Pizzas galore!

On one side of this psycho-war stand Bush and Blair, on the other is the shadowy figure of al-Zarqawi, a killer who dreams of turning Iraq into an extreme Islamic state. Caught in the middle, alone and helpless, is Bigley.

LIKE many of the civilians who work in Iraq, Bigley knew the risks and had made his choices. “I’m not afraid,” he told neighbours in Baghdad a few weeks ago. “You only die once.”

After years of working in the Middle East, he was relatively at ease in Iraq and for a while after the fall of Baghdad expats there had enjoyed some freedom. They rented spacious apartments with swimming pools; they could walk the streets and bargain for carpets in the souk. Then as the suicide bombers and assassins grew bolder, they hired guards and installed extra security.

As the killings intensified, foreigners ventured out less and less. Many fled to the Green Zone, the city centre area that has been turned into a giant fortified compound known as “Little America”. They knew all too well what was likely to happen if they were seized.

“If you are caught, you’re dead meat,” said one Briton. “The best you can hope is that you die on the spot when they capture you. The idea of beheading is too chilling to think about — although we can’t help thinking about it over and over.”

If that fear preyed on Bigley’s mind, he did not show it. In July he visited his 86-year-old mother in Liverpool and as he left to return to Iraq, his brother Paul asked him: “Are you sure you want to do this?” Bigley replied: “There’s a job to be done. I have started it and I am going to finish it.” He smiled as he walked off to catch his flight.

His life had already taken many sudden and tragic turns. Bigley had worked in engineering until he had switched to running two small supermarkets in the Wirral. One day a robber threatened his wife with a hammer.

The incident so traumatised her that the couple moved away to start afresh, running a pub in Somerset. Once again their lives were shattered, this time when one of their sons was killed in a road accident. He was 17.

The grief destroyed Bigley’s marriage. “It changed Ken completely,” said his brother Paul. “He said to me, I have no life any more. I had to pick him up, tell him that time is the greatest healer.”

Paul helped his brother find work in the Middle East, setting him on a road that eventually led to Iraq where Bigley, having remarried to a Thai woman, had chosen to do one last lucrative job. It was to be a golden goodbye, before retiring to a house he was building in Thailand, looking forward to becoming a grandfather.

The money was tempting. The best contractors in Iraq could earn $150,000 or more. Bigley could build up his savings and was only a few weeks away from leaving for good.

Within Iraq, however, kidnapping was becoming an epidemic. Hundreds of local men, women and children were being snatched and ransomed for anything from $5,000 to $20,000.

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