Tina Turner had replaced Buddy Holly, her raucous, strangulated voice belting out Simply the Best. A drunken chorus took it up, and Dillon was hauled onto a chair, glass in hand, to lead the community singing. Halfway through the mind-blowing din, Harry turned the sound low and gave Dillon a broad sweaty grin and the thumbs-up.
'Thanks – thanks for coming…' Dillon beamed down on them, on top of the world, his voice hoarse with singing and the emotion of the moment. 'This is a big day for me, for Stag Security – so pass, it on to any of the lads comin' out into civvies – we got work for 'em!' He stuck his fist in the air, pumping it in a victory salute. 'We're simply the best!'
Cheers and shouts turned into a chant of 'Dance! Dance! Dance!' which was all the encouragement Dillon needed, if he needed any. A space cleared, and Dillon and Tina went for it, a circle of clapping hands and stamping feet, the singing almost loud enough to drown out the stereo.
On the fringe of the crowd, Susie shrank away, embarrassed at the spectacle Dillon was making of himself. He was gone, in a world of his own, shirt stuck to his body as he spun round and round, arms up, fingers clicking, hips swaying, performing fancy side-steps and sensuous shimmies. Then she thought, he's not at all bad. In fact he was good. Hellfire, he was brilliant!
Helen had had enough, both of Dillon's gyrations and Tina Turner's shrill vocals. She leaned over and shouted in Susie's ear, 'Can somebody change that bloody record! You know the neighbours have been at the door – next thing they'll call in the police. Turn it down!'
Susie nodded, put her glass down on the sideboard and slid open a drawer; she had something else in mind. Frank was enjoying himself and she wasn't going to spoil his fun, not tonight of all nights. She knew it was here somewhere, amongst their collection of EPs, some of them as old as the Ark. Rummaging through, she pounced, triumphant.
'Found it!' She held up the record in its tattered paper sleeve for Shirley to see. 'This used to be his favourite – he's always loved dancing to it.'
There was no way she could get near the stereo. 'Harry!' Susie waved to attract his attention, handing the record to him over the heads and crush of bodies. 'Will you put this on, it's his…' pointing to Dillon, still lost in the music '… it's his favourite.'
Harry yelled, 'Cliff! Cliff!' and passed the record on to Cliff at the turntable, then went back to his monologue on the art of warfare that even Tina Turner couldn't disrupt: 'I mean, a stun grenade, mate, it's what – fifteen centimetres high and ten centimetres round, weighs 250 grams, you pull that ring, you get one helluva bang that ignites the magnesium – that's what creates the flash-bang effect…'
Cliff had missed his way as a deejay. There was barely a break in the music. One moment Dillon was whirling and singing along to Simply the Best in the middle of a bopping, heaving crowd. In the very next, four heavy pounding piano chords pummelled the air.
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain -
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Too much in love drives a man insane -
The crowd bopping and heaving around him, Dillon stood frozen to the spot, hair plastered to his scalp, sweat dripping off him. Something in his face seemed broken. His throat worked. Wild-eyed now, his expression ugly, demented, Dillon barged forward, roughly thrusting bodies out of the way. He reached out, hands like claws, swiped the playing arm, an horrendous screeeeech as the stylus skidded across the record.
'Which bastard put this on!' Panting, staring round, eyes out of kilter, mad-looking.
Harry was there in a trice, a bulky, comforting arm around Dillon's shoulder. 'Outside, come on, old son. Let's have a breather…'
Numbed by the suddenness and shock of it, Susie watched her husband being led away, shoulders hunched under the protective shelter of Harry's arm. As for the third or fourth time that night Tina Turner began yet another rendition of Simply the Best.
Some of the crowd had spilled from the flat onto the outside landing. They were getting to the silly stage, fizzing up bottles of lager and squirting one another, laughing like drains. Farther along, neighbours were poking their heads out, and when they didn't get much change, slamming back inside.
Harry sat on the concrete steps. He offered a cigarette to Dillon and they both smoked for a while, the thump of music, shouts and screams of laughter issuing from the flat. Leaning against the brick parapet, Dillon stared off into the darkness, a million light-years away. He hardly heard Harry's angry, 'I'll whop that idiot Cliff! Guess he didn't know, Frank.'
As if voicing a private thought, Dillon said, 'I don't understand, it's only since I been in civvies it keeps on comin' back…'
A bottle went over and splintered in the courtyard below. From somewhere, a man's enraged shout about this time of night, pack it in or else. Dillon dragged deep, let the smoke out with a sigh. 'Yeah, I know, you think I want to get involved?' he said. The question was addressed as much to himself as to Harry. 'He says they're in London.'
'Yeah, an' maybe Wally's contact's a load of crap,' Harry said. 'Right now, we got an opportunity to give a leg-up to our lads comin' out. They all need work.' He stood up and flicked his cigarette end away, the red ember sailing off through the dark air. 'Let's go back in, I don't want one of those buggers pullin' my blonde.'
The music was even louder now, hysterical screams mixed in with it. Another bottle went crashing down. The men outside the flat were booming out 'Here we go here we go here we go. Here we go here we…' full-throated baritones and basses.
Dillon made a small gesture. 'Yeah, go on, gimme a few minutes.'
Harry moved off. He looked back over his shoulder. 'Not our war any more, Frank,' he said, and carried on, shouting at the drunken scrum outside the flat to bloody well keep the noise down.
From the landing below a woman's voice screamed up, 'I'm gonna call the police! You hear me? I've got two kids tryin' to sleep, you got no right! Stop it!'
She was standing in the concrete stairwell, built out from the main block, strained white face staring up. A thin woman with straggling hair, she clutched the fur-trimmed collar of a long coat to her throat, a night-dress underneath, fluffy slippers on her bare feet.
She spotted Dillon at the parapet and shook her fist at him. 'You bastards think you own this estate! I got two kids scared out of their wits…!'
Dillon stared back down into the venomous face, pinched with fury. He was used to faces like that, women's faces especially. And their eyes. It was their eyes that haunted him. Eyes that looked at him as if he'd crawled out from under a stone and left a trail of slime behind him. As if he wasn't even human. As if he wasn't any kind of life-form at all.
Border checkpoint. County Tyrone. October 1987.
It is dusk, the poor light made worse by the drizzle sweeping in across the fields and the isolated clusters of farm buildings, their red corrugated roofs shining slick-wet. A line of vehicles, cars and vans, most of them old and beat-up, all of them mud-spattered, wait at the striped barrier. The squaddies are in no hurry. They are here till changeover at twenty-one hundred, so it makes no difference to them. Four men form a semi-circle round the car at the barrier. They wear flak jackets over their DPM uniforms, with special non-slip shoulder pads for their rifle butts. At the hip, trained on the leading vehicle and ready to fire, they hold L1A1 rifles, fitted with thirty-round magazines. The sling of the weapon is attached to the right wrist so that it can't be snatched off in a scuffle.