Civvies (25 page)

Clutching her fur collar, the woman stared up into Dillon’s face. She was visibly shaking, hair bouncing on her shoulders. ‘You dirty bastards, they’re pissin’ over the railings, animals…’ ‘I’m sorry, okay.’ Dillon held up his hand. ‘I’ll go an’ quieten ‘em down.’ ‘I know who you are, Frank Dillon!’ the woman suddenly said. She pointed an accusing finger. ‘I’m gonna call the police.’ Shaking his head, and feeling it start to spin, Dillon moved to the top of the stairwell. Holding out both hands in appeasement, he stumbled down a step or two, and the woman dodged back as if a pan of boiling water had been tipped over her foot. ‘Don’t come near me!’ Dillon swayed on the steps the lethal mixture of keg bitter, brown ale, lager, Scotch and Tina Turner combining and igniting in his brain like nitroglycerine. He tried to turn back, missed his footing, and slumped instead against the wall, his face scraping the concrete. Down on his knees, cheek pressed to the wall, Dillon whispered in a voice near as dammit to weeping, ‘I got two kids … I got two kids.’

Falls Road District. Belfast. March 1988. It is night, the streets are quiet, the pubs and clubs emptied and dispersed nearly an hour ago. A cold wind blows along the street of terraced houses, each with its tiny square of garden bordered by a low brick wall, rattles the chip papers in the gutter. A garden gate creaks, four hunched shapes scuttle in, flatten themselves like limpets to the front wall of the house. A light burns above behind floral bedroom curtains, a glow from the hallway through the stained-glass fanlight above the door. Crouching close to the wall, the brick is chill and damp against Dillon’s cheek. He checks the illuminated dial of his watch. The green second-hand creeps into the third quadrant. Very slowly he eases himself up and looks back to the corner of the street. A single ruby-red light winks from the driver’s aperture, telling him that the
APC
is in position, ready to move in. Once more Dillon looks at his watch, for the last time. The green hand sweeps away the final seconds. Dillon gives the signal. Jimmy steps up and with one swing of the sledgehammer smashes the front door open. The armoured personnel carrier is already at the gate, the rest of the squad piling out, the alsatians straining on their short leashes, soldiers in visored helmets deploying along the street. At the kerb, a lance-corporal speaks into a shortwave walkie-talkie, confirming to the 21/C that entry has been effected. The hallway of the small terraced house is suddenly packed with bodies. A woman with cropped dark hair and a narrow pinched face stands screaming at the foot of the stairs, arms held wide barring access; a pregnancy in its seventh month makes a bulge like a bowling ball in her quilted housecoat. ‘No, please, dear God no!’ The woman retreats one step up but keeps her scrawny grip on the banister. ‘Oh, God help me please, don’t harm my kids… there’s just children upstairs.’ ‘How many upstairs, who’s upstairs?’ Dillon barks at her. He grips her arm tight, shaking her. ‘Gimme their names, ages, come on!’ From the living-room and kitchen, the sounds of drawers being wrenched out, cupboard doors flung open, their contents scattered, ornaments swept off shelves, crockery breaking. ‘I swear before God it’s just my kids,’ the woman weeps, her eyes pleading with Dillon. Jimmy comes through waving a family allowance book. ‘She’s got seven bastards, eldest is seventeen, one fifteen, an’ two twelve-year olds, rest are girls.’ ‘Get away from the stairs.’ Dillon twists her arm, prising her grip from the banister. ‘I said move it!’ He turns, gives a curt nod to the four Toms crowding in through the front door. ‘Back up, move up.’ Roughly shoving her aside, Dillon cautiously mounts the stairs, clicking the firing control of his rifle to automatic, a live one up the spout, ready to fire. ‘You got any lodgers, eh?’ The woman lies slumped on the stairs, stretched out. ‘Answer me!’ The woman shakes her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. Feebly she tries to grasp hold of Dillon’s trouser-leg. He kicks her away without looking. In a broken voice she pleads with him, ‘Ah no, please, they’re just children. Please don’t, they’ve done nothing wrong…’ Jimmy laughs, dangling the family allowance book in front of her. She makes a grab for it. Holding it tauntingly out of reach, he rips it to shreds and sprinkles the scraps over her. ‘You scum!’ The woman’s face breaks out in ugly red blotches. ‘I got seven kids to feed, how long you think it’s gonna take for me to get that renewed… please why don’t you tell me what you want, please!’ From up above comes the sound of doors banging, scampering feet on the bedroom floor, the terrified screams of children. Furniture is being moved, wardrobe doors crashing open, the tinkling of breaking glass. Harry wanders in from the kitchen, shaking his head. Jimmy gives him the nod. ‘Out in front, get the flagstones up.’ He shouts upstairs, ‘Everything kosher down here, Frank!’ Dillon leans over the banister. ‘Get the bitch up here!’ Jimmy grabs the pregnant woman under the armpit and force-marches her up the stairs, practically dragging her on her knees the last few steps. The front bedroom has been ransacked, the mattress ripped apart, bedding thrown into a corner. The contents of the dressing-table and wardrobe are strewn over the floor. A little glass shelf and its collection of religious pictures and icons lie broken and trampled behind the door. Jimmy crunches through the debris, his bent arm hooked under the sobbing woman’s arm, half-supporting her. Harry comes in behind, his square bulk filling the doorframe. Dillon points. ‘Get the baby out.’ In its crib, an eighteen-month old baby with a halo of golden curls, thumb tucked into its rosebud mouth, sleeps peacefully through it all. ‘Leave her be, you scum!’ The woman flails her arm helplessly, but Dillon is well out of range. ‘There’s nothin’ here — leave her! Don’t you touch her!’ Jimmy swings her forward. ‘Do what he says, tart! What are you, a breedin’ machine, a real slag, aren’t you — get the kid out.’ ‘I’ll get the police, you soldiers you got no right, no right to do this!’ Dillon beckons Harry over and together they approach the crib. Jimmy restrains the woman, who wants to scream yet daren’t, for fear of waking the child. Harry looks underneath and round the back of the crib while Dillon feels gingerly along the edge of the mattress. He eases the covers back. The baby’s eyes open, she blinks and focuses, and starts to bawl. The mother screams and claws to go to her. Jimmy hauls her straining body to the door. Harry lifts out the crying, wriggling baby and Dillon removes the pillow and mattress, prods and feels at them, tosses them down. Out on the landing, Dillon says, ‘Get a neighbour, we’ll take the tart in for questioning.’ The rest of squad waiting in the hallway shake their heads as Dillon comes downstairs. Behind them they have left a wrecked house, and nothing to show for it. Stepping over the torn-up paving stones, Dillon gives the wipe-out signal. The soldiers deployed along the street start to gather in, the
APC
throttles up, the dog-handlers rein in the alsatians. Two Toms lead the woman through the gate, still wearing bedroom slippers and quilted housecoat, her head bowed, both hands pressed to her swollen belly. Always one for a ready quip, Jimmy calls out, ‘Sorry about this, tart, we were lookin’ for a dead hunger striker!’ This gets a general laugh, slackening the tension, and Dillon says through a grin, ‘Just hold her for an hour or so, get a photograph an’ let her go.’ The woman is bundled into the back of a Land Rover fitted with Macralon armour and toughened anti-shatter windows. She leans out, her face distorted, so that it’s hardly recognisably the same woman, with an intense, implacable hatred. ‘You’re animals, all of you!’ Walking by, Dillon ducks his head. ‘Tarra! See you again some dark night! And Kathleen —’ he wags his finger ‘ — watch out for your kids eh!’ The Land Rover moves off, the woman turning to look at Dillon through the back window. She will never forget his lean, hard face with its vertical scar below the left eye, and Dillon will never forget hers, with its look of dumb, hopeless, helpless defeat. A priest hurries across the street and pushes through the knot of soldiers waiting to board the
APC
. He pauses with his hand on the garden gate, grey-haired, slightly stooped, taking in the upturned paving stones, the wrecked front door. He turns to look at the soldiers, and then at Dillon, the streetlight glinting off his metal-rimmed spectacles. Stepping through the front door, he sees the shambles of the living-room, and looks up the stairs. On the landing, the younger children, three boys and two girls, in pyjamas and nightdresses, sit huddled together, crying, shivering with fright. The older boy stands behind them, an eyebrow split open, blood running from his nose, holding his baby sister in his arms. The little girl has stopped crying and is examining with curiosity the blood dripping onto her fingers from her brother’s nose. The priest has to close his eyes. ‘Why? Dear Mother of God, why?’

‘Frank!’ Wearily, Dillon opened his eyes. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know what time of day it was. Yes he did, it was dark, which meant it must be night. But he wasn’t in bed, so where the hell was he? Susie’s voice — shrill, hysterical — pierced through the tender tissue that was his throbbing brain. ‘Frank, for God’s sake will you get them out of the house, they’re going into the kids’ room, Frank! They’re gettin’ out of hand, throwing bottles over the railings, the neighbours have called the police… Frank!’ Dillon pushed himself up, crawling hand over hand up the concrete wall of the stairwell. Once upright, he shook his head blearily, and staggered past her up the steps. ‘I’ll get them out.’ ‘They’re bargin’ into the kids’ room, terrifying them…’ Dillon halted on the landing. His head came slowly round to look at her over his shoulder. Susie had never before seen such a dark welter of twisted demonic hatred on his face, much less turned upon her. As if he loathed her with all his being. Loathed her. ‘Frank…?’ Dillon turned back, a strange distant glaze in his eyes, and went on, head down like a charging bull, leaving Susie frozen to the spot.

Dillon kissed the boys, tucked in their duvets. ‘Nothin’ to be scared of, they’re just havin’ a good time!’ Trying to make it sound hearty and jovial. ‘You weren’t scared, were you? Eh? Not big lads like you two? Nothing to be frightened of…’ Phil peeped out. ‘They’re drunk, one of ‘em’s been sick in the toilet.’ ‘I’ll clear it up,’ Dillon said. ‘Now, go to sleep — tell you what, I’ll sit here, keep guard, eh? So nobody comes in, how’s that?’ He patted their shoulders and pulled up the small chair from Kenny’s desk, sat down facing the door. Opposite him, the picture gallery of posters, postcards and photographs, the relics and mementoes tacked to the wall. High up in one corner, soundlessly circling on invisible strings, a camouflage-pattern C-130 with
RAF
roundels. Hunched forward, Dillon stared at the wall of memories, listening to the noise of revelry still going on downstairs. Music was still playing, and through it he heard Harry bellowing, ‘Everybody out, come on now, lads, party’s over. Come on… out now!’ The racket gradually diminished as people started leaving. Voices on the landing outside the window, laughter, the clatter of footsteps. The Beatles finished Norwegian Wood, followed by a silence that seemed to signal the end of it all, and then a pounding piano and Great Balls of Fire burst out once again. Dillon rested his forehead in his hands. Abruptly the music stopped. The front door banged. From the window Dillon watched the lads climbing into their cars. Drunken singing and shouting sailed up from the courtyard. Some of the cars drove round three or four times, headlights flaring, horns blasting. Dillon saw headlights shining through smoke, hoses trailing across a cindery patch of earth bordered by whitewashed stumps. Groups of people with blackened faces, shrouded in blankets and coats, gazing with shell-shocked eyes at the smouldering ruins of Hennessey’s Bar. Harry, chin jutting out, saying Come on, let’s get back in there. I’m game! Harry was game all right. Too fucking game. Because he’d nothing to lose. No wife, no kids. The Paras had been his entire life — wife, kids, family all rolled up into one, stamped in silver with a winged parachute, crown and lion. If coming out into civvies had been a shock to Dillon, it must have been traumatic for Harry, like being severed from the umbilical cord all over again. Suddenly finding yourself floating, rootless, in an alien world that didn’t give a toss who you were or what you’d done. Just another useless fat knacker who hadn’t had the sense to stop a sniper’s bullet in the Falklands or in Ulster like some of his mates had. Isn’t that why you joined the Army, mate, to get your fucking brains blown out? The door was pushed open and Harry crept in. ‘Cops arrived, but it’s all under control. Just a few stragglers left.’ He went to the window and looked down, his broad, beery-red face relaxing into a fond grin. ‘But they’re on their way home now… okay bunch of blokes.’ He patted Dillon’s shoulder and turned to leave. ‘I’ll check out Wally’s info — that what you want?’ ‘Harry, wait…’ Harry stopped, his hand on the doorknob. His face wasn’t relaxed any more, the fond grin had gone. Now he looked tense. ‘Like you said, mate,’ he reminded Dillon, his voice low and angry, ‘we made a pact! Jimmy’s gone, Steve’s dead, not a lot Taffy can do from inside, so it’s down to you and me Frank… I’ll check out Wally’s info and get back to you.’

Harry shut the door quietly, not waiting for Dillon to reply. They had made the pact and there was no backing out of that, but without the others, without the backup — or was it without the army?… Dillon sighed, he was so screwed up inside that twisted emotions strangled each other — guilt, anger, grief. He had no fury left, he could not feel the hatred or the anger he knew he needed. What if Wally’s information was sound, that these were the two dark-haired boys who were sitting at that table that fucking awful night, the two smiling boys who had downed their beers and offered Dillon’s crowd their seats, those two, who had strolled out of the bar that night, knowing within seconds the place would be blown apart. They had to have known. Wasn’t that why they had smiled? There had been many weeks of checking and questioning everyone in or near the pub that night. A barman remembered the boys. He had never seen them before, they were not regulars, but he remembered them because one of them was carrying what looked like a carrier bag with booze brought in from outside. The disco attracted a lot of kids who’d slip in their own liquor to save a few bob, but then the two had ordered beers and sat at the table, the same table Dillon’s lads took over. No one had ever been arrested for the bomb attack. Months, even years after, the description of those two killers’ faces was imprinted on, and in, each of the minds of those who survived. They would always mark the anniversary with one hell of a binge, and they had always sworn no matter how long it took, that they would each make it their responsibility to keep the hunt going, it was personal, not Army. The last anniversary, they had actually combined with a new recruit’s birthday bash, but it didn’t mean their pact was over. Yet thinking back, Dillon knew that in some way the fever was dying, life went on, other mates had been killed. Dillon thought about Barry Newman and wondered whether maybe that was why he remembered so often now. It wasn’t because of the music, the same song that was being played that night, that bloody Great Balls of Fire. It was Newman’s son Billy. That was the connection or the memory and it was there like a dark cloud. Dillon stared at the wall of photographs. He closed his eyes to blank them out. ‘Oh Christ,’ he whispered, as he felt the dark insidious cloud creeping over him, felt the tremors of guilt, of anger, of grief and then the burning sensation, the fury. It was coming back, and he was afraid. Why was it that every time he felt as if he was breathing clean air, something, someone drew him back down? It was as if he was suffocating inside himself, but he had instigated that pact, and if there was only Harry and himself left then he would have to see it through.