'Harry, give us the kitty.' Steve reached across, palming notes and coins. His long-lashed, green eyes in his clean-cut handsome face were already a bit fuzzy. One or two of the young girls had given him the swift once-over as soon as he walked in, and Steve, glassy-eyed or not, had taken their rank and number. Might get his end away later on, with one, both, or several. Can't keep a good prick down.
But first things first. Drink, crisps, drink, peanuts, drink, and more drink.
They were still a few chairs short, Steve saw, and gestured to Billy Newman, the youngest of the Toms, just turned nineteen, to get it sorted. 'There's two up at the end, Billy – grab 'em. Hey mate,' Steve called to a squaddie nibbling the ear of the blonde girl on his knee, 'that seat being used?'
Over by the door, on their way out, one of the two young Irishmen glanced back. His gaze drifted casually down beneath the table. For a mere fraction of a second it lingered there, on the brown carrier-bag against the wall, wedged behind and partly hidden by the old-fashioned iron-ribbed radiator.
His gaze flicked over the six young men sitting there, expression frozen, eyes hooded. Then taking all the time in the world, he pulled the collar of his leather jacket up round his ears and strolled out after his companion.
Taffy Davies hailed Dillon from the bar. A large beefy man, with a broad, friendly mug and a nose that had taken a bashing in the Battalion boxing squad, Taffy and Dillon had been close mates ever since they'd signed on and gone through basic training together – thirteen, fourteen years ago – both young shavers practically straight out of school. Since then they'd done a roll-call of tours all over the world: Jordan, Bahrain, Cyprus, British Guiana, Belize. Not forgetting their time in the Falklands, when they'd been under continuous artillery and mortar fire for almost two days and nights. Wherever there was a shitty job to be done, send in the Paras. The Regiment's motto, Utrinque Paratus, said it all -'Ready for Anything.'
'Hey, Frank, wanna drink?' Taffy raised his pint mug.
'We're on a round,' Dillon yelled back. 'Come and join us.' And turning to Harry, 'Got a coin for the juke-box?'
Dillon pushed through the ruck of bodies, passing Jimmy and Steve at the bar, frantically signalling to get served. Harry went over to give them a hand. Taffy drained his glass and waved it aloft. 'I'll have a pint, Jimmy!'
'I'll be a second.' Dillon pointed to the crudely-painted sign reading GENTS' TOILETS tacked above a scarred green door at the far end. 'Gonna take a leak.' On the way he stopped at the juke-box and did a quick recce through the Fifties section, then with a grin inserted the coin and punched up his all-time favourite. Christ, if he had a quid for every time he and Susie had bopped to 'Great Balls of Fire'… go for it, Killer!
Heading for the Gents', he had to laugh at the antics of the Toms, pounding the table and yelling at Jimmy and the others to get a move on: six young faces, slightly flushed with heat and the few they'd had on the way, bursting with health and high spirits. And Billy Newman acting the comic, sprawled back in his chair, grasping his throat, tongue lolling out, as if he'd just crawled across the desert. Smashing lads, Dillon thought, the best, and felt a glow of real pride. My lads. Better than those fat knackers you saw on the streets back home, hair dyed green and purple, safety-pins through their nostrils, with pasty, drab faces like dead fish on a slab.
Feeling good, more relaxed now, he pushed through the door into a narrow, dank-smelling concrete-floored passage with mildew eating the walls, having to squeeze past crates of empty bottles stacked nearly to the corrugated iron roof. The Gents' toilets consisted of two cubicles, one already occupied, and as Dillon stood back to let someone pass, he glimpsed Malone entering the other. A girl, seventeen or thereabouts, lank mousy hair tied back in a pony-tail, was standing outside one of the Ladies' cubicles opposite, tapping ungently on the door with bitten fingernails painted a day-glo yellow.
'Come on, Kathleen, you bin ages!' The lilt of her accent made even her whine sound attractive to Dillon's ears. She tapped again, gnawing her lip. 'Kathleen, are you coming out of there?'
Amused, Dillon leaned against the wall, stroking his dark moustache. He watched as Kathleen emerged – a transformed Kathleen apparently – having strained and struggled into a skimpy, tight-fitting knitted top that showed every nook and cranny. She smoothed it down over her puppy-fat tummy, blue-lidded eyes under frizzy blonde, home-kit permed hair, an attempt at being Madonna falling flat. She mouthed through glossy red lips, 'Me mother'd kill me if she caught me wearing this… do you like it? It's crocheted -'
Catching sight of Dillon, she tossed her haughty head in the air, and the pair of them went off, squealing and giggling.
Hell, he was bursting. Dillon banged on the cubicle door.
'Come on, Malone!'
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain -
(Loud enough, even here, to drown out the sound of the live band.)
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
Too much in love drives a man insane -
Dillon banged again, harder.
Jimmy backed away from the bar, loaded tray held high, Harry nipping in to grab the one being filled by the perspiring barman. Taffy, having filched his pint, was already on his way to the table, licking a moustache of foam from his upper lip. Given the glad eye, Steve was leaning over a pale girl with glossy black hair draping her shoulders, putting in a useful bit of spadework for later on. She Taurus, he Pisces – sweet combination! – was the bill of goods he was selling. And she was buying, gazing into those sexy green eyes of his.
I laughed at love cos I thought it was funny -
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
You came along and moved me honey -
BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!
I've changed my mind
This world is fine -
Goodness Gracious! Great Balls of…
Weaving through the crowd, twelve feet or so from the table, Taffy saw with his own eyes what a £6.50 Woolworths' alarm clock, some copper wiring and thirty pounds of Semtex could do.
It was the stuff of a twisted, tortured nightmare dreamt by a madman. In an instant the table and the six flushed, laughing young faces vanished, obliterated in a rocket blast of intense white heat and a curling, orange-streaked fireball that blew a hole through the ceiling. In a dragged-out eternity of suspended time Taffy actually saw it happen, before the upsurge of the blast sucked the big Welshman in – sucked him towards the heart of the inferno, towards the gaping hole left behind as the front wall was ripped out and spewed into the carpark.
Then the roof caved in, a massive oak beam smashing across Taffy's shoulders and pinning him to the floor.
The shockwave lifted Jimmy, the loaded tray of brimming pints disappearing over his head, and flung him into a writhing knot of hot bodies, tangled arms and legs, splintered tables and chairs, shards of broken glass. Harry, his back to the explosion, head-butted the bar and in a dazed, instantaneous reflex rolled under a table as another huge beam came crashing down, missing him by inches. Further away from the epicentre of the blast, near the archway to the disco, a giant hand swatted Steve between the shoulder-blades. Sent him skidding along the floor into a mass of bodies, feeling them pressed close to his face, the mingled smell of perfume, aftershave, sweat, beer and Babycham stinging his nostrils like fetid, suffocating incense.
And then a strange unearthly silence. After the boom and searing flash and shockwave had died away, it settled over the wreckage of broken bodies and falling debris, illuminated by a single stuttering fluorescent tube hanging crazily from its bracket. It lasted a couple of heartbeats, this dreadful silence in the flickering semi-darkness. Long enough for the horror of what had happened to sink in, for the brutal fact of it to penetrate the numbed brain of the injured and the dying. Not as bad though, nowhere near, as the screams and moans and cries for help that now went up, a shrill, piercing, endless cacophony of human anguish.