'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.