Civvies

I would like to thank the
BBC
for producing
CIVVIES
as well as the director, Karl Francis, the producer, Ruth Caleb, the co-producer, Ruth Kenley Letts, and the script editor, Sheryl Crown. My thanks must also go to the great crew, the make-up and costume department, the stunt arrangers and casting. Indeed, there was a dedication from everyone involved in the making of
CIVVIES
that I have never seen before in any other production. My deep gratitude also goes out to the superb team of actors and actresses whose professionalism and talent I cannot praise too highly. I thank you all sincerely and wish each and every one of you a successful future. You have held in your hands a piece of work that I had a deep and personal belief should be made and to have it enriched by your talent and produced with such loving care has touched my heart. Thank you. Lynda La Plante

I would like to acknowledge the talent of the writer Trevor Hoyle without whom this book could not have been published.

I dedicate this book to Bob’s four daughters

An alarm bell clanged through the haze in Dillon’s head, faint yet nagging as toothache, the instant he laid eyes on the place, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere. Trouble was, by then his brain was half-pickled by the four pints of bitter and three Grolsch sloshing around his gut, making his head spin slightly and giving him that keyed-up flutter in his chest — Saturday night had started right and could only get better. Yes! And Jimmy Hammond, squashed against him in the front passenger seat of the jeep, can of lager in his hand, was yelling in his ear, ‘Got the best beer for miles around — and there’s a disco, Frank!’ There were ten of them in the jeep. The four in the front were seasoned veterans and old mates, while crammed in the back were six fresh-faced ‘Toms’, as the privates in the Parachute Regiment were called. After passing through the living hell of ‘P’ Company selection (twenty-seven had made the grade out of ninety-eight hopefuls), followed by months of intensive training, this was only their second week in Northern Ireland and their first chance to get tanked up. Dillon had promised ‘his lads’ a barnstorming binge, and Sergeant Dillon always delivered. The jeep swung into the parking area — little more than a patch of cindery earth bordered by concrete posts slapped with whitewash — and tried to find a spot amongst the thirty or more cars already there. Dillon got his first gander at Hennessey’s Bar, and was none too impressed. Not much more than a two-storey barn tricked out with fairy lights, he reckoned, the shanty-like toilets housed in lean-to shacks at the side. And nothing for miles around except a few trees and the impenetrable darkness of fields, hedgerows and tilled farmland. Harry ‘Big Gut’ Travers switched off the engine, and everybody piled out to avoid his thunderous fart. They groaned in union and threw a few choice curses as they extricated themselves from Harry’s fumes. The six young lads jumped around, faces all aglow, trying to get the circulation going. The noise from the entrance, double doors flung wide, was horrendous — a thumping disco fighting it out with a live Irish folk band. ‘Popular, isn’t it?’ Dillon looked around, tucking his shirt into his jeans, pulling his windcheater straight. All wore their scruffs, jeans, T-shirts, battered Puma trainers, outside the base. ‘Sure it’s got clearance?’ That bloody persistent alarm bell. Jimmy drained his lager, crumpled the can as if it was a paper cup and tossed it over his shoulder. He grinned and thumped Dillon’s arm. ‘Trust me, I’ve been coming here for months.’ Leading the way, he waved them forward, tall, broad shoulders on a muscular frame, red hair cropped short. ‘Right lads, get a move on!’ he yelled. ‘First round’s on me!’ Crunching over the cinders and broken glass, Harry on one side, Steve Harris on the other, Dillon caught sight of Malone talking to another guy just outside the entrance. Tony Malone, plainclothes military police, six-foot-four, built like a brick shithouse with a personality to match. Dillon wasn’t given to hating people, he didn’t care to waste the emotional investment, but Malone made a career of being stagnant pond life and proud of it. ‘Oi! Malone,’ Dillon called out as they approached. ‘This place given the all-clear, has it?’ Malone turned, eyes narrowing under the black bar of his eyebrows, Brylcreemed hair gleaming slickly in the fairy lights. He didn’t like being addressed as if he were a common craphat, even by a staff sergeant in the Paras. He spat the words out, hardly moving his lips. ‘You and your mob drinking, Dillon, no place is —’ No love lost between them, Dillon went straight to him, staring up past Malone’s hairy nostrils, though he kept his voice low and neutral. ‘I asked you a question, mate.’ Malone stared back, eyes like slits, as if seriously considering whether to have a go, right there and then. He’d taken on bigger guys and beaten them to a pulp, but there was something about Dillon, a kind of chilling stillness and brooding intensity about the man, that warned him off. And Dillon’s face bore the marks of someone who’d been through the wars and lived to tell the tale. The
NAAFI
brawl in Belize that had slit his cheek wide open and left him with a thin cruel scar. Nearly losing an eye ‘down south’ on Mount Longdon, the sniper’s bullet grazing his right eyebrow and leaving a pale puckered abrasion. The kind of face that could take punishment and come back for second helpings. ‘Come on, Frank —’ Jimmy pulled Dillon away from the simmering confrontation. ‘We’re wasting valuable drinking time…’ As the six young lads pushed past him, Malone vented his spite over their heads, twitching his size-seventeen neck. ‘I checked it out personal, so screw you and…’ The rest of it was lost as noise, heat and smoke hit them like a solid wall. At the far end of the long, narrow room, beams and nicotined stucco plaster overhead, the live group was twanging away, and through an archway disco lights were strobing over a packed dance-floor. He’d been dead right, Dillon saw, following Jimmy’s broad back. This was about as basic as you could get, a bar running almost its entire length, tables against the walls, bare floorboards, and a crowd into the serious business of getting pissed as farts in record-breaking time. They were all young, mostly soldiers, with a fair sprinkling of local girls sitting on laps, some openly necking. Dillon felt the tiny coiled spring of tension at the base of his spine unwind. Odd how after three tours in the Province he was more wary now than he’d been on his first. What was it — creeping paranoia or just plain old senility? Jesus wept, past it at thirty-one. Jimmy — Mr Fixit as usual — was doing the organising. He’d spotted a table round the corner from the main door vestibule with only a couple of young blokes sitting there, just finishing their pints, locals judging by the length of their hair and five o’clock shadows, and Jimmy was in before they’d put their glasses down. Harry Travers and Steve Harris were grabbing spare chairs and passing them over the heads of nearby crowded tables. Dillon and Jimmy started clearing the table of empties, pint glasses and bottles of Guinness, telling the six Toms to get sat down, first shout on them. ‘Thanks, mate.’ Harry plonked two more chairs down as the Irishmen got up to leave. Their table was filled with empty glasses and bottles. ‘You had a good night’s session by the look of it.’ One of them nodded, gave the thumbs-up, and stood aside as the young lads eagerly crowded in. Jimmy raised his arms. ‘Right — pints all round. What you having, Harry? Scotch? Steve, want to give me a hand?’ Counting on his fingers, backing towards the bar. ‘Guinness for you, Frank, yeh?’ ‘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. A tongue of yellow flame licked. It lapped up the walls, touched the curtains, turning to orange, and raced upwards in a sheet of bright crimson. As if this was the signal, the real panic started.