Dillon stood next to an Army fire tender, drenched to the skin, gazing with sick eyes at the flames leaping towards the sky. The front of the pub was practically burnt out, the fire still raging at the back, rapidly devouring the upper storey and roof.

The little girl Harry had rescued was nearby, wrapped in a blanket, being comforted by her mother. Her two boys, barely a couple of years separating them, were huddled in their father's arms as he knelt between them. God knows how Taffy had done it, Dillon thought… the bloke was asbestos, somehow finding them in there and smashing his way out through a rear window, bringing them out alive with hardly a scorch mark apiece. That brand of courage didn't grow on trees.

Dillon closed his eyes, jaw muscles clenched tight making the scar on his left cheek stand out through the smeared dirt. His lads. None of them over twenty, with all their young lives ahead of them. If he lived to be a hundred, two hundred, he'd never forget this, never forgive. Jimmy's voice brought him back to his senses.

'They're bringing them out now.' Jimmy was pointing to where the firemen had hosed the front entrance to a charred frame of smouldering timbers. Bodies were being stretchered out.

'I'm game.' Harry, his hands bandaged, was staring at Dillon with bloodshot eyes, one old pro reading the thoughts of another. 'Come on, let's go for another try…'

'You crazy?' Jimmy tried to grab Dillon's arm as he started forward. Dillon shook him off. 'Frank, the whole place is gutted. Frank!'

'My lads…' Dillon choked on the words. '…are still in there.' A spasm creased his face. 'My lads.'

'Frank, for God's sake, don't be crazy!'

'I'm with you, Frank,' Harry said. 'Let's go for it!'

'FRANK!' Fists clenched at his sides, Jimmy watched them get another drenching under the fire hoses and head towards the building, a fireman and two MPs trying to cut them off.