'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.'