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Steve got to his feet and weaved towards the door. As he went by her he muttered, 'oNe lAMe – DuCk's enOUgh…'

  Susie watched him go and rounded on Dillon. 'What did he say?' she demanded, spots of colour burning her cheeks.

  Dillon grabbed her arm and dragged her towards him until his dark, dangerous eyes were two inches from hers.

  'You want to have a go at me, do it when he's not around -'

  Susie yanked her arm free. 'He bloody lives here?

  'You want to talk?' Dillon murmured, raising his eyebrows. 'Well, I'm all ears.' He went past her, kicking the door shut, turned about, folded his arms. 'What do you want to know?'

  'Oh stop this, Frank,' Susie pleaded. 'I can't take this!'

  'What do you want to know, Susie? Want to know about the job?' Susie flinched as Dillon lunged forward. He made a grab for the carrier-bag propped against the end of the sofa and ripped it open, holding up a chauffeur's uniform of dark jacket and dark grey slacks with knife-edge creases. He bared his teeth in what was supposed to be a smile.

  'Okay. Exchange one uniform for another, all right? You think this is what I want? You think I came out for this?'

  When she had her breathing under control, Susie said quietly, 'It's a job. At least you can pay the rent.' She swallowed, her face nearly crumpling. 'You – you did take the rent money from the drawer, didn't you? Oh Frank, you're not playin' the horses, are you, you promised me…'

  Dillon carelessly let the clothing fall in a heap over the back of the sofa. He said huskily, 'I'll pay the rent, Susie, I'll pay it and anything else you want.' His eyes bored into hers. 'In answer to your question, no, I did not put a cent on a bleedin' horse… even if I did it's my business, not yours.'

  He went to the door and threw it open, and Susie thought, if he yells for Steve just once more I'll scream. But he didn't, instead he almost fell over the Hoover.

  Susie took a pace forward, trying one last appeal.

  'You have so much time for everyone else… I need some too, Frank!' Dillon glared at her over his shoulder. 'Think about it, will you?'

  Between tight lips, only just audible, Dillon muttered: 'Everyone wants a piece of me, and I need some space, okay? I need -'

  What he needed was lost as Susie swept her hand out and slammed the door, this time in Dillon's face. A second later it crashed back on its hinges from Dillon's kick, and he stood in the doorway, the blood draining from his face, fists clenched.

  'Don't ever do that again!' Dillon snarled, eyes glittering.

  Susie held up her hands and backed away, her insides shrivelling at this proximity to a wild man with so much naked violence pouring out of him she could almost smell it. Or perhaps it was her own fear. Frank had never struck her but now she saw him fight for control, his hands rigid fists.

  'I'm sorry.' Susie said quietly.

  Dillon walked out, this time closing the door quietly and firmly, somehow it was worse than if he had slammed it. Susie buried her face in the cushion and burst into tears. She knew she couldn't take it much longer, she had tried, no one could say she hadn't tried, but she was beginning to wish he had never left the Paras.

  CHAPTER 11

  With the tip of his finger, Dillon touched the bonnet of the Mercedes-Benz 300SE three-litre and watched the little round patch of condensation evaporate from the flawless silver surface. The caged wall lights of the underground garage gave the car a ghostly, almost supernatural aura. Thunderbirds are go! Dillon thought, and felt a little tremor of excitement and apprehension.

  He was conscious of Jimmy watching them both from behind the wheel, no doubt revelling in their awe and trepidation – and of course envy too – because who else but Jim'll Fixit had the clout and the contacts to graciously bestow such a favour?

  'What do you think?' Dillon said, a bloody sight more nervous than he cared to admit.

  Steve gulped air and rifted, 'It's up to you – you'll be driving.'

  'What d'you mean? You're driving, mate. I've never driven an automatic'

  'Okay but…' Steve shrugged indifferently. 'I've got no licence.'

  Dillon's head came round in three distinct movements, his eyes burning holes through the air.

  'Banned,' Steve burped. 'Three years, drunk driving…'

  Dillon turned away, and hissed under his breath, 'Banned, you pillock!' Here they were with a job all lined up, he depending on Steve having never driven an automatic himself, and now Steve blurted or burped out he was bloody banned from driving. Dillon faced Steve, looked back to Jimmy, and in a low voice warned Steve to keep his mouth shut, not to let on to Jimmy, just drive the Merc out, he'd take over after a practice.

  Jimmy beckoned to them. They leaned in, inhaling the rich mingled odours of Cuban mahogany, deep-pile carpets and whole-hide leather in Antique Burgundy. 'Telephone…' Jimmy indicated the handset in its walnut box, 'you got everythin', even clean-air spray – and if you want a tip, use it. Nothin' worse than gettin' into a car reekin' of stale farts.' With a look of dire warning he tossed the keys to Steve. 'But so much as a scratch – an' I'll have your balls.' He tapped the steering-wheel. 'Thirty grand's worth of motor.'

  'Okay, it's simple,' Steve told Dillon fifteen minutes later, having driven the car to a piece of waste ground. They'd swapped seats and Dillon was frowning at the unfamiliar controls while Steve played driving instructor.

  'Just remember not to use your left foot… this is Reverse, this is Park, then 'D' for Drive… that's it.'

  He folded his arms and settled back as Dillon pushed the stick into Reverse and pressed the accelerator. The fat wheels skittered stones and dirt as the silver Mercedes shot back at high speed towards a brick wall, Steve unfolding his arms quick to stop his head bashing against the wooden fascia. Dillon slammed down on the foot-size brake pedal and they skidded to a halt, rocking on hydraulic suspension, inches away from the wall.

  Gasping and choking from the shock, Steve wiped his forehead, weak with relief that Dillon hadn't crumpled anything at first attempt. Then he was thrust back deep into the leather seat as the car suddenly hurtled forward, heading towards a pile of rubble. Steve covered his eyes. But Dillon reckoned he was getting the hang of it, even starting to enjoy himself.

  Taffy made his preparations. He placed a blanket, crosswise, on Megan's single bed, and with neat, orderly movements stacked her toys and dolls in the centre of it, added the pictures off the walls to the pile, finally the toddler's fluffy animals, plastic bricks and colouring books. He gathered the four corners together and quickly and expertly knotted them, then carried the tight bundle out and dumped it on the landing.

  Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump -

  The drumbeat in his head pounded out its unrelenting rhythm. The phantom drummer was at it too, repeating the same riff over and over and over again. But Taffy stayed calm. It was all very clear and simple. No sweat. He knew what he had to do.

  Megan crouched at the top of the stairs, biting her knuckles as she watched Daddy, singlet and shorts under the dressing-gown flapping at his calves, go back into her bedroom. He'd stripped down the bed and now he was dismantling the cot. He took it apart like a Bren gun, working with military precision and economy of effort, gathered the pieces and stacked them neatly against the banister rails.

  Megan cowered away but Daddy completely ignored her, went back into the empty, bare room and closed the door. As a welcome change the phantom drummer was now practising triple rolls, but the thump-thump-thump continued as before, as always, as ever.

  On Radio 5, Danny Baker was slagging off a new film with undisguised glee while Susie Dillon tidied away the breakfast things. She wiped her hands on the tea-towel and hurried through the living-room, using her fingers to comb back her hair, checking on the way that Kenny and Phil were still decent and presentable. She grabbed her coat from the hook and called up the stairs, 'Frank? Frank, I'm taking the kids to school – did you hear me?'

  Susie took a step back, trying to hide the glimmer of a smile as Dillon and St
eve came down the stairs, done up like dogs' dinners in their brand-new chauffeurs' uniforms, crisp white shirts and black ties, complete with peaked caps.

  'You look great…' Susie said, proud and impressed. She waved her hand. 'Hey, kids!'

  'Don't…' Dillon's neck was red with embarrassment. He glanced at Steve, and then, finding a weak grin, raised his cap as the boys came charging through. 'How do!'

  The telephone rang as Susie opened the front door and ushered the boys outside. She gave Dillon and Steve a big bright smile. 'Good luck! Know what time you'll be home?'

  'Hello?' Dillon said into the phone, then covered the mouthpiece. 'We could be late.' Susie winked and shut the door, but opened it almost at once, flagging for Dillon's attention. 'It's Frank speaking, who is this?' Through a blizzard of static he caught the name 'Mary' before his attention was needed elsewhere.

  'There's a gang of kids around the car,' Susie alerted him, jabbing her finger beyond the parapet.

  Dillon sighed, glanced three ways at once, at Susie, at the phone, at Steve adjusting his cap in the hall mirror. Jesus, if it wasn't one thing it was ten others. 'Go and take a look, Steve… I'll call Jimmy, ask if we can leave it in the garage.' Dillon's lips tightened as Steve dawdled, now putting his tie straight. 'Steve – just go and check the car…'

  Steve brushed past and went out banging the door behind him.

  Dillon said, 'Hello… hello?' The beeps sounded. Impatiently Dillon checked his watch, waiting for Taffy's missus to feed in more money. Calling from south Wales and she was dropping in ten-pence pieces one at a time. Come on.

  'Hello? Mary? Yeah, I'm still here, yeah…' Dillon listened to the distant voice, faint yet obviously distressed. 'Look, love, I don't know what I can suggest. I mean, I'm here, if he wants to call me again -'

  beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep

  'Christ!'

  'Frank!' Steve thumping the door with his fist. 'Come on, we'll be late!'

  Dillon plonked the receiver into the cradle, set his cap straight, and went out at the trot.

  Mary went cautiously up the stairs, the toddler, drowsily sucking her thumb, clasped in her arms. Megan lagged behind, peeping round her mother to the piles of stuff Taffy had placed on the landing. She pointed and whispered, 'See… he's moved everything out!'

  Mary looked down at the bundle, Megan's and the toddler's clothing piled on top, the dismantled cot, the blankets and bedding beside it in military order. Handing the child to Megan, she shuffled forward to the door and listened. Not a sound from within, and blessed silence from next door as well, which probably meant they were all watching Noel Edmonds with their tea on their laps, thank God. Mary raised her hand to tap on the door, but didn't.

  She called softly, 'Taffy? Do you want something to eat? Taff?'

  Frowning and shaking her head, Mary went back down, silently shooing her daughter ahead of her. From the bend in the stairs she saw the light under the door go out. She hesitated, but carried on down.

  In his dressing-gown Taffy lay on the bare mattress, arms straight at his sides, watching the light fade through the net curtains. The streetlamp came on, throwing a yellow trapezium on the flowered wallpaper and the pale areas where the pictures had hung, and, as if this was the signal triggering something in his brain, Taffy got up and began the final stage.

  Opening his Airborne-issue bergen rucksack, he laid out his kit on the bed. DPM Para smock, olive green denim trousers, 'Hairy' KF woollen shirt, '58 pattern webbing order, cloth puttees, DMS rubber-soled boots, green lanyard for compass, maroon belt with regimental badge in bright metal on the circular buckle, maroon beret with matt-black cap badge. All present and correct, sah!

  Taffy unscrewed the lid off the black boot polish and worked up a nice smooth paste with a globule of spit. Dipped the yellow cloth into it, set to with a will, bulling up the toe-caps. In the silent, darkened room Taffy polished industriously away, a frown of rapt concentration on his face.

  'What time is it?'

  Dillon, dressed only in jockey shorts and socks, carrying his uniform on a hanger, halted in mid-creep halfway across the bedroom floor. Susie's eyes watched him from above the covers as he hung the uniform on the wardrobe door. Dillon arched his back and crawled into bed with a groan. 'After two… I got terrible backache.'

  'What time are you on in the morning?'

  'Seven-thirty.' Dillon tried to relax, let the tension flow out of him. 'We've been sittin' in that car for twelve hours solid

  'Well,' Susie retorted, 'at least you're sitting down.'

  'Might have known I'd get no sympathy from you,' Dillon mumbled sleepily. He stretched and made a noise somewhere between a yawn and a groan, and snuggled down, totally whacked.

  Crash!

  From downstairs, but loud enough to wake the dead, Steve falling in through the front door, colliding with the bikes in the hall and thudding headlong to the floor.

  Floating away on the soft pink billow of deep wonderful sleep, Dillon came bolt upright in the bed, eyes sticking out like organ stops. Another thud, clang of bike frames, and Dillon, realizing what it was, flopped back, the pillow over his head.

  Steve, muttering drunkenly to himself, was now attempting the impossible, death-defying ascent of the stairs. Halfway up he missed his footing and tumbled to the bottom, landing with a thud that jarred the floorboards and made the wardrobe door swing open.

  From the boys' room, a shrill plaintive 'Muuuu-mmmmmm!'

  With a heavy sigh, Susie whopped the bedcovers aside and prepared to get up. Dillon whopped them back again.

  'Leave it – just leave it!'

  'But it sounds like he's fallen downstairs…'

  'Good! Hope he's broken his ruddy neck!'

  CHAPTER 12

  There was a red line around Dillon's forehead where his cap had been. He drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel, glancing every now and then at Steve, bent over in the passenger seat with a Little Chef road map spread across his knees, marking the motorways with a felt-tip. Bloody wonder they'd ever got here. And how long had it taken them – over two hours? Jesus wept.

  Dillon kept a wary eye on the clients, just in case. Three bags full, sir, that was the drill. At the moment they were on the farside of the cobbled yard, talking to a tall thin man wearing baggy cord trousers and a polo-necked sweater under a tweed jacket, trainer or stable manager, Dillon guessed. He didn't know it for a fact, but the horses all looked like thoroughbreds, a row of glossy necks and proud heads arched over the stable doors, lively, intelligent brown eyes. He wondered how many of them Ali Baba owned.

  Dillon wrinkled his nose. Was that horseshit or what?

  He said, 'And for chrissakes, Steve, make sure we get the right route back to London. We go the same way we got here, we'll never get back.' He leaned nearer, suspicions confirmed. 'An' I told you, use some deodorant, you stink!'

  Steve sniffed his armpits. 'It's not me!' he protested, and nearly poked a hole through the map with his pen. 'Your fault – you said Newmarket was near Ascot!'

  'Give. You always were bloody useless on directions.' Dillon snatched the map off him and glared at it with weary disgust. Thirty-grand silver Merc and they were using a Little Chef free road map to ferry their clients the length and breadth of the Home Counties…

  'I told you, Steve, get a decent map… we need to check how we're going for gas.' There was a low rasping sound as Steve released a fart. 'Very funny,' Dillon said. He glanced worriedly at the fuel gauge. 'We got any cash?'

  'I'm skint.'

  'We can't ask them.' Dillon looked across the cobbled yard to the two Arabs. The slim dapper one, Salah Al-Gharib, was beckoning, his gold ring winking in the sunlight. 'Hey, they want you.' Dillon nudged Steve. 'Go on. I'll check the route.'

  Grumbling, Steve climbed out, and shambled over. Dillon swore, long and loud, discovering his squashed cap Steve had been sitting and farting on. He bashed it into shape, too busy straightening the bent peak to notice Steve was shaking h
is foot in the air, having trodden in a heap of fresh horse dung.

  The black and chrome JVC stereo deck (nearly five hundred quid's worth) was the first item on the agenda. It smashed through the upstairs window and landed on the concrete path, disintegrating in a tangled heap of plastic and metal and solid-state circuitry.

  Taffy stood at the broken window, spick and span in parade-drill order, maroon beret pulled low over the left eye in the approved Parachute Regiment manner, and let fly with a stream of tapes, CDs and records, showering down over the scrubby patch of lawn. A portable TV set followed, and a transistor radio followed that, hurled out with a methodical calm efficiency that was strangely at odds with the crazed, wide-eyed expression on Taffy's face.

  The front door opened and the phantom drummer shot out, dreadlocks flying, a look of sheer terror in his eyes. He stumbled down the path, screaming abuse as a bass drum smashed an even bigger hole in the window and scored a direct hit on the garden gnome casting his rod in the flower bed. Out sailed the rest of the drum-kit, hi-hat cymbals setting up one hell of a racket as they skimmed and bounced into the road.

  Mary came out of the kitchen next door and ran screaming round the side of the house, arriving to see Taffy emerging through the front door. 'Oh God Almighty – what have you done?'

  Taffy strode down the garden path, kicking the mangled remains of the stereo deck out of his way. 'Got some peace and quiet,' Taffy said. 'That's what I've done.'

  He turned sharp left through the gate, straightened his shoulders, and setting his beret at the correct angle, marched off.

  'Where are you going?… Taff?

  'For a quick drink,' Taffy said, arms swinging.

  Dillon was crouched forward in the passenger seat, brow furrowed, speaking on the portable phone: 'I told her this morning! I mean, what am I supposed to do, Susie? Hello…?'

  He shook the handset. 'This ruddy thing keeps cutting out… Hello?' He shook it again, and this seemed to do the trick. He listened, nodding, and in a quick muttered aside to Steve: 'It's Taffy's wife again, she's freakin' out about something.' He said into the phone, 'Susie? Can you hear me…? Okay, give her this number, if she calls again, or you get her number, but Susie -'