Dillon wiped his hand down his face. When it came away, his eyes were staring. He was seeing Malone all right. The big square face, the black bar of his eyebrows. But Malone wasn't grinning. His face had a sickly grey pallor. His eyes were rolling, the whites showing, his mouth slack and quivering, as he burst from the toilet cubicle in the side passage of Hennessey's Bar…

'Come on Malone, get back in there!'

After swearing the pub was clear, the bastard was trying to do a runner. Didn't have the guts to stay and help. Only interested in saving his own yellow skin. Throwing Dillon off, barging his way into the crush of people jammed in the narrow passage, pushing bodies aside in a frantic effort to get out.

Still staring, Dillon said, 'Like the way you ran out on my lads?' He shook his head, his breathing hoarse. 'I'm not quitting!'

Malone lunged forward. Dillon hit him. Once. A sweet right hand, smack in the teeth. Malone went cross-eyed. His legs buckled and he sank, very slowly, to his knees and toppled over.

'You had that coming for a long time, Malone,' Dillon panted, and with a smile at the lads fell down flat on his face.

'Just keep still… you're gonna have a beaut, split open like a tomato, mate.' Harry dabbed with a red-speckled towel, then stuck a plaster across Dillon's right eyebrow. Cliff stood nearby with a bloody sponge and a bucket of rose-tinted water. 'How's your ribs?' Harry asked.

Dillon eased himself into a sitting position in the back of the jeep. If his eyebrow was like a split tomato, the rest of his face resembled a blue and purple pumpkin. He pushed Harry's hand away. 'Gerroff me… you're makin' it worse!' Groaning, Dillon gingerly touched his cheekbone. 'I feel terrible…'

Jimmy bounded up, grinning fit to bust. 'How's about this to make you feel on top of the world, mate!' He waved a thick bundle of notes in the air, licked his thumb and peeled through the twenties. 'Two weeks' wages, plus – you won't believe this, but his Lordship thought you took a beatin' from the poachers – bonus – one grand!'

Cheers and shouts from the lads clustered round the jeep. 'No, wait,' Jimmy held up his arms, 'plus, plus – Malone is out, and…' He wrapped his arm around Don's shoulder, who gave him a shy, quizzical smile. 'Don-boy here is now head keeper!'

Don went beetroot-red, stuttered, thank you, thanks, nodding his head up and down. Afraid to show how much it meant to him, he did a runner, running like the deer he loved, and they watched him running, watched him take a flying leap into the air, then they heard him whooping at the top of his voice, arms above his head, fists clenched.

Jimmy laughed. 'Well, he seems happy enough! Guy's a real fruit!' Then he leaned closer to Dillon, whispering. 'Eh, what you say Frank, we can make it a nice round figure…' He flicked the wad of notes and slipped his arm around Dillon's shoulder. 'We could take him tonight, drive the carcass to Edinburgh, with nature boy owin' us, he can turn a blind eye, what you say Frank?'

'Forget it!' Dillon shrugged him off. He called out, 'Come on, let's get home.'

'Why? Who's to know it was us?'

Dillon didn't think it needed explaining, but obviously it did.

'Because he's free, Jimmy, don't let some bastard nail him to a wall.'

'Dillon!' Malone shouted.

As he came towards them, Jimmy whispered nastily, 'Okay, we'll nail this bastard instead…'

'Just stay put!' Dillon said.

Malone stopped a yard away, looking anywhere but into Dillon's face. He hesitated, then in a mumble, 'Rumour has it you and your lads are startin' up your own security firm.'

'Yeah, we're thinking about it.'

Malone took a thick buff envelope from his inside pocket and held it out. 'You won this, take it, it was double or quits, right?' He cleared his throat. 'It's a grand, Frank. Cash.'

Dillon took the money, handed it to Jimmy. He didn't say anything, just watched Malone's lowered head, the Adam's apple jerking in his throat. Dillon thought he was going to turn away, but then Malone said in a rasping voice that was full of torment, 'I checked out that pub, Frank, I swear before God…' His choking voice faded away to a whisper. 'Those lads that died… it wasn't my fault.'

Not his fault. That was all right then. Big fucking consolation.

Dillon said, 'Thanks for the dough.'

The jeep drove out. Malone stood watching until it was gone from sight. As if to himself, he repeated. 'I checked out that pub, Frank, I swear before God…' but no one heard, he was alone with his guilt, as he had always been, feeling it eating into him, seeing the bodies lined up outside the charred remains of the pub, seeing those six young lads Dillon had strode in with, seeing their faces hideously disfigured, their bodies twisted. He had never forgiven himself, would never forget their six pitiful bodies, the bodies of the women and young blokes. They stayed locked inside his big barrel chest, locked inside his bullish head, and when the memories squeezed out in his nightmares, when he woke up sweating, he always saw Frank Dillon's face, his blue eyes more brilliant, like ice shafts in his smoke blackened face, that accusing vicious face haunted him like the dead. Malone knew why Dillon hated him, knew it, took it, and no matter how far he tried to hide himself, even to a bloody salmon farm in Scotland, Dillon caught up with him.

'I checked out that pub, Frank, I swear before God… it wasn't my fault.'

Dillon went up the steps of the Clyde Hotel, calling back to the lads in the jeep. 'I'll be five minutes!'

The lads exchanged knowing grins, and a chorus of whistles and cat-calls followed Dillon inside. From reception he glimpsed Sissy at the top of the stairs. She saw him and quickly turned away.

'Sissy… Sissy wait. I wanted to say goodbye, me and the lads are on our way home.' As Dillon mounted the stairs, Jimmy came in behind him and nipped through to the bar. Dillon went up, attempting to explain, 'I don't want them boozed up for the drive… Sissy?'

She was in her room, sitting on the bed, her face to the window.

Dillon knew at once. Even though Sissy wouldn't say anything, or even look at him, Dillon knew the instant he saw the angry bruising on her cheekbone, the puffy lip where it had been split. He knelt on the carpet, his stomach trembling, and gently took her face in his hands. 'Steve did this to you?'

'I didn't call the police, or anything, he -' Sissy swallowed, her eyes downcast. 'I even feel sorry for him, he's sick…'

'Yeah, everyone always feels sorry for Steve,' Dillon said, his eyes hard as stones. 'Makes excuses for him. But this is different.'

A sob came up and Sissy squeezed her face with both hands, shoulders hunched and shaking. Dillon fished for a handkerchief. Sissy pointed to a box of tissues on the dressing-table. Dillon took one and knelt before her, wiping her wet cheeks.

Sissy blinked tears away. 'You look terrible,' she told Dillon.

'Had a bump into a tree.' He smiled and traced the outer corner of her lip with his finger. 'It won't scar…'

He cupped her face and brought it closer, and gently kissed her, away from the swelling. A discordant chorus of Why are we waiting… oh why-eye are we waiting…? sailed up from the forecourt below.

Dillon stood up and went to the window. He stared out at the curve of moorland beyond the trees. There was a deep angry stillness about this man, Sissy thought, that she recognised but did not understand. As if he was waging a continual battle to keep a welter of seething emotions under iron control. A dark, brooding mystery to him that both baffled and attracted her, sensing that Dillon had lived several lifetimes already, and she hadn't yet lived one.