This Town

All along, I've been wrong. How could I have been so thick?

Words. Need. Music.

Bardy, this girl is Jeannie.

She looks like that but she writes music.

You used to sing those rebel songs at parties with your dad.

And I remembered you had a good voice.

If you stayed sober for even a month,

Dad could ask permission for you to move back onto the estate.

I still love her.

Deuce, I know you've been to the same corner of hell where I am

and I just wanted to ask your advice.

Jeannie, come and dance.

Sorry, she's busy.

When you collect the insurance money and reopen your nightclub...

When it reopens, it won't be a nightclub, it will be a music venue.

Fiona, last night I wrote a poem that could also be a song. It's about you.

All we need now is our lead singer.

He's trying to bring me in.

I need you to go and make a phone call, son.

In half an hour, a bomb will go off inside Coventry rail station.

Coventry branch of the IRA has been activated.

I'm not asking you to spy on your own family.

I'm ordering you.

I'm thinking of leaving for London. Sorry, you can't do that.

You've got to sing my song.

I've got to do something to stop myself thinking

nothing is worth doing.

OK.

Worst-case scenario.

PLAYS NOTE

And this is a pretty heavy worst case.

PLAYS SINISTER CHORD

Our lead singer didn't show up today

because he's been arrested for being in the IRA.

SINISTER CHORD

Are Friends Electric by Tubeway Army

Do you mind if I smoke?

You know the Gate pub? Yes.

Do you?

Yeah, I do.

My dad's the treasurer.

And I am social secretary.

Oh, fuck.

Someone on the estate saw you with a sign walking toward the motorway.

They said you looked like you needed a lift.

Yeah, to London. What's in London?

Freedom.

Beloved to all true patriots.

I am going to London.

It's not a topic of conversation nor is it a matter of speculation.

I agree.

Your destination is not a matter for speculation.

You've taken part in an operation as part of an active service unit.

You have obligations to other members of that unit.

You want to jump? Jump.

Dead, you're harmless.

Alive in London, you are a potential threat to security.

You've nowhere to hide.

Your dad says he needs a hand.

He has some diesel to process.

I told him, I need him.

He's from Coventry. He probably got the days mixed up.

Dante!

Other people were not put on this planet purely to be of use to you!

Went to the lock-up. Bardon didn't show up.

Might have been a mix-up.

More probably a fuck-up.

KNOCKING

DOOR OPENS

Why you not in college?

I found out today, Dad, that apparently,

other people were not put on this planet purely to be of use to me.

I also found out today how important other people can be to other people.

Especially if they can sing and you can't.

I'm going to have to think of a way of explaining it to her.

Sorry I'm late.

Dante, you said you had something to give me.

Something important.

Well, I don't.

I don't have anything for you.

I took a day off college to come here.

So did I.

I took a bus full of mad people to get here.

The number 24.

I actually like it.

So, what was it you were going to give me?

I don't want to think about it.

About what?

Look, I have a lock-up garage.

I was going to make this thing for you

but events outside my control got in the way.

And you're not going to tell me what it is?

Have you ever considered the possibility that none of us

are real and we're all just invented?

No. I was going to make this thing for you

that explores that possibility.

It expresses the idea that none of us are real

and that loving someone is actually just making somebody up.

I had to invent my mum because I never knew her, so

I made her perfect to make it easy to love her.

Do you see what I mean?

I know you don't. But try it.

It might stop the words.

Dante, are you also a virgin?

I don't know.

How can you not know?

Well, I'd have to take into consideration previous lives.

You believe in previous lives?

I have recently become convinced that once, in a previous life,

I was a singer of songs somewhere.

And bit by bit I am remembering the words of the songs I once sang.

And when you remember the words, do you sing the songs?

No.

Because I can't sing.

That's a shame.

That's a real shame.

Because even though you are very, very strange...

..you're also very, very beautiful.

And if you ever showed up at one of the gigs I go to in Erdington,

and if you got up on stage...

..wearing this hat...

..and if you could sing....

..man... Man what?

I'd dance naked to any song you sang.

I say no! Fucking no!

I will not be forced to dance to anybody else's fucking tune!

I swear to God, I'll blow this entire enterprise to fuck.

And take us both with it?

I will not be part of your plans to murder people.

Your particular role in this enterprise isn't to harm anyone.

Your job is to save lives.

10p a time.

You make the calls to warn the Crown Forces...

Fucking "Crown Forces"!

..so they can clear innocent people out of the way and our devices

simply destroy the infrastructure of the system that oppresses us.

I promised Nana and I will keep that promise.

Where did she sleep?! What?

Your mother. After the funeral. Where did she fucking sleep?

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about some of the boys stayed over in the Wood

after the funeral and they said they saw your mother.

Saw her what?

She went to Dante's house.

Dante's dad let her in. She had no shoes, Dad.

No shoes? If she went to Dante's house it's probably

because she had no shoes and nowhere else to go.

You care where she sleeps?

Yes, I fucking care!

I still get these scenarios in my head.

Another man touches her.

Then he's lying dead, you know?

Jesus. You can't let anybody go, can you?

The same person who saw her go there,

said he saw her leave in the morning.

She was wearing a pair of old football boots.

Yeah. She probably borrowed them.

Because like I said, Dad, she had no shoes.

I can picture her in football boots...

None of it is any of your business.

Take that look of love out of your eye,

you threw her off Hillside estate. That was a decision of High Command.

Your love lives in two rooms on the fucking hard shoulder. I saved her fucking life!

They were going to put bullets in her knees for talking business to

people outside the organisation, while she was intoxicated.

These friends of yours.

These bosses, these fucking "freedom fighters".

You'll be needing this.

Before the week is out.

There's going to be another wee bang.

Wires are buzzing.

Coventry is alive with overheard conversation.

War.

Rumours of war.

Have you made your decision, Sergeant?

Yes, sir, I have made my decision.

I've decided I do not want to go back to Birmingham

and spy on my own family.

OK, relax.

I want to be totally open and transparent with you here.

If you decide not to return to Birmingham

and accept an attachment to the Special Branch anti-terrorism unit,

these photos are going to be used in evidence.

Now, we can be pretty sure that it was this man...

Boy. Terrorist, who phoned in the bomb warning

20 minutes before the Coventry train station explosion.

So we can therefore assume that it was him also who planted the bomb.

That's not how it works.

Yeah, I'm going to explain to you right now how this works.

Bardon Quinn's going to be picked up about midday today,

he's going to be taken into custody charged with terrorism offences.

He's going to be interrogated by the Branch, MI5

and the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.

If he survives that encounter, he's going to be charged with

the Coventry bombing and he will be convicted.

We will then see to it that he is sent to Long Lartin maximum security

prison, where he'll be joined by other senior IRA prisoners.

Once inside the prison, a rumour's going to emerge

that he co-operated with Crown Forces.

And he'll be serving a 30-year sentence, so...