The Bad Fire (23 page)

‘It's in,' Caskie said. ‘Nothing's come back to me yet. We'll get something, I'm sure.'

‘I'm sure,' Eddie agreed.

Joyce ruffled his hair. ‘Back soon.'

Caskie said, ‘See you later, Eddie.'

I know how to empty a room, Eddie thought. He heard the front door close. He thought of phoning Claire, but before he could lift the phone the motion of the day caught up with him – the taxi-rides that had zoomed him from one end of the city to the other – and he shut his eyes and dozed in a shallow way for twenty minutes, dreaming of Glasgow, a black-and-white Glasgow he'd never lived in, steamships on the Clyde, crinolined ladies stepping out of horse-drawn carriages, shoeless kids begging on street corners. The air stank of raw sewage and the dank river. Women in shawls sold fish from wheelbarrows, and men hauled on their shoulders sides of butchered animals.

He woke dry-throated, walked into the kitchen, drank some water at the sink. He felt a deep frustration. He didn't see how he could stay in Glasgow long enough to penetrate the reasons behind Jackie's murder, or identify the killer, as if the slaying and the people involved belonged in a Glasgow so secret it was out of his reach – like the monochromatic city he'd seen in his dream. He was due to leave the day after the funeral. What could he achieve in so short a space of time? He couldn't drag out his visit, he had work at home, the case of the dead junkie girl in the abandoned brownstone, her identity and cause of death, and God knows what else might have happened in the meantime, what files dropped on his desk, what mysteries he was paid to solve –

Caskie and Haggs. Haggs the gun collector and Caskie the cop. What did they have going between them that required such facile fabrications? It was a fair assumption, he thought, that Haggs knew Caskie. He certainly knew
of
him. Say their paths had crossed. It was possible they'd met in orbit around Jackie. Assumptions, and Eddie wasn't enamoured of them, but sometimes they were the little building blocks that led to truth. He dipped his head under the cold water tap and let the stream run for a minute. Then he turned off the tap and stepped back from the sink and enjoyed water running over his scalp and down his face and thought: Caskie, lying sonofabitch.

You and Haggs are involved in something –

It was always
something
, this mystic
something
, this object that couldn't be defined. He dried his face and walked back to the living room and opened the phone directory.

29

The motorway roared half a block away. Petrol fumes hung brown in the still air like old muslin. Haggs, hands deep in pockets, gazed at the street through a high wire fence. This site, protected by the fence and an expensive electronic alarm system, was the location of a car-hire company called EasyGo, which Haggs owned. The lot was filled with Puntos and Ford Mondeos and VW Golfs. The Clyde was about five hundred yards to the south.

Haggs stared into the street, which had a derelict look. Across the way was an abandoned warehouse with broken windows. A gang of teenagers smoked crack and eyeballed the EasyGo lot as if they were thinking wads of drug money might be stashed inside.

Wasted fuckwits, Haggs thought. ‘He comes to see me,' he said. ‘On my fucking doorstep, bold as brass.'

Caskie, arms folded, leaned against the chassis of a Golf. ‘I can't keep him chained, Haggs. He's not an easy customer.'

‘Tells me he's the executor of the will and do I want to buy Jackie's warehouse.'

‘He's not the executor of the will,' Caskie said. ‘I happen to know Jackie's lawyer is the executor.'

‘Okay, so he's lying. Then he asks me who do I think murdered his father and do I know a policeman called Caskie who, it seems, told him about that trial of mine years ago. I don't like this Yank cop turning up on my fucking doorstep.'

‘I didn't tell him anything about you or your trial, Haggs.'

‘So he's got a private agenda.' Haggs glared at the crackheads passing a pipe around.

‘Private? His agenda's as bright as a lighthouse,' Caskie said. ‘He's looking for the killer.'

‘And that brings him to my doorstep.' Haggs cracked his knuckles a couple of times. ‘He doesn't believe Bones did it.'

Caskie had the urge to ask
Where is Bones?
, except he didn't want the answer. Bones was to take the fall, and then he'd be smuggled out of Glasgow to safety. That was the understanding, the deal. But Caskie was having a hard time picturing Bones strolling down Regent Street to Piccadilly Circus or drinking ice-cold beer at a sidewalk cafe on the Boul St Mich, and clocking the passing crumpet. He felt cold inside.

Haggs said, ‘I don't like the way Mallon stares at you when you're talking to him, because I get the feeling he's seeing right through your fucking head.'

‘He sticks,' Caskie said.

‘I wish he'd fuck off back to America. Is there a chance he knows anything about Jackie's business?'

‘You think Jackie telephoned his son in Queens to tell him he had some furtive deal going on? Straws, Haggs. You're clutching.'

‘I wonder.' Haggs made a V-sign at the scruffs across the street but they were too buzzed to be bothered by him. They had their crack and that was the limits of their universe and some tall skinny fucker gesticulating was an alien drop-in from another galactic system. ‘Why's he so desperate to connect you and me?'

‘Because he doesn't trust his local sheriff,' Caskie said. ‘He doesn't believe anything you tell him unless he can verify it for himself.'

‘I'd hate it if he became too much of a nuisance, Caskie. I'd hate to …' Haggs shrugged and looked serious.

Caskie saw a plane far to the south, rising out of Glasgow Airport. He wondered about its destination. Far away. Far far away.

Haggs said, ‘The business we were discussing yesterday. Where are we with that?'

Caskie watched the plane vanish, a silver dot of light. ‘Senga first,' he said. ‘She knows nothing about Jackie's plans.'

‘You're absolutely sure about that?'

‘One hundred per cent. And the same with Joyce.'

‘So what you're saying is Jackie confided his plans in nobody.'

‘Nobody in the family anyway.'

‘You're not just being gallant, are you, Caskie? The bold knight figure. The big man.'

‘No, I'm not.' Caskie realized, not for the first time, how deep his hatred of Haggs had become; the emotion was hard and black like a stone dropped down a bottomless well.
I'll get you, Haggs
.

Haggs said, ‘I've relied on you to suss out what these two women know, but if I find out you're lying and you're protecting either of them, you can forget all about your police pension and any perks you might be expecting. What you'll get instead, pal, is public humiliation so fucking shattering you'll need to slip out of Glasgow in the back of a turnip lorry –'

Caskie interrupted. ‘I'm not lying, and I'm not protecting Senga or Joyce.' He looked up at the sun, blinked. ‘It might interest you to know Joyce was attacked today.'

‘Attacked?'

Caskie told him about the assault, and Tommy G. He was pleased to see that the story had a distressing effect on Haggs, who clamped his hands together and cracked his fingers quite rhythmically. ‘Let me get this straight. This Tommy G said he had a
deal
going with Jackie?'

Caskie nodded. ‘A
big
deal. His very words. Maybe it's even the same deal as the one you're so interested in, Haggs. Wouldn't that be a kick in the teeth? Competition for you.'

Annoyed, Haggs asked, ‘Who the hell is Tommy G?'

‘He's up from London.'

‘That's really helpful. And what else?'

‘Tommy G alias Tommy Gurk alias Thomas Gilfillan alias Tommy Zen. Any of these ringing your chimes, Haggs?'

‘No.'

Caskie said, ‘Jamaican Londoner. Did a short stint in the Scrubs for possession of hashish with intent to sell. A year, time off for good behaviour. Then he entered a monastery.'

‘A monastery?'

‘He became a Buddhist, Haggs. In Tibet.'

‘So you're telling me that our dear wee Joyce was attacked by a pacifist vegetarian? What did he hit her with – a fucking bean-curd egg-roll? Note to self: always make sure you're armed with a sharpened parsnip when you're in conversation with a Buddhist.'

‘Buddhist or not, he's connected,' Caskie said. ‘He takes trips. Rotterdam sometimes. Also Zurich. He has associates in both places.'

‘What kind of associates?'

‘Business types.'

‘Straight business or funny?'

‘Funny, I'd say.'

‘How funny?'

Caskie didn't answer. He loved to keep Haggs dangling. He looked at the dopeheads beyond the wire fence. The druggy underclass. Thin stoned faces blissed to the hilt. A wine bottle, label peeling off, was doing the rounds. One of the kids, a girl dressed in baggy jeans with a plaid shirt knotted round her waist, blew him a kiss and called out, ‘
Hey Santy Clause! Can I suck yer beard, eh?
' She tugged her khaki blouse open and flashed a small sad breast at him and then sat down with her back to the wall and rolled a cigarette.

‘Nice wee tit,' Haggs said.

Caskie ignored the remark. ‘As far as I can gather from the skimpy data I was able to access,' he said, ‘Gurk is associated with a dubious character in Zurich called Josef or Joe Kaminsky. According to police surveillance reports, Gurk stays at Kaminsky's country house when he visits Switzerland.'

‘And what's so special about Tommy Gurk that he merits surveillance? What business is he doing with this Kaminsky?'

‘Anything that pays is my guess.'

Haggs said, ‘Give me specific.'

‘Kaminsky is wanted by the Israelis on charges of – I quote – currency irregularities. The Swiss have resisted extradition efforts.'

‘Currency irregularities? Fuck does that mean?'

‘It sounds like a catch-all phrase. Maybe he's evaded taxes, or traded illegally in securities … I don't know. There's also the chance it's a smokescreen to cover activities which have absolutely nothing to do with fiscal matters.'

‘That's it?'

Caskie nodded. What he'd told Haggs wasn't the whole truth. But enough to rattle Haggs's cage. Haggs didn't need to know everything in the database. ‘The Police National Computer has its limitations, Haggs.'

Haggs thought,
Jesus Christ
. Rotterdam. Zurich. Israel. A monastery in Tibet. It was getting out of hand, going international, spreading to places where he had no control and no affiliates, where he didn't know the bloody languages. He didn't like it when his ventures had connections beyond Glasgow or, at a pinch, the Scottish border, because it increased the chance of complexity, elaborate rip-offs, encounters with men whose ways of doing things might be alien to him. He couldn't make the link between Jackie Mallon and the Jamaican Buddhist called Tommy Gurk or G or Zen, between a terraced house in the east end of Glasgow and a country house in fucking Switzerland. He couldn't connect a junkyard near Duke Street with ‘currency irregularities' in Israel. Weird planets were colliding. He felt as if the road he'd been travelling towards the hidden world of Jackie Mallon – badly signposted as it was – had suddenly reached a fork where the directions were posted in languages he couldn't translate.

‘Get me more, Caskie. I need more.'

‘Easier said than done. I could go through Interpol, but there are protocols.'

‘Fuck protocols,' Haggs said.

A rock thrown from the old warehouse smacked the wire fence and made it vibrate. Haggs wished he had a rocket-launcher and he'd just blow those crack-smoking guttersnipes all to hell.

A young man with wild hair called out, ‘
How much is it to rent one of them fucken cars, eh?
'

Haggs turned his back on the crack crew and looked at Caskie. ‘I suggest you dig a wee bit deeper, pal. If you know what's good for you.'

I'll dig your grave, Caskie thought. That's how far I'd like to dig.

A shadow moved at the back of his mind. Then it took definite form, brightening. He thought: Maybe. Why the hell not? He recalled what he'd experienced when he'd first run Tommy G through the computer – a dim awareness of possibilities, a disjointed sense of enlightenment – but it was expanding now, it was growing from seed to shoot.

Another rock struck the fence, then another, a third, eventually a fusillade. The restive crackheads drifted across the street. Ragged, white-faced, skinny, these kids looked like extras from a cocaine version of
Night of the Living Dead
. More rocks thudded the fence. Then faces were pressed to the wire and grubby fingers hooked the metal strands. The fence was kicked and rattled and shaken vigorously. A rock flew into the lot and struck the roof of a Ford Mondeo.

Haggs roared, ‘Fuck off out of here, the whole bloody lot of you! You shower of shite! You bunch of arse-wipes!
Fuck off!
You hear me?'

Some of the kids laughed and hooted. A gaunt girl in yellow-tinted glasses and a mini-kilt and purple Doc Martens climbed a few feet up the fence before she fell back. A few of her friends cheered and helped her up and she began to climb again.

Haggs looked at Caskie. ‘You're a cop. Do something about this scum, for God's sake.'

‘They won't get over the barbed wire at the top,' Caskie said.

‘I'm not counting on it,' Haggs said. ‘Have I got to dial the police myself?'

‘You know the number, Haggs?'

‘Fuck you,' Haggs said. He took his cellphone from his jacket. The girl climbing reached the top of the fence and tried to seize the coiled strands of barbed wire. She cut her hand and fell, clattering against the pavement.