The Bad Fire (38 page)

Eddie moved towards the front steps of the house. He'd tried twice to phone from the city centre to announce he was on his way, but the line had been busy both times, so he quit. He wasn't in the mood for politeness anyway, he was beyond niceties. He climbed the steps, rang the doorbell, waited. He gazed at the nameplate. I'll turn, walk away, leave. This is wrong. Confrontation isn't the approach. But the anger kept coming back in waves and he was powerless to stall the feeling. His skin was hot. His hands sweated. His scalp too. He rang the bell again and this time heard a sound from within, a click, a shuffle.

The door opened.

Caskie said, ‘I'm surprised.'

‘Invite me in,' Eddie said. He didn't wait to be asked, he stepped past Caskie into a hallway where a ceiling fan turned and there was awful wax fruit in a bowl and some cheesy watercolours of seascapes adorned the walls.

‘Consider yourself invited,' Caskie said, closing the door.

Eddie entered a room to his right. A sitting room, some good solid furniture, glossy wood surfaces, shrubbery at the window, a leafy big garden beyond.

‘You seem agitated,' Caskie said.

‘Have I disturbed your siesta?' Eddie asked.

‘I wasn't napping.'

‘You go around in a robe usually?'

‘When I'm unwinding, why not?'

Eddie looked at the navy blue robe and the pyjama trousers that matched and the marbled white feet tucked inside pale blue slippers. Hadn't Caskie heard? Hadn't this bastard heard about his boy McWhinnie?

Then Eddie noticed that the telephone handset was off the hook and dangled close to the floor. ‘I tried to phone you,' he said.

‘I was resting, Eddie. It's my day off. I hate being disturbed.'

‘So you haven't heard?'

‘Heard what? Clarify, Eddie.'

Eddie told him about Charlie McWhinnie.

Caskie stood slightly stooped, head forward, like a man listening to a radio station he hasn't been able to tune. His expression didn't change. Sometimes he touched his beard. Eddie, throat dry, was light-headed. Memory bytes:
He was back at the station, looking at McWhinnie on the ground. He didn't want to see the dead man's blood again
. When he finished talking he watched Caskie step towards a chair and perch himself on the arm. Caskie drew his eyelids together, middle finger and thumb, and sighed, and shook his head. The material of his robe shimmered.

Eddie said, ‘Probably your colleagues have been trying to contact you, Caskie. They want to tell you what's happened to Charlie.'

Caskie made no move to replace the handset. He stared at Eddie. ‘You saw this murder happen?'

‘I saw,' Eddie said.

‘How did you know Charlie?'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, why don't we just strip the whole charade down? Why don't we pack up the fucking tents and admit the circus and all its illusions have left town? You had McWhinnie follow me from day one. He wasn't terrific at the job. So we met. We met, we talked, he was an okay guy.'

‘Cosy,' Caskie said.

‘He had problems,' Eddie said. ‘You got him to work surveillance, Caskie, but you didn't say why. It's dog's work and long fucking hours, and he had these terrific cops-and-robbers dreams, but you didn't even stroke him a little, or lie and tell him what he was doing was of great importance to the Force. He desperately wanted to be good at his job. He was keen, Caskie.
Eager
. You remember what that was like, Caskie? When you were enthusiastic. You wanted to set the world on fire. But you – I know what it is, you're out of touch with people. You're arrogant. You don't know how ordinary people tick. You don't know what weighed on Charlie's conscience.'

‘No? Let me clear it up for you,' Caskie said. ‘It's standard operating procedure in our part of the world, Mallon, that subordinates do what their superiors tell them. We don't expect misgivings and self-doubt and neurotic little twitches. And if any man has a problem with his conscience, we don't expect him to wallow in it. We expect only obedience. I'm deeply sorry about what happened to Charlie. Profoundly sorry. Shocked. You don't know how much I mean that. But he knew law enforcement work was not without its dangers.'

‘What about
your
conscience, Caskie?'

‘I don't have a problem with it,' Caskie said. ‘I sleep at night. Deeply.'

Eddie heard a sound from the room overhead. A slight creak, then silence. An old house. Mice under floorboards. Whatever. He'd had mice in his house in Queens. He'd baited traps with cheese, and listened to them snapping murderously in the dark. Ah, Queens. I want to go home. I want Claire in my bed and the knowledge my kid is asleep in his room down the hallway and there's strong coffee in the morning and Danish fresh from Fiedler's Bakery on the corner. I want what I've left behind.

He gazed at Caskie. ‘No problem, huh? Okay. Tell me how you square your conscience when it comes to my father. Did you arrange to meet Bones the night my father was shot? Did you ask him to leave the car at a certain time and meet you someplace nearby? Then what – did you drive him to a safe house in Govan while certain parties murdered my father?'

‘I know you've been through a rough experience this afternoon, Eddie, you need something to relax you –'

‘Don't even try to take me down that road, Caskie.'

‘Too late. I think you're well and truly on that road already. Let me get you a drink. Scotch?'

‘Fuck the drink. I don't want your booze. I want the truth, Caskie. You set my father up. You had to get Bones out of the way. You made promises to him. Just leave the car for a while. We'll look after you. Gambling debts? No problem, Bones. We'll take care of them too. So Charlie goes round squaring debts with bookies. And somebody shoots my father with Matty Bones's gun and then you stash the weapon in the old guy's flat under the sink – hidden in plain fucking sight – so a couple of hapless cops on a search can't possibly overlook it.'

‘Surmise,' Caskie said. ‘All of it.'

‘Not according to McWhinnie.'

‘Who isn't around to verify any of it, alas.'

‘Sadly,' Eddie said.

‘You're fucked,' Caskie said.

‘I'll go to Tay. I'll tell him all this.'

‘He'll listen? Ballocks.'

‘I'll make the bastard listen.'

‘How? Handcuff him to a radiator? You can't make Tay do anything he doesn't want to do. And he doesn't want to listen to you, Eddie. Believe me.'

Eddie slipped into silence. Exhaustion, weary to the marrow. A long brutal day. Shadows formed in corners.

‘Just tell me. Is Haggs in this with you? Are you helping him in some way? I know he wanted a slice of whatever my father was getting into, and I guess Jackie wasn't sharing. So you decided to give Haggs a hand, you're well placed, you've got all kinds of connections –'

‘That's a stretch, Eddie. You're overreaching. You're always trying too hard –'

Eddie held a hand up to silence Caskie. ‘What can Haggs give you in return? Cash? Information? What can Haggs possibly do for you?'

‘You're playing head games, Eddie.'

‘Or it's something else,' Eddie said. ‘Maybe he has a hold over you. Is that it? Behind the nice home and the respectable position in law enforcement, there's something festering in a closet, there's a grub inside the lovely red pippin, and Haggs knows about it, and it could ruin you – how about that? Am I getting warm?'

Caskie said, ‘Ice floes. Polar bears.'

Eddie felt defeated. He moved this way, Caskie blocked him. He moved that way, Caskie blocked him again. He was weak suddenly, and hungry, but he knew he wouldn't keep food down. His stomach was like that of a man sailing on a rough tide. He thought he'd drift off into sleep if he didn't get up and leave this house. He'd go back to his sister's and rest for a half-hour and he'd think of another approach, and maybe he'd go straight down to Force HQ and find a sympathetic ear for his story. Perlman's ear. But he had to get it clear first. He had to be sure of his direction. And suddenly he was woozy. The margins of his vision were fogged.

He moved into the hallway. Caskie stepped behind him.

‘You also lied about Tommy Gurk,' Eddie said. One more deceit: what did it matter?

‘I was protecting confidential police records,' Caskie said. ‘Don't tell me you haven't done that once or twice in your life, Eddie.'

I can't remember, Eddie thought. Head blank. Whiteout. ‘It's pointless to talk with you,' he said. ‘I just don't have the energy for it, Caskie.'

He looked at the wax fruit and then raised his face to observe the slow-turning fan and the shadow it cast on the ceiling, and his eye was drawn beyond that to the stairway leading to the upper part of the house and he saw a figure in the dimming light at the top of the stairs, small and thin and wrapped in a robe six sizes too big for her, her short hair a mess, and he felt as if a hammer had been bludgeoned into the side of his head with such force that his brain emptied and his eyes failed.

She said, ‘Eddie,' and her voice came out of the blackness.

49

The streets around Central Station had been cordoned off: a no-go zone. So many cops, more than a hundred certainly; Perlman couldn't remember when he'd last seen his colleagues out in such numbers except when they worked security at big football games.

He had to push his way through the crowd of spectators constrained by a phalanx of uniforms and a barricade of patrol cars and police vans. Mounted horses were present, big steady beasts seemingly unperturbed by the mass of people. There were cops making announcements through a loudspeaker system, telling the crowds to disperse, everything was under control – the usual pabulum for the public. But crowd control was no simple choreography in this situation; apart from the sightseers and sensationalists, there was the added complication of huge numbers of people trying to make their way out of the station, and others desperate to enter because they had trains to catch.

Madness, Perlman thought. Murder during rush hour. Commuter chaos. He was buffeted and elbowed as he pressed through to the Union Street exit where Scullion had told him to come. He wanted to say, Let's make it fun, let's turn it all into a bloody big outdoor fair, a massive fête, hotdog stands and barbecues and brass bands, games the kiddies can play, helter-skelter and merry-go-rounds and three-legged races. Why not? Do away with all this morbid vigilance and bring on the dancing girls. If the crowd wanted entertainment, give it to them.

Bitterness, Perlman, he thought. Watch out for that.
En garde
. A young man dies – but not everyone in the crowd is a ghoul, there are those who want to get home to their families, and can you blame them for that? You solitary old fart. Been alone too long. You don't remember what a family was like.

He saw Sandy Scullion when he finally flashed his ID in front of a uniformed cop who ushered him through the throng. Scullion, in white shirt and red tie, raised a hand wearily. Perlman walked towards him. He was aware of Tay loitering in the background and a couple of other heavyweights from Force HQ – DCI Ralph Hannon, known as Ralph Cheeks because of his resemblance to a squirrel whose mouth was stuffed with crab apples, DCI Mary Gibson, a cheerful woman in her mid-forties who dressed like a woman in a Laura Ashley catalogue, and DCI Benjamin Bennet, sharp, a bachelor with a trim moustache and a ladykiller's rep. They were out in numbers, showing the flag.

The Force is with you, Perlman thought. Not always. Not for McWhinnie.

Scullion said, ‘They tried to resuscitate him in the ambulance. But he wasn't coming back, Lou.'

‘Who shot him?'

‘We've got some witnesses,' Scullion said. ‘The killer's a light-skinned black, five-eight or nine, muscular, wore a hat that was either brown or black, hair in dreadlocks.'

‘Dreadlocks?'

‘A hairstyle, Lou. Rastafarians, reggae bands. Don't tell me you don't know.'

‘I know, dammit, it just slipped my mind a minute. You think I don't keep up with things?'

‘You're snapping, Lou. Don't snap at me. I didn't ask for this situation.'

‘You're right, Sandy. I apologize. Read my face.' Perlman felt his breath catch at the back of his throat. He didn't want to show emotion. Maybe later, when he was on his own. But not here, not now. You reserved a private table for your feelings and you said, Charlie, too bad it didn't work out for you. I'm sorry and I'm sad. You had a few things to fix in your life, but you didn't get your allotted span, son. You didn't get your biblical quota of years.

‘What else have we got?' he asked.

Scullion said, ‘The killer ran in the direction of St Vincent Street.'

‘And then what.'

Scullion shrugged. ‘I don't know. Jesus Christ, how damn difficult can it be to find a man with dreadlocks in Glasgow?'

‘He won't have the fucking dreadlocks now,' Perlman said. He made scissors of his index and middle fingers. ‘Snip snip.'

Tay came towards them. He appeared uncomfortable, like a man whose shoes are too tight, or whose cummerbund is pinching him after a heavy formal dinner. ‘This has been a private nightmare for years. I keep arguing the police shouldn't carry guns, and then this happens and I wonder if I'm wrong, if my support of that policy's addle-headed, and we ought to be toting those bloody Magnums like they do in America.'

Irrelevant, Perlman thought. Whether you armed the Strathclyde police or you didn't, it was academic as far as Charlie's life was concerned. He ignored Tay and looked at Scullion. ‘What else have we got, Sandy?'

‘The killer had a briefcase – black or brown or tan, take your pick – and seemingly McWhinnie apprehended the man and demanded to see what was in the case.'