The Bad Fire (39 page)

‘Why?' Perlman asked.

‘I don't know.'

Tay said, ‘McWhinnie worked under Chris Caskie. Why isn't he here? He could tell us what McWhinnie's workload involved.'

‘Caskie's not answering his phone,' Scullion said.

‘Then I'll send some bloody uniforms to find him,' Tay said. He wandered off, clapping his hands for attention, roaring orders, stirring up the gendarmerie. The crowds all around seemed to simmer, like a human broth.

Perlman saw dry blood on the pavement. He looked again at Scullion. ‘So Charlie hassles this black guy into opening his briefcase. And then what? The man whips out a gun and shoots Charlie dead?'

‘That's the essence of it, Lou.' Scullion looked sad and placed a hand on Perlman's arm. ‘I know you tried to guide him through the Pitt Street minefield, show him the ropes, I know you were a friend to him, Lou –'

‘For Christ's sake, that doesn't have any bearing,' Perlman said. ‘A fellow officer is dead and whether I liked him or despised him isn't even a consideration, Sandy. I know you want to be helpful and I appreciate it, but this is work. This is what we do for a living. Anything personal, drop it. Save it.'

‘I was only …' Scullion didn't finish whatever he'd set out to say.

Perlman looked in the direction of St Vincent Street. So many people in the evening sun. Cops. Civilians. The buildings created warm pools of shade. ‘What else do our witnesses tell us?'

Scullion said, ‘I have three female witnesses who think there was another man in McWhinnie's company. This third party apparently went down on his knees beside McWhinnie, then he got up and took off in pursuit of the killer. According to one of our witnesses, he looked as if he'd seen a ghost.'

‘And we don't know who this concerned citizen might have been?'

Scullion shook his head. ‘We've got a description. Six feet or thereabouts. Thirteen stone rising to fourteen. Black jeans. Trainers, variously white or beige. White T-shirt with a logo. The guy had thick hair, curly, black going grey. One woman described it as “a mass” of curls. Another said he was handsome, kind of.'

‘Anybody read the logo?'

Scullion looked skyward. ‘The shirt said something like Sunny on it.'

‘Sunny?'

‘I'm only telling you what I've gleaned from hysterical people. Sunny, one woman said. But spelled with only one “N”.'

‘Suny. What's that? A Japanese fish treat?'

‘Take it or leave it, Lou. Two of the witnesses were also certain that the T-shirt had the word Brook on it.'

‘So we've got Suny and we've got Brook. We've got a funny T-shirt and a mass of curls and handsome kind of.' This was ringing a tiny bell in some remote steeple at the back of Perlman's brain. His memory often yielded details he had no idea he'd committed to it. Suny Brook. Mass of curls. Wait for it to come. Don't force it.

Always treat memory with courtesy and patience, Lou.

Scullion said, ‘The man who went in pursuit never came back.'

‘So he vanished into the mystifying air of dear old Glasgow,' Perlman said, and his eyes were drawn back to the blood on the pavement. One of the police horses whinnied. The crowds were beginning to thin in the manner of people who, having expected a spectacular of sorts, were shuffling off because the event had been cancelled and their tickets made null and void. The uniforms were allowing commuters to leave the station, pressing them into orderly lines. Those who awaited permission to enter, even if they knew they'd missed their regular trains, were being directed inside the station through the Hope Street entrance.

Perlman tried to imagine the man in the white T-shirt run towards St Vincent Street. But he couldn't see facial detail; his memory had stalled. Getting old, Lou. What is it they say? Memory is the second thing to go. But what's the first? Can't remember. That joke had blue mould growing on it.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and wondered why he'd been so careful of Charlie McWhinnie's welfare, his state of mind.
The son you never had
. Bullshit, Lou. It's something else inside you. It's that jellybaby heart of yours. You see unhappiness and you want to go to its rescue because you're the bloody schmuck who climbs trees to save stranded kittens or young kids clinging to limbs. You grit your teeth and you haul yourself up branch by branch.

Charlie McWhinnie had something of the quality of a kid dangling from a limb. And you wanted to help him down to safety.

Aye. You're a hard bastard, Perlman. A man to be feared, right enough.

Why was Charlie so unhappy with Caskie?

Fucksake
. That wasn't a question. Everyone who'd ever worked for Caskie had been miserable. He treated his subordinates with all the affection of a 19th-century plantation owner for his indentured slaves. He cracked the whip. You worked for Caskie, you became a non-person. He lorded it over you. Smug strutting bearded
pupik
.

This is not going to bring back McWhinnie.

‘Somebody'll have to tell his parents,' Perlman said. ‘His dad's a lawyer somewhere. Bearsden, I think.'

Scullion said, ‘Tay's already assumed that role.'

‘Somebody's also going to have to ask Caskie if he knows anything about the identity of the alleged killer and why Charlie confronted him.'

‘You'll do that, I suppose.'

‘Oh, aye,' Perlman said.

50

Haggs spoke into his cellphone: ‘We need to meet, Twiddie.'

Twiddie asked, ‘Something up?'

‘I want a chat.' Haggs was aware of a happy bunch of golfers walking past, toting their bags.
A birdie at the twelfth
, somebody said.
When did you last see a birdie at the twelfth?
One of the players laughed and said,
It's not nice to toot your own horn, Archie
.

Haggs waited until the party had gone inside the clubhouse before he spoke again. ‘Bring Rita.'

‘Name a place,' Twiddie said.

‘The usual,' Haggs said.

Twiddie powered off his cellphone and looked at his sausage sandwich. Brown sauce oozed out between the two pieces of bread and dripped on to the table. Rita, dressed only in a pair of pink panties that matched the glitter she'd applied to her nipples, smoked a cigarette and leafed the pages of one of the glossy magazines she so enjoyed. Other lives. Glamorous ones. Big houses with gardens, bright flowers and kids. Places where it never rained. You never saw rain in any of these glossy journals. People fried in eternal sunshine. I want to go there, she thought. Out of here. Away from these streets.

‘He wants to see us,' Twiddie said. He sucked brown sauce from the back of his hand.

‘What for?'

‘He sounded sharpish. Mibbe it's about that … van.'

Rita tossed the magazine to the floor. She dropped her cigarette inside a beer bottle and it sizzled briefly. ‘The van, the van, I wish this bloody van would just go
away.
'

‘You'd better get dressed. Haggs wants us. We've been ordered. Our Lord and Master has spoken.'

Rita stood up, stretched her muscular arms. ‘And we obey.'

‘I think I'm turning into one of them – what do you call them – an atheist.'

‘An atheist?' Rita made a mocking
ooooeee
sound. ‘Mother Philomena always told us atheists go to hell.'

‘There's no such place.'

‘If you're a dried-out old Mother Superior there is.'

‘My nose still hurts,' Twiddie said, and touched his reddened nostril gently.

51

Shocked, angered, bewildered, Eddie walked into the sunlight in Broomhill Drive.
I didn't see it coming
, he thought. I didn't even get a sniff of it. He'd been preoccupied in a number of ways, sure, but just the same he felt he should have sensed
something
. He'd had a breakdown of his peripheral vision, of instinct. No, it was more, it underlined the distance between his world and his sister's, how far apart they'd been forced to grow. He stopped walking and thought of her as she stood on the staircase wrapped in what must have been one of Caskie's bathrobes, and the quiet way she'd uttered his name. A whisper. He didn't remember turning and marching out of the house, nor if she'd called after him. He had to get out, that was all he recollected, leaving her on the stairs, the big fan turning and Caskie's expressionless face in the hallway.

His throat was dry, and he had pain at the back of his eyes. He stopped at a traffic signal. He heard Joyce call his name and he turned, saw her half-walk, half-run, towards him. She wore a tan lightweight silk shirt that hadn't been tucked very well inside the waist of her dark brown slacks, and the strap of one shoe was undone, causing her foot to slip in and out, and the heel of the shoe to cluck against the pavement with each step she took. She looked as if she'd been glued together hastily and the parts were already coming undone.

She caught his arm and said, ‘Eddie, I'm sorry.'

‘It's your life, Joyce. I figured you might have better taste, that's all.'

‘Fuck you,' she said, and her small face was pinched and pale and sharp. ‘I'm trying to apologize for not telling you about this before, but if this is your attitude I'm wasting my time.'

‘He's a shit,' Eddie said. ‘Big-time.'

‘You don't know him, Eddie.'

‘I know enough. He lies. He manipulates. Where he should have a heart he's got a fucking icebox.' He fell silent, because the next sentence that came into his mind was one he wanted to withhold, to spare her, to leave her with something. Choke on it, Eddie. Tamp it down.

‘You need to see it from his angle,' she said. ‘He's been through a lot. His wife was ill for a long time.'

‘And you were his solace, huh? You were his comfort.'

‘Christ, you have a way of making things seem downright cheap.'

‘Talk to your boyfriend. He knows about cheap.'

He turned away but she tightened her hold on his arm and swung him round to face her. ‘I know how it might look to you. But he needed me. She was dying, and he hadn't loved her in years. Even so, he stayed with her until the end, Eddie. He went through her pain with her. He nursed her. He dispensed her medication. He bathed and fed her. He sat up with her for hours at a time, watching her pain. He's caring and he's good-hearted and maybe that eludes you, Eddie, because you don't know him –'

‘Okay, the guy's a saint, a real sweetheart,' Eddie said. ‘But he had you on the side to ease his burden, so that must have helped.'

She swung a fist suddenly. Eddie didn't see it coming. It stung his ear and he heard a whining sound in his head. He caught her hand and held it against his chest.

‘Don't make me hate you,' she said.

‘Did Jackie know about you and your Romeo?'

‘You can be so fucking childish, Eddie.'

‘Did he
know?
'

‘No.'

‘Couldn't tell him? Ashamed to confess?'

‘What was the point in telling him?'

‘You were sparing his feelings?'

‘Yeh, that's it. He and Chris were on different sides of the fence, Eddie.'

‘Bullshit. When you come right down to it, they were on the same side of the fence. They were both crooked.'

‘I don't believe that, Eddie.'

He touched the side of her face as softly as he could. He had to tell her now. He didn't have an escape route. ‘Listen to me. Caskie knew Jackie was going to be murdered before it happened. Caskie, whose bed you've just come from, was involved in the mechanics of the killing – in conjunction with a man called Roddy Haggs.'

She put her hands on her hips and stepped back a pace. ‘What kind of fucking person are you? How can you
possibly
say something like that, Eddie? How can you stoop so damned low? You really know how to get down into the gutter and come up with some pretty vile stuff, don't you? Why in God's name would Chris want my father killed? You want to hurt me because I lied to you, I omitted the truth, fine, I apologize, I am sorry to the bottom of my heart, but there's no bloody need for you to make up all this shite and throw it in my face, is there? We don't need this between us, Eddie. It's a wedge, and I don't want it.'

She doesn't want to believe, he thought. Who could blame her?

‘I tried to kill off the relationship, I really did,' she said. ‘When I married Haskell I thought, this is a way out of a bad situation. But I couldn't get Chris out of my mind. The whole Haskell thing was doomed. I didn't want him. I wanted Chris. I'm not getting any younger, Eddie, and love is a substance that is bloody hard to find. What do you know? You've got Claire and a kid.'

Love
, Eddie thought. Love was a thing you wanted so desperately you didn't always see things clearly. It was more than a life raft that kept you afloat in solitary waters, or the sound of another human voice in an apartment or the ruffle of somebody turning the pages of a newspaper while you read the magazine section on a Sunday afternoon. Love was a commitment of the heart, not a salve against solitary confinement.
I'm not getting any younger, Eddie
. ‘How long has it been …' He left the question hanging.

‘How long has it been going on?' she said.

He looked away. Butterflies flapped out of a hedge and flew close to his face, startling him.
Forget I ever asked, Joyce
.

‘Buckle your seatbelt, Eddie,' she said. ‘The first time was a few months before my thirteenth birthday.' She delivered this statement in a flat way, as if it were something she was reading from a prepared health bulletin.
The patient is comfortable and is off the critical list. We don't expect any further complications
.

Dear Christ. He didn't know what to say. Stunned. He'd assumed the affair was of more recent vintage – maybe the last six or seven years, on and off again. Now she was telling him something else, and he couldn't take it in. He couldn't find room for it. Couldn't get his mind round it.