The Bad Fire (41 page)

Into the roundabout, zippedy-doo, no sweat. A few more blocks and here we are. And a jolly nice street it is too. Prosperous. Very much so. Go slow. This is white bread land and you stand out like Malcolm X at a Klan convention. He sang to lull himself. He did his Paul Robeson voice.
Old man ribber
. He was close to the house now, he checked the numbers, noticed how some of the homes had names because jokers who lived here thought that was posh. He sang Belafonte's ‘Banana Boat Song' and stared at the name of the house and waited, slouched in the driver's seat, motor running.

54

Caskie usually made Lou Perlman feel that he was an inferior being, a dunderhead allowed five minutes of human conversation. Caskie's bearing was one of low-grade tolerance. They sat in Caskie's office in Force HQ and Caskie sipped coffee out of a plastic cup.

‘It's tragic about Charlie,' Perlman said.

‘It's a heartbreak.'

‘He was a nice young guy. I'm sorry for his parents.' Perlman noticed how tidy Caskie's desk was. Pencils in containers. Pens lined up on the leather cover of a notebook. Caskie's fingernails were immaculate. He must have them manicured, Lou Perlman thought. Maybe at the hairdresser's he has the whole
schmear
, beard trim, manicure, hot towel shave.

‘Tay's asked me to clarify a few things,' Perlman said. ‘For the record.'

‘Of course.'

‘What was Charlie doing at Central Station, Chris?'

Caskie shrugged. ‘I gave Charlie a broad remit, Lou. We'd have to look through his records, the logs he kept.'

‘So you gave him his head, you let him run, is that what you're saying?'

‘Exactly.'

And pigs have wings in that world, Perlman thought. You never gave Charlie an inch of breathing space. You kept Charlie in a black room of your own design. ‘You're telling me you have no idea what he was working on that would've taken him to Central Station?'

‘Come to think of it, he was quite excited about information he was gathering in a case involving the theft of a valuable coin collection from a house in Langside a month ago. We can examine his notes, Lou.' Caskie glanced at his watch.

A young man's dead and you're checking the time, Caskie. What does that tell me? You have another appointment, better things to do. ‘So you have no idea about the identity of the killer?'

‘I wish to God I did. Again, I can only say that we should look at McWhinnie's papers and maybe we'll find some kind of hint.'

I'm hearing a looped tape, Perlman thought. Check Charlie's notes. His log. Aye. Sure. Maybe Charlie had written,
I suspect a black called Winston Smith, 24 Garturk Street, Govanhill, of stealing a valuable coin collection and I intend to arrest him at Central Station during rush hour
. And that also belonged in the same world as jet-propelled pigs.

‘He never mentioned a black guy to you?' Perlman asked.

‘No, never.'

‘All right. We'll look through his stuff. See what there is.'

Caskie was quiet a moment. ‘I intend to take retirement, Lou.'

‘Is that a fact?'

‘I've written a letter I'll give to Superintendent Tay in the morning. You're the first to know.'

‘Is this not a wee bit sudden?' Perlman was surprised that Caskie had confided in him. But it wasn't exactly an act of intimacy. There was no sense of sharing involved, no exposure of self. Perlman felt Caskie simply needed an audience to make his announcement, and it didn't matter who was in the room with him. A tea-lady, a janitor, anybody.

‘It's been coming a long time,' Caskie said. ‘Maybe the death of McWhinnie's the last straw. I don't know.' He got up from his desk and walked to the window and stood with his hands tucked in the pockets of his double-breasted jacket. He stared down into Pitt Street where the falling sun had begun to create shadows and he wondered if he was being premature in announcing his retirement. What if things went wrong? What if the scheme he'd devised with Kaminsky became derailed? No, don't think that way. It'll work. Even as you stand here, it's in motion.

He thought of Eddie Mallon striding out of the house in Broomhill Drive, leaving the front door open behind him. And of Joyce, how tiny she looked inside the bathrobe, how quickly she dressed to catch up with Eddie Mallon. She wanted her brother to know she felt bad concealing the truth from him – all very fine and honourable, but Caskie wasn't so sure Eddie could take that truth calmly. He'd disapprove furiously. Adult men and pubescent girls – Eddie Mallon would see it as an immoral equation. He wouldn't understand that kind of love; it was socially unacceptable as well as criminal, and had to be carried out in hotel rooms and cars parked in lonely places. Caskie had never found delight in the illicit aspect of it. He'd feared the condemnation of men, and the disgrace of imprisonment.

And then there was Haggs.

Once, many years ago in a gloomy little motel outside Edinburgh, he and Joyce had been checking out at the reception desk when Joyce, in an ill-judged moment of impetuosity, a spark of affectionate mischief, had linked an arm through his, and laid her head against his shoulder, and run the tip of her shoe against the inside of his leg –

– and there in the lobby was bloody Haggs, registering this intimacy with a leer. Two days later Haggs had phoned.
I've been studying this situation, Chris. And you know what? I've got you by the family jewels. You're all mine, pal
.

And down the years Caskie did Haggs a favour here, a favour there. Overlook this, ignore that, help me out with this allegation of stolen property. Assist me with this, gimme a hand with that. You are my private cop, Caskie.

And then one day: I need help with the Mallons, Chris.

I need some assistance with Jackie
.

When exactly had the final escalation begun? Caskie couldn't remember the date, there was a passage of time when everything accelerated, and he could recall only fragments. Haggs had become frantic because Jackie was up to something, and he couldn't find out what, and so he dreamed up a plan, and he needed Caskie to get Bones out of the way for a while, a few hours, take him someplace safe overnight, you can arrange that, Chris, dead easy for you, eh?

Caskie thought: Haggs didn't really need
me
. He could have used
anyone
to pressure Bones into taking a walk at the appropriate time. All he wanted was to drag me deeper into the mire of his life. Show me he had control. Remind me of all the years he had a hold on my world.

And make me a partner in murder.

Caskie tried to shut down his memory as a man might close a very old door, but the hinges were stiff with rust.

You want Jackie alone, Haggs?

Aye, for a wee while.

I'll see what I can do
.

Try to deny it, but you knew in your heart that there was murder in the air. You could smell it as certainly as the stench of a long-dead carcass. You knew Jackie Mallon was being set up. Joyce's father. You wanted to stop it. Let Haggs blast his revelations all over the tabloid sheets. Live with the disgrace. You can go down in people's memories as that cop who molested a wee girl. Caskie, pervert.

But you couldn't. You turned your face, looked away.

You even took the murder weapon in a plastic grocery bag.

He felt deeply depressed. He thought, Soon I'll be free. ‘It's time to draw the blinds and lock the door and hang a Gone Away sign.'

‘You'll miss it,' Perlman said.

‘Miss what? The hours? The flood of crime?'

The power, Perlman thought. That's what you'll miss. ‘I take the point,' he said.

Caskie seemed suddenly expansive, but in his own detached way. It was as if he'd come down a rung or two on the ladder where he lived his life, and found it a risky descent. ‘It's a liberation, Lou. I feel I've been carrying a backpack of bricks around for years. I've wanted to let go before now. But the time wasn't quite right …'

‘And now it is.'

‘Yes. I'm ready. It's time.'

You don't have the look of a man anticipating serenity, Perlman thought. There's no air of celebration about you. Where's the champagne spirit, Christopher? Where is that I-don't-give-a-shit good cheer?

Maybe McWhinnie's death has done you in after all.

Caskie released a smile, as if it were a lick-penny's offering dropped into a collection-box. He looked at his watch again. ‘I have a few things to do, Lou.'

Perlman got up. ‘Fine.'

‘Feel free to ask me anything you like about McWhinnie. I'll be available.'

‘Thanks,' and Perlman turned towards the door and that was when his brain kicked him.
Sunny. Brook. A mass of curls
.

55

Haggs drove his Jaguar along Nitshill Road for a mile before taking a right turn, which led him through narrow suburban streets. He marvelled at the tidiness of some lives. Blackhill, where he'd been born, was a squalid pit of tribal divisions and deprivation, of runny-nosed wee kids screaming in shite-soaked nappies that hadn't been changed in days, of men standing on street corners and bemoaning the failures of their lives and the general lack of justice, of petty thieves and burglaries and drunkenness and casual acts of violence, the swift arc of a razor, the violent flick of a sharpened steel comb. It was a million fucking miles in his wake and he was never going back that way again, and if Twiddie and his brain-dead crumpet menaced his pleasant little world in any little way, they were history.

Eventually the streets thinned out and he entered an industrial estate, one that was clearly not thriving.
FOR RENT
signs hung outside hangar-sized buildings. Companies long defunct had had their names whited out but sometimes you could discern a spectral impression in faded paint of these former tenants,
THOMAS BAILEY
&
SON
,
WELDERS
. Or half a name might still survive in rust-coloured letters, like an enigma to be solved:
GR SON EXP S D S V CE
.

Haggs parked outside a small brick building that he owned for various purposes. A car he was obliged to stash, a shipment of this or that passing through. A meeting he wanted to hold in total privacy. The building was functional, the roof metal. The sign outside said
GLENLORA RENTALS
, although there was no indication of whatever might be available for rent. Haggs unlocked the door and went inside. He turned on the light because there were no windows. A sink was situated in a corner. There was a rudimentary crapper behind a partition. The air smelled dead. The space was hot with the day's trapped warmth.

Haggs shut the door and walked to the middle of the room and stood with his hands in his pockets and thought of burning vans and amateur arsonists and diddies in general who endangered your way of life. And that fucking Jew was no dummy. You could practically hear him calculate. He couldn't have Perlman strutting inside his golf club. He couldn't live with that.

Haggs walked in circles. He jingled his car keys in his pocket. That bloody wallet. How could they have overlooked that? They hadn't checked the van before they tried to torch it. It was elementary shite.

He heard a sound from outside. The slam of a car door.

He heard John Twiddie's voice. Then Twiddie and the Bucket-Faced Girlfriend entered the building. Rita was all pins, jaggy protrusions, things like miniature knitting needles sticking out of her piled-up hair or dangling from her earlobes. There was some sharp object lanced through her lower lip and a shiny stud in an eyebrow. She wouldn't want to be outdoors in an electric storm, Haggs thought. He listened to the way her black leather trousers creaked as she moved. Twiddie, besuited in his counterfeit couture, wore a white slim-jim tie and a black shirt, what he considered gangster chic.

Haggs said, ‘You're wondering why you're here.'

Rita said, ‘Aye. It's a long way to come.'

‘Oh, you're inconvenienced. I'm dead sorry. Note to self: do not inconvenience Rita in future.'

‘So, eh,' Twiddie said. ‘What's the score?'

Rita sniffed the air. ‘Stinks a bit in here.'

‘Only since you arrived,' Haggs said.

‘Cheek,' Rita said.

Twiddie smiled. He understood the insult, and saw the need to defend Rita, but Haggs was the boss, and even if you despised Long Roddy his money kept you in cigarettes and clothes and food. He wasn't a man you crossed. So Twiddie's dilemma was resolved in a pallid smile.

‘Fuck you grinning at, Twiddie?'

‘I don't know,' Twiddie said.

‘Fucking stupid grinning at nothing.' Haggs tugged Twiddie's tie out from his jacket and tossed the end of it over Twiddie's shoulder.

‘Here,' Twiddie said.

Rita said, ‘Leave him alone.'

‘Don't you ever tell me what to do, bitch. Don't you open your mouth unless you're spoken to.'

‘Fuck you,' Rita said.

Quickly, Haggs plucked a long needle from her hair and jabbed her face with it. He drew blood instantly. The girl yelped.

‘I'm wounded. You've wounded me, Haggs.'

Twiddie said, ‘You all right, love?'

Haggs said, ‘She's not all right. You're not all right. You're both up shit creek. Pair of you. You couldn't burn that fucking van. Which would be bad enough. But you go one better. You overlook the old bastard's fucking wallet in the back of the fucking van.'

‘Wallet? We didn't see the wallet,' Twiddie said.

‘And your matches were damp as well, I suppose.'

‘Some fires don't take,' Rita said.

Haggs's anger had the propulsion of a moon-shot. ‘I've built myself a life. I like it. I like it an awful lot. I can't have it jeopardized by two completely worthless wankers like you pair. Do you understand that?'