The Bad Fire (42 page)

‘So, eh, what do you, ah, propose?' Twiddie said.

‘I'd dearly like to torture you for a while, maybe a day or two, and then snuff you out.'

Twiddie laughed. Rita didn't. She said, ‘Talk's cheap.'

Haggs cracked his knuckles. How in God's name had he ever become associated with this couple? There were moments of pleasure at times, sure, driving the dark streets, the sheer buzz of hands-on brutality, dancing with menace. But when you had Perlman in your own clubhouse right in your bloody face, when you smelled a bad tide swirling in your direction, then it was time for serious changes.

‘You'll leave Glasgow,' he said.

‘Is zat so?' Rita asked.

‘You'll go to London. From London you'll catch a train to Holland, Germany, wherever, I don't give a fuck.'

‘Wait a minute,' Rita said. ‘I like Glasgow. I don't see why I should leave. My friends are here.'

Haggs said, ‘You're not getting the picture, Rita. You don't have a choice. Either you leave the country … or some more permanent location is found for you.'

‘You're talking about …' Twiddie paused.

‘I'm talking about closing time, Twiddie. You know, when the barman says drink up and leave, and he flicks the lights, and you're out on the street? I'm talking about that kind of situation. Only there's no tomorrow, see. You don't go back to the pub next day because for you there is no next day.'

‘You've arranged this?' Rita asked.

Haggs said, ‘It only takes one phone call.'

‘So we bugger off and live in poverty with a buncha krauts and you go on enjoying the good life. Fuck that for a lark.'

‘You'll receive compensation,' Haggs said. ‘Which is bloody generous of me, considering I have that other option I just mentioned.'

‘I want fifty grand, Haggs,' Rita said.

Haggs said, ‘I split my sides.'

‘What's your figure?' she asked.

‘Five K each max. No haggling.'

‘Har,' Twiddie said.

‘Take it, leave it.' Haggs shrugged. ‘One way or another, you don't live in this city any more. I want you gone by tonight.'

‘Tonight?' Rita asked.

Twiddie said, ‘Can't be done.'

‘No choice,' Haggs said. ‘Life's like that. In the immortal words of a certain M. Jagger, Twid, you can't always get what you want. Remember that.'

56

Eddie let himself into Joyce's flat. He felt weak, liquid-headed. The sun was dying and twilight gathered slowly in the city. He slipped off his damp T-shirt, took a fresh white linen shirt from his bag. He buttoned the shirt then pulled his dark suit, the one he'd wear at the funeral, from the bottom of the bag. He laid it on a chair, smoothed it with his hands. It made little difference, but so what? A crumpled suit: small potatoes in the scheme of things.

The day came rushing back at him. The train to Largs. The great bright promise of the sea at Saltcoats and the happy faces of the kids at the carriage windows. Ice cream and candy floss and gulls and innocence.

How it changed.

McWhinnie dying. Charlie in blood. The day framed in blood.

And then Joyce. Hotel rooms with Caskie, the child and the man, crushed sheets and skewed pillows. Why did he imagine rain sweeping hard across a dreary car park and battering the window of a tiny hotel room where Caskie had drawn the curtains and Joyce was undressing by the light of the bedside lamp?

He heard the doorbell ring. He went down the hallway to answer. Lou Perlman, stooped, hands behind his back, stood in shadow.

Perlman said, ‘Invite me in.'

Eddie stepped aside, Perlman entered. Eddie shut the door and led Perlman into the living room.

Perlman lit a cigarette and said, ‘SUNY. State University of New York. Right?'

‘Right–'

‘And Stony Brook is a campus in the system. You had it on your T-shirt earlier today. And yesterday when we met.'

‘You saw me today?' Eddie asked.

‘Me, no. Some other people did. At Central Station with Charlie. So tell me this – why were you with Charlie and what did the pair of you have in common?'.

Eddie looked at the brown suit and the soiled tie and the shirt with the collar tips slightly upturned. He wasn't sure why, but he'd always felt at ease with Perlman. Probably the man's lack of affectation, the fact he made no concessions to modify his accent for the untrained ear: this is me, Lou Perlman, and I don't come in any other wrapping.

Eddie said, ‘McWhinnie was helping me chase Gurk.'

‘AKA Tommy G. See, I remembered to check the computer.' He dragged on his cigarette so deeply his cheeks hollowed. ‘You and Charlie were working together? He never said.'

‘He didn't have time to say. It happened suddenly. He liked a taste of action, I guess. He was sick of working for Caskie.'

‘He wasn't the happiest young man I ever met, I'll say that,' Perlman remarked. ‘So you and Charlie were in hot pursuit of Gurk. Charlie caught up with Gurk in the crowd. A struggle, then …'

‘I went after Gurk, but he'd gone. I walked the streets for a time. I don't remember which ones. Just streets.' He pictured McWhinnie, and felt as if he'd had all the air kicked out of him. There was that ache in his neck again, resurgent. His thoughts, darkening and gloomy, drifted back to Joyce, and how she'd appeared on the staircase in Caskie's house, and then he remembered his conversation with Caskie just before Joyce had materialized out of shadow.
You set my father up
.

Surmise
, Caskie had said.

Eddie shut his eyes. Surmise, no. It wasn't surmise that had killed Charlie McWhinnie. Caskie's face formed in his head, that smug little beard, that look of self-assurance, and he was filled suddenly with an anger so deep that it depressed him he could feel such a disagreeable emotion with this
intensity
.

He looked at Perlman and said, ‘What do you think of Caskie, Lou? What do you
really
think of him?'

‘Really? Not much. He's a class-act shite. He's a
keech
in a good suit. Fortunately he's about to retire, so he won't be occupying my thoughts much longer.'

‘He just walks off into the sunset,' Eddie said. And maybe Joyce walks with him, he thought. ‘It's more than he fucking deserves, Lou.'

‘And what precisely does he deserve, Eddie?'

‘What usually happens when you're an accessory before and after the fact of a murder. Jail, right?'

‘Hold on. Put your foot on the brake.
Murder
, you say?' Perlman turned his head sharply and his glasses slipped down his nose. He caught them before they slid from his face.

Eddie said, ‘Murder. The killing of my father. Caskie pulled strings in the background.'

‘Murder's very rich gravy,' Perlman said, and focused his good eye hard on Eddie. ‘Can you make it stick to the wall, son?'

Eddie, gazing at the high ceiling, saw a spider's web in which a couple of dead flies hung.
Make it stick to the wall
. He heard himself talk about the safe house, and how McWhinnie had escorted Bones there, and how Caskie must have participated in the killing of Jackie Mallon in some way, and Haggs's role in the scheme of things, and the words tumbled out of him, and they kept coming, colliding one with another until his throat was dry and he was rambling, and he'd begun to repeat himself. He wondered how he sounded to Perlman. Deranged? The victim of delusion?

He fell silent.

Perlman ran a hand through his bristle of hair. ‘It's great gravy, son, and my appetite is well and truly whetted, and if you think you see me drooling, you're dead fucking right – but it's still not sticking.'

Eddie said, ‘Bones could have provided the glue, but God knows where he went. And McWhinnie knew some of Caskie's machinations, but that poor bastard isn't coming back to tell us. So …'

‘So I hear you howling in the wind, Eddie. Unless …'

‘Unless what?'

‘Unless I can make Haggs talk. Problem is, he's a stone, and it's damned hard to squeeze blood out of something that has none.'

‘You can try,' Eddie said.

‘Oh, I'd love to try, I'd
love
it,' Perlman said. He plucked at his eyepatch and rubbed his hands together briskly as if he were pleased. ‘Call a taxi, Eddie.'

They rode in a black cab through the south of the city. Eddie recognized a couple of landmarks when they were in the vicinity of Haggs's neighbourhood. The big roundabout. Rouken Glen. Langtree Avenue and the house called Drumpellier. Lou Perlman didn't get out of the cab at once. He gazed in the direction of the house.

‘I'll go in alone, Eddie. Me and him, we talk the same talk.'

‘You've thought how you'll approach this?'

‘I wing shit all the time, son.' Perlman winked. ‘Maybe I'll hint we've got some truly damning evidence, then see what happens. Or I'll say Caskie confessed to everything. Who knows? I'm a man of great invention when I need to be.'

‘He'll call his lawyer immediately.'

Perlman said, ‘We'll see.'

Eddie stayed in the cab. He watched Perlman push through the front gate. He moved with a quiet confidence, like an insurance salesman certain of a client's signature on a policy. Eddie waited. The driver listened to a talk show on the radio. Eddie gazed at the house. He heard a sound of breaking glass – a swift crack – then he saw Perlman come back. He'd been gone little more than a minute.

‘Nobody's home,' Perlman said.

‘What was that noise?'

‘Noise?'

‘Glass breaking.'

‘Oh, that.' Perlman looked slyly pleased. ‘Those bloody security cameras depress me, Eddie. I mean, here's this thing on a fucking stalk peering into your face without permission. I'm a Luddite, son. So I took a fine stout branch to it. Whackety-whack.'

‘You vandalized it,' Eddie said.

‘I
pulverized
it.'

‘Now what?'

Perlman settled in the back of the cab and looked thoughtful. ‘Haggs could be almost anywhere. One of his favourite restaurants, say. His golf club maybe … Or.'

‘Or what?'

‘He's got this run-down place he sometimes goes when he needs privacy. He thinks it's his secret rendezvous, and nobody else knows about it. He hasn't got a bloody clue I've clocked the place more than a few times and I've seen him come and go. Great fun to watch somebody who doesn't know he's being watched. This is worth a try.'

Perlman leaned forward to instruct the cab driver.

57

‘Wotcher, mates.'

Haggs turned towards the door. He hadn't heard it open.

The man who stepped in kicked the door shut behind him, and smiled a big white-toothed smile. His bald brown scalp shone under the electric light and he carried himself in an easy manner, as if he had the ability to slough off all life's problems.

‘Who the
fuck
are you?' Haggs asked.

‘Tommy Gurk.'

‘Gurk?' Haggs asked.

‘Got it in one. Pardon my bad manners, if you will, but I been eavesdropping your conversation. It seems to me I can save you all kinds of problems, providing you do everything my way.'

‘And what way is that?' Haggs asked.

Gurk had a gun in his hand. Out of nowhere, conjured up like a magician's prop, there it was, steel enclosed in a firm brown hand.

Twiddie said, ‘He's fucking armed.'

‘Bright boy,' Gurk said.

‘You're not going to use that,' Rita said.

‘It all depends, my beauty,' Gurk said.

‘Depends on what?' Haggs asked.

‘What do you know about my business with Jackie Mallon?'

‘Sweet fuck all,' Haggs said.

Without expression, Gurk turned away from Haggs and shot Twiddie in the head. It was done so quickly, so casually, it was seconds before Haggs or Rita registered the fact that a gun had been fired and Twiddie had buckled like a beast shot in a slaughterhouse and lay sideways on the floor, and blood was flowing in little streams around his skull. Rita slumped to her knees beside Twiddie and covered her open mouth with her hand. She was terrifyingly mute.

‘Now,' Gurk said. ‘Have I got your attention?'

Haggs had a falling sensation, as if his internal organs had slipped inches inside him. He wondered if Billy McQueen had felt like this on the high-rise when he looked down the dark shaft. ‘Very definitely. What do you want to know?'

‘I hear you're looking for a certain cargo that was the basis of a business agreement involving the late Jackie Mallon, the just as late Billy McQueen and my good self.'

‘I expressed an interest,' Haggs said. ‘Mallon wouldn't give me the time of day.'

‘And so you had him snuffed. And then you had Billy the Stump snuffed as well because he couldn't tell you jack shit.'

‘Let's say there was, ah, a breakdown in communication.'

‘But you're still looking to get in, aintcha?' Gurk asked.

Haggs said, ‘Aye, but I'm tired banging my head against a shithouse wall.' Was there a way out of this? he wondered. Could he ever walk away from this building and get in his car and go home? He was conscious of Rita bent over the dead Twiddie, and how she'd started to sob, and he imagined his life flushed down a toilet and swirling away, all the good things he'd accumulated sucked into sewers. He wanted to say
Spare me
. But he'd never begged in his life and he wasn't about to begin now. Note to self: Never ask for mercy. It lacks dignity.

Gurk looked at Rita and said, ‘Here, love. Stifle that snivelling, eh? It's giving me the willies.'

Rita looked up at Gurk. Mascara ran down her face like ink spilled carelessly. Her hands were locked in upraised fists. ‘You fucking
killed
him, you fucking pig, you fucking
cunt.
'