The Bad Fire (13 page)

‘It's no different anywhere else in the world,' Eddie said, a feeble response to Wilkie's remarks, yet all he could come up with.

Joe Wilkie made tea, handed Eddie a mug. Eddie tasted the tea, which was hot and unsweetened.

‘Your dad was awful proud of you, Eddie,' Wilkie said. ‘My son's a cop in New York City, he'd say. He'd show a photo of you in uniform every chance he got. He kept it in his wallet. He never tired of it.'

Eddie had no idea that Jackie carried a picture in his wallet, and showed it to people. The notion touched him.

‘I heard Dad was selling.'

‘So he said.'

‘Did he have a buyer for the place?'

‘He never mentioned one,' Wilkie said. ‘A guy came a couple of times, and they shut themselves away in your dad's office. I could hear them arguing sometimes. I got the impression he might have been interested in buying the business, but maybe he didn't want to pay Jackie's asking price, whatever that was … I couldn't say for sure, I just know they had violent shouting matches and Jackie always looked furious afterwards.'

‘You know the man's name?'

‘I know his name all right. Roddy Haggs. A lot of people know him and his reputation.'

‘And what's his reputation?' A son's curiosity about his murdered father's life: that was justification enough for asking a couple of questions. He wasn't trespassing on anyone's jurisdiction.

‘Bent and bad,' Wilkie said. He shuffled papers and looked tense. He didn't want the warehouse sold. This had been the only employment he'd ever known in his life. Without it, what was he supposed to do? His white face was a map of uncertainty and loss. ‘I told the police Haggs was here,' he said. ‘I told them about the arguments.'

‘How did they react?'

‘One of the cops – his name'll come back to me in a sec – wrote something in his notebook. That was that … Got it. Perlman. Detective-Sergeant Perlman.' Wilkie snapped thumb and middle finger together.

‘When was Perlman here?'

‘Yesterday afternoon. Nice enough fellow, a wee bit on the shabby side. But he has one of them faces that doesn't tell you what's going on in his brain.'

Eddie thought, The deadpan approach: give nothing away. He imagined Perlman, who looked as if he'd worked the streets for ever, would be adept at this.

‘How's Senga?' Wilkie asked.

‘It's a bad time for her. I don't know how she's handling it.'

‘She loved Jackie. She used to come down here and help out now and again. I've often seen her roll up her sleeves and get stuck in. Never afraid of hard work. Some woman. Where are you staying?'

‘At my sister's.'

Joe Wilkie said, ‘How is Joyce?'

‘Doing the best she can …'

‘She's a good girl.'

Eddie, who realized he wanted to get out into the sunlight and away from the memories this place blitzed him with, finished his tea. ‘Speaking of Joyce, I better get moving. She's probably wondering where I am.'

Wilkie walked with him into the yard and unlocked the gate in the fence. He held out his hand and Eddie shook it.

Eddie asked, ‘You'll be at the funeral.'

‘I'll be there,' Wilkie said. ‘I knew your dad when we were growing up in the Gallowgate. That's a long time ago, Eddie. I wouldn't miss his send-off.'

Eddie clapped the old warehouseman's arm, then turned and walked slowly up Bluevale Street. And that was when it struck him again, the unsettling feeling he'd had before, the sense of something having brushed against him. The heat was sucked out of the day and he was cold for a moment as he gazed towards Duke Street where traffic was growing and bright red buses trawled along.

He stood still. He was conscious of the tenements looming over him, their dark secretive entranceways and the severe geometry of their windows, and suddenly he loved them as he'd loved them as a child because they were permanent, some part of himself would
always
belong here, but he had the feeling that these buildings, where people lived and bred and died, formed a protective shield around the mystery of his father's death, that if you could somehow penetrate to the hidden heart of the massive sandstone constructs you'd find the answer in the form of a man sitting at a table cleaning a gun, surrounded by oily rags and bottles of solvents, a cigarette crushed in an ashtray, pale lager going flat in a half-empty glass, and a cartridge clip lying alongside a lighter.

If you could find him. If you knew which stairs to climb, which door to knock.

16

‘He's in Birmingham, is he?' Haggs asked.

‘That's what he said on the phone. Birmingham. Or mibbe Liverpool.'

‘Make up your mind.'

‘He could be anywhere. How did he ever get to be an accountant? You need a brain for that, and Billy doesn't have one. His skull's empty. I mean, he lost a leg when a train ran into him. Hapless isn't the word. So, eh, where's the TV?'

‘TV?' Haggs looked at the old fellow on the bed. He was thin and unshaven and had ketchup and egg stains down the front of his striped pyjamas. His face was thin as a hatchet-blade and his eyelids drooped. He looked as if he'd never smiled in his life. He had the expression of a man sitting on a thistle, but too self-willed to complain.

‘Aye the didgie, whatever it's called. You're supposed to be delivering it, right?'

Didgie? Haggs wondered. He examined the army of little prescription bottles on the bedside table. The names of the drugs meant nothing to him. ‘When's he coming back?'

The old fellow stared at Haggs in a vacant way. ‘I want to see the digital telly,' he said. He sounded like a spoiled kid.

Ah, digital. Haggs said, ‘We'll get to that. Suppose you focus, McQueen, and tell me when Billy's coming back.'

‘What's it to you? Just bring in the telly. Do you need his signature – is that it? Christ, man, I can sign for him.'

Haggs thought this was like talking to a brick edifice.

‘Hey,' Larry McQueen said. ‘How did you get in anyway?'

‘You opened the door for me,' Haggs said. ‘You don't remember?'

‘My memory's …' With a look of irritation, Larry McQueen flapped his hand at the prescription bottles. ‘I never remember when I'm supposed to take these bloody pills. They wreck my head and I get confused.'

Haggs walked around the room. He clenched and unclenched his hands, bones cracking. Note to self: be patient when there is no other strategy. The room smelled of pee and pot-pourri air-freshener. The area round the bed was littered with old newspapers, books about World War II, copies of
Watchtower
. ‘What Christ's Resurrection Can Do In Today's World.' Not a fuck of a lot, Haggs thought.

A guitar with an ornate pick-guard was propped against the bedside table. A chamberpot of a blue floral design was visible just under the bed. It contained a little yellow pool of pish. The furniture in the room was good quality stuff.

‘Larry,' he said. ‘Would you happen to have a cellphone number for Billy?'

‘He had a sky-blue marble when he was three,' Larry said. ‘We lived in Kinning Park then.'

‘Is that so?' Haggs said.

‘Lost it, didn't he? Down a gutter. Plop and gone. Always losing stuff. A marble. A leg. Born a loser.'

Haggs walked to the bed. He grabbed the old fellow by the collar of his pyjama jacket and dragged his head up from the pillow. ‘Where can I reach your son? Don't talk to me about digital TVs and marbles and such shite. Just give me a number for Billy.'

‘Take your hands off me, Lew, I warned you.'

Lew? Who the hell was Lew? Some figure in McQueen's apparent dementia? Haggs said, ‘I'm about to slap you in the mouth, Larry.'

‘If I was a fifteen years younger, or even ten –'

‘Aye aye aye. Let's not discuss the impossible.' Haggs raised a hand in the air. He wondered if a quick whack across the lips would do any good, if it would activate Larry McQueen's memory. Probably not.

Larry said, ‘I don't remember any phone number, mister.'

‘Think.
Think.
'

‘Get your mitts off me,' and Larry McQueen made a funnel of his mouth and spat into Haggs's face, a wad of phlegm that struck Haggs in the eye.

‘You disgusting old fucker,' Haggs said.

‘Red card me for spitting then,' McQueen said.

Haggs punched McQueen half-heartedly in the nose, and the old man bled and cried out. Haggs had a mind to hit McQueen again but he knew it was pointless. Besides, there was no particular buzz to be had from bashing this defenceless old fart. The experience left him as flat as dead Alka-Seltzer. He'd crushed Matty Bones's hand, sure, but McQueen was a different matter.

Blood was flowing from the old fellow's nose. He appeared indifferent to it. As if the brief assault had never taken place, he glared at Haggs and said, ‘Where's the telly then? In your van?'

Haggs stepped back from the bed. This encounter was like one of those weird nightmares where nobody ever answered your questions. You were inside a room and the walls sloped in a strange way, and people were staring at you as if the simple question ‘Where am I?' was too difficult to answer.

He sighed and said, ‘Okay. I'll bring up the telly. Where do you want it plugged in, Larry?'

‘I don't want any sunlight shining on the picture,' McQueen said. Blood dripped from his lip to his pyjama jacket, where it brightened the dull red-brown of old ketchup crust.

Haggs wrote his name and phone number on a scrap of paper and placed it on the bedside table, wedged between the medication bottles.

‘What's that?' Larry McQueen asked.

‘When Billy gets round to calling, tell him I need to see him. It's in his own best interest. Can you remember that?'

‘Think I've got a problem remembering, do you?'

‘You? Never.' Haggs plucked a fistful of Kleenex from a pop-up box on the bedside table and shoved them into McQueen's hand.

‘Wipe your face,' he said.

‘Right, treat me like a baby,' McQueen said. ‘It'll be a dummy tit next, and nappies, and talc for my arse.'

‘I'll get the TV,' Haggs said.

He paused in the doorway and looked back. McQueen had let the tissues drop to the floor. He was staring at Haggs and blinking in the brassy early sun that gatecrashed the room.

‘You got any smokes, Lew?' McQueen asked.

‘I'll find you some.' Haggs closed the door and left.

17

When Eddie Mallon reached the corner of Onslow Drive and Whitehill Street he saw Senga standing barefoot outside her house in a dark green robe with short sleeves. Her hair was in some disarray. Eddie walked towards her, thinking how she looked pale and depleted. She turned her face when she heard him.

‘You're up bright and early,' he said.

‘I woke at dawn and I couldn't go back to sleep again, so I stepped outside and lo and behold here I am.'

‘You're not wearing anything on your feet.'

‘I like the ground against my skin,' she said. ‘As a wee girl I loved to go barefoot every chance I got.' She looked at Eddie sadly. ‘I have this cringe-making memory of forcing you to dance last night. I'm sorry about that. It was lunatic behaviour.'

‘There's nothing to apologize for.'

She took a packet of B&H from the pocket of her robe, removed a cigarette and lit it with a gold lighter. She squinted her eyes against the smoke and looked at Eddie carefully for a moment. ‘So … do I measure up to Flora?'

The question surprised him. ‘I never thought of comparing you and her.'

‘Apples and pears, eh?'

‘You made Jackie happy.'

‘It was hard work at times.'

‘He wasn't happy with Flora,' Eddie said. He wondered if this remark constituted a tiny betrayal of his mother.

‘Oh, I know all about that old soap opera,' Senga said. ‘How to use your weans as pawns in a stupid game. Jackie realized it was stupid and destructive, but he could be inflexible beyond belief at times. Breaking a family up – for what?' Senga hesitated a second. ‘He used to agonize over what he'd done. One day I told him, look, Jackie, if it's eating your heart out as much as you say, why don't you write to Eddie? Why don't you tell him how you feel?'

‘You were behind that? I didn't know. I'm glad you did it.'

‘
Somebody
had to kick his arse. I helped him write that first letter. And when you replied, he was over the moon. You'd opened the door for him a little way. A belated chance at redemption. You hadn't condemned him. You should have seen how happy he was after he made the first phone call and heard your voice.'

‘I always wanted him to meet my wife and son,' Eddie said.

‘It just wasn't on the cards.' Senga rubbed her eyelids. ‘You want my honest opinion? Your mother was as much to blame as Jackie. She should've scratched and clawed to keep her kids together, but no, off she went to America with her tail between her legs. And don't tell me it was because Jackie frightened her, because if it had been me I would've moved bloody heaven and earth to keep my kids.' She puffed her cigarette quickly. Her words were expelled in little spurts of smoke. ‘Flora chickened out, no argument. Jackie behaved like a major prick. And you and your sister were the ones that paid the price.'

Eddie thought of Flora immersed in her world of plants and big-band music. Her lifelong loneliness. Senga was right. Flora hadn't fought for her kids. She'd talked and talked about saving money for a lawyer, and how Joyce would be rescued and brought to America, but it was vapour, and it blew away. Maybe Joyce wouldn't have wanted to leave Scotland in any event. Had anyone ever asked her? Dysfunctional, Eddie thought. A family broken down and hissing steam like an old truck at the side of the road.