The Bad Fire (15 page)

‘What happened to the union?'

‘It fell apart.'

‘His fault or hers?'

‘It takes two to screw up, they say.'

McWhinnie watched traffic in the street. Cars and buses glowed in the sun, mirrors flashed.

He said, ‘About my car.'

‘Send me a bill for the cassette deck. I'll see what I can do.'

Feeling despondent, like a low-rent private detective in the pay of dodgy lawyers working squalid divorce cases, McWhinnie watched Caskie turn a corner and disappear. He suddenly remembered what the little man in Govan had said:
You don't have the stuff for this work
. Maybe I don't. He wondered if he should call Lou Perlman. Perlman, an odd bird in the aviary that was Force HQ had taken him under his wing when he'd first joined the Strathclyde Police. Dear old Perlman, smart and big-hearted, that hair cut in tough-guy spikes, always had time for him.

Perlman, he thought. My rabbi.

He took out his cellphone and punched in Perlman's number, then killed the power before a connection was made. Work it out for yourself, Charles, he thought, don't go running to somebody else when you need rancid water pumped out of your system. Lou Perlman doesn't need your problems.

McWhinnie ordered another coffee, took a small diary from his pocket and made a note. He thought, I should be writing something like
Dear Diary, I am melancholy
. He closed the little book and wondered if he should tell Chris Caskie his white beard looked damned stupid.

19

‘What a dump,' the detective-sergeant said. His name was Anthony Bothwell. He was a tall man with red hair and a wide nose that might have been broken at one time. He had the soft accent of a Highlander. In his spare time, he was a bagpiper.

‘Be a sweetheart and open a window, Vicky. Place pongs.'

The uniformed officer, Constable Vicky Kyle, thought,
I'll be your sweetheart any time
– and did as she was instructed. Brittle flakes of old paint fell from the window frame. The window probably hadn't been opened in years. She watched Bothwell, a happily married man for whom she had a doomed infatuation, stroll round the room. PC Kyle wasn't altogether downhearted; she liked the idea of a secret longing. You needed some passion in your life, even if it was only dreamy make-believe stuff.

‘Look in there,' Bothwell said. He pointed to a small bedroom that adjoined the kitchen. ‘I'll have a shufty here,' and he began rummaging through drawers and opening cupboards.

Vicky Kyle stepped into the bedroom. A blind had been drawn down on the window. She tugged it and it rose quickly on its roller,
swoosh
, releasing a cloud of dust. The window was dirty. Below, cars and buses slogged through the clogged thoroughfare that was Shettleston Road.

Discarded clothes covered the floor. Pyjamas, underwear, shirts, socks. The bed was unmade. A bedside table was littered with assorted cold medications and empty Nicorette boxes. Squeezed-out tubes and half-empty bottles and God knows what lay under a ceramic lamp which was crusted with dried gobs of gum.

Vicky Kyle opened the drawer of the table.

Old football pools coupons, three or four centrefolds, some of them obviously antique, a postcard from Skye signed by somebody called Tam. The message read:
Fishing's crap here and too many midges
. She looked inside a wardrobe; sports jackets hung crookedly, neckties dangled from hooks. There was a stink of camphor. A stack of old race programmes had been piled at the bottom of the wardrobe. She bent to examine them. A spider rambled across her knuckles.

She looked under the bed, saw dust compacted into balls and old newspapers and cast-off slippers and four empty scotch bottles, Haig's. She stood upright, straightened her skirt. The bedroom was airless and stale. She walked into the kitchen. Bothwell was checking under the sink.

‘Nothing in the bedroom, Tony,' she said. ‘This place is disgusting. I wonder when it was last cleaned. If ever.'

‘The year dot,' said Bothwell, groping behind drainage pipes.

‘BC or AD?'

Bothwell hummed ‘Amazing Grace' and then ‘The Black Bear'. Pipers' tunes. He loved getting kitted out in the full regalia, enjoyed the swinging weight of the kilt, the well-polished sporran, the
skean-dhu
tucked in the sock. He thrilled to parades and bagpipe competitions and Highland games.

He said, ‘Ah hah. Now what have we here, I wonder.'

‘You found something interesting?' Vicky Kyle asked.

Bothwell backed out from under the sink. The sleeves of his white shirt were covered in dark streaks. He held a plastic shopping bag in one hand.

He said, ‘Let's see what secret the hidden bag holds, shall we?' He peered inside the bag. Then he looked at Vicky Kyle and winked. ‘Well well,' he said. ‘Well oh well.'

She thought his wink playful. She felt blood flush her cheeks. She wondered if it showed. If she was blushing. You're a big girl, Vicky, for the love of God, act your age.

‘What have you got, Tony?'

‘See for yourself.'

She looked inside the bag. ‘Bloody hell,' she said.

20

The telephone rang at twenty minutes past ten. Alone in the flat, Joyce was still in bed; she answered on the third ring.

The caller was Flora.

‘Ma?' Joyce said. Her voice was dry. Too much wine before bed.

‘Surprised you, did I? Eddie have a good flight?'

‘It was fine, Ma.'

‘He has that daft phobia about flying.'

Joyce lit a cigarette – damned habit, why did she need it, especially when her throat was so dry? – and turned over on her back and looked up at the bedroom ceiling. She had a small unexpected flashback to her amphetamine days when the first thing she'd do on waking was drop a hit of speed and wait for it to fire her furnace just enough to get her out of bed and drive to school and babble at her pupils.
Wordsworth this and Keats that and here's what Coleridge wrote
… And the pupils, most of them dull-faced and sullen and listening for the bell that would free them, sometimes asked questions that turned out to be jokes so old they had beards …
Miss Mallon, what's a Grecian Urn? Five quid a week, ha ha ha
. By mid-afternoon she was always wilting; she'd go inside the staff bathroom and snap a tab in half and swallow it, saving the remainder for later. And so she got through her life, and her separation from Harry, riding the speed train through the hours of daylight and sometimes deep into the night too. She'd never loved Haskell, although she'd tried. She wept a lot back then, not because she missed Harry, but because she hadn't been able to get the marriage to work, she'd tried, oh Christ she'd tried, but she was never capable of sustaining the illusion of a healthy marriage. For his part, Harry couldn't come to terms with the fact that marriage wasn't always the beautiful dream he wanted it to be. You weren't always attractive and anxious to fuck. Your period was depressing, or you developed a cold sore at the corner of your lip, or you just drifted away into the private world of a book and you didn't want Harry to follow, dragging his hard-on.

All that. The mathematics of matrimony. The downs were troughs of low pressure. And suddenly there were just too many of them, and Harry had become a burden she couldn't carry and couldn't learn to love.

‘Are you listening to me?' Flora asked.

‘Of course I'm listening.'

‘So how are you bearing up?' Flora asked.

‘That's a tough one, Ma.'

‘I know, dear. I know. I'd come to the funeral but …'

‘It's okay. I understand.' Joyce thought, I dread the final goodbye. The ritual.

‘I should have phoned before this …' Flora paused. ‘Sometimes I just don't know what to say. Sometimes I feel so damn sorry for the way …'

‘It's water under an old bridge, Ma.'

She tried to picture Flora in her tiny house on Long Island but all she could see were plants, a great forest of them. She remembered the afternoon five years ago when Flora had prepared a barbecue in her back yard and how the smell of burning meat had floated through the neighbourhood and dogs had begun barking everywhere. That was the day Joyce first realized her mother was shrinking with the passage of time. Becoming tiny, a little white-haired thing.

‘I try to let it go,' Flora said. ‘It's hard.'

Was she crying? Joyce wondered. Her voice sounded thin and quivery.

There was a long silence. ‘It must be good to have Eddie with you,' Flora said eventually.

‘It's great.'

‘Is there any news?'

‘No, Ma. Nothing.'

‘Is Eddie there … can I talk to him?'

‘You just missed him by about five minutes. He wanted to go into the city centre.' She was going to tell the truth, but held it back. ‘He thought he'd buy some presents to take home with him. And I didn't want to keep him company. I hate shops, all the crowds –'

‘You
love
shops. What are you
talking
about?'

‘I've changed,' Joyce said.

‘Last time you were over here, you couldn't wait for me to take you to Bloomingdale's. We did Macy's, and then all those funny little stores in the Village.'

‘I remember,' Joyce said. ‘I suppose that was my last shopping rush. Where do you go after Bloomingdale's anyway?' Why was Flora really calling? She telephoned maybe twice a year and it was always small talk, and now and again a family story that had assumed the status of folklore, a tale to be repeated and handed down.

‘Joyce … he's not getting, well, involved, is he?'

‘Involved, Ma? I'm not following you.'

‘Interfering … in the investigation.'

‘Is he acting the cop? Is that what you mean?'

‘I guess so.'

‘Ma, he's not a wee boy you have to worry over all the time. He talked to the police. But he's not out there trying to solve this crime, if that's what you're thinking.'

She thought: Of course Eddie's
involved
. He might not admit it to himself just yet, but he's
definitely
involved. The moment he stepped off the plane, he was
involved
. Somebody murdered his father: was he supposed to sit back and accept? And now he was at the crime scene with Chris because he'd asked to see it, he thought he might learn something, whatever. Because he couldn't help himself.

She imagined that hideous slice of wasteland, Chris and Eddie studying the place, Eddie thinking he might unearth something the local gendarmes had missed, a spent shell, a discarded comb the criminal had dropped.
Not in the real world
.

‘If you want reassurance, Ma,' she said, ‘I'll get him to phone you.'

‘No, it's okay … Have you seen Chris Caskie?'

‘Last night.'

‘How is he?'

Good question, Joyce thought. ‘Normally he's his charming friendly self. Sometimes he broods.'

‘Meg's been dead only six months.'

Joyce didn't want to talk about Chris or Meg. Meg's sickness. Sometimes she had the feeling that all human relationships ended in disaster.

Flora said, ‘I love you, Joyce. You know that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' Joyce said. ‘And I love you too.'

‘Keep in touch, sweetheart. And if you need me, I'm here.' Flora made a kissing sound and hung up.

Joyce rose, went inside the kitchen in her underwear, drank cold water. She found an old tartan dressing gown hanging on the back of the door, and she put it on, then she brewed coffee and drank it standing at the table, her robe open, her small breasts warmed by sunlight coming through the window. She felt a vague arousal she attributed to the heat; certainly there was nothing else nearby to cause it.

21

Billy McQueen sat in a black Ford Fiesta at the corner of Armadale Street and Ingleby Drive. Gurk, dreadlocked, was behind the wheel.

McQueen said, ‘I'm not saying it's a waste of time, Tommy.'

‘Spell it out. What the hell are you saying?'

‘I'm saying mibbe it could be.
Mibbe.
'

Gurk looked at McQueen with eyes Billy thought just a little too intense to belong to a rational human being. There was a light in them that indicated either a form of madness or an extreme calm, Billy wasn't sure which. Gurk had an astonishing forehead, a brow that protruded prominently over his eyes like some abnormal outcropping of bone. His chin was almost a perfect square.

‘I'm going up,' Gurk said. He prodded McQueen in the chest. ‘And you, my old china, you sit right here until I get back.'

McQueen said, ‘She may not be helpful.'

‘It isn't experimental physics we're talking about, Billy. A, she knows something. B, she doesn't. No in-betweens. No fuzzy zones.' Gurk leaned close to Billy McQueen, eye to eye. ‘You wear too much grease on your hair, mate. Grease is what you fry chips in. It's fucking unhealthy. Interferes with follicle development. Take my advice. Stop lathering your scalp in that shit.'

Gurk got out of the car and closed the door. Billy McQueen watched him in the rearview mirror as he walked along Ingleby Drive. Gurk moved with a confident kind of lope, lazy and loose. He obviously spent a lot of time in the gym, which showed in the rocklike musculature of shoulders under the red and yellow shirt he wore hanging outside his khaki slacks.

McQueen thought: This isn't a smart move. Coming here. I am unhappy. This has all gone wrong. He jumped when his cellphone rang, then calmed down enough to answer it.

Larry said, ‘Where's that didgey TV?'

Billy wondered how Larry had found this cellphone number, then remembered he'd written it down months ago and the old man had stuffed it in the drawer of the bedside table. Okay, so he'd had one of his rare moments of clarity and remembered where he'd stashed the number and now the TV was worrying him.