The Bad Fire (22 page)

‘And what does Jackie's will have to do with me? Unless he's left me something, a keepsake maybe.' Haggs laughed. It was a high-pitched sound, a hinge squeaking. ‘Old bugger wouldn't leave me a cracked chanty.'

A
chanty
, Eddie thought. A chamberpot. ‘About the warehouse.'

‘That dump in Bluevale Street?'

Eddie nodded and went into his storyline. ‘It's going on the market soon to satisfy some tax demands Jackie hadn't paid.'

‘Jackie had a useless accountant, some fucking quill-pusher from the Victorian age. I told him a hundred times. Get up to date. Throw out every last abacus and plug into the new age … Did he listen? Did he fuck. And now the whole kit and caboodle is going up for sale, you say?'

‘Probably at auction,' Eddie said.

‘I still don't see any connection to me, Eddie.'

‘No? I heard you were interested in the property.'

With an expression of amazement, Haggs laughed loudly. His long body shook and he fine-sprayed the air with saliva. ‘Me?
Me?
Do I look like a junk dealer? Do I look like a man who'd be interested in buying and selling rubbish?'

Eddie said, ‘I heard you'd visited the warehouse and you and Jackie had arguments about the valuation of the business.'

‘Jackie and me – we were oil and vinegar. We liked to argue. Christ, we thrived on it. Who remembers the reasons? When conflict's finished, I let it go.'

Eddie didn't buy that. He had the feeling Haggs was the kind of man who'd never forget a grudge or a slight or the name of anyone who'd walked on the wrong side of him. Okay. Realistically, what the hell
did
a rich man want with a rundown warehouse? Demolish the place and build a supermarket or a bingo palace or a leisure complex? Wrong part of town, Eddie thought. Fine. Say it wasn't the warehouse or the space Haggs wanted, and Joe Wilkie guessed wrong. Say it was something else.

What did Jackie have that Haggs needed? What exactly?

He thought of Tommy G. Jackie
definitely
had something Tommy was looking for.

Had Jackie left troublesome loose ends all over Glasgow?

‘I hear you're a cop in New York,' Haggs said.

‘In Glasgow I'm just somebody's son trying to make sense of his father's affairs, and if I got the wrong end of the stick about you and the warehouse, let's drop it.'

‘Gladly,' Haggs said.

The muzak played on. ‘There is Nothing Like a Dame'. Suddenly Haggs slapped his thigh and laughed again, and said, ‘I'm trying to imagine myself sitting in Jackie's grubby wee office arguing about the price of such-and-such a sundial or an old HMV gramophone. Sorry, Eddie, I don't mean to mock what Jackie did for a living –'

‘No big deal.' But it was, and Eddie felt a surge of irritation at the way Haggs belittled Jackie.

Haggs asked, ‘You talked to the police about the murder?'

‘Yeah, we've talked.'

‘Is Glasgow's finest close to finding the killer?'

‘They believe Bones did it,' Eddie answered.

‘
Bones?
'

‘Bones's gun was the murder weapon.'

Haggs asked, ‘That wee man went around
armed
? Have they brought him in for questioning?'

‘They can't find him.'

‘Then he fucked off. Probably scared shitless. I can't believe he killed Jackie.'

‘So who did?'

Haggs shrugged. ‘I'm baffled.'

‘Then we're all baffled – apart from the cops,' Eddie said.

‘The cops won't change their minds. They're inflexible. And it wouldn't be the first time they've jumped to the wrong conclusion.'

‘Am I hearing contempt for the Strathclyde Police?'

‘You don't need to be a mind-reader. They're a right evil bunch of wankers.'

‘I heard something about a trial you were involved in …'

‘That was a bloody attempt to railroad me.'

‘Why?'

‘How many reasons do you want? They're jealous of my lifestyle. They don't like some of my business partners. They don't like to see somebody from my background get ahead. You read the sign on the gate when you came in? You see the word
Drumpellier
there?'

Eddie said, ‘I saw it.'

‘I was born in Drumpellier Street, in a district of this fair city called Blackhill. You're born and brought up in Blackhill, Eddie, you're not supposed to get out. It was crime and drugs and gangs, some of the hardest fuckers in Glasgow. The police didn't like to visit Blackhill, and they didn't like people spilling out of Blackhill into other places, especially people like me drifting into respectable areas like this … Are you getting the picture?'

‘You've risen above your station.'

‘And I stepped on a few toes climbing. And some people don't forget that. And some of these people have friends in the police …'

‘So you have
Drumpellier
out there to remind you where you came from,' Eddie said.

‘More than that. It's me giving them the finger, Eddie. It's me saying, fuck the lot of you, I walk where I bloody well please.' Haggs tossed his scotch back and drew a hand across his mouth. ‘So the trumped-up trial, Eddie, was a scheme planned by morons who wanted to show me that even if I'd come up in the world, I could go down again as fast as
that,
' and he snapped his fingers. ‘The police case against me was a load of ballocks. I walked out of that courtroom free as a bird.'

Eddie stood under the angels and the blue sky and the cloud clusters. Haggs carried deep black grudges against the social order. Did he have grudges against Jackie too?

‘Who told you about that trial anyway?' Haggs asked.

Eddie plucked an easy lie out of nowhere and tossed it like a paper dart. ‘Guy called Caskie. A cop.'

Haggs said, ‘Caskie … Is he the one friendly with your family?'

‘The same,' Eddie said.

‘And how did my name happen to come up in conversation?'

‘Because I told him you intended to buy the warehouse.' Eddie smiled.

‘Now you can tell him you were wrong.'

‘Consider it done,' Eddie said. ‘Thanks for your time.'

Haggs walked with Eddie towards the door. On the right was a small wood-panelled room filled with glass display cases.

Eddie glanced at them. ‘Quite a collection,' he said.

Haggs asked, ‘You interested in guns? I've been collecting them for years.' He strode towards the display cases. There were almost fifty blackpowder pistols here, most of them genuine antiques, each gleaming and imbedded in dark brown wood. Haggs took a keychain from his pocket and unlocked one of the cases and removed a long handgun with a walnut stock and held it out for Eddie's examination.

‘Kentucky Flintlock,' he said. He handed the gun to Eddie, who was surprised by its weight, and then he carefully removed another weapon from the case. This one had a fancy curved handle and a barrel more than a foot long. ‘This beauty is a Le Page Percussion Duelling Pistol. Lovely feel to it. I've also got a very fine original Colt 1860 Revolver and a mint-con Remington Percussion dating from 1858.' He gestured towards the display proudly. ‘Been a hobby a long time. I always take my hobbies very seriously, Eddie.'

‘This Kentucky is a very fine gun,' Eddie said, admiring the craftsmanship.

Haggs held out his hand and Eddie gave him back the flintlock and he returned it to the case, which he locked.

‘Beautiful things make me forget my origins,' Haggs remarked. ‘I'll walk you out.'

Outside, both men gazed at the monkey puzzle tree. To Eddie it seemed as if the tree had been tortured by sea storms, a thing you might find growing in godforsaken sand dunes.

He asked, ‘You know Caskie, I assume?'

‘You think I'd want a cop for an acquaintance?' Haggs laid a hand on Eddie's shoulder and massaged it a little too firmly. ‘I'd rather use shite for toothpaste.'

Eddie smiled thinly. Sun reflected from the branches of the tree in a zigzagging pattern of light and a drab bird – probably a sparrow – popped out of the foliage and flew directly overhead.

28

The calamitous drumming in Caskie's head just wouldn't quit. Hot and flushed, he kept going over the same thing – his denial of ever having heard of Haggs. Reason, give me one good reason, he thought: I panicked. I slipped. I gave in to a kind of idiot seizure of guilt. Moron. It was downright stupid, a magician dropping his cards during a sleight of hand, and Mallon – certainly no dummy – had picked up on it. Caskie was convinced of that.

What would it have cost me to say I knew Haggs by name? Nothing. He'd answered without thinking.
Haggs? Never heard of him. Nothing to do with me. Not part of my world
. He'd rushed into the denial too quickly.

The burden you've been carrying. You're on overload.

He watched Joyce, who stood at the window and looked down into the street. She smoked a cigarette. ‘Where the hell did Eddie go? He just disappeared. He didn't say he was leaving. It's been more than an hour, hasn't it?'

‘I don't know.' Caskie had lost track of time.

From the hallway came the sound of a man drilling screws into sheets of plywood. Caskie had telephoned him and he'd come at once to put the plywood in the place where the glass had been, a temporary solution, security for Joyce. She'd wondered how Caskie could find somebody so quickly. One phone call and
voilà
. The carpenter appeared within ten minutes. Probably an old favour. Caskie had hundreds of strings he could pull in this city. He'd already arranged for a patrol car to remain in the vicinity in the event that Tommy G returned. She had the feeling a single car wouldn't worry a man like Thomas G.

‘It's the middle of the afternoon and I'm not dressed yet,' she said.

‘School holidays,' Caskie said.

She looked at Caskie. He had a strange lifeless tone in his voice. ‘I'd better put some clothes on,' she said.

She stepped into her bedroom, closed the door. She pulled on a T-shirt with the logo
McCools
, the name of a bar she sometimes visited when she was in a jazz mood. Then blue jeans tight at her hips. She stood in front of the long mirror of the wardrobe, thinking she looked undernourished. She remembered how the intruder had dragged her to the floor, the way his hand had parted her robe. She'd have bad dreams about him. He'd crash her head uninvited.

She sat in a green velvet chair, an item salvaged from Jackie's yard. She saw her image again, this time in the oval mirror of the Victorian dressing table that had once belonged to Granny Mallon, funny how bits and pieces of furniture and small items of jewellery are handed down through generations like genetic material passed from one person to another, and she thought of how often Granny Mallon must have gazed at herself in this very mirror, a young wife, barely more than a girl, brushing her hair stroke after stroke.

She touched her lip where Tommy G had struck her. It didn't hurt now. She'd pressed ice cubes to it for a while, and they'd helped. She heard a knock on the door. Caskie appeared. She looked at his reflection in the mirror.

‘You all right?' he asked.

‘I'll be fine. Just give me a minute to myself, Chris.'

‘Checking,' he said. ‘You want aspirin or anything else?'

‘No. But thanks for asking.' She smiled at him in the mirror. He closed the door, retreated. She couldn't read his expression. Concern, certainly. Always. She wasn't sure what else. Something troubled him. Probably Tommy G. She heard the buzz of the carpenter's drill and a big delivery truck pass in the street and how it made the glass vibrate in the window frames. Flora popped into her mind and she thought, I want my mother, I want to lay my head in her lap, all the things lost to us in the crap of the years, all mother-daughter moments ripped away from us. Thank you for that, Jackie. Thank you. I loved you anyway.

Caskie fingered the spines of books.
A Scots Quair. Growing Up in the Gorbals. The USA Trilogy
. Motes of dust drifted in sunlight. He walked the room restlessly. He brought his face close to one of the busts Joyce kept on shelves. This one, smooth-eyed, blind, a Roman copy, seemed to be peering into a world outside the range of everyday senses.

‘Counsel me, Senator,' he whispered to the bust. ‘Look at the bloody awful state of things. Where do I go from here?'

‘Are you talking to a statue?' Joyce asked.

Caskie turned quickly. He hadn't heard her enter, and he was a little embarrassed. ‘I was conferring,' he said.

‘Talk to statues often?'

‘All the time,' Caskie said. ‘They don't judge, you see.'

‘You're afraid of judgement?' Joyce asked.

‘Now and then.'

There was a noise in the hallway, and Eddie Mallon came into the room.

He looked weary, Joyce thought. His eyes were lightless. ‘Where the hell have you been?' she asked.

‘Choosing a coffin,' he said.

‘Oh shit,
damn damn
, I was supposed to help Senga do that and it went out of my mind. I feel awful.'

‘Under the circumstances,' Caskie said, ‘you're allowed a little amnesia.'

Eddie flopped on the sofa and stretched his legs.

Joyce said, ‘You've been gone a long time.'

‘When you're buying a coffin you don't simply leap into the first one you see,' he said.

‘Comical,' Joyce said.

‘I need some light relief,' Eddie said.

‘Don't we just? I think I'll walk round to Senga's. See how she's doing.'

Caskie looked at his watch. ‘It's time I was going too.'

Eddie glanced at Chris Caskie, whose face was lightly tanned. It made his small beard seem whiter.

‘Did you process Tommy G through your computer, Chris?'