The Bad Fire (8 page)

‘Am I supposed to sound like a guy who's been selling newspapers outside –' and he fumbled for a location'– St Enoch Station all his life?'

‘Sorry to tell you this, Eddie, but there's no such station any more. Shut down long ago …'

A streetlight illuminated her face a second. She lit another cigarette. She looked, he thought, very young. A person too young to have her kind of history – a family hewn apart, a marriage that had been disastrous from the beginning, a murdered father.

‘You wanna hear my American?' she asked.

Eddie Mallon said, ‘I have a choice?'

‘Hey, it's your loss, buddy.'

‘That's bad, Joyce.'

‘Bad as in good?'

‘As in terrible.'

They'd slipped into banter, he thought. Steer clear of the real subject. Digress. He looked at his watch but the damn thing had stopped. ‘I need to call Claire. She worries when I have to fly.'

‘Phone from my place,' Joyce said. ‘I just remembered the man's name.'

‘What man?'

‘The one that drove me home from the morgue. McWhinnie. Charles, I think. Detective-Sergeant. Posh Glasgow accent. He said yes instead of aye and didn't drop his gs at the end of -ing words. Classy, eh?'

‘Very,' he said.

The car left the motorway and headed into the east end of the city, where Eddie had been born and raised; suddenly streets were darker, tenements overbearing and the occasional streetlamp was missing, presumed vandalized. Stores were shuttered, bars closed. The only place open was a fish and chip shop. Eddie saw a fat man behind the counter toss a chip in the air and, like a trained sea-lion, catch it in his mouth on the way down.

Joyce turned the car into Onslow Drive and parked outside the house that had been the Mallon family home in another lifetime.

Eddie said, ‘I thought we were going to your flat. Why are we stopping here?'

‘I want to see how Senga's bearing up,' Joyce said, and stepped out of the car.

Eddie didn't move.

He gazed at the garden, which was a tangle, a jungle of shrub. He stared at the windows, half-expecting to see a curtain drawn back and his mother's face appear there, or the shadow of his father pass in front of a pane. He imagined Flora calling,
You finished your homework, Eddie
? Or the sound of Joyce practising scales she could never master on the old upright piano in the living room. Doh ray me fah
clunk
, the lid slammed down in frustration and Joyce running upstairs to her room and Jackie shouting after her,
You won't learn to play the bloody piano by hiding in your room, young lady
.

I don't want to get out of the car and go inside the house, he thought. Jackie's
Daily Express
would be lying on the kitchen table and Flora might be peeling onions under running water and maybe some of Jackie's friends would be in the sitting room, laughing at a joke or talking in a low masculine rumble Eddie found impenetrable. And Flora would say,
If you're looking for your dad he's in the front room with his business associates, so-called
.

The dead walk this house.

Ghosts. Including the spectre of young Eddie Mallon.

‘Come on, Eddie,' Joyce called. ‘You'll like her. Don't look so worried.'

It wasn't the prospect of Senga that troubled him here. He stepped from the car. Joyce was inserting a key into the front-door lock and turning it; then she ushered him ahead of her into the hallway where the first thing he saw was the coat-rack where Flora had always told him to hang his blazer or raincoat after school. He looked down and yes,
Jesus
, it was
still
there after all these years – the same goddam doormat, he was sure of it, worn to nothing except a few flat bristles.
Wipe your feet, Eddie. That mat's not there for decoration, you know
. This house didn't exist in the present tense.

Joyce called out: ‘Senga? Are you there?'

Music was playing very quietly from somewhere. The Eagles: ‘Lying Eyes'.

11

Matty Bones, who'd finished his whisky a while ago, shut his left eye and surveyed Haggs through the bleary slit of his right. ‘Did you bring me drink? Eh? I need more booze.'

Haggs turned away from Matty Bones and looked at the third man in the room. His name was John Twiddie. He wore a black leather jacket and gloves, and had a ring through one nostril and a wad of pus where metal punctured skin.

A plook, Matty Bones thought. That was the word for that kind of inflammation. A big fucking golden
plook
. If it grew any more it would be like an extra nose. This guy looked familiar but Matty Bones was lost in a boozy mist and all links with the world were tenuous.

There was also a young woman Bones had never seen before. Face like a dented medieval battle helmet, scar on her neck, tattooed knuckles, black hair combed upright and held in position by a complex arrangement of pins and metal clasps. She also wore gloves.

‘You there,' Bones said.

‘You pointing at me, jim?' she asked. A snarl.

‘Aye, you. You bring me any drink, dear?'

‘Don't point your bloody finger at me. I hate when anybody does that.'

‘Oh, you're a toughie, eh? A hard case.' Bones laughed.

The girl turned one hand into a heavy fist and punched Bones in the face and he slipped and clattered into a chair before he fell. Anaesthetized by booze, he felt nothing. He lay on the floor and continued to laugh. He'd fallen from too many nags and no-hopers in his day to let this stumble worry him. He was known around the Scottish flat-racing circuit, Hamilton, Lanark, Ayr, as resilient. You fall off, you get back in the saddle.

Roddy Haggs said, ‘Christ's sake, put a clamp on that temper, Rita.'

‘Well, I'm sorry, but this fucking wee dwarf annoys me,' she said. She had an expression of permanent rage about her. Whenever Haggs was obliged to look at her, which wasn't often, he thought of somebody who dragged around her own private tempest in which all manner of wild emotions were tossed willy-nilly.

‘Give me the booze, Twiddie,' Haggs said.

John Twiddie, who had a sorry thin moustache such as an adolescent might achieve, took a half-bottle of scotch from a pocket of his jacket. He passed it to Haggs, who opened it, then leaned down over Matty Bones and let some of the alcohol slide into the old jockey's open mouth. Haggs had a good view of the interior of Matty's gob; a dentist's nightmare. You could send down a hundred technicians with the latest in laser dento-technology and they'd pronounce this mouth condemned.

Matty Bones said, ‘Aye, great, keep it coming, keep the stuff coming, Haggs.'

Haggs quit pouring. ‘A question or two first, Matty.'

‘Ask away. I'm your man.'

‘Jackie Mallon,' Haggs said.

‘Jackie and me. Best mates. Peas in a pod. You know that.' Bones felt a momentary sobriety. A shudder. He didn't like the world in clarity. Something bad had happened to Jackie.

Twiddie said, ‘Fuck the talk. Just let me stick the boot in, Roddy.'

Haggs frowned at John Twiddie and his girlfriend Rita. They had hair-trigger brains. They were always on the edge, pissed off by the smallest inconvenience. Pierced like tailor's dummies, they were also embroidered with tattoos of flowers and guns. Roddy Haggs didn't want to be in the same room as them, but in this world you had to have your enforcers. And since Twiddie liked to work with Rita, they came as a pair. Lovebirds. Ugly ones.

Haggs grabbed the old guy's hand and squeezed hard. ‘Listen, Matty. This is important. What was Jackie Mallon up to? What was he planning?'

‘Up to? Oh, this and that. You could never keep track of Jackie. Too fast on his feet.' Matty reached for the bottle and Haggs drew it away with his free hand.

‘Matty, you were his driver. You took him everywhere.'

‘Pubs, here and there.'

‘No, not just pubs, Matty. Other places you took him. Who did he see?'

‘Now how the hell would I know, Haggs?'

Haggs crushed the little man's hand as if it were the dried carcass of a squab. Matty Bones moaned. The feel of bone crunching penetrated the armour of booze. He stared at his broken hand. It dangled strangely. Red and green lights jitterbugged in his vision.

‘Where did you take him and who did he see?' Haggs asked.

Bones had tears in his eyes. He shoved the broken hand into his mouth, thinking saliva might help ease the agony.

Haggs made a signal to Twiddie, who launched his metal-tipped boot into the little man's scrotum. Matty Bones went at once into a fetal position and his face lost all colour. Aw God, this is a bad fall, he thought. Right bad. He heard his horse gallop away. Hoofbeats on frosty earth. He was paralysed. Red Cross would be coming any minute. The morphine wagon.

He wanted scotch. He nodded his head at the bottle.

Haggs held the whisky high over Matty's face. ‘Make it easy on yourself, Matty. Tell us what you know and you get to keep the booze, and we leave you in peace.'

Flat on his back, Matty Bones stared up at the ceiling. He had an image of Jackie Mallon stepping inside Blackfriars pub. It was clear as a photograph. Bones didn't like the picture at all. It brought stuff back he didn't want to look at. ‘You said you wouldn't hurt him.'

‘I say a lot of things,' Haggs remarked. ‘Most of it unbelievable.'

‘You fucking
snuffed
him. You said you just wanted to ask a couple of questions and you wouldn't hurt him but you bastards shot him.' Bones wept softly; a drunk man's black guilt. I loved you, Jackie. Really loved you. Honest to God I did.

Haggs said, ‘Let's not sob like some wee lassie whose ballerina dreams have just been binned because she's got knock-knees. Let's keep on track here. Who did he see?'

‘I drove him to Hyndland a couple of times to meet Billy McQueen.' Bones drew his cuff across his eyes.

‘Wan-Fittit McQueen?'

‘Right, the Stump –'

‘And what were they scheming, Matty?'

‘I sat outside in the car. I never joined in. I wasn't asked. Wait in the car, Bones. Take a walk, Bones. Here's a tenner for a fish supper and a pint, Bones.' Bones's voice was wheezy. His broken hand felt five times its usual size and still swelling.

Haggs asked again. ‘What were they scheming, Matty?'

‘Swear to God, I don't know. Jackie didn't tell me anything.'

‘Right. Try this one. Where did Mallon go when he left Glasgow last week?'

‘I never knew he left Glasgow,' Bones said.

‘I'm to believe that?'

‘It's the truth,' Bones said.

‘His woman took him to the train station last Wednesday morning.'

‘I never knew,' Bones said.

Haggs shrugged and looked at Twiddie. ‘Do it,' he said. ‘Just do it.'

Twiddie and the girl dragged Matty Bones across the floor and out of the flat and hauled him down the stairs by his ankles, and his head struck the edge of each stone step in a synchronized way. He was sobbing and pleading,
I've telt ye everything I know, I swear on my mother's grave, I swear to God
, but nobody was listening, God especially.

He was yanked out of the tenement and across the pavement and dumped in the back of an ancient Transit van. Haggs got behind the wheel and drove. Twiddie and his girl stayed in the back with Bones. They took turns kicking him, ribs, mouth, belly, skull, it didn't matter, anywhere they could land their boots. Bones curled up like a dying armadillo, and after a while he just stopped feeling anything. He drifted into a dreamy place where faces shimmered, visions of people he might or might not have known.

Jackie was there, hands folded behind his back like a stern schoolmaster. Let this be a lesson, Matthew Bones. Don't betray your pals, wee man.

Haggs drove along Edmiston Drive, heading west past the redbrick monolith of the Glasgow Rangers football stadium. For a couple of miles he listened to Bones whimper. In the back, the girl was smoking a cigarette. Haggs could hear her suck smoke deep into her lungs. Twiddie lit a cigarette too. Thugs on a tobacco break.

‘He's a tough wee cunt,' Twiddie said.

‘He's had enough,' Haggs said.

‘I'm no finished with him.' Twiddie blew a long stream of smoke.

‘Enough's enough,' Haggs said.

‘He's still breathing,' the girl said.

‘I want him out of the damn van,' Haggs said. ‘I want the bugger dumped.'

He drove west until he came to a dim-lit street of houses which gave way after a half-mile or so to a path dense with trees and weeds. Then he parked. A stretch of water called the White Cart flowed sluggishly nearby.

‘Don't forget the shovel,' Haggs said.

Twiddie grabbed the tool, opened the door and pushed Bones out, then he jumped down and hauled the little man by the collar and dragged him between trees and through bushes and nettles to a slope in the land. Twiddie set the spade aside and took a spool of piano wire from the pocket of his jeans. He unravelled a length of it and wrapped it round Matty Bones's neck and pulled.

I'll fuckin' finish you here an' now, Bones
, Twiddie thought.

Bones raised a hand to the place where the wire touched flesh. His eyes popped and he gasped,
No please no let me go, I'll say nothing to a single soul about what I know
, and Twiddie said,
You don't know fuck all anyway, you ignorant old git
. Blood fountained high from Matty Bones's throat when thin razor-edged steel sliced vein. Then Twiddie grunted and tugged harder, his knuckles sharp and almost luminously white, until Bones's head rolled to one side and blood was everywhere, over Bones's face and neck and clothing, as well as Twiddie's hands and shirt and face.

Bones slid over on his side and he thought he saw his dead ma at the finishing line at Ayr races in July 1967 when he brought home a high-strung no-hope gelding called Isaac's Lad at 33-1, and his ma waved, one pale hand raised in the air, and rain was falling on her flowery umbrella and the grass smelled good. He wanted to wave back but he had the reins in his hands, and then somehow they just slipped from his fingers and the horse quit and that was it, the book closed, and Twiddie rolled the body down the earthen incline to the place where, that morning, he'd dug a hole four feet deep.