White Rage (33 page)

‘Out of my district,' Scullion said.

‘Not entirely, Sandy.'

The pain in Perlman's spine was easing already. Fast-acting Nurofen. He felt clear-headed. He looked from the window into Pitt Street and saw a familiar elderly man walking a highly strung Dalmatian.

He thought: Don't let it slip the leash again. He felt a moment of tension as the big dog lurched forward, pulled by God knows what canine impulse, but the elderly man held tight, even though he was dragged several yards down the pavement by the beast, and almost lost his balance. But he remained standing, and the dog was brought back to still, if resentful, obedience.

A small triumph of the human will, Perlman thought. Such little victories always lifted his spirit. He watched man and dog go out of sight and wondered what it was that had risen from dormancy at the back of his brain to make him think of Leo Kilroy.

It had to do with the sea, he was sure of that. With the sea and ships. But what? So much of the past, he thought, was debris hidden behind muslin. And what good was a policeman with a flaw in his memory circuits?

38

She liked the feel of mid-morning sun in her blonde hair. She jogged through Tollcross Park at a steady rhythm, passing the glass structure of the Winter Palace where sunlight the colour of beaten copper was thrown back from the panes. She saw her own reflection slide past in a smooth sequence of moving pictures, as if she were trapped in celluloid like an actress in a film. Black glasses, grey tracksuit with the red stripe in the trousers, Walkman plugged into her ears, the easy stride of her taut body; the compleat jogger.

She stopped, caught her breath. She bent, placed her hands on her knees. She saw her long shadow on the grass. She wanted to lie down, stretch out, but it wasn't a sunbathing day. She watched a couple of mothers push prams past her along the path. They glanced at her, and she thought: They don't recognize me. These women look at my figure, they see a fitness they left behind when they gave birth, and now they're dough-faced and flabby, they have stretch marks and I don't.
They walk the baby, go to the shops, buy mince, get the man's tea going later, make sure it's on the table at the right time, then after a night of dreary telly they might be asked for a quick fumbling fuck from work-knackered hubby
… How did some women live that way, leaving unexplored the possibilities of life?

She started to run again. She thought of Blum jogging along the Broomielaw in the first light of morning, making his move on her, sure and smooth as a fine Scotch, thinking, Hah, my ship's come in, a pick-up, an easy score.

She reached Wellshot Road, ran past the children's zoo where she heard a pony neigh, then kept running along the edge of the park. Pound pound, elbows pistoning, hands clenched, calf muscles tensed, sun glowing on her shades. The Walkman played a tape of nature sounds, running water, birds whistling in trees, wind roaring through a canyon.
The Best of Nature, Vol 1
.

She crossed Wellshot Road. She went right on Ardgay Street. The houses around her were 1930-ish two-storey blocks, plain, each constructed in imitation of its neighbour. Lives of uniformity, she thought. An elderly man in a flat cap, a tweedy bunnet, stepped from one of the buildings and stared at her as if he couldn't understand her purpose in this place.
Saw a fucking jogger, so I did, swear to God
. But he smiled at her in a wolfish way, a reflex reaction to a pretty female going past. He might think she was a stray from the Leisure Complex in the park, just a good-looking girl running free and easy. She knew he was still watching her even as she'd passed him.

She took another right. She was panting a little now. She kept moving, beating the pavements, listening to the slap of her trainers. The tape in the Walkman stopped. She heard dead noise, static.

She ran a little harder, slowing once, and then only for a moment, outside a house that was unlike any of the others around, a narrow black stone front with a blue door and curtains drawn shut at every window. A quiet black house. She slipped the tape out of the Walkman, flipped it over, listened to the other side as she started to run hard again. Her head was filled with the liquid roar of a waterfall.

39

‘I always find it strange to think the Romans were here once,' Kilroy said. ‘They must have
hated
the climate.'

Frankie Chasm said. ‘They brought their own vino. It was some consolation.'

‘But not much.' Kilroy studied the scant remains of the Roman Baths that had been dug out of this small corner of Bearsden. It was more an outline of stones than a massive reconstruction. The little noticeboards helped identify what you were looking at: over here was the
frigidarium
; and there the
caldarium
. To an unenquiring eye, the whole thing might have suggested a pile of old rocks rather than an ancient and sophisticated bathing system.

Traffic moved west along Drymen Road, east to Milngavie. Slightly glazed by ten milligrams of Valium, the Fat Man listened to the hum of vehicles even as he detected another sound that floated above the commonplace noise of the piston engine. A lark, high and invisible, but a lark decidedly. He hadn't heard a lark in years. He thought pollution had done them all in.

He sat down on a wall. He carried a gold-knobbed walnut stick, with which he prodded the earth between paving stones. Chasm sat beside him, crossing his legs.

‘You hear that, Frankie?'

Chasm heard nothing. His affinity for the world of nature was nonexistent. His natural habitat was one of bars, restaurants, casinos. But he was agreeable and said yes, he heard it, definitely, whatever it was.

‘Rare. Used to be dirt common. Not now.' Kilroy launched into a spiel about birds. Birdwatching had been a boyhood hobby of his. He spoke of how, at the age of seven or eight, he'd considered a career in ornithology. Chasm didn't listen. The Fat Man was sensitive to Diazepam and sometimes babbled on the drug. Chasm could eat Valiums like fucking Smarties, but Leo had zip tolerance.

‘Let's walk back to the car, Frankie.'

‘Any time you're ready.'

Kilroy rose from the wall. He hummed ‘Getting To Know You' all the way back to the Daimler. Frankie opened the door, ushered Kilroy into the back seat, then settled behind the wheel.

‘Straight home, Leo?'

‘And no radio, if you please.'

Chasm headed down Drymen Road and turned right on Ledcameroch where sunlight burned pleasantly on thick trees. The soft fleshy underside of Glasgow, Chasm thought. The sweetest of suburbs. He zapped a remote for the gates to open, and drove the Daimler through.

His attention was drawn to the rearview mirror. Behind him, a car he didn't recognize squeezed between the gates just as they were closing. Instantly, he reached under his seat and found the automatic he always stashed there, a Llama 45 with a thirteen-shot magazine. He gave the Daimler a little more fuel and swung it in a tight circle in front of the house. Tyres screeched. The air smelled of scorched rubber.

‘What the fuck?' Kilroy said, yanked from his Diazepam lull.

‘The floor, Leo. Get down.'

Kilroy slid from his seat. ‘Do we know them?'

‘I'm not taking any chances,' Chasm said.

The car was foreign. He couldn't say what make. He watched it approach the Daimler and then, twenty or thirty yards away, it stopped.

‘Who is it?' Kilroy asked. He was in a heap on the floor.

‘I don't fucking
know
, Leo. Be still. Do nothing until I tell you.'

‘Right, right,' Kilroy said.

Chasm held the gun in his lap, waited, watched the metallic silver car. He enjoyed the tension. He fed on the adrenalin of the situation.

He saw the two front doors of the silver car open.

The driver was a man Chasm didn't recognize. The passenger, on the other hand, was familiar.

It's Perlman and a sidekick,' he said. He slid the Llama under his seat.

‘I'm lying here like a bagman in a shop doorway on account of
Perlman?
' Kilroy struggled up into his seat and watched the cops through the back window. ‘The other guy is Scullion. Detective-Inspector.'

Chasm got out of the car. Perlman and Scullion walked towards him. Perlman peered into the back of the Daimler and said, ‘Leo. Did I surprise you? Should I have phoned for an appointment?'

Kilroy smoothed his coat as he shoved his door open. Grunting, he stepped out. ‘You shouldn't come up behind people like that.'

‘Call me a sneaky bastard,' Perlman said.

Scullion said, ‘Pity about your lawyer, Leo.'

‘A great tragedy,' Kilroy said. ‘A kid filled with such promise.'

‘Lawyers are ten a penny.'

Kilroy said, ‘You've got a big heart, Inspector.'

‘You find the culprit yet, Perlman?' Chasm asked.

‘Not yet, but we will.'

‘Racist trash killed the boy,' Kilroy said. ‘You should be turning Glasgow upside down to find these cunts.'

Perlman turned, looked directly at Chasm, who hadn't aged greatly since the last time he'd seen him. Maybe he'd developed a little more flesh in the jowl region, a slight fattening, but not much. The body was trim and hard. ‘How long has it been, Frankie?'

‘Years,' Chasm said. ‘See you wear the same specs.'

‘They suit me.'

‘Nothing else matters. If you're happy.'

Perlman said, ‘See you got yourself a nice wee job looking after Leo. Into the bargain a terrific car.'

‘You're not here to talk about bloody
cars
again, are you?' Kilroy asked. ‘When you get going on that subject you're like a runaway train.' He wondered if he should play nice and invite the coppers indoors, then decided against it. He couldn't remember where he'd put the photograph. He panicked, wee birds flew round his heart like sparrows descending on a stale loaf. His ulcer scorched him. His tubes might have been stuffed with hot cinders. What if he'd left the photie lying on a table and he asked this pair of jokers to come indoors and they
saw
it? Would Perlman pretend to be shocked by it? Would he seize it in the fashion of a man seeing something for the first time and gasp?
What's this, Leo?
No, you couldn't tell what the yid would do. He was cunning, he'd play you like a cat a dying mouse.

Scullion said, ‘Lou likes antique cars. He likes old Bentleys especially, Leo.'

‘Oh, Lord, let it go,' Kilroy said.
Old Bentleys
. Why was Scullion bringing this up now? Had he participated in the creation of the photo? He must have. Perlman & Scullion, it was like they shared a fucking
pod
.

‘Lou gets a thing in his head, there's no shifting it.'

‘It just
lodges
there,' Perlman said.

‘This is the same old harassment, Lou.'

Perlman lit a cigarette. ‘Funny to see you without poor Nat draped round you.'

‘He was smart. Dedicated. Loyal –'

‘And greedy as shite,' Perlman said.

‘That isn't fair, Lou. That's a libel.'

‘Right, I shouldn't speak ill of the dead. It's bad luck they say.' Perlman laid a hand on a wing mirror of the Daimler. ‘So life's been good to you, Frankie.'

Chasm said, ‘I'm a changed man, Perlman.'

‘Walking softly with the angels these days, eh?'

‘I wouldn't go that far.' Chasm smiled. He had an effortless smile, casual, calculated to put people at ease. Oddly, this same expression sometimes had the opposite effect: sinister, mirthless, cold.

‘You miss jail?' Scullion asked.

‘Aye. Constantly. I lie awake at night pining my heart out for the snoring and the stink of pish and the sound of boys being shagged by brutes and the screws clattering people with sticks. I miss all that, Inspector.'

‘I'll narrow my question. Miss anyone in particular?'

‘Come again?' Chasm cupped a hand behind his ear, a gesture of mock deafness.

‘Old cellmates,' Scullion said.

Perlman asked, ‘Need a clue? Willie Glone.'

‘Willie. I remember Willie all right. Nice guy.'

Perlman said, ‘Lovely guy, Chasm. He scalped a man behind a bar, as I remember. Took a knife and cut off the top of some poor tosser's head. He also lacerated a young woman's skull with a beer bottle.'

‘These things happen,' Chasm said.

‘In your world,' Scullion said.

Kilroy flapped a hand. ‘What are you here for anyway, Lou? My factotum is a busy man.'

‘I just want to talk to your, uh, factotum about Glone,' Perlman replied.

‘Is this important?' Kilroy asked. Glone, he thought. Was that all? Just Glone? ‘Poor Nat Blum's lying stone-cold in the morgue and his building's been daubed with these bloody swastikas, and you come here asking about an obscure ex-con, when you really should be hunting down this White Anger or Rage or whatever it's called. What kind of music hall are you running down there in Pitt Street anyway?'

Chasm said, ‘It's okay, Leo. I don't mind.'

Scullion asked, ‘You heard Glone died?'

‘Did he? I'm gobsmacked.'

‘Smashed a truck he was in the act of stealing.'

Chasm said, ‘Glone couldn't drive a golf cart, never mind a lorry.'

‘Why steal something you can't even drive?'

Chasm said, ‘Maybe he was on the bevvy at the time. He was fond of a tipple. Too fond.'

‘The stolen truck was the property of a company called Bargeddie Haulage. You ever heard of them?'

Chasm said, ‘Do I look like an anorak that memorizes the names of haulage companies?'

‘When did you last talk to Glone?' Perlman asked.

‘Must be months.'

Kilroy interrupted. ‘What are you hoping to catch here, Lou? A cold?'

‘Always the same commodity, Leo. Information.'

‘You're just fucking
fishing
,' Kilroy said and tried to keep the stress out of his voice. ‘People are dropping like flies, and all you do is come out here asking questions that have SFA to do with the general situation in Glasgow. You're talking dolly mixtures compared to what's going on out there.'