The Bad Fire (24 page)

‘You can never find a policeman when you need one,' Caskie said, enjoying his moment of supremacy – that and the fact the shadow was taking on ever more solid form, and he saw it clearly now. He felt a jolt, a thrill, of inspiration.
How to get Haggs out of my life …
How often had he asked himself that? And now he had a possible answer. But did he have the guts?

‘Bloody joker,' Haggs said, punching buttons.

Caskie was miles away, thinking. Yes. One longdistance phone call.

30

Lou Perlman said, ‘This pub's a kind of shrine for addicts like me.' He indicated old football photographs and posters that filled every available space on the wall. Glass display cases contained various editions of the green-and-white hooped jerseys of Glasgow Celtic Football Club. Medallions hung here and there, and scarves had been stapled to the ceiling beams.

Perlman went on, ‘Traditionally, Celtic has had a predominantly Roman Catholic support – on account of the club's Irish origins – but not exclusively so. You remember your social history, Eddie?'

Eddie Mallon remembered. Jackie was usually disappointed when Celtic defeated their Southside rivals, Rangers. Eddie took the half-pint of lager Lou Perlman pushed along the bar towards him, and sipped. Perlman had a shandy, which he rapped cheerfully against Eddie's glass, and said, ‘I'm a nut about Celtic, a passionate headcase – so what can I do? Some of these players on the walls are old heroes of mine. Charlie Tully, a right comedian on the wing, Willie Fernie, played like he had the ball attached to his boot with an invisible thread, Billy McNeill, tower of strength in defence … I'm boring you, right? I always bore people when I go on about Celtic.'

Eddie said, ‘I liked the game when I was a kid.'

‘Ah, the game's only a small
part
of it,' Perlman said. ‘It's the culture. It's Glasgow. It runs in the blood of the city. Of course, you'll find people who'll try to tell you they've got no interest in the two teams. View such individuals as suspect, son. They may be aliens from beyond the city limits. You'll find other people who take the game to extremes, and see it as a holy war. On one side is Ulster and the Union Flag and our beloved monarchy, on the other is the IRA. View these nutters with suspicion as well. They may be dangerous. And then some people will tell you we've moved on from all that shite, we're liberated from old hatred … take that with a pinch of salt, Eddie. We're impaled on the past like a pig on a spit.'

Perlman stared at the various posters in silence for a time. He smiled. He had a good smile. It changed his face the way sudden sunlight transforms a dark room. His lower teeth were slightly misaligned and discoloured by tobacco. ‘So what's an old Jew like me doing supporting Glasgow Celtic, you wonder? They've been the immigrant underdogs, and Rangers the establishment. So who's a Jew with a liberal streak to support, eh?'

‘Not the Presbyterian establishment,' Eddie said.

‘Got it,' Perlman remarked.

They carried their drinks across the bar to a table hidden in a corner behind the jukebox. A few drinkers, wearing team colours, stood at the bar and argued about an arcane footballing matter. Perlman removed his glasses and wiped them on the sleeve of his jacket. The knot in his wide gold tie was undone and his collar unbuttoned. ‘I'd rather talk football than crime any day of the week. Except crime pays my wages and football only fuels my passion … So crime it is. On the phone you said somebody attacked your sister.'

Eddie described the break-in, the assault.

‘Your sister's never seen this character before?'

Eddie said, ‘No. And Senga had never heard of him either. Slim gleanings for you, huh?'

Perlman held his glasses up to the light, then replaced them. The lenses were still smudged. ‘The next question is – what's this situation between Tommy G and your late father? I assume you've asked yourself a few questions and come up with nothing.'

‘Less than nothing.'

‘No conclusions, no inspired guesses.'

‘None. I thought Roddy Haggs might be able to throw a little light –'

‘You talked to Haggs?'

‘Was that a faux pas?'

‘Didn't I tell you he was on my list?'

‘I didn't think it could do any harm to see him. I hoped he might know what Jackie was up to, and maybe I could somehow hook that information to Tommy G –'

Perlman said, ‘Let me tell you this. I'm the Force's numero uno Haggs Watcher. When it comes to Roddy, I'm like a fucking encyclopedia. The main thing to remember about Haggs is he's driven by a completely disgusting greed. He sees something he wants – slurp, out comes the tongue like a demented anteater, and the object of desire is digested. Roddy belches, and moves on to the next acquisition. If he believes your dad had something tasty, he'd want to suck that down too. Haggs is dangerous, Eddie. He's got some unpleasant cronies.'

‘Are you saying I could be in trouble?'

‘I'd be lying if I denied it.'

‘I'll look out for myself,' Eddie said.

‘See that you do. Seriously.' Perlman tore the filter off a cigarette. He lit the vandalized cigarette and regarded the filter with scorn. ‘I hate these sorry attachments. So you say Caskie phoned Tommy G's name into Force HQ for a crime computer check?'

‘Right,' Eddie said.

‘I'll double-check, see what result came through.' He coughed and swallowed some shandy.

‘Why? You think Caskie might just be going through the motions?'

‘There's a whisper about good old Chris. I've been hearing it on the streets for donkey's. It's always been constant but quiet as a lullaby, and what it says is that Caskie's very friendly with Haggs. This isn't to accuse Caskie of anything illegal, don't get me wrong. Cops and criminals, they're in the same industry basically, so why shouldn't they know one other? But with Caskie the talk has always suggested something more, like he's maybe a wee bit
too
close to Haggs. People in Pitt Street have heard this gossip, but nobody's ever done anything about it. Most cops would put it down to criminal malice. Some wanker out there wants to spread a bad word about a cop, undermine him. But this particular whisper has been unusually long-lived.'

‘Nobody ever looked into it?'

‘Eddie, the world is bursting at the seams with criminals and assorted louts. Who's got time to probe a groundless rumour, eh?'

Caskie and Haggs, Eddie thought. Friends. What kind of friendship was it? What sort of benefits could they derive from such an alliance? He imagined Caskie and Haggs meeting in dark places, heads close together, whispers. An exchange of information, favours flowing back and forth between them.
Find out what Jackie Mallon is up to
, Haggs says.
You've got the inside track
.

Caskie, maggot in the apple, agrees.

A kid approached the jukebox, spread his hands against it, studied the playlist. He dropped in a coin and pressed a couple of buttons and then swaggered back to the bar. The music was an Irish tune played by a folk band.

‘“Fields of Athenry”,' Perlman said, and laid a hand on his heart. ‘My anthem.' He listened to the music a moment before he leaned across the table and said, ‘Tay showed you the gun, I'm told.'

‘I saw it.'

‘Did he tell you where the gun was found?'

‘Bones's flat.'

‘Did he say where exactly?'

‘Just the flat. That's all I was told.'

Perlman beckoned Eddie closer with his finger crooked. ‘It was wrapped inside a Tesco grocery bag and stuffed under the kitchen sink. The
fucking
sink.'

‘No way,' Eddie said.

Perlman said, ‘Does the word transparent come to mind?'

Eddie said, ‘See-through. A man has a gun that was used in a murder and he wraps it in a grocery bag and sticks it under his sink, which must be the most blatantly obvious place in the history of crime for stashing
anything.
'

Perlman said, ‘Too fucking easy to find.' He blew smoke. ‘You can bet your mortgage Bones didn't stash it there.'

‘Then who did?'

‘There's no other candidate
but
Bones, Eddie. That fact has come down from a very high place indeed. It's the gospel. Tay wants it signed and sealed.'

‘What is it? Is Tay lazy? Is he too busy to dig any deeper?'

Perlman crushed out his smoke. The cigarette paper burst and flakes of tobacco stuck to his fingers. He blew them away. ‘Laziness isn't a factor, Eddie. Tay is at his desk dawn till dusk some days. His assistant Sandy Scullion also works all the hours sent by God, although he's altogether a more pleasant human being than Cardinal Tay. But you know the shitty way it works. If the murder victim had been the Lord Mayor of Glasgow, you can bet your arse Tay would have been crawling all over the crime, witnesses and potential witnesses would have been hauled in on crowded charter buses.'

‘And Jackie was a nobody,' Eddie said.

‘Not quite,' Perlman said. ‘Jackie Mallon wasn't the Marquis of Govan, right, but he had a criminal record, albeit small. Also he was suspected of various wrongdoings down the years. Theft of artworks. Masterminding a scheme to persuade some decrepit aristo in his dotage to part with precious pre-Revolutionary Russian coins. Stuff like that. None of it ever stuck to your dad, but it occupied police man-hours, it produced paperwork and more paperwork, and so Jackie Mallon was something of a fucking nuisance if you worked in Pitt Street.'

‘Now he's not a nuisance.'

‘Score,' Perlman said.

‘It sucks. It's –'

‘Unacceptable? Unfair? Sure it is. It's like the fucking National Health Service, Eddie. If you're rich, and can go private, you'll get good service. If you're
Untermenschen
, you can wait a year or two for a hernia operation. Same with the law. If you're a star, you'll get star treatment. If you're a small-time fucking pain-in-the-arse like Jackie Mallon, and. somebody shoots you – oy – you're off the books. It's the system, Eddie.'

‘And that's what Jackie was, a small-time pain-in-the-arse?'

Perlman said, ‘That's what they tell me.'

‘Never big-time.'

‘Unless he changed horses lately.' Perlman opened his cigarette packet and saw it was empty. He began to tear it in strips. ‘You want him to have been sweetness and light, eh?'

‘He'd never been that.'

‘Okay. Let's say … worthy of love.'

Eddie finished his drink. ‘That,' he said.

‘Boys and their fathers,' Perlman said. ‘Dear God, the complexity of it all. I'll walk out with you.'

They left the pub. Eddie looked at the darkening sky, then at Perlman who was smoking thoughtfully. ‘You married?'

‘Not any more.'

Eddie detected nothing in the response, no regret, no sadness: it was a dry fact dryly uttered. ‘Any kids?'

‘Never had the time. I'm going home. What about you?'

‘I'll stroll for a while,' Eddie said.

‘I'll be in touch. Mind how you go.'

‘I will.'

Perlman turned and moved away.

Eddie walked to the end of the block, looking for a taxi, seeing none.
A small-time pain-in-the-arse
, he thought. It wasn't a bad judgement. He could live with that one.

But small-time didn't get you killed.

He paused on a street corner. The city was all noise, unfiltered and vibrant. He listened to the drone of the city. He picked one or two distinct sounds out of the auditory pile, a muted trumpet being played in a tenement, a vandalized version of ‘I'll Be Seeing You' – bum note, stop, try again – a man tapping the sidewalk, the
pavement
, with a cane, and the sound of a dog-chain rattling quietly.

Another sound reached him, a constant ticking, and it occurred to him that there was a weird familiarity about this, he'd heard it before only he couldn't remember where, it had sunk into a deep pool of his awareness and lain there unexamined under the silt. For a second he was touched by mild apprehension, something that settled on him with the fleeting touch of a furry summer moth.

He gazed across the street. The car was dark green. The motor was idling. Something inside the engine was out of whack, a minor malfunction.
Tap tick
. The driver, face half-shadowed, was staring straight ahead, not looking at Eddie at all, not interested.

Go for it, Eddie thought.

He crossed the street quickly and caught the handle of the door on the driver's side and hauled it open and, reaching in, grabbed the man by the lapel of his dark blue blazer and dragged him out of his seat.

‘Jesus Christ.' The driver slid to the ground, banging an elbow and rubbing it vigorously.

Eddie looked down at him. ‘Funny bone?'

‘Yes, but not remotely amusing, alas,' the driver said.

31

Larry McQueen woke, got out of bed and went in search of the TV deliveryman and wondered, as he padded in pyjamas and slippers from room to room, if he'd dreamed the fellow up, and all this TV delivery stuff was just a nonsense. But his nose ached and there was dry blood on his hands and he remembered the fellow punching him. He wondered how long he'd slept.

‘Hallo? You there? Coooeeee.'

No answer. He looked in the kitchen. Checked out the bathroom in case the fellow was answering the call of nature. In the living room, where a bowl of wax fruit sat on a long coffee table, Larry looked from the window down into the street, which was clogged with parked cars.

He walked into the hall and stepped into his son's bedroom and gazed at the prints on the walls. Modern art. All lines and paint spillage, any moron could do that, what the hell did Billy pay for these bits of crap? Billy had more money than sense. And precious little sense anyway.