The Bad Fire (35 page)

He was out in the cold.

And he wanted to come back in.

Tommy Gurk took the stairs up to his room. It had dark blue wallpaper. He sat on the centre of the bed, lotus position. He had the slats of the blinds angled in such a way that the sun coming into the room was sliced. Light, dark, light, dark. He shut his eyes. He searched for the inner place, the garden, but it kept eluding him. He'd glimpse the path to the tranquil centre a moment, then he'd hear the niggling whisper of voices, the natter of all the monkeys in his brain, and his mood fell apart.

He walked the room.
I don't need any static
, he thought. He spaced the slats of a blind with his fingers and looked out at the water. A ferry was ploughing towards the island.

He thought about Kaminsky's missing property.

Then the American in the bar. That was bothering him. Ex-cop, or so he said. Listen, he's just a guy skipped out on his responsibilities, how do you know he's anything else? He's running away. He's got that fugitive look. Heavy alimony, can't hack it, takes a hike. That was one plausible scenario.

The American looked familiar, didn't he?

How could that be? You see a guy for the first time and he looks familiar, how so? He reminds you of somebody else, say?

He let the question go. He didn't have an answer for it.

He sat on the bed again. He took off his wristwatch and set it on the night-stand. He let his arms dangle loosely at his sides. Think of the garden. The garden. The garden. Think all the scents of the garden. Now let it go, let these pictures fall away, and step into the white zone beyond the garden, seek the peace where birds don't sing and nothing stirs because nothing exists in this zone except the thump of your heart and the thud of your pulses and soon you won't even hear these drumming reminders of life. You enter a place beyond nothing. You call it the Zone.

Here you are capable of anything because you are nothing, the embodiment of a paradox –

A wayward fly buzzed his face.

He opened his eyes,
damn
, pawed at it, missed. It flew to a corner of the room and settled. A common housefly. The disturbances small things can create. He got up from the bed. He was out of the Zone because of a fly, but he still felt a measure of peacefulness, so much so that when he opened the padded envelope that lay on his pillow and let the stainless-steel pistol, a Ruger P90, slip into his palm he felt a glorious detachment from the violent capabilities of the weapon.

He studied the piece of paper stuck in the envelope. He memorized the information, looked at his watch. He had twenty minutes before the train.

He returned the gun to the envelope and he thought, The secret of doing violence well is self-knowledge.

Eddie waited in the Atlantis amusement arcade, surrounded by zap-technology, the roar of interstellar weaponry, lizard-monsters kids chased at high speed through mazes in space, the beeps and kapows and blasts of a form of entertainment whose attraction eluded him. Kids stuffed coins into slots and entered these strange worlds without having first of all to make any kind of mental adjustment, or so it seemed to Eddie; they passed effortlessly from the non-electronic dimension to its opposite.

He moved as far away from the machines as he could but the noise tracked and assaulted him. He watched the street. Across the way, tiny kids went round and round in miniature cars. Eddie thought, I can handle that. It's nice. Teensy cars that went in an undeviating circle lacked the evil complexity of electronic games where Space Wizards could take you to infinite dimensions –

Tommy Gurk appeared. He was carrying a black leather briefcase. He'd changed clothes. He wore a loose black linen jacket and blue jeans. Eddie drew back into shadow. Gurk strolled straight past. His expression was one of intense focus:
I'm going where I'm going, and nothing will stop me
. Eddie gave him thirty seconds, then left the arcade and walked about fifty yards behind him.

Gurk was heading for the railway station.

44

Christopher Caskie answered his telephone on the third ring. He gazed through french doors into the back garden of his house in Broomhill and remembered how Meg, when her health had begun to decline, used to sit in the conservatory with a book in her lap. Catherine Cookson sometimes. A P.D. James mystery now and then. Invariably she fell asleep and Caskie had to go out and fetch her and carry her inside. This bloody house was like a prison, too big for one person, he'd sell it, anyone with any sense would put it on the market.

‘Mr Caskie?'

‘Speaking.' Caskie was conscious of his hand shaking slightly. He fought to still it.

‘Christopher Caskie?'

‘Yes –'

‘I have had you checked.'

Caskie said, ‘Of course. I expected that.'

‘A phone call from somebody in your position was unusual. But you pass muster – is that the phrase?'

‘That's the one.'

‘I am wary. I check. Always. Check this. Check that. Check check. No mistakes.'

‘Naturally.' Caskie shut his eyes. The room was too bright. It was like standing inside a tube of neon. Was it too late to take things back, to say no,
I've changed my mind, this isn't the way I want my personal affairs conducted?
I was a good cop once, an exemplary cop. I have awards, medals, citations. Now this. This rot I can't stop.

But I have to stop it.

He heard a sound at the other end of the line, a liquid falling, perhaps tea or coffee being poured. Say no to your conscience. Just say no to that interior sniper who shoots down all your bad thoughts. You never asked for him in the first place. It came with the way you were brought up. Here, swallow your daily spoonful of John Knox Juice. You'll feel bad if you don't take it. You'll feel a whole lot worse if you do.

‘Now we will take the next step,' the caller said. ‘My man will be prepared.'

‘And the two women will not be involved.'

‘My word. My hand is on my heart.'

The line was cut. Caskie put the handset down. He looked at his watch. Four p.m. exactly. He called McWhinnie's cellphone.

‘Christopher, I'm sick,' McWhinnie said.

‘How sick, Charles?'

‘Flu type of feeling. Draggy.' McWhinnie's voice was thick, like a man speaking from inside a ski mask. ‘Headache, upset stomach, the runs.'

‘I know the symptoms. You've been in bed all day?'

‘I went out for a time,' McWhinnie said. ‘Our man visited Senga in Onslow Drive … then I felt sick in the car, so I came home and lay down. I don't know where he is.'

‘You'll be right as rain tomorrow,' Caskie said. He thought of his conversation with Eddie Mallon, that stuff about a safe house. Out of the blue. It could only have come from McWhinnie. Ergo: they'd met, and McWhinnie, whipped by that conscience of his – so akin to Caskie's own – had talked. And Eddie Mallon had dropped the subject into the conversation as if to say:
I'm ready to play any game you like, Chris
.

Caskie said, ‘Stay warm, Charlie. Drink fluids, take aspirin. We'll talk in the morning.'

‘Fine.'

Caskie hung up. Poor McWhinnie, saying he was sick. He lied badly. But it didn't matter. There was no hard evidence to link Christopher Caskie to any crime. McWhinnie might have broken the code of confidentiality in the presence of Eddie Mallon, and talked of safe houses – but it stopped there. How could McWhinnie verify his tale of carrying groceries to a safe house in Govan? Who at Force HQ would listen and believe?
Poor Charlie, nervous breakdown, terrible thing
. As for Mallon, well, he had no evidence either, and little credibility in Tay's eyes.

Caskie walked out to the patio and stood in shade. As if affected by heat, bees were cumbersome as they moved from flower to flower. This confounded weather. It couldn't last. Not in Glasgow. Global warming. This was more like global meltdown.

He walked back inside the house and poured himself a gin, which he packed with ice. He held the glass in the air and said ‘Cheers' to himself, then he drank. He thought of the man saying,
My word. My hand is on my heart
, and he wondered if the same dry heat that held Glasgow in its grip also prevailed in Zurich.

His doorbell rang. He went down the hallway to answer it. He couldn't remember when he'd last felt this liberated, nor this awful. He had a war going on in his head and the heavy machine-guns were bombarding those trenches where the soldiers on the side of the angels flew white flags of surrender.

He opened the door. The sunlit street was harsh, the light like a lake of petrol burning.

45

Eddie Mallon stepped off the train at Central Station, walking about a hundred yards behind Tommy Gurk. It was a long time since he'd stalked anyone. He remembered the vigilance required, the almost unnatural sense of anticipation, the ability to detect any sudden alteration in the quarry's movements – such as that pause when the target turned and, as if struck by an inexplicable uneasiness, glanced back and thought:
Somebody is walking on my grave
.

Gurk moved along the crowded platform at a regular pace. He was in no hurry. Neither was he lagging. He held the briefcase close to his side. At one point he paused, scratched his head. But he didn't look back. If he turns, Eddie thought, if he sees me and raises a hand in greeting, it's no big deal, I'll say hey, we meet again, small world, whaddya know.

Gurk went through the ticket barrier. Eddie kept his distance. Gurk passed a couple of coffee shops and then, changing his mind, wheeled round abruptly and entered one of the cafés. He didn't look in Eddie's direction. Head down, Eddie kept moving, then turned after twenty yards and walked back. He glanced inside the café and saw Gurk pointing to a pastry in a glass case. A young girl slid the pastry on to a plate, handed it to Gurk, who said something to make her laugh – what a gift, the guy was a walking joker – and she put a hand up to her mouth as if laughter was against management policy. Tommy Gurk made another crack, the girl turned her face to one side and her shoulders shook. She poured him a coffee and he took it – coffee in left hand, pastry in right, briefcase clutched under his armpit – and he wobbled from side to side like a man who'd lost his balance, all part of the funny-man routine. He moved to a table, sat down, took a healthy bite from the pastry. He set the briefcase on the floor between his feet.

Eddie walked to a newsagent's that faced the café, bought a paper. Textbook. You bought a newspaper and pretended to read it and all the while you felt completely ridiculous, like somebody wearing a wide-brimmed hat in a hoaky black-and-white spy movie set in a foggy Balkan town before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Eddie opened the
Evening Times
. The front page depicted the skeleton of a half-finished high-rise surrounded by scaffolding. A photographic insert showed the plump face of a man with shiny black hair. The headline was lurid:
Mystery Death of Local Accountant
. The face was Billy McQueen's. Eddie read:
Police are baffled by the discovery of the corpse of William McQueen on a Maryhill building site early this morning. McQueen, who ran an accountancy business in Glasgow
–

Eddie moved, narrowing the angle of his view. Gurk was finishing his pastry, licking crumbs from his fingers. Where do you go from here, Tommy? Who do you hurt next? Senga? Is she on your list? Or do you have another shot at Joyce in your search for whatever it is that Jackie left behind? That fucking grail, that unholy treasure chest, whatever.

‘Fancy meeting you here, Mallon.'

Startled, Eddie turned. Charles McWhinnie had materialized next to him.

‘You almost stopped my goddam heart,' Eddie said.

‘I can affect people that way.' One side of McWhinnie's face was discoloured, but there was little swelling.

‘How the hell did you find me?'

‘I saw you get on the train, which I managed to miss by the width of a pubic hair. So I waited. I knew you'd come back.'

‘Terrific patience,' Eddie said.

‘Now and again,' McWhinnie said.

‘You don't look too bad,' Eddie said.

‘Considering I sat up half the night rummaging through the nooks and crannies of my soul, while I sipped Macallan's with an ice pack pressed to my face. I concluded that I'm not a happy fellow. This job is a waste of my time. I have one life to live, why spend it on angst? So I called in sick, and I'll stay that way until I've decided what to do with the rest of my time on planet earth. I've decommissioned myself …'

Eddie scanned McWhinnie's face a moment. Changes were going on inside Charlie McWhinnie. You could see a darkness in his eyes that might have been tunnels going places Charlie had never been before.

Eddie said, ‘Listen, that rough-house stuff last night, I apologize. That's not me, McWhinnie. Maybe twenty years ago, when I had a more aggressive streak, but last night I lost control. Put it down to frustration. Annoyance. A bunch of stuff, people giving me a hard time, being obstructive –'

‘Let's forget it.'

Eddie laid a hand on McWhinnie's arm and positioned himself in such a way that if Gurk looked in this direction he'd see only Charles McWhinnie's back.

McWhinnie said, ‘Why do I get the impression you're using me as a shield?'

‘There's a guy in that café,' Eddie said.

‘I'm not supposed to look, right? And he's not supposed to see you either. Is there a reason for this surveillance?'

‘Here's the story, Charlie. The guy's called Tommy Gurk. He's looking for whatever the hell it was my father was doing before he got killed.'

‘
Gurk
, you say? Caskie ran a PNC search on a fellow by that name yesterday.'

‘He told me it came back negative.'

‘Dear me, he lied,' McWhinnie said.