The Bad Fire (36 page)

‘No kidding.'

‘Gurk, who has a bunch of aliases, is some kind of demented Buddhist who took a wrong turning down Satori Street and has been trapped in a cul-de-sac ever since. He's linked up with some characters on the Continent, in particular a guy called – let me think – Josef Kaminsky, who is reputed to be
seriously
dangerous, and involved in black-market activity.'

‘What kind of black market?'

‘Name it. He can get you anything.'

‘Anything isn't very specific, Charlie.'

‘Because, my friend, the computer says he dabbles in everything. You want American cigarettes from Norfolk, Virginia, delivered direct to anywhere in the world at one-fifth US retail price? Unused outboard motors in their original cartons or shock absorbers from Detroit as unsullied as the day they came off the assembly lines? No problem. Something less mundane perhaps? How about works of art pilfered from galleries? Perfectly valid credit cards stolen from the manufacturing companies? Easy for Kaminsky to acquire, if you have the scratch … Oh, yes, and if you step out of line, you might well disappear for ever. People who cross Kaminsky have a tendency to vanish. Nice, eh?'

‘This is in his file –'

‘I'm not making it up, Eddie. And the only reason he isn't behind bars is because he can walk on fucking water. I imagine he sits in Zurich and issues orders on his cellphones and his minions go out and do his bidding while the man himself sips Campari and nobody can point a finger at him. And Gurk is, quote, an
associate
. Which almost certainly means that Tommy is quite capable of anything.'

Eddie assimilated this, wondering what the deal was with Jackie. Stolen artworks? Cigarettes? It was going to be a big score for you Jackie, right? Eddie looked at Gurk and his head clouded and he thought, The deeper I dig into Jackie's world, the less I like.

Where was the good father every kid wanted?

The good father I wanted
.

And now there are two of them, Gurk thought. He didn't need this. He didn't need interference. He didn't want any fucking
aggro
. He couldn't afford wankers looking inside his fucking briefcase.

He'd wait, pick his moment, get up, walk out. They think,
He hasn't noticed us. He's just supping his brew and digesting his Danish
. He reached down and picked up his briefcase and laid it on his lap.

Then he got up. Immediately sat down again. Keep them on their fucking toes. Keep them dancing.

Any minute now, you go.

Eddie saw Gurk get up from the table, briefcase in hand. A train was disgorging its passengers and suddenly the area around Eddie was more crowded than it had been, a throng of red-faced people disembarking after hours at the beach.

McWhinnie said, ‘He's on the move, Mallon.' Then he was swept aside by the tide of the crowd, but managed to push his way back to Eddie. Gurk stepped out of the café. It was confusing, this buzzing surge of people and the smell of their suntan lotion and sea-salt, men in baggy shorts, kids scurrying around, getting entangled in the legs of adults and playing games and making weird sounds like
zoop zoop zoop
, women carrying souvenirs of the outing, beachballs and baskets of seashells, and one little kid had a water pistol he fired into McWhinnie's face and said,
How's zat feel, eh?

Gurk was moving quickly now, losing himself in the multitude that pressed towards the main entrance just as office workers and insurance agents and salespersons hurried inside to catch their regular commuter trains. McWhinnie rubbed water from his eyes and followed Eddie, who was shoving his way through the crowd and wondering if Gurk knew he was being dogged. So many goddam people pushing in opposing directions. Eddie felt like a man swimming against a mutinous current. McWhinnie was close, a few yards to the left. Gurk was maybe twenty or thirty yards ahead, barging forward to the main exit.

Then suddenly Gurk found some space for himself and jack-knifed right, hurrying towards the stall where a few hours before Eddie had bought cashews. Eddie kept after him, conscious of McWhinnie making a turn to stay in touch with Gurk's abrupt change of direction. A voice boomed on the tannoy system.
The train now standing at Platform Three is the 1800 hours for Ayr, stopping at Paisley Gilmour Street, johnstone, Dairy …

Gurk was moving in the direction of a side exit. We could lose him, Eddie thought, and ran into the swarm of commuters hurrying towards the Ayr train, elbowing his way through, ignoring the grunts of disapproval, the snide little remarks about his rudeness.
What happened to manners?
Eddie could see McWhinnie to his left still. He was making better progress than Eddie, he was closer to Gurk, fifteen yards behind the quarry.

Eddie was sweating. The air trapped inside the station was hot. Gurk knows, he thought. He has to know. Nobody moves like that unless he's being hunted. He's seen me. He's seen McWhinnie. He can't get bogged down in a goddam railroad station. He's got business ahead.

A beggar tried to thrust a tin cup into Eddie's face.
Please help
. Sorry. Another time. McWhinnie, somehow, had managed to shorten the distance between himself and Gurk to about ten yards. Maybe he had a better knack for sliding through crowds than Eddie. Gurk was already vanishing into the corridor of the side exit. Eddie found himself surrounded by a group of Germans with backpacks. Six or seven of them, poring over a big map.
I think Culzean Castle will be nice, yes?
Eddie swept the map aside and the Germans murmured in irritation, and one, a standard-issue Aryan, reached out for Eddie as if to drag him back and demand either an instant apology or rapiers at dawn, but Eddie was already beyond him.

Now he'd lost sight of both McWhinnie and Gurk.

He reached the exit passage. There were stairs he hadn't expected, and a metal barrier bisected the stairway. People obeyed no rules here, left side for those ascending, right for those in descent, some process of order. Instead, they went up and down as they pleased. There were collisions, dodges, confrontations narrowly avoided, the whole commuter lunacy, the urgent madness of the citizenry rushing to various destinations. So many people in flight. The city was burning. The doors of the asylums had been thrown open. Everyone was free to create chaos. Eddie was pressed to the rail in his descent. His back hurt. His arm was crushed to his side.

He saw McWhinnie at the bottom of the stairs, but no sign of Gurk. Maybe Gurk had been devoured by the city, disappeared, one of those posted missing in the mystery that was contemporary life. McWhinnie looked up, caught Eddie's eye, motioned towards the street with his hand. Did McWhinnie's gesture mean he still had Gurk in his sight? Eddie kept descending through the scrum until he reached the bottom of the stairs. He felt he'd been forced through a sieve. I'll have a portion of mashed Eddie, please.

A rectangle of sunlight ahead, a street, traffic, flocks of people entering the station or escaping it. Was there no end to the number of bodies? McWhinnie was outside now, and so was Gurk. From where Eddie stood it appeared McWhinnie had caught up with Gurk and grabbed his arm, and Gurk was arguing, trying to free himself. This altercation was observed by Eddie in an intermittent way, as if he were inside a cinema where the patrons in front of him kept getting to their feet and obscuring the view. Now you see McWhinnie, next second he's vanished. And Gurk was going in and out of the frame too –

Then there was one of those moments when your heart feels like glass that has suddenly developed a flaw, and you know something has gone badly wrong, something beyond normal commuting-hour activity has happened, something so extraordinary and unexpected that nobody knows how to react. There's a clearing in the crowd, a pocket of quite unnatural space, and people are hurrying back from the epicentre of the event, ground zero, and somebody shouts, somebody else screams, and Eddie finds himself rushing forward, stomach tumbling, knowing that whatever has taken place here isn't a happy occurrence, and before he realizes it he's reached the clearing and he sees McWhinnie lying on his side, his white shirt stained with blood, and more blood on the grey pavement, a bright pool reflecting the sun, so much blood you can't tell where it's coming from, and then Eddie is on his knees beside McWhinnie, who's dead, dead beyond dispute, dead as a body that might have fallen from a high ledge or a passing plane. Dead as McQueen, dead as the jumper in Manhattan.

McWhinnie's eyes are open. His mouth.

Eddie stands up, just as a woman with a pale shocked look points a finger without speaking, but Eddie knows she's indicating the direction the gunman took, and he turns and moves quickly and although his legs feel disconnected from his body he runs as if the woman's finger was a starter's pistol whose explosion he alone in all the world has heard. Renfield Street, through traffic, then crossing St Vincent Street against the lights, aware of buses and taxicabs and the sheen of sunstruck cars, but then he doesn't know where to go next – up St Vincent or down?

He stops moving, leans against the wall of a building, gasping, head down, a thin thread of saliva hanging from his open mouth, all his pulses raging.
I have one life to live
, McWhinnie had said.

Short life, Eddie thinks. Oh, you sad bastard, Charlie.

His back to the wall, he hunkered down, arms dangling uselessly over his knees. He didn't move from this position for a long time. He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how far he'd come from Central Station. A passer-by in a business suit said, ‘Clean yourself up and find a job, for heaven's sake, have some pride in yourself, man,' and dropped a pound coin between Eddie's feet. Eddie said thanks but the man had already vanished round a corner.

Gone.

And Gurk had gone too. Into the ever more narrow arteries of the city, side streets, alleys, lanes, passageways too tight for any car to travel, places to which Eddie had no access.

46

Haggs had never liked the Jew, who brought to life a nascent anti-Semitism in him. Haggs rarely ran into Jews and generally had no feelings about them one way or another – but Perlman, this guy in need of a shave and a haircut and a complete sartorial overhaul, stirred up some deep resentments Haggs had acquired by chance on his way through life. Haggs believed, on the basis of no experience, that Jews were pushy, acquisitive, clannish, secretive, and loved to control great flows of cash.

This fucker Perlman clearly wasn't into the cash aspect, but he fell right into the pushy category. The way he blew cigarette smoke straight into Haggs's face, for instance, and the aggressive lock of his jaw, and how he flaunted his disgusting soiled tie, which anyone with any taste would have hidden
inside
the jacket – these things weren't designed to endear Perlman to you. What also troubled Haggs was the fact that Perlman had strutted into the members-only room in the clubhouse without a member's approval, and that was downright bad manners, like pishing on the floor.

Perlman said, ‘Posh place. What does membership run you?'

‘If you have to ask, you're not membership potential,' Haggs said.

‘Relax, Haggs. I wouldn't join any club that accepted you,' Perlman said. ‘So don't worry your arse about me filling in an application. Golf gets on my tits. There's something depressing about grown men hitting a wee ball for miles and chasing after it in clown-coloured clothes. I don't know about you, Haggs, but I sense retarded development and a Freudian thing.'

Haggs smiled and secretly longed to land a fist in the centre of Perlman's grizzled chops. ‘You've got some gall to talk about clothes, Perlman.'

‘I've got a lot of gall, Roddy, old son. Keeps me young and spry. As for my clothing, I don't give a shite. I'm a cop. I'm not on some bloody catwalk. In fact, I'm proud – in a contrary way – of my total lack of nous in the world of couture. I hope my appearance here is embarrassing the crap out of you.'

Haggs was uneasy. Of course he didn't want to be seen with Lou Perlman. He looked round the dark-panelled room, glanced at the roll of honour on which were gold-painted the achievements of past members, the windows that overlooked the first tee, a stand of pine, a stretch of glassy water in the distance. At polished circular tables members with prosperously ruddy faces and rings of chub under their polo shirts drank expensive single malts and smoked fat Cuban jobs and laughed at crude jokes they couldn't have shared with their wives.

‘It's a man's world in here, right enough,' Perlman said. ‘Dead butch. You can just smell the pong of rich leather polish and the Old Spice aftershave and a tiny wee hint of sweaty groin that's been talcumed. Very nice. You've come up in the world, eh? You're a star, Haggs.'

‘I played my cards right,' Haggs said.

‘Aye, but it was always your deck,' Perlman remarked.

‘Control is power, Perlman.' Haggs lit a cigar which he poked at Perlman, who fingered his eyepatch. ‘I come here for a quiet time and then you turn up looking like a lost dog, darkening my doorstep. What do you want anyway?'

‘I like the way you carry all this off,' Perlman said. ‘This swanky place. The clothes you're wearing. What do you call those trousers – plus fours?'

‘Right.'

‘And those fine red and blue diamond socks. Magic.'

‘Get to the point, Perlman. What do you want?'

‘Information.'

Haggs said, ‘Information?'

Perlman scanned the room. ‘I wonder what the good people in here would think of your association with John Twiddie and Rita whatserface, both lowly denizens of Govan, both incurably violent sociopaths. What would they say if they knew you consorted with scumbags like that? Would you be blackballed, Roddy? Would they sling your arse out on to the street, eh?
Off you go, you fucking impostor, and no refunds
. Oh the shame, oh the scandal. Haggs expelled for fraternizing with nasty bastards.'