The Bad Fire (40 page)

‘He'd always been so kind to me, Eddie, it just seemed that what we did was natural,' she said.

‘Twelve,' he said.

‘Almost thirteen.'

‘What's the difference?' He thought, Twelve is only a word. Let it go. But no, he couldn't, twelve was a child, a kid, an innocent. Caskie had committed a crime.

‘You consented to it,' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Even if you gave your consent, it's still –'

‘I know what you're going to say, and I know what you're thinking,' she said. ‘How could he do it with a girl that young? He must be some kind of perve, a monster. Look at me, Eddie. Don't turn away. I
wanted
him to do it. It was all I had to give him in return because he'd been good to me. Here, my body, it's all yours, take it, I want you to have it –'

‘I don't need to hear this,' Eddie said.

‘But I damn well need to tell you. He was twenty-nine and married, and I was almost thirteen, and after that first time it became a regular occurrence. We'd meet, he'd find some place to take me, a hotel out of the city, he'd book us into different rooms just in case … So it went on.'

‘And on, and on.'

‘We tried to break it off a few times over the years.'

But true love conquers all, Eddie thought. It can vanquish any enemy. He couldn't picture Joyce,
twelve years of age
, spreading her legs for Caskie in a hotel room, Caskie entering her, man into child: did he speak of love, did he talk of a future? She'd fall for it. She was a kid, and optimistic. Yeah, she'd go for it. Eyes closed, a supplicant before her own future, she'd dream her romantic dreams even as Caskie thrust himself inside her and grunted, and the years rolled away and still he remained married, and her hopes diminished to the extent that she met and married Haskell just to escape – what? Her own disappointment? Some sense of shame? Twelve years of age, he thought. Jesus Christ. He felt unsettled, queasy. It wasn't his thing, schoolgirls and their little skirts and their blazers and their gymslips, their smoothly innocent faces and tiny breasts. For some guys, sure, it was a big twisted kick, they sat in the half-light of their computer screens and scoured the Internet for images to incite them, the Web pimped for them – but he'd never understood that kind of lust. He'd perceived it as sickness. He'd seen too many runaway schoolgirls raped by middle-aged men, sodomized and forced to participate in orgies and drugged and God knows what else. He'd seen them dumped inside derelict buildings or on abandoned railroad lines, alive, half-alive.

Joyce said, ‘We couldn't stay away from each other, Eddie. It was a kind of insanity. It's always been like that.'

‘It's an insanity, granted,' he said.

‘Oh, you don't have to sound so damn smug. Who are you to judge?'

‘I wasn't judging.'

‘You prick. You can't help yourself.'

‘Okay. I'm judging. I have a moral view. It's instinctive. I can't help it. Who else knows about you and your boyfriend?'

‘Nobody.'

He placed his hands on his sister's shoulders and, lowering his head, looked directly into her eyes. What did he see in there? A tiny hint of sorrow because she'd kept her secret and the effort made her lonesome, or a touch of relief that she'd finally told somebody? He wasn't sure.

Twelve, he thought. 12. Two times six. Three times four. Work the figures any way you like, it still came out twelve.

He said, ‘I think somebody knew.'

‘I'm positive they didn't, Eddie.'

‘Here's an educated guess. Roddy Haggs.'

She shook her head. ‘No, not –'

‘He found out. He had the knowledge. So he had the power. Do whatever I ask you to do, Chris old pal, or I'll blow the whistle and it's going to be heard all over the land. High-level cop fucks underage girl. Field day in the tabloids. They have a name for this crime, Chris. So cooperate with me, Inspector, or you're going to hell on a fast bus … It makes sense, Joyce.'

‘We were careful, Eddie. Very careful.'

‘You thought you were.'

‘I
know
we were.'

‘Secrets are the hardest things to keep. You're seen on the street by chance, or you're noticed stepping into a taxi or catching a train, or maybe in the parking lot of some rustic hotel you think is remote and nobody knows you, but it's a small world …' He dropped his hands from her shoulders. ‘Do you really love him?'

‘I don't know. I'm not sure what love is. When I was twelve I would have died for him. I thought he was damn adorable. He could've asked me to jump off a bridge and I would've done it without hesitation. When I was twenty I wanted to live with him, the whole domestic bit. Cook, clean, have kids by him. By the time I was thirty I realized I'd become accustomed to sex with him. There was still this spark, this passion. Now … now I think it's a pleasant habit, Eddie, one I can't imagine living without. Is that what love is in the end? A habit? I have an addictive personality anyway, for God's sake …'

‘I hope to Christ you don't love him, Joyce. I think he's got all kinds of problems coming down on him sooner or later. I don't want to see you hurt. I don't want you drawn into something that can only end unpleasantly.'

‘I don't believe he had any involvement in Dad's death,' she said. ‘I'll never believe that. Not in a hundred years. No way.'

‘In a hundred years we'll all be history,' Eddie said. ‘And none of this will matter a damn.'

‘You can't live your life from that perspective, Eddie.'

‘When stuff gets unbearable, you can try.'

She suddenly wept then, pressing her fingertips against her eyebrows, inclining her face. He watched tears roll down her cheeks and he reached out and held her and he thought of the little girl with the ribbon in her hair who played
Chopsticks
on the piano with flamboyant movements of her hands, like a melodramatic concert pianist, and Jackie would say, ‘Good Christ, girl, is there nothing
else
you can learn to play?'

Jackie's voice echoed in his head.

He was filled with a deep yearning to go home, and leave Joyce to the misadventures of her heart, and forget Jackie Mallon. What do you owe him anyway? Whatever illicit activity he was involved in was a link in a chain of lies and violence. You didn't do business with a killer like Gurk without making a statement about yourself: okay, so you didn't pull a trigger and kill somebody, Jackie, but you were prepared to associate with a man who was a shooter, so what did that make you? If you knew what Gurk was capable of, you were an accessory. And if you
didn't
know, then greed had made you blind. And if you were trying to recover any decency with your phone calls to Queens, and your regrets about how you'd driven a stake through the soul of the family, and how love had to be restored, goddammit, you let it all slip through your fingers, didn't you, Dad?

And yet he couldn't resist the thought:
Jackie wasn't responsible for his associates, was he?
You went into business with someone, and he turned out bad, it happened all the time to people … Screw it, Eddie, even now you're looking for an avenue leading towards forgiveness. Even after all that has happened, you still come back to the hope that you can find a cleft of light in your heart and a way to rescue Jackie from damnation. Why can't you just despise him, and let it go like that? You're a kid again, and he's telling you how he'll take you to Balloch and hire a boat and go fishing, except that day never came,
but you're still fucking waiting for it
, aren't you, Eddie, even when it's impossible …

The sun began its very slow summery descent. He listened to his sister crying, and he had the impression that the city all around him was built on foundations of deception and greed.

52

When she left Eddie, Joyce walked back to the house. Caskie was standing at the table in the conservatory and she pressed herself against his back and circled her arms round him and locked her hands upon his chest. She knew without looking that his eyes were closed. She knew him so well. She knew him better than anyone ever had.

‘You told him,' Caskie said.

‘I felt so bloody fraudulent, Chris. I don't want that feeling. Skulking, lying. I don't want that.'

‘You went back to the beginning?'

She said yes, she'd gone back.

‘How did he take it?' Caskie said. ‘I don't have to ask, do I?'

‘He looked unpleasantly surprised. Distressed. What do you expect?'

‘And angry. He'd feel angry.'

She laid her cheek against his spine and smelled the cologne he wore and she wondered what it always reminded her of, she could never quite reach the heart of the scent. ‘He said Haggs knew about us.'

‘Did
you
tell him that?'

‘He guessed Haggs had you in a bind. A stranglehold.'

‘He's smart,' Caskie said. ‘It's not always a good thing to be.'

Say it, she thought. Say the next bit. Spit it out. ‘He thinks … He thinks you might have had something to do with Jackie's death. You and Haggs colluded. You conspired in some way.'

‘That's what comes of being just a little
too
smart.' Caskie turned, caught her chin between his fingers. ‘Look at me. Do you really think I had
anything
to do with your father's killing?'

‘No, of course I don't.'

‘You feel absolutely certain when you say that?'

‘Yes,' she said.

He caressed her cheek. ‘Haggs has had me in chains for years, you know that. I've done him some favours, things I shouldn't have done. Maybe I could have been strong enough to tell him no, turn him down, but that's water under the bridge. Killing, though, good Christ, no no, there's just no way – that's something else, Joyce.'

‘I know that.'

‘It's beyond consideration. I'd never agree to anything that brought you misery, never.'

She thought of their relationship, this little world they'd created, and how private it was. You could withdraw inside it and lock the doors and shutter the windows and light candles, and then it was only you and Chris and everything else could go to hell.

‘It's going to change,' he said.

‘What is?'

‘This situation with Haggs. I'm going to change it.'

‘How?'

‘Just trust me. I have to get dressed and go into the office.'

‘No, not yet.'

‘I have to,' he said.

‘No, don't hurry away.'

He hesitated, then lowered his face to hers, and she felt his warm breath upon the side of her neck and she enjoyed the soft touch of his beard, and she slid a hand down to the belt of his robe and she thought how easily he led her, how easily she wanted to
be
led, and how he'd had this same effect on her for years, even during the period of her miserable marriage to Haskell when she'd deliberately cut Caskie out of her life, but oh God she'd
longed
for him, Mrs Harry Haskell dreaming of her lover and how tender he was, and considerate, and remembering all the times they'd met in hotels, even when Meg was dying, yes, even then. He'd have a nurse come in to look after Meg and he'd slip away.

Sometimes she detected Meg's ghost in this house, like a quick shadow in a stairwell, or a brush of clothing against a wall.
I hadn't loved Meg in years
, he'd once told her.
Not in the man-woman sense. I don't feel guilt, Joyce, I never have about you
.

He slid her blouse off, and inclined his head to her shoulder and she felt his open mouth on her flesh and the touch of his teeth. She had her hand inside his robe, his cock in her palm, and she went down on her knees and pressed her face into him. She listened to the soft moan of pleasure he always made and it struck her that at the core of this sound there was something else, another tone, a kind of subdued lament. As if, like her, he regretted the years of subterfuge, and the voluminous lies. As if in some secret corner of himself he was sad, and this diminished his pleasure. She cupped his testicles in her palm and when she needed it least she heard an echo of Eddie's voice,
he helped arrange the mechanics of the killing
, and she dismissed the whisper, exploded it, sent the splinters flying out of her mind. One day, maybe, Eddie would know that the real Christopher Caskie was a sweet man, genuine, gentle and warm. One day.

‘My girl,' Caskie said. ‘Oh my dear girl. My love.'

53

Tommy Gurk took a taxi to Gorbals Street, south of the Clyde. The car was a bottle-green Fiat, parked close to the Citizens' Theatre. The keys were inside a magnetized steel box attached to the underside of the bumper. Gurk opened the box, got the keys. The heat inside the car made his hairless skull sweat. His head felt raw, like a rash was developing. He'd worn dreadlocks a long time now. It was bizarre having a scalp as naked as a baby's bum.

He glanced at the directions somebody had left on the passenger seat. Written on a sheet of blue-lined paper, they were easy and explicit. Gurk shook his head, amazed. See, this is where you had to hand it to Kaminsky, the way he had of doing things, he had minions all over the shop, geezers who did stuff without even knowing who they were working for, locating weapons, delivering envelopes, providing cars, no questions asked – there was a big intricate network of connections in different countries. People always owed Joe Kaminsky favours. And they always obliged. The consequences of failure, well, they didn't bear consideration.

Off we go, Tommy Gurk thought.

He drove along Pollokshaws Road, heading south. There were cop cars all over the place, and once or twice he felt he was being scrutinized, once or twice he had a little electric-prod of paranoia, but the trick was to look cool, and that meant you had to feel you had your shit together inside. You had the juice. Cool within, cool without. All the way, baby. You were just a guy driving along Kilmarnock Road, and the fact you had brown skin, tally-ho, that was no impediment. Just follow the directions, get into the rhythm of the road, put some miles behind you, drive into the sweet Zone. Then the directions got a little more complicated, but not much, he could handle it, he was beginning to feel more like himself.