The Bad Fire (46 page)

He said, ‘I don't believe what you're telling me.'

‘I don't have to spell it out, Eddie. I like you. I'm fond of you. We're family, just about. Believe what I'm telling you, that's all I ask.'

‘I fucking hate being threatened,' he said.

‘Threatened? I was merely mentioning certain possibilities, love.'

He thought of the Mercedes. Automatic weapons in layers darkly shining at the front of the big van, some covered by tarp, a few visible. He had no idea how many. Hundreds of AK-47s or some similar automatic weapon, it was impossible to estimate the number of guns or the diversity of the consignment – there could have been thousands of rounds of ammunition, packs of plastic explosives, scores of grenades, and handguns. Without going back and checking the contents of the van, how could he know?

He gazed the length of Onslow Drive.
Our Orange friends need some hardware, what can you do for us, love?
And Jackie smelled the spoor of profit even as he heard the beating wings of the angels of Protestant righteousness. He'd buy the guns and sell them to Ulster connections at a hefty profit. Guns in oilskins, boxed and buried in fields, hidden in the outbuildings of lonely farmhouses, sunken in pits, concealed and ready for use when the time came.

He looked directly at Senga.
She'd threatened his family
. The full force of that struck him, and he was angry. ‘Christ, you're such goddam neanderthals,' he said. ‘You and all the people like you. Your marches and your tribal songs and your fucking banners. All right; Glasgow might be more superficially sophisticated these days and you might be better dressed and wear more fashionable clothes and maybe you visit your hairdresser once a week and get your fucking nails done, but the poison is the same as it always was. You're living in the past, and it's barbaric.'

‘Believe me, I wish it was different, Eddie. I wish there was trust and peace and happy wee children from both sides of the divide holding hands and singing, believe me. But it's a barbaric world, and you're a part of it as well, so don't criticize me,' Senga said. ‘Where the hell do you think the other side get their money and arms from? Smack in the heart of where you live your little bit of the American dream, Eddie Mallon. New York. Boston. Chicago. The money rolls in every time somebody sings “Danny Boy” in an Irish pub. Pass the coinbox. Let me make a contribution to the boyos. Well, we have to defend ourselves against all that cash rolling across the Atlantic into Ulster, Eddie, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.'

‘Now give me the speech about how the weapons are for defensive purposes only,' Eddie said.

‘Of course they are, dear,' Senga replied. ‘We're a peaceful people. But we're not weak.'

‘You'll only shoot if you're shot at, right?'

‘Naturally.'

Eddie shook his head: and I was born yesterday. ‘What did you and Jackie see in one another, Senga?'

‘We loved. We loved a lot.'

‘And the Cause,' Eddie hated the sound of the word. ‘Was that something you had in common, huh?'

‘Oh, we had more in common than that, pet. But love's a deep mystery. All kinds of people fall for one another and you never know why. Right?'

He looked at her face in lamplight. She was going somewhere with this, and he felt it, and he wanted to kill the conversation, but he waited, fascinated even as he sensed dread.

‘Take …' She paused. She looked up at the streetlamp, concentrating on the torrent of moths, as if she were trying to count the numbers.

I know what she's going to say, he thought. I feel it coming.

‘For instance, your sister,' Senga said. ‘What does she see in Caskie? Makes you wonder.'

‘You knew about that,' Eddie said.

Senga laughed. ‘Oh, for years.'

Eddie sensed the light from the overhead lamp dwindle to little more than a faraway star. ‘What about Jackie?' he said.

Don't tell me, he thought.

‘Jackie knew from the beginning, Eddie. Jackie knew from the minute the stalls sprang open and Joyce was off and running into Caskie's bed.'

‘She was
twelve
, for Christ's sake,' Eddie said.

‘Mature for her years,' Senga remarked.

‘I can't believe Jackie –'

‘Oh, grow up, Eddie. He not only
knew
, he
encouraged
it.'

‘I don't
believe,
' Eddie said.

‘No skin off my nose,' she said. ‘But Jackie wanted his own tame policeman. He thought Caskie might come in handy along the way somehow. So Joyce was deliciously sweet bait. Ripe and fresh, straight off the tree. And Caskie – poor love – he fell so hard it was almost comical. And seeing him try to hide his feelings around Jackie, God, it was farcical.'

Caskie had been handcuffed by Haggs; but Jackie was the one who'd been the original jailer.

Chris Caskie, tame house-broken policeman.

‘You might say Jackie pimped his own daughter,' Senga said.

‘
Might
say? Is there another expression?'

‘I prefer to think of it as a strategic manoeuvre, Eddie. Nightcap?'

Eddie refused. He felt cold. Despite the warmth.

Senga said, ‘Another time then. Goodnight.'

He watched her walk away, tall and loose in her movements, and he thought about going after her to dispute her version of events, then he decided no, why should he, he'd come to the end of the road. Like every other time he'd tried to exculpate his father, it would be energy wasted and another scar across his heart. There was a limit to the search for excuses: nothing about Jackie Mallon merited tolerance. He deserved to have been shot in the back seat of a car parked on a piece of waste ground on a Glasgow street at twilight, with a whiff of scotch on his breath and his face blown off.

He fucking deserved that kind of ending.

His life had been a bankrupt affair.

Eddie turned and moved slowly down the street in the direction of Joyce's flat. He let himself into the building and climbed the stairs. Bone-weary. Sweating. A man at the end of revelations too heavy to carry. He was dragging his body through time until the moment of departure. He thought about the guns. He thought about Jackie negotiating in Largs with Tommy Gurk. He thought about Caskie and Joyce, and how Jackie had brought them together in the event that he might gain something from that illicit relationship. The cunning and brute insensitivity of it.

Yes, Jackie, fuck you, you deserved your execution.

He unlocked the door of the flat and went inside.

Joyce sat on the sofa with a glass of wine in her hand.

‘It's late,' she said.

‘And I'm tired.'
You never knew you were used, did you, Joyce?

She got up from the sofa. ‘I heard about McWhinnie and those other killings … Chris says the police are turning the city upside down. It's awful to think …'

Everything was receding already, Eddie thought. The tenements, the streets, the names of the living and the dead. Joyce put her arms round him.
Yes, dear Joyce, it's awful to think
. He smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead with a gentle gesture. You love Caskie, he thought. You've made a settlement with your emotions.

And you never knew Jackie played the role of a dark cupid, a gargoyle. And Caskie didn't know either.

‘I'm sorry I upset you before,' she said.

‘I'm over it, Joyce.'

‘Are you?'

He nodded. ‘I hope it all works out for you. I hope it happens the way you want it to happen.'

‘Is that your blessing, Eddie?'

‘Bestowed,' he said.

‘In a half-hearted way.'

‘You expect more?'

‘I don't know what I expect,' she said. ‘I wish you liked him.'

Eddie said, ‘Bad chemistry.'

‘No. More than that. Those accusations you made.'

‘Let them go, Joyce.' He lay down. The room seemed fuzzy. ‘Early rise in the morning.'

She leaned over him, kissed his forehead, and he wanted to cry suddenly. He felt a sadness as black as night in the city. There was the ache of dead hopes inside him.

‘Big day,' she said. ‘Hard to believe he's gone.'

‘Yes.' They held one another tightly for a long time and Eddie remembered the cab that had taken him and Flora away so many years ago, and all the wreckage since, lies, crimes, love misguided, love abused.

61

A hot stillness lay across the city. TV weather maps showed an infinity of clear skies. Forecast: brilliant. More of the same. Eddie sat in his dark suit in the back of a small limo. Joyce, subdued in a black suit, wore sunglasses. And Senga, a small black lace scarf covering her face, sat next to Joyce in silence. She reminded Eddie of a grieving dowager, imposing and dignified in her well-tailored clothes of grief.

The limo travelled east in the direction of Daldowie Crematorium; the car carrying Jackie's coffin was scheduled to arrive at the crematorium at the same time as the limo. The funeral service would begin at 10:30.

Eddie hadn't slept. He'd lain a long time in the dark, too fatigued to sleep. At one point he drank a glass of Joyce's wine but it hadn't helped him over the edge. He called Claire and spoke quietly to her, nothing words, just touching base – everything okay back there? Mark staying out of mischief? He loved the sound of her voice, her calm, the way she had of putting a favourable light on dark circumstances.
Yeah, but how would she deal, say, with letter bombs?
He imagined limbs blown off. His head was filled with images of destruction. He lay staring into the unlit sitting room, and the busts, outlined by a faint light from a streetlamp, seemed to be watching him like the members of a judiciary committee.

Do you really want to put your family in danger?

No, of course I don't.

Then will you say nothing about the armaments?

I can't stay silent. That would be –

What? Unprofessional? Dereliction of duty? Unethical?

All of the above –

And how do you find Jackie Mallon?

Guilty.

No mitigating circumstances?

I've looked hard.

None then?

None.

Bleary, he gazed from the limo into the sun and realized he was travelling deep into eastern regions of the city that were totally unfamiliar, ramshackle industrial buildings, used car lots, run-down housing. He had a sense that none of this was real, he was skirting the threadbare fringes of Glasgow, a man travelling inside a white-lit stereopticon. Something called Parkland. Then Carland. Then Zoo Park. McDonalds. St Peter's Cemetery. He wished he'd worn dark glasses.

He felt Joyce's hand on his own. He squeezed her fingers. He longed for sudden rain, more appropriate weather for funerals, mourners crowded under umbrellas, the miserable drip of water from trees, small puddles on the oiled wood surface of the coffin.

The limo entered the grounds of the crematorium and parked in front of the chapel. Eddie got out, helped Joyce from the car; she looked frail and unprepared for this. He glanced at Senga who raised her veil and smiled at him in a quiet way, and then dropped the veil back.
Remember, Eddie
, she was saying.
Keep in mind our talk
.

He scanned the place. Men in uniforms worked the memorial gardens, surrounded by rich-coloured roses. Here and there people sat on benches in contemplation, remembering their dead. Eddie found himself gazing at the green metal dome of the furnace above the chapel building; heatwaves shimmered from the dome, and the air became liquid. At what temperature did the human body combust? Infernal.

The motorway beyond the memorial grounds droned and droned. There could never be any tranquillity here. Trucks passed day and night, cars, buses.

Joyce took off her glasses. She had that look of bewilderment, a mourner's disbelief:
This can't be happening. We'll wake from this any moment now
. Eddie held her by the elbow and took a few steps with her towards the chapel. He recognized the man from the funeral home, Crichton, dark jacket and pin-striped trousers and an expression of discreet sympathy. He nodded at Eddie very slightly just as Eddie entered the chapel.

Fluorescent lights, cream walls, a ceiling of deep red. Jackie Mallon's coffin sat on a plinth behind which were brass doors. The coffin would slide through those doors and down into the furnace, into that fiery kiln where wood and flesh and bone imploded in hot ash.

He sat beside Joyce. He was aware of Chris Caskie, dark-suited, sitting in the row behind. He felt an odd little flutter of pity for the man. Joe Wilkie sat alongside Senga: conspirators. There were others Eddie had never seen before, neighbours probably, some of Jackie's old friends. At the back, close to the door, was Lou Perlman. He raised a hand in Eddie's direction, a small gesture. Here we all are, Eddie thought, waiting for fire to begin its consummation.

Waiting for Jackie to burn.

A minister, dog-collared and pallid, stepped in front of the plinth.
We come to mourn our friend Jackie Mallon
, he said, and his voice was high-pitched and nasal, and Eddie, in a moment of irreverence, imagined him calling bingo numbers.

We come to remember him, and his kindnesses, and the goodness of his heart. We come to extend our condolences to his family members. He was a man much loved by his friends and held in high esteem within his community. He was a man who loved life
.

Eddie glanced at Caskie. But Caskie, with a distant depressed expression, was looking up at the ceiling, as if he wanted no connection of eyes.

We come today to pray for his soul
.

Yes, Eddie thought. Pray hard. If you can find the man's soul. Jackie had lost it long ago in the streets of this city.
Caskie's shagging my daughter and he doesn't know I know. It's a bit of a laugh, intit? Have another glass of cider, Senga, eh?