The Bad Fire (6 page)

‘I bet she kept her ears open,' Haggs said eventually. ‘I bet she knew Jackie's business.'

‘Even if she did, which I doubt, it doesn't mean she'd be willing to repeat anything she heard,' Caskie said. He stroked his white beard. He thought it made him look almost nautical, like an admiral. How ironic.

‘Sod it,' Haggs said. ‘It doesn't matter who tells us what. We'll get it in the end anyway. There's just too much buzz vibrating along the grapevine for this to be a bag of hot air. That old tosspot Mallon was up to something, and it was big, and I'm not being left out in the fucking cold. Nothing passes me by.'

Loose talk in the criminal fraternity, Caskie thought; but enough to convince Haggs something profitable was in the wind. Caskie decided to risk standing up. He leaned carefully against the handrail and looked down into the water. Reflected light hit his sunglasses. His mouth filled with sticky saliva. He was going to throw up. His moment of courage passed and he made his way shakily back to his seat. I'll never be a seagoing man. No life on the ocean wave for me.

Haggs said, ‘Jackie Mallon left Glasgow last Wednesday from Central Station. You any idea where he went?'

‘It's news to me,' Caskie said.

‘My man saw him enter the station, then he was gone in a flash.'

‘Maybe he didn't go anywhere. Maybe he was playing games with your man.'

‘He was seen buying a ticket,' Haggs said.

‘And then your man lost him? Downright careless.'

‘You know nothing about this jaunt?'

‘Nothing. Anything else on the agenda, Haggs?'

Haggs gestured loosely. ‘We're almost finished.' He ticked off the names on his fingertips. ‘Matty Bones. Joyce. Senga Craig. I'll deal with Matty when he's had a few more hours to sweat. You can cope amiably with Joyce. And Senga – do you want me to leave her to you?'

‘Yes,' Caskie said.

‘You're the expert on the Mallon family, after all. You're the authority. You're the historian.'

‘Up to a point,' Caskie said.

‘What you don't know about the family isn't worth knowing.' Haggs stretched his long arms until his elbow joints cracked. He smiled. The expression made him appear ugly and unwanted, like the solitary bruised Cornice left in a greengrocer's display after all the others have been sold. ‘It's a bloody shame Jackie was such a stubborn fucker –'

‘I don't think he'd have told you anything in a million years,' Caskie said. ‘He was never easily intimidated. If he didn't want to tell you something, that was the end of it. You could pull out his fingernails one by one, he still wouldn't tell you if he didn't want to.'

Caskie remembered Jackie Mallon the last time he'd seen him – Jackie's ruined looks, the glossy hair, the sunken cheeks that might have belonged to an old trumpeter. A chance encounter on Argyle Street on a busy Saturday afternoon last Christmas, the shops festooned with tinsel and light, an army of Santas everywhere, a kiddy choir singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem', and Jackie walking one way, Caskie the other, and they'd collided. They shook hands vigorously, men who tolerated, perhaps even liked each other, despite the fact they worked different sides of the street.

What are you up to these days, you old rogue?
Caskie asked.

All I do with my time is play dominoes in the senior citizens' centre. You didn't hear this from me, but we actually play for money. It's illegal, I know, I know. But where's the harm in gambling for a few quid, eh? Such are the innocent pleasures of sorry old men. I was never a reprobate
. Jackie had smiled then, the easy-going smile that made you feel he was sharing an enormous confidence.

Caskie laughed.
And I believe in Santa
.

Aye, everybody should believe in Santa. Where's the spirit of Christmas if you don't believe in the gaffer?

They wished each other seasonal greetings. Jackie Mallon had patted Caskie's arm and walked away, bent forward a little against the wind that came rushing up from the Clyde and shook the decorations in the streets. Caskie thought he had a quality few rogues possess; he could make you believe he was incapable of the lawlessness attributed to him. He had about him an unsettling air of innocence. Charm, Caskie thought. All charm.

He blinked against savage sunlight. Unsteady as the launch shivered again, he wanted to tell Haggs – look, we didn't need to meet on this boat, we could have talked over a glass of wine somewhere nice and private outside the city; but no, you have to drag me out to this bloody vessel
because you know I don't have the stomach for water
. Haggs had a mean-bastard streak and enjoyed other people's discomfort.

‘There's a son,' Caskie said.

‘He lives overseas. So I hear.'

‘In New York,' Caskie said. ‘He may come back for the funeral. He's a cop, incidentally.'

Haggs did another stretching thing with his arms. He looked like a figure made out of pipe-cleaners twisted by a child. ‘So what? Is this a cause for concern or something? An American cop, is that supposed to worry me?'

‘I mention it in passing,' Caskie said. He thought of Flora Mallon. Had the years been good to her? When he first met her he'd been more than a little smitten by her beauty; she had the kind of presence that would turn heads at parties, the rich black hair and the square jawline that suggested pride and self-assurance and an element of ferocity, the mouth that defied you to kiss it, the dark chocolate eyes that saw straight through you. He'd felt clumsy and inadequate in her presence, he remembered. But he'd been kind to her at a time when she needed somebody.

How was she taking the news of Jackie's murder? Had she ever stopped loving Mallon? Her notes never made any mention of him. The last time she'd written it was to say how very sad she was to hear of Caskie's wife Meg dying. Meg had been sick for a very long time, clinging to an existence that seemed worthless to Caskie. Slow death had been a lonely experience for her. And for him too. That pathetic solitude. You sit in a room and hold the sick woman's hand but you might be the only person on the planet. You want her to die. You pray for it.

Then you wonder if you want her to die for all the wrong reasons.

Haggs scrutinized Caskie for a moment. ‘You don't like this, do you, Caskie? You and me involved in this. It makes you feel dirty. You think I'm a fucking lout, don't you? Beneath your station in life. You've always looked down your fucking nose at me. For years you've made me feel like a turd.'

‘I'm cooperating with you,' Caskie said. ‘Isn't that all you've ever needed? Feelings don't enter into it.'

‘I could buy and sell you and it wouldn't make a fucking dent in my bank account,' Haggs said. ‘In one month I probably go through more than your entire net worth. You know what this boat cost me? You any idea what I paid for my house in Rouken Glen? Did you know I have a villa in Lanzarote with a swimming pool?'

Caskie said, ‘I'm deeply impressed, Haggs.'

‘Fuck you. I have a real estate company that covers the entire city. I own six full-service garages and a car-rental firm with a fleet of forty. So don't turn your nose up at me, mister. Don't talk to me like I'm slime. What have
you
got, Caskie? Let me tell you. Qualms, right? You've got qualms.'

‘I certainly don't have a fleet of damn taxis,' Caskie said.

‘Qualms, for fuck's sake,' Haggs said. ‘I never trust a word that doesn't sound the way it looks.'

‘Can we go ashore now?' Caskie asked.

Roddy Haggs said, ‘Why? Don't like the water?'

‘I get seasick, Haggs.'

Haggs said, ‘Note to self: Mr Caskie does not like sailing. Don't ask him again. It makes him want to vomit.'

Caskie stared at the shore. He thought: I have one year until retirement. I've never looked forward to it before now. One year and then I'm beyond Haggs's reach. Gone. All this will be a dream hurriedly dissolving:
you hope
. He couldn't wait a year. He didn't have that kind of patience. He sucked sea air into his lungs as if to cleanse them and thought, I need to get Haggs out of my life soon. Today. Tomorrow. The day after. First chance I get. He'd had dreams of killing Haggs. In one, he dropped Haggs from a great height into a vat of acid and Haggs, screaming, was skinned within seconds. In another he'd strangled Haggs with an old bicycle chain. These dreams always left him drained.

Roddy Haggs unlocked a small cabinet and took out a plastic Tesco bag which had been rolled over and wrapped with very thick rubber bands. He thrust the bag into Caskie's arms and said, ‘Before I forget. Evidence for the prosecution.'

Caskie, whose heart thumped, and who felt gluey saliva rise again in his throat, took the bag with great reluctance. What have I done? he wondered. What in God's name?

9

Eddie Mallon sat in the sky, hunched forward in his seat while he waited for that moment when the wheels struck the runway and the aircraft with all its great weight roared to an unlikely halt. A time he always found tense and scary. All bets with gravity were off. You could die in an instant of fire.

When the cloud cover was blown away and he saw the city appear, he forgot his alarm. He found himself looking out at a mazy profusion of orange streetlamps burning in the night, the lights of cars on long ribbons of motorway, and in the west beyond the limits of Glasgow the outline of hills. He couldn't recollect the city having been so bright before. It didn't square with his boyhood memory. He recalled a grubby place, more shadow than streetlamp. A soot-cloaked city, darkness at noon, black buildings.

‘Your table, sir.'

The young woman who wore the sombre blue uniform of the airline chided him for his failure to put his table in the regulation upright position. He did as he was told; only on planes was he so readily obedient. This high off the ground he had no control over anything, no choice but to defer to people cloistered in a cockpit, men and women who understood instrument panels, radar, all the rest of it.

His nervousness wasn't entirely founded in this lifelong dumb-ass fear of flying. He was also thinking of what he'd encounter when he landed. He was thinking of his sister and wondering how she'd handle her father's funeral. He was thinking about the old man's long-time live-in companion, Senga Craig.
What you see is what you get with Senga
, Joyce had said.
She's sentimental and she'll weep at the sight of a dead budgie in a cage, then out of the blue she'll hit you with a hard opinion or a tough insight you never saw coming. Under that pile of red hair there's a sharp brain
.

The prospect of finally meeting Senga made him a little uneasy; maybe it was the idea of seeing another woman in a house he'd only ever associated with his mother. Now somebody else slept in Jackie's bed. Somebody else controlled the household, chose the furniture, all the things Flora had done.
Jackie loves her
, Joyce had said.
And she's devoted to him. They're happy
.

He heard the thud of the undercarriage, a noise that always distressed him. The plane was four hundred feet, three, then two hundred, above the runway. And now, his nerves leaping like doomed kittens in a canvas sack on their way to a river, he watched the runway rush up to make contact. It was always easier when Claire flew with him; he had her hand to squeeze.

Landing. Touchdown. The wheels whined on the runway. Eddie clutched the handrest until he was certain everything was safe, then he sat back in his seat, relieved, as the craft taxied. Why the fuck was he scared in planes?

It had always been so, starting with the first flight he ever took, and that was the day he'd fled Glasgow with his mother, and he'd locked himself in the toilet and trembled, just stood there looking at himself in the mirror and
shaking
, not really knowing where he was flying to or why, except it was the end of the world as he understood it. Easy for a shrink to make something out of that, Eddie. You associate flying with upheaval. With change and the fear of change.
You can get off the couch now, Mr Mallon. That'll be two hundred bucks
.

He unbuckled his seatbelt. He stepped into the aisle, opened the overhead compartment, hauled down the leather bag Claire had packed for him. This was the only luggage he had, which meant he didn't have to waste time at the baggage carousel.

He checked the inside pocket of his jacket, made sure his wallet was in place, then moved along the aisle towards the exit. In the terminal he stood in the Immigration line reserved for non-Europeans. He was a naturalized American. Stuck in this slow-motion throng, he wished he had dual citizenship, because people with European Community passports were streaming through other channels unimpeded. He shuffled in stages towards an official in a glass booth, a rotund individual with no neck and Coke-bottle glasses.

Eddie handed his passport to the official, whose nametag identified him as Arthur Dudgeon. He checked Eddie's photograph against the real man, then said, ‘Somebody wants to talk to you, Mr Mallon,' and he nodded in the direction of a man who was standing, hands in the pockets of a pin-striped suit, twenty yards away.

‘Is there a problem?' Eddie asked.

Dudgeon said, ‘It's a formality, I'm sure.'

You couldn't argue with passport-control officials. It was a waste of time the world over. These guys dreamed in their sleep of the Ultimate Rubber Stamp, the imprimatur of Total Authority. You possessed that, you had World Domination.

Eddie took his passport, picked up his bag, then walked towards the man in the suit, who shook Eddie's hand firmly; he was somewhere in his thirties and had thin ginger hair and a pleasantly bland face.

‘Sorry to inconvenience you, Mr Mallon. I'm Detective-Inspector Scullion, Strathclyde Police. Will you follow me, please? We need just a wee minute of your time. Good flight?'