The Bad Fire

by Campbell Armstrong

  During one of his phone calls Jackie had said, What I did was a big mistake, and there was the dolorous note in his voice of a man who’d drunk just enough to be honest. Hacking the family apart like that was a bloody selfish cruelty, Eddie. Now I wish I’d told your mother to keep you and your sister together. But no, no, I knew better, I chose another way.

  If Flora knew about any of this, she never said so.

  ‘Does anyone have any idea who killed him?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Joyce didn’t say,’ Eddie remarked.

  ‘Killers always go to the Bad Fire,’ she said.

  He was surprised to hear her utter this phrase from childhood, and even more surprised by the fact she hadn’t used it with any flippancy. She’d said it seriously. It was where sinners were sent in Glasgow. You’ll go to the Bad Fire if you steal, if you lie, if you cheat, if you swear … Parents told kids that. Eddie would lie awake in Granny Mallon’s third-floor flat in Bathgate Street and see flames created by streetlights in the folds of the blinds. He believed the Bad Fire lay in the street below and if he went to the window at night he’d see the pavement explode and people coming home from the pubs get sucked through a slit into the inferno.

  ‘I stopped believing in the Bad Fire long ago,’ he said.

  ‘Not me,’ she said. She stepped towards Eddie and held him a moment and he thought he detected a shiver run through her, as if she were suppressing an emotion. ‘He must have had enemies, Eddie.’

  Eddie shrugged. ‘You don’t know that. He might have been shot by somebody who didn’t know him. A random slaying. A robbery. We don’t have the facts.’

  ‘That time he went to jail,’ she said, then she paused.

  Jail … Eddie remembered how he’d constructed a fiction in which Jackie hadn’t been incarcerated for eight weeks in Barlinnie, that austere fortress in the far eastern reaches of Glasgow. No, Jackie was secretly working for the government in an unspecified country overseas, fighting in something called the Cold War, which Eddie always imagined took place in the Arctic, tanks camouflaged white, soldiers with frostbitten noses.

  He wanted to be proud of his dad. He wanted to adore him.

  Flora said, ‘He was never quite the same after jail. He was harder under the surface.’

  Eddie had to ransack his memory. What crime had Jackie allegedly committed anyway? It came back to him in a flash, a little nugget of recall. Possession of stolen goods.

  Flora continued: ‘He met men in jail who didn’t think twice about violence. Hard men. And Jackie had never been a violent person. He never once raised a hand to me all the time I knew him. But after Barlinnie, nobody could ever convince me he was the same man. I don’t mean he started beating us up or anything like that –’

  ‘He was angry with the system, Ma. He was embittered. He always said he was innocent. He was adamant about that. I remember he kept saying he’d done nothing wrong.’

  Flora wasn’t listening to him. ‘He became withdrawn and furtive and he’d vanish for days at a time. He had a look on his face that said, Don’t ask me where I’ve been, woman. Just don’t ask. So I never did. He came and he went … And then out of the blue we moved up in the world, from Granny Mallon’s flat in Bathgate Street to a house in Onslow Drive, and I didn’t know how Jackie could afford a place like that on the money he made selling junk out of that bloody warehouse.’

  She sat down at the table. She was reflected in the polished wood like somebody drowning in brown water. Eddie Mallon remembered moving house. Less than a mile separated Bathgate Street from Onslow Drive, but the houses in Onslow Drive weren’t decrepit tenements, they were smart terraced properties, your own garden front and back. People living there belonged to a class that enjoyed a certain genteel prosperity.

  ‘Obviously he made some good business deals,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Is that what you really believe?’

  ‘Why not? What are you trying to say – he sometimes walked on the wrong side of the street? He ran some scams, broke some laws? How can you be absolutely sure of that?’ He thought of Jackie Mallon saying: I was never a criminal, son. Remember that. If anybody says anything against me at your school, learn to ignore it. I was the victim of spiteful men. That’s the truth.

  The victim of spiteful men.

  You don’t know anything about him, Eddie, do you? You don’t know how the man lived his life. You remember him the way a small kid might remember the scent and texture of a long-lost security blanket or a favourite teddy bear. You wanted more than that. All through the years of separation you longed for reconciliation.

  Flora patted the side of her son’s face. ‘Oh, Eddie. He’s stone-cold dead, but he’s still got you thinking good things about him. What a bloody great talent it is to get the benefit of the doubt – even after you’re gone.’

  Eddie Mallon said, ‘I missed him when I was growing up, so okay – maybe I idealized him a little. A kid misses his dad.’

  Flora said, ‘If you go to Glasgow you’ll get to meet the mysterious Senga.’

  ‘Is she so mysterious?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘I don’t know the first thing about her. Admittedly, I haven’t inquired too closely. She’s been with Jackie for what – twenty years? Just think. If he’d married her she’d be your stepmother. There’s a thought for you, Eddie.’

  Flora sagged suddenly; she hunched over the table.

  ‘You okay, Ma?’

  ‘Just a little breathless. It’ll pass. My days are usually more humdrum. This is …’

  ‘Are you sure that’s all?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He stood over her. He noticed her hair was thinning, her pink scalp faintly visible on the crown of her head through a white lattice-work of strands. He imagined her growing infirm and still somehow managing to hobble out to the greenhouse, watering can trembling in her hand. He wondered if Senga looked the same age as Flora, and if she had that same grandmotherly vibe about her – then he remembered Joyce had described her as red-haired and tall and flamboyant, a vibrant character. My stepmother, he thought. But Jackie hadn’t taken the conjugal route with Senga, who had the status of a common-law wife.

  He said, ‘I have to make some travel arrangements. You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, fine.’ She walked with him to the door. She held his elbow tightly. Stepping on to the porch, Eddie saw distress on his mother’s face. ‘I missed him too,’ she said.

  5

  Flora watched Eddie walk to his vehicle and thought: he looks the way his father used to. He moves the same way, that measured step, like a man afraid of standing on something unpleasant. He’s taller than his father, and better built, but not as handsome as Jackie; he doesn’t have that same flighty charm. But more dependable than his father.

  He has more heart. Or maybe less camouflage around it.

  She saw the Cherokee back out of the drive. The lights blinked on and off a couple of times, Eddie’s goodbye signal. Then the vehicle swung out of sight.

  He’s going to Glasgow to bury Jackie, she thought. I’ll never see Glasgow again. Bellahouston Park. The Botanic Gardens. A saunter down Buchanan Street, a left turn along busy Argyle Street. She wondered if there was still that awful smelly zoo in Oswald Street where they kept a couple of mangy lions caged.

  It was all lost to her.

  She went inside the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She removed a bottle of Absolut from the freezer. The glass was cold and adhered to her hand. She poured a little, drank it down quickly, filled the glass again. What is happening to you, lady? Two small shots at dawn. Strolling down Stumblebum Street. You shouldn’t be doing this.

  The radio was playing ‘What A Little Moonlight Can Do’.

  Oh aye. Oh yes. A little moonlight. Jackie’s dead and there’s a sharp stick in my heart and I remember what a little moonlight can do.

  The honeymoon in Largs, the hotel room with the sea view, the big brass bed. Jackie was an energetic lover. He exhausted her. She loved
that fatigue and the deep ache of it all. She recalled how it rained all week, but it didn’t matter, because they never left their room. Jackie took the bedsheets and hung them between chairs, making them into a kind of tent, just for laughs. I’m the sheikh, he said. Come inside my desert hideaway, Flower. He often called her ‘Flower’. Flora my flower, he used to say.

  She picked up her glass and entered the greenhouse. She was a little out of breath: age, she thought, the system on the blink. She loved this glass room at dawn. The tranquillity, the quiet force of greenery, the subtle modifications of colour.

  Flora my flower. What had replaced her? Senga my sunshine? Senga –

  She remembered The Raid suddenly, the day she’d come home to the house in Onslow Drive from shopping and found it crowded with policemen, some uniformed, others in suits, and they’d yanked floorboards up, hauled drawers open, strewn clothing all over the place, dragged books from shelves and tossed them around, ripped open cushions and pillows – a mad intrusion, a crazy nightmare of vandalism.

  This was when she’d first met a young policeman called Caskie. He had an easy manner. He’d taken her to one side and said, ‘We have a warrant, Mrs Mallon,’ and he flashed paper in front of her, but she pushed his hand away and raced from room to room, shouting at the policemen, throwing punches, and then Caskie had tried to calm her down, leading her gently into the back yard where he lit a cigarette for her and opened an umbrella to keep her dry from rain that had just begun to fall. She wanted to scratch Caskie’s eyes out of his head.

  But it wasn’t Caskie’s fault. He had a bloody warrant. He was doing his job.

  Jackie was the cause of this. It was something Jackie had done.

  She’d been expecting the sky to collapse ever since he’d come out of jail for possession of three 19th-century statues stolen from a country house in Ayrshire. He swore he’d bought them in all innocence from a dealer. She’d been dragging a sense of impending catastrophe around for more than a year.

  And now this. Whatever this was.

  She listened to the wreckage inside the house. Nails pulled out of wood, screeching. A closet ripped apart. ‘What in God’s name do you expect to find?’ And she was shaking with rage, sucking smoke as deeply into her lungs as she could.

  Caskie said, ‘Read the warrant, Mrs Mallon.’

  ‘Fuck the warrant,’ she said. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘We believe there are certain items in the house –’

  ‘What items?’

  Caskie, who wore a dark blue suit that was a little too baggy for him, looked like a young man who’d been promoted beyond his experience. This situation was obviously awkward for him. In other circumstances, she might have been touched by his immaturity.

  He said, ‘Specimens of counterfeit money.’

  She laughed in disbelief. ‘Counterfeit money?’

  Caskie had pleasing blue eyes, a detail she remembered only later. And he had a hard time looking at her.

  ‘And you have to tear my whole bloody house apart to search for this alleged counterfeit money?’

  ‘Some of the men are a little …’ and Caskie hesitated.

  ‘They’re brutes, Caskie. They’re enjoying themselves, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I admit they’re over-enthusiastic –’

  ‘Over-enthusiastic? Who do I sue for damages if you don’t find this alleged counterfeit money?’

  ‘We try to leave things the way we found them.’

  ‘And I sailed up the Clyde on a water biscuit. How do you put back broken vases and a broken mirror?’

  ‘You’d be reimbursed for that kind of thing.’

  ‘And my peace of mind – do I get reimbursed for that?’

  Caskie touched her arm. ‘We go through a rigorous process to get warrants like this, Mrs Caskie. They’re not handed out lightly. Usually we get them only when we’re sure.’

  ‘And you’re sure, are you?’

  ‘I’m not enjoying this.’

  ‘Somehow I believe you,’ she said. She flicked her cigarette into the rain. ‘At least my children are at school and don’t have to see this demolition.’

  A uniformed policeman stepped out into the yard and gestured to Caskie. Caskie placed the umbrella in Flora’s hand and said, ‘Excuse me,’ and then he disappeared inside the house. She smoked another cigarette, listened to rain drum on the taut black skin of the umbrella. She cursed Jackie Mallon. She cursed him for bringing these men into her home.

  Counterfeit money. No. Stolen goods maybe, just maybe; she didn’t think he was beyond doing a dodgy deal concerning paintings, statues, antique jewels. But fake money was something else altogether, big-time crime against the financial structure of the country, against the bloody government. Serious business. Serious punishment.

  Caskie came back. ‘We found what we were looking for,’ he said quietly.

  Flora was dizzy, lost her balance, slipped against Caskie, who had to catch and hold her. She stood with her face pressed into his shoulder while he talked quietly and reassuringly about how his men were making the place tidy again, it wouldn’t be one hundred per cent but it wouldn’t look too bad.

  She stopped listening to his individual words. She liked the soothing sound of his voice.

  ‘Do you know where your husband is?’ Caskie asked.

  She said she didn’t. It was true. He’d been gone for the last two days.

  ‘Myself and another officer will wait for him,’ Caskie said. ‘And you can tell the children we’re here to investigate the break-in.’

  Jackie came home the evening of The Raid. He was arrested before he could enter the house. Cuffed on the street and tossed into the back of a car and driven away quickly; the kids didn’t see it happen. No charges were ever brought against him. His lawyer argued that the counterfeit notes had been planted by police officers who had long-standing grudges against Mallon because they suspected him of crimes they could never prove. The only charge they’d ever been able to make stick was the business of the stolen statues – and that case, the lawyer contended, was so thin as to be downright transparent. Besides, the evidence of involvement in a counterfeit scheme was circumstantial at best.

  Flora didn’t believe Jackie was innocent. He’d brought illicit material into the house and he’d threatened the security of the only things she cared for, home and family. How could he have put everything at risk? She didn’t doubt he loved her after his fashion, and she never questioned his love of the children. But the marriage had turned cold.

  Flora. My flower. Flower of ice, she thought. Petals dipped in frost.

  I gave you my heart, Jackie Mallon. And you dropped it.

  Three weeks after The Raid, weeks of arguments followed by fragile truces and promises of future good behaviour, weeks of madness and acrimony, she and Eddie had flown to America.

  Without Joyce.

  Flora had made a deal with the devil and she’d never stopped regretting it. Not in all the years since she’d left Scotland.

  She wandered through the greenhouse with the half-drunk shot of Absolut in her hand. She wondered what Christopher Caskie looked like now. They’d corresponded a dozen or more times through the years. His letters were usually in response to her inquiries about Joyce: was she doing all right? In his last letter Caskie had written that his wife had died of cancer.

  A blackbird flew over the greenhouse and was briefly reflected in sunlit glass. From inside the house the radio played Artie Shaw’s rendition of ‘There’s A Small Hotel’.

  6

  Captain Zeke ‘Marvel’ Stock, Eddie’s superior, was so big and wide that some of the men in his command referred to him as the Eclipse. He weighed an imposing three hundred pounds plus, much of it solid muscle. Eddie sometimes thought of the captain as an African tribal chief, a man you expected to arrive at a crime scene held aloft by a congregation of bearers.

  Presently, Marvel was motionless under a traffic signal, and the red stop light gave the impression that his fa
ce was smeared with the bloody innards of a goat sacrificed in his honour moments before.

  Eddie gazed at the dead man in an expensive overcoat who lay face-down in the middle of the street.

  Marvel twisted his huge neck and scanned the grey edifice of a twelve-storey office building. ‘A jumper,’ he said.

  ‘He’s sidewalk salsa all right,’ Bobby Figaro said. Figaro was Marvel’s right-hand, yes-man and all-round gofer.

  ‘Anyone got his name?’ Marvel asked.

  Figaro had it, of course. Figaro always had the scoop. ‘John Boscoe Bentley, an address on East 32nd. According to what was in his wallet, he worked down on Wall Street for a brokerage firm called Something Somebody and Something Else Incorporated. I gather from a preliminary inquiry – to wit, a phone call to the company CEO – he was something of a player. How he came to be on the ledge of this particular building,’ and Figaro shrugged.

  ‘Coulda been pushed,’ Marvel said.

  ‘All possibilities will be explored, Captain,’ said Figaro, with his ever-ready halogen-bright smile.

  Detectives and uniforms were already inside the building, knocking on doors, asking questions; because it was only seven a.m., the building was largely unoccupied save for custodians and a cleaning crew, also a few lonesome workaholics, some of them demented guys who’d been in the place all night trying to balance ledgers or make sense out of spreadsheets.

  Mallon stared at the corpse and wondered about a life terminated this way – whether he jumped or was pushed, it was a hell of a place for a guy to die; the hard pavement of a city street. He thought of his father and realized how few details he had about the old man’s death. Was he gunned down in the street? At home? Were there witnesses? What calibre weapon? The questions buzzed him like gnats.