The Bad Fire

by Campbell Armstrong

She watched him make his way to the door. He was unsteady. He stooped, picked up the canister, stuck it in his pocket. She heard him go down the stairs. Whistling. Whistling. She recognized the tune, couldn’t name it, something cheerful out of Gilbert and Sullivan. ‘My Object All Sublime’ … was that it? She went inside the living room. She tried to light a cigarette but her hand was trembling. It took her four matches before she succeeded. She drew smoke deep as she could into her lungs. She sat down, still shaking, and she thought of Tommy G’s eye, the colour of prime rib. Christ, what is this legacy you’ve left us, Jackie?

  24

  Detective-Superintendent Malcolm Tay’s office was situated at Force HQ in Pitt Street, a few blocks south of Glasgow’s most famous thoroughfare, Sauchiehall Street, which had had a certain bustling elegance at one time, but was now a yard or two downmarket, fast-food eateries and theme pubs and nightclubs, although a few department stores stood here and there. To the east of Pitt Street was Blythswood Square, formerly the red-light district, but genteel these days. South was the slab of the Hilton, close to the motorway that had been driven with civic disregard through the centre of the city.

  Force HQ was a red-brick building attached to a glass office block that must have been constructed at an earlier time. The effect was of mismatched parts, botched architecture. The Strathclyde Police motto, Eddie Mallon had noticed in the brownish marble entranceway, was ‘Semper Vigilo’.

  Tay’s office was sparsely furnished. The walls were bare save for a cork bulletin board with a schedule pinned to it. Nothing personal here, no cosy family pictures, which didn’t surprise Eddie. He imagined Tay’s life as one of solitary self-containment. No encumbrances.

  The superintendent, who sat behind a desk, was wearing the same charcoal suit he’d worn at the airport. Scullion was also present, standing with his back to the window. Chris Caskie leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling. Eddie Mallon felt he was a figure in a contemporary still life: Hot Room with Policemen.

  Tay opened the middle drawer of his desk. ‘I made you a promise last night, Mallon. I said I’d keep you posted.’ He looked at Eddie, then reached into the drawer and produced a clear plastic bag with a cardboard tag. He laid the bag on the desk. ‘And here we are.’

  Eddie saw the gun under the kinks in the plastic.

  ‘This is the weapon that killed your father,’ Tay said. ‘A Smith and Wesson 4006.’

  Eddie felt blood hurry to his head and depth charges detonate in his heart. He was accustomed to guns every day of his working life, they were commonplace, but this one was different, this one was surrounded by static disturbances, as if an impression of the assassin’s touch lingered upon the weapon. Eddie had an urge to pick up the bag, remove the gun and hold it in the palm of his hand and feel this instrument that had been used to slay Jackie. He looked at sunlight dulled in the folds of plastic.

  ‘Whose gun is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Matty Bones’s,’ Tay replied.

  ‘Bones?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘The only prints on the weapon are his. And there are any number of people who say they’ve seen Bones with this gun. It seems he liked flashing it when he was jarred. Something of the cowboy about our Matty.’

  Scullion said, ‘The weapon was discovered by DS Tony Bothwell and PC Vicky Kyle during a routine search of Bones’s flat.’

  ‘So you’re saying – Matty Bones shot my father?’ Eddie said.

  Tay said, ‘That’s how it looks, Mallon.’

  Eddie was incredulous. ‘They’d known each other for more than thirty years. Long-time associate, intimate – then Bones suddenly decides to shoot his old friend. Why? A brainstorm? A seizure? You got any ideas?’

  Tay picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desk. ‘Who knows? In my experience, money’s usually involved somewhere down the line. Maybe Bones owed your father cash –’

  ‘Which he couldn’t pay back, so he shot Jackie?’ Eddie said. ‘That’s too goddam drastic.’

  ‘Is it? People get killed for all kinds of reasons, some of them seemingly very petty, even ludicrous, to you or me …’ Tay picked up the plastic bag and appeared to weigh the gun. ‘Maybe there was an argument we know nothing about. Or a long-standing grudge. Or maybe Bones was indebted to somebody who wanted Mallon struck down. Bones had the weapon and the opportunity –’

  ‘Now you’re looking at a weird-ass scenario in which Bones is a hired gun.’

  ‘I’m throwing darts, Mallon. See what might stick to the board.’

  This metaphor struck Eddie as inappropriate in the circumstances of a murder investigation, reducing the search for Jackie Mallon’s killer to a game. He stared angrily at Tay and said, ‘Fuck darts. Jesus Christ. Let’s talk about your whole line of inquiry. Let’s look at the big picture. Why are you so cheerfully embracing the half-assed conclusion that Bones was the killer? Because it’s easy? Because you’re too goddam lazy to go out there and shake the bushes?’

  ‘Eddie, for God’s sake, calm down,’ Caskie said.

  He ignored Caskie. ‘Have you interviewed the people he did business with, Tay? Have you been talking to auctioneers and estate agents who might have worked with him when an estate was coming under the hammer and who might be able to point you in the direction of any deals he was trying to make? Have you talked to any of his competitors in the salvage business? Have you got people looking into where he went when he left Glasgow last week? God knows, that might be important. You’re pecking at the goddam surface. You’re just scratching around. And now you’ve got the murder weapon and Bones’s prints are all over it and that’s it, case closed, no loose ends.’

  He was thirsty, and glanced round the room; no sign of a water-cooler. He watched a muscle work furiously in Tay’s jaw.

  ‘You’ve crossed the line, Mallon,’ Tay said.

  Eddie paid no attention. ‘This gun that belonged to Bones. You’re saying he used it to kill Jackie, then he took it back to his flat and hid it? Why didn’t he toss the fucking thing in the river? Why run the risk of it being discovered –’

  ‘Criminals aren’t neurosurgeons,’ Tay said.

  ‘Some of them know about survival,’ Eddie said. ‘They know about covering their tracks. I’m getting the feeling you just want to shut the book on this and save yourselves a load of legwork. Chalk one up on the old blackboard –’

  Tay stood up. His face was tense and when he spoke his lips barely moved. ‘Shut up and listen. I’m satisfied we’ve got the murder weapon, and it’s only a matter of time before we find Bones. And I’m damn sure he can be persuaded to tell us just why he shot Jackie Mallon.’

  ‘Persuaded?’ Eddie said. ‘That has a nice sound.’

  Tay beat a rhythm with the tip of his pencil, then he stepped out from behind his desk and unexpectedly clapped a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. ‘I’m not a sentimental man, Eddie. It’s a well-known fact we Scots are only allowed that luxury on New Year’s Eve. But I remember when my own father died I lost the plot for a while …’ He appeared to run out of steam quickly, as if this moment of human contact was embarrassing to him. He sighed, raised then dropped his shoulders. ‘I understand what you’re going through. Grief. Pain. I understand all that. But trust me with this case, Eddie. I know what I’m doing. The Strathclyde Police knows what it’s doing. Believe me. We’ll find Bones …’

  Eddie stood up. ‘Thanks for the progress report.’

  Tay said, ‘You ought to get some medication to help you relax.’

  I’ll dope myself just for you, Tay. I’ll be a zombie. I won’t be a nuisance. Eddie went to the door, stepped out. Caskie followed him. In silence, they walked to the stairs.

  Then Caskie said, ‘That was bloody stupid.’

  ‘Too upfront for you, Chris? Too open?’

  ‘Bloody rude.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, let’s not forget rude. I’m the bad-mannered Yank. What do I know about fucking etiquette?’

  Outside, in the shadow of the building, Eddie stuck his
hands in his pockets and rattled some loose change. He watched uniformed cops enter and leave the hive that was Force HQ.

  Caskie said, ‘Even after you railed at him, Tay had the decency to open his heart to you. That doesn’t happen often.’

  ‘Was that his heart? I thought it was the hinge of a crypt creaking,’ Eddie said.

  ‘Give him some credit, Eddie. He was trying to be understanding.’

  Eddie stepped out of shadow into sunlight. The blue sky was high and cloudless. The sun had no mercy. Why expect mercy anyhow? If Bones had killed Jackie, he’d shown no mercy to him.

  If Bones had killed Jackie.

  I’m not buying, Eddie thought. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe to Tay it does. Cut. It’s a wrap, guys. Go home.

  A couple of black taxis were parked on the other side of the street. He wondered where Matty Bones, alleged murderer, was hiding.

  ‘I think I’ll grab a cab and head back to Joyce’s place.’ Eddie raised an arm, signalled, saw the taxi spin in a tight circle towards him.

  Caskie’s cellphone rang just as Eddie entered the taxi. Eddie watched him speak into the handset, saw his face change, that placid mask slip like flesh peeled from bone.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, and looked as if he’d just been struck by a club. He stuffed the phone clumsily in his pocket and climbed inside the taxi. His tone of voice was urgent. ‘I’m coming with you, Eddie.’

  25

  Eddie’s first impression was of broken glass everywhere, an explosion of bright colour, as if a rainbow of ice had fallen out of the sky and shattered. He saw Joyce standing at the end of the hallway holding a wet towel to her mouth. The cord of her robe was loose. He and Caskie hurried towards her. She fell into Eddie’s arms, and he led her inside the living room and made her sit.

  But it was Caskie who took her hand and stroked it with a slow gesture of concern. ‘Eddie, there’s some brandy in the kitchen. Would you mind fetching a glass for Joyce?’

  Eddie thought, He’s good with the women in Jackie’s life. He’s attendant physician, private nurse, counsellor, favourite uncle. Eddie wondered if he was envious of Caskie’s role in Joyce’s world. He looked at Caskie’s neat little beard and the long fingers with the perfect nails, and he thought, yeah, I don’t like the guy, and maybe it’s connected to a mild jealousy or associated with Perlman’s low opinion.

  He went into the kitchen, found a bottle of cognac in a cupboard, returned with a half-filled glass.

  Caskie was asking, ‘Can you describe this character, Joyce?’

  Joyce took the towel from her lip, which was only slightly swollen. Eddie handed her the brandy.

  ‘Thanks.’ She sipped, shuddered. ‘He called himself Tommy G. G the letter, not GEE the name. He was black, wore his hair in dreadlocks. English accent. Sounded like London. Said he wanted to pay his respects to Jackie, but I wouldn’t open the door. You see how expertly he overcame that trifling obstacle. I shot him with mace but it didn’t work the way it was supposed to … He grabbed me, hit me. Right here.’ She applied the damp towel to her lip again. She spoke through it, her words muffled. ‘He was about five-eight. Muscular. Head sort of weird, square, I don’t know what else … a line in oddball sayings.’

  ‘Like what?’ Eddie asked. He imagined somebody striking his sister. He saw a hand in the air, felt the contact of knuckle on lip. The picture angered him.

  Joyce shrugged. ‘Oh, some crap about how you can overcome pain. How there was a doorway into a pain-free life, I don’t know exactly. Ouch. I wish he’d left me the key to this magic doorway.’ She lowered the towel. The collar of her robe was wet. She pointed to her lip. ‘How does it look?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Joyce,’ Caskie said.

  ‘It feels about three feet wide,’ she said.

  ‘Did he hit you more than once?’ Caskie asked. He sat down beside Joyce, still stroking her hand.

  Joyce said no. One blow.

  ‘And he told you he wanted to pay his respects,’ Caskie said.

  Joyce said. ‘Yeah, but what he really wanted was to know if I had any information about a business deal he said he had going with Jackie … I told him no, which is the truth. Then he belted me.’

  Caskie asked, ‘What kind of deal? Did he say?’

  ‘He just said Jackie had something that belonged to him.’

  ‘But he didn’t spell out what?’ Caskie said.

  Joyce shook her head.

  ‘Tommy G,’ Eddie said. ‘Does that name mean anything to you, Chris?’

  Caskie said, ‘No, nothing.’

  Eddie looked at Caskie. ‘Can you run the guy’s name through your crime computer?’

  ‘I was just about to do that.’ Caskie took his hand away from Joyce and rose. She drank her brandy, glanced at Eddie, then lit a cigarette, which she smoked from the side of her mouth. Caskie stepped out of the room. Joyce patted the arm of the chair and Eddie sat, one arm hung loosely round his sister’s shoulder. Caskie could be heard talking on the telephone in the kitchen.

  ‘Did Tommy G say he was coming back?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘He said he wouldn’t like it if he had to come back and hurt me.’ She lowered her voice, as if she wanted to be sure Caskie couldn’t hear. ‘What in God’s name was Jackie up to?’

  ‘I don’t know –’

  ‘I mean, he mixed with some dodgy characters now and again, Eddie, but they were basically harmless. This is the first time I ever ran into anyone like Tommy G, and I didn’t like it. This is one downright desperate bastard, and he scares me.’

  Eddie looked into his sister’s face. Jackie’s deal, okay. But what kind of deal made a man smash through glass panes and attack Joyce? It was no ordinary transaction, no hundred-quid debt Jackie had left unpaid at his death. Jackie had something that belonged to the intruder and the guy wanted it back so badly it was worth physical violence to get it. One thing was sure: you didn’t break and enter and cause havoc if you were walking the legal side of the street.

  ‘I think Jackie was involved in something a tad more spooky than chiselling the Inland Revenue, Joyce,’ he said. ‘Unless they’re sending out a whole new breed of tax collectors.’

  ‘Definitely. So what was he doing, Eddie?’

  Caskie came back into the room. ‘We’ll see what the computer spits out in due course.’ He smiled at Joyce. ‘I better make an official report.’ He took a little notebook from his jacket. ‘Let’s run through it. He rang the doorbell and you went out into the hallway. Take it from there.’

  Eddie only half-listened a second, drifted to the window, looked down into the street. He didn’t need to hear this reconstruction. He thought about Jackie. He felt an ache that wasn’t connected to Jackie’s murder; it was the clouded insight into his father’s world that disturbed him, that wherever Jackie lived was no place for the innocent. Fuck it. It was one thing to pull a few quiet strokes now and again, fiddle a ledger, massage the figures, buy merchandise that had quote unquote fallen off the back of a truck. That was part of the cash-and-carry business, and you winked at it and nobody got hurt. But when you were involved with a guy who behaved like Tommy G, it tethered you to something beyond crimes of funny accounting –

  I was never a criminal, son. Remember that. That’s the truth.

  Yeah, Eddie thought: and I’m just loyal enough or dumb enough, or some weird filial combination of the two, to hold on to a sliver of hope that there’s some reason behind Tommy G’s actions that will absolve Jackie Mallon. But what?

  Think.

  Could Senga know anything about the intruder’s identity? Could she throw a little light on Tommy G? He walked across the hall to the kitchen, drank a glass of water at the sink. He felt depressed, confused, he missed Claire, he wondered what she was doing in New York right at that moment. Three thirty p.m. Glasgow, ten thirty a.m. Queens. What day was it? Was it one of her working days when she dressed in her Century 21 blazer and showed prospective home-buyers property available in Queens? He wasn’t sure. I
’m lonely, I miss my life. I miss standing with Claire in the shower stall, holding her hard under the water jet, and the way water runs into her eyes and flattens her hair against her skull and how she looks beautiful against the tiles. Go home, Eddie. Ignore Jackie’s business dealings, whatever they were. Ignore his life and death, attend the funeral, fly away. Do what Tay would dearly love you to do, and leave it alone.

  But Perlman, goddam, was correct: I’m not made that way. I’m the son. The only son.

  He skimmed the pages of the phone book, found Perlman’s number, dialled it. He’d report the attack to Perlman because it fell within the parameters of their arrangement, if that’s what it was.

  All he got was an answering machine. He didn’t leave a message.

  He stepped lightly around the stars and chips of stained glass, opened the door and went down the stone stairs. Outside, he turned right along Ingleby Drive. The surface of the street shimmered in heat. Tenements blurred like buildings immersed in rippling water. A dead cat lay in the middle of Whitehill Street. Black fur and blood on the tarmac, paws crushed, head back and mouth wide. Flies. Three kids stood in a circle round the cat. A small red-haired boy poked the animal with a stick. Telt ye it was deid.

  Beyond all doubt, Eddie thought, and kept moving. He was sweating by the time he reached the house in Onslow Drive. He went up the steps, rang the doorbell, Senga appeared. She was wearing a black silk blouse and smart black slacks.

  ‘Eddie,’ she said. She was pleased to see him.

  He thought: Don’t alarm her with the story of the assault on Joyce. She doesn’t need to know.

  ‘Come in, come away in,’ she said.

  He went inside the house, which was dark and cool, and he followed Senga into the living room. ‘I was just about to go out,’ she said.

  He said, ‘I can come back when it’s more convenient, Senga.’

  She looked at her watch. ‘I ordered a taxi, which should be here in a couple of minutes …’ The horn of a car sounded outside. Senga got up. ‘There it is. I have an appointment at the funeral home.’