Joe Wilkie, cleaning his glasses against his sleeve, was emitting tension: was it because he didn’t like being interrupted at work?
Perlman sniffed the air in the manner of a wine buff. ‘You know, the smell in here reminds me a wee bit of the old subway system. That lovely underground damp and the scent of old oil.’
‘Aye, I noticed that a few times.’
Ray Wilkie materialized from behind the stack of slates. He held a harmonica in one hand. He wore a warehouseman’s grey coat, exactly like Joe’s. He nodded and tapped the harmonica in his palm.
‘So this is the musician,’ Perlman said. ‘Sweet stuff, son.’
‘I just blow a few notes now and then,’ Ray Wilkie said.
‘He’s modest as hell.’ Joe Wilkie laughed. ‘You should hear him when he really gets going. He’s a wizard. Play some jazz, Ray. Play that Cole Porter thing. “Love for Sale.’”
‘Da, I don’t feel like it.’
‘Never hide your light under a bushel,’ Joe Wilkie said. ‘Make with the music, Ray.’
Ray Wilkie frowned at his father and then raised the harmonica reluctantly to his mouth and blew. Eddie recognized the tune at once, but Ray hurried through the melody and into an area of improvisation that rendered the piece unrecognizable.
‘Boy’s good,’ Perlman said.
‘He’s as good as yon fella, Larry Adler,’ Joe Wilkie said with pride.
Eddie listened as he walked around the warehouse. A rat scuttled out from below a heap of old tarps. Above, pigeons stirred on metal beams. He stopped beside a headless statue whose shoulders were thick with years of bird droppings, and he looked across the room. The big aluminium door leading to the yard lay open; directly outside, both rear doors of the Mercedes van were wide.
Eddie was conscious of Joe Wilkie watching him. ‘Isn’t he something, eh, Eddie? Isn’t the boy a bloody marvel?’
Without turning, Eddie said yeah, Joe, Ray was really something all right.
‘Come back and listen,’ Joe Wilkie said.
‘In a minute.’
What looked to Eddie like a stack of unwanted items had been piled inside the big Merc. Stocktaking. Discard the worthless. Busted lamps, formica-top tables and broken-legged chairs all in a tangle, stacked rolls of old linoleum. ‘Love for Sale.’ Ray Wilkie segued into another familiar old song, ‘Dream A Little Dream’, and Perlman laughed in a delighted way.
Eddie drifted to the open door and looked at the Mercedes. He stepped out into the yard and peered at the junk heaped inside the vehicle. The dog appeared and growled, standing between Eddie and the van. Eddie shushed it, calmed it, carefully ran a hand over the animal’s great powerful head.
Joe Wilkie called out, ‘You can’t hear the music properly from there, Eddie. Come back inside.’
Eddie didn’t answer. Joe doesn’t want me near the vehicle. I wonder why. ‘Dream A Little Dream’ took off down musical highways Eddie had never travelled before. Ray’s playing became frantic. The tune changed mood, darkening suddenly, its inherent tenderness altered.
Perlman clapped his hands and said, ‘Oh, he’s the goods, he’s the goods all right.’
‘He’s got the juice,’ Joe Wilkie said.
‘God-given,’ Perlman said.
Eddie was drawn to the jumble-sale items in the van. He stared at the rubbish, and realized that between the arrangement of unwanted goods and the front of the van was a space which seemingly contained nothing, nothing he could see, as if the broken-down furniture had been deliberately arranged to create an impediment to viewing the deep interior of the Mercedes, but that was a stray thought, a gatecrasher, and Eddie was about to let it drift out of his mind when something caught his eye and he peered through a tunnel in the clutter of crap and caught a certain smell, a whiff of lubricant familiar to him – and then he turned away, tense, a pulse in his throat, hoping he hadn’t been noticed, sticking his hands in his pockets, ‘Dream A Little Dream’.
He heard Perlman clap his hands and say, ‘Brilliant, bloody brilliant,’ and the kid stopped playing and Joe Wilkie came to the doorway and asked, ‘Jazz not your thing, Eddie?’
‘Sometimes. It depends.’
Joe moved past Eddie and shut the doors of the Mercedes.
It’s too late, Joe. I’ve seen. I didn’t want to. I wish to Christ I hadn’t.
He stepped back inside the warehouse and Wilkie followed him. Perlman was lighting a cigarette and talking in a quiet voice to young Ray, who was showing the cop his harmonica. Two jazz freaks, they could probably talk for hours.
Eddie saw the door of Jackie’s old office open and Senga appeared there in a pair of dark blue jeans and a pale blue sweater. Her hair, unpinned, hung to her shoulders.
‘Well, Eddie,’ she said. She came towards him, embraced him. ‘Why did you not tell me Eddie was here, Joe?’
‘You were busy with the books,’ Wilkie said.
‘I was bored to hell, so I was.’ Senga linked her arm through Eddie’s. That overwhelming warmth, that sense of inner strength: Eddie thought some magnetic force flowed from the woman.
‘I heard the music and I assumed Ray was just tooting for his own fun the way he sometimes does, I had no idea you were here … Who’s your friend, Eddie?’
‘Detective-Sergeant Lou Perlman. He’s been involved in the murder investigation.’
‘Oh.’ She smiled and held her hand out and shook Lou Perlman’s. ‘Nice hands, Lou. You shouldn’t bite your nails.’
‘Bad habit,’ Perlman said. ‘I’m full of bad habits. You wouldn’t believe.’
‘I’d believe,’ Senga said.
Eddie gestured round the warehouse. He felt he had to explain his presence. He cleared his throat. He was hoarse, dry. ‘An exercise in nostalgia coming here.’
‘It has a few good memories for Eddie,’ Joe Wilkie said to Perlman. ‘He was always in and out of here when he was a wee nipper. Right, Eddie?’
‘Long before I knew him,’ Senga said.
Eddie nodded. An awkward, fragile moment: something hung in the balance. I saw what I wasn’t supposed to see. He was aware of Joe Wilkie running the back of his hand across his lips and Senga taking a cigarette out of a packet and Perlman, a gentleman, lighting it for her, and he was thinking of the van and the jumble of objects in back, and an old Scottish word came back to him that Granny Mallon had used to describe a mess, a heelie-goleerie, an expression he hadn’t thought of in years. This is a right heelie-goleerie, she’d say when dirty dishes had been stacked in the sink or clothes lay about the bedroom floor.
‘Let’s call it a night,’ Senga said. ‘We can finish up the day after the funeral. I’m bone-tired.’
Eddie looked at her face. Without her usual make-up she appeared a little pale. Stocktaking on the night before the funeral service.
No, it’s not that, not that at all.
Perlman said, ‘I’m going back to the office. I’ve got some stuff to deal with.’
‘The law never sleeps, eh?’ Senga said.
‘Only when criminals do.’
Eddie realized Perlman was flirting mildly with Senga. His body language was different, the stoop was gone, he was alert and smiling and his voice was less of a growl. They went out into the yard. Joe Wilkie locked the warehouse door. Ray made sure the van was secure, trying the back handles. The dog whined and whooped, knowing it was about to be abandoned for the night.
They walked into the street, all five of them, and Perlman said, ‘I’ll find a taxi.’
Joe Wilkie padlocked the gate. ‘Taxi my arse. I’ve got my car right here,’ and he indicated an old Honda. ‘Not the most comfy ride in the world, but it’ll take you anywhere you want to go and it won’t cost you a penny.’
‘I don’t want to inconvenience you,’ Perlman said.
‘Come on, get in, I insist.’ Wilkie unlocked the car. Ray climbed into the back seat, Perlman sat in front and looked cramped.
Joe Wilkie slid behind the wheel. ‘What about you,
Senga?’
‘I’ll walk home,’ she said. ‘I need the air and it’s a nice night, and I’ve got Eddie for company. He and I can have a chat just between ourselves.’
Perlman said, ‘I’ll call you, Eddie.’
The Honda drew away in a stuttering burst of smoke, and Eddie stood without moving. Senga’s arm was hooked through his. He was reluctant to move, as if by taking a step away from the warehouse he was abandoning his childhood for all time. When he moved, he didn’t look back.
He walked up Bluevale Street to Duke Street, Senga attached to him. Neither spoke for a couple of blocks. When they’d crossed Duke Street and were heading up Whitehill, Eddie said, ‘Tell me, Senga.’
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Just tell me the truth.’
‘The truth?’
‘It would be a real nice change to hear it.’
Senga said, ‘It’s a rare commodity.’
‘Practically extinct.’
‘And you found it in the back of a big Mercedes van, didn’t you?’
‘It’s a funny thing how hard you can look and how many people you can question,’ Eddie said, ‘but sometimes you find the truth by pure goddam chance.’
59
Gurk waited until the group had dispersed and the street was empty, then he crossed to the wire fence and looked at the sign: J MALLON, TRADER. This place was worth a look, he thought. Christ knows, he didn’t have a whole lot of options. Earlier, while he’d been lurking in shadow, he’d heard the dog. A deep bark, trained guard dog probably, maybe a Doberman, maybe an Alsatian. It didn’t matter. He had a way with animals. They sensed a oneness with him.
He took a run at the fence, which was twelve feet high. He caught the wire at around eight feet and hung there, gaining a toehold and raising his hands to the top. He’d haul himself up and over, one last effort, deep breath, easy-peasy.
The dog was going mental beneath him, snarling, barking, jumping at the fence.
Gurk said, ‘Calm, boy, calm calm.’
The dog raged, curled, sprang. The stench of fur was strong. The teeth shone in what little light fell from a nearby streetlamp. Gurk caught the upper part of the fence: but in the poor light he hadn’t seen the fucking barbed wire, compacted into wicked rolls and bolted along the top of the fence, that lacerated the palms of his hands. Jesus. Ohhhh. This world of pain. This world of mace and crucifixion on barbed wire.
He yelped, and dropped into the yard, and the dog streaked at his ankle and bit deep through cloth and flesh and muscle to the bone, and now blood flowed from Gurk’s hands as well as his ankle. He kicked the dog hard and the creature squealed and came back at him, springing at his stomach, digging its teeth through the material of his shirt and locking on to his belly, and Gurk karate-chopped the beast with a vicious downward thrust, but the animal – enraged – continued to cling.
My gun, Gurk thought, I’ll end this now.
The weapon was in the left-hand pocket of his jacket and it was his left hand that had been spiked by barbed wire and he couldn’t grasp the gun. He twisted, tried to reach across himself and the snarling head of the dog to get the gun out of the pocket with his right hand, but the dog, sensing menace, dug fangs into the moving hand and burst the skin and veins and Gurk thought his right hand had been thrust inside an incinerator.
Right hand, left hand, stomach, he was bleeding from various punctures and wounds. How much fucking blood had he lost? He clubbed the dog with the side of his left hand – aieee, the pain of it – but the animal came at him again and this time Gurk got the gun out just before the beast launched itself in flight, but pain had slowed him and the dog bounded with such ferocity that the gun went spinning out of Gurk’s hand and clanked to the ground somewhere close but dark.
He’d never find it.
He was leaking blood and he had no gun and no safe crawl space and the animal was insatiably violent. It circled, sprang again, battered his shoulder, and he lost balance and fell over into a pile of bricks, sharp-edged motherfuckers that pierced his skin. A bed of goddammed stone.
He crawled, hands soaked with blood, brick grinding into palms and knees, and the dog came after him and caught his cheek in its teeth and he imagined fangs penetrating flesh right to the teeth and through that to the soft roots inside the gum, and I am going to black out pretty fucking soon if I don’t get this monster, this remorseless thing from hell, away from me –
Easy boy easy now –
His voice enraged the dog. It bolted up on to his spine and bit the back of his neck and held on and Gurk turned this way and that, locked in a struggle with the beast, smelling its vile breath and the stink of its fur and all the while aware that blood was flowing out of him at a rate he couldn’t afford, because before long he’d be light-headed and pass out. He fumbled for a slab of brick and brought it down on the dog’s head and the animal, perplexed, yapped and drew back, but Gurk knew it was a momentary relief, the dog was gathering forces, regrouping to come again, and this time Gurk didn’t think he could beat the animal off. He crawled over brick and rubble and planks of wood.
The Zone. Enter the Zone. Fuck the Zone. There is no Zone.
He saw the white van a few yards away. If he could get inside the vehicle and slam the door.
The dog was barking, ready to fight again.
Gurk tried to open the back of the van. Bastard was locked. Sometimes fate doesn’t have a kind word for you. You’re fucked no matter what.
He slammed a lump of brick against the handles again and again, bang bang – yield, you bastard, open up, let me inside, gimme haven. The dog raced towards him and he swung, lashing out with the brick, catching the animal at the side of its head, and it fell over dazed, but Gurk knew it would come again and if he didn’t find a hiding place he was mincemeat ready to be dropped on the sizzling hot coals, barbecued Gurk on a bun. Karmaburger.
The animal, vast in bad light, shook itself, recovered its senses, and soared at him, crossing space with a lethal grace that in other circumstances Gurk might have admired. Sleek flesh, density of muscle, defiance of gravity such as that possessed by a hawk on the wing, and those teeth, those precise surgical instruments. He stepped back, stumbled against the van. The dog came zooming in and caught him low on the thigh and the teeth went through his flesh and this time Gurk screamed because so much pain couldn’t be contained in silence. Screamed, then grunted, then went down on all fours, face to face with the beast. They eyeballed one another, the dog’s snout a few inches from Gurk’s nose: in that cold canine eye Gurk saw no mercy. He crawled back, the dog watched him, waited, cocked a head to one side, growled softly. With his spine pressed to the rear doors of the van, Gurk wondered, could I make a run for it, a beeline for the fence, did I have the strength to get over that wire? He was lathered in his own blood. He was weak.
He watched the dog, listened to the throaty growl and wondered if maybe the beast was offering a truce –
But no. Dogs didn’t do truces. They didn’t understand the concept.
The animal came at him and knocked him down and he banged his skull against the van as he fell, and what he saw was the full moon in wayward flight across the sky and all the stars above the city opening like ripe silver flowers and he raised a hand wearily as if he might push the dog away, but the animal yanked off a finger between its teeth and Gurk felt the horrible tearing of his flesh. He’d never known a sensation like that before: a bit of his body just ripped off. Like that. Gone. In shock he struggled to his feet while the dog played with the finger. Shoulders slumped, he caught the handles of the van doors with his intact hand and suddenly metal snapped from the face of the door – luck luck – and Gurk eased the door open and a cascade of household furniture clattered down on him, tables and chairs and lamps, a crash of trash.
The leg of a chair poked him directly in the mouth and he heard a tooth break. He spat blood. He thought, I fall to pieces, and he hauled himself into the back of the van and lay among the disarray of formic
a tables and pleated lampshades. He drew the doors closed. He knew he couldn’t get out. He was a prisoner. The upside of this was that the dog couldn’t get in. He listened to it bark and bark and bark, and he heard it prowl round the vehicle, and then there was silence. Or maybe he was faint and the world outside fading.
He crawled to the back of the van and his hands encountered objects he recognized at once and he thought, Jesus Christ in heaven, I know what these are, but before he had a chance to appreciate the dumb irony of his situation he went out like a meteor striking some lonely tundra, and his blood flowed and he didn’t hear the dog sit in the dark growling every now and then as it waited.
60
The place where the school had once stood, that vacant lot of nettle and dock leaf, seemed hostile in the dark. Eddie ran a hand along the railings as he walked. Senga still held his arm.
‘You shouldn’t have looked,’ she said. ‘Very naughty of you, Eddie. Spying like that.’
Eddie thought the night had an emptiness about it, as if the pulses of the city had been stilled. The street was quiet.
‘So, Eddie. What will you do?’
He hadn’t thought. He hadn’t had a chance to think.
Senga took her arm away from him and stopped, turning to face him. ‘Your father did it for me, Eddie. I asked him. I told him what our people needed, and he found it.’
‘Our people?’
Senga said, ‘Our people, my people. It’s in the blood, Eddie. You can’t just squeeze it out of your system. Our people over there need the weapons.’
‘There’s never an end,’ Eddie said. ‘It goes on and on.’
‘What do you imagine – that everybody buys all this disarmament shite? Come, we’ll open our arms dumps and you can take a look and see how cooperative we really are. Fucking hell, Eddie, you can talk peace and coexistence until you’ve got steam coming out your ears, and the politicians can huff and puff about how bloody brilliant they are – oh, aren’t we wonderful, we’ve brought peace – but at the end of the day you’ve got people who’ll never trust each other, because there’s been too much blood for forgiveness, and too much hate. There’s no peace, Eddie. Only PR. Only the image. The shadow on the wall. No substance. Not where it counts,’ and she laid a hand on his arm. ‘We can never trust the other side. Understand that. We may fight among ourselves now and again, we may squabble furiously, but when it comes right down to it, we’re united against the enemy.’
The Bad Fire Page 34
