This is the life.
You couldn’t live in a world like Caskie’s, say, a horrible wee cardboard box of law and order. Regulations and requisitions, screw all that shite. Hypocrite.
Haggs thought that Jackie Mallon, for all his cunning, his sly secrecy and stubborn ways, had been a more admirable human being than Caskie could ever be. In fact, in his own off-centre manner, he’d liked Jackie Mallon, and the decision to put him away hadn’t been easy. But a time came when you had to make the move, establish your supremacy, plant your own flag on Mallon’s moon.
And that’s what he’d done. Or tried to.
What had he learned about Jackie’s scheme?
Sweet Fanny Adams.
He thought of bloodstains inside the vehicle. ‘We’ll need to torch this bloody van, Twiddie.’
‘I want to be the one to do it,’ the girl said.
‘Aye, Rita likes fires,’ Twiddie said.
Haggs said, ‘Why am I not astounded.’
Twiddie said, ‘She likes playing with matches.’
‘I was a Girl Guide once,’ Rita said. ‘Building bonfires was the only thing I liked. All the rest was crap. Crap games and stupid badges. Dykes running about giving you orders.’
‘Make sure you do the job right.’ Haggs glanced in the rearview mirror. Twiddie and his girl were kissing in the back. Twiddie covered in blood. Kissing his girl. Her T-shirt was up round her neck. Twiddie had one wet red glove on a bare tit. Haggs stared straight ahead. Note to self, he thought: love brings some very weird customers together.
12
Senga Craig, early fifties, a big tornado of a woman in a bright gold blouse and black slacks, somebody just a little larger than life, loomed in the open doorway to the sitting room. Her red hair was piled up and a long gold pin stuck through it. Her eyelids were swollen from crying. She seized and hugged Joyce and said, ‘My darling, oh my wee darling,’ and then she looked past Joyce at Eddie. Before he could speak, Eddie was clutched in an embrace so strong he felt almost faint, crushed like a man trapped in the forward surge of a mob. He smelled Senga’s pungent scent and gin on her breath. Her arms were bare. She emitted raw energy; this wasn’t a woman who’d waste away in grief for ever. She’d fight it and in time she’d win.
‘Eddie,’ she said. ‘Oh, jeez, you’re the spitting image. Isn’t he the spitting image, Joyce? Oh my God.’ She put a hand over her open mouth.
‘There’s a resemblance all right,’ Joyce said.
‘You’re Jackie Mallon’s boy,’ Senga said. ‘God in heaven, I can’t get over it.’
She dragged Eddie inside the room. The music was issuing from a CD player, the Eagles singing ‘Cheating Side of Town’.
Senga said, ‘Jackie’s favourite group, I was listening to them because I’m a silly old cow and I’ve had one gin too many and gin does funny things to me …’ She somehow managed to get both Joyce and Eddie into a single hug now; three bodies pressed together, three heads in contact. ‘If I can’t have Jackie, then I can have his kids. Right? Right? I deserve some kind of consolation, don’t I? I loved that man. Loved him.’
Eddie was vaguely conscious of the room beyond the tight limits of Senga’s embrace. Years ago the walls had been covered with red and purple floral wallpaper. Now they were painted a flat grey colour and hung with black and white photographs of Scottish scenery in silver frames. The furniture was black leather. The effect was a little austere; Eddie couldn’t imagine that Jackie, who liked clutter and wasn’t the kind of man who’d give a damn about decor, had any say in decorating this room.
He tried to disentangle himself from Senga, but she was persistent and strong, and seized him harder, holding him in such a way that his cheek adhered to hers, which was fleshy and damp. Joyce, he noticed, had escaped from the communal squeeze, and was lighting a cigarette as she moved to a chair in the corner where a man with a white beard sat.
Eddie hadn’t noticed the bearded man before. Joyce gripped the guy’s hand, fingers locking for a moment. Then she embraced him, and he closed his eyes as she leaned down to press her face to his shoulder.
‘Let me get you a drink, Eddie,’ Senga said.
‘A beer would be fine,’ Eddie said. He observed a small tattoo on Senga’s upper left arm, a half-inch below the oval mark of a smallpox inoculation. He thought the tattoo looked familiar, but it eluded him.
‘I’m not sure we have beer.’ Senga took a Kleenex from a pocket of her slacks and dabbed her damp eyes with it. ‘I’m not sure what we’ve got in the kitchen …’
Joyce said, ‘Senga, I’ll look in the fridge; you stay where you are,’ and she left the room.
The man with the white beard rose. He wore a blue double-breasted suit and a black tie. He shook Eddie’s hand and said, ‘Chris Caskie. We met before you went to America. You couldn’t possibly remember me. You were about thirteen years of age and we saw each other two or three times at most.’
‘You look vaguely familiar,’ Eddie said. He wasn’t sure if that was a truth or something he imagined. He felt weary, and sad. This house burdened him. Echoes of family and old songs.
‘It would have to be a very vague memory,’ Caskie said. He sipped from a glass of sherry. ‘I was a friend of your mother.’
‘She never mentioned you by name, as far as I can recall,’ Eddie said.
Senga said, ‘Chris has been close to this family for years. Haven’t you, Chris?’
‘Close enough.’
‘Joyce has always been his favourite,’ Senga said. ‘After Flora, of course.’
‘Senga, you know I don’t play favourites,’ Caskie said. ‘I corresponded with Flora now and then over the years.’ He turned to face Eddie again. ‘How is she taking …’
‘I’m not sure,’ Eddie said. ‘Shocked. But we’re talking about thirty years of separation, so it’s the kind of shock with a long slow fuse. It might burn out tamely.’
Senga filled a glass with gin and looked at Eddie, then linked an arm through his. ‘I sympathize with Flora, I do, I really do, it’s just, well, I’m trying not to think, just hold myself together, it’s like I’ve misplaced something except I don’t know what the hell it is, but if I keep looking I’ll remember … I’m sorry, sorry, I’m just talking a pile of gibberish. Forgive me, the both of you. But I keep expecting Jackie’ll walk through the door at any moment. Hello, my great big beautiful doll, he’ll say. And I’ll say, Tell me you love me, Mallon … Oh my heart’s wrecked.’
She sniffed, tried to force out a little smile of fortitude, but it didn’t work. She looked, Eddie Mallon thought, out of focus, a badly taken snapshot. The stark grief of this stranger his father had apparently loved – it was odd to him, it lacked a framework into which he could place it. She and Jackie had built a life together. He needed to absorb this fact, and accept it.
Caskie said, ‘You’ve lost somebody you loved, Senga. You’re entitled to your sorrow.’ He passed her a handkerchief, a neat square of folded linen he took from his jacket.
Senga blew her nose, then walked across the room. She sat down, balanced her gin on the arm of the sofa. She’d raised her spirits enough to welcome Eddie, she’d worked at seeming sober, but the effort had been too much, and now she’d lapsed into a place of silence and melancholy.
Alone in the corner of the room with Caskie, Eddie asked, ‘How well did you know my father?’
‘I tried to arrest him a couple of times,’ Caskie said, and smiled.
‘Arrest? You’re a cop?’
‘Just like you,’ Caskie said. He looked a little amused. ‘The truth is, I used to have a young man’s crush on your mother – all totally innocent, I assure you – and when she left for America she asked me to keep an eye on your sister. You obviously didn’t know about this, did you?’
Eddie Mallon shook his head. He was sure Flora had never mentioned Caskie. Or it had escaped him. It wasn’t important. He could easily imagine somebody having what Caskie quaintly called a ‘crush’ on Flora, becau
se once upon a time she’d been beautiful in a way men might find both haughty and challenging, as if her sexuality were a minefield you crossed at your own peril; and somewhere along the graph of time the colour had gone out of her rich black hair and she’d begun the decline into the little white-haired lady who spent most of her life stooped over potted plants.
Caskie said, ‘I’d phone Joyce every three or four months. Sometimes we’d meet for a drink when she’d reached the legal age,’ and he smiled here, raising one eyebrow as if the word ‘legal’ had a meaning only cops understood. ‘Sometimes we had dinner. How are you doing, what’s happening, anything new – that kind of thing. I’d run into your father every so often too … but I could never pin a damn thing on him. Either he lived a life of total innocence or he was the most clever man I ever met.’
‘Which do you think it was?’ Eddie asked. He was remembering what his mother had said: He’s stone cold dead, but he’s still got you thinking good things about him. Yes, yes, I want to believe that. Apart from one godawful error in his life, he was basically a decent guy. What was so wrong in needing a little faith?
Caskie shrugged. ‘I believe he kept some bad company. And maybe his business ledgers wouldn’t have survived microscopic scrutiny.’ He drank a little sherry. ‘I don’t think this is the time or the place, Eddie, to dissect your father’s life.’
‘I’d like to know more about him –’
‘That’s perfectly natural, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to help.’
Joyce came back into the room on the tail-end of the conversation. She handed Eddie a chilled bottle of Amstel and asked, ‘Help with what, Chris?’
‘Your brother’s curiosity,’ Caskie said. He moved back towards the sofa and sat down beside Senga, whose eyes were shut.
Joyce said, ‘What are you curious about, bro?’
Eddie swallowed some beer. ‘Just Jackie in general.’
‘I knew him better than anyone, except maybe Senga. You have questions, Eddie, ask me.’
Before Eddie could respond, Senga got up from the sofa and approached him. For a tall big-chested woman she looked fragile; she weaved from side to side as she walked, like somebody trying to cross a tricky bridge in a fun-house. Caskie moved behind her in an attentive way, to catch her if she lost her balance.
‘This has all the feel of a bloody dreeeeary wake,’ Senga said. ‘Och, Jackie would’ve hated this. He’d already be looking for the side door so he could sneak away. When I die, he used to say, play some happy music and drink yourself into a stupor. So I’m changing this …’ She went to the stack of CDs – two steps to the side, one forward – and she found what she was looking for. She ejected the Eagles.
Suddenly the room was filled with Scottish dance music of a kind Eddie hadn’t heard since they’d all lived in Granny Mallon’s flat in Bathgate Street. Accordion and fiddle, diddley-dum-dee, jigs and reels, foot-tapping stuff.
Senga hooked an arm through his and said, ‘Dance, Eddie. Come on. Dance the sadness away.’
‘Dance?’
‘You heard me, laddie. Dance!’
It was weird. Inappropriate. Maybe it was the deranged way grief made some people act. Eddie found himself spun in a reckless circle by the big-boned woman whose red hair had fallen down the sides of her face. Round and round. She whooped. The ceiling rotated. Eddie felt dizzy. Senga threw her head back and stamped her feet as she moved and the floor shook. This was her house, her stage, her performance. She dominated all the space around her.
‘Dance dance dance, Eddie,’ she roared, and tears slid down her face, and she placed an arm above her head in the curved manner of a Highland Fling, and held it aloft while she swung Eddie ever faster. She was strong, fired with the crude energy of grief. He saw the black-and-white photographs rush past like scenery glimpsed from the window of a high-speed train. He had a fixed smile on his face, but he wanted to stop this dance, put an end to this surreal interlude.
Senga said, ‘Jackie loved to dance, he was so bloody light on his feet.’ It was what Flora had also said about Jackie. He must have foxtrotted and waltzed into their hearts.
And then Senga was suddenly out of breath and had to quit, and she slumped into an armchair, head back, mouth open. Eddie looked at the long red hair and the gold blouse and the lipstick that had faded and the tears that continued to roll down towards the corners of her mouth. ‘What I want to know is why some fucking bastard had to shoot him, for Christ’s sake? Why, Eddie? Why? Why did they have to take his life?’
Caskie was quick to comfort her.
Joyce stood at Eddie’s side. ‘You’re tired,’ she whispered.
He shrugged and nodded towards Senga. ‘I’m more worried about her.’
‘I’ll make sure she doesn’t take any sleepers on top of what she’s been drinking. I’ll help her up to bed, then we’ll leave.’
Joyce killed the music, and whispered in Senga’s ear. Senga rose from the chair, leaning on Joyce’s arm, and the two women walked together across the room.
At the door Senga looked at Caskie, then at Eddie.
‘Joyce says I have to sleep, gentlemen. I have to drift away … Land of Nod for me.’
‘Joyce is right,’ Caskie said.
Senga said, ‘Give me a kiss, Eddie.’
Eddie Mallon took a step forward and pressed his lips against Senga’s cheek. She gazed into his eyes, not quite meeting them because drink had skewed her line of vision. ‘We’ll talk soon, you and I. We’ve got some catching up to do. Goodnight.’ She blew a sad little kiss. ‘The pair of you.’
The door closed.
‘I think it’s time for me to push off,’ Caskie said.
Eddie said, ‘He was shot in his car.’
‘Yes.’
‘And no witnesses.’
‘Nobody’s come forward,’ Caskie said. ‘But this isn’t my case, Eddie. I’m not up to speed on it. If you want to know more about the investigation, Superintendent Tay’s the man to ask.’
‘I met him at the airport. He gives the impression he might not like questions.’ Eddie gazed at Caskie’s small white beard. It was tidy, well clipped. His eyebrows were perfect, no stray hairs. He had an easy smile. He was maybe fifty-four, – five, and in good shape.
‘I’m sure he’ll keep you posted if anything happens,’ Caskie said. ‘He’s sympathetic. Don’t let the veneer put you off.’
Eddie went on, his voice rising a little. He heard words echo in his head like gunshots in a tunnel. ‘Tay told me Jackie hadn’t been robbed. His wallet hadn’t been taken and he had money in his possession. But who knows what else he might have had in the car? Something in the glove compartment, say. Or in the trunk. Something Tay didn’t know about. So how can he rule out robbery? And then there’s the secondary mystery of the missing driver, Bones.’
‘He’ll show up, I’m sure. Probably he’s scared and imagines he’s going to be implicated, so he’s lying low, who knows?’ Caskie rolled his glass of sherry between the palms of his hands, then set it down unfinished. He checked his wristwatch. ‘I’m tired. It’s been a long one.’
Eddie wanted to quit talking, but he couldn’t. It was like jogging and not wanting to stop even if you were breathless, because the adrenalin rush was addictive. ‘Either Jackie was shot during an act of robbery, or he was killed for other reasons we don’t know about. If I was running this investigation and it turned out nothing obvious was stolen from him, then I’d dig deeper and ask myself what the hell he’d done that made somebody want to kill –’
‘But you’re not running the investigation, Eddie,’ Caskie said.
Eddie stopped, subsided, leaned against the wall. The hard truth of Caskie’s statement silenced him. He’d been flying, buzzing in on questions that weren’t his to ask. What the hell am I doing exactly? I’ve come all this way to bury my dad; his murder isn’t my business. Whoever had fired a bullet into Jackie Mallon’s face isn’t my concern. Tay and his team were on the job. Justice wou
ld get done, but not by you. Take it easy, for Christ’s sake. Slow down. But it was goddam hard to take the heat out of himself. This ain’t Manhattan, Eddie. Remember that.
He said, ‘I was getting carried away.’
Caskie said, ‘It’s understandable.’
Joyce came back into the room. ‘She’s out cold. I think we’ll go, Eddie. If she needs me later, she can phone me. I don’t think she’ll wake for hours.’
All three left the sitting room and stood for a moment in the hallway at the foot of the stairs; the awkward etiquette of leave-taking. Who goes first? Who says what?
Caskie reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket and took out a business card. He handed it to Eddie. ‘Here. If you need to get in touch while you’re in Glasgow … It’s been nice to see you again.’
‘The same for me,’ Eddie said. He tucked the card in a hip pocket of his jeans.
Caskie embraced Joyce. ‘Call me if you need me.’
‘I will, Chris.’
‘Help with the funeral arrangements, anything at all …’ Caskie raised a hand almost imperceptibly, and then he was gone, closing the front door with hardly a sound. Caskie had an undertaker’s diplomacy, Eddie thought, listening to the quiet click of the latch. His body vibrated curiously to the aftermath of the spinning dance Senga had forced him through.
The dance of death.
He remembered he hadn’t phoned Claire yet. He gazed up the stairway to the lamp lit on the landing. He touched the polished wood of the banister. He must have slid down that a thousand times when he thought Flora wasn’t looking. He had a faded memory of Jackie coming down the stairs towards him, bright red braces and a white shirt with the collar open.
The Bad Fire Page 7