The Bad Fire

by Campbell Armstrong

  ‘The man who would be king, eh?’ Caskie smiled. ‘It’s hard to imagine an officer abusing his power to such an extent.’

  ‘Sure. But it could happen, right?’

  ‘Is there some reason behind this little fantasy, Eddie? Or does it simply amuse you?’

  ‘Is it a fantasy, Chris?’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Come on, Chris. Give me a better answer than that.’

  Caskie pushed his cup aside and sighed, a long sound. ‘When did you first decide you disliked me, Eddie?’

  ‘You changed the subject, Chris. Didn’t enjoy the last one?’

  ‘I had a feeling it wasn’t going anywhere. Now it’s my turn to be curious.’

  ‘Fine,’ Eddie said. ‘Dislike you? Funny, I can’t decide if it’s simple dislike or a more complicated contempt.’

  ‘Contempt is strong. Where does it come from, Eddie? Do you despise me for being closer to your family than you? Is that the root of it? I knew your own father better than you ever did. Is that it, Eddie? I’m this stranger, this outsider who got to know your dad and your sister and you can’t cope with that.’

  ‘You wanted to sling Jackie’s ass in jail, Caskie.’

  ‘If I’d had the chance. Jackie knew that. He understood the rules. It didn’t stop us being close.’

  ‘The best of pals,’ Eddie said. ‘I doubt that. You didn’t even trust each other.’

  ‘We had a working arrangement. We were friends despite the obstacles. Which is more than you ever achieved.’

  ‘And that was my fault? I was taken away, for fuck’s sake. What chance did I have?’ Eddie gazed past Caskie to the far side of the room where one of the waitresses was watching him in the glazed manner of the daydreamer. His eye travelled beyond her and into a shadowy place. He could have shown Jackie his home in Queens. Toured him around Manhattan. Empire State Building. Staten Island Ferry. The whole works. He could have taken him to a soccer game. Jackie might have liked that, hotdogs, cold beer in waxy cups, the passion of the Hispanic fans. Lost ambitions. Such simple ones.

  Eddie pushed his chair back from the table. Dislike. Contempt. He wished he had the kind of dignity that didn’t allow him to yield so easily to these feelings. Claire would have said something like how we’re only human after all and that means weakness as well as strength, vanity as well as humility, but right now Eddie could only think of the fact that his mind was smoking and the smoke smelled of sulphur. Claire had a world of her own, where charity and understanding reigned.

  He got up from the table and looked down at Caskie. ‘Tell me, Chris, how long have you known Haggs?’

  ‘I believe I answered that question before,’ he said.

  ‘Why the fuck are you lying?’

  Caskie asked. ‘I don’t remember lying to you, Eddie. You asked if I knew the man, I told you I didn’t.’

  Eddie smiled. ‘You’re cool, Chris. You’re a fucking cucumber on ice.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse. Don’t forget your bag.’

  Eddie picked up the paper bag. Outside he blinked in the unrelenting sun of this pink and blue city. Tarmac shimmered. Starlings flocked above rooftops, a glossy black swarm. He looked this way and that, thinking how clumsily he’d cut the ribbon of polite pretence between himself and Caskie, then decided his destination.

  42

  Although he was superior in rank to Perlman, Sandy Scullion felt like a trumped-up impostor in the older man’s company. Lou Perlman, a legend in the Force, was a throwback to the old days, when DNA might have been the acronym for a savings bank, and electronic gizmos were primitive hand-held Asteroid games that came direct from Taiwan to the Barras market and lasted about forty-five seconds before going on the blink.

  The car in which the two men travelled moved along Moss Road on the south side of the city. Scullion drove because Perlman hated cars. They always broke down on him. On the right was the dark-brown Victorian façade of the Southern General Hospital. A couple of young nurses walked across the lawn in front of the hospital; in sunlight their white uniforms had a fluorescent look.

  Perlman watched the girls. He had a feeling he’d forgotten something he’d promised to do. It dogged him. ‘Some days I feel my age,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ Scullion eyed the rearview mirror. ‘Where do I turn?’

  ‘Left. Langlands Road.’

  Perlman coughed into his hand. His lungs hurt. He wished he could kick the nicotine habit. ‘Some mornings I get up and my throat’s scratchy and I need to pee like my bladder’s bursting and my bones ache and I think this is it, this is the day I’m writing the resignation note, and ballocks to it all.’

  ‘Retirement,’ Scullion said.

  ‘Aye. Downhill Drive,’ Perlman said. ‘I could sit in the park and give crumbs to birds. I could buy a wee dog, take it walks, wait patiently while it poops.’

  ‘You’ve got a couple of years in you,’ Scullion said.

  ‘Could you put a wee bit more enthusiasm into your voice when you say that, Sandy? I want to be convinced. What am I without my work? A hollow man. The walking dead. Take a left here.’

  Scullion turned the car into Kennedar Drive, a street of shabby tenements. Kids played on the pavement. A van with a punctured tyre listed at the kerb.

  ‘Number twelve,’ Perlman said.

  Scullion parked, pulled on the handbrake. ‘You lead,’ he said.

  ‘I know these buggers,’ Perlman said. ‘They try my patience something fierce.’

  ‘I’ll be a silent presence, just along for the ride.’

  They went inside the tenement. The close was dim and the air cool. They climbed to the second floor. Perlman held the banister rail, which was sticky – probably from some kid’s ice cream or sweetie. At least he hoped it was something as innocent as that. The city rubbed off on you, he thought, in bad ways and good. Live in it all your life, you know its corners and its angles, you can rattle off bus numbers and routes, all fifteen names of the underground stations in any order, you remember the streets where the trams used to run, those clattery old bone-rattlers that travelled in seeming defiance of Newtonian physics, you recall buildings long ago demolished, even the names of people who lived in them. He remembered the old Jewish families. The Sakols. The Finemans. The Jesners. Others. Take a couple of Jews and you’ve got a potential diaspora. Where had they gone? Where had all that piety gone? The respectable suburbs. Giffnock. Newton Mearns. Beyond.

  You and the city, he thought, you’re an old married couple conscious of each other’s faults, and forgiving of them at least some of the time, but irritable the rest. He coughed again. The city was in his lungs, the spoor of the place. He wondered if a city could kill you. Cause of death: Glasgow.

  He wiped his sticky hand on the side of his trousers. The brass plate on the door ahead of him read ELVIS PRESLEY & ANNIE LENNOX.

  ‘Pair of wits,’ Scullion said.

  ‘You’re half right.’ Perlman rang the bell. It played the first few bars of ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’

  A man’s voice came from the other side of the door. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Perlman. Your friendly cop.’

  ‘Aw, what the fuck is it now?’

  The sound of a chain sliding, a key turning, the door opening half an inch. Twiddie’s unsmiling face appeared in the slit.

  ‘We’re coming in,’ Perlman said. ‘Get the kettle on.’

  Twiddie, in black T-shirt and yellow briefs, moved back from the door and Perlman stepped in, followed by Scullion. A Harley-Davidson motorcycle, big and malignant, was propped against a wall, dripping oil on newspapers. Perlman had long ago ceased to be surprised by anything he came across in the homes of people. A Pekinese in a microwave, a chopped hand in a food processor, and on one memorable occasion an entire car, a Vauxhall Astra built from stolen parts, inside a third-floor flat. How to get the vehicle downstairs hadn’t been part of the scheme. Er, what do we do with the car now? Ooops.

  ‘I see w
e’ve caught you with your trousers off, Twiddie.’

  ‘I was sleeping,’ Twiddie said. He touched his swollen red nostril in a self-conscious way.

  Rita appeared in a doorway at the end of the hall. Her hair was in blue plastic curlers. Without make-up, her face resembled a blanched potato. She was dressed the reverse of Twiddie. She wore black panties and a yellow T-shirt.

  Perlman said, ‘Look at this, Sandy, a match of clothes and a match of love. It’s so adorable it just makes me want to take up embroidery. Little hearts on tiny cushions. Rita, you never looked more alluring.’

  ‘Piss off,’ Rita said.

  Twiddie said, ‘She’s not at her best before she’s had a cup of char.’ He glared at Scullion. ‘Friend of yours, Perlman?’

  ‘This is Detective-Inspector Scullion, Twiddie. He’s my boss. The way Haggs is your boss.’

  ‘Haggs, Haggs, I wish you’d drop that. I haven’t seen Haggs in a long time.’

  Perlman said, ‘I might look like a simpleton, Twiddie, but don’t be deceived. You’re never far away from Hot Rod. He snaps his fingers and you run. You’re the messenger boy. Phone calls, quick meetings in out-of-the-way places, I know how it works.’

  Twiddie waved a hand dismissively. ‘That’s shite.’

  Rita retreated into the bedroom and slammed the door. Twiddie wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a pair of jeans from the back of a chair and pulled them on.

  ‘How come you’re still working anyway, Perlman? How come you’ve not retired?’

  Perlman said, ‘The Force needs me to keep an eye on the likes of you and the Bride of Frankenstein,’ and he gestured with a thumb towards the bedroom door.

  Twiddie muttered something that might have been auld bastart, then stuck the plug of an electric kettle into a wall socket. The kitchen was a mess. Sinkload of dishes. Pizza boxes and red sauce stains and dead cigarettes filling an old milk carton, and rolling papers spread around. No sign of dope.

  Rita came into the kitchen now, wrapped in a red Chinese-style robe adorned with dragons. They breathed fire, Perlman noticed. Very appropriate. She was Arsonia, Goddess of Arson. She sat at the table and folded her arms and stared at him fiercely. ‘Can you not leave us in peace?’

  ‘That’s not in my job description, love,’ Perlman said.

  Rita glanced at Scullion. ‘Who’s this prat?’

  Twiddie said, ‘He’s Perlman’s boss.’

  Rita lit a cigarette, blew smoke at Perlman. ‘So what is it this time, Perlman?’

  ‘You know, Rita, I look at you and I wish I was thirty years younger,’ Perlman said. ‘Ah-har, shiver me timbers, Jim lad. My heart’s tripping the light fantastic. Feel it. Give me your hand –’

  ‘I don’t want to touch any part of you, Perlman. Just get to the point.’

  ‘That van,’ Perlman said.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, not again,’ Rita said. ‘The van this, the van that.’

  ‘Something nags me about that van,’ Perlman said. ‘You want to hear it?’

  ‘Not especially,’ Rita said. ‘But I’m going to anyway, I suppose.’

  ‘Right, so you might as well pin your lugs back, my dear, and listen close, while the Swami, the Great Perlman, speaks. The van, the mysterious van. What is it that bothers the Swami?’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ Twiddie said.

  ‘You better fucking believe there’s a point,’ Perlman said. He moved quickly and stepped towards Twiddie and slammed him against the wall. Twiddie looked surprised, neck stiff and face held back by Perlman’s forearm.

  ‘Police brutality,’ Rita said.

  ‘No, police brutality would be if I was to give Twiddie a right brutal kicking,’ Perlman said. ‘If I was to whack him bloody hard in the ballocks, say, and when he dropped to the floor I’d kick the shite out of him. Now that would be police brutality. Right, Inspector?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Scullion said, and smiled uneasily. He heard pages of a regulations book fly free from their binding.

  Perlman continued, ‘This is just to get your fucking attention, the pair of you. Just tell me who else was with you in the Transit the other night. That’s all I want to know.’ He stared at Twiddie through his one good eye. His unshaven face was set in belligerence; he had a street-fighter’s jaw. Twiddie struggled to free himself from the strength of Perlman’s forearm, but couldn’t.

  ‘Not bad, eh, Twiddie? Not bad for an old fart that should have been superannuated ten years ago. Who was with you in that fucking van?’

  Twiddie’s eyes popped. ‘We told you, we were watching –’

  Surreptitiously, Perlman kicked Twiddie hard on the shin. ‘A video, I know, I heard that one. Tell me another.’

  Twiddie groaned. Rita got up from the table. She appeared quite ready to launch herself at Perlman, but he had a way of glaring – even one-eyed – that made people hesitant about physical confrontation. It was the demonic look of a man who could promise you nightmares, and deliver them if you pushed him too hard.

  ‘Understand this, my wee pals, I’m not pussy-footing,’ he said. ‘Who else was in the fucking van?’

  ‘We don’t know about any bloody van,’ Rita said.

  Perlman released Twiddie now. Twiddie rubbed his neck. Perlman paced the floor, hands in the pockets of his brown trousers. He had a grease stain on his wide gold tie; some of the older officers at Force HQ claimed to remember that same mark from the mid-80s.

  ‘We’ve got brilliant new sciences these days,’ Perlman said. ‘We’ve got electron microscopes. We can test a single strand of hair and tell you the name, address and phone number of whose noodle it was attached to. Now this is way beyond my understanding, just as I’m sure it’s way beyond yours. No matter, it’s enough just to know that all this bright shiny new stuff actually works, which makes it harder for people to do things without leaving traces of themselves. A fleck of dandruff. Belly-button lint. These trifles are the gateways to whole new worlds … keeping all that in mind, if you can, I’ll ask again. Who else was with you in the van?’

  ‘I want my lawyer,’ Twiddie said. ‘I want Binks.’

  ‘You think that babyfaced piss-artist can help you, John? You think Mr Henry Binks, solicitor and bullshitter and drunk, can help you out? He wouldn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground, our Mr Binks. He’s probably having a champagne cocktail in the Rogano even as we speak.’

  ‘This is just bluff,’ Rita said.

  ‘Are you sure of that?’ Perlman asked.

  ‘Slurry I can smell a mile off. John, don’t you listen to anything he says. And don’t run to phone your bloody lawyer either. This old bastard,’ and she pointed a finger sharply at Perlman, ‘is blethering.’

  Perlman pulled her towards him, clutching a fistful of her Chinese robe. She stared at him. The eye-lock, the contest. She wasn’t yielding, nor was he. He saw in her eyes a lack of generosity and charity. Life was a sore struggle and she’d survived a loveless upbringing inside a decrepit rat-infested building in a world of cracked cups and broken porcelain sinks and outside toilets and all the hard crap a city conspired to throw in your path, and somewhere along the way she’d attached herself to Twiddie, minor thug, villain. It wasn’t for love she’d barnacled her world to Twiddie. It was their mutual interest in the arcana of violence that bonded them.

  Perlman felt a dip in his emotion, a leaking of energy, as if this brief insight into Rita’s world forced him to confront an unfamiliar sensation: pity, or something like it. Getting softer as the years roll, Lou. My sand isn’t packed quite so hard any more. It drifts through my fingers. I’ll be a bleeding heart next. God forbid, a man with a social conscience.

  He shook this mood off and zoomed back in on the ugly face that was so determined not to flinch from his look. But he’d lost eye contact. By the rules of this contest, he’d lost.

  He recovered quickly. ‘I forgot to mention. We’ve got blood samples from the back of the van.’

  ‘And this is supposed
to worry us?’ Rita asked. She yawned, covered it loosely with a hand.

  ‘To death,’ he said.

  Twiddie said, ‘Perlman, for God’s sake, we don’t know anything about this Transit. I swear it.’

  ‘Apart from the blood,’ Perlman said, and paused, and held the silence a beat. ‘We’ve got a wallet.’

  ‘Wallet? What wallet?’ Rita asked.

  ‘You tell me,’ Perlman said.

  ‘I can’t tell you a fucking thing,’ Rita said. ‘That’s my last word on the subject.’ She looked at Scullion. ‘Unless you have some kind of warrant, Inspector, could you and your senile sidekick please see yourself off the premises?’

  ‘Bones,’ Perlman said. ‘Matthew Bones. Name familiar to you?’

  Rita shrugged. Twiddie turned away, picked up the kettle, made tea. ‘Only from the newspaper,’ Twiddie said.

  Hand on chest, Perlman feigned cardiac arrest. ‘A newspaper? You actually read, Twiddie? Quick somebody. Pass me the digitalis.’

  ‘Excuse me if I don’t laugh,’ Twiddie said. ‘This guy Bones is missing, right? Something to do with that shooting.’

  Perlman said, ‘Missing is correct. The jackpot of pennies rattles down Twiddie’s chute.’

  ‘So he’s missing, who gives a fuck?’ Rita asked.

  ‘Why was he in the van you and Twiddie torched? I stand corrected: tried to torch.’

  Rita spoke to Scullion again. ‘Do you usually employ cops hard of hearing?’

  Perlman said, ‘Did I not mention it was Bones’s blood we found in the back of the van? Did I not tell you that even as we speak men are going through the van looking for fingerprints – which they’ll find. Yours and Twiddie’s. And those of Matty Bones. So suppose you spare us all the time and trouble involved, and tell us exactly what happened that night, and where Matty Bones might be found? Eh? What do you say?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’ Rita picked up a magazine and thumbed the pages. Skinny girls in lingerie flickered past. Gaunt ghosts with druggy expressions.

  Perlman thought: You don’t break down a wall like Rita’s with bluff and bluster. You don’t make a dent with threats. Magic microscopes and forensics and blood samples and all the rest of it – it was a bag of cold chips as far as she was concerned. She had an in-built alarm-system manufactured on the streets and so far it hadn’t issued a beep, and thus she felt secure. Somebody’s wallet in an old Transit, so what? Blood? Gimme a break. And fingerprints … well, Rita and Twiddie would’ve been wearing gloves. They might possess stunted IQs, but they weren’t suicidal. They weren’t going to be linked to that van. Perlman had known that coming here. He’d known he couldn’t con them into an incriminating statement, or menace them into giving up information loosely. No, this was something else, this was sifting the dross to see how it was constituted.