The Bad Fire

by Campbell Armstrong

  He saw McWhinnie at the bottom of the stairs, but no sign of Gurk. Maybe Gurk had been devoured by the city, disappeared, one of those posted missing in the mystery that was contemporary life. McWhinnie looked up, caught Eddie’s eye, motioned towards the street with his hand. Did McWhinnie’s gesture mean he still had Gurk in his sight? Eddie kept descending through the scrum until he reached the bottom of the stairs. He felt he’d been forced through a sieve. I’ll have a portion of mashed Eddie, please.

  A rectangle of sunlight ahead, a street, traffic, flocks of people entering the station or escaping it. Was there no end to the number of bodies? McWhinnie was outside now, and so was Gurk. From where Eddie stood it appeared McWhinnie had caught up with Gurk and grabbed his arm, and Gurk was arguing, trying to free himself. This altercation was observed by Eddie in an intermittent way, as if he were inside a cinema where the patrons in front of him kept getting to their feet and obscuring the view. Now you see McWhinnie, next second he’s vanished. And Gurk was going in and out of the frame too –

  Then there was one of those moments when your heart feels like glass that has suddenly developed a flaw, and you know something has gone badly wrong, something beyond normal commuting-hour activity has happened, something so extraordinary and unexpected that nobody knows how to react. There’s a clearing in the crowd, a pocket of quite unnatural space, and people are hurrying back from the epicentre of the event, ground zero, and somebody shouts, somebody else screams, and Eddie finds himself rushing forward, stomach tumbling, knowing that whatever has taken place here isn’t a happy occurrence, and before he realizes it he’s reached the clearing and he sees McWhinnie lying on his side, his white shirt stained with blood, and more blood on the grey pavement, a bright pool reflecting the sun, so much blood you can’t tell where it’s coming from, and then Eddie is on his knees beside McWhinnie, who’s dead, dead beyond dispute, dead as a body that might have fallen from a high ledge or a passing plane. Dead as McQueen, dead as the jumper in Manhattan.

  McWhinnie’s eyes are open. His mouth.

  Eddie stands up, just as a woman with a pale shocked look points a finger without speaking, but Eddie knows she’s indicating the direction the gunman took, and he turns and moves quickly and although his legs feel disconnected from his body he runs as if the woman’s finger was a starter’s pistol whose explosion he alone in all the world has heard. Renfield Street, through traffic, then crossing St Vincent Street against the lights, aware of buses and taxicabs and the sheen of sunstruck cars, but then he doesn’t know where to go next – up St Vincent or down?

  He stops moving, leans against the wall of a building, gasping, head down, a thin thread of saliva hanging from his open mouth, all his pulses raging. I have one life to live, McWhinnie had said.

  Short life, Eddie thinks. Oh, you sad bastard, Charlie.

  His back to the wall, he hunkered down, arms dangling uselessly over his knees. He didn’t move from this position for a long time. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know how far he’d come from Central Station. A passer-by in a business suit said, ‘Clean yourself up and find a job, for heaven’s sake, have some pride in yourself, man,’ and dropped a pound coin between Eddie’s feet. Eddie said thanks but the man had already vanished round a corner.

  Gone.

  And Gurk had gone too. Into the ever more narrow arteries of the city, side streets, alleys, lanes, passageways too tight for any car to travel, places to which Eddie had no access.

  46

  Haggs had never liked the Jew, who brought to life a nascent anti-Semitism in him. Haggs rarely ran into Jews and generally had no feelings about them one way or another – but Perlman, this guy in need of a shave and a haircut and a complete sartorial overhaul, stirred up some deep resentments Haggs had acquired by chance on his way through life. Haggs believed, on the basis of no experience, that Jews were pushy, acquisitive, clannish, secretive, and loved to control great flows of cash.

  This fucker Perlman clearly wasn’t into the cash aspect, but he fell right into the pushy category. The way he blew cigarette smoke straight into Haggs’s face, for instance, and the aggressive lock of his jaw, and how he flaunted his disgusting soiled tie, which anyone with any taste would have hidden inside the jacket – these things weren’t designed to endear Perlman to you. What also troubled Haggs was the fact that Perlman had strutted into the members-only room in the clubhouse without a member’s approval, and that was downright bad manners, like pishing on the floor.

  Perlman said, ‘Posh place. What does membership run you?’

  ‘If you have to ask, you’re not membership potential,’ Haggs said.

  ‘Relax, Haggs. I wouldn’t join any club that accepted you,’ Perlman said. ‘So don’t worry your arse about me filling in an application. Golf gets on my tits. There’s something depressing about grown men hitting a wee ball for miles and chasing after it in clown-coloured clothes. I don’t know about you, Haggs, but I sense retarded development and a Freudian thing.’

  Haggs smiled and secretly longed to land a fist in the centre of Perlman’s grizzled chops. ‘You’ve got some gall to talk about clothes, Perlman.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot of gall, Roddy, old son. Keeps me young and spry. As for my clothing, I don’t give a shite. I’m a cop. I’m not on some bloody catwalk. In fact, I’m proud – in a contrary way – of my total lack of nous in the world of couture. I hope my appearance here is embarrassing the crap out of you.’

  Haggs was uneasy. Of course he didn’t want to be seen with Lou Perlman. He looked round the dark-panelled room, glanced at the roll of honour on which were gold-painted the achievements of past members, the windows that overlooked the first tee, a stand of pine, a stretch of glassy water in the distance. At polished circular tables members with prosperously ruddy faces and rings of chub under their polo shirts drank expensive single malts and smoked fat Cuban jobs and laughed at crude jokes they couldn’t have shared with their wives.

  ‘It’s a man’s world in here, right enough,’ Perlman said. ‘Dead butch. You can just smell the pong of rich leather polish and the Old Spice aftershave and a tiny wee hint of sweaty groin that’s been talcumed. Very nice. You’ve come up in the world, eh? You’re a star, Haggs.’

  ‘I played my cards right,’ Haggs said.

  ‘Aye, but it was always your deck,’ Perlman remarked.

  ‘Control is power, Perlman.’ Haggs lit a cigar which he poked at Perlman, who fingered his eyepatch. ‘I come here for a quiet time and then you turn up looking like a lost dog, darkening my doorstep. What do you want anyway?’

  ‘I like the way you carry all this off,’ Perlman said. ‘This swanky place. The clothes you’re wearing. What do you call those trousers – plus fours?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And those fine red and blue diamond socks. Magic.’

  ‘Get to the point, Perlman. What do you want?’

  ‘Information.’

  Haggs said, ‘Information?’

  Perlman scanned the room. ‘I wonder what the good people in here would think of your association with John Twiddie and Rita whatserface, both lowly denizens of Govan, both incurably violent sociopaths. What would they say if they knew you consorted with scumbags like that? Would you be blackballed, Roddy? Would they sling your arse out on to the street, eh? Off you go, you fucking impostor, and no refunds. Oh the shame, oh the scandal. Haggs expelled for fraternizing with nasty bastards.’

  ‘Twiddie and Rita,’ Haggs said and shrugged. ‘I can’t say I’m intimate with them, Perlman. They passed in and out of my world once or twice. It’s not as if I’d have them at my house. I wouldn’t sit down to dinner with them.’

  ‘They wouldn’t know what fork to use, would they,’ Perlman said. ‘They’d think the fish knife was for the butter. Rita would stub out her fags in the left-over mashed potato. Oh, it’s a scary picture. When did you last see this awesome pair?’

  ‘Who remembers?’ Haggs said.

  ‘Try, Rod
dy. Try for me.’

  ‘I’m drawing blanks,’ Haggs said.

  Perlman said, ‘What if I was to knock this table over and this nice Rennie Mackintosh lamp with it? What if I was to spill your drink in your lap? What if I pretended to vomit on these lovely waxy floorboards, I mean, give it the full boke choke right out of my gullet, you know what I mean? Wouldn’t that be a humiliation for you, Roddy?’

  ‘You can dance on the fucking table for all I care.’

  ‘You wouldn’t blink?’

  Haggs shook his head. ‘Neither eyelid would move.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t be embarrassed?’

  ‘You can’t pressure me, Perlman. You ought to know better.’

  ‘You want to test me, Roddy? I’ll go down on my knees and make puking sounds. Members will show grave alarm. Disgust will be evident. You’re judged by the company you keep in the rarefied atmosphere of an expensive boys’ club. It’s no bloody skin off my back to be seen rolling on the floor. I don’t give a fig, old son. Ready?’ Perlman clutched his stomach and made a sound of discomfort. It was barely audible, but the threat was there. ‘After I’ve rolled on the floor and made rude gurgling noises and farted, I’ll throw this ashtray through the mirror behind the bar where all the single malts are lined up like smart wee soldiers. Glasgow Policeman Loses Control At Exclusive Golf Club. Sound good to you, Roddy?’

  ‘Fuck you, Perlman.’

  ‘I hear that refrain a lot.’

  ‘Twiddie and Rita, when did I last see them – that’s all you want to know?’

  Perlman lit another cigarette. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘A week ago.’

  ‘In what circumstances?’

  ‘Passing on West Nile Street. We exchanged quick chat about the weather. I went my way. They went theirs. I wish I had more, Perlman. I wish I could bring sunshine into your life. But that’s it.’

  Perlman sucked smoke. Haggs was a good liar. He didn’t have a giveaway of any kind. He lied barefaced. Probably because he believed what he was saying. He invented alternative realities and lived inside them. ‘I was hoping for more, Roddy. Truly. Here’s the thing. They set fire to a van, a Transit, but they’re such rank fucking dildoes they didn’t exactly light up the sky with their effort. I have a witness, a fellow that saw Twiddie and Rita run from the scene of their incendiary flop.’

  ‘Stop right there,’ Haggs said. ‘You think this interests me? A pair of morons try to burn a van – come on, Perlman. Tell me a better story.’

  ‘This one picks up,’ Perlman said. ‘In the back of the van is a wallet.’

  Haggs had the sense of travelling in a small boat towards rough waters. ‘A wallet?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The property of Matty Bones.’

  Wallet, Haggs thought. Bones. The two words echoed in his brain like coconut shells struck together.

  Oversight. Big time. The ship was drifting towards rocks and the lighthouse wasn’t working. Haggs said, ‘So what?’

  ‘So how did Bones’s wallet get in the back of this van, together with bloodstains that are precisely Matty Bones’s type?’

  I could kill, Haggs thought. ‘I’m not exactly Twiddie’s keeper, Perlman. How the hell would I know what he and that deranged crumpet of his get up to? I move in another world altogether.’

  Perlman looked round the room and remarked, ‘And very nice it is too.’

  ‘I wish you luck, Perlman, I really do. But as for a burning van and Bones’s wallet, listen, you’ve come to the wrong place if you’re looking for alms.’

  ‘I had my hand held out and I was expecting you to cross it with the silver of information,’ Perlman said. ‘Daft of me. I live in great expectation, Roddy. I always believe that behind every closed door lies the dark truth. And in every burning Transit van is the clue you don’t expect. Funny old world.’

  ‘Funny’s right,’ Haggs said. Note to self, he thought: stay calm in adversity. Don’t let it show.

  ‘The van was stolen in Renfrew three nights ago, matter of interest. Were you in Renfrew by any chance?’

  ‘Give me a break, Perlman. Do I look like I’d steal a Transit van?’

  ‘Maybe you do,’ Perlman said, and gazed in the direction of the trees, the lake, light from the sun spreading across still water. A golf ball was flying through space, insignificant against the vast blue of the world. It came down like a shotgunned bird in the dead centre of the lake. Plop.

  ‘People pay to play golf.’ Perlman shook his head. ‘Downright amazing.’

  ‘Are you done with me?’

  ‘Aye,’ Perlman said. ‘For the time being.’

  ‘Call me first next time,’ Haggs said. ‘If there’s a next time.’

  ‘But you’re such a hard man to reach, old son.’

  ‘If at first you don’t succeed.’

  ‘How does the rest of that go, Roddy?’

  Haggs clapped a hand against Perlman’s shoulder. ‘You’re a smart arse, Lou. But I like you anyway.’

  ‘The admiration is mutual, Roddy.’

  ‘I never doubted it,’ Haggs said.

  ‘Remember, Roddy. I’ve got my eye on you. The good one. I’m this close to nailing you for something.’

  Perlman walked towards the exit. As he pushed open the glass door and stepped outside, his cellphone rang in his pocket and he felt the closing door slap lightly against his back.

  He spoke into the handset. The caller was Sandy Scullion, who said, ‘Central Station, Lou. Now. It’s bad.’

  47

  In his room at the dosshouse in Duke Street, Tommy Gurk stood at the sink and plugged an electric razor into the wall-socket and, concentrating on his reflection in the mirror, ran the razor across his skull. His dreadlocks dropped like newborn minks into the sink. He thought of the young geezer at the railway station. I want to have a word, you don’t mind. I was out of the Zone, Gurk thought. I wasn’t in a place of peace. I wasn’t in the garden. Where was calm? More locks fell into the sink.

  Take your hand off me, chief.

  A word, won’t take a minute. You have some ID?

  Never carry any. Don’t need it. Free country, ennit? You a copper?

  Could I take a wee peek inside the briefcase?

  What’s in this briefcase is private, mate. For mine eyes only.

  I’d like to just check that, sir.

  You’re not listening to me, are you, copper?

  Zzzzzz. Tommy Gurk switched off the razor and leaned forward over the sink until his face touched the mirror. He put his hands into the pile of dreadlocks that lay nestled in old brown porcelain. Strip the identity down. Change. You can’t go around this city looking the way you did. You can’t do what you’ve come to do unless you alter your appearance. He pulled his lower eyelids down. Underneath, the pink tissue was pale and looked unhealthy.

  He stepped back from the mirror. There. Bald now. Shaved to the skin. He gathered the thick lanks of cut hair and put them in a wastebasket, then ran water into the sink until all trace of stray hair was gone. The room smelled of old cigarettes and piss and disinfectant and the stale flesh of all those men and women who’d come and gone. A dosshouse. In the lobby downstairs he’d paid his money at the desk and the clerk in the cage hadn’t even looked at him and the people who sat in beaten-up leather chairs paid him scant attention, they just shuffled newspapers or played draughts or snoozed and twitched in their wino dreams. He’d felt invisible. That was what he wanted.

  He remembered, saw it clearly, how the gun came out of the briefcase.

  Wait a minute, think, put away that weapon, sir.

  All the faces in the crowd at the railway station had receded like people suddenly diminishing in size, the sky pressing down, the planet wobbling on its course through space, all topsy-turvy.

  Just give it to me.

  You want it, you got it, china.

  The explosion jarred his hand but he didn’t have time to feel the kick because he’d stuffe
d the gun back in the briefcase and then he’d run, he’d fled down side streets, this way and that, lost, not caring, needing to be beyond reach and recognition, then he’d found an underground station in Buchanan Street and gone down the escalator to the platform and boarded a train that carried him into the sweet anonymity of a black tunnel, and he’d come up into brassy sunlight in another part of the city and bought the razor in a second-hand shop and boarded a double-decker bus and after he disembarked he walked a few blocks until he found this dump, this great drab Victorian building where rooms were cheap and the clientele cheaper.

  Catch your breath. Find the place. Enter the Zone.

  He ran a hand over his hairless head. He felt bumps in his skull, and tiny crevices his dreadlocks had hidden. He couldn’t find the calm. He was a long way off and his compass fucked. He was tuned to static. He thought, I’ll phone Kaminsky, I’ll tell him what happened, unforeseen circumstances – but Kaminsky never wanted to know about failure. The word wasn’t in his vocabulary.

  Down in the street an ambulance raced and screamed, an auditory explosion, how could you reach out for tranquillity in such a place? He had a flash of Tibet, the placid shadows of the monastery, monks in saffron robes, the gong that echoed in the arched passageway, wind-chimes, unflavoured cooked rice in his mouth. He’d go back to that if he could. Like a fucking shot.

  He emptied the briefcase on the bed. The gun. The toothbrush and tube of tea-tree toothpaste he always carried in the event he couldn’t get back to wherever home base might be. Healthy gums, very important. A disposable razor. A small phial of Total Shaving Solution. A bar of hemp soap in its original box. That was all.

  The ambulance faded but now there were police cars and sirens and all hell. The city was a cauldron of jarring noises. He had to get the whole job done successfully and go back to Largs and collect his gear from the hotel – if that was possible, if the place was safe – and then head south, maybe by bus, he’d decide later. He walked to the window and pulled the net curtain back a little way and his fingers penetrated the dry moth-eaten material. He looked into the street and thought how a simple business deal – let’s shake hands on it, Mr Mallon, or can I call you Jackie? – could go so easily to ruin.