The Fire

by Robert White

  Rick grabbed his oldest and only friend by the arm.

  "Hey... Lauren didn't mean anything there. You do what you have to do, mate. Nothing is wasting here; we can manage." He looked me in the eye and sent me an obvious message. "Can't we, Lauren?"

  I nodded too vigorously. "Sure, of course we can, Des, you take as much time as you like, mate."

  He stood, instant sobriety being bad tidings' bedfellow.

  "I'm away," he said. "I'll call you when I know a wee bit more like...erm....sorry."

  And he was gone.

  Rick and I sat in stunned silence. Minutes passed before he pushed his bottle of water away. To my surprise he said, "Let's have a proper drink."

  I was still a little numb when Rick returned from the bar with two glasses of single malt whisky. I'd never seen him drink to excess; the odd beer maybe. This was a new one on me.

  I sipped the amber liquid and felt it trickle down my throat. The natural flush of warmth from the Dalwhinnie relaxed me. It was obvious Rick had something to get off his chest. I sat back in my seat and waited.

  Unusually for him, he'd stepped out into town without changing his clothes. We'd come straight from our newfound offices, and he sat in a plain white T with blue gloss paint splattered on the front. His Levi's were faded and torn and his boots had seen better days.

  The low level lighting in the bar seemed to accentuate the star-shaped scar on his cheek; the wound I had treated along with his scalded legs when we'd first met. There were traces of plaster dust in his hair that added to his already salt and pepper locks.

  I couldn't recall ever seeing him look so handsome.

  He spun his tumbler around on the table between thumb and forefinger; examining it closely as if looking into a crystal ball to see the future. As it turned out, tonight it was a look deep into the past.

  "Anne Margaret Mahoney," he said to the glass. "Childhood sweethearts they were, her and Des; a good Catholic girl from a good Catholic family. It was on the cards they would marry, long before the little bugger joined the army."

  Rick looked up and into my eyes. I thought I may drown.

  "They were engaged at sixteen, and had been together a couple of years then; but when Des announced he was joining up, it caused a big rift in the Cogan and Mahoney families."

  "Why?" I asked.

  Rick gave me a look that told me I was stupid at best.

  "How many Catholics do you think fight for the British Army against the PIRA? See... the part of Glasgow Des is from, ain't too far removed from Belfast. Most Glasgow Catholics can trace their families back to Ireland. And, I can tell you this, the sectarianism is no different from what you'd find over the water either."

  "Ah, I see what you mean."

  Rick knocked back his whisky and waved the empty glass at the barman, who nodded his acceptance of the order.

  "Anyway, as I said, it caused all kinds of shit but they still married at a tender age and everything seemed fine between them, even if Anne's parents were not too keen.

  It was bad enough she was marrying a soldier, but to see her move to England was a bitter blow for them."

  Rick pushed his finger across the table.

  "And England was only the first step. The military move you around like chess pieces on a board. Army wives get a raw deal, but Anne Margaret seemed to settle into wherever Des was posted. She did her best to make a home no matter what kind of shithole they were sent to..."

  Two more malts arrived.

  "...But it was after Des joined the Regiment that things started to go wrong. He...we...were away more than at home. Contact was often difficult if not impossible and Anne was desperate for a baby. One thing though...money was not an issue, Des was much better off. Anne no longer had to live in army housing and seemed happy in their Hereford home with her friends around her. That said, Des was keen to buy the cottage by Loch Lomond and, of course, they also bought Hillside Cottage as a rental property for holidaymakers, the place we went to when I was convalescing, you know?"

  I finished my glass and took hold of the refill. My head was swimming a little and I was unsure if it was the drink or the company.

  "Yes, how could I forget? It was such a beautiful place."

  "Well, as it happened, Anne was a dab hand with the DIY. She discovered she had a great eye for detail and spent more and more time at Hillside, finding the seclusion of the Loch cottage difficult."

  I nodded, taking everything in. "The place was stunning, but being away from your husband isn't healthy."

  Rick took another large gulp of his drink.

  "You said it...Turned out she also had an eye for the gardener, a guy by the name of Donald. She...she began an affair."

  The drink was definitely getting to me and I tried my best Scottish accent. "Ah...as in 'Donald where's yer troosers'."

  I swear Rick smiled too.

  "Not funny, but yes. Des was heartbroken. Anne filed for divorce."

  "And?"

  "Des buried his head in the sand, and gave it the big 'Catholics don't get divorced' thing."

  "And?"

  "And Anne took him to the cleaners."

  "You mean he let her."

  "This is Des we're talking about here, of course he let her. This guy is one of the toughest, meanest sons of a bitch you would ever meet...but when it came to Anne Margaret...he was a pussycat. Six weeks after the divorce was final, she married Donald."

  I was definitely drunk and close to making a fool of myself....again. I was determined not to make another failed pass at Mr. Fuller. Somewhere I found some resolve.

  "I'm going to walk to Piccadilly and get a cab," I slurred.

  Rick hesitated for a moment. Stupidly, I waited for him to offer to take me home. I didn't have to wait long.

  "Okay, come on then, I'll walk you, we've had enough bad news for one night. I don't want you getting turned over for your briefcase on the way."

  Strolling along Thomas Street and feeling quite tipsy, we talked about anything but Des and divorce. As we approached the junction with Oldham Street and Dale Street, my hackles began to rise.

  I put my arm around Rick and looked into his face; to anyone watching we were two lovers walking home. "That motorcycle that just passed us; that's his second time around the block."

  Picking up our pace slightly, we continued along Dale Street and headed for Piccadilly station. We passed Lever Street; and I clocked a battered Golf GTI parked on the left three cars down, half hidden behind an old Bedford van; two up, lights off.

  Rick saw it too.

  "It's a team, either cops or E4."

  "E4?"

  "Government surveillance crew; they look at anyone and everyone from terrorists to people that may be of interest to the Firm."

  I was doing my best to clear my head.

  "Why us? The Firm know where we are, we haven't been hiding out in the middle of nowhere."

  A black cab was approaching, its yellow light illuminated on the roof. Rick stuck out an arm.

  "The cops were looking at me months ago, before the Gibraltar job, I was about to do one abroad, keep my head down for a while. Maybe they found me again...Whoever it is...Let's test their resolve, shall we?"

  Rick barrelled onto the back of the cab, dragging me by the hand.

  The instant we were inside, the Golf pulled out from Lever Street and settled in behind.

  Rick produced two twenties from his wallet and stuck them through the glass divide.

  "Hey, pal, forty quid here if you can lose this dickhead behind us."

  The cab driver looked worried.

  "I'm not into anything dodgy, mate. I gotta think about me licence."

  Rick pulled another couple of twenties from his pocket and waved them at the cabbie. "Look," he said sharply. "The car behind is a private dick, paid for by my missus, she's spying on us; know what I'm sayin'? The bitch wants my balls for breakfast... just do your best, eh?"

  The driver looked at the notes, snatched them from
Rick's hand and hit the gas.

  We lurched forward and even though our cab was slower than the Golf behind, the cabbie was sharp and clever with his manoeuvres.

  The surveillance team would have at least three vehicles plus the motorbike; they would complement their mobile capability with at least a couple of guys on foot. We were probably pinged by one of the foot-patrols when we left Odd Bar. They would have directed the Golf where to park. The motorcycle would relay our progress and all the various patrols could swap and change in order to remain covert. I knew exactly how it worked; I'd just spent eight grand on the course.

  The whole idea of surveillance is to follow your target unnoticed. This lot were failing miserably.

  Our cab accelerated and swung right into Portland Street. The traffic was at a near standstill, but our driver was undeterred and drove down the centre of the road to blaring horns and shaking fists. The Golf didn't follow but, almost instantly, we were tagged by the motorcyclist. We powered past the Britannia Hotel and took a sharp right toward China Town. We flew past the famous Chinese archway and swung left into George Street.

  The bike was still with us, but the cabbie spun his car a full three-sixty and set off back the way we'd come, the wrong way down the one way street. I started to fumble for my seatbelt as the cab driver seemed to warm to his task.

  "My missus took me for fuckin' everything," he shouted over his shoulder. "Fuckin' cow even wants some of me earnings from me cab! She fucked off with this other mush...an' now she wants me to fuckin' pay for him!"

  I suddenly sussed why he'd become so keen to outrun our 'private dick'.

  The bike didn't follow, he was probably screaming into his comms to direct the Golf in our general direction.

  Before we knew it, our cab was on Charlotte Street and heading toward The Village.

  Rick leaned forward. "Drop us at the coach station, pal, well done, I owe you a pint!"

  The driver screeched to a halt and we sprinted into the large grey concrete structure.

  Two coaches were dropping passengers, and a veritable mix of young and old were wandering about the concourse, consulting maps and chomping on fast food from the nearby vendors. Rick was dragging me along by the hand until we reached a fire exit along the back wall. He kicked the door open and smashed the glass in the alarm with his elbow.

  Sirens filled the station. People instantly ran about like headless chickens. The small number of staff on duty attempted to calm the passengers and usher them toward the large open area to the front of the building.

  Seconds later we were out into the street, lost in the panicking crowd. Running hard, we stayed on Bloom Street until we hit the junction with Sackville where we dropped our pace to a stroll. I looked around us and the street was empty. Rick pushed open the door to Baa Bar.

  He was the ultimate in cool.

  "Drink?" he said.

  Des Cogan's Story:

  Buying a first class ticket was not my best idea. I'd figured it would be quieter than the main train for the two and a half hour ride to Glasgow; somewhere to get my head together. As it turned out, the three carriages were full of a big group of lads on a stag do. They'd started early; the kind of thing squaddies used to do when they got some leave.

  I'd been frowned upon many a time by a ticket collector as I guzzled cans of Guinness at six in the morning on my way home.

  Time was precious then...it always was really, I just didn't appreciate it.

  I watched the young lads with something approaching contempt. How dared they flaunt their good fortune, without a care in the world, when my life had gone to shit?

  As we pulled away from Piccadilly, my disdain dissolved into aching sadness and their raucous laughter faded along with the clatter of the train. My heart was broken and I heard nothing.

  At just after seven in the morning, the dawn had yet to break and the train cut through the Lancashire countryside in pitch darkness. I studied my reflection in the window and touched the dark circles that had appeared under my eyes overnight.

  What in God's name was I going to say to my wife? I mean, my ex-wife.

  What was there left to say? Sorry? That wouldn't fuckin' cut it, eh? Sorry that you're going to die before your forty-sixth birthday? Sorry we never had any kids? Sorry I messed up?

  I was so fuckin' angry. Angry that after all this time, I still felt a good old dose of Catholic guilt. Angry with myself for allowing her to simply pick up the phone, secure in the knowledge that I'd come running as I always had; but most of all, angry because I was about to lose her.... forever.

  The train rocked rhythmically and I closed my eyes. Where had the time gone? Why had we wasted so much of it?

  I was a snotty-nosed kid when I met her.

  I went to St John's Infant School, smack bang in the middle of the Gorbals.

  If you've never heard of it, you're lucky.

  Slum housing is never pretty, but the place I called home, close to the centre of Glasgow was a complete shithole.

  I went on to serve my country all over the world, but let me tell you, some of the African mud huts I've slept in were better equipped than our house.

  My first 'educational facility' was built by the Glasgow School Board in 1905. It became known as the 'Truant School' and provided a few months of residential education for a hundred and sixty of the most persistent truants in the area. Even though I lived just yards from the place, this included my good self. It was a prison in everything but name. The idea was that, as you couldn't get out, you would get used to attending school and become a model of Scottish society.

  The nuns who ran the place gave us lessons in subjects such as writing and arithmetic, and twice a week Father Jonathan would visit, and give us practical instruction in skills like carpentry and gardening. Being one of seven, I was used to sharing a bed, never mind a room, so being a 'resident' was not so bad, especially as the 'school' had hot running water, something we didn't have at home. I did miss my mum's cooking though, and the great craic with my brothers.

  We were loved, all seven of us boys, and my parents did their best. Looking back, I suppose I was a bit of a tearaway and a worry to them back then.

  My family lived in the tenements on Norfolk Street but by the time I was in my teens the rotting buildings were being swept away in a tide of rebuilding to be replaced by modern tower blocks, the answer to all our working class dreams, eh?.

  Everyone was fuckin' delighted, except my dad, who refused to move to the high-rise accommodation. By the winter of 1974 we were one of the few families remaining in the cold, damp, cramped housing that remained.

  Stubborn bastard.

  I'd had my fourteenth birthday that year. Just one school term was left before I was supposed to join my older brothers in the adult world of the Glasgow shipyards.

  St John's, the place that had once been my prison, had been extended and refurbished and had become my Secondary Modern school.

  It was home to the toughest and poorest kids in Glasgow. Having so many older brothers, I'd been well protected from harm until my fourth year. Unfortunately, my siblings had all left and were working their bollocks off at Camel Laird.

  I was very much alone.

  Tam McCullach was the hardest boy in my school, and for reasons that I no longer recall, I'd pissed him off.

  To explain the difference between Tam and other boys in my year would be difficult. Just to say, he had a beard, where we mere mortals were hoping to discover bum fluff in the mirror.

  "I'm gonna kick your fuckin' head in," he announced to virtually all the school as I shook uncontrollably in what was laughingly called the playground.

  Thankfully, nobody actually had a fight in the concrete hole in the ground that was supposed to pass for a leisure area at St John's. The nuns, and in particular, Sister O'Shea, watched this particular shit tip like a hawk. Any behaviour she considered to be 'unacceptable' was punished by lashing you about the thighs with a rounder's bat. As the old bird was a good eight
een stone, she was easily capable of bringing the wooden implement to bear with the velocity of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

  You did not fuck with the Sister.

  No, Tam demanded that his revenge, for whatever misdemeanour I had committed, be avenged on the rubble-strewn spare ground close to my home on Norfolk Street where the slums once stood.

  I remember I spent the whole afternoon, sitting in fuckin' triple History, petrified of what Tam was about to do to me. I went through all the possible scenarios in my mind's eye thousands of times. Each time, the outcome became more and more terrifying.

  He was going to kill me. I just knew it. That... or even worse, I would lose my bottle and not show up, therefore confirming what the whole school already knew...that I was a soft bastard and scared of Tam.

  The fact that every other boy in the place was terrified of the Neanderthal had nothing to do with it. They were so delighted that it wasn't them that he'd picked on that they instantly forgot what a twat he was.

  Oh no....to a man, they were looking forward to my demise with an unhealthy Scottish relish.

  Later in life, I learned that the actual event that is the source of your fear is rarely as bad as anything the human mind conjures up. Worrying has always been a pointless exercise; but at fourteen years old, faced with almost certain death, walking back to my tenement that day... I was shitting it.

  I had a key for the back door on a piece of string around my neck. I needed this, as three days a week, my mum worked as a cleaner at some big posh offices in Glasgow centre till five o clock.

  My eldest brother was home, but worked nights and would be asleep till supper time. My usual routine was to let myself in and quietly start some chores, careful not to disturb my brother. Nothing major, my mum was queen of her kitchen, but I was expected to peel a few potatoes and bring in any washing left out on the line to dry, that sort of thing.

  Being close to a nervous breakdown, I couldn't bring myself to start any of my usual tasks. I recall I was shaking so much I'd probably have done myself an injury with the potato peeler.