6

Captain Zeke ‘Marvel’ Stock, Eddie’s superior, was so big and wide that some of the men in his command referred to him as the Eclipse. He weighed an imposing three hundred pounds plus, much of it solid muscle. Eddie sometimes thought of the captain as an African tribal chief, a man you expected to arrive at a crime scene held aloft by a congregation of bearers.

Presently, Marvel was motionless under a traffic signal, and the red stop light gave the impression that his face was smeared with the bloody innards of a goat sacrificed in his honour moments before.

Eddie gazed at the dead man in an expensive overcoat who lay face-down in the middle of the street.

Marvel twisted his huge neck and scanned the grey edifice of a twelve-storey office building. ‘A jumper,’ he said.

‘He’s sidewalk salsa all right,’ Bobby Figaro said. Figaro was Marvel’s right-hand, yes-man and all-round gofer.

‘Anyone got his name?’ Marvel asked.

Figaro had it, of course. Figaro always had the scoop. ‘John Boscoe Bentley, an address on East 32nd. According to what was in his wallet, he worked down on Wall Street for a brokerage firm called Something Somebody and Something Else Incorporated. I gather from a preliminary inquiry – to wit, a phone call to the company CEO – he was something of a player. How he came to be on the ledge of this particular building,’ and Figaro shrugged.

‘Coulda been pushed,’ Marvel said.

‘All possibilities will be explored, Captain,’ said Figaro, with his ever-ready halogen-bright smile.

Detectives and uniforms were already inside the building, knocking on doors, asking questions; because it was only seven a.m., the building was largely unoccupied save for custodians and a cleaning crew, also a few lonesome workaholics, some of them demented guys who’d been in the place all night trying to balance ledgers or make sense out of spreadsheets.

Mallon stared at the corpse and wondered about a life terminated this way – whether he jumped or was pushed, it was a hell of a place for a guy to die; the hard pavement of a city street. He thought of his father and realized how few details he had about the old man’s death. Was he gunned down in the street? At home? Were there witnesses? What calibre weapon? The questions buzzed him like gnats.

He watched Marvel yawn. It was an awesome sight; the mouth opened like a giant oyster about to yield a pearl. Gold fillings flashed in his mouth, which became one vast maw. ‘I need coffee,’ Marvel said. ‘Somebody be good enough to get the captain a shot of strong java, huh?’

‘There’s a joint round the corner,’ Figaro said. ‘I’ll go.’

Figaro disappeared. Brown-nose Figaro. Marvel looked at Eddie Mallon.

‘Say, this ain’t your shift, is it, Mallon?’ Marvel said. ‘Come to that, it ain’t my shift either. So why have I dragged my sorry ass downtown at this time of day, you ask? Lemme tell you. Because I ain’t been home, Eddie. I been struggling with paperwork. I been wrestling figures. Budgets. City Hall needs numbers to crunch.’

‘Way over my head,’ Eddie said.

‘Way over mine too.’ The captain lit a small brown-papered cigarette and stared at the corpse. ‘My brain feels like a punchbag. I just stepped out for some air and take a look at this body we got here. What brings you out?’

‘I need to talk with you,’ Eddie said. ‘I want some leave.’

‘You got vacation time coming to you?’

‘This would be leave of absence. Family reasons.’

‘Somebody sick?’

Mallon saw lights go on in the upper floors of the building. He imagined the dead man, John Boscoe Bentley, falling through space, through darkness: what did you think as you dropped? You knew you were going to hit ground hard, and you’d break, so what went through your mind in those few seconds? Nothing? Everything? Or was it all just one blind deep-red searing panic? And at the end – what? A fraction of acceptance? A microsecond of tranquillity? Maybe you just blacked out, or your heart exploded out of fright halfway down.

‘My father died.’ Eddie turned to look at Marvel.

‘Say. Sorry to hear that. Real sorry. How did it happen? Was he sick?’

Eddie said, ‘He was shot.’

‘Shot. Jesus Christ.’

‘I don’t know the circumstances.’

‘Shot. Fuck. Fucking world we live in.’ Marvel sucked on his cigarette and stared into the lit end a second. ‘You got any heavy cases on your desk as of now?’

Eddie said, ‘There’s the dead girl we found in the empty brownstone …’

‘That junkie kid nobody can ID?’

‘Yeah,’ Eddie said. He pondered the mystery of the missing teenage girl, a runaway from somewhere, and the fact her identity hadn’t yet been established. Somebody must be missing her, waiting up for her, insomniac parents in a small backwater township in a faraway state.

‘Tom Collins can deal with that,’ Marvel said.

Tom Collins was Eddie’s partner, a dark-jawed second-generation Irishman.

Eddie said, ‘Apart from the girl, it’s stuff that can wait.’

‘Stuff that can wait, huh? I never heard of stuff like that before,’ Marvel said, and smiled. ‘Must be new on the market. I gotta grab myself some of that good shit. You take the time you need, Eddie. You want any help, you know where to turn.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Eddie said.

Marvel dismissed the gratitude with a quick motion of his hand and was already moving away, drawn towards the door of the building by the sight of Figaro, who was clutching a cardboard cup of coffee.

An ambulance appeared, lights whirling. Eddie Mallon watched the paramedics emerge. He saw them surround the body. And he felt weirdly lonely, out of touch with this world of his, as if he’d already left it, and was airborne, flying back to a place he barely remembered.

Glasgow, a city seen through a rainy mist, a fuzzy sketch in damp charcoal.