27

When he dropped Senga off, Eddie remained in the taxi and rode south. What did he think he could prove by talking to Haggs? she’d asked, but she’d dredged the address out of an old address book anyway. He opened the window and sat back and watched the city flicker past in the afternoon sun, shadow and light, fragmentary eclipses created by tenements and an occasional high-rise. Trying to prove … If Haggs had been the defendant in a prominent criminal trial five years ago, it was impossible that Chris Caskie didn’t know his name unless he’d been vacationing outside the solar system at the time. Caskie, Caskie, confidante of the Mallon clan, friend to Senga, Joyce and Flora – for Christ’s sake, why deny knowing Haggs’s name?

Eddie had the feeling everything was connected in a way that was nebulous to him yet, a string of knots he couldn’t unravel, Caskie’s prevarication, the relationship between Haggs and Jackie, and the whereabouts of Bones, whose motive for the slaying of his old pal remained utterly obscure – unless you were Tay, who seemingly wanted quick closure.

Eddie felt the warm breeze in his hair as the cab headed down Bellgrove Street. This trip to Rouken Glen, think about it: did he expect Haggs, even if the guy happened to have information about Jackie’s life and times, and Caskie’s dishonesty, to volunteer his knowledge freely?

Eddie Mallon, imbued with bright-eyed Yankee innocence, seeker after truth, pilgrim: Why did I never develop the deep cynicism of the long-serving cop? His partner, Tom Collins, once said, You want to believe the best in everybody, Eddie, doncha? The question concealed a criticism: Why doncha grow the fuck up, Eddie? The world is populated with sleaze. People will deny their wrongdoing until hell becomes a fucking health spa.

It’s me, Tom. It’s the way I am. Everybody deserves a chance to tell their side of a story, don’t they? You don’t rush to judgement.

Tom Collins said, In fucking Walt Disney’s head, sport.

The taxi passed the expanse of open land that was Glasgow Green, and the former Templeton’s Carpet Factory, built in the late 19th century to resemble the Doge’s Palace in Venice. An extravaganza, exotic, bold, it should have been a wild incongruity, but somehow it managed to look as if it belonged here on the north bank of the Clyde.

The cab headed along Pollokshaws Road towards Shawlands, after which the tenements gave way to less cramped housing, some stout red sandstone villas whose tidy appearance suggested the inhabitants were prosperous and lace-curtain prim. God was in his heaven, and all was well in this corner of Glasgow.

The cab driver turned his face and glanced at Eddie. ‘You said Langtree Avenue, jim?’

‘Right,’ Eddie said.

‘Where money grows on trees. So they say.’ The driver laughed.

Beyond Giffnock now, Fenwick Road, a big roundabout, a right turn followed by a left into Davieland Road which adjoined Rouken Glen Park, where Eddie saw sunbathers stretched on grass and dogs scampering and teenagers sitting in a huddle that emitted a blue fuzz of smoke that might have been tobacco or something illicit. The cab swung left away from the park and entered Langtree Avenue. Eddie, a little tense and uncertain, leaned forward in his seat as the driver looked for the house, which turned out to be a big detached white-painted structure surrounded by a tall hedge.

Eddie paid the driver, then walked towards the gate, carved walnut with a white enamel plate screwed into the wood. The word Drumpellier was painted on the enamel in blue floral letters. A house with a name. He pushed the gate and entered the drive and his feet crunched on gravel the colour of a flamingo. The windows struck by sun were like long mirrors. A burgundy Jaguar was parked in a shaded space at the side of the house. The lawn was trim and a single monkey puzzle tree stood in the dead centre. The thick interlocking branches of the tree resembled a pine with advanced arthritis.

He walked to the front door, noticing a security camera about four feet above him to his right. He pressed the doorbell. He heard the camera whirr quietly as it shifted a couple of inches. He understood. You didn’t get inside by ringing a bell. You gained entrance only if the person staring at a monitor inside granted you permission.

Eddie looked up into the eye of the camera.

A man’s voice came out of a hidden speaker. ‘Who are you?’

Eddie was startled, but tried not to show it. ‘Eddie Mallon. I’m looking for Roddy Haggs.’

The voice said, ‘Come in.’ The door opened without human assistance.

Eddie went in, found himself in a big square entranceway with a marbled floor and a number of marble columns. The original rooms of the house had been demolished to make way for this one enormous space. From a hidden source came a muzak version of the soundtrack of South Pacific.

He crossed the floor a few yards, then paused at the edge of what people used to call conversation pits. Five steps down to a sunken square area furnished with casual chairs and huge pillows. ‘Happy Talk’ finished. Now it was ‘Some Enchanted Evening’.

The man who approached Eddie was tall and cadaverous, and his head was too small for the body that supported it. But there was more to the man’s unusual appearance than the size of head in relation to frame. It was his skinniness, the quality of near-transparency, that made it seem as if his height was artificial, as if he’d been stretched on a rack.

Eddie didn’t need to be told that this was Roddy Haggs; he fitted Senga’s description. And when Eddie accepted Haggs’s handshake he wasn’t surprised to discover that the man’s skin was chilly. He sleeps in a box of his native soil, Eddie thought.

‘Let’s go down into the pit,’ Haggs said.

The pit. How appropriate. Eddie descended, Haggs followed. ‘Sit. Make yourself comfortable. Drink?’

Eddie refused the drink, then said, ‘Quite a place.’

Haggs fixed himself a small tumbler of scotch from a decanter. ‘Should be, considering the cash that went into it.’

A certain kind of person always wanted to tell you what they’d spent on their houses. They were usually self-made types. Eddie looked up; where the columns met the high ceiling assorted angels had been painted skilfully on plaster. He half-expected God to appear, staring down at him stern-eyed, a white beard in the clouds. Behave cautiously, Eddie.

Haggs said, ‘You’ve come home for the funeral, I assume.’

Eddie nodded. ‘Yeah.’

‘Fucking tragedy.’ Haggs sipped his drink. ‘Me and Jackie had our differences. But I like to think we respected each other. I feel bad for Senga.’

If Haggs was an act, he was a pretty good one, Eddie thought. The sorrowful intonation in the voice, the expression of concern.

‘You knew each other a long time,’ Eddie said.

‘Years and bloody years.’

Eddie hesitated before his next question. Haggs had a way of looking down the length of his nose at you, as if you were a specimen on a slide, something very small and hard to categorize. ‘You ever do any business together?’

‘I once gave him an opportunity to invest in a car-hire company, but he was a wee bit slow opening his chequebook, and the chance passed.’

‘And that’s all,’ Eddie said.

‘Aye. Did you expect more?’

Eddie shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. I thought maybe you had some joint ventures in the past.’

Haggs shook his head. ‘The big difference between Jackie and me is that he was interested in what he could pluck out of history, whereas I’m more intrigued by what I can make of the future. Show Jackie an old country mansion and he’d wonder what he could salvage. Show me that same house and I’d be thinking of pulling it down and putting up a block of flats. So, what brings you out into the wilds of Rouken Glen to see me?’

‘I’m the executor of Jackie’s will.’ Sometimes the capacity to fabricate was so slick it frightened Eddie.

‘And what does Jackie’s will have to do with me? Unless he’s left me something, a keepsake maybe.’ Haggs laughed. It was a high-pitched sound, a hinge squeaking. ‘Old bugger wouldn’t leave me a cracked chanty.’

A chanty, Eddie thought. A chamberpot. ‘About the warehouse.’

‘That dump in Bluevale Street?’

Eddie nodded and went into his storyline. ‘It’s going on the market soon to satisfy some tax demands Jackie hadn’t paid.’

‘Jackie had a useless accountant, some fucking quill-pusher from the Victorian age. I told him a hundred times. Get up to date. Throw out every last abacus and plug into the new age … Did he listen? Did he fuck. And now the whole kit and caboodle is going up for sale, you say?’

‘Probably at auction,’ Eddie said.

‘I still don’t see any connection to me, Eddie.’

‘No? I heard you were interested in the property.’

With an expression of amazement, Haggs laughed loudly. His long body shook and he fine-sprayed the air with saliva. ‘Me? Me? Do I look like a junk dealer? Do I look like a man who’d be interested in buying and selling rubbish?’

Eddie said, ‘I heard you’d visited the warehouse and you and Jackie had arguments about the valuation of the business.’

‘Jackie and me – we were oil and vinegar. We liked to argue. Christ, we thrived on it. Who remembers the reasons? When conflict’s finished, I let it go.’

Eddie didn’t buy that. He had the feeling Haggs was the kind of man who’d never forget a grudge or a slight or the name of anyone who’d walked on the wrong side of him. Okay. Realistically, what the hell did a rich man want with a rundown warehouse? Demolish the place and build a supermarket or a bingo palace or a leisure complex? Wrong part of town, Eddie thought. Fine. Say it wasn’t the warehouse or the space Haggs wanted, and Joe Wilkie guessed wrong. Say it was something else.

What did Jackie have that Haggs needed? What exactly?

He thought of Tommy G. Jackie definitely had something Tommy was looking for.

Had Jackie left troublesome loose ends all over Glasgow?

‘I hear you’re a cop in New York,’ Haggs said.

‘In Glasgow I’m just somebody’s son trying to make sense of his father’s affairs, and if I got the wrong end of the stick about you and the warehouse, let’s drop it.’

‘Gladly,’ Haggs said.

The muzak played on. ‘There is Nothing Like a Dame’. Suddenly Haggs slapped his thigh and laughed again, and said, ‘I’m trying to imagine myself sitting in Jackie’s grubby wee office arguing about the price of such-and-such a sundial or an old HMV gramophone. Sorry, Eddie, I don’t mean to mock what Jackie did for a living –’

‘No big deal.’ But it was, and Eddie felt a surge of irritation at the way Haggs belittled Jackie.

Haggs asked, ‘You talked to the police about the murder?’

‘Yeah, we’ve talked.’

‘Is Glasgow’s finest close to finding the killer?’

‘They believe Bones did it,’ Eddie answered.

‘Bones?’

‘Bones’s gun was the murder weapon.’

Haggs asked, ‘That wee man went around armed? Have they brought him in for questioning?’

‘They can’t find him.’

‘Then he fucked off. Probably scared shitless. I can’t believe he killed Jackie.’

‘So who did?’

Haggs shrugged. ‘I’m baffled.’

‘Then we’re all baffled – apart from the cops,’ Eddie said.

‘The cops won’t change their minds. They’re inflexible. And it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion.’

‘Am I hearing contempt for the Strathclyde Police?’

‘You don’t need to be a mind-reader. They’re a right evil bunch of wankers.’

‘I heard something about a trial you were involved in …’

‘That was a bloody attempt to railroad me.’

‘Why?’

‘How many reasons do you want? They’re jealous of my lifestyle. They don’t like some of my business partners. They don’t like to see somebody from my background get ahead. You read the sign on the gate when you came in? You see the word Drumpellier there?’

Eddie said, ‘I saw it.’

‘I was born in Drumpellier Street, in a district of this fair city called Blackhill. You’re born and brought up in Blackhill, Eddie, you’re not supposed to get out. It was crime and drugs and gangs, some of the hardest fuckers in Glasgow. The police didn’t like to visit Blackhill, and they didn’t like people spilling out of Blackhill into other places, especially people like me drifting into respectable areas like this … Are you getting the picture?’

‘You’ve risen above your station.’

‘And I stepped on a few toes climbing. And some people don’t forget that. And some of these people have friends in the police …’

‘So you have Drumpellier out there to remind you where you came from,’ Eddie said.

‘More than that. It’s me giving them the finger, Eddie. It’s me saying, fuck the lot of you, I walk where I bloody well please.’ Haggs tossed his scotch back and drew a hand across his mouth. ‘So the trumped-up trial, Eddie, was a scheme planned by morons who wanted to show me that even if I’d come up in the world, I could go down again as fast as that,’ and he snapped his fingers. ‘The police case against me was a load of ballocks. I walked out of that courtroom free as a bird.’

Eddie stood under the angels and the blue sky and the cloud clusters. Haggs carried deep black grudges against the social order. Did he have grudges against Jackie too?

‘Who told you about that trial anyway?’ Haggs asked.

Eddie plucked an easy lie out of nowhere and tossed it like a paper dart. ‘Guy called Caskie. A cop.’

Haggs said, ‘Caskie … Is he the one friendly with your family?’

‘The same,’ Eddie said.

‘And how did my name happen to come up in conversation?’

‘Because I told him you intended to buy the warehouse.’ Eddie smiled.

‘Now you can tell him you were wrong.’

‘Consider it done,’ Eddie said. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Haggs walked with Eddie towards the door. On the right was a small wood-panelled room filled with glass display cases.

Eddie glanced at them. ‘Quite a collection,’ he said.

Haggs asked, ‘You interested in guns? I’ve been collecting them for years.’ He strode towards the display cases. There were almost fifty blackpowder pistols here, most of them genuine antiques, each gleaming and imbedded in dark brown wood. Haggs took a keychain from his pocket and unlocked one of the cases and removed a long handgun with a walnut stock and held it out for Eddie’s examination.

‘Kentucky Flintlock,’ he said. He handed the gun to Eddie, who was surprised by its weight, and then he carefully removed another weapon from the case. This one had a fancy curved handle and a barrel more than a foot long. ‘This beauty is a Le Page Percussion Duelling Pistol. Lovely feel to it. I’ve also got a very fine original Colt 1860 Revolver and a mint-con Remington Percussion dating from 1858.’ He gestured towards the display proudly. ‘Been a hobby a long time. I always take my hobbies very seriously, Eddie.’

‘This Kentucky is a very fine gun,’ Eddie said, admiring the craftsmanship.

Haggs held out his hand and Eddie gave him back the flintlock and he returned it to the case, which he locked.

‘Beautiful things make me forget my origins,’ Haggs remarked. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

Outside, both men gazed at the monkey puzzle tree. To Eddie it seemed as if the tree had been tortured by sea storms, a thing you might find growing in godforsaken sand dunes.

He asked, ‘You know Caskie, I assume?’

‘You think I’d want a cop for an acquaintance?’ Haggs laid a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and massaged it a little too firmly. ‘I’d rather use shite for toothpaste.’

Eddie smiled thinly. Sun reflected from the branches of the tree in a zigzagging pattern of light and a drab bird – probably a sparrow – popped out of the foliage and flew directly overhead.