61

A hot stillness lay across the city. TV weather maps showed an infinity of clear skies. Forecast: brilliant. More of the same. Eddie sat in his dark suit in the back of a small limo. Joyce, subdued in a black suit, wore sunglasses. And Senga, a small black lace scarf covering her face, sat next to Joyce in silence. She reminded Eddie of a grieving dowager, imposing and dignified in her well-tailored clothes of grief.

The limo travelled east in the direction of Daldowie Crematorium; the car carrying Jackie’s coffin was scheduled to arrive at the crematorium at the same time as the limo. The funeral service would begin at 10:30.

Eddie hadn’t slept. He’d lain a long time in the dark, too fatigued to sleep. At one point he drank a glass of Joyce’s wine but it hadn’t helped him over the edge. He called Claire and spoke quietly to her, nothing words, just touching base – everything okay back there? Mark staying out of mischief? He loved the sound of her voice, her calm, the way she had of putting a favourable light on dark circumstances. Yeah, but how would she deal, say, with letter bombs? He imagined limbs blown off. His head was filled with images of destruction. He lay staring into the unlit sitting room, and the busts, outlined by a faint light from a streetlamp, seemed to be watching him like the members of a judiciary committee.

Do you really want to put your family in danger?

No, of course I don’t.

Then will you say nothing about the armaments?

I can’t stay silent. That would be –

What? Unprofessional? Dereliction of duty? Unethical?

All of the above –

And how do you find Jackie Mallon?

Guilty.

No mitigating circumstances?

I’ve looked hard.

None then?

None.

Bleary, he gazed from the limo into the sun and realized he was travelling deep into eastern regions of the city that were totally unfamiliar, ramshackle industrial buildings, used car lots, run-down housing. He had a sense that none of this was real, he was skirting the threadbare fringes of Glasgow, a man travelling inside a white-lit stereopticon. Something called Parkland. Then Carland. Then Zoo Park. McDonalds. St Peter’s Cemetery. He wished he’d worn dark glasses.

He felt Joyce’s hand on his own. He squeezed her fingers. He longed for sudden rain, more appropriate weather for funerals, mourners crowded under umbrellas, the miserable drip of water from trees, small puddles on the oiled wood surface of the coffin.

The limo entered the grounds of the crematorium and parked in front of the chapel. Eddie got out, helped Joyce from the car; she looked frail and unprepared for this. He glanced at Senga who raised her veil and smiled at him in a quiet way, and then dropped the veil back. Remember, Eddie, she was saying. Keep in mind our talk.

He scanned the place. Men in uniforms worked the memorial gardens, surrounded by rich-coloured roses. Here and there people sat on benches in contemplation, remembering their dead. Eddie found himself gazing at the green metal dome of the furnace above the chapel building; heatwaves shimmered from the dome, and the air became liquid. At what temperature did the human body combust? Infernal.

The motorway beyond the memorial grounds droned and droned. There could never be any tranquillity here. Trucks passed day and night, cars, buses.

Joyce took off her glasses. She had that look of bewilderment, a mourner’s disbelief: This can’t be happening. We’ll wake from this any moment now. Eddie held her by the elbow and took a few steps with her towards the chapel. He recognized the man from the funeral home, Crichton, dark jacket and pin-striped trousers and an expression of discreet sympathy. He nodded at Eddie very slightly just as Eddie entered the chapel.

Fluorescent lights, cream walls, a ceiling of deep red. Jackie Mallon’s coffin sat on a plinth behind which were brass doors. The coffin would slide through those doors and down into the furnace, into that fiery kiln where wood and flesh and bone imploded in hot ash.

He sat beside Joyce. He was aware of Chris Caskie, dark-suited, sitting in the row behind. He felt an odd little flutter of pity for the man. Joe Wilkie sat alongside Senga: conspirators. There were others Eddie had never seen before, neighbours probably, some of Jackie’s old friends. At the back, close to the door, was Lou Perlman. He raised a hand in Eddie’s direction, a small gesture. Here we all are, Eddie thought, waiting for fire to begin its consummation.

Waiting for Jackie to burn.

A minister, dog-collared and pallid, stepped in front of the plinth. We come to mourn our friend Jackie Mallon, he said, and his voice was high-pitched and nasal, and Eddie, in a moment of irreverence, imagined him calling bingo numbers.

We come to remember him, and his kindnesses, and the goodness of his heart. We come to extend our condolences to his family members. He was a man much loved by his friends and held in high esteem within his community. He was a man who loved life.

Eddie glanced at Caskie. But Caskie, with a distant depressed expression, was looking up at the ceiling, as if he wanted no connection of eyes.

We come today to pray for his soul.

Yes, Eddie thought. Pray hard. If you can find the man’s soul. Jackie had lost it long ago in the streets of this city. Caskie’s shagging my daughter and he doesn’t know I know. It’s a bit of a laugh, intit? Have another glass of cider, Senga, eh?

Was it only late in life you felt some shame, Jackie?

But it was way too late by then.

Eddie lowered his head, stared at the floor. Don’t talk about the weapons. Say nothing, keep them secret. But that went against his grain. Such neglect would come back years later to haunt him, and he’d open a newspaper and read about a fresh atrocity in Ulster, or see a bomb-wrecked house smoulder in a TV film, and what would he feel then? I could have helped. I could have helped just a little. If I don’t lift a finger, how will I live with myself? How will I teach my kid anything about truth? Okay, so I take extra security precautions, vigilance at all times, I live as if there’s menace in everything, and if it comes right down to it we pick up and move and start all over: it was a lot to ask, a lot to expect. But what else could he demand of himself?

We come to pray that God takes Jackie into the heavenly masses.

Eddie held his sister’s hand. She uttered a sob, raised a hand to cover her eyes. Caskie leaned forward and touched her shoulder to comfort her, and Senga, turning a little, observed these small movements from behind the mystery of her veil. Joe Wilkie blew his nose. Somebody else, situated at the back of the chapel, began to cry. Eddie expected he’d feel something, despite himself, maybe a reflex of grief, a spasm of sorrow, but no, he was beyond it now.

He remembered his hand in his father’s and Jackie Mallon saying, I was never a criminal, son. Remember that. If anybody says anything against me at school, learn to ignore it. I was the victim of spiteful men. That’s the truth.

You never knew what truth was, Dad.

Eddie realized music was playing through a sound system and that people around him were getting to their feet and singing ‘What A Friend We Have in Jesus’.

I was never a criminal, son.

Eddie thought: You were worse than that.

Curtains closed in front of the coffin. Senga uttered a tiny cry and Joyce wept against Eddie’s shoulder, and then he led her up the aisle and out of the chapel into the sun. He looked at the crematorium dome and the waves of heat rising from it, aware that Joyce had wandered away from him and was talking to Caskie, and that Senga, a cigarette in her hand, was surrounded by neighbours and acquaintances who wanted to offer a word of comfort, a hug, a kiss.

Perlman said, ‘I like these things brief. Get to the point. I never believed in long-drawn-out funerals. I’ve been to some where I wished I’d brought a packed lunch and a bloody sleeping bag. Believe me.’

‘It was good of you to come,’ Eddie said.

‘Everything I do has a concealed purpose, Eddie. I’m a cunning old bastard. I’ve been around the block more times than I can count. Never forget that. I’ve got my eye, and I mean that in the singular, on a certain person here.’

‘Would he be a colleague of yours?’

Perlman said, ‘Aye. A few wee problems have cropped up that I need to probe a little further.’

‘Such as?’

‘They concern poor Charlie McWhinnie and his relationship with Caskie.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It appears Charlie kept a small if somewhat cryptic personal notebook tucked away in his desk under paper clips and rubber bands,’ Perlman said. ‘A few entries are intriguing. Something about a safe house in Govan, and Matty Bones – which seem to verify your own suggestions. Also, it seems there were certain irregular orders he took from Caskie beyond the call of duty. Of course, it might just be Charlie’s imagination working overtime. He was unhappy with his lot, after all, and unhappy men are sometimes driven to flights of utter fancy.’

‘Sometimes,’ Eddie said.

‘But not in this case,’ Perlman said.

‘Right.’ Eddie looked in the direction of Caskie, who returned the look and smiled a little nervously. Lou Perlman lifted one hand, a lazy gesture of greeting at his colleague. Then Caskie stared away in the direction of men pruning roses.

Eddie watched his sister. Be strong, Joyce. And when things go wrong for you here, when the ground opens up and the plunge is a deep one, you know where I’ll be, and you know I’ll help. Then he gazed at Senga, tall and seemingly devastated by her grief, red hair tucked under her wide-brimmed black hat, holding court with friends and neighbours. She had a handkerchief in one hand and she stuck it under her veil to wipe her tears away. Eddie couldn’t see her eyes, couldn’t tell if she was looking at him.

He said, ‘I don’t see young Ray Wilkie anywhere.’

‘Aye, right enough, he’s missing,’ Perlman said.

‘I seem to remember I heard him say he had some overtime to do at the warehouse.’

‘On the day of the funeral? Seems strange.’ Perlman lit a cigarette and sucked smoke deep. ‘There’s an odd wee note in your voice, Eddie. Are you trying to tell me something?’

Eddie hesitated. But he knew where he was going and what he had to say. There wasn’t a choice. There never had been. ‘They had a load of quite fascinating crap inside that big Mercedes van, Lou. Maybe Ray’s planning to dump it.’

‘What crap?’

‘Old tables and chairs, busted lamps, other stuff.’

‘You sneaked a peek, did you?’

‘I’m a nosy bastard.’

‘And you think this van’s worth me bothering about?’

Eddie said, ‘Yeah. But you didn’t hear it from me, Lou.’

‘An anonymous tip.’ Perlman sighed. ‘We get a lot of them in this business.’

‘Some good,’ Eddie said.

‘Others pure shite.’

‘But you check them all anyway.’

‘That’s what we do,’ Perlman said.

‘No sign of Gurk?’

‘Not yet. Ah, I daresay we’ll find him soon enough.’

Eddie looked in the direction of the green dome and he thought, You’re burning, Jackie, you’re ashes now, and just for a moment he imagined his father hovering above this place, taking form in shifting patterns of light, a malign genie.

Burn, old man, float away, leave us. A father lost for all time.

But he’d always been lost. You only dreamed he might be found, Eddie.

There was a sudden breathless silence as if for a tiny fraction of time Jackie had taken all the sound of the world with him as he turned to flame, then Eddie heard people chattering on all sides of him, and someone crying, and the crinkle of plastic wrapped round a bunch of lilies held in somebody’s arms, and Lou Perlman, activated by an anonymous tip, punching numbers into his cellphone.

Eddie felt sun hot on his face and heard the motorway buzzing like a machine fuelled to run for ever and he imagined the city spread out under a haze of heat, and light rise in shimmering films from the Clyde, and he thought: Welcome to Glasgow, and goodbye.