White Rage (43 page)

‘I didn't kill your brother, Lou. That picture is a bloody fake.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Colin just won't go away, will he? You'll twist anything to get me for Colin.'

Almost anything, Perlman thought. He heard water lap against the hull. Funny: the more I drifted away from Colin's death, the closer I approached it. You start on another case, a diversion, and somehow it takes you back to your point of origin. Connections. A dead nursery school teacher, a dead embezzler, neither of whom knew the other – and Kilroy was the glue that held the connection together.

Life has patterns, after all. The tapestry has a design, the watch a maker. Fancy that.

The Fat Man sighed long and hard and with the frustration of someone misunderstood. ‘Despite my rep, Lou, I don't think I'm a bad man. I'm good to the people I like. I give money to charities. It's just the world keeps changing, and people keep changing too, and things get confusing. And I have a hard time keeping up, Lou. Younger people come along, scumbags and neds who see what I've achieved with my life, they want a share. They don't want to
work
for it. No, they want to seize a nice juicy chunk of it. Gratis.'

Everything you've achieved, Perlman thought: all of it ill-gotten, illegal, accomplished ruthlessly. ‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Leo?'

‘I don't need your sympathy.'

Perlman stared at a crane upriver and a squall of seagulls that burst out of shrubbery on the south bank, and spun in the sky. He remembered holding Colin's dead body. He thought of grief: the narcotic had fucked with his filter system and suddenly he had a feeling he was going to break down. Him and Kilroy, casualties of a changing Glasgow. A pair of guys growing old. Reminiscing.

No, what in
God's
name was he
thinking
? He had nothing in common with Kilroy.

The ferry docked back on the Yoker side. Both men disembarked and walked in silence a little way. They turned onto Dumbarton Road and Kilroy said, ‘Here's how I see it, Lou. You're playing a guessing game.'

‘Is that what I'm doing?'

‘You don't have a shred. You've got nothing to link me with Colin. A fake picture. A phoney tape. Why was I so worried about all that? You got under my skin, Lou. That's why. I dropped the ball.'

‘And when Chasm opens his big mouth to sing opera?'

‘You don't have anything except his word, and he's a known felon and probably a fucking perjurer into the bargain. So you lose on the Colin front, and you lose on the White Rage front. Life's hard.'

‘You're scared, Leo. First time in your life, you're terrified. Admit it. You've had it all your own way for such a long time, you don't remember what it's like to be on the defensive. Chasm's in custody and ready to blab about your secret life – including that nice shooting range in your basement – because he wants to sell you to us, and maybe he can get the library slot in Peterhead, or some other cushy number. You're reaching the end of your road, Leo.'

Leo Kilroy laughed. ‘Shooting range? He's lying.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘I couldn't tell a gun from a power drill.'

Perlman stopped, caught his breath. He wondered how much further they were going to walk. He was hovering a few feet above his wound; he knew that when this last painkiller wore off he'd fall back on the sword again. So this was nice while it lasted. But it wasn't for ever.

‘Chasm says you practise shooting three times a week. You're a sharpshooter.'

Kilroy stopped outside the gates of the Scotrail Depot. ‘He's talking ballocks.'

‘We'll hear what tunes he whistles soon enough.'

‘You don't look so hot, Lou. Out of energy?' Kilroy asked.

‘This wound's a bastard.'

‘Get a taxi. Go home. That's my advice.'

‘And forgo the chance of being involved in your arrest?'

‘It's not going to happen,' Kilroy said. He looked through the bars at trains idle on the tracks, trains awaiting repairs, or cleaning, in preparation for going back into service. There were scores of passenger carriages painted burgundy and cream, some with broken windows, others with dented panels.

Perlman said, ‘I don't think we have a whole lot more to discuss, Leo.'

‘You sure? I wanted to reminisce a wee bit longer about old Glasgow. I thought you'd be interested in a wee stroll down memory lane, Lou.'

‘Perhaps another time.' Perlman took Sandy Scullion's mobile from his pocket. What was the number to press? Sandy had told him. Two? Three? Bloody memory, a curtain in the wind.

‘St Enoch's Station,' Kilroy said. ‘You remember that?'

Perlman said, yes, he remembered it.

‘You remember the old subway, the way it used to smell?'

‘I remember,' Perlman said. I remember everything except the correct button to push on the damn phone.

‘Oil, water, damp, a whole underground strangeness. Nobody can ever describe that smell, Lou.'

Three. That was the number. Perlman pressed the button and Kilroy suddenly knocked the mobile out of his hand and it went flying in the air before it clattered to the ground. As Perlman turned to pick it up, the Fat Man pushed through the depot gates and ran towards the platform; he was an astonishing sight, the cavernous coat flapping like a marquee, the stubby legs working the air as if it were molasses, the arms rising and falling vigorously. He vanished among the engines and the carriages.

Perlman went after him, calling his name.

‘Leo! Come on! Where the hell do you think you're going?'

No answer.

Perlman stood on the platform and scanned the area. He saw nothing except his own reflection in the windows of the motionless carriages. He walked the length of the platform. Somebody as gross as Leo couldn't simply vanish. Perlman opened a carriage door, stepped inside, moved slowly down the aisle between the seats. He looked left and right, trying to keep the carriages on the next track in view, as well as the platform; where was Leo?

Lost in the Scotrail Depot, Yoker. Me and the Fat Man.

Perlman moved into the next carriage. He called Leo's name a few more times. And still no sign of the man, no sound.

‘Leo!'

He gazed through a cracked window at the carriages parked alongside. And there – he saw Leo's face behind a grubby pane for just a second before it vanished. Perlman opened the nearest door, stepped out, found his way across a yard of track and clambered into the carriage where he'd seen the Fat Man. Hide and seek. But only if you were young and had the energy and weren't fighting against battalions of pain.

He moved down the aisles, shoving doors, calling Kilroy's name.

Leo knows he isn't going anywhere. So what was this desperate scramble to flee? Fear of a trial, a guilty verdict, imprisonment? Kilroy would die in a prison. No freedoms, no luxuries, no exotic wardrobe. And no power. That was the worst of it.
No power
.

‘Leo, for Christ's sake!'

The oxygen had gone out of Perlman's lungs. He felt airless, had to sit down. His heart was roaring. He had a rapid pulse beating in his throat. He saw midges jig in front of his eyes. I can't do much more of this. He turned his head to the right and glimpsed Leo again, rushing across a length of track. Perlman rose slowly, opened a door, lowered himself onto the rails. A hundred feet away Kilroy raised a hand in greeting, a challenging smile on the big porcine features.

‘Catch me, Lou.'

Kilroy laughed and turned and ran a few yards down the track, glancing back to see if Perlman was still in pursuit. And Perlman was, his muscles screaming with every step. Leo was pulling further away all the time. Kilroy stopped again in a space on the tracks between one length of carriages and another, and he spread his arms wide as if he saw himself as some kind of superhero, his coat hanging like a cape.

‘Catch me, Lou. Come on.'

‘Don't do this,' Perlman shouted. ‘It's ridiculous.'

‘There's always an exit route, Lou.'

Perlman understood he had nothing left to give. If Kilroy wanted to flee, let him. Others, younger and fitter, could catch him.

‘What are you waiting for, Sergeant? Come on. You scared?'

Perlman squatted at the edge of the rail, trying to catch his breath. He heard the sound of wheels rolling along the track some distance up the line. He stared at Kilroy who was still taunting him.

‘Can't catch the fat man, eh? Lazy bastard.'

Perlman heard the sound grow: an engine was on the move.

He climbed from the track to the platform. He waved a hand frantically, warning the Fat Man. Something's coming. Move out of there. He shouted this aloud, but his voice was weak, and Kilroy was roaring anyway, a great blustering vain outpouring of words, a bitter rant.
I ran this city. I could buy and sell any policeman I liked. Nobody held me back. Everybody was scared of me. Everybody wanted to be my friend. Headwaiters licked my arse. None of that ever happened to you, did it, Sergeant?

Perlman heard a clank behind Kilroy. The clatter of metal on metal. The carriages at Kilroy's back slid forward, propelled by the engine shunting them from the rear.

‘Get the fuck out of there!'
Perlman shouted.

Kilroy twisted his head, saw too late the carriages come rushing towards him, and then realized he was trapped between those moving at him and the stationary collection in front. He tried to get to the platform, but his coat had apparently become tangled in the hitch of the last forward carriage, and he was imprisoned. Perlman shouted again,
Get the fuck out of there
, and Kilroy made a great effort to grasp the edge of the platform, short arms extended in hope, plump fingers grabbing air, but as the carriages grew closer the more he was dragged down by his ensnared coat, and then he was gone, screaming as the two strings of carriages slammed fiercely together and the engine at the back fell silent.

Perlman, who'd been moving along the platform, stopped when he saw Kilroy. The Fat Man was crushed, sandwiched between carriages, his mouth open, his fingers broken and twisted in all manner of unlikely angles, and his hands flattened back against his shattered face.

50

In a pub called the Dry Dock Perlman sipped cold water, relishing shards of crushed ice on his dry tongue. He looked at Scullion and said, ‘I wanted him in a courtroom. I wanted to make a case the Proc-Fisc couldn't toss out. I don't get any kind of joy him dying like this.'

‘I understand that.' Scullion finished his half-glass of cider. ‘I think I should take you back to the hospital.'

‘I know what you think.'

‘You need medical attention, Lou.'

Perlman shivered, though the air in the bar was warm. He knew Scullion was correct, but he felt no inclination to incarcerate himself in a hospital ward to be looked after by the sisters of the NHS. He could arm himself with a bottle of strong prescription painkillers and go home, of course – but the loneliness of his house held no appeal. In any event, the case that had begun with the murder of Indra Gupta wasn't closed: White Rage might have lost an operator, but there were others in the city, and he had no idea how many, and he didn't want to quit looking for them.

Who are you kidding, Lou?
You don't have the strength now. Other cops will take over. Same with the people-smuggling racket. You're out of that equation also. Leave it alone gracefully. You're not well. You need recuperation. The movie's over. No Fed ever felt a pain like the one you feel now.

He looked inside his glass at melting ice. Imponderables remained – the Samaritan who'd given him Chasm's address. The photograph he'd been sent, the anonymous caller. Look for joy, he thought. Look for the bright prospect. Amen.

He stood up. Scullion lingered at his side, concerned and fussy. ‘Okay, I'll drive you wherever you decide to go, Lou.'

They left the pub. The sky was still light, but staining dark at the edges. Soon the sun would go. Night falls on Glasgow. Perlman held his injured arm flat against his side. Sandy opened the door of his car, helped Perlman climb in.

The car passed the street in Partick where Cremoni's had been; now a dark gash, plastic sheeting in place of glass, haunted. I can't find the bright prospect, Perlman thought. There's been too much death and God knows there might be more. The city was still subdued, still besieged. He could feel it. Turn a corner and you might collide with a killer whose agenda was white superiority.

‘I want to see Miriam,' he said. He told Scullion the address in Merchant City, and then wondered if he was in any condition to climb to her loft.

Scullion said, ‘I have to pop into HQ and pick up a couple of files. You can wait in the car if you like.'

‘I don't intend to go inside Pitt Street looking like this,' Perlman said. He saw Miriam's face pass across his mind; he was hanging on the edge of sleep. Glasgow was suddenly a dream-state filled with shifting structures. Everything that had happened belonged in the fiefdom of mirages. He was shaking now, tremble in his legs, tic under his eye. The wounded arm had died entirely. He thought of Kilroy crushed between railway carriages, and it was as if he were looking at a single frame of a motion picture, incomprehensible, ripped from context.

The Fat Man dies on a railway line in Yoker.

Scullion parked. ‘Back in a jiffy,' he said.

Perlman watched him go out of sight. Darker now, streetlamps pale against the coming night. He imagined Miriam's loft. He fancied dancing with her under the skylight, stars overhead. He dozed, dreamed that Kilroy, raised from the dead, was knocking on the window of the car. A horrific Kilroy, bloodied and skinned –

Perlman opened his eyes. Somebody
was
rapping at the window on the driver's side. He adjusted his glasses and focused on the shape outside. It was Frase Deacon, in a black polo-neck sweater and black and white hound's-tooth jacket. Inspector Cool.