The Bad Fire by Campbell Armstrong

long glass filled with a fizzy red liquid. He sipped it; exactly as he remembered. So sweet he imagined sugar armies scaling the enamel battlements of his teeth.
    â€˜How do I get the operator?’ he asked. ‘I want to make a collect call to Claire.’
    She told him, he dialled, got through to Queens in a matter of moments. Claire sounded close at hand, a voice in the next room. They talked inconsequentially of the flight, then Claire wanted to know how Joyce was. Eddie glanced at his sister and thought she looked exhausted.
    â€˜Hard to say,’ he remarked.
    â€˜You can’t talk right now,’ Claire said.
    â€˜You got it.’
    â€˜You met Senga yet?’
    â€˜I did.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜She’s … I guess she’s what I expected.’
    â€˜You sound tired. Call me tomorrow.’
    â€˜I will. Love you.’
    Claire said the same thing, then Eddie hung up. Cutting the connection caused him a little jolt of sadness: I still love my wife after all this time . He guessed that seventy-five per cent of his colleagues, maybe more, were divorced, separated or serially unfaithful. He couldn’t imagine another woman in his bed.
    Joyce closed her book, picked up her wine. ‘Claire’s okay?’ she asked.
    â€˜Fine.’ Eddie nodded. ‘I like this room.’
    â€˜I’m glad, because you’ll be sleeping in it. The sofa you’re sitting on opens into a bed. It’s comfortable.’
    Eddie took a swallow of Irn-Bru. ‘Tell me about Chris Caskie. I didn’t know about his existence until tonight.’
    â€˜I suppose his name just didn’t crop up,’ Joyce said. ‘How many times have we met since you left anyway? I’ve been to the States, let’s see – three times in thirty years, Eddie.’
    â€˜It’s not enough, I know,’ Eddie said, and sighed. ‘It’s my fault. I should have made the effort to come over –’
    â€˜I’m not blaming you, Eddie. You have a whole life over there. Responsibilities.’ Joyce placed a cigarette between her lips, but didn’t light it.
    Eddie watched her and thought, I could have made the trip on any one of my vacations, but I didn’t, I was afraid, not of seeing the city again – but of coming face to face with Jackie and entering the maze of my own emotions.
    What would he really feel about his father? That first contact, whether handshake or hug, how would that have been? Stiff and tentative, warm and welcoming? Uncertainty had kept him from Glasgow. He’d become accustomed to the phantom he’d constructed in his mind – an unreliable man, touched by a wild streak, but honest: a man who meant well most of the time, although circumstance and his own flaws sometimes conspired against him.
    Joyce blew cigarette smoke. ‘Chris Caskie was the kindly uncle nobody else in our family knew how to be. He had contacts in universities, he could get the low-down on what universities had the best teachers – the kind of stuff that was light-years away from Jackie’s world. It’s a funny situation when you think about it, the avuncular cop wondering how he can arrest the father of his adopted niece.’
    â€˜Did he want to nail Jackie?’
    â€˜I think it became a kind of standing joke,’ Joyce said. ‘But a serious one. They enjoyed each other, only they just couldn’t relinquish their roles. In the blue corner, Detective-Inspector Caskie, career cop. In the red, Jackie Mallon …’
    â€˜Mallon the what?’ Eddie asked.
    â€˜How can I put it? The alleged criminal?’
    â€˜No more than alleged?’
    â€˜I really don’t think he did much more than chisel the Inland Revenue any chance he got. Sometimes I had the feeling Dad said stuff deliberately to get up Chris’s nose. He’d make a reference to a crime he’d heard about, and how he might know the names of a few