Free The Bad Fire by Campbell Armstrong

frustration and Joyce running upstairs to her room and Jackie shouting after her, You won’t learn to play the bloody piano by hiding in your room, young lady .
    I don’t want to get out of the car and go inside the house, he thought. Jackie’s Daily Express would be lying on the kitchen table and Flora might be peeling onions under running water and maybe some of Jackie’s friends would be in the sitting room, laughing at a joke or talking in a low masculine rumble Eddie found impenetrable. And Flora would say, If you’re looking for your dad he’s in the front room with his business associates, so-called .
    The dead walk this house.
    Ghosts. Including the spectre of young Eddie Mallon.
    â€˜Come on, Eddie,’ Joyce called. ‘You’ll like her. Don’t look so worried.’
    It wasn’t the prospect of Senga that troubled him here. He stepped from the car. Joyce was inserting a key into the front-door lock and turning it; then she ushered him ahead of her into the hallway where the first thing he saw was the coat-rack where Flora had always told him to hang his blazer or raincoat after school. He looked down and yes, Jesus , it was still there after all these years – the same goddam doormat, he was sure of it, worn to nothing except a few flat bristles. Wipe your feet, Eddie. That mat’s not there for decoration, you know . This house didn’t exist in the present tense.
    Joyce called out: ‘Senga? Are you there?’
    Music was playing very quietly from somewhere. The Eagles: ‘Lying Eyes’.

11
    Matty Bones, who’d finished his whisky a while ago, shut his left eye and surveyed Haggs through the bleary slit of his right. ‘Did you bring me drink? Eh? I need more booze.’
    Haggs turned away from Matty Bones and looked at the third man in the room. His name was John Twiddie. He wore a black leather jacket and gloves, and had a ring through one nostril and a wad of pus where metal punctured skin.
    A plook, Matty Bones thought. That was the word for that kind of inflammation. A big fucking golden plook . If it grew any more it would be like an extra nose. This guy looked familiar but Matty Bones was lost in a boozy mist and all links with the world were tenuous.
    There was also a young woman Bones had never seen before. Face like a dented medieval battle helmet, scar on her neck, tattooed knuckles, black hair combed upright and held in position by a complex arrangement of pins and metal clasps. She also wore gloves.
    â€˜You there,’ Bones said.
    â€˜You pointing at me, jim?’ she asked. A snarl.
    â€˜Aye, you. You bring me any drink, dear?’
    â€˜Don’t point your bloody finger at me. I hate when anybody does that.’
    â€˜Oh, you’re a toughie, eh? A hard case.’ Bones laughed.
    The girl turned one hand into a heavy fist and punched Bones in the face and he slipped and clattered into a chair before he fell. Anaesthetized by booze, he felt nothing. He lay on the floor and continued to laugh. He’d fallen from too many nags and no-hopers in his day to let this stumble worry him. He was known around the Scottish flat-racing circuit, Hamilton, Lanark, Ayr, as resilient. You fall off, you get back in the saddle.
    Roddy Haggs said, ‘Christ’s sake, put a clamp on that temper, Rita.’
    â€˜Well, I’m sorry, but this fucking wee dwarf annoys me,’ she said. She had an expression of permanent rage about her. Whenever Haggs was obliged to look at her, which wasn’t often, he thought of somebody who dragged around her own private tempest in which all manner of wild emotions were tossed willy-nilly.
    â€˜Give me the booze, Twiddie,’ Haggs said.
    John Twiddie, who had a sorry thin moustache such as an adolescent might achieve, took a half-bottle of scotch from a pocket of his jacket. He passed it to Haggs, who opened it, then leaned down over Matty Bones and let some of the alcohol