Goatie 5

All of a sudden your life is not what it was. Your brain does its best to catch up. I don’t know what’s happening. I feel like greeting, or giving one of those telly laughs, so insincere you want to punch the screen. Neighbours rush to help the women with the two kids that jumped. Her hair has been shaved to the one side by the fire, but the kids seem fine. They’re greeting. I’d be worried if they weren’t.

I do my best to blend in. Stand beside a motely group of baldy men, heart-attack material in discoloured T-shirts and training shoes that have come out of the four-in-a-block next door. One of them has a can of Tenants lager in his hand and a fag in his mouth. He scratches at his belly and chaffing his balls. If he wasn’t so wan and white, I’d swear we were in Spain together, and he was the guy in the chalet next door to Hughie and me that battered his wife, but called each other ‘lovie’ in the morning.

The fire engine comes to a standstill like a multi-mobile disco, unrolling hoses and shouting at each other in friendly banter. Firemen jumping to it and taking up choreographed positions by rank. Looking for stanks and standpipes moving us away from the thick black smoke with brisk efficiency.

Police cars pile up in the parking bays, small islands blocking in cars that are already parked. Plain-clothed cops arrive in an unmarked dark car. The man in charge dresses in black, with a long coat, prepared for any weather, but sunshine. Dark eyes, shaggy eyebrows, bloodless face, he squints over at us and I duck my head and bite down on my lips. His driver is taller, fat with unruly curly hair. He didn’t dress like a cop. Wore an outsized T-shirt and droopy jeans, he kept tugging to keep up, like an adolescent that took dressing up as an undercover cop seriously.

Most of the onlookers drifted away as the firemen took control after death and dying became a bit too boring. I made the mistake of standing too long and edging towards the wrong person. Seb was a small guy with wild eyes, a thick beard, hair that seemed made of wood ash and if you didn’t see he had a noticeable drug problem, you weren’t looking. Standing beside him with my rucksack on my back I must have looked like his sensible older brother that licks windows. We might as well have worn arrows on our clothes.

Most of the police cars left after the ambulances arrived. Some plods chapping doors and offering community support, while asking questions. The detective with the shaggy eyebrows and his hippy driver falls into step behind him as they come straight towards us. I slap the top of Seb’s arm and turn to walk away.

A hard voice from the East End of Glasgow in a long coat. ‘Hi, you, wait a wee minute.’  

But I ignore him and keep walking. He jogs to catch up with me. His driver arguing with Seb, raised voices, frightening the birds.

My knees knock together on the flat straight towards the canal bridge and home as if I’ve done something wrong. But I’ve crossed the border to uncertainty.

‘A word,’ he blocks my path.

You can’t argue with ironed trouser and shiny black shoes. ‘Whit?’

His brows glower and he squeezes his eyes almost shut. ‘Yeh’re name would be a start?’

‘So would yers. Um a suspect or a witness?’

He smells the air around my head. ‘Yeh smell o smoke.’

‘Yeh, know the answer tae that.’ I sigh and nod towards Hughie’s house. ‘If I knew yeh better, I’d say yeh smell o shite.’

‘Okay, let’s cut the cackle. Gie me yer name and details.’

I point towards my house. ‘I stay o er there. I can make yeh a cuppa and tell yeh everythin yeh want tae know.’

‘Whit dae yeh know. Jist the facts.’

‘That’s the problem.’

‘Whit’s the problem.’

‘No sure, facts ur no longer straight. Jist the same as some folk used to believe the earth was flat. Facts huv become rounded by believe. They boomerang back to the belief yeh first started wae.’

‘Yeh takin the piss?’ he hisses.

‘Nah, it wasnae my fault. It wiz they goats. The made Hughie spontaneously human combust. It’s no as rare as yeh think. There’s probably a Facebook page.’

‘Very true,’ he admits. ‘Stands tae reason. There probably is. There’s a Facebook page for everythin.’ He holds a hand up and curls his finger. One of the young cops strides towards us. Bushy eyebrows tells me, ‘We’re taking yeh doon tae the station.’

I hold my hand up. ‘Yeh don’t need tae, I can explain. It’s quite simple.’

He pulled at my arm, spun me around and had my hand up my back, touching the base of my rucksack. But I try and make him see reason. The young cop squeezed the bracelet of the handcuffs too tight and tugged me towards the van, smirking and smelling of aftershave. My voice shrill, ‘It was Anaxogoros came up wae the idea that the sun in the sky was like a fat man standing still. Oor wee earth hud tae walk around tae get some light. Galileo Galilei went further than he liked. He put himsel in the same limb as Nicolaus Copernicus. If the sun and the moon and the stars didn’t bow down to the Christ figure that took away the sins of the world then there was somethin seriously wrang wae them. Cause everybody knew that’s whit happened. No only that. The Virgin Mary produced a male heir to God by dividing wan cell into two daughter cells. That’s spontaneous combustion in anybody’s language. Hundreds of millions of Catholics agree wae that notion. It’s common sense in many countries.’    

‘Shut the fuck up, talkin,’ the plainclothes cop says.

‘But I thought yeh wanted me tae talk.’ The young cop yelps and smothers his laugh.

‘No that shite,’ the elder cop answers.

‘Whit other kinda shite yeh wantin?’