Soft (6 page)

Her mother, Diane, opened the door. Diane had dyed her hair a dark cherry colour, and she wore a big pink T-shirt over a pair of black leggings. Somewhere behind her, inside the flat, Barker heard a baby crying.

‘How are you, love? Give us a kiss.'

He leaned down, kissed her cheek. She smelled of deodorant and cigarettes. She had always been fond of him, Diane. She said he reminded her of her youngest brother, who had died in a car crash when he was seventeen. He stood outside her front door in the sunshine, answering her questions. It was a beautiful day – a blue sky and a fresh wind blowing from the west, the clothes on the communal washing-lines below them horizontal in the air.

While they were talking, he noticed a pigeon moving awkwardly along a low brick wall. It was huge, this pigeon, almost the size of a pheasant, and it only had one leg. When he pointed it out to Diane, she slit her eyes against the sun and lit another cigarette.

‘Christ,' she said. ‘Seen it all now.'

They watched the pigeon in silence until it spread its wings and heaved itself into the air. Barker remembered being surprised that it could fly.

‘I suppose you're looking for Leslie,' Diane said eventually.

He nodded.

‘She's down the pub. With Chris.'

‘Chris?'

‘Well,' Diane said and then she sighed, ‘you know Leslie.'

He walked to the pub, which stood on the crest of a small hill not far from Dockyard Station. With one hand on the door, though, he hesitated, thinking it would probably be a mistake to go inside. As he stepped back, passing the window, he saw Leslie through the glass, her back half-turned, her feet in a square of sunlight. She had a Human League haircut, which must have been the fashion then, and she was wearing a skirt
that was too young for her. A man with shoulder-length black hair stood next to her. In his jeans and faded blue tartan shirt, he had the look of a builder. Chris. They were in the middle of an argument. Barker couldn't make out what Leslie was saying, even though her voice was the louder of the two. He thought he heard the words
two hundred quid
and
bastard
. Turning away, he walked down the hill to Saltash Road and caught a bus back to the city centre. He could remember nothing else about that day.

When Barker left his flat in the early evening, he half-expected to see Will Campbell's father waiting outside the old warehouse, under the hoists, or on the corner by the corrugated-iron fence, but there was no sign of him. The rain had stopped. To the west, above the public gardens, a wall of cloud lifted high into the sky, glowing with an unearthly peach-coloured light. In medieval times, he thought, this would have heralded some terrible event – the murder of a king, for instance, or an outbreak of the plague. Death of one kind or another. He paused at the end of the street, wondering if the man in the dark-green anorak believed in omens. Then he turned left, making for the nearest phone-box, which was on Tooley Street.

The sky faded as he walked and by the time he reached the phone-box it was almost dark. He put some coins on the shelf in front of him, then lifted the receiver and dialled his mother's number. Bella Dodds lived in a tower-block in Mount Wise. He used to be able to see her bathroom window from the walkway outside his flat. She had moved in fifteen years ago, after Frank died, and nothing had changed since then, her two imitation-leather armchairs in the lounge, her collection of china Alsatians, and the wind howling and moaning, eight floors up. At this time of day she would be drinking tea with a dash of Captain Morgan in it, or else a glass of Bols. There'd be a plate of Digestive biscuits on the table. She'd always liked her biscuits.

She picked up the phone on the seventh ring. ‘Yes?'

‘How are you, Ma?'

‘Oh, it's you.' Her voice sounded gravelly and rough, as if she had been sleeping. Perhaps it was simply that she hadn't talked to anyone all day.

He asked her again. ‘How are you?'

‘Not so good, son. Not so good.'

It was the angina. She had chest pains and she was often short of breath. Sometimes the lift broke down and then she couldn't get to the shops. None of the neighbours helped her, of course. They weren't the type. Single mothers, petty thieves. Kids doing speed and glue. She had to live on what she'd put by in the kitchen cupboard: tins of Irish stew, cream crackers, Smash.

‘How're Jim and Gary?'

‘Jim's all right. Talked to him Wednesday. Gary's not so good. That girl he was seeing, Janice. She left him.' She paused and he could hear her lungs creak and whistle as she breathed in. ‘I don't blame her,' she went on. ‘He wasn't nice to her.'

Barker thought of Jill sitting on the floor of his old flat, her legs folded beneath her, her bra-strap showing through the rip in her blouse.

‘I got a job,' he said. ‘I'm cutting hair.'

‘Just like your father,' she said, but it was just a statement of fact, and there was no nostalgia in it.

‘I got a flat too.'

‘You eating, are you?'

Barker didn't answer.

‘I went to London once,' she said. ‘We saw the soldiers parading up and down, those black hats on, all furry. What's it called, when they do that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Anyway.' She sighed and then said something he didn't catch.

‘What's that, Ma?'

‘You coming home for Easter?'

A sudden burst of laughter startled him until he realised it must have been the television. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty-five. He should have known she'd be watching TV. The soap operas, the shows. Des O'Connor was her favourite. A lovely man. Bob Monkhouse, she liked him too.

Not long afterwards his coins ran out. He told her he would call again soon, but he was cut off before he could say goodbye. He put the receiver back on its hook, then stepped out of the phone-box and stood on the pavement, watching cars hurtle through the orange gloom towards Jamaica Road.

Across the bridge and down on to Tooley Street, bleak and gleaming in the rain. Barker walked quickly, eager to be home. Just before he reached the entrance to The London Dungeon he turned right, into a tunnel that burrowed under the railway. Clinging to the curving walls were vents and cages fouled with grime and oil and dust. A steel roll-door lifted to reveal a mechanic wearing loose blue overalls, a car with two flat tyres. Barker passed an air-filter whose high-pitched howling set his teeth on edge. Then emerged into the daylight once again. It was summer, and his eyelids stung. The weather was humid, the sky yellow and light-grey, too bright, somehow, the green of the trees too pale. By the time he had climbed the stairs to the front door of his flat he was breathing hard.

He had been living there for almost five months and no trace of the squatters now remained. Thanks to Charlton's aunt, who'd died recently, he now had proper furniture. ‘She didn't have no diseases or nothing,' Charlton said when Barker inspected her settee suspiciously. ‘She died of like, what's it called, natural causes.' He'd had a phone installed in the hallway. In the two main rooms he'd fitted pieces of red carpet, which had come from an office building that was being redecorated. On the walls in the lounge he had hung several pictures – shiny colours on a background of black velvet. He liked the subjects: chalets in the Swiss Alps, gypsy women, junks. He had also found one that had been made out
of the wings of butterflies. A seascape, with islands. One day he would travel. Not like in the Merchant Navy, where you had to go where they told you to. Really travel.

Closing the front door behind him, he walked into the lounge. His dull silver weights looked sweaty.
Christ, mate, what you got in there?
As he lifted one and drew it automatically towards his chin, the phone rang. It was Ray Peacock.

‘Barker,' Ray said, ‘I'm calling long distance.'

Behind Ray's voice Barker could hear shrill laughter, the clink of glasses. Ray liked nothing better than to sit in some seedy south-coast cocktail bar and shout into his mobile. There would probably be a girl beside him. Short skirt, white high-heels. Someone he was trying to impress.

‘How did you get this number, Ray?' Though, even as he asked, he knew.

‘That's nice,' Ray said, ‘after all I've done for you.'

Barker had been hoping he could leave Ray behind, along with almost everybody else in Plymouth, but Ray nurtured his connections, Ray let nothing go. Grasp Sparrow By The Tail.

Barker waited a few seconds. Then he said, ‘What do you want?'

‘I just thought I'd ring you up, see how you were –'

‘Bollocks.' He'd spoken to Ray once before, in Charlton's house on the Isle of Dogs, and he'd suspected even then that Ray was only phoning because he wanted to be punching buttons.

‘How long's it been anyway? Six months?'

All of a sudden Barker didn't like the feeling of the receiver in his hand. He felt as if he'd just eaten some seafood that was bad and in three hours' time his stomach would swell and then, an hour later, he'd throw up.

‘Listen, Barker,' and Ray's voice tightened, ‘I heard about a job …' The background noise had dropped away. He must have left the room where he'd been sitting. Walked out into a
corridor. A car-park. He'd be pacing up and down like a caged animal. Like something in a zoo. Five paces, turn. Five paces, turn again. That's what people do when they're using mobile phones. They can't stand still.

Barker closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, the scar tissue lumpy between his finger and thumb. Through the open window he could hear rain falling lightly on the trees. Beyond the rain, a siren.

‘This is big,' Ray said in the same tight voice. ‘It could set you up.'

Still Barker didn't say anything.

‘I had a chat with Charlton the other day,' Ray went on. ‘He said you were skint.'

‘What is it?' Barker said at last. ‘What's the job?'

‘They wouldn't tell me. You've got to meet someone.' Ray dragged on a cigarette. ‘Must be big, though. There's six grand in it.'

Six grand?

‘So why aren't you doing it, Ray?'

‘That's what I'm asking myself. Why aren't I doing it?'

Barker laughed despite himself. He knew Ray wasn't trying to be funny. It was just the way things came out. Ray used to have a girlfriend called Josie. A big girl – forearms the size of legs of lamb. One lunchtime Ray was sitting over his pint, scratching his head, when something fell out of his hair. Landed on the table, kind of bounced. Bright-red it was, shiny, slightly curved: a woman's fingernail. Ray looked at it for a moment, then he looked up.
Me and Josie. We had a fight this morning
.

‘Seriously, though,' Ray was saying, ‘you think I wouldn't do it if I could? I mean, six grand. Jesus.'

‘So why can't you?'

‘I'm out on bail. I can't risk it.'

‘You're a fucking menace, you are.'

‘Yeah.' Ray sounded resigned. ‘Listen, you've got to help me out on this one. I'm counting on you.'

Barker stared at the blank wall above the phone. You shouldn't ever let someone do you a favour. You shouldn't get into that kind of debt.

‘Barker? You still there?'

‘I'm here.'

‘They're going to phone you. Probably tonight.'

Barker couldn't believe it. ‘You gave them my number?'

‘Well, yeah. I thought you needed the money.'

‘That's great, Ray. That's fucking great.'

‘How else are they going to phone you, for Christ's sake?'

Barker stood in his narrow hallway with the receiver pressed against his ear. Tiny white-hot holes burned in front of his eyes. It wasn't that Ray was stupid. No, he just saw things from a different angle, that was all. Barker could hear Ray's voice raised in his own defence.
I was only trying to help you, Barker. Thought I'd see you right. It's not my fault
. Ray was always only trying to help, and nothing was ever his fault.

When the phone rang again two hours later, Barker could have ignored it. Equally, he could have answered the phone and said he was unavailable; there were any number of excuses for not getting involved. And yet he had the sense that something was beginning, something that he was part of whether he liked it or not, something that couldn't take place without him. Afterwards, he would remember his right hand reaching for the receiver as the decisive moment, the point of no return.

He listened carefully to the voice on the other end as it provided him with details of the meeting-place, a Lebanese restaurant near Marble Arch. No accent, no inflections; it might have been computer-generated to give nothing away. And the man's face when he saw it, at one o'clock the next day, had the same lack of individuality. The man was sitting at a table in the corner with his back against a wall of shrubbery;
lit by miniature green spotlights, the foliage looked rich and fleshy, almost supernatural. The man introduced himself as Lambert. It seemed an unlikely name. Barker took a seat. In the space between his knife and fork lay a pale-pink napkin arranged in the shape of a fan. He picked it up, unfolded it and spread it on his lap.

‘Thank you for coming,' Lambert said.

They were the only people in the restaurant. Soothing music trickled from hidden speakers, instrumental versions of famous songs: ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree', ‘Brown Girl in the Ring', ‘The Green Green Grass of Home'. Barker noticed that there were colours in all the titles and he wondered if that was deliberate, if it had some kind of significance. Then he recognised the old Rod Stewart favourite, ‘Sailing', and his theory collapsed. A waiter appeared at his elbow.

‘Please order,' Lambert said. ‘Anything you want.'

Barker chose two dishes randomly and closed the menu. Lambert told the waiter he would have the same, then he opened the briefcase that was lying on the seat beside him. He took out a brown envelope and, moving a small silver vase to one side, placed the envelope on the tablecloth between them.