Rupert Thomson - Soft

One Wednesday afternoon in August somebody knocked on Barker’s door. He took the length of pipe down the hall with him. When he opened up, his brother Jim was standing on the walkway.

Jim looked at the pipe. ‘Expecting someone?’

Barker didn’t answer.

Jim walked past him, into the flat.

Barker laid the pipe along the top of the coat-hooks and closed the door behind him. Jim was wearing a dark-blue suit, the pinstripes chalky, widely spaced. He had a footballer’s haircut, short at the sides, long and rumpled at the back, like a rug when it rucks up under the leg of a chair. A gold chain hung lazily around his left wrist. Jim sold second-hand cars in Exeter.

Barker fetched him a cold beer from the fridge.

‘Cheers,’ Jim said.

He sank down on the sofa. He had this way of sitting on a piece of furniture, knees apart, one arm stretched along the back, which made you think he owned it.

‘How’s business?’ Barker asked.

Jim nodded. ‘Pretty good. What about you? Still bouncing?’

‘Yeah.’ Barker mentioned the name of the club.

‘I know the place.’ Jim was holding the can of beer away from his body, as if he was Tom Jones and the can was a microphone and he was about to hit a high note. He didn’t want it dripping on his suit, that was the reason. ‘You ought to come in with me,’ he said. ‘It’s good money.’

Barker shook his head.

‘Ah well.’ For a while Jim stared at the floor. Then he said, ‘I hear you’ve got a problem.’

‘Nothing serious. They think I killed Steve Scully.’

‘Useless piece of shit. Always was.’ Jim coughed something gummy up into his mouth and held it there while he rose from the sofa and walked across the room. Once at the window he spat deftly through the gap. ‘Nice afternoon, thought I’d take a walk, what happens? Some fucking bird craps on my head.’ He turned to Barker, teeth showing. One of his jokes.

Barker smiled faintly.

Jim stayed by the window. ‘Steve Scully,’ he said. ‘He broke into that old lady’s place, broad daylight. Brained her while she was lying there in bed. And she was just getting over some fucking operation, cancer or something. Remember that?’

‘Yeah, I remember.’ They had run a picture of the woman in the Western Morning Herald . Two black eyes, fifteen or twenty stitches in her face. They’d used the words they always use: sickening, horrific .

‘You need any help,’ Jim said, ‘you let me know.’

Barker nodded.

‘You coming down the pub Friday?’

‘I don’t know,’ Barker said. ‘Might be working.’

Jim put his beer on the mantelpiece, then shook the condensation off his fingers.

Barker moved to the window. The city lay buried in a pale-blue haze. It clung to the tower-blocks, blurring their sharp edges. The hot weather had arrived at last. He leaned on the window-sill, looking out. ‘They say all the land used to be covered by trees.’

‘Yeah?’ Jim turned. ‘What they say that for?’

That big brown building with the custard-coloured chimneys, he knew it was famous, but he couldn’t remember the name of it. He sat up straighter, brushing the crumbs off his lap. They crossed the Thames, the water sluggish in the sunlight. Steep walls smeared with slime dropped sheer to stretches of gleaming mud. The girl in the paper hat was collecting rubbish in a black bin-liner. It wouldn’t be long now.

The passing weeks did nothing to soften the Scully family’s resolve. To people like the Scullys, time was salt: it aggravated every wound. Barker realised the vendetta could go on almost indefinitely; they seemed to have developed a taste for it. Strangely enough, he’d been noticing something similar at work. Old bouncers, that’s what happens. You get a reputation over the years and suddenly there’s some kid, nineteen or twenty, he’s heard about you. You’re hard, but he’s harder. It never stops.

His shirt had stuck to his back. He leaned forwards, lifting it away from his skin so the sweat could dry. In the last few months he had begun to feel that the odds were stacked against him. So far he’d been lucky. But prison ran in the family, like wiry hair and heart disease. Sooner or later he’d be put away for something, even if he was innocent. Either that, or he’d get badly hurt. There had been a time when he would never have dreamed of backing down. All that pride, though, it had faded like the tattoo on his chest. Was it age did that?

Some would say he was running. Well, let them say it.

The coach pulled in under a high glass roof. Lines of people waited below, their eyes flicking left and right like tadpoles in a jar. He could feel the city air, the speed of it, much faster than the air down on the coast.

Outside, the driver opened a flap in the side of the bus. He looked at Barker over his shoulder. ‘Can you see yours?’

Barker pointed at two black canvas bags. The driver gripped the handles and, grunting, hauled the bags out on to the tarmac. Then he stood back, hands on hips. ‘Christ, mate, what you got in there?’

Barker didn’t answer.

‘I know,’ the driver said. ‘You killed the bloke, but the body was too big. So you had to cut it in half.’

Barker just looked at him. ‘You tell anyone,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to kill you too.’

The door of the pub creaked open under his hand, crashed shut behind him. He ordered a pint of bitter and drank a third of it, then he put his glass down and glanced around. Half a dozen suits, two girls in office skirts and blouses. A scattering of old men wearing hats. Not a bad place, though. The booths looked original, the name of the brewery elaborately carved into the panes of frosted-glass. Statues of women in togas hoisted opalescent globe-lights towards the dark-brown ceiling. A polished brass rail hugged the foot of the bar. His brother Gary would have approved. Gary used to deal in antiques.

He asked the barman if Charlton Williams was around.

The barman jerked his eyes and eyebrows in the direction of the window. ‘Over there.’

From where he was standing, Barker could only see Charlton Williams’ back. Brown leather jacket, grey trousers. Cropped black hair. Barker moved across the pub towards him, pint in hand.

‘Charlton Williams?’

The man who swung round was this side of forty, but only just. He was going bald from the front, his hair receding at both temples, leaving a round piece that looked as if it might fit into a jigsaw. He reminded Barker of a wrestler who was always on TV on Saturdays in the late sixties.

‘The name’s Barker Dodds. I’m a friend of Ray’s. Ray Peacock. He said to find you here.’

Charlton’s pouchy eyes narrowed. ‘You’re the bloke that needs a place to stay, right?’

Barker nodded.

‘So where’s the luggage?’

‘Bus station. Victoria.’ Barker drained his pint.

Charlton pointed at the glass. ‘Same again?’

‘Cheers.’

Charlton Williams. According to Ray, Charlton had been named after the football club. People used to call him Athletic, which was a bit of a laugh, Ray said, because Charlton had never played sport in his life, not even darts. Charlton was drinking with Ronnie and Malcolm, two mates from the meat market in Smithfield. When they had emptied their glasses, Barker bought another round. It struck him that he had no idea what would happen next. The pub was where his knowledge ended. He was like someone who was about to go missing. A sense of freedom, limitless and exhilarating, suddenly invaded him. He smiled and nodded at the faces that surrounded him, as if they were in on it, as if they were the bearers of his secret.

He breathed in slowly, feeling his lungs expand. The same smell the country over: spilled beer, cigarette smoke, crisps. His ex-wife Leslie used to work in a pub. The Phoenix. The first time he went in there he was drunk. She noticed him straight away, she told him later, but he couldn’t remember seeing her at all. Other things on his mind, she said with a knowing smile. She was used to that. Women came third with a lot of men, after booze and horses — or, sometimes, if the men did drugs, women weren’t even placed.