Rupert Thomson - Soft

The cat stared at him with yellow eyes.

Nothing happened.

At last, he turned and walked off down the road. He had the distinct feeling that Glade would only appear after he had left. He took a deep breath, let it out in stages. It was a lovely evening, a wind blowing gently against his back. Every now and then he saw a cloud glide past the rooftops. A new energy flowed through him now he was moving. On St Mark’s Road he saw a taxi go by and caught a glimpse of blonde hair in the window. Was that her? He stood still, watched the taxi’s brake-lights flashing as it slowed for a roundabout. It took a right turn, into Chesterton Road. If it had been carrying Glade Spencer, surely it would have turned left.

At Ladbroke Grove he bought a ticket to London Bridge. The tube journey was long and hypnotic, full of inexplicable delays. Opening his book, Barker read a passage about the war between Clovis, who was a famous Merovingian king, and Alaric, the King of the Goths. This took place in 507 AD. After killing Alaric in battle, Clovis wintered in Bordeaux. The following year he rode to Angoulême, a place he wanted to recapture. Because he had the Lord on his side, the walls of the city collapsed the moment he set eyes on them. Angoulême was his. Barker closed the book. If only things could be that easy. Or perhaps it was simply that he had no one on his side.

It was after nine o’clock by the time he reached his flat. Once through the door, he leaned against the wall, the lights still off, the rooms in darkness. From the far end of the corridor came a pale glow, almost a phosphorescence, light from the city filtering through the window in the kitchen.

Sunday night.

Above the sound of people shouting in the distance, above the ghostly siren on Commercial Road and the high-altitude rumble of a plane, he could hear the voice of Charlton Williams. You’ve had a good run, after all.

The next day Barker stood outside Glade Spencer’s house for almost five hours. The trees that lined her street had all been pruned — the foliage had been cut away; only stumps and swollen knuckles remained — and he could find no shade. He could feel the sunlight on his face, his neck, his arms. In films, the detective always has a car. He parks opposite the house, smokes endless cigarettes. In the morning he wakes up slumped behind the wheel, unshaven, bleary. Then, just as he’s yawning, the front door of the house opens and his quarry conveniently appears. Films. It occurred to Barker that he didn’t really have a plan. No chloroform. No rope or twine. No gun. He was waiting until he saw her and when that happened he would know. But he saw nobody. He noticed that someone had closed the bay window and opened the curtains, and the knowledge that such things could change sustained him through the dull, uncomfortable hours. Once, he peered through the letter-box, just for something to do. One door was open, the other closed. As before. When he put his ear to the gap and listened to the inside of the house, he could hear nothing — no radio or TV, no footsteps, no running water. Sometimes he took out his tube ticket and looked at it, sometimes he walked up the street a little way, trying to believe in the fiction he’d invented the previous day, but his heart wasn’t in it. He supposed that, by now, he must have aroused suspicion in the neighbourhood. He no longer cared. By three in the afternoon he could stand it no longer. His skin stung, as if it had been lightly brushed with nettles. The outside of his forearms was pink, the inside white, reminding him of a barbecue at Jim’s a few years back, everyone too smashed, the sausages half-cooked. He decided to walk over to Portobello Road, which he had heard about, but never seen. After the hours he had spent in silence, on his own, the crowds of people were a surprise to him. Pushing through the crush, he saw stalls piled high with brooches, bathtaps, shoes. Rubbish, really. Junk. Before too long, he’d had enough. He wandered away from the market, into the narrow streets surrounding it. At last he reached Notting Hill Gate. With a huge sense of relief, he walked down a flight of steps into the cool, grimy atmosphere of the tube, following the sign that said District and Circle Line Eastbound.

He stood close to the edge of the platform, the toes of his boots just touching the white line. The next train was due in seven minutes. Looking up, he noticed the panes of reinforced glass in the roof. Beyond the glass there was a tree, its foliage colourless and blurred. Every now and then, the wind pushed the branches down, pinning them against the glass. Yawning, he watched the branches sink down on to the roof, lift away, sink down again. There was something soothing about it — something familiar too, though he couldn’t think what that might be. It had nothing to do with the station itself. He had never been to Notting Hill before.

Then, as he lowered his eyes, his breath caught in his throat. There, standing opposite him on the westbound platform, was the girl he had been looking for. He didn’t even have to take out the photograph. The flawless skin, the bright-blonde hair. It was her. She wore an ankle-length black skirt that clung to her hips and a shiny orange shirt, and she was carrying a leather bag. Though he knew her height, she was taller than he had imagined, with longer limbs. His heart bounced against his ribs. What should he do?

Before he could decide, her train slid into the station. Flashes of her through the moving windows, her face in profile as she glanced sideways, along the platform. Sweating, he lifted his eyes to the roof, as if in supplication. The leaves darkening against the glass. The leaves. In that moment he decided to let her go. There was no need to cross the footbridge and follow her on to the westbound train. There was no hurry. After all, he knew where she lived, knew where she worked. He could find her any time he wanted. The document he had received from Lambert was his guarantee. And now a coincidence had brought that document to life. It was a good sign — but it was no more than that. Only someone who was desperate would act on it. As her train pulled out of the station, he saw her hunting through her bag for something, one hand lifting simultaneously to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her slightly protruding right ear.

For a few moments he felt an urge simply to be close to her — to travel on the next train going in the same direction, to cover the same ground. But then, just as abruptly, the urge faded. To people watching him rush from one platform to the other, he would look like someone who had got things wrong. They’d think he was a tourist, a stupid foreigner. No, he would take the train he’d been intending to take all along, the train that was now due in one minute. As for the coincidence, he had no need of it, no use for it. He could afford to squander it. Far more professional, he thought, to act as if nothing had happened. And besides, wouldn’t there be a kind of excitement in taking the eastbound train and feeling the city expand between them as they travelled in completely opposite directions?

The tube slid out of the station, swaying slightly, and entered the darkness of a tunnel. He heard Jill’s voice on the phone. Maybe we could spend Sunday together … He had met her at a party in Saltash, empty cider bottles lined up along the bottom of the walls. The following week, he had called her, asked her out. She told him she would like to catch the ferry to Mount Edgcumbe. It seemed strange to her, she said, but she had never been there — at least, not since she was a child. They agreed to meet at ten-thirty in the café on Admiral’s Hard, a narrow street that doubled as a landing slip, its smooth cobbles running downhill, right into the water.

They ate breakfast in the café — poached eggs, hot buttered toast, mugs of strong tea. He noticed that she had an appetite, and he approved of that. Through the window he could see racks of seaweed on the cobbles, abandoned halfway up the street by the outgoing tide.