Rupert Thomson - Soft

Jimmy nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘Pretty bizarre.’ Richard was watching him closely.

‘I know.’

‘Nothing in it, I suppose?’

‘Richard,’ Jimmy said. Then, when Richard’s face didn’t alter, he said, ‘Of course not. Totally without foundation. In fact, there’s a press conference tomorrow. Connor’s going to make a statement.’

‘You seem uneasy —’

‘I’m not uneasy, Richard. I’m just bored with the whole subject. I’ve been hearing nothing else for days.’

A silence fell.

Richard finished his coffee, setting the cup down on its saucer so carefully that it didn’t make a sound. Eyes still lowered, he said, ‘You won’t be needing any more of those invoices, I take it.’

It suddenly occurred to Jimmy that Richard might be taping the conversation and, though he instantly dismissed the thought as paranoid, he decided not to say anything else.

At last Richard sat back and, reaching for his napkin, dabbed his mouth. ‘It’s all right, Jimmy,’ he said, laughing. ‘I won’t tell.’

You’ve just lost the account, Jimmy thought. Not today. Not tomorrow either. But you’ve lost it.

He passed the house with the four motor bikes in its front garden. The window on the second floor was closed. Nobody home. At the end of the road he turned right, into Delancey Street. It had been a strange day, a day that had raised as many questions as it had answered. Halfway through the afternoon, for instance, Tony Ruddle had stopped him in the corridor and said, ‘You know what I decided while I was away?’

Jimmy had no idea, of course.

A wide smile from Ruddle, which revealed his chaotic library of teeth. ‘I decided,’ he said, ‘to let you dig your own grave.’

When Jimmy asked him what he meant by that, Ruddle wouldn’t answer. He just stood there, nodding and smiling, as if he was listening to a joke inside his head.

Walking more quickly now, Jimmy turned right again, making his way back towards his flat. He no longer paid too much attention to what Ruddle said. It was just hot air, bile, spleen; it had no consequence, no meaning. All the same, it could unsettle you.

Looking up, he saw a door open further down the street. Two people stepped out on to the pavement. They were in the middle of an argument. The man was balding, his skin-tight T-shirt highlighting a weightlifter’s chest. The woman was wearing sunglasses. With her low-cut scarlet dress, her muscular tanned legs and her frizzy hair, she had a Spanish look. The man strode on ahead, ignoring her. She kept shouting at him, though; you could almost see her words bouncing off the nape of his neck, his shoulderblades. Her breasts shook as she walked.

A strange day altogether. Provocative, somehow. Incomplete. And yet the threats, such as they were, seemed empty, and the most important news was good.

Later that night Jimmy lay on his sofa with the TV on and a vodka-and-tonic in his hand. He had just started watching the first American football game of the season, which he had videoed the week before, when the doorbell rang. For a moment he didn’t move. The bell rang again. He looked at his watch. Ten-forty-five. Marco, he thought. Or Zane. Sighing, he put his drink down and stood up.

When he opened the front door, Karen Paley was standing on the pavement, her back half-turned. She had been about to leave.

‘Karen,’ he said.

She stared at him, almost as if she didn’t know him. ‘Are you busy?’ she said.

‘No, I’m not busy.’

In his living-room she stood by the window, looking out into the garden. He asked if he could get her anything. She shook her head. The whites of her eyes looked too white, somehow, as though she had been crying. It occurred to him that maybe she had told her husband, and there had been a fight. Behind her, the San Francisco 49ers were moving upfield. Elegant, remorseless.

‘I’m sorry to turn up like this,’ she said.

‘That’s all right.’

‘It’s just — something happened …’

He sat on the arm of the sofa, looking up at her. The tempting top lip, the blonde hair tucked behind her ear. He waited.

‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time,’ she said. ‘But later — I don’t know …’

‘What happened?’ He reached for his vodka. On the TV he saw a wide receiver leap high into the floodlit air and fold a spinning ball into his chest.

‘There were dead people in the swimming-pool …’

Still staring out into the darkness, Karen told him that when she arrived for training that morning, there were TV cameras on the steps outside the baths. She thought it was funny. So did the other girls. It seemed as if the TV people were there for them, as if they’d become famous overnight. So they played to the cameras, waving and blowing kisses … Later, she heard that a woman had hidden in the changing-rooms until the pool closed and then, sometime during the night, she had drowned her two small children, then she had drowned herself. The bodies had been found that morning.

Karen turned to him with tears shining on her face. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day,’ she said, ‘but this evening it got worse. Somehow, I didn’t want to be alone.’

‘Where’s your husband?’

‘In America somewhere. Houston, I think.’

‘He’s getting closer then.’

She smiled through her tears. ‘You think I’m stupid.’

‘No.’

‘Maybe I should go.’ She looked round for the backpack she had brought with her.

‘Karen,’ he said, ‘it’s all right. You can stay.’

She seemed restless, though, so he took her out and showed her the neighbourhood — the Hotel Splendide on the corner, the statue of Cobden on its scrubby patch of grass, the house where the bald man and the Spanish-looking woman lived. They stood on the railway bridge and listened to the trains. The red light on the Post Office Tower blinked in the distance. The sky was the colour of beer.

‘Our troubles are over,’ he said. He wanted to hear the words out loud, see how they sounded. He wanted to believe in them.

Karen was looking at him oddly.

‘It’s just something someone said today.’ He took her hand. He could feel the knob of bone on the outside of her wrist. His little finger touched against it as they walked.

Later, when they reached his flat, she had a bath. At one-thirty they went to bed, the flicker of a black-and-white movie on TV.

‘Do you mind just holding me?’ she said.

He smiled. ‘Of course not.’

‘Strange place you’ve got,’ she murmured.

‘Everyone says that.’

‘No, I like it.’

Soon her breathing deepened and she was asleep. He looked down at her, what he could see of her — some green-blonde hair, one half-closed hand — and found himself remembering something Bridget had said to him a few months back. Why can’t you be nice to me? Why can’t you just be nice?

*

Journalists from many of the country’s leading newspapers and two of its TV stations attended the press conference that was held the following morning, but Raleigh Connor showed no signs of nervousness as he stepped up to the microphone. He began by mentioning a colleague of his who had worked in Washington for many years. If you want a friend in Washington, his colleague had told him, buy a dog. Connor waited until the laughter died away. In London it’s even worse, he went on. You bring your dog, they put it in quarantine for six months. This time laughter burst towards the ceiling like a shout. Standing at the side of the room with Neil Bowes, Jimmy saw that Connor already had his audience exactly where he wanted them. It was only in private that Connor slipped up, became human — even, sometimes, a figure of fun; in public he was seamless, infallible. At that moment Neil Bowes nudged Jimmy in the ribs. Jimmy realised he had not been listening.