Soft by Rupert Thomson Page A

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 outof 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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜How did you get this number, Ray?’ Though, even as he asked, he knew.
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜I just thought I’d ring you up, see how you were –’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 acorridor. 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.
    â€˜This is big,’ Ray said in the same tight voice. ‘It could set you up.’
    Still Barker didn’t say anything.
    â€˜I had a chat with Charlton the other day,’ Ray went on. ‘He said you were skint.’
    â€˜What is it?’ Barker said at last. ‘What’s the job?’
    â€˜They wouldn’t tell me. You’ve