Soft

by Rupert Thomson

  ‘We thought it might be a bit unpleasant to show the whole thing in detail,’ Lambert explained. ‘A bit,’ and he paused, ‘gratuitous.’

  The man’s agony was such that his face seemed to have changed shape. Once, he passed out, his chin sinking down on to his chest. He was still chained to the radiator. One hand burned black, a tendon showing …

  Then, suddenly, they were looking at a man with a bushy seventies hairstyle. He was standing in an office with his trousers round his ankles. A girl with no top on was kneeling in front of him. He was holding his dick in his right hand and she was licking it. ‘Yes,’ she was saying when she could get a word in, ‘oh yes. Give it to me. Yes.’

  Lambert stood up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘We must have used an old tape.’ He pressed STOP and switched off the TV. Walking over to the video, he bent down and pressed EJECT. The tape slid out.

  ‘Did you kill him?’ Barker wanted to know.

  ‘Oh no.’ Lambert seemed put out by the idea, almost offended. ‘He won’t be fucking anyone in a hurry, though.’ He fitted the tape back into its case and closed the lid. ‘He won’t be playing snooker either.’

  Barker watched as the two men rose from the sofa and filed out of the room. He heard the front door open. Lambert tucked the tape into his coat pocket.

  ‘This time tomorrow,’ he said.

  Twenty minutes later Barker carried his coffee table down the stairs and out on to the pavement. The rain was still falling steadily. The street shiny, empty.

  He walked to the corner and threw the table into a skip. He knew it wouldn’t be long before it caught somebody’s eye. It wouldn’t be long before they noticed the carved inscription either. 24 HRS. He wondered what they’d make of it.

  19 Hrs

  It was four in the morning before the rain slowed down. Barker lay on his back with his head turned towards the window. Light from the streetlamp slanted across the top half of the bed, across his hands. He had dreamed about Jill, who was also, somehow, the girl in the photograph. He had seen her on the video entryphone, on that grainy screen, night lapping at the edges of her face. Her skin so white, there could have been a lightbulb glowing behind the thin shade of her skull. She spoke to him – or, rather, her mouth moved – but her voice was lost in a storm of interference. He rolled on to his side, his eyes still open. His weights glinted in the corner of the room. The carpet looked dark-grey.

  He had lied to Lambert, of course. In all sorts of ways. Since first setting eyes on Glade Spencer in the tube station, he’d had countless opportunities to do what had been asked of him; if he’d done nothing, he could only think it was because he was waiting for his own version of the instructions to reveal itself. Almost a week ago, for instance, on Tuesday, he had sat behind her on the top deck of the night bus. It was one-thirty in the morning and she was on her way home from the restaurant where she worked. There had been a moment when she took hold of her hair in both hands and dropped it behind her shoulders. In one gleaming torrent it splashed over the chrome rail that ran along the back of the seat and hung in the air in front of him, just inches from his knees. As the bus swung round a corner, he reached out to steady himself and a few strands brushed the back of his right hand. He had touched her, and she hadn’t even noticed. He had come that close. But still he had done nothing.

  On Thursday he had followed her to a party in Covent Garden. From where he was standing, in the doorway of the building opposite, he could hear the music – the bass notes, anyway. He stared up at the open windows, then at the sky beyond. Stars showed like moth-holes in the darkness. Once or twice a half-smoked cigarette came somersaulting down into the street. He stood in that doorway until his knees and hip-bones ached. At last she stepped on to the pavement with two other girls. A kind of damage. She kissed them both and waved, then walked off in the opposite direction, westwards, into Soho. She was wearing a mini-dress. At first Barker thought it was silver, but when he drew closer he realised that it was made from bits of mirror-glass. It reflected a shattered version of everything around her. She waited at a set of traffic-lights and he watched her change from green to red. Later, on Bayswater Road, she stopped in front of a hotel’s neon sign, spinning slowly, drunkenly, in the orange light. She seemed to be admiring the effect. Once, a man shouted at her from the window of his car. In the shadows Barker tensed – but Glade didn’t seem to notice. She had a curiously absent quality, which gave her the appearance of being alone, even when she was standing on a busy street; it should have made his job easier – after all, he only had to take that absence to its logical conclusion – and yet she existed in a place so much her own that he could find no way of approaching her. Though he had touched her, she remained untouchable. Still, if there was any trouble, he was ready to step in. He would be the stranger who just happened to be passing. When she turned to thank him, he’d be gone.

  He followed her west, into Notting Hill, where she paused for a long time outside a big white house, then north, through Ladbroke Grove. He followed her, unnoticed, all the way to her front door. It took almost an hour and a half. Afterwards, he realised that he had walked her home. Though he had no children of his own – and never would have, not now – he felt towards her the way he imagined a father might feel, an emotion that was both fierce and clumsy, difficult to name. He seemed to take a kind of pride in her. It was unthinkable that somebody might do her harm.

  Yet here he was, with nineteen hours left. He looked at the clock on his bedside table. Yes, nineteen hours. And then the Scotsman would arrive with his blowtorch. And later, when the agony was over, the job would be given to someone else. He slept in snatches, his mind swept by plans that all, inevitably, failed. Finally, at a quarter to six, he reached up and switched on the light. Blinking, he felt his way into the lounge. She would still be asleep, her bright-blonde hair tangled on the pillow.

  He lifted weights for twenty minutes. His blood woke up. Through the open window he could hear trucks braking on Crucifix Lane. He showered and dressed. There was no sunrise, no colour in the east, only a gradual lightening of the sky. The absence of strange weather surprised him. He put the kettle on, fried some bacon. Twenty-five-past six. He watched his hands spoon coffee grounds into the chipped enamel pot. It was Tuesday. When he tried to think of Wednesday, he found that he could not imagine it.

  At ten to seven he locked the door to his flat and set off down the stairs. All the evidence had been destroyed. He had burned Lambert’s document in a metal basin on the roof outside his kitchen. The cool air would scatter the ashes across the narrow gardens behind the house. A funeral of sorts … Smiling grimly, he stepped out on to the pavement and pulled the door shut after him. In his hand he held a small parcel that was addressed to Harold Higgs. He had scrawled a note to his employer, explaining that he had been forced to leave suddenly, for personal reasons. He enclosed £700, which ought to be enough money to pay for a hip replacement. He told Higgs to forget the NHS, go private; the sooner he got it sorted, the better. Also in the parcel he had enclosed two letters, already addressed. He asked Higgs to send them by registered post. One contained £500 and a two-line note: Charlton–something to help you get over that redhead – Barker. The other, to his mother, had taken him more time. He told her to spend the money he was sending her on something nice. A new TV, maybe. Some furniture. He signed off by saying that he missed her. When he reached the corner of the street, he pushed the package through the slot into the letter-box. He hoped he’d put enough stamps on it; he didn’t want all that money to go astray. He couldn’t wait until the post office opened, though, and he couldn’t risk carrying the package around with him either, in case it fell into the wrong hands.

  He walked down Morocco Street, which was a dead end, and crossed the area of wasteground beyond it, then cut through a housing estate and circled round behind Guy’s Hospital. It was an eccentric route to take to the station, but he wanted to make sure he wasn’t being followed. What was about to happen should hap
pen in private, unobserved. He heard a clock strike seven, the notes wobbling in the cool, glassy air.

  Sixteen hours.

  Waiting in the tube at London Bridge, with rush-hour just beginning, he thought of Glade again, her orange shirt, her long black skirt clinging to her hips. The way she looked when he first saw her.

  That first sighting, a coincidence. Dark branches held against the glass roof. Flashed glimpses of her through the windows of a train. And then the distance between them widening as he deliberately let her go …

  Before he left the flat that morning, he had called Jill. It was the first contact in more than a year. A woman answered. Jill’s mother. He asked if Jill was up yet.

  ‘Who is this?’ she said.

  ‘Barker Dodds.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She had never approved of him, wanting something better for her daughter. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had told him that Jill was away on holiday, he wouldn’t have blamed her for lying, but instead, after a moment’s hesitation, he heard her put the phone down and call Jill’s name. Through the kitchen window he watched Lambert’s instructions burning. He saw how the flames seemed to taste the air around the edges of the bowl. He must have waited minutes. At last he heard footsteps, faint at first, but growing louder.

  ‘Barker?’

  She sounded just the same. It was strange how the sound of someone’s voice could close a gap. As if the last fifteen months had never happened.

  ‘How are you, Jill?’

  ‘OK. Tired.’ She yawned.

  ‘You working?’

  She smiled into the phone. You can hear somebody smile. ‘Same shitty building society …’

  He smiled too. She was just saying that. She loved her job.

  ‘Have they promoted you yet?’

  ‘Not yet. The end of the year maybe.’

  The end of the year. How far away that sounded. As far away as the Dark Ages he had recently been reading about. In fact, in some ways, the Dark Ages seemed closer, less mysterious.

  ‘Barker?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What about you? What have you been doing?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  In the silence he heard the scratch of the flint on a cheap lighter as she lit a cigarette, the faint kiss of her lips separating from the filter as she inhaled. She had always liked to smoke when she was on the phone.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I just wanted to ring you up.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Well, I should be going.’

  ‘Will you ring again?’ She seemed to be saying she would like it if he rang but, at the same time, she didn’t want to pressurise him into anything. Also, perhaps, for her own sake, she couldn’t risk putting it that bluntly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ was the best that he could manage.

  Silence fell between them once again. He could hear her breathing out, almost the same sound as when you blow into the red part of a fire to get it going.

  ‘You never came for me,’ she murmured. ‘I thought you’d come for me.’

  He didn’t speak for several seconds. He couldn’t.

  ‘Barker? Are you there?’

  ‘I think about you, Jill,’ he said at last, then he hung up.

  She couldn’t phone him back, of course; she didn’t know the number. She probably didn’t even know that he had moved to London – and by the time she found out, he’d be gone.

  The tube hurtled into the station, startling him. Just for a moment he had forgotten where he was.

  The Northern Line. A pungent smell of cinders and scorched rubber, a smell of wires short-circuiting …

  His phone-call to Jill – he wasn’t sure it had been such a good idea. That hesitation in her voice, that generosity. Once again, he had come away with the sense that it had all been his own doing: some inability, some lack, some failing on his part that he could not explain, not even to himself. He glared at the people sitting opposite, as if he might shift some portion of the blame to them. A thin man in a pinstripe suit stood up suddenly and moved to the far end of the carriage. Now the seat was empty, Barker could see himself reflected in the dark glass of the window, his forehead stretched and bulbous, the sockets of his eyes filled to the brim with shadow. It was a distortion, but it didn’t seem untrue.

  He changed trains at Elephant & Castle. Caught in a surge of commuters, he found himself wedged into the corner of a carriage with his head turned sideways against the roof. He was staring at a man’s ear from a distance of about six inches – a fierce bristling of ginger hairs, the lobe like something botched, vaguely thalidomide. The man seemed to be trying to work one hand down the side of his body, but the carriage was so crowded that he was having difficulty even moving his arm. At last he succeeded, and his hand appeared in the pocket of air below his chin. The hand opened cautiously, revealing two Maltesers. They rolled across his palm, first one way, then the other, reminding Barker of one of those infuriating games where you have to try and fit small silver balls into even smaller holes and keep them there. Just before Charing Cross the man lowered his head and, reaching out with his lips, drew the Maltesers deftly into his mouth. Then he turned and pushed towards the doors.

  Four stops later, Barker changed to the Hammersmith & City line. The train emptied a little. At that time of day most people who had jobs were travelling into the centre. He should have been on the way to work himself, of course, but the idea only occurred to him remotely, like the light issuing from a distant star. He hadn’t thought of calling the shop, for instance, even though he was aware that Higgs might feel let down. It would have been too much of a distraction. And besides, his letter would arrive soon enough. In the meantime, he was overtaken by a kind of confidence, a surprising absence of responsibility. He had the feeling he was flying on automatic pilot. As obstacles presented themselves, so adjustments would be made. He wouldn’t even really be involved.

  Which was just as well, perhaps. Though he had a plan now, he had no idea where it had come from or whether it was going to work. Plans depend on your ability to predict the unpredictable. You have to prepare the ground, allow for every eventuality. He had notes on Glade Spencer, and he had watched her, followed her – but how much did he really know? It seemed quite possible that he had underestimated the difficulty of the task that lay before him. Maybe he was even living in a dreamworld. At the very least, he could expect a few moments of violence. He would have to instil a sense of fear. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. And then? Should he tell her the truth? If he did, how would she react? From that point onwards he would be entering the unknown.

  Standing outside the tube station at Latimer Road, he checked his watch. Just under fourteen hours left. He looked around. A black cat crouched beneath a parked car, its eyes as bright and flat as sequins. A woman in a shell-suit wheeled an empty pushchair out of a paper shop. There was the smell of drains. A sudden irritation ran through him: one of his hands flew upwards, skimming his forehead, as if to brush away a fly.

  He moved north, covering the distance between the station and her house as quickly as he could. At eight-thirty-five he was turning the corner into her street. That was good. One girl would already have left for work, the other would just be waking up. Above his head a plane moved with slow, hydraulic force towards the airport fifteen miles to the west. The grey sky crackled in its wake. This was it. He walked up to the front door and pressed the bell. After a moment he heard footsteps on the stairs. Through the frosted glass he watched her float towards him, her identity disguised, scrambled, reduced to a shifting pattern of abstract shapes and colours.

  There was no security chain in place, no suspicious eye appearing in the gap. Instead, the door swung open, drawing air into the house, and there she was, Glade Spencer, standing right in front of him. When she saw him, she smiled.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ she said.

  He stood on the doorstep, clumsy now, and utterly bewildered. The strangest sensati
on. He felt as if he was wearing what old-fashioned deep-sea divers used to wear – a helmet like a goldfish bowl, a pair of lead-soled boots.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

  She closed the door behind him and then led him up a flight of stairs. He followed her, his eyes fixed on her bare feet, the frayed hem of her dressing-gown. Halfway up, she stopped and looked at him, over her shoulder. ‘You know, you look completely different from what I imagined.’ She noticed the confusion on his face and laughed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be so rude.’

  She showed him along a narrow corridor and into the front room. He recognised the bay window, the red curtains. This was her room. He couldn’t resist moving towards the window. He stared past the curtains and down into the street. He had watched the house for so many hours that he felt he must have left an impression on the air. He could see his own ghost standing on the paving-stones below. That puzzled look, which he knew from the mirror. A man who had been placed in an impossible position. A man with the odds stacked against him. Something seemed to have changed since then, just in the last few minutes, though he couldn’t have put his finger on what it was.

  He stepped back into the middle of the room and looked around. A tiled fireplace, its grate heaped with pale ashes. The double bed unmade. He could see the shape of her head preserved on the top pillow, an oval indentation in the cotton. At last his eyes reached hers. She was still smiling. He realised he hadn’t spoken to her yet. Words seemed to have deserted him.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘that you’ve got theories …’