Soft Read Free Page A

Boots. You could see her legs through the nylon – her curved white calves, her knees slightly chapped and red. Almost five years he had been with her, five years of his life, and yet he didn’t feel a thing. He wondered why. Though he knew she would be over at her mother’s house he couldn’t bring himself to ring her. At night he slept with a length of metal pipe next to the bed in case the Scullys suddenly got brave.
    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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜How’s business?’ Barker asked.
    Jim nodded. ‘Pretty good. What about you? Still bouncing?’
    â€˜Yeah.’ Barker mentioned the name of the club.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Ah well.’ For a while Jim stared at the floor. Then he said, ‘I hear you’ve got a problem.’
    â€˜Nothing serious. They think I killed Steve Scully.’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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
.
    â€˜You need any help,’ Jim said, ‘you let me know.’
    Barker nodded.
    â€˜You coming down the pub Friday?’
    â€˜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 theirsharp 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.’
    â€˜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