The sky faded as he walked and by the time he reached the phone-box it was almost dark. He put some coins on the shelf in front of him, then lifted the receiver and dialled his mother’s number. Bella Dodds lived in a tower-block in Mount Wise. He used to be able to see her bathroom window from the walkway outside his flat. She had moved in fifteen years ago, after Frank died, and nothing had changed since then, her two imitation-leather armchairs in the lounge, her collection of china Alsatians, and the wind howling and moaning, eight floors up. At this time of day she would be drinking tea with a dash of Captain Morgan in it, or else a glass of Bols. There’d be a plate of Digestive biscuits on the table. She’d always liked her biscuits.
She picked up the phone on the seventh ring. ‘Yes?’
‘How are you, Ma?’
‘Oh, it’s you.’ Her voice sounded gravelly and rough, as if she had been sleeping. Perhaps it was simply that she hadn’t talked to anyone all day.
He asked her again. ‘How are you?’
‘Not so good, son. Not so good.’
It was the angina. She had chest pains and she was often short of breath. Sometimes the lift broke down and then she couldn’t get to the shops. None of the neighbours helped her, of course. They weren’t the type. Single mothers, petty thieves. Kids doing speed and glue. She had to live on what she’d put by in the kitchen cupboard: tins of Irish stew, cream crackers, Smash.
‘How’re Jim and Gary?’
‘Jim’s all right. Talked to him Wednesday. Gary’s not so good. That girl he was seeing, Janice. She left him.’ She paused and he could hear her lungs creak and whistle as she breathed in. ‘I don’t blame her,’ she went on. ‘He wasn’t nice to her.’
Barker thought of Jill sitting on the floor of his old flat, her legs folded beneath her, her bra-strap showing through the rip in her blouse.
‘I got a job,’ he said. ‘I’m cutting hair.’
‘Just like your father,’ she said, but it was just a statement of fact, and there was no nostalgia in it.
‘I got a flat too.’
‘You eating, are you?’
Barker didn’t answer.
‘I went to London once,’ she said. ‘We saw the soldiers parading up and down, those black hats on, all furry. What’s it called, when they do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Anyway.’ She sighed and then said something he didn’t catch.
‘What’s that, Ma?’
‘You coming home for Easter?’
A sudden burst of laughter startled him until he realised it must have been the television. He glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty-five. He should have known she’d be watching TV. The soap operas, the shows. Des O’Connor was her favourite. A lovely man. Bob Monkhouse, she liked him too.
Not long afterwards his coins ran out. He told her he would call again soon, but he was cut off before he could say goodbye. He put the receiver back on its hook, then stepped out of the phone-box and stood on the pavement, watching cars hurtle through the orange gloom towards Jamaica Road.
Thank You, Ray
Across the bridge and down on to Tooley Street, bleak and gleaming in the rain. Barker walked quickly, eager to be home. Just before he reached the entrance to The London Dungeon he turned right, into a tunnel that burrowed under the railway. Clinging to the curving walls were vents and cages fouled with grime and oil and dust. A steel roll-door lifted to 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 out of 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.
‘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.
‘How did you get this number, Ray?’ Though, even as he asked, he knew.
‘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?’
‘I just thought I’d ring you up, see how you were —’
‘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.
‘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.
‘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 a corridor. 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.
‘This is big,’ Ray said in the same tight voice. ‘It could set you up.’
Still Barker didn’t say anything.
‘I had a chat with Charlton the other day,’ Ray went on. ‘He said you were skint.’
‘What is it?’ Barker said at last. ‘What’s the job?’
‘They wouldn’t tell me. You’ve got to meet someone.’ Ray dragged on a cigarette. ‘Must be big, though. There’s six grand in it.’
Six grand?
‘So why aren’t you doing it, Ray?’