BOILER

Chapter 6

Barnes knocked the front door and the window next to it. He tried the front door and the back door and thought for a moment about trying a small window that was probably too small for him to snake through after looking through every window that didn't have the blinds drawn. He walked back up the steps, through the gate, and returned to his car as the mist fell to rain. He sat inside and put the engine on and the window down. The rain fell apart on the glass and greyed the furthest hills. The lighter popped out. He watched the house. One young woman in a yellow mack appeared at the bottom of the road and quickly disappeared. The tallest towers in the city, pillars of black and silver glass, had lost their heads in the clouds. Barnes sniffed. He took another look at the house, rolled up the window, and drove.

There were business cards in a glass case, pinned to a cork board and offering private massages, English lessons, Spanish lessons, and help if you'd ever been hurt at work. There were colourful stickers with phone numbers around the frame and posters for seminars around the board offering sure-fire tips to the top of whatever business you chose. A

fat man was holding his plate over the cash register and complaining about temperature while a smaller woman said, 'You come in here twice a week, and every time it's the same shit. If you wanna complain, do it before you ate all the goddammed bacon!'

The man dropped his plate on the counter, spilling some potato. Spatulas scraped the grill and sausages shook in the fat while a gaping extractor hood gorged itself on the fumes. Barnes stopped listening to the staff and finished his eggs and slung back the last of his coffee. He slung a little too hard and spilled a little on his chin and mopped it up with a napkin and dropped it on the plate and rang the bell on the door as he went out.

A battered chain-link fence ran around Taylors Scrap. Stripped out and jagged remains of cars stacked up like corpses and steel engine lumps were dotted about in the dirt. There was a tan leather front seat collecting dirty water in the yard and a section of exhaust sticking out of the ground next to it acting like a base for a parasol. Barnes went through an open green gate that had no reason to be there and passed a selection of cheap cars. He went around a wall of tires that weaved in and out of each other. The office was a sturdy looking four walls of concrete with a door and a window that was more steel than glass. The door had a map of the city on it. The outer rim was a green space where the wealthy put down roots. From there the streets looped in tightening circles to the centre.

There was a small waiting area in the office where two low, wide, deep, and square pleather seats were in front of a cupboard stained with black handprints. There was a snack machine next to them. A small space was kept between the snack machine and a tall wood-panelled desk that ran across three-quarters of the room. A thin man stood behind the desk. He had a black suit on and looking at the state of it he'd had it for a while. His face was drawn in enough and eyes blackened enough that he might have been saving it for his own funeral. Maybe he wouldn't be waiting that long. His hair was trying to be white but could only manage yellow. He was leaning on the desk with his thin arms folded, smiling with teeth that would do better in the dark. He was talking to a woman looking for a cheap tyre. Barnes listened to them and pulled up a loose corner of the vinyl floor with the toe of his boot. The woman dragged her handbag off the desk and left. He looked at the tall man while the tall man watched the woman leave. The tall man looked at Barnes and cocked an eyebrow.

'I'm looking for Jon James,' Barnes said, taking out his ID.

'What's this about?'

'Just some thing's I'm trying to get straight. You own this place?'

'I do. Jack Taylor,' he declared, extending a cold hand across the counter. He came around the desk and led Barnes out of the office. 'We do good business here. People like to knock scrap dealers, but when you're in a pinch, and let's face it, most people are, we're the ones you come to.'