The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (122 page)

Rike lies on top of her bed, fully clothed. A window runs alongside the bed, starting at her knees and ending at her chest. She can’t see why the bed is placed here, right beside the window so that lying down, if she keeps the blind up, anyone in the garden can see her. All she can see is the white wall that makes up one of the sides of the garden, and the edge of a fig tree with its big, deep green, hand-like leaves.

The doors and windows are open to draw in the evening breeze, but the air in the room is still. The rooms are too broad and too empty. She decides to set Tomas assignments. Museums, outings, cultural events organized by the school, she will ask him to eat with her. They will go to the café where she will encourage him to speak, to interact, to open his world a little more every day.

She watches part of a movie on her computer and picks up twenty minutes into the film. She lies on her side, earplugs in, but can’t settle, just isn’t tired. There are no emails, nothing to reply to, no messages to send, so when she opens the browser she types in
Damascus
and checks the news-streams.

There’s nothing here either, nothing more than conjecture.

She types in
Sutler
and again finds a long list of sites, some reports from papers, Grenoble, an entry in Wikipedia, his name connected on every hit with a business, HOSCO, now failing because of the contested sum the man has embezzled from them: thirty, fifty, sixty million. Speculation on Parson now focuses, implausibly, on the Mafia, and how, in pursuing Sutler, Parson had exposed himself to dangerous elements. While there is no mention of Sutler Number Three, ideas about Sutler Number Two are rife. The man, positively identified in Grenoble, is connected to crime syndicates in Marseilles. In a separate strand, a car delivery service in Westphalia is accused of providing cover for him. Each strand, hydra-like, generates new heads. With that much money what would you do? It’s no surprise that Henning, the British, and the Americans are interested in him.

She takes a shower before bed. She binds her hair and pins it back, and watches her reflection in the hallway mirror – and notices a message on her phone. The message is from her brother. Leaving a new local number he asks her to call as soon as possible.

She calls Mattaus and is surprised when he picks up. Her brother keeps the conversation smooth, away from trouble. She catches up with his news. He’s told her all of this, hasn’t he? Surely? When did they last speak?

Rike asks after Franco. She’s sorry, she says, to hear of his breakup.

Mattaus dismisses the comment. It’s history. Ancient.

‘And who is the new man?’

She doesn’t like her brother’s voice. Sour and lazy, deception nests in his slow and calculated intonation. He sounds younger than he is, and smarter. It’s hard to see how men like him, unfathomable. The kind of men they are, journalists, architects, doctors, teachers, all of them affable, clever, handsome. A type. They trust him. They adore him. They even find him funny. And his treatment of them leaves them startled and wounded. Mattaus’s sexual history is a field of debris from which he alone walks free.

Rike checks herself in the mirror. She taps the glass with her fingernail. She is nearly thirty, it will be her birthday in under a month.

‘When are you arriving?’ she asks, making sure there is no measure of welcome in her voice.

‘We’re already here,’ he answers, smug and precise.

Her brother is here already, ready to interfere in any plans she has with Isa, ready to take over – because this is what he does.

‘So when do we get to see you?’

Mattaus gives a vague response. He’ll speak with Isa, speak with his friend. He says
friend
deliberately – the man won’t be given a name – to keep everything in its compartment. But yes, hasn’t he already explained all of this? They flew in to Paphos, what, four, five days ago. Oh god, he can’t remember, was it last week already or longer? He asks the question to some third party and waits for a response. Must have been. He asks her not to tell Isa just yet. ‘We’re hoping to spend a couple of days on the beach, and take it easy before we bring in any family. No offence, but it’s nice to have time to ourselves.’

No offence taken, she assures him. Take all the time you need. She won’t whisper a word.

Rike can’t wait to tell Isa, to see how it feels to be on the other side of Mattaus’s manipulations for a change. She can’t wait either to see Henning’s reaction. It would be worth bursting into their room right now to share the news.
Guess what? He’s here already.
Henning would explode. Only she won’t do this. Would never go that far. Besides, Isa has probably had the same conversation with Mattaus.
Don’t tell Rike. You know how she is. We just want a couple of days to ourselves
. The only person she can be certain to be left out of Mattaus’s complex machinations is Henning. It’s almost worth the trouble.

She wants to ask him more about Franco. Not only because she would like some information, but because she wants to remind him of the damage he’s caused. She would appreciate some acknowledgement, a reference to the man he’s shared his life with for the past five years and dropped for a new, doubtlessly younger flash,
an architect
no less. She can imagine the scene too easily, Mattaus telling Franco, and probably not face to face.

In the night a helicopter cuts over the house, the sound wavers, bounces so she can’t determine the direction of travel, if it’s coming from the British base or heading toward it.

4.6

A fire alarm at the hotel sends Gibson out to the street halfway through the call.

Geezler isn’t happy at the news, and becomes irritated at the confusion as Gibson moves about to secure a better signal.

‘It’s nonsense—’ that Geezler would have Parson followed. ‘It doesn’t make sense—’ why Parson would invent any of this. The pure aimlessness of his travels, his
ambling.
To what end would Parson fabricate lies about Sutler? Why would he take advantage of HOSCO, of Geezler, when there is no obvious profit from it?

‘I don’t see why she would lie.’

‘She’s lost her husband. She wants to sow doubt.’ It is, Geezler suggests, an accentuated part of the process. ‘She’s angry at us all.’

Gibson does not explain that he didn’t speak directly with Laura.

He stands separate from the staff, who lean against the blue shutters of the enoteca opposite the hotel, and smoke and look a little intense, like arsonists. There is no fire, he’s assured. The manager, a lean man, unshaven, appears disappointed with the news. The guests bustle out with a little more urgency, wait for a break in the traffic to cross, and stand together at the steps of the church, Purgatorio ad Arco. Some take photographs of the front of the hotel and the long and narrow strip of via Tribunale, of scooters bouncing and skidding across the black street slabs, a few sit at the steps. All of them rub their hands, one at a time, over the four bronze skulls mounted on bollards in front of the church.

Gibson walks to via Mezzocannone, returns to the café where there are fewer students, a place to sit. He sets out the papers and reads each of the hotel bookings to Geezler: the phone numbers, the dates, the reference numbers. He looks up at the long grey wall opposite. The university. ‘These are all in your name. There’s no doubt that this is Parson’s work.’

Geezler is less happy, but somehow not surprised, with the news about the man following Parson and his wife. ‘It can’t be true. These are paranoid fantasies. Of someone who –’ the connection falters ‘– desperate. I fail to see the logic.’ It is absurd.

‘She has a photo of the man. She recognizes him from other occasions.’

The line becomes silent.

‘I said she has—’

Geezler asks him to send the photograph. Can it be emailed? He asks Gibson to describe the man.

‘Well,’ Gibson tries to recall the image, ‘the picture shows very little. Something of a staircase and there is a man in a doorway. It’s very clear.’

The stairway might be marble, there is a suggestion that it is vast and grand. A curved wall. A doorway in which a figure hesitates, his right hand raised. On a small screen the image appears deceptively clear. This is a European male. Light skinned. Light hair, shorn but not shaven. An angular face, with strong features, Gibson thinks, with a new or trimmed beard which emphasizes his mouth.

Enlarged, the image shows nothing new, and what appears distinct begins to lose definition. The most striking element is that the man knows he has been caught. His eyes look directly at the camera.

Rike sleeps late. She wakes with one clear thought, an ambition: today the lesson will be outside. It doesn’t matter where, but outside, away from the apartment. She isn’t interested in hearing news about his neighbours, has no desire to know Christos’s thoughts or experiences with his wife. She does not want to hear about the Kozmatikos boy or know what kind of trouble he has brought down upon himself. No. Today they will walk through the city, and maybe have a drink at one of the terraces overlooking the bay. Today they will take in Limassol and they will discuss what they find, whatever they happen upon.

She finds Henning in the kitchen in his shorts. He walks through the apartment without a shirt, an electric razor in hand. The buzz maps his walk. Rike watches from the garden, her feet up on the small side wall. It’s like he’s checking his territory, she thinks. He’s taking stock.

‘So no more cats?’

‘I haven’t seen them today. There’s one black one left. That’s all I’ve seen.’

‘I thought the black one was dead?’ Henning leans against the door. Rike hasn’t noticed before how the kitchen and the front room are linked by a continuous line of windows which should all open up. Henning hangs about like he has something to say.

‘What?’

‘Nothing?’

‘No, what is it?’

Henning turns back to the apartment but doesn’t yet go inside. ‘Isa said you’re teaching?’

‘Yes, there’s a school in Limassol.’

‘She said you were teaching a man in his house?’

‘I go to his apartment.’

Henning frowns.

‘It’s safe. It’s all organized through the school.’

‘For how long?’

‘Seven weeks.’

‘And you like it?’

Rike takes a sip from her coffee and slowly agrees. ‘Yes, I like it enough. Why did you come back early?’

Henning rubs his hand over his cheek and chin to check his shave.

‘Everything’s done.’

‘With the man from the desert?’

‘Yes, everything is settled.’

‘You still think he isn’t Sutler?’

Henning isn’t pleased to hear the name. ‘I doubt it.’

‘But you aren’t sure?’

Henning runs his tongue inside his cheek. ‘Do you know what a sutler is? It’s a person or a company which provides for the military. This is a man, who works for a trans-national company which provides for the American military, and his name is the name of the service he provides. And because no one takes so much money from these people so easily, not without someone knowing. It doesn’t happen.’ Henning points the shaver at the cat-food bowls.

‘But someone thinks that it’s him?’

‘Someone, yes. Some people.’

Henning points again to the cat bowls and asks if Rike can pick them up. ‘We’ll have rats.’

‘She won’t listen to me.’

‘You think I’ll have more luck?’

‘You could ask for anything right now.’

‘I’d better ask then. It won’t last long.’

She thinks Henning disapproves of her teaching. The idea, one he approved, was that Rike would spend time with Isa while Henning was away. If she’s teaching, she isn’t providing company.

Rike walks to the school offices on the Limassol waterfront. She delivers her passport and waits while it is copied. The language teachers are all women. Rosaria, the woman who hired her, is friendly and formal in equal measure, certainly less blank than the first time they met and the times they have spoken on the phone. As she waits the door buzzer sounds intermittently. There is an expectant atmosphere, a little nervousness among the students as they gather in the common room. It wouldn’t be so bad teaching here. English, German, Italian. In the afternoons, between classes, she could swim.

Rosaria points out the library. It’s nothing more than a stacked shelf in each room of DVDs, CDs, course books, and other books – novels and poetry – which seem so random they were possibly left by students. Greek in one room. Spanish in another. Italian in another. English in two rooms. Rike is welcome to borrow the books as she pleases, and she should tell her student about the facility. Rosaria presses a brochure into Rike’s hand.

‘Make sure he knows about these. There are trips, half-day trips to the museum, to Curium, to other archaeological sites, and a meal. Then full-day trips to Paphos, which take in a stop at Aphrodite’s Beach. He’s welcome to come.’ She points out that these are
extras
, run in association with the school. Rike would also be welcome on these trips and her ticket would come at a reduced price.

As the bell sounds Rosaria turns to the door. She hesitates. ‘He really hasn’t told you about himself?’

It seems to Rike that this question is reflexive. Rosaria asks Rike to walk with her. ‘Has he said anything?’

‘Only that he isn’t working.’

‘He was on a day course with us, but he only stayed for the morning. When we were in touch with him he explained that he would be more comfortable taking the lessons at home. I met with him to discuss what he might need, and that’s when he asked for you.’

‘Did he say what the problem was?’

‘Oh yes. He was assaulted.’ Rosaria looks meaningfully at Rike – who isn’t sure about what she’s implying.

‘Assaulted?’ This word sounds different when applied to a man.

‘Hospitalized.’ Rosaria nods and adds in a low voice. ‘What I’m telling you is confidential.’

In the office Rosaria looks in the small filing cabinet and takes a moment to locate the file.