*
Gail has wedged the knuckle of her forefinger between her teeth, which is another thing she does in court to protect herself against unprofessional emotions.
‘Talking it over with Perry in the cabin afterwards, everything fell more or less into place,’ she says, raising her voice to give it an even more detached ring, but still keeping Perry out of her eye-line, and meanwhile trying to make it sound natural that two little girls should be having a jolly time beside the seaside a few days after their parents have been slaughtered in a car accident.
‘Their parents died on the
Wednesday
. The tennis match took place on the
following
Wednesday. Ergo, the household had mourned for a week and Dima had reckoned it was time to get them out into the fresh air: so all snap out of it and who’s for tennis? If they were Jewish, which for all we knew they may have been, or some of them were, or the dead parents were, then maybe they’d been sitting shiva, and by the Wednesday they’re supposed to be getting back into life. It hardly meshed with Tamara being Christian-holy and wearing a cross, but we weren’t talking religious consistency, not with that crowd, and Tamara was widely held to be weird.’
Yvonne again, respectful but firm: ‘I hate to press, Gail, but Irina said it was a
car smash
. Now is that
all
she said? Did she say, for instance, where the smash had happened?’
‘Outside Moscow somewhere. Vague. She blamed the roads. The roads had too many holes in them. Everyone drove in the middle of the road to avoid the holes, so naturally the cars hit each other.’
‘Was there any talk of hospitalization? Or did Mummy and Daddy die instantly? Was that the story?’
‘Dead on impact. “A great big lorry came rushing down the middle of the road and killed them dead.”’
‘Any other casualties at all, apart from the two parents?’
‘I wasn’t being awfully good at the follow-up questions, I’m afraid’ – feeling herself start to waver.
‘But was there a driver, for instance? If the driver was killed too, that would be part of the story, surely?’
Yvonne has reckoned without Perry:
‘Neither Katya nor Irina made any reference to a driver, dead or alive, direct or indirect, Yvonne,’ he says, in the slow, corrective tone he reserves for lazy students and predatory bodyguards. ‘There was
no
discussion of other casualties, hospitals, or what particular car anyone was driving.’ His voice is mounting. ‘Or whether there was third-party insurance cover, or –’
‘Cut,’ says Luke.
*
Gail had gone upstairs again, this time unescorted. Perry had stayed where he was, head caged in the fingers of one hand, the other tapping restively at the table. Gail returned and sat down. Perry appeared not to notice.
‘So, Perry,’ said Luke, all brisk and businesslike.
‘So what?’
‘Cricket.’
‘That wasn’t till next day.’
‘We’re aware of that. It’s in your document.’
‘Then why not read it?’
‘I think we’ve been through that, haven’t we?’
All right, it was next day, same time, same beach, different part, Perry grudgingly conceded. The same black-windowed people carrier pulled up in the
NO PARKING
bay, and out poured not just Elspeth, the two girls and Natasha, but the boys.
All the same, on the word ‘cricket’ Perry had begun to brighten: ‘Looking like a couple of teenaged colts who’d been locked up in the stable for too long and were finally being allowed a gallop,’ he said with sudden relish as the memory took him over.
For today’s visit to the beach, he and Gail had picked themselves a spot as far from the house called Three Chimneys as it was possible to
get. They weren’t hiding from Dima and company but they’d had a rocky night of it and woken late with splitting headaches, after making the elementary mistake of drinking their complimentary rum.
‘And of course there
was
no escape from them,’ Gail cut in, deciding it was her turn again. ‘Not anywhere on the
whole
beach. Well
was
there, Perry? Not on the whole
island
, when we started to think about it. Why were the Dimas so bloody interested in us? I mean, who
were
they? What did they want? And why
us
? Every time we turned a corner, there they were. We were getting to feel that. From our cabin, they were straight across the bay, peering at us. Or we imagined they were, which was just as bad. And on the beach, they didn’t even need binoculars. All they had to do was lean over the garden wall and gawp. Which no doubt they did a fair amount of, because it was only minutes after we’d pitched camp that the people carrier with black windows drove up.’
The same baby-faced bodyguard, said Perry, taking back the story. Not in the bar this time, but under a shade tree on the high ground. No Uncle Vanya from Perm with his tam-o’-shanter and family-sized revolver, but a gangly string-bean understudy who must have been some kind of fitness freak, because instead of shinning up the lookout he pranced up and down the beach timing himself and stopping each end for a bit of t’ai chi:
‘Bubble-haired chap,’ Perry said, his grin slowly stretching to its full width. ‘Kinetic. Well,
manic
was more like it. Couldn’t sit or stand still for five seconds. And beyond skinny. Skeletal. We put him down as a new arrival to the Dima household. We’d decided the Dimas had a high turnover of cousins from Perm.’
‘So Perry took
one
look at the children, didn’t you?’ Gail said. ‘The boys particularly – and you thought, Christ what do we do with
this
lot? Then you had your
one
brilliant idea of the holiday:
cricket
. Well, I mean, not
so
brilliant if you know Perry. Give him a dog-chewed ball and a bit of old driftwood and he’s lost to all non-cricketing mankind. Aren’t you?’
‘We took the game extremely seriously, as one should,’ Perry agreed, frowning unconvincingly through his smile. ‘We built a
wicket out of driftwood, put twigs on top for bails, the marina people found us a bat and ball of sorts, we rounded up a clutch of Rastas and ancient Brits for the outfield, and all of a sudden we had six a side, Russia versus the rest of the world, a sporting first. I sent the boys off to persuade Natasha to come and keep wicket, but they came back saying she was reading some guy called Turgenev they pretended they’d never heard of. Our next job was imparting the sacred Laws of Cricket to’ – the smile widening into a broad grin – ‘well, some pretty lawless chaps. Not the ancient Brits or the Rastas, of course. They were cricketers born and bred. But the young Dimas were
internats
. They’d played a bit of baseball, but didn’t take at all kindly to being told they had to bowl a ball and not chuck it. The small girls needed a bit of handling, but once we’d got the ancient Brits batting we could use them as runners. If the girls got bored, Gail swept them off for drinks and a swim. Didn’t you?’
‘We’d decided that the great thing was to keep them moving,’ Gail explained, determinedly sharing Perry’s brightness. ‘Not give them too much time to brood. The boys were going to have a high old time whatever we did. And for the girls – well, as far as I was concerned, just getting a smile out of them was … I mean,
Christ
…’ and left the rest unsaid.
Seeing Gail in difficulties, Perry quickly stepped in:
‘Very difficult to make a decent cricket pitch out of that soft sand,’ he explained to Luke, while she collected herself. ‘Bowlers get bogged down, batsmen capsize, you can imagine.’
‘I can indeed,’ Luke agreed heartily, quick to pick up Perry’s tone and match it.
‘Not that it mattered a hoot. Everyone had a blast and the winning side got ice creams. We called it a draw so both sides got ’em,’ said Perry.
‘Paid for by the new presiding uncle, I trust?’ Luke suggested.
‘I’d put a stop to that,’ Perry said. ‘The ice creams were strictly on us.’
With Gail recovered, Luke’s voice took on a more serious note:
‘And it was while both sides were winning – actually quite late in
the match – that you saw
inside
the parked people carrier? Have I got that right?’
‘We were thinking of drawing stumps,’ Perry agreed. ‘And suddenly the side door of the carrier opened and there they were. Maybe they wanted a bit of fresh air. Or a clearer look. God knows. It was like a royal visit. An incognito one.’
‘How long had the side door been open?’
Perry on guard over his celebrated memory. Perry the perfect witness, never trusting himself, never answering too fast, always holding himself to account. Another Perry that Gail loved.
‘Don’t know actually, Luke. Can’t say exactly.
We
can’t’ – with a glance at Gail, who shook her head to say she couldn’t either. ‘I looked; Gail saw me looking, didn’t you? So
she
looked. We both saw them. Dima and Tamara, side by side and bolt upright, the dark and the light, the thin and the fat, staring at us from the back of the carrier. Then
wham
, and the door slides shut.’
‘Staring, not smiling, as it were,’ Luke suggested lightly, while he made a note.
‘There was something – well, I said it already –
regal
about him. Yes. About both of them. The royal Dimas. If one of them had reached out and pulled a silk tassel for the coachman to drive on, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised.’ He dwelled on this idea, then approved it with a nod. ‘On an island, big people seem bigger. And the Dimas were – well, big people. Still are.’
Yvonne has yet another photograph for them to consider, this time a police mugshot in black and white: full face and side view, two black eyes, one black eye. And the smashed and swollen mouth of somebody who has just made a voluntary statement. At the sight of it, Gail wrinkles her nose in disapproval. She glances at Perry and they agree: nobody we know.
But Scottish Yvonne is not disheartened:
‘So if I put a bit of curly wig on him, imagine for a moment, and if I cleaned his face up a wee bit for him, do the two of you not think this might just possibly be your fitness freak released from an Italian gaol last December at all?’
They think it might well be. Drawing closer to each other, they are sure.
*
Early notice of the invitation was delivered by the venerable Ambrose in the Captain’s Deck restaurant the same evening, while he was pouring wine for Perry to sample. Perry the puritan son doesn’t do voices. Gail the actors’ daughter does them all. She awards herself the part of the venerable Ambrose:
‘“And tomorrow night I’m going to have to forgo the pleasure of serving you young folks. You know why? Because you young folks will be the honoured surprise guests of Mr Dima and his lady wife on the occasion of the fourteenth birthday of their twin sons who, so I hear say, you have personally introduced to the noble art of cricket. And my Elspeth, she has made the biggest, finest walnut-whirl cake you ever saw. Any bigger, why, Miss Gail, by all accounts those kids would have you jump right out of it, they love you so deep.”’
For his final flourish, Ambrose handed them an envelope inscribed:
To Mr Perry and Miss Gail
. Inside, were two of Dima’s business cards, white and deckle-edged like wedding invitations, giving his full name:
Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, European Director, The Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus
. And beneath it, the address of his company’s website, and an address in Berne styled
Residence and Company Offices
.
4
If it occurred to either of them to decline Dima’s invitation, they never admitted it to one another, said Gail:
‘We were in it for the children. Two hulking teenaged twin boys were having a birthday: great. That was how the invitation was sold to us, and it’s how we bought into it. But for me it was about the two girls’ – again privately congratulating herself on not mentioning Natasha – ‘whereas for Perry’ – she shot a doubtful glance at him.
‘For Perry
what
?’ Luke asked, when Perry did not respond.
She was already pulling back, protecting her man. ‘He was just so fascinated by it all. Weren’t you, Perry? Dima, who he was, the life-force, the formed man. This outlaw band of Russians. The danger. The sheer
differentness
. You were – well –
connecting
. Is that unfair?’
‘Sounds a bit like psycho-babble to me,’ Perry said gruffly, retreating into himself.
Little Luke, ever the conciliator, darted in to intervene. ‘So basically, mixed motives on both your sides,’ he suggested, in the manner of a man familiar with mixed motives. ‘Nothing wrong with that, surely? It’s a pretty mixed scene. Vanya’s gun. Tales of Russian cash in laundry baskets. Two small orphan girls desperately in need of you – maybe the adults too, for all you knew.
And
it was the twin boys’ birthday. I mean, how, as two decent people, could you resist?’
‘On an island,’ Gail reminded him.
‘Exactly. And on top of it all,
dare
one say, you were
jolly
curious. And why shouldn’t you be? I mean, that’s a pretty heady mix. I’m sure
I’d
have fallen for it.’
Gail was sure he would too. She had a feeling that, in his time, little Luke had fallen for most things, and was a bit worried about himself in consequence.
‘And
Dima
,’ she insisted. ‘Dima was the big lure for you, Perry, admit
it. You said so at the time. It was the children for me, but when push came to shove it was Dima for you. We discussed it only a few days ago, remember?’
She meant:
while you were penning your bloody document, and I was a Christian slave
.
Perry brooded for a while, much as he might have brooded over any other academic premise, then with a sporting smile acknowledged the rightness of the argument.
‘It’s true. I felt
appointed
by him.
Over-promoted
is more like it. Actually, I don’t know
what
I felt any more. Maybe I didn’t then.’