Read The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit Online
Authors: Richard House
He wakes in the night, the covers a little heavy on his legs, which means that he wakes lying in the same position with the idea that he hasn’t slept at all. The television is on, the sound muted, tuned to a news channel, an image of an earthquake. It takes a moment to register that this is Syria, a city razed. This is no earthquake.
The driver, he can’t remember his name or rank, had asked how long he’d known Parson, and this question strikes Gibson as meaningful. Did Parson know the person who chased him? Imagine that you have this answer first.
He knew him well. He did not know him. He met him that morning. The man (it has to be a man) was casually familiar.
Then you would learn a great deal about the incident, its motives, its commission.
On the television people stand beside the rubble of houses and shops, as if this is ordinary. When people protest and cry to camera there is a theatre about it, a language which looks assumed, as if, moments before, moments after, they might be holding ordinary arguments and conversations, but the camera demands they strike themselves, they weep, they raise their hands skyward. Grief, he thinks, makes for an intolerably amateur display, crude and dulling. Foreign.
He misses Parson. Misses knowing the man is out there. Believes that something is wrong now with the shape of the world.
Henning: Second email to Kraiz
The next morning Rike returns to Tomas’s apartment. In the hallway she finds four large rolls of white insulation, taller than her, wrapped in plastic with labels in Greek. On her way to Tomas’s apartment she again notices Christos’s name on the list of occupants at the main entrance, then at his door, in English first, then Greek, both crossed through. The scratches aren’t recent. She’s deliberately thinking about details, like the sign, to distance herself from the dream.
It’s possible, this scratching out, that Christos has annoyed someone.
The previous evening she spoke with Henning and attempted to pry a little more from him about the man in hospital: Sutler Number Three. Henning, having fended off Isa’s questions about Parson, refused to give details, but did admit to a small triumph. Udo has conceded. Sutler Number Three, Mr Crispy, will be brought to Cyprus. She is not to talk about this, understand? And neither is Isa. The decision, he thinks, has more to do with expense than security.
The sisters feed their curiosity through internet searches:
Sutler
,
HOSCO
,
Iraq Conspiracy
,
Sutler One
,
Two
,
Three
, tapped in to furnish the smallest details, and finally,
Parson
, who they feel some connection to because Henning has met the man, interviewed him, discussed details about Sutler which he will not divulge. Speculation on Parson’s death includes the involvement of the Neapolitan Camorra. Isa prefers this theory, and pictures the man’s chaotic run from a band of armed thugs. His stumbling across railroad ties. She loves the idea that the Mafia might be involved, however improbable.
Rike takes the steps to Tomas’s apartment preoccupied. What they do know: Sutler is British, he worked in Iraq as a contractor with an American company called HOSCO, he has absconded with anything between forty-five and fifty-three million dollars. No small change. She thinks of him trudging through the desert with sacks of cash, and losing, on each day, one sack after another. The man is like a bug, a tiny thing wheeling massive balls of cash across the desert. The man sheds money as he walks, it flies from him, stripped by the wind.
A million dollars in twenty-dollar notes weighs about twenty kilos.
*
Tomas’s door stands open in anticipation. Tomas, in the kitchen, answers her knock with a greeting and a question – would she like coffee or water? He has cold still water but no ice. He hasn’t eaten; he’s running late himself. He bends over in the kitchen so she can see only his haunch through the doorway as he searches through his fridge.
It’s like he knows.
For a forty-year-old he’s in very good shape. When he straightens, he stretches. This is her weakness: necks, backs, shoulders, forearms. The equine shapes these muscles define. She prefers lean to strong: a racehorse rather than a bear.
Rike waits at the door, makes small talk about the packets left out in the hall (insulation, no?) and for the first time she takes a proper account of the room; the loose water-stained parquet floor which makes the whole room feel unsteady; bare white walls bruised with grey scuffs. A window overlooks a small playground, and opposite, behind her, double doors lead to a balcony which overlooks the street. A sad room, if rooms can be sad, weighted by the absence of furniture and the fact that month after month new people live here.
Set ready by Tomas’s chair: a notebook, a newspaper, a dictionary.
‘No birds today?’
‘Yesterday,’ he says in German. ‘Today we have snow in the hall. Snow, in bags, fake snow, polystyrene, in bags as big as this.’ He gestures up to his chest, then shrugs. ‘I have my homework. Here.’ He points to the window overlooking the back of the apartments, and they stand side by side and look out.
The building describes a hard U. Tomas’s apartment is almost dead centre. The two wings of the complex, east and west, curve on either side; between them lies a small, bare playground. The flagstones have been recently hosed and swept. This view feels English to her despite the row of stumpy palms (in Peckham every estate had a play park with swings, a slide, and sometimes a roundabout, and how these parks became the territory for thugs not children). Rike looks at the wings, at the parallel lines of balconies and windows. Most of the shutters are closed, but where they are open it’s impossible not to invent stories of these lives. Once again there are the sounds of people, dishes chipping together, a radio, nothing as loud as the previous day. A man in swimming trunks vacuums his apartment. There’s a rhythm in his dips and sweeps, even in the way he pauses to smoke.
‘I was reading about Syria this morning. Again, the news is very bad.’
Rike hasn’t heard the news today. Most of what she knows comes via the internet or her sister. Neither is reliable.
‘It’s hard to know what’s happening.’
Tomas sips his coffee, his elbow on the window ledge so that the cup and saucer are held over the drop. Below, on the flagstones, a cat.
‘The Arabs. They should do something. They wait, and what for?’
Tomas Berens is making conversation and it would be polite to respond. Rike can’t quite formulate her thoughts. She can’t think of Syria without thinking of her sister, and then there’s the report Isa read out loud two nights ago about how the unrest was nothing more than war-by-proxy. This isn’t Egypt or Libya, this isn’t about
freedom
, not with Russia, China, Iran stuck in the mix. She doesn’t like to think of Syria as a place where something is enacted, where moves are made, but she isn’t naive enough to think that this is new, it’s impossible to think of a small country which doesn’t have associations with bigger, more ambitious neighbours. She can’t figure out the sides. Exactly who are the rebels the government are suppressing? Rike can’t make small talk because she doesn’t know what she thinks, so she asks instead to hear about Tomas’s neighbours. Even this isn’t simple. Her self-awareness has created tension. It’s strange to stand next to a man you have dreamed about, as if, by dreaming, some line has been crossed.
‘We should speak only in English? Yes?’
Once again Rike speaks slowly, aware that Tomas is watching her mouth. This is normal, students watch the shape of her mouth, how the lips stretch or curl to a word, to notice where the tongue is placed: visible or not. Not so normal were the three men she taught in London last summer who looked only at her breasts, expectant, not with lust, so much, as hunger, so she couldn’t look at them without thinking of them as being parched or starved. Her one discomfort with teaching is the sense that she’s being sapped dry, although, she admits it’s slightly nonsensical to think of knowledge as nourishment. It’s not uncommon, Isa tells her, for teachers to imagine that their students are obsessed with them. It isn’t that Rike actively considers these ideas as she stands beside Tomas, or even believes them, but they come at her as a package, one thought tied to another, bound by habit and connections. Isa’s ideas are crafted to be wicked, ridiculous, and sticky. Nevertheless, those grey Nordic eyes as they coolly watch her mouth are a little unsettling.
‘Show me where they live and tell me their location. You understand?’ She points to the apartment where the man has finished his cleaning. The blinds are still open but the room is now vacant. ‘Tell me where these people are. Describe their location. Inside? Outside? Behind? Beneath?
On top
. Tell me where they live.’ The dream sits with her as a residue. Everything she says today brims with innuendo. Rike focuses her attention on Tomas’s right hand,
and such big hands
. She hopes that Tomas doesn’t sense what passes through her mind.
Tomas nods, sets down his cup, then points to the windows to his right: east wing, one floor below. ‘Christos the driver and his wife live on the third floor.’ He points now at the west wing: a window with open shutters, where pale blue curtains, thin as a nightdress, drop over the sill. ‘Below. One floor,’ he points directly down, ‘is the Kozmatikos family. The mother is a speech therapist. Sometimes you hear the students. Peh-peh-peh. Treh-treh-treh.’ He trills the ‘r’. ‘It must be the school holiday because her son is always home. Maybe he is sick. I often see her son at the window,’ and again in German. ‘I spoke with her husband yesterday. I don’t remember his first name. He works as a pharmacist. The Kozmatikos family have lived here for a long time. It’s close to the hospital and easy for work. He inherited his apartment from his father. I think that’s what he said.’
Rike asks that he speak in English.
‘Before, there were fourteen children here, but now there are only three. He says that Limassol isn’t so friendly now, it’s bigger, and there are many people who come for their holidays. Many businessmen also, and many Russians.’ He points at the opposite building. ‘Most of the rooms on this side are bedrooms and bathrooms. On the front are the sitting rooms.’
They return to the room, then Tomas draws Rike to the balcony and points to the street and the opposite building, the last before the hospital.
‘A judge lives there. He lives on the top floor with his wife. In the evening you can see it’s one long room. The apartment is modern. You see, with the black and white painting? He wears a suit and house shoes. You would not know he is a judge. His wife is an elegant woman. Christos says that the judge has a house at the coast near Larnaca and another in the Troodos mountains. This is where he stays when the court is in session.’
Tomas quickly checks his notebook.
‘I sit here in the morning with my coffee. This is my routine. Every morning I watch the judge’s driver. His car is parked in the same place and the man stands in the same place, like this.’ Tomas folds his arms in demonstration. ‘According to Christos he is a police officer. He is always calm and relaxed. His expression is always the same. He notices everything.’
Tomas looks up from his notes and smiles his first proper smile.
‘The doctor’s son ran away – the Kozmatikos boy. This morning, the mother accused the supervisor of leaving the main door open. The boy is seven or eight and he’s always dressed in his football clothes. He was gone for four hours. He isn’t allowed out of the building on his own. Along the street there is a café which is managed by two brothers, then a news-stand which sells comics and books. There is a man who watches the parking spaces on both sides of the street. He never speaks with the judge’s driver, who is often waiting in the street. During the day the street appears respectable, but at night there are women on the corner. They sit on mopeds. I’m not certain they are all women.’
Tomas checks the notebook again to ensure he has said everything.
‘Every morning I make a coffee and I come to the window. Christos is always the first to leave, sometimes he returns just before eight. He parks in front of the building and waits for his wife.’
When Tomas looks up from his notebook Rike congratulates him.
Sunlight, reflected from the glass doors, slips from the balcony into the room in a widening block to capture her shoes and calves; the edges vibrate and heat prickles her skin. She hasn’t seen the driver. He isn’t there now. None of the characters Tomas has described are about.
Satisfied with his presentation, Tomas adds, ‘I didn’t explain yesterday that Christos drives a taxi.’
‘I thought he was a photographer?’
‘This is his hobby for a little extra money. For work he takes people to the airport at Paphos and Larnaca. Christos and his wife fight every moment they are together. In the morning they argue about work. In the evening they argue about money.
‘This morning, I woke to hear him shouting that everything that is happening is her fault.’
Rike waits until Tomas has finished. There isn’t much to say. Perhaps talking in a group would be good for him. She could ask about sessions at the school. ‘Conversation would help,’ she says. ‘Try using the simple past tense. Tell me more about Christos. Have you seen him today?’
‘I saw Christos this morning. But we didn’t speak because he is in a bad mood. He had an accident so he cannot drive.’
Rike asks Tomas to describe Christos’s accident in detail. Taxi, stoplights, bus. He’s lucky to be alive. The minibus is a write-off, and as the taxi driver was
unofficial
and therefore
uninsured
this is going to cost an unbearable amount of money. Now he considers himself unlucky. He can’t work without his vehicle, which leaves him at home with too much time on his hands.