The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (125 page)

Tomas isn’t to say a word. He must promise not to say one word.

6.2

The police arrive in two vans. They line the street, blue-black uniforms, batons, sky blue helmets and clear shields, then swarm the entrance to the hotel. The whole business is settled in a matter of minutes. One section of the street is closed, and a group of tourists are caught inside the patisserie and instructed to remain inside while the men go swiftly about their business.
Their appointed rounds.
Gibson watches from the café but once the police are inside little can be seen. At the upper windows he catches the backs of the police, and against expectation there is little shouting. Noise instead, a hammering, comes from a building site, out of view. People are hauled out of the hotel, the woman with the glasses, the man in the singlet among them, and divided, male from female, then taken to one of the waiting vans.

In the café, once the police are gone, the two baristas and the counter clerk eye him suspiciously and say nothing.

6.3

Later in the afternoon the three of them drive from Limassol to Akrotiri. Henning has business on the British base. There are people to speak with, discussions to be held. Advances to be stopped. Yesterday the British brought in lawyers. We bring doctors, he says, the British bring lawyers and PR.

The drive alongside the salt lake, a flat plain of sand and salt, a white crusted line furred pink along a soft horizon. The colour is miraculous, iridescent, just a line, bright and wild with specks of black and white to signal other kinds of birds, then a rich blue sky.

‘The flamingos come every year. They’ve started coming earlier. They come from Africa, or on their way, and stay for the spring. I don’t think they breed here, I don’t know. And I don’t know where they’re from.’

Isa sits quietly at the front. One hand on her lap, the other supporting her hat against the wind. She braces against the bumps in the road but doesn’t complain. This lake is different than the lake at Larnaca, and the road sweeps round as if to contain it. The sea borders the salt flat on two sides, so that Akrotiri rises almost as a separate island. There isn’t the same sense of scope. As the road curves alongside the lake, a building rises in the background, a block that elsewhere would look like a housing complex.

‘That’s the military hospital.’

‘That’s where we’re going?’

‘That’s where I’m going. You’re going to the beach club.’

Isa complains that Rike is
making that face
again. ‘Sometimes you have this strained expression like you don’t want to be here, or you’re expecting something bad, like the entire room is going to laugh at you.’

If it were deliberate, Rike replies, then she’d stop, but she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.

‘Like now. Right now.’

This is Isa, picking at the stitching until she’s left with a lap-full of patches and threads.

Henning drives to the hospital then lets Rike out of the back seat to drive. He stands in the sunlight beside the car, sweat already marking his shirt in dark curves.

Isa looks to the front of the hospital, blocked stone columns, long white windows, metal instead of wood. A serious building: the stone, the glass, the sensible design.

‘Is this where he is?’ Isa asks, her voice deliberately conspiratorial although there’s no one about to overhear them.

Rike watches for his reaction, but he keeps his face straight, ignores the question and leans into the car to kiss his wife.

‘Keep those passes with you, and keep that badge in the car so it can be seen. Take the road we came in on to the end and you’ll find the bay and the beaches. I’ll meet you at the boathouse at four.’

Rike drives carefully and quite a bit slower than Henning. She follows the road to a small shopping centre, a NAAFI, a cinema, a plaza for parking: open, low buildings built in the same stone as the hospital, neat and old-fashioned.

‘Not many people. Have you noticed how clean it is?’ Isa asks Rike if anything is wrong. ‘You’re quiet today. Quieter than usual, even for you.’

Rike says it’s nothing.

‘You weren’t quiet this morning. I heard you chatting with Henning. How did the lesson go? How is your Nordic man?’

Rike can’t help but grimace.

‘Are you still making him spy on his neighbours?’

The road curves by a group of houses set back from the road with dry gardens, sparse bushes and long low walls. Deep concrete storm drains run either side of the road.

‘You’ll like what he was talking about today.’

‘What about it?’

‘There was a murder.’ The word is too ridiculous spoken out in the sunlight, stupidly implausible. She can’t quite believe it, but doesn’t know what it would take to make it such an event credible. Falling buildings, burning planes, deserts on fire, more plausible because of the scale. ‘They never found the victim.’

‘When was this? Who?’

‘I don’t know. I think it was some time ago. They never found who did it, and they never found a body.’

‘Here? Are you serious?’

‘Very serious.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘I’m not sure? A while ago. Two men rented a room, they had it specially prepared. When they left it was covered in blood.’

Isa pulls a face. ‘How fantastic.’

‘It just doesn’t seem possible.’

‘You think these things don’t happen?’

‘I’ve never heard anything like this before.’

‘Why? It’s just a matter of density, of where you live. It isn’t so uncommon. People kill each other all of the time.’

‘I don’t know. I just think it’s sad.’

‘And how did you get to talk about this? It’s not your usual discussion during language school?’ Isa asks almost with admiration.

‘I was asking for details about his family. I think he wanted to avoid the subject.’

‘Well, well done.’

Rike gives her sister a small angry glance.

‘And did he talk?’

‘Just about the room.’

‘He didn’t start talking about himself?’

‘A little. He told me he was assaulted. He was in hospital. He was attacked.’

Isa nods as if this is not uncommon.

‘Now he’s talking about it, he probably won’t shut up.’

‘You think?’

‘That tends to be the case. Uncork something like that and you won’t be able to shift the discussion to anything else.’

‘Oh, god.’

This is perfect, exactly what she wants, a daily rehashing of today’s discussion. An endless speculative loop of loss. ‘Thanks,’ Rike says flatly.

‘What for?’

‘For getting me this job. Thanks. Thanks a whole lot.’

‘So this is the cause of his stress? You’re going to have to take him.’

‘Oh god. Isa.’

‘I’m serious. Ride it out of him. Distract him. Men can only think of one thing at a time.’

‘I’m his teacher.’

‘Oh, like this has never happened. You’re both adults. Give him back his money if it troubles you.’

‘It’s not going to happen.’

‘You haven’t said you
don’t
want it to happen. The idea doesn’t horrify you.’

‘It’s always the same with you. Why is everything about sex.’

‘Because everything is about sex. But I’m right aren’t I? Would you?’

‘Would I what?’

‘I’m being serious. Would you? You like him? You must like him, and he must like you if he’s telling you all this information.’ Isa whispers conspiratorially. ‘He’s confiding in you. He trusts you.’

Rike rolls her eyes.

‘I’m serious, if he’s telling you about his deep emotional scars then he trusts you. Just don’t do what you usually do and turn him into a friend.’ Isa won’t drop the subject. ‘Is he handsome?’

‘No. You already asked.’

‘But you like him?’

Rike points out the sea. She parks the vehicle and they walk in silence across the sand. Rike lays the towels side by side and wonders if Isa will be able to sit down and get back up.

‘Is he muscular?’

‘Who?’

‘Your Norwegian. They’re outdoorsy, those Nords. I bet he’s muscular.’

‘He keeps himself fit.’

‘Fit? Sounds old.’

‘Not so much. But he keeps himself in shape.’

‘So, you’ve been checking him out. Eyeing him up between his conjugations? I like them muscular, not too much. Henning could use some muscles.’

‘You’re complaining already?’

‘I’m just stating a fact. Henning is in need of some muscle.’ Isa kneels on the towel. ‘So if Henning and your Norwegian were in a fight who do you think would win?’

‘Tomas.’

‘He has a name!’ Isa clasps her hands heavenward. ‘Is he smooth or hairy?’

‘I don’t know, I think smooth?’ Rike takes the question semi-seriously. ‘He has a little hair on his arms. But I think he’s smooth.’

‘Take the opportunity, Rike, I’m serious. Just don’t screw it up.’

Isa settles onto her elbows and looks out at the bay, middle distance, with a wince at some subterranean movement, the child unsettled inside her. Sometimes Rike finds her sister unbearable.

Rike checks her computer for messages. She checks for messages from her brother.

Isa asks if Rike has spoken with Mattaus yet.

‘I’m trying to find out what his plans are. Is Franco still in the apartment?’

‘I think that’s what he said. He – obviously – wasn’t saying much. It isn’t as black and white as you think.’

‘Good.’ Rike resists the urge to defend Franco.

‘Listen.’ Isa’s voice remains flat, rational. It is the voice she uses when she needs to explain something that might, in any other circumstances, be unreasonable. ‘About Mattaus. Has he said anything about the man he’s seeing? What has he told you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘The man he’s seeing has paid for a house somewhere, he’s rented a villa, but I don’t think he’s staying there. The villa is in Larnaca, but I think he works in Limassol.’

Rike doesn’t understand. ‘The apartment is shared with Franco and Mattaus. They both bought it?’

‘I’m talking about where he is now. He’s living in a villa.’

‘Where?’ Rike settles in the seat, turns to see her sister. ‘He’s here on holiday, no?’

Neither of them know where Mattaus is exactly.

‘Look.’ Isa is hesitant. ‘There’s no good way to say this. But why is he living in a villa that another man is paying for? I mean. What does that make him?’

Isa pauses again, she has warmed a plate of pastries and the air tastes of hot butter.

‘Who pays for somewhere they don’t live?’

‘What are you thinking?’

Isa is uncharacteristically slow in coming to the point.

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I think Mattaus’ new boyfriend must be married.’

Rike laughs. The idea that her brother is seeing a married man is neither shocking nor a surprise. ‘It’s possible, but Mattaus would have said.’

‘Would he?’

‘Of course. It’s another man on his team. We would know. You’d have it on a T-shirt already.’

‘What if he didn’t know? Or what if he was lying to us?’

‘But why would he lie?’

‘That’s what Henning says, but usually he tells us everything, every last detail. We only have what Mattaus says. There’s nothing else to go on, no other information.’

Rike laughs at the absurdity. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so worried?’

‘Because it’s strange. Even for Mattaus. And it’s strange that he would lie to us or keep something hidden and that’s what I think he’s doing.’

Rike shuts the computer and says that there’s no reason to doubt him. ‘All you ever have is what someone tells you. That’s normal. That’s what we do.’

‘But I think he’s lying.’

For Rike the problem isn’t
why
her brother would lie to them, but why he would share with them the details of his life. Unlike Isa she isn’t so certain that they are the kind of family who share confidences.

6.4

Rike wakes in the early pre-dawn to a heavy rainfall, her mind too active to return to sleep. It’s a clean awakening, right out of sleep, and if this hadn’t happened most nights since her arrival she’d think that there was a reason for this, some disturbance, some problem, something to fret over.

She checks her emails and finds a message marked MFP with a link to a website. It doesn’t make sense that work like this would be happening in Cyprus, and not New York or Berlin, although some of their events, when she checks them online, have occurred in similarly offbeat places: an airport lounge at Kuala Lumpur, a lakeside beach on Fraser Island, a castle courtyard in northern Italy.

Three videos are already online. One at Kolossi, right by the castle, no more than five kilometres away. The man wears a mask, not a mask so much as part of a costume, a fake panda head, round and black and white, with crosses for eyes as if it might be blinking, or maybe even dead. The man is wearing shorts, slightly baggy and blue, with a white cord. Shirtless, his body seems American to her: thick, broad-shouldered, a man who works out perhaps, or works out but doesn’t particularly watch his weight. In this first video, the man picks up a stone from one side of the path, in front of the entrance to the castle, carries it to the other side of the path then stands back, in position, right in the centre of the path and faces the camera.

The man with the panda head takes his time. He looks to the stone, to the camera, to the place where the stone was, then, with some deliberation he looks at a third spot. Having identified this new place the man returns to the stone, picks it up and moves the stone to the new, third place. The stone, not small by any means, is white and doesn’t come from the castle, but looks to have been brought from a beach, being smooth and almost perfectly round. And the way he holds it, with both hands, she can see it isn’t light. When he returns to the centre of the path he looks with great care at four places. The place where he has now set the stone, the place where the stone was last, at the place where the stone was originally set, and finally, the camera.

She doesn’t know why this is funny. His gesture? The minimal movement of his head, or perhaps the anticipation?
That you know exactly what he will do?
Is this what delights her, what she finds so pleasing?