The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (132 page)

There’s a nice duplication in today’s story, which he could use straight, but has an idea that it could be fashioned more appropriately. It’s a simple anecdote: while researching his book on the murders in Naples, the author hired an assistant. The assistant, a university student, sets up meetings ahead of the visit, and is generally helpful. Once the author arrives things don’t go so cosily. There isn’t any chemistry and the men don’t particularly like each other. One night the author receives a call telling him that the assistant has been kidnapped. For some reason the author is suspicious, the calls aren’t necessarily credible. When the author returns to his hotel he discovers the whole thing was set up as a run-around to get him out of the room so he can be robbed. Everything is gone. He doesn’t see or hear of the assistant again. Rather than return home, the writer, robbed and dejected, starts the project over. Right from scratch.

The story has potential use, but the details aren’t distinct enough. Sometimes that’s just how it goes.

Everything now depends on plausibility. Circumstances have meant some
stretching
, which he doesn’t like. As Rike is new to Cyprus it’s unlikely that she can check in too much detail, and right now there’s simply no reason for her to doubt him. He’s lucky, if she knew more people it wouldn’t work. If she asked the neighbours she’d learn enough to invalidate much of what he’s told her. At some point, he knows, Rike is going to do some homework. She’ll get online. She’ll check out the neighbours. She’ll pick out one detail and discover the source. Having used the story about the murder already, it’s starting to sound absurd. When it drops, when the idea collapses, it will thunder down. He’s hopeful that this won’t happen immediately.

He doesn’t have to do it this way. He knows. He could get to the same place quicker with cruder means, or by simply being patient. This is, after all, what he does –
almost nothing
. Stick to the room, assess what is happening, move incrementally. Baby steps.

Tomas calls Geezler to let him know that he is in place. He needs a decision.

This isn’t going the way he wants. Hasn’t from the start. There’s a low-lying discomfort at how everything has steadily become unworkable.

He doesn’t tell Geezler about the stories, about Rike, or about the basement. Geezler doesn’t need to be concerned. What he needs from Geezler is a decision.
Which one does he go for first?

He waits for the call: 10am, 2pm, 6pm, the usual times, but there’s no word.

*

He works on another approach. A backup. The basement is easy to prepare. He buys expanding foam and fills the ducts and the inside of the air vent. The vinegar stink of the chemical as it expands gives him a headache and he’s obliged to return to the stairs, to open the door and allow a draught.

Down in the basement again, he has to unpack the crates to reach the furthest vent. The only air that could come in to the room now would be through the door, and that, when he closes it from the outside, appears tight.

He doesn’t know how long it would take to exhaust the room of oxygen, and doubts that this would be possible. But it would become hot and intensely uncomfortable, enough to discourage action, enough to make the subject weary, weak. The room is deep enough that any noise would be contained.

Berens re-attaches a pulley system to the door, a counterweight which automatically slams it closed. He oils the hinges and uses foam to fill the hole left by the inside handle. While working on these final touches, he secures two pieces of wood as a wedge to ensure that the door will not close and he will not become trapped.

11.3

Rike insists on taking the lesson outside. He loses confidence while talking about the assault, a story he wishes he hadn’t used. She complains about her brother, tells a pitiful story about her sister, and repeats what he already knows about the man in Damascus. Bastian returned two days ago, and the patient was airlifted yesterday. Rike isn’t clear about which hospital they’ve brought him to: Limassol or Akrotiri.

While he’s patient, Tomas is also ready to exploit chance and possibility. Discussions with Rike which might feed into the structure. Having something work to plan is preferable, but the tedium of it means he often entertains other notions. A well-considered idea is like an object suspended, which can be re-approached, improved on each consideration. This is the best way he has of explaining the satisfactions of his work. It’s all about craft.

If he’s honest she isn’t exactly forthcoming. She knows precious little about Sutler, and Bastian, now he’s back from Syria, sounds even more reticent on the subject. He’s getting a limited return for all of his work.

And still no word from Geezler.

Tomas returns to the basement for a final check. He brings with him a pack of six large water bottles, and leaves them inside the door. He isn’t sure about the noise now. He remembers a scene from a film (this has bothered him all night), where a man, father to two very pretty girls, who is planning to bury someone alive, asks his daughters to scream. They are in a forest. Remote. It’s fun, he tells them. It’s a game. The daughters shriek and holler loud enough to test, to make sure that, whatever the noise, however loud, he can be confident no one is going to hear it. They do this without knowing what is being asked of them.

As the café is across the street, Tomas thinks it’s worth testing. He’ll have to play the role of the daughters himself – if this doesn’t work, then he’ll need to find another method. If someone comes to find out what the noise is about then he won’t be able to use the basement. The risk is larger, now he’s faced with it, than he’d first realized. It’s getting too late to make mistakes.

He’s surprised by how uncomfortable it is to walk into the room, it’s airless, and he immediately begins to sweat. His brow, his back. It’s incredibly close. The chemical smell from the previous day has cured, and is replaced with a musty stink. Strong. Cold concrete. Mould.

He bangs a stick against the wall. Timid at first, and then with force. Then shouting:
Hey, hey, hey, hey
. He can’t do this for very long as he quickly becomes dizzy.

He shouts. His voice breaks with the heat, yodels and cracks. He tries again, but just can’t grab the air. It isn’t impossible, but he doubts that he could sustain it.

This doesn’t take long. He cleans up after himself, leaves, and then returns, takes out the light bulb and throws it behind the stack of decorations. Once the door is shut it will not open from inside.

With the room soundproofed, Tomas leaves a message for Geezler then waits for a call. He needs a decision. When Geezler doesn’t call, he goes to the wasteland behind Rike’s apartment, and takes with him a pair of binoculars and a water bottle.

Tomas returns to the hotel and sits behind the concrete columns in the lower section until the sun falls behind the brewery. Boys play in the street and while he can’t see them he can hear them. The boys settle into their game, and the soft punch of the ball, their shouts and hollers carry across the scruff.

He watches a taxi arrive at the front of the apartment. A man pays, sees the cab off, stands outside to smoke. He paces in front of the entrance, ducks to read the names, takes a long draw from his cigarette and backs away, clearly nervous.

Inside, Rike stands with her back to the living area. She works at the counter beside the sink, preparing what looks to be a salad. Picks what she needs from the fridge. Even in this she’s hesitant. Her hand hovers uncertain in front of the shelves. Isa doesn’t appear to be doing much of any purpose. Rike’s industry appears to irritate her and she picks at details, points at things in the living room, demanding attention. The few houseplants are inspected, a coffee table is pushed square. For a moment she looks directly out, straightens up and draws her top straight, checks her reflection in the long glass doors.

He can’t see the man for the moment. He paces at the corner, so that Tomas’s view is obscured. And when Tomas looks back to the living room Isa has also gone. Rike, now on her own, checks the kitchen drawers, finds the cutlery, counts out the settings, checks the place mats. She leaves these together on the counter, clearly busy. She looks into the apartment. Appears to be talking as she settles her hair behind her ears. Tomas draws the focus to her face, steadies the lens. Is that anger? Is she irritated? She appears to give in, becomes suddenly active, walks round the island and begins to set the table. Once she is done Isa returns, her purple top changed for an orange one with a wide collar, slightly clownish. She points at the table, then further to the garden, and makes wafting gestures. Rike stands with her hands on her hips. She nods and shrugs, her expression watchful but guarded, again, he thinks, irritated.

Henning comes out, dressed in a sports top with short sleeves and old-mannish long trousers. Both Rike and Henning face each other and wait. Neither appears to be talking.

The man, back outside the apartment, walks directly to the door, ducks at the console and presumably presses the apartment bell. Inside Isa immediately turns.

The greetings are stilted. This must be the brother,
Mattaus
, it has to be. Tomas steadies the binoculars and focuses closer. The man’s anxiety translates into sudden gestures. Rike barely moves when she kisses him, does not return his hug. Henning shakes hands and almost immediately turns away, and while it becomes evident that he’s offering Mattaus a drink, it’s clear that Mattaus is all at sea.

The sound of an ambulance passes through the city, close but unseen.

There is a resemblance: Rike, Isa, Mattaus. The brow line, their dark eyes and dark hair. Long, angular faces.

There are two sets of gestures in the apartment, easily distinguished. The awkward stillness of Rike and Henning, and the more expressive gestures of Mattaus and Isa. These couples pair up at the dining table, Rike with her back to the window. She sits with one hand at her side. Tomas again focuses in. Sometimes she tucks her hand under the seat, other times she runs her fingernails along the wood rail. Isa’s hands hover just above the table, are animated; she describes shapes, is unresting, draws designs in the air as she speaks. Mattaus’s hands flutter busy about his face. Touching his nose, wiping the back of his neck, animated also, but evidently demonstrating his anxiety. Henning is the only one who does not move. He watches, as if from a distance.

There is a moment when they all seem to lean in, as if to listen, their bodies tighten. Mattaus laughing, Isa laughing, and Rike shortly on her feet in the kitchen.

At the kitchen Rike’s movements become autonomic. Mattaus remains excitable. Isa laughs, head forward, head back. And then a sudden change.

Tomas, so focused on his subject, realizes that he can no longer hear the children playing football. Darker now, there’s no light in the building site, the street behind the apartments is also unlit, and the sky striates into two parallel purple bands, each quickly darkening. He lies on the concrete absorbing the radiant heat, widens his legs so his feet can rest flatter. He thinks himself out of the picture, less solid than air. A rising wind picks up heat and feathers through the empty and open building.

Inside the apartment an argument gathers force. New boundaries are drawn. Rike and Isa at the sink, Henning and Mattaus at the table. Combative in his gestures, Henning can’t keep still, his legs jigger under the table. He balls up the napkin in his fist, releases it, aggressively shakes his head with tight and emphatic movement. Isa, in contrast to her husband, has become less animated, stands as if stuffed. Rike, who is facing Tomas, is similarly transformed, appears to suppress a smile, not pleasure so much as disbelief. All of this a bright oblong in the first floor of a darkening block. Other windows are lit up, two or three with closed shutters, no one out on their balconies.

Mattaus shunts back his chair, arms on either side. This motion sparks Tomas into action. If he’s not quick enough he’ll lose Mattaus. Tomas stands, secure in the darkness, tugs off the short-sleeved shirt he’s been wearing inside out, shakes off the dirt and slaps his trousers. He hides the binoculars behind the column, these he can return for later, then, his eye on the apartment, he carefully and quickly picks his way through the open stairs to the ground. Once on the scrubland he begins to sprint, shirt in his hand, until he reaches the fence. Tomas ducks quickly through, the route picked out, anticipated from many such visits. At the street he runs to the compound wall, jumps carefully up, hands on top of the wall, and draws himself to the top where he settles on his forearms.

Inside, through the branches and leaves of the lemon tree, he can see everyone except Henning. Rike, Isa, and Mattaus are standing, Mattaus makes his way to the door by himself.

Tomas lowers himself, then re-dresses. He dusts his trousers again, tucks in his shirt, holds back before the corner, poised to walk.

Mattaus comes out of the lobby alone and at a pace, hands rooting through his pockets as he heads down the street. The night air thick about them. Mattaus walks under the street lights to the chipper quarrel of cicadas.

Tomas looks first to the lobby to make sure no one is following with last hesitant pleas or final words. Mattaus is truly alone, and he walks fast, agitated, stops to dig through his pockets and draw out a phone, a pack of cigarettes. The man immediately lights up, attempts a call, but evidently has no answer or no signal.

The two men walk into town, there being little or no traffic until they are down at the waterfront. Mattaus holds his head back and huffs out smoke. Taxis line under the stumpy city walls, and Mattaus walks into the traffic with little caution.

He follows Mattaus along the seafront, his walk now a little more relaxed, and Tomas dithers deliberately, slipping into stalls, hangs back, side-steps tourists, hears languages: Greek, English, Russian, the signage for restaurant in three-tiers, hand-painted and sometimes neon.
Happy Hour
.
Two-for-One
.
Keo. Local Wines
.
Kleftiko
.
BBQ
.
Fish & Chips
. Ahead of him Rike’s brother speaking agitated into his mobile.