The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (135 page)

When Lexi comes into the sitting room he turns the light on, then stops, just freezes when he sees Tomas.

Tomas fixes Lexi, a dry welcome, not unexpected. Lexi slips his phone into his pocket and looks for a moment like he might run.

Lexi speaks in Russian. His voice quiet. He sets a bag at his feet. Slowly, as if repressing the urge to react, to give himself away. His hand grips and ungrasps.

‘Speak to me in English.’ Tomas invites Lexi to sit down. Lexi holds a second bag in his hands. Tomas holds out his hand and Lexi crosses the room and passes him the bag, then sinks slowly onto the opposite couch.

Has he ever met anyone so malleable?

Inside the bag is a good deal of money. The notes bound together again with rubber bands. The night’s takings from the club, which should, Tomas guesses, be secure in a safe. Tomas resists making comments. He looks into the bag, indifferent, then sets the bag aside. Money makes sense to Tomas in situations where it’s lacking, where people are struggling, and where the gaining of it has meaning. That’s why it’s called
currency
. But here, in a smart house, expensively furnished, in Cyprus no less, he finds it squalid. He can empathize with most situations and predicaments, understands all other cardinal sins, except greed. Greed he finds intolerable, ugly.

‘Kolya?’

‘I said speak to me in English.’

Lexi swallows before making himself clear. His voice comes sticky and particular. ‘Kolya sent you?’

Tomas shakes his head.

Lexi, already crestfallen, slumps lower in his seat. ‘Lev.’ This is a statement, not a question.

Tomas can’t help but smile. On one hand the situation is writing itself. On the other it’s much more complex than he would like it.

‘Lev.’

Tomas picks a thread out of his mouth. A dog hair, short and coarse.

Lexi looks at the wet patch in the middle of the carpet – in outline, not unlike Alaska – then back to Tomas.

They remain looking at each other, Lexi weighted with sorrow.

‘I can call someone? There is someone I would like to speak to.’

Tomas shakes his head and Lexi gently nods.

‘I can get you the money. You want to know where the money is?’

‘This is no longer about the money.’

Again Lexi nods.

‘Please.’ His voice now grainy and small. ‘I would like to call someone. He is expecting me.’ Lexi draws deep, uneven breaths in an attempt to hold his dignity. The man shivers, and can’t steady the vibration breaking his words. ‘I would like to explain to him. I don’t think he will understand.’

Tomas again shakes his head.

Lexi looks at him directly. ‘He has nothing to do with this. Please. He has nothing to do with this. You have me. Take the money. Please.’

The dog, without regard to either of them, patters behind Lexi’s couch, looks to Tomas, squats and pees again.

‘What’s wrong with your dog?’

‘The dog?’

Tomas has to repeat the question, as the question, clearly, is off-script. ‘The dog. The dog.’

Lexi’s brow unfurrows slightly, perhaps hopeful. ‘She has diabetes.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Her name?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’m asking you. What is the name of your dog?’

‘Mishka.’

Tomas sits forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘I want you to kill your dog. Take a knife from the kitchen and kill your dog. I want you to put this animal out of its misery.’

Lexi is struck with grief. His expression slips register, becomes honest, mouth slightly open, his brow creased, sorrowful and pained. He rises, ageing right before Tomas’s eyes, he shakes, appears unstable, turns to go to the kitchen, but isn’t able to take the steps, to move his feet. The man can’t stand completely upright, can’t straighten himself. It’s also clear that Lexi is so terrified that he will do whatever Tomas demands, perhaps with the hope that whatever happens to him, whatever Tomas has in mind, it will be swift and decent.

Tomas now actively dislikes him. A man should always have dignity. He regrets the direction this has taken.

The walk to the kitchen takes a long time. It’s probably not a good idea to tell him to get a knife. But Lexi isn’t thinking, is in some animal state where he’ll do whatever Tomas tells him. Tomas lets him walk to the kitchen, and when the man doesn’t come right out he follows after.

Lexi stands over the counter with a steak knife to his ribs, testing, finding a proper space between them. The man is shaking so badly he can’t hold the knife steady. Tomas picks a cup up from the counter. He knows these situations, knows exactly what to do. Push the event off-kilter.

‘Tea?’ he says, holding the cup at eye level.

To Lexi, this is nonsense. Exactly as it should be.

Tomas punches him in the temple with the cup, and Lexi’s head hits the kitchen cupboard. Tomas punches again, left hook, without the cup, left temple, to knock him out. He isn’t sure that Lexi is unconscious, but the knife is free. One blow, blunt and certain, and Lexi won’t be the same person when he wakes.

Tomas picks up the knife and tells himself that enough is enough.

The Russian wakes and finds himself laid out on the couch, a wet towel wrapped about his head, and Tomas sat at the edge of the opposite couch with a cup of tea. Tomas has had a shower. His hair is neatly combed. The dog is missing.

‘Where were you going?’ Tomas points the cup to the bedroom. ‘The suitcases. Where did you think you’d go?’

Lexi attempts to sit upright, fails, appears to be looking for his dog.

‘Where’s the German?’

‘He doesn’t know anything.’

‘Concentrate on the question.’ Tomas speaks very slowly, and hopes he didn’t hit Lexi too hard. ‘Where is Mattaus Falsen? I want to know where he is.’

Lexi’s head jolts on hearing Mattaus’s name. ‘Limassol. He’s staying in Limassol.’

‘Now you’re lying to me.’

‘He’s in Limassol. I took him back to his hotel before I came here.’

‘In Limassol?’

Lexi nods.

‘Which hotel?’

The man refuses to answer, looks fearfully at Tomas but refuses to answer.

‘Tell me the hotel and room number.’

‘The Miramar. Room 709.’

‘When did you intend to see him next?’

‘Tonight. I go back to the club before they close.’

‘What time is he expecting you?’

‘Four,’ Lexi stutters, ‘four or five.’

‘And were you both intending to leave?’

Again, Lexi nods. ‘He thinks this is a holiday.’

‘Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going back to Limassol.’

Lexi gives a cautious nod. His eyes intent on Tomas.

‘Good.’ Tomas sets the cup down and stands up. ‘I have to tell you, this is against my better judgement.’

As Tomas turns the car to the road another dog starts up a bark. A cold yip, sharp in a humid night. Glassy. At this moment it becomes clear to Tomas how problematic this is – the dog, Lexi, have compromised his preparations. It isn’t unfixable, but it isn’t clean. His decision to stay in the house, on the expectation that Mattaus and Lexi would return together, was, in hindsight, a poor choice. While this is messy, Tomas thinks he can find a satisfactory result. Neither strategy, Rike, Mattaus, is working.

It’s possible that he hit Lexi too hard. The man can’t focus. Worries about his dog. Can’t speak without a stutter, and Tomas hates to hear a stutter. Lexi operates within a bubble in which much of what is spoken is misheard, and Tomas wishes there was a simpler resolve. This idea is too complex. This is what happens when he works ad hoc. He shouldn’t be driving at this hour. He shouldn’t be wasting time, because this might possibly be a terrible waste of time.

Lexi has trouble giving directions to the hotel. The Miramar is the hotel the Russians use. They party there. They chase the prissy British tourists out. They shock the Scandinavians with their appetites and disregard to civil decency. They misbehave. Mattaus is housed there, licking wounds after a family misunderstanding. Mattaus has no idea how bad his night is about to become. Lexi has an inkling.

Tomas parks in front of the hotel and coaches Lexi in what he will do. He goes through the lobby, he takes the lift. He waits outside the lift for Tomas. He does not go to the room until Tomas arrives. Lexi seems to have it straight. Appears to be composed. It isn’t complicated.

Lexi produces a card key from his wallet.

Tomas takes the card key, and tells Lexi he’ll meet him outside the elevator on the seventh floor. He doesn’t intend to leave Lexi out of his sight for very long, but he doesn’t want to be seen entering the hotel.

Tomas comes into the hotel from the pool, finds the stairs and makes his way to the seventh floor without any kind of challenge. Even so, he arrives before Lexi. When the lift doors open Lexi looks different, as if he’s used to this level of threat, acclimatized now, dulled. The man complains that he’s dizzy. Feels a little sick. He’s distracted with it and doesn’t want to focus, drifts when Tomas draws his attention to the room.

The room is empty. Mattaus is nowhere: the bed is still made, undisturbed. There’s no sign that the room has been used.

Tomas sits Lexi on the bed. ‘Where is he? You said he would be here.’

Lexi swears he has no idea, shakes his head. The man speaks to himself in Russian.

Tomas holds Lexi’s head between both hands. ‘Where is Mattaus Falsen?’

Lexi complains that his head hurts, he needs fresh air. He asks Tomas to open the door. He needs air.

‘Where is he?’ Tomas shakes Lexi, tries to make him focus. ‘Is he in this hotel?’

Lexi nods and then shakes his head. The man won’t look him in the eye.

Tomas asks him what he’s done.

Tomas goes to the balcony and opens up the curtain, the door and the screen.

‘What have you done?’

He feels some admiration now. Lexi is fighting back in some small way.

‘Is someone coming?’

Lexi complains that he can’t breathe.

‘Why did it take you so long to get to the room?’

Lexi doesn’t answer.

‘He doesn’t use this room, does he?’

Lexi softly nods.

‘And have you called him and warned him?’

Again, Lexi nods.

‘Do you know where he is at all?’

Lexi mutters a reply. Tomas asks him to repeat himself.

‘I told him to go. I don’t know where he will be.’

Tomas beckons Lexi forward and asks again what he has done.

Lexi looks partly over his shoulder at the open balcony door. The pool.

‘You’re not leaving this room,’ Tomas whispers in his ear, the tone is final, and Lexi’s face sets back in the same expression he’d had when he’d first set eyes on Tomas.

Pushed or jumped, it doesn’t matter. Lexi falls without noise. No shouting. Face out, perhaps in hope. Pitched forward. Arms wheeling. A long way from the pool. The impact is a compact sound, final enough to be only exactly what it is. A body hitting concrete. It doesn’t bring the chaos Tomas expected. And he thinks that this wrong, that such an incident should bring no attention seems a little obscene.

If Mattaus is on the run, Tomas admits that he’d probably not find him.

He takes out Mattaus’s phone. Carefully wipes it, then drops it onto the floor. He nudges it under the bed, just far enough. This now, is far from the shape and dimension he had determined.

He sits in the car, watches the police arrive, the ambulance. Satisfied with what he’s done with the phone (an uncannily smart idea), he asks himself if this could have played out any differently. Although Lexi misunderstood who Tomas was, he read the situation, understood the result, and Tomas wonders if this couldn’t have been different, and how Mattaus will hear about this. The news, the discovery of his telephone, will make a world of trouble for him – which should certainly make him run.

Today, he remembers, he has arranged to go swimming. Tomas and Rike are taking a picnic to Lady’s Mile.

11.6

They meet on the sea front. Rike has a backpack with a swimming costume, a swimming cap, and a towel. She’s ready for everything, she says. Tomas is in his hire car which stinks now of carpet cleaner. He unwinds the windows because the smell bothers him, already his throat feels thick and the heat threatens a headache. Like he isn’t tired enough anyway. The bay’s long swoop can be seen from the front. You can literally see where you’re going. He points this out to Rike as she ducks into the car. Something about her, as always, comes across as fresh and welcoming, if a little pathetic. Rike lumbers the backpack onto the back seat and explains she’s packed a towel and the costume, of course, but also some treats, out of habit, ginger beer, and mentioning it she turns a little red, her cheeks gain colour – because this is childish, or it’s something she did when she was a child? He can’t decide. She has suntan lotion, factor 50 if they need it, although how strong is the sun anyway at this time of year? She has rum in a small bottle. She has wipes. She has insect repellent, although, apart from wasps, there really isn’t much to worry about. She didn’t tell her sister, she explains, just said she was going on her own to the beach at Amathus. She’d only have ideas if she knew, and Isa’s humour can be fierce. She doesn’t know, really, how aggressive she appears to other people sometimes.

They were here the other day, but on the other side of the perimeter, so to speak, on the British base, and one man had caught an octopus, told them also there were moray eels, a ray of some kind. The man’s face had shone as he described the sighting, one week before. A ray with a wingspan of say, one metre, one and a half, mottled brown and black, and white underneath. It moved, the man said, only the tips of its wings. Funny word that, giving a creature wings under water.

There were also pottery shards to collect, and he’d brought them up. Pieces of amphora, most of them pinkish and curved and softened by their time underwater, some encrusted with white snail-like trails. A few pieces displayed how antique they were, the mouths of the jars, the double handles. Ships taken in storms? Perhaps even run aground. The island ends in a stub, and from that stub runs a sharp shelf, so that the sea bed drops from two metres to seven.