THE FIFTH LESSON

 

6.1

Rike suggests that they take a walk. If they follow the street it will lead them to the bay. There are the wine factories on one side and the town on the other, the road is the dividing line between a light industrial zone and a living quarter. Today they will walk and talk.

Tomas, naturally, isn’t keen. And while he doesn’t refuse, he asks if this is a good idea. It’s hard to think out there: the sun, the noise, the distraction.

No books, she insists. No notebooks, no prepared speeches, no pocket dictionaries. ‘We shall speak today about what we find in front of us. Today you will demonstrate a mix of tenses, you aren’t to worry about your vocabulary, you aren’t to worry about being perfectly correct. Today you are to walk with me and speak about things you have not prepared.’

Tomas’s reaction is stern. He’d much rather not, if she didn’t mind.

‘Believe me, you’ll find out that you know more than you realize. It won’t be so hard. I’ll help you.’

Tomas nods, and searches in his pockets for his keys.

In the stairwell, as he locks the door and tests to make sure it is shut, he asks about the museum. Did she go? Did she see that piece. The artists are German?

‘They are here, you know,’ he says in English. ‘The artists are in Limassol, and they’re making new work for the internet. I heard them interviewed on BFPS.’ He has a flyer, he says, something he picked up when he left the museum. He hasn’t yet checked to see what this work is, but now that he’s seen one piece by them – and here he falters a little – in fact participated in the piece, he’s curious to see other works. Not that he really understands them. But he’s curious.

Rike admits she’s also curious. Having participated in the piece it would be interesting to see what else they’ve done. Yes, she’s curious.

‘And you did take part?’ he asks.

‘I did.’

‘You recorded something?’

‘I did.’

‘Can I ask what it was?’

Rike comes down the stairs ahead of Tomas. ‘It’s a little complicated. I chose a date, but I didn’t save it because it isn’t my story. My sister lost a child before he was born.’ Even now, the bluntness of the fact hurts. Something so horribly complex, so easily described. ‘I left the date and name, but chose not to save it.’

She walks ahead to avoid his reaction, and is relieved when he doesn’t respond. It takes a great effort not to explain further, to allow the fact to sit.

‘And now,’ he asks, ‘you said she is going to have another child?’

They are further along already, Rike explains, and doctors, Henning, everyone, are prepared this time, and yes, everything is going very well. She is too superstitious to say more.

‘And your brother, he comes here as well?’

This, Rike explains, is a whole other issue. ‘When I first lived in London I lived with my brother and his partner. A man called Franco.’ For three months Rike lived with her brother and witnessed what she can only call wilful cruelty. ‘He’s a bully. He knows how to get inside people.’ This is the simple fact. ‘The trouble is, Franco couldn’t see it. He just let it happen, and it was like watching someone fall, who doesn’t put out their hands or make an attempt to save themselves.’ And here is the complication. The more hopeless Franco appeared, the more the situation mattered to her.

Tomas is quiet. For a moment she thinks that she is over-explaining herself.

They come to the entrance, stand side by side. It is an infinite relief when Tomas simply nods.

‘He’s here. In Cyprus, and I just don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to be part of it.’ The words embarrass her, but the facts are plain. ‘Right now. I would be happy if he just disappeared.’

They step into the street and a small but noticeable change overcomes Tomas. His discomfort is clear in how he shies away, walks close to the wall, seems in every way keen not to be seen or to take part in the outside world.

Rike’s confession emboldens her and she asks Tomas about his message. ‘It was your voice? February twelfth?’

‘I thought about speaking in Norwegian.’ He looks sideways, a little sly, ‘but I think they want messages that can be understood, no? In the end I also decided not to record a reason.’

Tomas looks ahead, wipes his hand across his mouth. ‘Did the school tell you anything? I spoke with the woman who runs it.’

Rike automatically answers no.

‘I was monitoring security and I caught a team of men stealing from a depot.’ He holds up his arms to describe the assault. ‘The thing is I remember very little. But they came at me with iron bars.’

Shocked, Rike stops walking. She’s sorry, she says. This is none of her business. She’s really sorry.

Tomas dismisses the apology. ‘It’s a fact. Yes? Something that happened.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

‘I was unlucky. I was in the wrong place. I didn’t have to be there. But I saw them, and they came after me. I have no memory of this.’ He holds his hand first over his forehead, slightly to the right. ‘I was hit here, one time, at the front, and also on my chest, my arms. But the damage was worst for my head. This happened in the depot, but I was found at the security post, which is across a large car park. But I have no memory of this, of what happened, or how I got there. After, of course, everything was different.’

Rike can’t think of anything to say except how sorry she is. And isn’t this a lesson about caution, about how she needs to plan to keep them clean and clear of personal revelation – because this is none of her business.

Tomas points across the road. ‘I’m not much in the mood for walking. We should sit perhaps?’

Rike agrees, and follows as Tomas leads her across the road to a café.

*   *   *

They sit side by side with their coffees and face the street, both uncomfortable with the silence. Occasionally Rike feels an obligation to restart the conversation, but the impetus isn’t there. Tomas looks down at his cup and Rike apologizes and says they can forget about today.

‘I can make it up another time. I didn’t mean to ask about personal things.’

Tomas straightens his back. ‘I was painting the room today, in the basement. Christos came to see me. I asked him about what happened.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘Nothing. Christos said these people were clever. They rented a room for a month. They had someone prepare it for them. They used it once, only for one weekend. They picked up the first person they met. There was no meaning to it. No intention. Except they wanted to do this horrendous thing.’

Tomas turns the spoon over on his saucer, And without fuss he begins to set the salt, pepper, the sauce pots in order on the table.

The air, stale with coffee from the café and the fruited malt from the wineries and breweries closes over them, and the room yaws open to the street with a long overhanging hood, so that the café might be a cave.

‘They rebuilt my skull. See. On this side.’ His hand traces an area from his temple to the crown.

The conversation falls into shadow, stops, and Rike wants desperately to open this into something new. She changes the subject, tells him about Sutler. Thinking that this subject is a remedy, strange enough to distract him.

‘He’s here. The man from the desert.’

The shift works, and she’s pleased with his reaction. It’s water to a dry plant the way he stirs and listens, becomes present.

‘They flew him to the hospital at Akrotiri, but I don’t think he’s staying there because the burns unit is in Limassol.’ She points left, indicates the hospital no more than two hundred metres away. You know about this? The hospital, she explains, has a burns unit. The British use the hospital for soldiers from Iraq, from Afghanistan, who have – it’s impossible to imagine – wounds you wouldn’t believe. The unit is world-leading for the treatment of burns, and it’s here, in Cyprus, right here, just up the street. So this man has been flown in, wrapped up – Rike combines details picked from Henning and pure invention. It isn’t that she wants to lie, she wants him distracted, she wants Tomas thinking about details, procedures, impossible tit-tats of information. ‘What they do is wrap you in this plastic film to stop the oxygen reaching the burn, it stops the air and bacteria from entering the wounds. They wash you in a saline solution, and they cover you in this wrapper and in these creams, and then lower your body temperature with these silver blankets. They keep you cold so the body slowly recovers, and this is what stops the scarring, the cold, the slow healing, and as with all burns the only problem they have to be particular about is infection, because these super-bacteria are resistant to all forms of antibiotic. Henning has seen this, she says, he’s sat with the man, observed him, and while the facilities look crude, he can assure you they have developed advanced techniques in treating skin and burns and lesions, and they’ve learned all of this through treating soldiers. They sent a group of doctors from here to Damascus to bring him back. They want this man to live.

Information pours from her. The British have insisted on bringing him here because Britain, Germany, the US are squabbling over who should take responsibility for this man. ‘They all believe he is the man from Iraq. Stephen Sutler.’ She isn’t sure if she has mentioned this, but Henning has other attachments to the case. Last summer he met Parson, the man they were calling Sutler Number One. He met the man and advised him, according to Isa the meeting didn’t go well, and Henning advised the man that this was all – as far as he could see – a scam. That no company could be so cavalier or clueless, not with that amount of money. Parson shouldn’t be searching Turkey for Sutler, he should be examining HOSCO, the correspondence, the emails, calls, and contracts. The man is a construction, a front to disguise more serious misbehaviour.

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 semiseriously. ‘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?

The video continues.

The man, after looking, regards the two places where the stone has been set and where it now lies, then identifies a fourth spot – and so he moves the stone to this place, a little further from view, almost out of frame. Once again he returns to the centre of the path, and again he regards the place where the stone now lies, and the three places where the stone has previously been set.

On the fourth move the man sets the stone out of the range of view. He does this seven times, always returning to the path to stand dead centre and look to each of the places he has set the stone. The castle behind him, a square stone block, the sky behind that a simple blue, in the distance the handsome spindles of a row of cypress trees, a slight wind bothering them, but nothing else within the frame: the man, the path, the castle, the trees and the sky. The man is now sweating, and she can see why he isn’t wearing a shirt.

She insists that Henning and Isa watch the video, plays it for them on Isa’s laptop, and at first, like her, they find it hard to be interested, but after the second move, once there’s a pattern established, they both look puzzled, and remain curious and quiet while they watch the entire clip.

Isa takes the laptop to watch the video again.

‘I never get this stuff,’ she said, ‘I don’t understand why it’s so compelling. What is this?’ Light from the screen illuminates her face. There is a memory here that Rike can’t place.

‘Does anybody know who they are? Why the head?’ Henning chews as he speaks.

Rike doesn’t know. They have a Facebook page, they call themselves Mannfunktionprojekt or MFP for short, and this, she guesses, maybe means that they’re German. There’s a date on the website to show when another piece will go online.

The video is puzzling: the man picking up stones and placing them elsewhere achieves nothing, however deliberate the action. On TV the characters speak to you, the radio plays songs overstuffed with meaning. This, similarly, feels directed. It’s a pointless activity with no result. That’s what she sees, and what troubles her is that by looking directly into the camera the panda-headed man appears to know it too. And he knows that you know. That, day to day, most of what you do is pointless. Aren’t you ever going to figure that out?

*   *   *

The rain stops abruptly at eight o’clock. Rike walks without purpose and finds herself on Tomas’s street, outside his apartment. She’s much more interested in the hospital and the idea that Sutler Number Three lies inside in some private room with security guards. A lot of people are working hard to keep him safe and alive. She hurries across the street to the café conscious that if Tomas sees her she’ll have to explain herself – although, would that really be so bad? An hour’s longer meandering through the shuttered streets of the main town than she’d intended means that she’s missed the preparations for the day – and isn’t Saturday always a day in which a routine is followed: families go shopping, provisions are bought, obligations are fulfilled. Time is spent with the people you live with, the people you love. Isn’t this what Saturday means?

As she steps into the café Rike is treated to a quick view of Tomas on his balcony. Tomas, four flights up, comes out, the morning’s first coffee in his hand, and gives the street a quick overview. Nothing in particular to be discovered, nothing to observe.

The day has long-started and Rike has missed the judge’s walk, missed seeing also how he dries the dog’s paws on his handkerchief before he returns to his apartment, how he pets and spoils the dog with treats from his jacket pocket. The street is wet and the air smells of rain, vehicles drum by occasionally, faster than they should. One ambulance, and two police cars. People walk with open umbrellas as balconies and awnings funnel down the last of the rain. To the east the sun strikes the glass front of the judge’s apartment to throw spars of light onto the opposite wall – and in these bright patches she can see where the plaster wasn’t always painted magenta, underneath appears a faint ghost of decoration. Inside the apartment, a man, the judge, sorts through sheaves of paper stacked along a table. He walks to the window to stand in the sunlight, the papers held high as he reads. A woman cleans in the kitchen behind him. Light bounces through to illuminate pans and book spines and bleach colour from the walls. Down in the darker street a waiter takes coffee to a car and squats beside the driver to talk. As she sips her coffee she imagines the driver peeling back the foil cap, sweetening, stirring, then looking out at the same street. He pauses for a moment, anticipating the taste. That, right there, is the story of the morning.

Behind her, on the radio, is news of a massacre in Syria. Thirty-four civilians killed, among the number are men queuing for temporary work, and thirteen children, all of them deliberately sought out and shot. Here, in Limassol, there are reports of a hotel fire, suspicions suggested, but not spoken outright. Bad things are happening everywhere and they must be announced.

The waiter brings a second coffee, and because it’s quiet she allows herself to be caught in a conversation.

The water speaks excellent English, some German. He asks where she’s from and when she says Hamburg, he’s suddenly enthusiastic. His favourite place is Berlin. The Funkturm. The Political Sector, not so new now. He wants to study architecture, and Berlin is his preferred choice if he can get a place and a scholarship.

Rike asks about the café, and he answers, less interested, that it’s been here forever, although they’ve only run it for, what was it, four years now? He can’t remember. And no, the owner is an English woman who used to be a nurse.

‘There are some characters here. On this street. The judge.’

The boy asks her to repeat what she’s just said.

Rike answers in German. ‘A judge. With the dog, a small dog. On the top floor?’

The waiter shakes his head. There’s no judge.

‘His driver?’

Again, the man doesn’t know what she’s talking about. ‘Does she like Berlin? All of the buildings? It’s a nice place.’

A nice place, she agrees, a little put out that he hasn’t understood.

*   *   *

Rike receives a call from Isa as she returns to the apartment. Isa asks where she is and Rike explains that she couldn’t sleep so took an early walk. Is everything all right?

‘I’ve just spoken with Mattaus.’ Isa sounds weary. ‘He’s coming for dinner tonight with his new friend?’ Isa’s voice is strained and it’s clear that this isn’t the reason for the call. Rike says she could be back in five minutes, is there anything she needs to pick up?

Isa takes in a long breath. ‘Mattaus was asking questions about the apartment in Hamburg.’

‘What did he want to know?’

‘His plans have changed.’

‘About the apartment?’

‘Yes. It looks like Franco is being difficult.’

‘Why hasn’t he called me directly?’

‘I don’t know.’

The reason for the call becomes blindingly obvious. ‘I can’t stay there, can I?’

Isa begins to explain that she understands how inconvenient this all is, but understandable.

‘It isn’t his. It’s Franco’s, they bought it together. It’s their place. I’ve had everything shipped there already. I’ve paid to have everything delivered.’

Isa heaves out a breath. ‘That’s not the point, is it? The problem here is that Mattaus and Franco have broken up, and Mattaus needs his place back.’ Isa pauses. ‘Look. We can arrange for someone to pick up all of your things. It can all go in storage. You don’t have to go back.’

‘And what am I supposed to do now? Where am I supposed to live?’

Rike stops at the entrance to the apartment.

‘I’m not happy.’

‘He wants you to think about it before tonight.’

‘Think about what? If I can’t stay there then there’s nothing to think about except what I’m supposed to do with my belongings and where I’m going to live.’

‘Then think about that.’

‘I could have stayed in London. Do you know how much this has cost me?’

‘He said he was sorry.’

‘Then he can call me, he knows my number. He can tell me just how sorry he is.’

‘Maybe he didn’t call because he knew you’d react like this. I don’t understand why you are so hostile to him. This is his business. His life, his apartment. Why do you have these expectations of him?’

‘I should have known that you’d take his side.’

Isa complains that this isn’t about taking sides. If Mattaus is starting a new relationship then he needs to resolve the details from his old one, in his own time, in his own way. The apartment is one of those elements. Surely she can understand?

Rike’s shoes scuff on the steps. ‘Isa, this is too much, it really is.’ She comes quickly to the door fixing a hair clasp as she walks and decides that this isn’t where she wants to be. If Mattaus is coming tonight with his new friend, there will be arrangements to make, a whole day of preparation, which, given how things usually work out, will fall on Rike, not Isa.

6.5

Sandro arranges to meet Gibson at a small restaurant close to the street market and the Montesanto station. The restaurant is reached through a long tiled corridor, barrels of fat obstruct the entrance. Inside, the tables and chairs are mismatched. Knives and forks and paper napkins sit centre-table in open cans. Gibson finds Sandro already seated. He explains there is no menu, if Gibson tells him what he likes he can order.

‘You speak Italian?’

Gibson apologizes, no. ‘I learned French and Italian at school. I was passably good. But my wife had a command of languages. It makes you lazy. It takes from you what you know.’

Gibson hopes his story will prompt information from Sandro. He holds to this notion of Sandro as a family man, pure Italian, realizing that such assumptions cannot be made, not these days. Sandro asks if Gibson really has a daughter.

‘That was ingenious.’ His smile is genuine. ‘You are a natural. But why did you have the money? The story would have worked without the money.’

Gibson doesn’t know. ‘I wanted leverage. I thought a lot of money would make me look serious.’

‘I’m not sure that he believed you, but it’s interesting that he went along with it. I must remember this. It isn’t the story at all, but the conviction with which it is delivered. The money is something else, a distraction. Maybe this is part of it?’

Flattered, Gibson says he isn’t so sure.

‘You understand that we needed to make a gesture. Twenty policemen make everything look serious in the way that we need to look serious. We speak with people, they tell us nothing. We go back and make a little noise, and maybe next time they will be more helpful.’ Sandro broadens his smile. ‘I doubt it, but this is the tactic we like to use. Force has no meaning unless you deliver once in a while. You cannot always hold up your hand in warning. Sometimes it is necessary to strike. We have a little information because of it. Some of it is useful.’ Sandro speaks about the man in the singlet, the woman with the glasses. ‘They admitted they had made a mistake earlier when speaking with me, and that there was indeed a man staying with them, who was there for ten days, and who caused them no disturbance while he stayed. The Hotel Sette does not keep precise records, as they should, but they recognize the man in the picture and say that he was German. I would question this a little, but they were certain that he was German.’

A waitress approaches the table and Sandro speaks with her.

‘Do you like hot food? Spices?’

Gibson says that he would rather have something plainer, a cutlet if they have it, and Sandro nods, and places the order. The woman listens but writes nothing down.

‘So, I think this is all we will discover. I think they have told us what they know. They spoke with the man but have no idea where he was going. He left the same day as the incident in Rome. He paid the night before and took his bags early in the morning. There was nothing in the room. In fact, it looked like he had not slept there, but sat at the window. There is no record of him arriving at the Stazione Centrale, he is not on any of the video we have collected. Which does not mean, of course, that he was not there.’

*   *   *

While they wait for the food Gibson calls Geezler. This needs to be explained. Geezler has the photograph, but does not know about the search of the hotel.

Gibson lays out the situation. Parson, it appears, was being followed, and while they have not yet linked this man to his death, the possibility is looking strong.

‘The police think that we have as much information as we are going to find. They can make the photograph public, but it seems counterproductive at this point. I’m not sure. If nothing else is discovered they are going to have to use it.’

In his exasperation Geezler says that this wasn’t supposed to happen. Parson was hired to find Stephen Sutler. Instead, what do they have? They have a situation which is increasingly hard to control. Worse. They now have information, so destabilizing, it cannot possibly go forward to the hearing. Gibson himself should not attend because this evidence, this photograph, this coincidence, cannot be presented at this point as it will cause much too much disruption. Does Parson understand what is at stake? HOSCO, apparently dissolved, survives as a network of companies, a new constellation of associated concerns which orbit the new company CONPORT. Who knows, in future years these elements might coalesce, conjoin. This future is now in doubt. If these rumours increase about the old company and gather any more pace, any kind of survival, for CONPORT, for Geezler, for Gibson & Baker is in jeopardy. I only have control because I have cut out the problem and appear to have established order. Everything will be lost. The implications are vast. Unthread this and we undermine our very presence in the Middle East, how every company manages itself on foreign soil. Does he understand?

The waitress hurries past him, runs across the street to the market and returns with a single raw pork chop on a plate. Gibson looks at the bustle. There is an intelligence at work here. He watches the crowd and considers how its movements are constrained. The produce, water-filled buckets of clams, sardines, he isn’t sure what kinds of fish, the plates of squid and tubs of octopus, and either side the vegetable stalls, are set out in blocks of colour, organized mounds of tomatoes, bundles of greens, onions, garlic, peppers, everything classified by size and kind. Superimposed on this is the disorder of the crowd, who come and go, return, haggle, argue, pinch, taste, converse and pay. There are two elements, the seller and the buyer, which appear hectic, but are contained and controlled by two basic principles: the need to sell and the need to buy. In this regard, it isn’t hectic at all.

When he returns to the restaurant Gibson asks Sandro what he knows about HOSCO. Supposing Parson was right – entertain the idea – but if he was right, and the man who chased him across the tracks, the man who is responsible for his death, was commissioned by HOSCO. Supposing. What would happen next?

Sandro sets his elbows on the table. ‘It’s interesting. Do we assume the man who was after Parson wasn’t Stephen Sutler?’

‘Laura’s photograph doesn’t match the picture we have of Sutler. We have the one photograph from an ID and it looks nothing like this man.’

‘Then we imagine that this is something different. He was not finding the man he was sent to find. Instead the issue becomes more complex, because he helps to make it complex.’

Gibson can’t quite organize the thought. ‘Think of what is supposed to happen. The design. What was intended. Not about what has happened.’

Sandro asks him what he means.

‘I was speaking with Paul Geezler, and he is frustrated because this can’t be controlled. Parson. Sutler. It is too chaotic now. There is too much attention. And it continues to make damage.’ Gibson wants to distil recent events to their essential intentions, to reduce everything back to what was supposed to happen. ‘Parson was supposed to find Sutler. Not finding Sutler becomes a problem, because Sutler is still active. He is still getting attention. Making noise. Making more noise perhaps. If you eliminate Parson, then you eliminate Sutler. Because if no one is searching for Stephen Sutler, then he is no longer a matter of attention. So what would be the next step?’ Gibson looks up. ‘Or is this all over?’

Sandro laughs softly. ‘The method is not impressive. But the result is interesting. If we no longer have these people looking for Sutler, then, as far as everyone is concerned, we no longer have Sutler to worry about. I can see this. It makes sense.’

‘So is it over?’

Sandro gives the smallest head shake. ‘If there is someone making sure that Sutler is not discovered, then anyone who is involved is – I suppose – a threat.’ He looks quizzically at Gibson, the thought taking shape. ‘This means Paul Geezler,’ he softly clears his throat. ‘And it also means you.’