LIMASSOL

 

11.1

Tomas follows Rike and the supervisor down the stairs. The supervisor is so small that with Rike behind him, and Tomas behind her, he can see only the man’s arms swinging as he scurries down the steps. Rike, a talker when she’s nervous, keeps the little man occupied. So the supervisor pays her more attention. Which is exactly the point.

She’s gone before they look at the room. Changed her mind. There isn’t much to see in any case, the back end of an oblong bunker packed with crates of Keo beer, and what look to be promotional decorations: two sooty and gruff polar bears, an animatronic reindeer, and penguins in different poses (some realistic, some cartoonish with scarves and hats and skates), and what look like rolls of thick white cotton that will stand in for fields of snow – this is what he can see from the door. The rest of the space, about eight by eight metres, has been hastily cleared. The landlord guarantees that whatever is stored here can be removed. The door, with a damaged lock, has to be wedged open because the handle is missing from the inside. The landlord also promises to have that fixed. ‘You get stuck in here without a key,’ he says with a little snicker, ‘and you won’t be getting out.’ The man responsible for all of this used to work for Keo breweries, he’s now working across the road for the hospital if Tomas wants to have a word with him.

Tomas says he isn’t worried. He has no intention of being associated with the hospital in any way. Although he needs to know more details, even now, he doesn’t want any kind of connection that maps him here, now.

*   *   *

The hotel, a bare structure, is nothing more than a series of cast concrete platforms, with heavy pillars, an iron framework and almost no walls – the floors stand open, and look something like a high-rise car park. The second storey provides the most sheltered vantage point, but the best view is from the rooftop under the cupola. It’s not unpleasant to lie on the concrete and feel the draught running over his back.

From the cupola level he can see into the living room, the kitchen beyond – it’s all one open space, more or less, divided by a small banquette. To the right of the living room lies Rike’s room, after that the bathroom with its small frosted window. Her sister’s bedroom is on the far side, which he can’t see. From the cupola, if he stands up – if it’s night – he can see into the garden, but not much of it. If Rike and her sister sit outside, then he has a great view. But the compound wall, the fig tree beside the bathroom, and a larger lemon tree block the remaining view.

He watches them in the evening. Sits with binoculars trained on the apartment. Rike cooks and Isa watches. The way they move when they speak shows them to be wary. Isa is more open. Rike, in everything she does, appears tight and controlled.

11.2

The days are long and unpleasant. It takes longer than he likes to prepare for the lessons. He regrets his choice of source material, the Finn Cullman book isn’t popular, but from what he’s found on the internet, a film based on the story had a limited release in Europe to art-house cinemas. Committed, he works out a timeline, collects the information into manageable blocks. He thinks of this as a kind of architecture. Each project is a purpose-built structure for one-time use. It’s a pity that no one will ever know. Although this unknown-ness is part of his craft.

Very little of what he uncovers is useful – there’s no way of knowing this when he starts. He works standing up, papers spread across the counter and stove top.

When he comes across useable material he tears the pages out of the book, writes notes, then sets the notes and pages in order. It doesn’t need to take as long as it does.

This is the only time Tomas wants to smoke. He stands in the kitchen, stooped over papers. A coffee in his left hand, his right hand unoccupied, shifting paper for the sake of it. Even after four years he still misses smoking. To make sure he tells a story the same way he’s told it before, he practises speaking out loud. Gives the same detail. Doesn’t deviate. Never improvises.

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. Kleftico. BBQ. Fish & Chips. Ahead of him Rike’s brother speaking agitated into his mobile.

They walk to the bay hotels, to the start of the resorts. At the Sovereign Tomas finally stops, and enters a club: Nightingale 1.

*   *   *

The Nightingale 1 is part of the Sovereign Resort complex. The club, a three storey bunker, overlooks the bay. The Sovereign Hotel has its back to the land, and during the day causes a long shadow to sweep the beach, from right to left. For the most part, the beach is obscured. There’s a joke that the hotel was built the wrong way round: the steep side facing the water, the sloped side facing the land, but Tomas thinks this isn’t the case. It can’t be. The pool, for example, being to the side of the hotel, takes the sun almost the whole day through, and this only works because the back is sloped. The rooms and balconies on the seaward side take the shade.

He watches Mattaus and can’t understand why the man stays, given how he’s ignored by the people he sits with, except one man, the manager, who buzzes about him briefly, then disappears for a good hour. These people, younger, excitable, a nervous edge to them with their sudden enthusiasms and keen bodies, they shout, bicker, go to the toilet cubicles to take drugs because this is the place for such activities, and come out energized and glassy-eyed. This group is watched over by the club’s security. As far as he can tell the club is divided into zones. This, anyway, is how it appears to be monitored. Across the club there are other such areas, although the patrons would not know it. There’s a certain balance to the excesses here. One boy, Russian, dressed in sports gear, sits at the bar, and keeps a cool eye on the room. Disengaged, but observant.

Tomas finds it hard to watch, even at this distance, and remain uninvolved. His interest at this point is on how he’s going to approach Mattaus. Speaking to him directly would be unwise, although he will already be recorded on the club’s cameras. Impatient to do something, he understands that tonight might not provide the right opportunity.

A possibility opens later in the evening, when it becomes clear to Tomas that the manager, Mattaus’s friend, is robbing the club blind.

Drinks bought at the bar pass through the register, but drinks bought from the waiting staff are unregistered, cash in hand. Money paid at the door is kept in a cash box. The arrangement appears deliberately slack, and only the manager, who collects the takings in a black sack, can have any idea what the takings are at any point, on any given night. The opportunity for the man to help himself is evident. In Tomas’s experience, when such a possibility exists, there’s usually a taker. He watches with particular interest. The manager comes by almost every sixty to eighty minutes, and counts out the money, makes a note in a small pad, then binds the cash with the note in a rubber band, which he drops into a pouch. It’s laughable. He does this without any security. No one oversees his accounting, no one offers him protection.

To test the diligence of the guards, Tomas follows the man through the club from bar to bar, up and down between the levels, and then it happens. As they walk down the stairs Tomas witnesses, to his great satisfaction, the manager reach into the pouch and help himself. So lazy, so incautious; he doesn’t even look around him. None of the guards is concerned that the manager is alone while he collects the money. At the top bar he ties a knot in the neck of the bag, then comes back down the staircase to return to his office. The only person distantly aware of Tomas’s movements is the boy at the bar.

Before he leaves Tomas steals Mattaus’s phone. This is ridiculously easy, a technical move, but not so sophisticated. The man doesn’t see him. Tomas keeps to the dark side of the stairs, comes at him from the curve. Mattaus doesn’t feel a hand slip into his pocket – and if he did feel something, this sleight of hand, in this kind of club, the gesture would translate as a small intimacy. As it stands, Tomas keeps this nice and tidy. No error involved. Mattaus knows only that a man nudged by him on the stairs, and bumped shoulders.

They leave before the club closes, Mattaus and the manager. Tomas follows after them, but outside, the manager has a car waiting, and Tomas returns to the club and sits at the bar.

The club is still busy, and while the clientele is mixed, the younger ones look worse for wear, except one, the boy in sports gear, who, like Tomas, appears to be watching.

It doesn’t take much to get the boy to talk, and Tomas learns that the manager of Nightingale 1, Kolya, runs a private game of poker. Anyone he likes the look of can play as a guest. Kolya likes to win, for many reasons, not least of all for the money, this is his one vice, the single benefit he allows himself with his work, and so the cards are stacked, and once he has their money the guest is escorted out of the club, invariably to a cash machine or a hotel to empty their safety deposit. The boy, Sol, enjoys the drama. It’s impossible to tire of that frustration, the inevitability of failure, the sheer breathlessness of their losses.

Sol goes to the toilets, and when he comes back he’s a little wired and won’t answer his phone. When Tomas asks who is calling he says Lexi, with clear dislike. Right now he’s supposed to be with Lexi, he should be in Larnaca, but Lexi, who runs Nightingale 2, is such a bore. Sol is working hard to avoid him. He doesn’t understand why the others tolerate the man and take him so seriously. Lexi runs the club in Larnaca, and Kolya runs the club in Limassol, there are other duties divided between them. Lexi manages the money, more or less, and Kolya manages the stocks and staff. Which makes them equal. Kolya is certainly more the figure you’d imagine for a nightclub manager: big, brusque, tattoos running fist to fist, while Lexi looks like he should be running a boutique. If there is a hierarchy his worry is that Lexi is possibly the man in control.

Tomas understands that the manager he was watching was Lexi.

The boy won’t drop the subject. It’s the way people listen to Lexi, give him attention, the way they really seem to like him that gets under his skin, and he doesn’t know why. Lexi is a waste of space: the man is so tedious atoms unwind around him, tire of life, cohesion, basic physical principles, everything undoes, gives up, DNA unravels, brains melt, entire species evaporate, the universe dissolves.

The people who come to the club, Sol has to admit, aren’t so pretty, and charging a higher entrance fee has done nothing to improve the clientele. The talent is seriously lacking. His own compatriots aren’t much to go by. Entrance at least requires footwear, shorts or a skirt, some kind of top, but every night they turn away boys in fancy dress or shirtless, stag parties, hen parties, girls in thongs, and one time, a girl in sandals and gold makeup, nothing else. The police in both towns are regular visitors, known by their first names. Kolya has a talent for looking after them. Kolya is a hulking Cossack, hairy shoulders, broad and solid, the man is both architectural and animal, which makes him what? Some kind of a machine. Vast and bald. Sol admits that Kolya looks after him, makes sure he keeps out of trouble. Kolya knows Sol’s father, they’ve worked together, which either enhances or complicates their association, although this link is deliberately under-discussed.

Sol’s monologue runs freestyle, but returns to Lexi, his pet hate. Tomas wants to know why the manager of the club at Larnaca is here in the evening in Limassol, instead of watching over his own business.

Sol doesn’t know the answer, but that’s exactly what he’s talking about. ‘Like there’s a specific way everything has to be done.’

The people who know him (namely Kolya, Matti, Max) know not to ask Sol about boarding school, but Lexi won’t leave it alone. It’s as if Sol’s schooling in England, in the US, in Switzerland, is what makes him interesting, when in fact, everybody knows, the school you go to is just about how much money your parents are prepared to spend. Sol’s dislike is long established. It isn’t that Lexi likes him, not in that way. Sol doesn’t have to worry about that. Lexi goes with the dancers, the boys, the ‘go-go’s’, as a consequence Lexi’s year, so far, has been a series of sulks and pointless crushes, except now he’s met this Fritz, this German and everything’s hunky-dory. Sol isn’t judgemental, he really doesn’t mind people like Lexi. That isn’t his problem. His problem is that the man doesn’t partake in the way everyone else partakes in substances and pleasure, and nothing dampens a buzz more than a superior govno constantly giving you the disapproving eye. And so what if Lexi really runs the place? You know, it’s not like Sol is looking for a career. All he wants, until he starts university, is some major distraction.

Sol asks if Tomas would like a drink. Tomas says he has an idea. He’d like to play cards with the manager. What was his name? Kolya?

Sol looks at him, a little astonished. ‘You can’t win.’

‘Perhaps. I’d like to figure out how he does it.’

The boy appears to understand but doesn’t move.

‘I’m serious. Go see if he’s interested.’

‘You’ll lose.’

Tomas shrugs. ‘I’ll lose,’ he says, ‘but I’ll learn how he does it.’

Kolya agrees to a game. He sends over drinks, then sits with him. Sol sits separately and watches as Kolya and Tomas become acquainted. The small booths at the back of the club are intimate enough, under-lit against the cavernous dance floor, but the sound bounces, is so enhanced, so deep and penetrating, that every conversation is busy with head ducking, repetition, gestures.

He follows Sol and Kolya through the club to the lower office. They each walk in pace to the beat. Once Sol notices this he breaks his stride. Kolya holds the office door open and asks why Sol is smiling.

Lit by a line of fluorescent light, the office is small and cluttered with equipment, buckets, and crates, and the smell reminds Tomas of boiled cabbage. He gives small answers to Kolya’s questions but clearly wants the game to start. When it does start, he loses every hand.

Kolya asks Sol to accompany Berens to the ATM. As they walk they make small talk.

He asks Tomas if he learned anything.

‘How he does it?’

Tomas nods, thoughtfully. ‘Possibly. I have an idea.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Mind?’

‘Losing?’

Kolya has no respect for losers, not in the club, and not out of it. Sol holds the same ideas. ‘We own this island. They don’t even know how much. They have no idea. They like this,’ he can’t think of the word, ‘half-ness. They like to be known only for their disagreement. Everyone in this country is an amateur.’

The national debt is a subject of deep distaste to Kolya and Sol alike. Both value business and business ethics, and deeply mistrust the idea of compounded debt. That an entire nation would impoverish itself without knowing what it is doing is pathetic. A kind of death. It’s worse that they accept help, and seem happy to be weak. He calls them zombies. Undead. It isn’t that Europe is corrupt, so much, as weak and slothful. Yes, sloth. This is the nature of their greed. There have been demonstrations, which makes Sol suck in breath between his teeth. Water cannon. Rubber bullets. Hoses. When people lose their houses they will properly understand their folly.

Tomas takes the money from the machine, counts it into Sol’s hand. He tells him to be careful walking back. Sol thinks this is funny, how some men speak to him as if he were still a boy.

11.4

On the Monday Rike comes to the apartment early, deliberately, she says, because she wants to try out a new café. Her sister has rated the mozzarella as unsurpassable. It’s the real thing, proper buffalo mozzarella. Isa is an authority, and now she is pregnant she’s not allowed to eat cheese with any kind of live culture. In this café they keep the mozzarella in a clear plastic barrel filled with briny-looking milt (it actually looks like breast milk). According to Isa this is the freshest mozzarella outside of Italy. If you want it any fresher you’d have to lay under a buffalo’s teat.

She looks tired. Tomas asks her how she is, says that she doesn’t look her usual self, and gives a good smile, as if it might matter to him that she is out of sorts.

‘My brother,’ Rike delivers the news without emphasis, ‘came over on Saturday.’ She rubs her face, runs her hand alongside her nose. It’s an ungracious gesture, a range of expression he hasn’t seen from her before. ‘It was awful. Just awful.’

‘What happened?’

‘I can’t describe it. Just, horrible. And my sister. I couldn’t believe it was happening. When he left he was really angry. We don’t know where he is.’ Rike grimaces. ‘This is just like him. He makes a mess of everything then disappears, and leaves everyone else to clear up. When I first arrived, Henning warned me about things I shouldn’t do while I was in Cyprus. His work is sensitive. If things even look wrong he could be sent back to Germany and they would never return to Syria. It’s a huge pressure for him. Even Isa takes this seriously. On some level it just doesn’t register with Mattaus. He just doesn’t care how much it matters to other people.’

Mattaus has always been selfish. That’s his problem. But nobody sees this. Everybody likes him. (She just can’t believe this. How does it happen?) Everybody sees what he wants them to see. He manipulates people and they just don’t get it. He attracts the nicest men, and it always ends badly. Always.

Tomas agrees. She’s probably right. But this is family, right? Don’t sisters always disapprove?

‘I didn’t even know he was in Cyprus.’ Rike shrugs. ‘We’ll not hear from him, and then one day, out of the blue, he’ll show up, expecting everything to be forgiven. He’ll make a joke out of it. A story. Remember that time…’

‘And for your brother-in-law, has he made much trouble?’

‘I really don’t know. Henning takes it all pretty seriously. It’ll probably blow over, but Henning is the kind of man who’d feel obliged to tell someone about it. And that would be very unwise. It’s just a bad situation. Mattaus said he recognized your name?’

‘It’s common. Berens. Not so rare.’

Rike shakes her head. That wasn’t it, he recognized the name. Placed it.

‘Sometimes it’s a first name. But in German it’s a shortened version of “baron” which means “freeman”. In Norwegian it’s a little different and it means “bear”, wild bear.’

The question or statement about her brother is lost, and if she even thinks about it now, which he doubts, she’ll imagine that the subject is closed.

Rike starts the lesson and the idea of going somewhere else is passed over. ‘Today,’ she says, ‘we talk about aspirations. What I would like, what I hope for. What I would want to see.’ These are, she says, conditional clauses. Tough to master, and she would like to see him demonstrate them.

This is almost too easy now. Tomas uses the example, Finn Cullman in Naples. It’s satisfying to find a use for it.

‘I’ve always wanted to write,’ he says, ‘not fiction but real stories. What has happened to other people. This is what I like to read. I’ve taken it seriously and once I hired a researcher, but he took advantage of me. It didn’t go so well.’

Rike nods as she listens.

‘I think it would be good to write about something current. I don’t know, but it is interesting to me, the stories you have been telling me about this man they found in the desert. It is always more interesting when these stories are true, no?’

Rike agrees. It is much more interesting.

‘I mean you have to wonder who he really is, and why he walked so far. What would make someone do that. I think that would be interesting. To nervier people who are involved. To investigate. I don’t know. Maybe even help.’ He stops short of making a more direct appeal and turns the conversation to another subject.

By the end of the session Rike is looking pleased. ‘Tomorrow,’ she says, ‘we should try that mozzarella.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Tomas answers, ‘the weather is supposed to stay nice. We should do something different.’

He isn’t sure just what to suggest, but one more opportunity to learn something from her, to take her close to the military base to prompt more information on Sutler. ‘There is a beach you know. Lady’s Mile. You like to swim?’

Rike, suddenly coy, says that she likes to swim very much. Tomorrow, then, it is agreed, a picnic, a swim, at Lady’s Mile beach.

*   *   *

After the lesson Tomas watches Rike walk up the street. This is wasting time. He should be more direct. Even with the suggestion posed today he can’t guarantee that she will return with any information. He looks out toward the hospital and waits for a call from Geezler, knowing instinctively that there is little time to waste. Tomas has everything he needs. From this point he needs to work decisively, with intent.

Geezler has unsettling news from Italy. ‘They have a photograph of you. Parson’s wife took a photograph and she has passed it on to the police. If they make this public, it’s a possible problem. The picture is clear, it looks like you. Even in Cyprus I think you’ll have a difficult time explaining this.’

They discuss their options. Information from Rike has been limited. It isn’t working as expected. Geezler decides: stop wasting time on the sister, use the brother. Mattaus. Tonight.

11.5

Tomas isn’t properly dressed for a night out. He unbuttons the top two shirt buttons, untucks the tail, smooths his hair. At the Bank of Cyprus, he draws out cash then heads to the club. By the time he arrives Mattaus will be settled with the same group as before. Lexi will be roaming, collecting money. At some early hour they will return to Larnaca. He does not doubt that their evenings follow the same pattern.

Tomas walks with one hand in his pocket, more self-conscious than usual, given the possibility that he could be recognized and associated with Parson’s death. The air, sweet with grilled meats from the roadside restaurants, reminds him that he hasn’t eaten. It’s easy to forget those details. The harbour lights darken at the kerb, so the sea is hidden but present as a faint, over-ripe stink of fish, or fish waste.

When he arrives at the club he finds Mattaus and Lexi on the sidewalk ready to leave. Mattaus, highly animated, aggravated, in conversation with Lexi. Lexi’s face is long, his jaw sharpened by a slight overbite. He appears sulkier than before and weary. He holds his hand out to halt a car, his car, and takes the keys without a word. Tomas has as good as lost them.

*   *   *

He searches through the club for Kolya. As he comes up the stairs Tomas can feel the music pulse in his chest. Blood-red walls, heat, and a synthetic heartbeat, is that what makes these places so familiar? Kolya isn’t about, instead he finds the boy, Sol, and lets him know that he wants to speak with Kolya. Can he set this up? He can do that, right?

The boy looks surprised. If it’s about the card game, the money, it would be better for Tomas to leave everything alone. Just forget it.

‘This is about something else. I think he’ll want to hear this.’

Sol pauses, still doubtful, but Tomas assures him this is for Kolya’s benefit.

‘Someone is stealing from the club.’ Tomas makes a gesture like he isn’t bothered either way, and the boy slips away.

Sol returns immediately with Kolya, who invites Tomas to a booth. Tonight the man wears a white singlet which shows a tattoo on either shoulder: the talons of a beast mounting his back, the nails piercing the skin.

He asks Tomas if he would like a drink. Tomas immediately asks after Lexi. ‘The manager from the other club. The man who deals with the money.’

Kolya has a scar on his neck, a small, smooth puncture. He asks why they are talking about Lexi. The men lean toward each other to be heard over the music.

‘How much do you think you’re losing each night?’ Tomas’s voice is strained. ‘How much do you think he’s taking? You think he takes from both clubs? Or maybe just yours?’

Kolya coughs into his hand and asks what Tomas is talking about.

‘The other manager, who collects the money. Do you have any idea how much he’s taking?’

Tomas can’t help but stretch his neck, twist his head from side to side. He waits for the music to change so that he does not need to shout. ‘I’m here for the German, the man he brings here. I can tell you how he’s doing this. But I want the German. I want to know where his friend is staying.’

‘What is your interest in this?’

‘It’s separate. This is something different. I need to know where he is staying.’

Kolya folds his arms. ‘So how? How is this happening?’

Tomas rubs his face, takes his time to answer. ‘It’s simple. He collects the money himself. How long is he here before he goes to the other club? Two hours? Three. So he collects the takings every hour, two or three times a night. You have no record of what is coming in, except what you collect yourself at the end.’

Kolya begins to smile and it occurs to Tomas that he is making a mistake. It’s entirely possible that he hasn’t witnessed a theft at all, but something which can be otherwise explained. It’s possible that the theft is of no consequence, both managers appear to run a little renegade: Lexi’s thievery, Kolya’s gambling.

‘This is nothing.’

‘He takes the money on the stairwell, between levels. There are no cameras on the second stairwell.’ Tomas explains that the system isn’t clever, it’s snatch and grab, essentially, so simple you’d only know it was happening if you saw it with your own eyes. Perhaps he has this wrong, he admits. It’s possible.

He wants information on the German. He wants a guarantee, if he’s right, that Kolya won’t act on this information tonight.

*   *   *

Berens returns to his apartment, showers and changes. He picks up his car and drives to Larnaca, then further, following Kolya’s directions beyond the airport toward the cape. The air here is swampy, damp from the sea. On high tide the land floods, and the road sparkles with sea salt. Another salt flat, considerably larger than the one at Akrotiri, runs alongside the road and beyond this a small village built on a flood plain, on what was once a malarial swamp. He follows Kolya’s map with ease, because there isn’t much to it, three right turns in the entire drive. The final section has no street lights. He continues along the road which dips down and levels out at the edge of the salt flats. The road continues straight. Tomas dims his headlights and drives toward an area of palm trees, a grove which shelters a single building, and when he comes to the bungalow Lexi has recently hired he finds the gates closed, the lights off, no sign of the car. No one at home.

*   *   *

He takes his time. He drives the car further down the track, not hidden, but out of view.

It’s simple luck that the bedroom shutters are raised enough to allow air into the room. The grille covering the lower pane is loosely fixed to the wall and comes away with little persuasion. This is basically an invitation.

Tomas slides into the room and slips feet first onto the bed. He sets himself carefully down and turns on the bedroom light. There’s little sign of intimacy in the room. The bed is unmade. There are clothes scattered to one side. Two pillows lie lengthwise down the centre, and it appears that only one person has slept here. At the end of the bed, side by side, are one small holdall and three large suitcases. Inside the holdall he finds a set of freshly laundered clothes and a wash-bag which contains condoms, hair gel, small samples of aftershave. Lexi is leaving. The drawers and closets are empty. Tomas lifts the valance and looks under the bed. There is nothing to be found in the entire room. No indication either of where he might be going.

Disappointed, Tomas opens the bathroom door and discovers, inside, sat on its hind legs, a dog. A svelte black Dobermann.

But of course, a dog.

Tomas does not move.

The dog does not move. Neither does it growl.

They are, it appears, locked together: Tomas standing by the door, the dog seated beside the shower. Across the floor lie scattered scraps of the shower mat the dog has ripped to pieces.

Tomas remains absolutely still, his hand on the door handle, then, slowly he starts to retreat. The dog dips its head and growls, a small overture, but a growl. An introduction to trouble. He can’t shut the door. At any movement, his best guess, the dog will lunge, and he will need to jump back and pull the door closed. It’s doubtful that he can manage this. The Dobermann sits the same distance from Tomas as Tomas stands from the bedroom. The odds aren’t great.

The dog breaks the impasse.

First, it urinates in a half squat. A broadening puddle on the tiled floor. A pool which joins, dot to dot, the scraps of torn matting, and takes an unnecessary amount of time. The dog looks at him as it pisses. Eye to eye. Intentional.

Second, it yawns, and shows, even in the slice of light spilling from the bedroom, a strong set of teeth.

Third, it stands up, walks by Tomas, and sits square in front of the bedroom door.

The dog looks from the door to Tomas to the door. It’s a slow series of movements, brimming with expectation.

Tomas returns to the bedroom. One step at a time. He keeps his movements controlled, limited only to what is necessary. He steadies his breath. He creeps back to the window, and begins to sneak wide of the bed and the dog.

As soon as Tomas approaches the bed, the dog begins to growl.

It isn’t much of a threat: a guttural roll. Almost sub-sonic. A warning.

The dog makes no complaint when he approaches the bedroom door, and when he opens it the dog trots through. The house is silent except for the dog’s claws on the tiles. Then, right in the hall, right before the doormat, the Dobermann again positions herself so that she can watch him while she squats and takes a long slow piss. The same in the living room. The same in the kitchen. In each room the dog silently demands entrance, and then urinates. Copiously.

Finally Tomas takes a seat in the sitting room, on a white couch. The room, even in the darkness, is too mannered. White carpets, white furnishings, white walls, white paintings flecked with texture, a mania for white.

The dog sits up alert. Ears pricked. Watching him. Watching the exits.

*   *   *

A car turns into the driveway. On the side table is a heavy onyx lighter. He waits for the key to turn in the lock. The lighter handsomely fits his grip, his fingers comfortably span the stone. Hungry, his stomach tightens and growls. For a moment the dog turns to look at him. Then back to the door. Tomas flexes his hands, then stretches his arms to his shoulders. He takes deep breaths, sits forward. Ready.

First the dog – make your intentions clear, define your terms – second, the thief, Olexei.

*   *   *

The lights come on in the hall, and he hears Lexi’s exasperation, swearing, in Russian, from the door. It’s clear he’s alone. Mattaus is not with him. Tomas listens. There are two conversations. The greeting, in Russian, to the dog, and a conversation on the phone, in English. The dog, now sat in the doorway between the sitting room and the hall, is delicately focused, poised. A picture.

Tomas listens as Lexi speaks. Is he inside? Or is he still at the door?

‘No. I’ve said. I’m done. That’s what I’ll tell them – pause – You’re getting shit from your family. I’m taking shit every day. At some point you just have to stop and consider if it’s worth it – pause – If they won’t let me – pause – What do you mean if they won’t let me. They don’t have a choice – pause – With Kolya? What about him? – pause – I’ll just tell him. This is how it is. I don’t want to do this any more – pause – You need to replace your phone. No. I’ll bring you one. No. You don’t need to. Forget it. I’ll give you one.’ There’s more frustration. ‘I come home and she’s shit all over the place. I shut her in the bathroom, in the en suite, and she manages to get out. The house is full of – pause – You can imagine.’ (He’s still only in the hall.) ‘I can’t stand it. It smells so bad in here. Something has to happen. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it, but I think I have to do something. Maybe she’s senile. Maybe? I don’t know – pause – Later, then. Yes. An hour. It’s so late I don’t think so – pause – OK, in an hour. Truss.’

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.

They drive out of Limassol, by the castle keep at Kolossi, the air a kind of blanket, folds of heat. After the castle, the refugee camp, bunkers in long rows, then suddenly lines of trees, behind them citrus orchards. Rike closes her eyes, and Tomas watches, and wonders if anyone has ever been so relaxed about him. If this was so he couldn’t remember. Rike holds her arm out to the breeze and suggests that they stop. When they came by here the other day they’d passed a shop, all on its own, which sold fruit and souvenirs. There were baskets out front, hanging from the awning, and she’d liked the look of it but they hadn’t time to stop.

At the next crossroads they come to the store.

The line of trees remind him of New Hampshire – it’s a little unguarded he realizes to give an actual location. Remote, you know, completely out in the woods, and he was cycling along a path and felt something above him, a bird, right at the tree tops overtaking then flying just ahead, broad wing span, bigger than his outstretched arms. This bird, this hawk or something – are hawks even that large? – but there at some height, ahead, following the same path.

‘I heard it.’ He locks the car doors once they are out. ‘I could hear it when I was working, but this one time I could see it.’

Rike, ahead of him, smiling also.

They buy baskets and fill them with oranges and grapefruit. Rike decides that these will be gifts for people in her building. She hasn’t met them yet and feels that it is about time to say hello, see who everyone is.

‘I’ve decided not to worry,’ she announces, walking between the bins of fruit. The grapes look good, tight bunches, sweet, fat, still a little dusty. ‘I’m not going to worry about Mattaus. He’s big enough to look after himself. I’m not responsible. I’m not going to worry about what happens after the summer.’ She leans forward. ‘I’ve even been thinking I might stay. I could find a place of my own and I could teach. I don’t think it’s what I want to do, but it will buy me time until I can decide.’

Heading south now they cut through the groves and the orchards. Of a sudden they give way, the treeline stops, the groves stop, and give abruptly to a savage white plate. They both squint at the salt flats. The fierce brightness sparks about them, the sky peeled a flat burnished blue, an impossible colour. Tomas pushes back his sunglasses, takes the soft curve of the road, which somehow seems to be a kind of expression, a leaning glide, and Rike smiles without reserve. This is, she says, incredible.

‘Isn’t this something?’ she asks him, sincere and insistent. ‘Really something to see.’

The sea lies on either side of the salt flat; a drying lake with a fine furred pink line. Rike explains about the flamingos, repeats Henning’s facts, which again are questions about the birds and how surprising it is that of all places they should end up here.

The heat draws a wind off the gulf, and as they drive Rike is grateful for the cooler air.

*   *   *

On the beach she lugs the backpack in both arms insisting that Tomas doesn’t need to help. She kneels as she unpacks it, happy with the job. The sand is fine, with no wind to disturb it. Tomas looks about but there’s no shade. While it’s warm, there isn’t any real heat to the sun. A loose line of people sit and face the sea. Some stand at the shoreline, hands on hips, and look out at a bare horizon.

The first thing she finds in the backpack is a book, a thin hardback without a cover. She holds it up and says that Isa must have slipped it in. ‘I deliberately didn’t pack it.’ After a quick search she finds only the food and drinks she had packed herself.

*   *   *

He watches her read. Is too tired to think it through. It never occurs to him, although he notices how her head gives a small jolt – nothing more than a pulse, a beat, a kind of double-take. She sits more upright, turns the pages, looks through, flicks ahead, and at each page seems more confused.

He asks what is it, and she answers nothing. She doesn’t, and this is noticeable, look up. Not once.

And then he realizes. She’s reading Finn Cullman’s book.

The change in mood is significant. He can’t quite describe the difference, but he can read the register – she scowls hard at the paper. It’s the same day, no doubt about it, the same blue sky front and back, the same stretch of sea, calm and placid. The same flat plate of white land, of sand a good mile or so on either side. But Rike has hardened.

He never imagined that he would be present when it happened.

When he swims she doesn’t join him. She tilts her book and looks up, appears to examine him.

Ten metres out and he can still stand with the water level at his chest. He tastes salt, remembers how pleasurable it is to swim in the sea, and how surprising it is to be so buoyant. It’s a good temperature, a good colour. Rike, back on the beach, knees raised, together, book slanted down, head up and looking out, her expression still one of concern.

Tomas turns away from the land, swims at a steady pace directly out, with Limassol on his left, the beach immediately behind him. He wants to know exactly what is disturbing her, which element gave him away? He can’t understand her stillness. He draws thirty strokes in one burst, but still, when he stops, finds the sea no deeper, only Rike is smaller. He bounces on his toes and looks up. It isn’t Rike he’s looking at. In fact, there isn’t anyone directly in front of him.

He steadies himself in the water, allows his legs to fall back and floats on his stomach facing the land, a slight strain to keep his head upright, consciously drawing in breath. She isn’t on the beach, not directly in front of him.

Tomas takes a few strokes back, he keeps the pace deliberately slow. How, here, and at this point, could anything go wrong?

She isn’t in the water either. Looking away, toward the military base, he doesn’t see her. But further down the beach, where the umbrellas start, he thinks he sees her, but isn’t entirely sure. There’s a girl, what looks to be a girl, further up, speaking with a family, and yes, she appears to have a backpack.

He swims back now, faster, but not hurried. He walks out at a stride. His clothes are still folded beside his towel, and where Rike sat are the contents of the backpack, set carefully aside.

With his towel over his shoulder he walks toward the umbrellas. The first group, two adults, two children, appear to be in a hurry. A woman with big sunglasses, a canary-yellow swimming costume, pink shoulders and thighs, glowers in Tomas’s direction as she walks away. Rike steps quickly over the sand, not looking at him. The woman, Rike, and two boys make a slightly chaotic path to the line of cars parked on the shoulder of the beach.

As Tomas draws nearer they break into a run, in response he starts to jog. The mother opens the doors, and throws her bags into the trunk. They have left their umbrella tilted in the sand. Tomas reaches it, nothing but sand and footprints.

When he reaches the car the woman is pushing her children inside and telling them to hurry.

‘She doesn’t want to speak with you. You better stay where you are.’

Rike, in the back seat, sits with her head bent forward, a penitent, a doubter, her hair covering her face. She isn’t dressed either, is still in her swimsuit, he can see her shoulders. She won’t look up.

‘I’m serious. You don’t come any closer!’

Tomas stands in front of the car.

‘Rike? Rike?’

‘Just keep where you are.’ The woman holds the driver’s door open, as if this is an adequate shield.

‘Rike. Can you get out of the car?’ Tomas steadies his voice to sound reasoned, in control, as if this is something that has happened to them before. As if this is some kind of episode. ‘I need to take her home.’ He smiles at the woman, a wan and patient smile. A man who has suffered because his girlfriend, his wife, his sister is irrational. And now a softer, cajoling, ‘Rike, are you coming with me?’

‘I said, stay where you are.’

‘Rike?’ Tomas slaps his hands to his side, draws his towel from his shoulder. As he walks to the side of the car, Rike instinctively turns away.

The woman, now seated, starts the motor and as she reverses, clumsy and unsteady, he can see an element of panic. Tomas can touch the car. He tries to open the door, but the car is moving, the door is locked. The two children, one in the back seat beside Rike, the other in the front, both look at him, both uncertain of what is happening. As the car lurches forward and begins to pick up pace, Rike looks at him, a long and low look, a face so sucked of joy that as he runs after the car, he’s certain that she has discovered that everything he has told her is a lie. Everything is stolen. This realization, right at this moment, must be blossoming within her. Who is Tomas Berens? She has to be thinking this. Why has he done this?

He watches the car round the salt lake. Small and silver, shimmering. He starts running as it joins the road and heads toward the green bank of cypresses, almost gone. Of all the scenarios he’s worked through, none were this complicated. Tomas looks to the town. This wasn’t supposed to happen until after he’d left.

*   *   *

A man walks into a desert. He walks for four days, maybe five if he carries or comes across water. He’s found by an archaeological team. The man is unrecognizable. He looks like scabbed raw meat. His head, his hands and arms alive with flies.

He isn’t dead, which is somehow more shocking. And he resists being helped. They haul him into a jeep. No one wants to sit beside him. And the man, who has made no movement, makes it clear that he wants to get out of his clothes. The skin on his chest and back is a sore crimson, but not broken, not erupted, unlike the fully exposed skin. Under his pants, right at the buckle, there’s a line where the red immediately cools, and the body becomes human again and can’t be compared to meat, or a crust, or something infernal.

The archaeologists aren’t naive, and they understand how suffering doesn’t compare to anything else. It is exactly what this is: a person reduced to animal function.

11.7

Rike asks to be brought into town. Once away from the beach she’s embarrassed about her reaction. The woman, Sarah, says that she will take her home, or to a police station. She advises Rike to talk to the police.

‘That man was harassing you, and you should report it.’ She senses Rike’s reticence. ‘Look, it was you today, and you got away. The next one might not be so lucky.’

Rike agrees, feels a little shame over the story she’d told to the woman. That man is bothering me. He won’t leave me alone. Given the circumstances she’s not happy about lying, but how else to explain this?

She promises that she will speak with someone. Promises. But insists on being let out as soon as they reach Limassol waterfront.

Rike waves goodbye to the children then hurries from the car, slips down a pedestrian street busy with tourist trade, the tables of carved wood goods, T-shirts, place mats, bangles, and finds a café where she can look again at the book – because this is crazy, this hasn’t happened. Somehow she has this all wrong. She sits in the café and marks up passages with a pencil. At each page the discoveries are familiar and deeply unsettling. Rike sits with the book and reads. She doesn’t like to have the book in her hands, doesn’t like to read, line for line, the stories Berens has passed as his own. It helps that the book isn’t very good. She can justifiably dislike it on these grounds. It’s an effort to sit with it, a conscious effort.

It doesn’t take much to find the material. The discoveries are so immediate she begins to think there’s something a little dumb about the whole thing. It’s just plagiarism, that’s all this is. Petty theft.

Not clever. Not at all.

*   *   *

She returns to find the apartment empty and a note from Henning with a mobile number she doesn’t recognize. The note is simple. Isa is in hospital. It isn’t serious. It is a precaution. She calls the mobile number and speaks with Henning.

‘How serious is this?’

‘It’s nothing. They’re just being careful.’ He’s with Isa right now and she’s laughing. He probably shouldn’t be on his mobile.

Rike says she’ll come directly to the hospital.

Henning tells her not to worry. ‘They have her on a stretcher,’ he says. ‘She’s behaving as if she’s lying on a sunbed. This is just a precaution. It really isn’t that serious.’

Rike asks what the problem is.

‘She had a little bleeding. It’s nothing serious.’

They’ve heard news about Mattaus. He’ll speak with her when he gets back.

Rike can hear the medics telling Isa to breathe slowly.

‘I’m coming,’ she says. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

Henning doesn’t discourage her, and asks if she could bring Isa’s overnight bag. It looks like they’ll want to keep her in overnight.

Rike takes a taxi. Grateful for a little time to digest what’s happening. Baby. Mattaus. Tomas. And while she’s spared an excruciating discussion with her sister (what did I tell you about the man? What did I say? The minute I heard the story about the dog, I knew), she’s mortified by the possibility that the situation, with an unborn child, has shifted into territory none of them want to revisit. While she’s recently felt secure in the fact that she’s hit bedrock, that things couldn’t get worse, she’s beginning to realize that this isn’t the case. Things can always get worse. Even now the situation is unstable, worse could be about to happen. She concentrates on the immediate moment and focuses on arriving at the hospital. She sits in the front passenger seat and ignores the driver as he tries to be polite.

*   *   *

‘Nothing serious’, the hospital advises. Henning comes out of Isa’s cubicle. It’s what they call spotting, he says, scratching his head. Which both is and isn’t unusual at this point depending on who you speak with. It’s only a problem if it doesn’t stop. To be on the safe side they want to keep her under observation. It’s a little unexpected but they’ve told him not to worry. He doesn’t know what any of this means. Doesn’t know either how long they will keep her. He’s never heard of spotting before, nor how long it might continue? An hour? A day? Until the baby is born? He’s called Udo, because Udo wants to speak with him about Mattaus, and because Udo needs to know what is happening. If Rike could do him a favour and keep Udo busy, just for the moment. The information from the doctors can only be described as random.

Hands clasped, Rike makes a deal that she will suffer any kind of indignity just as long as the baby is OK. Just this one thing. I’ll never ask for anything else.

Henning summarizes for Rike. She needs to catch up. ‘Mattaus has disappeared.’ He drops facts. Is clumsy with them. Her brother’s name rings with accusation. As if he’s the cause of this trouble with Isa.

‘Rike. There has been an accident. Last night a man fell from a balcony at the Miramar.’ He allows Rike to digest the information. ‘OK? The man who fell was Mattaus’s boyfriend. They found Mattaus’s phone in the same room. They’ve only just traced it.’

Rike isn’t sure how to take this. She wants to know what happened to Mattaus’s boyfriend.

‘You brought that book?’ Henning asks, as if this is insensitive. Another connection to Mattaus they just don’t need. Rike holds it up as if she intends to read it out loud or swear an oath. ‘The man fell seven floors. He hit the poolside.’

Rike looks at the book and says, ‘Oh.’

*   *   *

Rike isn’t allowed to speak with Isa, every time she approaches the booth curtains are drawn and she is asked to wait. After an hour Isa is moved to a private room with brisk efficient fuss. Nurses surround the trolley and Rike can’t see her sister, just bare feet, just hair. If she could see Isa she would know how serious this is. It’s just a little spotting. She needs a little rest. Unconvincing platitudes and little theories. A little bed rest at the worst of times. Rike repeats her deal: let the baby be OK. If anything bad needs to happen, let it happen to me.

She starts to add clauses when Udo arrives. Anything can happen as long as the baby and Isa are OK. OK means no complications. OK means everything returns to how it was pre-spotting. Assuming that everything was OK then, and this isn’t the result of some condition, of some other trouble. If she thinks about it Rike isn’t sure what OK means. Baby. Isa. Mattaus. Lexi. None of these people are OK. Tomas Berens, most certainly, is not OK.

Udo confronts Henning, Rike can’t prevent him. He wants to know more about Mattaus’s dealings with the Russians. Rike is asked to move away; instead she sits down close by. She can’t believe he would challenge Henning at this time, in this place. The conversation is taken to a corner. Once Udo stops haranguing, almost shouting, with bad and tight gestures, they both become silent and appear to sulk. Udo recaps the information. Fills in the blanks.

‘Were they a couple?’

‘I think so. They haven’t known each other long.’

‘How long is not long?’

Henning looks to Rike for support and they both agree that not long possibly means two months, maybe even a little longer. They barter dates, slowly admit to the facts as they understand them. Is this really the right time? Rike wants to take the man aside, push him down some stairs.

Udo makes a show about counting the weeks. Fingers out.

Henning crosses his arms and clenches his fists. ‘It’s not that long.’

How could this be worse for Henning? A pregnancy – so close to the due date – concluding with spotting, an errant brother-in-law, and now a manager who wields immeasurable influence over his future. Henning doesn’t deserve to be cornered like this. Add Tomas to this mess. Tomas is a falling piano, a random surprise from the sky. Just when you need it.

‘And how long have you known?’

‘Saturday. He came to dinner and told us, and since then he hasn’t been in touch. Look. I can’t think about this now.’

The men stand with their arms folded, mouths pursed. Rike sits and faces the corridor, waits for news about Isa. Hasn’t she expected this? Wasn’t this, more or less, what she fretted about? And while she couldn’t have anticipated the accompanying troubles (Mattaus. Tomas. Lexi), didn’t she always know something would go wrong? Udo, though, there’s no accounting for Udo’s lack of timing and tact.

She knows enough not to say anything. Not even a hint.

Instead they wait for news, with an occasional expression from Udo. ‘You don’t tell me this – I had no idea? I find out now?’

Henning, summoned by a doctor, leaves Rike with Udo. As he walks away the doctor talks. If the baby is in distress they will induce. The situation isn’t so serious, he advises (an arm now on Henning’s shoulder), he just wants Henning to understand the possibilities. To be prepared to make choices. These aren’t little things any more.

Udo wants to talk. Rike can’t think about an unborn child in distress. Can’t imagine what this really means. She doesn’t like the organized quiet of the waiting room. She doesn’t like the word spotting. Instead it’s easier to focus on Udo.

Rike opens the conversation by saying she hopes Henning returns soon with news – and adds: ‘So what happened with – what was his name?’ She can’t look at the man. ‘What happened with the Russian? How did he fall?’

Udo answers so slowly he blinks between words. ‘We don’t properly know.’

This isn’t unusual. Udo explains. Drunk guests (Brits, almost always), convinced by the proximity of the pool to their balcony, take the plunge and commit themselves either to death or a lifetime of feeding tubes and bed baths. There’s actually a procedure for closing off the pool and drawing the blinds in the bar and reception every time this happens, it’s that frequent.

Udo draws an expression which implies that this a little tiresome. It’s happened a good number of times. It isn’t unusual.

‘So it’s not exactly suspicious, then?’

Udo again makes the same broad-mouthed shrug that says this is of interest, he supposes, but little concern. ‘If your brother hadn’t disappeared, then this would all be dealt with. It would be over. It’s the connection we have to worry about.’

‘I don’t know what that means?’

‘It means we have to find him.’

‘It won’t be hard. He’s no criminal. He’ll be clueless.’ Rike tucks her hands under her thighs. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust herself, but the idea that she would like to slap Udo – not particularly hard – is growing louder in volume. ‘Is he in serious trouble?’

‘He ran away from an incident, which is a criminal offence. Yes, it’s serious. Until we know what happened more clearly it’s very serious.’

‘But, is it? Technically, you don’t know if he’s run away or not. You only know his phone was in the room.’

‘We need to speak with him.’ Udo can’t help but sneer. It isn’t that this is idiocy, this sneer suggests, just pedantic conjecture. He attempts to be polite. ‘You’re teaching? Henning said.’

‘I was,’ she gives a deliberate, insincere smile, ‘but I’m going to quit. My student has been lying to me.’ She likes saying this to him, just to open up the spite. She’s quitting because it’s all too complicated. She’s had enough. Lying is such a masculine weakness. It didn’t work out with Tomas Berens, so she isn’t going to make any effort.

‘Lying?’ Udo wipes a finger across his upper lip. He isn’t particularly listening.

She holds out the book. ‘Telling me stories from this book. Like they were his stories.’

‘Good stories?’

‘Lies.’

‘When did you last see your brother?’

‘The same time as Henning. The same meal.’ Rike wants to explain about the book, she’d like to speak with someone about Tomas (not Henning, certainly not Isa) without automatically sparking an argument. It might help to work through what has happened. ‘Mattaus gave me this book.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Mattaus. He said he recognized the name of the man I’m teaching. And then he arranged for someone to give me this book. Yesterday, so I think he must still be in Cyprus.’

Udo makes a droll double-take. ‘You didn’t see him – but he gave you the book?’

‘He had someone deliver it to me. A boy. Russian. I think a friend of his…’ She can’t figure out the word, not partner, not boyfriend. How close an association did Mattaus have with Lexi? ‘I was so angry I wouldn’t take it from him. So the boy delivered it to Isa. He took it to the apartment.’

‘The club manager? The man who fell?’

‘No. A boy. A young boy. He said he had to deliver the book right into my hands.’

Udo wants to see the book. Now he wants to hear the story. ‘So Mattaus knows this man?’

‘Who? My student? I doubt that he knows him. He said he recognized the name.’

She tells him what has happened. Gives short details: the jealous Christos, the doctor, the doctor’s son. The speech-therapist mother. This is what she’s found so far. Borrowings, situations, and histories. At first, as an overall idea, it doesn’t sound unusual. She set assignments for the man and he stole the material and used it as his own. These are the facts. What’s really so terrible? But that he achieved this in such a bare-faced way starts to sound unhinged. He didn’t even bother to invent anything, he just changed the location.

‘That’s what I don’t understand. I think he expected me to find out.’

With unexpected insight, Udo hits another problem. Did he believe these stories? Did he believe what he was telling her?

The answer is yes. It has to be. But even so, the basic act is wrong – because stories are good, aren’t they? Stories are how we connect. Evolution isn’t seriously about thumbs but about how we use language – that’s what raises us above dumb animals, right? Language? There’s something Rike just isn’t getting. While every other student wants to connect, Tomas wanted to misconnect. Deceive.

Rike understands that everything is beginning to sound rehearsed.

Udo flicks through the pages, cocks his head when he finds an underlined passage. ‘He said that, about the coffee? It always tastes better?’ He holds his finger to the page.

‘Word for word.’ And again, she asks herself, why? To what end? ‘There’s probably more. I can’t bear to read it.’

‘And what did Henning say?’

‘He’s had enough going on, don’t you think?’

Udo, out of niceness, she can’t think of another reason, asks if she wants him to check this out.

‘I can talk with him. Find out what’s going on.’

‘Oh god no. I don’t want to cause trouble.’ Does he think she’s asking for help? The situation offers unending possibilities for humiliation. ‘I just want to forget this. Honestly.’

‘Grooming,’ he says. ‘He was grooming you.’ Then looking up. ‘It’s a technique the Stasi used. If you can’t intimidate someone, if it’s not possible or appropriate, then you befriend them. You give information which isn’t yours, so they know nothing about you.’

Now he thinks she’s stupid. ‘I know plenty about him.’ Rike doesn’t like how defensive she’s sounding.

‘You take a story from somewhere else and use it as your own. This way you give a consistent idea, something formed. It’s harder to detect if you are lying. It’s a quick way to gain someone’s confidence when you want information.’

This is ridiculous. ‘What do I know?’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘We talked about his neighbours. The other people who lived in his building.’

‘That’s what he talked about. But what did you talk about?’

‘I taught him English.’

Udo waves his hand as if this is probably nothing. He’ll visit Tomas Berens. See for himself. ‘I’ll take Henning. We’ll go see this man.’

She asks him not to take Henning, the whole thing has been embarrassing enough. The idea makes her cringe, sending her brother-in-law, in whatever capacity, to check up on a man who has cheated on his homework (if that’s even what you’d call it) just feels juvenile. She can’t think of any aspect of this event which hasn’t been grindingly humiliating. He hasn’t broken any law, and there isn’t any requirement that a student should tell the truth to their tutor. If she thinks about it, the idea that students always tell the truth is a little ridiculous. How many times has she listened, kept herself attentive to the turgid details of an unremarkable life: where people come from, their families, their schools, their childhoods; thousands of unremarkable facts traded as confidences, which seldom hold interest or meaning? Tomas Berens took stories out in the public domain. Stuff to be used. Grooming? To what purpose?

She wants to know why. Didn’t he lay the ground first with those banalities, all of that detail about his neighbours? Didn’t he soften her up first?

Udo takes the book and says that he will read it first.

*   *   *

With Isa in hospital the apartment is much too empty. She hankers for Isa’s company, finds the hospital visits unsatisfactory. Yearns to see the black cat, even briefly, but there’s nothing in the garden except fallen fruit, a few scattered lemons.

She takes a phone call from Henning, who hands her over to Udo.

They want to know if Berens made any threats.

‘Threats?’

‘Did he say anything which sounded inappropriate? Anything at all?’

‘He just spoke about the people in the apartments. Then about his assault. All of those stories from the book.’

There’s an inordinate number of drugs in his apartment. Did she know anything about this?

‘Drugs?’

‘Medication. Anti-depressants. Anti-psychotics.’

She knows nothing about this.

Did he say anything about the man in hospital? The man from Syria?

Rike rests her hand on her heart and feels it thumping. She has to think before she answers, not because she doesn’t know the answer, but because the answer will be complex. If she says yes, then she is admitting to being indiscreet. And hasn’t she already caused Henning enough trouble? Isn’t her family bothersome enough?

‘Did he mention the man in the hospital?’

She says yes.

Udo is quiet and she has to ask why this matters.

‘I’d better come and speak with you.’

‘What does he say?’

‘He isn’t here.’

11.8

She finds the boy poolside at the Del Mare not the Miramar. Sunlight bounces off the pool, so bright she shies away. Sol stretches across a lounger, wears his sunglasses, and a pair of briefs – a posing pouch – with a picture of a kitten on the front. The kitten is cute, nestled in a ball, big saucer eyes, just adorable, and ridiculous ears. She can’t see why a young man would want to wear something so absurd, so girlish. He turns again to find a comfortable position, and she can see, printed across the seat in a pretty italic script, the words ‘kitty kat’.

She watches him for a short while. With earphones and a small player he likes to stand over the pool and look out at the sea. There’s a ring of winsome mothers in the shallow end who are less shy about staring at him than their daughters. But he looks bored, and she imagines it can’t be much fun sitting in the sun, with the pool, the interested mothers, the distant daughters, the uppity staff, and the very pissed-off pool boy (who isn’t getting any attention while Sol takes the boards). What he needs is company, other boys, it’s wrong to see a young man so isolated.

She decides to speak to him. The honest truth is that she isn’t entirely sure what to ask him, but has a notion that he can help resolve some of the confusion. Perhaps she means to apologize?

The boy returns to his lounger and lies back. Rike, with her bag over her shoulder, comes tentatively forward and clears her throat.

‘I don’t mean to interrupt.’

She isn’t prepared for his reaction. The boy is alarmed to see her, and he immediately sits up on his elbows.

Rike gestures to the sunbed beside him and she sits side on. The straps on her shoulder bag stroke down her legs as the bag softens at her feet.

‘I need to speak with my brother.’

Sol shuffles up, and searches for a towel, a little too naked perhaps for a conversation about brothers.

‘I can’t speak with you.’

Surprised by his reaction, Rike repeats her question. She just wants to know where her brother is.

‘I can’t help you.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch. I just need to speak with him.’

The boy looks hard at her for a moment. ‘We shouldn’t be talking.’

Rike asks why. ‘He’s my brother. I need to speak with him. You might know where he is?’

‘You seriously haven’t heard?’

‘I told you he hasn’t been in touch.’

Sol shakes his head and she thinks he looks frightened. ‘No one knows where he is. He’s disappeared.’

‘I’m sorry about the manager. Lexi.’

The boy looks away.

‘I really don’t think Mattaus had anything to do with it. I think it was an accident.’

Sol now looks very confused. Rike thinks he has more to say. She looks to the pool, notes the pattern where water has splashed along the stone side. She asks why he isn’t in the Miramar, and Sol automatically looks up at the rising ranks of balconies.

‘The book.’ Rike changes the subject. ‘I looked at the book.’ She holds her hand to her chest, then to her brows. ‘I really need to know where Mattaus is. It would help to know when you last saw him. Nobody knows where he is.’

Kolya’s arrival isn’t best timed. Sol sees him from across the pool. The man strides out from the shadow of the lobby, shorts on, sandals going clap, clap, clap, looking mean and nasty with his newly shaved head (the skin whiter on his head than his face and neck), a monster tattoo of a dragon clambers up his back, she sees this as he twists about to make his way through the tables and chairs, one claw stuck into his belly, another to his thigh, two others dug into his shoulder. The tail coils around his leg – the claws look like they puncture his skin. It’s a crazy tattoo, the thing is scrambling over his body. Compared to the crudity of the blue-black scribbles on his arms, this is fine art.

Kolya clocks onto Rike immediately. His head twists inquisitively as he changes direction and speed as if he’s expecting her to make a dash.

‘Just pretend you’re from the hotel.’

Rike doesn’t hear him.

‘The hotel. Just pretend. You’re a guest.’

As Kolya rounds the near corner of the pool he’s suddenly all smiles, all charm and delight.

‘Hey.’ Sol stands up. ‘I was just heading in.’ He directs this to Kolya, then turning to Rike says he hopes she has a nice stay, perhaps they can talk tomorrow?

‘Sure.’ Rike holds up her hand, like she might wave. ‘Tomorrow.’

Kolya wraps his arm about Sol’s shoulder. ‘You call those shorts? You walk about in public like this?’ He tells the boy to go inside, hands him a key and then speaks to him in Russian. Sol indicates Rike, a small hand gesture, and Kolya asks Rike directly why she is bothering the boy. He knows nothing, and given what has happened, he doesn’t want the boy involved. ‘We cannot talk with you. We can’t help.’

Rike says she’s sorry, but she doesn’t understand what this is about.

And here Sol steps forward. ‘He called me. Before he fell. He asked me to tell your brother that he should run. That he was in trouble. That someone was after him.’

Kolya holds up his hand and tells Sol to be quiet. Rike should go.

‘Why?’ she asks the boy directly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where was he?’

‘He was staying here. He’s gone now. He left as soon as I spoke with him. I don’t know where he’s gone.’

Kolya again instructs the boy to be quiet.

‘He needs to tell this to the police.’

Kolya says no. The boy is not involved. Whatever trouble her brother is in, Sol has nothing to do with. ‘He can’t help you.’

11.9

Udo comes to the apartment on his own. Henning, he says, is with the manager and the boy from the nightclub but they aren’t getting any information. The boy won’t even confirm what he told Rike earlier. He wants to speak about the other matter, Tomas Berens. He’d like to go through everything Berens has told her, everything she might have said to him. Anything that might seem particularly odd to her now. Udo tells her: You are the stories you tell, whatever their basis in fact or experience. It’s who you are. This sounds like Isa, truthful and banal. Once she can understand Tomas Berens, she can let him go.

What did she tell him? ‘Are there any discussions which stand out? Things which at the time were peculiar?’

Rike honestly can’t remember. In hindsight she just feels stupid about everything. The story about the assault is perhaps the most ridiculous element.

‘What did he tell you?’ Udo insists on detail.

It’s hard to remember specific conversations, all of that stuff about his neighbours.

Udo is definite. ‘What did you talk about? Try to remember.’

He needs to explain, she asks, how this matters. ‘What difference will it make?’

Udo holds his breath, as if he needs to say something, but wants to spare her. ‘We have nothing except for the stories. His apartment is close to the hospital. Henning thinks this is relevant. It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it.’

This isn’t so bad, she thinks. Surely? This can be explained. And what about the medication?

‘He won’t explain what he’s doing here.’ The medication the man was supposed to be taking is unbelievable. She should have seen it. The quantity. The bathroom had every anti-psychotic you could imagine. All suppressants of one form or another. The man isn’t well.

‘It’s all attributable.’ Udo is insistent. It will all come from somewhere. He won’t be completely making it up because that takes time and creativity he just doesn’t have.’ The books are his source. Perhaps, on some level, he wants you to know how clever he is. He wants the shape of this deception to be discovered. He wants to be acknowledged.

Udo lays out the possibilities. ‘This is what we think we know. The man is suffering some kind of breakdown. It’s possible he’s here because he’s fixated on the man they discovered in the desert.’ He asks again, ‘Is there anything he’s said which makes either or both of these seem likely? Is there anything you might have said which could have encouraged him?’

Rike stands at the window and looks for a while to the patio. She should shower, freshen up, put this aside and take a break. He wasn’t well. Didn’t he admit to that?

‘There’s no record of a family, the Berens, in Bergen.’

‘So where is he? Is he dangerous?’

‘I doubt it.’ Udo doesn’t think the man is dangerous, just delusional.

*   *   *

Rike lets the water fall hard on her scalp, turns under it, twists the head so that the stream becomes sharper and more focused. The pressure penetrates, at least preoccupies her so she can focus only on the water, the heat. She doesn’t want to think of Tomas, and cannot believe that he is disturbed in any way.

*   *   *

When Rike and Henning visit they find Isa sat up in bed, flowers on the table, flowers beside the bedside. Isa asks Rike if it’s too funereal. ‘I mean, seriously, look.’

Rike holds back at the door, and Isa asks why she’s looking at her like that. She can’t bear how kind they’ve become. Everyone is being overly nice.

‘Hen.’ Isa purses her hands, as if in prayer. ‘Would you give us a moment?’

Isa is seldom this serious. Henning holds up his hands in surrender. ‘Let me know when you’re done.’

‘I’ll let you know.’

Rike asks what’s wrong. Isa gathers papers from the side unit. ‘The boy who came to fix the washing machine—’

‘Shit-the-bed?’

‘Right. Little Mr Shit-the-bed. They think he’s the one shooting the cats.’

‘They know? Or they think?’

Isa closes her eyes and softly rubs her eyelids. ‘That’s not what I wanted to talk about.’

Here it comes.

‘Henning and I. Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with Henning. I think. Not right now. But after the baby comes. I think you should start thinking about leaving Cyprus. This isn’t what it sounds like. I just don’t think you should stay here. I don’t think it’s healthy. I think you should make a new start. We can still keep looking for Mattaus. We aren’t giving up. You can still be involved.’ She reaches for Rike’s hand. ‘Rike. I’m worried about you. I don’t think it’s healthy to stay here.’

Rike sits back and folds her arms.

‘Do you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you.’

‘But you don’t like me much right now?’ Isa shifts her weight awkwardly in the bed. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that nobody wants you to be happy. That everything is working against you. I just want you to have a fresh start.’ Isa pauses and purses her lips. ‘He’s sick. I don’t think you can blame him either. He’s a clever man who is also very sick. He’s a fantasist who thinks he’s more powerful than he is. This is all about power. He finds stuff in the real world and insinuates himself into it. Telling stories to make himself into something that he isn’t. We all do it. We all tell stories to make ourselves look better.’

Rike looks at the books and papers spread out across the bed.

‘Let it go.’

*   *   *

She finds her brother, or thinks this is her brother, online, in a video posted by MFP, a short piece, ‘Hotel, Hotel’, in which different couples repeatedly check in under the same name. The quality is poor, the pixels vibrate so that the image shudders, drops colour. Light fuzzes unevenly across the faces, stretches them into blades, and behind there’s one man at a table – right beside the reception. It’s the hunch, the way he leans on a table, the whole forearm flat to the table top so he’s leaning in, that makes her think Mattaus even before she properly reads the image: a reception, a receptionist, a couple, a table behind. First – a man whose face, whose body language, might or might not be her brother’s. The scene changes, flickers to another foyer, and again, the same scene replaying, the same four couples, with a title in the right-hand corner which names the hotel and place. Hotel Mons, Troodos. The Ziggurat, Limassol. Hotel 5, Ayia Napa. Hotel Montparnasse, Nicosia. Four couples check in, one after another, under the same name.

Henning and Isa haven’t spoken to her about Mattaus. While they talk about Lexi’s accident and the associated dangers of ‘a certain kind of lifestyle’, Mattaus, as a subject of discussion, is studiously avoided. Officially, Mattaus Falsen remains a person of interest. His flight, they assume, is one of panic. Rike senses that she has always misread her brother. Always looked for trouble, and regarded him with mistrust.

How could it happen? One minute someone is right there, the next, they’ve tipped over a low balcony. No one heard it. To Rike the suddenness, in how she imagines this, is profoundly saddening. Poor Mattaus. Poor, poor Mattaus. This will haunt him. This will eat him alive.

Rike replays the clip from the beginning. It seems more degraded the second time, holds just enough information to show a hunched figure at a table. Those shoulders, the outline of the head. He would wear a jacket, it’s exactly what he would do, even though the brightness of the images shows how hot it must be. He’s in Troodos, she thinks. She hopes. He’s up in the mountains, and when he’s ready, he’ll do what he always does. He’ll show up and face whatever is coming to him.

Henning brings Rike a glass of wine to her bedroom. She closes the computer. Isn’t ready to talk about this.

‘Stay as long as you like.’ Henning bows down as he sets the glass beside her. There’s no hurry. Once Henning is gone Rike returns to the computer, looks again at the clip and finds herself frustrated at how long it takes to reboot. She watches again, then again, this man who might be her brother. The figure is no clearer, and she is sometimes certain, at other times she cringes away from certainty.

The fact is she sees him frequently. Elements of him. Out in the street these small sightings, familiar as a scent.