‘I’m serious. Tell him you’re going to teach him something French. You both need it. See. You can help each other.’
Rike draws her hands in a line and closes the subject. She asks Isa if she is going to eat.
‘I was sick this morning. Twice. I told you this? Then yoghurt, then I ate those oranges. So now I have an acid stomach.’
In front of the café runs a low and cropped hibiscus bush behind which a photographer poses a young couple. The woman straddles a parked motorbike, the man stands beside her with an idiot grin, like a man who can’t believe his luck. The photographer arranges the woman’s hair over her shoulder. The pictures are for an album that will show how and where the couple met, a picture book of recreated memories.
Isa scowls at the couple. ‘She’s so out of his league. Look at that hair.’
* * *
They return to the apartment by taxi. Isa sober, Rike a little woozy on beer. Rike drops her purse getting out of the cab, then her keys in the lobby and laughs as she tries to pick them up.
‘Are you expecting a delivery or something?’
Isa says no and asks her to hurry.
‘There’s something in the hallway.’ Rike finds the key and manages to open the door with Isa giggling beside her telling her to hurry. ‘It’s Henning.’
Isa rushes through as soon as the door is open. ‘Henning? Henning!’ She hurries to the front room in quick short steps. ‘Oh, oh, oh. Rike, go see where he is.’ Then slips into the bathroom without closing the door.
Rike comes slowly into the apartment, feeling happy — because she likes Henning, and because her sister has missed her husband so much — but also a little excluded, because this is not her reunion, and her time with her sister is now effectively over.
‘Where is he?’ Isa calls from the bathroom. ‘Henning?’
Rike walks through the apartment but can’t find him. His bags are in the hallway, but the man is not in the apartment. And now, confusingly, she feels disappointed at having to explain this to Isa. On the table, in a large vase, stands a bouquet of roses. Small pink heads. The colour and the quantity are extravagant. The pink buzzes against the white walls.
The situation resolves quickly. As Isa comes out of the bathroom, adjusting her clothes, Henning comes to the front door, a shopping bag in one hand, hooked on one finger. Isa is upon him before he can close the door. Arms up then locked about his neck.
Henning stoops to receive his wife’s embrace. They rock together, eyes, at first, closed. And then, because this is looking to become drawn out, he opens his eyes, sees Rike and offers her the shopping bag — the same finger that is holding the bag wiggles to call her forward. As Rike takes the bag Henning gives her a smile, a wink, then wraps both arms about his wife.
Rike doesn’t know what to do with herself. It’s awkward, the two of them in the hallway holding tight, so she walks into the garden and startles the black cat. While she dearly loves her brother-in-law, his return, unannounced, points out that she has no one who will return to her.
If Henning is here, then so is the man from the desert. Mr Crispy. Sutler Number Three.
The cat scampers then freezes at the wall, mid-stride, ready to disappear. Rike holds herself still, and the woman and cat eye each other, the cat won’t look her in the eyes, and then suddenly, after a moment shoots up the wall, its tail flicks as it disappears.
4.4
Gibson waits in the lobby of Laura’s hotel on via Miano, opposite the Parco di Capodimonte. The walk has left him hot, and he is sweating through his shirt. While it is a bright day, the sun holds little heat.
Instead of Laura another woman comes down the stairs, and explains, with an apology, that Laura is sleeping. She introduces herself as Sarah. ‘I know everything,’ she says. ‘I can answer any questions you might have.’ Gibson doesn’t catch if she is a friend or someone from the family. She asks if Gibson would prefer to walk or find somewhere else to go. Gibson looks about the lobby. He has no idea where they should go. Hasn’t considered the mechanics of the day in any way.
Sarah walks ahead to the door, then pauses. The papers Gibson asked for, she’s left them in the room.
‘The day he left,’ she explains, ‘Laura moved hotels. They agreed to stay near the park.’ She points to the city to their right. ‘There’s an observatory. He liked the view. You can see the Albergo di Poveri, the Duomo, Vesuvius. Capri, I think. When she arrived he brought her here. Made the taxi drive by and wait.’ Sarah steers Gibson across the road. ‘The park,’ she says.
They walk through the gates, kept lawns lousy with dogs spill out from the museum. ‘It’s probably easier if I describe everything. I think that’s easier. If I show you his papers you’ll think less of him. You’ll find out anyway. You’ll need to consider what you want do with this. With what I’m going to tell you.’ They come to an avenue, trees on either side with mast-like trunks. They agree it’s surprising in such a crowded city to have such a vast and private park.
‘It was all invented. Almost all. Most of what he told you. He was never close to finding Sutler. Not in Turkey, and not in Malta. The truth is he didn’t want to return to Iraq. So when Sutler came up it was his opportunity to leave. I don’t think he knew that at the time. The longer he spent chasing Sutler the less he wanted to return to Iraq. He just wanted to come home. That’s all he wanted.’ She pauses, waits for a troupe of motley dogs to pass in front of them. Abandoned by their owners, these dogs become wild, she says. They run about the park and nobody stops them.
‘At some point he realized that no one was interested in finding Sutler. Not really. They wanted Sutler to disappear, especially HOSCO. They wanted the whole thing to die down. So he started booking hotels under Paul Geezler’s name, as if he was Sutler, as if he had a point to make. I think that’s all it was. Making enough noise to keep up interest, to keep the story alive, and as long as the story was alive he wouldn’t have to return to Iraq.’
Their pace slows to a standstill halfway down the avenue. At one end a gate, at the other a stone statue of Hercules: the paved road runs straight in a soft descent.
‘He knew it wouldn’t last. When he heard Sutler was in Malta he followed him there. Then he invented a route from Sicily across the southern mainland. After Laura’s surgery she joined him as soon as she was able. She didn’t have much to do with it, she would have, but he spent all of his time creating a false trail. He said you have to invent the whole story, but only give out small pieces to make it credible. I think he enjoyed this. He had Sutler stay in Puglia for a while, so he hired a car, drove down, worked everything out — where he’d stay, what he might do from day to day. I think he sometimes pretended to be him — to leave evidence.’
Through a break in the trees Gibson can see another avenue, and beyond that an open field. Sarah clears her throat. She asks if Gibson has followed her so far. ‘In the last three weeks there have been changes. Laura wanted him to return to England with her. He thought someone was following him. He was convinced. He thought it was Paul Geezler, or that he was somehow behind it. Laura didn’t believe him. But there was an occasion when they went to the museum and they both felt that they were being followed. There’s one exhibit for which you need a separate ticket. They bought tickets but didn’t go inside. You could see people going in from the stairwell. So they waited. There was one man. He went into the exhibition but came out, so it was obvious that he wasn’t interested. The thing is, Laura is certain that she’s seen him before. There’s a café on via Toledo close by the hotel. I don’t know the name.’
Gibson asks if she can describe the man.