‘So when do we get to see you?’
Mattaus gives a vague response. He’ll speak with Isa, speak with his friend. He says friend deliberately — the man won’t be given a name — to keep everything in its compartment. But yes, hasn’t he already explained all of this? They flew in to Paphos, what, four, five days ago. Oh god, he can’t remember, was it last week already or longer? He asks the question to some third party and waits for a response. Must have been. He asks her not to tell Isa just yet. ‘We’re hoping to spend a couple of days on the beach, and take it easy before we bring in any family. No offence, but it’s nice to have time to ourselves.’
No offence taken, she assures him. Take all the time you need. She won’t whisper a word.
Rike can’t wait to tell Isa, to see how it feels to be on the other side of Mattaus’s manipulations for a change. She can’t wait either to see Henning’s reaction. It would be worth bursting into their room right now to share the news. Guess what? He’s here already. Henning would explode. Only she won’t do this. Would never go that far. Besides, Isa has probably had the same conversation with Mattaus. Don’t tell Rike. You know how she is. We just want a couple of days to ourselves. The only person she can be certain to be left out of Mattaus’s complex machinations is Henning. It’s almost worth the trouble.
She wants to ask him more about Franco. Not only because she would like some information, but because she wants to remind him of the damage he’s caused. She would appreciate some acknowledgement, a reference to the man he’s shared his life with for the past five years and dropped for a new, doubtlessly younger flash, an architect no less. She can imagine the scene too easily, Mattaus telling Franco, and probably not face to face.
In the night a helicopter cuts over the house, the sound wavers, bounces so she can’t determine the direction of travel, if it’s coming from the British base or heading toward it.
4.6
A fire alarm at the hotel sends Gibson out to the street halfway through the call.
Geezler isn’t happy at the news, and becomes irritated at the confusion as Gibson moves about to secure a better signal.
‘It’s nonsense—’ that Geezler would have Parson followed. ‘It doesn’t make sense—’ why Parson would invent any of this. The pure aimlessness of his travels, his ambling. To what end would Parson fabricate lies about Sutler? Why would he take advantage of HOSCO, of Geezler, when there is no obvious profit from it?
‘I don’t see why she would lie.’
‘She’s lost her husband. She wants to sow doubt.’ It is, Geezler suggests, an accentuated part of the process. ‘She’s angry at us all.’
Gibson does not explain that he didn’t speak directly with Laura.
He stands separate from the staff, who lean against the blue shutters of the enoteca opposite the hotel, and smoke and look a little intense, like arsonists. There is no fire, he’s assured. The manager, a lean man, unshaven, appears disappointed with the news. The guests bustle out with a little more urgency, wait for a break in the traffic to cross, and stand together at the steps of the church, Purgatorio ad Arco. Some take photographs of the front of the hotel and the long and narrow strip of via Tribunale, of scooters bouncing and skidding across the black street slabs, a few sit at the steps. All of them rub their hands, one at a time, over the four bronze skulls mounted on bollards in front of the church.
Gibson walks to via Mezzocannone, returns to the café where there are fewer students, a place to sit. He sets out the papers and reads each of the hotel bookings to Geezler: the phone numbers, the dates, the reference numbers. He looks up at the long grey wall opposite. The university. ‘These are all in your name. There’s no doubt that this is Parson’s work.’
Geezler is less happy, but somehow not surprised, with the news about the man following Parson and his wife. ‘It can’t be true. These are paranoid fantasies. Of someone who —’ the connection falters ‘— desperate. I fail to see the logic.’ It is absurd.
‘She has a photo of the man. She recognizes him from other occasions.’
The line becomes silent.
‘I said she has—’
Geezler asks him to send the photograph. Can it be emailed? He asks Gibson to describe the man.
‘Well,’ Gibson tries to recall the image, ‘the picture shows very little. Something of a staircase and there is a man in a doorway. It’s very clear.’
The stairway might be marble, there is a suggestion that it is vast and grand. A curved wall. A doorway in which a figure hesitates, his right hand raised. On a small screen the image appears deceptively clear. This is a European male. Light skinned. Light hair, shorn but not shaven. An angular face, with strong features, Gibson thinks, with a new or trimmed beard which emphasizes his mouth.
Enlarged, the image shows nothing new, and what appears distinct begins to lose definition. The most striking element is that the man knows he has been caught. His eyes look directly at the camera.
THE FOURTH LESSON
5.1
Rike sleeps late. She wakes with one clear thought, an ambition: today the lesson will be outside. It doesn’t matter where, but outside, away from the apartment. She isn’t interested in hearing news about his neighbours, has no desire to know Christos’s thoughts or experiences with his wife. She does not want to hear about the Kozmatikos boy or know what kind of trouble he has brought down upon himself. No. Today they will walk through the city, and maybe have a drink at one of the terraces overlooking the bay. Today they will take in Limassol and they will discuss what they find, whatever they happen upon.
She finds Henning in the kitchen in his shorts. He walks through the apartment without a shirt, an electric razor in hand. The buzz maps his walk. Rike watches from the garden, her feet up on the small side wall. It’s like he’s checking his territory, she thinks. He’s taking stock.
‘So no more cats?’
‘I haven’t seen them today. There’s one black one left. That’s all I’ve seen.’
‘I thought the black one was dead?’ Henning leans against the door. Rike hasn’t noticed before how the kitchen and the front room are linked by a continuous line of windows which should all open up. Henning hangs about like he has something to say.
‘What?’
‘Nothing?’
‘No, what is it?’
Henning turns back to the apartment but doesn’t yet go inside. ‘Isa said you’re teaching?’
‘Yes, there’s a school in Limassol.’
‘She said you were teaching a man in his house?’
‘I go to his apartment.’
Henning frowns.
‘It’s safe. It’s all organized through the school.’
‘For how long?’
‘Seven weeks.’
‘And you like it?’
Rike takes a sip from her coffee and slowly agrees. ‘Yes, I like it enough. Why did you come back early?’
Henning rubs his hand over his cheek and chin to check his shave.
‘Everything’s done.’
‘With the man from the desert?’
‘Yes, everything is settled.’
‘You still think he isn’t Sutler?’
Henning isn’t pleased to hear the name. ‘I doubt it.’
‘But you aren’t sure?’
Henning runs his tongue inside his cheek. ‘Do you know what a sutler is? It’s a person or a company which provides for the military. This is a man, who works for a trans-national company which provides for the American military, and his name is the name of the service he provides. And because no one takes so much money from these people so easily, not without someone knowing. It doesn’t happen.’ Henning points the shaver at the cat-food bowls.