Tomas looks down at his hands, folds them together. There are specks of white paint on the backs of his hands and forearms. ‘What is the news from your brother-in-law?’
‘He’s home.’ Rike nods and smiles.
‘So the man in the hospital no longer needs him?’
‘I think he’s stable. They are keeping him in a coma to help him recover.’
‘Is it true that he walked across the desert?’
Rike isn’t sure. It doesn’t sound feasible. ‘I don’t know. They found him in the desert. A team from Tübingen. Archaeologists from the university. He is very sick and dehydrated and he has sunburn.’ She strokes her face, her arms, gestures at her throat. ‘Serious sunburn. It doesn’t look good. His health. It’s very bad. They want to move him, but they don’t know if he will recover.’
‘So they are waiting?’
‘So they’re waiting. And trying to find out who he really is.’
‘This is your brother-in-law’s work?’
‘Yes, this is what Henning has to find out.’ She changes the subject. ‘You have paint on your hands.’
‘I was helping Christos in the basement.’
Rike is pleased to hear this. ‘Have you decided to come to Cyprus?’
‘Not exactly. But I’m here, and doing nothing. I might as well help. If I do decide, then I will need space for storage. I haven’t thought this through properly.’
Rike doesn’t understand, and Tomas admits it isn’t exactly logical. ‘It’s something to do. And it might be useful. If I make up my mind it will make everything easier.’
Rike admits that this makes sense. ‘And perhaps this is one way to make the decision?’
Perhaps, he agrees, perhaps. ‘I haven’t told you the story about the basement.’
Rike opens her hands in invitation.
‘It isn’t pleasant.’ Tomas wipes the side of his nose. ‘Christos told me. There are rooms in the basement for storage. Sometimes they rent them out. Some are used by the residents. Four years ago two men rented one of them, and when they left they found evidence of a crime.’
‘Evidence?’
‘It’s hard to explain. But the room was lined with plastic, and sorry, it’s a little disgusting,’ he looks apologetically to Rike, ‘but the room was full of blood, and other things. Clothes, I think. But they didn’t find a body.’
Rike does not know what to say. ‘When was this?’
‘I’m not sure. It can’t have been so long ago because Christos was living here, also the doctor.’
‘And the two men?’
‘Disappeared. They have no idea who did it, or who they killed. They think that these men picked up someone from the port, but they don’t know. No one was ever reported missing.’
‘But it was a murder? How do they know?’
‘It isn’t pleasant. There was blood in the room. A lot of blood, and a tongue found outside, in a plastic bag with clothes.’
Rike sits forward with her elbows on her knees. The chairs are a little small and there is no other way to sit. He’s right, she says, the story, it isn’t so pleasant. She doesn’t know what else to say.
5.3
Sandro waits in the hotel lobby, legs crossed, he sits crooked in the seat with one arm across the shoulder. A studied look. Practised and conscious.
Gibson wants Sandro to invite him home, to extract him from the misery of shower caps, hand soaps, white towels, suitcases with wheels, double beds and hotel rooms which cannot be filled. He wants to meet the man’s wife. See how he behaves with his children. Their house will be an apartment in a palazzo, dark, chaotic, intimate, overloaded, with scents of home cooking, washing. A place noisy with neighbours, cats, dogs, children: both a pleasure and an irritation. He wants to be absorbed. He wants a stranger to be uncommonly friendly.
Sandro, unshaven, wears a suit, and again has a sloping, apologetic smile. He was in court this morning at the Centro Direzionale, close by the prison. ‘Another world.’ On some other occasion Gibson might like to visit? It is like an office and a church, he says. He asks about the man in Laura’s photograph. Gibson has seen this, yes?
‘I assume you checked the hotels?’
‘We have.’
‘And nothing?’
‘And nothing.’ The man runs his finger under his mouth, pinches his chin as if in thought. ‘If you have the time, you might try Hotel Sette on via Toledo.’ Sandro sits back, assumes his original position, one leg hitched across another, an arm stretched across the chair-back. ‘Sometimes people aren’t so willing to talk with the police. It’s nothing personal, but there are habits, ways in which things are done.’
‘They won’t talk to me.’
‘You underestimate yourself. Information is more available to you as an ordinary man. Go see what they say. Give them a story so they are involved.’
* * *
He finds Hotel Sette on the third floor on via Toledo opposite the Café Roma. He buys coffee after coffee, short espressos, which have no effect and taste charred. He watches the hotel doorway, the shops beneath: a clothing store with a single a white window, brightly lit, a manikin with purple earmuffs dressed in yellow hot pants (isn’t that what they’re called?). To the right a patisserie, dark and old-fashioned, wood and glass. Customers leave with wrapped packages.
Gibson isn’t sure what day this is, he thinks to ask the barista, but doesn’t want to appear foolish. There is no movement in the hotel. The windows, three floors of them, all open with blinds pulled up, but nothing to see, except ceilings, the top corners of rooms. Small, he guesses, and plain.
He has no idea who he’s looking for. Less idea about what to do with the information. He thinks to order another coffee, his fourth, but notices that his hand is shaking. He finds the photo on his phone. It takes a while to remember the sequence (unlock, swipe to the third screen, select the camera …). With the image on view, he props the phone upright on the counter, turns it to the barista, and attempts to explain.
‘This man. He was here perhaps? Did he come to the café? He was staying in the hotel opposite.’
The man leans in to the phone and squints, then shakes his head.
‘I’m looking for my daughter.’
The barista, now attentive, picks up the phone and shows it to the woman behind the counter who gives a long, considered nod.
‘Sure,’ he says. ‘He was here. I remember him. Not so long ago.’ He speaks in Italian to the woman and they appear to disagree. He points to Gibson, to the hotel, to the entrance. ‘This is where he was staying. He was in that room. One, two, three windows.’ He points to the third floor, the window immediately above the clothes shop. He knows the room he says, because the man would watch the street all day.
Gibson isn’t sure who to contact first: Sandro or Geezler.
5.4
The museum isn’t on her way, and Rike arrives with half a mind not to go inside, but the building is dressed with bright banners, and there’s no reason not to now she has walked there and has a free ticket. Besides, any kind of art, pictures of beaches even, pretty domed churches, would be a pleasant change of subject after stories of blood and stories of severed tongues.
She passes quickly through the lobby, seeking the room on the upper floor, but has to ask directions.
The guard points to a poster, right in front of her, with the letters MFP and underneath Mannfunktionprojekt: ‘I want / I wish: One Year of Trouble’. The letters, in a smart unadorned script, promise some style.
The exhibit, on the top floor, is very simple. The grey walls have a brick-red script printed with I want I wish I want I wish I want I wish I want I wish in a solid block, so insistent that ‘I’ looks only to be a separation between ‘want’ and ‘wish’. So emphatic that the words become a simple command.