Ford doubted that these things had ever occurred. He searched for a word — was ‘cuckold’ specifically masculine? Were women saddled with verbs instead of nouns, with the past-imperfect, the ‘was’ and ‘used to’ of being cheated, deceived, disappointed. Tired, he wished the boy would let him drowse.
A soft knock came at the door. Nathalie, in a deliberately level voice, asked if she could come in, then edged open the door, anticipating Eric’s reply. She stood with her arms folded and leaned into the room, thin-lipped and matronly.
Prepped with new information Ford sat up, expectant, but Eric’s information didn’t translate to anything that could be read in her gestures and manner. From what he could see she was still angry.
‘How is he?’
‘I don’t know. He has a bad stomach. He’s sleeping now. Things have been difficult for him. You know how he is. What have you been talking about?’
‘That man. The one in the news. The man who disappeared.’
‘The man from Iraq?’
Ford felt his throat constrict. Four simple words. Alarmed by the comment, so sudden and unexpected and so easily presented, he wiped his hands over his face, certain that his expression would expose him.
‘We’re talking about that writer.’ Eric shook his head.
‘I don’t know who you mean?’
‘That writer. The murder. Remember?’ Eric’s tone bordered on sarcasm.
‘That isn’t news,’ she clucked, ‘it’s sensation. It’s just a story.’
Ignoring her, Eric reached for the paper and asked if Ford was done.
Nathalie looked from the Eric to Ford and back to Eric. ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to interrupt anything.’
Eric folded the newspaper and set it aside.
‘What?’ For no reason Eric’s smile appeared to annoy Nathalie. Relieved that the subject had moved on, Ford watched her unfold her hands with a certain haughtiness he hadn’t noticed before, the gesture of someone familiar with humiliation.
‘He could be anywhere. That writer. He could be anyone. He could be here.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Why not? Think about it. What better place is there? There’s all this distraction going off at the border. It’s a perfect place to disappear. That’s what I’d do.’ Eric looked directly at Ford. ‘Of course. This makes perfect sense. This is what you’re doing.’
‘Me?’
‘You. You’re hiding. You’re in trouble. Mystery solved. You aren’t travelling. You aren’t lost. You’re hiding. Laying low. Why don’t you tell Martin, he can make a film about you?’ Eric lay back, laughing. It was a good joke, wasn’t it? Just a great joke.
3.8
Parson waited in his car outside the hotel with a radio on his lap tuned to BFBS. Every morning he listened to the same content, to sentimental dedications from distant families to serving troops, half-touching but also banal. The town names, King’s Lynn, Bedford, Maidenhead, Hungerford, sounded invented, overly quaint, although he knew and disliked these towns. Occasionally the simplicity of the messages, the pure-heartedness, say, of a daughter’s greeting for her father, made him catch his breath. Tourists walked wide of the row of police vehicles and huddled groups of uniformed men. There were lessons to learn. First among them that he didn’t need to be here, and second, he should keep his work with the Turkish police to its barest minimum. Eager to demonstrate their control over the situation they had provided a squad of seven cars, a whole battalion of men, and assured him that this response was occurring at the very same time in Bodrum, in Izmir, at other places with confirmed sightings. Unsure that this was a good idea, he no longer felt lucky and slumped low in the seat. When he ran his finger inside his shirt collar he found the material soft with sweat.
The sun hit fiercer here than inland, hard on the water and stripped to a steely light. He noted the shops beside him, painted white, the restaurants and boutiques, a hairdresser, a clapboard market with signs for cola, ices, thick-crust pizza, burgers, designer clothing; the entire boardwalk appeared over-familiar.
The police lined the balcony of the self-catering hotel and chivvied the guests off the balconies and out of neighbouring suites. Armed militia stopped the traffic from entering the promenade. Tourists hung about the poolside to watch: attention zeroed to Room 42.
The event played out modestly. The door opened to a simple knock to show a man, a giant, dressed in brown plaid shorts and white socks, his gut pushing over his belt. With his hands raised the man filled the doorway — and it was obvious to Parson, even from a distance, that this could not be Sutler: having no hair in the first instance, and being in any case so grossly oversized that imagining him walking through the mountains just didn’t work.
Parson came out of the car wanting the whole show over, aware of the hours ahead returning to Kopeckale and the explanation he would have to make to Gibson. No, he waved, then shouted, ‘No, no, no, no, no. Stop this. Let the man go.’
Out of the room, shimmying from behind the giant as if dividing from him, appeared two women in swimsuits, both young, then two more, and two more to total six. The man stood with his hands held up, his head hung hangdog, a picture of shame. The police, visibly confused, gathered up the women, and worked the man out of the doorway with their sticks, a little bemused by an event which had every appearance of a magician’s act: a fat man sub-dividing into six pretty women. ‘Exactly what is this?’ Parson asked the man as he approached. ‘What is this?’
* * *
The calls started as soon as he returned to the car. Expecting Gibson, Parson was surprised to find himself speaking with Paul Geezler. He recognized the name from conversations with Gibson, and thought it strange that the new head of HOSCO operations in the Middle East would bother with a direct call. Not for the first time he sensed a perspectival shift as his idea of the damage caused by Sutler broadened.
Geezler introduced himself as the man assigned to pick up the pieces.
Parson leafed quickly through his papers but could not find his notes on Sutler at HOSCO.
Geezler explained that he had just arrived at Southern-CIPA and was familiarizing himself with everything undone since Howell’s arrest, although no one seemed happy to share information with him. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘I talk mostly to myself.’
Southern-CIPA, Geezler hinted, would be disassembled and reconfigured. He was working directly with them, which is how it should have been all along. If HOSCO had kept a tighter eye on the finances, especially the distribution, then it wouldn’t have gone so haywire so quickly. ‘Independent companies are more responsible when it comes to monitoring. We all know that. That’s nothing new. With Southern-CIPA it was always too complicated, all of these processes which were just too much of a mystery,’ Geezler explained, weary of it. ‘Truth is, we’re the victims here, of a government that has no stop checks, and of a system which leaves the financial distribution down to just one man. Where else would you find that? I’m not naive, we need to put our hands up and admit we’re vulnerable to any individual who wants to abuse us. Sutler took us for a long ride. I’ll admit that. I’ll be the first. There’s work to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again. But my main duty is to make sure that HOSCO has some place in the reorganization, in whatever comes next, but it looks like the damage is going deep.’ Camp Liberty was already dismantled, and even as they spoke, the burn pits were being bulldozed. ‘The Massive is over.’ Geezler faced a winter of hearings, suits, and litigation. ‘Job number one is to make sure we’re still a part of whatever develops here, and that we learn some serious lessons. Which is where you come in.’