Richard House - The Kills

As she walks away it occurs to her that he might throw the book at her, hard.

8.2

Gibson waits in the lobby for Sandro. While he waits he reads through the Herald Tribune and sees an article about Paul Geezler. Embattled CONPORT Head Goes Missing.

* * *

The news from London confirms his fears. Geezler was spending the weekend in New Mexico. His car has been found outside a motel, with his wallet, his briefcase in plain view on the backseat. The driver’s door was left wide open. A heavy rain. Papers stuck to the motel forecourt. His passport under the car. Money in the glove compartment. Undisturbed.

* * *

Sandro organizes a room in Posillipo. He brings a small suitcase with a change of clothes. Gibson unpacks the case and lays the items across the bed. He has not worn shorts in thirty years.

‘Nobody knows you are here. I arranged this myself. There are no records. You are booked on a flight to London. This is secure.’ Sandro sits on the opposite bed. ‘We will have a man with you here. He does not know your name, he does not know your business. As far as you are concerned you are on holiday. This is a vacation.’ He hands Gibson a pair of sunglasses. ‘The secret to disappearing is to stay where you are.’

8.3

Rike eats at the café alone. And there, once again, the Russian. She isn’t surprised to see him.

Three times in one day.

Rike, determined not to show her irritation, makes no response when he sits at her table. He places the book on his lap, believing this to be a more diplomatic approach. As he settles in his chair, she leans back and folds her arms.

‘Did you speak with him?’

Sol shakes his head as if scolded.

‘I know him from the club. He comes to the Nightingale with one of the managers.’

‘In Limassol?’ She says this with great irritation.

‘He’s with Lexi. We have two clubs, in Limassol and Larnaca. Lexi runs the club in Larnaca. It’s always best to leave Lexi alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your brother is with the club manager in Larnaca. You understand? He wants me to give you this book. He said I should make sure you have it. That’s all.’ He sets the book on the table. ‘That’s what I’ve been asked to do. You can take it, do what you want. You can throw it away. My job is to make sure you have it in your hands.’

‘You’ve read it?’ There’s an element of disbelief she can’t manage to hide. ‘How do you know him?’

‘I don’t know your brother. I know Lexi. I’m at the club, most nights.’

‘You work there?’

‘I’m here until the summer. The man who runs the club in Limassol is a family friend. I’m staying at the Miramar just up the road.’

They nod simultaneously.

‘Why won’t you take the book?’

Rike looks down at the table.

‘Why not?’

Rike turns her chair askance to the table. Her eyes flutter closed for a moment. ‘Because.’ And then she stops herself. ‘It’s not your problem.’

‘Actually. It is my problem if you don’t take it.’

‘I don’t know why I don’t take it, and I don’t know why I don’t want to read it. I don’t know why my brother would be wasting his time on something so petty when he’s in a great deal of trouble.’

‘Trouble?’

‘He shouldn’t be at that club. He shouldn’t be with the people he’s seeing.’

She means him, she means the Russians, and he immediately understands. ‘It’s a club. There are plenty of clubs in Cyprus. It’s one of the reasons people come here.’

‘No. They come here for what the clubs bring with them. For what happens in the clubs.’

‘It’s probably not what you think.’

‘It probably isn’t.’ Rike smiles for the first time. ‘You’re probably right. I’m making assumptions.’

‘I still don’t understand the book.’

‘It’s — family. It’s how we are. Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No.’

‘It isn’t complicated.’ Rike isn’t sure how much she wants to explain, but begins to explain in any case. ‘There are three of us in our family, and one person can’t have something without the other two spoiling it. That’s what the book is about. The older we get the more childish it becomes.’ Rike runs her finger along the tabletop. ‘I’m not going to read it. You can tell him that. If you see him.’

‘You’re not curious?’

‘Not at all.’

‘It’s just some story about a murder.’ Sol looks out at the street. ‘Two brothers take a basement room, they pick up someone from the station and kill him. If you like thrillers it’s a good story. It’s true.’ He watches the traffic come left to right. ‘It’s not like he even solves it.’

Rike struggles to her feet. How typical is this? Mattaus, determined to insert himself where he isn’t wanted, has dug out one book, out of millions of books, with a familiar sounding plot. It’s pathetic. That’s what it is. Pathetic. Flustered, she goes through her pockets, then stops to look at the boy. ‘Did he tell you to say this?’

‘I don’t know your brother. He comes to the club, but I don’t know him.’

‘Liar.’

Her exit is messy. She bumps into a chair, walking, blind almost, extra-clumsy, humiliated. It doesn’t make sense that Mattaus would work so hard at this, unless, of course, he blames Rike for the farce on Saturday night.

* * *

Rike returns to the apartment and finds the book on the hallway table, with a note in Isa’s handwriting. ‘You have a fan! This was delivered for you today.’

She walks to the kitchen, opens the trash and is ready to drop the book without a thought, but decides against it. Fine. This is now evidence. Maybe Isa will see just how much of a bully her brother is, how pathetic and petty.

Even so. It’s hard not to be a little curious.

9.1

He doesn’t know what’s happening, the road stretches ahead of him, grey and rubbery: the desert on either side a flat stony pitch, with heat rising in waves so the land appears furred. Whitby loves this, thinks of it as a TV landscape, something known, pre-encountered. The Americans he hires work in chinos and brown boots, white or blue shirts, regardless of their status or duty. Whitby, nicknamed English, has his own style: a lightweight suit, which he sweats through. He spends his life in an office or a 4×4, subject to air-conditioning.

The problem is this: he needs core samples for a road project financed three years ago. The road doesn’t exist, but the samples should already be in boxes, logged and housed in the company stores, proof of work done. And now he’s having to collect these samples himself, three years after the fact because people are getting sticky about these details. Once he has the samples he’ll have to drive back and make sure they are stored where they would have been stored, should the project actually have gone ahead. He calls these projects gophers, as in, go-for-the-money (don’t-deliver-the-project).

He’s on the phone as he drives. ‘My concern,’ he says, ‘is that we undertook the work we were required to undertake but this appears not to have been logged.’ Silence. ‘I was looking at them this morning. Those samples are in the store.’ The person he is speaking with contradicts him, and goes against the grain of the conversation. Whitby invites him to check tomorrow morning.