Richard House - The Kills

He redialled, a last attempt, went directly to message and found that he had nothing to say.

‘Paul. Paul, I just want to know how this happened. I want to know if this was planned. If you worked this all out right from the start. I want to know if you organized this down to the last detail, had me sent me out there with this idea, so that step by step you’d end up at the top of the heap. I just want to know. What came first, Paul? Was it Sutler? How long did you have the idea for Sutler? Or was this something more haphazard? Someday, Paul, I hope we have a conversation about how this all came to happen.’

5.8

In his first weeks in Iraq, Parson had spent some of his time in barracks. In the evenings they watched DVDs in the mess hall, war films, thrillers, and when a man was shot or stabbed or otherwise killed they shouted die until he died, and then they cheered. They would play the scene over, with some smartarse making a mockery of it right before the screen. The same death, the same keen pain on the recruit’s face, and as he folded to the floor the room rose in uproar to applaud. They watched men die and quoted these deaths, walked into rooms with a stagger, hand to heart, hand to guts. Like the phrases they repeated to each other, like the nicknames they were given, these copycat deaths became part of the language.

* * *

Through his last night in Malta, Parson dreamed of endless endings. Falling, shooting, stabbing, suffocating: actions stopped before a final result. He woke and returned to these dreams, these quotes of other deaths, and woke again laughing at their absurdities.

* * *

Today he would call Geezler, let him know that Sutler was heading to Palermo, returning to mainland Europe. He was close now, closer. So close they walked practically side by side.

The last news on Sutler would not come for a while — not until he’d marked a trail through Italy, the south of France — names span in Parson’s mind: Corsica, Sardinia, Slovenia, Croatia — places he was keen to visit: Sutler would be busy before his final confrontation. At some point, this Sutler would learn about Parson, and Parson would negotiate a settlement with Sutler before the man disappeared permanently. He couldn’t decide how obvious to make this ending. There needed to be some back door, some possibility of a sequel because the real Sutler might show up, in which case Parson would have to admit to a certain ineptitude. I was working on my own. Following my own nose. I did what I could. But by then, really — three months, one year — what would it matter? It was equally possible that the real Sutler would simply evaporate, just disappear into some white fog on some white landscape. But thanks to Sutler, Parson had hoisted himself out of the Middle East: no longer the available man on the ground.

Parson called his wife: Laura, listen. You pack. You put together what you need. You make arrangements for your mother with your sister. Leave as soon as you can. Find a cheap flight to Naples. You don’t need to think. You only need to say yes.

He held the phone away from him, hand over the receiver, high above his head so that he would not, for one moment, hear her reply, so that he would not feel disappointment in her excuses, her hesitation, or her refusal, so that he would not need to offer encouragement or rebuttal. And so he waited, marking the time it would take for her to come round or reject the idea.

With the phone high above his head he let her thoughts spill out above him, thinking, for the moment, that this might be possible, and that what might be possible at this point would be good enough. And with that idea satisfaction burned through him.

6.1

The idea that she should speak to a private investigator came from her friends, the ones facing divorce, bankruptcy, or abandonment by husbands and partners, and for a while, being reluctant to enter this damaged world, she resisted the suggestion. But within two months of returning to New York, Anne realized that the various embassies and agencies were coming up with nothing and were starting to avoid her calls: the search, which was never a proper search, had no impetus and no direction. Hiring a private investigator became the most logical, and necessary, next step. She arranged an appointment with a Manhattan firm, Colson Burns, who came recommended as the best of the best; the most professional, the most discreet, and the most thorough, although this came at a high price.

The company agreed to undertake an initial assessment before they took on the case, a good number of missing-person cases were handed over to federal or state agencies, they warned, as they often involved prosecutable offences which came to light through their investigations. She needed to understand this — if they found anything illegal they would always hand the information to the appropriate authorities. It would also, possibly, draw up information about her son she might ordinarily choose not to know. Anne said that this was not an issue. She didn’t mind what they discovered, as long as they found him.

On her first visit to the company, the offices, being so deliberately against type, confirmed the rightness of the decision. Airy, bright, on the forty-third floor overlooking Fifth.

She arrived exactly at the time the meeting was to start and found herself uplifted by the bright lobby, polished concrete walls, and a series of drawings by Cy Twombly mounted along the corridors, strange investigations themselves, fine pencil lines irritating white fields, words or fragments of words suggesting logic, or sense to be made.

She was interviewed by a woman, Marcellyn, who would collect everything they needed for their primary assessment. Dressed formally in light pinstripe suit, lawyer-like, pale, she made listening a hard physical fact, her face and body set in concentration. Like visiting a doctor. The woman’s attentiveness made Anne question herself.

She told the woman facts about her son that she had not yet expressed out loud. She spoke about the computer, the recovered files, her son’s attempts to contact men, and her fears about these men. Marcellyn listened, nodded, and waited for Anne to break before picking up her pen, uncapping it, and writing herself a note. This rhythm continued through the interview. She would listen, and then she would write.

‘And this was your computer?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have deleted these files?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘But you have the computer and we could examine the hard drive?’

‘Yes.’

The woman laid one hand on her notes. She had an outline, she said, which was a good start. She would contact the university lecturers and collect their testimonies, their outlines, but what she wanted to do now was draw out a timeline. Anne’s timeline. Marcellyn drew her pen elegantly through the air. ‘It helps to understand the sequence,’ she said, ‘from each perspective. It really does.’

Anne looked to the windows. The building seemed to give a giddy shift to the side, a view of sky, an unbroken grey, unfathomable. Aircraft level to her view.

In the months since her return from Europe not one person had asked for a simple recounting of what had happened, a simple step-by-step, not even Mark. Everyone already settled into their own idea, she could see it even before they spoke.

‘Take your time, Mrs Powell.’ The woman sat, tuned, attentive, the entire room an apparatus to focus and collect thought.

6.2

The businessman picked Ford up at Aachen service station and offered to take him south.

Rolf Ebershalder spoke at length about his country. Germany has no soul, he said. What was ripped apart is not bound together but lost. The younger generation have inherited a place that is strange even to them. How can they know what Germany is if it is always under question?