The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (11 page)

‘We have two things for you.’ She turned the map around and leaned close. ‘It was here,’ Heida pointed to the map, ‘somewhere here on this road. Maybe there. He was walking on his own. We took him to the station in Kopeckale. There were no buses until the morning so he had to stay the night at the terminus. When we found out who he was we went to find him, but he was gone.’

‘And did you see where he was going?’

‘No,’ Grüner interrupted, but they had spoken about a hotel in Istanbul. ‘It’s for journalists. It’s a hostel opposite the big church, Aya Sofya. I think this is where he will go.’

‘And how did he appear? In himself?’

Grüner stopped chewing. ‘Tired. Not so good. Exhausted I think. His clothes were dirty, you know, and his face was scratched, and he had a tan. His face was, you know, dark. He told us he was on the road for two or three days, but the way he looked, it was longer. I’m sure. He didn’t say so much until we told him about the hotel in Istanbul, then he was really interested because he asked questions.’

Parson wrote his number on the map. ‘Call me if you remember something else.’ He paused, pen in hand. ‘You said you had two pieces of information.’

‘Yes.’ Heida looked to Grüner and narrowed her eyes. ‘He had the money with him. He had two big bags. Very big bags, and he sat with his arms about them. I tried to help but he wouldn’t let me touch them.’

‘Two bags?’

‘Two backpacks.’

‘And you didn’t see what was in them?’

‘I didn’t see inside, but they were heavy.’

‘Tell me, why did you stop for him?’

‘Because it was strange. He looked like someone you would see at home. Just someone on the street. This ordinary man in the wrong place. I thought something might have happened to him because of the marks on his face. We had no idea who he was.’

Parson returned to his car. Instead of driving away he slowly circled the parking lot and the one lone vehicle belonging to Heida and Grüner, a military jeep with civilian plates. He drove a full circuit, unwilling to head off, a nagging dissatisfaction with the discussion he couldn’t fix. His headlights strafed the motel, the concrete wall, the compound fence, and a row of generators, a bare hill that flattened out to wasteland then the distant sheets of plastic, the slack sides of tents at the refugee camp, low-lying and secretive – then back again to the motel and the neon lights in the eyes of a stray dog. Driving, thinking, he leaned into the curve and began to feel the satisfaction of ideas beginning to stir. It wasn’t that the journalists had lied to him, maybe a little, but they had failed to impress upon him some crucial element. Of this he was certain.

He parked beside the jeep and decided to spend the night watching the motel.

Grüner woke him in the morning. A cup in one hand, steam condensing on the window, a sheet of paper in the other.

Parson shuffled upright and squinted at Grüner. The man leaned down, his face grey, unshaven, the sky behind him pale. Still early. 5:34.

‘I saw you here, so I brought you a coffee. I have something for you.’

Parson unwound his window. Grüner passed him the cup and the paper, then crouched beside the door with an apologetic expression as if he was sorry for Parson, or embarrassed at what he was doing.

‘This is why we picked him up. He looks like this man. Exactly like him. This isn’t him,’ he repeated, ‘but it looks like him. This is why we stopped. This man is our friend and he looks like this man. I’ve written his name here.’ Grüner hesitated. ‘You know, what she said about the bags is not true. He had one bag, that’s all. I don’t think there was anything in it, but I don’t know. It was small. I don’t know why she told you this. I think she wants a better story. I don’t know. I hope you find him.’

‘Last night you said he had marks on his face?’

Grüner nodded. ‘Scratches. And under his eye one nick.’

Parson handed the image back to Grüner and asked if he had a pen. ‘Can you draw those marks? What you remember. Draw them on this face.’

Parson sat with the journalist’s printout. Sutler, but not Sutler, with seven lines drawn in blue biro radiating across his right cheek and forehead. He compared the picture with the copy of the HOSCO ID in his file. If this was a dependable likeness then Sutler had lost a great deal of weight and had grown his hair. Locked in this man’s expression, he fancied a haunted quality, and arrogance, plenty of arrogance.

He drove to Cukurca and looked for somewhere to eat in the small grey town. Stumpy towers, something like grain silos, stacked either side of the road. Parson drove slowly so that he could look. He would find somewhere to eat first, then call Gibson and see what the plan was. Without more detailed information he assumed that he would be returning to Amrah City. Changing his mind, he smoothly swung the car about and changed direction. First he’d visit the coach station at Kopeckale, he decided, then he’d call Gibson. He could string this out for a week perhaps, chasing ghosts. Why hurry back to reports and cases HOSCO would not want to settle?

3.3

Ford returned to the pension and found Nathalie with her companion Martin. Nathalie lay on the sun-lounger with a book resting on her stomach, the cover folded back, her hair into one long braid, and a smile indicating that everything was in its place. As she made the introduction her arm lazily conducted the formalities (she pronounced his name with slow determination, her voice skipping pitch between syllables):

‘
Mar-tan
, Tom. Tom,
Mar-tan
.’

Short and in his late forties, Martin’s dark hair and full beard, his round shoulders, hairy forearms and neck, made him faintly baboonlike. He cleaned a pair of heavy-framed glasses with his shirt tail and blinked as if the air was dusty. Preoccupied, he complained about how disorganized everything had become in two short days. Turkey was more difficult than he’d anticipated. Two days of meetings with officials, he tutted, in which ‘everybody wanted to speak, but nobody wanted to help. Have you been to Ankara?’ he asked Ford, his English almost without accent. ‘Everybody talks. They say what you want to hear. Everyone is perfectly polite. But they don’t act.’

Ford couldn’t imagine the two of them together. Nathalie and Mar-tan. It wasn’t a picture to linger over.

‘I’m sorry, but you no longer have the room to yourself.’ Nathalie turned the book over, ready to read. ‘Eric is here. Did you find some clothes?’

Ford held up his bag and excused himself as he stepped into his room.

Propped beside the spare cot lay a black backpack, new and clean. Ford recognized the luggage tag: a clear plastic star. Eric Powell. The student from Kopeckale. He told himself this wasn’t anything he couldn’t deal with, but the coincidence itself was unsettling.

He changed his clothes and returned the courtyard to find Nathalie alone. Wasps hovered about the table. Behind Nathalie the honeysuckle folded over the edge of the wall, thick and dry, the undersides of the leaves a cold silver – all of this reassuringly familiar. Nathalie fidgeted, nervous of the wasps, every time she moved, even to turn a page, the chair creaked. She set the book aside then sat up and began to inspect her toes.

‘Maybe tomorrow I’ll come shopping with you again? If you want?’

‘You don’t like the shirt?’

‘No. I like the shirt. Don’t you need more?’

Despite this familiarity she was different somehow, less the woman he had met that morning. Ford felt more like an audience, someone she could play to.

He watched her prepare to paint her nails. ‘You know this book? You’ve read this? The author is English, no, American?’ She indicated the novel as she cleaned away the old varnish with acetone. Colour bled into the cotton wool. ‘There is a lot of interest because someone was killed in the same way.’

Ford remembered his conversation with Eric about how the author had disappeared. ‘And you believe it?’

‘I don’t know. People say bad things about Naples. Always.’ Nathalie curled the loaded brush quickly over the nail with one sure stroke. Turning to her right foot, she peered over her sunglasses and asked if he minded. Ford said that he liked the smell.

‘But the smell is very bad for you.’ As she painted she made a face, mouth curved in concentration, the world focused to this one small act. She continued painting as Eric walked into the courtyard. ‘I think you know Eric? He said you saved our film. You know about the project?’

Ford rose to shake the boy’s hand. ‘Tom.’

‘Tom?’ The boy caught on the name. He spoke in French to Nathalie and laughed,
what did I tell you?
then in English to Ford to apologize about the room. ‘It’s all right here? Small but all right. Sorry you have to share.’

Ford passed over the apology and said there was no problem. ‘Where did you go?’

‘He climbs.’ Nathalie indicated that Eric should sit beside her. ‘He goes away, he disappears, and he looks for places to climb. He’s a little crazy about climbing, and not so safe. He leaves me alone for almost an entire week without any explanation while Martin is in Ankara.’

Eric shrugged and smiled, one hand kneading the other, fingers entwined.

‘What’s wrong with your hand?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You told me you didn’t climb?’ Nathalie stopped, brush poised. ‘You said that you were looking.’

‘I didn’t climb.’ Eric turned to answer Ford. ‘I was going to, but I didn’t have time, and couldn’t find anywhere to stay so I came back. Anyway, the climbs here are grade four, the rock’s soft.’

‘So it’s no good?’

‘Oh no, it’s very good. When it’s dry the rock powders so everything falls apart. Then when it rains it turns to clay, so it’s pretty slick.’

Nathalie slid the applicator back into the bottle and set the bottle aside, ending the subject. ‘I have a question, Tom.’ She paused, mid-thought. ‘There’s something I don’t understand. You met Eric in Kopeckale? That’s almost at the Iraq border.’

‘It’s a long a story. It was a mistake. I was supposed to be travelling with someone else. We had a disagreement and I took the first bus out.’

‘To Kopeckale?’

‘That was the mistake. I had no idea I was heading east. As soon as I realized I decided to return.’

‘Did you have an accident?’ Nathalie signalled his face.

‘No. I walked into a screen door. Glass. It happened a while back, but it’s taking time to heal.’

‘I might have something.’ Nathalie began to search through a make-up bag and after a moment found a small foil tube. ‘Here, try this. It’s very good.’ She set everything aside, sat up, and told Ford to sit forward. ‘I did the same thing when I was a girl.’ She looked closely at his forehead. ‘But this is not so long ago? I ran from the outside, the patio, into a glass door. You see this?’ She indicated a small scar on the side of her nose. ‘This is the only thing you can see, but it was very bad. I had cuts all over my face and in my hair. Glass is very bad, but it makes a clean cut. You do this twice a day and they will go. It’s incredible. It really works.’ She mixed the crème in the palm of her hand then smoothed it onto his forehead, then under his right eye. ‘When you were in Kopeckale you saw how bad things are?’

Ford said he saw very little. He wasn’t sure he understood her question.

‘It’s very bad there with the refugees. Did you have any trouble getting back? Everywhere is in chaos. The border towns are full with refugees. Did you have any trouble?’

‘Trouble?’

‘Eric was stuck for two days, there were no coaches.’ Nathalie turned his head in her hands and looked for more cuts.

‘He arrived at the end of it,’ Eric interrupted. ‘They resumed normal service, more or less, on the afternoon before he arrived.’

Ford said that he knew very little about what was going on. He’d noticed that there were soldiers, but it was the same at every stop, so he didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. He hadn’t followed the news since he’d left home.

‘But it is impossible not to know what is happening? You didn’t know? Not even before you came? Surely this is news, even in England?’ She nudged Eric to his feet and told him to take the novel back and find a book from her room. Ford watched her give instructions to the boy, and watched the boy obey. ‘And your friend? This woman?’

Eric left with the novel and a broad smile.

‘My friend? I’m afraid that’s unfixable.’

Nathalie sat back, hand clapped to her chest with genuine concern.

‘But this is a terrible story. Have you heard anything from her? Is she travelling alone?’

‘It isn’t quite how it sounds.’

‘But is she alone?’

Ford shook his head slowly as if with regret.

‘So maybe everything will be all right?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘I hope so, it isn’t a good idea to travel so much on your own right now.’

Eric returned from Nathalie’s room with two paperbacks. He held up both and she pointed to his right hand. ‘That one.’

‘You said you came by coach?’ Eric handed the book to Ford. ‘I thought I saw you in a four-by-four?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I saw you in a jeep with two people?’

‘No. Oh,
that
. They brought me from another town. I was even further east and they brought me back.’

‘You should read this.’ Now serious, Nathalie pointed at the book. She wiped her hands on a small towel and said that she was done. ‘You know, it isn’t safe for tourists, not in the east. Read it. It might save your life.’

Accepting the book, Ford said it was a lot to expect.

‘You should make sure your friend is all right. You can use my phone,’ she offered, ‘you should contact her.’

Ford thanked Nathalie for the book and returned to his room, then regretted not taking up her offer. He could use the phone to access the junk account.

Eric smoothed his hand through his hair, shirt buttoned, long trousers, ready for his evening with Nathalie. Ford stood beside him, recently showered, and looked down at his bed deep in thought, trying to decide. If he lay down now that would be the end of the day.

‘So it’s Tom, right?
Tom
? Thomas.’

‘Tom.’ Ford nodded and waited for more questions, now anxious. As he leaned forward the dog tags swung out of his T-shirt.