The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (133 page)

They walk to the bay hotels, to the start of the resorts. At the Sovereign Tomas finally stops, and enters a club: Nightingale 1.

The Nightingale 1 is part of the Sovereign Resort complex. The club, a three storey bunker, overlooks the bay. The Sovereign Hotel has its back to the land, and during the day causes a long shadow to sweep the beach, from right to left. For the most part, the beach is obscured. There’s a joke that the hotel was built the wrong way round: the steep side facing the water, the sloped side facing the land, but Tomas thinks this isn’t the case. It can’t be. The pool, for example, being to the side of the hotel, takes the sun almost the whole day through, and this only works because the back is sloped. The rooms and balconies on the seaward side take the shade.

He watches Mattaus and can’t understand why the man stays, given how he’s ignored by the people he sits with, except one man, the manager, who buzzes about him briefly, then disappears for a good hour. These people, younger, excitable, a nervous edge to them with their sudden enthusiasms and keen bodies, they shout, bicker, go to the toilet cubicles to take drugs because this is the place for such activities, and come out energized and glassy-eyed. This group is watched over by the club’s security. As far as he can tell the club is divided into zones. This, anyway, is how it appears to be monitored. Across the club there are other such areas, although the patrons would not know it. There’s a certain balance to the excesses here. One boy, Russian, dressed in sports gear, sits at the bar, and keeps a cool eye on the room. Disengaged, but observant.

Tomas finds it hard to watch, even at this distance, and remain uninvolved. His interest at this point is on how he’s going to approach Mattaus. Speaking to him directly would be unwise, although he will already be recorded on the club’s cameras. Impatient to do something, he understands that tonight might not provide the right opportunity.

A possibility opens later in the evening, when it becomes clear to Tomas that the manager, Mattaus’s friend, is robbing the club blind.

Drinks bought at the bar pass through the register, but drinks bought from the waiting staff are unregistered, cash in hand. Money paid at the door is kept in a cash box. The arrangement appears deliberately slack, and only the manager, who collects the takings in a black sack, can have any idea what the takings are at any point, on any given night. The opportunity for the man to help himself is evident. In Tomas’s experience, when such a possibility exists, there’s usually a taker. He watches with particular interest. The manager comes by almost every sixty to eighty minutes, and counts out the money, makes a note in a small pad, then binds the cash with the note in a rubber band, which he drops into a pouch. It’s laughable. He does this without any security. No one oversees his accounting, no one offers him protection.

To test the diligence of the guards, Tomas follows the man through the club from bar to bar, up and down between the levels, and then it happens. As they walk down the stairs Tomas witnesses, to his great satisfaction, the manager reach into the pouch and help himself. So lazy, so incautious; he doesn’t even look around him. None of the guards is concerned that the manager is alone while he collects the money. At the top bar he ties a knot in the neck of the bag, then comes back down the staircase to return to his office. The only person distantly aware of Tomas’s movements is the boy at the bar.

Before he leaves Tomas steals Mattaus’s phone. This is ridiculously easy, a technical move, but not so sophisticated. The man doesn’t see him. Tomas keeps to the dark side of the stairs, comes at him from the curve. Mattaus doesn’t feel a hand slip into his pocket – and if he did feel something, this sleight of hand, in this kind of club, the gesture would translate as a small intimacy. As it stands, Tomas keeps this nice and tidy. No error involved. Mattaus knows only that a man nudged by him on the stairs, and bumped shoulders.

They leave before the club closes, Mattaus and the manager. Tomas follows after them, but outside, the manager has a car waiting, and Tomas returns to the club and sits at the bar.

The club is still busy, and while the clientele is mixed, the younger ones look worse for wear, except one, the boy in sports gear, who, like Tomas, appears to be watching.

It doesn’t take much to get the boy to talk, and Tomas learns that the manager of Nightingale 1, Kolya, runs a private game of poker. Anyone he likes the look of can play as a guest. Kolya likes to win, for many reasons, not least of all for the money, this is his one vice, the single benefit he allows himself with his work, and so the cards are stacked, and once he has their money the guest is escorted out of the club, invariably to a cash machine or a hotel to empty their safety deposit. The boy, Sol, enjoys the drama. It’s impossible to tire of that frustration, the inevitability of failure, the sheer breathlessness of their losses.

Sol goes to the toilets, and when he comes back he’s a little wired and won’t answer his phone. When Tomas asks who is calling he says
Lexi
, with clear dislike. Right now he’s supposed to be with Lexi, he should be in Larnaca, but Lexi, who runs Nightingale 2, is such a bore. Sol is working hard to avoid him. He doesn’t understand why the others tolerate the man and take him so seriously. Lexi runs the club in Larnaca, and Kolya runs the club in Limassol, there are other duties divided between them. Lexi manages the money, more or less, and Kolya manages the stocks and staff. Which makes them equal. Kolya is certainly more the figure you’d imagine for a nightclub manager: big, brusque, tattoos running fist to fist, while Lexi looks like he should be running a boutique. If there is a hierarchy his worry is that Lexi is possibly the man in control.

Tomas understands that the manager he was watching was Lexi.

The boy won’t drop the subject. It’s the way people listen to Lexi, give him attention, the way they really seem to like him that gets under his skin, and he doesn’t know why. Lexi is a waste of space: the man is so tedious atoms unwind around him, tire of life, cohesion, basic physical principles, everything
undoes
, gives up, DNA unravels, brains melt, entire species evaporate, the universe dissolves.

The people who come to the club, Sol has to admit, aren’t so pretty, and charging a higher entrance fee has done nothing to improve the clientele. The talent is seriously lacking. His own compatriots aren’t much to go by. Entrance at least requires footwear, shorts or a skirt, some kind of top, but every night they turn away boys in fancy dress or shirtless, stag parties, hen parties, girls in thongs, and one time, a girl in sandals and gold makeup, nothing else. The police in both towns are regular visitors, known by their first names. Kolya has a talent for looking after them. Kolya is a hulking Cossack, hairy shoulders, broad and solid, the man is both architectural and animal, which makes him what? Some kind of a machine. Vast and bald. Sol admits that Kolya looks after him, makes sure he keeps out of trouble. Kolya knows Sol’s father,
they’ve worked together
, which either enhances or complicates their association, although this link is deliberately under-discussed.

Sol’s monologue runs freestyle, but returns to Lexi, his pet hate. Tomas wants to know why the manager of the club at Larnaca is here in the evening in Limassol, instead of watching over his own business.

Sol doesn’t know the answer, but that’s exactly what he’s talking about. ‘Like there’s a specific way everything has to be done.’

The people who know him (namely Kolya, Matti, Max) know not to ask Sol about boarding school, but Lexi won’t leave it alone. It’s as if Sol’s schooling in England, in the US, in Switzerland, is what makes him interesting, when in fact, everybody knows, the school you go to is just about how much money your parents are prepared to spend. Sol’s dislike is long established. It isn’t that Lexi likes him, not in that way. Sol doesn’t have to worry about that. Lexi goes with the dancers, the boys, the ‘go-go’s’, as a consequence Lexi’s year, so far, has been a series of sulks and pointless crushes, except now he’s met this
Fritz
, this German and everything’s hunky-dory. Sol isn’t judgemental, he really doesn’t mind people like Lexi. That isn’t his problem. His problem is that the man doesn’t
partake
in the way everyone else partakes in substances and pleasure, and nothing dampens a buzz more than a superior
govno
constantly giving you the disapproving eye. And so what if Lexi really runs the place? You know, it’s not like Sol is looking for a career. All he wants, until he starts university, is some major distraction.

Sol asks if Tomas would like a drink. Tomas says he has an idea. He’d like to play cards with the manager. What was his name? Kolya?

Sol looks at him, a little astonished. ‘You can’t win.’

‘Perhaps. I’d like to figure out how he does it.’

The boy appears to understand but doesn’t move.

‘I’m serious. Go see if he’s interested.’

‘You’ll lose.’

Tomas shrugs. ‘I’ll lose,’ he says, ‘but I’ll learn how he does it.’

Kolya agrees to a game. He sends over drinks, then sits with him. Sol sits separately and watches as Kolya and Tomas become acquainted. The small booths at the back of the club are intimate enough, underlit against the cavernous dance floor, but the sound bounces, is so enhanced, so deep and penetrating, that every conversation is busy with head ducking, repetition, gestures.

He follows Sol and Kolya through the club to the lower office. They each walk in pace to the beat. Once Sol notices this he breaks his stride. Kolya holds the office door open and asks why Sol is smiling.

Lit by a line of fluorescent light, the office is small and cluttered with equipment, buckets, and crates, and the smell reminds Tomas of boiled cabbage. He gives small answers to Kolya’s questions but clearly wants the game to start. When it does start, he loses every hand.

Kolya asks Sol to accompany Berens to the ATM. As they walk they make small talk.

He asks Tomas if he learned anything.

‘How he does it?’

Tomas nods, thoughtfully. ‘Possibly. I have an idea.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Mind?’

‘Losing?’

Kolya has no respect for losers, not in the club, and not out of it. Sol holds the same ideas. ‘We own this island. They don’t even know how much. They have no idea. They like this,’ he can’t think of the word, ‘
half-ness
. They like to be known only for their disagreement. Everyone in this country is an amateur.’

The national debt is a subject of deep distaste to Kolya and Sol alike. Both value business and business ethics, and deeply mistrust the idea of compounded debt. That an entire nation would impoverish itself without knowing what it is doing is pathetic. A kind of death. It’s worse that they accept help, and seem happy to be weak. He calls them zombies. Undead. It isn’t that Europe is corrupt, so much, as weak and slothful. Yes, sloth. This is the nature of their greed. There have been demonstrations, which makes Sol suck in breath between his teeth. Water cannon. Rubber bullets. Hoses. When people lose their houses they will properly understand their folly.

Tomas takes the money from the machine, counts it into Sol’s hand. He tells him to be careful walking back. Sol thinks this is funny, how some men speak to him as if he were still a boy.

11.4

On the Monday Rike comes to the apartment early, deliberately, she says, because she wants to try out a new café. Her sister has rated the mozzarella as
unsurpassable.
It’s the real thing, proper buffalo mozzarella. Isa is an authority, and now she is pregnant she’s not allowed to eat cheese with any kind of live culture. In this café they keep the mozzarella in a clear plastic barrel filled with briny-looking milt (it actually looks like breast milk). According to Isa this is the freshest mozzarella outside of Italy. If you want it any fresher you’d have to lay under a buffalo’s teat.

She looks tired. Tomas asks her how she is, says that she doesn’t look her usual self, and gives a good smile, as if it might matter to him that she is out of sorts.

‘My brother,’ Rike delivers the news without emphasis, ‘came over on Saturday.’ She rubs her face, runs her hand alongside her nose. It’s an ungracious gesture, a range of expression he hasn’t seen from her before. ‘It was awful. Just awful.’

‘What happened?’

‘I can’t describe it. Just,
horrible
. And my sister. I couldn’t believe it was happening. When he left he was really angry. We don’t know where he is.’ Rike grimaces. ‘This is just like him. He makes a mess of everything then disappears, and leaves everyone else to clear up. When I first arrived, Henning warned me about things I shouldn’t do while I was in Cyprus. His work is sensitive. If things even look wrong he could be sent back to Germany and they would never return to Syria. It’s a huge pressure for him. Even Isa takes this seriously. On some level it just doesn’t register with Mattaus. He just doesn’t care how much it matters to other people.’

Mattaus has always been selfish. That’s his problem. But nobody sees this. Everybody
likes
him. (She just can’t believe this. How does it happen?) Everybody sees what he wants them to see. He manipulates people and they just don’t get it. He attracts the nicest men, and it always ends badly. Always.

Tomas agrees. She’s probably right. But this is family, right? Don’t sisters always disapprove?

‘I didn’t even know he was in Cyprus.’ Rike shrugs. ‘We’ll not hear from him, and then one day, out of the blue, he’ll show up, expecting everything to be forgiven. He’ll make a joke out of it. A story.
Remember that time . . .
’

‘And for your brother-in-law, has he made much trouble?’

‘I really don’t know. Henning takes it all pretty seriously. It’ll probably blow over, but Henning is the kind of man who’d feel obliged to tell someone about it. And that would be very unwise. It’s just a bad situation. Mattaus said he recognized your name?’

‘It’s common. Berens. Not so rare.’