All That Man Is (37 page)

Hans-Pieter ups the tempo of the wipers.

So much for the weather forecast.

Maria turns to Hans-Pieter to make a similar point. She has a fat whitehead near her mouth. A stud in her nose. He's welcome to her, Murray thinks.

Once they hit the motorway it takes an hour and a half. Murray nods off. Wakes to stark limestone hills. Then the sea, greyly glittering. They park in a municipal lot – plenty of space, today – and find a place for lunch. A mixed grill for Murray, with that sweetish red-pepper sauce they do here. A glass of the local plonk. A squall passing outside. Maria is being friendly. She does most of the talking. Hans-Pieter hardly says anything. He picks at his grilled fish, prising flesh from bone, and rarely lifts his eyes from it. The lazy silence of a man in settled circumstances, letting his other half entertain the guest. Intervenes to correct her sometimes, that's all. She has rings on most of her fingers. Blue eyeshadow. She's encouraging Murray to go to the police – they're still talking about that. It's what they've been talking about for a week. He hasn't even told them the true amount Blago took from him. He doesn't want to talk about it. He wants to forget all that. She's just trying to be nice, though. Shouldn't be impatient with her.

‘What's the point?' he says. ‘They'll not find him.'

She is adamant. ‘How do you
know
?'

She just likes the drama of it, he thinks. At least it's something –
something
has happened at least.

‘You can't let him get away with it!' she insists.

‘I shouldn't have trusted him,' Murray tells her, feeling the wine a bit. ‘I was an idiot. End of.'

It's raining outside again.

Murray and Maria have flaming sambucas.

I was an idiot. End of.
Put that on my fucking tombstone, Murray thinks as they leave and head for the sea – down some steps, through some drizzly streets. He has dropped back now. Hans-Pieter and Maria are hand in hand, up ahead of him. Jack Sprat would eat no fat … That's what they look like, those two – Jack Sprat and the wife.

No, he's okay, Hans-Pieter, the shy Dutchman in his duffel coat.

She's okay as well, waddling along next to him.

They're my only friends, anyway.

I was an idiot. End of.

There aren't really beaches here. There are walkways along the shore, winding paved paths, overleaned by spry old pines. Dry patches of paving stones under the pines. On one side as they walk, former villas of Austro-Hungarian notables, now hotels. On the other side, steep steps or even ladders down to strips of shingle, or empty terraces, or little marinas. The sloshing sea. Slapping at green-matted walls. At squeaking jetties.

He is kissing her. Hans-Pieter is kissing Maria, leaning down to her, snogging in the shelter of his upturned collar.

They are about twenty yards ahead of him. They seem to have forgotten he is there. Murray stops, to save himself embarrassment, and turns to the sea.

Hooded, he takes up a position of heroic reflection, hands resting on the top bar of the metal railing that follows the edge of the walkway, eyes seeping water and fixed on the distant island, far out over the windy inlet, no more than a dark horizontal smudge.

And, nearer, in the middle distance, some sort of yacht. More of a fucking ship, actually. How many decks does that thing
have
? Four, five? Must be a hundred yards long, at least. It moves on the waves, you can see, if you keep your eyes on it.

And look at that! Look at the way the sunlight falls down between the clouds! White the sea underneath it. Sudden islands of blinding white. The yacht turns black, waves blink around it. Sudden islands of blinding white. And in Murray, watching, an unfamiliar euphoria. Sudden islands of blinding white. Then melt away. Dull sea.

Damp wind in his face.

He turns his head in the hood of his jacket, sees the lovers still necking further up the walkway, in the shelter of a wind-mangled pine.

Fuck it.

His eyes find the superyacht again.

And fuck that as well.

Aye, fuck the lot of it.

Yesterday. In the afternoon, he left the house in Lowndes Square, the huge house still holding the shock of what had happened. Chelsea, seen through the window of the Maybach. Sloane Street, its familiar shops – Hermès, Ermenegildo Zegna. Cheyne Walk. Traffic heavyish at four. Dark November day. Low tide, the Thames, dull mudflats. That park, on the other side, the south side. Then small streets, and the heliport. The windy platform over the water. The loud, leather-trimmed pod of the Sikorsky. They were about to fly upriver, over the western districts of London. As the helicopter turned over the water, wavelets fleeing from the downdraught, he looked back at it, at London, the place that for some years had been his home. Then it was dropping away, to something merely schematic, a monochrome expanse spread out in the light of the late-autumn afternoon. He would never see it again.

The decision had been made standing at a window in Lowndes Square, staring out. The decision to jump into the sea. To drown himself. It had seemed like some sort of solution.

Farnborough airport.

A two-hour flight to Venice.

From Venice airport, a hired limousine.

Venice itself hidden in darkness and drizzle. It was there, somewhere, on the other side of the water, an eroding monument to lost wealth, to lost power.

The harsh, tall light of the docks. The hum of the pump as the yacht took on fuel. The smell of the fuel. Someone holding an umbrella.

And Enzo, the first officer, waiting for him at the end of a strip of drizzle-wet carpet: ‘Welcome aboard, sir.'

Enzo told him that they would be all set in half an hour, wanted to know where they were headed.

A pause.

He had not thought about it. It made no difference.

‘Uh,' he said. ‘Corfu.'

Enzo nodded, smiled.

And Mark, the head steward: ‘Will sir be dining this evening?'

‘Just a snack,' he said to him. ‘Thank you.'

It arrived, later, with a half-bottle of Barbaresco. He did not touch the food. He had a glass of the Barbaresco.

It was from his own estate, a property he had acquired some years ago. An impulsive thing. He has only been there once. He finds it hard to picture the place. They had flown over it in the helicopter, he and the previous owner, a Piedmontese or Savoyard aristocrat, a youngish man, pointing things out to him, shouting over the shriek of the machine …

Silence.

He was lying on the bed, waiting for the yacht to start moving.

He did not mean to fall asleep. He meant to jump into the sea. He meant to drown himself. And yet, for the first time in many days, he simply fell asleep.

In the morning, the yacht is at anchor, a kilometre or two from the Croatian shore. Enzo has phoned to say there is a storm out in the Adriatic. He has apologised for the delay, and said they will be on the move again at some point in the afternoon, when the storm out at sea has passed.

Nearer the shore, where the yacht is anchored, it is a windy, unpleasant day. Sometimes rain.

He turns down Mark's suggestion, in the middle of the morning, to take the launch and visit the little seaside town that they can see.

Instead, he picks at his lunch in the small private dining room – a single table, able to seat only eight – on the middle deck.

He feels like an imposter in the world of the living, still in the same clothes he fell asleep in, still carrying the stale, days-old scent of Cartier Pasha.

When he woke up this morning, grey light was gathering at the windows. Lifting his head, he looked at it, puzzled. Then he understood. One more day.

It would have to be done at night. No one would notice then, and try to save him. No one would notice – just, in the morning, his quarters empty, and all around the inscrutable sea. The long, dissolving wake.

He is a man in his sixties, with a heavy paunch. A hard handsome face. He has lost much of his hair. He is wearing a shirt with an exaggeratedly large collar, black silk. White leather shoes.

The sea is blue like flint and cold and unforgiving. Squally rain speckles the tall windows of the private dining room, and across the restless grey water, the Croatian town huddles on the coast. Stony hills loom above it, collide with clouds.

He puts down his fork and summons Mark. When he appears, he asks him for a cigar, and Mark addresses himself to the humidor.

Mark presents him with the cigar and asks whether he would like a digestif. A shake of the head.

‘Will that be all then, sir?' Mark asks. Mark is from Sunderland.

‘Yes. Thank you.'

With the laden tray, Mark leaves.

Some minutes later the cigar is still unlit.

He lets himself out onto the terrace and stands there, looking down at the surface of the sea, which moves with smooth, heavy movements.

Smooth, heavy movements.

Heavy shapes finding the light and losing it as they move.

Heavy, more than anything.

Heavy.

And he wonders, half-hypnotised by the heavy shapes finding and losing the light:
How much does the sea weigh?
And then, his logical mind working on the question:
What is the volume of the sea?
And then:
What is its average depth? What is its surface area?
Those two facts, he thinks, must be easy to find out – and then you would have the answer, since the volume of water is effectively the same thing as the weight.

He steps inside, out of the wind, and summons Mark.

When the steward appears, he says, ‘Mark, I want you to find out two things for me.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘What is the average depth of the sea.'

‘Yes, sir,' Mark says.

‘And what is the surface area.'

‘Of the sea, sir?'

‘Yes.'

‘Anything else, sir?'

‘No.'

‘I'll find out for you, sir.'

‘Thank you, Mark.'

Alone, he waits impatiently for the numbers, and sitting at the dining-room table, finally he lights the cigar.

A few minutes later there is a little tap on the door.

‘Yes.'

‘I have that information for you, sir,' Mark says.

‘Yes?'

‘The average depth is three thousand, six hundred and eighty-two metres,' Mark says.

‘So deep …?' he murmurs, writing it down. ‘Okay …'

‘And the surface area is three hundred and sixty-one million square kilometres.'

‘You're sure?'

Mark hesitates. He googled the questions. His employer, though, only vaguely knows what Google is and probably thinks that Mark has spent the last few minutes phoning marine experts at the world's leading universities – people who would be happy to be interrupted in order to help him with his important work.

‘I did double-check, sir,' Mark says doubtfully.

‘Okay. For now this is okay.'

‘Do you need anything else, sir?'

‘Not now. Thank you.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Mark withdraws.

Excitedly, he is already doing the sums – on paper, as he was taught in a Soviet technical school, long ago.

The surface area is in square kilometres, so the first step is to convert that to square metres, one square kilometre being … being one
million
square metres …

And then multiply
that
by the average depth …

There are a lot of zeroes to write.

Which is the volume …

Which is the same as the weight in metric tonnes.

1,329,202,000,000,000,000 tonnes.

One point three million
trillion
tonnes.

Success!

The weight of the sea.

He throws down the pen, and tugs smoke triumphantly from the cigar. Shoves it out through his nostrils.

Then other questions start to trouble him.

The sea is salt water – does
that
affect the weight?

And what about the pressure? Does the pressure in the depths of the sea make a difference? Does a cubic metre of water, under the enormous pressure of the depths, weigh
more
than one metric tonne, perhaps?

More questions, then, for Mark, who is sent to look into them while his employer waits, finishing his cigar, hunched over his own reflection in the varnished tabletop.

Mark takes longer this time.

Nearly half an hour has passed when the little knock sounds.

And he finds, listening to Mark talking at some length about factors affecting the weight of salt water, that he has entirely lost interest in the subject.

The question of the effects of pressure on the mass of water is particularly long-winded, and he stops listening totally. He just sits there, studying the stub of his cigar. Mark's soft Geordie voice keeps talking for a while. Then it, too, stops.

There is a long silence.

‘Sir?' Mark says.

He seems to snap out of a trance. ‘Yes?'

‘Will that be all, sir?'

‘Yes. Thank you.'

‘Thank
you
, sir.'

*

It is late afternoon. The twin Pielstick diesel engines have started, and the hundred-and-forty-metre-long yacht is on the move again. Light still lies on the open sea. Hard late light on individual dark waves. The distant shore slides very slowly past. It is dissolving in the early twilight, is indistinct now except for the lights that appear, the tiny silent lights of towns.

Enzo, in his smart white uniform, personally delivers the weather outlook – ‘smooth sailing' – and says that they will arrive at Kérkira in the morning, at about ten o'clock. Will sir wish to dock there? Should he arrange facilities to do so?

‘No.'

And where will we be heading, from Corfu?

‘I don't know.'

Enzo nods tolerantly. He waits for a moment – sometimes his employer, if he is on his own, as now, invites his Maltese first officer to join him for a drink at this hour. They drink whisky and talk about ships, about the sea. He asks Enzo, sometimes, about his former life as the master of an oil tanker, or lectures him on politics, economics, the state of the world. Not today. He is not in a talkative mood.