Our Kind of Traitor

one brilliant idea of the holiday: cricket. Well, I mean, not so brilliant if you know Perry. Give him a dog-chewed ball and a bit of old driftwood and he’s lost to all non-cricketing mankind. Aren’t you?’

‘We took the game extremely seriously, as one should,’ Perry agreed, frowning unconvincingly through his smile. ‘We built a wicket out of driftwood, put twigs on top for bails, the marina people found us a bat and ball of sorts, we rounded up a clutch of Rastas and ancient Brits for the outfield, and all of a sudden we had six a side, Russia versus the rest of the world, a sporting first. I sent the boys off to persuade Natasha to come and keep wicket, but they came back saying she was reading some guy called Turgenev they pretended they’d never heard of. Our next job was imparting the sacred Laws of Cricket to’ – the smile widening into a broad grin – ‘well, some pretty lawless chaps. Not the ancient Brits or the Rastas, of course. They were cricketers born and bred. But the young Dimas were internats. They’d played a bit of baseball, but didn’t take at all kindly to being told they had to bowl a ball and not chuck it. The small girls needed a bit of handling, but once we’d got the ancient Brits batting we could use them as runners. If the girls got bored, Gail swept them off for drinks and a swim. Didn’t you?’

‘We’d decided that the great thing was to keep them moving,’ Gail explained, determinedly sharing Perry’s brightness. ‘Not give them too much time to brood. The boys were going to have a high old time whatever we did. And for the girls – well, as far as I was concerned, just getting a smile out of them was … I mean, Christ …’ and left the rest unsaid.

Seeing Gail in difficulties, Perry quickly stepped in:

‘Very difficult to make a decent cricket pitch out of that soft sand,’ he explained to Luke, while she collected herself. ‘Bowlers get bogged down, batsmen capsize, you can imagine.’

‘I can indeed,’ Luke agreed heartily, quick to pick up Perry’s tone and match it.

‘Not that it mattered a hoot. Everyone had a blast and the winning side got ice creams. We called it a draw so both sides got ’em,’ said Perry.

‘Paid for by the new presiding uncle, I trust?’ Luke suggested.

‘I’d put a stop to that,’ Perry said. ‘The ice creams were strictly on us.’

With Gail recovered, Luke’s voice took on a more serious note:

‘And it was while both sides were winning – actually quite late in the match – that you saw inside the parked people carrier? Have I got that right?’

‘We were thinking of drawing stumps,’ Perry agreed. ‘And suddenly the side door of the carrier opened and there they were. Maybe they wanted a bit of fresh air. Or a clearer look. God knows. It was like a royal visit. An incognito one.’

‘How long had the side door been open?’

Perry on guard over his celebrated memory. Perry the perfect witness, never trusting himself, never answering too fast, always holding himself to account. Another Perry that Gail loved.

‘Don’t know actually, Luke. Can’t say exactly. We can’t’ – with a glance at Gail, who shook her head to say she couldn’t either. ‘I looked; Gail saw me looking, didn’t you? So she looked. We both saw them. Dima and Tamara, side by side and bolt upright, the dark and the light, the thin and the fat, staring at us from the back of the carrier. Then wham, and the door slides shut.’

‘Staring, not smiling, as it were,’ Luke suggested lightly, while he made a note.

‘There was something – well, I said it already – regal about him. Yes. About both of them. The royal Dimas. If one of them had reached out and pulled a silk tassel for the coachman to drive on, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised.’ He dwelled on this idea, then approved it with a nod. ‘On an island, big people seem bigger. And the Dimas were – well, big people. Still are.’

Yvonne has yet another photograph for them to consider, this time a police mugshot in black and white: full face and side view, two black eyes, one black eye. And the smashed and swollen mouth of somebody who has just made a voluntary statement. At the sight of it, Gail wrinkles her nose in disapproval. She glances at Perry and they agree: nobody we know.

But Scottish Yvonne is not disheartened:

‘So if I put a bit of curly wig on him, imagine for a moment, and if I cleaned his face up a wee bit for him, do the two of you not think this might just possibly be your fitness freak released from an Italian gaol last December at all?’

They think it might well be. Drawing closer to each other, they are sure.

* * *

Early notice of the invitation was delivered by the venerable Ambrose in the Captain’s Deck restaurant the same evening, while he was pouring wine for Perry to sample. Perry the puritan son doesn’t do voices. Gail the actors’ daughter does them all. She awards herself the part of the venerable Ambrose:

‘“And tomorrow night I’m going to have to forgo the pleasure of serving you young folks. You know why? Because you young folks will be the honoured surprise guests of Mr Dima and his lady wife on the occasion of the fourteenth birthday of their twin sons who, so I hear say, you have personally introduced to the noble art of cricket. And my Elspeth, she has made the biggest, finest walnut-whirl cake you ever saw. Any bigger, why, Miss Gail, by all accounts those kids would have you jump right out of it, they love you so deep.”’

For his final flourish, Ambrose handed them an envelope inscribed: To Mr Perry and Miss Gail. Inside, were two of Dima’s business cards, white and deckle-edged like wedding invitations, giving his full name: Dmitri Vladimirovich Krasnov, European Director, The Arena Multi Global Trading Conglomerate of Nicosia, Cyprus. And beneath it, the address of his company’s website, and an address in Berne styled Residence and Company Offices.

4

If it occurred to either of them to decline Dima’s invitation, they never admitted it to one another, said Gail:

‘We were in it for the children. Two hulking teenaged twin boys were having a birthday: great. That was how the invitation was sold to us, and it’s how we bought into it. But for me it was about the two girls’ – again privately congratulating herself on not mentioning Natasha – ‘whereas for Perry’ – she shot a doubtful glance at him.

‘For Perry what?’ Luke asked, when Perry did not respond.

She was already pulling back, protecting her man. ‘He was just so fascinated by it all. Weren’t you, Perry? Dima, who he was, the life-force, the formed man. This outlaw band of Russians. The danger. The sheer differentness. You were – well – connecting. Is that unfair?’

‘Sounds a bit like psycho-babble to me,’ Perry said gruffly, retreating into himself.

Little Luke, ever the conciliator, darted in to intervene. ‘So basically, mixed motives on both your sides,’ he suggested, in the manner of a man familiar with mixed motives. ‘Nothing wrong with that, surely? It’s a pretty mixed scene. Vanya’s gun. Tales of Russian cash in laundry baskets. Two small orphan girls desperately in need of you – maybe the adults too, for all you knew. And it was the twin boys’ birthday. I mean, how, as two decent people, could you resist?’

‘On an island,’ Gail reminded him.

‘Exactly. And on top of it all, dare one say, you were jolly curious. And why shouldn’t you be? I mean, that’s a pretty heady mix. I’m sure I’d have fallen for it.’

Gail was sure he would too. She had a feeling that, in his time, little Luke had fallen for most things, and was a bit worried about himself in consequence.

‘And Dima,’ she insisted. ‘Dima was the big lure for you, Perry, admit it. You said so at the time. It was the children for me, but when push came to shove it was Dima for you. We discussed it only a few days ago, remember?’

She meant: while you were penning your bloody document, and I was a Christian slave.