Читать книгу The Istanbul Puzzle - Laurence O’Bryan - Страница 15

Chapter 10

The driver sped through the still-busy streets. I was in the back again. Inspector Erdinc had stayed in the hospital. His other colleague had disappeared. My forehead was pounding as if I had a migraine.

A lot of things had been stirred up in me in the last few hours. There were so many links to the past in this city. So much was different here.

My fists were clenched as we sped onto a wide, low bridge. It had black chest-high iron railings on each side. Below, eel-black water slid past. On the far side of the bridge the shadow of a hill loomed, crowned with the spot-lit outlines of Topkapi Palace, the palace of the Ottoman Sultans, and the dome of Hagia Sophia. The dome was glowing with yellow light, and with its four minarets it looked like an oil painting come to life. Above, stars shone weakly through a haze. We were crossing the Golden Horn.

I asked the driver how soon we would get to the hotel. He didn’t answer. I had only one word of Turkish – Merhaba, hello – so I decided to shut up.

He stared at me in his rear-view mirror. Then he touched one of those blue and white circular evil-eye charms they hang everywhere in Turkey. When we stopped at the traffic lights on the far side of the bridge he spoke.

‘Your friend, he played a dangerous game, no?’

His eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror.

I looked over my shoulder. There was a car with blacked-out windows behind us.

‘It shouldn’t have been dangerous,’ I said.

He tutted, as if he didn’t believe me. The lights changed. We sped on, cutting across two lanes in a way that would have spelled disaster in London.

He turned the radio on. A wild song filled the car, part Arab lament, part Latin dance beat. Then he turned the radio down, as if he’d remembered he shouldn’t be playing music while on official business.

Then we were rumbling up a cobbled street and after another tight turn, with the minarets and dome of Hagia Sophia looming over us, we stopped in front of a parchment- yellow building. It was an Ottoman era, five-tier, wedding-cake of an edifice. It dominated one whole side of a narrow and steep side street.

Alek had picked the hotel, he’d said, because it was in the oldest part of Istanbul, near the summit of the hill Hagia Sophia was on. That was where the original Greek colony had been founded by someone called Byzas hundreds of years before Alexander the Great’s family even owned a single olive tree.

The site had been chosen for reasons any child would understand. It was easily defendable. It had water on three sides; the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn.

Not far from the hotel were the remnants of the old Roman Hippodrome, a stadium Ben Hur might have raced in.

The Roman imperial legacy here was only part of the history of the place though. Within strolling distance of the hotel was the palace and harem of the Ottoman sultans, rulers of an empire which at one time stretched from Egypt almost to Vienna.

I stepped out of the car. Old stone walls and sun-bleached Ottoman-era buildings lined the street. The hotel brooded above me. It felt strange, unsettling, to be following in Alek’s footsteps, seeing things he’d seen only a few days before.

I stood for a moment watching the police car pull away. I could smell jasmine on the warm air, hear laughter, voices. I touched the yellow plaster of the hotel wall as I climbed the stairs from the street.

As soon as I entered the building I was hit by a blast of air conditioning. The smiling lady behind the glass-topped ultra-modern reception desk had the blondest hair I’d seen in a long time. She was friendly, and very sympathetic, after I gave her my name and told her I was a colleague of Alek’s.

‘We are all so sorry about what happened. We heard from the police that Mr Zegliwski had an accident. It’s terrible. He was so nice. What happened to him? Do you know?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t feel like telling her though, so I added. ‘And thanks. I appreciate your concern.’

She smiled, then held a finger in the air, as if she was trying to remember something. After a moment, she said, ‘There’s something here for Mr Zegliwski.’

She turned, scanned the pigeon holes that filled the wall behind her until she found what she was looking for – a large brown envelope. She held it out in front of her triumphantly, to show me what was written on it. Mr Zegliwski.

I took the envelope. As I walked to the lift I squeezed it gently. It felt like there were a few sheets of paper in it, and something else at the bottom.

A man in a puffy black jacket stared at me from an oversized leather sofa at the far end of the reception area. He gave me the creeps. I imagined his corpulent boss entertaining some underage hooker or three upstairs.

As I waited for the lift to reach the fifth floor, I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and looked inside. A silver key-ring, with one of those USB memory sticks attached, lay in the bottom of the envelope. I pulled it out, looked at it, then put it in my pocket. The only other thing in the envelope were some photos.

I almost dropped them on the white marble floor of the hallway as I juggled my room card and bag. It wasn’t until I was inside that I got a chance to look at the photos properly.

One of them was of a woman with long black hair and a winning smile. Alek had clearly been busy. Something tightened in my chest. Did she know what had happened to him? My shoulders hunched, as the weight of his death bore down on me. There was one thing I was going to promise myself, and Alek. Whatever happened, I would find out who had done this.

I steadied myself, looked at the photos again.

Two didn’t fit with the rest. One was of a crumbling floor mosaic. Debris lay scattered around it. The other was of the inside of a brick-lined tunnel. It had an arched ceiling, sloping downwards. A yellow marble plaque hung on the wall near the top of the tunnel. I could just about make out what was carved on it; scales with a sword lying across its pans.

I put the photos on the round table near the window. I couldn’t make sense of them now. And I didn’t want to think about them. I looked around. The room was a pastiche of late Ottoman style, decorated in reds and golds. Every piece of furniture was covered in a thick layer of varnish.

After a quick shower I turned off the bedside light and lay staring at the shadows, my mind drifting. A faint aroma came to me. The smell of roses. It reminded me of Irene. It would have been good to be able to call her now, to talk all this through with her.

When I met Irene she’d been studying medicine. She hadn’t been interested in me initially, but I found out she used to drink in the university bar before getting her train home. A week later we had our first date. A walk in Hyde Park. She was a great listener.

We got married three months after I graduated. One of her friends used to tease us about how perfect our lives were, how lucky we’d both been to be doing so well so soon after graduating.

And then she’d volunteered to go to Afghanistan with the Territorial Army. They needed doctors. Three of them had volunteered from her hospital. That had been reassuring. I’d imagined stupidly, so stupidly, that that meant there would be safety in numbers. That the odds were against all three of them being killed. Their tour started two years and three months ago.

And she was the one who didn’t make it back. A roadside bomb, an IED – an Improvised Explosive Device – killed her two weeks into the mission.

And for a long time I felt powerless and angry, all at the same time. Irene had been about all that was good about England. All she’d ever wanted to do was help people. It wasn’t right that she’d died. Not for one second.

For months after it happened I fantasised about her walking through our front door. And I used to hope, despite everything logical, that I’d wake up one day to find her beside me again.

Tragedy warps everything.

I was slipping away, on the edge of consciousness, back in London, walking towards Buckingham Palace. A man in a long white shirt carrying a pitcher of water was coming towards me. I turned my head. Somebody was behind me, way in the distance. I knew who it was. But she was so far away. I turned, ran, stumbled.

I woke up, sickly unease rising through me. The floor-to-ceiling curtains were shadows in the darkness. I could make out the vague outlines of the gilt-edged prints of Ottoman Istanbul that hung in a row on the wall, like Janissaries, the Sultan’s guards, standing to attention.

Then I felt something move. There was something in the bed with me.

Bloody hell! I swung my fist, slammed it into the mattress, bounced up out of the bed, scrambled for the light switch by the bathroom door.

The room flooded with jaundiced light.

There was nothing. Nothing in the bed. Nothing under it. Was I going mad?

Relief soaked through me. Had it been an animal, a spider, something like that? My skin crawled. I should never have left the window open.

The phone rang.

‘Mr Ryan?’ A woman’s voice, anxious. It was the receptionist who’d given me that envelope. I sat on the bed, cradling the telephone against my bare shoulder. The gossamer breeze from the window felt like water running over my skin.

‘Yes?’

‘Two men are on the way up to see you, Mr Ryan.’

‘What?’

The line went dead. I could hear a truck grinding its gears outside.

For a second I didn’t understand why she’d called. Then it came to me. She was warning me.

A sharp knock – rat tat tat – sounded from the door. The do-not-disturb sign hanging on the doorknob vibrated.

That was quick. Then the knock came again. It was even more insistent this time.

I walked over to the door, put my eye to the viewer. Nothing. Just blackness. Was it broken?

‘Come on, Mr Ryan,’ an officious female voice called out. Someone English.

‘Hold on,’ I replied. I grabbed a fresh T-shirt from my bag and pulled it over my head. An even sharper knock sounded.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

‘Coming.’ What the hell was the hurry? I pulled on my chinos, pushed my feet into suede moccasins.

Another knock.

RAT TAT-TAT TAT-TAT.

‘Come on!’ She sounded petulant, as if she hadn’t heard my replies, or had heard, but didn’t think I was moving fast enough.

I jerked the door open but held my foot against it, just in case I needed to close it in a hurry.

An attractive-looking woman was standing outside. She was in her late twenties, I guessed, and was wearing a tight high-necked black T-shirt. Her face was symmetrical, her eyes dark green, serious, her black hair pulled back tight. She had a thin gold chain around her neck. Despite her slim frame, she was clearly someone who could look after herself.

And she was holding an identity card in my face. I saw a severe-looking face and an official stamp, a triangle with a crown and the letters EIIR above it, and the words ‘British Consulate’ below. Then the card vanished before I had a chance to read any more. I stood up a little straighter. And then it came to me. This was the woman from one of Alek’s photos.

‘Come with me, Mr Ryan. Now.’ She glanced towards the lifts.

‘There are some people on the way up that you don’t want to meet. They were demanding to know your room number down at reception. You have to come with me. I mean it.’ She looked up and down the corridor, as if expecting to be interrupted at any moment. I heard a metallic thrum as the lift rose towards us. Then there was a creaking noise. It had stopped at a lower floor, maybe the one below us.

I could smell her perfume. It was faint, sweet.

‘Did you know Alek?’

A flicker of hesitation crossed her face.

‘My name’s Isabel Sharp. I was Alek’s liaison officer at the Consulate. Come on, Mr Ryan. If you don’t want to end up like him.’

I felt my back pocket. My wallet was there. I could get another room pass. I was dressed. I had my shoes on.

‘OK.’

She moved quickly. My room door closed behind me with a clunk. She was already halfway to a door down the corridor with an ‘Exit’ sign above it.

She held the door open for me, closed it after I’d passed through.

‘I thought I was gonna be met at the airport?’ I said, still unsure why I was following her.

‘That was a little misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘But I’m here now.’ She started down the carpeted stairs. I followed.

I was going to ask her why she was moving so fast, when I heard a juddering bang above us, as if someone had slammed a door open.

‘They’re coming,’ she said. I barely heard her. A muffled clatter of footsteps echoed from above.

She took the next set of stairs in two jumps.

Someone shouted. Then a crisp popping sound filled the stairwell. It was accompanied by a shrill pinging near me. A rain of concrete chips and dust fell around my head. Something had hit the wall above me!

‘Bastards,’ she said, in a low voice, as if she was talking to herself. I was barely keeping up with her.

My heart was pounding.

Something struck the metal handrail behind me. It squealed. I jerked my hand away from it.

Adrenaline pumped through me, tingling every muscle. The hair on my body stood up straight. My scalp felt tight.

I was taking three steps at a time, sometimes four. I could feel the rough concrete under the thin carpet as I landed on each step. Then Isabel almost fell. I put a hand under her arm, held her up. She regained her footing. We kept going.

The sound of running feet, voices, wasn’t far above us now. They were catching up. I looked behind. All I could see was a shadowy blur coming down.

Isabel’s face was pale.

The backs of my legs were straining. Who the hell were they?

At the bottom of the stairwell I overtook Isabel, barged through the fire exit door, held it open for her. The deafening noise of an alarm rang out above our heads.

Then she was sprinting like an Olympic runner down the deserted concrete laneway in front of us. I went after her, my lungs dragging in air. She was heading for a black Range Rover, a giant cockroach resting on oversized tyres.

The Range Rover’s lights flickered as we came up to it. For a moment I thought there might be someone in it.

‘Get in,’ she roared, jerking open the driver’s door.

As I slammed the passenger door closed, a sense of security enveloped me. Then I heard muffled shouts. I turned, looked through the back window. Two huge guys, one of them bald, had emerged from the fire exit door. The bald guy lifted his arm, pointed a gun at us.

There was a noise like fire crackers snapping.

‘Go!’ I shouted.

The engine of the Range Rover growled. I heard a whoosh, fans starting.

We jumped forward. There was a loud ding. I looked around.

The back window had taken a hit. The glass had a star in it now. Then another. But it didn’t shatter. We had bulletproof glass.

‘Put on your seat belt,’ she shouted.

A brick wall loomed. She swerved.

‘They’ll need a missile to stop us.’ She sounded triumphant.

We slid sideways, tyres squealing, onto an empty street. Exhilaration filled me. I was glad to be alive.

‘These diplomatic cars are worth every penny,’ she said. She was holding the steering wheel so tightly I could see her knuckles protruding through her pale skin.

‘Who they hell were they?’ I shouted.

‘I think a better question is, what the hell have you been up to that they want you so bad?’

‘I have no idea,’ I shouted. I took a deep breath, released my grip on the armrest, peeled my hand slowly from the plastic. I’d been holding it way too tight. I stared out the back window. There was no one coming after us. Isabel squealed around another turn. My shoulder banged against the window.

‘You better thank your guardian angel I didn’t get a taxi tonight,’ she continued.

I settled back in my seat, rubbed my elbow. It throbbed lightly. The inside of the Range Rover was a cocoon of black leather and brushed aluminium. A shiny logo sat at the centre of the polished walnut steering wheel. The vehicle was cavernous and it smelled of leather.

We turned the next corner a lot slower. Then, after examining the rear view mirror, Isabel sat back in her seat.

‘Do you have any idea what a bitch this car is to park?’ she said.

I was still thinking about how close the bastards had come. I looked at Isabel. She had tiny gold studs in her earlobes. They shone as we passed a street light.

She looked as if she’d done this sort of thing before. Only a few hairs had escaped from her ponytail. And they were flying gently in the breeze from the air conditioning.

The Range Rover growled as she changed gears. The steep side street we were on was empty. Pools of darkness crowded around lonely street lights. We bounced through a pothole.

‘You’re in good shape,’ she said, glancing in my direction. ‘You live in your gym, right?’

‘No. I free dive, run most days, but not usually for my life. Does this sort of stuff happen a lot to you?’

She shook her head.

‘No. Mostly I help businessmen and holidaymakers. And I rescue the unlucky from police custody.’

‘What do you think that lot were after?’

Her expression hardened, as if I’d insulted her. ‘Mr Ryan. This has to do with you and your colleague, Alek.’

‘Well, I’ve no idea why anyone would come after me like that. Has Istanbul gone mad?’

‘Not at all.’

I felt an ache in my arm. I rubbed it, moved it in its socket. Nothing seemed to be broken, but it was stiff and painful.

We stopped at a traffic light.

‘You obviously can’t go back to the hotel. I’ll take you somewhere else.’ It sounded as if she was going to find a kennel for a sick dog.

‘I can look after myself.’

‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Mr Ryan. Didn’t they teach you that at MIT?’ She looked at me, then at the traffic lights.

‘No, I was taught to look for explanations. And I still don’t have one for what just happened.’

‘Mr Ryan, when people get shot at here, it’s usually for a good reason, because of drugs or something worse.’

‘I’m not into drugs or something worse.’

She didn’t speak for a few seconds. ‘What about this project you and Alek were working on? Could it be something to do with that?’

‘I don’t think so. The project’s no big deal. There’s nothing controversial about it at all. We’re doing photographic work in Hagia Sophia for God’s sake. That’s it. What kind of joker is going to start killing because of that?’

‘Well, you’ve trodden on someone’s toes. Those thugs were prepared to kill you. And me, by the way, which I don’t appreciate one bit.’

As we drove on, she checked the mirror at regular intervals. My breathing had just about returned to normal, but my leg muscles were tight, as if I’d run a marathon, and my stomach felt weird, all hollow, as if I’d retched, even though I hadn’t.

‘Are you into antiquities, Mr Ryan? This place is awash with them. Maybe you have something those guys want, something of value.’ There was a suspicious edge to her voice.

‘You’re on the wrong track.’ Her insistence that all this was something to do with me was pissing me off.

‘We don’t deal in or smuggle antiquities at the Institute. I have nothing those guys could want.’ I made a show of patting my body.

My fingers touched the USB storage device in my trouser pocket. For a moment I considered not mentioning it, but I decided to take it out, to show her how little I’d picked up in the few hours I’d been here.

I pulled out the storage device, waved it dismissively in the air.

‘This is the only thing I’ve been given since I came here. It was in an envelope with some photos for Alek at the hotel. I don’t think they’d try to kill us for this.’

She reached for the USB key. ‘We’ll be the judge of that.’

I swung it away. ‘This is the property of my Institute.’ I hadn’t even looked at what was on it.

‘Give it to me, Mr Ryan.’ We were travelling through an obviously poorer district now. The houses crowded in on each side.

‘Or perhaps I should drop you here, if you’re going to be so uncooperative.’ She stopped at a corner, as if she meant to let me out.

‘I could outrun them better, without you holding me back,’ I said.

‘But their aim might improve.’

‘Tell me a good reason I should give it to you.’

She let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Look, beheadings are long out of fashion in Turkey. If they’ve started up again, there has to be something serious going down. We need to follow up anything that could help us find out why Alek was murdered, and who did it. That requires you to give me your full cooperation. Now please, can I have it?’ She held out her hand.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I want a copy of whatever’s on it. Agreed?’

She hesitated, then nodded.

I handed over the device.