She was smart too – I knew because I had read a transcript of the interview which the Bodrum cops had conducted with her on the night of the so-called accident. Told she wasn’t allowed to have a lawyer present, trying to understand a translator’s fractured English, exhausted and alone, she remained polite and helpful throughout the hours of questioning. Lose your temper in Turkey and – guilty or not – you could find yourself in a world of trouble. Intelligent and self-possessed – remember that, I thought.
Satisfied with the lights, she turned and opened one of the bottles of water.
‘The Turkish police told me you are the sole heir to your husband’s estate,’ I said, with as much neutrality as I could summon.
She took a drink. ‘Is this a formal interview, Mr Wilson?’ she asked sensibly.
‘No, but I can make it one if you want.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s no secret to it. Yes, I’m the heir.’
‘Was there a pre-nuptial agreement?’
She hesitated, and I could tell she wasn’t going to answer. ‘Our New York office can subpoena the documents if you want. From what you said earlier, I’m sure the lawyer or trustee would be happy to assist us.’
‘Yes, there was a pre-nup,’ she said, sucking it down.
‘What were the terms of that agreement if you got divorced?’
She took another drink. ‘For the first five years I got forty thousand dollars a year. After that, it rose by small amounts until I was fifty. Then – to use the lawyer’s term – I became “vested” and the pre-nup no longer applied.’
‘Forty thousand a year for five years,’ I said. ‘That must have been about what you were earning at Prada.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘And what do you get now that you are his widow?’
‘It’s a trust … it’s complicated – I’m not sure anyone knows exactly—’
‘How much?’ I repeated.
‘About one point two billion,’ she said, and turned away.
The figure hung in the air for a moment – figures like that often do – then she turned and looked at me. To my surprise, she was shaking with emotion, her eyes alive with anger.
‘Do you know why I was closing the shutter on the terrace? Do you know why I was up there? That was the bedroom my husband and I shared. I come over here from the boat every night, I walk up the lawn and I go to that room.
‘If I lie on the bed, I can smell him, I can believe that if I were to roll over he’d still be there.
‘People can say whatever they want about the money – some sheets in a bedroom in a rented house are all that I have left of him. I loved my husband, Mr Wilson.’
Her eyes welled up. She fought back the tears and, in that moment, she had such dignity and courage it was hard not to feel your heart go out to her. If it was an act, she needed to get her acceptance speech ready.
‘Now, I want you to leave. Any further questions, you can speak to the Turkish police. They’re in charge of the investigation, and they have a full record of the interview I gave. I’ve got nothing more to add.’
As I crossed the terrace, heading towards the front gate, my inclination was to believe her but, of course, you never know. About to turn the corner of the building, I glanced back. She was standing on the terrace, alone in the shadow of the brooding house, barefoot and achingly beautiful, staring towards the gazebo and the spot where her husband had died. I thought for a moment she was going to turn and look at me, but she didn’t.
I entered the long driveway, the night engulfed me and the sinister house receded into darkness. I had arrived with doubts and I left convinced that somebody had induced Dodge to swap his drugs for binoculars and take that last walk.
It was a good theory, but it wouldn’t suffice, not if I was going to stay in the game. Leyla Cumali would make sure of that – she had developed her own version of events and burdened it with her professional reputation. She couldn’t afford to be wrong, and she would do everything possible to send the American intruder on his way.
What I needed was proof.
Chapter Twenty-two
I WOULD NEVER have found it if it hadn’t been for a set of traffic lights.
I had driven down from the southern headland and hit the outskirts of the town at that time when restaurants transform into bars, women start thinking of ditching their stilettos and normally sober couples begin ordering just one more glass of raki.
The traffic lights – at a busy intersection with a club on one corner and a construction site on the other – changed from green to amber. I was close enough to have been able to run the light but, as there were so many mopeds working to their own rules and crowds of pedestrians with a buzz on, I decided not to risk it.
Waiting for the green, I glanced across at the construction site and among the graffiti supporting various political parties was a tattered poster advertising an all-night rave that had been held on the night of Zafer Bayrami. It showed a stylized graphic of the harbour, the French House on top of the headland and the huge ‘bomb of the phosphorus’ exploding above it. Shredded magnesium was what it was, I thought idly, remembering my chemistry classes at Caulfield Academy. It was the same material old-time photographers used in their exploding flashguns, I rambled on mentally.
Then an idea struck me that was so far out I had to repeat it to myself. After I had, it seemed even more outrageous.
I knew Dodge had been in the library when the starburst exploded – Cumali had said so, and there was no evidence to disprove it. It meant he would have been sitting in the leather armchair with a pair of large mirrors behind him when the magnesium burst outside the tall glass doors. There was a chance, I figured, that those seemingly unconnected elements – the magnesium and the mirrors – would provide the proof I desperately needed.
I was so engrossed by the idea that it took me a moment to register that the drivers behind were laying on their horns and I had a green. I hit the gas, rummaged one-handed through the files Cumali had given me, found a note to the medical examiner with her mobile number attached to it and pulled out my cellphone. I was halfway through dialling when I realized that a woman with a six-year-old child might not appreciate being woken and, anyway, what was she going to do that late at night?
Instead, I decided to drive to the hotel, get on the Internet, find the home page of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and hit every one of their email addresses with my phone number and an urgent request for help.
The Uffizi, a former home of the Medicis, was one of Europe’s greatest art museums, home to the finest collection of Renaissance paintings in the world. When I was young, Bill and Grace had taken me down its corridors half a dozen times and, on one occasion – the visit I had enjoyed most – Bill had arranged for us to tour what the museum director modestly called their ‘workshop’: an art-restoration facility unequalled on either side of the Atlantic. It was the workshop’s facilities I needed now, and I hoped that, when the museum staff arrived early in the morning, somebody would get my message into the right hands and they would contact me.
I pulled up at the hotel, parked the car and headed to the front desk to get my room key. The manager handed me another envelope.
‘I hope this is not news of the type which might cause Mr Brodie David Wilson the great sorrow,’ he said. The envelope was unsealed and I figured he had already read the message and it was almost certainly going to cause me the great sorrow.
I was right. It was from Leyla Cumali, telling me she had discussed with her superiors my ‘request’ for a delay in finalizing the investigation into Dodge’s death.
‘After examining the file and all supporting documents, my superiors have decided that no delay can be justified on investigative grounds.’
She said the chief of police and his senior officers had concluded it was a clear case of ‘death by misadventure’ and, as a result, the file would be forwarded to Ankara in the morning, Dodge’s body would be released to his wife for burial and th
e passports of their friends and acquaintances would be returned, allowing them to leave town immediately.
‘The Bodrum Police Department thanks you for your interest and have been proud to offer the FBI every possible assistance,’ she wrote. ‘Please feel free to keep the copy of the material we provided to you for your files.’
No wonder Cumali had seemed to surrender a little too easily. I was sunk if the cops implemented what they had decided – there would be no need for the FBI in Bodrum, and reopening the investigation would be impossible. The body would be gone and any potential witnesses scattered around the world. My inclination was to call Cumali immediately, but my calmer instincts prevailed. I could phone her in the morning; the priority was the Uffizi.
The manager was watching me closely, and I told him that life was full of the sorrow but to this type of problem Brodie David Wilson was no stranger. Hell, I was so tired I was starting to talk like him. I went to my room and, after bombing the Uffizi with emails, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed.
But there was one more call I had to make. I put the battery into my phone and called Ben Bradley. I told him the local cops were convinced Dodge’s death was accidental and were closing down the investigation.
‘Christ,’ Bradley replied.
‘Yeah. They’re wrong, too. I’m working on something to keep it open, but you’d better let the other interested parties know.’
‘Anything I can do?’ Bradley asked.
‘Appreciate it,’ I replied, ‘but my mess, my clean-up.’
I hung up but left the battery in the phone just in case there was an urgent response. As tired as I was, I hadn’t even got to sleep when it started ringing. ‘I forgot to ask,’ Bradley said. ‘When do you think you’ll know if your idea has worked?’
I knew it was from Whisperer, and I could almost hear the panic in his voice.
‘This time tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I may have to go to Italy in the morning.’
Chapter Twenty-three
I WOKE AT seven and immediately called Cumali on my cellphone but got sent straight to voicemail. I left a message to call me urgently and kept trying the number but, after twenty minutes, I still hadn’t managed to talk to her.
I went down to the front desk, took another tour through the English language with the manager and discovered from him the address of Gul & Sons, Marina and Shipwrights. I entered it into the Fiat’s navigation system and, seven minutes later, I was in the old port, standing in front of the house Cumali had been painting in the photograph.
It had once been a fisherman’s home, two-storey, with terracotta pots and window boxes full of flowers. I was surprised – there was a joy and softness to the house which I certainly hadn’t seen in the woman. I walked up the front path and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.
I crossed a small patch of lawn and headed down a driveway wedged hard against the tall wall of Gul’s marina and looked in the garage. The piece-of-shit Italian car was in there – black paintwork and its hood up – but there was no sign of life. I moved closer to the back of the house and listened: there wasn’t a sound or movement except for a tabby cat scratching its ear inside the kitchen window.
Back in the car, glancing at my watch, I started driving a grid, steadily expanding out from the house, looking for a corner park. I had to find her soon. Ten minutes later, I saw a small piece of grass with half a dozen kids playing on the swings. Their mothers were hovering around them and, to my immense relief, Leyla Cumali was among them.
I parked and scrambled out. She had her back to me, pushing her son on the swing, so I was only a few yards from her when one of the other mothers called out to her in Turkish and pointed in my direction.
The detective turned, saw me and, in that moment, there was so much anger in her face at the unexpected intrusion that I could hardly credit it. But there was something else … something furtive … in the way she moved to gather up her son. The instant impression I had – the blink moment, so to speak – was that I had walked into a secret.
As she glared, the boy peeped one eye out from behind her skirt and I smiled at him and said, ‘This must be your son.’
To my credit, the expression on my face didn’t change as – more confident – he stepped further out from behind his mother and I saw that he had Down’s syndrome.
Like every one of those kids I have ever encountered, his face was beautiful – smiling and full of innocence. He said something to me in Turkish which I guessed was ‘Good morning’ and, for some reason, instead of trying to communicate in a language he didn’t understand, I took it into my head to bow to him. He thought this was about the funniest thing he had ever seen and did a pretty good bow back. The mothers and the other kids, all of whom were watching, laughed, and that only encouraged him to bow several times more to the crazy American.
The only person who didn’t think it was funny was his mother. ‘How did you find me? My note made it clear, I’m not willing to argue—’
‘I’m not here to argue,’ I interrupted. ‘I want you to come to the French House with me.’
That took some of the horsepower out of her anger. ‘Why?’
‘I think Dodge was killed, and we may be able to prove it.’
‘Murdered? How did anyone get on to the estate?’
‘I don’t know. The first step is to prove there was somebody else in the house. I think we can do that.’
She thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘No. The evidence clearly shows—’
‘Forget the evidence. Evidence is a list of the material you’ve got. What about the things you haven’t found? What do you call that – unimportant?’
It was a quote from my book and I immediately berated myself – again I had stepped outside my legend – then I remembered the book had been packed as part of my on-plane reading and I let the self-admonishment go. Cumali still wasn’t convinced.
‘We have to do it now – before the investigation is closed,’ I pressed.
‘No – my superiors have already signed off on it.’
I had to work hard not to lose my temper. ‘If I turn out to be right and the Bodrum police have released the body and returned people’s passports, there’s going to be hell to pay. Not from me – from the highest levels of government.’
She wavered. The other mothers and kids started to head to school, waving goodbye to Cumali and her bowing son.
‘I can’t go now,’ she said. ‘I have to drop my son at the nanny’s. The car is broken, it takes time—’
‘I’ll drive you,’ I replied, pointing at the Fiat.
She didn’t appear to like it, but, equally, she couldn’t see any way out, so she nodded in agreement. The little boy, on the other hand, thought it was great and took my hand as I walked them to the car.
Cumali opened the back door, ushered her son inside and climbed in beside him. It was bad enough for a Muslim woman to share a car with a man she barely knew; for her to travel in the front seat would have been unthinkable.
As she gave directions, I spoke over my shoulder. ‘I think you should call your office – tell them something has come up and get them to delay sending the file to Ankara.’
She didn’t respond, so I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw her staring at me, cold-faced. It wasn’t going to be pretty when she heard my idea, but there was nothing I could do about that. After a moment I saw her take out her cellphone and she started speaking in Turkish.
She hung up and told me that she’d left a message for her chief and had asked several of her colleagues to meet us up on the southern headland. Calling in reinforcements, by the sound of it. I didn’t get a chance to say anything about it – the young guy started speaking animatedly in Turkish. I looked in the mirror again and saw Cumali listening hard. It was obvious she wanted him to know that his thoughts were valued and, the more I watched, the more I realized she had endless patience with him.
‘My son wants me to tell you that we are going to the circus on
Thursday,’ she translated. ‘He says we’ll start with the Grand Parade and then watch acrobats and lions, clowns—’
‘And snake charmers,’ I added. ‘I saw it when I was arriving – please tell him it looked like a great circus.’
Cumali translated, the boy laughed and quickly it turned into what sounded like an argument. Finally, she explained: ‘My son said to ask if you would like to come with us but I said you had a meeting that night – you were very busy.’
I caught her eye in the mirror. ‘Yeah, a shame about the meeting,’ I said. ‘I would have liked to come. Please apologize to him.’
She spoke to him in Turkish, then told me to make a left and stop twenty yards up the road. We pulled up outside a modest house with a row of garden gnomes along the front path, a kid’s slide on a square of grass and a Coca-Cola distribution warehouse opposite. The engines of two large trucks, manoeuvring in and out of the drive, were so loud I didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to the little guy before his mother had him out of the car, through the gate and walking towards the house.
A young woman, probably in her late twenties, dark-haired and badly obese, opened the door and kissed the little boy on his head. As Cumali spoke to the nanny, it gave me a chance to think again about the furtive moment in the park. The easy take-home was that it had been caused by the boy’s Down’s syndrome, that his mother had instinctively tried to protect him from my intrusion. But I didn’t believe it was that – both Cumali and her son were totally comfortable among the other people and kids. No, I had a feeling it was something quite different, but I had no idea what it might be. A mother and her child, playing in a park – so what?