By then Cumali was returning and her son was standing in the doorway, lifting his hand in farewell to me. Even though I was behind the wheel, I managed to perform a fairly good bow, and his face lit up. He gave me two back.
Cumali climbed into the back seat and I remained looking at her son for a moment. He was a great kid and it was a terrible thing – there was no way to spin it, I’m sorry to say – it was a terrible thing that I ended up doing to him.
I put the car in gear and drove towards the French House.
Chapter Twenty-four
CUMALI’S COLLEAGUES HAD already arrived, and the tall gates were open. We drove down the long driveway and found three of them waiting near their cars, all in plain clothes, smoking, a couple on their cellphones.
Two of them looked like your average gumshoe. The other one, though, had corruption written all over him. He was in his mid-forties, tall and overweight, a sausage-fingered vulgarian in a slick suit. Cumali introduced him, but I was damned if I could catch his name. To be on the side of the safe – so to speak – I decided to call him ‘Officer’.
As the cops rang the doorbell, my cellphone vibrated in my pocket. It was the fourth time since I had found Cumali at the park, but I decided again not to answer it. I guessed – I hoped – that it was somebody from the Uffizi, and I didn’t want to have to rush through an explanation. I would need plenty of time to take them through what, I assumed, would be one of the strangest ideas they had ever heard.
There was no answer to the bell and Cumali opened the door with her pass key. Inside, it was as gloomy as ever and, though I hadn’t been in this part of the house, I led them through a baronial dining room and into the library. The only thing that had changed since the previous evening was that the curtains had been drawn and I assumed that, after I left, Cameron had spent time in the room with the memory of her dead husband. Unless, of course, I really had heard a door close and whoever else was in the house had come and sat in the library for the evening.
I drew the curtains back, let the light flood in and turned to face the four Turkish cops. ‘I told Detective Cumali that I don’t believe Dodge was alone on the night he died. I think a visitor came into this room – somebody he knew.’
‘How did they get on to the estate?’ the guy I was calling Officer asked belligerently. Typical.
Frightened we were going to waste time down that rabbit hole, I went back at him just as hard. ‘Go with it for a minute – assume the visitor knew how to beat the system, say he knew a place where the cameras didn’t mesh, figure he found a way over the wall, think anything right now. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Okay, hurry up then,’ said one of the gumshoes.
I ignored him. ‘The lights are off, the curtains are open – it said so in the crime-scene report.’ I pointed at the leather armchair. ‘The two of them are here – the visitor standing, Dodge sitting next to his stash. He’s on a binge and he’s not leaving.
‘But the visitor’s got a plan – he’s going to induce Dodge to go down to the gazebo then tip him over the cliff.’
‘What does he say to get him down there?’ the officer interrupted.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
‘Sheesh – what do you know?’
‘I know that while the visitor is speaking to him, the fireworks start,’ I said. ‘It begins with a white star exploding over the headland. Everybody says it was huge—’
‘Yeah, you could have seen it in Istanbul,’ the other gumshoe offered. I smiled politely – Istanbul was five hundred miles away.
‘But that was the one thing the killer hadn’t thought about,’ I continued. ‘The nature of fireworks.’
The cops all looked at each other – what was the FBI idiot talking about now? Fireworks were fireworks.
At least I had their undivided attention. ‘To be bright enough to be seen in Istanbul, it would have contained shredded magnesium. That’s common in big fireworks – for a moment, it turns night into day. That’s why old-time photographers used it in their flashguns.’
‘Look,’ Cumali said. ‘Fireworks, magnesium – does this mean anything?’ It got a chorus of agreement from the others.
‘It means we’ve got a flash and we’ve got a subject – Dodge and his visitor,’ I replied. ‘All we need is film.’
I pointed at the two huge mirrors next to the fireplace. ‘Mirrors are glass backed with a coating of silver nitrate. What is silver nitrate? It’s another name for film stock – it’s exactly what they once used in movie cameras.’
Nobody said a word; they just stared, trying to compute it.
‘It was all here,’ I said. ‘A flash. A subject. Film. I believe we’ve got a photograph of whoever was in this room. I think it’s imprinted on the back of the mirrors.’
Still they said nothing, continuing to look at me in disbelief. I can’t say I blamed them – even I thought it was pretty wild.
Cumali recovered first. ‘Just to be clear – you think you’re going to “develop” the mirrors?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Where – One-hour Photo?’
I smiled but, before I could respond, the officer launched in. ‘This is ridiculous – photographs on the back of mirrors,’ he sneered. ‘We’re wasting our time,’ and he motioned to the others to head out. He probably had some criminals he needed to shake down.
I couldn’t help it, I turned on him. I’ve never had much stomach for corruption. ‘Why do you say it’s ridiculous? Because it’s never been done before? The FBI are the guardians of the best crime lab in the world, you hear me? The best. We’re accustomed to pioneering things. How would you know what’s ridiculous and what isn’t?’
The spark in his pudgy eyes and the curl of his lip told me I had made an enemy for life. I didn’t care. Before things spiralled down any further, my phone went again and, glancing at the screen, I saw that it was an Italian number.
‘That’ll be the Uffizi Gallery in Florence,’ I told them. ‘I’m going to ask for their help in recovering the image.’
One of the gumshoes – apparently, he was the leader of the group – shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There won’t be any help – not from the dagoes or anyone else. The mirrors stay where they are. This is reaching for straws, or however you people say it.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. I am now making a formal request, on behalf of the FBI, to take possession of the mirrors for forensic examination. If you refuse I will need your reasons in writing so that I can forward them to the White House and the relevant officials in Ankara.’
Silence. My phone rang again, but I made no attempt to answer it. We all stood there without a word. Just before the phone stopped, the leader shrugged. ‘Take the damn mirrors then,’ he said angrily. ‘Waste your time if you want to.’
‘Thank you,’ I replied. ‘Who do I call to make arrangements to get them down?’
The officer laughed. ‘No idea. Try the FBI lab – they know everything, I’m sure they can help.’
The two gumshoes smiled broadly. Cumali looked embarrassed by her colleagues but, when the leader motioned them out on to the terrace, she followed obediently.
As they lit cigarettes and walked down the lawn – enjoying the view, bitching about me I’m sure – I called the Uffizi back. Someone had alerted the director of the workshop, and it was to him – probably the leading art-restoration expert in the world – that I explained what I needed.
Once he had stopped laughing, he got me to take him through it again. After a dozen or so questions he finally agreed – I guessed more for the challenge of it than any other reason – but made me understand that he had virtually no expectation it would work.
‘I suppose it’s urgent?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Isn’t everything? I’ll get them to you as fast as possible.’
The moment he had rung off I made one more call and – from a far different quarter – also received a promise of help.
Cha
pter Twenty-five
THE MANAGER OF my hotel arrived at the french house with two beaten-up trucks and eight companions who looked like they were on day release. Shame on me for judging them by appearance – they turned out to be some of the finest, most hardworking men I had ever encountered.
They were friends of the manager, he had rustled them up at a moment’s notice, and when I met them at the front of the house and told them I would pay them, they all refused.
‘These men peoples say that of the money today they have no kissing-love,’ the manager translated, sort of. The more I heard him, the more he sounded like one of those online translation programs. ‘Is enough for them of the great estate they have the chance to see,’ he said.
It appeared that none of the men, like almost everybody else in Bodrum, had ever been through the tall gates, and they were only too willing to heed the manager’s call for help. As I led them around the house, heading towards the rear terrace, we encountered Cumali and her colleagues on their way out. There was a moment of embarrassment when the two parties confronted each other, but the manager stepped off the path and his workers followed suit to allow the cops to pass.
It so happened that I was in a position where I could see the manager’s face clearly and the look of disdain as the officer walked by was almost palpable. The manager turned, saw me looking at him and smiled. Once the cops were out of earshot, he walked to my side: ‘He is the name of a man we call SpongeBob.’
All the workers nodded. ‘SpongeBob?’ I said. ‘Like the cartoon?’ The manager nodded and mimed a sucking motion.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘the big sponge,’ and rubbed my thumb and forefinger together in the universal symbol of bribery. The manager and his friends laughed, and one of the men spat on the ground. For a moment we had transcended all language, and we turned the corner of the house.
After allowing them a minute to stare at the view, I led them through the French doors into the library. Two of the men were carpenters and, while they discussed the logistics of building crates to protect the mirrors, several others returned to their trucks for ladders and tools.
I wandered out on to the lawn and started trying to call somebody at FedEx who could organize, at short notice, to pick up the mirrors and fly them to Florence. I was waiting for yet another customer-service rep to call back when the manager hurried to my side, obviously upset and wanting me to follow him into the house. For a moment I thought they must have dropped one of the mirrors, but I realized I would have heard it smash and I put that possibility aside.
I temporarily gave up on FedEx, followed the manager up to the terrace, went through the doors and into the library. I stopped. The men – silent and standing to one side – were watching me. They had removed both mirrors, and I looked at the dressed-stone walls where they had been hanging.
When I first saw the mirrors, I had thought they were incongruous but I had put it down to someone’s eccentricity. It wasn’t – the mirrors had been used to cover two large swastikas that had been carved into the stone. They were the real deal too, beautifully chiselled, both surmounted by the imperial eagle of the Third Reich. I stared at them. As a child, I had seen swastikas in the Kommandant’s office at Natzweiler-Struthof and, for a terrible moment, I saw the woman again with the baby in her arms and the two children holding tight to her skirt.
I walked towards the foul things, watched by the manager and his friends, all of them seemingly shamefaced. Turkey had been neutral in the Second World War, but they all knew what the symbols represented and I think they were deeply offended at what had been found in their town.
I reached up – I really didn’t want to touch it – and ran my finger along the chisel marks. It came away thick with dust: the mirrors had been put in place years ago.
I turned to the men. ‘Why do they call it the French House?’ I asked.
Chapter Twenty-six
IT WASN’T THE name of the house, not originally. When it was built, just after the end of the war, it had been called La Salle d’Attente. The Waiting Room. Waiting for what? I wondered.
I was sitting with the manager and his team on the steps leading from the terrace down to the lawn, the Aegean Sea laid out in front of us and a warm breeze rustling through the palm trees above. The men had brought out their lunch and insisted I share their meal of olives, cheese and wood-fired bread. It was only by showing them my FBI shield and telling them it was forbidden that I managed to avoid the wine and raki that seemed to accompany every mouthful. I was grateful they had got the mirrors down before lunch.
We were engaged in what was, to put it mildly, a chaotic conversation – and not because of the booze. All the men, the manager included, had their own version of the history of the house. None of them were old enough to remember its construction, so they relied on stories that had been passed from mouth to ear by their grandparents.
The one thing everybody agreed on was that the house had been built by a German woman. As far as I could tell, that had been in 1946, barely a year after the war had finished when Germany – with seven million dead – was in ruins. The story was that her family had moved their assets to Switzerland before the outbreak of hostilities and that her fortune had survived intact. Maybe it was true: there were Germans who had done exactly that – ask the guys at Richeloud’s.
The consensus among the storytellers was that the woman had flown into the old grass runway at Milas, was met by a car, inspected the site at lunchtime and flew out two hours later. After a few months, a construction team arrived.
Back then, there were hardly any roads, so all the tradesmen and engineers, as well as the building materials, had to be brought in by barge. The gaunt men – all Germans – built bunkhouses and a field kitchen and, for reasons only they knew, had nothing to do with the villagers.
After two years, with the house complete, the last of them demolished their simple barracks, landscaped the gardens and pulled out. All that was left to mark their stay was the name of the small cove at the base of the cliff, inaccessible except by boat, where they had landed the barges and swum every evening. ‘This sand of the water,’ the manager said, ‘is what the Bodrum peoples call—’
‘The German Beach,’ I said.
The men told me that, despite all the effort and expense, nobody had lived in the villa – at least not permanently. At first, lights would come on every few months, stay lit for a week or so, then go dark again. Everybody assumed it was a vacation home, but the carefully planted foliage and the privacy of the land made it impossible even to glimpse the people who called the Waiting Room their temporary home.
The Waiting Room, I thought again – such a strange name. ‘Why was it changed?’ I asked them.
The manager laughed and didn’t need to consult his colleagues. ‘It was of the nature very simple,’ he said. ‘La Salle d’Attente made a complication far too much for the fisherfolk to pronunciate. They knew of the language in which it was spoken, so they did the shrug and called it the French House. Over the years, it did a catch-on and all peoples named it the same.’
The seasons passed, the men said, the foliage grew thicker and the villa seemed to fall into a long sleep, eventually becoming unvisited for years at a time.
Slowly at first, then more rapidly, tourism changed the coast – marinas sprouted in the harbour and other beautiful villas were built on the headland. Then, about eight years ago, a man came – nobody knew who he was – and opened up the house. A few weeks later, teams of renovators arrived from overseas and set about updating the mansion, even installing a state-of-the art security system. Finally, the twenty-first century had caught up with the French House.
A few months before that particular summer season started, a local realtor received a call from someone who said it was time the mansion earned its keep: it was available for vacation rentals at two hundred thousand US dollars a week.
The men smiled at the amazing figure and did the shrug.
‘Who was she, the wo
man who built it?’ I asked in the silence, thinking about the swastikas.
They shook their heads: it was a mystery. The manager looked at his watch and told the men they had better finish loading up if the mirrors were going to make it to the airport on time. The team recorked their bottles, got to their feet and headed back to the terrace.
I turned and walked down the garden. Halfway, I stopped and looked back at the house. It was certainly sinister, and my impression had been right when I had first seen it from the driveway: it had been built for privacy. But the Waiting Room – why call it that? And what of the people who came and stayed briefly all those years ago? Who were they?
I don’t know why I thought of it – maybe it was the sweep of the sea, perhaps it was the sight of a freighter on the horizon – but I have learned to trust my intuition. A ship, I thought. That was what they were waiting for: a ship.
The manager was on the terrace, waving to get my attention. ‘The loadings of the mirror are all system go and finished,’ he called. ‘We only need now the person of you.’
I smiled and headed up to join the convoy to Milas airport.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I FLEW INTO florence at dusk, not a cloud in the sky, the great Renaissance city laid out below in all its haunting beauty. I was in the cockpit of a FedEx plane that had been diverted from Istanbul to pick up two large crates as a special favour to the FBI.
The pilots, a pair of cowboys – one English and the other Australian – invited me to sit in the spare seat up front. Had I known they would spend the entire flight arguing about cricket, I would have stayed in the back.
A truck from the Uffizi headed on to the apron to meet us and, between the gallery’s three storemen and the two cricket-lovers, the large crates were craned out of the belly of the plane and into the back of the truck in a matter of minutes. As much as any city on earth, Florence itself is a work of art, but seeing it again brought me little joy. The last time I had walked its streets had been with Bill and, once again, I found myself overcome with regret about the way I had treated him.