The Turkish Trap: A tense and intriguing action thriller.

by Jack Dylan

  What followed was as irresistible and as inevitable as the grinding of the legal process usually is. Because Sandy’s licence was suspended his firm couldn’t operate as an Estate Agent even in his absence. Not that there would have been any customers anyway. Because he was my partner in the Cally project, I couldn’t sell any of the apartments. I couldn’t make the payments to the bank, and since they knew what was going on they wasted no time in foreclosing on the debt. That meant they were able to seize the company assets, which included the unsold Cally apartments, various details like the office furniture and fittings, and in the end the deeds to our house.

  I was bankrupt, disgraced, and untouchable, even though I had nothing to do with Sandy’s downfall. He had squirreled away the cash and was surviving somewhere cheap and sunny, while I picked up the pieces. Except there weren’t any pieces left in Edinburgh.

  It is hard to describe the feeling of injustice and bewilderment that I suffered. My inability to show my face in the golf club, rugby club, my usual pub, our favourite restaurants or even on the street, plunged me into an almost catatonic depression. I couldn’t leave Edinburgh until it was clear that Sandy’s misdeeds were in a separate business from mine. All I had done was trust a business partner who amiably and smilingly ruined my life.

  Pat showed admirable devotion and constancy – to her own well-being. Rather than staying to support me through the business and social horrors that followed, she was in Dublin by the weekend, having managed to make sure her best jewellery, clothes and paintings were in Dublin and out of the reach of the bailiffs in Edinburgh. She had always maintained her bank account in Dublin so that also was safe.

  She went to the small flat we had maintained in the cheaper but still fashionable end of Ballsbridge. Not a mile from the hotel where we had our original and fateful coupling. It was owned by the two of us really, but for tax reasons was in Pat’s name. She sportingly let me know that I could use the spare room if I needed to get out of Edinburgh, but only until “I got myself sorted”.

  I stayed with my by then elderly as well as disapproving mother in Edinburgh until the end of December. All the legal processes still had some way to go but for practical purposes I no longer had a business, a home, nor a friend in Edinburgh. Yes, old friends who didn’t see me in time and bumped into me on the street were considerate and consoling.

  “Sorry to hear about the bother Sandy landed you in. Never did totally trust that bugger. And you’re left with the mess. Bad luck, bad luck. Must get together for a drink – busy this weekend. Will give you a call.” And off they scurry to avoid the contagion.

  My mother alternated between her Scottish Presbyterian days when she couldn’t resist her taunts of,

  “I always knew your ‘path of least resistance’ would end like this,”

  and her vaguely motherly days when she would do her best to comfort me with,

  “Sure we’re all right together here. We have a roof over our heads and what more do we need.”

  It was a far cry from my Cally millions that were going to see me to a comfortable retirement.

  We saw Christmas and Hogmanay through together, and a dreamlike experience it now seems. I’m sure I was in a state of severe psychological trauma, and not really able to think straight. I adopted a plodding, minimalist survival process, where I watched TV, ate, drank, slept and repeated the process.

  In January Pat came to see me and must have been moved to some feelings of guilt. She packed up my few belongings and dragged me back to Dublin, but emphatically to the spare room, and “let’s be clear about this”, for a short time.

  To her undying credit she really helped me to get back on my feet to the extent that I am. She was taking her own work more seriously than ever before, she had to. But every morning and every evening she chivvied and bullied me. She made phone calls for me and organised distant old friends for me. It probably literally saved my life, and by the summer of 2001 I was in a way back to where I had started. I was a willing runner for resurrected friends and new friends in the Dublin auctioneering and antiques world. I had to borrow their cars to go to auctions, but still had an eye for what to buy. Best of all I started to have that buzz again from the firm little roll of notes in the pocket. I had forgotten how much more immediate and more obviously stimulating and motivating it was than a set of figures in a set of accounts.

  When Pat was sure I was functioning again, and making enough money to survive, she quietly but firmly separated herself from me. I found a bedsit in Sandymount that I could afford, and agreed, in exchange for a gradual and unofficial buyout of my share of Pat’s flat, that I would sign the papers she had prepared for the uncontested and irretrievable breakdown of our marriage.

  Single, and starting all over again at 45.

  Chapter 18

  Lavinia

  Dublin: Hermione visits Lavinia: December 2005

  Lavinia wiped the tiled walls of the kitchen to make sure they were completely clean, then stuck the wet prints to the walls using the natural adhesion of the moist glossy backs on the shiny tiles. She loved this moment, for the bright kitchen lighting gave the first really good view of the completed prints. This was the moment when she knew, without any doubt, which were due to be framed, which would be filed, and which would be binned.

  This was a good batch, they all looked worth keeping, but the one that was most eye-catching was the night-time scene in Kapi Creek. Her eye studied each of the prints as she settled down with a strong black coffee. They were a potent reminder of the week on the Lycian coast – a week that had affected her more deeply than she knew how to explain. Perhaps it was the unexpected historical resonance of the area – so many scattered bits of evidence of past civilizations just lying there to be stumbled upon. Perhaps it was the intense delight in the physical sensation of sailing. When she had planned the holiday she had been attracted by the romantic picture of sitting on the yacht in the evening, sipping a cold drink, and looking like a seasoned member of a privileged elite. That had certainly lived up to expectations, but what had captivated her was the multiplicity of physical and sensory experiences that all seemed to work in harmony when the yacht heeled to the wind and started to pulsate with life as it cut through the water. Yes it was hopelessly idealised, and demonstrably slower than the powerful motor-cruisers that she had learned to disdain. But as Alex has said, it was one of the most accurate ways of recreating the experience of the ancient people who lived on that coast, traded along it, and transported even St Paul on his travels. The speeds, sensations, problems and delights were mostly the same – providing you ignored modern conveniences like GPS and diesel engines – but once sailing you were part of an almost timeless human experience.

  Her reverie took her back to Gocek where they started and finished the holiday. One of her photographs had captured the strange incongruities as they sat in the little Palm Café in a dark street some way back from the bustling main street.

  There was a rusty old upright Coca-Cola fridge against the outer wall of the café, all the advertising slogans in an unfamiliar tongue. The fluorescent light from the fridge illuminated a rickety glass-walled cabinet that stood at the edge of the pavement and displayed what was left of the day’s bread. She could still see in the photograph the mixture of plain long loaves along with the delicious flat-breads that were so good with their mezes. What she wouldn’t give for some of that yoghurt and watercress; and the tender baked peppers; not to mention those cheese rolls.

  On the road behind the bread cabinet was a rough wooden crate, which at first she thought was full of large apples, but then realised it was full of enormous ripe pomegranates. The photograph had also caught a local man sitting astride his moped, but it had missed that strange and dangerous looking departure when his wife climbed side-saddle onto the moped behind him, while his 5-year old son stood on the frame between the rider and the handlebars, and the family rode off into the darkness with no helmets, no lights, and no fear.

  S
he hadn’t been able to capture the rest of the scene and regretted it still. They had been sitting at an outside table under the vine-leafed canopy looking out at the dark street past the bread cabinet, the pomegranates and the little wall of planted flowers in their painted tin cans. It was beautiful in its simplicity. On her left hand had been the brightly lit windows revealing the interior of the café, and it was this she most regretted failing to capture. The room had been large and rectangular. High on one end wall was a television that no-one seemed to be watching. Round one table was what she assumed was the café-owner’s family, with three daughters who in Ireland would probably have been described as at the ‘awkward age’ of early to mid teens. The mother, wearing a headscarf, was holding the latest addition to the family – a very chubby baby boy with a scattering of dark hair, a happy round face, and a big pair of blue stretchy pants over his nappy. The baby was passed from person to person. Conversation seemed to flow without break all the time that Lavinia sat outside as an admiring spectator.

  At a separate table a boy of about ten sat with a set of chess pieces arranged on the table in front of him. Eventually his father came in and the two played a serious and competent-looking game of chess. When they finished, Lavinia realised the chess-board was a cheap sheet of plastic, which the boy rolled carefully and slid into a tube along with the chess pieces.

  The walls of the room facing her had two doors leading to the family accommodation, while the end wall opposite the television had been decorated with a strange array of pictures. There was a serious looking man in a formal business suit, who Alex explained was Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, whose portrait was virtually obligatory and who was almost universally revered. There were some faded black and white family photographs – looking like wedding parties, and there were coloured prints of distant places. They looked like the prints of Italian lakes, Swiss mountains and foreign cities that could have been calendar pictures from years gone by. The slightly drooping cardboard and the fading of the colours suggested to her that this is exactly what they were. But what a scene! She wished she had been able to capture on film the palpably close family atmosphere; the simplicity of the décor; the serious and respectful behaviour and expressions; the unquestioning shared caring for the baby. And people thought of this as a backward and uncivilised culture!

  Her warm reverie was interrupted by the distinctive ring on her doorbell that announced her sister Hermione was visiting. Lavinia would have cursed if she was that sort of person, but she was still only partly successful in breaking free from the old constraints, so she emitted only a groan.

  What was Hermione going to say about the party? What on earth would she do if Pat were with her? This last thought meant that Hermione was greeted with a smile and a look of relief as Lavinia opened the door and found her sister alone.

  “O God, let me in and give me some coffee,” was the sisterly greeting. Hermione obviously hadn’t found as effective a therapy as Lavinia’s darkroom to dispel the after-effects of the party.

  “Coffee’s ready, and I hate to say it but you look as if you need it.”

  “Need it? I’d kill for it.” Moments later Hermione clutched the cup between her two hands as if she didn’t trust herself to use just one. She took a sip, breathed deeply, put the cup back on its saucer and lifted her sunglasses from her eyes to restrain the hair on top of her head. “And talking of killing, I suppose that’s what you want to do with me?”

  “Well actually I was rather afraid that you would blame me for it all!”

  “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “Well I suppose it was my failure to warn William that led to the whole debacle. I was so embarrassed for him, for you, for Pat, for everybody, that I think I went a bit overboard with the champagne.”

  “You didn’t force us to drink it. We are all consenting adults, but yes, that moment when William dropped his glass is burned on my memory for ever. I’ll never, ever forget the look on his face. That really was probably the most excruciating moment of my life – beats even wetting my pants on stage in that nativity play when I was six.”

  “I’d forgotten that,” laughed Lavinia, greatly relieved both at Hermione’s frame of mind and at the injection of humour into the situation. “I really had meant to tell William but things were tricky. I suppose I did put it off, but there were two new people there which meant it was hard to disappear with William, Anyway, I ducked it, and I’ll never do that again.”

  “I hope you won’t have to. But honestly Lavinia it was my fault. The whole idea of publicly announcing my “gay partnership”, as the freaks in the office are calling it, was stupid. I should have forced Pat to meet quietly with William and tell him in private, but you know how flamboyant she has become. It’s as if discovering her real sexuality has opened up her whole life. She is just totally unstoppable now. The way she dresses; her confidence; her noisiness; it’s incredible.

  “But don’t you think that if you add her drinking to that list it maybe indicates a bit of insecurity and uncertainty? I really think you’ll have to slow her down and get her to talk quietly to William. Get her to take a break from this supercharged act of hers and relax a bit. If she doesn’t she’ll come to grief in some way before long.”

  “You’re right, and I know it. Perhaps I can use the party as the trigger for forcing her to do a bit of an adjustment to her behaviour. I don’t want to lose her and I know she’s still afraid that if she slows down she’ll fall off. Maybe it’s fear of finding that this is just as big a mistake as William that means she can’t look down – has to keep charging on.”

  “What about poor William? You probably know him better that I do. How is he going to feel today?”

  “You’re right my darling do-goody Lavinia. You always were so good at looking after other people. That’s why you haven’t looked after yourself yet. But yes, William. You know when I first met William when he came over from Edinburgh he had such a hang-dog and beaten look to him. He has been looking so much better. How long is he in Dublin now? Is it three or four years? I think he has just improved beyond recognition. And you know what – I think you might be part of the reason why.”

  “Oh don’t be ridiculous! I’m awfully fond of William and we get on really well, but there’s no romance in it. He never talks much about Edinburgh, in fact he dismisses the subject if anyone else raises it. I suspect there is a story there, but I’ve never felt I could get to the bottom of it.”

  “Poor William. He was always so gentlemanly, so amiable, and for someone dealing in antiques and auctioneering so gullible. It’s as if all his critical faculties were absorbed by his work – and he really is good at it you know – but the sort of insight, knowledge and general canniness that he obviously uses in the business just evaporate when it comes to his personal life and his relationships.”

  “What’s that got to do with the scandal? I can see that his inability to spot that he was married to a suppressed lesbian would follow from that total blind spot – but what about the scandal – come on.”

  “I’m surprised you have never winkled it out of William or me before now, but….”

  “I only know him a short time don’t forget. It was your idea to suggest him for the book club and it wasn’t the sort of thing to ask at the first meeting, and it never seemed the right moment since. There I go again, putting off something important because I didn’t find the right moment!”

  “OK well here goes. He was apparently the totally innocent, in every sense, victim of an absolute rogue of a business partner. He had been quite, in fact very, successful and was on the verge of making an absolute fortune in a property development thing, when his partner was disbarred or whatever they do to solicitors for taking backhanders to fix prices. The bastard had enough put away in offshore accounts that he could run and hide in Spain, leaving poor trusting William with bankruptcy and disgrace. On top of that it was the last straw for Pat. I’m sort of proud about what she did, but also sort of edgy.
It was a horrible moment to make the break in their marriage, but she did rescue him from his mother, and you’ve no idea the strings she pulled and favours she begged to get him functioning again. You know she was virtually destitute too, and was having to resurrect her old career, but she took on William at the same time bless her.”

  “I can see that you could take that positive view of things, but wasn’t she really rather a rat abandoning the marriage just at that time?”

  “I asked her that but perhaps a little less politely. She really does believe that it was the best thing to do. The way she describes their existence in Edinburgh – well honestly – it’s like one of those excruciating Alan Bennett sitcoms. I don’t suppose he’d like them called that,” Hermione giggled, obviously feeling relieved to be having a sisterly chat rather than a painful post-mortem.

  “I can’t really picture it though. William is always so proper and polite.”

  “But that’s exactly it! They very properly and politely shared a house and to some extent shared a life. But they were far too polite and controlled to ever talk about the difficult stuff. Children for example. Do you realise they weren’t able to be honest enough with each other to work out why Pat didn’t want children? William is such a pet, but such a totally ineffective coward when it comes to anything to do with real personal relationships. Pat knew that they shouldn’t go on together, that it wasn’t right for either of them in the long term. She decided that if William recovered from the bankruptcy and a year later was hit by his marriage breaking up, it would just finish him. Better to get it all over in one fell swoop – then he could start rebuilding his life on a more realistic basis. I really do agree with her.”