by Oliver Tidy
He joined the current of people heading in the direction of his hotel. From a street vendor, he stopped to purchase one of the simit breads that he had enjoyed that morning. In the reflection of a shop window, he saw the suited man again, staring towards him from the shadows of a doorway. He understood then that they had been followed. Whoever was in charge of Botha’s personal security was either very nervous or very thorough. Inwardly, he cursed himself for his lack of attention, his sloppiness.
Adrenalin surged through his system, his senses sharpened and his mind racing. Leading them back to the hotel would uncover him. He would go from hunter to quarry, become a sitting duck. He saw only two options – fight or flight – and swiftly weighed the consequences of each.
Without appetite, he forced himself to gnaw at the food as he continued in tourist fashion and at tourist speed down the tourist boulevard, buying himself time. A tram clanged its warning of approach from behind him. Moving aside, he saw the man at a distance. Ahead was the narrow street that Eda had led him down the previous night on their route to the sea. He ransacked his memory for its details.
On impulse, he entered a clothes shop. He emerged some minutes later clutching a carrier bag. The watcher was still there. He followed. Sansom estimated thirty yards between them. Turning into the deserted street of the previous night, he broke into a run. The sharp descent bent round ahead of him. He ran past a disorderly group of the city’s ubiquitous steel garbage bins, tattered posters hanging from them, to disappear around the curve.
The man stood at the entrance to the alley for a few seconds, assessing from behind his dark glasses. He undid the buttons of his jacket and walked. As he quickened his pace, the material flapped in the breeze channelled up the narrow space. A mangy dog appeared from behind a bin, growling a warning. The sound of his footsteps echoed off the walls of the otherwise-subdued, deserted space as he pursued Sansom.
The man barely glanced at the stooped track-suited figure making its way up the incline, a floppy hat obscuring the features and a scaffold pole on his shoulder. As they came abreast of one another, Sansom swung the metal tube retrieved from the derelict building where he had pulled on the new clothes. The man brought up his arm in defence. It cracked as it absorbed the impact. He yelled in pain. His good arm fumbled inside his jacket as he reeled backwards. Sansom brought the pole down across the man’s shoulders. He buckled and collapsed. Sansom fell on him, wrestling the gun from under his clothing, shoving it under his chin. The man groaned. Sansom scanned the street. It remained empty, quiet.
‘You’re fucking dead,’ said the man through gritted teeth. The short clipped tones of the South African accent stung Sansom. ‘You and that trouble-making bitch.’
Sansom jabbed the pistol hard into the man’s throat. ‘How long have you been with Botha?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Ever been to the Pacific Ocean? Jackson Island?’ The rage welled up inside the soldier. It boiled, compressed in his consciousness to pressure and distort his thinking, cloud his judgement. He twisted the man’s broken arm, feeling the parts of shattered bone grate. The man screamed.
‘The Pacific Ocean?’ he repeated.
‘You’re fucking dead,’ shouted the man.
‘You had your chance,’ said Sansom. The red mist of his vengeance finally enveloped him. ‘It’s more than you gave them.’ He stuck the weapon into the man’s stomach and fired. The muffled pop bounced off the walls in the stillness. The man spasmed briefly and lay still.
It was not an act born of reason, proof or knowledge, but of cold-bloodied fury that surged through him; the accumulation of months of powerless impotence. Sansom lifted himself off the man. A trickle of blood had begun running with the pitch of the street. He took the man’s wallet. Looking around and up, he saw a child’s face at a third floor window staring down at him. Pocketing the weapon, he walked swiftly away down the hill, bile rising in his throat.
***
8
‘Eda?
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Something’s happened.’
‘I’m fine. What has happened?’
‘They followed us, followed me. They recognised you.’ A silence stretched out until Sansom said, ‘I’ve dealt with it.’
‘How?’
‘Not on the phone.’
‘I’m finished here. Can you get a ferry to the Asian side? I’ll meet you at the dock.’
‘I’m leaving now. Be careful.’
*
He had used a shaded doorway in a huddle of derelict buildings to remove the newly-purchased clothes, which he had slipped on over his own. He threw the pipe through the unglazed window. The resounding clatter of metal on concrete shattered the peace that had settled on the passageway, scaring a pair of roosting pigeons into clumsy, noisy flight. A couple of streets away, he buried the clothes and hat in a rubbish skip.
*
Arriving back at the hotel drenched in a guilty sweat, he hurriedly began gathering his few things together before slumping, drained, in what he recognised as delayed shock, on the edge of the bed to gather his thoughts and collect himself.
He had killed a man, not his first, but the nature of it disturbed him. The nature of himself disturbed him. Killing had been unnecessary. It would only serve to generate attention that he should be aiming to avoid, not encourage. He had acted recklessly, lost his control. He recognized that. Allowing emotion to colour his judgement, influence his actions in the future, could only further risk his already-slender chances of meeting with any success. Simply for the man’s death, however, he had no regrets. Had he been part of the massacre on The Rendezvous or not, it was something towards his revenge, a message; a salve for his anger and frustration. He studied the pistol and counted the rounds. It felt good to have it. Now, at least, the odds had improved.
Checking out of the hotel, he discussed with the receptionist his good fortune at getting a ride east with friends to see some of the historic sites of the country. The likelihood that he could be identified and traced from the afternoon was, he felt, slim. However, others besides the law would now know of his existence in Istanbul. Botha, too, would inevitably soon have to take an interest. The resources that he would command would make staying somewhere as obvious as a hotel dangerous. Sansom deemed any effort to confuse people who came looking for him better than none.
*
Eda was waiting for him at the dock looking anxious, grim. He followed her to her car at the car park and put his holdall in the boot.
He indicated the benches overlooking the dock. ‘Let’s sit for a minute.’
He gave her time to root around in her bag for cigarettes and light up.
He said, ‘Hear what I have to say and if you want nothing more to do with this I can walk away. Maybe it would be better for us both if I did anyway.’
She stared out across the water while people milled about them in varying states of haste. Sansom noticed that there were far fewer tourist types evident on this side of the Bosphorus. That fact made him more conspicuous.
‘I killed a man,’ he said. ‘I had a choice. I didn’t have to.’
He waited. She smoked.
‘We were followed this morning. I noticed him when we came out of the coffee shop – one of Botha’s men. He trailed me down a side street. I didn’t plan to kill him. I lost control.’
Still she said nothing.
‘I don’t think I was seen. As soon as he’s found the shit’ll hit the fan. Perhaps you should distance yourself from me. It’ll be safer for you.’
Turning to look at him, she said, ‘How do you arrive at that understanding? We were seen together this morning. They followed us and now one of them is dead. You said that I was recognised?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’m implicated.’
‘You weren’t there and you had no idea what I was doing. You are not responsible for my actions. The law can’t h
ope to make trouble for you without evidence.’
Slowly and deliberately, as if she was explaining something to a child, she said, ‘I’m not talking about the law. I’m talking about Botha. I’ve already told you; the law doesn’t matter to him. He maintains his position in Istanbul by being above the law. He pays well for it. I’m still not sure you have any idea of who you are dealing with.’
She ground out the cigarette under her shoe.
With a bravado that sounded hollow, even to him, he said, ‘Maybe not but now he will.’
She sighed heavily. ‘I told you yesterday that I wanted Botha dead. I still do. If you are continuing to that end then I am still prepared to help you in any way that I can. But I don’t want to be party to some gratuitous killing spree or your vendetta with the rest of them.’
He nodded. ‘I understand. But I can’t promise that things won’t overlap.’
She ignored this. ‘You’re sure that no one saw you?’
‘A small child, maybe.’
She moved her head slowly from side to side registering her disapproval. ‘They’ll trace it back to you, won’t they?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘You will have to stay away from places that they or the police might look for you.’ He made to speak but she quietened him with a raised hand. ‘The police will be looking for you either for themselves or on Botha’s behalf. You can be sure of that, too. That rules out hotels.’
He let her think for a minute.
‘There is a flat in my apartment building that I am minding for a friend. You can stay there for now. It’ll be safe.’
His thank you sounded horribly inadequate.
‘And you need to do something with your hair. It makes you stick out like a sore toe.’
‘Thumb,’ he corrected.
‘Right. The English and their idioms – sore thumb.’ As if waking up to the danger around them, she said, ‘We should go.’
*
She navigated the heavy traffic with reckless, practised abandon, seemingly oblivious to the entitlements and rebukes of other road users, focussed only on what was in her way: changing lanes without indication, running lights, and ignoring road signs and speed limits. Her own use of the horn had him scanning the highway for the inevitable attention that she must surely be attracting while his feet twitched in the foot well.
‘This is the way it is,’ she said, indicating the traffic outside with a wave of her hand. ‘Making other road users aware of your determination to progress is essential if you wish to get anywhere on the roads of Istanbul. The meek don’t even inherit a right of way here.’
Swinging the wrong way into a one-way street, she fumbled in the door pocket to retrieve a remote control. She cut across the pavement and they came to a stop at the top of a steep slope. Activating the device, a large shutter began to rise, revealing an underground car park. They shot down the little ramp to be swallowed up by the great yawning mouth. Despite the coolness of the underground space and the car’s air conditioning, he realised he was sweating.
The building was not more than a few years old. The internal decor and finish of chrome, glass and polished stone indicated affluence and expense. The chill of the interior provided welcome respite from the heat and humidity of the city.
She led him up polished granite stairs. As they climbed, he reflected on her extreme trust and faith, putting herself into a situation where she was alone with a man who she really didn’t know at all and who had not an hour ago confessed to murder. Would he be doing the same in her position? It made him wonder, again, at her motives and loyalties.
Her apartment was open plan, darkened and protected from the rising heat of the day by electric blinds lowered almost to their full extent. It was sparsely but tastefully furnished. Every wall had either a well-stocked bookcase or some piece of abstract modern art ornamenting it. She threw her bag and keys on a table in the hallway.
‘You want a drink of something?’
‘Water would be good.’
She took a large container from the refrigerator and said, ‘Don’t ever drink water other than bottled while you’re in Istanbul.’
The apartment was hushed compared to the constant dynamic soundtrack of the city streets. Their words assumed a new clarity. She filled a kettle and began preparing coffee.
‘My friend lives one floor up. We’ll go in a minute. I need a coffee and a cigarette first. Why don’t you sit down?’
He took a seat at the breakfast bar. From somewhere inside the apartment music began to play.
‘My phone,’ she said and went to retrieve it.
He stood and wandered over to look out of the unshuttered kitchen window that overlooked the street. Shoppers wandered around the pavement stalls of the small market shop opposite. He watched an old bent woman slowly picking over tomatoes, examining each individually, tossing the unwanted aside, and he found himself wondering when was the last time he had done something as mundane and ordinary as that. Would he ever get the chance again?
He became aware of her behind him in the doorway and turned to face her.
‘That was a colleague of mine. He rang to tell me that one of Botha’s men has been found dead.’ Her large eyes bored into him, searching for something in his face. Weakness? Fear even? An indication that he wasn’t up to the task that he had set himself?
He held her gaze for a long moment before saying, ‘Anything else?’
She shook her head, dropped her eyes and busied herself with making coffee.
‘He knows about my feelings towards Botha, wanted to give me some good news. He asked if I knew anything about it. I think he was joking. He said that it would be on the news soon.’
They drank coffee together at the breakfast bar. She switched on the television news channel, muting the sound.
‘Of course,’ she said, giving further vent to her critical side, ‘if Botha was well protected by security before, he will be even more careful after this. Your precious element of surprise would appear to have been wasted.’ She was right and she was letting him know how foolish he had been.
‘They might not necessarily connect us with the death,’ he said, although as the words left his mouth, he realised that he was fooling neither of them. ‘OK,’ he said quickly, ‘you’re right. But it’s done and there’s no undoing it. Maybe I shouldn’t regret it.’
She turned to face him. ‘What do you mean?’
He said, ‘Regardless of what you want out of this, I want as many of them dead as I can manage. I really don’t care whether I can prove that individually they were directly involved or not in what happened to my family. They work for him. They are part of what he stands for. Every one of them that I can kill will crank up the anxiety for Botha until it becomes a worry and then a fear. I want him to feel fear. I want him to be afraid, to suffer those anxieties. My best means to that end might be to work from the outside inwards. It seems that I have little chance to get to him directly. Besides, if I were to be able kill him first, what would happen to the others? With no master, they’d scatter. With Botha alive and well and employing, I have them all right where I can find them.’
She stared at him without speaking but her body language was just as effective in communicating her feelings for his sentiment.
*
The flat upstairs was a mirror image of Eda’s in design. Her friend shared similar tastes in furnishing style, although Eda’s love of culture and the arts was clearly greater. She showed him the rooms he would need. At his insistence, they had agreed a story that if either of them was questioned about his presence there he was a friend of Eda’s dead brother from England. She was letting him stay in the flat that she managed for her friend. As for why they had been together near Botha’s residence that morning, they had simply stumbled off the beaten track on their walk back to the city after their sightseeing cruise – a coincidence. It wasn’t going to fool anyone, they both knew that, but it was better than nothing and a story that whoev
er was questioning it had to disprove.
Satisfied that he was familiar with the place, she told him to wait for her while she went out for hair dye. She had again expressed her concern for the way his blond hair would make him stand out in a nation of dark-haired Mediterranean-looking men.
From the kitchen window, he watched her emerge from the building below, cross the road and disappear down a side street. As he stood there alone, his paranoia returned to cloud and confuse his thinking.
Perhaps it wasn’t her who was too trusting but him. Had she settled him there to set him up? Made an excuse and left simply to inform on him and get him out of her life? He understood that she viewed his actions of the morning as irresponsible and potentially dangerous for her. He couldn’t argue with that. She had certainly been affected by the opinions he had expressed in her flat. Perhaps she viewed her association with him now as undesirable, something for her to put a stop to before it went too far.
For several minutes he remained at the window, watching, waiting, worrying. Normal life went on below. He pulled over a chair and settled himself, determined to keep a vigil, unable to trust her completely. He reflected on the mistakes he had made already and resolved to be more guarded, more aware, more professional. He had flown into the city with a purpose but no plan and had rushed into situations that could, in retrospect, have been avoided. His slim odds of achieving anything would not be helped by such an amateurish approach. He was a professional, trained to think and act effectively in conflict situations. He needed to start behaving like one.
*
Time wore on. The afternoon light began to wane. From somewhere close by the evening call to prayer began – the eerie wail drifting across the rooftops.
He awoke with a start to the sound and vibration of the mobile phone in his pocket. For a brief moment, he was unable to remember where he was and stood quickly, staring about him until his senses returned. He didn’t need to check his watch to see that a decent chunk of time had elapsed since Eda had left the building. The evening light was thinning out. He pulled the phone out of his pocket.