by Oliver Tidy
Somewhat rested and refreshed, Tallis heaved himself up. When all this was over, he vowed, he would do something about his lifestyle, his fitness and his ambition. It was time to snap out of his post-annus-horribilis outlook and look to the future.
He collected his sandals and socks and – favouring the cool shallows of the sea, despite the sharp little stones, over the heat of the sand – began to make his way towards the eateries on the seafront. His thirst was only mildly slaked and now, he realised, he had an appetite to match. He would be in a far better frame of mind to think and observe with a full stomach and a comfortable seat in the shade.
*
Having driven the length of the main street only to find it to be a dead end, the couple left the vehicle in the shade offered by a group of trees and walked along the seafront in search of refreshment. Despite the time of season, the place was not heaving with the tourists and holidaymakers Sansom would have expected. Although, when Eda reminded him of its remoteness, its access issues and the fact that this was an area with homes owned predominantly by an affluent Turkish population who preferred to keep it that way, the whole picture began to make sense. In fact, as Sansom pointed out to Eda, as they sat in the welcome shade of an umbrella enjoying iced drinks, the only thing that seemed out of place here was the man they had passed on their way into the settlement who was now making his way in their direction, evidently enjoying having his feet in the water.
*
With only sustenance and shade on his mind, Tallis splashed along the shoreline, looking up every now and then to inspect an establishment and assess its suitability to his needs and his pocket. It was as he passed an expensive-looking restaurant that he noticed the couple among the clientele seated outside the establishment next door. They were staring in his direction. Was it just that he had Sansom in his sub-conscious? Was it low blood-sugar levels or heatstroke inducing hallucinations? He found himself hesitate, his whole body betraying recognition and nothing he could do about it. Sitting with a Turkish-looking woman, he would swear was Acer Sansom, the man he had travelled fifteen-hundred miles to find. The hair was a different colour and so he couldn’t be sure. And then he saw something akin to panic on the man’s face and he knew.
*
Eda turned to smile at the man’s progress as he picked his was along the stony shoreline. Her smile lost something of its amusement as she noticed him look up and over in their direction, hesitate in mid stride and then change direction, inject some purpose into his step and head straight for them.
Sansom’s face assumed a puzzled look at the man’s purposeful diversion. With a sense of mounting apprehension that he couldn’t explain, only react to, he understood that something was about to happen.
Perhaps thirty yards separated Sansom and Eda from the stranger wading through the shallows when the stranger’s expression suddenly changed. He faltered in his stride and removed his sunglasses. Sansom knew that he had been recognised. Without a weapon, he could think of doing nothing but running. He seized Eda’s forearm to indicate that they should leave quickly. He noticed that her face seemed to express a similar concern at the stranger’s obvious attentions. The man altered his course, left the sea and began striding towards them. Sansom was already standing, trying to lift Eda to her feet, but she appeared mesmerised into a state of inaction by the advancing figure.
The distance between them narrowed to less than ten yards.
‘Eda, get up,’ hissed Sansom.
She grabbed at her bag. And then a strange thing happened. The man walking towards them dropped the sandals and socks that he was carrying and raised both his hands in front of his chest, palms outwards – a universally unthreatening and appealing gesture. His face then broke into a smile. The whole effect was disarming and further confusing. And all the while he edged closer.
A hush descended on the few surrounding tables that were occupied. And then the man spoke in English: ‘Please, Acer. Just one minute. Give me just one minute.’
***
15
The stranger stopped ten feet from them. He and Sansom stood facing one another. Eda sat still, as if paralysed. The people at the tables around them seemed unable to mind their own business.
‘Who are you?’ said Sansom.
‘A friend,’ said Tallis, his hands still in front of him.
‘I said, who are you?’
‘Please. I just want one minute of your time. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll walk away.’
‘Tell me who you are or we’re leaving now.’
The stranger took a deep breath, partly because of the importance of what he was going to say next but mostly to steady himself against his emotions for what he must reveal and remember. He forced another smile. ‘I’m your friend but you don’t know it, yet. I’m also a Detective Inspector with the Hampshire County Constabulary, but above all that I’m the father of Jenny Tallis. You may remember her from the crew of The Rendezvous.’ As that hit home and sank in, Tallis repeated his plea: ‘Now, please, give me one minute?’
Sansom was visibly stunned. Each of the last two ways that the man opposite defined himself was like a physical blow. He stared at Tallis for a long moment, deliberating. And as he did so, he saw that the man’s eyes were full of tears, one of which escaped and ran down his cheek, then another. Tallis made no attempt to wipe them away. He stood perfectly still, as though he had stumbled across a rare bird and didn’t want to startle it into flight with his movement.
Sansom became aware of the quiet around him and the unwanted attention that the spectacle was bringing them. ‘Sit down,’ he said.
Only then did the man remove a handkerchief from his pocket and dab at his face. The noise of people lunching gradually resumed.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the stranger, with a little self-conscious laugh. ‘I can’t help myself. It’s Jenny, do you see? She was everything to me.’
Ignoring his most heartbreaking confession, Sansom said, ‘Can you prove who you say you are? Now?’
The detective unzipped his bum-bag and removed firstly his warrant card and then a laminated photograph that he had carried around with him specifically for this moment. If he had been in Sansom’s shoes, he would have done the same thing: insisted on some proof of who he claimed to be, especially the relationship with the crew member of The Rendezvous.
Sansom opened the identification, looked briefly at it and handed it back. He then picked up the photograph. Staring back at him was a slightly younger, thinner version of the man before him with Jenny Tallis in her graduation gown and mortar board, arms around each other. Both were smiling broadly.
Sansom had come to know Jenny Tallis well during their time together on The Rendezvous. She was on a gap year after university and they shared a passion for the sea. She was working as part of the small crew from which, she had once confided in him, she hoped to go on to bigger craft and bigger things, contrary to what her family expected her to do. She was a popular crew member – friendly, good-hearted and helpful. Sansom remembered that on more than one occasion she had minded his baby daughter while he and his wife had dived over the side for morning swims.
Carefully, he pushed the photograph back to the bereaved father. When he spoke again, his tone had lost its guarded hostility. ‘I’m truly sorry for your loss,’ he said. ‘Jenny was a wonderful girl. Everyone loved her.’
‘Thank you,’ said the DI, a little of his composure regained.
‘Would one of you care to let me in on this?’ said Eda, bewilderment clouding her features.
‘Detective Inspector Tallis’s daughter was a crew member on the ship on which my family and everyone else apart from me were murdered.’
Eda looked at the sweating Englishman sitting across from her and sympathy flooded through her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
Sansom’s thoughts were walking a different line. ‘How did you know that we would be here? I mean, did you? Were you looking for us or is this some completely ran
dom occurrence?’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Tallis. ‘And I want to share it with you, but would you mind very much if I ordered a drink and something to eat first? I think there’s a real chance that I might pass out soon if I don’t. I’ve had a particularly exhausting morning and I’m not in the best physical shape, as you can see.’
Eda and Sansom both remembered the man struggling down the hill in the heat and could see that he was probably telling the truth. Iced drinks were re-ordered and quickly consumed.
Tallis ordered sandwiches and while they waited for them to come, he began to explain his presence there. ‘Firstly, it’s no accident that I’ve found you. I’ve been looking for you. I’ve taken leave from my job to come to Turkey to find you.’
‘But how did you find me? I didn’t even know I was going to come here today until this morning.’
The DI smiled at him. ‘Don’t forget, I’m a detective. Finding people is part of my job. And to be honest, son, you haven’t made it that difficult and I’ve had some luck.’
The food arrived and while he ate Tallis detailed the history of his involvement with the case. He described the first time he had set eyes on Sansom as a murder suspect, unconscious in a hospital ward, and the subsequent revelation that he was a member of the group aboard the vessel his daughter had been sailing on when she vanished.
He spoke of Sansom’s night-time abduction by the military, through to his meeting with the Army Captain at the motorway services and the subsequent gift of the sensitive information from him that had originally come from Sansom himself.
He then described his own police work and moments of good fortune that had brought him to the beach that day. He admitted that never in his wildest imaginings would he have expected to encounter Sansom on his first visit to the place. That was indeed great and good fortune.
Fantastic though the story was, of greatest immediate concern to both Eda and Sansom was the fact that such an apparently good likeness of Sansom had been published in a national newspaper. It meant that he would need to guard against recognition, which would make his movements that much more awkward and dangerous.
‘But where would they have got it from? said Sansom.
‘Botha or someone working for him,’ said Eda. ‘I’ve tried to tell you how much influence that man has. You’ve been seen by them on CCTV and in the flesh. It wouldn’t take much for them to get someone to ‘help the police with their enquiries’. One of the police that he has in his pocket could easily have arranged it.’
As they ate and drank, they exchanged questions and answers. Eventually, the time came for Tallis to make the pitch he had come for; a pitch he felt he would get only one opportunity to make.
‘As you may have guessed,’ he said, ‘I’m not in Turkey in any official capacity. To all concerned authorities, I’m simply a tourist taking a well-earned holiday. The real reason I’m here, as I’ve explained, is to find you. Because I want your help.’
He locked eyes with Sansom to emphasise the importance of what he was about to say. ‘I’m here for the truth but the truth isn’t all here. Only part of it is here. Someone is responsible for the death of my little girl, your family and those other poor devils on that boat, and I intend to get justice for them and those they left behind.’
He smiled at Sansom then. ‘Not your kind of justice. I want legal justice. I understand why you would want what you seem to want and, believe me, in some of my darker moments I could happily strangle those responsible with my bare hands. But I’m a copper through and through. Playing vigilante has never seriously appealed to me and I’ve seen the mess that it’s got some good people into. Far better in my opinion to let the law do what it’s there to do. Besides, there’s a bigger picture here that I have a feeling you know nothing about.
‘I have three reasons for coming to find you,’ he continued. ‘One is that I would like to know, directly from you, about the last days of my daughter’s life and what happened at the end out there.
‘I have the tapes that you made with Captain Harris. As I’ve said, he gave me everything, but in my experience there’s nothing like hearing it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Clearly, Harris suspected that there was something very fishy in all this, in the authority’s treatment of you, especially with Bishop’s involvement. He’s broken the bloody Official Secrets Act, after all.
‘Harris believed that you deserved better from the service as one of their own. I wonder if his own involvement wasn’t the cause of his posting well away from where he could be a problem for them. But maybe that’s just the conspiracy theorist in me.
‘The second reason I’m here is to find evidence that could lead to a prosecution of those responsible for these crimes. Like I said, I want proper justice. There’s something very wrong here that involves some very elevated people up to their necks. Without proper evidence and testimony, I’d have no chance of holding them accountable.
‘Which leads me on to the third reason I’m here – I want you to agree to come back to England to testify as a main witness.’
Up to this point, Sansom had listened respectfully to the policeman, secure in the knowledge that he had no jurisdiction here, that he was merely an interested, involved third party, who, as the father of a murdered girl, deserved a hearing. He owed him that at least. However, when Tallis broached this last point he sat up, making to argue with him.
‘Please,’ said Tallis, once again his hands in front of him, palms out, ‘let me finish what I have to say before you respond. You don’t know it all, yet. If I’m right, this whole business is much more important and much bigger than you can imagine.’
Sansom relaxed a little, intrigued.
‘I’m going to ask you to be honest with me about something,’ Tallis continued. I want you to think very carefully. I also want you to know that whatever we discuss here today, and any upshot of it, I have no intention of making trouble for you with the authorities in Turkey.’
He allowed himself a little chuckle, ‘I might ask you for a lift back up the hill to the bus stop when we’re done here. But I’ll ask nothing more from you if you make it clear that’s what you want. If you want nothing more to do with me when we leave here, I’ll respect that. I give you my word.’
‘Go on,’ said Sansom.
‘I want you to cast your mind back to the night you were spirited away from Headley Court. Will you tell me exactly what happened between when you left the base and checking into the hotel at the airport?’
‘Why?’ said Sansom. ‘What’s so important about it? I wrote down everything for Harris and if he passed it all on to you, then you know as much as I can tell you. There’s nothing more to add.’
Tallis smiled at him. ‘Put it down to me being a copper. Something happened that night and I need to know how you were involved. Tell me your version of the evening and I’ll tell you mine. Humour me.’
Sansom thought, recollected, got events straight in his mind. Tallis studied him closely. Eda was relegated to the sidelines, an enthralled witness to this most bizarre of meetings. The atmosphere around them had returned to what it had been before the man had wandered out of the sea.
‘After we left the base, we drove to a London address. Number fourteen somewhere. I didn’t catch the street name. I was met by a man who calls himself Smith. Bishop was waiting inside for me.
‘He just wanted to talk to me, thank me for being with them, leave me in no doubt that there would be, shall we say, certain consequences if I had a change of heart and sought to make trouble for him in any way. He told me that I wouldn’t see or hear from him again and that I would be contacted by Smith when they needed me.
‘I have a phone they gave me,’ he said, in response to Tallis’s questioning look. ‘Contact was also to be one way. After that, I went upstairs to change into clothes they’d brought for me. Bishop left when I was upstairs. I’ve not seen or heard from him since. Smith drove me to a cafe, where he briefed me and provided me with doc
uments that I’d need. He then drove me to the hotel and left me there. Alone.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yes. That’s everything.’
‘Did it not strike you as odd that they took you there just for that? Couldn’t it all have been done in the back of a car?’
‘I suppose it could, but I didn’t have much control over the situation.’
‘There was no one else present?’
‘Apart from the driver who took me there, no one that I saw. Do you want to tell me what this is all about now?’
‘Last question: have you ever heard of a journalist called Phillip Hatcher?’ The policeman, experienced through years of practice at spotting an untruth, studied Sansom’s face intently.
Maintaining eye contact with his interrogator, Sansom shook his head. ‘No.’
‘They fitted you up, son,’ said the DI, with a mixture of seriousness and sadness.
The alarm bells started to ring. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know what they promised you, but the official Army line for now is that you died in their care as a result of complications after travel.’ Sansom nodded.
‘However, that doesn’t tally with your apparent appearance, after your ‘death’, at the home address of the journalist I mentioned, who was found with his throat slit – sorry miss – dead on his kitchen floor soon after your visit.
‘A glass with your prints on was found at the scene, as was a Headley Court hospital gown. Your prints are all over the place. Now do you see why they got you there? I have no doubt that when it suits them they’ll own up to losing you and then, despite what they promised you, you’ll be wanted by the Army for your escape from Headley Court and for any other military violation that they care to throw at you; wanted for questioning by the Hampshire Constabulary in connection with the death of Harper, and also wanted by the Met for the murder of the journalist. I also suspect that all that might be used to validate a shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy where you’re concerned.’
For several unpleasant moments nobody spoke. Eda and Sansom digested and computed this latest bombshell. Tallis gave them time to do so. Some colour drained from Sansom’s tanned features, giving him a wan look. It was Eda who broke the silence, her journalistic mind working. ‘Why?’