Maria Hudgins - Lacy Glass 02 - The Man on the Istanbul Train

by Maria Hudgins

  “Nothing but the way he went flying off the train and the look on his face the night before. It’s hard to explain, but his body reminded me of a mail sack. In the old days they threw a mail sack off a train as it went by a station. I think he was already dead, or at least unconscious.”

  “And you saw him again yesterday morning, a few minutes before he left the train so hastily.”

  “Right. But I didn’t speak to him. We nodded at each other.”

  “What did he look like? The same as the night before?”

  Lacy hadn’t thought about that. She tried to recall the scene. “Now that I think about it, he looked more relaxed. Exhausted … defeated, maybe … but not as panicked as the night before.”

  “As if a crisis had passed?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What do you plan to do about it?” she said, a deep crease between her brows.

  Lacy felt as if Gülden had handed her a sword and shield. How did she know Lacy planned to do anything about it? As different as they were, she felt she and Gülden were kindred spirits. She liked this woman. “I want to go back and find out what’s happened to his body. I want to know if someone claimed it, and if so, who.”

  “But you have no car, and there is no bus service out here.”

  “Do you think they’d let me use the van?”

  “No. They need it at least twice a day and sometimes more.” Gülden balled up her paper napkin and folded her used paper plate around it. She pushed her chair back and stood. “How about Henry and Max’s car?”

  “Is Henry still here?”

  “He’s staying on a few more days, Bob told me.”

  “It won’t hurt to ask.”

  * * *

  Henry Jones was working inside his tent. Lacy paused outside the flap wondering how to knock on a canvas door. “Knock, knock,” she said. Bidden to enter by a voice inside, she pushed the flap aside and bent to clear the opening.

  Henry, wearing shorts and a SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt, looked up from his laptop. After Lacy explained the reason for her visit, he said, “I need the car this afternoon.” Leaning back in his chair, he sighed and looked at his watch. “Could you have it back here by four?”

  Lacy’s own watch said a few minutes to nine. “Sure.”

  “What are you going to the train station for?”

  She made up a story about losing a credit card somewhere between the dig and Istanbul.

  “Forget it. You’ll never see it again. What do you think? Somebody’s going to hold it for you?” His gaze caught Lacy’s. She was craning her neck to see what was on his computer screen. He folded it shut. “Call your credit card company and cancel it. You should have done that yesterday.”

  “I didn’t discover it was missing until this morning.” It looked as if Henry wasn’t going to let her have the car after all.

  “Can you drive a stick shift?”

  “Sure.” Her confident tone was a bit misleading. She had driven one once.

  Henry stretched out his right leg until he could slide his hand into his shorts pocket. He tossed her a ring of keys and smiled. “It’s the blue Fiat in the parking lot.”

  Lacy thanked him, twirled the keys around her finger, then said, “Has Max Sebring’s body gone back to America yet?”

  “It should be arriving there any minute. They put it on a late flight out of Ankara, and Alan, our New York office manager, is meeting the casket and the guy flying with it at JFK.”

  “Will it be too late for an autopsy?” To her own ears, that sounded nosy. They were talking about Henry’s long-time boss but a man she’d never met.

  As if he understood her concern about post-mortem decay, he said, “It’s only been a day and a half, plus, the airplane is equipped with a refrigerated compartment.”

  “What’s the reaction from the family?”

  “What family?” He scrubbed his face with both hands and sighed.

  Chapter Eight

  Wandering through the camp in search of Paul, Lacy spotted Gülden talking to her husband under the tin roof of the open-air kitchen. They both waved, Süleyman putting one hand to his mouth in an exaggerated giggle. What an odd couple, Lacy thought. She nearly tripped over Sierra Blue sitting on the ground at the edge of an excavated area, surrounded by reference books and taking notes on a stenographer’s pad. With her rose-tinted glasses pushed up into her dark, tousled hair, Sierra stopped writing and held up one of the books, Pre-Hittite Pottery in Asia Minor. Paul, she said, had told her about Lacy’s discovery of the cinnabar on a pottery sherd and asked her to research prehistoric use of the red pigment. “Paul’s really excited about it. I’m so glad I told him to ask you here. I promised him he wouldn’t be sorry.” She lowered her sunglasses and looked up at Lacy, who towered over her in the morning sun.

  Lacy felt a lump in her stomach as if her heart had joined her breakfast. Thud. The only reason Paul asked her here was because Sierra told him he needed a pigment expert. That is, according to Sierra. On the other hand, this might be Sierra’s way of chopping Lacy down to size before her supposed rival became a problem. Wishful thinking? How would she ever know for sure? Fiddling with the car keys in her pocket, she said, “Where is Paul?”

  Sierra pointed. Paul and Bob Mueller stood on a small rise to the east, gesturing this way and that, as if surveying their entire project. When Gülden emerged from behind a tent and surprised them with “Good morning, ladies,” Lacy stopped her.

  “I’ve got the keys. What are you doing today?” Realizing she was moving too fast, she backed up. “That is, could you possibly join me today? Henry’s car is a manual shift, he tells me, and I’ve never driven in Turkey. I might need a little help.”

  “I dare say you will, and the road signs may also be a problem for you.” Gülden looked over Sierra’s shoulder and went silent for a minute. “Sure. Why not? I’ll just run down to the kitchen and tell my husband.”

  Before Lacy reached Paul and Bob at the top of the small hillock, she saw quite clearly that the two men were arguing. Paul worried a large rock with the toe of his boot while Bob, eyebrows lowered, made pleading gestures with both hands. She considered walking away, then decided to go ahead.

  “I have to go back to the train station and Henry has loaned me his car for the day.”

  Bob went silent and Paul pulled her toward him, throwing an arm around her shoulder. “You can’t drive in Turkey. Not on an American license.”

  “Gülden is going to drive.”

  Paul looked at her, smiled, and removed his arm, then gingerly lifted a small strand of her yellow hair that had stuck itself to her lip balm. “Wish I could go with you.”

  Lacy felt he meant that, in spades. “By the way,” she said, “Gülden and I are trading places. I’m taking her tent and she’ll be staying at the bunkhouse, which she prefers.” Paul’s tanned face reddened all the way down his neck. “I can go back to the house during the daytime. I’ll still have all day to work with the material in the finds room.”

  Was it her imagination, or did Bob Mueller flash him a look of sympathy?

  After a minute, Paul said, “Whatever suits you.”

  * * *

  The keyless entry fob on Henry’s key ring opened the blue Fiat’s doors with a little chirp. The rented car smelled of vinyl cleaner on the inside. As soon as Lacy slipped in on the passenger side, her attention was arrested by the glove box. She longed to open it, but feared that Gülden would object to her nosiness. But it might hold something that would shed light on the real reason she was making this trip—finding the identity of the man wearing Max Sebring’s coat and why someone killed him. She had no idea what might lurk behind the small door in the dashboard, but one never knew. Perhaps a letter, or a receipt for left luggage, or a matchbook from a hotel.

  Gülden shifted into reverse, playing the clutch and the accelerator simultaneously while turning to look behind. Lacy watched the smooth procedure and Gülden noticed her watching. “What? Why
are you looking at me?”

  “I was admiring how you do all that while wearing a scarf. If I did it, I’d end up with the scarf all over my face.”

  “When you’ve worn a scarf all your adult life, it becomes easy. I never think about it.”

  They bounced across the barren field, sticking more or less to the worn path but veering around the deeper ruts. When they reached the road, Gülden revved the engine to propel the little car onto the raised asphalt, and turned right.

  “I hope I can remember how to get to the train station,” Lacy said.

  “I know where it is. We came down from Ankara by train.”

  “You have no accent in English. When did you learn it?”

  “In school. I learned it in the early grades, but Süleyman didn’t learn English until he was nearly grown, and you hear the difference.” Gülden checked her rear view mirror. “Plus, Süleyman’s talents are more culinary than verbal.”

  Lacy asked her more about Süleyman.

  Gülden told her theirs was an arranged marriage. She and Süleyman had known from early childhood that they would someday marry. “But I really liked Süleyman’s older brother better. I used to wish I could marry him, but it was not to be. Another bride had been selected for him.”

  “I can’t even imagine it. It’s so foreign to the American way.”

  “Your divorce rate is higher than ours.”

  “Yes, but isn’t that because divorce is harder to get here?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” Gülden’s cell phone, lying on the center console, rang. She looked at the screen, punched a button with her thumb, and went on. “All I’m saying is, I don’t think your system works any better than ours.”

  “But you would’ve rather married Süleyman’s brother! You just told me that.”

  “If I had, I would have torn two families apart, and, I would have found myself married to a wife-beater.” Gülden went on to talk at length about her marriage to Süleyman. They had both gone off to university at the same time, but Süleyman soon dropped out, bored by the long hours of study, while she flourished. He tried several jobs with little success while she went on to earn a doctorate in archaeology. She put him through cooking school, juggling a new job and a new baby, while he whipped up dishes with French names for a burgeoning circle of friends. His greatest talent, she said, was making friends. His second greatest—cooking. At this point in their lives, their son now grown, they lived comfortably in Ankara. Süleyman’s job as chef at a popular restaurant paid more than hers at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. Clearly Gülden considered her marriage to Süleyman Güler a success.

  Before Lacy knew it, they pulled into the parking area at the train station. Gülden yanked the hand brake up and turned to Lacy with a smile. “He may be a fool, but he’s my fool.”

  After an initial explanation about the reason for her visit, Lacy let Gülden handle most of the interview with the stationmaster. A small group of loiterers gathered within earshot, apparently because the locals were as eager to learn more about the mysterious man on the Istanbul train as she herself was. Gülden’s head pivoted from the stationmaster to Lacy and back again.

  “He says the ambulance took the man to the hospital, but it was too late.”

  “Ask him if the body is still at the hospital.”

  “They took it to the gendarmerie. The police station.”

  “Then what?”

  Gülden shrugged. “They’ve heard nothing more.”

  “Ask him where the police station is.”

  Gülden listened for a minute, nodding, then nudged Lacy toward the door.

  * * *

  The crumbling gendarmerie stood alone on a slope near the main road some five miles from the train station. Inside, Lacy and Gülden created quite a stir when four men in blue uniforms, roused from a chess game, caught on to the fact that these women might know something about their mystery corpse. They proceeded in an olio of Turkish and English, all talking at once.

  “Your friend, the American. She knew him?” The man who seemed senior to the others addressed Gülden, bobbing his head toward Lacy.

  “Not actually. But she thinks she may have a connection to him. She only met him on the train.”

  “What was his name?”

  Lacy understood this, even in Turkish. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  His face fell. “We do not know either. There was no identification on his body. We have no way to contact his relatives if we do not even know what his name was.”

  Lacy nudged Gülden. “Ask them where the body is now. Ask if we can see it.”

  Gülden looked as if that possibility made her uncomfortable but she did ask, then turned back to Lacy. “They buried him last night.”

  “They’ve already buried him?” Lacy, wide-eyed, made no attempt to hide her astonishment.

  “Muslim tradition. The body should be buried the same day.”

  “No autopsy?”

  “The body is washed and wrapped in clean sheets, then buried.”

  Lacy took a moment to think this through. She was prepared for an argument over permission to see the body but hadn’t considered the possibility that there would be none to see. Meanwhile, Gülden was getting pummeled with more questions about the exact relationship between the American girl and the John Doe. “Ask them what happens now. Are they just going to wait and see if anyone inquires about an unidentified man?”

  Following Gülden’s query, the man in charge shrugged his shoulders and muttered something in rapid Turkish.

  “They’ve contacted several embassies. So far, they’ve heard nothing.”

  “What about his clothes? Did they bury them, too, or do they still have them?”

  They had not buried the clothes with the man and they did still have them, but whether these two women should be allowed to see them took a good bit more discussion. Lacy saw the shaking of heads, and frustration on Gülden’s face.

  “Tell them if they want to identify their John Doe, I’m their best bet. Other than the conductor who wanted to throw him off the train, I’m the only person known to have ever spoken to the man. I assume they’ve already talked to the conductor.”

  This line of reasoning worked. One of the men slipped into a back room and returned with a bag of clothes. He opened it, dumping the contents on the counter and releasing a stomach-churning odor. A smell that brought to Lacy’s mind the squeal of brakes on pavement—something—years ago. Something, and then the flash of déjà vu was gone. She lifted the green trench coat, looked at the hand-sewn tag that still proclaimed Maxwell Sebring as the coat’s owner, and sniffed it. Fish. But strangely, only a hint of the repugnant smell so overpowering on the rest of his clothes. She forced herself to lift the cotton shirt to her nose. Fear. It reeked of fear. She wished her old dog, Willie, were here. Gone ten years now, Willie would have been able to identify every aromatic compound and calculate the percentage of each in the overall scent. Of course he wouldn’t have been able to verbalize what he knew.

  A wave of nausea overtook her and she felt as if she might be sick. She rested one hand on the counter briefly, then stepped away and looked out the station’s grimy front window. When she turned back toward the counter, she spotted some other small items and examined them: a baggage claim ticket in German from a Lufthansa flight dated 18 July, and a cocktail napkin with 411 written in black ink and embossed with the logo of the Pera Palace Hotel. She examined the top of claim ticket for the passenger name, but that edge had been obliterated by a spill of something dark. Lacy held up both items. “Where did you find these?” One of the men picked up the trench coat and showed her a pocket in the lining. He ran his hand inside it. They’d found the claim ticket and cocktail napkin there.

  Lacy reached across and fingered the label inside the collar. She pointed to the words Maxwell Sebring and raised her eyebrows at the officer holding the coat. “Did you see this?”

  Gülden, peering past Lacy’s s
houlder, asked the same question in Turkish. “He says that’s the name of the designer. They’ve already talked about it.”

  “No! It’s the name of the owner of the coat. Tell them that.”

  Gülden and the men discussed this for a minute, then she turned to Lacy. “They say they will investigate. If you are right, it may be helpful.”

  Lacy examined the items from the coat pocket again. She grabbed a scrap of paper from her hip pocket and wrote down the numbers on the claim ticket and the napkin. She’d heard of the Pera Palace, a famous five-star hotel in the New City section of Istanbul.

  Gülden, holding the shoes and tapping their heels together, stood back a few feet from the counter.

  “These shoes look very expensive,” she said.

  The leather looked like alligator skin. Lacy took the shoes in her own hands and found a maker’s mark on the insoles. “Italian.” She examined the soles. The outside of the left heel showed more wear than the inside. She measured the length of one shoe against her left arm and then put the pair together, sole to sole. “Wait a minute. They don’t match.” Looking carefully at the soles of both, she ran a finger along the stitching at the outer edges. “Look. The left one is wider.”

  “Custom made.” Gülden said.

  Lacy agreed. “He may have had a bunion or something on his left foot and the shoemaker adjusted the shoe to fit.”

  The policeman held out his hand for the shoes and dropped them back in the bag with the rest of the clothes. Evidently convinced he could get no useful information from these two, he bade them a good day.

  Lacy turned toward the door, then stopped. “Wait a second. Do you have any photos of him?”

  “We took photos. Yes.”

  “May we see them?”

  Low mumbling among the men began with shaking of heads, but changed to nods when, as Lacy surmised, they realized the very reason for taking the photos was for a situation such as this. One man ducked into a back room and reemerged holding a couple of eight by ten color photos.

  In death, the poor man looked infinitely more peaceful than he had that night on the train. The scene came back to her in a rush. The fear and confusion in his eyes. The relief when she volunteered to buy him a ticket. Relief perhaps, but not peace. Not yet. Not in this life.