Captive of Kadar

by Trish Morey

  ‘Of course, she did.’ He flicked his fingers. ‘I’m still waiting.’

  ‘Didn’t you read what it said? Didn’t you see the caption?’

  He shook his head, as amazed by her sheer brazenness as he was by his own stupidity. He’d almost believed there might be a kernel of truth in what she’d said. Because he’d wanted to believe what she said was true. Fool! ‘How long did it take to come up with this pack of lies? Did you make it up on the spot or did you fabricate it all before you came, so you would be ready to wheel out your so sad and mysterious tale of your ancestor in case you got caught? Were the tears part of your plan, so that I would be so touched by your depth of emotion, I would have to be swayed to believe you?’

  ‘It’s the truth!’

  ‘You lie! For the last time, give me the bracelet!’

  Her beautiful face crumpled. Beautiful thieving face, he thought, correcting himself as she twisted off the bracelet over her hand and finally passed it to him. The metal was warm where it had rested against her skin, and he wished it as cold as he felt towards her right now. ‘Please listen, Kadar, you’ve just got to believe me.’

  ‘Believe the words of a common thief? Anyone would have to be a fool to believe you.’ He snorted. ‘And I almost did. I almost thought I’d been wrong about you, sweet little Amber Jones. I almost thought you were something special, you know that? God, I’m a fool.’

  She blinked up at him, her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘No! I can’t believe you were so stupid. I told you it was illegal to deal with Turkish antiquities. And still you couldn’t help yourself. Get your things together. My driver will take you to the airport. And the only reason I don’t have you delivered to the nearest polis station is because I’m sick to death of the sight and sound of you. Always feigning innocence when you’ve been nothing more than a common thief the whole time. The sooner you’re gone, the better.’

  ‘Take me to the polis, then. Take me there and I will explain—’

  ‘And who do you think they are going to believe? You, who has already come to their attention for trying to deal in antiquities, or me? You will be thrown in jail before you know it. Be grateful that I am letting you go.’

  She sniffed. ‘Fine,’ she said, snatching up her bag and pulling out a notepad and a pen. ‘Be a bastard. That’s what you’re best at, after all.’ She scrawled her name and address on a piece of paper and thrust it at him. ‘When I am gone, and you discover the mistake you have made, this is where you can return my bracelet to me.’

  He swiped it from her proffered hand and balled it in his fist, flinging it onto the floor.

  ‘I think we both know I won’t be needing that.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KADAR STEWED IN HIS empty apartment for two entire days being constantly reminded of where Amber wasn’t to be found. Wearing an achingly short checked cloth in his shower. In the bed he’d grown used to seeing her in. Against the glass doors while she counted the ships sailing by as he...

  She wasn’t in any of those places, but he saw her all the same.

  So he would put his coat on and shove his hands deep down in his pockets and he would walk the windy, rain-streaked streets of Istanbul, walk till he was sure her ghost must finally be gone, only to go home and find himself still sensing her in the movement of a shadow, still catching her perfume when he least expected it.

  Two days of torture and he was over it. He’d done the right thing, hadn’t he? He’d cut off the offending limb and cauterised the wound. So why was this black mood hanging over him like a dark cloud?

  Because he was still angry at himself, he reasoned. Because she’d lied to him and he’d almost fallen for it. Almost imagined that she was special, and that he would be a fool to let her go.

  Lying sleepless and alone at three in the morning in his big wide bed, he knew the truth.

  He was a fool, and it wasn’t because he’d let her go.

  Because with Amber, he’d actually believed the impossible—that it was possible for him to feel love for a woman. Love with Amber, at any rate.

  Fool!

  He’d let a liar and a thief work her clever cunning way into his heart, and if anything he should feel relieved.

  Maybe what he needed was a change of scenery.

  He thought about visiting his three friends, even just for a couple of days for a change of scenery, but Zoltan and Bahir were married and had young families and he would be a third wheel, and besides, his friends weren’t stupid. One of them was bound to sniff out that there was something on his mind. Something he’d rather not confess.

  And God only knew where Rashid was in the world at the moment. Which was a shame, because he could do with talking to another confirmed bachelor right now. The competitiveness between them alone would have been enough to convince him he was better off without her.

  Fed up with his mind going in ever-decreasing circles, he left his meeting with the advertising agency that wanted to use his fireworks, and had his driver pull up outside the Spice Market. He would visit Mehmet and tell him of his time in Burguk and his visit to the Pavilion of the Moon.

  Maybe a visit to his old friend would brighten his dark mood.

  But the Spice Market only reminded him of Amber and those red jeans and blue eyes and a smile that could light up the marketplace, and he scowled at the man serving him the dates and apple tea as if it were all his fault, and left the market in an even darker mood.

  Mehmet at least was happy to have a visitor. It was something. ‘I brought you apple tea and some dates. Would you like some tea now or would you prefer coffee?’

  Mehmet waved his thanks. ‘Come in, come in. It is good to see you, my friend.’ He cocked an ear. ‘But you are alone?’

  ‘Of course, I am alone.’

  ‘And your friend?’

  He ground his teeth together. ‘Amber left two days ago.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that. I liked your young woman.’

  ‘She was never my young woman,’ he growled, already heading for the kitchen, making an executive decision. ‘I’ll make us some tea.’ Sure, maybe for one moment he’d almost fallen for her wiles. For one second he’d imagined—but no. He was never cut out for love and marriage and family. He’d been a fool to forget that for even a second.

  Besides, she was a thief. An opportunist. He’d known it from the start and she’d proved him right. When all was said and done, he’d had a lucky escape. Mehmet himself had had a lucky escape. Which reminded him, as he boiled water and made tea for them in copper pots, and found a dish for the dates, he still had to get the bracelet back to the Pavilion of the Moon. Strange that nobody had missed it, but then, the university students cataloguing the collection might still be on holidays. Maybe that was where he should go. Not that visiting the Pavilion of the Moon would make him forget about Amber. Her ghost would be everywhere there.

  He poured the tea into glass cups and took it and the dates through to the other room.

  ‘The dates are just how you like them, old friend,’ he said, finding a space on a side table in the old man’s reach. ‘Plump and meaty.’

  Mehmet took one and nibbled on it with his old teeth and nodded. ‘Excellent. You are good to an old man.’

  And Kadar knew he was only giving him back a fraction of what he’d done for him and so much less than what he deserved if he were ever to repay him, but he smiled anyway. He was right to come. The visit was working. He felt better already.

  ‘As I said,’ the old man said, ‘I’m sorry your friend has had to go home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kadar said resignedly, knowing he would feel better when the old man had finished with that particular subject. Mehmet was bound to be disappointed when he had all but decided that Amber was going to become some kind of permanent fixture in Kadar’s life
on the basis of a ten-minute meeting with her. Any meeting would have been built into something else by Mehmet. But he’d save him the truth. He wouldn’t tell him how close he’d come to being right. But neither would he share that she was indeed a thief and that he’d caught her stealing from even him. He didn’t need to hear the whole truth. ‘You did say that.’

  ‘Will you see her again, do you think?’

  ‘No.’ Not if he had anything to do with it. She lived in a country on the other side of the globe and, after her deception and the betrayal of his trust, even that did not seem far enough away. ‘There is no chance of that.’

  ‘Oh. For that I am sorry. I was hoping to show her something I found. How will she see it now?’

  Kadar was only half interested. He flicked his hand at a piece of lint on his trousers. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Because I remembered after your visit why she seemed so familiar.’

  Kadar stiffened, the whole of his attention with the old man’s words now, and he had the distinct feeling his dark mood wasn’t going to be getting any better any time soon. Even though the old man’s sight was negligible, there were things he perceived that went beyond sight. ‘Familiar? You never mentioned that before.’

  He shrugged. ‘I could not be sure. Not at first. My mind is not what it used to be. It was the name that struck me. An unusual name. And then I remembered.’

  He turned to the side and fussed with some bits and pieces he had sitting there while Kadar waited, uncertainty setting needles under him in the upholstery of his chair so that everywhere his body made contact with it prickled.

  His tea sat untouched in the wait.

  ‘Ah.’ Mehmet picked something up, something flat but too small for Kadar to make out, and ran his fingertips over the surface, and his face lit up as he nodded. ‘Yes. I am certain.’ He passed what was in his hand to Kadar. ‘What do you think?’

  Kadar took it with a growing sense of foreboding, his blood starting to thicken and curdle in his veins. But it was only when his heart lurched when he glanced down at the small oval disc in his hand that he realised it was justified.

  It was her.

  His mind told him it couldn’t be.

  And yet it was. Amber’s profile, carved from layers of shell, white against the caramel-coloured surround. And the worst of it was, it didn’t look recent. It looked old. Antique.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘From my father.’

  And a shiver ran through Kadar from his scalp to his toes.

  ‘But it’s her. It’s Amber.’

  ‘I knew it!’ Mehmet declared, slapping his hand against his thigh, suddenly brighter, ‘I thought the same. That is why I asked you if she’d been to Istanbul before. Because I was sure I’d encountered her features somewhere before. It was right here, in this cameo.’

  And the gears and cogs of Kadar’s mind groaned and shifted as a sickening feeling settled thickly upon an already black mood. He didn’t want to entertain such a thing could be possible because then he’d have to consider that the stories Amber had spun might have contained a kernel of truth.

  He did not want to have to admit that.

  Because then he’d be forced to admit that maybe he’d been wrong about the bracelet too.

  He could not have been wrong about the bracelet.

  She was a thief. He was certain of it.

  He was counting on it.

  That was the reason he hadn’t returned the bracelet yet. Because in a small dark corner of his mind, he’d known that he couldn’t risk it, that he’d feared what she’d said might be true and that he might find the bracelet he’d accused her of stealing still there in the cabinet under lock and key. He’d clung to the belief that she had stolen it because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

  But if she wasn’t a thief...

  ‘Did your father tell you who this was?’

  ‘There is a story he told me. Not written in the official histories of the court or the harem, so no trace of her will be found there, that there was a woman who came from the West, with blond hair and blue eyes and who was found wandering lost and alone, and sick with fever, after her tour party was raided, the horses and camels stolen, her guides lost or murdered.’ He shrugged. ‘Nobody knew.

  ‘She was taken to the Pavilion of the Moon, where the Sultan happened to be visiting.

  ‘The harem was back at the palace, no women accompanied him for this was a place of reflection and prayer. But he took the woman in and she recovered and became his secret desert wife. His business was at the palace, his visits to her necessarily infrequent given the distance, but in time she bore him a child. A daughter. Fortuitous for her, because by now her existence was whispered of in the palace, and if she’d borne him a son she and the child would most certainly have been killed. As it was, her presence was tolerated only because she had no impact on the succession. Alas, the child ailed and died in infancy.

  ‘A year later, and it was the Sultan himself, who died. He had left instructions before his death that the woman be sent home, because it would be too dangerous for her to remain.

  ‘My father arranged as the Sultan had commanded. She pressed this brooch into his hand as she made her thanks to him and boarded the ship that would take her home.’

  Kadar’s gut was churning, his thoughts in turmoil, as he asked the question he did not want to hear the answer to. ‘What was the name of this woman, do you know?’

  ‘They called her Kehribar.’

  A muscle in Kadar’s jaw popped.

  The Turkish word for amber.

  A coincidence. Surely it was a terrible coincidence.

  ‘Did she take anything with her when she left?’

  Mehmet thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Ah, yes. Whatever made you think of that? I had forgotten that part of the story. There were two bracelets the Sultan had fashioned for her as a gift. Kehribar asked my father that he place one bracelet in the Sultan’s tomb, as an eternal memory of her, while the other she would keep close to her heart. Alas, that would not be tolerated, so the bracelet was returned to the Pavilion of the Moon, where it remains today.’

  As it surely did.

  Two bracelets, then. And the woman had taken one and her descendant had unwittingly brought it back, only to be accused of stealing it.

  Only for Kadar to accuse her of stealing it.

  She’d been telling him the truth all along.

  Oh, God, what had he done?

  ‘She told me a story,’ he said, the words of his admission having to all but chisel their way out through his rock-hard throat, ‘that an ancestor of hers had travelled to Constantinople where she’d disappeared only to turn up on the family doorstep more than five years later. When I found her with a bracelet of gold and jewels, I told her she was lying. That she’d made up a story to cover her tracks. That the bracelet she had said she had brought with her was stolen. From the Pavilion of the Moon.’

  ‘And did you check to see if that particular bracelet was still there?’

  ‘No.’ Because they’d been back in Istanbul by then and he hadn’t needed to anyway, or so he’d thought. Because he’d been convinced it was the same one. He’d seen her gazing longingly at it in the display case, her eyes wide, her lips parted, and that had been his proof. He’d interpreted her shock—her discovery—as lust, pure and simple.

  And he hadn’t been in any hurry to check if the bracelet was still there, because he hadn’t wanted to discover that she’d been telling the truth the whole time.

  ‘I was wrong,’ he said. But, God, how wrong? He remembered her defiance when he’d found her with the bracelet. Her defiance. Her tears. He remembered his unwavering certainty. She’d begged him to listen, and he hadn’t. She’d pleaded with him to check the bracelet wa
s still there and he hadn’t. He remembered her scribbling down her address so he could return the bracelet when he discovered she’d been telling the truth and he’d screwed it up and flung it away as easily as he’d discarded the feeling in his heart that she was special. He hadn’t given her a chance. ‘I’ve never been so wrong. But it’s worse than that, Mehmet. Because I wronged her.’

  The old man made a rasping scratchy sound, half sigh, half recrimination, or that was the way that Kadar read it, because it was a sound that grated on what was left of Kadar’s conscience. ‘And what comes next, my young friend?’

  There was no question in Kadar’s mind.

  ‘There is something I must do.’ He looked at the antique brooch in his hand. ‘Can I take the cameo?’

  Mehmet nodded. ‘You must. After all, it is rightfully hers.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  AMBER WAS GOING to have to find herself a new flat, and soon. She sat wrapped in her summer silk dressing gown, fresh from her shower, in the dining room of the suburban home her parents had owned for more than thirty years. It was generous of them to welcome her back into the family home, seeing she’d gladly left Cameron and the flat they’d shared for a year before her shock discovery, but a permanent proposition, it was not.

  Especially when news of her return got around the neighbourhood. Because if one more friendly neighbour happened to drop by while her mum and dad were at work with a batch of scones or a casserole to console her about the boyfriend and best friend who weren’t, she’d go mad.

  ‘Are you over it all, dear?’ they’d ask, with cups poised over saucers and ears poised for all the gory details. ‘Did Turkey get it all out of your system or are you still feeling upset over the whole sorry affair?’

  And who could blame them, because of course she looked like she was still upset? She had bags under her eyes from not sleeping and jet lag was only to blame for a fraction of that.