Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  Kalem shot me a horrified look.

  ‘Give me your passport.’ Goodbody ignored my outburst and held his hand out to me.

  OK then, maybe not.

  I reached into my bag and handed it to him.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ Dick Head shuffled in his chair. ‘Ah, yes. Kalem Mustafa. I will ask you again. Is that your real name?’ He glowered at Kalem.

  ‘Yes.’ Kalem shot me a silencing side glance.

  ‘And what’s your name, hmm?’ Goodbody asked me.

  ‘You know what my name is; it’s on my p–’

  Kalem stared at me, jerking his head towards Dick Head and Goodbody, silently willing me to just answer their questions.

  I sighed. ‘Helen Mustafa.’

  ‘Ah ha!’ Goodbody waved my passport around. ‘It says Helen Grey here. Is this a fake passport?’

  ‘No! Sorry, I meant to say that my name’s going to be Helen Mustafa in six days time. We’re getting married. At the moment, I’m Helen Grey. You know how it is when a girl’s getting married: she gets a bit over-excited and starts signing her new married name for months in advance and repeating “Mrs. Mustafa” over and over again.’ I could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t have a clue what I was on about. ‘In fact…’ I glanced at my watch. ‘We’re supposed to be catching our plane in about forty-five minutes. We’re supposed to be having a few days of relaxing pre-wedding sand, sea and s… ’

  ‘Sharap,’ Kalem interjected.

  ‘Did you just tell me to shut up?’ Dick Head frowned at Kalem.

  ‘No, he said sharap. It’s Turkish for wine,’ I informed him. Since I’d found out that Kalem and I were going to be moving to North Cyprus, I’d desperately been trying to learn some Turkish words. So far, I’d mastered the important things like: “More wine please” and “Where are the toilets?” I could also say: “cat”, “thanks”, “very much”, “I’m full”, “cucumber”, “large”, and “melon”. It wasn’t a lot, I know, but it could make for an interesting sentence.

  ‘Why have you got a single plane ticket? Why aren’t you returning to the UK?’ Dick Head peered at us as if this were highly suspicious.

  ‘We’re moving abroad. We’re going to live the dream.’ I gave him a wistful smile as I thought about how perfect our new life was going to be.

  ‘What dream?’ Goodybody said.

  ‘You know, we’re escaping the dreary British weather and the rat race to experience life in the sunny and relaxing Mediterranean.’ Daydreams rapidly filled my head: walking hand in hand with Kalem on a sandy beach after a leisurely swim in the warm sea; sitting on our orange blossom scented, sun-baked villa terrace with a chilled glass of rosé as we watched the blazing sun set over the sea; sipping tiny cups of strong coffee in a chic waterfront café; eating succulent, freshly caught sea bass or juicy king prawns, cooked to perfection on a barbeque.

  ‘Your name sounds like a Muslim name. Are you a Muslim?’ Officer Head’s voice broke into my daydreams, sending me spiralling back to the reality of being stuck in a tiny, lifeless room with overpowering lights and a sweaty, stale smell. ‘Well?’ He peered at Kalem, waiting for his answer.

  Kalem folded his arms casually across his chest. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Hmm. Not really. That’s a strange answer. What does “not really” mean?’

  ‘Well, my parents are Turkish Cypriot. The religion of Turkish Cypriots is Muslim, but we don’t exactly practice it or anything. Most Turkish Cypriots are relaxed in their religious practices and very tolerant of other people’s religions.’ Kalem shrugged.

  I jigged my leg up and down. We were going to miss our flight. My wonderful pre-honeymoon would be ruined.

  ‘Is that what they told you to say?’ Goodbody leaned in closer, resting his elbows on the desk.

  ‘Who?’ Kalem asked.

  ‘Are you a member of Al-Qaeda?’ Officer Head looked deadly serious. ‘We have to be extremely vigilant these days, you know.’

  ‘What?’ Kalem blustered. ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Where are you travelling to?’ Goodbody wanted to know.

  ‘North Cyprus,’ I said, jigging harder. ‘We’ll miss our flight if you keep us here any longer. What’s going on?’ I whined, feeling my heart bouncing around in my chest. I was going to have a panic attack in a minute. Maybe if I fainted, they would let us go. I slouched down further in my chair, so I wouldn’t have as far to fall if I hit the ground.

  ‘Are you a suicide bomber?’ Dick Head growled at Kalem.

  ‘He’s a teacher!’ I cried.

  ‘And who do you teach? Terrorist cells?’ Dick Head beamed with excitement at Officer Goodbody. ‘I think we’ve got one of the Al-Qaeda’s main men here.’

  Kalem shook his head in amazement. ‘I teach woodcarving and sculpture!’

  ‘Is that a code name of some sort?’ Goodbody asked Dick Head. ‘I seem to recall one of the Bin Laden breakaway groups had a code name like that. What was it now?’ He scratched his toilet brush head, deep in concentration. ‘Ah yes! The Splinter Group.’

  ‘I haven’t heard of that one before.’ Dick Head frowned. ‘But it’s possible. Woodcarving… splinter…yes, it sounds possible to me.’

  ‘Why are we here?’ I furrowed my brow and gazed at both of them, interrupting what seemed like the most surreal conversation I’d ever heard in my life.

  Dick Head ignored my question and stood up. ‘Hand over your bags, please. I want to take a look inside.’

  I gave him mine. Kalem lifted his rucksack and put it on the table in front of us.

  Goodbody rummaged around in my bag with interest and then pulled out my camera. ‘Why do you need such a big camera? Are you going to be taking surveillance photos?’

  ‘I’m a photographer,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm. A likely story.’ Goodbody’s eyebrow shot up.

  Dick Head started on Kalem’s rucksack, pulling out a book, a couple of apples, and a tub of edible chocolate body paint. He held up the body paint to Kalem. ‘What’s this?’ He unscrewed the lid and glared at it as if it were packed full of Semtex.

  Kalem shrugged. ‘Well, it is going to be our pre-honeymoon.’

  I felt my insides turn to goo. He still had that effect on me. Oh, yes, bring on the chocolate body paint!

  ‘Was that the surprise you were talking about?’ I said to Kalem, turning my head away from the customs men who were busy scouring our bags for hidden compartments.

  Satisfied there was no Semtex, suspicious looking shoes, or packets of nails in our hand luggage, they returned their attention to us.

  ‘We’re going to miss our flight.’ I looked at my watch again, desperately hoping they’d hurry up.

  ‘Why has your passport been tampered with?’ Dick Head asked Kalem again.

  ‘It hasn’t,’ Kalem insisted.

  ‘Well what do you call that then?’ Dick Head turned the passport around to face Kalem.

  I gulped and my brain did a silent mental shriek. ‘Oops,’ I squeaked, suddenly feeling nauseous.

  Kalem stared at the photo section on his passport. The picture of a footballer-permed Kalem had been replaced with a picture of an old, fat, bald man with huge black square glasses.

  ‘I think I’m going to pass out,’ I muttered. If I caused a distraction, maybe we could just make a run for it.

  ‘What’s that?’ Kalem gasped, turning his head slowly to me with dread.

  Dick Head and Goodbody gave me an icy glare.

  ‘Ah,’ I croaked. It was all my fault. How was I going to explain this one?

  ‘Well?’ they said in unison.

  ‘Erm…well…what happened was…Kalem is always playing practical jokes on me,’ I paused, thinking how this was going to sound. ‘Anyway, about four months ago I bought this hair dye…’

  Goodbody snorted.

  ‘What does hair dye have to do with this?’ Dick Head growled.

  ‘It’s very relevant, actually,’ I started again, running a shaky han
d through my hair. ‘So, I bought this hair dye, and when I got it home, I realized I didn’t like the colour.’ My eyes darted to Kalem, who gawped at me. ‘A few days later, I took it back to the shop and asked the woman at the counter if I could return it. But when she took the box back off me, she stared at it for a while with a puzzled look and then turned it around to show me.’

  Dick Head and Goodbody had deadly straight faces.

  ‘Do go on. This is thoroughly enlightening,’ Goodbody said in a voice that clearly meant it wasn’t at all.

  ‘Well, that was when I noticed that someone had drawn a moustache and beard on the picture of the woman on the front of the box.’ I narrowed my eyes at Kalem, who chuckled under his breath, remembering.

  ‘Anyway, I was really embarrassed and had to pretend that it must have been like that in the shop when I’d bought it.’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ Goodbody asked, glancing at his watch.

  ‘I wanted to get Kalem back, and I knew he was going to the building society a few days later to get some money out, and he needed to take some ID. He can never find his driving licence, so he always takes his passport,’ I paused. ‘Because I’m a photographer, obviously I’ve got loads of old photos lying around, so I thought it would be really funny to pay him back for all the practical jokes he plays on me. I found this photo, cut it out, then stuck it over his passport photo with removable adhesive and put it back in the drawer. Then, of course, I forgot all about it.’ I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like I’d swallowed a Brillo Pad. ‘Until now.’ I tucked my hair behind my ears with shaky hands.

  Kalem coughed. ‘Actually, I managed to find my driving licence and took that to the building society instead.’

  I cast him a sheepish look. ‘Yes, I realize that now.’

  ‘You see! This is all perfectly innocent,’ Kalem said to Dick Head and Goodbody. ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘Not yet. Are you a Muslim too?’ Goodbody asked me.

  ‘No, I’m not a Muslim,’ I said.

  A confused glance passed between Dick Head and Goodbody. ‘Well you certainly look like one. Can you please explain why you’re wearing a burka if you’re not Muslim,’ Goodbody asked me.

  I glanced down at the floor length, head-to-toe black burka that I’d almost forgotten I was wearing. Even if the rest of the stuff sounded slightly odd, there was at least a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.

  ‘Well, there’s an ancient tradition with Turkish Cypriot families. When a new bride-to-be arrives in North Cyprus to get married, it’s good luck for her to be wearing a burka, isn’t it?’ I glanced at Kalem, willing him to explain this peculiar custom further. Instead, he kind of gave me a small shake of his head, and his jaw dropped.

  Oh, God. I recognized that look. There was no such custom. This was another one of his wind-Helen-up practical jokes. If they could’ve seen my face, which of course they couldn’t because I only had a two inch rectangular slit for my eyes, they would’ve seen it completely drain of colour. Luckily, they accepted this explanation, and neither of the customs officers seemed to notice that my eyelids had just pinged open in surprise or that Kalem’s face had turned a scorching-hot shade of pink.

  Dick Head picked at the adhesive on Kalem’s passport photo and pulled it off, examining the official picture of Kalem underneath. ‘What do you think?’ He handed the passport to Goodbody.

  ‘Mmm.’ Goodbody scrutinized it. ‘It looks legitimate.’ He sounded disappointed.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Dick Head huffed and turned to Officer Goodbody, frowning. ‘Seems like we’ll miss out on our CAT bonus.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Kalem asked.

  ‘Catch-a-terrorist bonus,’ Dick Head grumbled at us. It was clear from the look on his face that he’d already worked out what he was going to spend it on.

  ‘Can we go now?’ I pleaded.

  ‘OK,’ Goodbody said with much reluctance. ‘But don’t let this happen again.’

  ‘Thanks, Dick.’ I yanked Kalem’s arm and hurried him away to catch our plane before they changed their minds.

  We arrived at the gate with minutes to spare, just as a rather harassed looking baggage handler was about to search for our luggage to offload.

  OK, maybe this wasn’t exactly the kind of start to our perfect life together that I had in mind, and one day I was actually going to laugh about this, but I couldn’t allow myself to relax until we were sitting in our allocated seats and the plane was taxiing down the runway. We were on our way to an exciting destination, full of possibilities. Living a life abroad that most people just dreamed about but never got to experience. An amazing adventure that nothing was going to spoil.

  Nothing will spoil my wedding. Nothing will spoil my wedding. Nothing will spoil my wedding.

  Or so I thought.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Look on the bright side.’ I smiled at Kalem as we boarded the packed plane and pulled out my boarding pass.

  ‘And what’s that? We’ve just saved hundreds of pounds by not missing our flight?’

  ‘You started it all,’ I said.

  ‘I hardly think that defacing a box of hair dye is on a par with defacing a passport.’

  ‘Actually, I was going to say, at least we managed to get the seats with the extra legroom.’ My eyes darted between the seat number on my boarding pass and the corresponding seat row, realizing that an elderly couple were sitting in our seats.

  The couple stared at me in my burka and melted back into the leather upholstery.

  ‘Suicide bomber,’ the elderly man whispered to his blue-rinsed wife, grabbing her arm in a death-grip.

  I seriously hoped she didn’t have osteoporosis. He’d pull it off at this rate.

  ‘It’s OK, madam. These passengers have been through the same security checks as everyone else. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,’ the air stewardess whispered to the couple

  Bloody cheek! Thinking that I’m a suicide bomber, just because I’m wearing a burka! And anyway, I didn’t think it was politically correct to refer to them as suicide bombers these days. I thought the new terminology was Death Enforcement Technician.

  The elderly woman made a sign of the cross.

  The stewardess turned to us. ‘I’m afraid we’ve had a little medical emergency. As you were late boarding, we’ve had to move some passengers into your seats at the front.’ She leaned in closer. ‘Nearer to the toilets,’ she whispered.

  ‘There goes the extra leg room,’ Kalem whispered in my ear.

  ‘Follow me. There are a couple of seats in the middle.’ She shot off down the aisle as the engines roared to life.

  We ignored the suspicious looks from the fellow passengers as we got settled in our seats. I could’ve sworn I heard a little boy in the seat behind me ask his parents why I was dressed as a letter box.

  Kalem reached for my hand, gazed into my eyes, and smiled. ‘OK, we’re finally onboard.’ He let out a sigh of relief. ‘We can relax now.’

  My heart did a loop-the-loop as I reached over and tried to kiss him, then realized that was probably one of the many things you couldn’t actually do wearing a burka.

  ‘You can take the burka off now if you want.’

  I gave him a playful punch on the arm. ‘I can’t. I haven’t got anything on underneath it.’

  He gave me a seductive grin. ‘What, nothing?’

  ‘It is actually a bit hot under here.’ I wafted the material around. ‘I can’t believe I fell for it. Why didn’t Ayshe or your parents tell me it was a joke that brides-to-be have to wear burkas when they arrive in North Cyprus?’

  ‘They thought I’d tell you at the last minute that it wasn’t for real.’ The grin got wider.

  ‘Anyway, you really did start all this. You’ve been playing practical jokes on me since I was a kid. You deserve some payback.’

  ‘Well, I’ve known you were the girl for me since I was about four years old. I had to get you to notice me in that way someh
ow. And just think of all the fun we have! Wouldn’t life be boring if we didn’t have a laugh together?’

  ‘I am so going to get you back for this!’ I chuckled.

  ‘Well, it looks like the practical jokes paid off in the end. I’ve finally got you now.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘So I don’t want anything to get in the way of the wedding.’ He slid an arm around my shoulder and the momentum of the plane taking off pushed me towards him.

  Ouch! The arm of the seat between us dug into my ribs. Not exactly designed for romance. Oh well, we’d have plenty of time for that when we landed.

  I glanced out of the window as the green fields disappeared into tiny little distorted blobs below, and I almost couldn’t believe this was really happening. When Kalem had been offered a new job at a university in North Cyprus, I admit I was a little worried. For a start, I’d miss his mum and dad, Yasmin and Deniz. They’d pretty much been my surrogate parents after my own parents died when I was just a kid, and I’d gone to live with my nan. His sister, Ayshe, was my best friend and someone I saw almost every day. In fact, she was more like my own sister than Kalem’s. And it was her fourteen-day life-changing challenge that had actually got Kalem and me together – but that’s a whole different story! I just didn’t want to think about what was going to happen after the wedding, when she would be going back to the UK with her husband, Atila, and giving birth to her baby girl. No more talking or texting each other several times a day. No more shopping trips. No more girly chats about everything and nothing. No more having someone who was just so close and so much on the same wavelength that it really felt like we had some kind of telepathic link. Sometimes we could just look at each other and know what the other was thinking, and we’d often finish off each other’s sentences. And I wouldn’t be there to see her little bump be born or be a big part of Bump’s life like a doting Aunty should. These were the things I’d desperately miss.

  But at the same time, I could feel an excitement burning in my depths. Or maybe it was indigestion – one of the two. Actually, maybe it was neither. Maybe it was dread. Most people told me it was really brave to move to another country and start again. After all, there was a lot to do. After the wedding and honeymoon period, we had to get Yasmin and Deniz’s house habitable for us to live in until we got a place of our own. No doubt Kalem would have ups and downs with his new dream job, and I would have to try and build up my photographic business again from scratch. We had to make new friends. We had to get used to living in a foreign country where everything would be so different. Maybe we’d both die of malnutrition or dysentery or something, because I could only ask for wine, toilets, melons, and cucumbers.