by Simon Brett
‘I don’t know. If it was Henry who organized Nita’s death, then—’
‘It was not Henry who organized the death. You killed her!’
They both looked up at the sound, to see a figure framed in the rotting doorway. The bandage round his head looked like a turban in the moonlight. In his hand was a gun.
It was Erkan.
‘Your friend gave you away,’ said Travers Hughes-Swann.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The lovely Jude. She told me about you finding the body.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘Everyone seems to think that Barney killed Nita. That’s the logical thing to think. And once Erkan has killed Barney, the whole affair will be neatly sewn up without any involvement of the police … well, except when they arrest Erkan.’
‘Erkan’s in hospital in Fethiye. He can’t do much harm to Barney at the moment.’
‘Don’t you believe it. I phoned him as soon as your friend Jude told me about you discovering the body. I told him all the details, and I told him that Barney must have killed Nita. As a result, he discharged himself from hospital and got a cousin of his to drive him back to Kayaköy.’ Travers looked at his watch. ‘Barney is probably already dead.’
‘But does anyone know where Barney is? How’s Erkan going to find him?’
‘I know where Barney is. In the ghost town. I’ve told Erkan where to find him.’
‘Why on earth did you do that?’
‘I told you. So that the whole business is neatly sewn up. Erkan kills Barney for strangling Nita. The police arrest Erkan.’ He spread his hands wide. ‘How tidy is that?’
‘It won’t be so tidy,’ said Carole, ‘if I tell the police about finding the body.’
‘No, I agree, it won’t.’
And suddenly he had grabbed her, enveloping her in his body odour. Carole tried to fight back, but there was amazing strength in his wiry tanned arms. He must have had the plastic garden ties ready, because soon she was pinned down in an upright chair, wrists and ankles strapped to its arms and legs.
‘Which is why,’ said Travers, as if there had been no interruption to their conversation, ‘I have to ensure that you don’t go to the police.’
‘Are you threatening to murder me?’
He smiled ruefully in the moonlight. ‘I’m afraid I can’t see any other viable alternative.’
‘Suppose I were to promise you that I won’t go to the police, that I will forget what I saw at Pinara?’
‘Oh, if only one could trust people’s promises,’ he said almost wistfully.
‘So did you actually strangle Nita?’ asked Carole.
‘Yes,’ he replied with something approaching satisfaction.
‘But why? Why were you at Pinara, anyway?’
‘Ooh, there’s a long history of me going to Pinara, you know, Carole.’
‘What, as a sightseer?’
This seemed to amuse him. ‘No, not as a sightseer … more to see the sights.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That Lycian tomb where Nita died has seen a lot of action over the years.’
‘You mean sexual action between her and Barney?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. How did you find out about that?’ Carole clearly didn’t think it was the moment for long explanations, so he went on, ‘I first came across them by accident. I was there sightseeing, with Phyllis. Just before we got to the car park on our way back, I needed to nip into the woods to have a pee. I saw the little stream, and then through the trees I could see into the tomb.’ He chuckled again. ‘And see what was going on in the tomb. I didn’t have any of my equipment with me then, but I still found what I saw very exciting. So the next time the two of them were there I saw to it that I was properly equipped.’
‘But how did you know when they were going to be there?’
‘Not too difficult to work out. As I may have said, there are no secrets in Kayaköy, so everyone would know when Barney Willingdon was going to be over here. And the schedules of the tours Nita organized were easy enough to access – from holiday companies’ brochures at first, and later on their websites.
‘And Barney and Nita were very regular in their assignations. Eleven o’clock in the morning. Nita would send her tour party off to look at the amphitheatre with the junior guide, then she’d go to the tomb to meet Barney. And I’d be ready waiting with my equipment.’
‘When you say “equipment”,’ asked Carole with distaste, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Binoculars, cameras – particularly cameras.’ He sniggered. ‘With telephoto lenses, of course.’
‘So you mean you’ve got a whole archive of …?’
‘Yes,’ he said complacently.
It was at that moment Carole realized just how unhinged Travers Hughes-Swann was. And how little hope she had of avoiding the fate he had lined up for her.
‘For some years,’ he continued, ‘there wasn’t any activity at the tomb. If Barney came over with his wife – the first one or the second one – he wouldn’t make his assignations at Pinara. But this time I knew he’d come over on his own, and then I heard Nita say that she was going to Pinara on Tuesday.’
Fairly sure she wouldn’t like the answer, Carole asked, ‘When you said you “heard Nita”, where were you when you heard her?’
‘Right here,’ he said smugly. ‘I have microphones set up in Morning Glory. I like to know what’s going on.’
Carole felt physically sick at the thought that this pervert could have been listening to every word she and Jude uttered when they were at the villa. She was grateful that none of their poolside conjectures had featured him as a possible murderer. Otherwise the schedule for her execution might have been moved forward a bit.
Still, she might as well go to her death knowing the solution to the murder mystery she’d become involved in, so she asked bluntly, ‘Why did you kill Nita?’
‘Ah.’ He sounded almost apologetic as he said, ‘Bit of a cock-up on my efficiency front, I’m afraid. There’s an optimum position in the woods near that Lycian tomb, just over the little stream, where I always set up my equipment, but some trees had fallen down there, so it wasn’t terribly safe underfoot. And I’m afraid, just after Nita had got to the tomb, I slipped, and she heard the noise and came out. Then she saw me. And once she’d seen me …’ He spread his hands wide in a gesture of inevitability. ‘Well, there was only one thing I could do, wasn’t there?’
Carole could think of a wide choice of things that could have been done by someone less insane than Travers Hughes-Swann, but she didn’t enumerate them. Instead, boldly, she asked, ‘And did you kill your wife Phyllis too?’
‘Oh, you’re very quick, Carole. Yes, I’m afraid again I had to.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, she found my archive.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘She was looking at my laptop – which I’d many times told her she shouldn’t do – and she came across the archive of photographs.’
‘The ones you’d shot at Pinara?’
‘Amongst others. Amongst many others. You’d be surprised how many people leave their bedroom windows open at night when they’re in a hot country like Turkey. And I have very good telephoto lenses on my cameras and video cameras.’ He giggled at his own cleverness.
‘And did you strangle your wife too?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It’s the easiest way.’ Then, to Carole’s horror, he reached into the pocket of his grubby shorts and produced something she recognized. It was the lanyard from which Nita Davies’s ID card used to hang.
‘And you maintained that your wife was still alive so that there’d be no enquiry into her death?’
‘Well, that was part of the reason,’ he admitted. ‘But also the state pension is rather more generous for a married couple than it is for a single person.’ He spoke as if all of his behaviour had been prompted by pure mathematical logic.
‘Yes. Well, I had to, didn’t I? Can’t leave dead bodies in Lycian tombs, can you?’ He seemed to find this very funny. ‘I brought her back in the Land Rover.’
‘And where did you dispose of the body?’
‘Well, obviously, in the same place as I disposed of Phyllis’s. And—’ he smiled – ‘where you will be very shortly joining them.’ He looked across at his home-built travesty of a Lycian tomb. ‘Very fitting, don’t you think?’
And Carole understood why the stone blocks that floored Travers Hughes-Swann’s ‘suntrap’ had been so much less dusty and weed-covered than the rest of the garden. They had just been moved to accommodate Nita’s body beneath them.
He had now unclipped the plastic catch which made the lanyard into a necklace and was wrapping the free ends around his strong thin hands. ‘Now, obviously, it’s going to be easier for me, Carole, if you don’t struggle, but it won’t make a lot of difference either way. I’m still going to kill you.’
Carole began to scream. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of screaming before. But the nylon lanyard was so quickly round her neck, and so tightly round her neck that the screaming sound ended abruptly in a choke. She found her mind turning to her granddaughter Lily – and the brother or sister for Lily whom she would never meet.
Carole Seddon felt her consciousness draining away. She was only half-aware of a commotion at the gates of Brighton House, then a shout and the sound of a gun firing.
She didn’t see Travers Hughes-Swann stagger, slacken his hold on the lanyard as his strength deserted him, and drop to the ground, dead.
THIRTY-TWO
There was no way the police could not be called this time. An ambulance was also summoned, but the paramedic who examined her announced that Carole did not need hospitalization. She would have a very sore throat for a few days, but the bruising would not take long to subside.
The police quickly established the basic facts, Barney having enough Turkish for them to understand each other. Erkan did not deny having shot Travers Hughes-Swann, and his action had been seen by Jude and Barney. There might have been a third witness, but Carole had been too near unconsciousness to be reliable.
The police said they would need to ask more questions, but, given Carole’s condition, they agreed that the three English could go next door to Morning Glory for the time being
In spite of her shock, Carole decided that she probably could manage a glass of wine – ‘That nice one that tastes like Sauvignon Blanc,’ she croaked. Soon the three of them were sitting round a poolside table. A rather odd assemblage – Carole recovering from near-strangulation, and Barney with his blood-soaked shoulder. Jude was the only one uninjured.
Carole should probably have gone to bed with some paraceta-mol, but she was far too intrigued by the missing bits of Jude’s narrative. And the main thing she wanted to know was why Erkan, who when she last saw him had been issuing death threats against Barney, should suddenly be shooting Travers.
‘He explained that,’ said Jude, ‘when he found us in the ghost town.’
‘Sorry? In the ghost town?’
And Jude remembered that Carole had been asleep when she’d left Morning Glory. So she explained about the summons she had received from Barney, and how Travers had guided her to his hideaway.
‘But he also told Erkan where Barney was, and Erkan immediately discharged himself from hospital and—’
‘Yes, he told me that.’
‘But Travers made a big mistake when he made that call to Erkan. He mentioned that Nita had been strangled with her lanyard. Now, in theory, the only people who knew how she died were you, Barney and Erkan. You all saw the body in the tomb. The reason Erkan came to find Barney in the ghost town was to check whether he’d told anyone about the lanyard. I could vouch for the fact that you wouldn’t tell anyone, because you were keeping quiet about actually having seen the body. So, unless he’d actually murdered her, how did Travers know about the lanyard?’
Liking the logic she was hearing, Carole nodded (which was much less painful than speaking).
Jude went on, ‘As soon as Erkan had established that Barney hadn’t mentioned the lanyard to anyone, he announced that Travers must be the murderer and that he was going to shoot him. We tried to persuade him not to, but he wouldn’t listen to us. Which, as it turned out, was a good thing for you.’
Gratefully, Carole smiled (another action less painful than speaking).
Jude turned to Barney. ‘So what do you reckon will happen to Erkan? Prison sentences can be pretty harsh out here, can’t they?’
‘Yes, but there would be a good few mitigating circumstances in his case. The fact that his shooting Erkan stopped you being strangled, Carole, for one. He did it to save your life. And if they can ever prove that Travers did kill Nita, the case for Erkan’s defence would be that much stronger.’
‘Oh, but they will be able to,’ croaked Carole, the importance of what she had to say far outweighing the pain that saying it might cause her. ‘Nita’s body is under the floor of Travers’s naff little suntrap. Along with that of his wife.’
Jude and Barney looked at her, open-mouthed.
And, despite her very sore throat, as an amateur sleuth Carole Seddon did feel rather pleased with herself.
THIRTY-THREE
The rest of Carole and Jude’s stay in Kayaköy was pleasantly uneventful which, given what had happened in the first four days of the holiday, was probably just as well. They got into a pleasant rhythm of doing some things together and some separately. Sometimes they might be apart at lunchtime, but they went out to eat together every evening. They explored the varied cuisine on offer in some of the other restaurants. They tried the more expensive options, the zhuzhed-up boutique hotel Izela and the Lissiki Wine House. They had excellent and reasonably priced meals at the Village Garden (literally, someone’s back garden) and the Villa Rhapsody (known as Atilla’s after its ebullient owner).
But more often than not they ended up eating in the casual welcoming atmosphere of Antik. And Jude failed regularly to stop having a large wonderfully cold beer before she moved on to the wine.
At the beginning of their second week they even went together to the archaeological site of Tlos to experience more of the Lycian culture. They climbed up the high rock, marvelling at the ingenuity and mindset of a civilization that would choose to build tombs in such inaccessible places.
But Carole still didn’t get the ‘TLOS PROPERTY’ joke.
One day they went to the fabulous sandy beach at Patara, but before they did anything else Carole insisted they should visit the ruined city, recently and very impressively excavated. After that they rented loungers. Jude stripped down to her bikini and sploshed about in the bracingly large waves, while Carole kept her trousers on and, sitting awkwardly on the edge of her lounger, tried to concentrate on one of her Times crosswords. Jude would have been happy to stay on the beach till it got dark, but aware of her friend’s lack of ease, agreed to leave about two. They had an excellent late lunch in a restaur-ant called Ayak in a nearby village, then returned to Morning Glory to laze by the pool.
As the days went by, Carole’s throat got less sore and, having gone through the spectrum from purple to yellow, her bruises slowly faded.
One morning they were visited at Morning Glory by the police – two very correct young officers who spoke excellent English. Both women made statements about the events of the Thursday evening. The policemen took their contact details but said there would be no need for them to change their travel arrangements. They could return to England the following Monday as planned.
They didn’t see Barney Willingdon again while they were out in Turkey. As soon as Henry was reunited with her husband, she had booked them on the first flight back to England, where she very soon forced him to consult a specialist in erectile dysfunction. It is to be hoped, given the amount of trouble it had caus
ed to so many people, that his problem was sorted out. Maybe Viagra worked its magic, but Carole and Jude never found out because the Willingdons didn’t contact them again after they’d returned to Fethering.
On the Wednesday of their second week, as an indication of how much she was entering into the holiday spirit, Carole Seddon did two things she had sworn she never would. She bought a trashy novel (there were plenty of books in English available in Fethiye).
And, even more daringly, she bought a plain black bikini.
Then she spent a lot of the remainder of their time at Morning Glory reading the one and wearing the other, lying at the poolside with Jude a few loungers away. And when she’d finished – and, it had to be said, rather enjoyed – her Danielle Steel, she started reading Fifty Shades of Grey (only, of course, to see what all the fuss was about).
She’d long ago stopped wearing her money belt. She no longer even noticed the muezzin’s daily calls to prayer. As the days went by there seemed to be less and less urgency to go and see any more archaeological sites.
And Carole Seddon almost – dare it be said? – relaxed.
When, on the Monday morning, the pre-booked taxi arrived to take them to Dalaman Airport, Morning Glory was living up to its name, the frontage of the villa a splendid display of blue.
The weather was good when they got back to England, late that afternoon. Even though they had return railway tickets, Carole did not demur when Jude said they should get a cab from Gatwick to Fethering.
They parted on the pavement between their two houses. Jude went back to Woodside Cottage and began to check through the list of messages on her answering machine. She dealt with most of her client work on the landline, only allowing a favoured few her mobile number or email address. If she didn’t protect herself in that way, she knew that she’d get no peace with constant day and night ‘emergency’ calls from her frequently paranoid clientele.
The first thing Carole did on her return to High Tor was to unpack (she had fixed to pick up Gulliver the following morning). She felt a slight pang as she folded away the black bikini and the beige cotton shorts, but then pulled herself together. There were things one might do in Kayaköy that one wouldn’t dream of doing in Fethering. So Carole Seddon’s legs were removed from public view for at least another decade.