by Rob Sinclair
‘That’s a shame. Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘No I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s gone back home.’
‘To Morocco?’ Which was both Wahid’s real home country, and the fake Obbadi’s. Aydin sighed. ‘And I find myself here. Can you believe it?’
‘No. Not really,’ she said. ‘Well, yeah actually. He never gives much notice for these things.’
‘Always the same, isn’t he? How long will he be gone?’
She took an unusually long time to answer. ‘He said he’d be back today.’
She was lying, Aydin knew. Was she afraid of him? A stranger she didn’t want knowing she might be alone in the apartment for some time? She looked at her watch mechanically. ‘I’m expecting him this evening.’ She fell silent for a few seconds, but Aydin needed to keep the conversation going.
‘I’ve been travelling all day,’ he said. ‘You can probably tell by looking at me.’ He smiled as she glowered back. ‘You don’t think I could wait here a short while, do you?’
A flicker of panic in her eyes. ‘Why don’t you call him? You know, there’s a bar downstairs. You could wait for him there.’
‘Will you join me for a drink then?’ he said. ‘It would be nice to get to know the woman Ismail chose.’
Aydin could tell she hated the idea.
‘I’m actually kind of busy,’ she said. ‘But it was really nice to meet you.’
She went to push the door shut. Aydin had a split-second decision to make: cut his losses and head away, or . . .
He lifted his foot into the doorway just in time, and the wood banged against his toes. Katja’s face dropped.
Aydin lunged forward, into the apartment.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Istanbul, Turkey
Cox travelled by car through Istanbul, her journey from the hotel on the Asian side of the Bosphorus Strait taking her back onto European soil that she’d left behind just the day before following her brief trip to Berlin. She’d finally had the chance for a proper night’s sleep in Germany, and was feeling refreshed for it, but was also left feeling slightly guilty as though she’d taken her foot off the gas. She needed to keep the investigation moving, because Aydin Torkal and his brothers certainly wouldn’t be taking breaks.
There’d not yet been any further update from Germany on identifying either the killer or the victims found in the van, nor confirming if cyanide was indeed the cause of the blue smears at the crime scene. There also hadn’t been any useful updates from Data Ops or Flannigan recently. Cox felt like so many elements of the investigation were up in the air, though she had to believe they were only one step away from everything falling into place. Sooner or later she’d get the break she really needed. She had to.
Driving in the rented Seat, she crossed the strait that divided the city at the Bosphorus Bridge. When constructed it had been one of the longest suspension bridges in the world, though in recent history it was more recognisable to millions around the world as one of the key sites of the 2016 failed military coup that had played out the world over live on TV.
Across the other side of the water, on the European side of the city, Cox could see the many ancient and ornate buildings rising up proudly into the sky. Minarets of the many mosques. Clocktowers. The wide baroque, white stone frontage of the Dolmabahçe Palace on the edge of the water, built for the Ottoman sultans in the nineteenth century. The spectacular old buildings of the city gave Cox just a glimpse of Istanbul’s rich past that stretched back thousands of years, and blended – sometimes awkwardly – with the more modern. It fascinated her how places and peoples and cultures could recycle and remodel and change so significantly over time. Natural human instinct was to resist change, yet an outside observer would likely suggest that it was through destruction, in all manner of guises, that the human race had forged progress, again and again.
Following the in-car sat nav Cox soon found herself out of the city proper and travelling through lesser populated suburbia. The relative wealth of the area was confirmed not just by the size of the individual houses, but the amount of greenery she saw at the sides of the road. When the sat nav indicated she was just half a mile from her destination, Cox slowed and began looking more keenly out of her window. With tall hedges and walls and gates, there were only glimpses of the properties that lay beyond. One thing was clear, though, they were big.
Cox took a right onto a much narrower and twisting road – wide enough for only one car. After a couple of hundred yards the sat nav bleeped to indicate she’d reached her destination, though all Cox could see were trees and hedges.
But a few yards further up the road she spotted a discreet gap between two tall date palms. She turned in and soon found herself in front of arched brown-painted metal security gates, more than eight feet tall. Either side of the gates a white wall ran off into the distance, colourful bushes and flowers screening much of the outside of it, and in some places spilling over the top from the inside.
Cox wound down her window, the sweet smell of the date palms and of lavender and other scented flowers tickling her nose as she pressed the buzzer on the intercom.
‘Merhaba?’ came a croaky female voice moments later.
‘Hi,’ Cox said, moving straight into English. ‘This is Rachel Cox from the British Consulate, I’m here to speak with Kamil Torkal.’
There was a click and then silence and Cox frowned and wondered if her plans had already been scuppered so soon. She’d pre-arranged to meet with Kamil, posing as a legal liaison from the British government, there to discuss Nilay’s untimely death in Aleppo. Kamil had agreed to that by phone, but perhaps he’d had a change of heart.
After a couple of minutes of waiting, with Cox torn between pressing the intercom again to check what the issue was, and just driving away to rethink, the gates in front of her clunked and then whirred open.
On the inside she was greeted by a glorious yellow gravel driveway that led up to a white Roman-style villa, a turning circle in front, complete with fountain topped with water-spitting cherubs. Cox parked the car and before she’d stepped from it the large wooden door to the villa was opened to reveal a plump middle-aged woman in plain blue linen trousers and matching top – a uniform by the looks of it, a nurse or maid perhaps, though which it was Cox wasn’t sure.
She smiled at the woman.
‘Please, he’s inside.’
Cox nodded and carried on in, breathing a sigh of relief at the welcome moderate temperature inside. The last reading on her car’s thermometer had been thirty-one celsius. Inside the villa it felt half that, though Cox didn’t note any air-conditioning units, the cool ambient temperature achieved the old-fashioned way through the design of the building itself, with overhead fans keeping air moving through the shaded spaces.
Cox followed the woman across tiled floors, through airy rooms, taking in what she could of the elaborate layout. As well as crammed bookcases almost everywhere in sight, there were statues and ornaments and paintings depicting and originating from a wide range of different times and cultures; Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Persia, the Far East among them.
They moved through into a garden room where the shuttered doors were wide open to reveal a cascade of water features in the manicured garden outside. There were two wicker seats in front of the open doors, the straggly white hair of a balding man poking up over the top of one of the seat backs.
‘Would you like a drink?’ the lady offered.
‘Just a water, please.’
The lady gave a slight bow and walked off, just as the man turned his head.
‘Selamünaleyküm,’ he said. May God’s peace be upon you. His voice was hoarse and wheezy.
Cox continued to step towards him. ‘Aleykümselam,’ she said in response.
The man gave a half-smile before turning back around in his seat.
‘Please, come and sit with me,’ he said, changing to a barely accented English.
Cox did so, putting her handbag
on her lap. She’d brought the Glock pistol that Flannigan had given her in Ankara with her. Looking at the frail man in front of her, she now felt a bit foolish about that, though given recent form it was still good to have the extra security at her fingertips.
‘I’m so glad it’s cool in here,’ Cox said. ‘I spend a lot of time in some very hot places but I can never get used to heat. It’s the Celt in me.’
‘I’m the same, my dear. This is too hot for me. Istanbul is about the coolest place in this country, though. It’s one of the reasons you find me here.’
Cox smiled at that, more because she could see Kamil himself relaxing than because of what he’d said.
‘It’s a glorious home you have,’ Cox said. ‘And the garden . . . it’s incredible.’
Kamil nodded. ‘It’s taken many years.’
‘Ancient studies was your area of expertise,’ she said, looking at the bookcase behind Kamil, across the many oversized books and the knick-knacks carefully arranged there.
‘Not was. It still is. What are we without knowledge? I was a working professor for more than twenty years. I had to stop not because of my mind but because of my body, but I still study all the time.’
As if on cue he began to cough. Just a light, clearing-the-throat-type cough to start with, but after a few attempts it grew into an almost full body spasm with each exhale. When he finished he was panting and wheezing, his face grimacing in pain.
He sighed and sat back just as the nurse came scuttling over to his side. She whispered something to him, indicating the oxygen tank and mask over in the corner, but Kamil waved her away and, head down, she disappeared again.
Cox studied Kamil for a few more moments while he continued to compose himself. The man was sixty-two years old but he looked more than eighty with his withered features and mottled skin and yellowed eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’ Cox asked, not caring about prying.
‘What’s not wrong,’ he said. ‘But it’s the emphysema that will kill me.’
The nurse came back in and handed Cox a glass of icy-cold water. She again checked on Kamil but he just waved her away once more.
‘Sometimes it would be nice to just be left alone for five minutes.’
‘She’s certainly very attentive,’ Cox said. She took a sip of the water which was so cold it made her front teeth ache. She set it down.
‘Don’t get me started,’ Kamil said. ‘My wife insists she be here all the time. They both think I’m some old cretin.’
He laughed at that. Cox didn’t.
‘Is your wife home?’
‘No. She went shopping. Hours ago. To be honest she didn’t want to be here when you came.’
Cox frowned but said nothing to that.
‘Perhaps we should stop the small talk,’ Kamil said, his face turning slightly sour. ‘You said this was about Nilay.’
‘You’ve heard what happened to her?’
‘Of course I heard.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Perhaps you are. But I’m not sure why her horrible death means you’re here.’ He sounded more bemused about that fact than confrontational.
‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Torkal, I’m not here just to speak about Nilay. It’s other members of your family too.’
‘Family? Yes, she was my niece, but I haven’t seen her in years.’
‘Really?’
‘No. The situation was . . . complicated.’
‘But you did know she had been killed?’
‘Her mother called me the day she found out.’
‘So you were still on speaking terms with her?’
‘I never said otherwise, did I? Yes, we spoke every now and then. Not often. We sent cards to each other on birthdays.’
‘And you’ve also heard what happened in London? To Nilay’s mother.’
Kamil hung his head. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you know why someone would hurt her?’
‘Someone? This wasn’t just someone. That boy was always trouble.’
Cox frowned. ‘Aydin?’
‘Sometimes you just know. Even in children. You sense they’re different. That was always the case with him. I knew him from when he was a baby, of course. There was always something hiding in there, behind those innocent eyes.’
‘So you believe Aydin killed his own mother?’
‘I absolutely do. Are you saying otherwise?’
The information about Aydin being the man wanted for murder wasn’t public. Yes, it was his picture plastered all over the newspapers, but he hadn’t been formally identified as Aydin Torkal by the media, even though Cox was convinced it was him. So how and why was his uncle so sure? This was a boy he hadn’t seen for at least fifteen years.
‘What happened to Aydin?’ Cox asked.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Your brother, he kidnapped Aydin when he was only nine,’ Cox said, a fact she’d long ago confirmed both with the Met and with Nilay, though what happened after that she still had little knowledge of. ‘Why did he do that? And what happened to them?’
Kamil scoffed. ‘There were many things wrong with my brother, but one thing is for sure, he didn’t kidnap his son. He loved that boy. What he did was rescue him. My brother did everything he could to help that runt, but it seems like whatever he did it wasn’t enough. The only question in my mind with Aydin was always when, not if he would kill. Put simply, Miss Cox, Aydin Torkal is nothing but a monster.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Rome, Italy
Katja was sitting on the floor in the middle of the lounge, gagged, with her ankles and wrists bound with plastic cable ties. Since the moment he’d forced his way in, she’d looked more angry than scared.
The situation was far from ideal, Aydin knew, but he had to get inside the apartment – he desperately needed leads, any clue as to where Wahid had gone. Had his brother already disappeared into the shadows? Had he set the operation in motion?
Aydin gave the apartment the once-over. The rooms were huge, but there weren’t many of them: a bathroom; two en suite bedrooms; a gigantic open-plan kitchen, diner and lounge. There was no indication that the second bedroom was regularly occupied – it was clear neither Hamsah, nor any administrator, lived there with Wahid. He was too important to have to share.
One door that led off from the lounge was closed and locked. Much like in Bruges, Aydin guessed what he wanted was most likely behind there.
He kneeled down next to Katja, and she squirmed and growled as he pulled the gag from her mouth. She yelled and swore.
‘I can put the gag back in, if you like?’ he said, his hand now pressed against her mouth. The threat quickly shut her up and he took his hand away. ‘Some honesty, please? Do you know where Ismail has gone?’
‘I told you already!’ she shouted.
‘But what you told me isn’t true. So either he lied to you, or you lied to me.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Where’s the key for that door?’ he said, pointing to the closed door that led off from the lounge.
‘I’ve no idea,’ she said.
‘You think telling me lies will help you right now?’ Aydin thought for a moment. An idea sprang into his head. ‘He doesn’t know, does he?’
Aydin saw the look of doubt creep across her face.
‘How many times have you gone snooping?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you came today, when you know he’s not here? Probably you’re stealing from him too. Cash, jewellery?’
‘I am not!’ Katja screamed, and Aydin could see he’d really pissed her off.
He smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s you, isn’t it. Sneaking around behind his back. You like the money, don’t you?’ He reached out and took the large diamond pendant around her neck in his hands. ‘But you like it on you more than you like it on him.’
She pulled her body back, taking the stone from his grasp.
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘What do you t
hink Ismail would do if he knew?’
Aydin saw the look of panic in her eyes. It made him worried too, because it suggested she was scared of Wahid, but why? A slim thought remained that maybe Katja was more than just a prying girlfriend – an undercover agent of some sort, perhaps? Or could Wahid have possibly let slip to her about their plans?
‘I’ll ask one more time, nicely, and then we’ll try something else,’ Aydin said. ‘Where’s the key for the door?’
‘He keeps it around his neck, on a chain,’ she sighed. ‘But there’s a spare. In the kitchen. At the back of the cutlery drawer.’
‘Thank you,’ Aydin said.
He stuffed the gag back into her mouth, and she moaned and blathered again as he walked into the kitchen to find the key.
The room it unlocked turned out to be an office, exuberantly decorated, with a crystal chandelier dangling above an oversized dark, lacquered wooden desk. He looked back at Katja before he stepped in. Despite being tied up, Aydin didn’t trust leaving her out of his sight, so, taking hold of her ankles, he dragged her into the room with him to renewed whining.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he reassured her, quickly averting his eyes from her bare legs, her dress having ridden up over her thighs. ‘Not unless you give me a reason to.’
Aydin let go and she quietened down, and he got to work.
It didn’t take him long to discover there was nothing for him to find. It looked like a clean-up job. Either Wahid never kept anything in there of importance to start with, or he’d already shipped everything out. Was he even planning on coming back to the apartment at all, or was he gone for good?
He moved over to the desk. It was bare on top except for a chrome lamp. Aydin ran his fingers along scuff marks in the shiny finish, to the small round blotches from the rubber feet of a laptop computer. He wouldn’t have expected Wahid to be stupid enough to have left that out in the open.
Aydin tried the top drawer – locked. Within seconds he’d prised it open with his multi-tool, using the screwdriver as a lever to pop the cheap lock. Inside, the drawer was neatly arranged with pens and pencils, a stapler, hole punch, an old-fashioned ink-pot. As though Wahid sat there with his quill pen to handwrite letters. All the fixtures and fittings, all the money and glamour and material nonsense painted such a different picture from the boy Aydin had grown up with.