The Istanbul Puzzle (25 page)

‘The Greeks liked a good riddle,’ said Isabel.

David nodded.

That was it. Some ancient riddle wasn’t going to solve anything.

‘What’s going to happen about Peter?’ I said, turning to Isabel.

‘We need evidence,’ she said tiredly.

‘It sounds to me like you’re not going to do anything about him,’ I said.

‘Calm down, Sean. Things like this take time,’ said David.

I’d had enough. We were getting nowhere. David’s attitude to Peter looked to me like the establishment closing ranks, putting things off until they were forgotten about. I should have known.

David glared at me, then continued.

‘I’d have thought that coming from an academic background you’d have learned a little about patience.’

His phone rang.

It played
Rule Britannia
as he extracted it from his pocket. A one-sided conversation followed. When the call ended his face was even more flushed.

‘That was the Minister,’ he said. His eyes were fixed on Isabel. ‘Apparently, they know all about your friend. He said to thank you for coming forward.’ He gave her a weak smile.

Isabel looked defeated.

‘That’s it?’ I said.

David stared at me. ‘Mr Ryan, we’re monitoring over three thousand terrorist suspects in London alone. That’s not a state secret. We’re up to our eyes in threats this year. You might say there’s a lot hitting the fan right now. I told you, we need evidence, not just hearsay.’

‘I have to go,’ I said.

David looked troubled. ‘What about lunch?’

‘You eat for us,’ I said.

I stood. Isabel got up as well.

David held out his hand, motioned to Isabel to come towards him. As he shook her hand he pulled her down to him and whispered something in her ear. When he was finished she moved away from him. I shook his hand a moment later. He didn’t smile.

As we headed out into the heat of the afternoon Isabel glanced from side to side, then turned left. The sky above was a dark grey haze. There was a lid of cloud on the city. The tightness in my stomach was still there. Our effort to get Peter investigated had turned into a total disaster. And Kaiser was on the TV claiming our manuscript was his.

‘What did he whisper to you?’ I asked as I caught up with Isabel.

‘He said I shouldn’t be involved with you.’

The boy was only twelve, but his father decided to bring him. His son was going to go to university. He was showing great promise already. And this was going to be the biggest demonstration ever by Muslims in the United Kingdom. This would be the moment when English people sat up and took notice. The time for the shadows and the ghettos was coming to an end.

The house they lived in was only a short ten-minute walk from Tottenham Hale station. It was a walk the boy knew well.

As they entered the station, the boy saw a pile of
Evening Standard
s lying on the grubby grey-tiled floor. His father bent down to pick one up.

The boy saw the headline. It filled the front page.

NEW PLAGUE IN ISTANBUL

The picture underneath was of a bearded man. It looked like a passport photo. The boy read the story looking over his father’s arm.

Two people had died of the plague in Istanbul in the last twenty-four hours. A hundred others were in quarantine. The plague was classified as airborne. It had resisted all the normal treatments, including high-strength antibiotics. The World Health Organisation was sending a team to Istanbul.

The father grunted, put the paper under his arm. They waved their Oyster cards at the turnstile. As they boarded the train, the boy noticed a lot of people had the
Evening Standard
in their hands.

It was good to be in London, far away from such nightmares.

‘You’re going to give up,’ I said.

‘We have no evidence, Sean,’ she responded.

‘You
are
giving up.’

‘Don’t look at it that way.’

She stopped, stood facing me.

‘Sean, it’s over. You’ve done everything you could. Go home. Watch some TV. We’ll organise protection for you. We’ve warned people about Peter. What more do you think we can do?’ She turned and walked on, as if she didn’t give a damn whether I replied or not or even whether I followed her.

I watched her walk away, disappear into the crowd. She didn’t turn her head. Not once.

I wanted to go after her, but I was angry with her. How could she give up?

And then I knew. She was trying to protect me. I ran.

The street was full of people. Was everybody taking long lunches in London these days? Where was she? It was hard to tell the tourists from the office workers.

Then I saw her. I called her name.

She turned, and on seeing me, hurried on. She’d reached the next corner before I caught up with her.

‘What’s your rush?’ I said.

‘Go home, Sean.’

‘You’re not going to get rid of me that easy.’

She was standing with her arms folded in the middle of the pavement, passers-by diverting around us.

‘Don’t you get it?’

‘Get what?’ I said.

She looked pissed. ‘You have to let it go.’ Her hand cut through the air between us.

‘Why?’

She walked under the awning of a barber shop. I followed her. She turned her head, checked that no one was standing behind her before continuing.

‘This is not about you any more, Sean.’

‘It was never about me.’ I said. ‘It’s about Alek. It’s about not giving up. Not walking away. I thought you’d understand that.’

‘I do.’

She folded her arms.

‘No you don’t.’ I pointed at her. People were staring at me.

‘If you think I’m going to slink away, you don’t get it. If you think I’ll let this go, you don’t have a clue. And if you think I’m going to let you take the next steps on your own, you don’t know me at all.’ I paused, took a breath. ‘Don’t force me to do something stupid, Isabel. I mean it.’

She looked me straight in the eyes. ‘I know you do, Sean. That’s the trouble.’ She stepped towards me, put her hand on my arm.

‘But this isn’t your job. It’s mine.’ Her eyes were begging me to listen.

‘It’s mine now too,’ I said. I spoke calmly. ‘You’ll have to shoot me to stop me.’ I pointed two fingers at my forehead.

A girl bumped into me. Seconds ticked by. A bus beeped.

‘You’re crazy. And I respect you.’ She bit her bottom lip, shook her head. ‘You know, you’re the first man I’ve said that about in a long time.’

I raised my eyebrows.

She smiled at her admission. ‘Yeah, it’s true. I rang a friend last night. I told her about how you wouldn’t give up under Hagia Sophia. How you wouldn’t leave me.’ Her eyes widened, as if she was thinking about it. ‘That meant a lot to me, Sean. I’ve known a lot of spineless idiots in the past.’ She closed her eyes, shook her head as if throwing off a bad memory.

‘Did I thank you properly for not leaving me?’

I shook my head, wondered what properly meant.

She leaned towards me. And I was sure, for one heart-squeezing moment, that she was going to kiss me. I could almost feel her lips on mine.

But she didn’t. All she did was whisper, ‘Thank you, Sean. I mean it.’

Then she stepped back, before I could reach out for her.

I looked away. I wanted to reach out, hold her, but something held me back. Maybe it was Irene’s ghost. Maybe I wasn’t as ready as I’d thought.

‘I won’t give up,’ I said. ‘No matter what you say. Even if I have to follow you in a cab or run after you in the Underground. I know you’re up to something. This means a lot more to me than just exposing Peter, you know that.’

She groaned. ‘You are so pig-headed, Sean.’ She turned her head away, put her hand to her mouth. A few seconds later she turned to me again.

‘OK,’ she said. Then she pointed a finger at me. ‘You can come with me. I’m going to see Peter. But I’m going to keep it simple with him. I just need to ask him a few questions.’

I breathed out. ‘I have a few too,’ I said.

‘I’ll be asking the questions,’ she said, sharply.

But there was a softness in her eyes, as if she was happy I’d pressed hard to go with her. She wasn’t going to make things easy, but she wanted me to come along.

And I wanted to go with her.

‘Where is he?’ I said.

‘Not far.’ There was an urgency to her answer that took me by surprise.

‘We’re going to see him now?’

‘You bet.’

‘There’s something going on you’re not telling me.’

‘This is all you need to know, Sean. I’m going to ask Peter a few questions, face to face, right now.’

‘OK.’

Her hand shot up. A black cab screeched to a halt beside us. The driver was a skinhead with an angel tattoo on his forearm. He had a wide smile.

‘Where to, love?’ he said.

‘St Paul’s,’ said Isabel.

The driver gave me a grin as I squeezed in beside her. There was an
Evening Standard
on the seat. Isabel picked it up and looked at it. After a few seconds she dropped the paper back down. Outside, ball-bearing-sized drops of rain were falling. In seconds the street was a stream. People were dashing under awnings and into doorways. A flash of lightning reflected into the cab, a momentary neon glow. A crack of thunder echoed. The weather was weird for August, that was for sure.

Isabel was staring out of the window at the traffic.

I picked up the
Evening Standard
. The front page was about people dying in Istanbul of the plague. What the hell? Had I come and gone out of a city with a killer disease without knowing anything about it?

I shivered, turned the page, then the next. Where was the story about the demonstration this afternoon? I flicked on through the paper. There wasn’t anything about it.

‘Did you see this?’ I said, holding the front page of the paper in front of her.

She glanced at me. ‘It’s a nightmare, Sean. They’re thinking about closing the airports there.’

‘We got out just in time,’ I said.

The taxi pulled over. ‘’Ere you are, love, can’t get you any closer, that demo’s blocking half of bleeding Ludgate Hill. You better get home early too, love. I heard this crowd will get a lot bigger.’

We paid him, got out into the rain. A hundred yards away, up a road lined with five- and six-storey office blocks, curving gently up towards St Paul’s, was an eight-foot high sheet-steel barrier. It was painted yellow. The barrier was just beyond a Pret A Manger sandwich shop. It blocked the road from side to side except for a passageway at its centre. Were they worried about suicide bombers? Was the plan to allow the event, but heavily restrict it?

The barrier had the Metropolitan Police logo emblazoned on it. Beyond the barrier, the dome of the cathedral reached up into the sky. A small orb glistened at the top of the dome, like a golden cherry.

I turned up my collar. Rain trickled down my face. It had eased, but it was still uncomfortable, seeping into my clothes, making everything damp. We ran into the doorway of a book shop.

Despite the rain, throngs of people were moving through the barrier towards St Paul’s.

‘Where the hell are we going?’ I said.

Isabel’s hair was sticking to her forehead. In the distance I could hear the slow beat of a drum. It sounded more like a call to war, than something you’d hear at a demonstration.

‘Peter’s place is in St George’s Tower, near St Paul’s,’ said Isabel. ‘This is the easiest way to get there.’

‘I’m looking forward to seeing his face when we tell him why we came,’ I said.

She leaned towards me.

‘I’ve agreed to this, but I hope to God you don’t make me regret it.’

‘You won’t, but he better have a good explanation,’ I said.

There was a sense of anticipation around us – people were walking fast, talking to each other. When she spoke again, she changed the subject.

‘There have been wild claims on the Internet that Allah’s going to perform a miracle today. That he’s going to convert London,’ said Isabel. She raised her eyebrows.

A bolt of lightning split the sky above the chalk-grey dome of St Paul’s. Its tiers of pillars and statues of saints, peering out expectantly, were lit up for a moment as if by a giant spotlight.

‘It’s certainly the right weather for miracles,’ I said.

As I watched people passing through the barrier, I felt a sense of expectation grow inside me. I was about to pass through an ECP demo. Should I say something if I met one of the organisers? But what? Do you know anything about a bomb two years ago in Afghanistan? Sure, I was going to get an answer to that question.

The rain lashed the road.

‘Come on,’ said Isabel. She led the way, her head down.

We passed through the steel barrier along with a group of four-foot-something women dressed all in white, their heads covered. On the other side of the barrier, white police vans lined each side of the street. A large truck had ‘Incident Unit’ in red lettering on its side. Policemen in white shirts and armoured vests were sitting in rows in the vans.

‘They’re worried that someone might attack the demonstration,’ she said, as we walked together, heads down, towards St Paul’s.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ I said

She replied in a soft voice. ‘I hope not.’

Just up head, across a small triangular piazza, was the high-Baroque citadel of St Paul’s, its wide grey Portland stone steps glistening in the rain. The tiers of wedding cake style Corinthian columns and twin towers on its west front looked like time travelling relics from the 17th century.

Some of the people around us were waving black banners now. Some were holding up see-through plastic covered placards with ‘Repent or Prepare’ written on them. They were prepared for the rain anyway.

As we came onto the piazza in front of St Paul’s, the crowd grew thicker. Still, there was little sign of any organisers or stewards marshalling everyone. There were simply knots of people standing around in the rain, waiting for something to happen. Looking up at the cathedral I felt its timeless majesty. It reminded me of how I’d felt looking up at Hagia Sophia.

That was an older, darker edifice, but the feeling of being in the presence of something sublime and brooding was similar. If anything, I felt it more distinctly here. This was the place where British pride began, where Arthur drew the sword from the stone, where England’s great heroes, Nelson and Wellington, had their crypts.

We wove our way through the crowd, headed towards the buildings on the left, the northern side of the piazza. In places, the clumps of bearded men and penguin-like huddles of black-cloaked women were too thick to penetrate. Many of the crowd had umbrellas too. We had to detour around them. The rain was easing. I felt damp right through. I had goose bumps on my arms. Even my shirt cuffs felt damp. In the distance, thunder rumbled, as if there was another storm on the way.

We walked under the awning of a coffee shop. Isabel took her iPhone out, tapped at the screen for a few seconds. Then she put her phone away.

‘I had to send a text,’ she said.

I heard a huge noise, looked up. Two Royal Air Force jets, dart-like new Eurofighters, flying low, roared straight overhead. Each of them was trailing an amber glow. For a moment, the hubbub of the crowd in front of us died as everyone looked up, followed the jet trails. Then, after executing a tight turn, the planes came roaring back over us.

That was when I noticed that people nearby were staring at us. We weren’t obviously Muslim, and I hadn’t felt unwelcome, up until now, but an uncomfortable feeling of wariness crept over me.

‘What time is all this kicking off?’ I said.

‘Soon. They’re going to have some ceremony in front of St Paul’s, by the statue of Queen Anne. That’s all I know.’

To our left, stone and glass office buildings reared up like a prison wall, their rows of rectangular windows staring implacably down at us. Two passageways provided a way between the buildings. Isabel pushed through the crowd and headed for the smaller of the passageways. At the end of it, after making our way against a stream of demonstrators, we crossed a street empty of vehicles, but full of people heading for St Paul’s.

It felt like we’d met a crowd going to a football match, except that we were wearing the wrong colours.

We crossed the street, made our way towards a shiny steel gate set into the granite wall of a keep-like building. There was a keypad at shoulder height on the wall, which reared straight into the sky. We were supplicants at a castle gate.

Isabel jabbed at the keypad. Nothing happened. She pressed two of the keys again. People passed behind us, looking at us. Finally, an accented voice called out from a speaker somewhere.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Isabel, for Peter.’ She waved jauntily at the camera embedded in the wall beside the keypad, as if we were there for a party. There was no reply.

The gate had slits in its metal surface. I could see a stone flagged passage beyond.

There was a dim patch of artificial light at the other end of the passage. What else was down there was far too indistinct to make out. The rain began to beat down again. Some people on the street began running to find shelter.

Isabel gave me a nudge.

‘Nice place, ain’t it?’ she whispered. ‘There used to be a hospital on this site, a long time ago.’ She looked over her shoulder.

‘You’d think they’d have something better to do on a wet Friday afternoon,’ she said.

We waited. More demonstrators rushed past us, squelching loudly.

I pressed the bell. ‘We’re not going away, Peter,’ I said. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions. Then we’ll go.’

We stood there. I was sure he wasn’t going to let us in. I asked Isabel for her phone.

‘Who are you going to call?’ she said.

‘If he doesn’t let us in, I’m going to call a journalist I know, tell him everything I overheard in Istanbul. He can get a TV news crew here in fifteen minutes.’ It was true that I knew a journalist at the BBC. He’d be surprised to hear from me, but he would listen if I called him.