The Istanbul Puzzle (3 page)

The heat was like an open-air oven, even though night had fallen. I could hear a plane’s engine revving. The odour of jet fuel filled the air. The inspector was striding towards a gleaming black Renault Espace with darkened windows, which stood beside a ‘No Parking’ sign.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked loudly.

‘You will see,’ was his nonchalant reply. He held the Espace’s door open for me. His colleagues were a few paces behind me. Did they think I was going to run? Did they think I’d done something?

Or had Alek done something outrageously stupid? Was I going to be implicated in something illegal that I knew nothing about?

‘This is quite a welcoming committee,’ I said.

‘Hagia Sophia is one of our national treasures,’ said the inspector, as he put his seat belt on.

‘Anything to do with it involves our national security, especially these days. I’m sure you understand. All deaths there must be fully explained and accounted for.’ He sounded firm, and suspicious. About what I had no idea, but he was not in the least bit ashamed of it.

I belted myself in.

‘How is London?’ he said. ‘I saw you had another riot.’

‘It was good when I left.’

‘I like London. I have a cousin there. Such a great city.’ He tapped the driver on his shoulder. The car moved off with a squeal.

‘I thought you were going to be British, Mr Ryan,’ said the inspector. ‘But your accent is American, I think.’ He looked puzzled.

‘My father was American. My mother was English. We stayed in England until I was ten, then we lived in upstate New York. I’m back in England twelve years now.’

‘An English mother and an American father.’ He repeated what I’d said, as if he found it amusing. If he was trying to annoy me he was doing a good job.

‘That’s what I said. I like Macy’s and Harrods. And I’m proud of it.’ I’d used that line before. And I didn’t mind giving him more from where that came from.

He looked me up and down, then changed the subject. ‘Were you close to your colleague, Mr Ryan?’

‘We were friends.’ I stared back at him. I had nothing to hide.

He stared out the window. Letting me stew, most likely.

The motorway we joined a few minutes later had five lanes. The headlights streaming towards us were like strings of pearls.

The reservations I’d had about coming to Istanbul seemed justified now. What the hell had happened to the contact from the Consulate who was supposed to meet me? And where were we going?

‘You were Mr Zegliwski’s manager, weren’t you?’ asked the inspector a minute later. The question had an aggressive undertone to it, as if he was trying to find someone to take responsibility for something.

‘Yes, I am. That’s why I’m here, to find out what happened to him.’ I’d worked hard on this project. I’d spent months on research. Alek had too. There was no way I was going to allow this guy to dump anything on me, or on the Institute.

‘And you haven’t been told what happened Alek?’ His eyes gleamed in the semi-darkness.

‘Just that he’s dead. That I’m supposed to identify his body.’ There was still a slim chance that it wasn’t Alek they’d found, that he was in a coma in some hospital. I clung to it.

The inspector opened his window. Warm soggy air poured in. It was well after 9:00 PM, but still as hot as midday on the hottest summer day in London.

‘It’s a little hot,’ I said.

‘Not too much,’ he replied. ‘This is cool by Istanbul standards.’

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’ I asked, louder than I expected to. I wiped off a rivulet of sweat running down my cheek.

I could smell musky aftershave.

‘Your colleague’s been murdered,
effendi
,’ he whispered. Occasional beeps and the drone of cars speeding around us almost drowned his voice out.

I stared back at him. I felt empty, numb. I’d assumed Alek had died in an unfortunate accident.

‘I’m sorry for the bad news.’

I looked at his face, waited for his nose to grow.

‘Why are you treating me like a criminal, when my friend’s been murdered?’

He didn’t answer. He just kept staring at me. His eyes were bloodshot. He had a thin white scar on the side of his forehead.

‘Did your colleague have enemies?’

I shook my head. ‘Are you going to tell me how it happened?’ I said.

For a split second, I saw disdain in his expression, then it became impassive again.

The traffic reverberations around us were like a muzzled growl. Warm air sliced menacingly through the car. Anger rose up inside me. I had to close my eyes to calm myself, start breathing deeply. I had to be careful. Letting off steam into this guy’s face would probably only see me end up in a prison cell.

Memories of Alek flashed through my head. Why the hell had he been murdered?

‘Is it a secret?’ I said.

‘Later,
effendi
, later.’ His tone softened.

We passed a conga line of minibuses. There must have been fifty of them. Each had a blue circular logo on its side, the outline of the minarets and unmistakable dome of Hagia Sophia.

I’d been to Istanbul twice before. Alek had been even more times. The grey crust of buildings that flows to each horizon gives the city an anthill intensity. It’s what you get, I suppose, for having a population of almost fourteen million. No city in Europe has ever been bigger.

I stared out the window, trying to take in what had happened. It was all so unreal. Anger rose up inside me again. I put my fist against the glass.

‘We will find out who did this, Mr Ryan. And when we do…’ I turned to look at him. He put his hands together, motioned as if he was crushing something.

The motorway we were on soared over a valley encrusted with buildings. The scene was lit by a spider web of yellow and white street lights. Then the motorway turned to the right and a whole vista of curved steel-and-glass office blocks appeared in front of us, all lit up. TV screens flickered in one of the blocks.

Electronic billboards flashed by. Yacht-sized, red Turkish flags were draped down the sides of some of the larger buildings. The skyscrapers we passed would not have been out of place in Manhattan or Shanghai.

Mixed with all this modernity, on every ridge, were spot-lit minarets and the illuminated domes of mosques, each a mini Hagia Sophia. Every district seemed to have one. Some were half dark and had fewer minarets; others were lit up like football stadiums. But none of them came anywhere near Hagia Sophia’s beauty.

‘Alek loved this city,’ I said.

‘He was right to. This is the city of the future,’ the inspector replied. ‘We are growing fast. And we’re managing it well.’ His finger jabbed the air.

‘Our birth rates aren’t low, like the rest of Europe.’ He raised an eyebrow, gave me a toothy grin.

‘People are still moving here?’

‘More than ever. From Turkey and this whole region. Everyone deserves a future.’

Who could argue with that? I went back to staring at the cars streaming past. People were changing lanes as if they were on a racetrack.

‘And you’re not sweeping aside the past,’ I said.

‘No, not at all. You Westerners think you are the best at conserving things, but you forget we saved Hagia Sophia, the greatest building in the world. Tell me, which 1300-year-old building is still in use in England?’ He looked smug.

‘I think the Greeks were already a beaten empire by the time they lost this city,’ I said.

‘It is true, Mr Ryan. And it was foretold. That was the Greeks’ fate. And they were fortunate too. Mehmed’s tolerance, the freedom he allowed different races and religions, was something your European kings and inquisitors could have learned from.’

He pointed at a skyscraper the size of the Empire State Building. It was lit up in electric blue and had a giant Islamic crescent on top.

‘Look, this is the future. Islam and capitalism married at last. Faith and money intertwined. What our people can do will surprise you all.’

‘I just want to find out what happened to my colleague.’

The motorway became elevated again. We were bowling along high up over a muddle of buildings. Then the road swung to the left. The lights of the city were spread out in front of us, as if a sack of diamonds had spilled over dark velvet.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as we powered through the traffic, sounding our horn at anyone who strayed into our path.

‘The morgue at the New International Hospital,’ was the inspector’s reply.

I thought about telling him to postpone the identification, that I was too tired. I’d have preferred to speak to Fitzgerald before I did it, find out what the process was in Turkey, if there was anything I had to make sure to do. But maybe it was better to get it over with.

We turned off the motorway onto a dual carriageway running between pencil-thin office buildings, fifteen, maybe twenty storeys high. There wasn’t as much traffic now. Soon I lost all sense of direction. We were driving through a warren of narrow streets with old buildings crowding in on each side.

‘The Galata area,’ said the inspector, motioning at the hodgepodge of old and new around us.

I’d seen pictures of the Galata Tower poking its head up above the tiled roofs of old Istanbul. Venetian traders had built the stone tower on the top of a hill to the north of the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s natural horn-shaped harbour.

We pulled up with a squeal in front of what looked like an office block. I saw a green cross sign. I wasn’t looking forward to what was going to happen next. But I held on to a paper-thin hope that the body wouldn’t be Alek’s.

I followed the inspector through an oddly empty reception area into a marble-floored lift. We’d left his colleagues in the car. They’d smiled at me like factory workers who’d been given a day off.

The hospital looked new. There wasn’t a scuff mark on a wall or a scratch on any of the shiny floors.

For a second I wondered if we were too late to visit the morgue. Then I remembered who I was with.

A moon-faced attendant in a loose virgin-blue uniform was waiting for us, clutching a clipboard, when the doors to the basement slid open. He mumbled something in Turkish. We followed him. Our shoes squeaked on the floor. He led us to a low room encased in white tiles. The smell of powerful disinfectant filled the air. He pulled a shiny metal morgue tray from a wall. Every noise was amplified. All eyes were on me. Things were moving too fast.

There was a covered body on a tray in front of me. I’d expected a long wait, documents to be signed.

‘Mr Ryan, are you ready?’ The inspector sounded uninterested, as if he’d done this many times before.

I desperately wanted to leave. There was something pressing into my chest.

I nodded.

He said something to the attendant in Turkish, who motioned for me to adjust the white cotton face mask he’d given me, hold it tight to my mouth, as he was doing.

I’d been talking to Alek only a few days ago. How could the white-swathed figure on this tray be him? No, it was impossible. This shape didn’t even look like him.

The attendant pulled back the stiff white sheet just far enough to expose the face. Bile rose inside me.

The face I was looking at was pale, plastic, like a mannequin’s, a waxy effigy of Alek. A bloody bruise disfigured his forehead. His lips were dry, closed tight, as if they’d been glued together.

I stared, unblinking. I was watching what was happening, but from far away.

I’d learned in the past few years to disdain pity, to look ahead, to act strong, to not think too much. I needed every one of those lessons now.

Alek’s skin had a blue tinge. There were wisps of vapour emanating from under the sheet.

And his body seemed strangely disconnected from his head, as if his neck had been elongated. A shudder ran through me. He looked different, so still. He’d always been so full of life.

I took a step forward, put my hand out. I wanted to touch him, to say goodbye.

The attendant waved me back briskly.

‘Mr Ryan, can you confirm that this is your colleague, Mr Alek Zegliwski?’ said the inspector.

‘Yes.’ I looked away. This was not how I wanted to remember him.

‘As your colleague was Greek, Mr Ryan, our investigation of his death must follow certain procedures.’ He paused.

‘He was Polish,’ I said, cutting in fast.

‘His mother was Greek, Mr Ryan. He had emphasised that fact himself to a number of people here in Istanbul.’ He spat out the word Greek.

I took a deep breath. All Alek had ever told me about his mother was that she was dead. Had she been Greek?

The attendant pulled the sheet over Alek’s head. Then, with a resounding clunk, he slid the tray back into its drawer. Neighbouring trays rattled. Something caught my eye high up; a tiny security camera staring down at us.

‘Come, we will talk,’ said the inspector.

He led me to a smaller room up the hall. The type of room where grieving relatives could be comforted. I sat on a hard plastic chair. There was a line of five of them down the wall opposite the door. Everything was white. The inspector stood facing me. He was hunched over, as if he was thinking hard, and his arms were folded. Tiredness pulled at me. My body had finally decided to react to everything I’d been through.

‘Aren’t Turkey and Greece friends these days?’ I said.

‘Of course we are, but you must understand there are a lot of crazy Greeks who claim Hagia Sophia, and this whole city, for themselves. They say it all belongs to them.’ He sounded affronted at the idea.

‘What does any of that have to do with what happened to Alek?’ I said.

In answer I got silence. All I could hear were the rumblings from the air conditioning. I waited, imagining Alek lying cold in that drawer. The inspector stared at me, as if he was expecting me to answer my own question.

‘I came here to find out what happened to my friend. And I still don’t know,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘And I’ve no idea why you think being Greek would have any impact on Alek’s murder.’

The inspector held up his hands.

‘I will explain why. The last Greek emperor of this city, Constantine the 11th, disappeared in Hagia Sophia the day the city was captured.’ He paused. His tone was firm as he continued.