Hard Rain (22 page)

I ran to the other side of the house, where I knew I’d get a view down into the street. The woman was talking to the uniform, bag and bucket in hand, but disengaging, saying goodbye, her other hand on the door handle of the van. I called out, but she didn’t hear. I tried opening the window, but it had been painted shut. I ran for the staircase and took the steps three and four at a time, all the way down.

I hit the front door, fumbled with the lock, pushed it open and jumped past the uniform and onto the sidewalk. Just in time to see the back of the van as it disappeared around a corner, a hundred yards down the road, in a cloud of exhaust smoke. ‘Damn it!’ I swore, maybe a little too loud.

The uniform frowned. I gave him a wave and fumbled for my cell.

‘Captain Cain,’ said the voice down the line.

‘It’s Cooper,’ I said.

‘Hey, Cooper, what’s –’

‘I’m over at Portman’s place, Rodney. Can you give me a number for the cleaners here?’

‘Yep, what’s the problem?

‘No problem – I just passed one of them on the way out of here. She was carrying a plastic trash bag. I want to know what she was taking out.’

‘Okay. Call you back soonest.’

I rang off and stood there on the roadside, hoping for a cab to happen along so that I could give chase, but the street was empty of traffic. An icy windblast blew a handful of grit into my eyes. I took a seat on the front steps and waited. A minute later, my cell rang.

‘It’s Cain. Okay, I got hold of the woman from the cleaning company. She’s on her way back to you at the house.’

‘You tell her why I wanted to see her?’

‘No.’

‘Thanks, Rodney,’ I said, just as her van ambled around the corner down the far end of the street. ‘Can you hold?’ I asked Cain. ‘I might need your language skills.’

‘Sure,’ came the reply.

I put the phone on speaker as the van pulled up. The woman opened the door and wheezed as she got out.

‘Hi,’ I said.

She replied in Turkish.

‘What’d she say?’ I asked Cain.

‘You don’t want to know.’

I could tell the woman wasn’t happy. Plus, she had a way with chemical agents that I wasn’t prepared to tangle with a second time.

‘Tell her I want to have a look inside the trash she just removed from Portman’s place.’

‘Okay,’ he said before again breaking into Turkish.

The woman threw her hands up and spoke to someone above, and then turned and lumbered over to the van’s sliding door.

Digging into a pocket, she fished out a pair of surgical gloves and handed them to me. She then tipped the contents of the orange garbage bag out onto the floor of the van. I picked through the heap with a bent wire coat hanger.

‘What’s going on?’ Cain enquired, hearing a bunch of random sounds punctuated with silence.

‘Just practising for when my retirement benefits run out.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind . . . So, in the bag we’ve got some half-eaten tomatoes, a bunch of soiled rags, five or so empty water bottles, a couple of Mars Bar wrappers, and what looks like – yeah, pages from a local newspaper used to clean the windows.’

‘So, altogether nothing much,’ he summed up.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I missed lunch and those tomatoes look pretty appealing.’ I prised open the balls of newsprint, being thorough. Nothing.

The woman’s arms were folded and her face looked like a pair of old sneakers. She said something.

‘She wants to go,’ Cain translated.

‘Okay. Can you thank her for me? Tell her I think she has a camel’s eyelashes or something – something nice.’ I smiled at her, nodding.

Cain took over. The woman grunted, turned her back and heaved a butt cheek back onto the driver’s seat. A few moments later she drove off, the exhaust blowing smoke like a good Turkish vehicle should.

I turned and almost collided with an old guy wearing an official but well-worn uniform. He pushed past. He had the determined walk of someone who did a lot of it all day every day. The old man then stepped up to the front door of Portman’s place, where the police officer raised a cordial finger in his direction like the two were chums. Next, the old-timer reached into the faded cloth sack hanging over his shoulder, pulled out a couple of envelopes and pushed them through the slot in the door. He then trudged back down the steps, off to the next house down the street.

I pulled out my cell again and hit the redial button.

‘Captain Cain.’

‘Rodney, did you have Portman’s mail rerouted to the consulate-general as a matter of procedure?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘Never mind,’ I said, ending the call.

I pocketed the cell and climbed the front steps. The uniform opened the door for me again and I went back inside. Two envelopes lay on the tassels fringing the end of the Turkish rug that ran the length of the hallway. I bent down and picked them up, intrigued. Both were addressed to the leasing agent – which made sense. I wondered whether other letters had been delivered, but I couldn’t see any. Maybe the leasing agent had already collected them. There was nothing on the side table, and nothing in either drawer. I looked
behind the vase and discovered a stack of mail. All bills. Except for one. Prickles went up my spine and played with the hair on the back of my neck.

In neat handwriting, the letter had been addressed to a ‘Sultan Mehmet II’ at 827 Tenth Avenue, West 55th Street, New York, NY 10019. Sultan Mehmet II. The name was familiar . . . Wasn’t he the guy in Burnbaum’s painting standing on a mountain of body parts?

On the back of the envelope was the address of the residence I was standing in – Portman’s – but no name. Predictably, given the letter’s addressee, across the front of the envelope was scrawled ‘RETURN TO SENDER’. There were enough stamps to start an album, ensuring it made the round trip. The postmark indicated that the letter’s journey had begun just over three weeks ago.

The sender had to have been Colonel Emmet Portman. Furthermore, he must have addressed it the way he had to keep the contents out of circulation for a period of time, the time it takes a letter to make the trip from Istanbul to New York and back again. I tapped the envelope on my fingertips, considering whether to open it. After travelling thousands of miles and passing through at least half-a-dozen pairs of hands, one more set wouldn’t compromise the envelope’s forensic value, would it?

I took the letter to the kitchen, slit it open with a bread knife and shook the contents out onto the bench. A single sheet of paper. On it, printed in neat black ink, same as the handwriting on the envelope, was a single line of numbers and letters:
L12R25L36R19L51
. Goddamn it – the combination for a safe!

I raced up the stairs again, all the way to the second-floor sitting room, gripping the sheet at a corner between thumb and forefinger. I pulled the chair away, rolled back the carpet and flipped up the floor tile. After pushing the safe door closed and spinning the knob left and right to lock it, I dialled in the combination from the letter . . . and the door popped ajar.
Je-sus!
I sat back on the floor with another burst of those prickles running up my spine.

Portman must have known he was in danger. So he’d put . . . what?
Evidence of some kind? Whatever, he’d put it in the safe and then sent the combination to the US and back. Portman had locked something away, something to be found in the event of his death, and it had all been removed on the night he was killed.

T
he cab pulled up outside Portman’s place. I got in. The driver wanted to know where to, which was precisely the question I was wrestling with. The hours off that Masters had demanded had yet to pass. But enough afternoon delight was enough, especially when Colonel Dick Wad was the one giving it. The general R-rated nature of those thoughts had made me think of Doc Merkit. I needed to pay her a visit too, and managed a reasonable job of convincing myself that said visit had nothing to do with the potential of once again seeing her without her clothes on. So I tossed a coin and let it decide.

A short ride later, I pulled up outside the familiar pink shoebox in Beyoglu. The lights were on, holding back the gloom of the mid afternoon. Wind whipped down the street in a sudden blast that turned a couple of umbrellas inside out. I huddled into my jacket, took the steps up to the front door, and rang the bell. I heard footsteps and then the door opened and I was looking into the doc’s deep-sea eyes. She was smiling, pleased to see me. The feeling was mutual.

‘Vin! You must come in. Hurry, it is cold out there,’ she said, scooping me in with a wave of her arm. The house was warm but the doc was dressed as if it wasn’t, in a thick woollen sweater the colour of corn meal that hung mid-thigh, and a sea-blue scarf covering her hair that
framed her face. Beneath the sweater was a narrow sheath of dark blue fabric that forced her to take small quick steps. Her feet were bare. ‘You have caught me relaxing,’ she said, a little self-conscious.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘Please, it is okay.’

‘Where’s Nasor?’ I asked.

‘He has gone back to university and my receptionist is still sick. I have no patients today, so I am closed.’ She shrugged. ‘I was making some apple tea. You would like some too?’

‘Sure,’ I said. The doc made it easy to be accommodating.

‘I saw you outside in the street earlier – before an hour or so. Was it you or is there someone else in Istanbul who looks just like you?’

‘That was me,’ I admitted as I walked behind her to the kitchen.

‘You left before I could invite you to come in.’

‘I walked here from the Sultanahmet,’ I said. ‘I had some things on my mind. The walk helped.’

‘Why did you leave?’

‘I went back to Portman’s home – to have another look around the crime scene.’

‘Oh,’ she said, pouring the tea into the small, traditional bell-shaped glasses. ‘I heard from Captain Cain about what happened at Incirlik. He told me you were lucky not to have been killed.’ The doc was frowning. I couldn’t help but notice she frowned sexy, too.

‘Cain’s prone to exaggeration.’ I was suddenly aware of my cracked rib. It was throbbing beneath the bandages. ‘You mind if we sit down somewhere? Been kind of a long day.’

‘You are injured. I was about to take a bath –
you
must have it.’

I had the picture of the doc all soaped up and slipping around with me in the tub. It took an effort to wrench myself away from the happy thought. I said no thanks and meant to leave it there, but I heard myself add, ‘Maybe later.’

She nodded as if that would be fine, and sat beside me on the couch. I did my best to try to stick to the point. ‘So . . . Cain tell you about the man killed down there and what they found on him?’

‘Yes. Again, like the Bremmel murder, I think this is now definitely not the work of serial killers,’ she said. ‘The murders are not happening for psychological reasons.’ The doc handed me a glass of tea.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The other murders were a smoke screen – a diversion. I believe Portman was assassinated, removed for perhaps political reasons.’

Aysun sipped her tea, giving herself a moment to consider it. ‘What makes you think this?’

I gave her a rundown on the significant developments, starting with her own theory that Bremmel’s murder was too different from Portman’s to have been the work of what was ordinarily deemed a serial killer. There was the FBI’s confirmation that the explosives used to blow Portman’s wall safe were military, made in the USA; the discovery of the blast blankets and other items in the Bosphorus and the related sinking of the
Onur
with the loss of all hands. Then, of course, there was the mysterious presence of the supposed ‘agents’ and their hunt for Adem Fedai, Portman’s manservant, the man I was certain had cleaned out the hidden floor safe when he arrived for work. There were other factors, too, ones that didn’t seem to fit any scenario other than that of a planned and systematic attack: the break-in at the leasing agent’s offices to steal the floor plans for Portman’s residence; the care with which the crime scenes had been managed to lead us down blind alleys; the letter containing the safe combination that Portman effectively posted to his own address, proving he believed himself to be in mortal danger.

‘Do you have any suspects?’ she asked finally.

‘No.’ The admission pricked the soap bubble, the feeling I had that this case was finally leading somewhere.
Pop
. I shifted on the seat and the rib hooked my breath, causing me to grit my teeth.

Doc Merkit matched my discomfort with a look of concern. ‘Please, Vin. Come with me.’ She got up from the couch, stepped over a pile of books and helped me stand. She led me down to the back of her house and into the bathroom. ‘Here, sit,’ she said, indicating an old wooden chair.

I eased down onto it with a grunt that reminded me of the way the
cleaner over at Portman’s moved. I glanced in the mirror and rubbed the growth on my chin and cheeks. I was even starting to look like her.

The doc struck a match and lit two fat candles on the broad, white marble benchtop. She then kneeled in front of me and began unlacing my shoes.

‘Doc, I don’t have time . . .’

‘You have never had a Turkish girlfriend.’

‘No.’

‘Turkish women know how to care for a man.’ She slipped off my boots.

‘I’m sure that’s true, doc, but . . .’

‘Shh.’

I put up about as much resistance as an old drunk with a fresh bottle.

Doc Merkit stood and removed the headscarf. Her hair was tied in a ponytail. She removed the elastic from her hair and shook it out for that just-had-sex look. The sweater came next, and she pulled it over her head. The blue sheath beneath it was a dress made from some stretch fabric that followed the curves of her body, with low off-the-shoulder sleeves cut to accentuate the narrowness of her waist and the swell of her breasts. I had a little swelling of my own.

She leaned over, unzipped my jacket and helped me out of it. ‘Can you lift your arms?’

‘Yep,’ I said.

‘Show me.’

I showed her and the doc gently eased the T-shirt over my head. My chest was tightly bandaged.

‘These . . . I can do them better,’ she said, running a hand across the strapping. ‘A doctor must be good for something, don’t you think?’

‘Must be,’ I replied, by this stage not really caring what her prowess with a bandage was like.

She released the clips that kept the elastic tight around my ribs and the sudden drop in pressure caused me to flinch. ‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.

‘It’s okay, doc, though I think I’m going to need a lot of sympathy.’

She smiled and stood. I did likewise and she rolled the bandages off my torso, eventually revealing a large black bruise the colour of spoilt plums. ‘What did this to you?’ she asked, running her fingers gently over the discolouration that now occupied most of my left-hand side.

‘My job spec.’ The meeting in the park with the woman called Yafa and her brass knuckles came briefly, but vividly, to mind.

The zip coming down on my pants refocused my attention. The doc dropped them to the floor, along with my shorts, and I helped the process, stepping over them, naked.

She ran her fingertips over the puckered entry scars of various lead slugs that had passed through my upper body on the way to other places. ‘You have been in a war,’ she said.

‘Or two.’

Her hands dropped to Little Coop, who was showing off as usual. She took hold with both hands. ‘This is much better than toys,’ she told me, and our mouths came together in a kiss that was hot and wet.

When we finally broke, she said, ‘Now, I will do your back.’

I was hoping she’d do other parts of me. She helped me settle into the bath, which was the size of a spa. I turned to watch the doc peel herself out of her dress. And then her black lace bra. And then the small triangle of black lace covering the smaller black triangle beneath. She stepped down into the bath, her large breasts snubbing gravity and bouncing – it seemed to me – happily.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she asked.

‘No, why?’

‘You are smiling.’

‘You’ve got plenty for me to smile about, doc.’

She sat behind me, picked up a loofah and gently went to work. ‘You did not need to see me about the case. You could have called to talk about it. Why did you really come?’

I’d managed to convince myself that this visit was legit, but not the doc. ‘You’re right, I could have phoned,’ I said. ‘Maybe I wanted to see
how you were getting along. Y’know, holding on to your virginity till you were thirty-one – maybe I was feeling guilty about you losing it in my hotel room.’

‘I am the one who lost it, not you. I have no regrets. It was time. But I will not take out an advertisement in the newspaper to make an announcement.’

‘So you’re okay?’

‘Yes, but afterwards . . . I prayed it would not take another thirty-one years to happen again. And here you are.’

That sounded to me like a cue. I turned, pulled her towards me, and we slid around on each other like a couple of horny tuna fish.