I Am Pilgrim (71 page)

Nothing happened – they were still there. I hit the button again, with the same result, and realized what a fool I had been. The messages, disguised as spam, were from Battleboi.

When I had first met him and we were sitting in Old Japan expunging Scott Murdoch’s academic

record, he had told me that he had recently designed a particularly nasty virus that looked identical to the countless spam messages circulating in cyberspace. It was so obvious that even the most primitive filter would recognize it and send it to the junk-mail folder. When the unsuspecting owner – thinking that the filter had done its job – tried to delete the message, he would inadvertently activate it.

Immediately, it would download a virus, a spyware Trojan or any other program Battleboi deemed necessary – for instance, a key-stroke logger to record credit-card information.

Having been busted by the Feds, he had never got the chance to deploy his new spam bomb, until

now, and I knew that I had already downloaded the information he had discovered about Leyla al-Nassouri-Cumali. All I had to do was find it.

I opened the first of the spam messages and was delighted to read that I was the lucky winner of an

online sweepstake. In order to claim my winnings of $24,796,321.81 it was only necessary for me to

send an email and they would reply with an authorization code and a list of instructions. The other spam emails were reminders, urging me not to delay and risk missing out on my windfall.

I tried clicking on the payout button without the authorization, but nothing happened. I figured that what I was really looking for was an encryption code which would unlock a hidden file, and I was starting to wonder if Battleboi was going to send it in a separate mail when I realized I already had it.

I copied the numerals of my winnings, deleted the commas and dot, entered it as the authorization

code and hit payout. It sure did.

A document opened and I saw a picture of Leyla Cumali, aged about sixteen, taken from a driver ’s

licence. Underneath it was a list of everything Battleboi had found out up to that point and, glancing through it, I saw that he had – exactly as I had hoped – certainly coloured outside the lines.

He said that he figured – as Cumali was a cop – that she had to be educated and, as a result, he had decided to try to track her through her schooling. The strategy gave him one huge advantage: it greatly reduced the number of people he was investigating. Shocking as it was, over 45 per cent of

Arab women couldn’t read or write.

He took six Arab nations and started searching middle and high schools. He found only one Leyla

al-Nassouri of the right age – in an online archive from a school in Bahrain where she had won an

essay competition in English.

He lost her for a while but discovered that, in the Arabic language, Leyla means ‘born at night’, and he started trawling through blogs and social networking sites using several dozen variations of that.

Under the name Midnight he unearthed a woman who had posted several items on a local blog about

scuba diving in Bahrain.

He managed to access their database and learned that Midnight was the online handle of Leyla al-

Nassouri, and it gave him an email address which she had been using back then. Figuring that she was over seventeen, and armed with her name and the email address, he tried to get into the Bahrain Department of Motor Vehicles in the hope that he could locate the details of a driver ’s licence. It took him over four hours of brute-force hacking, but he finally broke into their network and found her application. It provided the photo and also her date and place of birth.

She had been born in Saudi Arabia.

Battleboi said that she faded away and he could find nothing more on her, not until two years later, when he located a photo and a precis of her academic career at a law college in Istanbul.

‘That’s all I have at the moment,’ he wrote.

I closed the pages and sat in quiet thought. I saw her again – approaching the phone box, speaking

to a terrorist in the Hindu Kush, the most wanted man in the world – an Arab woman who got an education, went scuba diving, learned to drive and travelled far away to attend college.

Battleboi had done a great job, but things were no clearer. Leyla Cumali might have been born in

Saudi, but it still didn’t make any sense.

Chapter Sixty-seven

I WALKED. I hunched my shoulders, buried my hands in my pockets and grappled once again with the

contradictions of Cumali’s life.

I had left the hotel, wandered through a maze of small streets and, by the time I had tried a hundred different ways to square the damned circle, I found myself at the beach. It was late afternoon and still warm – the last flicker of summer before autumn really blew in.

I sat on a bench and looked across the foreign sea, turquoise and almost other-worldly in its brilliance. A father was splashing water with his three kids in the narrow zone where the water met the sand. Their laughter filled the air and, from there, it was only a small step for me to start musing about a little boy who had no father to splash water with and didn’t even know what Down’s syndrome

was.

The kids’ mother walked close to take a photograph of her children just as I was thinking about Cumali and the quiet heartbreak she must have experienced when she saw the telltale single crease across the palm of her newborn baby’s hand and realized that he was the one in seven hundred.

The whole world seemed to slow: the glittering water from the kids’ buckets hung suspended in the

air, the father ’s laughing face barely seemed to move, the mother ’s hand froze on the shutter. My mind had run aground on a strange thought.

Evidence is the name we give to what we have, but what about the things we haven’t found?

Sometimes the things that are missing are of far greater importance.

In all the time I had spent searching Cumali’s apartment I hadn’t seen one photo of her with the baby. There were none of her with him as a newborn on her desk, not one of her playing with him as

a toddler and no portraits on the wall. I hadn’t found any in the drawers and I had seen none in frames beside her bed. Why would you keep an album of photographs of a failed marriage and have nothing

of you as a family or of the little guy as a baby? Weren’t they the things mothers always kept? Unless

…

He wasn’t her child.

Still the water hung in the air, the mother kept the camera to her face and the father was caught in the middle of laughing. I wondered why I hadn’t considered it before: she had arrived with her son in Bodrum three years previously with her husband left far behind and no friends or acquaintances to contradict her. She could have told people whatever story she wanted.

And if he wasn’t her child, whose was he?

The water fell to the ground, the mother took her photograph, the father threw a splash of water back at his kids and I started to run.

It was dinner time and I figured if I was fast enough I could get to Cumali’s house before she did

the washing-up.

Chapter Sixty-eight

CUMALI OPENED THE door wearing a casual shirt, a pair of jeans and an oven mitt. As she wasn’t expecting any visitors, she had dispensed with the scarf and tied her hair back in a ponytail – I have to say it suited her, accentuating her high cheekbones and large eyes, and I was struck again by how attractive she was.

She didn’t appear embarrassed about being seen with her hair uncovered and a shirt open at the throat, merely pissed off at being disturbed at home.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘Your help,’ I replied. ‘May I come in?’

‘No – I’m busy, I’m just about to serve dinner.’

I was ready to start arguing – to be as insistent as necessary – but I was saved the trouble. The little guy emerged from the kitchen, saw me and started to run. Calling happily in Turkish, he came to a

halt, gathered himself together and gave a perfect bow.

‘Very good,’ I said, laughing.

‘It ought to be – he’s been practising every day,’ Cumali said, her voice softening, pushing some

wayward strands of the little guy’s hair back into place.

‘It’ll only take a few minutes,’ I said, and after a pause she stepped back, letting me in – more for her son, if that’s what he was, than from any desire to help me.

I walked down the corridor ahead of them, making sure to look around, curious, as if I had never

been in the house before. The little guy was right behind, chatting away in Turkish, demanding that his mom translate.

‘He wants to take you on a picnic,’ she said. ‘He saw a programme on TV about an American boy.

Apparently, that’s what best friends do.’

I didn’t joke – it meant everything to the child. ‘A picnic? Of course,’ I said, stopping to bend down to him. ‘Any time you want – that’s a promise.’

We stepped into the kitchen and, using her oven mitt, she went to the stove and pulled a tagine – a

Moroccan casserole pot – off the heat, tasted its contents with a short wooden spoon and served herself and her son. She didn’t offer me any – a real affront in the Muslim world, where, due to the prohibition on alcohol, most hospitality revolved around food – and it was clear she wanted to be rid of me as soon as possible.

‘You said you wanted my help – what is it?’ she asked, as soon as she sat down and started to eat.

‘You remember a woman called Ingrid Kohl?’ I said, thanking God for a cover story good enough

to get me into her house.

She paused, having to think, while the little guy smiled at me and took a drink from his Mickey Mouse glass.

‘Ingrid Kohl,’ Cumali said. ‘A backpacker … American … an acquaintance of Cameron, or

something. Is that her?’

‘Yeah. Have you got anything else on her?’

‘She was peripheral; I don’t think we even interviewed her. You came here at dinner time to ask about her? Why?’

‘I think she and Cameron know each other. I think they’ve known each other for a long time. I suspect they’re lovers.’

She stared at me, her fork halfway to her mouth. ‘Do you have any evidence – or is this just wishful thinking?’

‘You mean like the mirrors?’ I said sharply. ‘There’s evidence – I just need to firm it up.’

‘So you’re telling me she knows how to get on to the estate, that she’s a suspect?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. But I have to hear her voice.’

‘Her voice?’

‘I’ll take you through it when I know for sure,’ I replied. I didn’t want to get into a long discussion about Dodge’s death, I just wanted to get her out of the damn kitchen and take the items I had already identified.

‘Can you get the two women down to the precinct house in the morning?’ I asked. ‘I want to hear

Ingrid’s voice then put some questions to her and Cameron.’

Cumali was anything but enthusiastic. ‘Cameron has already given an extensive interview. I’d have

to know more—’

‘I want to wrap it up quickly,’ I interrupted. ‘I want to get out of Turkey as soon as possible. With your help, I think I can do that.’

Maybe it was the hard insistence in my voice – more likely it was the thought of getting rid of me –

but, for whatever reason, she gave in. ‘All right, I’ll call Hayrunnisa first thing tomorrow and get her to organize it.’

‘Can you call her now, please?’ I had already checked out the kitchen and couldn’t see her handbag

or cellphone. I was hoping it was in another room.

‘Call her at home, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. Like I said, I’ll phone her in the morning.’

‘Then give me the number,’ I replied. ‘I’ll do it.’

She looked at me, exasperated, then sighed, got to her feet and went towards the living room to get

her phone.

I acted fast, meowing to the cat, which was watching me from the corner. It worked, making the little guy laugh and look in the opposite direction. I moved behind him and had the first item in my pocket before he saw it.

By the time he turned in my direction I was at the stove with my back towards him, and he couldn’t

see me reach for the second item. In order to divert him, I pulled my phone out as I turned to face him and started pulling silly faces and shooting photos of him.

It made him laugh again, and that’s what he was doing when his mother walked back in, cellphone

to her ear, talking in Turkish to Hayrunnisa. Cumali hung up and looked at me.

‘She’ll call them at eight in the morning and tell them to be in the office at ten. Satisfied?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Now, can my son and I have our dinner?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll let myself out.’

I bowed to the little guy, turned and went out the front door. I made a right, headed towards the nearest main road and started to run. I only stopped when I was lucky enough to find a vacant cab going back to town from the port.

I told the driver I wanted to go to some souvenir shops, and directed him towards the ones I had

seen on my first day in Bodrum. It was getting late, but I knew they stayed open all hours and that the largest of them was an agent for FedEx.

Inside, I bought half a dozen souvenirs and told the old guy behind the counter I wanted to express courier them to New York – all I needed was a box to pack them in. I addressed it to Ben Bradley at

the precinct house and included a note so that if anybody in Turkey inspected the parcel they would

think it was innocent enough – a cop on assignment was sending the guys at the office a few mementoes to make them envious.