Chapter Four

THREE TECHNICIANS IN coveralls have torn apart an old brick wall. Despite their face masks, they’re almost gagging from the smell inside the cavity. It’s not a body they’ve found – rotting flesh has its own particular odour – this is leaking sewage, mould and a hundred generations of rat shit.

Bradley makes his way through a sequence of foul cellars and stops in the harsh light of a bank of work lights illuminating the wrecked wall. I follow in his wake, tagging along with the other investigators, arriving just in time to see the Asian guy – a Chinese-American who everyone calls Bruce, for obvious reasons – shine a portable light deep into the newly opened space.

Inside is a maze of cowboy plumbing. Bruce explains that, having torn up the bathroom in Room 89 without finding anything trapped in the U-bends, they went one step further. They got a capsule of Fast Blue B dye from the forensic guys, mixed it into a pint of water and poured it down the waste pipe.

It took five minutes for all of it to arrive, and they knew if it was running that slow there had to be a blockage somewhere between the basement and Room 89. Now they’ve found it – in the matrix of pipes and illegal connections behind the wall.

‘Please tell me it’s the teeth, ’ Bradley says. ‘She flush ’em down the toilet? ’

Bruce shakes his head and shines the portable light on a mush of charred paper trapped in a right-angle turn. ‘The pipe comes straight from Room 89 – we tested it, ’ he says, pointing at the mush. ‘Whatever this is, she probably burnt it then sent it down the crapper. That was the right thing to do – except she didn’t know about the code violations. ’

With the help of tweezers, Bradley starts to pick the congealed mess apart. ‘Bits of receipts, corner of a subway MetroCard, movie ticket, ’ he recounts to everyone watching. ‘Looks like she took a final sweep through the place, got rid of anything she missed. ’ He carefully separates more burnt fragments. ‘A shopping list – could be useful to match the handwriting if we ever find—’

He stops, staring at a piece of paper slightly less charred than the rest. ‘Seven numbers. Written by hand: 9. 0. 2. 5. 2. 3. 4. It’s not complete; the rest has been burnt off. ’

He holds the scrap of paper up to the group, but I know it’s me he’s really speaking to, as if my job at an intelligence agency qualifies me as a cryptographer. Seven handwritten numbers, half destroyed: they could mean anything – but I have one advantage. People in my former business are always dealing in fragments, so I don’t just dismiss it.

Among everybody else, of course, the speculation starts immediately – bank account, credit card, zip code, an IP address, a phone number. Alvarez says there’s no such thing as a 902 area code, and she’s right. Sort of.

‘Yeah, but we connect to the Canadian system, ’ Petersen, the young detective – built like a linebacker – tells her. ‘902 is Nova Scotia. My grandfather had a farm up there. ’

Bradley doesn’t respond; he keeps looking at me for my opinion. I’ve learned from bitter experience not to say anything unless you’re certain, so I just shrug – which means Bradley and everyone else moves on.

What I’m really thinking about is the wall calendar, which has been worrying me since I first saw it. According to the price on the back, it cost forty bucks at Rizzoli, the upmarket book store, and that’s a lot of money to tell the date and never use. The killer was obviously a smart woman, and the thought occurred to me it wasn’t a calendar at all to her: maybe she had an interest in ancient ruins.

I had spent most of my career working in Europe and, though it’s a long time since I travelled that far east, I’m pretty sure 90 is the international code for Turkey. Spend even a day travelling in that country and you realize it has more Greco-Roman ruins than just about any place on earth. If 90 is the country prefix, it’s possible the subsequent digits are an area code and part of a phone number. Without anyone noticing, I walk out and head for the quietest part of the basement and make a call to Verizon on my cellphone – I want to find out about Turkish area codes.

As I wait for the phone company to pick up, I glance at my watch and I’m shocked to realize that dawn must be breaking outside – it is now ten hours since a janitor, checking a power failure in the next room, unlocked the door to Room 89 to access some wiring. No wonder everybody looks tired.

At last I reach someone on a Verizon help desk, a heavily accented woman at what I guess is a call centre in Mumbai, and find my memory is holding up – 90 is indeed the dialling code for Turkey. ‘What about 252? Is that an area code? ’

‘Yes, a province … it’s called Muğ la or something, ’ she says, trying her best to pronounce it. Turkey is a large country – bigger than Texas, with a population of over seventy million – and the name means nothing to me. I start to thank her, ready to ring off, when she says: ‘I don’t know if it helps, but it says here that one of the main towns is a place on the Aegean coast. It’s called Bodrum. ’

The word sends a jolt through my body, a frisson of fear that has been barely dissipated by the passage of so many years. ‘Bodrum, ’ she says – and the name washes ashore like the debris from some distant shipwreck. ‘Really? ’ I say calmly, fighting a tumult of thoughts. Then the part of my brain dealing with the present reminds me I’m only a guest on this investigation, and relief floods in. I don’t want anything to do with that part of the world again.

I make my way back to Room 89. Bradley sees me, and I tell him I figure that the piece of paper is the first part of a phone number all right, but I’d forget about Canada. I explain about the calendar and he says he’d seen it earlier in the evening and it had worried him too.

‘Bodrum? Where’s Bodrum? ’ he asks.

‘You need to get out more. In Turkey – one of the most fashionable summer destinations in the world. ’

‘What about Coney Island? ’ he asks, straight-faced.

‘A close call, ’ I tell him, picturing the harbour packed with extravagant yachts, the elegant villas, a tiny mosque nestled in the hills, café s with names like Mezzaluna and Oxygen, awash with hormones and ten-dollar cappuccinos.

‘You’ve been there? ’ Bradley asks. I shake my head – there are some things the government won’t let me talk about.

‘No, ’ I lie. ‘Why would she be calling someone in Bodrum? ’ I wonder aloud, changing the subject.

Bradley shrugs, unwilling to speculate, preoccupied. ‘The big guy’s done some good work too, ’ he reports, pointing at Petersen on the other side of the room. ‘It wasn’t a student ID Alvarez found in the manager’s file – fake name, of course – it was a New York library card. ’

‘Oh good, ’ I say, without much interest. ‘An intellectual. ’

‘Not really, ’ he replies. ‘According to their database, she only borrowed one book in a year. ’ He pauses, looks at me hard. ‘Yours. ’

I stare back at him, robbed of words. No wonder he was preoccupied. ‘She read my book? ’ I manage to say finally.

‘Not just read it – studied it, I’d say, ’ he answers. ‘Like you said – you hadn’t seen many as professional as this. Now we know why: the missing teeth, the antiseptic spray – it’s all in your book, isn’t it? ’

My head tilts back as the full weight of it hits me. ‘She took stuff from different cases, used it as a manual – how to kill someone, how to cover it up. ’

‘Exactly, ’ Ben Bradley says, and, for one of the few times ever, he smiles. ‘I just want to say thanks – now I’ve got to chase you-by-proxy, the best in the world. ’