Chapter Sixteen

THE HOTEL I was booked into wasn’t what anyone would call fashionable – I mean, people weren’t drilling holes in the walls to get inside. Those sorts of places were down on the waterfront with 24-hour champagne bars, open-air dance clubs, and Ukrainian models doing lingerie shows on private beaches.

Mine was in a backstreet with a car-repair shop at one end and a used-furniture shop at the other. Built out of cement block which had been painted a pale blue, ‘tired’ was about the kindest word that could be applied to it. When I drew up outside I was forced to admit that the staff in Whisperer’s makeshift back office had done an outstanding job – it was exactly the sort of place you would expect an FBI agent travelling on his country’s dime to stay.

Even as I walked up the front steps I knew what I would find inside: faded curtains, a limp buffet for breakfast and a pair of potted palms clinging to life. The man standing behind the reception desk, like the hotel itself, had seen better days. Over the years all his features appeared to have been battered every which way but loose. I learned later that he had once been one of Turkey’s most successful amateur middleweights. If that was the look of a winner, I certainly didn’t want to see the loser. Yet, when he smiled – and he smiled in expansive greeting as I walked through the door – his face was so full of vitality and goodwill it was impossible not to like him. Pumping my hand, he introduced himself as the manager and owner, pulled out an index card on which I was required to write my name, passport details and home address, and took imprints from three credit cards. ‘Just to be on the side of the safe, ’ he confided happily.

Let’s just say his English was idiosyncratic.

‘It’s a great pity of the shame you weren’t here on the Saturday night, Mr Brodie David Wilson, ’ he continued. For some reason he had decided that all English speakers had to be referred to by the full name given in their passports.

‘The fireworks were of a nature rarely by anyone to be seen. ’

‘Fireworks? ’ I asked.

‘Zafer Bayrami, ’ he replied.

I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe it was some kind of blessing. ‘Zafer Bayrami? ’ I said.

‘The Day of Victory. All peoples of the world know of this date – the nation of great Turkey wrung the heads of enemies that were mainly of the Greeks. ’

‘Ah, ’ I replied. ‘No wonder there were fireworks. ’ The Turks and the Greeks had been at it for centuries.

‘I went up for the watching on the roof. A huge bomb of the phosphorus exploded over the headland of the south. The Greece peoples probably thought we were attacking again. ’ He thought this was a fine joke and laughed loudly.

‘The southern headland, ’ I said. ‘Isn’t that where the French House is? ’

A shadow passed over his face. ‘Yes. ’

‘And somebody died there on Saturday night, didn’t they? ’

‘A misfortune of the first rank, a man of very few years. Terrible, ’ he said, shaking his head in sadness. I think he had such a love of life that he found the death of just about anyone upsetting. Well, maybe not if they were Greek.

‘Is that why you have come to us – for the investigate, Mr Brodie David Wilson? ’

‘Yeah, ’ I said. ‘Who told you that? ’

‘The police, ’ he replied, as if it were perfectly normal. ‘They were here of this morning, two of them. The woman one left you a message. ’

He handed me an envelope and called for the bellhop.