Chapter Fifty-two

I WALKED ALONG the marina, shoulders bent into a fast-rising wind and my face hit by the spray being whipped off the ranks of advancing whitecaps. The summer storm – wild and unpredictable – was sweeping in, and already thunderheads were appearing overhead and flashes of lightning lit the horizon.

The ride back across the bay from the French House had been a battle against the wind and tide. When we reached the marina, even the skipper had looked green around the edges and had told me, laughing, that maybe I had got the better part of the bargain after all. I paid him and headed somewhat unsteadily towards the waterfront promenade.

At the end of the bay I found what I had seen a few days earlier: a ghetto of garages and down-at-heel shops which specialized in renting scooters and mopeds to the legions of tourists. I walked into the busiest of the outfits – a man was far less likely to be remembered among a crowd – identified the most common of the bikes, a Vespa step-through, gave an overworked attendant my licence and passport details and rode out into the encroaching storm.

I made one stop – at a shop selling mobile phones and other small electronic devices. I scanned the display counter, pointed out what I needed and bought two of them.

Around the corner, in a deserted alley, I halted at a rutted section of road and smeared the licence tags with mud to make them indecipherable. It was far safer than removing them – if a traffic cop were to stop me and complain that the tags were illegible, I would just shrug and say I had no idea. The purpose of the scooter was simple: to provide a fast escape in case things went wrong.

For that reason, it had to be parked at the back of Cumali’s house, so, having made my way down to the old port, I circled behind the huge building housing Gul & Sons, Marina and Shipwrights and turned into a narrow road which led to the loading bays at the rear. Everything was closed for the evening and, by good luck, there were no other buildings overlooking the area. I parked the Vespa behind a row of garbage skips hard up against the brick wall that formed the rear perimeter of Cumali’s property, and hidden by the night stood on the saddle.

As the first drops of rain splattered around me, the wind moaning through the steel roof of Gul’s warehouse-style premises, I leapt up, grabbed the top of the wall, hauled myself up and moved fast along the top of it.

Twelve feet above the ground the wind was worse, and I had to use all my concentration to ignore the peals of thunder and keep my footing as I headed for Cumali’s garage.

I clambered on to the roof, crouched low and crossed the rain-slicked tiles. From there, it was a jump across a small void to the back of the house and a grab on to an ornate iron grille that secured a second-floor window. I’m not as young as I used to be – or as fit – but I still had no difficulty in shimmying up a tangle of old pipes and getting on to the pitched roof of the home.

I knelt in the darkness, removed four terracotta tiles and dropped down into the attic space. It was unlined, unlived in, and I was pleased to see that Cumali used it as storage – that meant there would be an access panel, and it relieved me of the necessity of kicking my way through her ceiling.

Without replacing the tiles, I moved slowly through the attic and let my eyes become accustomed to the gloom. Against one wall I saw a folding ladder and knew I had located the access panel. Gingerly, I lifted it a fraction and stared down into the stairwell. I was looking for the telltale red blink of a sensor, but there was nothing and I knew there was no burglar alarm.

I opened the panel, dropped the ladder silently and slipped down into Cumali’s dark and silent house.

I froze.

I wasn’t alone. It was the merest hint of movement, a muffled sound – maybe a foot falling on a wooden floor – but I registered it as coming from inside the room at the front of the house. Cumali’s bedroom, I figured.

Was it possible she hadn’t gone to Milas at all? In that case, where was her son? Could somebody else be staying in the house – the nanny, for instance? I had no answers, but I had a stopgap solution – I pulled the Beretta out of my waistband and crept silently towards the door.

It was open a crack, but there was next to no light coming from inside. If it was Cumali I was sunk, but anybody else and I had a fighting chance – the likelihood of someone being able to describe me in the dark, taken by surprise and with their heart in their throat, was so low as to be negligible. I just had to remember not to speak – my accent would narrow the field of suspects to a fraction.

I hit the door hard, throwing it back on its hinges and bursting inside – just like they had taught me. The noise and suddenness of movement was designed to unnerve even the most seasoned professional. I swept the room with the muzzle of the Beretta and saw the eyes first – green – looking straight at me. Their owner was sitting on the bed.

Licking its paws.

It was the tabby cat that I had seen scratching itself inside the kitchen window. Dammit – I should have remembered she had a pet. Getting slack, I told myself.

Angry, I turned, went down the stairs and found myself in the living room. The curtains were drawn, the room made up of pools of shadow, but the first thing I saw was a TV in the corner and a Sky decoder box on top of it. I stared at it and thought of her sitting cross-legged on the floor, her son asleep upstairs, as she worked through the night composing and copying her messages.

To be so close to the heart of it galvanized me and I moved fast to the windows, made sure the curtains were closed tight, and turned on a lamp. The single worst thing to do when you have broken into a home is to use a flashlight – light leaks out, and nothing alerts a neighbour or passer-by faster than a beam of light sweeping around inside a house. The soft glow of a lamp, on the other hand, seems normal.

In a corner of the room was Cumali’s chaotic desk, stacked with files and bills, only the computer monitor and its keyboard sitting in a clear space. I moved the mouse and the screen came alive – thankfully, like most people, she had left the computer on and I didn’t have to worry about trying to unlock the password or removing the hard drive. I reached into my pocket and took out the two USB travel drives I had bought at the mobile-phone shop. I put one into the computer – the other was a spare, just in case – and I knew my way around Windows well enough to be able to ignore that it was in Turkish and get it to perform a full back-up.

With all her files and emails being copied on to the tiny drive, I set about searching her desk. I split it into four sections and did it methodically, examining everything and refusing to let myself be hurried. I used the camera on my cellphone to photograph anything of interest, but I knew in my heart I was just going through the motions – there was nothing that appeared to signify some sinister plot.

Among a pile of bills that were waiting to be paid was a file containing all Cumali’s home and mobile-phone accounts, and I took several minutes to look through them. All the numbers she had called seemed straightforward – certainly there were none to Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or any of the other hot zones of Islamic fundamentalism. Nor did I see any billing codes that indicated they were relay numbers used to connect to a foreign phone number. They seemed to be Turkish calls – that was all – but I photographed them anyway.

Then the lamp went out.

I felt a spike of fear and, instinctively, I grabbed my gun. I listened closely but heard nothing, not even the tabby cat. I stood up from the desk and moved silently to the window, wanting to see what was happening outside. I pulled a corner of the curtain aside and looked into the street: the storm had become steadily worse and the whole area was in darkness. It was a power failure.

I should have asked myself, of course, if it was just Bodrum that was blacked out or if it extended further afield. Unfortunately, I didn’t.