Chapter Fifty-seven

THE MANAGER DID. He was alone in the foyer, sitting behind a desk on one side of the reception area, when he looked up and saw me enter. As usual – hand extended, his face alight with his signature smile – he came forward to greet me.

‘Ah, Mr Brodie David Wilson – you have been on the relax with a dinner of the fine quality, I hope. ’

Before I could answer, I saw his expression change: a shadow of concern and perplexity crossed his face.

‘But you are wearing an injury of seriousness, ’ he said, pointing across his always impeccably clean tile floor to where smears of blood marked my path.

I looked down, saw a tear on the left calf of my chinos and figured that the piece of flying debris from the exploding Cigarette had done more damage than I had realized. The blood had flowed down on to the sole of my trainers and I had now traipsed it across the hotel foyer.

‘Damn, ’ I said. ‘I crossed the main road down near the BP gas station. There’s a rusty railing they use as a road divider. I guess I didn’t climb it as well as I thought. ’

It wasn’t a great explanation, but it was the best I could do at short notice and the manager seemed to accept it without question.

‘Yes, I know this place, ’ he said. ‘The traffic is of much madness. Here, let me be of helping. ’

But I declined, insisting instead on making my way to my room, walking on the tip of my foot to prevent leaving any more bloody smears on his floor. Once inside, with my door locked, I took off my trousers and, utilizing a pair of travel tweezers, succeeded in pulling a jagged hunk of metal out of my calf. Once it was removed the wound started to bleed like a mother, but I had already torn a T-shirt into strips and I got it compressed and bandaged in a few seconds.

Only then did I open my shirt and turn my attention to the photo I had stolen from the wedding album. It showed Cumali and her then husband, smiling, arm in arm, leaving the reception for their honeymoon. He was a handsome guy, in his late twenties, but there was something about him – the cut of his linen pants, the aviator sunglasses dangling from his hand – that made me think he was a player. There was no way I could imagine him being a stalwart of the local mosque and, once again, looking at Cumali’s beautiful face, I encountered the same damn circle I couldn’t square.

I turned the photo over and saw that Turkish photographers were no different from their counterparts elsewhere: on the back was the name of the photographer, a serial code and a phone number in Istanbul to call for reprints.

It was too late to phone him so, with my calf throbbing hard, I opened my laptop to check for messages. I was surprised to see that there was no information from Bradley about Cumali’s background, and I was in the middle of cursing Whisperer and the researchers at the CIA when I saw a text message from Apple telling me how much I had been charged for my latest music download.

I opened iTunes and saw I was the proud owner of Turkey’s Greatest Hits, a compilation of the country’s recent entries in the Eurovision Song Contest. Oh, Jesus.

I had to endure two tracks and part of a third before I found, embedded in it, a series of text documents. Although it didn’t say so, it was clear that the researchers had hacked into the Turkish police database and found Cumali’s human resources file.

Their report said that she had studied two years of law, dropped out, applied to the National Police Academy, and undertaken a four-year degree course. In the top tier of her graduating class, she had been streamed into criminal investigation and, after service in Ankara and Istanbul, her knowledge of English meant that she was posted to a tourist destination where it would be put to best use: Bodrum.

They found plenty of other stuff, commendations and promotions mainly – she was a good officer by the look of it – but it was all standard career stuff and it was clear that even from her time at the academy, the Turkish police had known her as Cumali and nothing else.

The researchers at Langley had also wondered if that was her real surname, and they tried to find an electronic back door to access marriage licences, birth certificates or passport applications, but they ran straight into a brick wall. Amazingly, Turkish public records couldn’t be hacked. It wasn’t because the government had adopted, like the Pentagon, some complex system of cybersecurity. The answer was much simpler – none of the archives had been digitized. The official records existed only on paper – probably bundled up, tied with ribbon and stored in endless warehouses. According to Langley, the only way to access anything more than five years old was by a written application – a process which could take over a month.

I stared at the report in frustration – as was so often the case with the agency’s research, it was all tip, no iceberg. I figured that sooner or later they would resolve the question of her name but, as the lawyers say, time was of the essence. Pissed off with their work, I went to bed.

Thanks to Langley, the entire investigation now rested on a photographer in Istanbul I had never heard of and who might well have been retired or dead.