Chapter Twenty-three

BRADLEY AND I were in a different corridor: we were heading through the gloomy silence of the hotel towards my room.

With less than thirty minutes left before the deadline, I had wanted to walk off some of the crushing anxiety, and I had suggested to Bradley that I give him the Turkish police files concerning Dodge’s death. Knowing that they would be crucial to a future prosecution, he agreed, and we said goodnight to the lazy cat and headed across the deserted foyer. We were about to step into the elevator when I stopped – I had a strong sense we were being watched.

There was nobody around, not even the duty manager, but there was a CCTV camera mounted on a wall, trained on the reception desk and its safe, and I wondered who might be in some office nearby observing us.

Quietly, I told Ben to take the elevator while I used the stairs – a group of assailants, Albanians for instance, would find it very difficult to deal with a target which suddenly split apart. The cop looked a question at me.

‘I need the exercise, ’ I said.

He knew I was bullshitting, and I jagged left as he stepped into the elevator car. I took the stairs two at a time and met him without incident just as the steel doors opened. He stared at me and raised his eyebrows – I had the Beretta 9-mil out and cocked. ‘Handweight? ’ he asked, deadpan.

I lowered it, and together we headed towards my room. I still had the feeling we were being observed, but the corridor wasn’t equipped with cameras and, though I turned fast and looked behind us into the gloom, I saw nothing.

I unlocked the door and a thought occurred to me: the bellhop could still be in the building, ordered by whoever had recruited him to keep an eye on me. I closed the door behind us, bolted it and put the pistol on the coffee table, within easy reach.

‘We were in Manhattan, ’ Bradley reminded me. ‘Cameron and Marilyn had decided to kill Dodge in Turkey, but there was a problem. ’

‘Yeah, Marilyn needed a passport, ’ I said. ‘So they started searching. They were looking for a woman in her twenties, a loner, new in town maybe, definitely somebody who wouldn’t be missed. ’

‘Did they find her? ’

‘Sure. ’

‘Where? ’

‘A gay bar, Craig’s List, Washington Square on a Sunday afternoon – I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. But Marilyn took her out on a date. Later in the evening she invited her back to the Eastside Inn with the promise of drugs and sex. Instead, she killed her. ’

We looked at one another. ‘She killed her for her identity, Ben, ’ I said.

Bradley said nothing, thinking about it, like any good cop trying to work out how to blow holes in it.

‘You recall a woman at your seminar? ’ I continued. ‘Turquoise shirt, very intelligent, sitting at the front? ’

‘Sure, I don’t think she was intelligent, though. You told her women found you sexually attractive, and she agreed. ’

I laughed. ‘She said that the murder might have had something to do with identity theft, but I wasn’t concentrating. Remember, those guys arrived and sat at the back? I should have listened, though – she got it right. ’

‘And you say the name of the dead woman was Ingrid Kohl? ’ Bradley said. ‘That was the woman we found in the acid? ’

‘Yes, ’ I replied. ‘Marilyn was dead. She had no identity, so she had to destroy Ingrid’s face, her fingerprints and pull her teeth. She couldn’t allow the body to be identified – she was going to steal her name and become her.

‘Once the real Ingrid was dead, she had her wallet, her handbag and apartment keys. She cleaned out Room 89, sprayed it with industrial antiseptic, took one final pass, burnt anything else she found and headed out. ’

‘You think she moved into Ingrid’s apartment? ’

‘I don’t know. She chose a loner, so it was possible. Whatever happened, Marilyn would have immediately gone through Ingrid’s possessions.

‘In a few hours, she would have had a social security number and everything else she needed to get a birth certificate. ’

‘And with a birth certificate you can get a passport, ’ Bradley said.

‘That’s right, ’ I replied, and started to assemble the files relating to Dodge’s murder.

I glanced at the digital clock on the night stand – fifteen minutes to go – and tried not to think of failure. There was still time – just one phone call and a short message was all we needed.

‘So she’s now Ingrid Kohl and has a legitimate passport with her own picture in it to prove it, ’ Bradley said.

‘She flew to Europe, ’ I explained, ‘established a history as a young backpacker and arrived in Turkey four months ahead of Cameron and Dodge. ’

‘What was the plan? How were she and Cameron going to kill him? ’

‘I’m not sure they knew, I think they were going to figure it out here – an accidental fall off the back of the boat one night, a hot shot of bad drugs, wait till he was loaded and drown him in the bath.

‘But Ingrid got lucky – she met a hustler who used the name Gianfranco, a guy who knew more about the house where Dodge was staying than anyone.

‘I think he had a scam going on – if there was nobody in residence he’d take young women through a secret tunnel and have sex with them in the locked mansion. ’

‘A secret way into the house? ’ Ben said. ‘That must have been all Ingrid needed. ’

‘Yeah, ’ I replied, handing him the stack of files. Ten minutes left.

‘Dodge and Cameron sailed into Bodrum on their boat and met Ingrid around the clubs – just casual, nothing special. Dodge had never seen Cameron’s lover, so he had no reason to suspect Ingrid was anything more than she appeared.

‘The two women waited till they knew he was alone on the estate – the night of a big fireworks display – and Ingrid made her way into the boathouse and along the tunnel. Dodge was in the library on a massive drug binge when a woman he had met burst into the room – of course, he assumed she had been let in by security.

‘My theory is that – seemingly out of breath – she told him that a helicopter with Cameron on board had just gone down in the bay. ’

‘Shit, ’ said Ben, shocked at the ruthless ingenuity of it.

‘Naturally, Dodge believed her, ’ I said. ‘Not that he was in much of a state for rational thought – he was completely loaded, full of self-loathing and disgust too. ’

‘How do you know? ’

‘He had a series of cuts on the palms of his hands. The cops thought it was because he’d grabbed a bush on the cliff as he fell, but the wounds were too regular for that. He had been doing it to himself in the library. It’s not uncommon among drug abusers – he was self-harming. ’

Ben was silent. ‘Poor guy, ’ he said finally. ‘All the money in the world, and he’s alone, sitting with a knife …’ His voice was swallowed by the sadness of it.

‘He grabbed a pair of binoculars, and Ingrid led him down the lawn, ’ I said. ‘Desperate to see what had happened to Cameron, he stood on a railing. Ingrid probably offered to hold his waist.

‘Everything turned out perfectly. Ingrid gave him a tiny push, he was flying through the air and a billion dollars was knocking on their door. ’

I shrugged. That was it – finished. Ben looked at me.

‘Ever seen one as good as this? ’ he asked. ‘Even if the Turkish cops thought it was murder, there was nothing to connect Ingrid to Cameron. ’

‘Nothing at all, ’ I replied. ‘How could she even be a suspect? There was no past relationship, no present involvement, no motive. ’

Ben just shook his head. ‘Brilliant. ’

‘Sure was, ’ I said. ‘Both the murders – this one and the one in Manhattan. ’

Ben had found a file he was interested in and opened it up: it showed the passport photo of Ingrid, and he stared at her beautiful face.

‘If you’re right about the rejection, I guess Ingrid must have really loved Cameron – to have been thrown aside in favour of some guy, to take her back and then to kill for her. Not once, but, as you say, twice. ’

I had never thought about it like that. ‘Yeah, I guess that’s true, ’ I said. ‘A strange sort of love, though. ’

Of course, I should have remembered what Ingrid had said when I interviewed her – about not understanding the half of it. It was arrogance on my part, I suppose – I was so certain that I had unravelled the whole crime.

Bradley was too. ‘How unlucky were they? ’ he said. ‘They had committed what was near enough to the perfect murders, and they would have got away with it too – except the highest level of the United States intelligence community and one of its investigators became focused on this town. ’

‘Bad luck for them, maybe – not for us, ’ I said. ‘Without Ingrid and Cameron I wouldn’t have had the perfect cover – we would never have got as close as we have. God help them, but they were an important part of what could have been a great victory. ’

‘It’s over? ’ he asked in surprise, looking at the clock. Four minutes to go. ‘You don’t think he’s gonna call? ’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t tell you, but McKinley had his own estimate of when we could expect to hear. I was the outrider – he was an hour earlier. ’

‘What happens now? ’ he asked quietly.

‘Get on the phone, ’ I said. ‘Book the first plane home. If you leave at dawn, you can probably get back before they close the airports.

‘Then do what I suggested – take Marcie and head straight for the beach house. Together, you’ll have a chance. ’

‘Better with three, ’ he replied. ‘Come with us. ’

I smiled but shook my head. ‘No, I’ll go to Paris. ’

‘Paris? ’ he said, shocked. ‘Cities are going to be the worst places. ’

‘Yeah, but I was happy there … I had a lot of dreams … If it gets really bad, I’d like to be close to that. ’

He looked at me for a long moment, sad, I think, but it was hard to tell. Then he started to ask me how long it would take for the virus to burn out and other—

I held my hand up, signalling him to be quiet. I thought I had heard something outside in the hall. We both stood frozen, listening. Then we heard it together – footsteps.

I grabbed the Beretta off the night stand and glided silently to the peephole. Ben drew his pistol and trained it on the point where the door would open.

I looked through the spyhole and saw the shadow of a man on the wall. He was coming closer.