I Am Pilgrim(133)

‘Not that live with me,’ I continued with a smile. ‘I’m divorced, that’s why I know how difficult it is – my former wife keeps telling me.’

She laughed, not noticing anything untoward. Good recovery, I thought, but my palms were damp and I gave myself a metaphorical slap across the head to wake me up. ‘Is that your boss?’ I asked, trying to change the subject, pointing at a photo on the other desk.

It showed a smiling woman dressed in a headscarf and coveralls halfway up a ladder, whitewashing the side wall of a small Bodrum house. It must have been shot down in the old port – a large building next door carried a sign in English and Turkish: GUL & SONS, MARINA AND SHIPWRIGHTS.

‘Yeah,’ the secretary said, coming to my side. ‘That was a couple of years ago, just after she arrived.’ I looked more closely at the photo – she was a beautiful woman, in her thirties, sort of exotic too: high cheekbones and large almond eyes.

‘She’s very attractive,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ a voice said icily from behind. ‘People say I get it from my mother.’

I turned, and it was the cop, of course. She put her handbag and cellphone down and turned to the secretary. ‘Go to your desk, please, Hayrunnisa.’

Hayrunnisa didn’t need to be told twice. The cop was dressed in a headscarf that was tucked into a high-collared jacket that fell to her knees. Underneath it she wore a long-sleeved blouse and wide-legged pants that brushed the top of a pair of high heels. Everything was of good quality – stylish too – but there wasn’t an inch of flesh exposed except for her hands and face. This was the other side of Turkey – conservative, Islamic, deeply suspicious of the West and its values.

‘My name is Leyla Cumali,’ she said. She didn’t offer her hand, and you didn’t have to be a detective to work out she didn’t like me. Maybe it was because I was an investigator trespassing on her patch, maybe because I was an American. Probably both, I decided. Apparently, in Turkey, two strikes and you’re out.

‘It’s a pity you’ve come so far for so little,’ she said, sitting down at her desk. ‘As I said in the note, the death of the young man was clearly an accident.’

‘When do you intend to finalize it?’ I asked.

‘Today. The case file will go to my superiors later this morning. Assuming everything is in order, it will then be forwarded to the department head in Ankara, who will close and seal it. That’s a formality.’

‘I’m afraid it will have to be delayed,’ I said. ‘I need to review the investigation before any decision is made.’ I’m not usually so abrupt, but I couldn’t let it get away from me; somehow, I had to buy some time.

She tried to mask it, but she was instantly angry – I could see it in the almond eyes. She fixed them on mine, trying to make me offer some conciliatory gesture, but I had been stared down by better men than her.

‘I don’t think there’ll be any need to delay,’ she said finally. ‘Like I mentioned, I can take you through this in twenty minutes. Less, probably. That’s how clear cut it is.’

She opened a filing cabinet, pulled out a stack of files and found a photo of the lawn at the back of the French House. She slapped it down on the desk.

‘This is where he fell,’ she said, indicating a hundred-foot drop down the face of a sheer cliff.

The crumbling precipice was rendered safe by a double-bar wooden fence which ran around the entire private headland and terminated at a beautiful gazebo on the tip of the point.

‘Four metres north of the gazebo he either climbed on to the fence or stepped over it,’ she said. ‘We know the exact spot because one of my forensic team found a single thread from the chinos he was wearing snagged on a splinter.’

Her English was damn near perfect, but she hit the term ‘forensic team’ a little too hard – still seething, she was letting me know she wasn’t from the backwoods and they had done their work in a thorough and modern fashion. I started to ask a question, but she rolled over me.

‘You asked for a review, let’s finish it. The young American died at 9.36 p.m. We know because his cellphone was in his pocket and the clock stopped when he smashed on to the rocks. That was six minutes after a large phosphorous star exploded above the headland. It marked the start of a firework display. I doubt you would know but Saturday night was—

‘Zafer Bayrami,’ I said.

She was surprised. ‘Congratulations,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps you’re not as ignorant as most of your countrymen.’

I let it ride – what was the point? I had far more difficult problems to deal with than her attitude.