Satisfied with the lights, she turned and opened one of the bottles of water.
‘The Turkish police told me you are the sole heir to your husband’s estate,’ I said, with as much neutrality as I could summon.
She took a drink. ‘Is this a formal interview, Mr Wilson?’ she asked sensibly.
‘No, but I can make it one if you want.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s no secret to it. Yes, I’m the heir.’
‘Was there a pre-nuptial agreement?’
She hesitated, and I could tell she wasn’t going to answer. ‘Our New York office can subpoena the documents if you want. From what you said earlier, I’m sure the lawyer or trustee would be happy to assist us.’
‘Yes, there was a pre-nup,’ she said, sucking it down.
‘What were the terms of that agreement if you got divorced?’
She took another drink. ‘For the first five years I got forty thousand dollars a year. After that, it rose by small amounts until I was fifty. Then – to use the lawyer’s term – I became “vested” and the pre-nup no longer applied.’
‘Forty thousand a year for five years,’ I said. ‘That must have been about what you were earning at Prada.’
‘Pretty much.’
‘And what do you get now that you are his widow?’
‘It’s a trust … it’s complicated – I’m not sure anyone knows exactly—’
‘How much?’ I repeated.
‘About one point two billion,’ she said, and turned away.
The figure hung in the air for a moment – figures like that often do – then she turned and looked at me. To my surprise, she was shaking with emotion, her eyes alive with anger.
‘Do you know why I was closing the shutter on the terrace? Do you know why I was up there? That was the bedroom my husband and I shared. I come over here from the boat every night, I walk up the lawn and I go to that room.
‘If I lie on the bed, I can smell him, I can believe that if I were to roll over he’d still be there.
‘People can say whatever they want about the money – some sheets in a bedroom in a rented house are all that I have left of him. I loved my husband, Mr Wilson.’
Her eyes welled up. She fought back the tears and, in that moment, she had such dignity and courage it was hard not to feel your heart go out to her. If it was an act, she needed to get her acceptance speech ready.
‘Now, I want you to leave. Any further questions, you can speak to the Turkish police. They’re in charge of the investigation, and they have a full record of the interview I gave. I’ve got nothing more to add.’
As I crossed the terrace, heading towards the front gate, my inclination was to believe her but, of course, you never know. About to turn the corner of the building, I glanced back. She was standing on the terrace, alone in the shadow of the brooding house, barefoot and achingly beautiful, staring towards the gazebo and the spot where her husband had died. I thought for a moment she was going to turn and look at me, but she didn’t.
I entered the long driveway, the night engulfed me and the sinister house receded into darkness. I had arrived with doubts and I left convinced that somebody had induced Dodge to swap his drugs for binoculars and take that last walk.
It was a good theory, but it wouldn’t suffice, not if I was going to stay in the game. Leyla Cumali would make sure of that – she had developed her own version of events and burdened it with her professional reputation. She couldn’t afford to be wrong, and she would do everything possible to send the American intruder on his way.
What I needed was proof.
Chapter Twenty-two
I WOULD NEVER have found it if it hadn’t been for a set of traffic lights.
I had driven down from the southern headland and hit the outskirts of the town at that time when restaurants transform into bars, women start thinking of ditching their stilettos and normally sober couples begin ordering just one more glass of raki.
The traffic lights – at a busy intersection with a club on one corner and a construction site on the other – changed from green to amber. I was close enough to have been able to run the light but, as there were so many mopeds working to their own rules and crowds of pedestrians with a buzz on, I decided not to risk it.
Waiting for the green, I glanced across at the construction site and among the graffiti supporting various political parties was a tattered poster advertising an all-night rave that had been held on the night of Zafer Bayrami. It showed a stylized graphic of the harbour, the French House on top of the headland and the huge ‘bomb of the phosphorus’ exploding above it. Shredded magnesium was what it was, I thought idly, remembering my chemistry classes at Caulfield Academy. It was the same material old-time photographers used in their exploding flashguns, I rambled on mentally.