I Am Pilgrim(143)

‘This time tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I may have to go to Italy in the morning.’





Chapter Twenty-three


I WOKE AT seven and immediately called Cumali on my cellphone but got sent straight to voicemail. I left a message to call me urgently and kept trying the number but, after twenty minutes, I still hadn’t managed to talk to her.

I went down to the front desk, took another tour through the English language with the manager and discovered from him the address of Gul & Sons, Marina and Shipwrights. I entered it into the Fiat’s navigation system and, seven minutes later, I was in the old port, standing in front of the house Cumali had been painting in the photograph.

It had once been a fisherman’s home, two-storey, with terracotta pots and window boxes full of flowers. I was surprised – there was a joy and softness to the house which I certainly hadn’t seen in the woman. I walked up the front path and rang the doorbell. There was no answer.

I crossed a small patch of lawn and headed down a driveway wedged hard against the tall wall of Gul’s marina and looked in the garage. The piece-of-shit Italian car was in there – black paintwork and its hood up – but there was no sign of life. I moved closer to the back of the house and listened: there wasn’t a sound or movement except for a tabby cat scratching its ear inside the kitchen window.

Back in the car, glancing at my watch, I started driving a grid, steadily expanding out from the house, looking for a corner park. I had to find her soon. Ten minutes later, I saw a small piece of grass with half a dozen kids playing on the swings. Their mothers were hovering around them and, to my immense relief, Leyla Cumali was among them.

I parked and scrambled out. She had her back to me, pushing her son on the swing, so I was only a few yards from her when one of the other mothers called out to her in Turkish and pointed in my direction.

The detective turned, saw me and, in that moment, there was so much anger in her face at the unexpected intrusion that I could hardly credit it. But there was something else … something furtive … in the way she moved to gather up her son. The instant impression I had – the blink moment, so to speak – was that I had walked into a secret.

As she glared, the boy peeped one eye out from behind her skirt and I smiled at him and said, ‘This must be your son.’

To my credit, the expression on my face didn’t change as – more confident – he stepped further out from behind his mother and I saw that he had Down’s syndrome.

Like every one of those kids I have ever encountered, his face was beautiful – smiling and full of innocence. He said something to me in Turkish which I guessed was ‘Good morning’ and, for some reason, instead of trying to communicate in a language he didn’t understand, I took it into my head to bow to him. He thought this was about the funniest thing he had ever seen and did a pretty good bow back. The mothers and the other kids, all of whom were watching, laughed, and that only encouraged him to bow several times more to the crazy American.

The only person who didn’t think it was funny was his mother. ‘How did you find me? My note made it clear, I’m not willing to argue—’

‘I’m not here to argue,’ I interrupted. ‘I want you to come to the French House with me.’

That took some of the horsepower out of her anger. ‘Why?’

‘I think Dodge was killed, and we may be able to prove it.’

‘Murdered? How did anyone get on to the estate?’

‘I don’t know. The first step is to prove there was somebody else in the house. I think we can do that.’

She thought for a moment then shook her head. ‘No. The evidence clearly shows—’

‘Forget the evidence. Evidence is a list of the material you’ve got. What about the things you haven’t found? What do you call that – unimportant?’

It was a quote from my book and I immediately berated myself – again I had stepped outside my legend – then I remembered the book had been packed as part of my on-plane reading and I let the self-admonishment go. Cumali still wasn’t convinced.

‘We have to do it now – before the investigation is closed,’ I pressed.

‘No – my superiors have already signed off on it.’

I had to work hard not to lose my temper. ‘If I turn out to be right and the Bodrum police have released the body and returned people’s passports, there’s going to be hell to pay. Not from me – from the highest levels of government.’

She wavered. The other mothers and kids started to head to school, waving goodbye to Cumali and her bowing son.