I Am Pilgrim(172)

I knew then, without any doubt, that logic had not fallen victim to emotion.

‘How did you record it?’ Pamuk asked, indicating the MP3 player.

‘Somebody came in to get gas,’ I lied. ‘A person in the car was on the phone and left a message on an answering machine in New York. The music was playing in the background. It’s a murder investigation – I can’t say any more than that.’

The last thing I wanted was to reveal the importance of the phone box – even allude to its existence – and I was pleased to see he was totally down with my explanation.

‘New York?’ he said, smiling. ‘Wow – an international recording artist at last.’

I smiled and indicated what I had seen on the gas station’s office and roof. ‘You’ve got video cameras,’ I said.

‘Yeah, in case anyone drives off without paying. Armed robberies too, but there hasn’t been one in years.’

‘Listen, Mr Pamuk, this is important – what system is used to record the footage? Tape or disk?’

‘It’s old. Tape,’ he replied. ‘VHS.’

‘Where is it – the system and the tapes?’

‘They’re both here – in the office.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How are the tapes catalogued, filed?’

He laughed. ‘What filing? There’s a box and the tapes are thrown in.’

‘Then reused – recorded over?’

‘That’s right,’ he said.

It was exactly what I had feared – that one of the cameras had captured the woman approaching the phone box – either on foot or by car – but that the tape had been reused and the footage wiped.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Tell me how it works. Who changes the tapes?’

‘We all do – whoever’s working,’ he explained. ‘The first thing you do when you start your shift is make sure the right amount of money is in the cash register, and then you check the recording equipment.

‘If the tape is close to running out,’ he continued, ‘you eject it, throw it in the box, select another one, rewind it and hit record.’

‘So some tapes might not have been used for weeks or months, that right?’ I asked.

‘Sure – depends on which one somebody grabs. For all I know, ones at the bottom of the box might not have been used for a year.’

I took a moment to think: it was going to be a roll of the dice, that was for sure. ‘What happens if somebody drives off without paying?’ I queried.

‘We go to the system, wind it back, take down the licence tag and call the cops.’

‘Do you give them the tape? For a prosecution, anything like that?’

He looked at me and laughed in disbelief. ‘This is Turkey, Mr Wilson. The cops trace the licence tag and go talk to the guy. Pretty soon he agrees to cough up twice the amount on the pump, which then goes to the gas station. He also has to pay a “fine” to the cops, which they pocket. Who needs a prosecution? Everybody’s happy except the guy who did the runner, and nobody cares about him.’

The system had its advantages for me too – it meant that none of the tapes were at the Bodrum police station or drifting through the judicial system.

‘And you look at the tapes on a TV in the office, right?’

‘Sure,’ he replied, then watched as I walked around the front of the gas station, looking at every camera, working out their fields of vision. It was going to be close, very close, whether they captured her – whether she came by foot or car, she would have had to walk to the phone box. If she had stayed very close to the kerb I didn’t think any of the cameras would have picked her up. And that was even assuming I could find the right tape and it hadn’t been recorded over.

‘Are the tapes time-coded – you can see the date, hours and minutes running along the bottom?’ I asked.

He nodded – yeah – and that gave me one advantage: thanks to Echelon, I knew the exact dates and times of both phone calls.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take me into the office. I want to look at the tapes.’





Chapter Forty-five


AN HOUR LATER, alone, I was still sitting in front of the ancient black-and-white TV, its screen little bigger than my hand, and its definition about as good.

Beside me was a large stack of VHS tapes that I had already reviewed and a small collection of ones which I hadn’t yet seen, the fast-diminishing repository of all my hopes. Maybe the Western world’s too, but it was best not to think about that.

The office was cramped and, if it had been cleaned in the last decade, I would have been surprised. Despite the heat – air-conditioning hadn’t yet reached BP in Bodrum – there was no chance of falling asleep. The chair I was sitting in was so wrecked and uncomfortable that I had to get up every few minutes to give my back and butt a chance of survival.