Lee looked down and saw, for the second time, the small, grubby-looking carpet on the grass beside him. Dull and slightly frayed around its edges, it was nevertheless quite clear at its heart where what looked like a glittering weeping willow had been woven into its design. The ground and border columns of pale blue, magenta and indigo were particularly striking and clean. Unlike the picture his grandfather had given him, the thing itself was alive with all manner of colour and, around the tree at the centre, seemingly a degree of light too. It was, however, absolutely and unequivocally the same as the black and white version that lay outside that once-fine old Gothic mansion in Nişantaşı. It looked much brighter and more impressive than it had done when he’d first seen it in the police station. ‘God . . .’
‘My brother and I, being men and with children of our own at that time, had little involvement when the Princess Gözde died,’ Muhammed Süleyman explained. ‘But our sister has told me that our father, the Princess Gözde’s brother, sold most of her things.’
‘Including the box?’
Muhammed Süleyman spoke quickly to his sister who replied at some length and then he said, ‘She thinks so, yes. You have to understand, Mr Roberts, my father was poor at that time. He kept only a very few things from his sister’s home.’
‘Do you know who your father sold the box to?’ Lee asked.
‘Not for certain, no,’ Muhammed Süleyman said. ‘But I imagine it was probably to dealers in the Kapalı Çarşı. Not to carpet men, you understand. To my father it was just a box. But to antique dealers, I think.’
Beyazıt and Esma Süleyman stood up and moved around the table to where İkmen had placed the Lawrence Kerman carpet. Lee Roberts looked back at the photographs on the table again. ‘The carpet is supposed to be stained with blood,’ he said. ‘From that action against the Ottoman train. The Princess Gözde my grandfather knew believed it was the blood of her fiancé. He gave it to her because she believed that was what it was.’
İkmen sat down at the table and poured himself a glass of tea. ‘Which brings us to our problem, Mr Roberts,’ the policeman said.
‘Which is?’
‘Which is to establish whether your grandfather’s Princess Gözde and Princess Gözde Süleyman are in fact one and the same.’
‘The mansion in the picture my grandfather took and the one these people have from their aunt look the same,’ the Englishman said. ‘Then there is the box which is identical . . .’
‘But the Princess Gözde Süleyman never opened the box she said had come from her fiancé in front of anyone,’ İkmen said. ‘So we cannot be certain that this carpet was inside. Her brother apparently sold the box to a dealer in the Kapalı Çarşı probably back in the early 1960s. Your grandfather, Mr Roberts, did not buy the box from the Kapalı Çarşı until 1981. Maybe it did just lie there for twenty years, but it is doubtful. It must have gone somewhere else before returning to the bazaar, but we cannot know. Anything could have happened in those years.’
‘But it is certain this is the carpet that was taken from a Turkish military train by T. E. Lawrence?’
‘Of course!’ İkmen said. ‘There is photographic evidence for all to see, Mr Roberts. If you wish to auction the piece off, once its authenticity has been verified, you will make a lot of money. There is little doubt of that.’
Lee Roberts put his hands up to his head and said, ‘Yes, but is it mine to sell or is it . . . Does it belong to these people or doesn’t it?’
İkmen smiled. ‘There are strong similarities that exist between your grandfather’s story and that of this family, Süleyman,’ he said. ‘The name of the princess, her age and situation, the appearance of the sandalwood box. What is missing is a report of someone seeing the carpet. None of the efendis can say they have seen it when they have not.’
‘At the moment, the carpet belongs to you, Mr Roberts,’ Muhammed Süleyman interjected. ‘My family cannot prove that this carpet belonged to our aunt. You may take it back to England with you. It is your choice.’
Lee Roberts looked up at İkmen.
‘The police department can only provide you with details of the facts we know about the carpet,’ the policeman said. ‘I can’t say whether this carpet rightfully belongs to these people or not. At the moment, Mr Roberts, it is yours and it is up to you what you do with it.’
Lee Roberts looked up at the three elderly people gathered around the side of his carpet and sighed.
Peter Melly looked across the table at a woman who was now a stranger to him. The young constable who was guarding the door coughed just as Peter said to Matilda, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’
She visibly blanched and then replied, ‘What do you mean?’
He leaned across what was an ash- and tea-stained table. God, but the interview rooms of police stations were grim! It didn’t seem to matter where one was in the world, they were always dingy, grubby and depressing. ‘The police are saying that you keep on changing your story,’ he said.
‘Just like you, then,’ she responded lightly.
Peter Melly gritted his teeth. ‘Not really,’ he said tightly. ‘I said I’d seen you in bed the night Yaşar died because I couldn’t believe you capable of anything even approaching murder! Christ, Matilda, I was still trying to come to terms with what you told me when you left . . .’
‘That I’d had other men.’
‘Yes! That was a bloody thunderbolt. But then when on top of that I learned from the police that one of your conquests could have been Yaşar Uzun . . . Well . . .’
‘You were humiliated.’
He leaned forward still further and lowered his voice. ‘Of course I was! I know I’ve never been the most attentive husband . . .’
‘Oh, you think so?’ she laughed but without humour.
‘But once I thought I might lose you . . .’ He put his head into his hands and said, ‘Look, Matilda, the Lawrence carpet has gone. The police have found who they think is the rightful owner and it sure as hell isn’t me.’
‘Shame.’
‘But that doesn’t matter.’ He looked up at her again and then said, ‘Look, the police have told me that you and this Handan Ergin woman are both giving them the run-around. They’ve taken our house apart looking for forensic evidence, but they seem pretty sure that you killed Yaşar. Now . . .’ he put his head in his hands again as he attempted to deal with his heightened emotions. What he was experiencing now was difficult, sad and humiliating all at the same time. ‘Matilda, they seem to think that this Ergin woman persuaded you to do it. In common with me, they can’t see that you would do something like that of your own accord.’
Matilda Melly reached one hand over to her husband and took his fingers in hers. ‘If I didn’t love Handan so much she and I wouldn’t have done whatever it is we did.’
‘Killed Yaşar Uzun.’
‘No one made me do anything, Peter. I did whatever I may have done completely of my own accord.’
He pulled his hand away from hers and then sat back in his chair in order to regard her from a distance. Without the make-up, hair-piece and snazzy clothes he’d seen her in when the police had apprehended her at the airport, she was the image of the old Matilda once again. His Matilda, his wife. Except that not only had she been a slut she’d also been something else too, something he had never dreamed that she was.
‘You know the poor husband of your dyke lover has been released, don’t you?’ he said bitterly. ‘Poor bastard!’
‘Abdullah Ergin hit Handan, he abused her!’ Matilda replied heatedly.
‘Oh and so that’s some sort of excuse for trying to get him banged away for life for a crime he didn’t commit?’ Peter Melly snapped back angrily. ‘Not to mention poor old Yaşar!’
Looking down calmly at her nails now Matilda said, ‘You’re only bitter because of that ruddy Lawrence carpet.’
‘Well, of course I am, yes,’ he said. ‘I had to have something in my life . . .’
‘And I had to have something in mine!’ his wife said as tears rose into her eyes. ‘Our home, you, when you could be bothered – it wasn’t enough!’
‘So you took to boys and Yaşar and some woman and—’
‘Handan is not some woman!’ She shook her head whilst wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Handan has never been just some woman!’
‘Matilda . . .’
‘I loved her from the first moment that I saw her!’
‘And yet . . .’ He wrestled with what he knew, mainly because it was both so alien and irrational to him. ‘If you love her, why did you say that she killed Yaşar when the police first asked you? Why is she saying that you killed him if she loves you? Why have you both changed your stories over and—’
Matilda Melly laughed. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘Know? Know what?’ Peter asked.
She leaned still further forward and then she whispered, ‘About confusion, silly! If we keep the police confused then they won’t know whom to sentence or for how long. We’ll be given the same amount of time in the same prison . . .’
‘No you won’t!’
‘Yes, we will!’
‘No, you won’t!’ Peter Melly insisted. ‘The police will find forensic evidence to convict one of you actually of murder in the end. The other, the accomplice, will receive a lighter sentence. And besides, Matilda, when did you and this woman get together to devise this cracked strategy? You haven’t seen each other since you were arrested.’
‘No, but we’re so close,’ she said. ‘We know each other’s minds . . .’
‘You think so?’ Peter Melly first shook his head and then rose from his seat with a sigh. He’d had enough. According to İkmen the other woman, Handan Ergin, was digging his wife in deeper and deeper every time she was interviewed. She had obviously never had any intention of staying with Matilda any longer than she had to. Handan Ergin had found a way out of her unsatisfactory life, or rather she thought that she had, but unlike Matilda, she had not found love.
After first asking the constable to open up the interview-room door, Peter Melly leaned down towards his wife and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Co-operate with the police,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you no good not to.’
‘Afraid it might damage your career if I don’t?’ Matilda responded bitterly.
But Peter Melly just shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m finished in İstanbul anyway. I just don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in prison.’
‘If I’m with Handan . . .’
‘But you won’t be with Handan,’ he responded gently now that he was leaving. ‘She’s betraying you, right now, Matilda.’
‘Oh, that’s just a strategy, she . . .’
‘No it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Not on her part. It’s the difference between a few years for conspiracy and life.’
And then her face just began to fall. A second before the constable shut the door on her again, Peter Melly saw his wife’s face drop, whiten, and even line a small amount. Maybe his words had hit home on some level? He hoped so because if they had not, Matilda was going to go down for everything. That Handan woman, however much persuasion she may have used upon Matilda, was working hard to cast herself in the light of a poor, clueless innocent. What Matilda needed to do was get together enough grit to stand up for herself and fight her own corner.
But deep down inside Peter Melly knew that she wouldn’t do anything like that. She didn’t have it in her. Had she done so she would have burned all his carpets and punched all his mistresses years ago. Once outside the police station, Peter Melly hailed a cab to take him to the cheapest, dirtiest bar that he could think of. Maybe there he could try to forget Matilda, the female love of her life and his poor, gorgeous, lost Lawrence Kerman carpet.
Çetin İkmen had just fallen asleep in front of the television when Fatma shook him awake and said, ‘You’ve got a visitor.’
‘A visitor?’ He coughed, licked his very dry lips, and said, ‘Who?’
‘Mehmet,’ his wife replied as she cleared several teen fashion magazines from the seats next to her husband, tutting disapprovingly as she did so. ‘Why do our daughters want to read such rubbish, eh? Fashion and pop stars and . . .’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ her husband said as he sat up straight in his chair and then lit up a cigarette to help bring him back into consciousness once again. ‘Such dreadful young children we have, Fatma! Allah, but where did I go wrong with two sons grown up to be doctors, a daughter married to the son of a friend and . . .’
‘Oh, shut up, you old fool! You’re half asleep!’ Fatma said as she bustled out of the room clutching the girls’ magazines between her fingers.
İkmen closed his eyes again and muttered, ‘Allah!’ His two youngest children, Gül and Kemal, were not easy kids. But they were teenagers, so what did Fatma expect? All, well, most of the older children had turned out well. And yet she moaned and moaned and . . .
‘Çetin?’
İkmen opened his eyes again and saw before him the tall, smiling figure of Mehmet Süleyman.
‘Mehmet!’ He made as if to get out of his chair in order to embrace his friend, but Mehmet Süleyman begged him stay where he was.
‘Don’t get up. You must be exhausted,’ he said as he sat down beside his friend and then kissed him affectionately on both cheeks. ‘I’ve just been to see my father.’
İkmen sat up very straight and widened his eyes expectantly. ‘And? Do you have good news? Did Mr Roberts decide to give your family the Lawrence Kerman?’
After first lighting up a cigarette of his own, Süleyman said, ‘Well, it is good news but, for my father in some respects, it’s bad news too.’
İkmen frowned. ‘Roberts wants to take the Kerman back to England with him?’
‘No,’ Süleyman said. ‘Mr Roberts has kindly given the carpet to my family. After you left him, he gave it a lot of thought and came to the conclusion that my great-aunt Gözde was in all probability the woman that his grandfather knew. So he gave the carpet to the current head of the family . . .’
‘Your Uncle Beyazıt.’
‘Yes, who decided that because my aunt Esma had known the Princess Gözde better than any other member of the family, she should solely own the Lawrence Kerman. As a sort of a keepsake.’ He puffed heavily on his cigarette and then said, ‘Father, of course, had hoped that they might all be able to jointly sell the thing. But . . .’