Authors: Will Adams
The restaurant that night proved very different: low-ceilinged, intimately lit, with small tables set obliquely to each other and no scruples about alcohol. Their waitress stood with one foot hooked behind the other as she took their order, like a ballerina about to curtsey. ‘Listen,’ said Iain, once they’d agreed on red wine and mezes. ‘Remember what I said last night about your boss’ kids? Forget it.’
‘I already had. They’re whiners, not doers. But why the change of heart?’
‘I met a man today. I can’t tell you about him, I’m afraid. But he was here for the same reason as your boss. If that meeting had been a ruse, they’d hardly have invited rival bidders, would they?’
‘Huh. Another Homer buff?’
‘Not exactly. Dido and the Phoenicians. But that’s all part of the same thing, right?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’ frowned Iain. ‘But Dido had a fling with Aeneas, didn’t she? And Aeneas was at Troy.’
Karin pulled a face, as though she saw quicksand in their path. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ she said. ‘Yes, Aeneas fought at Troy. Yes, he also had a famous love affair with Dido. But the dates simply don’t work. The Trojan War was around 1200
BC
, like I said last night; yet Dido wasn’t even born until around 850
BC
. And that’s assuming she existed at all, which is far from certain. Her name actually means “wanderer”, which is a classic sign of folklore.’
‘But I thought she founded Carthage.’
‘Yes. Maybe. Except the earliest graves they’ve found there date to about thirty years after her time. More to the point, they’re
poor
.’
‘So?’
‘So that doesn’t tally with the legend,’ said Karin. ‘Dido’s husband was famously rich. Her brother Sicherbas, the king of Tyre, grew so jealous that he had him killed, then he tried to force Dido to marry him instead to get his hands on all that gold. But Dido was too smart for him. She pretended to dump it all into the sea as an offering to the gods, but actually she stashed it on her fleet of ships then looted her brother’s treasury and sailed off with the lot.’
‘Good on her,’ laughed Iain.
‘Yes, but like I said, the first settlers in Carthage were poor. So what happened to all that gold? It was actually one of the great mysteries of the ancient world. Nero tore up half the Tunisian coast looking for it.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Still out there,’ smiled Karin. ‘A spare afternoon and a metal detector. We could be rich.’
Iain laughed and refilled their glasses. The wine was raw and left a pleasurable warmth in the throat and chest. ‘Seriously, though, where did the story of Dido and Aeneas come from, if the dates were that far off?’
‘The Greeks weren’t very good at chronology. They had nothing to measure dates against. So they pretty much glossed over the Dark Ages altogether. Besides, the Trojan War was a huge part of their mythos. They all wanted a piece of it. You wouldn’t believe how many ninth- and eighth-century cities claimed they’d been founded by some returning Homeric hero or another. Besides, Carthage and Rome went on to become the great rivals of the ancient world, so a doomed love story between their founders made perfect material for a story. The beautiful, exotic princess falling so hard for the hero’s war stories that she threw herself onto his sword when he sailed off – what’s not for a man to like?’
‘I’ve got war stories,’ said Iain.
‘I’ll bet you do,’ laughed Karin. They held each other’s gaze a fraction longer than was polite, but then she shook her head and looked away.
Iain reached for the wine, refilled their glasses once again. A single drop spilled onto the white tablecloth, staining purple as it spread. When you’d lost the love of your life, it felt like betrayal even to look fondly at someone else. It felt like betrayal of his dead son, to cheat upon his mother. But four years had passed, and it was time.
Hakan was first to react. He snatched up the keys to Asena’s motorbike then ran from her room and slammed the door behind him. She grabbed her M-16 from her bottom drawer, slapped in a new magazine as she went after him. But the door had jammed shut and she couldn’t open it so she went to her window instead, lifted the sash, dropped herself down onto the waterlogged earth outside.
An engine sputtered and then caught. She ran around the side of the cabin, shoes squelching, just as Hakan opened the throttle and pulled a sharp turn, spraying her with muddy water. She fired three times but he didn’t slow down. Doors banged open behind her. Men ran out shouting. She wiped her eyes, struggling to see in the darkness. Hakan was evidently blind too because he flicked on his headlight, revealing himself near the top of the rise. But it was steep there, and the storm had turned the earth to mud so that his back wheel span uselessly. He climbed off to push it up the last few metres. She ran after him, stopped, aimed, fired. He cried out and clutched his shoulder. She fired again. He went down and the bike fell upon him. She walked up to him, her gun at the ready in case he had a final trick; but all he had were upheld hands and the pleading terror of his eyes.
The others caught up with her. Ali looked bewildered when he saw it was Hakan. ‘I assumed we had an intruder,’ he said.
‘They have a picture of him at the hotel,’ she told him. ‘They have his face.’
‘They have his face?’
‘This place is blown,’ she said. ‘We have to leave.’
Ali nodded at Hakan. ‘And him?’ he asked.
She looked down. His mouth was a tight grimace as he braced himself for the
coup de grâce
, yet there was a glimmer of hope in his eyes that she was a woman and therefore maybe not quite hard enough for this kind of work, that she’d persuade herself she could afford to let him live. She shook her head with genuine regret as she aimed down at his forehead and pulled the trigger twice more. ‘He’ll be staying here,’ she said.
Iain settled the bill, held the door open for Karin. It had turned colder outside, a storm brewing. The wind was in their faces, gusts stiff enough to throw them slightly off balance and mean that they had to turn towards each other and raise their voices to be heard. A young woman sending a text on her phone overtook them, her head bowed, her long black hair streaming behind her like something from a cartoon. They reached a T-junction. Iain put his hand upon Karin’s elbow to steer her left. Then he kept it there afterwards. She hesitated for a moment or two but pulled away from him and shook her head. ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ she said.
‘What isn’t?’
‘You know what.’
‘I like you,’ said Iain. ‘Is that so bad?’
‘I like you too. Honestly I do. But we live on other sides of the world. There’s no future to it.’
‘All the better.’
Karin laughed, but not for long. ‘I don’t do flings. Not any more. They make me unhappy. Besides …’ She spread her hands to indicate the bombing, the friends they’d both lost. ‘Does it feel right?’
Iain nodded soberly. ‘No.’
They were silent the rest of the way back to the hotel. He felt deflated. As they waited for the lift, the receptionist called them over. ‘Good news,’ she said. ‘We’ve had a cancellation.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Karin.
‘We have a free room for you, if you still want it.’
‘Oh,’ said Karin. She looked uncertainly at Iain. ‘That
is
good.’
‘Not tonight,’ said Iain. ‘It’s too late tonight. How about tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ said Karin. ‘Tomorrow.’
They took the lift up, stared diligently at the doors. Iain took the bathroom first again to leave it clear for Karin. She turned off the lights herself before slipping into bed. The storm started outside, announcing itself with a sweep of rain against their skylight. It quickly grew closer and fiercer, then suddenly erupted all around them. Lightning shuddered above; rain slammed like machine-gun fire into the glass. The thunder was so loud that Karin sat up at one particularly violent clap, hugged her arms around her knees. ‘Christ that was close,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Yesterday must have got to me worse than I thought.’
There was something in her voice, a hand reached out. On instinct rather than calculation, Iain threw back his duvet and crossed the narrow divide between their beds, climbed in beside her.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Just while the storm lasts,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘I won’t try anything,’ he said, sliding his hand down her arm to her elbow, feeling the warmth of her, the goosebumps on her skin. ‘We can play football rules, if you like. You can be ref.’
‘Football rules?’
‘Sure. You’re Dutch. You must have come across the beautiful game.’
He could hear the smile in her voice. ‘Not in this context.’
‘Okay. Then how it works is, first offence, you can give me a yellow. If I talk back or do it again, it’s a second yellow and I’m off.’
‘And I can give you a straight red, yes?’
‘If I do something completely outrageous, sure. Which I won’t.’
‘And you’ll go at once? Without protest?’
‘You’re the ref.’ She had her back to him. He put his arms around her, fitted himself to her contours. ‘Take my hands,’ he said. ‘That way you can be extra safe.’
She put her hands tentatively in his. He spread his fingers to let her interlace. ‘While the storm lasts,’ she said. Another lightning bolt struck even more loudly. This time Karin didn’t even flinch. He smiled to himself, and wondered whether he was the one who’d been played. If so, he was glad enough of it. Her neck was by his mouth, the curve of it as it flowed into her shoulder. He couldn’t help himself, he kissed her gently.
‘Hey!’ she said. ‘I felt that!’
‘I didn’t do—’
‘That’s your first yellow, mister.’
‘A yellow!’ he protested. ‘But I barely touched you!’
‘It’s a yellow,’ she insisted.
‘But—’
‘One more peep and you’re off.’
‘But—’
‘One more peep!’ Her body trembled with suppressed laughter. For a moment he hankered to hug her tight, to feel again the reciprocated affection of a desirable woman. But he held himself back, and when the storm finally abated, and the room began to grow a little grey with dawn, Karin was sleeping peacefully in his arms, and the warmth where their bare legs touched was like sunshine on his skin.
Inspector Ozgur Karacan turned his pillow to its cooler side then slapped it three times like a mouthy suspect until it had the shape he wanted. He rolled onto his front and rested his face sideways upon it with his hands up either side, trying to surrender himself back to sleep. But his father was snoring upstairs and the bakers next door had opened their doors so that he could smell their bread and hear their banter with their first customers, and his mind began inexorably to hum and whirr again with yesterday’s unanswered questions, and he knew in his heart it wasn’t going to happen.
It was that damned email and its attachment. He couldn’t get it out of his head. The consensus view of a
jihadi
video struck him as self-evident nonsense. For one thing, Cypriot reunificationists were not
jihadis
. And even if they had decided to film their handiwork, then surely they’d have known better than to film from inside the blast zone.
His pillow was already too warm. It promised to be a muggy day. He flipped it over again, but it was no good. The trouble was, he knew, making progress on the email and the footage required people who understood computers and the new digital age. He was of the wrong generation, that was the fact of it. A dinosaur in an age of …
With a slight start, he realized he’d been thinking about it wrong. He shouldn’t be trying to work out who had
sent
the footage. He could leave that to the IT guys. He should be trying to work out who had
taken
the footage. That traumatic first afternoon, the witness interviews he and his fellow first responders had conducted. Everyone shocked and bewildered, except for the burly Englishman with the excellent Turkish, the only one close to the blast who’d been sharpened rather than dazed by it. He never had explained satisfactorily what business it was that had brought him to Daphne.
Tiredness left Karacan in a blink. He threw back his bedclothes and reached for the uniform folded neatly on his bedside chair.
Karin woke to find Iain still lying beside her in her bed. She wasn’t quite sure whether to be pleased or dismayed by this development. Certainly, she’d felt a powerful hankering for his companionship last night, which was why she’d first refused a room of her own then had offered him the opportunity to join her in her bed. She liked him a great deal, was attracted to him, and was immensely grateful for everything he’d done for her. Yet her life was such a mess right now that she needed no further complications. When you had important decisions to make about your future, you wanted your head clear.
She removed her hand from his, edged carefully from the bed. She washed and dressed and came back out to find him still dozing. She turned on her smartphone to check her messages. That done, she tried to log on to the password-protected website that the police had set up to publish bulletins for people affected by the blast. The page was running some script that kept freezing her phone. It had played up the same way yesterday, so she’d ended up using the hotel’s guest computer down in reception. She was about to head off down there when she noticed Iain’s laptop zipped away in its bag beneath the dressing table. She sat down beside him on the bed, shook him gently by his shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she said.
He turned onto his back, stretched, smiled fondly up at her. ‘Hey yourself.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘There’s this website I need to check. Is it okay if I use your laptop?’
His expression didn’t flicker, yet somehow she got the sense he was suddenly on alert. ‘I wish I could,’ he said. ‘But I’ve got client information on there. It’s absolutely against company protocol to let anyone else use it.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘No problem. They’ve got one down in reception.’