Authors: Terry Hayes
called banana hammocks.
At the opposite end to the cabanas was the bar and a small stage for a five-piece band. One of the
guitarists was my objective, but getting there wasn’t without its obstacles. The first of them was approaching me with a sympathetic smile and his hands spread wide in silent apology. It was the maître d’ and, unlike his clientele, he was class all the way: French was my guess, Berluti handmade shoes, lightweight Brioni suit, gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘Today, we are fully booked.’
I looked at the two dozen empty tables – it was early – and even more vacant stools at the bar. I smiled back just as pleasantly. ‘Yes, I can see that.’
He already had his arm around my shoulder, guiding me back towards the elevator where the ninja
was waiting to whisk me back down to the street where I belonged. I reached into my jacket pocket,
and the maître d’ assumed I was going for my wallet and a handful of bills to bribe him.
‘Please, sir – don’t embarrass us both,’ he said, with genuine pain.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ I replied, pulling out my gold shield.
He looked at it for a moment and put aside the shepherding shit while he considered what to do.
‘Are you arresting someone, Mr Wilson?’ he asked.
‘Probably.’
He leaned closer – you could tell he was a terrible gossip – and dropped his voice. ‘Can you tell me who?’
I leaned in equally close and dropped my voice to match his. ‘Sorry, not allowed.’
‘No – of course not. But you could probably say what the charge would be.’
‘Sure,’ I said, and indicated the pool area. ‘Bad taste.’
He burst out laughing and shook my hand. ‘Fuck, the place will be empty. You’ll need a bus.’
He dismissed the ninja with a glance, raised his hand in a gesture to the distant barman and guided me back towards the acres of flesh. ‘Be my guest, Mr Wilson – Anton at the bar will take care of your drinks.’
I thanked him, walked beside the pool and settled myself on a stool at the bar. I asked Anton for a
coffee and turned my attention to the band. It was the bass player I was interested in – his name was Ahmut Pamuk, and he was in his fifties, neatly dressed, a guy who had obviously decided years ago
just to play the groove and not look at the crowd. At the Skybar, that was probably wise. He was good, he knew his shit; the sort of man who had already given music the best years of his life and would
probably be playing just one more gig until they laid him in the ground.
But the owner of the music store had warned me that he was one of the most unpleasant people you
could meet and, watching him on stage, seeing him at his lifetime’s work, I had some understanding
why. For a real musician, a man who had been full of hopes and dreams, playing endless versions of
‘Mamma Mia’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ would be enough to embitter anyone.
As Anton brought my coffee, Pamuk was in the middle of a set – the hits from Titanic – and I waited for him to finish. The owner had told me the guy had been collecting traditional and folk music for years. His father – a musician himself – had started it, worried that if it weren’t collected and written down it would be lost for ever and, in later years, his son had picked up the baton.
Apparently, Pamuk got by however he could – playing at the Skybar, pumping gas – all the time finding lost music, playing some of the instruments himself, noting it down like a lost language and sending it to the Turkish National Archives. According to the guy at the music store, if any local could identify the çigirtma tune, it would be him.
The set finished, the band left the stage to no applause, and I stood up. I gave Pamuk my name and
told him that I had a piece of music I was hoping he could help me with. My idea had been to ask him to listen to the MP3 player, but I never got the chance: the store owner hadn’t been mistaken about Pamuk’s personality.
‘It’s the brunch crowd, and I’ve been on stage for an hour already – you heard the deafening applause, right?’ he said. ‘I’m gonna eat, I’m gonna have a coffee and then I’m gonna rest.’ He turned to walk away.
‘Mr Pamuk,’ I replied, ‘I’m not a musicologist or some foreign academic.’ I flashed him the shield.
He wasn’t sure how to react but decided it might be wiser to at least pay lip service to cooperation.
‘Okay, I’ll give you a phone number. Call me tomorrow, we’ll set a time,’ he said.
‘Tomorrow’s not good enough. It’ll have to be today,’ I countered. He glared at me, but he had never met the Defcon 1 before and buckled.
‘From four o’clock I work at 176—’ and he rattled off the name of a street that I had no hope of
pronouncing, let alone finding, as I was sure he knew. Asshole.
‘Write it down, please,’ I told him, and motioned to Anton that I needed a pen. Grudgingly, Pamuk
complied and, as I walked away, I slipped the address into my pocket.
I almost didn’t bother: in light of his personality, I was certain the meeting was going to be a waste of time.
Chapter Forty
APART FROM HAVING to stab him through the fleshy part of his hand, my follow-up conversation with Ahmut Pamuk actually turned out to be quite pleasant.
After I left the Skybar I walked along the harbour, found a bench in the shade, slid the battery back into my phone and called Cumali at the station house. I hadn’t spoken to her since Florence and I wanted to check any progress on the newly launched investigation into Dodge’s murder.
As it turned out, very little had happened. Hayrunnisa picked up the call and told me Cumali had left just after 11 a.m. and wouldn’t be back for the rest of the day.
‘Where’s she gone?’ I asked.
‘Just a few private things she had to attend to,’ she replied.
I was about to press her when I realized it was Thursday and that Cumali’s son had invited me to see the Grand Parade and the clowns. She had taken him to the State Circus.
I said I would call back in the morning and then spent another hour checking with people working
near phone boxes – again to no avail – and realized that, with lunchtime approaching and most offices and stores closing, it was about to become a near-to-hopeless task.
With little choice but to take a break, I decided to turn my attention to the French House. My confidence had been badly shaken by the mistake that Whisperer and I had made: we had jeopardized
our entire mission by assuming that the death of Dodge would be a case worth investigating. Such errors rarely went unpunished in the secret world and, on the plane back from Florence, I had resolved never to let it happen again. Come what may, I was going to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Knowledge is power, as they say.
The core question was simple: how did the killer manage to enter and leave the estate without being
seen? Included in the files about Dodge’s death that Cumali had given me was a reference to the company responsible for letting the mansion, and I figured that was the best place to start.
Prestige Realty was its name, and I had seen its flashy storefront a number of times during my walking tours. I glanced at my watch and saw that, if I hurried, I had a chance of getting there before it too closed for lunch.
I got within hailing distance just as a man was locking the front door. When he heard me calling to
him in English he turned and switched on the smile that realtors reserve for someone they think might have just got off the boat. As soon as he saw me, he switched it off.
He was in his early forties with a full pompadour, an open-necked shirt and a rope of gold chains
around his neck big enough to anchor a cruise liner. I liked him immediately. In a strange way, there was no guile to him – if you got ripped off by a man who looked like that, I figured you only had yourself to blame.
I introduced myself, told him I was with the FBI and that I wanted to discuss the French House. He
shrugged and said that one of the local cops had visited him about a week ago and taken a photocopy
of the lease. He was just the realtor and there was really nothing more he could add.
He was obviously in a hurry to leave and I apologized for taking his time – as a rule, I’ve always
found it helps to be polite – and told him the local cop had called by when it had been an investigation into an accidental death.
‘What is it now then?’ he asked, surprised.
Obviously the word hadn’t leaked out about the overnight developments in the case – although I guessed that what I was about to tell him would mean most of Bodrum would know by nightfall.
I looked at the glass front door and saw his name in gold letters. ‘It’s a murder investigation, Mr
Kaya. The young American was pushed off the cliff.’
It shocked him – upset him, too. ‘He was a nice man,’ he said. ‘Not like most of the assholes who
rent mansions here. He talked, showed an interest – he said he was going to take me out on his boat.
Shit – murdered?’
‘You can understand why I need to talk to you.’
‘I was just going to lunch—’
‘Good, I’ll join you.’
He laughed. ‘You know that wasn’t what I meant.’
‘Yeah.’ I smiled. ‘But where are we eating?’
Chapter Forty-one
IT WAS A high-end barbecue joint on the beach: a polished deck overhanging the sand, sails of white canvas filtering the sun, designer furniture and – not surprisingly, given my host – a front-line view of groups of tourist chicks sunbathing topless.
As soon as we sat down I asked him if he knew about the house’s Nazi past and he looked at me as
if I had forgotten to take my medication.
‘You’re kidding, right?’ he said. He looked at my face and saw that I wasn’t.
‘Who owns it?’ was my next question.
‘I don’t know, not exactly,’ he replied, sort of shaken. ‘I got a letter – this would be about seven years ago – from a lawyer in Liechtenstein saying he represented a charitable trust which owned the
property. He said the trustees had decided they wanted it to produce an income.’
‘Did you ask him who was behind the trust, who the real owner was?’ I inquired.
‘Sure. I even got my own lawyer to try to find out, but it led through a series of nominee companies into a dead end.’
I didn’t say anything, but I knew most Liechtenstein trusts were designed to be impenetrable. That
was the reason why the tiny principality – sixty square miles, sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria – was the first port of call for Europeans, primarily Germans, wanting to hide assets from their tax authorities.
‘So the lawyer acting for the trustees said he wanted you to rent it out. This was after the renovations?’
‘That’s right – and it was good money for not much work. I collected the rent, deducted the maintenance expenses and my commission and forwarded the balance to a bank in Liechtenstein. That
was it.’
‘Who had a key to the estate?’ I asked. ‘Apart from you?’
‘Nobody has a key. Just codes. There are four gates, they’re all on electronic keypads linked to a
computer – you can’t tamper with them.’
‘Okay – so how does it work? A new tenant arrives for their stay, then what?’
‘I meet their estate manager at the house – all these people have estate managers and personal assistants,’ he said. ‘I enter my six-digit code into the keypad and hit hash. The screen asks me if I want to change the code and I say yes. I then have to enter my code again, wait twenty seconds, and it tells me to put in the new code.
‘I take a walk and the estate manager or the tenant enters their own six numbers – that way I have no idea what it is. We do the same thing at the other three gates.’
‘Then they decide who to give the code to?’ I asked.
‘Exactly. They bring their staff with them – all security-checked, so it’s not as if they give it out to strangers.’
‘What about gardeners, the pool guy – people like that?’
‘It’s up to the tenant, but I’ve never heard of anyone giving the code to any locals. They make them ring the intercom on the tradesmen’s entrance, the security chief checks them out and opens the gates personally.’
‘And at the end of the lease, it’s the reverse, right? They enter their code and you replace it with yours?’
‘You got it.’
I paused, thinking. ‘And in winter, when there are no tenants?’
‘There’s no need for that level of security,’ he replied.
‘So – you give the gardeners and the pool guy your code?’
‘Not exactly – there’s a caretaker who stays on the property for part of the year. He lets them in and does some maintenance. He uses two rooms in the attic over the boathouse, but he has to move out when summer starts. Rich people don’t like strangers on the property.’
‘But he lives there eight months of the year?’
‘Pretty much,’ he replied.
‘He’d know the house better than anyone?’
‘I guess.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Gianfranco Luca.’
‘Where can I find him?’
‘He’s got a summer job here on the beach – runs a little team that gives massages to tourists.’
The waiter was hovering nearby, and I signalled to him to bring the bill. Kaya offered to give me a
ride back into the Old Town, but I said it was a beautiful day and I preferred to walk. He got to his feet, we shook hands and he gave me a business card – made to look like a gold ingot – and told me
to call him if I needed any more information.
It wasn’t until he had left, and I was waiting for my change, that I glanced down at the card and solved another one of life’s mysteries. In the bottom right-hand corner was his office phone number.