Christ, the bloke could win a BAFTA, Tallis thought. ‘All right,’ he said, feigning sympathy. ‘Full trip, there and back with a twenty-minute stop at the Fortress.’
‘Is better,’ Kerim said, significantly brightening up.
‘And something else,’ Tallis said, lowering his voice.
‘I very quiet,’ Kerim said, pointing to his mouth. ‘I say nothing.’
You’d better not, pal, Tallis thought, jaw grinding at the terrible yet calculated risk he was about to take. Kerim leant in close, allowing Tallis to explain what he wanted the little man to do, that there would be a great deal of money paid if he looked after something he was about to give him, but dire consequences, not only for him but for his family, should he default, then he offered a little more than his original sum for the trip, which, like the good businessman Kerim was, he accepted with a small bow.
Rumeli Hisari was a maze of steep, narrow cobblestone streets leading to tranquil Muslim cemeteries in a fortress setting. Everywhere were reminders of its fifteenth-century past, and the grand plans of Mehmet the Conqueror in his quest to take Constantinople. Much as Tallis adored history, he couldn’t have been less interested. He was looking for a suitable place to get rid of his carrier bag full of clothes. In a little less than ten minutes, he found it. Although most hotel and restaurant lavatories were of the modern flush design, public conveniences remained stubbornly old-fashioned, of the squat-over-the-slot variety. Setting aside any squeamishness, he took out his belongings and thrust them deep into the bowels of the latrine. Nobody in their right mind would try to retrieve them. Ten minutes later, he was back on the boat, allowing his offending arm to trail in the deep and narrow waters of the Bosphorus.
After checking and booking a KLM flight out of Ataturk to Spain, part of a set of precautionary measures following the killing and the previous night’s excitement, he spent the rest of the day lying low, eating a simple meal in the hotel restaurant before retiring to bed early. Deeply asleep, he was suddenly alerted to someone hammering on his door. ‘All right, all right,’ he said, dragging on a pair of boxers, instantly awake. ‘Who is it?’
‘Polis!’
Tallis glanced at his watch. It said two-twenty in the morning. ‘You got ID?’ he called out.
More banging.
He took a deep breath, opened the door a crack, clocking two men in plain clothes flanked by two police officers with firearms. Shit. He opened his mouth to say something. The door burst open. An outstretched fist shot out. Connecting.
Next stop darkness.
5
TALLIS came round feeling muzzy. Half-naked, feet bare, handcuffed, he was lying flat on his back on a piece of thin cardboard. His mouth was dry, as if it were laminated, and his temple throbbed with a viciousness he’d only experienced once before in his life after getting legless, at the age of seventeen, on a bottle of rum. He gingerly ran his cuffed fingers over his body. No broken bones, only bruises.
He looked around. Low-wattage light swinging from the ceiling throwing a nicotine glow on walls the colour of British cement. A hole in the ground signalling a convenience, the malodorous smell and dark cloud of flies buzzing round the entrance further confirmation. A dodgy-looking stain, the colour of dried pig’s blood, on the floor to his right. A steel door, with a slot in it for those outside to see in, remained resolutely shut. So much for Turkish hospitality, he thought dryly. There was no sound of faraway traffic, no human voice, no birdsong, so he guessed he was deep in the bowels of a building. The size of the cell, for that’s what it was, was the human equivalent of a battery hen’s coop. And, Christ, it was hot. His lungs felt as if they were sticking to his ribs. Might as well shove him in an oven, turn it to 200 degrees and roast him.
He staggered to his feet, tried to get his bearings, tried to focus. His watch was missing from his wrist so he had no idea of time. Without natural light he couldn’t even make an estimate. Wherever he’d been taken, he doubted that it was a police station. That worried him.
He retreated to the corner of his cell. Best he could do was conserve his energy, stay upbeat. There was absolutely nothing to connect him to the dead man so it was pointless to speculate about the reason he’d been brought and banged up there—wherever there was. Fear of the unknown was his greatest enemy. He refused to entertain the notion of detention centres and secret police, of places where men were detained without charge or trial, or of ghost prisoners held in legal limbo. He had a high pain threshold, but even seasoned soldiers knew that the mental anticipation and anguish was often worse than the horror itself. As soon as his captors came for him, he decided to play the role of outraged tourist. No heroics. No trying to beat the system. But plain old browned-off from Britain. Oh, and act frightened, he thought. Remember, he repeated to himself, you’re David Miller, boring, lowly IT consultant.
At last, he heard some movement and the scraping sound of metal against metal. The slot in the door drew back. A face with midnight eyes peered in, expressionless, followed by another face, which Tallis immediately recognised. On seeing Ertas, he got up. ‘Captain,’ he began, hope briefly rising. ‘So glad—’ Before he could complete his sentence, the slot slammed shut. Irritated, Tallis hunkered back down on the cardboard. At least he wouldn’t freeze to death.
Hours seemed to pass. He was getting seriously dehydrated, his thinking lacking clarity, becoming muddled. Who was Ertas? Was he part of the administrative police keeping track of foreigners, the judicial police investigating crimes or the dreaded political police who combatted subversives of any denomination? Bound to be crossovers, Tallis thought foggily, or maybe Ertas belonged to none of these groups.
He must have fallen asleep. He woke up with a yell. A guard standing over him had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water over his head. Tallis stuck his tongue out, eager to catch a few precious drops. Two other guards were pulling him up, banging his knees along the concrete, dragging him towards the open door. God, he thought, what next? He’d heard about enhanced interrogation techniques. He’d heard they weren’t very nice.
He managed to get up onto his feet. They were taking him at a fast trot down a dingy corridor. He could hear voices now. Men shouting. A gut-wrenching cry of pain tore through the fetid air. Barked orders.
Stairs ahead. One of the guards led the way, the other behind threatening him with a Taser stun gun should he try anything clever. Not that Tallis had any intention of risking 50,000 volts and total muscle paralysis. The noise was growing louder now. More desperate. The unmistakable clamour of violence. In spite of the heat, Tallis felt a chill as cold as a desert night creep deep into his soul.
The corridor opened out. Overhead strip lighting flickered with enough of a strobe effect to induce a fit in an epileptic. Doors off on either side, some of the metal grilles open, sounds of excessive use of force crashing around his ears. He hoped it was staged. If it wasn’t, poor sods, he thought.
They were walking three abreast, Tallis stumbling slightly, not used to walking in bare feet, and feeling off balance with his hands tied together. Finally they came to the end and to what looked like the type of lift you saw in a car park. One of the guards pressed a security keypad and the metal doors drew apart. Tallis was butted through into another corridor, more stairs, more fancy codes and security panels, more shouts of protest. For a brief moment, he thought he heard the strains of classical music and the sound of dripping water. Must be the product of a vivid imagination. Either that, or he was hallucinating. And then all his birthdays came at once. He was standing in an open space, like an atrium, natural light flooding through the barred windows in the ceiling. So delighted by the sight of the sun crashing down on blue, he hardly noticed Ertas, but he did clock the man standing next to him. Deeply tanned, strong-jawed, and sturdy with eyes that were too close together so that it was impossible to detect who or what he was looking at. The man dismissed the two guards with a short command. At once, Tallis could tell that, fluent though the man’s Turkish was, it wasn’t his first language.
‘This