‘You make many demands, Mr Miller,’ Ertas said quietly, with disdain.
Thank God for that, Tallis thought. At least his true identity hadn’t been revealed. Could only make things complicated. A quick visual of the building told him that escape was probably out of the question. The atrium appeared to be the highest point of the structure. There were no other windows, only doors off with a staircase leading down at the opposite end. A man in boxer shorts, even in these soaring temperatures, wasn’t exactly likely to go far. ‘Who’s your friend?’ he said, bolshie.
Ertas answered. ‘You may call him Koroglu.’
Strange, why can’t he speak for himself? Tallis thought, eyeing the man suspiciously.
‘Come,’ Ertas said, pivoting on his heel.
Tallis let out a belligerent sigh. He felt less fear now, his outrage building and genuine. Shown into a room not too dissimilar to the one at the police station, he asked first for water then to be untied. Both requests were ignored.
Ertas pulled up a chair for himself. Koroglu took a position behind Tallis. Ertas asked Tallis to sit down.
‘I pro—’ Two firm hands grabbed his shoulders, fingers digging deep into his nerves. Tallis gasped with shock and slumped down, arms half paralysed. He wondered what rank Koroglu held, from which department he hailed. Bastard division, he concluded.
Ertas, who was sitting opposite, showed no emotion. ‘After you left the station, what did you do?’ His voice was soft, coaxing.
Fucking predictable, Tallis thought, straight out of the hard-guy, soft-guy school of police interrogation. Ertas had probably picked that up in the States, too.
‘Not sure exactly when that was,’ Tallis said, leaning forward slightly, wishing he could rub his arms and get the circulation going. A stolen glance at Ertas’s watch told him it was four in the afternoon.
‘Two days ago.’
Right, Tallis thought so now he knew exactly how long he’d been held, which wasn’t very long at all. Just felt that way. ‘I went back to the hotel. I can tell you what I had to eat if you insis—’
The blow came from the left, flat-handed, mediumstrength, precision-aimed. Tallis’s ear rang. He felt temporarily deafened.
‘I will ask the questions,’ Ertas said softly. ‘You will answer.’
Tallis nodded, raised his tied hands, rubbed at his ear and did his best to look stricken. Inside he boiled with rage. In two fluid movements, he could throw his head back against the goon standing behind him, swing his hands round and punch Ertas in the throat, smashing the hyoid bone.
‘And after dinner, what did you do then?’ Ertas continued elegantly.
‘I went for a stroll.’
‘Where?’
‘Not sure I re—’
Another clout on the other side ensured that he did. He told Ertas what he wanted to hear. No point in denying it. These guys already knew where he’d been.
Ertas leant forward with a tight smile. ‘You were observed, Mr Miller, following a man who is of interest to us.’
‘I don’t know wha—’ Tallis flinched, expecting another blow. But it was Ertas who raised his hand in a restraining gesture. Tallis heard Koroglu grunt with frustration at being denied another chance to use him like a punchbag.
‘You deny it?’ Ertas’s expression was hard.
Tallis smiled. ‘Since when was following someone a criminal offence?’
‘So you were following him.’
Checkmate, Tallis thought. Those blows to his head must have addled his thinking.
‘The man in question,’ Ertas continued smoothly, ‘is a Moroccan known to have links with al-Qaeda.’ A Moroccan? Tallis thought, surprised. According to his victim’s passport, he had been a Turk—unless it was false, like his own. ‘He was deported by your own government two years ago,’ Ertas continued, ‘and is of interest to the United States.’
Shit. Tallis baulked. Who the hell did they think he was? More to the point, who were they? In his mind, the USA was synonymous with extraordinary rendition and secret detention centres. Could this be one of them? From what he’d heard, they were more likely to be found in Poland and Romania, but the closed prisons there were reputed to be full and so the States had outsourced and turned their attention to the Horn of Africa. What all this definitely pointed to: Garry Morello had been onto something, and he was deep in the shit. He remained stubborn. ‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’
‘Because you were the last person to see him alive,’ Ertas said, down-turned eyes meeting Tallis’s.
‘You mean he’s dead,’ Tallis said, sounding aghast.
Ertas picked up the phone, ordered a jug of water and two glasses. Nobody said a word. Tallis was trying to work out what they wanted from him, confession or revelation? The water arrived. Ertas poured out, unlocked Tallis’s cuffs and handed the glass to Tallis who drank it down in one. ‘Thank you.’
‘So, Mr Miller,’ Ertas said. ‘Would you like to explain exactly what you were doing?’
‘All right,’ Tallis said with a heavy sigh. ‘I admit I followed him. I recognised him from when I was in the café with Mr Morello.’
‘Our Moroccan friend was at the Byzantium?’ Something in Ertas’s expression led Tallis to believe that he already knew the answer to the question.
‘Yes.’
‘Then why didn’t you mention this when we spoke at the station? Why was this not in your statement?’
‘Because I didn’t think it relevant.’
‘But you thought it relevant later.’ There was a cynical note in Ertas’s tone.
‘No, you don’t understand.’ Tallis allowed his voice to notch up a register to simulate frustration. ‘It was only because I saw the guy there in the evening.’
‘When you went back to the café,’ Ertas said, scratching his head.
‘Foolish, I know, but I was hoping to find something important that might help with your inquiry.’
Ertas flashed another tight, disbelieving smile. ‘And then what?’
‘I followed him.’
‘Where?’
‘To the gardens at Topkapi. Then I lost him.’
Ertas glanced up at Koroglu. ‘Ask him what he was planning to do,’ Koroglu ordered in Turkish. Ertas nodded. Obedient, he put the question.
‘I don’t know.’ Tallis shrugged. ‘Talk.’
‘To a stranger, in the middle of the night, in a foreign land? Wasn’t that reckless of you?’
‘I suppose it was. I wasn’t thinking.’ But he was now; he was thinking that the guy standing behind him wasn’t what he seemed at all. He’d assumed Ertas was calling the shots. He was wrong.
‘Did you know he was armed?’ Ertas said, watching Tallis like a crow observed carrion.
‘Certainly not.’
Koroglu spoke again. ‘Tell him that we know he intended to meet the Moroccan. Tell him that he had already contacted him in Britain. Stress that he has already lied and to lie further will only make things worse.’
Tallis did his best not to jump in, to shout and protest his innocence. Ertas, meanwhile, cleared his throat and repeated word for word