‘And so they murdered thirty people?’ asked Karin. ‘But that’s crazy.’
‘Since when has crazy ever stopped bombers?’ He touched his left ear. ‘Suds,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ She checked a mirror, wiped them away, then ran fingers through her hair, spiking it a little, but with evident dissatisfaction. ‘You don’t have a comb, do you?’
Iain ran a hand over his buzz-cut. ‘Do I need one?’
‘I guess not.’ She held up the banknotes he’d given her. ‘Then maybe I should go do some shopping,’ she said.
II
‘Hush, girl,’ said Zehra Inzanoğlu, as her granddaughter stood on the road and continued to bawl. ‘Enough.’ But Katerina didn’t stop, except to take in more breath so that she could howl all the louder.
Indignation roiled Zehra’s heart. How could her son do this to her? She was too old. Her parenting was done. Yet what could she do? She looked around. She couldn’t see any of her neighbours watching but she knew they would be, if only because she’d be watching them were their situations reversed.
And still Katerina howled.
Village life was a delicate affair. Everyone knew each other’s business, yet they also soon learned where they could and couldn’t tread. But then something new came along and suddenly all those tacit boundaries broke down, and people would ask their intrusive questions again. They’d make judgements. Zehra couldn’t face that again. She just couldn’t. Besides, a girl of Katerina’s age should be at school. Yes. The thought was clarifying to her. She needed to return her to her home, find someone there to look after her. The Professor, perhaps. They wouldn’t have arrested him. And it would serve him right for introducing her son to that Greek whore in the first place. Her chin jutted with the rightness of it.
The bus wouldn’t run again that day, she couldn’t afford a taxi and asking a neighbour for a lift would mean having to explain and thus justify herself. She’d rather die. She went instead to her son’s car. His keys were still in the ignition; his wallet and mobile phone were on the dash. The car was a manual, however, and Zehra had only ever driven automatics. On the other hand, she knew the basic principle: you started them in second gear and then drove them as though they were very, very bad automatics.
She went inside to pack a bag, in case the Professor wasn’t home. When she came back out, Katerina was still bawling. Her persistence was astonishing. ‘Hush,’ she said crossly, belting her in to the passenger seat. ‘I’m taking you home. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’ But Katerina just carried on. Bitter thoughts filled her mind as she climbed behind the wheel, turned on the ignition and tried various combinations of pedals while heaving at the gear-stick, until finally it slotted into place. Then she took her foot off the brake and began bunny-hopping on her way.
III
A police horse whinnied in the street outside the Prime Ministerial offices, then did a little leftwards dance before lifting its tail and venting its bowels in a massive, noisy movement exactly as Deniz Baştürk was getting out of his car, providing the pack of press photographers across the street with the perfect visual metaphor for his premiership. And no one to blame but himself, for the horses were his idea, a way to increase security without making it look like they were turning into a police state.
A car pulled up behind. Iskender Aslan, his Minister of the Interior. ‘Prime Minister,’ he called out, hurrying to catch up. ‘May I ask what this—’
‘Inside, Iskender.’
‘But I—’
‘Inside,’ said Baştürk.
They found the Chief of the General Staff waiting in the antechamber. General Kemal Yilmaz typically wore suits in Ankara, as befitted a civilian city, but he’d been supervising exercises when the call had come, and so was in uniform today. ‘All those ribbons,’ mocked Aslan. ‘You must be very brave.’
‘They award most of them to anyone who serves,’ replied Yilmaz. ‘I’m sure you have plenty of your own.’
‘Gentlemen, please,’ said the Prime Minister. He motioned them through into his private office, made their aides wait outside. This wasn’t the kind of talk that wanted witnesses. ‘Nine mass-casualty bombings in three months,’ he began, walking to his desk. ‘Twenty in the past year.’
‘The terrorists are to blame for that, Prime Minister,’ said Aslan. ‘Not my ministry or the police. We’re doing all we can. And we’re making real progress. We have already made a number of highly significant arrests in Cyprus this afternoon.’
‘Ah, yes, all these highly significant arrests of yours. You tell me about them after every bomb. Then you quietly release them a week later for lack of evidence. So what good are these arrests when the bombings don’t merely continue, but get worse? They’re saying thirty people. Thirty people!’ He sat down, as much to calm himself as anything, then looked back and forth between them. ‘You may have seen me on television earlier. I assured the nation that we operate a joined-up government, that you two were already working together on this. Is that even faintly true? Are you working together?’
The two men glanced coolly at each other. Their mutual loathing was an open secret. ‘I saw your briefing, Prime Minister,’ said General Yilmaz. ‘As you made clear, counterterrorism is rightly a job for the police, not the army.’
‘And we don’t need the army’s help,’ added Aslan. ‘All things considered, we’re making commendable progress in—’
Baştürk slapped the table. ‘Commendable progress!’ he mocked. He let silence fall again, then said: ‘I don’t care what history you two have. I don’t care about turf wars or saving face. This is a crisis.’ He dropped his eyes a little, for all three of them knew that this was merely his own exercise in arse-covering, so that his earlier statement wouldn’t be proven a lie. ‘General Yilmaz helped defeat the terrorists last time it got this bad. He knows the Syrians and he fought in the Cyprus campaign. So I want you to take advantage of his experience, Iskender. Is that clear?’
‘But we—’
‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Prime Minister.’
‘Several of my old team are still in the service,’ Yilmaz