The Turkish Trap: A tense and intriguing action thriller.

by Jack Dylan

  Thumping headache and urgent need for a pee wakens you in the morning. “Where am I” is a high priority question. Home can be quickly ruled out as a location, so some remaining brain function hazily feeds in “Dublin, hotel, everything OK”. You try to move to get to the bathroom but any movement shifts the throbbing pain in your head so you stop. Having started your body moving, the need for a pee becomes more pressing.

  It is generally around this phase of the low-level brain function that the presence of someone else in the bed creeps into the approximation of consciousness that you are left with. A strange mixture of pride, apprehension and panic usually follows, depending on how much recall of the night before has survived. Being a gentleman, you check the memory for any sign of a name that might be associated with the companion. That is a risky moment. It is all too easy to grasp at a name that floats into your apology for a mind. It often turns out to be wrong. Experience leads to caution at this point.

  So there you are, lying in bed, wrestling with puzzles that would test Einstein, and your brain seems to have packed up. The headache demands attention, but perhaps if you ease your neck and shoulders it will help. You have to pee but you can’t risk moving. If you let her wake first she’ll start the conversation so you might not need to remember the name. The packet of Resolve in the bathroom is becoming irresistible. (How do you know there is Resolve in the bathroom? – Well of course you do. There has to be. There always is.)

  Thirst. That’s the other thing. Like a lost soul in the desert you’d give anything for liquid. Funny how Coke can be so right at a time like this. Surprising they don’t market it on that basis. If you’re feeling queasy – as you usually are – flat lemonade is medicinally advised.

  So there you are, torn by conflicting demands to be asleep and be awake; to lie still and to get up for a pee; to avoid disturbing the throbbing head and to get to the bathroom for some magic powder; to avoid being sick – but you don’t know if getting up or lying still will work best. And you’re trying to wrestle with all this stuff on the basis of about three functioning brain-cells!

  The good old body usually sorts things out. Large quantities of beer of any sort lead to quite remarkable disturbances of the digestive system. In general the darker the beer the more serious the consequences – but that rule isn’t hard and fast. In any case, large quantities of internal gas seem to be produced at times like these, and in a totally fair world you’d just be able to let rip.

  However there are two problems. First, you have company and the little remaining bit of brain function does seem to be disproportionately concerned with avoiding further embarrassment. So being a gentleman you resist. Secondly, the magic little mechanism in your anus or your sphincter or wherever it lurks that enables you to determine if the pressure is purely gaseous or if it is solid(ish), is not a reliable performer on mornings like this. What you think to be a potentially decorous little fart may have quite another outcome planned.

  So when the pressure builds up to demand release, the only safe place to be is sitting on the toilet. That’s just something you learn. All those plans to let your mystery companion waken first come to nothing when your body conspires to let you down and force you to move – now – quickly – but gently.

  So that’s how I met my wife Pat. Not exactly the introduction my mother would have intended, but functional nonetheless.

  Pat really took control from that first hazy moment. She was in no position to be judgemental about my behaviour the night before, as she was obviously just about as vague as I was. She even took the initiative over the names issue by unashamedly admitting she had seemed to have misplaced mine. There is something bizarrely intimate yet distant about making introductions in a hotel bedroom the morning after some part-remembered excesses. However we survived the first strange moments and then shared the gradually returning recall of the night before.

  “Oh shit, I’ve just remembered about that nightclub! Do you remember threatening to punch that English bloke?”

  “That was just because he kept pawing me and asking to dance. By that stage I fancied you.”

  “Where did we go after that?”

  “We left just after that and tried to get a taxi.”

  “I remember that. We got one didn’t we?”

  “In the end yes. Had to walk to the Green for it – half-way back here.”

  “Where did we lose the rest of the crowd?”

  “They were still in that nightclub when we left. Your friend with the tweed cap was asleep in the corner.”

  “That’s Davy. It’s his safety mechanism. Once he passes a certain point he just quietly falls asleep in a corner, while the rest of us drink more than we need and get into trouble. The only problem is we sometimes forget him, and he wakes up later with no sign of us and no clue where he is or where to go. Good initiative test. Should be part of the SAS training I think.”

  “Do you fancy Bewley’s for some decent coffee?”

  “Almost as much as I fancy a Bloody Mary in Davy Byrnes.”

  “That’s a plan then. First one then the other.”

  Who could resist a woman like that! I certainly couldn’t. Path of least resistance again. She was passably attractive in a slightly masculine way, had a good figure, but most importantly she slipped seamlessly into my way of life. She enjoyed the rugby weekends, loved the social noisiness of the crowd, and was not at all prissy or disapproving.

  Chapter 16

  William and Pat

  Edinburgh in the 90s

  William was getting used to the idea of writing his account of life so far and found it easier than he had expected to carry on with the story of how his relationship with Pat had developed.

  Pat liked the idea of me and my “business”, which I probably painted in a more favourable light than I should. But over a six-month period, she became part of the travelling social group, part of my life, and we both, without really discussing it or thinking deeply about it, allowed ourselves to be swept along with the natural flow.

  The “natural flow” was determined in good part by other people’s expectations. Pat achieved peer approval from my friends easily. She fitted in with our plans and our self-indulgent habits. I found that friends, especially Davy, took it for granted that she and I were an item, and assumed she would join us in Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Cardiff and even Paris. Pat was working in Dublin selling advertising space in one of the glossy society magazines, and dabbling a little in fashion journalism. It was an easy-going life with no problems about taking long weekends, so we settled into a routine of Pat coming to Edinburgh every other weekend – if we weren’t off elsewhere for a rugby weekend.

  By spring of the next year I was being asked increasingly frequently if and when we were going to give everyone an excuse for a big day out. Was the wedding going to be in Dublin or Edinburgh? Being a fairly unsubtle lot, these questions were asked in front of Pat, and I suppose we assumed that it was the natural thing to do. I was making enough money from the business for us to be relaxed about Pat finding a job in Edinburgh later. So by late summer that year I was a married man with my new wife, living in a small rented house in the moderately fashionable Gilmore Place, off the Lothian Road.

  For a year we carried on more or less as before - the same drinking friends; the same pattern of weekend eating and drinking; the easy punctuation of rugby weekends with the lads. One or two of the crowd were settling down, and not all were allowed to continue the full schedule of weekends. The norm was subtly changing around us, and if we slightly uncomfortably noticed it, we didn’t discuss it.

  By the time I was approaching 30, the pattern was changing inexorably. As friends settled down, the social drinking became more moderate and tended to be only on Friday and Saturday nights. As age intruded, more of the rugby players found they couldn’t cope with excesses on Friday so they became more moderate. Golf became a new social focus and a useful source of business. I entered my fourth decade with a middle-aged set of club
memberships; a very “Edinburgh” business – that depended a lot on relationships with old friends and contacts; and an increasingly pressing need to make sense of my marriage. I managed to ignore that need.

  What had worked easily and automatically at first didn’t seem to work any more. The changing priorities of friends and their partners left us struggling like ill-adapted survivors from a previous age. Others seemed to move easily into the domestic and child-bearing process. We seemed to be stuck. The chat about schools and the ridiculous fees they charged seemed to us irrelevant and boring. We hadn’t really thought out our future so we were left behind in the ill-fitting past.

  The good old path of least resistance was no help to us. It did not include facing up to the problem. Nor did it allow an honest analysis of what was happening. For me it was easier to work harder at the business, and to welcome the evening meetings and frequent excuses for travel. For Pat it was easiest to go back to her fashion writing and her contacts in the world of glossy fashion magazines. She had modest success with pieces in the Edinburgh and Dublin papers, and didn’t need to make much money from them. We rarely talked about children and when we did the issue was dismissed quickly on the grounds of career and “not the right time”.

  It actually worked quite well I suppose. We were pretty compatible and neither one of us was motivated to dig beneath the surface of our marriage. We probably had fewer rows than most, so were able to convince ourselves superficially that all was well. Pat was content for me to develop the auction business into a property development venture with our partner solicitor/estate agent. Money was available for the good dinners, the weekend trips, and the little self-indulgences that we both enjoyed. Any marriage guidance counsellor, with a very few questions about the frequency of love-making or quality of planning, would have identified that we were not a healthy prospect. Our exchanges in the evening, on those occasions when we both sat down in the house on the same evening, were about arrangements for dinner at the weekend; our different travel plans for the coming week; or the investment potential in that apartment in Leith that we both liked. It was easy, relaxed, sociable and agreeable. In effect we were ideal flat-mates but useless husband and wife.

  So we drifted easily into what I only realise in retrospect was middle-age. I don’t think many people admit to themselves one morning that they have entered that ill-defined phase of life. If only there were a more positive and attractive term for it we might all find it something to aspire to, and to look forward to. But we don’t, and more or less reluctantly, debt by debt, wrinkle by wrinkle, habit by habit, we teeter remorselessly into that pejoratively named stage of life.

  Business tended to compensate. We had more money along with more interesting and demanding business projects. For those like us who avoided the complication of children it was easy to allow the enjoyment of relative wealth to distract from noticing the negatives. Pat and I were particularly skilled at this – we didn’t even mention children any more, and I suppose we both knew it was no longer a sensible possibility.

  Chapter 17

  Edinburgh: William

  The “Cally” - William continues his story

  The marriage and the increasing introversion seemed to come back like a hazily remembered illness to William. His initial uncertainty about facing up to the sad story of his interpersonal incompetence had given way to a sense of relief and a sense of perspective. Like a mountain climbed and survived, it was only when looking back at the sight later, and from a distance, that the picture of what had been accomplished was easily grasped. He was finding that the calm recording of the events, and the relatively dispassionate narration of the history, allowed him to look back at it with a feeling if not of pleasure, at least with satisfaction at having survived it all. So in a spirit of therapeutic confession, William continued to put into words the most painful part of his history.

  The comfortable, superficial but companionable state of existence that I subsided into with Pat in the 90s left me plenty of time and mental energy to think of the business. They say that Queen Mary the First predicted that when she died they would find the work “Calais” engraved on her heart. My equivalent even sounds almost the same. It was my brainchild for a development of apartments not far from our original marital house, not far from the old Caledonian Hotel, and nicknamed by my solicitor/estate agent partner in the scheme the “Cally” project.

  It was a scheme like dozens of others in Edinburgh at the time. Banks were pretty relaxed about lending money if you had the right credentials. Between our golfing friends, the old school pals, and the cast-iron respectability of the Solicitor/Estate Agent partner, we had no problem raising the cash we needed. We each of course had to demonstrate our commitment by signing up for a percentage of the total cost, and I met this with a combination of cashing in some investments and signing over the deeds of the house. Pat wasn’t totally happy with this, but I convinced her that the start-to-finish time of the project was less than three years, and the profit was going to mean that I could choose if I ever worked again – and so could she. The figures were fantastic and we had planning permission for the asking.

  Everything went moderately according to plan. Building costs were high and unfortunately we had tied ourselves to stage payments that effectively meant the builder at each stage could hold the gun to our head and threaten to walk away, as all his costs to date were covered. This wasn’t too big a problem as the profit in the scheme left plenty of room for manoeuvre – as the builder had calculated – and in the heady mood of the time we could afford to be philosophical about it.

  Towards the end of year two the whole thing was looking good. We had the pre-release brochures printed and there was plenty of interest even though we were being cagey about prices of the apartments. We reckoned that given the rate of increase, the later we declared the price the higher we could pitch it. We even invented a couple of delays in the release as prices were escalating at 15% per year in the city centre.

  We could have released all the apartments for sale in the spring of 2000, but waited until the autumn. We told the queuing buyers that we were “snagging”; then getting the landscaping right; and finalising the legal work.

  In the meantime, Sandy our solicitor/estate agent partner had hosted a beautiful young research student from Aberdeen University who was doing a post-graduate project. Sandy was always susceptible to the charms of beautiful young women, and when she arrived in his office asking to spend a month or two seeing how the system worked, in exchange for helping with basic office administration, he simply couldn’t refuse. Her thesis in fact involved comparing final contract outcomes in the Scottish system of house-selling with the outcomes in the rest of the UK. In Scotland an asking price is published, and interested buyers submit their sealed bids to the solicitor. No-one knows what the others are bidding, and the highest bid wins. No gazumping, no messing about, on the given date the deal is done.

  An obscure piece of work by a Japanese professor of Economics in the USA had trickled into the awareness of some UK academics. His work was later to become very public when many big-name and supposedly ethical companies in the US fell foul of his calculations.

  He looked at the issue of stock options awarded to executives in US companies. The basic data was all in the public domain. Executive “x” awarded 150,000 shares on “y” date when shares were valued at “z”. What he showed through his statistical analysis was that either there was some super-human prediction of share movements going on, or, and this was the devastating alternative, companies were retrospectively and illegally choosing the date the award took place. They could look back and pick a date when shares were at a low value, use that as the award date, and the executive made a welcome profit when he cashed in the shares at a market high point. They probably thought it was impossible to prove that this was being done. They were wrong. The economist showed that the accuracy of the choice of date and value was thousands of times better than the most expert analysts co
uld achieve. Statistically it was not believable that the companies were doing anything other than the retrospective and illegal choice of date.

  Who would have thought that this was relevant to my life, my project and my survival? Well unfortunately the attractive student from Aberdeen had a canny supervisor who read the US stories and began to think. He realised that the Scottish house-selling process, combined with the close involvement of Solicitors and Estate Agents could tempt unscrupulous operators to “fix” the system.

  What would a buyer give to be able to know just exactly how high to pitch his sealed bid? The answer turned out to be something of the order of £10,000 on average, but that wasn’t uncovered until much later when the police became involved. Using his disarmingly attractive summer placement student to do the data-gathering, he simply compiled his comparison of the winning bid with the next highest bid and analysed the results firm by firm. He found that in two firms there were more instances of the winning bid being less than 1% above the next highest bid than could be accounted for by chance. Statistically it was not believable that it was purely coincidental.

  The results were presented formally to the Procurator Fiscal at the start of September, and leaked to the Scotsman on the same day. Our launch of the apartments was due at the end of the week, and we had some substantial repayments to the bank due within weeks.

  Sandy at least had the decency to come clean with me. He rang me at home early on the Tuesday morning as his phone had started to ring incessantly. We met in his Range Rover at the airport carpark, and he confessed that for years he had been fixing the bids. Not on every property obviously, but when a friend of a friend tipped him the wink and a substantial envelope of cash, he would ensure that their bid was just high enough and no more. Totally illegal. Despicable. He said he needed time to think so was going to “get off-side” for a while. What he actually did was to run – he left the country an hour after we spoke and before the police had time to take action to stop him. He hasn’t been back since, and we haven’t spoken.