The Treasures of Suleiman

by The Treasures of Suleiman (retail) (epub)

  ‘The Gatilusi family are very rich,’ said Adriano. ‘They had this place built a few years ago.’

  Halia turned around.

  ‘Gentlemen, would you like a cold drink?’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Brandon. ‘Could we go straight to where the body… I mean Christos was found?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Halia. ‘The master bedroom is upstairs at the front of the house.’

  They climbed a sweeping stairway before being led through double doors into a huge bedroom. The walls of the room were completely white and a pair of French windows led out onto a balcony overlooking the Aegean Sea. An enormous bed dominated the room, framed on either side by two ornate white sideboards. An antique phone sat on one while all around the room, various pieces of art decorated the walls or sat on pedestals, a testament to Gatilusi’s fascination with history.

  Brandon walked around the room, taking in every detail of its designer furniture and beautiful artwork.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask how Christos’s body was found?’ he asked.

  ‘I was visiting relatives in Athens,’ said Halia, ‘but had an unexpected call from him late at night. It wasn’t like him to call so late, so naturally I was worried.’

  ‘Did he say anything in particular?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Halia. ‘I answered the phone but he did not make any sense. It was as if he was struggling for breath. Seconds later I heard a crash and the phone went dead. Obviously I was worried so I called Adriano. He came up immediately and found…’ She stopped mid-sentence as her voice started to break.

  ‘When I got here, the doors were locked,’ interrupted Adriano. ‘His car was on the drive so I knew he should be home. I used my key to let myself in.’

  ‘You have a key?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘Yes,’ said Adriano. ‘When the family go on holiday I look after the house.’

  ‘And what did you find, exactly?’

  Adriano showed Brandon where he had found the body, immediately alongside the bed.

  ‘He was lying here,’ he said, ‘and was already dead. The phone was off the hook and lying alongside him. The last person he dialled was Halia.’

  Brandon glanced at the woman who looked down sadly, recalling the memory. He sat on the bottom of the bed and looked around the room.

  ‘These artefacts,’ he said, pointing around the walls. ‘These were here on the night of his death?’

  ‘They were,’ answered Halia with a sigh. ‘The room has not been touched since that night.’

  ‘You do not sleep in here anymore?’

  ‘No, I use the guest room, it is too difficult.’

  Silence fell for a while before India spoke from the other side of the room.

  ‘These are exquisite,’ she said, smoothing her hand down the body of a marble statuette of a Greek god.

  ‘They have been in our family a long time,’ said Halia.

  ‘Don’t you worry they will be stolen?’

  ‘We have a very good alarm system, linked directly to the police station,’ said Halia. ‘Besides, no one would dare steal from us.’

  Brandon glanced up at the slight edge to Halia’s voice.

  ‘This jug,’ said India, continuing her circuit around the room. ‘I don’t think it’s Greek.’

  ‘No, that was a recent acquisition,’ said Halia, joining her at the pedestal. ‘It’s from Turkey and cost us a fortune from a private collector. It is said to have come from the Topkapi Palace itself.’

  ‘And is Turkish art something you collect?’

  ‘No, not really, but Christos saw them in a catalogue and became obsessed with having them.’

  ‘Them?’ asked India, looking around.

  ‘Yes, it is one of a pair. The other was smashed on the night Christos died, he must have knocked it off the pedestal as he fell.’

  ‘And where is the broken jug now?’

  ‘I have packed it up ready to be sent for repair.’

  Brandon looked at the jug sitting on the pedestal at the end of the sideboard. It was at least three metres away from the bed. A matching pedestal stood at the end of the other sideboard on the opposite side of the bed. His brow creased in thought.

  ‘Where was the broken jug?’ he asked.

  ‘Alongside him,’ said Adriano. ‘The handle was still in his hand.’

  Brandon looked even more puzzled.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘The pedestal is over there, so how come the jug ended up over here by the body?’

  ‘Perhaps he staggered across the room during his final moments and knocked it off?’ suggested India.

  ‘No,’ said Adriano. ‘All the fragments were over here, there were none near the pedestal.’

  ‘Halia,’ said Brandon, ‘didn’t you say you heard a crash on the phone, just before it went dead?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And do you think it could have been the vase?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Halia hesitantly.

  ‘So,’ said Brandon, ‘assuming it was, that means that at the moment of his death, Christos was holding the jug. The thing is, to use this phone, you need two hands, one to dial and one to hold the receiver. Halia tells us that when he called her, he was already struggling to breathe, so his dying act after phoning his wife was to pick up the jug. Why would he do that?’

  Everyone in the room fell silent, picturing the final seconds of Gatilusi’s life.

  ‘Do you think there was anything inside the jug?’ asked India.

  ‘No,’ said Halia, ‘they were always empty.’

  India picked up the surviving jug, examining it closely. It was a standard sixteenth-century water jug made out of clay in the standard style of the era. The body was a bulbous shape reducing to a narrow neck and was glazed with an intricate design of hundreds of blue flowers on a white background.

  ‘Why would any man, in the dying moments of his life, go out of his way to grab an antique jug?’ she asked. ‘What was he trying to tell us?’

  ‘Do you think that it has anything to do with what he was researching?’ asked Adriano.

  ‘Who knows?’ asked Brandon. ‘But whatever it was, it must have been damned important.’

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Adriano was driving them back to the hotel, none of them any the wiser about the cause of Gatilusi’s death.

  ‘I suppose the post-mortem could have been right,’ said Brandon. ‘Perhaps his death was due to a heart attack and all this other stuff was circumstantial.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Adriano, ‘but something doesn’t seem right. Why would he reach for the jug in the last seconds of his life?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Brandon. ‘What about you, India?’

  India had been strangely quiet since leaving the house, lost in her own thoughts, seeking something deep in her memory. All of a sudden she looked up sharply.

  ‘Iznik,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Sorry?’ said Brandon over his shoulder.

  ‘I knew they reminded me of something,’ she said. ‘They are Iznik jugs.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Brandon.

  India’s eyes were wide open, her mind racing furiously.

  ‘Brandon, I think I’m on to something. Turn the car around, we need to go back to the house.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘Brandon, just trust me, we have to go back.’

  Adriano spun the car around and they drove back up to the house. Despite their probing, India wouldn’t answer any more questions. Soon they were once more in front of the ornate doors. Halia showed them back up to the master bedroom where India examined the jug once again.

  ‘Halia,’ she said, ‘you said you packed up the remains of the broken jug for repair. Have you sent it off yet?’

  ‘No, it’s downstairs in the kitchen.’

  ‘Could we see it please?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Halia, and disappeared for a few minutes before returning with a
well-wrapped box and a pair of scissors. She unwrapped the parcel and laid the fragments on the bed. India didn’t touch the pieces, yet a slight smile played around her mouth. The other three looked at her in confusion.

  ‘India?’ said Brandon. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ said India and turned to Halia.

  ‘Mrs Gatilusi,’ she said, ‘I believe that your instincts were right. I think your husband was murdered, and the evidence lies before our very eyes.’

  ‘India,’ interrupted Brandon, ‘what are you saying?’

  India walked to the surviving jug and brought it back to the bed. ‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘What do you see?’

  Brandon took the jug, closely watched by Halia and Adriano. He turned it over and over in his hands.

  ‘Blue flowers,’ he said. ‘Why, what am I looking for?’

  ‘Now look at the pieces on the bed,’ said India. ‘Bearing in mind these were a matching pair, what do you see there?’

  Immediately Brandon spotted something different on one particularly large fragment.

  ‘Those flowers are red,’ he said,

  Halia stepped forward.

  ‘They can’t be,’ she said. ‘I examined those jugs a hundred times, the flowers were all blue.’

  Brandon held up the fragment of jug. Sure enough, the flower heads were bright red in the middle, fading to pink the further from the centre they went. Those furthest from the centre were as blue as those on the rest of the fragments.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Halia, ‘how can the flowers change?’

  ‘I think they had already changed colour when you cleaned them up,’ said India, ‘you just didn’t notice.’

  ‘But how?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘The jugs are Iznik,’ said India, ‘made in the Anatolia region of Turkey in the sixteenth century.’

  ‘I could have told you that,’ said Halia, ‘my husband told me when he bought them.’

  ‘Yes, but did he tell you that these were made especially for the court of Suleiman the Magnificent?’

  ‘No, but if that is so, how do you know?’

  ‘Because the sultans of the Ottoman Empire were paranoid about being poisoned so had their drinking vessels and jugs glazed with the juice of a plant said to stay inert only in the presence of pure water. Any liquid containing any type of chemical would react with the glaze and turn the patterns a different colour.’

  They all looked at the fragments on the bed and in particular, the red flowers.

  India looked back up at Halia.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Gatilusi,’ she said. ‘I believe your husband was poisoned earlier in the day and by the time he realised, it was far too late to do anything about it. I think that in the last few seconds, he grabbed the only thing he could to leave a message and placed the jug to his lips, hoping the glaze would still react after all this time. As we can see, it obviously did.’

  ‘The flowers reacted to the poison on his breath,’ whispered Adriano in astonishment.

  ‘I believe so,’ said India before turning to Halia. ‘Mrs Gatilusi, I am so, so, sorry.’

  Halia walked slowly toward the bed and picked up the fragment with the red flowers.

  ‘With his last breath he kissed this fragment,’ she asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said India, sadly.

  Halia raised the fragment to her own lips and kissed it gently, tears flowing down her cheeks. The other three turned away discreetly, allowing the woman her last goodbye to her husband.

  * * *

  A few hours later, India and Brandon were sitting on a balcony of the hotel watching the scarlet sun sink into the Aegean Sea. Their mood was sombre and the jug of chilled wine on the table between them did little to lift their spirits. Eventually Brandon spoke.

  ‘That was really good work back there,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ said India, quietly taking a sip of wine.

  Silence fell again.

  ‘India, are you OK?’ asked Brandon. ‘You seem awfully quiet.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ she sighed, ‘it’s just that it’s so sad, seeing that poor woman so upset about her husband, they must have loved each other very much.’

  ‘It seems that way,’ said Brandon.

  ‘So what happens now?’ asked India. ‘Will they reopen the investigation?’

  ‘I don’t know. Adriano will send the red fragment for analysis tomorrow and if you’re right, we should know the name of the compound that killed Gatilusi in a couple of days.’

  ‘So are we done here?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘We proved the man was murdered, isn’t the rest up to the police?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Brandon, ‘though there is some unfinished business.’

  ‘What business?’

  ‘We still haven’t found out what he was involved in.’

  ‘But the man is dead, how do you intend we find out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Brandon, ‘though there is the second e-mail, I suppose.’

  ‘There was a second e-mail?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t take much notice at the time as it only contained two words.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The Aetosh,’ said Brandon.

  ‘Does that mean anything to you?’ asked India.

  ‘Not really,’ said Brandon. ‘There was that gang who used to protest about independence for Samothrace, but I asked Adriano about them back in the police station. They disbanded years ago.’

  ‘Perhaps they are still around, just keeping their heads down.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Adriano used to run with them before he became a copper. He’s still friends with many of them, apparently.’

  ‘Perhaps he is part of this,’ suggested India.

  ‘No, he seems straight to me, but I do think we are missing something simple here. Gatilusi sent a message consisting of two words only. I don’t think there is any hidden meaning, I believe it is a straightforward instruction. In English, Aetosh means eagle. Why would he just write the eagle?’

  ‘Well, I remember the eagle is the Gatilusi’s family emblem,’ said India. ‘Perhaps there’s something there?’

  ‘Do you mean, like a clue?’ asked Brandon.

  ‘Possibly,’ said India. ‘Perhaps he left a message under an ornament of an eagle or behind a picture, that sort of thing.’

  ‘But which one?’ asked Brandon. ‘Gatilusi’s house was full of images of eagles and we can’t just go back up there to start ripping the house apart on a hunch. No, the message was short and sweet. Gatilusi was fully aware of the last time we were on the island and was familiar with everything we did. When he sent the message, he must have thought we would know what he meant.’

  India looked up suddenly.

  ‘What about Chora Castle?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘If you remember, Agatha told us about the remains of a castle in the village of Chora that used to be the seat of the Gatilusi family when they ruled this place. Apparently there is a large stone up there engraved with a picture of an eagle, the most famous eagle on the island.’

  ‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ said Brandon, ‘though what a stone can tell us is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘We don’t guess, Mr Walker,’ said India with a smile, ‘we research!’

  * * *

  The following morning, after a leisurely breakfast, Brandon and India walked the five kilometres to Chora. Most of the village was hidden inland and not visible from the sea, though the three towers of a ruined castle stood high above the ridge. As they walked into the village they paused to take in the surroundings.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ said Brandon.

  ‘Yes, apparently the population retreated up here into the hills in the fourteenth century, abandoning Paleopolis on the coast.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who knows? Perhaps it was in self-defence. The Ottoman Empire was just starting to flex its muscles in the Aege
an and Mediterranean, so perhaps the people thought they would be safer inland.’

  ‘And were they?’

  ‘No, the island was conquered by the Ottomans in 1457.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Brandon. ‘Nobody can retain all this knowledge.’

  ‘I read, Brandon, I talk to people. Whilst you were busy playing poker last night, I spent a long time talking about the history of the island with the owner of the hotel. If you had bothered to come through as you promised, you might have learned something interesting.’

  ‘I was on a roll,’ said Brandon.

  ‘And did you win?’

  ‘Two hundred down on the night,’ he said quietly.

  India stifled a laugh.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said as they climbed the last slope to the walls of the ruins, ‘this castle was built by the Gatilusi family and they ruled from here for over a hundred years. Mr Maragos told me…’

  ‘Mr Maragos?’ interrupted Brandon.

  ‘The hotel owner,’ she explained. ‘He told me the stone bearing the eagle is original so has been there for over five hundred years.’

  ‘There it is,’ said Brandon, pointing toward a flat stone sunk into the wall. The light grey stone stood out from its darker neighbours and carved into the centre was the family emblem of the Gatilusi family. The eagle was surrounded by Greek inscriptions, worn almost smooth by hundreds of years of weather. Brandon studied it closely, running his fingers over the markings.

  ‘I wonder what it means?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps we should ring Adriano and ask him to come up to translate.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said India, and Brandon stood back to allow India closer access. ‘This stone was inscribed five hundred years ago and simply lists the rulers at the time. I can’t see any reason Gatilusi would bring us up here, this stone hasn’t been moved since it was first put in place.’ She turned around and saw Brandon staring at the floor.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Brandon quietly, ‘but that one obviously has.’

  India followed his gaze down to her feet. She was standing on a slab, one of three originals that still lay on the castle floor. Two of the slabs were overgrown at the edges with tufts of grass but the third, directly below the eagle, had its edges completely visible. The joints around the slab had been filled with soil and had evidently been recently relaid. More important was the childlike, single line picture scratched onto the surface: the picture of an eagle.