Dead Secret

by Alan Williams

  Here, again, they saw no one who was obviously suspicious; a few minutes later the engine started. Hawn was relieved; it was not every day that he embarked on a blind date in a strange city, carrying the equivalent of nearly five thousand pounds in his pocket.

  Despite the crowd of passengers and the persistent rain, they somehow managed to get a taxi outside the Galata landing-stage, and ten minutes later were back at the Pera Palace Hotel.

  They had both had several strong drinks during the crossing, and Hawn was now inspired with a sense of reckless release, as well as an angry determination which was reinforced on learning that there were no messages at the desk.

  They were both very wet, and Anna was for going up and having a bath and changing; but Hawn said, ‘I want to get this thing sorted out — tonight. Right now. If Effendi Salak Esquire wants to play games with us, I want to know why.’

  He knew that Salak had contacts in the hotel, but decided that things had now gone too far for it to be worthwhile being cautious or cunning. He asked the receptionist for a list of chemist shops in the Kumkapi district.

  The clerk returned a moment later, showing no interest or surprise. There was an all-night pharmacy on the Ordu Caddesi, near Beyazit; and another in the heart of Kumkapi, at 13 Türkeli Caddesi. It was clear from the map, and the maze of streets in the Kumkapi area, that the latter must be the one. He asked the clerk what time the shop closed.

  ‘Ten o’clock, sir.’

  It was now 9.35. Hawn said, ‘Get us a car — immediately. And I’ll pay the driver double if he gets us to the Türkeli Caddesi by ten.’

  The clerk looked doubtful. He lifted a phone, murmured something, and hung up. ‘The car will be here at once, sir. But I do not guarantee that you will reach the Türkeli Caddesi by ten o’clock.’

  ‘I don’t know quite what we’re trying to achieve,’ Anna said, as they waited by the entrance. ‘And even if we make it, we don’t know that Salak will be there. Why don’t we leave it until tomorrow, when we’ll have more time? Why tonight?’

  ‘Because I’m in the mood tonight.’

  The driver was one they had not seen before — a smart young man driving a brand-new BMW. He made no comment when Hawn gave the address and spelt out the conditions; but as soon as they had pulled from the curb, Hawn knew that they had an excellent driver.

  The traffic had thinned and the rain had almost stopped now. For the first ten minutes they made good time, as far as the Atatürk Bridge, dominated by the grim, green bronze statue of the founder of modern Turkey. And when they turned off the Atatürk Boulevard, they still had twelve minutes in hand.

  Next they plunged into the narrow crowded labyrinth of Kumkapi, the horn bellowing impotently at the wobbling rumps of overladen mules and fat sauntering women with great loads on their heads. For several minutes they were stuck without moving at all. Hawn sat with his hands pressed together, his heart pounding with an enervated rage directed half at the impoverished crowds outside, half at that great granite-faced gangster, Imin Salak.

  But an even more powerful emotion was one of compelling curiosity. Why should a mature old brigand like Salak turn his broken nose up at a quarter of a million lire? For it was quite possible that if his influence in the city was as wide as he claimed, he might well have heard that Hawn had drawn the money that very afternoon. And then, what was the explanation of that note, sending them on a futile expedition to Usküdar? It made no sense.

  It was eight minutes past ten when they crawled into Türkeli Caddesi. The light was still on behind the green cross above Number 13. Hawn leapt out and tried the door, which was locked. There was a light on at the back of the shop. As Anna got out behind him, he banged on the glass door, then found the bell-push and gave a long ring.

  A girl in a white coat came out of the back, peered at him, and waved him to go away. He signalled to her furiously, his finger still on the bell-push, and again pounded against the door. She came out at last, approaching slowly across the darkened shop; then stood behind the door examining them both through the glass with a hostile expression. Finally she turned the key and eased the door open.

  Hawn had his shoulder against the glass, pushed her abruptly back and dragged Anna in after him. The girl was shouting at them as he hurried with Anna across the shop, down the narrow corridor lined with bottles, and reached the unlit staircase where he wasted a few seconds finding the switch.

  At any moment he expected either Salak or the man in the white suit to bar his way. He still had Anna by the hand, squeezing it tightly, as he stumbled up the stairs into the long wooden corridor, which was pitch-dark except for a dim sliver of light under Salak’s door.

  He had taken only a couple of steps inside when Anna began to scream.

  CHAPTER 23

  Salak stared down at them both with bulging, bloodshot eyes. His enormous face was distended, shapeless, the colour of an over-ripe plum, and his tongue lolled lewdly out, swollen and black. He was wearing yellow socks and no shoes, and his feet dangled a couple of feet above the floor. The wire noose had cut deep into his throat; his huge body dangled from one of the brazier-like lamps which hung by chains from the ceiling. There was a nasty smell in the room, and Hawn guessed, disgustedly, that at the moment of death the man had lost control of his sphincter.

  Anna was still screaming, and there were noisy footsteps outside: then more screams as the girl from the shop appeared in the doorway.

  Hawn, cold with shock, began to notice things. Salak’s tight black suit was hitched up about his groin, where both his belt and fly-buttons were undone. On the floor below him, next to the pile of cushions, lay a car battery with two wires trailing off the terminals, each with a crocodile-clip at both ends. Spread around were four little brass cups, containing dregs of coffee, and two ashtrays stuffed with cigarette butts. There was no sign of Salak’s pipe.

  Further away, on the desk by the grandfather clock, were several sheets of paper and a gold pen. Salak, before dying, had evidently written something, or been about to write it.

  What puzzled Hawn, after the initial shock, was the lack of disorder in the room. Salak had been a comparatively old man, but he must have been immensely strong: yet there was no trace of a struggle. Besides the neatness of the cups and ashtrays, the cushions still lay casually round the walls, some plumped up, others creased from people sitting in them. Had Salak been one of them — drinking coffee with his murderers, suspecting nothing? And how many had there been? Three, four — perhaps half a dozen? A whole gang of them — enough to hold the great wrestler down, and apply the electrodes to his genitals until he agreed to what they wanted? Then they had taken him, without a fight, pronounced sentence on him, and hanged him. It had been an execution, not a murder.

  Only a few seconds had passed since they had entered the room. The girl from the shop was now crying uncontrollably. Hawn grabbed her by the wrist and smacked her twice, hard, across both cheeks. She gasped, then began to whimper. He said, ‘Do you speak English?’

  She jabbered inarticulately, trying to fight free of his grip.

  ‘You speak English?’ he said, and began to shake her.

  ‘Yok, yok!’ she cried; and Anna said, ‘Leave her. She’s hysterical.’

  ‘She let in the killers. At least, she must have seen them. I want to know how many there were. And whether they were friends or accomplices of Salak.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Tom, leave that to the police. We don’t want to get involved.’

  ‘We’re bloody involved already! The hotel clerk and the driver will both testify that we came here tonight looking for Salak and the police will want to know why. Anyway, let’s get out of here!’

  He had released the girl’s wrist, and stood taking a last look at the big bloated body hanging in the middle of the room; then led the way back down the corridor to the stairs. The girl stumbled between them, sobbing and wailing in Turkish. Hawn walked back down the narrow passage, between the rows of bottles and phials, and
out into the darkened shop. Two men were waiting for them. Badly-fitting suits, dark overcoats. He didn’t have to be told what they were — it was a type you could smell half across the room.

  One of them, a stout square-shouldered man, stepped forward and flashed a celluloid holder from his overcoat pocket. It was too dark to read the lettering. The man grunted, ‘Police. You come, please.’

  The second man, who was clearly the senior of the two — thin-faced, with grey cropped hair — stepped over and opened the door. He had a stiff military bearing, yet he moved swiftly, without appearing to hurry. It was then that something reacted in Hawn’s metabolism: the combination of accumulated tension, too many rakis, the gruesome spectacle upstairs — all concentrated into a ball of mindless energy, like a bolt of electricity. He stepped back and grabbed one of the thick bottles on the shelves in the passage.

  It was of brown glass with a glass stopper, and an ancient label on which was written some medical code. Even as he did so, the lucid part of his brain told him to go quietly — co-operate, tell everything, then endure the bureaucratic ritual of Istanbul police enquiries, with the sad hope that HM’s Consulate would somehow intervene.

  What he did instead was not just an act of panic, but of mild madness — the act of a rational man whose qualities of reasoning and self-control had totally jammed, as though seized by a cerebral cramp.

  He drew the glass stopper and hurled the bottle at the first policeman. Instantly the shop was filled with the burning smell of ammonia aromatica. It hit the man just below the throat and crashed heavily on to the floor. The man stumbled back, choking, spluttering. At the same time Hawn saw the second man move. He moved fast, like a dancer. Hawn retreated a step back down the passage, grabbed blindly at another bottle. He was vaguely aware that Anna was shouting at him, but his mind was so closed that he could not understand a word she said.

  The bottle hit the second man on the shoulder, and the next moment his thin face was splashed with dark indigo. Most of his overcoat, his trousers and shoes, had also turned a deep purplish blue. He hit Hawn somewhere on the neck, with a dull jarring pain that seemed to paralyse his whole body. Then the first man moved in, solid, square, his fists like big hairy hams. But they did not immediately knock him unconscious.

  In an act of pitiful loyalty, Anna kicked one of the men and hit the other with her satchel-like handbag, several times, like a petulant child. They pushed her up against the counter and struck her twice, low down in the belly, and even in the darkened room Hawn saw her face go paper-white, as she crumpled on to her knees and began to vomit.

  Hawn did not remember leaving the shop, or getting into the car outside. His first clear realization was driving down an open dual carriageway, very fast, under strips of floodlighting that flared into the car every few seconds. The thin man was driving — still stained an ineradicable blue — while Hawn and Anna sat squeezed up against the big policeman who, despite the fact that all the windows had been opened, gave off the pungent fumes of ammonia.

  Hawn experienced a dangerous moment on the edge of hysteria. He wondered how their colleagues would receive them both — one dyed blue as if with woad, the other exuding his poisonous stench. Then he was aware that Anna was talking to him: ‘Where are they taking us?’

  ‘To jail. Or Police Headquarters.’ He spoke as though it was of no real importance. He had seen a film once — about a young American who’d been picked up at Istanbul Airport carrying drugs. He had been driven to the main prison, which Hawn seemed to remember was somewhere outside the city.

  With the return of full consciousness came a cold aching hangover — all aggression and self-confidence dissipated, leaving him dull, utterly apathetic. He noticed the girl from the shop sitting in the front passenger seat, and wondered what sort of witness she would make. And would they believe her — always supposing that they wanted to believe her? Salak had friends in the police, and they would want the case solved quickly. The girl alone could establish that Salak was dead when Hawn and Anna arrived.

  And what had happened to their driver from the hotel? Would he come forward and corroborate the exact time that he had dropped his passengers at the chemist’s? Hawn doubted it. He didn’t suppose that the Turkish Police Force was the kind of outfit which invited the ready co-operation of the public.

  He wondered, too, why Salak had been wearing no shoes. But he didn’t suppose it was a detail which would worry anyone very much.

  They were passing the airport now; Hawn stared out at the dark runways, at the swivelling light on the control tower, and felt a weary despair. The idea of escape had not seriously occurred to him. They’d shoot them both down like dogs, and that would be the end of it. No awkward, unanswered questions, no rigged evidence at the trial. Perhaps that was the way they intended it, anyway.

  Anna was quietly crying beside him. He experienced a moment of warped irritation that gave way almost at once to impotent rage. He yelled at the big plain-clothes man: ‘Where are you taking us, you bastard?’

  The man stared at him in the dark and said nothing.

  ‘Bastard!’ Hawn yelled again, but there was still not a flicker of reaction.

  They had been driving for nearly forty minutes now, and were well outside the city: the floodlighting finished, but the road was still broad and fast, almost empty.

  Hawn tried again to remember that film about the luckless young American who had been driven straight to jail. He was sure the jail was nearer the city, not further away. And yet the further they drove, the more he felt the tiny flutter of hope. The car at least offered them a transitory hiatus between certainties — between the dangling corpse of Salak, and the clanging door of a stinking Turkish prison cell.

  Now they were slowing down. The driver dipped the car’s headlights; it was very dark. They pulled on to the soft verge and stopped; then the driver turned to the Turkish girl beside him and muttered something, at the same time leaning across her and opening the door on her side. She began to speak, very quickly, loudly, until the driver seized her by the arm and pushed her out. She was still dressed in her white coat, her face distraught and tear-stained, as she picked herself up from the grassy verge, shouting and weeping. The driver pulled the door closed and eased the car back on to the road.

  Hawn was at first too confused to react. In any case, he knew it would be futile to seek an explanation — even if the two policemen spoke enough English, which he now doubted.

  They drove for perhaps another ten miles, when the headlamps picked out the rear reflectors of a stationary car, parked in a layby a few hundred yards ahead. The driver slowed down again, but this time he flashed his lights three times, on high beam.

  Hawn was sitting very straight, beginning to sweat, despite the cold damp slip-stream flowing through the car. He felt Anna reach for a handkerchief and wipe her eyes. The driver was pulling into the layby behind the other car. Hawn could just make out, under the dipped headlights, a wide dark-coloured American sedan, with what looked like smoked windows. It had a Geneva number plate.

  The driver switched off the engine, and there was a moment of total silence. Then the door on the driver’s side of the sedan opened. A man got out and came walking towards them. He was a big man, oddly, hilariously familiar: a man in an astrakhan hat and knee-high boots. Only this time he was sober.

  When he had almost reached them, the policeman in the back opened the door and got out; and in the dead stillness Hawn heard them murmuring to each other. Then the man in the astrakhan hat leant down and said, in heavily accented French, ‘You will both accompany me.’ There was no trace of recognition in his voice or face, let alone a flicker of humour.

  Hawn climbed out and helped Anna, who was still suffering from shock and pain. Outside, the man in the astrakhan hat nodded towards the American car. As Hawn passed the driver who had brought them from Istanbul, he tried to catch his eye: but the man sat rigid behind the wheel, the window closed, the blue stain showing livid under the headlam
ps, covering his grey-cropped hair and narrow military face like a monstrous birthmark. His eyes stared ahead. Almost a scholarly face, Hawn thought.

  Together the three of them began to walk towards the sedan. The air, after the lingering fumes of ammonia, was fresh and cold and smelt of eucalyptus.

  The man reached the car, opened the rear door and gestured them to get in. Anna entered first, with Hawn close behind. It was very warm inside with a cloying stench of perfume. Then, from an enormous shape in the corner, came a peal of girlish laughter.

  ‘Welcome, my friends! I hope you did not have too bad a journey?’

  Pol was plunged in a vicuna coat, holding a hip flask which he offered them both. He was in good spirits. ‘No doubt you both require an explanation?’ he said cheerfully.

  Hawn was trying to think of an appropriate reply when Anna said, ‘I want to go to the lavatory.’ Together they waited while she got out and walked away under the eucalyptus trees. Hawn turned on Pol. ‘They beat her up — you know that? Your gorillas — your hand-chosen help. Is that their idea of a bonus — beating up a girl? Or is that what you call looking after us? Unique protection, a la Charles Pol.’

  ‘Mon chèr,’ the fat man laid a hand on Hawn’s shoulder; ‘do not be unreasonable. You undertook these inquiries of your own free will. You were warned that there would be risks, dangers, and you have encountered both. You cannot now turn and blame me. What have I done? I have snatched you from the scene of a very ugly murder in which you might well have been implicated. And what chance do you think you would have stood with them? How do you think they would have received your little story — or rather, your many stories? You should thank me, my friend.’ And again he offered Hawn the hip flask, while the man in the astrakhan hat climbed into the driving seat.

  Hawn drank deeply; it was brandy and tasted like the best. ‘We’re not out of it yet, you know. We’re still in Turkey.’