Kalem took his hand off the steering wheel and gripped mine. ‘Yes, you’re right. My job – or lack of it – will have to take a backseat until we get this mess sorted out.’
‘I found you a possible replacement sort-of wedding dress,’ Charlie piped up in the back.
I knew he couldn’t keep his lips sealed for long.
I swung around in the front seat. ‘What’s a “sort-of” wedding dress?’ I dreaded to think.
Charlie pulled a face. ‘It’s a gorgeous dress, and it would look super-freaking stunning on you…but…there’s a slight problemo.’
‘What?’ I asked.
‘It’s black.’
‘Some designers are saying that black is the new white,’ Ayshe said, trying to lessen the bad news.
‘Black! No. Absolutely not. No way. No sodding way. I can’t wear black at my wedding.’ I shook my head manically.
It was a sign. I was sure of it. And it wasn’t a good one.
‘OK, don’t panic. I’ll go back out and keep looking for something else when we get back to the hotel.’
‘I can’t get married in Osman’s mum’s dress, either. It’s hideous.’ I rocked back and forwards in the seat. I might have a nervous breakdown at any minute. Help. Mama. Mama.
‘I don’t care what you get married in, as long as I get to actually marry you.’ Kalem caressed my cheek as he drove.
But all I could think was that the black dot of death and the curse of Queen Cleopatra were upon us.
****
At 6 p.m. Kalem and I were standing with the hordes of other President wannameets at the Apricot Festival. It was being held in the village of Esentepe, at their wedding park, which, yes, you guessed it, was where the locals held their wedding parties.
The village was charming – quaint, with an eclectic mix of Cypriots and other nationalities. The wedding park had been set up so that little stalls, selling various wares, lined either side of the entrance. Further into the park there was an amphitheatre where the entertainment would be shown. To the side of the park, little cafes and makeshift bars had been set up. The smell of smoky barbeques and slowly roasted lamb cooked in traditional clay ovens wafted through the air.
I hopped from one foot to the other, fingering the letter in my hand.
I had it all figured out. I’d written a detailed letter to the President, explaining everything that had happened so far in concise detail. All I had to do was to get close enough to hand it to him.
‘So, as soon as he’s cut the ribbon to the entrance, we’ll both rush forward and try to hand him the letter,’ I said to Kalem.
‘OK.’
I craned my neck over the crowd. A black Range Rover with tinted windows pulled up.
Right. Get ready.
The crowd let out a roar as the President exited the vehicle. Four bodyguards with earpieces flanked either side of him.
He gave the crowd a huge smile and an enthusiastic wave. Then he made a speech.
I carried on hopping. I needed a nervous wee as well. Stress was so not good for your bladder.
The speech seemed to go on for ages.
Oh, get on with it!
Ten more minutes of speeching, and then someone handed him a pair of scissors. He said something else in Turkish and cut the ribbon to huge applause.
Here we go!
I jostled my way through the crowd, all elbows and argy-bargy, with Kalem close behind. I heard a couple of yelps as I accidentally stood on a few feet. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled.
I was half a metre away from him when a grumpy looking bodyguard stepped in my way.
‘Hello.’ I gave him my best no-of-course-I’m-not-going-to-attack-the-President smile. ‘I just need a quick word with the President.’
Kalem said something to him in Turkish.
Grumpy shook his head, holding his ground.
Kalem said something else, his hands making urgent gestures as he talked.
Grumpy glowered at him and did more head shaking.
Some of the other bodyguards pushed the crowd away from the President.
I pushed forward again. Ouch! Someone’s bag jabbed in the base of my spine.
Grumpy pushed me back.
In all the kerfuffle the letter got ripped from my hand. ‘Hey!’
I scrambled around in the middle of the crowd, frantically trying to get a view of the letter on the ground.
Where are you? Where? Come on, I know you’re here somewhere.
I twirled around in a circle, eyes glued to the concrete.
Kalem tried to barge his way closer. He shouted to the President, trying to catch his attention, but the President just waved his hand in return.
The weight of the moving crowd pushed us back further as the President moved.
There! I bent down and grabbed the note from the concrete. When I looked up, the President had drifted another metre away from us.
Oh, this was ridiculous. There was no way I could get close enough to give him the letter. Maybe I could throw it at him and hope he’d catch it.
I quickly turned the letter into a paper airplane, aimed it at the President, and shot for dear life.
It sailed through the air, above the heads of the crowd, in a perfect arc.
I held my breath. Just another bit further. Come on. Come on. You can do it.
And that’s when it hit Grumpy Bodyguard, slap, bang in the eye, and then fell to the floor in amongst the crowd.
Oh, shit.
Grumpy’s hand flew to his eye. With his other watery eye, he scrutinized the crowd for offensive weapons.
He looked at me.
I ducked.
When I got up again the President was gone – through the crowd and making his way to chat with the stall holders, bodyguards protectively positioned on either side. The crowd around the president gradually reduced as they sought out the excitement of the food stalls and the entertainment which had just started in the amphitheatre.
‘Look.’ I pointed to a stall at the end of the line, selling household goods. ‘There’s no one on it. We’ll just pretend it’s our stall, and I’ll write out another note to give to him when he stops.’
We ran to the stall and stood behind it. I grabbed a pen out of my bag.
‘Why did we have to get the worst stall?’ I stared at everything with dismay. ‘What can we write on?’ Why hadn’t I brought some spare paper with me for just such an event?
Toilet brush holders, mugs, toilet rolls, wooden spoons, potties.
What the hell could I write on?
I glanced up. The President was three stalls away.
To my right, a tall guy was heading our way, waving his fist at us.
Oops, must be the stall holder.
‘Kalem, go and distract him before he comes back.’
Kalem shot off to talk to the stall holder.
I looked around the stall frantically. What can I write on? A potty? No way. A mug? No. Toilet roll! Yes.
I took a toilet roll out of the packet and quickly scribbled:
Ali Kaya will be assassinated! Statue will be stolen. Please help. Must do something! Not a joke!
The President appeared at the stall. Grumpy stood next to him, rubbing his red, and very watery, eye.
‘Hello, Mr. President,’ I said, ignoring Grumpy. He couldn’t prove it was me, anyway.
If the President noticed my flushed, sweating face, he didn’t let on.
He held his hand out to shake mine. ‘Hello.’ He politely studied the stall for a moment and went to move on.
‘Wait!’ I shoved the toilet roll in his hand. ‘It’s a lucky toilet roll for you, Mr. President.’
He looked down at the toilet roll, slightly perplexed. Then he smiled politely. ‘Thank you.’ He gave me a slight nod and handed the roll to his bodyguard. The bodyguard frowned at it, as if wondering what he was supposed to do with it and they wandered off.
Kalem appeared at my side as the President strolled leisurely around the rest of the fe
stival. ‘Did you give him a note?’
‘Yes.’
‘I had to give the stall holder two hundred lira not to come back.’
‘I had to write on a toilet roll,’ I groaned with all the ferociousness of a wounded zebra.
‘What? You gave the President a toilet roll?’
‘It was a lucky toilet roll!’ I cried.
‘Why is it lucky?’
‘I don’t know. I just made that up, so he’d take it. And there wasn’t anything else to write on. Do you think he’ll read it?’
Kalem looked doubtful. ‘Would you?’
I carried on watching as the President made his way back to his Range Rover.
Look at the toilet roll! Look at the toilet roll!
The bodyguard, still holding the toilet roll in one hand, opened the door to the Range Rover with the other, and the President slid in the back seat.
I sent him silent open it! open it! signals as the Range Rover slowly rolled away.
My gaze followed the Range Rover as it went further down the hill.
Its brake lights came on. Then it stopped. Its reverse lights illuminated as it slowly came back up the hill. My stomach bounced up to my throat. This was it! He must’ve read the note. He was going to come back and talk to us. I clutched my chest with relief.
The Range Rover screeched to a stop, and slowly the car door opened. Then Grumpy threw the toilet roll in a roadside rubbish bin, and they pulled away again into the starry night.
All the blood in my body seemed to rush to my head, making me dizzy. I launched my arms around Kalem’s neck to steady myself and burst into tears, my nerves bristling with the hopelessness of our situation and my failure to make someone listen to us. It wasn’t as if I’d asked for all this to happen. I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter, and I was trying my hardest to make someone listen. It’s just that my hardest didn’t seem to be good enough.
He crushed me in his arms as my shoulders heaved, my nose blocked up, and Kalem ended up with a big, watery mascara patch on his shirt.
Slowly, the sobs turned to deep sighs, and I struggled to catch my breath. ‘What…are…we going…to…do…now?’ I wailed in between sniffs. ‘I don’t want to go back to the hotel. I can’t face telling everyone that we failed again.’
He grabbed my hand. ‘Come on. I’m taking you to the beach. We’ll think of something.’
‘The beach?’ I wailed, slightly louder this time.
‘It’s getting late. We can’t do anything now. We’ve still got three days to think of another plan before the opening night. But now we need some us time. And I need to cheer you up.’
We grabbed a bottle of wine and some plastic glasses from the village shop and headed to the nearby beach.
Even though it was nine o’clock at night, the sand still warmed the soles of my feet as I slipped off my flip-flops. No one else was around. Just Kalem, me, and the gently rolling waves of the sea – oh, and a couple of crabs.
I looked up at the sky. It felt like the clear, black expanse was giving us our own personal light show. Thousands of stars, sparkling up above, winking at us. I could make out the Plough and Orion’s belt, and – oh! A shooting star!
I quickly made a wish. Please let me have the perfect wedding, save the statue and Ibrahim Kaya, and live to tell the tale. OK, those were three wishes, but I said it really quickly so maybe the star fairies would only think it was one.
Kalem placed a beach towel from the Land Rover on the cushiony sand, and we sat down.
‘This is beautiful,’ I said.
He unscrewed the wine and poured out a couple of glasses. Handing me one, he said, ‘To us.’
‘To us.’ I lifted the glass to my lips and paused, gazing at him over the rim, the full moon casting a silvery glow over his face. ‘What are we going to do now?’ I sniffed through my blocked up nose. ‘No one wants to listen to us.’
Kalem sipped his wine, staring out to the ocean. ‘We need to find Ferret Face.’
‘And then what? Tie him up? Shoot him? Tar and feather him?’ I sloshed wine around my mouth for a moment, thinking.
‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind shooting him myself at this point.’
I swallowed. ‘Even if we could find out where he is, and he could be anywhere, I think someone in the police must be involved in all this. Why else would he have been talking to that officer at the police station? So if we find him, what do we do then? It doesn’t seem like anyone actually wants to help us.’ I glugged down my wine and poured another.
I wasn’t cut out for this. I was a wedding photographer, for God’s sake, not a bloody spy who’s trained in international crime solving. I didn’t even watch CSI. How was I supposed to know how to save an ugly statue and catch bad guys? I might have watched Miss Marple and Poirot a few times, but, to be honest, I think I fell asleep, so I hadn’t even learned any useful tips on how to solve a crime. In fact, everything I knew about crime solving could be written on a flea’s big toe.
‘We have to take things into our own hands.’ Kalem looked up at the stars. ‘If we find him, we have to stop him from turning up at the opening at all. The statue will be going back to Ibrahim’s private art collection afterwards, anyway, so I doubt if Ferret Face will have the opportunity to steal it again. And if he’s incapacitated somehow, and he can’t turn up, then he won’t be able to assassinate Kaya either.’
‘OK, we could try to find him and stop him going to the opening, but he could always try and kill Ibrahim Kaya another time after that. How can we stop that? We can’t get to the President to tell him, we can’t tell the police if we don’t know who’s involved there, and we haven’t been able to get hold of Ibrahim Kaya himself.’ I picked up handfuls of sand, letting it sift through my fingers absent-mindedly
We both thought about that in silence for a while until Kalem’s voice interrupted the noise of the surf. ‘I don’t know. We’ve still got three days to find him before the opening night. I guess we’ll have to take it one step at a time.’
But it all seemed so hopeless.
‘Hang on a minute!’ I clutched Kalem’s arm. ‘I’ve just had a thought.’
‘Oh, God, I hate it when you do that. It’s dangerous.’ He grinned at me.
‘OK, Ferret Face had floor plans of the hotel and casino in his case. But the other night when we saw him there, he looked like he was checking out the casino. Perhaps he’d already been around the rest of the hotel too. We also saw him in the bar at the Plaza afterwards.’
‘Maybe he wanted to make sure the place was laid out exactly according to the floor plans.’
‘Yes, if you’re going to steal a priceless statue and try to kill someone, you would have to make damned sure that your sniper view of Kaya and your escape route was exactly as you’d planned it according to the floor plans, wouldn’t you?’
Kalem nodded.
‘And if you wanted to surreptitiously check out the Plaza to make sure, you’d want to blend in, wouldn’t you?’ I asked.
Vigorous nod.
‘So the best way to blend in is to actually be a guest there. The staff wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a guest roaming around.’
His eyes lit up. ‘Yes! So we just have to scour the Plaza and find him.’
‘Yes,’ I said, although I didn’t exactly relish the prospect of coming face to face with Ferret Face, but what other choice did we have? ‘Well you can’t look for him. He’ll recognize you. I’ll have to do it.’ I took a deep breath, trying to psych myself up for such a horrible job. ‘But there’s something else as well. If Ferret Face is going to assassinate Ibrahim Kaya at the opening night, then someone else must be involved in actually stealing the statue. He can’t do two things at once.’
‘The assassination attempt must be a distraction so his accomplice can steal the statue.’
‘Who would want Kaya dead?’
Kalem shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know enough about him. We need to try and get more evidence. Then Ero
l will have to take us seriously.’
‘Even if we get more evidence, Erol won’t want to investigate because it will mean giving up the money. It looks like the only option we’ve got is to try and stop Ferret Face and his accomplice ourselves.’ I swirled the wine round in my glass thoughtfully, worrying about the enormity of such a task. I looked up at the stars, hoping they would miraculously give me some kind of answer. They didn’t.
‘Our container is arriving at your parents’ house tomorrow morning. So we have to be there then. Straight afterwards we can put Operation Find Ferret Face into action. Let’s try and forget about everything for a while and concentrate on what we were supposed to be doing this week: having some relaxing, pre-wedding couple time.’ Kalem took my glass and set it down on the sand.
Yes, he was right, of course. We couldn’t do anything else tonight, and I seriously needed some kind of distraction from it all. ‘Ooh. And what did you have in mind?’ I giggled.
In the moonlight I saw his eyebrow lift slowly. ‘How about skinny dipping, for starters.’ He took my hand and pulled me up, then quickly stripped off his cotton shorts and shirt. ‘You coming?’
I didn’t need asking twice. I yanked my sundress over my head and threw it on the towel, quickly followed by my knickers.
‘Oh, wait!’ I folded my knickers inside my dress. ‘I don’t want to catch crabs.’
We slipped into the warm water, hand in hand.
‘It’s like a bath.’ I wrapped my legs round his waist and slid my fingertips over his back.
Kalem groaned in the silent air, his shoulders tensing as he held me close. ‘You look even more beautiful in the moonlight.’ He murmured into the curve of my neck. ‘So beautiful.’ His lips brushed against my neck, my ear, my collar bone, my chin, the edge of my mouth.
‘Mmm.’ God, did he know how to work his lips. I shivered with delight.
Slow, erotic nips against my lips turned into sensual kisses, his mouth gliding against mine, his tongue sensually teasing me.
‘I love you.’ I ran my hands up and down his spine, sighing in ecstasy before he silenced me with a kiss.
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 43
