Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries

by Barbara Silkstone

  Yasmin grabbed my hand and squeezed it for dear life. ‘We don’t know yet. No one’s seen him since last night.’

  The policeman spoke then. ‘I am Ali Hussein, the chief of police here, and it seems there has been some kind of misunderstanding about you.’ He glared at Erol. ‘Now, we need to get some more information immediately so we can look for Kalem.’ Ali gave me a kind smile and turned his attention to Erol with a gruff no-nonsense voice. ‘That means I need to start at the beginning.’

  Wait a minute. This had to be some kind of sick joke. Erol’s dad hated Deniz, didn’t he? So why was he trying to help? Maybe it was a trap.

  ‘No.’ My whole body shuddered. ‘This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.’ And then I couldn’t stop the tears falling as I thought about Kalem, possibly lying injured somewhere, or worse…d…d…no, I couldn’t even say the D word.

  ‘We’ll find him, Helen,’ Deniz said. ‘You just need to tell them everything as quickly as possible, so they can look for him.’

  Ayshe squeezed my other hand, her dark, oval eyes pleading with me not to think about it, but talk.

  ‘Did he have a mobile phone on him?’ Ali asked me. ‘If he still has it, we can try and trace his location by GPS.’

  ‘Yes! He did!’ I rattled off the number.

  He wrote the number down and handed it to another officer who had just come in. ‘Trace this signal immediately.’

  ‘No one wanted to know anything. That was the problem!’ I snarled at Erol. ‘We told you this would happen, and you didn’t want to do anything. You’d rather keep the money than save a life. And now look what’s happened! You make me sick.’ If Ayshe and Yasmin weren’t gripping my hands at that point, I would’ve punched him in the face.

  ‘What money?’ Ali glared at his son.

  ‘I’ll tell you.’ And through the tears and sniffles, I told him what had happened from the very beginning.

  I told him about how we’d come to North Cyprus to get married and start a wonderful new life, living the dream in the Mediterranean sun. I explained about the mix-up with the suitcase and how we’d given the money, the plans, the photo, and itinerary to Erol to investigate. I told him how Erol didn’t believe anyone would try to assassinate Ibrahim Kaya or steal the statue, and how I believed his motive for not investigating was to keep the money. I also snuck in there how I suspected that Erol had arranged for the funding to be pulled on Kalem’s job, so we’d have to leave the island to keep us quiet. This produced some serious glaring at Erol from his dad.

  I told Ali how we’d gone to the police station to try and report all of this, but we’d seen Ferret Face talking with some high-up policeman and suspected he was involved. I explained how we’d even tried to talk to the President at the festival, and how we’d tried to warn Ibrahim Kaya, eventually resulting in me being arrested.

  I went on about how Erol had made a bargain with me that if Kalem and I left the island, he would drop the charges. And how he’d assured Ibrahim Kaya that there was no problem, and that I was just some crazy woman who had threatened to kill him.

  More glaring from Ali to Erol. ‘And you call yourself a security expert?’ he spat at Erol.

  I let him know about how we’d followed Ferret Face and discovered a connection with an Israeli yacht and someone called Mr. P. I repeated the conversation, word for word, that Ferret Face and Missing Link had with Mr. P on the yacht, and I gave him my suspicions that it all pointed to a man called Jacob Podsheister, who blamed Kaya for his downfall and wanted him dead. Then I explained how I’d tried to drug Ferret Face to stop him going ahead with the assassination, but it hadn’t worked, so the only option was to drug Ibrahim Kaya, but that hadn’t worked either, and he’d still been shot.

  Tears cascaded down my cheeks. ‘And now Ibrahim Kaya is dead!’ I flopped forward in the chair.

  ‘Helen, Ibrahim Kaya is not dead,’ Ali said.

  ‘Huh?’ I wailed. Had I misheard him? Did he just say that he wasn’t dead?

  ‘No, he’s not dead. Although it is still touch and go. Because you gave him the sleeping tablets, he was already falling over by the time the sniper shot him. The bullet caught him in the shoulder instead of the heart. A second later and he would have been dead instantly, I’m sure. But he lost a lot of blood. We will have to wait and see what the doctors say,’ Ali said.

  Yasmin handed me a glass of water. ‘Here, drink this.’

  I ignored the water and turned to Charlie. ‘What happened to you? Did you see Kalem? The last time I saw him, he’d been running towards the statue, and Missing Link already had hold of it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I think I must have passed out. When I came to, pretty much everyone had gone, and there was no sign of Kalem anywhere. The only thing left of him was this.’ He handed me the baseball cap that Kalem had been wearing the day before.

  I clutched the cap to my chest as I mentally went through the conversation from the yacht in my head over and over again. ‘There was supposed to be a boat waiting in the hotel’s port. According to the conversation on the yacht, Missing Link was going to steal the statue and get on this boat.’

  Ali picked up the phone, yelling into it. When he replaced the receiver, he said to us, ‘I’ve instructed the coastguard and helicopters to carry out a search for this boat. It could be anywhere by now, though. It’s been twelve hours.’ He glared at Erol. ‘If only I’d known about this sooner, it could have been prevented, or we could have been out hours ago, searching for Kalem.’

  And then I suddenly remembered the photos I’d taken of Ferret Face and Missing Link. ‘You might be able to recognize the men involved from Interpol or something. I took some pictures of them. Charlie, where’s my camera? You had it around your neck yesterday.’

  ‘Ah. There’s a slight problem there. When I came to after fainting, I had a black eye, and your camera must’ve fallen off in all the pushing and shoving.’ He looked sheepishly at me. ‘It was gone when I woke up.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I gnawed on my bottom lip. I didn’t even care that my thousand-pound camera had disappeared. All I cared about was finding Kalem. And my camera had the evidence on it that could’ve helped to identify the people involved. Now it was lost.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Helen,’ Charlie said.

  ‘We’re still interviewing and trying to get hold of witnesses who were at the hotel. So far, none of them can add anything useful. Most of the people were panicking to get away in all the mayhem. So no one seems to have seen Kalem since he tried to protect the statue.’ Ali glanced down at the desk, tapping his forefingers together, deep in concentration.

  I racked my brain, trying to think. So much was tumbling around in there, I had trouble trying to string together rational thoughts. There was something else that I knew, something that might help, but I didn’t know what. Think, Helen, think!

  ‘Well, at least we have some information to go on,’ Ali said. ‘I need you to identify the policeman who was talking to this assassin.’

  ‘Well, the last time I saw him, he was about to be punched by the captain who interviewed me the other night.’

  ‘Punched?’ Ali frowned.

  I nodded. ‘Yes, it’s a long story. But the captain will know who he is.’

  Ali lifted the phone on the desk and shouted something in Turkish. Then he turned to me again. ‘We will bring him here for you to identify. I’ve also ordered a search team to go to Jacob Podsheister’s yacht. They will arrest him and bring him here.’

  I slapped a hand to my forehead. ‘Yes! The captain has got a photo of Ferret Face. The CCTV cameras at the airport captured the drugs dog when it jumped on me, and in the same photo you can clearly see his face.’

  Ali smiled. ‘Good, good. Is there anything else you can think of?’

  What was it? What? Something about…Lena. ‘Lena, the woman who was in the cell with me. I think she knows Ferret Face. I think he was her customer. She might know something about his whereabouts.’

  Er
ol’s dad lifted the phone again and shouted something else. As he slammed it down, Captain Beaky appeared at the door with the same policeman I’d seen talking to Ferret Face in the station.

  ‘Is this the man?’ Ali said to me.

  ‘Yes. No doubt about it.’ I nodded.

  ‘You are a disgrace, Superintendant,’ Ali bellowed at him. ‘You have a position of authority and you’ve abused it! Take him into custody!’

  And the superintendant was hauled off, shouting obscenities, out the door.

  Ali rose. ‘I think we have enough to go on. If you’ll excuse me, we need to get on with the search.’ He glared at Erol again. ‘I’ll deal with you later. And don’t think because you are my son, that you will escape charges. You have no honour!’

  Erol slunk down in his chair, trying to make himself invisible.

  ‘But…what am I supposed to do?’ I cried. ‘I can’t just wait here while you’re out looking for Kalem. I have to do something.’ I looked down at the baseball cap, clutched in my hand, and put it on my head – somehow it made me feel closer to Kalem.

  ‘I agree.’ Deniz nodded. ‘This is my son we’re talking about. I want to come too. And the more pairs of eyes out there, searching, the better.’

  Yasmin clutched her chest. ‘I want to help.’

  ‘Me, too. I can’t just sit here and do nothing,’ Ayshe said.

  ‘Well, I feel partly responsible. If I hadn’t fainted, I would’ve seen what happened to him. So count me in,’ Charlie said.

  ‘You might need me to help,’ Osman said to Ali in a tone that I couldn’t quite work out.

  ‘And me.’ Atila glanced at me. ‘I think we should all go and search.’

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ I narrowed my eyes at Atila. ‘What do you know about all of this? You’ve been acting really strange since we got here. Going off on secret missions and not telling anyone where you’ve been. Acting all cagey and suspicious. What have you been up to?’ I pointed an accusing finger at him. ‘Are you involved in all of this?’

  Atila sat back like I’d slapped him. ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Well, what have you been doing then?’ I shouted.

  Ayshe wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach. ‘Yes? What have you been doing? You have been acting strange.’

  ‘It was supposed to be a surprise. A wedding present for you.’ Atila looked between Ayshe and me, horrified.

  ‘I’ve had all the surprises I can take. Tell me!’ My voice jumped a few hundred decibels.

  Oh, no. This was horrendous. Part of me didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to even contemplate that he could be involved in this somehow. But greed did funny things to people, didn’t it? And what other reason could there be for all his sneaking around?

  ‘Well, since my recipe books have taken off, I’ve been thinking about expanding my restaurant business. I don’t need to be at the one in London full-time anymore. It’s successful, and I’ve got an excellent chef and manager now to take over the reins. And I saw an amazing place in Kyrenia the other day that would make a perfect restaurant. I felt like I needed a new challenge, and this would be perfect, wouldn’t it?’ He slipped his hand through Ayshe’s. ‘I mean, I knew how sad you were about going back to the UK after the wedding and being so far away from Helen. I thought this would be the perfect solution. You could be here all the time with each other.’ His forehead creased with worry. ‘Have I done the wrong thing?’

  Ayshe’s tense shoulders slumped with relief. ‘Oh, thank God for that. You had me worried there for a minute. I even thought you were having an affair.’

  ‘An affair? Never.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ I shook my head manically, more to myself than anyone else. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course you couldn’t be involved in anything like this.’

  Atila enveloped me in a warm hug. ‘No problem at all. You can’t be thinking straight at the moment. It’s understandable. Now, the question is, what can we all do to help find Kalem?’

  Ali leaped to his feet. ‘It is not protocol, of course, to have you involved in a police investigation. But we may not have much time, and Helen, you might remember something useful on the way. So under the circumstances, I will allow you all to come with me. Let’s find Kalem.’

  Chapter 19

  We all bundled into the small interview room where they were holding the superintendant.

  Captain Beaky stood behind the superintendant who was sitting in the same chair I’d been in two days before. The superintendant didn’t look too happy, but Captain Beaky had a smug smile on his face.

  ‘Right. I want to know who these criminals are, and what your involvement is.’ Ali roughly pulled out a chair opposite the superintendant and plonked himself down.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong person.’ The superintendant folded his arms in a defiant stance. ‘Are you going to take the word of this crazy woman over me?’ He nodded his head in my direction.

  Captain Beaky kicked the bottom of his chair out from under him, and the superintendant fell on the floor.

  Captain Beaky grinned. The superintendant almost had smoke coming out of his ears as he picked himself up, dusted off his trousers, and sat down again.

  Ali slapped a hand on the desk. ‘Enough! We are searching for someone. It could be a life or death situation, and I’m not wasting any more time. Tell me everything you know. NOW.’

  The superintendant screwed up his lips, as if debating what to say. ‘OK, I admit I talked to this man. But I didn’t know who he was.’ He shrugged. ‘He just came into the station and asked me for directions.’ He let out a small, unconvincing laugh.

  Ali gave an exasperated shake of his head. ‘You will have to do better than that.’

  The superintendant shrugged again. ‘That’s all I know. He came into the station saying he was lost, and I just gave him directions, that’s all.’

  ‘Directions to where?’ Ali asked, even though it was clear from his tone that he didn’t believe a word.

  ‘To see my wife, probably,’ Captain Beaky muttered under his breath.

  The superintendant turned and gave him a killer look.

  ‘TO WHERE?’ Ali repeated, losing his patience.

  I was losing mine too. In a minute, I’d kick his bloody chair out from under him as well. Or poke his eyes out. Or…well, something to make him talk.

  ‘Just to the harbour.’ The superintendant grinned.

  ‘This is getting us nowhere.’ Ali stood up. ‘Take him to the cell,’ he said to Captain Beaky.

  ‘With pleasure.’ He pulled the superintendant to his feet and practically dragged him out.

  The short policeman from the other night rushed in and handed Ali a computer printout. ‘We’ve identified the sniper from the photo at the airport. He’s an Israeli citizen who is wanted in connection with several major jewellery thefts and murders in the last few years. I’ve updated all ports, airports, and also the border crossing with South Cyprus with the photo. He hasn’t been through passport control anywhere yet, but if he’s seen they’ll detain him.’

  Ali perused the printout. ‘Good. Any other updates?’

  ‘A search team is busy going through Jacob Podsheister’s yacht. They haven’t found anything incriminating yet. There’s no sign of the statue or Kalem. He’s denying any involvement, of course, but we’ve arrested him. He’ll be here in a minute. We’re still trying to trace the exact location of Kalem’s mobile phone, and Lena has arrived, so I’ll bring her in.’ The policeman’s stubby little legs dashed off again.

  ‘But it all happened hours ago.’ I slumped to the floor, flopping my head onto my knees. ‘The criminals could have already left the country by now. They could have taken their boat to any neighbouring country. South Cyprus, Syria, Israel, Greece, Turkey.’ This was getting us nowhere.

  Yasmin knelt down, hugging me into her warm body. She gently stroked my hair, making shushing sounds. ‘They’ll find him. They have to.
’

  But I wasn’t so hopeful.

  Lena strutted into the interview room. ‘Hey? Are we having a party in here?’

  I jumped to my feet, clutching her shoulders and imploring her with my eyes. ‘Lena, you have to tell them everything you know about that customer you were telling me about.’

  She tossed her hair back and glanced suspiciously at everyone gathered in the room. ‘I’m not admitting to anything. I don’t want to get charged with soliciting.’

  ‘I can arrange to have your previous charges dropped if you help us,’ Ali said. ‘You have my word that you won’t be charged with anything, as long as you tell us all you know about this man. He is a dangerous criminal and he is involved in some very serious offences. We need to find out where he could be.’ He showed her the photo of Ferret Face and me at the airport. ‘Is this your customer?’

  She licked her lips, pondering this for a minute. ‘You’re sure you won’t charge me?’

  ‘YES,’ I shouted before anyone else could say anything.

  She nodded at the picture. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘What do you know about him?’ Ali asked.

  ‘I know that he was staying at that fancy hotel, the Plaza. I thought he might phone me last night to hook up, because I’ve seen him the last few nights, but I haven’t heard anything from him.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘I used to meet him at Jacob Podsheister’s fancy boat. Jacob was always arranging parties with lots of ladies, if you know what I mean.’ She winked at me.

  ‘Well, that proves a connection between them. That proves Podsheister organized this whole thing, doesn’t it?’ My breaths came in short, sharp waves, feeling relief at some sort of breakthrough.

  ‘It only proves they knew each other. It doesn’t prove Podsheister hired him,’ Ali said. ‘But it’s a start.’

  ‘How did he contact you?’ Ali asked Lena.

  ‘Podsheister used to ring me up and arrange it.’