The Tomb in Turkey

by Simon Brett

  The attacker made another swinging slash with his knife, but the force of it overbalanced him, and he stumbled on to the dusty ground. From there, two of the waiters disarmed and picked him up, efficiently putting him into an armlock.

  The tall, dark-clad man who had greeted Barney at the entrance to the restaurant moved forward, and the two of them had a muttered conversation in Turkish. The man seemed to be trying to persuade Barney of something – Carole thought she heard a word like ‘police’ – but the Englishman was having none of it.

  Eventually, Barney won his way and, on instructions from their superior, the two waiters frogmarched the bleary Kemal through the trees towards the complex’s entrance, where presumably he would be thrown off the premises. After a couple more words with the tall man, Barney Willingdon resumed his seat and topped up his glass of red wine. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, in a manner that was far too urbane for the circumstances.

  ‘Have they called the police?’ asked Carole.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why ever not? That man attacked you with a knife. He should be charged with attempted murder.’

  ‘That’s taking the incident far too seriously. He’s drunk, that’s all.’

  ‘There are plenty of victims who’ve been murdered by somebody who was drunk.’

  ‘I’m sure there are. But, as you can see, I’m not one of them. Let’s talk about something else … like how you’re going to spend your fortnight in the lovely village of Kayaköy.’

  After the scene they’d just witnessed, Jude was beginning to wonder how lovely the village of Kayaköy actually was. Then, remembering what she’d heard from Fergus McNally, she asked, ‘Did that man Kemal use to be a business partner of yours, Barney?’

  He looked annoyed that she had made the connection, and a little confused as to how she might have made it, but conceded that Kemal and he had been in business together. ‘But we fell out over the definition of hard work. Kemal thought all he had to contribute to our mutual projects was a Turkish name on the letterhead. It didn’t occur to him that he was actually expected to get his hands dirty.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jude, thinking that Fergus McNally – and indeed Kemal himself – might have described the situation differently.

  When they got back to Morning Glory, Carole, who had had more wine than she was used to, said she would turn in straight away. ‘You know, having had such an early start this morning and what with the time difference and everything.’

  Jude thought it would be cruel to point out that the time difference worked the other way and that she’d gained a couple of hours rather than lost them. Back in Fethering it was only nine o’clock in the evening.

  ‘Well, goodnight, Carole,’ said Barney. ‘Nita did show you how the air conditioning worked, didn’t she?’

  ‘Oh yes. But I won’t be using it.’ To Carole’s mind, air conditioning was an entirely unnecessary form of pampering. She’d been brought up in an English home where no mechanical aids were allowed to interfere with the regular sequence of the seasons. In the winter you got cold, in the summer you got hot.

  Jude was sorry that Carole had retired for the night because that left her alone with Barney and, after the phone call she’d had from him on the Friday, she anticipated a slightly awkward encounter.

  And that’s what it proved to be. In spite of having put away a large Efes and the full bottle of red wine, Barney accepted her half-hearted offer of another drink. Reluctantly, she produced her duty-free bottle of Laphroaig and took it, along with two glasses, out to the loungers by the pool. It was a beautiful evening, still pleasantly warm, a tapestry of bright stars spread out over the cloudless sky. Far too romantic, thought Jude as she filled the glasses.

  Any hopes she’d nurtured that Barney might have forgotten or felt embarrassed about their recent phone call were quickly crushed.

  ‘Jude,’ he murmured, ‘I meant what I said on Friday.’

  ‘And I meant what I said on Friday. I’m not in the business of rekindling old embers with married men.’

  ‘You’re not telling me you’ve never had a relationship with a married man?’

  ‘No,’ Jude replied honestly. ‘I am not telling you that. But I do exercise my own judgement in the selection of those married men. And as I said when we spoke on the phone last week, I am not about to succumb to your blandishments.’

  ‘Blimey, have you just swallowed a dictionary?’

  ‘I think you know what I mean, Barney.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Or, at least, I know what you think you mean, Jude.’ He moved forward on his lounger and put a hand firmly on her knee. ‘But there still is something between us, Jude. Emotion that powerful doesn’t just go away.’

  She didn’t remove his hand. To do so would have felt too clumsy, too teenage, as though going through the motions of a bedroom farce. ‘Barney, you’re talking a very long time ago. I am not currently looking for any kind of emotional entanglement. And if I were, I’m afraid you aren’t the person I would be entangling with.’ That removed the hand on her knee more effectively than a slap would have done. ‘I come back to the same point, Barney. You’re married.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m in a marriage that’s not working.’

  ‘That’s not my problem. I recommend you find out which bit of the marriage is not working and sort it out.’

  ‘I can tell you the bit of it that’s not working. The sex.’

  ‘Ah. Well, you must—’

  ‘It’s stopped. There just isn’t any. Henry’s completely lost interest.’

  ‘Then that’s something you must work out between the two of you. It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But it could be something to do with you, Jude. When I think back to the sex you and I used to enjoy together! It was just so good, so adventurous, so uncomplicated.’

  ‘We were uncomplicated back then, Barney. Let’s keep that whole episode as a pleasant memory. It’s not going to happen again. And if it did, I can guarantee that it wouldn’t be the same. You can’t go down the same road twice.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Just take my word for it.’

  ‘But, Jude …’ His voice was low, teasing, sexy.

  Again, no slap. But Jude found another, equally effective method of changing Barney’s priorities. ‘Incidentally,’ she said, ‘I now know how your first wife died.’

  Jude felt uncomfortable as she lay uncovered on the crisp white sheets of her bed, waiting to feel the benefit of the air conditioning. (She did not share Carole’s inhibitions about using it.) She felt hot, but the main cause of her discomfort was not the ambient temperature, but the conversation she’d had with Barney. Why wouldn’t he just take no for an answer? If he kept up his current behaviour, he would spoil the two weeks of baggage-free relaxation that Jude had been planning.

  She tried to clear her mind, but her thoughts kept coming back to the same subject: Barney Willingdon. Not in a romantic way. Though she could still recognize his attractions, Jude genuinely had no intentions of getting embroiled there again. But she was worried about Barney’s moral values. She couldn’t forget Fergus McNally’s long diatribe against his former partner. And the fumbled attack by Kemal in Cin Bal was troubling too.

  There was also Barney’s conversation at the restaurant with Nita. That had displayed qualities of a stand-off. The tour guide had deliberately sought him out and then asked if he was going for a nightcap at the Scorpion (presumably one of the village’s many bars). To Jude, that question had sounded like an encoded message. She had a feeling that in the past ‘a nightcap at the Scorpion’ had preceded a sexual encounter between the two. His turning down the offer had been a slap in the face for Nita.

  And when Barney had refused even to tell Nita which villa he was spending the night in, the act of rejection was complete. He had made it clear to Nita that any liaison between the two of them had come to an end. Jude hoped to God that wasn’t because he planned for her to take Nita’s place.
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  As the room cooled down she drifted off into troubled sleep.

  TWELVE

  Carole Seddon had trained her body to wake up without the assistance of an alarm clock at half past six every morning. Winter, summer, whenever, she liked to be out on Fethering Beach walking Gulliver before seven o’clock.

  So after an interrupted, sweaty night (she should have switched on the air conditioning), Carole was rather disoriented when she woke at six thirty (or, rather, eight thirty in Turkish time). Her first thought, to her surprise, was of Gulliver, and she had a momentary pang, visualizing him in his unfamiliar kennels. She saw that look of pained reproach that only he could do so well. And the unspoken reprimand: ‘People like you shouldn’t be allowed to own dogs.’

  But then the broad stripe of bright sunlight across her bed brought her back to current reality. Of course, she was in Morning Glory, facing her first full day of holiday. It was a prospect that rather daunted her. Carole felt extremely restless. If a fortnight in Turkey was supposed to be helping her to untwitch, the process certainly hadn’t yet started.

  And she was already worried about how Jude would want to spend the day. The two of them were, after all, on holiday together. But did that mean they should both follow the same agenda and do everything together? It was so long since Carole Seddon had spent any length of time with another person that such questions troubled her. And although she and Jude were neighbours, there were still many things they didn’t know about each other.

  After opening all of the bedroom’s windows, Carole looked in the cupboard where she had neatly hung and laid out her clothes. Her Burberry was on a hanger in the furthest recesses, and she already knew that it would stay there until she packed to return to England. She felt an idiot for having brought it. The garment looked as reproachful as her image of Gulliver.

  For a moment, she lingered over the new beige shorts. If she had felt confident of spending the whole day at Morning Glory undisturbed by visitors, she might have put them on and begun the process of laying down a tan. But the experience of the previous day had warned her that the villa seemed to be open house to anyone who happened to be passing. Travers Hughes-Swann might appear again, so could Nita or Erkan. And, as the owner, Barney Willingdon seemed to come and go as he felt like it. Though Carole didn’t mind Jude witnessing the sight, she didn’t want any of the others to see her legs. (It should be mentioned that there was nothing wrong with Carole Seddon’s legs. Except for the visible trace of a blue vein at the back of each knee, they were unblemished. In fact, they were rather good legs. But Carole herself could never see them that way, and she kept them covered from one year’s end to the next.)

  So she reverted to her trusty navy-blue trousers. And a very clean, very white T-shirt. She hoped nobody would notice the bulk of her money-belt underneath. As an act of considerable daring, she put leather flip-flops on her feet. Then she went down to the kitchen and opened the doors giving out on to the poolside area.

  There was no sign of Jude. Having overheard much of the poolside conversation of the night before, Carole wondered whether her friend was actually even in Morning Glory or whether she’d succumbed to Barney’s blandishments and gone off with him. Knowing Jude’s track record, Carole wouldn’t have put it past her.

  There was instant coffee in a kitchen cupboard, so she put the kettle on. Then she inspected the contents of the fridge and decided that she’d have more or less the same breakfast as she would have done in Fethering – toast. She located a bread knife, cut two slices from the rather dry loaf and placed them in the toaster. She found butter and a choice of spreads. Frank Cooper’s Original Oxford Marmalade, Marmite, local honey and what she deduced from the picture on the label was cherry jam.

  Her guidebook reading had told her that the cherries in Turkey were particularly good, so she boldly went for the jam. Then she sat at the kitchen table and ate her breakfast, wishing she had a copy of The Times to concentrate on. Carole Seddon didn’t like being at a loose end when she was eating on her own. She knew it was now possible, for an outlay of money, to get newspapers online, but she hadn’t worked out how to do it yet. So she’d have to survive the fortnight with no daily paper and just her book of collected crosswords.

  As she munched her toast – the cherry jam was excellent – she tried to assess how her stomach felt. She hadn’t had much of the Turkish diet yet, but what they had eaten at Cin Bal had been getting very close to a kebab. And she was ready to rush to the Imodium packet if she did feel squittery. But Carole was forced to admit to herself with some surprise that she did actually feel fine.

  She washed up her breakfast things with punctilious efficiency and then went upstairs to get The Rough Guide to Turkey. Though she had read through the entry about Kayaköy many times, she wanted to have another look at it. And also Pinara. Nita’s mention of the site the night before had aroused her interest, and Carole thought it might be a good place to visit in a few days’ time.

  But the Rough Guide did not hold her attention for long. Carole was extremely unrelaxed. She felt she ought to be doing something. But then she always thought she should be doing something. She looked around to see if the kitchen needed cleaning, but Barney Willingdon’s staff had left it so immaculate that even she couldn’t find fault. And Erkan’s overpainting had efficiently erased all traces of the unwelcoming message that had greeted them.

  She went upstairs again to collect her book of Times crosswords and sat back at the kitchen table, trying to focus her mind on one of them. But her concentration wasn’t good, and the nagging knowledge that all the answers were temptingly available at the back of the book meant it didn’t feel like she was doing a proper crossword.

  She had been there for nearly an hour, not getting on well with the clues and constantly tempted to check the answers, when she heard some movement from upstairs. Carole expected that the sound of the toilet flushing would be followed by the noise of a shower, but it wasn’t. Instead, a bleary-looking Jude, dressed in a red bikini even more minimal than the previous day’s, appeared at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Good morning, Carole,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you been out yet?’

  ‘No, I’ve been busy here. Having breakfast and what-have-you.’ Though she’d finished her breakfast an hour before.

  ‘Well, come on out. I could see a bit of it from my bedroom window, but you’ll only get the full effect from out the front.’

  ‘The full effect of what?’

  ‘Come and see.’ Jude took her friend by the hand and pulled her out to the poolside. Then she turned them both round so that they were looking at the front of the villa. They could see exactly why it was called Morning Glory. Delicate blue flowers tumbled down in profusion over the frontage.

  ‘Best time of the day to see them,’ said Jude.

  ‘Yes, I can understand that.’ Then Carole asked urgently, ‘And what are your plans for the day?’

  ‘Plans?’ echoed Jude, with some level of incredulity in her voice. ‘I haven’t got plans. I’ve only just woken up.’

  ‘Well, presumably you’ll have breakfast first and then—’

  ‘No, I was considering having a splosh in the pool first, then having a shower and possibly thinking about breakfast after that.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Carole. Jude’s attitude seemed far too lackadaisical for her taste. ‘But don’t we need to do some shopping at some point …?’

  ‘At some point, yes. But this isn’t that point. The fridge is still very well stocked. We’ll get round to it in time.’

  Again the reply was far too unstructured. Carole couldn’t help saying, ‘I’ve already been up for an hour and a half.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Jude looked puzzled. ‘And this is really the first time you’ve been out of doors?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jude shook her head in mild bewilderment as her friend went on: ‘So … do you have any plans for the day or not?’

  ‘No.’ Jude shook her head firmly, setting ripples going through
her unbrushed blonde hair.

  ‘Planning to stay here?’

  ‘I should think so. Still too knackered to think of going anywhere else.’

  ‘What about meals?’

  ‘Probably stagger out somewhere in the evening. Make do with what we’ve got here at lunchtime.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Carole.

  ‘No, I’m not sure at all. May go out somewhere to eat at lunchtime too. See how we feel.’

  ‘Well, what I feel is that I should be doing something.’

  ‘Fine. You can do something. I can do nothing.’

  ‘Separately?’

  ‘Yes, why not? Where do you want to go?’

  Carole hadn’t really made any plans, but she didn’t want Jude to realize that, so she found herself replying, ‘I quite fancy going to Pinara.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go there on my own if it’s somewhere you want to go; we should maybe wait for another day when we can go together.’

  ‘What is there at Pinara?’ asked Jude lazily.

  ‘Well, there’s a Higher and Lower Acropolis, and there’s a Royal Tomb and an Amphitheatre.’

  ‘Hm. You’ve yet to offer me something more attractive than my trashy book on a lounger by the pool.’

  ‘I see.’ Carole couldn’t keep the note of reproof out of her voice.

  ‘Look, in a few days I’m sure I’ll feel up to going out on excursions, but at the moment all I want to do is chill out.’

  Carole wished Jude wouldn’t use expressions like that. ‘Very well,’ she found herself saying. ‘Today I will go to Pinara on my own.’

  ‘That’s cool.’

  Carole wished Jude wouldn’t use expressions like that either.

  Having blackmailed herself into saying that she was going to Pinara, there was no way now that she couldn’t go there. The idea of driving an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads among unfamiliar people frankly terrified her, but she tried not to let Jude see her fear. This did not prove too difficult because her friend seemed only to be interested in slopping about in the pool or flopping about on her lounger. And by the time Carole left, Jude had shown no signs of getting herself any breakfast.