by Oliver Tidy
Oktay again met and held Acer’s stare. ‘She lives in Canada.’
***
4
The shrill noise of a young child’s laughter pierced the silence. They all looked towards the house. A woman with a little girl in her arms was approaching them. They were too far away for Acer to discern their faces clearly but he knew from the shape of her that the woman was Mrs Botha. Hers was a shape not to be forgotten easily. He could guess who the child was.
Unable to control himself, his eyes filled with tears. He stood and realised his legs were unstable. He felt his heart racing and heard the blood surging in his ears. He swallowed and his throat was painfully dry. He took a quick mouthful of the lemonade and set the glass down with a nervous rattle on the tabletop.
They came closer. He walked a few paces out of the shade and into the afternoon sun to meet them. Neither the son nor the father moved or spoke.
Acer only had eyes for his daughter’s face. Mrs Botha had the girl hoisted up high on her hip, one arm cradling her bottom, the other around her back. She was speaking softly into the child’s curly blonde hair. Acer could not catch the words, but he knew they would be in a language he wouldn’t understand. The girl’s blue eyes were fixed firmly on Acer’s face. She was not smiling. She was not crying. Her expression was one of intense curiosity. The resemblance to her mother was startling. Acer had no doubt this was his daughter. She was not a baby anymore. She was a little girl. A beautiful little girl. His beautiful little girl. If he hadn’t realised it before, he did then: he would machine-gun a bus full of nuns to get his daughter back and deal with the guilt afterwards, if ever it came.
Acer dragged his eyes from his daughter to look at Mrs Botha. He remembered her from their brief and volatile encounter in Bodrum as fiery, determined and stunningly beautiful. The time between then and now did not seem to have altered her looks.
Acer said, ‘What have you told her about me?’
Mrs Botha said, ‘That you are part of her family.’ In response to Acer’s look, she said, ‘She is a child who understands nothing of what has happened to her or what is happening now. It is her that I think of in all this. Not you, not me. Her.’
Acer realised that she was right. He nodded his approval. ‘Does she speak any English?’
Mrs Botha seemed proud when she said, ‘She is still very young, of course, but as fluent as any child of her age in both Turkish and English. Your. . . Pearl – that is her name – is being raised as a bilingual child.’
‘Pearl,’ Acer repeated.
‘My husband’s idea. A gift from the sea.’
A tear escaped Acer’s eye. He brushed it away with the back of his hand. He turned his attention back to his daughter and said, ‘Hello, Pearl.’
The little girl stared at him and said nothing.
Acer said, ‘Can I hold her?’
Mrs Botha spoke quietly into the girl’s hair again. The girl shook her head, pursed her lips and frowned hard at the man she didn’t know.
Acer said, ‘It’s OK. I understand. She doesn’t know me.’
Mrs Botha spoke again into the girl’s hair. She seemed to be trying hard on Acer’s behalf. The girl’s face lit up with a smile and it transformed her. Acer felt something swell inside him so intensely that it physically hurt him. The girl nodded enthusiastically at her ‘mother’ and Mrs Botha closed the gap between them. Pearl reached out her arms for Acer. He lifted her away from the woman. There was the briefest confusion of limbs and Acer felt something shoved into his jacket pocket. He looked at the woman and received intense eye contact back.
He held his daughter tightly and smelled her hair. He felt the bare skin of her legs and it was as special for him as anything he could remember touching. He spoke to her, but she did not look entirely comfortable with the situation. Sensing this and not wishing to spoil the moment, he handed her back. ‘Thank you. What did you promise her?’
‘Ice cream. It never fails.’
Acer smiled at them.
Oktay said, ‘You should take her in now. We have things to discuss.’
Mrs Botha’s face altered. Her almost happy expression clouded and it showed something suggesting reluctant submission. She said to Acer, ‘I won’t let her forget you. I hope you will see her again.’
She turned and walked back to the house. The girl looked over Mrs Botha’s shoulder at the strange man. Acer raised a hand. The girl did not wave back.
‘Your wife must have been a very beautiful woman,’ said Oktay to Acer’s back as he continued to watch them.
Acer said, ‘I like to think she gets her good looks from me.’
Oktay laughed like he meant it. ‘Very good, Mr Sansom. The English sense of humour. Dry. I like it. Come and sit. Let us talk some more.’
Acer waited until woman and child were out of sight before returning to his seat.
Oktay said, ‘Time passes, Mr Sansom. Will you do us this favour?’
‘I go to Canada and kill one woman. I come back and you let me leave this island with my daughter?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How do I know you’ll keep your word?’
The man raised his eyebrows and made a face as if to say, good question. He said, ‘I suppose you’re just going to have to trust us, aren’t you?’
***
5
Acer said, ‘Who is she?’
‘Just a woman.’
‘I mean, who is she to you? Why do you want her dead?’
‘Please, Mr Sansom. Do not let us bother with such trivial details. It will not help you. In fact, might I suggest that the less you seek to find out about this woman, the better it will be for your conscience.’
‘Why? Is she a Nobel Peace Prize winner or something?’
Oktay laughed again – high-pitched, almost feminine and hard enough to encourage the old man to say something. The son waved his question away. ‘My father wants to know what is so funny. He would not get the joke. What I meant was the less you know about her, the easier it will be for you to see her as just an assignment, a dirty job that must be done, like unblocking a toilet. You’ll forget her quicker that way.’
‘Canada is a big country. Do you know exactly where she is?’
‘Oh, yes. Vancouver. It’s in British Columbia.’
‘British Columbia isn’t small.’
‘I have her location, Mr Sansom. A photo and an address.’
‘How will you know she is dead? Will you just take my word for it?’
‘I have given this some thought. Not that I don’t trust you, you understand. I think it would be best if the body came back here.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Mr Sansom, the woman in question is a Turkish national. All Turkish citizens should be returned to their motherland for interment. And I find it a rather fitting exchange: a body for a body. No?’
Acer was beginning to think that the man in front of him, the man who had initially struck him as some kind of businessman, might be just a crazy sociopath. He said, ‘I don’t know anything about repatriating dead bodies.’
‘Mr Sansom, you don’t need to. There are numerous Turkish companies that deal with such things on a daily basis. Turks are all over the world. Some of them die there. Their loved ones need them to be returned home quickly for proper Muslim burials in Turkish soil. So long as the death is not treated as suspicious by the authorities in Canada, then I cannot see a problem with exercising the woman’s family’s right to have her returned home. And quickly.’
‘So now I have to kill her and make it look like an accident? What if something should go wrong? What if the authorities turn out to be unconvinced that her death is an accident and don’t release the body?’
‘Let us not talk of complications, Mr Sansom. Let us focus on success. Let me give you an added incentive: you have one week from today to get her dead body back here. After that, you might not find me such a patient and tolerant man. I hope that I make myself clear.’
‘A w
eek? It’ll take at least a day to get to Canada by plane.’
‘It’s a fourteen-hour flight. And yours leaves in. . .’ the man checked his watch, ‘three hours from the airport you arrived at today. You’ll change flights in Frankfurt. That’s in Germany. I have your tickets here.’ He patted his jacket pocket. ‘Allow another fourteen hours to fly her home. That leaves you almost six full days to locate her and arrange her accident. Let me know with a phone call the moment it’s done and I’ll arrange transportation of the body. You fly back and we conclude our business.’
Acer looked at the old man. He was fast asleep. He looked back at the son. For a fleeting, insane moment, he considered leaping on the man and choking the life out of him, going to find his daughter and taking his chances with the guards.
Oktay said, ‘You wouldn’t get off the lawn alive, Mr Sansom.’
Acer said, ‘Do I get a lift to the airport?’
Oktay beamed at Acer. ‘Better than that. One of my men is going with you.’
***
6
They were back on the jetty, standing next to the speedboat that ticked over with a throaty burble. Oktay had come down to see Acer off. Acer’s luggage was back in the boat, with the gorilla behind the wheel, the car driver and a new face. He was as tall as Acer, mid-to-late twenties, average build, unmistakably Turkish. Unlike the other two, he was dressed casually, perhaps for travel. There was another small suitcase next to Acer’s. Acer did not know which of the three it belonged to, but he could guess.
It was late afternoon. The sun had dipped and a fresh breeze had sprung up to tease the water. Little white flashes against the blue of the sea indicated it was choppy out of the shelter of the bay.
Before Acer got into the boat, Oktay said, ‘One last thing, Mr Sansom.’ Acer turned to face him. ‘You have a mobile phone?’
Acer patted his breast pocket and said, ‘Yes.’
‘May I see it?’
Acer handed it over.
Oktay dropped it into the water. ‘Best to remove temptation.’
Acer watched it sink. He turned back to Oktay and said, ‘What happened to trusting each other?’
Oktay smiled again. It seemed genuine. ‘I do like you, Mr Sansom. I really hope that you succeed. It will upset me greatly if you don’t.’
Acer got into the boat, lowered his sunglasses and did not look back as once again the craft reared up, this time on its way back to the mainland. As they bounced across the sea, he put his hand into his jacket pocket for the first time since his contact with Mrs Botha. He felt paper. A couple of folded sheets. He relaxed into his seat and let the sea work its magic on him.
*
The gorilla stayed with the boat. The driver went for the car. The other man waited with Acer and their bags at the kerb of the busy highway.
Acer said, ‘Are you the one coming with me?’
The man turned his head to look at him from behind his sunglasses. He nodded.
Acer said, ‘How is your English?’
‘Good enough.’
‘What’s your name?’
The man stared at him.
Acer said, ‘I might need to talk to you, to tell you something, to ask you something. What should I call you?’
‘Kemal. My name is Kemal.’ He turned back to watch the traffic.
The car arrived quickly. The luggage went in the boot. They got in. They drove to the airport in silence. Acer spent the time wondering how he could get rid of Kemal. If he’d had his phone he could have gone to the toilets, called Crouch, a British Intelligence contact, asked a favour – had Kemal detained on a case of mistaken identity or with a paperwork problem at Frankfurt and continued on his way alone. That was not possible at the moment and Acer could not immediately think of a way to have Kemal delayed that would not incur suspicion of him – something he understood it would be best to avoid.
Acer considered the idea of dealing with Kemal himself at the airport, then not getting on the plane out of Istanbul but heading straight back to the Princes’ Islands and doing what he could to rescue his daughter. But he could think of nothing except the risks and the notion seemed foolish in the extreme. He was not prepared for such a course of action and not armed – two things he would need to be to have the slimmest chance of complete success. And only complete success would do.
Crouch called Acer lucky. Acer understood that to get back to the villa on Heybeliada undetected, to get in, get his daughter and get out and away would take more than luck. It would take divine intervention. And he was not a believer in such things.
At the airport, the driver got out of the vehicle and embraced Kemal. They exchanged a few words and then he got back in and drove away without looking at Acer. Acer followed Kemal into the terminal.
Sabiha Gökçen airport was still busy. Kemal knew where he was going. They passed through the airport’s security checks and then threaded their way through the milling crowds to the check-in desk. They progressed to passport control and then on to the departure lounge for their flight, with half-an-hour to spare before their scheduled boarding.
Acer said, ‘I need a coffee for now and something to read for the plane. Fourteen hours in the air is a long time.’
‘They will serve coffee on the plane.’ Kemal’s tone suggested Acer should wait.
‘Kemal. Listen to me. You’re along for the ride. To keep an eye on me. Be my shadow. Make sure I do the job. I understand that and I’m going with it. But if I want a coffee along the way, something to eat, or a shit, I am not asking your permission. “I need a coffee” means I’m going to get a coffee so you can either sit there and wait for me or come with me and have one yourself, or not, I don’t really care. I know when the plane leaves, I’ll be on it.’
Acer picked up his bag and started walking back to where he’d seen a good coffee franchise. He resisted the urge to look behind him. In a pane of polished glass, he saw Kemal hurrying to catch up with him. He allowed himself a thin smile.
Acer got coffee and then went to a bookshop. He wasn’t as keen on buying reading material as he’d made out to Kemal, but he wanted something that he could slip the paper from Mrs Botha into and read it without Kemal seeing it. He selected a couple of English language magazines.
Kemal did not leave him alone. Kemal did not buy a drink or anything to read. They headed back to the departure lounge to find the people on their feet and queuing to board. They joined them and shuffled along with everyone else.
*
Forty minutes later, they were in the air. Kemal had given Acer the window seat and had then sat in the one next to him. Acer understood that this was so that even if Kemal should fall asleep, there was no way Acer could get past him without waking him. Acer was not bothered by this. He had no intention of getting away from Kemal on the plane. There was nowhere for him to go and no one whose phone number he knew by heart.
Acer settled in for the three-hour flight to Frankfurt. He took out and opened the envelope Oktay had given him. Kemal looked at what he was doing. When he saw what Acer had, he said, ‘You shouldn’t look at that where people can see.’
Acer took up one of his magazines and slipped the information inside. Then he opened the magazine and looked at what he had. He said, ‘That better?’
Kemal shook his head and looked away.
All he had was an address in Vancouver on a place called Bowen Island. He asked Kemal if he had a maps application on his smartphone. Kemal asked why. Acer showed him the address. After the briefest hesitation, Kemal took out his phone, punched in a four-digit access code that Acer memorised and got up the maps application. Acer was soon looking at a map of Vancouver. Bowen Island was a small island to the west of the city, a short distance from the mainland. Acer enlarged the image to see that there was a ferry service. He handed the phone back to Kemal.
He looked at the photograph of the woman he was supposed to kill. It was a graduation photograph of an attractive young woman, perhaps in her early to mid-twent
ies. As he had suspected from his conversation with Oktay, this woman bore a strong resemblance to him. Acer believed she could be another of his sisters. Another one who had disappointed him and his father. But her crimes must have been far worse than marrying a foreigner. This had the feel of an honour killing by proxy.
He held the photograph in front of Kemal. ‘How old is this?’
Kemal seemed annoyed that Acer was flashing it around. ‘Why?’
‘Because I need to think about whether her appearance would have changed. People grow older in their faces as well as in years.’
‘She has not changed.’
‘How do you know?’
Kemal looked into Acer’s eyes. ‘I know.’
Acer looked back at the photograph of the smiling, successful, confident-looking young woman until he believed he would know her again in a crowd.
Acer folded the address and photograph and put them in his pocket. He read a magazine. Eventually, Kemal closed his eyes and dozed. Acer registered a change in the man’s breathing. He took the paper Mrs Botha had given him out of his pocket and slipped it into the pages of the magazine. He spent a few moments preparing himself for finding out things he might not want to know and then he read it.
Mr Sansom
I cannot tell you how sorry I am for the position you are in. As a mother who loves all her children, it is unthinkable for me to face separation from any of them.
When my husband brought Pearl to me, it was with a story that she had been the sole survivor of a terrible accident that had left both her parents dead. I have sons; I had always wanted a daughter. She was my gift from the sea. I wanted to believe it and so I did. I have raised her as my own.
When we met in Bodrum I understood that you were her father. You may remember that I told you that you had things to live for. I meant your daughter. And then you disappeared. I believed you had died in the incident that claimed my husband’s life.
Some weeks later I saw your face on the television news. You were being hunted by the British police for murder. I followed the news for knowledge of you. I discovered that you were an innocent man and I understood why you were involved in all that. It was revenge for the loss of your family.
