“Like that, is it? Half a minute, I’ll get someone to go with you now.”
“Yes,” Yashim said. “Why not?”
It took them only a few minutes to reach the parapet. The porter Eslek had found stamped along incuriously behind Yashim, but he was glad of his presence: the memory of the dark stairs leading down to that clean chamber still made him shiver. He unlooped the chain and once more set his shoulder to the door.
The porter protested.
“I think we didn’t ought to go in there. It’s not allowed.”
“I’m allowed,” Yashim said shortly. “And you’re with me. Come on.”
It was darker this time, but Yashim knew where to go. At the head of the steps he put his finger to his lips and led the way down. The tekke was just as he’d left it the day before. He tried the door: it was still locked. The porter stood nervously at the foot of the stairs, looking round in surprise. Yashim went over to the chest and raised the lid. Same collection of plates and glasses. Still no cadet.
Yashim straightened up.
“Come on, we’ll go back now,” he said.
The porter needed no second bidding.
[ 103 ]
The effendi had told him to keep his eyes open, and Eslek had been doing just that for several hours. He wasn’t sure what he was looking out for, exactly, or how he would recognise it when he found it. Something out of the ordinary, perhaps, Yashim had suggested. Or something so very ordinary that no one would give it a second glance—except, he had explained, perhaps Eslek himself. Eslek knew what went where, and who might be expected at a Friday market.
He scratched his head. It was all very ordinary. The stalls, the crowds, the jugglers, the musicians: it was like this every time. The market was busier, it being a Friday. What had happened that didn’t happen every day of the week? The meatball man had given him a free breakfast, that didn’t happen to you every day!
Thinking about the meatballs had reminded him of something.
He tried to remember. He’d been hungry, yes. And he’d seen that the meatballs were done, hadn’t he, before anyone else? Seen that much out of the corner of his eye while he poached a cube of bread—
Eslek jerked his chin. The little cube of bread. Nobody had noticed. There’d been no one manning the stall, and the little dog running round to turn the spit. Something he’d never actually seen before today, not in the market, at least. But so what?
He decided to take another look. As he threaded his way through the crowd, he caught sight of the meatball vendor with the flat knife in one hand and a pitta bread in the other, serving a customer. But he was looking the other way. When Eslek reached him he was still standing, as though transfixed, and the customer was beginning to grumble: “I said yes to sauce.”
The vendor turned back with a puzzled look on his face. Then he looked down at his knife, and the bread in his hands, as if he wasn’t sure why they were there. His customer turned away with a snort.
“Forget it. Life’s too short.”
The meatball man seemed not to have heard. He turned his head and looked over his shoulder again.
Eslek followed his gaze. The little dog was still trotting in the wheel, with his tongue hanging out. But it wasn’t the abandoned dog which attracted Eslek’s attention so much as the meat hanging on the spit. It had been tightly bound to set it once the heat caught it; but with no one about to baste the meat, it was beginning to shrink. The pack of meat was gradually unravelling, stiffening, revealing to Eslek the shape of the beast it had once been. Two of its legs, paring away from the surprisingly slender body, were thick; the other two were smaller, wizened, in an attitude of prayer. It could have been a hare, except that that it was ten times bigger than any hare Eslek had ever seen.
The meatball vendor must have noticed him, because he sud—denly said: “I don’t get what’s going on. There’s been no one at that stall all morning, not since I come. The dog must be fair knackered.” He swallowed, and Eslek could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “And what the fuck’s on the spit?”
Eslek felt the hairs prickling on the back of his neck.
“I’ll tell you one thing, mate,” he growled. “It sure as shit ain’t halal.”
