He grinned again. ‘Them box-heads have always got the hump about something or other.’
We could have waffled on. I could have told him about Kelly — he’d known her dad, Kev. But we’d done the social bit, and I was here to find Charlie.
‘Can you give me some idea where the old fucker’s gone? I promised Hazel I’d give him the lecture. You know how it is.’
Dave gave a smile that told me he did, and he’d heard it a hundred times. ‘You know I can’t tell you anything, mate. It’s the deal with the companies: they don’t want anybody knowing what jobs they’ve got going on. And if everybody went home as soon as their wives started honking, there’d be hardly any fucker working.’
He put down his mug and gripped the arms of his wheelchair. He lifted himself a couple of inches out of the seat and held himself there; maybe something to do with circulation, or to stop pressure sores developing on his arse.
‘What about yourself, Nick? I haven’t heard your name mentioned on the circuit; what you doing?’
‘Oh, you know… Stuff.’ I shrugged and smiled. ‘Look, Dave, I don’t need to know what Charlie’s up to. I just want to be able to phone up Hazel and say I spoke to him.’
He put his tea down and wheeled himself back alongside me. ‘Sorry, mate, but you’re fucked. Apart from security, what if you convinced him to head back for the pipe and cocoa? I’d have to find a replacement. And anyway, he was gagging for a job. I didn’t make him come to me, did I?’
He swivelled the chair and headed off towards the door. ‘Tell you what, I’m going for a dump. I’ve been trying to put a toilet in here, but planning won’t let me, the bastards.’ He whistled through the French windows and down the ramp.
‘Hey, Nick, watch this!’
I got up and went to the door just as he lifted his front wheels and did a 360. ‘I’ve got to close up, mate. Want to wait in the front room and finish your brew? What about a pint, later?’
I followed him outside and watched as he locked the garage doors with one of a bunch of about half a dozen keys.
We went into the living room and he carried on to the bottom of the stairs. As I sat down he transferred himself onto the lift. Then he selected another key from the bunch, pushed it into a control box on the wall, and gave it a turn. The chair glided slowly upwards.
‘You need a hand, Dave?’
‘Nah, it’s rigged up like a monkey’s climbing frame up here.’
The moment I heard the bathroom door close, I was on my feet and heading for the kitchen. No sign of the fuse box. I tried the cupboard under the stairs. There were two rows of cutout switches encased in a neat rectangle of plastic, but not one of them was labelled. Fuck it; I turned the whole lot off at the master switch.
I went to the control box, grabbed the bunch of keys, and headed for the garage.
Charlie’s card was right at the front of the Bayonets box. It didn’t say who for, where, or what the job was, just that Dave had booked him a hotel room in Istanbul.
I locked up and went back to the living room.
‘Nick! The fucking power’s gone. Nick, you there?’
‘Coming, what’s up?’
I got the key back in the box just as Dave eased himself off another wheelchair at the top of the stairs and onto the lift. He hammered away at the down button like a lunatic.
‘See? I can’t even have a fucking dump in peace. Try a light for us, see if the power’s gone.’
I hit the hall switch. ‘Where’s the fuse box?’
Dave told me and I headed for it. A few moments later the microwave in the kitchen buzzed a power-cut warning and he started to make his way back down.
‘Dave — sorry, mate, but I can’t stay for that pint. If Charlie’s in touch, tell him to phone home — Hazel’s lost something and he’s the only one who knows where it is.’
3
One of the first things I always noticed about a new country was the smell. In the arrivals lounge at Ataturk International it had been of strong aftershave; in the back of this cab it was even stronger cigarettes. The driver was already sucking on his second since leaving the airport.
The traffic was chaos, and to add to the misery the driver sang along, between drags, to the loud Arab pop music that blared from the radio. He kept turning his head for approval, like he’d mistaken me for Simon Cowell and I was about to sign him to a billion-lira contract. His blue-eye talisman swung wildly from the rear-view mirror as we hurtled from one side of the road to the other. I hoped it worked as well with articulated lorries as it did against evil spirits; the driver’s eyes were everywhere but on the road.
Every leg of this journey had been a nightmare, Australia to Hereford, Hereford to Stansted, Stansted to Turkey. Stansted on its own deserved some sort of prize. It felt like I’d spent longer there than I had in the air from Brisbane.
I’d made my way to it from Crazy Dave’s without checking flights. I’d assumed one of the bucket carriers would be my best bet, and I just hoped I’d walk straight on. But of course I’d missed the last one by an hour, so had to spend the night stretched out on a row of anti-sleep seats in the terminal. And because I got there late, I’d missed the last of the baguettes at the only cafe still open. I settled for four packets of salt and vinegar instead, and two large coffees that proceeded to keep me awake all night.
Even though the weather was cold, grey and blustery, I kept the back windows of the taxi open, partly because I needed the ventilation, and partly because I thought it might help me in a crash. We finally got to the Barcelo Eresin Topkapi Hotel without being flattened. The journey had been only three cigarettes long.
I hadn’t had time to go online and check the place out, but it looked pretty impressive. A drive swept past the front of a large, four-storey building that wouldn’t have been out of place among the grand hotels along the Croisette in Cannes.
A huge banner over the entrance welcomed the architects of Germany to their very important conference. That was what I assumed it said, anyway. All I’d learned during my two years in Sennelager as an infantry soldier was how to ask for a beer and half a chicken and chips, and I’d normally ended up with two; if they asked me whether I’d like anything on it, I’d just order it all over again.
I paid the driver and headed through a pair of towering glass automatic doors into the lobby. An ornate rope barrier guided me towards a metal detector, maybe a hangover from the bomb attacks in 2003. Whatever, the security guard, whose shirt collar was at least three sizes too big for his neck, just waved me past, then busied himself hassling a couple of locals coming in behind me.
Three or four blonde girls were clustered on a portable exhibition stand to the right of reception. The display space behind their hospitality desk was lined with photos of glassy, high-tech buildings, and they could hardly move for the piles of goody bags on either side of them. The architects were clearly getting the warmest of welcomes.
The lobby was constructed entirely of dark wood and pale marble. I kept walking, looking for signs that would point me to the bar, a cafe, even a toilet — it didn’t matter, so long as I looked as if I knew where I was going.
I headed for a big leather armchair at the bottom of a flight of marble steps where people sat drinking tea. I ordered myself a double espresso, and tried to resist the urge to put my head back; it wouldn’t have taken me long to flake out.
The coffee took for ever to come, but it didn’t matter. I waited and watched. A group disgorged from a plush Mercedes coach and were shepherded straight to the hospitality desk.
I picked up one of the ‘This place is great’ type brochures. The hotel, it told me, ‘distances itself from and to the following point of interests: only 3 kilometres from the famous Covered Bazaar, Suleymaniye Mosque, Blue Mosque, and Topkapi Palace’. All the rooms had a ‘luxurious bathroom’ and, what was more, ‘own private hairdyer
