Ada discreetly slips out the door.
Julia faces Leo. “Really, I’m okay. Go back to whatever you were doing.”
“Wait there,” he says.
Before she can argue, he ducks through the adjoining door and returns holding a candy bar.
He wiggles it back and forth in front of her face. “It’s Paleo.”
“Paleo?”
“I’ve been training for a marathon.”
She stifles a laugh. “You’ve never run a mile in your life.”
“People can change, Julia. I take care of myself now. Better than you apparently. When was the last time you saw the inside of a gym?”
“Leo, I’m on my feet all day in surgery.”
“Spare me,” he scoffs. He removes the wrapper and gives her the bar. “Eat it.”
She takes it, chews, feels better almost immediately. He disappears into the bathroom, comes back with a glass of water, and holds it out.
She shakes her head. “No way. That’s diarrhea in a glass.”
He shrugs and drinks it in one go.
“For God’s sake, Leo,” cries Julia. “You’ll get sick.”
He pats his belly. “Constitution of an ox, Julia, you know that.”
He looks at the flyer of Toni on the wall. She immediately feels stupid for putting it up there.
She turns away. “Like I said, I’m fine now, Leo. I don’t need a guardian.”
“I know you don’t,” he says, grabbing the TV remote.
He makes himself comfortable on the bed, hand behind his head, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He flicks through the channels. CNN. Turkish News. Home Alone 2. Finds a sports game. Settles on that. South Africa vs. All Blacks. Rugby.
Julia hates sports but decides it’s not worth the fight. Instead she takes a seat in the tub chair and checks her phone. “It’s been hours, they should have come for us up by now.”
But Leo’s not listening. The player in the number fifteen jersey has just kicked a goal.
13
Light has all but faded by the time the knock on the door finally arrives. This time Leo’s the one who’s fallen asleep and Julia gives him a nudge as she crosses the floor.
“Hey, wake up. I think they’re here.”
The first thing she notices when she opens the door is the man’s incredibly sad eyes. Dark pools of deep hazel that betray a lifetime of human grief. It’s the way he holds himself too, shoulders rounded beneath his crumpled suit, the slight bend of his head. She’s seen the same thing before with the surviving spouses of terminal patients. He’s a larger build than Leo, with black hair streaked with silver. Early sixties or thereabouts, Julia guesses.
The man wipes a big hand on his trouser leg and offers it to Julia. “Merhaba, I am Emri Muhtar. I am Turkish police detective. Please, I am showing you this.” He holds up a photo ID written in Turkish. “Okay? Like I say, police.”
“Police?”
“Correct.”
He steps inside the room and glances around.
Julia’s puzzled. “We were expecting someone from the embassy. A Christine Fletcher.”
He stops to look at the flyer of Toni on the wall. Without turning, he says, “I am taking you to the embassy now.”
“Do you have news?” says Julia.
“We still search.”
He turns to look at her, then Leo, then at the open door to the adjacent room.
“My apologies,” says Julia. “This is Leo Fraser. My former husband.”
Leo shakes his hand.
The detective blinks. “Okay, nice. All the family is here.”
“Have you dealt with missing persons investigations before?” asks Julia.
The detective looks at his shoe. The lace is undone. He crouches to tie it.
“It is better that we speak at embassy,” he says, standing. “We go now, okay?”
He shows them to his car, a navy Fiat in serious need of a clean. There’s a huge dent in the driver’s door and a crack along the corner of the back window. Leaning into the back seat, the detective sweeps aside food wrappers, crumpled coffee cups, and newspapers. There’s a suit jacket and sweater, too. He snatches them up and tosses them in the front seat, then stands back and gestures for Julia and Leo to get in.
“Please.”
Julia slides across and Leo follows. It stinks of stale smoke and French fries and Julia wishes she could wind down the window but doesn’t want to appear rude.
“So far, so good,” whispers Leo.
But Julia doesn’t think it’s funny. She gives Leo a look, then stares out the window, trying to quell her growing sense of concern.
They drive through the same area as before, up and down the narrow roads, past the shops and footpaths still busy with tourists. It’s later now, though, so people are eating in the open-air restaurants, crouched on cushions around low tables, tearing chunks from pita bread and scooping them into bowls of hummus. It’s dark out and there are lights, pretty ones, old-fashioned streetlamps radiating a warm glow across the stone cobbles, and clusters of stained-glass lanterns hanging from shop eaves, emitting a kaleidoscope of striking ruby, emerald, and sapphire colors. Julia wonders if Toni has seen any of this, whether she has eaten alfresco at one of the busy restaurants or walked beneath the streetlamps along the narrow footpaths searching for trinkets.
There’s a shuffle from the front seat as Detective Muhtar digs inside his jacket pocket, pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and puts one in his mouth. He flicks the lighter, then pauses, eyes hitting the rearview.
“Okay to smoke?” he says, unlit cigarette dangling between his lips.
“Actually, I’m a doctor,” says Julia.
He blinks at her and nods, takes the cigarette from his mouth.
“Yes. Dirty habit. I try to stop many times.”
They carry on uphill, driving parallel with the overland commuter train. Quite suddenly, a haunting Arabic voice rings out above the building tops.
“The call to prayer,” says Detective Muhtar, seeing their surprise. “It happens five times a day. All the prayers are in Arabic but Turks speak Turkish so we never know what the imam is saying. Not for my whole life do I know what he is saying.”
He shakes his head as if he thinks the whole thing is ridiculous.
“Imam?” says Leo.
“The holy man. Like your priest or preacher in the West.”
