“They’ll just make assumptions.”
“Julia.”
She gets to her feet. “I need a shower.”
16
Julia slips from the hotel room just before daybreak, clutching the tourist map in her hand. She’s heading for the waterfront and the port of Eminonu, a ten-minute walk from the hotel. Pausing at the brick wall boarding the railway, Julia squints at the line Ada had drawn in ink on the map. In the pale dawn light Julia can barely make out Ada’s chicken scratch. Taking a calculated guess, she continues west until she finds the train station, then exits through a set of bifold doors, emerging in a busy area called Sirkeci. She follows a set of tramlines past the Burger King and KFC until she gets to a main road heavy with morning traffic.
She looks across the road and sees the quarter-mile-long Galata Bridge, the primary link between the historic and modern districts of Istanbul. Despite the early hour, fishermen are on the bridge bent over the railings and dropping lines into the water. She needs to go left of the bridge toward the bus depot.
When the traffic lights change, Julia crosses the road and reaches the paved promenade along the waterfront. Continuing past locals queuing for the ferries, she ignores the call of a passing vendor with a basket of pretzel bread balanced on his head and keeps heading west, searching for the Galata Bridge underpass leading to the bus depot and the sea wall beyond that.
She thinks of the drone photograph of the backpack. Piers and ferries at one end, Toni’s backpack on a sea wall at the other.
Julia looks around as she walks, conscious she could be following in Toni’s very footsteps. It’s an eerie feeling and Julia tries to quell the growing sense of anxiety. But disturbing questions pop into her mind regardless. If Toni had come this way, was it voluntary or had she been forced? Was she frightened? Had she reached out for help from a passerby only to be ignored?
Julia thinks of when they were kids, and how Toni would be off talking to strangers in the grocery store or in the park or the street. Anyone who smiled or looked Toni’s way would get peppered with questions. Where are you from? Do you have any kids? What’s your favorite food? Do you have a dog? Julia would have to pull her away. You don’t even know that person, Toni. You’ve got to be careful. There are people out there who want to hurt kids like you. And Toni would say, But they’re nice. I just want to say hello.
Julia carries on and before long sees the bus depot. Feeling a sudden sense of urgency, she picks up pace, half-jogging until she reaches the sea wall. She stops. In front of her, around a rusty railing, a length of torn police tape flaps like a streamer.
Taking care not to slip, she descends the crumbling concrete steps until she reaches the top of the rocks. She looks down, hair a frenzy in the ocean breeze. Just below is a pink circle of spray paint on the rocks, the same spot in the photograph where the backpack had been. A chill runs through her. She stares at the pink circle for a long time, then turns and walks away.
17
“Where the hell have you been?”
Julia looks up and sees Leo standing in the corridor outside her door. She nudges past him, slipping the key card into the lock.
“I didn’t realize I’d be gone so long.”
Leo waves the crumpled Be back soon note she’d pushed under his door earlier.
“You can’t just disappear like that,” he says, following her into her room. “What was I supposed to think?” He looks down at his socks. “What the hell.”
Julia follows his gaze. He’s standing in a wet puddle.
She sighs. “God, the fridge. The buzzing was keeping me awake, so I turned it off. The ice must have melted.”
She goes into the bathroom, returns with a towel, and crouches to mop up the puddle.
“Listen, Julia,” says Leo. “I’m here to help you. I’m just as worried as you about Toni. She’s like my little—”
“Sister?” Julia hears the bitter undertone to her voice, immediately hates herself for it.
Leo’s face falls. “You’re never going to let it go, are you?”
They stare at each other.
“You want me to leave?” he says.
Julia looks at him and feels a stab of regret. “I went to the place where they found Toni’s backpack.”
“Oh.”
“I had to see it for myself.”
He gives her a sympathetic look. “That must have been tough.”
“I thought it might make me think of something.”
“And did it?”
“No.”
Leo reaches for her hand but she pretends not to see. She dumps the wet towel in the bathtub, then returns to check the stack of flyers in her satchel.
“I hate this,” she says. “This lack of facts. Someone must know something.” She stands, shouldering her bag.
“Where are you going now?”
“I arranged to meet Yasmin. She’s the one who reported Toni missing.”
Leo frowns. “You think that’s wise? The Turkish police might think you’re interfering with the investigation.”
She throws her hands in the air. “We can’t just sit around here and do nothing.”
Leo stares at her.
“I just want to talk to her, Leo. Where’s the harm in that?”
“Fine,” he says, exhaling. “But at least give me a chance to change my socks.”
18
They follow the tramline past shop windows piled high with pyramids of pink and lemon Turkish delight and pistachio-encrusted baklava dissected into perfect rounds. Restaurants are opening for the morning, and the aroma of freshly brewed Turkish coffee drifts out onto the street. It’s not long before the hill levels off and Istanbul’s two most famous mosques come into view. The Blue Mosque and
