Julia feels sick. “God.”
Leo gestures toward the threadbare sofa by the stairs. “Let’s wait over here.”
Forty-five minutes later, Detective Muhtar emerges from the room shaking his head. “No sign of blood or struggle.”
Julia is flooded with relief.
“But the room has been occupied and cleaned since your sister was here,” says Detective Muhtar. “So we do not know for sure if any foul play has occurred in the room.”
“How many nights was Toni booked in for?”
Detective Muhtar steps out of his paper suit. “She had no booking. The receptionist said Toni walked in off the street and pay cash for one night. Also interesting is that after Mustafa Saat dropped Toni at the hotel, she came to reception for a replacement key card saying she’d lost the other one. No key card was ever found in Mustafa’s car. We went back to the nightclub. There was no key card found there, either.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” says Julia.
“There is more security footage to examine. One camera just outside the hotel entrance, one in the foyer, one on each floor. None in the elevator. It will take some time to review.” He looks at his watch. “It is late. You should go back to hotel. I will call you.”
Julia crosses her arms and looks at him. Detective Muhtar lets out a breath.
“You want to come,” he says.
“You read my mind.”
60
“Hey, Julia. Wake up.”
Julia stirs. “What is it?”
“You were having a nightmare,” says Leo. “A pretty heavy one by the sounds of it.”
A patchy memory comes to her. Toni calling out from all the dark Istanbul places. Julia searching. A body wedged between two dumpsters. Headless and limp.
Julia looks down. She’s on a couch beneath Leo’s jacket.
“Police station, remember?” says Leo. “The CCTV tapes? They’re viewing them next door.”
Julia rubs her eyes. “Have they found anything yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
The door swings open. Detective Muhtar stands there looking haggard, shirt untucked, five o’clock shadow darkening his face.
“There’s something you should see.”
He shows them into the small, dimly lit room containing three large computer monitors. The room smells of body odor and electrical equipment left on too long. An exhausted-looking policewoman with glasses is seated at the largest monitor controlling the keyboard.
“Play it,” says Detective Muhtar.
She hits enter. A timer runs across the bottom of the screen, showing seconds, the date, the time. 3:30 a.m. Three hours after Mustafa said he dropped Toni at the hotel. The footage is of the empty hotel foyer. The receptionist sits on a stool on the small desk, scrolling through a tablet, cheekbone resting on his fist.
“What are we looking for?” says Julia.
“Keep watching.”
A figure appears. Male. He strides across the foyer and heads for the stairs, confident gait, as if he belongs there. The receptionist glances up, then returns to his tablet unconcerned. The male reaches the foot of the stairs and the camera captures the side of his face.
“Zoom in,” says Detective Muhtar.
The policewoman does and Julia gasps. Staring back at her is the handsome, boyish face of Dr. Daniel Bambury.
61
Daniel lifts his hand and wipes perspiration from his brow. The woman at the car hire place hadn’t batted an eyelash when he asked for a van with tinted windows. Why would she? He was simply another Brit on holiday, making his way across Turkey, spending his tourist dollars, keeping the local economy ticking over. When she asked if he wanted to upgrade to the more expensive insurance that included extra benefits to beneficiaries, should he, for instance, die in a car accident, he declined. Then he’d given her his best smile and she lowered her eyes and blushed. Women were funny like that. A little bit of attention could go a long way.
So now here he was, Istanbul long behind him, barreling down the highway heading toward Cappadocia, Toni deep in dreamland on the mattress in the back of the van.
Daniel had been surprised when he went to retrieve Toni from the hiding place how much her recovery had progressed. The caretaker had done well, administering the medication exactly as requested, tending to his little patient with a level of care that even Florence Nightingale herself would have been proud of. It was amazing what a satisfactory level of payment could do.
There’s a groan from the back. He glances over his shoulder.
“All right, princess? Heat too much? It is a tad stuffy in here.”
Daniel fiddles with the knobs on the old-fashioned air conditioner, flicking the lever down to blue. Perhaps he should have upgraded to a later model after all. No, he’s right to be careful with money. They would need it for the journey to Laos, to set up their home in Lao Prabang. He smiles at the thought of their little house and the children Toni would bear, the fish he would catch in the Mekong.
He thinks back to that night in Club Asena, when he presented Toni with his plan for their wonderful life together.
“There’s a little village where I can get work at the local clinic, my love. It is so cheap we can have our very own house and start a family.”
Toni had looked at him like he was mad. “You’ve got to be joking, Daniel. It’s over. You need to accept that and move on.”
Then she walked out the door, his dream for a beautiful life together right along with her. That’s when the real drama began. He never wanted her to get hurt. Not in the slightest. The entire thing had been a terrible accident. He had only followed her back to her hotel with the intention of trying to persuade her to come with him to Laos. He’d never dreamed she would run off and fall down the fire exit stairs like that. When he heard the smack of her skull against the steel barrier, he thought she was
