Another groan from the back. Daniel’s eyes flick to the rearview. She’s waking. That really won’t do. There are hours of driving ahead of them yet. Daniel turns off the highway to a remote road, pulls over, and squeezes himself through the seats into the rear of the van.
He takes out his black leather pouch and unrolls it, eyes skimming the vials of sedatives, antibiotics, malaria medication, and fresh needles, things he had appropriated from the third-world hospitals where he’d worked. Taking a syringe, he punctures the vial of midazolam with the needle, draws the full 5mg+. He fishes out Toni’s arm beneath the blanket and taps a vein. He pauses to look her. His beautiful sleeping beauty, heaven sent, just for him. But he mustn’t linger. They need to make it to the next village before nightfall.
He slips in the needle. Toni gasps then drifts back into silence. Daniel smiles. His beautiful sleeping beauty indeed.
62
Daniel? Julia can’t believe they missed it. She’d had her initial suspicions, for sure. Not just about Daniel, but any one of the others in Toni’s circle. Yasmin. Sally. Debbie. Conner.
“There’s more,” says Detective Muhtar.
Julia turns back to the screen. Daniel exits from the lift on Toni’s floor with something in his hand.
“The keycard.”
“How did he get that?” says Leo.
Detective Muhtar signals to the female officer and she pulls up different CCTV footage. The one of Toni getting into Mustafa Saat’s car.
Julia frowns. “We’ve seen this already.”
Detective Muhtar speaks. “No one thought to check what happened after Toni drove off with Mustafa Saat. I decided to take a look and found this.”
They watch again as Toni exits the club and gets into Mustafa’s Lamborghini. The tape runs on. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. At forty-five seconds Daniel appears in the doorway and gets into a white van on the street and heads in the same direction as Toni.
“That confirms it then,” says Leo, sitting back. “Daniel is the mystery man that Toni was meeting at the club and he somehow got hold of her hotel keycard.”
“Is there any more footage of him at the hotel?” ask Julia.
Detective Muhtar shakes his head. “Unfortunately not. No cameras face the guest rooms. All we have is Daniel exiting the lift.”
“And none of Toni or Daniel leaving the building?” asks Julia.
“Correct.”
Detective Muhtar says something in Turkish to the policewoman. She taps a few keys and brings up a scanned copy of the hotel blueprints.
“Each floor has a fire exit to a stairwell that leads to a street exit. No cameras. It is likely that your sister and Daniel left the hotel this way.”
Julia walks the length of the room. “I don’t believe this. Is Daniel even his real name? Is he actually a genuine doctor?”
Detective Muhtar picks up a folder. “We are checking with Interpol. We are also retrieving his email and phone history. Both calls and texts. That will give us more information.”
Detective Muhtar pauses.
“What is it?” says Julia.
He looks at her evenly. “We found blood in the stairwell.”
Julia feels sick. “Oh God.”
“We will test for DNA.”
Leo shakes his head, confused. “But what about Daniel’s alibi? Yasmin Jefferson said she was with him in Bulgaria.”
Julia’s face darkens. “Yasmin Jefferson is a liar.”
63
Yasmin is shaking. She lowers her hands and clutches the loose-fitting fabric of her harem pants as if to steady her nerves. But it’s a losing battle. Her bottom lip begins to quiver wildly and she brings her hands to her mouth and starts to cry.
Julia is also shaking. With anger. She doesn’t feel sorry for Yasmin one little bit. This is the woman who led the investigation astray. The woman who betrayed them. The woman who, through her own selfish actions, put Toni’s life in grave danger.
In an effort to control her emotions, Julia forces herself to shift her gaze from Yasmin to the whiteboard above Yasmin’s head. She reads each word slowly. Apple. Banana. Pear. Apricot. Orange. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. She does this so she does not shout and thump the table. She does this so Yasmin will tell them everything she knows.
In the middle of the room, Leo and Detective Muhtar sit next to Yasmin. The seats are arranged in a half circle, like some sort of therapy session. Julia counts them. Thirteen in total. Thirteen chairs for one teacher and twelve English students. Five minutes earlier, the twelve students ranging from teens to old-timers had trailed past Julia when Yasmin had dismissed them mid-lesson after Detective Muhtar, Julia, and Leo had appeared at the door. On their way out, the students had shot furtive glances at Detective Muhtar (he had police written all over him) and exchanged whispers as they exited down the corridor. It would be the talk of the class for weeks.
Detective Muhtar pulls a clean handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to Yasmin.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, taking it.
She dabs her eyes and throws back her head and blinks at the ceiling. “God, how could I be so stupid.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” says Detective Muhtar.
“When I first met Daniel?”
“Yes.”
Shaking, Yasmin reaches for the water bottle on the desk behind her and takes a sip. She lowers the bottle.
“Okay. I can do this,” she says.
Pausing again, she brushes the fringe from her eyes. She looks up. “I met Daniel eighteen months ago in Hanoi. I’d just returned from
