City of the Lost

‘Am I supposed to be following this?’

‘Sorry. I’m thinking out loud. You see, when I was arranging our itinerary, this was the only leg of the trip that Nathan insisted on, even though there was nothing for us to do here. We had to arrive last night, we had to stay at the Daphne International Hotel, and we couldn’t leave for Cyprus until the day after tomorrow.’

‘Ah,’ said Iain.

‘And Nathan only decided to make this trip two weeks ago. You don’t know him, but that’s completely out of character. He likes to have everything just so.’ She gave a little grimace. ‘He liked to, I should say. Spontaneity was never his thing. Yet suddenly he decides to come here. And you should have seen how excited he’s been these past few days. And that hotel! It was nice enough, yes, but Nathan was rich. I mean really, really rich. I could easily have found us something far nicer, like the place we had in Istanbul, you should have seen it. But no, he insisted on that specific hotel. And then this morning he tells me that he and Rick have a meeting, and that I should go out and not come back for at least two hours.’

Iain nodded. ‘So you think your whole trip here was in fact cover for this meeting?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

‘Do you know who it was with?’

‘No.’

‘But you suspect someone was offering him artefacts for sale, right? And that this package for your friend Mike in New Cairo contains samples he wanted tested? To authenticate the pieces before he handed over any cash?’

Karin grimaced. ‘Nathan never cared too much about provenance,’ she said. ‘At least, that’s not fair, he did care, he cared a lot. But he thought it worth pushing the boundaries a little if it meant getting important pieces back into the public domain. He donated all those sorts of acquisitions to museums, you see. The black market’s still illegal, though, however honourable your intentions. And he told me once that he almost got caught here in Turkey several years ago. So what do I do? I can’t see how telling the police would help the investigation, but what if it could? Yet if I tell them about it, and they use it to trash his reputation, I’d hate myself. Or what if they accuse me of being his accomplice? I wasn’t, I swear I wasn’t. It never even occurred to me until a moment ago. But how could I possibly prove that?’

‘So post it to this Walker guy,’ suggested Iain. ‘You’d have done it anyway.’

‘But they’re bound to be keeping an eye on those sorts of places, aren’t they? What with the bomb, I mean. Or what if Mike notifies them himself after he receives it? It’ll look like I was trying to hide it. And I showed it to that policeman, remember? What if he asks for it?’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sounded a little close to the edge suddenly; shock often got to people in unexpected ways. ‘Maybe to find out who Nathan was meeting. To identify his body or something. What would I do then?’

He took the package from her, packed it away in his holdall at the foot of his wardrobe. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You were badly shaken by the explosion. I took it from you to carry. What with everything else, you never even gave it another thought.’

‘But I—’

‘You never even gave it another thought. If anyone asks for it, which they won’t, frown and say you think maybe I have it. If they ask me, I’ll give it to them and your boss’ reputation will have to take a hit. That’s all. But it won’t happen, I promise you. Nor will anyone come after you. They’ve got far more important things to worry about.’

She let out a deep breath. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘And not only for this. For everything. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without you.’

‘Just glad I could help,’ he said.

III

A smallholding near Gornec

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Zehra Inzanoğlu was breaking up soil in her top field when she heard the engine. It sounded strained and urgent, with a different pitch to any of her neighbours’ vehicles. Nor did it sound much like the hire-car of one of the hapless tourists who sometimes got themselves lost up here while trying to find some imaginary shortcut across the mountains to the north coast.

She rested her mattock against her thigh, brushed dry earth from her hands. The car crested the low rise and came into view. It was old, pale blue and patched in places with grey filler and black tape, and her heart gave a little skip of recognition as it pulled to a stop on the hardened mud track near the steps to her cottage. Then the driver door opened and her son Taner stepped out.

He was taller than she remembered. He’d filled out in the chest and shoulders too. When she’d last seen him, it had been possible to think of him as a boy, her boy, though he’d been twenty-four, married and about to become a parent himself. But he was a man now, beyond question. She walked down the path towards him, but stopped several paces short and held her mattock out like a pikestaff. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

He tried a smile. ‘I need help, Mother,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘I need your help.’

She shook her head slowly. He was flesh and blood so saying no to him could never come easily. But the choice had been his. She and her husband had made the consequences of his betrayal perfectly clear. ‘You should have thought of that before.’

‘I’m not asking for myself,’ he said. He turned and beckoned to the car. The passenger door opened and a girl of perhaps ten years old climbed out. She was wearing a school uniform of royal blue with yellow bands, and her hair was of a lustrous black that tumbled in glossy curls down to and beyond her shoulders. Her mouth was mutinous and her eyes were bloodshot from rubbing or weeping. Even so, she looked so strikingly like how Zehra’s younger sister had looked at that age that it was a punch in her chest. ‘This is your granddaughter Katerina, Mother,’ said Taner. ‘Katerina, this is your grandmother Zehra.’ They stared at each other for several moments, uncertain what to say or do, so that in the end it was Taner himself who had to break the silence. ‘I need you to look after her for a few days, Mother,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m about to be arrested.’

That caught her attention. She tore her eyes from her granddaughter. ‘Arrested?’

‘The bomb.’

‘What bomb?’

‘On the mainland. Haven’t you heard?’

‘I don’t listen to news.’

‘It killed many people. And they’re blaming me and my friends.’

‘With reason?’

He flinched as though she’d slapped him. ‘Of course not, Mother,’ he said. ‘I detest violence. But plenty of people don’t like what we stand for and this is their chance to shut us up.’

Zehra nodded at Katerina. ‘Why can’t her mother look after her?’

‘Athena’s dead, Mother. She died last year.’

‘Oh.’ Despite herself, despite her promises, she felt an unexpected pang of pity for her son, for there was no doubting that he’d loved his wife, and she knew what it was to lose someone you loved. ‘Don’t you have friends?’

‘They’re going to arrest them too. They’ll arrest all of us. They made that absolutely clear after the last time. So it’s either you or sending her to stay with her mother’s family in Paphos.’ He gave her a shrewd look. ‘And if I send her there, how can I be sure they’ll ever let her come back?’

Zehra sniffed. She knew he was trying to manipulate her, but it was the truth too. Greek Cypriots couldn’t be trusted, which was precisely why she’d warned him against marrying one in the first place. She was about to point this out when she heard other engines approaching. ‘I told them I was coming here,’ explained her son. ‘I didn’t want them to think I was trying to run.’ He went to Katerina, crouched down before her so that she could see the seriousness on his face. He murmured something. She shook her head. He murmured it again, more forcefully. She took a couple of half-hearted steps towards Zehra then stopped and looked around. ‘Please, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘For Daddy.’ She nodded and went unhappily over to Zehra. ‘Be kind to each other,’ he said. Then he turned and raised his arms above his head and walked up the short hill to meet the two black SUVs now cresting it. They pulled to a stop either side of him. Doors opened. Six uniformed and plain-clothes policemen got out. They cuffed him roughly and bundled him into one of the SUVs, climbed in either side. The drivers executed a neat ballet to turn in the constricted space, then headed off. Taner looked back through the rear window, his palms pressed against the glass, but then they were gone, leaving only the fading noise of their engines and thin clouds of settling dust.

Zehra turned and looked bleakly at her granddaughter. Her granddaughter looked bleakly back. What now? It was Katerina who made the first move. She clenched her eyes, opened her mouth, and began – at a quite appalling volume – to howl.

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