Hotel Bosphorus (21 page)

“Two beers, five million,” I said to Gust.

Gust got up again, rummaged in his pockets and pulled out ten marks, which he held out to the waiter. The waiter looked at the money and said, “We don't take marks.”

“They don't take marks,” I said to Gust. “Haven't you got any Turkish lira?”

“No,” said Gust. Still holding out the money, he said, “Can they change it at reception?”

“Maybe, but you can't pay the bill with marks.”

“What nonsense,” said Gust. “In that case, he can change this note at reception.”

One of the pink faces supported Gust, saying, “Yes, he can change it at reception.”

Gust was still waving the ten-mark note about as if he was showing a dog a bone. I was in the process of deciding whose mouth I'd stuff that money down while the waiter stood anxiously without moving a muscle.

Suddenly, a bearded man appeared next to us out of nowhere.

“Are you wanting to pay the bill in marks?” he asked in German.

Gust was so pleased to be able to explain without an interpreter that he jumped in first.

“Yes,” he said.

“This is Turkey,” said the bearded man. “Bills are paid in Turkish lira here.”

“But they change marks at reception,” said Gust, clinging to his only argument. However, his tone of voice suggested that he was starting to cave in.

“Would I try to pay a bill in Germany with Turkish lira?” said the bearded man, who had clearly been irritated by the Germans on an earlier occasion.

The group threw sheepish glances at each other.

“But…” said Gust, trying once more.

“No buts. Here bills are paid in Turkish lira.” Just as he was leaving, he turned and said, “And don't talk so loudly. It's disturbing for us.”

He walked away, sat down in an armchair in the far corner and buried himself in a newspaper.

The woman who had just said she loved Istanbul held out a five-million-lira note to the waiter.

“A coffee,” she said in English.

The waiter took the money and, not having understood the argument that had taken place in German, looked at me questioningly and asked, “What happened, ma'am?”

“Never mind,” I said. “They're going to pay the bill in Turkish lira.”

 

We left a note for Miss Bauer and Otto at reception and left the hotel. It was a ten-minute walk to the Hasır café.

“We try to make everywhere we go conform to our own little world, don't we?” said the woman who loved Istanbul. She had skilfully moved away from her crew and was walking next to me.

Smiling, I said, “You mean like paying bills in marks?”

“Yes, that's an example. The same goes for drinking beer and eating sausages. It makes me shiver to see how
German stereotypes are true. I don't know if you've ever been to Mallorca. They've established a small German province there. You'd never know you were in another country. The weather is warmer of course and the sun shines all the time. But that's all.”

“Have you ever lived abroad?” I asked. In my experience, only those who have lived abroad have what it takes to criticize their own people, especially in the case of Germans.

She turned her head quickly towards me. “You can tell, can't you?” she said. “I was married to an Egyptian. He worked in foreign affairs and we travelled a lot. When we divorced, I went back to my old work. This film's my first big job.” She shook her head and continued, “As you see, I don't have much luck. Look what happened.”

What more could I ask for? The conversation had come round to exactly where I wanted without me saying anything.

“You mean the murder.” I said. That wasn't a question. “If you ask me, the people in your group don't seem very upset by it.”

“Nobody knew Müller very well. Only…” She stopped, unsure whether to finish her sentence. She suddenly seemed to be taking great care not to trip over the uneven pavement, a popular feature of Istanbul city planning. Her eyes didn't stray from her feet to look at me for even a second.

“You mean Petra?” I said.

She looked at me carefully and said, “So you know too.”

“If you mean that it was Petra who arranged the job for Müller, then yes, I've heard about it. But a relationship between them was out of the ques—”

I had difficulty stopping myself from shouting at a man who bumped into my shoulder as he passed by.

“Petra says there was no relationship between them,” I continued, gossiping to this woman I'd known for five minutes as if she was an old friend. It wasn't something to be proud of.

The woman went back to studying her feet. “I didn't think they were in a relationship either,” she said.

That was interesting.

“Why?” I asked, leaning forward in order to see her face.

She put her arm through mine, brought her mouth close to my ear so that the others wouldn't hear, and continued talking in a low voice. We had fallen to the back of the group so there wasn't anyone nearby to hear us anyway.

“I saw how she behaved towards Müller. At Berlin airport, Müller put his arm round her waist and she pushed his hand away with an expression of real revulsion, and immediately moved away. And after we arrived in Istanbul, I saw them together having breakfast. I… I don't want to exaggerate, but I have a sense for that sort of thing. A woman would never behave that way towards a man she was having, or was going to have, a relationship with. I'm certain there was nothing between them.” She pursed her lips and added, “I don't think there ever would have been.”

“But there's no proof that nothing was going on between Petra and the murdered man,” I said.

“Proof?” She lifted her head and looked at me as if to ask what more did I want.

Gust, the natural leader of the group, was calling to us from in front. I shouted back that we hadn't yet reached the Hasır café.

“OK, so who do you think did this murder?” I asked the woman. I felt sure she'd have an opinion about it.

“I don't think it was anyone in the film crew. It must have been someone from outside. Perhaps he called for a prostitute that night.” She stopped and sighed. “You know, he was just the sort of man to go with prostitutes. Maybe he didn't pay the woman and she got angry and psht…” As she said this, she lifted her left arm and opened her fingers as if she was dropping an object to the ground.

“Why do you think it wasn't one of the crew?” I asked.

“Why not?” she said. “You can say many things about the crew, but none of them has it in them,” she said finally.

“So you had a hunch…”

“Yes, a hunch.” She stopped. “But don't make light of my hunches.”

I smiled.

“You mean it was simply gossip that Petra and Müller were having an affair?” I asked. This matter kept preying on my mind.

“In my view, yes.”

“Who do you think started this gossip?”

“I don't know who started it, but they managed to persuade the whole crew that it was true.” Taking hold of my arm again, she smiled grimly and said, “See, even you were persuaded.” She wasn't bad-looking really but, despite being no more than four or five years older than me, her dress style and mannerisms were already making her look old.

I looked around in an attempt to get away from all this gossip and saw that we'd passed the Hasır.

The café, known to Istanbul regulars as “the Hasır next to the police station”, was in a Tarlabaşı basement that was reached by a low-ceilinged flight of stairs. When anyone asked why this basement was preferable to the evening cool of the cafés and fish restaurants on the Bosphorus, clients always gave the same reply as if by agreement: they served great
meze
at the Hasır.

As soon as the head waiter saw the large group of tourists at the door, he waved his hand at his small army of
commis
waiters and ordered them to pull some tables together.

We finally managed to sit down and to my horror I found myself sitting between the two pink faces. I made no objection because the chair opposite was vacant and I hoped Miss Bauer would soon come and sit there.

By the time Otto, the German newspaper correspondent in Turkey, and Miss Bauer appeared, we were halfway through our
meze
course. The pink faces on either side of me were already drunk because of the beers they'd had earlier at the hotel. Miss Bauer didn't sit opposite me as I'd hoped, but went to sit next to Gust at the other end of the table and, from what I could hear, immediately proceeded to give an account of why they were late. Even someone without well-developed hunches could see these two were more than just friends.

I had no choice but to start up a conversation with Otto, who had sat down opposite me.

“Gust told me you live in Istanbul,” I said.

“It would be more true to say that I work in Istanbul,” he said. Was he saying that Istanbul was no place to live?

“Don't you like it here?”

“No, not at all. How could I?” he said.

“I like it,” I said. He laughed disdainfully.

“You don't live in Istanbul, that's why. I think it's a very attractive place for tourists and the food is wonderful.”

“I'm not a tourist. I've lived here for thirteen years,” I said.

“Thirteen years?”

I nodded. “And I intend to live here for another thirteen years.”

He didn't seem very keen to argue with me because he kept his head down and studied his plate of
meze
until the waiter asked him what he wanted to drink.

When I heard him ask the waiter in English for a glass of white wine, I realized this was my chance.

“It must be difficult to understand a country and write about it without knowing the language,” I blurted out. I didn't care; making fun of him had to be better than trying to chat to the two pink faces on either side of me.

“We can't learn the language of every country we go to,” he said. “We move from one country to another every few years. Which language should we learn?”

“But if you don't know the language, you can't read the newspapers and you can't sit in cafés talking to people.”

“I work with an interpreter,” he said, making a last attempt to end the conversation.

“If you knew Turkish, you'd like Istanbul.” I said this in a romantic tone and, with the same romantic voice, added, “As an Istanbul poet said, anyone who doesn't love Istanbul doesn't know the meaning of love…”

Then I suddenly became serious.

“Did you write the articles about the murder?”

The man was trying to find a link between the different topics and my quick changes of mood.

“We haven't met, have we?” he said finally.

I extended my hand across the plate of sardines that lay between us and said, “I learnt from Gust that your name is Otto. I'm Kati Hirschel,” I said.

“Otto Frisch,” he said. He shook my hand a few times with his large fingers. “Call me Otto,” he said.

“And you can call me Kati,” I said.

I suddenly realized everyone at the table had their head turned towards me. The waiter was standing with pen and paper in hand, waiting to take the order. I signalled with my hand towards Otto and turned to my left.

“Shall we eat fish?” said the woman who liked Istanbul, leaning forward to look at me.

“I think so,” I said, and embarked on a conversation with the waiter about which fish was in season.

When I decided that we'd eat gilt-headed bream, the others were still staring at me in silence.

“I don't know the German name of the fish I ordered,” I said.

“We'll see what it is when it arrives,” said the woman who liked Istanbul, leaning back in her chair.

Otto patted the front pocket of his shirt and said, “I have a dictionary, let's see what it is.” There was no chance of him producing Steuerwald's thousand-page Turkish/German dictionary out of that shirt pocket, and in fact he got out a small yellow plastic-covered Langenscheidt and waved it in the air.

“Don't bother looking, it's not in there,” I said.

“How do you spell it?” he asked obstinately.

I started to spell out the word for him.

“You're right, it's not in here,” he said, after looking for it optimistically. Meanwhile the pink faces, who had been silent for a while, had started to talk to each other in a spray of spittle.

“Would you like to change places with me?” I asked the one on my right.

This meant I was one seat further away from the rest of the team, but at least I had escaped from the beery breath of the two pink faces.

Again I asked Otto, “Did you write the murder article?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Then I've read what you wrote,” I said.

“What I wrote wasn't anything much. I doubt if there'll be any further developments to justify writing more about it,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. Was I the only one who hadn't given up hope over this?

“No reason at all. It's an unsolvable murder. I had an interview today with the inspector who is investigating this murder; it'll be published tomorrow. He says they don't have any leads and they're preparing to close the file. At this rate, that will happen in a couple of days.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“Do you know him?” he asked, as he tried to swallow a mouthful of sardines.

“I know someone on the homicide desk.”