Hotel Bosphorus (5 page)

His teachers had also noticed the change in Peter. “He's shown more interest in everything over the last two weeks. It's given us all hope,” they said.

Peter did not have even one friend, not a single person with whom he could share a secret. The children at his school did not know why Peter talked to that man, why he looked happy, why he held his hand or when he first met him. Peter did not keep a diary of what had been happening; in fact he couldn't really write properly. But he did draw pictures. A child psychiatrist working with the police tried to discover clues in his pictures, but came up with nothing.

Peter's photograph was distributed to all the surrounding towns and villages, but nobody had seen the boy since he was abducted. His pictures were shown on news bulletins and crime programmes in a bid for information from anyone who had seen him or knew
his whereabouts. There were over three thousand telephone tip-offs, but the outcome was zero. Petra hired a private detective, who was unable to find even the smallest clue.

Two months after his abduction, Peter's bruised and mangled body was found in Belgium, in woods surrounding a village near Brussels. The tiny body had been violated. The perpetrators were never found and there were no clues.

The driveway to the plushest and costliest hotel on the Bosphorus was seething with police and journalists' cars. The murder of one of their clients was probably not good for the hotel's reputation, at least in the short term. However, I doubt if the owners, whoever they were, cared very much.

The hotel was swarming with men who were obviously plain-clothes policemen. I had become really curious about the identity of the victim. When I asked at the reception desk where Petra might be, a woman told me Miss Vogel wasn't speaking to journalists.

“Oh, for God's sake,” I murmured to myself.

“I'm her friend. Please, would you call her, wherever she is, and tell her that her friend Kati is in the lobby?”

Without even waiting for me to finish my sentence, the woman turned her back and was gone. I noticed a male receptionist who looked a bit more human; this time I said I was Petra Vogel's friend and wanted to see her. Clearly everyone had got out of bed on the wrong side that day because he also stood his ground, saying, “Miss Vogel doesn't want to be disturbed, madam.”

When I asked him to at least give her a message, it did no good at all.

I am not a person to give up easily, so I decided to go and eat something in the hotel café and work out a strategy. The journalists were also there, picnicking in the café and, like me, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

I approached a woman sitting at a table apart from the others. I recognized her vivacious appearance and dyed blonde hair from one of the commercial news channels. Using all my networking skills, I told the woman that I recognized her from television and enjoyed her work, and I asked if she would answer a question for me.

She didn't look very impressed by my flattery. Nevertheless, she said, “Of course, sit down.”

“I'm Petra Vogel's friend and I want to see her but they've changed her room, and reception won't give me her new room number. Perhaps you…”

The woman glanced quickly at her notebook as I was talking, and murmured, “Petra Vogel, Petra Vogel.”

“I haven't written down her room number. Wait here, I'll find out from my colleagues and let you know,” she said, and disappeared.

I didn't understand who she meant by “colleagues”, but I didn't think the woman would come back anyway. She probably thought this was outside her remit. After all, she wasn't there to perform a public service and satisfy someone just because they flattered her. So I was amazed when, two minutes later, she returned with a list in her hand.

“You're looking for the film star who was staying in the Topkapı suite, aren't you?” she said.

“Yes,” I replied eagerly.

“They've moved her to Room 724.”

I looked gratefully at the woman.

“May I ask you another question?”

She nodded her head.

“Who was the murder victim?”

“Don't you know?”

She looked at me vacantly as if she couldn't understand why she had gone to so much trouble for me.

“It was the director of the film your friend was starring in,” she said.

The director of Petra's film!

What was his name? What was it?

There was no point straining my memory. I had never known the man's name, so how could I remember it?

In fact, I must have seen his face when I went to the airport to meet Petra. But in that crush I hadn't had the slightest idea who was the film director or who was the gaffer. I didn't think I'd read anything about this director anywhere. What had Petra said about him? Then suddenly, I realized that Petra and I hadn't discussed the film at all. I didn't even know what part Petra was playing, never mind the director's name or the subject of the film. This blonde journalist undoubtedly knew much more about these things than me.

I called Room 724 from the telephone at reception. It rang for a long time, but nobody answered. That initiative had also failed. I could have gone home or to the shop, but curiosity got the better of me. I returned to the café and sat at a table where I could overhear what the journalists were saying. I waited and waited, jumping up every so often to dial 724 on the internal telephone. What I was waiting for, I had no idea, but I certainly knew I wasn't just waiting in case I was needed by Petra.

Realizing I wasn't going to get the information I wanted by eavesdropping on the journalists at the next table, I interrupted their conversation with an apology and asked the name of the murder victim. The plumpest and friendliest-looking of them asked, “Why do you want to know?”

“I just wondered if he was someone famous,” I said. “The hotel is swarming with police and journalists.”

“He wasn't actually famous or anything,” said the friendly young man. “His name was Kurt Müller, but I've never heard of him.”

I was getting into conversation with yet another man who probably didn't even know who Steven Spielberg was.

“Hmmm,” I said to myself. “Kurt Müller,” I repeated. What an ordinary name, even for a murder victim.

The chubby young man looked eager to talk; he pulled his chair up to my table and pointed towards the packet of cigarettes lying on the table. I held out the packet to him. “Who's this Kurt Müller?” I asked.

“A film crew came here from Germany three days ago to shoot a film. You must have read about it in the papers,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “The murdered man was the film director. He was found dead in his room at about five o'clock this morning… How he died, we don't know either. The police haven't made a statement about anything yet. All we know is that there is a murder suspect.”

It was long past noon and I decided I couldn't spend the whole day sitting in that hotel café. I could go to the shop and relieve Pelin, which would at least be doing something useful. I used the internal telephone at reception to try Petra's number one last time. I no longer expected an answer, and there was none.

Any reader who thinks I was feeling mad with frustration is utterly wrong. On the contrary, I was absolutely calm and simply following my destiny. Could life be any more straightforward than this? I, a seller of crime fiction, had glimpsed an opportunity of being an amateur detective, but now that opportunity had disappeared, and I would just carry on with my ordinary life. The shocks of the last few days, and the effect of all the coffee I'd drunk while waiting for a murderer to approach my table with his murder weapon and bloodied hands, was more than enough for me. I decided it was time to give up my passion for detective work.

 

However, for some reason, this opportunity for detective work, which I thought had been and gone, was not going to leave me alone.

 

You now know all about Istanbul traffic and the problems of parking. It's really not a pretty sight to see me struggling with all that. However, I managed to reach the shop without leaning out of the window to swear at the driver in front of me or quarrelling with pedestrians at red lights. I tell you, I was totally at peace and content with my lot.

When I entered the shop with two toasted cheese sandwiches in my hand, I had a pleasant surprise. Petra was sitting in my rocking chair. The moment she saw me, she jumped up. “Where have you been?” she cried out almost hysterically.

I didn't say, “And where have you been?” She might have been waiting there for a long time. To be honest, I was surprised that I hadn't thought of calling the shop.

“What's going on?” I said, biting into my toasted sandwich.

Petra had gone out to eat with the film crew the previous night. She hadn't stayed out long before returning to her room to go to bed. Later, she learned that the others didn't stay up late either; they'd split up at about twelve thirty. The plan for the following day had been to do some filming outdoors, so they needed to get up early in order to meet in the lobby at four thirty. The whole crew turned up at the appointed time except for the film director. They waited awhile, assuming he hadn't managed to wake up. Five minutes later, they called his room. When there was no answer, they waited some more. They couldn't do any filming without the director, so there was nothing else to do but wait. At about five fifteen, after many telephone calls, one of them suggested going up to his room, saying, “He put away a lot of drink last night. If he's unconscious, he won't hear the telephone.” Everyone thought this was a sensible idea. It was no secret that the man drank like a fish. At reception they were told that a hotel room could not be opened if the client was inside. They then consulted the hotel night manager, who in the end agreed that the wardrobe mistress, who was the director's closest friend, could go up to the room with a member of the hotel staff.

The wardrobe mistress had barely left before she returned looking flushed, shouting, “They've murdered Kurt!”

Petra didn't know how he was killed; she hadn't asked. The fact that she wasn't even curious made me uneasy to be honest, and my mind started working. Bearing in mind that even the wardrobe mistress had said, “They've
murdered him,” and she had only been in the room long enough for a glimpse, it must definitely be murder. Based on my experience from novels, I was in a position to say categorically that if a murder was as obvious as this, it was carried out with a gun. Yet even if it was a gun, you'd think an ordinary wardrobe mistress might think it was suicide before jumping to the conclusion that it was murder. Why didn't she say “He's committed suicide”, or “He's dead”? I had more than one answer to that question:

1. The wardrobe mistress killed the director.

2. The murderer had just not bothered to dress it up as suicide.

3. The wardrobe mistress was a reader of thrillers and so didn't believe people could die a natural death or commit suicide.

4. The director was killed by a gun, but the location of the bullet wound meant it was impossible for him to have fired the shot himself, and the wardrobe mistress had realized that with a single glance, which meant the wardrobe mistress must have more expertise than that of a mere reader of crime fiction. I had no idea whether retired doctors and homicide detectives found employment as wardrobe mistresses these days.

5. No murder weapon was visible and the retired homicide detective-cum-wardrobe mistress noticed that at a single glance.

After reviewing all these possibilities, I came to the conclusion that my thought processes were getting me nowhere.

 

To be honest, I don't like the police. Some might claim that it goes beyond mere dislike, but let's not get into
psychoanalysis. Suffice it to say, I will go out of my way to avoid a cop. My mother has always impressed on me, ever since I was little, that I shouldn't make friends with the police, and I've never forgotten that. Actually, I should point out that our views on the police are the only ones we have in common. As far as my mother and I are concerned, policemen are creatures who transcend nationality. For us there's no difference between British, Turkish, Mexican and German; as policemen, they're all as bad as each other.

However, the god in the police uniform who had stepped through the shop door thirty seconds ago was a potential threat to this one view I shared with my mother, that ultimate tie that bound us together. I tried to hide the fact that I was completely bowled over by him and, pretending not to see the police car in front of the shop and Recai standing outside the shop window, I said, “Yes, constable. Is there a problem?” I addressed him in that way just to upset his ego, because I could tell he was at least an inspector.

“I'm from homicide, ma'am. Inspector Batuhan Önal. I'd like to ask you a few questions if you have time,” he said.

Now, any readers who know anything about Turkey and Turks will realize that was a strange statement for an inspector to make. For the others, I think a short explanation is required. For instance, the name “Batuhan” is not the sort of name for an inspector to have. Usually, inspectors have ordinary Turkish names such as Ahmet, Ali, Mehmet or even Orhan. Batuhan is the sort of name given to pop singers. Any family that names its son Batuhan has definitely not brought him into the world to be an inspector.

It's quite possible that Inspector Batuhan Önal's mother took up gambling and his father became a heroin addict, after that dreadful day when their son stepped into the Police Academy. He had undoubtedly been the cause of a family tragedy, yet this brute of a man was standing opposite me smiling, as polite as you please, as if he'd had nothing to do with what befell his family.