The Light of Day (12 page)

Tufan
answered immediately and characteristically. 'You are late.'

'I'm sorry. You told me not to call through the hotel switchboard. I am in
a café.'

‘You went to the Hilton Hotel just after six. Why? Make your report.'

I told him what happened. I had to repeat the descriptions of the man at the Hilton car-park and of Fischer so that he could write them down. My report on the meeting with Fischer seemed to amuse him at first. I don't know why. I had not expected any thanks, but I felt that I had earned at least a grunt of approval for my quick thinking. Instead, he made me repeat the conversation and then began harping on Fischer's reference to a villa outside Istanbul and asking a lot of questions for which I had no answers. It was very irritating; although, of course, I didn't say so. I just asked if he had any additional orders for me.

'No, but I have some information. Harper and the Lipp woman have reservations on an Olympic Airways plane from Athens tomorrow afternoon. It arrives at four. The earliest you will hear from him probably will be an hour after that.'

'Supposing he gives me the same orders as Fischer—to hand over the car with its papers—what do I do?'

'Ask for your wages and the letter you wrote.’

'Supposing he gives them to me?' Then you must give up the car, but forget to bring the
carnet
and the insurance papers. Or remind him of his promise that you could work for Miss Lipp. Be persistent. Use your intelligence. Imagine that he is an ordinary tourist whom you are trying to cheat. Now, if there is nothing more, you can go to bed. Report to me again tomorrow night.'

'One moment, sir. There is something.' I had had an idea.

‘What is it?'

There is something that you could do, sir. If, before I speak to Harper, I could have a licence as an official guide with tomorrow's date on it, it might help.'

‘How?'

'It would show that in the expectation of driving Miss Lipp on her tour, I had gone to the trouble and expense of obtaining the licence. It would look as if I had taken him seriously. If he or she really wanted a driver for the car it might make a difference.'

He did not answer immediately. Then he said: 'Good, very good.' Thank you, sir.'

'You see, Simpson, when you apply your intelligence to carrying out orders instead of seeing only the difficulties, you become effective.' It was just like The Bristle in one of his good moods. 'You remember, of course,' he went on, that as a foreigner you could not hold a guide's licence. Do you think Harper might know that?'

‘I’m
almost sure he doesn't. If he does, I can say that I bribed someone to get it. He would believe me.'

'I would believe you myself, Simpson.' He chuckled fatuously, enchanted by his own joke. 'Very well, you shall have it by noon, delivered to the hotel.'

'You will need a photograph of me for it.’

‘We have one. Don't tell me you have forgotten so soon. And a word of caution. You know only a few words of Turkish. Don't attract attention to yourself so that you .are asked to show the licence. It might cause trouble with museum guards. You understand?'

'I understand.'

He hung up. I paid the proprietor for the call and left.

Outside, the man in the chauffeur's cap was waiting up the street. He walked ahead of me back to the hotel. I suppose he knew why I had been to the
café.

There was a guide to Istanbul on sale at the concierge's desk. I bought one with the idea of brushing up on my knowledge of the Places of Interest and how to get to them. On my way down to my room I had to laugh to myself. 'Never volunteer for anything,' my father had said. Well, I hadn't exactly volunteered for what I was doing now, but it seemed to me that I was suddenly getting bloody conscientious about it.

I spent most of the following morning in bed. Just before noon I got dressed and went up to the foyer to see if
Tufan
had remembered about the guide's licence. He had; it was in a sealed Ministry of Tourism envelope in my mail-box.

For a few minutes I felt quite good about that. It showed, I thought, that
Tufan
kept his promises and that I could rely on him to back me. Then I realized that there was another way of looking at it. I had asked for a licence and I had promptly received one;
Tufan
expected results and wasn't giving me the smallest excuse for not getting them.

I had made up my mind not to have any drinks that day so as to keep a clear head for Harper; but now I changed my mind. You can't have a clear head when there's a sword hanging over it. I was careful though and only had three or four
rakis.
I felt much better for them, and after lunch I went down to my room to take a nap.

I must have needed it badly because I was still asleep when the phone rang at five. I almost fell off the bed in my haste to pick it up, and the start that it gave me made my head ache.

'Arthur?' It was Harper's voice.

'Yes.'

'You know who this is?'

‘Yes.'

'Car okay?'

'Yes.'

Then what have you been stalling for?'

'I haven't been stalling.'

'Fischer says you refused to deliver the car.'

'You told me to wait for
your
instructions, so I waited. You didn't tell me to hand the car to a perfect stranger without any proof of his authority. . . .'

'All right, all right, skip it! Where is the car?'

'In a garage near here.'

'Do you know where Sariyer is?'

‘Yes.'

'Get the car right away and hit the Sariyer road. When you get to
Yeniköy
look at your mileage reading, then drive on towards Sariyer for exactly four more mites. On your right you'll come to a small pier with some boats tied up alongside it. On the left of the road opposite the oier you'll see a driveway entrance belonging to a villa. The name of the villa is Sardunya. Have you got that?'

‘Yes.'

'You should be here in about forty minutes. Right?’

'I will leave now.'

Sariyer is a small fishing port at the other end of the Bosphorus where it widens out to the Black Sea, and the road to it from Istanbul runs along the European shore. I wondered if I should try to contact
Tufan
before I left and report the address I had been given, then decided against it. Almost certainly, he had had Harper followed from the airport, and in any case I would be followed to the villa.

There would be no point in reporting.

I went to the garage, paid the bill and got the car. The early evening traffic was heavy and it took me twenty minutes to get out of the city. It was a quarter to six when I reached
Yeniköy.
The same Peugeot which had followed me down from
Edirne
was following me again. I slowed for a moment to check the mileage and then pushed on.

The villas of the Bosphorus vary from small waterfront holiday places, with window-boxes and little boat-houses, to things like palaces. Quite a lot of these
were
palaces once; and before the capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara the diplomatic corps used to have summer embassy buildings out along the Bosphorus, where there are cool Black Sea breezes even when the city is sweltering. The
Kösk
Sardunya looked as if it had started out in some such way.

The entrance to the drive was flanked by huge stone pillars with wrought-iron gates. The drive itself was several hundred yards long and wound up the hillside through an avenue of big trees which also served to screen the place from the road below. Finally, it left the trees and swept into the gravel courtyard in front of the villa.

It was one of those white stucco wedding-cake buildings of the kind you see in the older parts of Nice and Monte Carlo. Some French or Italian architect must have been imported around the turn of the century to do the job. It had everything—a terrace with pillars and balustrades, balconies, marble steps up to the front portico, a fountain in the courtyard, statuary, a wonderful view out over the Bosphorus—and it was huge. It was also run down. The stucco was peeling in places and some of the cornice mouldings had crumbled or broken away. The fountain basin had no water in it. The courtyard was fringed with weeds.

As I drove in, I saw Fischer get up from a chair on the terrace and go through a french window into the house. So I just pulled up at the foot of the marble steps and waited. After a moment or two, Harper appeared under the portico and I got out of the car. He came down the steps.

"What took you so long?'

They had to make out a bill at the garage, and then there was the -evening traffic.'

"Well...' He broke off as he noticed me looking past him and over his shoulder.

A woman was coming down the steps.

He smiled slightly. 'Ah yes, I was forgetting. You haven't met your employer. Honey, this is Arthur Simpson. Arthur, this is Miss Lipp.'

CHAPTER FIVE

Some men can make a good guess at a woman's age just by looking at her face and figure. I never can. I think that this may be because, in spite of Mum, I fundamentally respect women. Yes, it must be that. If she is very attractive, but obviously not a young girl, I always think of twenty-eight If she has let herself go a bit, but is obviously not elderly, I think of forty-five. For some reason I never think of any ages in between those—or outside them, for that matter— except my own, that is.

Miss Lipp made me think of twenty-eight. In fact she was thirty-six; but I only found that out later. She looked twenty-eight to me. She was tall with short brownish-blonde hair, and the kind of figure that you have to notice, no matter what dress covers it. She also had the sort of eyes, insolent, sleepy and amused, and the full good-humoured mouth which tell you that she knows you can't help watching the way her body moves, and that she doesn't give a damn whether you do so or not; watching is not going to get you anywhere anyway. She wasn't wearing a dress that first time; just white slacks and sandals, and a loose white shirt. Her complexion was golden brown and the only makeup she was wearing was lipstick. Obviously, she had just bathed and changed.

She nodded to me. ‘Hullo. No trouble with the car?'

She had the same combination of accents as Harper.

'No, madam.'

‘That's good.' She did not seem surprised.

Fischer was coming down the steps behind her. Harper glanced at him.

'Okay, Hans, you'd better run Arthur into Sariyer’. To me he said: "You can take the ferry-boat back to town. Are the
carnet
and Green Card in the glove compartment?'

'Of course not. They are in the hotel safe.'

'I told you to put them in the glove compartment,’ said Fischer angrily.

I kept my eyes on Harper. 'You didn't tell me,' I said; 'and you didn't tell me to take orders from your servant.'

Fischer swore angrily in German, and Miss Lipp burst out laughing.

‘But isn't he a servant?' I asked blandly; 'he behaved like one, though not a very good one, perhaps.’

Harper raised a repressive hand. 'Okay, Arthur, you can cut that out. Mr Fischer is a guest here and he only meant to be helpful. I’ll arrange to have the documents picked up from you tomorrow before you leave. You'll be paid off when, you hand them over.'

My stomach heaved. 'But I understood, sir, that I was to act as Miss Lipp's driver while she is in Turkey.'

That's okay, Arthur. I'll hire someone locally.'

'I can drive the car,' said Fischer impatiently.

Harper and Miss Lipp both turned on him. Harper said something sharply in German and she added in English: 'Besides you don't know the roads.'

'And I do know the roads, madam.' I was trying hard to make my inner panic come out sounding like respectful indignation. 'Only today I went to the trouble and expense of obtaining an official guide's licence so that I could do the job without inconvenience to you. I was a guide in Istanbul before.' I turned to Harper and thrust the licence under his nose. 'Look,
su'!'

He frowned at it and me incredulously. "You mean you really
want
the job?' he demanded. 'I thought all you wanted was this.' He took my letter out of his pocket.

‘Certainly, I want that, sir.' It was all I could do to stop myself reaching out for it. 'But you are also paying me a hundred dollars for three or four days' work.' I did my best to produce a grin. 'As I told you in Athens, sir, for that money I do not have to be persuaded to work.'

He glanced at her and she answered, with a shrug, in German. I understood the last three words: ‘. . . man English speaks.'

His eyes came to me again. 'You know, Arthur,' he said thoughtfully, 'you've changed. You could be off the hook if you wanted, but now you don't want to be off. Why?'