‘Like exactly what happened to his first wife, Zoë?’
‘Yes.’ Carole grimaced. ‘No, my view is, frustrating though it may be, that at this moment we should just do nothing.’
‘Not tell anyone what you saw?’
Another shake of the head. ‘Not yet, no. If we meet Barney or Erkan or Henry we can certainly keep an eye on their behaviour, but—’
‘Henry? I thought Henry was safely back in Chantry House in Sussex.’
‘No.’ And Carole proceeded to tell Jude about her sighting of Barney’s wife in Fethiye. But her description of Henry’s male companion was too vague for Jude to identify him as Fergus McNally. ‘I think all we can do,’ Carole concluded, ‘is to keep a watching brief on any of them we do meet. It won’t be for long.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Jude.
‘Nita’s been murdered. Soon, her body’s going to be found. And even if it’s been successfully hidden away somewhere, people are pretty soon going to realize that she’s missing. Her husband, Erkan, apart from anyone else.’
It was nearly dark when the two women got back down to the car and the camels. Carole showed only token resistance when Jude suggested they have a drink – and, come to that, eat dinner – in one of the restaurants. They chose one called Antik.
Inside, they could have sprawled on one of the circular rug- and cushion-covered platforms, the modern equivalent of the old Turkish divan, but Carole resolutely steered them towards a four-seater table. There were quite a few people around, but more seemed to be the management’s family members than diners. In spite of the outside temperature, a wood fire burned, and in front of it knelt a couple of women in traditional patterned trousers and headscarves. They poured batter on to circular hotplates, then shaped the fluid with wooden spatulas until it crisped into pancakes.
‘Gözleme,’ said Carole authoritatively.
‘Bless you,’ said Jude, misunderstanding.
‘No, they’re making gözleme. “Village pancakes.” Don’t you remember? Nita told us about them when we were driving over.’
‘Oh, yes, they look rather good.’
A smiling, casually dressed man in his forties wandered over to their table. Carole tried desperately to summon up some of the phrase-book sentences she had learned for ‘In The Restaurant’. Before she had time to speak, though, the man had said, ‘Good evening,’ in accented but perfect English and asked what they would like to drink.
To Carole’s surprise, Jude asked for a large Efes beer.
‘Draught?’
‘Yes, please. We’ve just walked up to the ghost town. Hot work.’ And, indeed, Jude’s round red face gleamed with sweat.
‘You chose a good time to do it. In the middle of the day, too hot. So, one large beer. And for you, madam?’
‘A glass of white wine, please. Do you have a Chardonnay?’ asked Carole instinctively.
‘No, madam. We have local white wine. Very good. It’s from a Turkish grape you would not know, but it tastes very like Sauvignon Blanc.’
‘Oh, I’ll try that, thank you.’
‘Just a glass or a small carafe?’
‘Just a glass, thank you.’
‘Oh, let’s go for a large carafe,’ said Jude. ‘I’ll be moving on to the wine once I’ve finished my beer.’
‘But I don’t think—’
Carole’s words seemed to be unheard. ‘Very good, a large carafe of local white wine. And will you be eating as well?’
‘Oh, yes, you bet,’ said Jude.
‘I will bring you menus. But let me say I have some very good lamb cutlets in today, if you like them, and some fresh sea bass.’
‘And gözleme.’ Carole, pleased to show off her Turkish, gestured towards the women at the fire.
‘And, of course, gözleme. These can be filled with cheese and spinach or ground beef or roasted eggplant.’ His use of the last word, instead of ‘aubergine’, demonstrated that some of his tourist customers were American as well as English.
He barked out a command in Turkish, and a fourteen-year-old boy with short-cropped black hair who’d been squatting by the fireplace immediately brought across two menus. The likeness was so striking that he had to be the owner’s son. The menus, they found, were in Turkish, English and German, indicating the range of expected visitors.
‘I will get your drinks,’ said his owner, ‘and then take your order for food.’ An instruction went out to another short-haired, but slightly older son, who immediately came across with a basket of cutlery and condiments and fitted a paper tablecloth over the table’s wooden surface. He secured it under elastic strings which ran beneath the tabletop.
By the time he had finished, his father had returned with the drinks. Both beer glass and wine carafe sparkled with condensation from the fridge.
‘Ooh, that looks so wonderful,’ said Jude, taking a long slurp of the pale yellow beer. ‘Aah, bliss …’
Carole found the first sip of wine that the man had poured for her equally welcome. Again, it was a change from the buttery Chardonnay she so often drank in the Crown and Anchor. But not an unwelcome change.
The man took their orders. Carole liked the sound of the gözleme with cheese and spinach, while Jude opted for the lamb cutlets.
‘Pirzola,’ said the owner. ‘Very good.’
‘We ought to have some starters too,’ said Jude. ‘What do you fancy, Carole?’
‘Oh, I don’t really know whether I actually need—’
‘Let’s have the cacik and some dolma.’
‘Very good,’ said the man. ‘And please, you are the ladies from Morning Glory – yes?’
As they admitted they were, Carole and Jude exchanged looks. There certainly were no secrets in Kayaköy.
After the owner was out of earshot, Carole whispered, ‘I didn’t know you spoke Turkish.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You just ordered those starters without looking at the menu.’
‘That hardly qualifies as “speaking Turkish”.’
‘So does this mean you’ve been to Turkey before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You didn’t ask.’
SIXTEEN
The beer and wine did their work, and by the time their main courses arrived Carole felt almost relaxed. She reflected that it had been quite a stressful day – a stressful few days, in fact. All the business of leaving to go on holiday, arriving in Turkey, adjusting to Morning Glory and sleeping so badly there. Then dealing with an unfamiliar car on alien roads. Add to all that the shock of finding – and then losing – Nita’s body, and it was no wonder she had felt tense.
But she knew her improved mood was not just due to the alcohol. Gruesome though it might seem to some people, Carole was also experiencing that little frisson of excitement that always came at the beginning of a murder investigation. She looked across at Jude draining the last of the beer and knew that her friend was feeling the same.
Her gözleme had arrived rolled into cigar shapes on a bed of salad. The way she’d fallen on the pitta bread with the starters made Carole realize how hungry she was (she’d never got round to eating her salami lunch). And she’d discovered that cacik was the Turkish version of the Greek tzatziki and dolma were stuffed vine leaves. Both delicious. Carole Seddon was beginning to think she might have underestimated the qualities of Turkish cuisine.
There was a silence as they addressed their main courses, which was broken by the approach of Barney Willingdon. They had been aware in their peripheral vision of a white Range Rover drawing up outside Antik but hadn’t really registered it as his until Barney spoke.