Carole, unfortunately, knew all too well what Nita looked like now, but she wasn’t about to share the information.
‘So the two of them were an item?’
‘Very definitely, yes. I mean, they weren’t often seen out together – they were discreet up to a point. The travel companies don’t like their tour guides to have boyfriends too openly – can upset the punters, many of whom cast lecherous eyes on the girls and don’t want their fantasies ruined. But evenings after Nita had knocked off from work … yes, they were very definitely an item.’
‘And this was before Barney got married to Zoë?’
‘Oh yes. Barney was a bit of a Jack the lad back then. Kept quite a few women on a string, so far as I can gather.’ Yes, he did, thought Jude ruefully. ‘But out here it was just him and Nita.’
‘So,’ said Carole, ‘she must have been pretty put out when he suddenly announced he was marrying Zoë?’
‘I would assume so. I wasn’t here when that news broke.’ His face darkened. ‘That’s when I was starting to get involved in Barney’s projects in Northern Cyprus.’
‘One thing …’ Jude began. ‘You said Barney wasn’t to know that you’re in Turkey. Presumably, he knows that Henry’s here?’
‘No,’ Fergus replied with some force. ‘And she very much doesn’t want him to.’
‘That’s not going to be easy, is it?’ asked Carole. ‘With her only being in Fethiye, and Barney seeming to be best mates with everyone in the area. We’re very quickly discovering that there are no secrets in Kayaköy.’
‘Henry’s staying in the hotel most of the time. She wants to choose for herself the moment when she makes contact with Barney.’
‘When she confronts him?’ suggested Carole.
‘I didn’t use that word.’ Fergus McNally was becoming very guarded.
‘When,’ intuited Jude, ‘you’ve reported back to her on how her predecessor, Zoë, died?’
But he wasn’t going to be drawn on that either. Something one of them had said had made him clam up. They exchanged mobile numbers, and no one suggested staying for a second drink.
TWENTY
On the way back from Ölüdeniz they stopped at the Kayaköy supermarket to load up with essentials. And to Carole’s mind, seeing the amount of wine and beer Jude loaded into their basket, some non-essentials too. They were served this time by a smiling woman, presumably the wife of the owner, wearing traditional baggy trousers and headscarf. But she, too, knew both their names and the fact that they were staying at Morning Glory.
As soon as they were back there, Jude pounced on the drawer where they had left the iPhone found at Pinara. ‘Funny, isn’t it? The two phone cases with reversed colours. It does suggest to me that they might be owned by the same person.’
‘Well, we’ll know that’s true if “1066” works, won’t we?’
Jude tried switching the phone on, and an expression of predictable disgust came across her face. ‘Out of bloody power. How is it that they can get so much battery life on a tablet and still so little on a phone?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Carole, feeling suddenly empowered by her prescience. Serenely moving towards the stairs, she announced, ‘I have a “universal all-in-one mobile phone charger”. And an adaptor for Turkish sockets.’
‘Ooh, get you,’ said Jude, half under her breath. ‘Think of everything.’
Carole plugged the lead into the adaptor and then, with a bit of hard pushing, the adaptor into the socket. She switched the iPhone on. It immediately told her that the charger she was using was not the official Apple product and might not be supported.
But it was. The home screen appeared and, as instructed, she slid to unlock. A grid of ten numbers appeared. Tensely, she entered ‘1066’.
It worked.
‘Brilliant,’ said Jude. ‘So it did belong to Nita!’
But accessing the phone only worked in the sense that a new screen opened up. It showed a weather forecast for Fethiye. How to move from that to some other function, Carole did not have a clue. Rather disappointed that she couldn’t complete the revelation, she reluctantly asked Jude if she had any idea about the interior workings of an iPhone.
‘I’ve got a friend with an iPad, and I think the basics are much the same.’ She took the mobile from Carole and pressed the indented white square at the bottom of the screen. Immediately, a grid of different icons appeared. ‘Let’s try the phone first – see if there are any messages, or at least a list of recent callers.’
Jude showed sufficient dexterity with the options to get where she wanted to. She checked the screen. ‘Well, that’s very odd.’
‘What’s very odd?’ asked Carole, a little tetchy at having become the sidekick in this part of the investigation. Since finally coming round to computers, she had always rather prided herself on her technological know-how.
‘No voicemails. And no record of any recent calls.’ Jude touched the screen a few more times. ‘And only one number in the contacts list.’
‘What does that suggest?’
‘Well, either that the owner had very few friends … or that she – or perhaps he – had only recently got the phone and hadn’t got round to putting in their contacts list.’
‘But the one contact that is there, Jude – is that name significant? One you recognize?’
‘It’s just a single letter.’
‘“B”?’ asked Carole excitedly.
‘That’d be too much to hope for. No, it’s “L”.’
‘Most peculiar.’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t there anything else we can try?’
‘Texts – maybe they sent each other texts?’ Jude’s fingers worked away on the screen, and a smile of satisfaction appeared on her well-rounded face. ‘Yes, much more promising.’
She showed her findings to Carole. The last text received on the iPhone read: ‘See you tomorrow 11 am. Old place. Old purpose. Let’s recapture the moment. L’
The text was dated two days before. The Monday, the day Carole and Jude had arrived in Kayaköy. And the day before Carole had found Nita’s body.
Were they jumping to conclusions to think that ‘the old place’ could be the tomb at Pinara? And that the text was setting up an assignation between Nita and someone else? But who? The obvious candidate for the job would be Barney. But so far they had nothing except circumstance to connect the text message to him.
‘I reckon this must have been a dedicated phone,’ said Jude.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A phone line only used by two people. That’s why there’s only the one contact in it. If it rings then the other person immediately knows who’s calling and can answer or not according to what circumstances or company they are in. It’s quite a popular cover method used by people having an affair.’
‘Is it?’ Carole sniffed. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’
‘Well, there’s one thing we can try to see if the other person is Barney.’ As she spoke, Jude deftly pressed the screen to make the call. She could hear the ringing tone from the other end, but no one picked up. Nor did the answering service click in.
‘Well, he wouldn’t answer, would be?’ said Carole.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he told us that thing about Nita having been called away to England because her mother’s ill. We now know her mother died when she was twelve, which must mean Barney knew Nita was dead. So he knows it can’t be her making the call.’
‘Possibly, but not necessarily.’
‘I can’t see any alternative.’
‘The alternative possibility is that Barney was merely reporting what he had been told. That someone else told him Nita had gone to England.’
‘I suppose it’s just possible,’ Carole said grudgingly. ‘But unlikely … I mean, they’d had this long relationship … surely, at some point Nita would have mentioned her mother’s early death?’