Feeling daringly self-indulgent, Carole went to the fridge and poured herself a large glass of the wine that tasted like Sauvignon Blanc. She took a sip as she moved to sit outside. It really did taste astoundingly good. Could it be that her long-term loyalty to Chilean Chardonnay was being challenged?
She sat in an upright chair by the pool and made a conscious effort to relax. Then she remembered that she should have sprayed on some mosquito repellent. But she resisted the impulse to go upstairs and get it.
Perhaps she ought to be doing a Times crossword …? Again she suppressed the urge to move. Because in order to see enough to enable her to do the Times crossword, she would have to put on the outside lights, and the outside lights would attract mosquitoes which would mean she’d also have to spray herself with mosquito repellent.
No, better just to sit there. She tried to let the tension drain out of her body, but her body was stiffened by many years of keeping it all in. She felt sure Jude would know some mumbo-jumbo like tantric breathing to relax her body, but then Carole Seddon wasn’t Jude and, she assured herself, never wanted to be.
She took a long swallow from her wine glass. Followed it by another. Yes, that helped. For a moment she really did feel quite relaxed.
Then she smelt burning.
TWENTY-EIGHT
It was a beautiful moonlit walk through Kayaköy from Morning Glory to the foot of the ghost town. There were even fireflies to be seen amidst the trees. But Jude was unaware of any of it. Her mind was too full.
Increasingly, it looked as though Barney Willingdon had been responsible for the murder of Nita Davies. Erkan’s logic had been convincing, and Henry’s suggested scenario of Barney turning on his mistress in frustration at his inability to function sexually did have a horrible ring of truth about it.
But there remained elements that were unexplained. And she still had difficulty in casting Barney, a man she had once loved, in the role of murderer.
Nor did it ever occur to her that going to meet him in this clandestine way might be putting her own life at risk.
Her mobile phone stayed obstinately silent. As she approached the flat area beneath the ghost town where the camels had hunkered down for the night, she tried ringing Barney’s number. But there was still no reply.
He’d said either he’d contact her or someone would ‘point her in the right direction’. In other words, she could do nothing by her own efforts, just sit and wait.
At least she could do that with a drink in her hand. There were a few more people in Antik that evening. By the fire, two women were busy pouring batter for gözleme. Jude decided she would order a white wine, but the owner, seeing her arrive, was already pouring her a cold Efes, so she didn’t argue when he brought it to the table.
‘Your friend is joining you?’
‘No, just me tonight. And just for a drink.’
‘Fine,’ he said and moved across to a table of German tourists who were noisily calling for more drinks.
Another man moved so silently that she was hardly aware of him until he was sitting on the chair next to her.
‘Hello,’ he whispered. ‘I have found Barney.’
It was Travers Hughes-Swann.
Jude swallowed down half of her beer and left some lira on the table to pay for it. Then she and Travers slipped away into the darkness. They passed by the battered Land Rover, which must have already been parked there when Jude arrived. Uncomfortably aware of the odour emanating from Travers’ body, she followed him to the edge of the flat area where the path led up into the ghost town.
‘He’s up in there, is he?’
Travers put a finger to his lips and nodded.
The soft soles of their shoes made no sound on the well-worn cobbles of the street. The moonlight was strong enough to show any unevenness in the path ahead. The noise from the restaurants below was filtered and thin, as if coming from a distant island. They passed the gaping windows of the roofless houses and, though Jude didn’t much care for Travers, she was grateful not to be alone in this necromantic landscape.
They climbed higher than she and Carole had done a few nights before. They went past the tall Greek Orthodox church and climbed on.
A sudden movement and clattering in the pathside grasses set Jude’s nerves jangling.
‘Just a goat,’ murmured Travers.
Then the road ahead of them was closed. Only by red and white tape on metal poles, but the hazard symbols and notices in English declared the area to be unsafe.
‘Is he up there?’ whispered Jude.
‘Yes. Do you want me to come with you?’
‘No. I think it’d be better if I talked to him on my own.’
‘Are you sure? Are you sure he’s not dangerous?’
‘No. I don’t think I’m in any danger. I really cannot believe that Barney murdered Nita.’
‘Oh? Do you know who did then?’
‘No. I just can’t work it out. Who killed her, and who moved the body.’
‘What makes you think the body was moved?’
Jude gave him a brief summary of Carole’s initial discovery and their fruitless trip back to Pinara on the Tuesday afternoon.
‘Hm. That’s interesting.’ But not interesting enough for him to ask any further questions. Travers Hughes-Swann pointed ahead, beyond the tape, where the uneven track climbed higher. ‘Go up there. Just round the corner on the left there’s a house whose door frame is still intact. Barney’s in there.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll stay here on guard.’
‘Thank you. And thank you very much for finding him.’
‘The pleasure’s all mine. Particularly when I am doing it for such a lovely lady,’ he added, losing most of the brownie points he’d been accumulating of the previous half-hour.
Jude nodded thanks to him, bent down to get under the red and white tape and started on up the hill.
TWENTY-NINE
Carole had a pretty good idea of where the smell of burning was coming from. And, sure enough, when she entered the gates of Brighton House, there was a small bonfire blazing in front of the building.
It didn’t look as if it was about to burn the place down. Carole found a bucket, filled it with water in the kitchen and soon put out the blaze. The charcoal on the barbecue was still hot and red. She reckoned an ember must have spat out or fallen on to the dry garden rubbish nearby. No big disaster, just a strong whiff of burning.
She was turning back towards Morning Glory when she suddenly had a thought. Of course, Travers’s bedridden wife Phyllis must be in the house. How terrifying might it be for someone unable to move to smell smoke from downstairs?
Carole didn’t know the extent of the woman’s disabilities. The fact that she had heard no shouts for help or screams might mean that she was unable to speak. That would make the smell of smoke and the flicker of the flames even more horrible.
Carole knew it was her duty to see that Phyllis Hughes-Swann was all right.
The interior of Brighton House, revealed by the moonlight through the windows, was considerably smaller than that of Morning Glory. It was basically one room with a kitchen area to the back. Apart from the front entrance, the only other door led off to a not very salubrious lavatory.
But then Carole had not really expected to find Phyllis Hughes-Swann on the ground floor. She switched on the light that shone down on the staircase and made her way up.
There were three doors off the landing, all closed. The one ahead proved to be a shower room which smelt of damp. The sweaty smell released by the next door announced to Carole that she was in Travers’s bedroom. There was a single metal-framed bed with grubby sheets, an open cupboard and a selection of unsavoury garments, mostly pairs of shorts, scattered across the floor.