The police said they would need to ask more questions, but, given Carole’s condition, they agreed that the three English could go next door to Morning Glory for the time being
In spite of her shock, Carole decided that she probably could manage a glass of wine – ‘That nice one that tastes like Sauvignon Blanc,’ she croaked. Soon the three of them were sitting round a poolside table. A rather odd assemblage – Carole recovering from near-strangulation, and Barney with his blood-soaked shoulder. Jude was the only one uninjured.
Carole should probably have gone to bed with some paraceta-mol, but she was far too intrigued by the missing bits of Jude’s narrative. And the main thing she wanted to know was why Erkan, who when she last saw him had been issuing death threats against Barney, should suddenly be shooting Travers.
‘He explained that,’ said Jude, ‘when he found us in the ghost town.’
‘Sorry? In the ghost town?’
And Jude remembered that Carole had been asleep when she’d left Morning Glory. So she explained about the summons she had received from Barney, and how Travers had guided her to his hideaway.
‘But he also told Erkan where Barney was, and Erkan immediately discharged himself from hospital and—’
‘Yes, he told me that.’
‘But Travers made a big mistake when he made that call to Erkan. He mentioned that Nita had been strangled with her lanyard. Now, in theory, the only people who knew how she died were you, Barney and Erkan. You all saw the body in the tomb. The reason Erkan came to find Barney in the ghost town was to check whether he’d told anyone about the lanyard. I could vouch for the fact that you wouldn’t tell anyone, because you were keeping quiet about actually having seen the body. So, unless he’d actually murdered her, how did Travers know about the lanyard?’
Liking the logic she was hearing, Carole nodded (which was much less painful than speaking).
Jude went on, ‘As soon as Erkan had established that Barney hadn’t mentioned the lanyard to anyone, he announced that Travers must be the murderer and that he was going to shoot him. We tried to persuade him not to, but he wouldn’t listen to us. Which, as it turned out, was a good thing for you.’
Gratefully, Carole smiled (another action less painful than speaking).
Jude turned to Barney. ‘So what do you reckon will happen to Erkan? Prison sentences can be pretty harsh out here, can’t they?’
‘Yes, but there would be a good few mitigating circumstances in his case. The fact that his shooting Erkan stopped you being strangled, Carole, for one. He did it to save your life. And if they can ever prove that Travers did kill Nita, the case for Erkan’s defence would be that much stronger.’
‘Oh, but they will be able to,’ croaked Carole, the importance of what she had to say far outweighing the pain that saying it might cause her. ‘Nita’s body is under the floor of Travers’s naff little suntrap. Along with that of his wife.’
Jude and Barney looked at her, open-mouthed.
And, despite her very sore throat, as an amateur sleuth Carole Seddon did feel rather pleased with herself.
THIRTY-THREE
The rest of Carole and Jude’s stay in Kayaköy was pleasantly uneventful which, given what had happened in the first four days of the holiday, was probably just as well. They got into a pleasant rhythm of doing some things together and some separately. Sometimes they might be apart at lunchtime, but they went out to eat together every evening. They explored the varied cuisine on offer in some of the other restaurants. They tried the more expensive options, the zhuzhed-up boutique hotel Izela and the Lissiki Wine House. They had excellent and reasonably priced meals at the Village Garden (literally, someone’s back garden) and the Villa Rhapsody (known as Atilla’s after its ebullient owner).
But more often than not they ended up eating in the casual welcoming atmosphere of Antik. And Jude failed regularly to stop having a large wonderfully cold beer before she moved on to the wine.
At the beginning of their second week they even went together to the archaeological site of Tlos to experience more of the Lycian culture. They climbed up the high rock, marvelling at the ingenuity and mindset of a civilization that would choose to build tombs in such inaccessible places.
But Carole still didn’t get the ‘TLOS PROPERTY’ joke.
One day they went to the fabulous sandy beach at Patara, but before they did anything else Carole insisted they should visit the ruined city, recently and very impressively excavated. After that they rented loungers. Jude stripped down to her bikini and sploshed about in the bracingly large waves, while Carole kept her trousers on and, sitting awkwardly on the edge of her lounger, tried to concentrate on one of her Times crosswords. Jude would have been happy to stay on the beach till it got dark, but aware of her friend’s lack of ease, agreed to leave about two. They had an excellent late lunch in a restaur-ant called Ayak in a nearby village, then returned to Morning Glory to laze by the pool.
As the days went by, Carole’s throat got less sore and, having gone through the spectrum from purple to yellow, her bruises slowly faded.
One morning they were visited at Morning Glory by the police – two very correct young officers who spoke excellent English. Both women made statements about the events of the Thursday evening. The policemen took their contact details but said there would be no need for them to change their travel arrangements. They could return to England the following Monday as planned.
They didn’t see Barney Willingdon again while they were out in Turkey. As soon as Henry was reunited with her husband, she had booked them on the first flight back to England, where she very soon forced him to consult a specialist in erectile dysfunction. It is to be hoped, given the amount of trouble it had caused to so many people, that his problem was sorted out. Maybe Viagra worked its magic, but Carole and Jude never found out because the Willingdons didn’t contact them again after they’d returned to Fethering.
On the Wednesday of their second week, as an indication of how much she was entering into the holiday spirit, Carole Seddon did two things she had sworn she never would. She bought a trashy novel (there were plenty of books in English available in Fethiye).
And, even more daringly, she bought a plain black bikini.
Then she spent a lot of the remainder of their time at Morning Glory reading the one and wearing the other, lying at the poolside with Jude a few loungers away. And when she’d finished – and, it had to be said, rather enjoyed – her Danielle Steel, she started reading Fifty Shades of Grey (only, of course, to see what all the fuss was about).
She’d long ago stopped wearing her money belt. She no longer even noticed the muezzin’s daily calls to prayer. As the days went by there seemed to be less and less urgency to go and see any more archaeological sites.
And Carole Seddon almost – dare it be said? – relaxed.
When, on the Monday morning, the pre-booked taxi arrived to take them to Dalaman Airport, Morning Glory was living up to its name, the frontage of the villa a splendid display of blue.
The weather was good when they got back to England, late that afternoon. Even though they had return railway tickets, Carole did not demur when Jude said they should get a cab from Gatwick to Fethering.
They parted on the pavement between their two houses. Jude went back to Woodside Cottage and began to check through the list of messages on her answering machine. She dealt with most of her client work on the landline, only allowing a favoured few her mobile number or email address. If she didn’t protect herself in that way, she knew that she’d get no peace with constant day and night ‘emergency’ calls from her frequently paranoid clientele.