Laurence O’Bryan - The Istanbul Puzzle

I put the photos on the round table near the window. I couldn’t make sense of them now. And I didn’t want to think about them. I looked around. The room was a pastiche of late Ottoman style, decorated in reds and golds. Every piece of furniture was covered in a thick layer of varnish.

After a quick shower I turned off the bedside light and lay staring at the shadows, my mind drifting. A faint aroma came to me. The smell of roses. It reminded me of Irene. It would have been good to be able to call her now, to talk all this through with her.

When I met Irene she’d been studying medicine. She hadn’t been interested in me initially, but I found out she used to drink in the university bar before getting her train home. A week later we had our first date. A walk in Hyde Park. She was a great listener.

We got married three months after I graduated. One of her friends used to tease us about how perfect our lives were, how lucky we’d both been to be doing so well so soon after graduating.

And then she’d volunteered to go to Afghanistan with the Territorial Army. They needed doctors. Three of them had volunteered from her hospital. That had been reassuring. I’d imagined stupidly, so stupidly, that that meant there would be safety in numbers. That the odds were against all three of them being killed. Their tour started two years and three months ago.

And she was the one who didn’t make it back. A roadside bomb, an IED – an Improvised Explosive Device – killed her two weeks into the mission.

And for a long time I felt powerless and angry, all at the same time. Irene had been about all that was good about England. All she’d ever wanted to do was help people. It wasn’t right that she’d died. Not for one second.

For months after it happened I fantasised about her walking through our front door. And I used to hope, despite everything logical, that I’d wake up one day to find her beside me again.

Tragedy warps everything.

I was slipping away, on the edge of consciousness, back in London, walking towards Buckingham Palace. A man in a long white shirt carrying a pitcher of water was coming towards me. I turned my head. Somebody was behind me, way in the distance. I knew who it was. But she was so far away. I turned, ran, stumbled.

I woke up, sickly unease rising through me. The floor-to-ceiling curtains were shadows in the darkness. I could make out the vague outlines of the gilt-edged prints of Ottoman Istanbul that hung in a row on the wall, like Janissaries, the Sultan’s guards, standing to attention.

Then I felt something move. There was something in the bed with me.

Bloody hell! I swung my fist, slammed it into the mattress, bounced up out of the bed, scrambled for the light switch by the bathroom door.

The room flooded with jaundiced light.

There was nothing. Nothing in the bed. Nothing under it. Was I going mad?

Relief soaked through me. Had it been an animal, a spider, something like that? My skin crawled. I should never have left the window open.

The phone rang.

‘Mr Ryan?’ A woman’s voice, anxious. It was the receptionist who’d given me that envelope. I sat on the bed, cradling the telephone against my bare shoulder. The gossamer breeze from the window felt like water running over my skin.

‘Yes?’

‘Two men are on the way up to see you, Mr Ryan.’

‘What?’

The line went dead. I could hear a truck grinding its gears outside.

For a second I didn’t understand why she’d called. Then it came to me. She was warning me.

A sharp knock – rat tat tat – sounded from the door. The do-not-disturb sign hanging on the doorknob vibrated.

That was quick. Then the knock came again. It was even more insistent this time.

I walked over to the door, put my eye to the viewer. Nothing. Just blackness. Was it broken?

‘Come on, Mr Ryan,’ an officious female voice called out. Someone English.

‘Hold on,’ I replied. I grabbed a fresh T-shirt from my bag and pulled it over my head. An even sharper knock sounded.

Rat-tat-tat-tat.

‘Coming.’ What the hell was the hurry? I pulled on my chinos, pushed my feet into suede moccasins.

Another knock.

RAT TAT-TAT TAT-TAT.

‘Come on!’ She sounded petulant, as if she hadn’t heard my replies, or had heard, but didn’t think I was moving fast enough.

I jerked the door open but held my foot against it, just in case I needed to close it in a hurry.

An attractive-looking woman was standing outside. She was in her late twenties, I guessed, and was wearing a tight high-necked black T-shirt. Her face was symmetrical, her eyes dark green, serious, her black hair pulled back tight. She had a thin gold chain around her neck. Despite her slim frame, she was clearly someone who could look after herself.

And she was holding an identity card in my face. I saw a severe-looking face and an official stamp, a triangle with a crown and the letters EIIR above it, and the words ‘British Consulate’ below. Then the card vanished before I had a chance to read any more. I stood up a little straighter. And then it came to me. This was the woman from one of Alek’s photos.

‘Come with me, Mr Ryan. Now.’ She glanced towards the lifts.

‘There are some people on the way up that you don’t want to meet. They were demanding to know your room number down at reception. You have to come with me. I mean it.’ She looked up and down the corridor, as if expecting to be interrupted at any moment. I heard a metallic thrum as the lift rose towards us. Then there was a creaking noise. It had stopped at a lower floor, maybe the one below us.

I could smell her perfume. It was faint, sweet.

‘Did you know Alek?’

A flicker of hesitation crossed her face.

‘My name’s Isabel Sharp. I was Alek’s liaison officer at the Consulate. Come on, Mr Ryan. If you don’t want to end up like him.’

I felt my back pocket. My wallet was there. I could get another room pass. I was dressed. I had my shoes on.

‘OK.’

She moved quickly. My room door closed behind me with a clunk. She was already halfway to a door down the corridor with an ‘Exit’ sign above it.

She held the door open for me, closed it after I’d passed through.

‘I thought I was gonna be met at the airport?’ I said, still unsure why I was following her.

‘That was a little misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘But I’m here now.’ She started down the carpeted stairs. I followed.

I was going to ask her why she was moving so fast, when I heard a juddering bang above us, as if someone had slammed a door open.

‘They’re coming,’ she said. I barely heard her. A muffled clatter of footsteps echoed from above.

She took the next set of stairs in two jumps.

Someone shouted. Then a crisp popping sound filled the stairwell. It was accompanied by a shrill pinging near me. A rain of concrete chips and dust fell around my head. Something had hit the wall above me!

‘Bastards,’ she said, in a low voice, as if she was talking to herself. I was barely keeping up with her.

My heart was pounding.

Something struck the metal handrail behind me. It squealed. I jerked my hand away from it.

Adrenaline pumped through me, tingling every muscle. The hair on my body stood up straight. My scalp felt tight.

I was taking three steps at a time, sometimes four. I could feel the rough concrete under the thin carpet as I landed on each step. Then Isabel almost fell. I put a hand under her arm, held her up. She regained her footing. We kept going.

The sound of running feet, voices, wasn’t far above us now. They were catching up. I looked behind. All I could see was a shadowy blur coming down.

Isabel’s face was pale.

The backs of my legs were straining. Who the hell were they?