I Am Pilgrim (73 page)

All the doubts I had about her voice had been dispelled. I knew with certainty it had been her in Cameron’s bedroom: when I stepped out of the guest room and headed for the secret elevator I had

smelt the same unique scent hanging in the hallway after she had passed.

‘No, not a horticulturalist,’ I said. ‘I’m a special agent with the FBI investigating several murders.

Gianfranco, the guy you named your dog after – how long did you date him?’

She and Cameron heard the aggression in my voice and they knew that everything had changed.

‘What’s Gianfranco got to do with anything?’ Ingrid asked.

‘Answer the question, Ms Kohl.’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘He showed you the tunnel into the house?’

‘What house?’

‘Cameron’s.’

‘There’s no tunnel into my house,’ Cameron offered.

I turned to her, surprised at my own anger – Dodge was her husband, and in all the interviews her

friends had said that he adored her. ‘Don’t tell me there’s no tunnel – I’ve walked along it.’

‘So? Even if there is,’ Ingrid interrupted, ‘nobody ever showed it to me.’

‘Gianfranco says that he did.’ I was making it up, hoping to shake the hell out of her. It didn’t work.

‘Then he’s a liar,’ she shot back. Cameron had been badly thrown by both the information and my

anger, but not Ingrid – she stepped up to the line and came right back at me.

‘You believe him?’ she said. ‘Franco’s your witness? A guy who feels up middle-aged women on

the beach for ten and change. Any decent lawyer would tear him to shreds. Did you ask him about dealing weed, huh? Or find out that his name’s not Gianfranco and he’s not Italian – but what woman

is gonna have a fantasy about getting head from a guy called Abdul? But you knew that, of course—’

She looked at my face as I was inwardly berating myself – I had sensed there was something in Gianfranco’s English that was more Istanbul than Naples, but I hadn’t taken the time to think it through.

‘Oh, I see the nationality escaped you,’ she said, smiling.

‘It’s not relevant. I don’t care what his name or country is.’

‘I care,’ she responded. ‘It goes to the question of credibility. Gianfranco’s got none and so far you’re batting on less.’

‘You a lawyer, Ms Kohl?’

‘No – but I read a lot.’

There was something in the way she delivered the line and turned her eyes on me that made me think of bare boards and a cold rehearsal room. I took a stab.

‘Where was it – New York, LA?’

‘Where was what?’

‘You studied acting.’

Ingrid didn’t react, but I saw Cameron glance at her and I knew I was right.

‘You can theorize whatever you like,’ she responded. ‘If Abdul – I mean, Gianfranco – knows a secret way into the house, then I would say it’s him in the photo. He probably killed Dodge.’

‘That makes no sense,’ I retorted. ‘What’s the motive?’

‘What’s mine?’

‘I think you and Cameron are lovers. I think you both planned it and did it for the money.’

She laughed. ‘Cameron and I are strangers. We’ve run into each other half a dozen times. The longest time we’ve spent together was in a vet’s surgery. Some love affair.’

‘That’s all true for Ingrid Kohl,’ I said. ‘But I don’t believe you are really Ingrid Kohl—’

‘Then take a look at my passport,’ she fired back. ‘This is total bullshit. Jesus! Of course I’m Ingrid Kohl.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I think you stole an identity. I think you’re acting a part. I believe that, whatever your real name is, you and Cameron have known each other for a long time – maybe you even grew

up together. You left Turkey Scratch, or wherever it was, and went to New York. Then both of you came to Bodrum for one reason – to kill Dodge. That’s a capital crime and, even if you avoid the injection, you’ll both spend the rest of your lives in jail.’

Ingrid smiled. ‘Turkey Scratch? That’s funny. You make that up – like you did the rest of it?’

‘We’ll see. I’m not done yet—’

‘Well, I am.’ She turned to Cameron. ‘I don’t know about you, but I want a lawyer.’

‘Yeah, I need legal advice too,’ Cameron replied, looking like a deer in the headlights. She grabbed her bag and started to stand.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a series of questions.’

‘Are we being charged?’ Ingrid demanded.

I didn’t say anything – it was clear she wasn’t easily bullied.

‘I thought so,’ she said into the silence. ‘You can’t hold us, can you? You don’t have any jurisdiction here.’ She smiled.

Cameron was already heading for the door. Ingrid picked up the throat lozenges and tossed them

into her bag. As she slung it over her shoulder she turned and stood close to me. I couldn’t help it, I felt like I was flying a kite in a thunderstorm.

‘You think you’re very smart, but you don’t know about me or Cameron or anything. You don’t know half of what’s happening. Nowhere near. You’re lost and you’re grasping at straws, that’s what

this is all about. Sure, you figure you’ve got some evidence. Let me tell you something else I read –

“evidence is a list of the material you’ve got. What about the things you haven’t found? What do you call that?” ’

It was my turn to smile. ‘Good quote – a fine piece of writing,’ I said. I knew then it was she who

had killed the woman in New York and dumped her in a bath of acid.

‘The quote comes from a book called
Principles of Modern Investigative Technique
by a man called Jude Garrett,’ I continued. ‘And I know where you got that book – you borrowed it from the

New York Public Library on a fake Florida driver ’s licence. You took it back to Room 89 at the Eastside Inn, where you were living, and used it as a manual to kill someone. How’s that for evidence?’

She looked at me expressionless – my God, it was a triumph of self-control on her part. But her silence told me it had rocked her world, ripped the canvas of her meticulous crime from top to bottom.

She pivoted and walked out. I figured that, within an hour, Cameron would be lawyering up, paying

for a regiment of top-flight advisers, but it wouldn’t help them much – I understood what they had done, everything from the day the Twin Towers fell to the real reason why there were lacerations on

Dodge’s hands.

I paid no attention, however, to what she had said about not understanding the half of it. I thought it was just boasting, cheap bar-talk, but that was underestimating her. I should have picked up every stitch, I should have listened and thought about every word.

I glanced up and caught Hayrunnisa’s eye. She was staring at me, seriously impressed. ‘Wow!’ she said.

I smiled modestly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Not
you
,’ she replied. ‘Her. Wow!’

If I was honest, though, I agreed. Ingrid Kohl – or whatever her name was – had done a great job

during the interview, better than I had ever expected. Even so, there was plenty of stuff on the camera that I knew would help convict her in court. I picked up the device and I couldn’t help myself – I started laughing.

‘What is it?’ Hayrunnisa asked.

‘You were right,’ I said. ‘Wow! It was no accident she spilled the stuff out of her bag – it was a diversion. She turned the fucking camera off.’

Chapter Seventy-two

I WAS WALKING along the marina, footsore and hungry, but too anxious to eat or to rest. It had been three hours since I had slipped the battery back into my phone and left Cumali’s office and already I had covered the beach, the Old Town and now the waterfront.

Twice I had started to dial Bradley, desperate to hear the results of the DNA tests, but I stopped myself in time. I had stressed to him on the phone how urgent it was and I knew that he and Whisperer would have made arrangements to speed them through the lab. He would call the moment he had them, but it didn’t make it any easier. Come on, I kept saying to myself.
Come on
.

I was halfway between a group of seafood stands and several rowdy nautical bars when the phone

rang. I answered it without even looking at the caller ID. ‘Ben?’ I said.

‘We got the results,’ he replied. ‘No details yet, just a phone summary, but I figured you’d want them as soon as possible.’

‘Go ahead,’ I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral.

‘The little guy is definitely not the woman’s son.’

My response was to exhale – I was so wired I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. Why

the hell was Cumali raising him as her own then? I asked myself.

‘But the two individuals are closely related,’ Bradley continued. ‘There’s a 99.8 per cent probability that she is the boy’s aunt.’

‘His aunt?’ I said, and repeated it to myself. His
aunt
?

‘What about the father? Can they tell us anything about that?’ I asked.

‘Yes – the father of the child is the woman’s brother.’

So, I thought, Leyla Cumali was bringing up her brother ’s son. I felt a rising tide of excitement – of sudden clarity – but I didn’t say anything.

‘That’s all I can tell you at the moment,’ Bradley said.

‘Okay,’ I said coolly, and hung up.

I stood still, blocking out the sound of the drinkers in the bars. Leyla Cumali’s brother had a little boy and she was raising him – in complete secrecy – as her own child.

Again, I asked myself, why? Why lie about it? What was there to be ashamed of in taking care of

your nephew?

I thought of the morning when I had met her at the corner park – of the anger that had greeted my

intrusion and the furtive way in which she had gathered up the little guy. I recalled thinking then that I had walked into a secret. It wasn’t normal; none of those things made any sense.

Unless, of course, the father was an outlaw – a soldier in a secret war, for instance. A man always

on the move, a man wanted for jihad or terrorism or something worse …

Maybe such a person would have handed his son over to his sister to raise.

In those circumstances, Leyla Cumali-al-Nassouri would have reacted with alarm when an

American, an investigator, showed up and discovered the boy’s existence.

But what about the little guy’s mother? Where was she? Dead, probably – bombed or shot in any

one of the dozen countries where Muslim women are cut down on a daily basis.

I found a bench, sat down and stared at the ground. After a long time I looked up and, from that moment forward, with an overwhelming sense that I had reached a watershed, I no longer believed

that Leyla al-Nassouri had been speaking on the phone to a terrorist. I believed she had been talking to her brother.

At last I had squared my circle – I understood the real connection between an Arab fanatic and a moderate Turkish cop. They hadn’t been discussing the mechanics of a deadly plot or the kill-rate of smallpox. We had assumed they were and had gone charging through the door marked ‘terrorism’,

but the truth was far more human: they were family.

Yes, she probably knew he was an outlaw, but I doubted she had any idea of the magnitude of the

attack in which he was involved. There were countless Arab men who were Islamic fundamentalists

and believed in jihad – twenty thousand on the US no-fly list alone – all of whom had some sort of

price on their head and were trying to make sure that Echelon or its offspring couldn’t find them. To her mind, he was probably one of them – a garden-variety fanatic. There was no evidence to show that she knew he was plotting murder on an industrial scale or that she was even aware he was in the Hindu Kush.

I started to walk fast, weaving through knots of vacationers, dodging traffic and heading towards

the hotel. But what of the two phone calls? Why, at that critical time, had the Saracen risked everything to speak to her?

Like I said, I was finding clarity. In the filing cabinet in Cumali’s bedroom I had found the bill from the regional hospital – the one that showed that the little guy had been admitted with meningococcal meningitis. I couldn’t remember the exact date of his admission, but I didn’t need to – I was certain it coincided with the two phone calls between Leyla Cumali and her brother.

Once she learned how gravely ill he was, she would have posted the coded note on the internet message board, telling the Saracen to phone her urgently. In her distress, she would have reasoned that a father had a right to know and, given her brother ’s religious devotion, he would have wanted to pray for his son.

Most sites that offer dating and personal ads automatically alert other users to posts that might interest them. The Saracen would have received a text message telling him that a fellow-devotee of an obscure poet – or something similar – had posted an item. Knowing it had to be bad news, he would

have phoned her at the designated phone box and listened to her prerecorded coded message.

What a time that must have been for him. On a desolate mountaintop in Afghanistan, trying to test

half a lifetime’s work, three people dying of sledgehammer smallpox in a sealed hut, he aware that, if he was discovered, it would probably mean instant death, and then to be told that his son was critically

– perhaps fatally – ill.

Desperate, he would have arranged to get an update from Cumali, and that was the second call he

made. She would have told him that the drugs had worked, the crisis was past and his son was safe –

that was why there were no more calls.

But there was one other thing I realized, and I couldn’t avoid it – the Saracen must have loved the