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Agios o Theos, agios ischyros, agios athanatos, eleison imas!
Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy and Immortal, have mercy on us!
He closed his eyes. Iciness hit his neck. Then a hot torrent fell on his chest. Warmth gushed down his legs, soaking him. A foul smell rose around him.
An eerie calm descended.
He looked around the ancient hall, taking in its forest like rows of pillars. The entrance he’d found must have been sealed up over five hundred years ago, before the ancient city of Constantinople above him fell to a Muslim army and its name was changed to Istanbul. There were treasures down here any museum director in the world would beg for. But he wished he’d never found the place.
He stared at the aluminium tables nearby. What he’d seen on those tables had terrified him.
A black mist rushed towards him. Would Sean find out what had happened?
Agios o Theos, agios …
A minute later the two fountains of blood, two foot high at their peak, from the left and right arteries emerging from Alek’s chest, bubbled like cooling coffee percolators. The flesh around them shone with a silky gleam. But Alek’s eyes were closed and his face was peaceful.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_1d4d0eab-1201-5c39-ac60-336bda4495d4)
Glass fell into the street. The four-storey frontage of the new American electronics store was collapsing. An animal rumble passed under me. Alarms sprang to life in a chorus.
I’d been on my way home. It was a Friday night in August. London was hot, sticky. I’d been crossing Oxford Street when I stopped, mid step.
Coming towards me, that glass behind them, was a mass of fists, hooded faces, rage. Every muscle tightened inside me. Was the city going up in flames again?
I saw an entrance to a brick-lined alley, broke into a jog. A girl with a pink afro, white stilettos and a lime green tube top was standing in the middle of the street, her mouth open, her arms at her side. I veered towards her.
‘Come on,’ I shouted.
She looked at me as if I was a ghost, but came with me. I didn’t have to turn my head to know the mob was almost on us. We barely made it. We turned together and watched them pass. For one frozen moment I thought they might turn on us, that I’d have to defend my new friend. But they moved on, chanting a drum-beat rhythm of slogans I could barely understand. That’s a sound I’ll never forget. Because this lot weren’t just looting. These bastards had found a cause.
Some of them glared at us as they passed, but luckily we weren’t their target. They were after symbols of their oppression. And they were out of their heads on it. After they were all gone, my pink-haired friend shuddered, then ran off.
Screaming alarm bells and broken windows were the most obvious signs of the mob’s passing, along with a whiff of danger. Was a police raid on a mosque worth all this?
I caught sight of a woman in a tiny leather jacket on the other side of the street. Her face was turned away from me. She was running. My vision tunnelled.
‘Irene!’ I said, softly. My legs started towards her. I stopped them.
Irene was gone.
But even though I knew that was true, my heart still wanted for the woman to turn, to smile, for my heart to pound like a rocket ship going into orbit again. No one had ever affected me like Irene. Before I met her I’d never believed that a woman could make your heart thump, just by walking into a room.
And a big part of me still didn’t want to get over what had happened to her, didn’t want to move on, not now, not ever, no matter what anyone said or did.
The woman was almost gone now, her black hair flying behind her as she disappeared into a glow of flickering lights. If I went after her, all it would mean was that I was crazier than I thought.
I let out my breath, slowly. I’d had what my grief counsellor had called a legal hallucination. People don’t come back from the dead. No matter how much you want them to. No matter how unfair their death was.
When my mom and dad had died back in the States, within eighteen months of each other, I hadn’t felt this way. They’d both had a good innings, but Irene had barely got to bat.
A helicopter flew low, its searchlight wandering. It was time to get away from this madness, to get back to normality, to my own frustrations. Alek hadn’t responded to my last text message. He was due back on Monday when the image enhancement program I’d spent the last week fixing would finally get properly tested.
If we messed up this project, I wouldn’t be able to hide from the rumour mill.
I could imagine what they’d say. How can you expect a project director not to make mistakes after what happened to him? Wasn’t it obvious he wasn’t over his wife’s death, wasn’t up to the job any more? Wasn’t this why he’d been demoted?
I started walking, checked my phone again. Nothing. Why was someone with every communication option the world had devised been uncontactable for six freaking hours?
Photographing mosaics of angels, emperors and saints shouldn’t have been this difficult. Even if he was doing it in what had once been the Islamic world’s St Peter’s. We’d worked in the Vatican for God’s sake. And in the British Museum.
Then it was raining and I was running. It was lashing in Piccadilly Circus by the time I got to the entrance of the Underground. I was totally soaked. My shoes were squelching. I knew I’d be looking like a half-drowned marsh creature, tails of brown hair straggling across my way-too-pale forehead, my four AM shadow even more pronounced than usual.
The train was packed. It was not a good time to be wet. But we all stood shoulder to shoulder, trapped, swaying, dampness and tension filling the air.
I read the headlines on a girl’s iPad. ‘New London Riots’ was the big story. Her finger hovered over it, pushed it away. ‘England Awakens’ read the next headline. Our train lurched, then stopped. The lights flickered. Someone groaned. It was ten minutes before the train started again.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_31f6209c-abc3-592e-a604-0a2ba5640fe1)
In the basement of a villa belonging to the British Consulate, in the affluent Levent suburb of Istanbul, two men were staring at a laptop screen.
Loud moaning noises filled the room. On the screen, a big-breasted blonde was bouncing up and down on top of a scrawny dark-skinned older man. The bed they were on, in a hotel near Taksim Square, where the Iranian biological scientist had been staying, squeaked like a busted door on a moving train.
Surely a man that age should have stopped to consider why a woman so young and beautiful might be interested in him.
As the man let out a gasp the blonde pulled back. The view of his face was quite a sight. The man sitting in front of the laptop clicked his mouse. A still image appeared for a moment, then flew to the bottom corner of the screen. Peter Fitzgerald tapped his colleague’s shoulder.
‘That should be enough for you to open him up,’ he said. ‘His superiors in Iran won’t be inclined to forgive him for this.’
Peter frowned as he went over to the printer. It hummed to life. This was going to be easier than he’d thought. But had they moved quickly enough? The Iranian had been in Istanbul for two weeks already.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_2a1b5aee-13ab-53f2-b9cf-a1bbdeecd17a)
The following night, Saturday night, I went to a barbecue near my house in West London. The Institute had an apartment in Oxford, but I rarely used it any more. My attic office was more than good enough for the days I didn’t feel like battling up the M40.
It had been over thirty hours since I’d heard from Alek. If he didn’t make contact until he came back on Monday I’d give him a chance to explain himself, then I’d tell him what I thought of his bullshit.
The barbecue was one of those gatherings where everyone dressed in similar, expensively-distressed clothes to demonstrate their individuality. I left before midnight. The host had been trying to hook me up with one of her friends, and while she was certainly attractive, my heart wasn’t it. All everyone wanted to do was talk about the riots starting up again.
And all I wanted to do was get away from thinking about them. I walked home, crossed New King’s Road, passed a bar with thumping music, people laughing outside. Everything looked normal. Maybe the riots weren’t kicking off again. Good. I needed to get some sleep if I was going to go for a run in the morning.
My plan was to do the Kauai Marathon in September, which was only six weeks away. Ten days in Hawaii was a break I needed. I’d been looking forward to it for months. It would be the holiday that would mark a proper break with my past. That was what Alek had said, and I was hoping he was right.
I kicked off my shoes in the hall downstairs as soon as I got home. They skidded across the black and white tiles. Then I hung my jacket on the pile over the bottom of the banisters. I really needed to sort them all out. But where would I find the time? God only knew how Irene had kept the place tidy. The cleaner who came in now had enough work keeping the kitchen from turning into a health and safety disaster.
I checked my iPhone to see if I’d missed anything. There was still nothing from Alek. No texts. No emails. No missed calls. No tweets. Nothing! What was he playing at?
Was this all some stupid game? Was he trying to make a point about how important he was? I wouldn’t put it past him.
A creak sounded from above my head. The pipes in the building had a habit of doing that. I reckon they were installed when Victoria was a princess.
The house had four floors and was at the end of one of those white stuccoed terraces West London is famous for. We’d grown used to its moods. Living there was our greatest luxury, Irene had said. Working seventy-hour weeks and being one of the founding directors of the Institute of Applied Research in Oxford had to have some advantages, I used to reply.
But I knew I’d been fortunate to end up owning the house. I’d been lucky to get a place on an exchange programme with University College London. And I’d been lucky to meet Irene while I was there. The work I did that year led to an article on patterns in human behaviour, which was published in the New York Times magazine to some acclaim. The success of that article helped us start the Institute.
I’d worked in a software company in Berkshire for three years after we got married. Then a few of us from college decided to set up the Institute. It had taken off way quicker than we’d expected, with serious projects in each of our specialisations.
We’d been lucky in many ways, but I’d give up every dime of our success, if that meant Irene could still be alive. We’d had plans and a house that was just waiting to be filled up with the sound of children’s laughter.
And sometimes in my dreams I could still hear the echoes of what might have been.
I headed upstairs. I always kept a light on on the floor above, so it didn’t feel like the house was brooding. That was the theory, anyway. Though it didn’t seem to have the desired effect.
As I was undressing, the landline rang. It had that insistent tone only a telephone ringing late at night has.
Was it Alek? It had to be.
I found the phone on a foot-high stack of documents by the bed.
‘Mr Ryan?’
The voice wasn’t Alek’s. It sounded like one of those city types who wear their sock suspenders to bed.
‘Yes?’ A needle-sharp sense of foreboding is difficult to ignore.
The sound of a car horn came over the phone line. A tinny noise, a radio station playing what sounded like Middle Eastern hip hop, echoed over the line.
‘The name’s Fitzgerald, sir. Peter Fitzgerald. I’m sorry to disturb you.’ He spoke slowly, emphasizing each syllable, his manner exceedingly polite. ‘I’m with the British Consulate, here in Istanbul.’
A shiver ran through me, as if I’d brushed against a wall of ice.
‘Yes?’ I didn’t want to talk to him.
‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.’
My mouth was as dry as sandpaper. Then my stomach did a backflip.
‘It’s about Mr Alek Zegliwski, sir. I’ve been told you’re his manager on a project out here. Am I speaking with the right Sean Ryan?’ The tinny Middle Eastern music played on in the background. What time was it there? 3:00 AM? Had he tried calling earlier, when I was out?
‘Yes.’ My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Alek was more than a colleague. He’d been one of Irene’s closest college friends. Then a drinking buddy of mine. We free-dived together. He was coming with me to Kauai.
Laughter echoed from the street below, from another world.
‘Please sit down, Mr Ryan.’ The voice seemed distant.
All the kinds of trouble Alek might have gotten himself into flickered through my mind, in a bizarre slide show. I stayed standing.
‘I’m afraid it’s my unfortunate duty to have to tell you that the authorities here have informed us that your colleague Mr Zegliwski is … ’ He hesitated.
‘… dead.’
A void opened beneath me. That was the one word he wasn’t supposed to say.
‘I am very sorry, sir. I’m sure it’s an awful shock.’
I opened my mouth. No sound came out.
‘We do need someone to identify his body fairly quickly. It’s the Turkish authorities you see. They do things differently out here.’
Alek was coming back on Monday. We were meeting up in the evening. He was coming to my house. We were going for a run.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Please, let it be a mistake.
‘I am sorry. They found his wallet, his ID. It’s a bad time to ask, I know, but do you have contact details for Mr Zegliwski’s relatives?’
I slumped onto the edge of the bed. Its scarlet Persian cover, half off already, slipped to the floor.
‘I don’t, I’m sorry. They’re in Poland. I think.’
‘He’s not married?’
‘No.’
‘What about a girlfriend?’
‘Not for a few months. And that was only for a week or two. He rarely talks about his family.’ I wanted to be more helpful, but Alek was about as single and as independent as you could get. The only time he’d been asked about his next-of-kin in my presence, he’d pointed at me. That was his idea of a joke. He never went back to Poland either – not that I knew of anyway.
‘No relatives in the United Kingdom at all? Are you sure?’ He sounded sceptical.
‘Not that I know about, no.’
Alek couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be. More than anyone else I knew, he was able to look after himself. He was six foot tall, full of life, in his twenties for God’s sake.
Something around me seemed to be changing, as if a hidden door had opened somewhere and a breeze had begun blowing.
‘In that case, Mr Ryan, we’ll have to ask you to come to Istanbul to identify Mr Zegliwski’s body. I believe the authorities here have some questions about the project he was working on too.’
I didn’t reply.
‘Are you there, Mr Ryan?’
‘Yes.’
‘When can you come out? The earlier the better, really.’ His tone wasn’t soft any more.
The line between us hummed. I took my mobile out of my pocket, scrolled to Alek’s number, tapped it. I had a phone to each ear now. Maybe, just maybe, this was all some stupid mistake. A joke even.
