Hard Rain - 03 Page 8

  With a final chorus of rat noises, the rodents retreated, disappearing into a crack.

  ‘Ugh . . . disgusting,’ said Masters with loathing.

  ‘I thought they were kinda cute.’

  She shivered. ‘Can we get out of here?’

  So Masters didn’t like rats. I was learning so much about her on this case. ‘In a minute.’

  ‘You doing this to be a jerk?’ she asked, exasperated.

  ‘Moi? Actually, I want to see where this comes out – see where the killers came in.’

  Another thirty feet of bouncing along on our haunches brought us out into the cool bright sun and a vast expanse of water: the Bosphorus. The far shore was momentarily obscured by an orange-painted container ship sliding past, the low throb of its huge engines pulsing up through the pipe and into the soles of my feet. A small, rusty oiler chugged in the opposite direction, heading north. The pipe exited a yard or so above the waters of the Bosphorus slapping at the concrete wall. I grabbed hold of one of the remaining corroded iron rods that had once secured the end of the pipe. The concrete holding it in had been freshly broken. The rod came away from the crumbling masonry, slipped from my grasp and fell into the water with a low splash.

  By the time we made it back to the ladder, my quads were burning from crawling along inside the pipe. Masters went up first, not happy to be left down here alone with King Rat and his subjects a moment longer than necessary.

  Shadows had claimed more of the courtyard. The uniform was standing in the remaining island of sunshine, smoking, enjoying a three-way discussion with Detective Sergeants Karli and Iyaz – if being chewed out was his idea of enjoyment. From the hangdog body language, I didn’t think it was. He threw his cigarette on the ground.

  Iyaz saw us. He nudged Karli. They left the uniform mid-sentence and walked over to us. Karli hitched up his pants higher than usual as he led the pair towards the manhole. Maybe he was worried that Iyaz was going to pull them down.

  ‘Hey, guys, great to see you,’ I said. ‘What’s been happening?’

  ‘We said we would meet at 11:30,’ Karli replied.

  It was just after midday. I shrugged. ‘Then you’re late.’

  ‘We wait out the front for you,’ said Iyaz.

  ‘If you’d asked your people at the door, they’d have told you we’d come inside,’ Masters said.

  Karli and Iyaz glanced at each other and frowned harder.

  ‘Okay, so we’ve had a look around. We agree the killers came and went through the pipe. That means most likely there’d have been a boat somewhere out in that strait. It would have been three or four hundred yards out beyond the wall. Far enough away so as not to attract attention, but not far enough out to get mowed down by a supertanker.

  ‘That’s too far to swim with the gear they were carrying. Scuba gear would have been used. The water’s close to freezing, which means they’d have used full drysuits. Along with keeping them warm on the swim, the suits would also have guaranteed the killers left nothing – not even hairs – at the crime scene for forensics to find. So, it might be an idea to get some divers out in the channel there to see if you can’t find anything useful they might have left behind.’

  ‘Drysuits, swimmers, killers . . . they?’ Masters asked. ‘Plural?’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the other point I was going to make. We’re looking for two killers. Whoever did it couldn’t have been working alone.’

  Seven

  The sightseeing tour over, we left Karli and Iyaz in the courtyard. On the way out, we said thanks to the uniform at the front door. I slipped twenty bucks into the guy’s jacket pocket without him knowing. I figured he’d earned it. He’d probably caught himself a night shift or two by being so helpful to us.

  Just then, a cab pulled up out in the street. The rear doors opened and out stepped the two Army CID agents we’d met earlier that morning, Goddard and Mallet.

  ‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Masters enquired under her breath.

  ‘Beats me. Let’s ask them.’

  ‘Hey,’ Masters said as Mallet ambled towards her.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied. ‘How you doin’?’

  ‘Oh, you know, taking in the sights,’ she said. ‘How are you doin’?’

  ‘What she means is what the fuck are you doing here?’ I translated, keeping it light.

  Mallet blinked, those little watermelon-pit eyes of his all but disappearing, the cogs in his brain jammed momentarily. ‘Well, y’all know how it is . . .’ he drawled when things started to turn again. ‘For all we know, there could be a dead body in a cupboard you haven’t thought to look in. I’ve heard you Air Force types have difficulty finding your own assholes on the toilet.’

  ‘Yeah, no need to be unfriendly, Special Agent Cooper,’ said Goddard. ‘We’re just familiarising ourselves with the case. Taking a look around, is all.’

  ‘This is me being friendly, Special Agent Goddard,’ I replied. ‘It’s just your partner reminds me of something I once saw in a museum formaldehyde bottle. Disturbing to see it walking around, is all.’

  ‘Any time, Cooper . . .’ Mallet added, pushing out his chin.

  Goddard put a staying hand on his partner’s shoulder before turning back to face me. ‘Well, that’s okay, then. I wouldn’t want there to be any friction here.’ The smile stitched on his face strained at the sutures.

  ‘Me, either. Just so long as we understand each other,’ I said, stepping past him. ‘Oh, one thing . . . ?’

  Mallet paused on the steps leading up to the late Attaché’s house.

  ‘You didn’t ask any questions at the briefing this morning. Why not? You and Doctor Watson here got the answers figured already?’

  ‘Had none to ask, Cooper. None that weren’t plain dumb, like the ones you and Masters wasted everyone’s time with.’

  ‘Oh, so it was white noise, then,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I left him to ponder. Masters and I walked half a block in silence to a main road that looked like it might spring a cab. One came along pretty much immediately. Masters asked the driver to drop us back at the Charisma, passing him one of the hotel’s cards as we climbed in.

  ‘You handled that well back there,’ she said.

  ‘You think?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Maybe you didn’t notice it, but those guys aren’t exactly in the diplomatic corps.’

  ‘And I’m not sure you noticed it, but you started it.’

  ‘Well, you know what they say – first in, best dressed.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘Don’t know, but they say it.’

  Masters shook her head and took to staring out the window.

  ‘Goddard and Mallet kicked it off just by hanging around,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what CID is doing here looking over our shoulders. I just let those guys know in the politest way possible that we can handle this. I don’t want them trampling over this case, getting in our way.’

  She gave me a listless nod that lacked conviction. We sat in silence for a few blocks.

  ‘So, we’re heading back to the hotel,’ I said, implying we had a lot of work to do and all of it was in another direction.

  ‘After that drain, I need a shower,’ she replied. ‘And trust me, so do you.’

  ‘Surely you’re not suggesting we have one together?’ I asked, as I examined the palm of my hand. It was brown. It smelt brown too.

  ‘No, I’m surely not. And don’t try your anti-charm bullshit on me, Vin. I’m impervious to it.’

  ‘Anti-charm?’

  ‘Making non-PC propositions of a sexual nature – which could be considered harassment, by the way – in the mistaken belief that I might somehow become attracted to your caveman-like persona.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re coming down with something nasty,’ I said. ‘Lawyeritis, maybe. I didn’t know it was contagious.’

  Masters sighed, the sort of sigh you might give a child who
won’t stop asking you to do something you’ve said no to at least a dozen times already. ‘Take me through your two-killer theory. What makes you so sure?’

  ‘The wall safe,’ I said. ‘The damage to its door says some pretty powerful explosives were used to blow it. That means a lot of noise in a nice quiet neighbourhood populated by rich, helpful, community-minded, law-abiding citizens. And yet no one heard a damn thing. Forget cushions. Something far more effective was used to eat up the noise, something designed for the purpose. I’m thinking blast protection blankets – three, maybe. Those things weigh thirty to forty pounds apiece, so that’s a hundred-plus pounds right there. Add them to the weight of the hardware store used to dismantle Portman, getting up and out of the pipe with that heavy manhole cover . . . it says two assailants – one to pass the chisels, one to do the deed.’

  ‘Not three?’

  ‘Overkill. You could do it with two, and three’s a crowd, unless two of them are wearing negligées.’

  Masters ignored the wisecrack. ‘Why wasn’t the other safe blown? And why weren’t any fibres from the blankets picked up by forensics on the cushions?’

  ‘Forget the cushions. They went nowhere near the safe or the blast blankets. And perhaps the blankets themselves weren’t fibrous. As for the floor safe, I still think maybe the killers just didn’t know it was there.’

  She nodded, coming along for the ride. ‘Everything else was meticulous . . . the planning, the execution. Is it likely they’d have made such a blunder – missed that floor safe entirely?’ She chewed on her bottom lip and turned to face me. ‘Unless . . . what if Portman had had it installed recently? If he had, the safe wouldn’t have appeared on any plans or drawings of the property.’

  Good point. No, it wouldn’t have.

  ‘And what if the killers had gotten hold of these plans from somewhere so they could case the place before they broke in?’ she continued. ‘Given the meticulous nature of the crime, that’s something I think they might have done.’ Masters sat back in her seat and watched the traffic flash by. ‘Might be an idea to find out who the leasing agent was,’ she added.

  Yep, it might at that. ‘Any thoughts on why the killers might have left the murder weapons behind?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps they plain didn’t think the local cops would find them.’

  Hmm . . . Karli and Iyaz weren’t NYPD, but they weren’t Keystone Kops either. The killers had to be working on the cache getting discovered. ‘I think the killers wanted their tools found,’ I said.

  ‘What purpose would that possibly serve?’

  ‘I asked you first.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Maybe they wanted us to find their gear so we’d think they weren’t as proficient as they obviously were,’ I suggested. ‘And I don’t think they left all their gear, just selective bits of it.’

  ‘Okay . . .’ Masters said, letting the thought sink in.

  Our hotel lay across the water – not the Bosphorus, some other strait. I leaned forward in the seat and pulled from my back pocket a map supplied by the concierge. The Charisma was in the area called the Sultanahmet, the quarter occupied by the old kings of this joint, the sultans. According to the map, this stretch of water was called ‘the Golden Horn’. Sounded like a euphemism if ever I’d heard one.

  We crossed the bridge, lined with fishermen trying to pull their dinner from the soup churned up by the incessant ferry traffic, turned right at a mosque and climbed the hill. The cab did a few lefts and rights and pulled up outside the hotel. I gave the driver a handful of notes and asked for a receipt as Masters got out. She leaned on the roof and put her head back in the door. ‘And just a suggestion, Vin. After you’ve had a shower, you might think about a change of clothes.’

  ‘What have you got in mind? Something tight?’ I asked.

  ‘No, more like something without holes in it.’

  She gestured at my midriff, which I suddenly noticed was showing. The miracle stuff the cleaners had used had removed the stain on my T-shirt along with half the T-shirt.

  Eight

  I took a shower, changed into chinos and a clean shirt, threw on my green MA-1 bomber jacket, and was back in the foyer thirty minutes later, as agreed. During this interlude, I thought about what Masters and I knew so far. In fact we had nothing more than what Karli and Iyaz already had. All we could offer was perhaps a new way to look at what was there on the table: that Portman had been murdered by two assailants, not one, and that they swam out and back to a boat using scuba gear. We had no suspects – though there was a question mark on this manservant guy – and no evidence that provided any leads.

  I gave some thought to the manner in which Portman was killed. Dismemberment was murder’s equivalent of a nudist street parade. Obviously the perpetrators were either deeply disturbed or a couple of show-offs. Was there another reason I wasn’t seeing?

  Ten minutes late, Masters breezed into the foyer wearing faded low-slung jeans with a heavy tooled leather belt and longhorned buckle, a navy fitted Tee that showed off her flat stomach, black Converse runners, a leather jacket and Ray-Ban Aviators. The NYFD cap had been replaced by a New York Yankees ball cap. Her hair was tied in a thick ponytail that bounced as she walked. Traffic? Hell, Masters could stop a tank.

  ‘You’re late,’ I said.

  ‘Phone call. And before you ask me any questions about it, none of your business.’ She tossed a brown paper bag in my direction.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A present.’

  I opened it and removed a red T-shirt.

  ‘To replace the one I hope you’ve just thrown away,’ she said. ‘Wear it with pride, partner.’

  There was a graphic on the back of the T-shirt: the white crescent moon and shield of the Turkish national flag. I turned it over. On the front, printed in large white letters, was the word ‘Turkey’.

  ‘When you wear it, think of it as a caption,’ said Masters with a smirk.

  ‘Turkey?’

  ‘One good insult deserves another, Vin. Payback for the insults about Richard. And what’s with the character assassination anyway? You don’t know him. You don’t know anything about him.’

  Masters was right, I didn’t know him, not personally, but what I knew of his reputation was enough to give me a fair portrait. ‘I was just passing along the opinion of several hundred vets suffering from various forms of cancer,’ I replied, ‘or whose babies have been born with three eyes and extra sets of legs. They refer to your future husband as “Colonel Dick Wad”, and they call him that because he’s doing his best to make sure the system screws them. So, were you helping Colonel Wad put evidence together for the class action he’s defending, the whole depleted uranium mess?’

  ‘Need-to-know, Cooper – and you don’t. I feel sorry for those people, but DU has proved to be safe. And his name is Colonel Wadding, okay?’

  ‘Try convincing the grown men and women with leukaemia hoping to get some compensation for doing a job no one said would kill them slow. I think they’d probably prefer to keep calling him names.’

  Masters folded her arms tight. ‘Like always, you’re real quick to judge. Oh, and I was late because I was on the phone to Richard. He has to go to Incirlik. He’ll be in Istanbul the day after tomorrow. He said he wants to meet you – don’t ask me why. You can see then for yourself how wrong you are.’ She turned and stomped across the foyer towards the front door.

  So Dick was coming to town. I could barely contain my excitement. I left the T-shirt she gave me on the couch and followed her towards the hotel exit. I wondered if Masters really knew this guy she was going to marry. She said she’d met him on holiday and then he pops back into her life years later with a proposal. Who does that?

  As the revolving door released me onto the street, I saw a cab leave the forecourt with Masters in the back seat. Her hand was up against the glass giving me the bird.

  The sudden booming of loudspeakers informed me that the faithful wer
e again being called to prayer. Or to lunch, if, like me, you happened to be an infidel.

  Cabs were queued out in front of the hotel. I picked one at random and settled into the back seat.

  ‘Where you going?’ asked the driver, a guy around forty years old with a black moustache the size and shape of a hair comb. He opened his door and threw his cigarette butt on the road.

  I’d climbed in through a haze of second-hand smoke mixed with a strawberry air freshener. The seats were encased in a thick clear plastic embedded with yellow flowers that squeaked as I moved. Various trinkets – a small golf ball, a crescent moon, a miniature plastic queen-of-hearts card and a tiny metal horse – swung from the rear-view mirror. Tobacco-coloured carpet covered the dashboard and instruments. A couple of purple velvet cushions trimmed with gold tassels sat on the rear deck. The guy was driving around in his living room.

  ‘The US Consulate-General. You know where it is?’ I said, hoping I wasn’t going to have to get my mouth around the address on the card Burnbaum had given me.

  ‘Yes, yes . . . I know it. US Consulate – Kaplicalar Mevkii Sokak, Istinye.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I replied. Whatever he’d just said looked like it might line up with the words on the card. Close enough, anyway. ‘No rug shops, no stop-offs, okay?’

  ‘Sure. Okay.’

  I glanced out the window. The hill off to my right was dominated by a building with a large dome surrounded by spires – minarets.

  ‘The Blue Mosque,’ announced the driver, his eyes darting back and forth in the rear-view mirror from me to the road ahead. ‘Most beautiful building in all of the world.’

  It was imposing, I had to give it that.

  ‘Where you from?’ he enquired.

  ‘Depends on who you ask.’

  ‘Not Amerikali?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘Yeah, American.’

  ‘You like Istanbul?’

  ‘Like it . . . ?’ I said, leaving the options open.

  ‘How long you stay?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘It is never long enough if you must one day leave,’ he ventured. ‘You need a driver while you are here. My name is Emir. I take you everywhere you want to go. You come to Istanbul alone?’