The Tomb in Turkey

ELEVEN

Because of the effusiveness Barney had demonstrated towards other women that evening, it was quite striking that when Nita emerged through the trees to approach their table he didn’t rise from his seat and offer her either a hug or a kiss. Just said a casual, ‘Hi.’

Round her neck hung the red and blue lanyard with identity card attached. She didn’t wear a polo shirt with a company logo on it, but presumably the card identified her for professional purposes. It also suggested she was either still working or had just finished.

‘Got your other person from the airport?’ asked Jude.

‘Yes, all done and safely delivered to their villa. I get the impression they’re going to be high maintenance, though.’

‘Oh?’

‘Already had two calls from them on the mobile. How do they get hot water from the shower, and can they set up the telly to receive Sky Sports? Needless to say, there are detailed instructions for dealing with both problems in their welcome pack. Soon, I’m sure, I’ll get the call about the blocked toilet. I think I’ll earn my money with that lot.’

‘They’ve gone into Sunbeam Cottage,’ said Barney, as a statement rather than a question.

‘Right.’

Belatedly, Barney remembered his manners. ‘Won’t you sit down and have a drink?’

‘No, still got a couple of things to sort out. Got to take a busload of punters who’ve come from Kidderminster to Pinara tomorrow.’

Carole’s ears pricked up. ‘That’s where there are some Lycian tombs, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. And temples, and an amphitheatre.’

‘I definitely want to go there while I’m here. I read about it in my guidebook. It sounds fascinating, with all those tombs carved out of the rock face. Do you fancy going tomorrow, Jude?’

‘I don’t fancy going anywhere tomorrow that is more than three metres from the pool at Morning Glory.’

‘Oh. Well.’ Carole turned back to Nita. ‘Pinara’s supposed to be very impressive, isn’t it?’

‘It is for the first couple of hundred times you see it, yes. After that, everything palls a bit.’

‘I’m sure it does,’ said Jude.

‘But that’s the job – not the one that I would have chosen, but the one that’s chosen me.’ Nita looked down at her ID card and sighed. ‘So that’s the job I do.’

Jude was aware that Nita was not talking to them as she would to her normal punters. She was dropping her professional guard and letting her underlying cynicism show. She thought of them not so much as holidaymakers but as friends of Barney Willingdon. She didn’t have to keep up any facade with them.

‘Anyway …’ Nita snapped herself out of introspection. ‘I must go, brush up my notes on Pinara. See you soon, I’m sure.’ She hovered on the edge of departure. ‘Oh, Barney, just wondering whether you might be going for a nightcap at the Scorpion tonight …?’

‘No, I’ll just be seeing Carole and Jude back to Morning Glory.’

‘And which of the villas are you staying in?’

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ said Barney Willingdon.

Nita was not the kind of woman to give away her emotions, but she flinched at his words. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’ll go and get ready for Pinara.’

Jude was trying to work out the subtext of their brief exchange. Surely, Nita had been trying to get together alone with Barney, but he had put an end to such an idea with considerable harshness. She hoped to God he wasn’t clearing the decks of other women because he thought he was going to make some progress with her.

But such speculation was interrupted by the sudden appearance at their table of a swarthy middle-aged man in grubby T-shirt and jeans, brandishing a kitchen knife.

‘You dare come out here!’ he shouted in heavily accented English. ‘You dare to sit here calmly in Cin Bal as if you are the king of everything!’

His words were clearly addressed to Barney, who instantly recognized his assailant. ‘Kemal,’ he said, ‘calm down.’

Jude’s ears pricked up. This must be the swindled partner of Barney whom Fergus McNally had mentioned in the Crown and Anchor.

‘Violence won’t do you any good,’ said Barney.

‘No? It will do me a lot of good – to hurt the man who has ruined my life, who took away my business—’

‘I didn’t take away your business. That was going belly-up long before I got involved.’

‘No, you took it away. You took away my livelihood. To hurt the man who did this will give me much satisfaction!’ And he made a stabbing motion with the knife towards Barney.

He missed by a long way, and instantly Carole and Jude realized that the man was very drunk. His movements were unsteady and his eyes glazed. By now, the commotion had attracted attention from the neighbouring tables and black-dressed waiters were moving towards the source of the trouble. Barney had stood up to get out of the range of Kemal’s weapon.

The attacker made another swinging slash with his knife, but the force of it overbalanced him, and he stumbled on to the dusty ground. From there, two of the waiters disarmed and picked him up, efficiently putting him into an armlock.

The tall, dark-clad man who had greeted Barney at the entrance to the restaurant moved forward, and the two of them had a muttered conversation in Turkish. The man seemed to be trying to persuade Barney of something – Carole thought she heard a word like ‘police’ – but the Englishman was having none of it.

Eventually, Barney won his way and, on instructions from their superior, the two waiters frogmarched the bleary Kemal through the trees towards the complex’s entrance, where presumably he would be thrown off the premises. After a couple more words with the tall man, Barney Willingdon resumed his seat and topped up his glass of red wine. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, in a manner that was far too urbane for the circumstances.

‘Have they called the police?’ asked Carole.

‘No.’

‘Why ever not? That man attacked you with a knife. He should be charged with attempted murder.’

‘That’s taking the incident far too seriously. He’s drunk, that’s all.’

‘There are plenty of victims who’ve been murdered by somebody who was drunk.’

‘I’m sure there are. But, as you can see, I’m not one of them. Let’s talk about something else … like how you’re going to spend your fortnight in the lovely village of Kayaköy.’

After the scene they’d just witnessed, Jude was beginning to wonder how lovely the village of Kayaköy actually was. Then, remembering what she’d heard from Fergus McNally, she asked, ‘Did that man Kemal use to be a business partner of yours, Barney?’

He looked annoyed that she had made the connection, and a little confused as to how she might have made it, but conceded that Kemal and he had been in business together. ‘But we fell out over the definition of hard work. Kemal thought all he had to contribute to our mutual projects was a Turkish name on the letterhead. It didn’t occur to him that he was actually expected to get his hands dirty.’

‘I see,’ said Jude, thinking that Fergus McNally – and indeed Kemal himself – might have described the situation differently.

When they got back to Morning Glory, Carole, who had had more wine than she was used to, said she would turn in straight away. ‘You know, having had such an early start this morning and what with the time difference and everything.’

Jude thought it would be cruel to point out that the time difference worked the other way and that she’d gained a couple of hours rather than lost them. Back in Fethering it was only nine o’clock in the evening.

‘Well, goodnight, Carole,’ said Barney. ‘Nita did show you how the air conditioning worked, didn’t she?’

‘Oh yes. But I won’t be using it.’ To Carole’s mind, air conditioning was an entirely unnecessary form of pampering. She’d been brought up in an English home where no mechanical aids were allowed to interfere with the regular sequence of the seasons. In the winter you got cold, in the summer you got hot.

Jude was sorry that Carole had retired for the night because that left her alone with Barney and, after the phone call she’d had from him on the Friday, she anticipated a slightly awkward encounter.

And that’s what it proved to be. In spite of having put away a large Efes and the full bottle of red wine, Barney accepted her half-hearted offer of another drink. Reluctantly, she produced her duty-free bottle of Laphroaig and took it, along with two glasses, out to the loungers by the pool. It was a beautiful evening, still pleasantly warm, a tapestry of bright stars spread out over the cloudless sky. Far too romantic, thought Jude as she filled the glasses.

Any hopes she’d nurtured that Barney might have forgotten or felt embarrassed about their recent phone call were quickly crushed.

‘Jude,’ he murmured, ‘I meant what I said on Friday.’

‘And I meant what I said on Friday. I’m not in the business of rekindling old embers with married men.’

‘You’re not telling me you’ve never had a relationship with a married man?’

‘No,’ Jude replied honestly. ‘I am not telling you that. But I do exercise my own judgement in the selection of those married men. And as I said when we spoke on the phone last week, I am not about to succumb to your blandishments.’

‘Blimey, have you just swallowed a dictionary?’

‘I think you know what I mean, Barney.’

‘Yes, I do. Or, at least, I know what you think you mean, Jude.’ He moved forward on his lounger and put a hand firmly on her knee. ‘But there still is something between us, Jude. Emotion that powerful doesn’t just go away.’

She didn’t remove his hand. To do so would have felt too clumsy, too teenage, as though going through the motions of a bedroom farce. ‘Barney, you’re talking a very long time ago. I am not currently looking for any kind of emotional entanglement. And if I were, I’m afraid you aren’t the person I would be entangling with.’ That removed the hand on her knee more effectively than a slap would have done. ‘I come back to the same point, Barney. You’re married.’

‘Yes, but I’m in a marriage that’s not working.’

‘That’s not my problem. I recommend you find out which bit of the marriage is not working and sort it out.’

‘I can tell you the bit of it that’s not working. The sex.’

‘Ah. Well, you must—’

‘It’s stopped. There just isn’t any. Henry’s completely lost interest.’

‘Then that’s something you must work out between the two of you. It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘But it could be something to do with you, Jude. When I think back to the sex you and I used to enjoy together! It was just so good, so adventurous, so uncomplicated.’

‘We were uncomplicated back then, Barney. Let’s keep that whole episode as a pleasant memory. It’s not going to happen again. And if it did, I can guarantee that it wouldn’t be the same. You can’t go down the same road twice.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Just take my word for it.’

‘But, Jude …’ His voice was low, teasing, sexy.

Again, no slap. But Jude found another, equally effective method of changing Barney’s priorities. ‘Incidentally,’ she said, ‘I now know how your first wife died.’

Jude felt uncomfortable as she lay uncovered on the crisp white sheets of her bed, waiting to feel the benefit of the air conditioning. (She did not share Carole’s inhibitions about using it.) She felt hot, but the main cause of her discomfort was not the ambient temperature, but the conversation she’d had with Barney. Why wouldn’t he just take no for an answer? If he kept up his current behaviour, he would spoil the two weeks of baggage-free relaxation that Jude had been planning.

She tried to clear her mind, but her thoughts kept coming back to the same subject: Barney Willingdon. Not in a romantic way. Though she could still recognize his attractions, Jude genuinely had no intentions of getting embroiled there again. But she was worried about Barney’s moral values. She couldn’t forget Fergus McNally’s long diatribe against his former partner. And the fumbled attack by Kemal in Cin Bal was troubling too.

There was also Barney’s conversation at the restaurant with Nita. That had displayed qualities of a stand-off. The tour guide had deliberately sought him out and then asked if he was going for a nightcap at the Scorpion (presumably one of the village’s many bars). To Jude, that question had sounded like an encoded message. She had a feeling that in the past ‘a nightcap at the Scorpion’ had preceded a sexual encounter between the two. His turning down the offer had been a slap in the face for Nita.

And when Barney had refused even to tell Nita which villa he was spending the night in, the act of rejection was complete. He had made it clear to Nita that any liaison between the two of them had come to an end. Jude hoped to God that wasn’t because he planned for her to take Nita’s place.

As the room cooled down she drifted off into troubled sleep.