City of the Lost. Will Adams

paid for. But it’s still an expensive business, being a student in America. I had to take on a crazy amount of debt, which my parents were not happy about, let me tell you. Anyway, I got to know Nathan while I was there, because he was the one sponsoring the programme. It was on the Homeric Question, you see, which was his thing too. And he saw how stretched I was with my studying and my bar-jobs, so he hired me as a sort of PA to help him manage his collection and deal with museums on his behalf, that kind of thing. But the work was pretty light and really it was another way for him to support my research, you know?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘So eventually I got my doctorate and then Leiden offered me a job. It wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted but it was a start, a foot in the door. For some reason, however, Nathan decided he wanted me to stay and work for him full-time. He offered me twice what Leiden were. I said no. So he offered me quadruple.’

      ‘He must have thought highly of you.’

      ‘Yes. But I think also he wanted to demonstrate something. I’d been so pleased at the Leiden job, you see. And my attitude towards money always amused him. The rectitude of it. All that hard work bravely done shit. This will sound awful, but I think he wanted to corrupt me a little. And he had so much money that my salary was effectively meaningless to him. Like filling a thimble from his lake. So he kept offering me more and more until finally I said yes. It was all that student debt; suddenly I could pay it off.’ She sat back in her chair as their main course arrived: succulent charred lamb kebabs garnished with yoghurt, onions, tomatoes and eye-watering peppers. ‘But the thing about a big salary is that you start taking it for granted. You think it’s what you’re worth. So instead of paying down your debt, you rent yourself a nice apartment, you lease a car, you fly home four times a year. Which was stupid, because no one else would ever have paid me half what Nathan did. I was his friend as much as his employee. I was his escort for openings and family events. It got so that people began to talk. I tried to ignore all that. I mean, Christ, he was as old as my grandmother. Literally.’ She took a deep breath, looked defiantly at Iain. ‘Last Christmas, he asked me to marry him.’

      Iain nodded. He’d guessed something of the sort. ‘What did you say?’

      ‘I said no. I told him I was fond of him, but not like that. He kept at it. It seemed almost like a game to him. He kept making exploratory little advances. Like he’d buy me gifts small enough that I’d have been churlish to refuse them. But then the next gift would be a little bigger, so how could I fuss about that after accepting the one before. Or he’d touch my elbow in public. Then my shoulder and my back. Or he’d tease me and call me pet names. That kind of thing. And whenever I tried to draw a line for him, he’d joke about my salary, only not altogether a joke, you know. Once you’ve grown used to a good income, the prospect of losing it is a bit like vertigo.’

      ‘I can imagine.’

      ‘Anyway, it got so that everyone took it for granted that we were secretly engaged. You should have seen the looks his children used to dart at me. Like they hated me.’

      ‘Ah,’ said Iain. ‘That dickhead on the phone earlier.’

      ‘Julian. Nathan’s eldest son. It’s hard to blame him too much. Even by his own telling, Nathan must have been a truly shitty father. He whored around until his wife finally had had enough and walked out on him, taking the kids with her. They grew up angry with him, as you can imagine; justice matters so much when you’re young. But then they grew older and realized where the money was.’

      ‘So they came crawling back?’

      ‘And he despised them for it, I think. Even though he’d inherited the company himself. And, God, he could be cruel. He’d get them to tell stories against themselves and against their mother, that kind of thing. Muse aloud about leaving everything to some absurd charity or other, or marrying again and starting a new family.’

      ‘But now they’ll get to inherit after all,’ observed Iain. ‘No wonder Julian sounded like he was off to pop some corks. After all that worry.’

      ‘Yes.’

      Iain allowed himself the faintest of smiles. ‘You don’t suppose he could have been worried enough to have had his father killed, do you?’

       SIX

      I

      Karin looked at Iain in consternation. ‘Have his father killed? What are you talking about?’

      ‘Someone set off a bomb today,’ said Iain. ‘You said yourself the crater was directly beneath his room. Maybe it really was Cypriot reunificationists out to inflict carnage for the cause. But isn’t it possible that it was a murder made to look like terrorism? That your boss was the real target?’

      ‘No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘His children aren’t angels, but they’re not like that. They couldn’t be. Anyway, Nathan only decided to come here two weeks ago. And he didn’t tell his family until a couple of days before we left. You’d need far more time than that to set up something like this halfway across the world.’

      ‘What if they had more time? What if they had weeks? Even months?’

      ‘Aren’t you listening? He only decided to come two weeks ago.’

      Iain reached across the table to touch the back of her hand. ‘Don’t get mad at me. I’m only speculating. I don’t know Julian and these others. I owe them nothing. But I do owe Mustafa the truth. So put yourself in the shoes of one of Nathan’s sons. He hates his father for all the shit he’s made him eat. He sees him falling for you and now he’s panicked too. Maybe he’s a gambler. Maybe he has a high-maintenance mistress. He needs his inheritance. He needs it now. So he decides to act. But getting at his father isn’t easy. Rick was his head of security, correct? Not just a bodyguard. So he obviously took his personal protection pretty damned seriously, right? Getting to him in America was sure to have been hard. And he’d likely have been near the top of the suspects list. But what if he could lure Nathan somewhere he’d be vulnerable? He’s a collector. Dangle the right piece in front of him and he’d be on the first plane. And if he was killed by some random atrocity while he was here, no one would look at it twice.’

      She shook her head. ‘And all those other people? Collateral damage?’

      ‘He wouldn’t necessarily have planned it that way. He could have hired a hitman and left the method up to him. It wouldn’t be the first time. Some of the gangs here are notoriously ruthless. There’s this group of ultra-nationalists called the Grey Wolves who …’ He frowned, sat back in his chair, scratched his neck thoughtfully.

      ‘What is it?’ she asked.

      Iain didn’t answer at once. There was something darkly familiar about all this, he suddenly realized: about the worsening terrorism, the hapless government response, the growing public clamour for decisive action. But surely all that belonged to Turkey’s buried past. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘A weird déjà vu, that’s all.’

      ‘What about?’

      ‘I can’t really talk about it.’

      She tipped her head quizzically to one side. ‘You have a past,’ she said.

      ‘Who doesn’t?’

      ‘Tell me.’

      ‘I’d rather not.’

      ‘I told you mine.’

      He sighed and splayed fingers on the starched white tablecloth. ‘I was in the army kind of thing for a few years.’

      That made her smile. ‘The army kind of thing?’

      ‘Afghan, Iraq, a bunch of other places. I saw the usual horrible things. I did the usual horrible things.