Babylon (18 page)

The figure was burning a hole in his pocket. Brunnsparken was swimming with cops too; he wanted to get rid of it as quickly as he could.

Knud had told him that many antique dealers didn’t give a fuck who was buying or selling. Private individuals, buyers within the trade and even museums would irresponsibly purchase artefacts which had been smuggled or stolen from graves. Those in the business would usually pay up for exclusive items, no questions asked. If the figure was as valuable as Knud had said, Torsen hoped he would be able to shift it pretty quickly. Cash in hand, no names, no receipts. When he walked into one of the three shops he had found via Directory Enquiries, he tried to hide his shaking hands.

‘How may I help you?’

The man behind the desk was elderly, slim, dressed from head to foot in beige, and wizened. Along his hairline the wrinkled skin of his forehead gave way to a crusty landscape of yellowish-brown flakes. Torsen focused his gaze on something else; he would be out of here in twenty minutes max and would find somewhere safe. He rummaged inside his jacket and imagined that he was gaining strength from the object pressing against his chest.

Before he went in, he had decided to say as little as possible. He placed the figure, which looked like a woman, carefully on the desk and asked in only slightly accented Swedish: ‘How much will you give me for this?’

Beneath the eczema the antique dealer’s skin had turned pale. At first it seemed as if he didn’t dare touch it, but then he picked up the figure and looked at the base, scraped it gently with his nail and shook his head, murmuring something Torsen didn’t catch. The man looked shyly up at Torsen, as if he were unsure what to do next. Torsen broke out in a sweat. It smelt bitter from the tablets he had taken for the pain in his back. A drop fell from his forehead onto his dry, cracked hand.

A couple who had been conducting a muted discussion in the corner fell silent and edged towards the door. Torsen realised he had jumped the gun. His decision to keep the lad in the dark would no doubt bring a whole heap of trouble on his head.

He wasn’t well enough for trouble. As he tucked the clay figure back in his pocket, the antique dealer started, then groped under his desk – did he have an alarm down there?

Torsen backed away, spun around and was back on the street once more. He had the feeling he was being followed, and kept looking over his shoulder. His fix was burning against his calf. He needed to get away from these busy streets.

With one more glance over his shoulder, he rounded the corner. His heart was pounding. The whole thing had been a mistake. He couldn’t think clearly. He could see a church, greenery and trees in his peripheral vision. Up ahead lay narrow cobbled streets and old buildings. In between were the tram lines; the ground came closer and he had to rest for a moment. He covered his eyes with his hand and breathed. He was still on his feet, it was just the sun dazzling him. It was spring and the sun was bright.

The shrubbery in the churchyard was sparse; there was nowhere to hide. He walked past a dark door set back in a stone porch, then another. He could feel his knees giving way and turned back to the porch. This would have to do. He saw shadows in the corners of his eyes, groped for support to keep his balance.

By the time the lad hurled himself at him, Torsen was already numb with pain. He took a kick in the guts and another in the ribs. He
stopped breathing briefly, a pure reflex, but when the lad smashed his head against the stone wall, he felt nothing.

Torsen was unable to place the pictures that came to him in the minutes before he came round. They had no connection with his life, or maybe the blonde woman with the troubled expression reminded him of the adults when he was a kid; they were worried and soft-hearted and cross all at the same time.
Mads, what have you been up to now?

Far away he heard a woman’s voice; she seemed to be on the phone. ‘Hello? The other guy’s run off . . . He’s lying in a funny position and he’s bleeding quite heavily from his head. Either he’s unconscious or . . . No, nobody here knows who he is. I was just walking past and I saw what happened. I didn’t have a phone on me so I ran into Holmström’s, the antique shop next door, and . . . hang on a minute.’

Although he was drifting in and out of consciousness, he was aware of someone crouching down beside him, uncertain and keeping as far away as possible while still able to reach his neck. He thought he ought to defend himself, but his body didn’t react. He felt a faint tickle beneath his skin for a few seconds after her fingertips had touched him.

‘I think he might still be alive,’ the woman said. ‘Wait a minute, he might have some ID on him. Yes, there’s a driving licence.’

His body jerked. A stab of pain ebbed away as he floated into the mist once more.

When he vaguely regained consciousness, he heard an anxious man saying something about the recovery position, and that the ambulance would be here any minute. The man’s voice was shrill and somehow familiar; Torsen opened one eye a fraction and saw that it was the antiques dealer. Feeling returned to his body in fits and starts, along with fear and the realisation of what had happened, what was happening. He moved almost imperceptibly. Yes, he could still feel the figure rubbing against his aching ribs.

The lad had taken his revenge, but had been interrupted.

Torsen’s eyelids twitched; they were swollen and stuck together, but through his bloodied eyelashes he could see glimmers of light, and the blurred outlines of people standing over him. The ambulance was on its way, they reassured him again, the ambulance and the police.

If it was the last thing he did, he had to get back on his feet. He had
to get out of there. Soon it would be too late. Torsen gritted his teeth.

With a rattling in his throat, he hurled himself upright. The pain made bile surge into his throat. He was dizzy, whimpering, and he crashed into the wall. The blonde woman cried out and jumped to one side to avoid his flailing arms; he managed a feeble blow to the antiques dealer’s midriff, enough to make him double over in shock and sink to the ground.

Torsen summoned up every last scrap of strength and ran.

25

Istanbul, September 2007

Henrik closed his eyes and tipped back his head. Even the sky looked different in Istanbul. A veil of smog coloured the woolly clouds a dirty brown, as if someone had slipped a nylon stocking over the sky.

He didn’t want to accept that it would all be over soon. Three more days and he would be back in Sweden. Standing in front of his red door, suitcases in hand, then putting them down in the hallway with a thud. He would begin to feel guilty towards Rebecca, and realise quite how badly he had betrayed her. The smell of incense and cherry tobacco would quickly evaporate from his clothes, disappearing along with the image of himself and Ann-Marie Karpov between crisp hotel sheets. Everyday life would drop down like a lid, pushing them both back into their former roles. The memory would slowly fade.

It was a humid day, and his scalp felt itchy. In a sudden, pointless rage, he scratched his head furiously. Then he contemplated his nails: damp and lined with dirt. And yet it was only a couple of hours since he had scrubbed his hands clean back at the hotel, and had a shave. Washed his hair and slicked it back with gel. The exhaust fumes had turned his white Eton shirt grey, and after a day out on the streets a black mess emerged when he blew his nose.

The heat really was unbearable. Henrik looked around. There was no shade in sight.

Ann-Marie had gone to a meeting with the head of the archaeology department and someone from the Museum of Archaeology to discuss a future exchange between the universities. She had arranged to meet Henrik afterwards at the entrance to Gulhane Park, at the bottom of the hill leading up to the museum. Like two giggling teenagers they had planned to steal an hour in each other’s company before rejoining the rest of the group later that afternoon.

There was quite a while left until he was due to meet Ann-Marie.

He got up, his legs wobbly, without any real plan. The main thing was to get out of the sun. The shade of a balcony, even of a tree, anything but this exposed, crowded square where his brain would begin to boil at any second.

He passed the queue for the Hagia Sophia, pushing through a group of Americans who were fanning themselves with maps and brochures. One of the guards, who had been on duty at the entrance to the nearby Blue Mosque earlier that week, reluctantly acknowledged him. It was a sign that they had shared a less than pleasant experience.

Axel, thought Henrik, his fucking integrity and those bloody shoes.

On the plane from Amsterdam to Istanbul they had discussed fingerprints and the new regulations surrounding passport applications. Both Henrik and Axel had been united in their determination never to supply their fingerprints as long as it was voluntary. It was a question of principle. But when Axel decided to apply his libertarianism to the Blue Mosque’s ban on shoes and expressly refused to cooperate with the guards, Henrik had been forced to intervene.

‘Don’t piss about when they’re carrying sub-machine guns. Take your fucking shoes off, OK?’ Axel had eventually come to his senses, sulkily removing his trainers and walking on the oriental carpets in his socks, just like everyone else.

Henrik began thinking about Ann-Marie again and a foolish smile spread involuntarily across his face. He decided to go for a walk before heading towards the park entrance. Beyond the open square it was both cooler and quieter: fewer tourists, fewer persistent hawkers. Even the smell of half-charred corn on the cob was less intrusive here.

Contentedly, he groped for his cigarettes.

‘Mister.’

Henrik deliberately didn’t turn towards the rasping male voice. It had taken a couple of days to learn how to avoid the worst of the hassle
from street vendors, and from then on the response became a kind of reflex. How to appear uninterested through a total lack of body language, when the tiniest misguided hint of politeness could lead to devastating consequences, bringing a surge of other hawkers. And they sold everything. From keyrings and jewellery to silver cutlery and socks, a little bit of everything packed into a box or spread out on a piece of cloth on the ground.

The voice belonged to a man with neither a box nor a blanket. He didn’t look like a typical street vendor either; he was wearing a loose brown shirt and grey waistcoat. His feet were brown and dry, spreading over the soles of his flip-flops.

‘Mister,’ he said again. He looked around warily before coming closer. Henrik felt uncomfortable. Even if the man probably wasn’t intending to rob him – he would hardly have made the effort to attract his attention if that were the case – no doubt he would try begging for money. Henrik found it difficult enough to ignore beggars on the street, where he was just one of hundreds of tourists. It was much worse now he was away from the crowds. It was so clear-cut: a rich man, a poor man.

He searched his trouser pockets for spare coins, rattling them in some embarrassment when the man didn’t seem to understand. He wanted to explain that he wasn’t rich at all. That, by Swedish standards, he was poverty-stricken, up to his ears in debt, and that he’d had to borrow the money for this trip.

The man shook his head in horror, no, he didn’t want money.

‘You’re selling something?’

He nodded, and gestured that Henrik should follow him.

Henrik hesitated. Maybe he was hiding stolen goods somewhere nearby. But Henrik was curious. If there was any trouble, he was still not too far from the crowd outside the Blue Mosque, he could shout for help. Besides which, the man wasn’t young, he must be about twice Henrik’s age. Henrik could beat him in a fight.

He followed the man but didn’t speak, afraid of committing himself to something if he gave any verbal encouragement. The man limped across the car park.

‘Come now,’ he said from time to time, waving his hand.

This is what travelling is all about, Henrik thought as he kept up with the man. Taking a chance, having the courage to let yourself be
challenged, questioned. Throwing caution to the winds occasionally and going with the flow.

They didn’t go very far; just beyond the main tourist drag. The city was still beautiful, but strikingly poor and much the worse for wear. Henrik soon lost his bearings.

The man stopped by an ancient pick-up truck, falling apart with rust, in a yard full of overflowing dustbins. For a moment Henrik gave in to his instincts, allowing himself to be both nauseated and fascinated by the rats scrabbling among the garbage, as big as cats with their swollen bellies dragging on the ground.

A boy emerged from the shadows of the yard. He seemed to have been doing something for Henrik’s guide, because as soon as they appeared he vanished silently around the corner. The man held up a finger indicating that Henrik should wait, then hurried around the vehicle as he fished a key out of his waistcoat pocket. The driver’s door opened and he leant in across the seat.

Henrik observed the man more carefully, and with a growing sense of unease. He had very little idea of where he was. The few people visible on the other side of the passage leading to the yard looked incredibly shady. They would feel no solidarity with him. They wouldn’t come to his rescue. He ought to take the opportunity to do a runner. But he didn’t. His curiosity outweighed his fear.

Perhaps the man was younger than he had first thought. The limp made his posture resemble that of an old man, but although the dry skin on his face was deeply lined, his physique and the sharpness of his eyes told another story. He had only the faintest shadow of a beard on his chin, but he had a splendid moustache, grey just like the hair on his head.

He held out his hand to Henrik.

‘Come now!’

Henrik slowly moved closer, his eyes fixed on the pale bundle in the man’s arms. The man squatted down and opened it out on his lap.

Henrik had been unconsciously holding his breath, and what first met his gaze was a conglomeration of varied objects. They looked scruffy. Disappointment washed over him. He didn’t know what he’d expected but his fear, combined with his pride at having gone off the beaten track, had created a sense of anticipation.