Hotel Bosphorus (4 page)

I talked first. Then it was her turn.

 

By the time I'd reached a state where I could no longer listen to what Petra was telling me, it was long after dawn. I'd consumed far too much alcohol in an attempt to fortify myself against the misery my friend had suffered. We left the hotel and walked in silence as far as Dolmabahçe. The early-morning coolness made me feel better, even if it didn't quite bring me back to reality. We went to the stand-up café next to Dolmabahçe Palace where, along with other drunks, we drank tarry tea to obliterate the feeling of helplessness and those turbid nightmares of the past…

 

It was almost noon when I returned home. I had a long shower and went to bed, where I tossed and turned at length before going to sleep. The moment I was alone, Petra's words overwhelmed me all over again. What she had gone through was very real and very scary. Something seemed to have changed in me, as if an innocent part of me had been corrupted. And this corruption seemed to have been chiselled into my heart. I was still a small child when I first learned how other people's personal
tragedies could affect you and destroy your belief in human nature. Even if you had not yet had any personal experience that might be termed true tragedy… Still…

My sleep was interrupted by the phone that kept ringing and the nightmares that kept appearing. When I finally decided to get up, I felt more tired than ever. As Petra's words went round and round in my head, everything started to seem even worse than the previous night. I didn't think I could spend an evening and night alone at home, so I jumped into the car to see Lale, which is what I did whenever something painful happened to me.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, Lale had long since left for her beloved work. However, it was still so early that normal people, even civil servants, had not so much as thrown back their duvets. I called Pelin at home, waking her to say I wouldn't be at the shop until the afternoon. I wanted to collect my thoughts and decided I'd feel better if I strolled around the streets for a bit or went to a comedy film. In the end, I could do neither. I had to see Petra. It would help just to sit at the edge of the film set. The only way I could escape this distress, this nightmare, was to be with Petra and see how she dealt with it. That was the best solution I could think of.

My heart seemed to have been replaced by an enormous hole that was draining away my feelings. I wanted to cry, but couldn't. I wanted to talk to Lale, yet the previous night I'd been unable to say anything. I'd spent the whole evening staring vacantly at the TV. Thanks to the sleeping pills Lale recommended, I'd managed to sleep a couple of hours, but no more. Now, at the crack of dawn, I was sitting in the garden with a
coffee cup in my hand wondering how I'd get through the endless hours ahead of me.

At about eight o'clock, I decided to give Petra a call. I thought she must be awake because they were filming that day. In any case, Petra was not the type to sleep until noon. For many people, discipline and success go hand in hand, whereas people like me flounder around in the muddy waters of life without managing either.

The phone in Petra's room was answered by a male voice speaking in Turkish. At eight o'clock in the morning, a Turkish-speaking man was answering the phone in Petra's room. “God, what hypocrites people are!” I thought to myself. Only last night she had been saying that she couldn't embark on any new relationship after her experiences, and that she was now crippled in this respect. Yet, only three days after arriving in Istanbul, a Turkish man, no doubt dark and handsome, was picking up her phone. My first reaction was to put the phone down on this fellow, and to erase Petra and everything she had told me from my life. But I was rather old for such behaviour.

“May I speak to Petra, please?” I said.

“Madam, are you calling from Istanbul?” he said, in a thick Black Sea accent.

I managed to stop myself saying, “What's it to you?” I thought this might seem rude to a Turkish man.

“Why are you asking?”

“I'm Alaatin, a police official from Ortaköy Police Station. We're here to investigate a murder. If…”

Murder… Murder…

I had only ever encountered that word in novels; it was the first time I'd heard it uttered in real life.

“Mur… mur… murder?? Who? Is it Petra?” I said with difficulty. Alaatin hesitated uncomfortably; they weren't supposed to give out information, and he didn't have the authority to do so anyway.

“Look, Inspector, I'm Petra Vogel's friend. What I want to know isn't a state secret, I just want to know if Petra is OK.”

Addressing Alaatin as “Inspector” was a good idea, I can tell you. He immediately dropped his guard.

“Miss Vogel is fine, madam.”

“Thank you, Inspector,” I said, this time as a reward.

Petra was OK. Or rather, Petra was not the person who had been killed. Yet since the murder investigation was taking place in Petra's suite, the murder had some connection with Petra. That probably meant that someone in the film crew had been murdered. What else could it be? I decided to get dressed and go to the hotel straight away for the following reasons:

One, Petra might need me. These policemen had to be addressed as Inspector, the inspectors as Chief Inspector, and the chief inspectors as District Chief of Police. I was one of the few people who realized that bestowing such imaginary ranks opened many doors in the police force. The time had come for me to use this knowledge.

Two, a murder had taken place. I'd been reading crime fiction since my childhood, and selling it for the last three years. I was no longer just an ordinary reader. The time had come for me to offer my theoretical knowledge for the benefit of society.

I left the apartment and jumped into my car. For two months now, things had kept happening. First, my dear friend Fofo had found a lover and disappeared from
my life without a second thought: I was missing Fofo. Then, I'd received what would normally be considered excellent news: my most famous friend, Petra, whom I hadn't seen for years, was coming to Istanbul. As soon as we'd had a chance to talk properly, she had related a story of tragic proportions that would darken the world of the most hard-hearted person. And now her suite was full of policemen from Ortaköy Police Station.

I tried to keep calm by repeating to myself that Petra's situation was far worse than mine, and that these mounting problems now made former disasters in my life, which at the time had each seemed so important, seem like sweet memories. That was the positive side of it all. I didn't even want to think about what might lie in store for me in the days ahead.

 

While trying to cross the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul's morning traffic to reach the European side of the city, I thought about what had happened to Petra during the years we were out of touch.

When we finished university in the early eighties, I decided to loaf around and travel the world for a while. I was going to live like a belated flower child. Petra, however, was progressing rapidly in her career. I hadn't even left Berlin when Petra Vogel's name started to be heard in the world of cinema and television. It wasn't exactly fame at this stage, even in Germany, although we all realized she had the potential for fame. It was around then that we lost contact. Even though we didn't meet up, we continued to get news of each other through mutual friends. The last I heard from these friends was that she was living with Wolfram von Haagen, one of the leaders of the socialist student movement. Wolfram was a brilliant medical student, an effective orator and a very handsome man. Half the girls I knew were in love with him. When I heard that Petra was with him, I couldn't believe it. Petra was my friend, yes, but I couldn't really understand what someone like Wolfram saw in Petra. It wasn't because I was jealous, that's just how it was.

Petra and Wolfram were complete opposites. Deep down, Petra wanted to be a housewife. She had an appetite for life, but only seemed to be working at her career until she found a man to rescue her and take her
away from ordinary life. She didn't have a real passion for her work. I still think of Petra in that way. She is very competent, but in my view the reason she remained a B-grade actor was this lack of passion.

As for Wolfram, I listened to a few of his open-house forums at university. Unlike Petra, he could become passionate about anything. He spoke about revolution and socialism in a way that could persuade the most ardent rightist and excite the most soulless person.

I heard that they were living together shortly before I set off from Berlin with my rucksack for new horizons. At that time, according to Petra, her relationship with Wolfram was already deteriorating day by day. Wolfram had fallen out with his rich aristocratic family, who in turn had cut off their rebellious left-wing son. The task of making ends meet fell to Petra. Wolfram couldn't decide what to do with his medical degree and spent all his time running around between protest meetings and political gatherings.

Petra began to yearn for a child. Marriage was unfashionable in the mid-eighties, and the only way of making a relationship official was to have a child. In those days, a child really did make a relationship permanent. However, Wolfram always insisted that he didn't want a child and that there were numerous other things he wanted to do in life. He clearly began to fear Petra's determination and, as a way out, started looking for work outside Germany…

Petra was two months pregnant when Wolfram joined a group of doctors researching malaria in various parts of Africa. Wolfram insisted on Petra having a termination, but she was stubborn and said she would raise the child on her own and wanted nothing from Wolfram. That
was their last conversation. Three months later, Petra heard that Wolfram had left for Africa.

Petra was now five months pregnant and in a desperate dilemma. She had never really wanted the child for herself, only to save her relationship. But since Wolfram had no interest in children… Anyway, their relationship was now over, despite their unborn child… She had failed at that game… Petra had to think what she would do if she had this child. She went to several quacks asking for a termination, but no one would abort a five-month-old foetus. Petra finally accepted her fate: she would have the child and accept that Wolfram had left her.

Petra had no chance of finding work as an actor with her expanding belly. After giving careful thought as to how she was going to manage, she gathered her few belongings together and packed them off to her mother's house. Her mother lived alone in a remote house near a tiny village on the bank of the Rhine. Petra stayed with her there until she had recovered from the birth. They agreed that her mother would take on the role of looking after her grandchild and Petra would send money each month.

Hardly anyone knew that Petra now had a son. She had told friends and acquaintances that the pregnancy had been terminated, perhaps because her pride was not reconciled to Wolfram's departure. Her mother also concealed the fact that the child was Petra's. Even though in big cities it might be perceived as “modern” for a single woman like Petra to give birth to a fatherless child, in a German rural outpost on the Dutch border it would still have been considered a manifestation of immorality. Nobody discovered the truth. In the village,
they knew young Peter as the son of Petra's married older sister who was living in Korea. They didn't even tell the child the truth. He knew Petra as his aunt.

Peter was a beautiful child. Beautiful and, like all children brought up by elderly people, rather sad. Petra would go to the village to see her son once or twice a year, and she even managed one holiday with him during his first six years of life.

As for Wolfram, he had settled in Africa where his name soon became well known in the field of malaria research. They had run into each other once in Berlin, but he hadn't even asked what happened about the child. “Maybe,” Petra said, “someone told him that I'd had a termination. Still, I did expect him to ask. When he didn't, I kept quiet about it.”

Petra was rapidly climbing the ladder of fame; she had no time for anybody, let alone her son. Over time she saw less and less of him, but they would talk on the phone. Her mother kept saying that the child was very withdrawn, that he had no friends at school and that the reclusive life he lived was not suitable for a child. Petra would forget her mother's anxieties the moment she put the phone down, but she would always send extra money the following month.

Work prevented Petra from seeing her son on his first day at school and on his sixth birthday. A few days after this birthday, Petra's mother called to say that Peter had not returned from school that afternoon. Petra dropped everything and went to the village.

 

Peter was a lonely child. He had no friends. He was the worst student in the class and was always causing problems. On that day, some children had seen him
talking to a man when they came out of school. Peter was looking unusually happy. He was laughing out loud, holding the man's hand and turning round to look at the other children. The man was tall, blond and wearing a suit. The children couldn't give any more details about the man's appearance. According to the village bar owner, a man of this description had been seen several times in recent weeks. However, no one had spoken to him and he had done nothing to attract attention. He was an unremarkable outsider in a tiny village.

Peter's grandmother said he'd come home with a huge teddy bear on his birthday, but didn't say who had given it to him. “But,” said the old woman, “somehow he changed after that birthday. He started doing his homework as soon as he came home, tidying up his room and he looked happier than ever before.”