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She had to find James.
She was reluctant to dine in the hotel that evening, so she checked her guidebook and selected a restaurant called The Grapevine which looked hopeful, and took a taxi the short distance there, not wanting to bother driving. It was a good choice, the restaurant being in the garden of an old Ottoman house. Agatha ordered wine and swordfish kebab and tried not to feel lonely.
The garden was heavy with the scent of jasmine and full of the sound of British voices. It was a great favourite with the British residents, a blonde woman called Carol who served her meal, told her. There were evidently a great number of British residents in north Cyprus: they even had their own village outside Kyrenia called Karaman, complete with houses called things like Cobblers, and a British library, and a pub called The Crow’s Nest.
Agatha had brought a paperback with her and was trying to read by candle-light when Carol brought her a note. It said simply, “Come and join us.”
She looked across the restaurant. Just taking their seats at a centre table were Rose, husband and friend, and Olivia, husband and friend. They were smiling and waving in her direction.
Intrigued that such an unlikely combination should get together, Agatha picked up her plate and wine and went to join them.
“Isn’t this a surprise?” said Rose. “There we was, just walking down the street, when my Trevor, he says, he says to me, ‘Isn’t that Olivia?’” Agatha noticed Olivia wince. “And Georgie says, ‘Come and join us,’ so here we all are! I
To Agatha’s amazement, Olivia seemed to be making an effort to be polite to Rose, Trevor and Angus. It transpired that her husband, George, had recently retired from the Foreign Office, friend Harry Tembleton was a farmer, and that Olivia herself had heard of Agatha, for the Debenhams had a manor-house in Lower Cramber in the Cotswolds.
The wine circulated and Rose grew more animated. It seemed she was a specialist in the double entendre. She had a really filthy laugh, a bar-room laugh, a gin-and-sixty-cigarettes-a-day laugh, which sounded around the restaurant. George crossed his legs under the table and his foot brushed against Rose’s leg. He apologized and Rose shrieked with laughter. “Go on,” she said, giving him a nudge with one thin, pointed elbow. “I know what you’re after!”
Agatha did not think anyone could eat kebab off its skewer in a suggestive ma
Agatha gave her a bored look and Rose mouthed at her, “Like Lysistrata.” So vulgar Rose knew her Greek classics, thought Agatha, who had only recently boned up on them herself. And somehow Rose knew that Agatha had rumbled her act.
What was an intelligent woman doing being tied to the brutish Trevor and a dreary retired shopkeeper like Angus?
Angus was a man of few words and those that he had were delivered in a slow portentous ma
Olivia had a bright smile pi
To Agatha’s surprise, they all decided to go on an expedition to the Othello Tower in Famagusta the next day and she was urged to join them. They would hire cars. She refused. Tomorrow was James Lacey-hunting day. They had been going to spend their honeymoon at a rented villa outside Kyrenia. She would try to find it.
Trevor insisted on paying the bill, joking that it would be the first time in his life he was a millionaire as he pulled out wads and wads of Turkish lira. Agatha refused a lift, deciding to walk back to the hotel. She was streetwise enough to know that she was safe, and Rose, who had arrived a week before her, had told her with a tinge of regret in her voice that there was no danger of getting your bottom pinched. Rose had also said that there was also no danger of getting your handbag snatched, or of being cheated by shopkeepers. So Agatha strolled down past the town hall and down Kyrenia’s main street.
And then she saw James.
He was ahead of her, walking with that achingly familiar long, easy, loping stride of his. She let out a strangled cry and began to run on her high heels. He turned a corner next to a supermarket. She ran ahead, calling his name, but when she, too, turned the corner, he had disappeared. She had once seen the French film, Les Enfants Du Paradis, and this felt like the last scene where the hero desperately tries to catch up with his beloved.
A Turkish soldier blocked her way and asked her anxiously in broken English if he could help her.
“My friend. I saw my friend,” babbled Agatha, staring up the side street. “Is there a hotel along there?”
“No, that is Little Turkey. Ironmongers, cafés, no hotel. Sorry.”
But Agatha ploughed on, peering at deserted shops, stumbling over potholes. Then she saw a light shining out from a laundry called White Rose, Beyaz Gül in Turkish. A man in shirt-sleeves was working at a dry-cleaning machine. Agatha pushed open the door and went in.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
He was a small man with a clever, attractive face.
“You speak English?”
“Yes, I worked in England for some time as a nurse. My wife, Jackie, is English.”
“Oh, good. Look, I saw this friend of mine come along here a moment ago, but he’s disappeared.
“I don’t know where he could have been going. Sit down. I’m called Bilal.”
“I’m Agatha.”
“Would you like a coffee? I’m working late because it’s cooler at night. Trying to get as much done as I can when lean.”
Agatha felt suddenly tired, weepy and disappointed.
“No, think I’ll go back to the hotel.”
“ North Cyprus is very small,” he said sympathetically. “You’re bound to run into your friend sooner or later. Do you know The Grapevine?”
“Yes, I had di
“You should ask there. All the British end up there sooner or later.”
For some reason, Bilal, although probably somewhere in his mid-forties, reminded her of Bill Wong.
“Thanks,” she said, getting to her feet again.
“Tell me the name of your friend,” said Bilal, “and maybe I can find something out for you.”
“James Lacey, retired colonel, fifties, tall with very blue eyes, and black hair going grey.”
“Are you at The Dome?”
“Yes.”
“Write down your name for me. I’ve a terrible memory.”
Agatha wrote down her name. “A laundry is an odd business for a nurse,” she commented.
“I’m used to it now,” said Bilal. “At first I made some awful mistakes. They would give me those Turkish wedding dresses covered in sequins and I’d put them in the dry-cleaning machine, but the sequins were made of plastic and they all melted. And then they come down from the mountains with the suit they bought about forty years ago covered in olive oil and wine and expect me to give it back to them looking like new.” He gave a comical sigh.
“In any case, can I come back and see you?” asked Agatha.
“Any time. We can have coffee.”
Feeling somewhat cheered, she left. She wandered round more streets. Men sat outside cafés playing backgammon, music blared, half-key Turkish music, sad and haunting.