He, too, had another job to do before he could eat. Once he had checked with his vendors, and reckoned their bills, he took a tour of the perimeter of the market. He paid particular attention to dark corners, shadowed doorways, and the space beneath the stalls whose owners he did not serve. He looked men in the face, and recognised them quickly; and now and then he lifted his head to scan the market as a whole, to see who was coming in, and to watch for the arrival of any carts he didn’t know.
From time to time he wondered what was keeping Yashim.
A troupe of jugglers and acrobats, six men and two women, took up a position near the cypress tree, squatting on their haunches, waiting for light and crowds. Between them they had set a big basket with a lid, and Murad Eslek spent a while watching them from the corner of the alley beneath the city walls until he had seen that the basket really did contain bats, balls and other paraphernalia of their trade. Then he moved on, eyeing up the other quacks and entertainers who had crowded in for the Friday market: the Kurdish story teller in a patchwork coat; the Bulgarian fire-eater, bald as an egg; a number of bands—Balkan pipers, Anatolian string players; a pair of sinuous and silent Africans, carefully dotting a blanket spread on the ground with charms and remedies; a row of gypsy silversmiths with tiny anvils and a supply of coins wrapped in pieces of soft leather, who were already at work, snipping the coins and beating out tiny rings and bracelets.
He took another look across the market and thought of food, though he knew it would be a few minutes yet before he could eat. The air was already spiced with the fragrance of roasting herbs; he could hear the sizzle of hot fat dripping on the coals. He lifted a cube of salty white bread from a stall as he passed by, and popped it in his mouth; and then, since no one had rebuked him, he stopped a moment to admire the arrangement of the spit, worked by a little dog scampering gamely round inside a wooden wheel. Nearby he saw out of the corner of his eye a man flipping meatballs with a flat knife. He drew a few meatballs to the side of the pan, and Eslek stepped forwards.
“Ready, then?”
The man cracked a smile and nodded.
“First customer Friday is always free.”
Murad grinned. He watched the man scatter a few pitta breads on the hot surface of the pan, press them down with the blade of his knife and flip them over. He pulled one towards him and opened it up with a quick arc of the point and a sliding motion with the flat side.
“Chilli sauce?”
Murad Eslek’s mouth watered. He nodded.
The man took a dab of sauce on the end of his knife, spread it inside the bread, scooped up two meatballs and stuffed them home with a generous handful of lettuce and a squeeze of lemon.
With the kebab in two hands, Eslek sauntered happily through the stalls, munching greedily.
He saw nothing to surprise him. Eventually he went down the alley by the walls and found the dark passageway Yashim had mentioned. He mounted the steps carefully, and made his way back to the tower. The door was still on its chain as Yashim had left it. He sat down on the parapet, swinging his legs, licking his fingers, and looked down through the cypress at the market below.
The sky had lightened, and it would soon be dawn.
[ 101 ]
When Yashim opened his eyes again it was still dark. The fire in the grate had died out. Wincing slightly, he eased himself upright and slipped his legs over the edge of the bed. His feet felt bruised and swollen, but he forced himself to stand upright. After he had hobbled up and down the room for a few minutes, he found the pain was bearable. He found his clothes by accident, putting out a hand in the darkness to steady himself. They were neatly piled on a table where Marta must have placed them.
He took his cloak from the hall and stepped out into the early morning air. His skin was tender, but his head was clear.
He walked swiftly down towards the Golden Horn. The lines of the Karagozi poem circled in his head to the rhythm of his footsteps.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
Wake them.
He quickened his pace to reach the wharves. On the quayside he found a ferryman awake, huddled into his burnous against the dawn chill, and once across he took a sedan chair and ordered the bearers to the Kerkoporta market.
[ 102 ]
I saw you arrive,” Murad Eslek explained. He’d recognised Yashim immediately, and rushed to greet him before he disappeared into the crowd. Now that the day had broken there were plenty of people milling past the stalls, filling their baskets with fresh produce. “I’ve been looking about, like you said. Nothing unusual. A few performers I don’t know, that’s about it. Quiet, everything normal.”
“The tower?”
“Yep, I checked it out. The door you told me about, it’s still on the chain. I’ve been up there for an hour.”
“Hmmm. There’s another door, though, from the other side. On a lower floor. I’d better take a look. You stay here and keep your eyes open, but if I’m not back in half an hour, bring some of your lads and come after me.”
“Like that, is it? Half a minute, I’ll get someone to go with you now.”
“Yes,” Yashim said. “Why not?”
It took them only a few minutes to reach the parapet. The porter Eslek had found stamped along incuriously behind Yashim, but he was glad of his presence: the memory of the dark stairs leading down to that clean chamber still made him shiver. He unlooped the chain and once more set his shoulder to the door.
The porter protested.
“I think we didn’t ought to go in there. It’s not allowed.”
“I’m allowed,” Yashim said shortly. “And you’re with me. Come on.”
It was darker this time, but Yashim knew where to go. At the head of the steps he put his finger to his lips and led the way down. The tekke was just as he’d left it the day before. He tried the door: it was still locked. The porter stood nervously at the foot of the stairs, looking round in surprise. Yashim went over to the chest and raised the lid. Same collection of plates and glasses. Still no cadet.
Yashim straightened up.
“Come on, we’ll go back now,” he said.
The porter needed no second bidding.
[ 103 ]
The effendi had told him to keep his eyes open, and Eslek had been doing just that for several hours. He wasn’t sure what he was looking out for, exactly, or how he would recognise it when he found it. Something out of the ordinary, perhaps, Yashim had suggested. Or something so very ordinary that no one would give it a second glance—except, he had explained, perhaps Eslek himself. Eslek knew what went where, and who might be expected at a Friday market.
He scratched his head. It was all very ordinary. The stalls, the crowds, the jugglers, the musicians: it was like this every time. The market was busier, it being a Friday. What had happened that didn’t happen every day of the week? The meatball man had given him a free breakfast, that didn’t happen to you every day!
Thinking about the meatballs had reminded him of something.
He tried to remember. He’d been hungry, yes. And he’d seen that the meatballs were done, hadn’t he, before anyone else? Seen that much out of the corner of his eye while he poached a cube of bread—
Eslek jerked his chin. The little cube of bread. Nobody had noticed. There’d been no one manning the stall, and the little dog running round to turn the spit. Something he’d never actually seen before today, not in the market, at least. But so what?
He decided to take another look. As he threaded his way through the crowd, he caught sight of the meatball vendor with the flat knife in one hand and a pitta bread in the other, serving a customer. But he was looking the other way. When Eslek reached him he was still standing, as though transfixed, and the customer was beginning to grumble: “I said yes to sauce.”