The Istanbul Puzzle by Laurence O’Bryan Read Free Book Online

stone walls and sun-bleached Ottoman-era buildings lined the street. The hotel brooded above me. It felt strange, unsettling, to be following in Alek’s footsteps, seeing things he’d seen only a few days before.
    I stood for a moment watching the police car pull away. I could smell jasmine on the warm air, hear laughter, voices. I touched the yellow plaster of the hotel wall as I climbed the stairs from the street.
    As soon as I entered the building I was hit by a blast of air conditioning. The smiling lady behind the glass-topped ultra-modern reception desk had the blondest hair I’d seen in a long time. She was friendly, and very sympathetic, after I gave her my name and told her I was a colleague of Alek’s.
    ‘We are all so sorry about what happened. We heard from the police that Mr Zegliwski had an accident. It’s terrible. He was so nice. What happened to him? Do you know?’
    ‘Yes.’ I didn’t feel like telling her though, so I added. ‘And thanks. I appreciate your concern.’
    She smiled, then held a finger in the air, as if she was trying to remember something. After a moment, she said, ‘There’s something here for Mr Zegliwski.’
    She turned, scanned the pigeon holes that filled the wall behind her until she found what she was looking for – a large brown envelope. She held it out in front of her triumphantly, to show me what was written on it. Mr Zegliwski.
    I took the envelope. As I walked to the lift I squeezed it gently. It felt like there were a few sheets of paper in it, and something else at the bottom.
    A man in a puffy black jacket stared at me from an oversized leather sofa at the far end of the reception area. He gave me the creeps. I imagined his corpulent boss entertaining some underage hooker or three upstairs.
    As I waited for the lift to reach the fifth floor, I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and looked inside. A silver key-ring, with one of those USB memory sticks attached, lay in the bottom of the envelope. I pulled it out, looked at it, then put it in my pocket. The only other thing in the envelope were some photos.
    I almost dropped them on the white marble floor of the hallway as I juggled my room card and bag. It wasn’t until I was inside that I got a chance to look at the photos properly.
    One of them was of a woman with long black hair and a winning smile. Alek had clearly been busy. Something tightened in my chest. Did she know what had happened to him? My shoulders hunched, as the weight of his death bore down on me. There was one thing I was going to promise myself, and Alek. Whatever happened, I would find out who had done this.
    I steadied myself, looked at the photos again.
    Two didn’t fit with the rest. One was of a crumbling floor mosaic. Debris lay scattered around it. The other was of the inside of a brick-lined tunnel. It had an arched ceiling, sloping downwards. A yellow marble plaque hung on the wall near the top of the tunnel. I could just about make out what was carved on it; scales with a sword lying across its pans.
    I put the photos on the round table near the window. I couldn’t make sense of them now. And I didn’t want to think about them. I looked around. The room was a pastiche of late Ottoman style, decorated in reds and golds. Every piece of furniture was covered in a thick layer of varnish.
    After a quick shower I turned off the bedside light and lay staring at the shadows, my mind drifting. A faint aroma came to me. The smell of roses. It reminded me of Irene. It would have been good to be able to call her now, to talk all this through with her.
    When I met Irene she’d been studying medicine. She hadn’t been interested in me initially, but I found out she used to drink in the university bar before getting her train home. A week later we had our first date. A walk in Hyde Park. She was a great listener.
    We got married three months after I graduated. One of her friends used to tease us about how perfect our lives were, how