Read Online Hotel Bosphorus by Esmahan Aykol - Free Book Online Page B

in an hour’s time in the hotel lobby, go for breakfast somewhere, and I’ll translate what the Turkish papers are saying.”
    After that, I immediately phoned Lale.
    Lale was publishing director at Turkey’s biggest newspaper, Günebakan . She therefore had access, and could get me access, to information from police and reporters. She was also my closest friend, as you know.
She promised to arrange for me to meet two reporters who had been writing about the murder for Günebakan over the last two days. Her secretary would phone in ten minutes to give me a time and place.
    While waiting for the secretary to phone, I passed the time in front of the wardrobe trying to decide what to wear. Actually, it was a complete waste of time. I could wear anything because as soon as I left the house, I would be bathed in sweat. In the end, I put on an open-necked white cotton T-shirt and mauve linen trousers, and sat down at the dressing table. As I applied blue shadow to my right eye, the phone rang. It was Lale’s secretary. Two reporters would be waiting for me in the Kuledibi café at four o’clock. What a great person Lale was. Despite being so busy, she’d taken the trouble to consider where might be the best place for me to have a meeting. No one else in her position as publishing director of the enormous Günebakan would have bothered.
    I hastily finished applying shadow to my other eye. This time I didn’t dither over whether to take the car or not; I hailed the first passing taxi.
    The number of people taking taxis had fallen owing to the economic crisis, and it seemed to me that taxi drivers had calmed down. Twice in the last four days, I’d managed to get out of a taxi without having a row. It was unbelievable.
    I was early for my meeting with Petra, so I took a short stroll through the streets near the hotel. I came across a jazz bar where a cleaner was vacuuming the cigarette ash from the night before and collecting up bottles. Finding a place to sit, I put my chin in my hands and looked out towards the beautiful Bosphorus, a sight I never tired of. But this time I was just staring vacantly,
thinking about what had been discussed the previous night. Batuhan suspected Petra of carrying out the murder. That was the situation, whether I liked it or not. However, his suspicion made no sense if, as he’d let slip in the shop, Müller was not really a film director.
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    I saw Petra waiting for me as I entered the hotel lobby through the main sliding doors.
    We strolled along the tree-lined road, full of exhaust fumes, which led to the tea gardens in Ortaköy, chatting about German cinema, without any mention of the film or its director. With some simits from a street seller and mature kaşar cheese from a corner shop near the square in Ortaköy, we went to sit in the tea garden nearest to the sea. Ortaköy is an interesting district. The gulf between classes, which is glaringly obvious in Istanbul, is just as evident here but somehow doesn’t oppress people. For instance, we were sitting in a fairly cheap municipal tea garden, yet just behind the garden we could see luxury chauffeured cars queuing up at the doors of the former Esma Sultan Palace for a society wedding. Ortaköy is one of several districts in Istanbul where the jet-set and ordinary people can live and enjoy themselves in close proximity.
    As soon as the waiter left us alone, Petra started relating what she had done the day before. It was the first time since she arrived that she’d had an opportunity to look round Istanbul and, like all normal tourists, she had visited Sultan Ahmed. Until that city tour, my friend had probably thought the beauty of Istanbul consisted of the view of the Bosphorus she could see from her hotel window. She started to describe with surprised excitement the wonders of Topkapı Palace, Ayasofya, the Underground Reservoir and the Sultan Ahmed mosque,
which she had visited