Captive of Kadar

‘The dates are just how you like them, old friend,’ he said, finding a space on a side table in the old man’s reach. ‘Plump and meaty.’

Mehmet took one and nibbled on it with his old teeth and nodded. ‘Excellent. You are good to an old man.’

And Kadar knew he was only giving him back a fraction of what he’d done for him and so much less than what he deserved if he were ever to repay him, but he smiled anyway. He was right to come. The visit was working. He felt better already.

‘As I said,’ the old man said, ‘I’m sorry your friend has had to go home.’

‘Yes,’ Kadar said resignedly, knowing he would feel better when the old man had finished with that particular subject. Mehmet was bound to be disappointed when he had all but decided that Amber was going to become some kind of permanent fixture in Kadar’s life on the basis of a ten-minute meeting with her. Any meeting would have been built into something else by Mehmet. But he’d save him the truth. He wouldn’t tell him how close he’d come to being right. But neither would he share that she was indeed a thief and that he’d caught her stealing from even him. He didn’t need to hear the whole truth. ‘You did say that.’

‘Will you see her again, do you think?’

‘No.’ Not if he had anything to do with it. She lived in a country on the other side of the globe and, after her deception and the betrayal of his trust, even that did not seem far enough away. ‘There is no chance of that.’

‘Oh. For that I am sorry. I was hoping to show her something I found. How will she see it now?’

Kadar was only half interested. He flicked his hand at a piece of lint on his trousers. ‘What did you find?’

‘Because I remembered after your visit why she seemed so familiar.’

Kadar stiffened, the whole of his attention with the old man’s words now, and he had the distinct feeling his dark mood wasn’t going to be getting any better any time soon. Even though the old man’s sight was negligible, there were things he perceived that went beyond sight. ‘Familiar? You never mentioned that before.’

He shrugged. ‘I could not be sure. Not at first. My mind is not what it used to be. It was the name that struck me. An unusual name. And then I remembered.’

He turned to the side and fussed with some bits and pieces he had sitting there while Kadar waited, uncertainty setting needles under him in the upholstery of his chair so that everywhere his body made contact with it prickled.

His tea sat untouched in the wait.

‘Ah.’ Mehmet picked something up, something flat but too small for Kadar to make out, and ran his fingertips over the surface, and his face lit up as he nodded. ‘Yes. I am certain.’ He passed what was in his hand to Kadar. ‘What do you think?’

Kadar took it with a growing sense of foreboding, his blood starting to thicken and curdle in his veins. But it was only when his heart lurched when he glanced down at the small oval disc in his hand that he realised it was justified.

It was her.

His mind told him it couldn’t be.

And yet it was. Amber’s profile, carved from layers of shell, white against the caramel-coloured surround. And the worst of it was, it didn’t look recent. It looked old. Antique.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘From my father.’

And a shiver ran through Kadar from his scalp to his toes.

‘But it’s her. It’s Amber.’

‘I knew it!’ Mehmet declared, slapping his hand against his thigh, suddenly brighter, ‘I thought the same. That is why I asked you if she’d been to Istanbul before. Because I was sure I’d encountered her features somewhere before. It was right here, in this cameo.’

And the gears and cogs of Kadar’s mind groaned and shifted as a sickening feeling settled thickly upon an already black mood. He didn’t want to entertain such a thing could be possible because then he’d have to consider that the stories Amber had spun might have contained a kernel of truth.

He did not want to have to admit that.

Because then he’d be forced to admit that maybe he’d been wrong about the bracelet too.

He could not have been wrong about the bracelet.

She was a thief. He was certain of it.

He was counting on it.

That was the reason he hadn’t returned the bracelet yet. Because in a small dark corner of his mind, he’d known that he couldn’t risk it, that he’d feared what she’d said might be true and that he might find the bracelet he’d accused her of stealing still there in the cabinet under lock and key. He’d clung to the belief that she had stolen it because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.