Hello Ester (Evening, Day 8)

It wasn't Mehmed Esad but Reşit. His meeting had just finished and he was calling to ask me if I was hungry and would like to eat with him. Of course, what he really wanted was to find out what I had talked about with Cezmi. I was in no position to refuse so I made my way down to the restaurant. In the lift, I bumped into that English woman, the one that writes detective novels. We didn't speak, as you can guess, but she smiled when she saw me, although that sadness was still there in her eyes. I found Reşit downstairs talking to Ihsan. I thought he would be telling him which food to bring but it turned out a customer had lodged a complaint and Reşit was giving Ihsan a stern talking to about cleanliness. However, he straightened up when he saw me and adopted a politer tone.

‘Please, Ihsan, if you wouldn't mind. The complaint went all the way up to the owner. Let's be extra careful when it comes to hygiene.’

Poor Ihsan turned crimson red.

‘Of course, Reşit Bey’, he replied courteously. ‘It must have slipped past us. I can assure you, something like that won't happen again.’

Reşit was eager to put the issue to bed.

‘Excellent. That's that sorted then. Back to work, eh? Oh look, here's Şehsuvar Bey. Would you be so kind as to bring us something to eat?’ Ihsan bowed and headed off. Reşit turned to me and said, ‘It's a treacherous game, this hotel business, my friend. Here I am breaking my back trying to make sure everything goes smoothly but all it takes is a little carelessness by one person and the whole thing goes south.’ He would have carried on with his diatribe except he saw the look on my face. ‘What is it, Şehsuvar ağabey? Has something happened?’

Before giving him the terrible news, I sat down.

‘It's Major Cezmi’, I said in a steady voice. ‘He's been killed’.

He froze. His eyes bored into mine. He was so shocked, he couldn't even ask me how but I went ahead and gave him all the grisly details.