The Istanbul Puzzle - an extract
An Interview with Laurence O’Bryan
Authonomy short story winners’ stories
1
Flames burst into life with a whoosh. It was an unusually cold night for late February in Jerusalem. Lead-coloured clouds had been rolling in from the Dead Sea, east of the city, since midday. By ten o’clock that night the streets of the Old City’s Muslim quarter were deserted. Smells of cardamom coffee and kofta drifted from shuttered windows.
At one minute past ten, the stepped passage of Aqabat at-Takiya echoed loudly with the sound of footsteps. Two men dressed in dusty suits and chequered keffiyehs were hurrying down the wide steps.
The high masonry walls on each side gave the alley the appearance of a gap between prisons. As the men approached the arched entrance to Lady Tunshuq’s Palace they saw orange flames coming from the recessed doorway.
They stopped, waited a few seconds pressed against the wall, then moved slowly forward, craning their necks until they could see what was burning. Whoever had set the fire was long gone into the warren of narrow alleys all around.
As a gust of wind blew the flames up, they saw the body burning fiercely in front of the double-height, green steel doors. Then a throat-clogging smell of burning flesh hit them. The man who’d seen the flames first was already talking on his phone. He could feel the heat from the fire on his face, though they were fifteen feet away. He coughed, backed away. The acrid smell was getting stronger.
They watched as the flames rose. The wail of an ambulance seemed far away as blackened skin slipped from the man’s face. Tendons and muscle glistened in the flames. A white cheekbone poked out.
Above the head, paler smoke was drifting where hair should have been. The sickly smell was all around now. A man shouted from a half-shuttered window high up. A woman wailed to God.
A spurt of hissing flames reflected on the alternating light and dark bands of Mamluk masonry and the stone stalactites hanging above the doorway. The sound echoed down the long passage.
2
I turned the radio down. Verdi’s ‘Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ had passed its climax.
‘This website says Abingdon is the oldest continuously occupied town in Britain.’ I looked up. A squall of rain hit the side of the car.
‘It says people have lived there for 6,000 years. That’s got to make for one hell of a long list of mayors at the town council.’ It was hard reading while Isabel was driving, not just because it was a rainy morning in February, but also because the road we were on, the A415 from Dorchester, twisted and turned at that point under a high canopy of trees.
‘In 1084 William the Conqueror celebrated Easter here.’ I looked at Isabel.
She kept her attention on the road ahead. ‘It is St Helen’s Church we’re looking for, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It was the first monastery to be established in England,’ she said. ‘It’s even older than Glastonbury. You could get four years out of purgatory for visiting it. Sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it?’
She was smiling. Her long black hair was tied up at the back. She looked good.
‘The church is still looking at all sorts of schemes to get people in the door. Did Lizzie tell you they had to go on a marriage preparation course before they used the church for their wedding?’ I said.
‘She doesn’t tell me things like that.’ She sniffed. It was barely audible, but its meaning was clear.
I didn’t reply. I wasn’t going to go there. Lizzie worked at the Institute of Applied Research in Oxford in the office next to mine. We’d always been friendly, though it had never led to anything. Her husband-to-be, Alex Wincly, had followed her around like a day-old puppy for years.
‘They spent three Wednesday evenings talking about their relationship,’ I said. ‘What a nightmare. How did they find enough to talk about?’
‘It sounds like a good idea to me.’ Isabel kept her attention on the traffic, but her eyebrow on my side was up half