Where is the key to the clock tower hidden? The team returns to the clock tower, looking at it more carefully this time than ever before. The main entrance is still locked, but Ahmet Bey places a hand against the outer wall. I got in here once, as a child, he says. There was a narrow gap on the side. They make their way around the building.
Sure enough, between the stones, there is a crack, narrow but wide enough to slip through. Inside, the air is cold and smells of mildew. Dust drifts through the thin beams of light falling from small windows near the ceiling. Nail notices that one of the wall stones looks loose. He pushes it, and it shifts easily, as though it had been moved many times before. Behind it is a small hollow space.
Inside sits an old recording device. How is this thing still working? Nil asks, lifting it carefully. Ahmet Bey checks the batteries, his expression growing more concerned. Someone replaced these recently, he says. They press play.
After a burst of static, a voice fills the room, shaky but clear enough to understand. It belongs to the journalist who disappeared forty years ago. If you're listening to this, the voice says, then the right time must have finally come. The journalist explains that there had been corruption in the city. Several historic buildings had been deliberately erased from official records, as if they had never existed at all. I hid the documents, the voice continues, somewhere no one would think to look.
At the library. The recording cuts off abruptly. Silence fills the room. Is that all there is? Büşra asks. Nil rewinds the recording and turns up the volume.
Just before it cuts off, there is another sound in the background, faint but unmistakable. A doorbell ringing. Everyone looks at each other. Ahmet Bey's face goes pale. That sound, he says quietly, is the library's doorbell. I haven't changed that bell in forty years.
Did the journalist hide the documents inside the library? And who rang that doorbell on the night he disappeared?