On the infamous Bar Street, he dishes out air-kisses to waitresses and high-fives to bouncers as if he’s a returning anti-hero
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Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror
At 3am, the infamous Bar Street is a hive of partying teenagers.
But amid offers of six Sex On The Beach shots for 10 Turkish lira, just £3.40, and the scantily clad podium dancers, heads are turning.
Murat Can Ertani, Can (pronounced Jan) to his friends, makes his way down the tight stone-walled stretch, dishing out air-kisses to waitresses and high-fives to bouncers as if he’s a returning anti-hero.
Already a known face in the hub of Marmaris nightlife, on Turkey’s southern coast, serial crook Can, 22, hit the headlines last week when he ran away with British schoolgirl Faye Jones, 16.
Her family was worried sick for four days before police found the pair.
But when their stories under interview matched up – with Faye having told him she was 19 and had disappeared of her own volition – charges of kidnap or abduction dissolved and the tattooed love-rat, no stranger to the inside of a cell, walked free.
But rather than keeping his head down, the jobless drifter, who boasts that “trouble is my surname”, was straight back into the action of Marmaris’ tourist haunts.
His shoulders pushed back, he struts down the road like a preened peacock, seemingly proud of the fact he has another notch of notoriety on his belt. A lack of shame is etched all over his smiling face.
Released by the police on Tuesday morning, he spent that night in Club Pacha, in Armutalan, a more family-based area away from the main town and harbour where the younger crowd flock.
The rows of neon-fronted bars all around Marmaris draw in the crowds, including thousands of young Brits and the likes of predatory Can.
He and his friends scour the streets nightly in the hope of meeting new girls or getting into trouble – their version of having fun.
They chat them up at the beach or by the pool and arrange get-togethers for later, when parents are more likely to have a drink and drop their guard.
At Pacha on Can’s first night without Faye, she was just a memory.
He met another British girl, one over 18 he assures us, and romanced her with his dirty tracksuit bottoms teamed with spiky hair and collection of rudimentary tattoos.
The next night he was back, waiting for his new girl. Except he had his old girl in tow, too.
Jumping off the back of a scooter that skids to a halt on a dirt track, he swaggers over to two girls and a guy waiting outside Club Pacha.
The guy is his friend Sahin. One of the girls is Can’s “Turkish girlfriend”.
Inside, the foursome tuck into a fishbowl of cocktail, paid for by everyone but Can, who scans the room from beside the dance-floor.
Taking Sahin’s phone, he checks Facebook – his chosen method of communication with Faye, his ex Alanah Longshaw, who had his child, and seemingly every girl he meets.
His inbox is packed with messages from pretty Western-looking girls he has charmed.
Blonde, brunette, small, tall...they are all in there. And probably not one knows about the others. He has made them all feel special.
After some furious tapping on the screen, Can separates himself from the group and slinks off to a darker part of the club behind the bar and out of sight from most.
His “new girlfriend”, who he claims had seen all the publicity when she met him 24 hours previously, was obviously not so smitten second time round.
But rejection rolls off Can’s shoulders like water off a duck’s back.
“Come on, we are going. There are other clubs and other girls I want to see,” he tells Sahin, smiling to reveal two broken front teeth.
The invitation, it would seem, doesn’t extend to his girl or her friend.
And so Can heads for Bar Street in a taxi he avoids paying for.
On the way, Can’s favourite subject – himself – comes up.
And his bragging, one of the main weapons when luring unsuspecting holidaying girls, begins.
Having been in prison for burglary and stabbing a man, he suddenly warns: “You don’t know me. You haven’t seen me violent.
"I can be very violent. You wouldn’t want to see it. I have no fear.”
Wrapped up in his own bravado, he adds: “I don’t work. I’m too pretty to work.
“You see this is my friend, Sahin. I hate him and he hates me.
"But we are friends because he has the money and I get the girls for him. Or I try to get them but he is stupid and they don’t like it.
“I don’t ever tell the girls they are pretty or say nice things. I tell them they have a belly and ask if they are pregnant.
"If you are rude and they laugh, you can be with them. If they don’t laugh, there is always another one.
"My friends try to be nice but they lose to me.”
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His presence attracts the attention of the local police, whose officers pick him up on a weekly basis.
Their gazes track his every move. They know he is not a man to be trusted.
Some words and hugs from bouncers at one club are quickly followed by much more welcome attention for Can.
Jodie Louise and Kerry Justine are British teenagers who say that they work all winter so they can spend the summer in Marmaris, away from their parents.
This is clearly not their first encounter with Can.
Draped off him, the pair, who say they are both 18, claim he is their “best friend” and rip into besotted Faye, calling her a “stupid girl”.
It becomes obvious with his dark eyes, stubble and quick patter, Can has a lot of “best friends” in what are probably one-way relationships.
Faye, from Cramlington, Northumberland, was one of them.
While he says he would now run away from rather than run away with her, she is probably still there in his Facebook messages somewhere.
Last night, she boarded a flight home to Britain with Rhonda keeping a watchful eye – and a tale more than your usual summer romance to tell.
