by Jane Bastin
“Well, what do you think?” Sinan’s voice rose in frustration.
“Sir, I don’t know what to think if we don’t have the evidence. We can only build the investigation through hard evidence; at least, that is what you always tell me.”
Sinan smiled and flicked the shell of a pistachio nut across the table. Both men, caught in their thoughts, stared into their beer, surrounded by the sound of fishing boats chugging into the marina and the soft whistle of fishermen on the quayside.
“Hungry?” Sergeant Mehmet looked up with a start. Sinan stopped a street seller as he passed their table and bought two large paper carriers of stuffed mussels.
“The best thing to have with beer.” Sinan eased open the mussel shell, sliding one half beneath the other and slipping the mussel and rice mixture into his mouth. For a moment, thoughts of murder and treason evaporated. No rational thought only the pure, unadulterated response of the senses. Sinan closed his eyes, savouring the texture of rice and mussel, the aroma of pepper, sea salt and sumac.
“Okay Mehmet. Here’s what I want you to do.”
“What Inspector Haris has ordered?”
“Too cheeky, sergeant. Of course not! You know how to access information on the dark net, don’t you?”
Sergeant Mehmet peered over the rim of his beer glass.
“I want you to find out about the shareholders in these proxy companies. Who are they and what do they own? Russians, Americans? Dividends? Oh, and the owners of Tahtakale printers.”
Sinan thought that walking back to his flat would be a good idea. Ordinarily, he relished the warmer evenings. The old city gained colour, even the skyscrapers that seemed to flourish like cancerous cells shod the grime of the winter and glowed. People commented on the weather and stepped to one side rather than shoulder barge along the pavements. But Sinan felt exhausted. Unsure whether it was the beer, or the rush of work, he felt the energy to lift his legs seep away. A taxi hovered expectantly and Sinan raised his hand. As he sank back into the warm plastic seat, he realized that he had not said where he wanted to go. The taxi shot away, tyres scraping along the tarmac. The last thing he remembered was the driver’s eyes staring straight back at him in the mirror. Familiar eyes.
When he woke, Sinan tried to stand immediately but quickly toppled down. The thud in his head was deafening. Easing his eyes open, he saw the faint outline of Bea’s red hair. What was she doing? A searing pain shot along his cheekbone as she dabbed a wet flannel. Why was she here? Smoothing his hair away from his eyes, she brought a glass of water to his lips and tipped his head gently back. What was going on? His flat. He was definitely in his flat but how did she get in? How did he get in?
“How are you feeling now, honey?”
Soft, warm air from Bea’s mouth filled his nostrils. She smelled like cinnamon and cloves, he thought quickly and lay back against her outstretched arm.
“What happened?” Sinan strained the muscles in his mouth to talk.
Bea placed her index finger softly over his lips, smoothing away the creases.
“I’m not sure. I had a phone call about 2 a.m. this morning. A strange voice, Russian perhaps, telling me to come and pick up my ‘lover boy’ – that’s you by the way!” Bea ruffled Sinan’s hair and licked her dry lips.
“They said that you had learnt your lesson not to meddle in things that were of no interest to you, and that this time you would escape with your life but that the next time, you would not be so lucky.”
Bea’s words raced from her mouth. Sinan felt her hands shake as she smoothed his hair.
“Meddle in what?” Sinan croaked the words.
“I have no idea, my love. The beast just said one word when I asked him that very question.”
“What word?”
“Land.”
The pain eased. Bea found a couple of strong painkillers at the bottom of her bag and Sinan just felt the exhaustion of the previous night. It was morning and too many questions raced through his mind. Russian? Land grab? Thrace? Bea was ready to leave for the congress and Sinan ignored her protestations, pulled on the trousers and shirt that she had removed in his unconscious state and slammed the door firmly behind them.
“Let me buy you breakfast.” Sinan took Bea’s hand, guiding her to a small café on the edge of Serencebey Hill. Obviously a regular, Bea watched as Sinan chatted to the old lady behind the counter. He saw her watching him and Bea cringed. But Sinan beckoned her to come closer. The old lady sat on a three legged stool in front of a large, iron flat dish that smoked curls of heat. Her hands like small balls of soft wool, pulled a chunk of raw pastry and rolled it into a paper thin strip. Sinan pulled Bea even closer as the lady threw the pastry onto the metal dish, flipped it until it was golden, tossed some white cheese and parsley in the middle and handed it across the counter to Bea.
“Gozleme. Like it?”
Sinan waited while Bea chewed. His head pounded when he moved it suddenly and he tried to remain still. But the heat of the tea caused his head to jolt back.
“I’ll call Sergeant Mehmet to take us into the city. I don’t think I’ll be calling any taxis for a while.”
Ruhi brought more tea into Sinan’s room. Sergeant Mehmet had not said a word since they left Bea at the Pera Palas Hotel. He listened with due attention to Sinan as he told him of the night he could not remember and nodded in the right places but there was a distance. As soon as Ruhi clicked the door shut, Sergeant Mehmet sprang up, drew the blinds so that they were obscured in semi-darkness.
“Inspector Haris.”
“Yes, is he coming?”
Sinan felt sweat bead on his forehead.
“No sir… I mean, yes sir. He will be here soon but not now. I dug around the dark web last night and found the shareholders in the proxy companies you gave me.”
Sinan leant forward and gestured for Sergeant Mehmet to keep his voice down.
“Many names, sir, including Inspector Haris. He has shares in Ramadan Gifts Holding and Futures Limited. The holiday he took last January that everyone envied…”
Sinan nodded. “The one in Miami?”
“Yes, sir. Paid for by Futures Limited. His wife was just made a shareholder and together with their dividends they received the holiday.”
“What’s their share capital?”
“Two million dollars.”
Sinan let loose a long, high-pitched whistle just as the door opened and Inspector Haris walked in.
Inspector Haris said nothing. Sinan looked quickly at Sergeant Mehmet. Had he heard? The silence was painful. Each waited for the other to speak until Ruhi opened the door with a tray laden with tea glasses.
“Sorry, sir. Shall I come back?”
“Not at all. Bring the tea in, Ruhi. I’m sure Inspector Haris would like to try the office tea – far superior to the tea in his office!”
Sinan loosened a button on his shirt and pushed his sleeves back.
“Hot now, sir!”
“Hot? Yes, the weather is, indeed hot. Now, thank you for the information you gathered earlier but I now need you to go down to Hakkari.”
Sinan was unprepared. Too much work in Istanbul to leave. Leads that seemed to lead nowhere but needed to be followed. Hakkari was the other side of the country. Bandit country. The border of Iran. And then he remembered. Gaye, the Prime Minister’s lover. He baulked at the term splashed across the newspapers: ‘paid whore’. In death, a little dignity that she was not offered in life was her due, he felt, with a soft shrug of the shoulders. Inspector Haris gulped his tea, looked at the loose leaves floating in the bottom of the glass with disgust and opened the door.
“Good, I’m glad that’s agreed then. You’re booked on the 7 a.m. flight from Sabiha Gokcen airport. Make sure you read the zip file I’ve sent over and get the information I have requested. We should be able to build a strong enough case against the boyfriend, Fevzi Cakmak.”
Sinan and Sergeant Mehmet sat in silence, listening to the diminishing sound of Ha
ris’ footsteps as he made his way to the lift.
“Sir, if I may say so, could it be that Inspector Haris is looking for a cover-up by focusing all our energies on the young girl and her boyfriend?”
Sinan smiled and felt his stomach groan with hunger. More regular than an alarm clock, his stomach kept time almost to the second.
“That’s precisely what it looks like. Can you keep digging around this dark net and look at whether our beloved inspector has had any telephone contacts with the CIA officers we know operate in the city. Can we also put a tap on his personal mobile?”
Sergeant Mehmet nodded at everything until the final request. Taps on phones were par for the course but on the personal phone of an inspector? Sergeant Mehmet followed rules to the letter unless he could be convinced that the moral imperative for breaking them was greater. How else could they distinguish themselves from the criminals they pursued? he would argue regularly with his colleagues when they mocked him for refusing bribes. Sinan moved his chair closer.
“Look, I know that this is an extraordinary request but we are living in extraordinary times. Our country may be in serious danger. The Prime Minister is dead. The country is experiencing unprecedented turmoil. We now know that proxy companies potentially managed by foreign states are purchasing huge swathes of our land. You don’t need to go to war to invade, just contact an estate agent and openly buy up the country. We sleepwalk into oblivion and submission. What would Ataturk have demanded? Protect this great country.”
Sergeant Mehmet wiped a tear from his eye and grasped Sinan’s hands melodramatically.
“You are right, sir. Extraordinary times require extraordinary actions.”
Chapter Eighteen
never knew I liked
night descending like a
tired bird on a smoky wet plain
The plane was not until the morning. A bite to eat would do no harm, surely, and the Pera Palas excelled in almost everything it served. The evenings were getting lighter and as Sinan walked from the police station to the hotel, he noticed changes. Gone was the biting cold that gripped your bones and threatened to rip every sinew to shreds. In its place came a softness, the air whipped gently and people seemed giddy. Children screamed as they chased each other across Taksim Square. Teenagers loped self-consciously, arms interlinked, stopping occasionally to kiss, and an old lady stopped to bless Sinan. He reached into his pocket to hand over some coins but by the time he looked up she had gone.
Bea stood by the doorman. She had changed at least five times, determined to present the perfect picture although she was still unsure of what perfection might look like to Sinan. With her other husbands, it had been so easy. Her trademark flick of the hair, revealing blouse and tight fitting trousers had won every time but Sinan was much harder to decipher. After an hour of dialogue between herself and her reflection, she settled on a midnight blue silk dress. When her mother tutted, she felt satisfied. Although, she felt a shiver of repulsion when the ex-interrogator turned author, Ahmet, stopped to compliment her. No sign of his wife, Sylvia, she thought as he passed her to knock on her mother’s door. What on earth? But Sinan would be here any minute, she thought quickly, and stepped into the birdcage lift just as her mother opened her door. As the lift descended, she thought she saw her mother take Ahmet’s hands in hers.
She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands together. Why was she feeling so unsettled? She had slept with the man so why the nerves. His face loomed close to hers.
“Are you alright, Bea?”
“Fine. Just a little warm. It is getting much hotter, don’t you think?”
Sinan smiled and, taking Bea’s arm in his, they walked into the dining room. Sinan could smell the food from outside. He was not interested in the menagerie of writers vying for his attention. He could cope with Bea but no more. Kylie and Ginge winked across the table and he smiled weakly until the waiter appeared from behind with a tray of fish soup. From the moment the aroma of tomatoes, oregano, parsley, fennel and rock fish wafted from the kitchen, Sinan knew it was going to be good. Perhaps, almost as good as his mother’s. Bea tried to make conversation about the investigation but she knew it was pointless. Sinan’s eyes were closed. The second course arrived with little fuss. The waiter placed plates of artichoke hearts and freshly cooked broad beans with feathers of fennel beside Sinan’s main plate and another waiter brought fried red mullet with salad. Bea could feel her stomach stretch against the silk of her dress. She slipped her hand beneath the table and squeezed Sinan’s thigh. No reaction. She leant forward, her cleavage carefully positioned. No reaction. Only when Sinan wiped his mouth clear on one of the hallmarked napkins, did he show any recognition.
“Delicious. Very well cooked. Great fish. Probably brought up from the Aegean.”
Bea nodded, unsure what she was acknowledging. A middle-aged French woman sat directly opposite Sinan, placed her knife and fork in the middle of her plate, wiped her mouth and extended her hand across the bowls of artichokes. Sinan and Bea both reached forward, their hands overlapping and Bea laughed.
“Sorry, must be the raki, it always does strange things to my head.” Bea turned away from the French woman to speak to Sinan but he had already been ensnared. Bea tried to glare the way her mother had taught her but the French woman was oblivious. Small eyes, not something you could easily trust, Bea recalled the lines from her latest book. The woman’s skeletal face, cheekbones protruding like knives from her face was no threat, Bea decided once she realized the glare was not working and her wandering hand on Sinan’s thigh was having no effect.
“Francoise Gilberto. My name.” The French woman added this almost as an afterthought. “I am here as part of the congress and not as part of the congress.”
“How’s that work?” Bea scowled across the table. The glare had not worked. She was now on the next stage – the outright grimace. Her mother had taught her well. Sinan leant back, his stomach full, glass of raki in hand and waited. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be on a plane bound for the south east and the thought made his head rush.
“Well, you see, my dear, darling husband, Alfredo was from here but he was also a writer. A very good one.” Francoise Gilberto rolled the ‘r’ in very and tipped her head back, the veins in her throat protruding like skeins of wool.
“Was?” Sinan sipped his raki and brushed his fingers over Bea’s hand as it rested firmly on his thigh.
“He died last year in Paris. It was my duty to bring his ashes to the Jewish cemetery in Arnuvutkoy.”
“Why not the Jewish cemetery in Paris?” Sinan leant over the table, his elbows leaning against Bea’s.
“It was his dream to return here. You don’t know the story of the Spanish Sephardic Jews and how they came to be here?”
Sinan passed his raki glass to his other hand and nodded. “Of course, I know.”
Bea nudged Sinan, knocking his raki glass so that a little dripped onto the tablecloth.
“I don’t know the story. Pray tell, Francine.” Bea slurred the woman’s name.
“Francoise.”
“Sorry?” Bea leant forward. Her breasts bulging from the top of her dress.
“Francoise, my name is Francoise. The story is simple. The Spanish inquisition – maybe you’ve heard of it?”
Bea glared and this time she was sure that it was understood. Francoise spluttered her wine and continued.
“Well, the Jews of Spain had to get out for obvious reasons and the sultan gave them, how you say… safentary?”
“Sanctuary.” Bea spat the word out.
“Yes, yes, sanctuary. So you see for hundreds of years, the Jews of old Spain lived here in the sanctuary and I had to bring my Alfredo back to his sanctuary.”
Sinan stroked Bea’s hand beneath the table and she relaxed. The glare disappeared.
“Fascinating. Did he speak the mediaeval Spanish that the Jews of Istanbul speak? I know it is dying out.”
“Oh, yes. We often visit Spain and
the persons say that he speaks the Spanish of poetry, a Spanish they have not heard before. It is wonderful.”
Francoise’s eyes misted and, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with a napkin, she waved goodbye to Bea and Sinan as they rose from the table.
Sinan almost missed his alarm call. If it were not for Sergeant Mehmet’s persistence, he would have slept for hours. Turning and opening his eyes, he saw Bea’s hair splayed across the pillow. It took a few minutes for consciousness to kick in. Scraps of memory from the night before. The meal. Bea’s arms around his neck. The softness of her lips. The warmth of her body. Grabbing his clothes that were hanging from the arm of a chair by the door, he dressed quickly. Sergeant Mehmet was waiting downstairs and he rushed to the door, remembering at the last second to lean over Bea’s sleeping head and kiss her. She moaned and reached out a hand but he withdrew and blowing a kiss from the doorway, went downstairs.
The flight to Hakkari took longer than Sinan expected. Flying from west to east in the early morning, remnants of his mother’s stories of Icarus and the ill-fated flight to the sun. Mother… restrictions on what women could wear… restrictions of where women could go… her calls to him, her voice faint in the mountain air and now, instead he was en route to Hakkari. Sinan clasped the hot coffee that the air steward left on his upturned table and let the heat scald his hand. A small child screamed and Sinan turned to see a woman shrouded in black cloth struggle to breathe. Unclipping his safety belt, he rushed to her side. The plane was almost empty apart from a small group of men in black suits at the front. The child screamed again as Sinan’s face loomed over his. With one hand, he pressed the bell for the air steward and with the other, loosened the woman’s scarf that was dangerously tight around her throat. Her eyes rolled back and her breath ripped like broken glass. The child screamed again. The steward called out for help and another rushed back with breathing apparatus, the men in suits turned in unison, stared at the unfolding drama and did nothing. The child screamed again. Sinan rubbed his hand over the child’s head and soothed him with a song his own mother had taught him about the wars of Troy across the mountain. As if from nowhere, the woman’s breathing settled, shallow at first and then deeper until she was able to thank everyone for their help. Her voice, cracked and guttural, the distinct accent of the south east. Kurdish possibly, thought Sinan, as he smiled at her over her son’s head.