River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I do give up junk!’ Sophia said, tears now in the corners of her eyes. ‘But . . . but I don’t give up Aslan.’ She looked down at her swollen belly and began to sob. ‘Aslan is father of my baby! He live with me, but now he have gone.’ She rose quickly from her seat and looked down into İkmen’s face. ‘I am afraid he is dead, like Hüseyin.’

  ‘Why do you think that, Sophia?’ İkmen said. ‘Why do you think that Aslan might be dead?’

  ‘Why else he leave me?’ she said tearfully. ‘Why else he leave his baby?’

  And then with a turn of speed amazing in a pregnant woman, even a young one, she ran headlong back along the passage towards İstiklal Street. Ayşe ran after her but after a few minutes’ desperate searching out on the main thoroughfare she had to admit defeat and returned to the café and Çetin İkmen. Sophia had been and probably still was a beggar. She knew the streets and all the hiding places they concealed.

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  Below Mardin and the monastery of St Sobo, the Mesopotamian plain stretched into a misty and unknowable place. As flat as a salt-pan, the plain was nevertheless a very interesting and intricate jigsaw of multicoloured fields, dusty roads and the occasional rough, mudbrick building. On the roads, which on this unexpectedly bright spring morning were clear save for the occasional errant goat, the only other humans on the move were a group of gypsies. No more than twenty in number, the gypsies looked at Edibe Taner’s car as it passed with blank, closed-off eyes. The women, whose faces and heads were completely uncovered, wore bright dresses, many of them covered with sequins that reflected the pale yellow light of early morning, making their wearers look like carriers of stars.

  ‘The turn off to Dara is just here,’ Taner said, pointing to a track which led off to the left. The signpost actually said Oghuz, which was the name, apparently, of the modern village that had grown up around the ancient site of Dara.

  When Süleyman had telephoned Taner late the previous evening, after Lütfü Güneş had come to see him at the monastery, she would have liked to set out for Dara straight away. Partly because she believed that Süleyman was exhausted, but mainly because she knew that looking for anyone out on the Ocean in the dark was going to be difficult, she had agreed to leave the journey until the morning. But she had started early. That Yusuf Kaya apparently had an American wife was something completely unknown to her and she was intrigued. She and a constable called Selahattin had called at St Sobo’s at five a.m. Luckily Brother Seraphim and the other monks were accustomed to early rising on account of their devotions, so it hadn’t taken Taner long to have Süleyman roused and then pushed inside her car with a tiny glass of tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other. As they came out of the city, she explained what she felt Süleyman’s guest had meant when he had said that Yusuf Kaya’s American wife was surrounded by ‘wormwood’.

  ‘Kaya’s clan, like all of us who belong to families from the plains, tattoo themselves,’ she said.

  Süleyman remembered seeing a tattoo on Zeynep Kaya’s left cheek. It had been, as he recalled, a scorpion.

  ‘This kind of tattoo we call Dakk,’ Taner said. ‘Well, the Dakk for Kaya’s clan includes a wormwood flower in the design. They are known locally as the “wormwoods” for this reason. When your informant said that the American woman was surrounded by “wormwood” what he meant was that this woman is guarded by members of the Kaya clan. To leave the wife of such a prominent man, even a foreign wife, alone is unthinkable.’

  ‘So not—’

  ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, actual wormwood does grow on the plains. The Dakk that we wear reflect our environment and the Kaya family do grow and sell herbs including wormwood. But we are, trust me, looking for a house that is guarded by Kaya family members or retainers. Although how such a unique event as an American can have been kept secret . . .’ She tipped her head back and called to the constable behind her. ‘Selahattin, have you ever heard of such a thing?’

  ‘No, Inspector,’ the young man said. ‘But then each clan is a closed book, isn’t it? That much I have learned since I came to work in this city.’

  ‘Selahattin is from Trabzon,’ Taner said. Then she smiled. ‘Black Sea people too busy trading to be bothered with clans and such nonsense, eh?’

  The young man smiled. People from the Black Sea coast, probably because of their proximity to sea and land routes to other cultures, have a reputation for cunning business practice.

  Once they had turned off the main route from Mardin down to the D400 and thence to the Syrian border, they soon came upon what looked to Süleyman like a series of vast overturned monoliths. Massive grey sharp-cut rocks stuck out of the ground at alarming angles. Seeing where his gaze was fixed, Taner said, ‘Those were the quarries that provided the stone needed to build Dara. Just before we get into the village is the ancient necropolis. Dara’s first inhabitants were Byzantine and so the graveyard is Christian. Inspector Süleyman, did you get any sort of idea from your informant about where this house might be?’

  ‘No.’ And then a thought struck him. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘about Dakk. Kaya’s wife Zeynep was tattooed, I noticed. But not with a wormwood flower – with a scorpion, on her left cheek.’

  ‘Zeynep Kaya was not born a member of his clan,’ Taner said. ‘There is some level of marriage between relations within the clans, but clan members do marry out, particularly if the match is advantageous.’

  ‘So the scorpion . . .’

  ‘Is the Dakk of the Taner clan,’ she said. She turned her head away from the road for a moment and rolled up the sleeve of her jacket. ‘Like this.’

  The tattoo was on her forearm. Long and black, its stinger held threateningly above its head, this scorpion was much more expertly drawn than Zeynep Kaya’s had been.

  ‘Zeynep is my cousin,’ Taner said. ‘She is the daughter of my father’s younger brother. Because of what my forebears were and what my father is, many clans want a connection with us.’

  This was obviously the Master of Sharmeran business again. But Taner related to Zeynep Kaya . . . Süleyman was shocked. He knew that he shouldn’t be, because that was just how things were, or could be, out in the east. Everyone was related in the end to everyone else. That notwithstanding, his İstanbul-raised sensibilities were rather rattled.

  ‘Inspector . . .’

  ‘Of course no one in Dara will tell us whether or not a foreign woman connected to Kaya lives hereabouts,’ Taner said. ‘Yusuf Kaya has always been feared and, by some, admired on the plains.’

  Deciding that now was probably not the time to ask Taner about her father – if such a time indeed would ever come – Süleyman turned his mind back to the job in hand.

  ‘So we look for a house, houses . . .’

  ‘No.’

  He looked across at her face, which was smiling in profile.

  ‘Selahattin,’ she said, ‘will take you sightseeing. Dara is a very interesting site and one that you should see while you are here. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that local people will expect you to see it.’

  The woman who lived on the fourth floor of Mr Lale’s boarding house in Zeyrek had been going on for months about the garden at the back of the building. Mr Lale had told her that if it bothered her that much maybe she should plant some flowers or something in it herself. That had shut the old bitch up!

  But ever since that nurse, that İsak Mardin, had just upped and left without paying his rent, the top flat had been empty, and Mr Lale needed the money. A couple of people had come to have a look since the nurse disappeared, but none of them had wanted the flat. To be honest, it wasn’t very big, and besides, word had got out that the police had searched the place and that had put people off. Mardin was after all missing and the last thing any putative tenants wanted to face was the possibility of suddenly coming across the nurse dead underneath their floorboards. So when elderly Miss whatever on the fourth floor suggested that tidying up the garden might help to encourage pros
pective tenants, Mr Lale had decided that that was what he would do.

  No gardener, he nevertheless made an early start. Dragging a shovel and a bag of flowers behind him, Mr Lale strolled miserably round to the back of his property and surveyed the bald lumpen patch of earth that was his garden. It wasn’t a very promising vista. But then, as Miss whatever had told him, some people made really fabulous flower displays out of very much less. As he began to dig, at random really, Mr Lale mused on the fact that none of the existing tenants used the garden. Occasionally the young man in the basement parked his bike against the back fence but more often than not he kept it inside. However, as Miss whatever had said, summer was only round the corner and a pretty garden would make people stop and look and not in a bad way.

  It had rained a few times in the past few weeks, as it often did in İstanbul in the spring. So the ground was variable, dry in some places, muddy in others. Because of this, Mr Lale gained no impression that the earth had been turned over by anyone else. But that must have been the case because after about an hour, in a corner of the garden nearest to the passage at the side of the house, his shovel hit something hard. Closer inspection of the object revealed it to be one of those very thick plastic bags sometimes used to cover electrical goods. There was something in it, too. But what it was was not electrical. It was a human arm, just beginning to break down and rot. Horrified, Mr Lale could see that the arm had once been very large and well developed.

  Süleyman didn’t see the logic of what happened next. He asked Constable Selahattin what he thought.

  ‘They do some very strange things around here, sir,’ the constable said as he too followed the troupe of teenage tour guides into the heart of Dara. Edibe Taner had simply handed the two men over to the boys while she went off to make enquiries on her own. ‘I imagine the inspector has gone to see something or someone she feels might be of use. There are some people here, sir, well a lot really, who won’t speak to outsiders. They won’t even speak to one of their own while an outsider is present.’

  ‘My understanding, however, is,’ Süleyman said, ‘that this American wife is a person unknown to anyone outside the Kaya family.’

  ‘And yet your informant knew, sir. Amazing to me he should care to talk to you, but . . . And you say he wasn’t a Kaya. So if he knows maybe others do too. I imagine this is what the inspector is assuming.’

  Lütfü Güneş, so Brother Seraphim had told Süleyman, wasn’t even distantly related to the Kayas. So, Süleyman reasoned, if he knew so indeed could others. But how did Taner know who, if anyone, she could talk to about words spoken by a man Süleyman had refused to name? Constable Selahattin in part answered this question.

  ‘There are all sorts of alliances and pacts and things between the various clans that no one from outside can possibly understand,’ he said. ‘They won’t talk to the likes of us unless there’s really no choice, or it would actively endanger them to talk to their own.’

  Following the group of boys down a rutted, bramble-strewn track, they came to the ruins of a massive cistern cut into the rock.

  ‘You can’t even draw lines along ethnic divisions around here,’ Selahattin continued as the boys, guides educated and paid by the local municipality, waited for the men to catch up with them. ‘Half of these kids here are Arabs and in Mardin itself you find Turkish families who only two generations back were Arabs or Christians or Jews or all three! So the alliances there, even now, can be confusing.’ He smiled. ‘But I leave all that to the locals. I just catch the odd pickpocket from time to time.’

  Süleyman was certain that wasn’t entirely true. After all, why employ someone as apparently neutral as Selahattin if there wasn’t some higher purpose in mind? The young man was intelligent and obviously very fit. Perfect for hiking out into the mountains in pursuit of terrorists of all kinds.

  The boy guides, who were indeed largely of Syrian Arab ancestry, began their spiel about Dara. As the smallest of the lads talked about how the city had started life as a Byzantine garrison town known as Anastasiopolis, Süleyman was struck by two things. First how durable some ancient names were. Yusuf Kaya’s Christian lover in the brothel in Gaziantep had been called Anastasia. And second, he wondered whether that really was Edibe Taner’s car driving out of Dara back towards the Mardin road?

  ‘Dad!’

  İkmen was just outside police headquarters when he was stopped by the sound of Çiçek’s voice. He turned and smiled. Breathless from running to catch him up, Çiçek tottered into her father’s arms and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘I came home to see you all yesterday, but only Kemal was in,’ she said as she put a hand up to her heaving chest.

  ‘He didn’t say anything about your visit,’ İkmen said as he returned her kiss and took one of her arms in his.

  Çiçek raised her eyes to the sky in exasperation. ‘Kemal!’

  ‘So, my soul, what was your visit about?’ İkmen asked. ‘Was it just a social call or did you want to talk about something in particular?’ He suspected from the rather serious look on her face that it was the latter.

  Çiçek had never been a person to mince her words. ‘Dad, I’m worried about Mum,’ she said. ‘More specifically, I’m worried about Mum and Bekir.’

  ‘Ah.’ İkmen put his free hand in his pocket and retrieved his cigarettes.

  ‘I know that she is going to be more protective about Bekir than she would be normally for a while,’ Çiçek continued. ‘But when Bülent was at home the other day he saw Mum cancel a dental appointment she made ages ago in order to stay in with Bekir. What’s more, Bülent said that although Bekir did make various noises to Mum about how she should go to the dentist, once she’d cancelled he looked smug and pleased with himself.’ She drew still closer to her father and took one of the cigarettes that he offered her. ‘Dad, Bülent can barely remember Bekir but I do and, glad as I am to see him again, he was trouble.’

  İkmen lit up their cigarettes and sighed. ‘He says he’s changed, that he’s off drugs . . .’

  ‘And Kemal is coming under his spell. Thinks that Bekir is “cool”!’ Çiçek drew shakily on her cigarette and then said, ‘Dad, I know it’s suspicious and cynical but I can’t and don’t trust Bekir. What he put us all through, years ago, but with such obvious delight . . .’

  ‘Çiçek.’ İkmen put a hand on her shoulder. ‘My darling, I must be honest and say that I don’t trust him either. I can’t tell you why; I have no evidence that he is or has been doing anything wrong. He says that he will leave us soon. Apparently he has a job down on the south coast for the summer.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No.’ He rubbed his face wearily with his hands. ‘I want him to go. I don’t know why, he’s not being unpleasant and he is my son, but . . . He says he’s leaving soon and I want your mother to have some good times with him first. She doesn’t know about this yet and you’re not to tell her. I mean, yes she is behaving in a silly fashion right now, but how can I tell her that? Her son has returned after one and a half decades doing who knows what—’

  ‘He says he fought gypsies, travelled and all sorts,’ Çiçek cut in.

  ‘Yes, and I must try to find the time to go to Balat and talk to my gypsy connection,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m not saying that I don’t believe any of Bekir’s stories, but . . . You know, Çiçek, I think that your mother does know on some level what is going on with regard to Bekir and her behaviour towards him. She’s not a fool.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  İkmen puffed hard on his cigarette and said, ‘I will go and see my gypsy. She knows everyone.’

  ‘Sir!’

  It was, İkmen recognised immediately, Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s voice. Turning towards his place of work he saw her standing in the doorway holding a mobile telephone to her ear.

  ‘Ayşe?’

  ‘Sir, we have to go out to Zeyrek now! İsak Mardin’s landlord has found something that could be significant in his garden!’

&nbs
p; İkmen smiled at his daughter, kissed her again and took his leave of her. Çiçek, used to such oblique and unexpected partings, began to go about her business. As she left she said, ‘Oh, and Dad, there’s a smell in the apartment. Don’t know what it is. Kemal says it’s his spot cream, but . . .’

  ‘Yes, it is, apparently,’ İkmen said as he ran off towards the station. ‘Ghastly, I know, but . . .’

  ‘OK, Dad,’ Çiçek said. ‘I’ll leave it with you.’

  But her father had gone.

  Interesting though the history of the ancient city of Dara was, Süleyman felt that there had to be more constructive things he could be doing with regard to the recapture of Yusuf Kaya. All this detail about Byzantine garrisons and wars with the Persians was making him feel as if he were on the edge of the world. And when one of their young guides pointed towards some tiny white cube-like buildings in the distance and said, ‘Syria,’ it only served to increase his sense of dislocation. But there was nothing he could do. Inspector Taner was running this investigation and she’d taken off in her car to who knew where over an hour ago.

  The young guides told the officers that they had been employed to take tourists round the site mainly because visitors had complained that they were being hassled for money by gangs of greedy kids.

  ‘They are mainly gypsies, of course,’ one of the lads said when they all sat down at the end of the tour at a tea garden on the edge of the town. The children in question probably weren’t exclusively gypsies, but Süleyman let it go.

  The tea, which was served to them by an elderly man, was hot and strong and was very welcome in spite of the now rapidly increasing heat. Constable Selahattin said, ‘When the sun does come out at this time of year, it can be very hot.’ He smiled. ‘It can also still rain and even snow on occasion too. This place is unpredictable.’

  They sat and talked of this and that with their young hosts for almost an hour and then, as quickly as she had gone, Edibe Taner reappeared. Once back inside the car, she didn’t speak to either of the men about where she had been until they had well and truly cleared Dara village. Even when she did speak she didn’t say from where or from whom she had gained her information.