River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘There is an old house at the back of the necropolis,’ she said, ‘that belongs, I am told, to the Kaya family. Occasionally, generally after dark, a tall veiled woman is seen taking exercise outside in company with armed men.’ She pointed out of the car window, beyond the tumbling tombs of Dara’s former masters, towards a large sandy hillock at the back of the graveyard. ‘Behind all that. I think we should return tonight and—’

  ‘Inspector, forgive me,’ Süleyman said, ‘but now that we have this information, wouldn’t it be better to investigate now? Yesterday you felt that night-time was not the best time to be out here. I mean, I don’t know who your informant was, but surely that person could tell the woman and her guards that you have been told about this.’

  She looked away from the road for a moment, her face proud and stern. ‘They won’t talk,’ she said with absolute certainty. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’

  It was not a statement that invited any sort of response, and Süleyman kept his counsel. Had Taner been perhaps to see Lütfü Güneş, the Kurd who had come to see him? It wasn’t likely. In line with the man’s request, he hadn’t told Taner his name, and anyway, if Lütfü had wanted to talk to Taner he would have done so a long time before. No, she had seen some other person or persons and quizzed and probably threatened them with something or other too. She was, he was coming to see, a very powerful woman – daughter of a Master of Sharmeran or not.

  ‘I will arrange for a squad to surround the house tonight and then you and I will go in and talk to the inhabitants,’ Taner said to Süleyman after a pause. ‘It’s safer that way. That’s my decision.’

  She clearly knew her territory and her people, so there was very little in that to argue with. Not that it didn’t leave Süleyman feeling uneasy. To surround the house at night seemed to him an unnecessarily aggressive act. Surely, to stop at the house and maybe for him to ask for directions in order to get the lie of the land would be a better plan? But then he didn’t know the area or the people. What he did know of it was, he had to admit, more tense, violent and generally unstable than anything he had ever come across in İstanbul. Apart from all the different ethnic groups and terrorist organisations active in the area, there was drug growing and trafficking and last, but certainly not least, the powerful clans that controlled life both up in the city and down on the plain.

  ‘Now we will go to Mardin Prison,’ Taner said as she accelerated the car past a herd of startled goats and made for the crossroads. ‘There is someone there I would like you to meet, Inspector Süleyman.’

  ‘Oh?’

  From the back of the vehicle, Selahattin said, ‘Musa Saatçi.’

  Taner said, ‘Indeed.’

  Süleyman, frowning, said, ‘Is Musa Saatçi something to do with Kaya?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Taner said breezily. ‘Not at all. Musa Saatçi is the father of a man who is a living saint.’

  A living saint? Süleyman squashed down his suspicions and said, ‘So why is he in prison, this father of a saint? What is his crime?’

  ‘He is on remand and so has not yet been convicted of any crime,’ Taner said. ‘But just under eight weeks ago, an old friend of Musa Saatçi when visiting him discovered that the old man’s house was full of weapons: guns, grenades and rocket launchers. That old friend is one of our officers.’

  ‘So this Musa Saatçi is a terrorist?’

  Edibe Taner sighed and shook her head sadly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He is a very pious Christian man whose son has performed miracles in this area. The guns are not Musa’s. But he won’t tell us who they do belong to.’

  ‘And now Gabriel has gone missing,’ Selahattin said from the back of the car.

  ‘Gabriel?’

  ‘Gabriel Saatçi, Musa’s son,’ Taner said. ‘He is a monk at St Sobo’s. But shortly after his father was arrested, he disappeared. Everyone is looking for him. When we were at the Kaya house yesterday I spoke to a neighbour about him. We are all very worried. Even if one is a Muslim, Gabriel Saatçi is very special.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Süleyman asked.

  Without a hint of scepticism in her voice, Edibe Taner said, ‘God via the Sharmeran gave Gabriel the power to withstand snake bite when he was a young child. Gabriel Saatçi was bitten by vipers and yet he lived unharmed. He is an immortal saint.’

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  Mr Lale was not a man to take a tongue-lashing from anyone. Not even a senior police officer.

  ‘I had to know whether it was him or not,’ he said to İkmen as he looked across, without emotion, at the plastic-bag-framed face of the dead body that was currently being examined by the police pathologist, Arto Sarkissian.

  ‘By “him” I take it you mean İsak Mardin your ex-tenant?’ İkmen said tightly. The bloody stupid man had tampered with a crime scene!

  ‘Who else would I mean?’ Mr Lale replied. ‘Of course İsak Mardin!’ He sighed. ‘It was a relief to find that it wasn’t him. I mean, I know he owes me rent, but—’

  ‘So having tampered with the body in order to satisfy your curiosity—’

  ‘My peace of mind!’ Mr Lale interrupted. ‘To put my mind at rest that the body in that bag wasn’t one of my tenants. With that great big arm sticking out at me, it could easily have been him. He built his body; it was his obsession. And if it had been him maybe one of my other tenants might have killed him. Imagine that! Imagine living with the knowledge that someone in your house had been killed by someone else in your house. Imagine—’

  ‘Mr Lale, hysterics will get us nowhere!’ İkmen snapped. ‘I’m quite rightly angry because you have contaminated a crime scene. You pulled that bag apart to reveal the face and in the process you have almost certainly destroyed at least some of the evidence this man’s assailant may have left behind. This man is clearly not İsak Mardin. I have to find out who he is and why he was buried in your garden.’

  It was at this point that the pathologist rose to his feet and beckoned to Çetin İkmen. ‘Ah, Inspector . . .’

  İkmen looked over at his friend and then, without another word to the landlord, he made his way over to him. ‘Arto.’

  The Armenian looked on as the policeman lit up a cigarette and then said, ‘Cause of death, as far as I can deduce right now, is a deep stab wound to the neck.’

  Thinking back to the other recent stabbings connected with the absconding of Yusuf Kaya, which by virtue of happening in İsak Mardin’s garden this one could also be, he said, ‘Glass?’

  ‘No, short-handled knife. Probably a flick knife. He’s about thirty. In good health as far as I can see.’

  ‘ID?’

  ‘He’s naked.’

  İkmen groaned.

  ‘Forensic are on their way,’ Arto said. ‘They’ll have to turn over the property.’

  ‘Won’t please the landlord too much,’ İkmen said, nodding his head in the direction of Mr Lale.

  The Armenian looked at the small, woollen-capped man with some disdain and said, ‘He contaminated the scene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Arto sighed.

  ‘Thought it might be his missing tenant, our missing nurse, İsak Mardin,’ İkmen said. ‘I must admit that I thought it might be him too. But it isn’t.’ He sighed. ‘I wonder who it is and whether he has or had anything to do with Mr Yusuf Kaya or not?’

  ‘I do not know,’ Arto said as he bent over the body once again.

  İkmen, puffing heavily on his cigarette now, hunched his shoulders in misery.

  But just before he hunkered down to go about his work again, Arto Sarkissian turned and said, ‘Oh, and he has a tattoo.’

  ‘A tattoo? Where?’

  ‘On his left bicep. It’s a flower, wound around with what look like tree branches. Quite well done. I have seen worse.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s something,’ İkmen said. Tattoos were, he knew, often a good way of tracing an unknown person. And if no other evidence pointing to the identity of this man was found, that tattoo could prove
very useful.

  It was strange to see anyone, unrelated to that person, kiss a prisoner’s hand. But Edibe Taner did just that when Musa Saatçi was brought into the interview room. It was, Süleyman decided, a foul place. Not that any prison could be described as pleasant, but this place, maybe because of its remoteness, felt worse than any other jail he had visited before.

  The prisoner himself, however, was probably cleaner and tidier than the usual run of such individuals. Short and stooped, Musa Saatçi was probably somewhere in his late seventies. He had a long white beard, not unlike those Süleyman had seen on the monks at St Sobo’s, and, behind small wire-rimmed spectacles, a pair of very lively bright green eyes. Taner, noticing the look of slight confusion on Süleyman’s face, said, ‘The guards look after him. He isn’t a criminal.’

  She looked and sounded absolutely sure about it. She was also adopting a deferential manner with this old man that Süleyman had not seen or associated with her before. It was almost as if all her toughness and ambition had suddenly dropped away from her.

  The old man sat down in the chair Taner brought over for him and made himself comfortable. A conversation in what Süleyman imagined was probably Aramaic ensued, after which Taner said, ‘My dear uncle here speaks Turkish. I have told him you are a completely neutral and fair officer from İstanbul. He will listen to you.’

  She obviously had a great deal of affection for the old man, but then so did the guard who brought him in a large glass of tea. He too addressed the prisoner affectionately as ‘uncle’.*

  ‘Yes, I will listen,’ the old man said in a deep, heavily accented voice. ‘For Edibe’s sake, I will listen.’ He then turned to Taner and added, ‘But it will change nothing.’

  ‘Just listen, uncle dear,’ Taner said. And then she looked across expectantly at Süleyman. He cleared his throat. According to Taner, Musa Saatçi had admitted neither guilt nor innocence with regard to the arms the police had found at his home. All he would say was that whatever was wrong would be all right once his son, the missing ‘miracle’ monk Gabriel, returned. The problem was that no one, Musa apparently included, seemed to know when that would be.

  ‘Mr Saatçi,’ Süleyman began, ‘Inspector Taner has described your situation to me in some detail. I understand you believe that all will be well when your son returns. But . . .’

  ‘When Gabriel comes back everything will be clear,’ Musa Saatçi said with a smile on his broad, brown face. ‘My son is a saint, young man. Everything will be well upon his return.’

  ‘Sir, I am . . .’ Süleyman, a man who once believed in God and now didn’t any more, felt embarrassed in the face of such, to him, blind faith. ‘Mr Saatçi, unless your son is coming home now, we don’t have the time. If you are innocent, as Inspector Taner believes, then you must tell us so, and you must also tell us who is actually the guilty party in this matter.’

  Musa Saatçi looked down at the floor and frowned. ‘I have nothing to say to you, young man.’

  Süleyman looked across at Taner, who just shrugged her shoulders helplessly. He leaned forward and whispered so that only the old man could hear him. ‘Mr Saatçi, I am from İstanbul. I belong to no clan or group, I have no religion and I have never been bought by anyone. I hate to see an obviously revered man like yourself in a place like this. Tell me the truth and I assure you that . . .’

  He stopped because the old man was laughing. Not loudly or with a cackle in his voice, but sadly, with much shaking of his shaggy white head.

  ‘Young man,’ he said when he had finished, ‘I know that you mean well. I know that Edibe here has only my interests at heart. But if I speak before my boy returns and it gets out . . .’

  ‘It won’t get out!’ Taner said, leaning forward to squeeze one of the old man’s hands in hers. ‘Tell Inspector Süleyman only, if you like!’

  ‘And he will tell you, and . . .’

  ‘I won’t tell anyone, I swear it!’ she said. ‘I will simply find who has really committed this crime and arrest them.’

  ‘Which is exactly what I do not want!’ Musa Saatçi thundered. ‘Not until Gabriel—’

  ‘Mr Saatçi, you are charged with a terrorist offence,’ Süleyman said. ‘If your telling us the truth is dependent upon your son’s returning to St Sobo’s then he needs to do that very quickly. Mr Saatçi, do you know where your son is?’

  Musa Saatçi turned away and said softly, ‘No.’

  Süleyman looked again at Taner, who spoke to the old man. ‘Uncle Musa, if you know where Gabriel is—’

  ‘I do not!’

  ‘Uncle Musa, is it that you fear that the people who really own those weapons will hurt Gabriel in some way?’

  There was a long and very still silence. It told both Taner and Süleyman almost everything they needed to know.

  The man from İstanbul leaned forward once again. ‘Mr Saatçi,’ he said, ‘if we knew where your son was we would, and I would personally oversee this, protect him.’

  The old man’s eyes were full of tears when he looked up once again. ‘You couldn’t protect Gabriel,’ he said. ‘My son is immortal, a living saint.’

  ‘So why do you fear for him so very much?’ Taner asked.

  The old man shook his head. ‘There are more ways to kill a man than just by destroying his body.’

  ‘You fear for his soul? These people have dominion over Gabriel’s soul? How can that be?’ Taner said. ‘Uncle, Gabriel is a saint, he is a perfect soul! No one can change that! No one!’

  But the old man didn’t answer. Süleyman, lost or so he felt in some sort of medieval world of saints and souls and miracles, leaned back in his chair again and sighed. He’d come out to Mardin to find Yusuf Kaya, not to get involved in something that to him felt like an episode from one of his son’s Harry Potter books.

  The old man rose slowly from his chair and then leaned down to cup Edibe Taner’s chin in his hands. ‘All I ask is that you speak to your father for me,’ he said. ‘Ask him to ask the Sharmeran to protect my son.’

  ‘Uncle.’ Taner got to her feet and embraced the old man. ‘Gabriel is the Sharmeran’s own dear son, you know that. She will never, ever desert him.’

  If Süleyman hadn’t known for sure that Taner was a Muslim he would have sworn that she was Suriani. Talking in reverent tones about a Christian holy man! But then of course there was the Sharmeran, too. What a thick brew people were in the east! Taner and the old man spoke in Aramaic again, until the guard returned to take Musa Saatçi back to his cell. Taner, her eyes wet with tears, followed. Süleyman, bringing up the rear, was flummoxed, confused and completely determined to find out just what this Sharmeran thing was really all about.

  Like Zeyrek, where İkmen had just come from, Balat is one of those İstanbul districts that line the Golden Horn. Traditionally Balat had always been a Jewish quarter and some Jews did indeed still inhabit its ancient winding streets. But in recent years new people had come into the area – migrants from Anatolia who had come to the city in search of work, and also a small number of artists. This latter group included İkmen’s informant, whom he was visiting now. A tall and very beautiful middle-aged woman, she had lived and worked in Balat for some years.

  ‘I imagine you’ve heard that Hüseyin Altun, the beggar king of Edirnekapi, has died,’ İkmen said after one of the gypsy’s many daughters had given him tea.

  The gypsy offered İkmen a fierce Birinci cigarette, which he took with gratitude, and then lit one up for herself.

  ‘Many of our people used to live in Edirnekapi,’ she said after a pause. ‘Long ago now. But I still keep an eye on what happens over there. Hüseyin was not one of our own, but I knew him. He was a beggar, a thief, a drug addict, some said an abuser of children . . .’

  ‘Do you know a lieutenant of Hüseyin’s, one of his ex-street kids, Aslan?’

  ‘Yes, I know Aslan,’ she said. And then she leaned forward in order to look intently into İkmen’s eyes. ‘He’s nowhere to be found now Hüseyin
has gone.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you—’

  ‘Know where he is?’ she said, and then she sighed. ‘No. What I do know, however, İkmen, is that you move in pursuit of Yusuf Kaya, the escaped convict.’

  ‘A man from the east,’ İkmen replied. ‘Not one of your kind.’

  ‘A dangerous and cruel man,’ the gypsy said. ‘Did Hüseyin Altun have any connection to him?’

  ‘We think that Kaya may have dealt drugs to Altun. But there is no established connection between the two except via Aslan who, it is said, once went to Kaya’s apartment in Tarlabaşı.’

  The gypsy smoked hard, nodding her head as she did so.

  ‘Since Yusuf Kaya escaped from Kartal Prison,’ İkmen said, ‘this city has experienced a lot of death. Two police officers and one prison guard were killed at the Cerrahpaşa, Hüseyin Altun was stabbed to death, Aslan has disappeared and just this morning I was called to a crime scene that may or may not have a connection to Yusuf Kaya. I believe it is possible that Hüseyin, Aslan or both of them may have aided Kaya’s flight from the city. It is further my opinion that our man from the east is systematically eliminating witnesses to his escape as he goes along. That is certainly how it is looking here in the city.’

  Out beyond Gaziantep, according to Süleyman, things were rather different. But then not only were the people out there Yusuf Kaya’s own but none of them, so far, had even hinted at catching sight of the escaped convict.

  ‘I have never heard anything about Aslan being involved with Yusuf Kaya,’ the gypsy said. ‘He traded with drug dealers all over the city, Beyoğlu and beyond. That was just part of the job that Hüseyin had given him.’ She sighed. ‘What I do know is that Aslan left, went missing or whatever you call it, on the day that Yusuf Kaya escaped from prison.’