River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘No.’

  ‘What you have to understand is that Mardin is one of those places where the differences between states of existence are small.’

  Mehmet Süleyman didn’t comment. This could, he felt, very quickly turn into one of those conversations that he sometimes had with Çetin İkmen: worrying conversations about the nature of reality, if indeed such a thing even existed.

  ‘My father has a relationship with the Sharmeran. One day I too will do so. I must be introduced to her soon, as my father is old now. When he dies I will take his place,’ Inspector Taner said. ‘That said, Inspector, with my “modern” head on I can think that utterly impossible. Maybe my father experiences some sort of delusion or hallucination when he goes into that cave, I can think. Maybe what he calls his relationship with the Sharmeran is in fact just a series of internal musings in his head. But to him and to the many other people round here who claim to have seen or heard the Sharmeran moving across the Ocean in the night, it is very real and it does bring comfort, joy and reassurance of the continuance of our lives here. I’ll be honest, I believe in the Sharmeran with my whole soul. I am a police officer working for my country, which I love. But I am also convinced that when I am a Master of Sharmeran, my mistress will come to me. The Sharmeran is our deity; that we alone can see her is only right. As for Gabriel Saatçi . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I am sorry that I got you into all that. It was desperation on my part. I know that those weapons in Musa Saatçi’s house are nothing to do with him. But his insistence upon not saying a word until Gabriel comes back is driving me insane!’

  ‘Why do you think that Gabriel has gone missing?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. Gabriel is a . . . well, he is a friend, and . . . None of the monks at St Sobo’s have a clue. He just left.’ Very briefly she took her eyes off the road ahead and looked at him. ‘But know this, Gabriel Saatçi is no fake. I saw him, all those years ago, his body covered in bites, his mind half mad from snake venom. His survival was a miracle.’

  She looked back at the road again then and briefly flashed the truck behind which contained the five other officers who had been assigned to the operation.

  ‘This is where we turn off,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’ Although Süleyman was thinking about the upcoming mission and feeling nervous about what they might find beyond Dara – after all, in this part of the country seemingly straightforward scenarios had in the past turned out to be terrorist traps – he was also still concerned with issues supernatural. ‘So, Inspector, would you say that Mardin and its legends are by way of being a sort of halfway house between what I understand as reality – the present, the concrete – and some sort of other consciousness, echoing back to the past, maybe?’

  ‘My city, Inspector Süleyman, is certainly a place that at the moment owes much to the past,’ Taner said. ‘Albeit a rather fragile past at times.’

  Süleyman, recalling what the old woman in the Zeytounian house had said to him, murmured the phrase she had used. ‘The Cobweb World.’

  ‘The Cobweb World? Where did you hear that?’ Taner said.

  ‘That old woman who served us dinner back in Gaziantep used it to describe the just barely living world of the past in which she exists,’ Süleyman said. ‘I think she either knew or deduced that I am descended from an Ottoman family – one doesn’t get a lot more redundant than that – and applied it to me. She said that Mardin was part of the Cobweb World too and that if I went there I would understand it.’ He smiled. ‘If only that were true!’

  There was a silence that went on just a little bit too long to be natural. Süleyman turned to Taner, whose eyes were fixed firmly and now grimly upon the road ahead.

  ‘Forget the woman in Gaziantep,’ she said. ‘People say she is mad. Maddened by such thoughts.’

  ‘She related her world of the past directly to me,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘But your Ottoman past is just that,’ Taner replied. ‘You cannot disappear back into it. You can only feel its sorrow. You are not like us, Inspector. You do not live half in and half out of different worlds. Your lack of understanding is quite normal.’

  ‘That is not what the old woman said,’ Süleyman countered.

  But Taner didn’t answer him.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu was accustomed to the fact that her boss, Çetin İkmen, often worked long into the night. Mehmet Süleyman was less inclined to operate in this fashion and so İzzet Melik found that he was rather more reluctant than his other two colleagues when he finally joined them at just before eight p.m. Not that İkmen was making any of them work within the grim surroundings of the police station. Because the evening, though cool, was very pleasant, he had chosen to meet in one of the tea gardens on Sultanahmet Square. Opposite the incongruously Gothic fountain that had been donated to the city by Kaiser Wilhelm II just before the First World War, the tea garden in question was famed for the fact that it offered its customers water pipes. By the time İzzet joined them, both İkmen and Ayşe were very happily smoking on the mouthpieces of cloth-covered tubes connected to large, ornate water containers.

  ‘My late father used to smoke the straight tobacco, tömbeki, whenever he had a narghile,’ İkmen said as he let a large lungful of smoke out on a sigh. ‘He would consider my only being able to stand the apple-flavoured tobacco indicative of a lack of a sense of adventure. Poor Father.’ He looked up and saw İzzet Melik standing in front of him. ‘Ah, İzzet!’ He patted the carpet-covered cushions on the bench beside him and said, ‘Sit down and tell us what you have been doing. Would you like a narghile?’

  İzzet Melik said that he would, with molasses-flavoured tobacco, and then he sat down. Ayşe Farsakoğlu, with whom İzzet had been enamoured for a number of years now, gave the slightly rough-round-the-edges officer a small, tight smile. She was fond of İzzet but, in spite of her single status, she was not fond of him in that way. İkmen called for another narghile as well as three glasses of tea and then began to quiz Süleyman’s sergeant who, earlier in the day, he had given a very important job.

  ‘How did it go at the mortuary?’ he asked once the waiter had left to fulfil their order.

  ‘I took the consultant orthopaedic surgeon from the Cerrahpaşa with me and he identified the body as that of Faruk Öz,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘According to the consultant, Öz was a very good worker.’

  İkmen sighed. ‘So now we know for certain that at least one of the nurses who went missing directly after Yusuf Kaya’s escape is dead.’

  ‘Dr Sarkissian confirmed that cause of death was loss of blood due to severance of the carotid artery. Stabbed in the neck with what the doctor reckons was a straight-bladed knife,’ İzzet said.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu puffed on her narghile and then said, ‘Time of death?’

  İzzet shrugged. ‘Doctor can’t be certain. The body’s been in plastic and under the ground for some time. Some days, he reckons.’

  ‘Which could mean,’ İkmen said, ‘that he was killed at or around the time of Yusuf Kaya’s escape.’

  ‘If we take it as read that Kaya or his agents are killing those who have assisted him in order to confound our investigation,’ Ayşe said.

  ‘Indeed.’ İkmen frowned. ‘Well, whatever may be the truth we will have to get Murat Lole in and ask him some questions.’

  ‘Of course, the person we really need to speak to is İsak Mardin,’ Ayşe said. ‘But . . .’

  ‘Mardin is still missing,’ İkmen said. ‘But, of course, that Öz’s body should turn up in Mardin’s garden in Zeyrek cannot be, I think, coincidental. Zeyrek is a long way from Öz’s home in Gaziosmanpaşa. Not that they were friends or even knew each other, according to Murat Lole.’

  ‘Lole denies that he was friendly with Mardin too, doesn’t he?’ İzzet asked as the waiter turned up with his narghile and tea for all three of them.

  ‘He does,’ İkmen said as he took the narghile from the young waiter and indicated that he would set it up for İzzet himself. He wanted to
get on with their discussion without further interruption. ‘But Mardin, we think, is originally from the east and may very well have some sort of connection to Yusuf Kaya. He gave a hospital in Şanlıurfa as reference for his job at the Cerrahpaşa. But that was a lie that the then director of the hospital, the one who killed himself, apparently colluded in. With the help of the current administration I have discovered that there is no record of İsak Mardin working at any hospital in Şanlıurfa.’

  ‘So Mardin could have been a plant?’ Ayşe said. ‘Someone sent in to be part of Kaya’s escape plan?’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen puffed on his narghile and then said, ‘Lole and Öz were at the Cerrahpaşa some time before Kaya was sent to prison. So the likelihood of their being plants is slim. Kaya wasn’t even in prison when they started nursing there. But Mardin, who has not been at the hospital for long, could have recruited them when he took up his post. Nurses don’t earn much; the offer of big money could have swayed any dedication to their profession. Maybe Mardin and Öz took Kaya back to Zeyrek after the incident at the hospital and then one or other of them killed Öz in order to silence him.’

  ‘What about Lole?’ Ayşe asked.

  İkmen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s part of it, maybe he isn’t. There were only, we think, two nurses involved in the actual escape, remember.’

  ‘Yes, but could he be in danger if Mardin is still out there?’

  ‘If Mardin is out there,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe he’s lying dead somewhere too.’ And then, turning to İzzet, he asked, ‘What about forensics on Öz’s body?’

  ‘They’re working on it, sir,’ İzzet replied. ‘But nothing obvious yet. However, I did find out what that tattoo he had on his arm was.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s the flower of the wormwood plant,’ İzzet said.

  İkmen frowned.

  ‘It’s the stuff that gives absinthe its potentially lethal effect.’

  ‘I know what wormwood is, İzzet,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m just trying to imagine what, if anything, it might mean. I went to see my gypsy earlier today and asked her about tattoos. The gypsies are rather fond of them, as you know. But a wormwood flower?’ He frowned again. ‘I’ve never heard of anyone in the city, not even the gypsies, being involved in the production of absinthe. La Fée Verte has never, to my knowledge, been one of their particular passions.’

  ‘La Fée Verte?’

  ‘It means “the Green Fairy”,’ İkmen said. ‘It’s what absinthe was called during its heyday in nineteenth-century Paris. The Green Fairy was a beautiful and addictive mistress and is implicated in the deaths of numerous French artists.’

  ‘My grandmother used to put wormwood leaves in with the winter blankets when she put them away for the summer,’ Ayşe said. ‘Wormwood has a strong smell which helps to keep the moths away. There was some sort of stomach remedy which used to contain wormwood too, but I don’t know what that was called. I know they used to grow wormwood near her village.’

  ‘Where was that?’ İkmen asked.

  Ayşe shrugged. ‘I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘Out east. There was some sort of trouble – when isn’t there out there? Anyway, my grandparents moved first to Afyon where my father was born and then here in about 1930. But I can still remember my grandmother using wormwood in her remedies and laying the leaves amongst the blankets. The horrible smell tends to stay with you.’

  ‘Mm.’ İkmen puffed thoughtfully. ‘Murat Lole.’

  The other two looked at him for several moments before, at last, İzzet Melik spoke.

  ‘Sir,’ he said as he put the mouthpiece of his narghile down and then drained his tea, ‘shouldn’t we pick him up? For his own safety if for no other reason?’

  Çetin İkmen smoked without comment.

  ‘Sir,’ Ayşe said, ‘I think that Sergeant Melik has a point. Whether Lole is innocent or guilty we do need to get to him, and soon.’

  After yet another pause, İkmen nodded sagely. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘With one little difference.’

  Ayşe and İzzet looked at him questioningly.

  ‘If’, İkmen said, ‘Murat Lole is in league in some way with Yusuf Kaya, maybe if we make him think he is in no danger from us he might lead us to some very valuable information. I say we have him watched, followed day and night. That way we can learn something about what he is doing as well as providing some level of protection too. What do you think about that?’

  Neither Edibe Taner nor Mehmet Süleyman nor indeed any of the officers with them knew exactly what was behind the front door of the house outside Dara. They were all well aware that they could very easily be walking into a trap. The PKK had been quiet for some time in and around Mardin, but Süleyman’s informant about this house had been a Kurd. Then there was Hezbollah . . . How difficult would it be for one of their people to mislead a police investigation team into a trap?

  Taner knocked with her fist on the ancient wooden door, which was covered in carved Armenian script. Civilisations had always met in this place of confluence. They also fought, died and sometimes, like the ancient Persians, disappeared completely.

  ‘Police!’ she called out, confident that she had carefully positioned three of her officers at the back and sides of the property. ‘Open up!’

  But not a sound came from either outside or inside the building. Instinctively, Süleyman looked down at the ground for any evidence of wiring. Soon Taner’s officers would have to force the door and the man from İstanbul did not want any of them to fall foul of such a basic thing as a booby-trapped entrance.

  As if reading his mind, Taner said, ‘Don’t worry, we won’t force it unless we’re sure it’s OK.’

  ‘Right.’

  She took her gun out of her jacket pocket and smiled. ‘But I guess we’d better get ready in case someone comes out—’

  ‘What do you want?’

  The door snapped open simultaneously with the sound of a man’s voice. The man in question, a tall young individual carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, regarded the police team with what looked like fury.

  ‘Police,’ Taner reiterated as she moved her gun from her right hand to her left and took out her ID card.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Taner, frowning at the man now, said, ‘Aren’t you—’

  ‘Oh, stop playing silly games like a little boy pretending to be a soldier!’

  The voice was female, it was annoyed, it came from somewhere behind the man at the door and it spoke in English. Taner stepped into the house and the ‘little boy’ in front of her stood to one side, suddenly looking, in spite of his weapon, really rather sheepish. Süleyman followed.

  The woman in front of them was not exactly beautiful. But she was tall, slim and angular and had the most startling cascade of thick red hair hanging down her back. She was, Süleyman reckoned, probably somewhere in her mid-thirties. When he, Taner and the two officers behind them had all crossed the threshold, they’d seen that the woman was surrounded by a group of heavily armed local men. Seemingly they had been waiting for them. The woman, when she spoke again, did so once more in English. She had an American accent. For a while Taner, Süleyman and the others assumed it was the only language available to her.

  ‘We always have at least one man a kilometre in front of the house,’ she said in what Süleyman could now tell was probably an east coast, New England type of accent. ‘The house is not accessible by road from any other direction. We knew you were coming. What do you want?’

  Edibe Taner cleared her throat. She knew, by sight at least, all of the men who surrounded the woman. They’d passed her on the streets of Mardin before. There was one man in particular with whom she knew she had shared polite greeting in the past. But not now. Now all of them stared down the officers with snarls on their faces. ‘I have papers to search this house,’ she said in English, holding up her authority to search for all to see.

  ‘Search this house?’ the woman said as she just very slightly smiled.
‘Whatever for?’

  ‘We think this house is property of a prisoner who escaped,’ Taner said.

  ‘Oh, you mean my husband? Yusuf?’ The woman laughed. Then, turning very pointedly towards Süleyman, she said, ‘I assume you are in charge—’

  ‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘Inspector Taner is lead officer here. My name is Inspector Süleyman. I come from İstanbul.’

  The woman raised her eyebrows. ‘Of course. It was you who arrested my husband.’

  ‘I put Yusuf Kaya in prison for what should have been his whole life,’ Süleyman said. ‘I saw first hand, madam, what your husband was capable of.’ Her face quickly clouded.

  ‘What is your name?’ Inspector Taner asked.

  The woman looked her straight in the eye and said, ‘Hürrem.’

  The men around her, though armed, shifted nervously. Süleyman hoped that none of them lost their nerve and accidentally let off the odd automatic magazine. No one in the house would survive.

  ‘Your American name,’ Taner persisted.

  ‘My—’

  ‘You are a foreign person,’ Taner said. ‘I must see your passport.’

  ‘I don’t know that I have it to hand. I—’

  ‘Just tell us your name for the moment,’ Süleyman cut in. He was getting tired of this woman’s game-playing and wanted to get on with the search. While all this was going on, Kaya could be trying to slip out of the building. ‘What is it?’

  The woman sighed. ‘My passport is in the name of Elizabeth Smith, the name I was given at birth.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Süleyman said. ‘So, Miss Smith, I assume that all of these guns you have here are registered?’

  ‘But of course.’ She smiled.

  ‘Excellent.’ Süleyman bowed his head slightly and then turned to Taner and said in Turkish, ‘Let’s go through this place.’

  The armed men in front of them moved forward as if to try to mount a challenge, but Elizabeth Smith told them, in Turkish, to put their weapons down. Continuing now in Turkish, she told the officers, ‘We don’t, after all, want to have any sort of accident, do we? Yusuf my husband isn’t here. Search anywhere and everywhere you like.’