River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘In İstanbul you go tearing into all sorts of situations, I am sure,’ she responded breezily.

  ‘Inspector Taner, if you are implying that we somehow have it easy in İstanbul, then you are very much mistaken,’ Süleyman said. Her tone had irritated him. ‘Our problems are just as intense as your own. But when someone escapes from prison we do search for them. Here, beyond terrorising the rest of the Kaya family and only very slightly upsetting, as far as I could see, that American woman, we have investigated nothing.’

  ‘Oh, so I went to Gaziantep for nothing?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘Look.’ She took one of his arms in hers and then looked up, smiling now, into his face. ‘I did not mean to cause offence, Inspector, but . . . We work very largely with informants here. Many are gypsies who don’t of course belong to native clans. They are sometimes of use and sometimes not. But this region is a land of fortified cities and villages with allegiances even I do not always understand. On top of that we have to contend with many different armed groups. We are close to the border with Syria, not much further from the border with Iraq. Inspector, my officers and I cannot go bursting into places without compunction. We could die. You yourself were nervous when we were outside the house in Dara. Organisations like Hezbollah have bombs, they stockpile the things! And how do I really know that Yusuf Kaya is not associated with such people? I don’t.’

  They had stopped in front of a little tobacconist’s shop above and behind which were three huge and magnificent arches. It was as if one of Mardin’s great mansions were hiding behind a humble and disproportionately small shop, which was indeed the case. Süleyman looked up at the structure and Taner looked at Süleyman. She sighed. It was now or never.

  ‘This is what is known as the Cerme family mansion,’ Taner said. ‘It was built at the beginning of the twentieth century by one of Mardin’s most famous sons.’

  But he changed the subject back. ‘Inspector, I am sorry if I failed to understand your problems—’

  ‘The architect Serkis Lole,’ she said. The look on Süleyman’s face changed. ‘We should have had this conversation before, but—’

  ‘Lole? But I told you about Murat Lole when we were back in Gazi—’

  ‘I know. Serkis Lole was an ethnic Armenian,’ Taner said. ‘He built many beautiful palaces here in Mardin.’

  ‘So Murat Lole—’

  ‘Cannot be connected to Mardin,’ Taner said. ‘The Lole family, they . . . er, they emigrated in the First World War.’

  Süleyman and Taner looked silently at each other. Both Turks, neither of them even wanted to breathe about the alleged massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces in Turkey in 1915. That the Lole family had emigrated from the city at around that time was difficult for the two officers. The Turkish Republic doesn’t recognise the Armenians’ allegations. The Armenian Republic, for its part, continues with this claim. And in the east it was an issue that was more sensitive and current than in the large western cities.

  ‘No person with the name Lole has been in this city for nearly a century,’ Taner said. ‘It is no longer a name associated with Mardin, except as something from the past. That man can have no connection to this place.’

  ‘You could have told me all this before,’ Süleyman said bitterly.

  But she didn’t answer him. She just looked long and hard into his eyes and then she walked away.

  Çetin İkmen was very sorry for Mrs Eren, who only wanted to take her husband’s body away from the hospital and have him buried. But he wasn’t prepared to let sentimentality cloud his judgement in this case.

  ‘I have to be certain this man died of natural causes,’ he said to an obviously furious Dr Eldem.

  ‘If, İkmen, you are impugning my honour or my professionalism—’

  ‘I am impugning neither,’ İkmen said. ‘But, Dr Eldem, Mr Eren here,’ he pointed to the sheet-covered body on the bed behind him, ‘was the last known witness to the flight of Yusuf Kaya. He might very well have been able to tell us some more facts about that incident.’

  ‘But he won’t be able to do that now, will he?’ the doctor cut in shortly. ‘He’s dead.’

  İkmen looked back at the body once again and said, ‘Clearly.’

  Mrs Eren, a small headscarfed lady in her thirties, wept silently and alone in a corner.

  ‘This poor lady—’

  ‘Is going to have to wait for her husband’s body,’ İkmen said. ‘Doctor, I have to be sure that Mr Eren died of natural causes.’

  ‘As I told you, multiple organ failure—’

  ‘Yes, quite common in those in coma. But it can also occur when certain substances are introduced to the body with the intention of killing the subject,’ İkmen said in as low a voice as he could, given the presence of the weeping widow. ‘Now, Doctor, do you have a list of nurses, doctors and other members of staff who attended Mr Eren, please?’

  After glaring at İkmen for a second or two, Dr Eldem went off in search, apparently, of information. Almost immediately İzzet Melik arrived.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, sir,’ he said in a low voice as he sidled up to İkmen. ‘Got a call from Inspector Süleyman. He tried to call you but of course your phone was off.’

  ‘Mmm? And?’ İkmen was not comfortable with the widow Eren still in the room and hoped that Arto Sarkissian would arrive soon to take charge of the body.

  ‘Inspector Taner in Mardin had never heard of Faruk Öz, but if we could send over that photograph she might be able to identify him as someone else,’ İzzet said. ‘However, she does know the name Lole.’

  ‘As in Murat Lole,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ İzzet said. ‘Years ago a very famous architect called Serkis Lole lived in Mardin. He was Armenian. Taner told the inspector that there are now only two Armenian families in Mardin. Neither of them is called Lole.’

  ‘So our Lole could be a descendant of a famous architect.’

  ‘Apparently Inspector Taner thinks not, sir,’ İzzet said, and lowered his voice. ‘The, er, the Loles left Mardin in the First World War. Emigrated, so Inspector Taner told Inspector Süleyman.’

  ‘I see.’ İkmen understood. ‘So where does he come from, this Murat Lole?’

  ‘Originally? Don’t know,’ İzzet replied. ‘I don’t think we asked him.’

  ‘Then we must ask him,’ İkmen said. ‘If he is involved in some sort of conspiracy he’ll lie. Maybe if Inspector Taner says there are no Loles left in Mardin that name is an alias anyway. Go and see him, İzzet. Tell him that his colleague Faruk Öz has died.’

  ‘Don’t you think he knows?’

  ‘Maybe.’ İkmen shrugged. ‘Gauge his reaction.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The younger man began to walk away.

  ‘Oh, and İzzet . . .’

  İzzet Melik turned. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Can you e-mail Öz’s photograph over to Mardin? And one of Murat Lole?’

  ‘Already done, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  İzzet turned to go again but once more İkmen stopped him. ‘İzzet!’

  ‘Sir?’ There was a tired if not downright obstreperous look on his face now. İzzet Melik was not a man easily pushed around even by his superiors. İkmen went over to him and took him to one side.

  ‘Also phone the Kartal Prison for me, if you will,’ he said. ‘Speak to the governor. I want his personal assurance that the prisoner who was instrumental in getting Yusuf Kaya into solitary, Ara Berköz, is being protected. If deaths around the escape of Yusuf Kaya are going to accelerate, I don’t want even Berköz to become yet another statistic. Kaya’s reach is, as I am only now beginning to fully appreciate, long. If you have any trouble with the governor, get him to contact me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Oh and İzzet,’ İkmen concluded, ‘not a word about this background to the family Lole. Not to anyone. Not relevant anyway, not as yet. Keep it in mind, though. I will.’

  İkmen waved İzzet Melik on his way an
d then went back to contemplating the sheet-covered corpse on the bed and the woman weeping in the corner. He wished fervently for the swift arrival of Arto Sarkissian.

  Inspector Taner tapped the image of the man on the computer screen and said, ‘His name is Hasan Karabulut.’

  ‘This is the dead nurse? Faruk Öz?’ Süleyman said as he peered across at the screen, frowning.

  ‘It is what your colleagues from İstanbul have sent us,’ she said. ‘Hasan Karabulut is a distant cousin of Yusuf Kaya. He has a clan Dakk to prove it, although Hasan in my experience was a decent lad, not at all in favour of drugs or violence or anything else that Yusuf Kaya does.’

  ‘Hasan Karabulut trained as a nurse in Van,’ Constable Selahattin said, referring to a cardboard-covered file as he spoke.

  ‘Hasan Karabulut was an orphan,’ Taner continued. ‘But he was taken in by his mother’s sister, a spinster lady. She looked after him and kept him away as much as she could from his father’s family, the Karabuluts, who are related to the Kayas.’

  ‘Yes, but if he had a Dakk . . .’

  ‘Hasan was tattooed as a child. A lot of people are,’ Taner said. She sighed. ‘I knew that he had left the city to seek his fortune somewhere else. But I had no idea that he had taken on an assumed name.’

  Süleyman hoped that she was telling him the truth. Their altercation outside the Cerme mansion had left him unsure. Between her impenetrable beliefs and her civic loyalty and her apparent inability to discuss such difficult issues as Murat Lole and his possible antecedents, Taner was making him nervous.

  ‘Do you think he took on another name in order to be able to assist Yusuf Kaya?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head. ‘Apart from the fact that the timing doesn’t work – Hasan/Faruk was working at the hospital in İstanbul before Kaya even went to prison – he would never have done that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Hasan’s beloved aunt, the one who took him in and cared for him when his parents died, hated Kaya. She hated what he did and the power that his family exerted on almost everyone around them.’

  ‘So maybe if we speak to her . . .’

  ‘She lives in a hospital out beyond Midyat,’ Taner said sadly. ‘She doesn’t even know what her own name is these days. Hasan must have gone to İstanbul to make a new life. There was nothing but heartache or a life of crime for him here. Maybe, somehow, Yusuf Kaya or those around him got to know where he was.’

  ‘What about the other picture?’ Süleyman said. ‘The so-called Murat Lole?’

  Edibe Taner sat down on her ancient office chair and lit a cigarette. ‘I don’t recognise that face at all,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look anything like the pictures of the Lole family members they have in the museum. At least I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where those Loles might be now?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘No. As I told you,’ she said, ‘they left Mardin.’

  ‘But that said, this Murat Lole could be a member of the—’

  ‘Whoever that is,’ Taner said as she continued to stare at the picture, ‘he doesn’t come from Mardin. If this man was part of the plot to spring Yusuf Kaya from prison he did not do so because of any local connection. But Hasan?’ She became animated again. ‘Hasan, of all people. Maybe Yusuf offered him money?’ Then she shook her head. ‘No. No, there has to be some other explanation.’

  ‘The third nurse, called İsak Mardin,’ Süleyman smiled grimly at the name, ‘was employed at the Cerrahpaşa under false pretences, with the knowledge of the then director.’

  ‘The one who killed himself?’ Taner said.

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman sighed. ‘İsak Mardin’s qualifications from a hospital in Şanliurfa didn’t check out. Theoretically he’s still out there somewhere.’

  Taner looked up. ‘And the cleaners? What of the people dressed as cleaners who were supposed to have been at the scene too?’

  ‘Of those we have no knowledge,’ Süleyman said. ‘The hospital’s records with regard to cleaning staff is sketchy to say the least. Inspector, I know that you said that Hasan Karabulut’s aunt was ill . . .’

  ‘Demented.’

  ‘But maybe we should go and see her? Maybe even through dementia the old lady might know something?’

  Edibe Taner didn’t say that she agreed but she did promise to call the hospital where the aunt was living in Midyat. Then she took him back to St Sobo’s. Easter Sunday was, she said, going to be a busy time for all of them and Süleyman, at least, should now try to get some rest.

  ‘The American woman will be coming up from Dara with her guards,’ Taner said as she leaned out of her car to speak to him at the gates of the monastery. ‘One of them I know quite well. He lives in an apartment across the courtyard from the Saatçis. He’s a new resident in as much as he came to the city as an infant. Comes originally from the plains. I think he’s a Suriani. I want to speak to him if I can. I think he’s one of only a few Christians who work for the Kayas. His loyalty may well be a little looser than the other guards’.’

  Süleyman smiled. In his experience it was money rather than religion that generally bound people together.

  ‘I’ll come and get you at seven thirty,’ Taner continued. ‘And don’t eat anything; there’s a huge meal laid on in the church after the service. Everyone is invited.’ She fired up the engine of her car but then thought of something else and said, ‘Oh, and my father will be attending the service too. Men and women sit separately in Suriani churches, so he will look after you.’

  And then she left. The smile on Süleyman’s face faded as he thought once again about how Edibe Taner had concealed information from him. Unpalatable information, but information none the less.

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  As soon as he got home from school that afternoon Kemal İkmen, as had become his custom of late, went straight to his brother Bekir’s room. But Bekir wasn’t there, so he went first to the family living room and then to the kitchen. His mother was standing at the sink washing up tea glasses. The only other occupant of the apartment, seemingly, was his brother Bülent.

  ‘Looking a bit worried, Kemal,’ Bülent said as the youngster put his head round the door and frowned into the room. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Do you know where Bekir is?’ Kemal mumbled.

  ‘In his room,’ Fatma İkmen said. ‘He was tired after last night.’ She shook her head at the memory of the argument Bekir had had with his father the previous evening. Just like the bad old days! ‘He went for a lie-down.’

  ‘He isn’t there,’ Kemal said.

  ‘Oh, well, then maybe he’s watching TV.’

  ‘He isn’t in the living room. I’ve looked.’

  Fatma’s face turned white. Bülent saw it, stood up and immediately took charge. In all probability Bekir had just let himself out to go and buy cigarettes and not bothered to tell anyone. Such thoughtlessness was typical of him. Such terrified over-reaction in his mother was, these days, typical of her.

  ‘Let’s have another look,’ he said to his brother. The two of them set off from the kitchen and went round the apartment until inevitably they came to what had become Bekir’s room. Bülent, whose room it had been, looked at the unmade bed and the dirty glasses on the floor with some distaste. He hadn’t been the tidiest person in the world when he’d had this room, but he’d only been a kid then. Bekir was years older than Bülent was. What a slob!

  Kemal began searching on the floor and looking in the cupboards for some reason. Bülent, frowning, said, ‘You won’t find him in there.’

  ‘No, I . . .’

  The boy looked hot, red-faced and flustered. Only when he finally lighted upon a small rucksack underneath the bed did he finally stop and sit down breathlessly on the floor. ‘Oh, he’s left his rucksack, so . . .’ He held the thing on his lap like a trophy. ‘He must be about.’

  ‘He’s gone out, that’s all,’ Bülent said. He then lowered his
voice and continued, ‘You know, Kemal, you really mustn’t over-react like this. Mum’s already anxious enough about Bekir. I know you really like him too and that’s great. But you have to try to be a bit calm for Mum’s sake.’

  Before the boy could answer, Bülent heard his mother’s voice from the kitchen. ‘Boys, have you found your brother yet?’

  Bülent turned towards the bedroom door and said, ‘I think he’s just out, Mum. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  But by the time he turned back Kemal had opened the rucksack and seemed to be searching frantically inside it for something. There was an expression on the boy’s face that Bülent didn’t like. His panic also, seemingly, was making that bloody spot cream he insisted upon using smell even worse than usual.

  ‘Kemal! What are you looking for?’

  The boy looked up, his reddened face slathered in sweat.

  ‘Er . . .’

  There was guilt there too. Bülent had been a teenager himself not long before; he knew that kind of look. He made a dive for the rucksack, which made his brother scream.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kemal squeaked. ‘It’s—’

  ‘It’s Bekir’s, not yours, so give it here!’ Bülent said as he tussled with the boy on the floor. ‘Give!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Kemal, what is in this bag? If you don’t show me I’ll . . .’

  ‘Ow!’ Kemal cringed as his older and stronger brother prised his pudgy fingers away from the bag. ‘No, it’s private! Mum, Bülent is bullying me!’

  ‘Bülent?’ Fatma İkmen couldn’t believe it. Bülent was such a kind and considerate boy. She began to move towards the bedroom.

  But now Bülent had the rucksack in his possession and was looking inside. Kemal, crying on the floor, was making threats apparently on behalf of Bekir about what would happen to people who ‘messed with his stuff’. But Bülent wasn’t listening. The first thing he took out of the bag was a small sprig of greenery that smelt alarmingly like Kemal’s face. The second thing he pulled out, and luckily just avoided hurting himself with, was a used and bloodied syringe. As his mother entered the room, he was in the process of dabbing one of his fingers in the small amount of white powder that had gathered in one of the bag’s side seams. Not that Bülent, who had been to a few night clubs in his time and was also a policeman’s son, didn’t know what that was.