Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Ikmen series Book 1)

by Barbara Nadel

  “All right.” She raised one swollen hand up and gave him a tired little wave. “I love you.”

  He felt the tears start in his own eyes and turned his head away from her. Silly, sentimental old fool! “I love you too, Fatma,” he murmured as he disappeared into the hall. “I just wish I had the time to show you a bit more often, that’s all.”

  Chapter 21

  The body wasn’t that unpleasant to look at, but Cohen tried to avoid it if he possibly could. Dr. Sarkissian reckoned that death had probably been caused by a single blow to the head. Certainly there was no evidence of the terrible mutilation that had, apparently, been present on Meyer’s body. But it still wasn’t nice. The thin blood of old age was still dripping from the gaping wound in the Rabbi’s head and Dr. Sarkissian had said as soon as he touched it that the flesh was still warm. Cohen turned away from the corpse and took two very large gulps of air. Who the hell would want to beat up a poor defenseless old rabbi, and why? It wasn’t often that he thought about being Jewish. For most of the time Cohen saw himself as no different to the rest of his colleagues. But not this time. Whereas all the rest of the lads could quite happily stand around chatting and smoking while the doctor went about his grim task, Cohen couldn’t. Mercifully he’d never seen Meyer’s body, he’d been busy that night interviewing neighbors and had felt fine. But Rabbi Isak was something different; he was his, he had found him.

  That it had happened by accident was creepy too. He wasn’t even supposed to have been in that alleyway anyway. But he’d been thirsty, desperate for a glass of tea, a little beer, anything. Uncle Zavi, like a lot of old people, rarely slept and besides he’d just wanted to talk to someone.

  He remembered the dull thudding sound as his foot met dead flesh, the horrible moment when he shone his torch down into a face that was not ghastly but surprised. At first he hadn’t even thought he was dead and had even asked him to get up, get sober and get home. Until, that is, he’d noticed the blood seeping out of the back of his head. Probably wrongly he hadn’t tried to revive him, not that that would have done much good. But it might have made him feel better. In retrospect there was no difference between administering first aid to a rabbi than to anyone else. Cohen hadn’t been able to touch him though, it had seemed wrong, sacrilegious somehow. He regretted that now, he also regretted blurting out about what he had found to Uncle Zavi. The poor old soul had nearly died himself when he told him and there hadn’t even been so much as a drop of brandy in the house to help him over the shock. People like Zavi shouldn’t have to deal with such things at their age.

  “All right, Cohen?” Ikmen was directly in front of him and was looking, for him, strangely concerned.

  Cohen tried to laugh. It was expected of him: sharp, randy little Cohen who doesn’t give a shit. But he failed. “Oh, Inspector, you’re…”

  His voice trailed off, he didn’t know where; it left him high and dry, just staring at Ikmen like a fool.

  Ikmen put his hand on Cohen’s shoulder and eyed him carefully. “You’re in shock, lad. Sit down.”

  Cohen knew that he was and, uncharacteristically, sat down without protest.

  Ikmen moved toward a crowd of late-night, slovenly-looking constables who parted to allow him through and for the first time he saw the body. It lay on the ground horizontally across the narrow alleyway and from even quite close it looked remarkably like a bundle of old clothes. But there was a face there, an old and leathery one, and the eyes were still open, just like Meyer’s had been. But the expression in these eyes was different. There was no horror, there wasn’t even any shock, there was surprise.

  The sort of pre-delight expression one sees on the faces of children when they have been given their birthday presents but haven’t yet unwrapped them. Behind the head, apparently pulling at something Ikmen preferred not to think about, was Arto, his plump features illuminated by the thin light from a police arc lamp.

  “Ah, Inspector, good.”

  “Morning, Arto.” Ikmen took out his cigarettes and lighter and started working. His head was beginning to clear rapidly now, he was just entering the jumpy alert phase that often follows intense alcohol consumption and lack of sleep. “What have we got?”

  Arto finished whatever it was he had been doing and stood up. “What we have is a very heavy blow, just one I think, inflicted by this piece of metal.” He pointed to a strange-shaped, shiny lump near his feet. “It cracked the skull causing the massive hemorrhage which killed him. Death would have occurred more or less instantaneously.”

  Ikmen lit his cigarette and puffed on it determinedly. “Time?”

  “An hour, maybe two hours ago. Some of the men are out doing house-to-house already.”

  Ikmen crouched down and peered closely at the body. The small hands were curled inward in front of it like cats’ paws. There was something so innocent and touching about this sight that for a moment Ikmen felt quite overwhelmed by sadness. “He was a rabbi, wasn’t he?”

  Arto took off his surgical gloves and wiped his sweaty hands on a towel. “Yes. Rabbi Isak. According to Mr. Cohen who lives over the back there he was very popular around here.”

  “And now he’s dead.” Ikmen stood up again and gazed around him at the pathetic collection of rude dwellings that passed for houses in this quarter. “Where’s forensic?”

  “On their way, as is the van from the morgue.”

  “Good.” Ikmen sighed deeply. He knew that it was self-indulgent but he couldn’t help thinking that he might have done more. And yet this was different. Whoever had killed Meyer had planned and gone prepared for what had to be done. But the Rabbi’s murder was another matter. He looked at the wide selection of stones, pieces of wood and lumps of metal that littered the alleyway, all potential murder weapons. The twisted, bloodstained hunk that sat at Arto’s feet had been chosen at random. An impulsive if crazed act that had caused instantaneous death. “Has the body been mutilated in any way?” He had to check.

  “Not as far as I can see yet. I would think it unlikely. Out in the open, albeit in a quiet place like this, the risk of discovery usually puts them off even if the desire to do so is strong.”

  Ikmen raised his chin upward in agreement.

  “Sir! Inspector Ikmen!” The voice was young and he remembered vaguely hearing it somewhere before, although he couldn’t quite place it. Ikmen turned and saw the young, soft face of Avcı directly behind him. He was with someone, a very short, heavily bearded man, the whites of whose eyes were scarred and cracked by heavy red veins. Ikmen raised one eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Sir.” Avcı was breathless with excitement; he’d found something. Ikmen could just remember being like that—once. “This man, Mr., er…”

  The man waved one unwashed hand across Avcı’s face and grinned. The expression made him look like some sort of medieval demonic spirit. Ikmen didn’t need the evidence of the reeking smell of whiskey that came from his mouth to realize that he was very drunk. “Not Mr.,” he said, “just Nat. Everyone, all misters, they call me Nat.”

  “Ah well,” said Ikmen. “Mr., er, Nat, you, er…”

  Avcı could contain himself no longer. “Mr. Nat saw a stranger drinking in his bar, which is just around the corner, earlier this evening. The man was a foreigner, couldn’t speak Ladino, and he was very drunk.”

  “He was shout, make some trouble, you know.” Nat swayed slightly and smiled stupidly. “Rosa throw him out, too drunk.”

  It did cross Ikmen’s mind to ask why Rosa, whoever she was, hadn’t thrown Mr. Nat out also, but he decided not to. “What did he look like, this man?”

  “Oh!” Nat’s torso lurched backward a little from his legs and he hiccuped loudly. “Very big, tall. Hair was white, you know, like American or German, I don’t know. Too much drink, start to cry, make lot of noise.”

  It was August and the city was full of tourists from all over the world, but Ikmen couldn’t help wondering. A tall, fair, foreign man in the right place at the wrong time?
<
br />   “When was this?”

  “Couple hours ago.”

  “You didn’t see where he went when he left, I suppose?”

  Nat shrugged. “I’m busy, you know.”

  It was not difficult to imagine what with. This wasn’t like Meyer’s murder, because this time they had clues. The murder weapon, especially if the assailant had been drunk, could yield fingerprints. Analysis of the victim’s clothes could be useful too. This had been a sloppy job, poorly executed in an open space. The surrounding area could hold untold treasures. And if Mr. Nat had seen the tall blond stranger then other people must have done too. Maybe even sober people more able to give detailed and reliable descriptions. Ikmen felt strongly that that must be so and dismissed Avcı and the roaring Mr. Nat for the time being.

  “Can I move the body when the mortuary attendants and forensic get here, Çetin?”

  He’d almost forgotten about Arto. Ikmen turned toward him and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Yes, I think so, although I want the whole area searched thoroughly, centimeter by centimeter. And I want the body and its clothing to have the same treatment too. I want to know everything about this one, right down to what his clothes are made of, what he had for dinner. He was native Balat, I understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmm.” One victim native Balat, the other a Jew from elsewhere. There could always be connections through friends or friends of friends, but on the face of it it seemed unlikely. And Ikmen wasn’t even sure whether it was really necessary to his theory. Perhaps in a way it was more necessary that there was no connection. But what he needed before he could even think about that was a break. “Arto, I want you to get going with this one as soon as you can and I want anything unusual reported directly to me immediately.”

  “OK.”

  A van pulled up at the far end of the alleyway and two suitably sepulchral-looking individuals got out. “Ah,” said Ikmen with a smile. “Your ghouls from the morgue, I believe, Dr. Sarkissian.”

  “Yes.” Sarkissian looked down at the body and put his hands in his pockets. “Time to go.”

  Ikmen moved out of the way and leaned his back up against one of the nearby wooden fences. Now all that he could do was wait. Wait for witnesses, wait for more information on the blond man in Mr. Nat’s bar, wait for Arto and forensic to contact him. Being sure was absolutely essential, even though that deep part of him already knew. He leaned his head back against the fence and took in some deep, revitalizing breaths. Oh he felt rough! But he had to keep going. He was close now. Two hands, two crimes but a cord connected their perpetrators. The roots if not the branches joined, known to one another. Now speed was vital. But before that there was just one more thing he had to do and it filled him with sadness. But do it he must because sometimes seeming cruelty is the only course of action left open. All he could hope was that in time he would be forgiven.

  * * *

  He was woken by a stray ray of sunlight touching his nose and the area just beneath his eyes. It wasn’t a rude awakening as it was still very early and the sun was not yet either very hot or particularly bright. But it was enough to rouse him and even before he opened his eyes he knew that he was in trouble.

  The nausea, although not fierce, kept coming across him in waves and his mouth and throat felt tight, dry and scarred. He turned to one side in an effort to assuage the rising sickness and discovered to his horror that his mattress was not below him. His slim gangly limbs clunked painfully against something much harder than that. He opened half an eye and found himself looking at a lot of gravel and one of those tall, thin Turkish gravestones.

  Inside his head blocks of information started to shift and grind up against one another, like small children’s wooden bricks in a box. Obviously he’d had such a skinful that he hadn’t managed to make it home and had just flopped down into the first available space, which just happened to be a graveyard. He didn’t dare move his head. Instinct told him that if he did he would discover a headache too, and it would not be one of those that responds to paracetamol.

  Robert tested out various unamusing descriptions for the state he had been in the previous night. Wrecked, arse’oled, pissed, shit-faced, whammed, bombed, legless, rat-arsed. All very jolly and laddishly amusing if one conveniently forgot about the hangover that always followed these expletives. But what had he done and where had he been? He opened his eyes fully, and, although the light hurt them, he made himself check his own body for damage. The sight of the crusted and dried blood on his shirtsleeves provoked an immediate reaction and he was sick all down his chest and onto the gravel.

  * * *

  As Ikmen’s eyes traveled down the second page of Reinhold Smits’s nauseatingly perfumed little missive he found that his reaction to its contents was not what he thought it would be. Instead of anger, he felt only sadness—sadness for another life, irrespective of its owner, gone. Another totally unique individual completely and utterly wiped off the face of the earth. Beside such an enormity his little questions regarding the seemingly endless Leonid Meyer conundrum suddenly seemed really rather paltry.

  As he picked up the telephone, preparatory to doing what he knew had to be done, Ikmen caught sight of young Avcı in the corridor just outside his office. In his present revolting condition, he would need, at the very least, someone to drive him and so he called him over.

  As Avcı entered the room, he smiled, one of his big, silly bovine smiles. “Yes, Inspector Ikmen, sir?”

  “I need someone to drive me over to Bebek,” Ikmen replied. “Are you up to it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, for the strength and fortitude of youth!”

  “You what?”

  Ikmen allowed himself the luxury of flopping back into his chair again. “Oh, nothing, just go and get my car ready for me.”

  “Sir.”

  As Avcı left, Ikmen readdressed himself to the telephone and, once again, with a deep sigh, he began dialing.

  * * *

  Mehmet Suleyman sprinkled a little Monsieur Dior cologne onto his comb and dragged it lazily through his hair. He felt fine, but he had his doubts about Ikmen. The “Old Man” had been absolutely roaring when he left him and his strange cousin, whose “tricks” had taken a remarkably short time to perform, had just ordered another round of drinks. Really he should have dragged Ikmen away then or at least stayed around until he was finished and seen him home. But the Bar Paris wasn’t his sort of place and the time he had spent there had depressed him enough already. The constant hassling by prostitutes of uncertain gender hadn’t helped either. It seemed odd to him that a husband and father like Ikmen could feel comfortable in such a setting. But then Ikmen was odd all round. He didn’t seem to have the same values or beliefs as other people. He was uncompromising, he did things his way or not at all. It was a miracle he still had a job.

  Downstairs the telephone rang and somebody picked it up. Mehmet briefly tidied up his new gray suit with a soft camel-hair brush and then spent a few moments inspecting teeth he knew already were perfectly clean. But then, with a totally unwanted breakfast and his mother’s endless inane chatter to look forward to, going downstairs did not hold much appeal for him. His mother was not a bad woman, but, like his boss, the world either conformed to her or she wasn’t interested.

  However, it had to be done and so, leaving his teeth to their own devices, he made his way downstairs and out onto the terrace. As usual the table groaned beneath the weight of his mother’s spread of breakfast food: bread, cheese, olives, tomatoes, home-made rose jam, the ridiculously ornate silver coffee pot. It looked beautiful but he wanted none of it. Ikmen had taught him many things over the past five years and probably the greatest of these was the benefit of skipping breakfast in favor of a chocolate pastry at around midday. He’d wanted to make it a habit, but it wasn’t easy with his mother.

  He sat himself down beside the silent outstretched newspaper that was his father and poured himself a coffee. The swishing sound of clean
skirts rustling around slim legs and the click-click of high heels on concrete signaled the arrival of his mother. Mehmet looked up and smiled. His father didn’t move.

  His mother beamed. “I’ve just had your boss on the telephone, Mehmet, he’s given you the day off. Isn’t that nice?”

  “The day off?” It didn’t make any sense! Suddenly? For no reason? “Are you sure, Mother?”

  “Well, he was quite specific, Mehmet.”

  Why did she always take offense so easily! His father put down his paper and looked confused. “What?”

  His mother tutted impatiently. His father’s increasing vagueness never failed to irritate her. “Mehmet has been given the rest of the day off, Muhammed.” She shouted at him too, like he was deaf. He wasn’t but it had never occurred to him to mention this fact—it seemed like too much trouble.

  “Oh.” He lifted the paper once again and turned to the sports pages.

  Nur Suleyman removed her son’s unused plate from in front of him and replaced it with another even cleaner version. Her son winced. She was such a mistress of the pointless that it almost hurt.

  She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “We can go shopping if you like.”

  The implication that he had a choice was almost laughable. He couldn’t bear it. “I think I’ll just go and check.”

  As he got up her hand fell from his shoulder and her eyes took on a hurt expression. “Oh, but Mehmet, I—”

  “It’s all right, Mother.” Although he didn’t want to he made himself bend low to kiss her cheek briefly. “I do believe you, but there are a few things I have to check up on.”

  “Oh.” It was a distracted little exclamation, the sort of sound people make when they’ve just been told something so awful that they can barely take it in. It was the sort of overreaction he was accustomed to.

  He walked back into the house but even before he reached the telephone he’d made up his mind. Whatever Ikmen said he was going into work and that was that.