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

by Barbara Nadel

  Robert, his teeth now gritted in anger, said, “You’re a very evil woman, Mrs. Gulcu—princess or no princess!”

  She shrugged. “I should have been more careful with regard to what I said in front of poor Misha. I let my desire to be always first in everybody’s affections get the better of me. And spite, of course, too. Knowing what Leonid really was and hearing the boy endlessly praise the man was, on this occasion, just a little too much. But then as you can see, the boy always looks as if he doesn’t have a thought in his head. But there. If only I had listened to Leonid long ago I—I would have been more careful.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I mean, Mr. Cornelius, that the one and only reason why poor Leonid drank to excess, as he did almost all of his life, was because he didn’t trust me. Rescue or no rescue, he had killed my family, my very special, divine family, and he knew that one day I would come for him. I didn’t believe it and indeed I used to laugh when he said such things, but when one of my little ones killed Leonid it was in a way my hand that was reaching out for him. Indirectly, if you will, but I killed Leonid. I have even, during the last few days, wondered whether I said the things that I did in front of Misha to obtain just that result.”

  Silence, with the exception of the sobbing that was now coming from Natalia’s mother, sat like a stone between all the occupants of the room—an absence waiting to be filled. Characteristically, it was Maria Gulcu who finally obliged.

  “And so now we must go to the police,” she said. “I do not want to but—”

  She was interrupted by her daughter who, still sobbing, flung herself across her mother’s bed, shouting out words that Robert Cornelius could not understand. The old woman stroked her hair and attempted to calm her even though, and to Robert’s open disgust, her face was still as hard as granite.

  “My daughter is upset, Mr. Cornelius,” she explained, “because the plan has always been that one day we all return to Russia in triumph. With the collapse of the old Soviet Union, that even looked possible—until now. God alone knows what will happen to us now.”

  Returning suddenly to the reason why he was there in the first place, Robert Cornelius shook his head and then said, “But what of Natalia? I mean, I presume she is at her work?”

  “Yes,” the old woman replied, “and she will be found there by the police once I have spoken to them.”

  And then Misha spoke again. Maria’s reply was bellowed sharply at him. “In English please, Misha! Mr. Cornelius cannot understand!”

  Robert forced himself to look at him. The identical features on the boy’s face made him flinch. He’d done things he hadn’t even dreamed about before for that face.

  In hideously halting English he cried, “I not want to go to prison, Grandmama! Police they even kill me for it!”

  “Ah, Misha!” She sighed deeply and looked at Robert. “What can I say? You hear he knows what will happen to him and I cannot deny it. He will confess to them as he did eventually to me. I know this. But what can I do?”

  Misha screamed. It was a high, piercing, womanly sound. “I am Romanov, you cannot!”

  Every eye in the room was upon him. His agitation made him hop from foot to foot, his arms wound protectively round his body. Robert had a sudden and terrible feeling that the boy was about to go seriously out of control. He had seen people like him before—psychotics winding themselves higher and higher up into panic until the only way to bring them down was via a needle or a straitjacket. All the old fears returned in a huge, heavy rush. The boy’s eyes were on him, narrowed, and he knew what he was thinking. It was his fault, this foreigner had messed it all up, and Robert knew that it was only a matter of time before he either raged insanely or attacked. He had to remain calm, even though he could feel his fear mounting at an alarming rate. He had to make some gesture toward him that the boy would understand.

  Nobody else in the room saw the danger. Maria leaned back against her pillows and just said “Sssh!” very softly under her breath. She knew that Misha wasn’t really a bad boy, he wouldn’t do anything to harm anyone.

  “Misha…” Robert reached toward the boy, his hand open in a classic gesture of giving and friendship.

  But the boy pulled away as if scalded. His long arm wheeled backward through the air. As it descended it just caught the edge of the glass shade that enclosed the big oil-lamp on the table beside him. It fell to the floor with a crash and flames, at first very small and tender, licked and fed from the bottom of the curtain.

  Chapter 24

  “No, don’t push, Mrs. Ikmen, pant instead!”

  Fatma screwed up her face and small painful gasping sounds came from her mouth. The eldest of her daughters, a wide-eyed twenty-year-old called Çiçek, looked on in horror. “But Mummy wants to push,” she told the doctor. “It’s hurting her!”

  “Well, she can’t yet!” She was young, she didn’t like attending confinements, and most of all she didn’t like to be questioned by people who didn’t understand anatomy. “Your mother’s cervix isn’t dilated enough yet. If she pushes now she’ll tear and I don’t think any of us want that, do we!”

  “No!” But her mother was in such pain! Her face was red and covered with sweat and her legs were already parted, they quivered on top of the plastic sheet below her, aching for delivery. Çiçek looked at the large puddle of water and blood that had gathered down by Fatma’s feet and wondered whether or not she should be thinking about clearing it up.

  The doctor placed her fingers on Fatma’s wrist and took her pulse. She didn’t comment.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Your mother’s doing very well,” replied the doctor, “for a woman of her age.”

  Fatma opened her eyes and looked up at her daughter. “Where is your father? Where’s Çetin!”

  “He’s on his way, Mummy.”

  Fatma scowled. “You don’t have to humor me, you know!”

  “He is!” But Çiçek couldn’t give it much conviction.

  The doctor leaned over the bed. “Your contractions are coming every three minutes now, Mrs. Ikmen. You’re still not fully dilated, but I can give you some pain relief which might help. Do you want that?”

  “Yes!”

  She walked over to her attaché case and took out a syringe. For a second she placed it beside the bed while she rubbed a small ball of cotton wool on Fatma’s arm. It contained a wet substance that was very cold. She then retrieved the syringe and knocking the clear liquid up into the needle she injected it into Fatma’s arm. “That should ease things a little for you.”

  After all the agony she had already experienced Fatma hardly noticed the pain of the needle. She just lay like a great fat fish, panting in the heat, waiting for the next contraction. “Dr. Koç, could you telephone my husband, please. I want him to be here.”

  The doctor looked confused. “But—”

  “My husband is a policeman, Doctor! He needs to be shouted at to get him home!”

  Her face dissolved into a mask of agony as another pain gripped her. The doorbell rang and Çiçek flew toward the bedroom door. “That must be Dad now!”

  * * *

  Why he or nobody else moved immediately to stop the flames spreading Robert would never know. Perhaps it was the speed with which they climbed up the curtains, like skinny children, hand over hand. If only someone, anyone had had the presence of mind to pull them down and smother them with a blanket. There were plenty of blankets on her bed.

  But they all just watched instead. It was so unusual to see a bright light in that room. It harshly illuminated the old woman’s face and for the first time Robert saw the long, lopsided scar that ran down the side of her face. Had she got it there, in that cramped Ekaterinburg cellar? Had perhaps that old Jew, in whose death all these terrible, frightening people had had a hand, inflicted that wound? Why had he saved her anyway?

  A loud, splintering, cracking noise alerted Robert to the fact that part of the bone-dry wooden wall had ignited and he moved.
“Somebody get some water, for Christ’s sake!”

  But still they didn’t move. A strange sort of calm seemed to have come over them, even Misha. They looked at the fire as if they were watching television. It was an unreal image from which they were removed in both time and location. It was then that Robert’s instinct for self-preservation kicked in.

  * * *

  Cohen swung the car into the steep, narrow alleyway beside the Pera Palas Hotel and was struck immediately by an appalling stench that hit him like a brick wall. It was a very acidic smell that actually hurt the inside of his nostrils. He pulled a face and looked across at Suleyman. “What the fuck is that, Mehmet?”

  Suleyman, by the disgusted expression on his face, had obviously noticed it too. He took a deep sniff and nearly choked on the contents of the air drawn in. “Oh, I don’t know! It’s almost like burning, although”—he put his head through the wide-open car window and looked up at the sky—“I can’t see anything…”

  Cohen pulled a face and paused the car at the top of the alleyway before proceeding across Meşrutiyet Caddesi. He saw the hotel doorman run across the road and up into the little road opposite.

  “Is that Karadeniz where that man’s just gone?”

  “Yes.”

  A few other men and a young woman dressed entirely in black followed after the doorman, also running. For some reason Suleyman looked up again and saw a thick curl of black smoke rise above the grim buildings toward Istiklal Caddesi.

  He snapped at Cohen. “Stop the car!”

  With one clean bound he was through the door and running across Meşrutiyet Caddesi in the direction of Karadeniz Sokak. The tiny street was full of people all looking up toward the top of a house about halfway down. For a second Suleyman looked wildly about him for signs of Ikmen’s presence, but when he found none he looked up too. The whole top floor of number 12, Karadeniz Sokak was on fire.

  * * *

  Panting heavily in the wake of his headlong dash out of the old woman’s apartment, Robert looked up through the ocean of woodsmoke rolling toward him from the stairwell he had just descended. They, the family, were moving about now, he could hear their feet running above him, their voices. His break for the door had woken them. Nicholas had followed him as far as the bathroom and had gathered some water in a bucket.

  Robert looked at the telephone on the hall table and wondered whether he should use it. But there were people outside now, lots of people, one of them surely must have called the fire brigade.

  He stared up into the stairwell again. A six-foot gobbet of smoke rolled down toward him and the walls of the house creaked and splintered as they expanded in the intense heat. To go up again would be insane, but none of them were coming down to him and if the brigade didn’t arrive soon they would all be incinerated or overcome by smoke. Not, of course, that they would understand that. Although why he should care …

  But he did. Whatever the Gulcus claimed to be it was beyond doubt that they were human, if unworldly. If someone didn’t organize them they would all die. They would try to fight the flames with what little water they had without even thinking about getting themselves downstairs and into the street. They would do that because she, by virtue of her age, was going to be so difficult to move. And they wouldn’t leave her. Leaving her was pointless because without her they had nothing. Whatever flimsy proof had ever existed about them was contained within her. They either all came or they all didn’t.

  Robert put one foot on to the first stair and took a deep breath. Of course for him it wasn’t about them and who they were at all. He didn’t really know the Gulcus and what he did understand about them painted a very ugly picture in his mind. No, it was guilt that was going to make him act. The guilt of a man who knows he has done something unforgivable—the subsequent pathetic attempt to make amends that sometimes overwhelms the most logical of minds. That old Jew he hit might be dead but if he could just save even one of the people upstairs …

  The smoke was thicker now and was beginning to make his eyes smart. If he didn’t go soon, he would never go. Then the opportunity would be lost and he would be just like every other man of violence who had ever lived. Cruel and thoughtless—not like the self he knew he had really always been at all.

  Robert took another deep breath, put his hand over his mouth and ran up toward the black, curling smoke. The house sighed around him.

  * * *

  Dr. Koç took hold of Fatma’s sweaty hand and smiled. “It’s all right, Mrs. Ikmen, you can push this time.”

  “I won’t tear?” There were tears running down her cheeks. She wiped them gently away with the back of her hand.

  “No, you won’t tear. You’ve been very brave and you’re going to be fine.”

  She gripped her hand hard and for a second Dr. Koç thought that she was starting another contraction, but she only wanted to attract her attention. “Was that my husband at the door just now?”

  How could she tell her when she was in the heat of heavy labor? But her expression had already given everything away.

  “I’m afraid it wasn’t, no. Just your father-in-law.”

  She wanted to give vent to her anger, but the pain in her pelvis gripped like a vice and she took in a deep, rasping breath. Dr. Koç let go of her hand and ordered Çiçek, who was sitting behind her mother, to grip Fatma’s shoulders very tightly. She moved over and peered between Fatma’s wide-open legs.

  Fatma let her breath out with a loud bellow and bore down hard with every atom of her strength. There was a movement inside her followed by the slight feeling of relief obtained when the baby’s head crowns the cervix.

  * * *

  The old Mercedes rolled down the street just in front of two fire appliances, their sirens wailing like agonized muezzins. Avcı banged his fist down hard on the horn and left it there. So many people were crowded into the street it was almost impossible to drive. Ikmen looked at them with disgust. The ghouls, the sickos, the watchers of accidents and other natural and unnatural disasters.

  He’d seen the smoke as soon as they reached Taksim. And he’d known. A high place. He looked up at the burning roof of number 12, Karadeniz Sokak, the whole top story and half of the next one down were violently ablaze. Naturally. That was the problem with the old wooden houses, especially in summer. All it needed was a spark.

  Avcı pulled the car over by a small grocery shop and stopped. The two fire appliances moved into position and men began unravelling hoses.

  Ikmen got out of the car and shook his head in disbelief. A little old man shuffled toward him, away from the scene. Ikmen hailed him. “Hey, Uncle!”

  “What’s that?” He walked with a limp and wore his War of Independence medals pinned to a very holey green cardigan. He peered at Ikmen. “What do you want, boy?”

  “The burning house—do you know if anyone’s in there?”

  “Oh yes. Couple of minutes ago one smashed a window. There’s several of them, all screaming, they have been. If Allah wills it the fire brigade will get them out. If not…” He shrugged.

  Ikmen looked back at the fire again and the old man shuffled off. If the Gulcus died, he would never get to ask her that question, confront her with old Smits’s photograph. Of that he was certain. But there was nothing he could do apart from what everybody else was doing—just let the firemen do their job. His only consolation was that Suleyman wasn’t around.

  He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. People around him, including Avcı, looked at him as if he were mad.

  The firemen lined their hoses up and switched on the water. As the water poured down the rubber tubing the hoses bucked and thrashed. People tried to get out of the way, but one woman got her ankle caught and fell over. Avcı immediately went to her aid. She was, Ikmen noted vaguely, young and pretty. He felt a movement behind his back as that section of the crowd parted. He took no notice and shouted to Avcı to make their presence known to the fire officers. A long, slim hand landed on his shoul
der. “Sir?”

  It felt like going to sleep again in the full knowledge that a hideous nightmare was about to return. He looked around and up and there were tears in his eyes. “Suleyman.”

  * * *

  Now that the floor was alight their only hope lay with the firemen in the street below. If they could swing their ladders up to the window he’d broken they could get out that way. Except perhaps for her. She still hadn’t moved from the bed and now her daughter had joined her. Robert could see them through the flames. The daughter was screaming. Her hair was on fire, it made her look like an agonized saint, a halo of red and gold tongues around her head. The old woman, by contrast, was quite calm. The agony of burning hadn’t yet started for her. But even when it did Robert had the oddest feeling that it wouldn’t elicit so much as a single murmur. In her mind she’d already gone elsewhere. Back to Ekaterinburg maybe? Perhaps it had happened while he’d tried to escape downstairs. While Nicholas desperately tried to put out the flames with buckets of water. That had been a useless exercise.

  For some reason at this point Robert remembered the old Jew, the way he had looked down at him with kindness and concern, the way he, Robert, had reacted with violence. Notwithstanding the bad associations he had built up against Balat, it was still extraordinary that he had done what he did. Mistrust, the instinctive lashing out at the unknown other, the barely restrained prejudices of nearly two thousand years. And how easy it had been! How simple to look into a sharp, pointed face and see, actually see the eyes of a demon. He looked down at the floor and saw Sergei’s twisted body stretched out before him like a broken mannequin. He knew that if he touched him he would find no sign of life. He had gone to join the old Jew and Meyer and all the other dead people whose lives his mother Maria had touched.

  The smoke was so thick now that he could hardly see anything anymore and his lungs felt heavy and painful. Misha alone stood by the window and if Robert knew what was good for him he should join the boy. Robert moved slowly through the darkening smoke. There was a smell like roasting meat and he ducked down closer to the floor to avoid it. Oxygen always gathered at floor level and if he was to survive he had to get some into his clogged lungs soon. He bent low and scampered quickly across the smoldering carpet toward the light. As he ran he fancied he passed another body moving in the opposite direction, back into the room, but he couldn’t be sure. Things shifted in the smoke. Shapes loomed and then subsided, like figures in fog.