Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  Apart from the accent, which was now, to İkmen’s way of thinking, decidedly weird, Jak Cohen had changed little in the thirty-something years since he’d left İstanbul. Still, like his brother Balthazar, small and thin, Jak in middle age actually looked better than he had done during his hungry, semi-orphaned youth. When İkmen offered him a glass of champagne, which was one of the few contributions the policeman had made to the festivities, Jak declined.

  ‘No, thank you, Inspector,’ he said as he held one hand aloft to signal his refusal. ‘I’ve never touched it and never will.’

  İkmen shrugged, took a glass for himself and sipped from it with pleasure.

  ‘If you remember my father . . .’

  ‘Of course Çetin Bey remembers our father! Everyone remembers our father!’

  Both Jak and İkmen looked down at the shrunken man in the wheelchair clutching, as if for his life, on to a glass filled with white, cloudy liquid – the local anise spirit rakı, mixed with water.

  ‘Yes, Balthazar,’ Jak replied gravely, ‘they do. Drinking yourself to death while neglecting your children does tend to attract attention.’

  The man in the wheelchair cleared his throat. ‘Ah, he had his problems. It was his way.’

  ‘It was a bad way.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘But today we mustn’t think of the past, only look forward to the future,’ İkmen interjected quickly. He’d known the Cohen boys, Balthazar, Jak and Leon, since childhood, which, given that İkmen himself was now fifty-five, was a long time. He knew how, even now and despite Jak’s generosity, disagreement could escalate between them.

  ‘Your daughter and my son, mmm,’ Balthazar frowned, ‘a Muslim and a Jew to become lovers in this world filled with hate.’

  ‘A Muslim and a Jew to show the way forward in this world filled with hate, I hope,’ İkmen said as he lit cigarettes for both himself and Balthazar.

  ‘You did agree to this marriage, Balthazar,’ Jak began. ‘I—’

  ‘I agreed because I knew it was inevitable,’ the man in the wheelchair retorted. ‘I called you,’ he looked up at his brother, scowling, ‘because if it had to be done I wanted it done properly.’

  ‘I am your brother. I love you. I’ll do anything I can for you.’

  ‘And I’m grateful, Jak. Just don’t ask me to be happy, because I can’t do that.’ He placed the cigarette İkmen had given him firmly between his lips and began to wheel himself away.

  In all the years that he’d known him, İkmen had only come across this side of Balthazar’s character in recent times. Until the great earthquake of 1999, which had been responsible for putting him in his wheelchair, Balthazar Cohen had been the cheerfully adulterous Constable Cohen. A rather slovenly officer, he had sometimes helped and sometimes hindered İkmen in various investigations over the years. That he never exhibited any sort of religious sensibility had led İkmen to believe that he possessed few feelings about his origins. But then along came his own catastrophic injuries, coupled with the mental disintegration of his eldest son, Yusuf, and suddenly Balthazar was only too aware of his five-hundred-year-old heritage as one of İstanbul’s ancient families of Sephardic Jews. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Berekiah, İkmen’s new son-in-law, was Balthazar’s only avenue into the future . . .

  ‘Balthazar tells me that you work in the entertainment business over in London, Jak,’ İkmen said, changing the subject for everyone’s sake. ‘You’ve done well.’

  Jak laughed. ‘I get by, Çetin,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’ve a flat in Docklands, a house in Surrey and an ex-wife with expensive tastes. It costs me to keep Daniel, that’s my son, at Cambridge. But, please God, when he does finally get his degree it will have all been worth it.’

  ‘You know I’m very . . .’ İkmen struggled with the words of gratitude he knew were neither expected nor required, ‘grateful to you . . .’

  ‘Your daughter is a very decent and beautiful girl, Çetin Bey,’ Jak said, changing his form of address to the more respectful ‘Bey’. After all, monied though he may now be, Jak could remember only too clearly when he and his ragged-arsed brothers had felt privileged to be allowed to play with Çetin and his brother, Halil – the İkmen boys, clever sons of the university lecturer Timur İkmen and his ethereal-looking wife, Ayşe, the Albanian, the famous witch of Üsküdar.

  İkmen looked across the room at the slim, handsome young man hand in hand with his eighteen-year-old daughter. Resplendent in white and gold, Hulya İkmen, now Cohen, looked like a bride from a fairy tale. Beside the couple, standing a little distant from them, was another attractive female, somewhat older and, to İkmen’s way of thinking, a little sadder than Hulya.

  ‘I am very happy to welcome Berekiah into my family,’ İkmen said, and then tipping his head in the direction of the young woman beside the couple he added, ‘I just wish that my Çiçek could find someone.’

  Jak, following the policeman’s gaze, looked at the young woman and smiled. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think you’d have too much trouble there,’ he said. ‘I mean, look at that fellow there. He’s very attractive and he’s moving in on your Çiçek, by the look of it.’

  For just a moment, İkmen thought that perhaps some new and exciting young man he’d never seen before had come on the scene. But when he saw that it was Mehmet Süleyman, he turned away from Jak and looked out of the open French doors across the terrace towards the Golden Horn and the great Imperial Mosques of the Old City.

  ‘I don’t think that he’s entirely suitable,’ İkmen said, more to himself than to Jak. ‘He’s got too much past.’

  And then the music began, softly at first, echoing up into the marble galleries that lined the upper storey of the function room. The Pera Palas Hotel, built for the elegant passengers arriving in İstanbul on the Orient-Express, erstwhile residence of Atatürk, Agatha Christie, Jackie Onassis, various Ottoman princes – including now Mehmet Süleyman. Poor Mehmet, childless, wifeless, worried, talking earnestly to Çiçek – about something. İkmen shook his head as if to free worrying thoughts from his mind and went to join his headscarfed wife and her sisters out on the terrace.

  The climb was steep and after a short while she began to pant. It wasn’t so hot now – around 5.30 p.m. – but, though young, she was mildly asthmatic and so it was hard. The asthma, so her doctor said, was a nervous condition, brought about by her anxieties. He’d given her medication for it. That the condition persisted now that she didn’t have any more anxieties, hadn’t had them for a while, was strange. Perhaps the medication, had she taken it, would have helped. She climbed on, gasping, using, where she could, the stout trunks of the trees to support her.

  Above, the Byzantine castle of Yoros loomed. At the height of summer, even this late in the afternoon, this area wouldn’t be deserted as it thankfully was today. A combination of late season and rumours of an impending war between America and Turkey’s neighbour Iraq had meant that İstanbul as a whole had done badly for tourists in recent weeks. In some quarters it was being said that perhaps this war could affect Turkey herself. Even İstanbul, some said, was close enough to Iraq to make gas or chemical attack a possibility. Her breath became more laboured, dizzying her head with lack of oxygen.

  Before the Christian Byzantines built Yoros Castle, the site on which it now stands was a pagan shrine dedicated to Zeus. The Ancient Greek sailors who wished to pass safely through the straits would first make sacrifice here, pouring innocent blood into the earth for their god to take and use for his nourishment. That the ‘new’ religion of Christianity had appropriated this site was nothing unusual. Up-coming faiths often did this to old sites, stamping down hard on what had gone before, neutralising what had been ‘evil’ and making it their own. Up in the city, Aya Sofya, once a church constructed from the ruins of pagan temples, then a mosque, now a museum, was a perfect example. All this the girl with the swimming head had learned and understood.

  Just below the castle, in a small clearing she had
been taken to before, the girl stopped and sat down. Though still taut with excitement, she was beginning to feel hungry. But now was too late and, besides, there was too much to think about and do in the intervening time. Now she knew he had to be preparing to come to her. When the sun set he would arrive. She took her clothes off and piled them neatly in front of a tree. Then she sat down, legs crossed, and removed her crystal from her bag. She thought how beautiful it was as she stared into its transparent depths.

  ‘People commit suicide every day,’ Çiçek İkmen said as she put her cigarette out in a small, white ashtray.

  Together with Mehmet Süleyman, she had moved from the main function room of the hotel and into the bar. Sitting at a distant table over by the hotel’s front windows, they had both decided to stay out of the orbit of the huge mirror that hung like a vague threat over the old, darkwood bar.

  ‘But then you, just like my father, must know that,’ Çiçek continued as, in unconscious mimicry of Çetin İkmen, she proceeded to chain-smoke. ‘Perhaps it was the boy’s youth that so affected you.’

  Mehmet leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Or maybe the method . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ He too took a cigarette from his packet and lit up.

  ‘OK.’ She crossed one slim leg over the other and settled back to look at the ornate and archaic décor.

  He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Besides, although he knew she was aware that Zelfa had left him, he didn’t know whether Çiçek knew why. It was almost certain she didn’t know the whole story. She was so normal with him. People weren’t generally this casual when talking to those living under possible sentence of death. And HIV, AIDS – it wasn’t nice, not a comfortable death. But then two handfuls of the antidepressants he’d been prescribed plus half a bottle of rakı would fix it even before it began. Even taking the route the boy had taken . . . No, that was far too upsetting, too messy, too much trouble for all of those left behind. It was, however, compelling, strangely attractive and just at this moment he wanted it with all of his soul. But he couldn’t tell her that. Now smiling as her sister the bride entered the bar with their father, Çiçek was so obviously pleased that the young girl had got what she wanted. Tales of death were not appropriate here. He reined them in and forced a smile.

  ‘My sister looks dazzling, don’t you think?’ Çiçek said as she raised her champagne glass up to her lips.

  ‘You belong to an attractive family,’ Mehmet replied.

  ‘With one exception,’ Çiçek joked as she flashed her eyes briefly in the direction of her father.

  Mehmet laughed. Small, thin and rumpled İkmen might be but, as he reminded the man’s daughter, her father had such charm and charisma that looks were largely irrelevant in his case.

  ‘Well, I suppose that my mum must agree with you,’ Çiçek said just after she drained her champagne flute. ‘She’s been with him for ever.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hey, you know Dad’s engaged a gypsy fortune-teller out on the terrace? He knows her; she’s supposed to be really good,’ Çiçek said excitedly. ‘Do you fancy having your cards read?’

  Süleyman grinned. İkmen and his soothsayers, spiritualists and other assorted misfits! ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not for me. But you go.’

  ‘OK.’ She got up and left.

  When she’d gone, just briefly Mehmet caught İkmen’s eye and watched as the older man’s features broke into a smile. He is, Mehmet thought, in a sense holding me close. He knows what I think and what my intentions could be. As the most successful and prolific homicide detective in the city he has a legal duty to protect me. And he is the son of a witch. And he loves me, I know, like a son. If I lay hands upon myself, he will stop me.

  The sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder made him jump. İkmen, suddenly materialised at his side, took his face between his hands and kissed him hard on both cheeks.

  The sunset call to prayer brought him just as he’d said. Wordlessly, from behind, he took her naked arms in his hands and entered her. It hurt. Terror briefly took over from desire and she just managed to stifle a scream. Big, hard and cold – as she knew it would be – slowly at first it moved inside her, agitating the pain. But then as the rhythm began to increase a curious thing happened – a sort of anaesthetic effect took hold, an absence of sensation that then suddenly blossomed into something she had never experienced before. A feeling somewhere between pleasure and pain, a glorious tightening of the senses. She gasped. Long, elegant hands reached around to pull and tease at her nipples and the girl let out a small, breathy scream.

  Her body now moving in time to his, she took her hands away from the earth and kneeled up, her eyes closed. She’d been told about this moment, the one that was approaching with such ecstatic rapidity. She heard her chest wheeze as her body attempted to deal with the increased need for oxygen. He spoke now, possibly in Hebrew, and she, in response, began to gasp. The experience took him to another level, one that was so wonderful and yet at the same time so frightening for her that she screamed.

  Let it finish, let it last for ever, she thought as the full force of orgasm broke across her.

  And then with him still hard inside her, others, their faces hooded, came and touched her body too. Sharing their ceremony, his and hers. She didn’t see the knife because her eyes were closed. But she felt it, plunging into her heart as great flashes of white lightning flew all around the clearing like a display of fireworks at a wedding.

  CHAPTER 2

  In spite of his father’s protestations to the contrary, Nurdoğan wasn’t convinced that he was right.

  ‘She must have gone to a club; she’s probably at Sırma’s,’ his father said as he took himself and his hangover out to his car.

  But Nurdoğan knew that Gülay hadn’t seen Sırma for months. She hadn’t seen any of her old friends for quite a long time. He walked up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom.

  ‘Gülay’s bed hasn’t been slept in,’ he said to the red-haired woman lying on the bed eating grapes and smoking a cigarette. Her considerable make-up was still, he noticed, plastered to her face from the night before.

  ‘She’s staying over with Sırma,’ his mother coughed.

  ‘I don’t think she sees Sırma any more,’ Nurdoğan replied as he lowered himself down on to his mother’s slippery and, in his opinion, uncomfortable red satin sheets.

  ‘Well, that’s probably for the best.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Where’s Kenan? Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’

  Nurdoğan’s young face hardened. ‘It’s Sunday.’

  His mother just raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

  ‘Mum, it is eleven o’clock now and Gülay didn’t take her pump with her. It’s still by her bed.’

  ‘She’ll be OK.’ The woman ground her cigarette out on the plate she was also using for grape pips. ‘Why don’t you go out on your bike or something? Gülay will be here when you get back. It’s not that she hasn’t stayed out before, is it?’ she added tetchily.

  She was always like this when she’d been out to the club with his father. The drink just seemed to carry on taking effect, blunting every real feeling she might possess. He was, he knew, supposed to leave her alone, carry on being in the care of Kenan and the small group of young girls who worked in the house, until she felt ‘better’ again.

  There wasn’t really any great need to be worried about Gülay. Sometimes she did stay out, although not in recent months as often as she had. And, if Nurdoğan were honest, he would have to say that Gülay had been happier of late. But this time, for some reason he couldn’t really articulate, he was worried about his sister. She used to tell him everything, still in fact said that she told him everything, but Nurdoğan was no longer sure about this. Sometimes she just went off without telling anyone and she’d taken to locking herself in her bedroom. Nurdoğan had always been close to his big sister, the two of them in a se
nse allied against their parents. It was an alliance that had survived all sorts of teenage ‘phases’ on Gülay’s part. Only now, when she was ‘normal’ again, did there seem to be a problem.

  Nurdoğan went downstairs and retrieved his bicycle from the garage. His father, who had taken his car out in order, apparently, to clean it, stopped talking to the large man Nurdoğan recognised as one of his club managers as he passed.

  ‘If you’re satisfied there are no signs of foul play, I’ll release the Ataman boy’s body for burial,’ the small, round man said with a smile.

  Mehmet Süleyman shrugged. ‘I can’t see any reason to hold back,’ he said wearily. ‘He took his own life. Not to any rational purpose but—’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  The smile faded from the round man’s face. Dr Arto Sarkissian had been employed as a police pathologist for all of his working life and had, during that time, seen most things that people could do to others and themselves. But premature, seemingly needless deaths like that of young Cem Ataman still shocked him.

  ‘I’ll contact the family and make the necessary arrangements,’ he said, and then, as if putting Cem Ataman himself to one side, he moved the boy’s notes to the edge of his desk. ‘So what time did you eventually leave the party?’ he asked, changing the subject to something far more pleasant.

  ‘At about midnight,’ Süleyman replied. ‘I think everyone, including Hulya and Berekiah, had had enough by then.’

  Arto nodded. ‘Yes. Weddings are tiring. Mine was. I would have stayed longer yesterday, but my wife doesn’t thrive well in the heat. I think Çetin understood.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  It was a safe assumption. Friends since childhood, the Turk Çetin İkmen and the Armenian Arto Sarkissian barely needed to speak now in order to know what the other was thinking. That Arto had been there to support his old friend at his daughter’s wedding had, both he and Süleyman knew, been enough.