Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  Mr Gören, who had lived in the next-door apartment for the last six months, had a daughter about the same age as Çiçek called Halide. Plain but honest, Halide still silently mourned the Anatolian village she and her father had left to come and seek their fortunes in the big city. Unfortunately, her sadness had caught the attention, and inflamed the affections, of the owner of one of the small pidecis down below the apartment building on Divanyolu. Mr Emin, at seventy-six, was in love – it was something he demonstrated all the time via his daily shouting sessions with Halide’s father.

  ‘I’m a man of means, I’ll provide well for her!’ Mr Emin shouted through the closed front door of Mr Gören’s apartment.

  ‘My daughter is fully occupied looking after me, her father, thank you,’ Mr Gören responded.

  ‘But you must want your daughter to be married! It must be a worry for you! She is no longer young! An old maid . . .’

  In spite of the heat, İkmen shoved his head under his pillow and sighed. Marriage, sex, sex, marriage – it was all he’d heard about, thought about for months. Young girls getting married, older girls not getting married. And now Çiçek, suddenly made aware of her age by the occasion of her sister’s marriage, rekindling her teenage crush on Mehmet Süleyman. Poor Çiçek, İkmen’s beloved ‘old maid’, glamoured by a man possibly infected with AIDS . . .

  Allah, but it would be good to get back to police work again in the morning! But what a shame it was that someone had to die in order for the adrenaline to really get going. Unless, of course, that person were either Mr Gören or Mr Emin.

  ‘What do you mean, “what did he do”?’

  ‘I mean, Mr Ataman, what were your son’s interests? Who did he associate with?’

  Giving the Atamans the news about their son’s yet again delayed burial was proving, if anything, even more distressing than telling the Arat family that their daughter had been found dead. At least at the Arats’ the girl’s young brother had cried . . .

  ‘You saw the note. Consorting with “devils”, apparently.’ Mete Ataman threw his long arms petulantly into the air. ‘He was eighteen and chose to give his life, seemingly, to something entirely fictional! What else do eighteen year olds do, Inspector Süleyman? You tell me.’

  ‘If I hadn’t been in my office day and night, we might have been able to stop him doing this terrible thing to himself.’

  All heads turned towards the thin woman in black, sitting, dead-eyed, beside a window that looked out directly across at the Galata Tower.

  Ataman, his face now red with fury, bore down upon her, one finger wagging violently into her face. ‘You said you wanted to be independent, Sibel! I gave you that job, I made it happen! It’s what you wanted!’

  ‘I know! I know!’

  ‘So don’t pretend you would have enjoyed being around for your son—’

  ‘I’m not pretending! I’m just . . .’ She looked up at Süleyman, her eyes wet. ‘So unhappy, my son! So morbid! You know, he used to cut his arms—’

  ‘Sibel!’

  ‘Yes, we do know that your son did harm himself, Mrs Ataman.’

  ‘Just about cut the skin, you mean!’ Mete Ataman put in acidly. ‘All for effect! Like those so-called Gothic freaks up in town! All for attention!’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Süleyman said, ‘I would like your permission to search your son’s room, Mr Ataman. I—’

  ‘You’ve looked at his things!’

  ‘In light of this other, similar incident, I would like in particular to have access to your son’s computer . . .’

  Only fifteen-year-old Nurdoğan Arat had had any idea what his sister, Gülay, liked to do. ‘She liked her computer,’ he’d said as his parents, two middle-aged socialites, reeking of alcohol, looked on blankly. ‘She spent hours on it.’ Locked into her room apparently, doing what Nurdoğan could only describe as ‘something’. But it was a start. Maybe, via the computer, Cem and Gülay had come into contact with each other. After all, or so it would seem, they had at one time, at least, shared rather dark interests.

  ‘He only played games on it.’ Ataman threw himself down into one of his leather chairs and lit a cigarette. ‘I tried to teach him how to use spreadsheets, preparing him for some level of responsibility in my business, but he wasn’t interested.’

  ‘Our son was a very . . . self-contained boy, Inspector,’ Sibel Ataman said gently. ‘He felt that our work was trite.’ She turned her head and looked hard at the tower beyond the window. ‘Which it is.’

  Her husband first threw the back of her head a murderous glance and then looked back at Süleyman. ‘As far as I’m concerned you can take anything you want,’ he said, and then with his voice breaking he continued, ‘My son is dead, I have no use for childish things.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Ataman.’

  ‘Just let us know as soon as you can when we can bury him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Süleyman and Çöktin stood up. Sibel Ataman turned back from the window to smile at them.

  ‘Tell me, gentlemen,’ she said softly, ‘do you believe that our Muslim death traditions are indeed fact . . .’

  Her husband put his head in his hands and groaned.

  ‘. . . that the soul of the deceased is in torment until the body is buried in the ground?’

  ‘Mrs Ataman, I can’t really—’

  ‘For the love of Allah, Sibel, will you stop?’ Ataman, his face puce now with both rage and suppressed despair, shouted. ‘Your son is dead, you’re too old and too frigid to have any more children! Your son is dead! He’s dead! He’s gone! My son . . .’

  And then he began to cry.

  Süleyman and Çöktin removed themselves to Cem Ataman’s bedroom, leaving his father weeping in his antique-stuffed living room. Sibel Ataman did not move to comfort or even look at her husband.

  Night had fallen by the time Gülay Arat’s body entered the mortuary. Her father, a hard, thuggish-looking man in his mid-forties, arrived to identify her formally, after which she entered the care of Arto Sarkissian. In spite of the lateness of the hour, he had decided to begin his examination of the corpse immediately. As he told Constable Hikmet Yıldız, who had accompanied the body from Anadolu Kavaḡı to the mortuary, ‘Inspector Süleyman is very keen for me to compare this girl’s body to that of the boy we found in Eyüp,’ and then turning to one of his technicians he said, ‘Ali, I’ll need the subject in number five, please.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  The technician disappeared into another room from which, a little later, Yıldız heard grinding, metallic noises.

  ‘I take it you’re staying with us, Constable?’ the doctor said as he arranged an alarming selection of instruments on a table beside the still-covered body of the girl.

  ‘Until either Inspector Süleyman or Sergeant Çöktin arrives, yes, sir.’ Süleyman in particular, praise be to Allah, always preferred to attend these things personally as opposed to letting some subordinate, like young Yıldız, do it for him. But he and Çöktin hadn’t yet returned from either the Atamans’ or the Arats’.

  ‘Well, it isn’t like you haven’t seen anything like this before,’ Arto said as he pulled the bloodied sheet from Gülay Arat’s greenish-white body.

  Yıldız swallowed hard. ‘No, sir.’

  The technician returned with the sheet-covered occupant of ‘number five’. Thin tendrils of water vapour, from the refrigeration process he had undergone, rose from the anonymous lump that had been Cem Ataman.

  ‘All right, Ali, uncover him, please,’ Arto said with a smile.

  The middle-aged technician did just that, and Hikmet Yıldız felt his lunch, which had been his favourite kokoreç (grilled sheep intestines) begin to move in an upward direction. If there was another colour beyond green, Cem Ataman’s body was that colour. Yıldız looked away while Arto Sarkissian began his examination of the wound in the girl’s chest whilst simultaneously referring to Cem Ataman’s file.

  ‘Unlike the Ataman boy,
we have no weapon,’ he said, ‘and this body had been disturbed.’

  He moved across to the other body and bent down low over the gaping wound in the chest.

  ‘Cem, of course, was found slumped over the knife while the girl was, so we are told, originally spread-eagled,’ he continued, ‘but then the downward slope of the hillside would have caused that.’

  ‘She fell over backwards.’

  ‘Or was pushed.’ He returned his attentions to the girl’s body. ‘As I said when we were at the site, I want to check for sexual activity. Forensic are of the opinion that others were present . . .’

  A minute or two passed – Yıldız, his lunch threatening to rebel at any moment, wasn’t counting – accompanied by the sound of dead flesh and bone being shifted around on the table.

  ‘Well, there’s some damage . . .’

  ‘So she could have just had sex . . .’

  ‘I think it’s possible,’ the doctor said, ‘although I won’t know until I’ve performed a full autopsy, which I’ll do first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Oh. Good.’ Yıldız had thought for a moment there that he was in for the long haul. Full autopsy in the middle of the night, his tired stomach bubbling with undigested sheep’s intestines. But then the doctor, as was evident, had to be too tired to perform such an arduous procedure effectively at this time.

  ‘I’ll just have a little preliminary look,’ the doctor said as he tapped at Yıldız’ shoulder in order to get his attention. ‘Why don’t you go and wait in my office? Have a glass of water.’

  Yıldız, suddenly ashamed of what he imagined the doctor would perceive as a weakness, looked away from the small Armenian very quickly.

  ‘You’ve gone a bit of a strange colour,’ Arto whispered gently.

  ‘Oh.’

  Half an hour later, the doctor returned to his office where a much more healthy-looking Yıldız and now Süleyman were waiting for him.

  ‘Well?’ the older man asked as he rose to his feet at the Armenian’s approach.

  The two men shook hands and then sat down.

  ‘Well, as I said to the constable here,’ Arto said as he looked across and smiled at Yıldız, ‘I can’t make a judgement as yet with regard to cause. But the weapon used, as with the boy, was an unserrated dagger. It was very sharp. I should imagine it had been prepared in advance for just this purpose.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I can confirm sexual activity.’

  Süleyman frowned. ‘Which we didn’t have with the boy.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, semen—’

  ‘Oh, don’t get too excited by that,’ Arto said as he held up one hand to silence the policeman. ‘When I said sexual activity, I meant that an act of sex had taken place, not necessarily with another person.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Although another person was involved.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that the girl has been penetrated by something,’ the doctor said. Yıldız, embarrassed and again a little nauseous, looked down at the floor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ Arto continued, ‘but I don’t believe that she was masturbating herself. She has bruises on her shoulders, consistent with fingermarks. The fingers held her from behind, which is where whatever entered her, a penis or, I believe, something larger and more, shall we say, unkind than that, came from. It bears out Forensic’s contention that there were others present at the site.’

  ‘When do you think you will know what this “thing” might have been, Doctor?’

  ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that, Inspector,’ Arto said with a sigh. ‘I’ve harvested some samples just now. Tomorrow I’ll open her up and then we’ll find out some more.’

  CHAPTER 4

  There was nothing sinister about any of the games so far. Youngsters liked computer games; they had, after all, been brought up with them. To be honest, İsak Çöktin wasn’t averse to the odd afternoon shooting up aliens or driving a computer-generated Ferrari himself. Not that he got a lot of time to do such things. His own involvement with computers, outside of his police duties, was rather more business-orientated than that.

  ‘Good morning, İsak.’

  He raised his red, curly head over the top of the screen and, when he saw who it was, he smiled.

  ‘Hello, sir. Did the wedding go well?’

  İkmen beamed. ‘It isn’t often that one gets the opportunity to feel really proud in this life,’ he said, ‘but Hulya’s wedding was one of those rare occasions.’

  ‘I congratulate you, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ İkmen, attracted by the flashing colours on Çöktin’s screen, moved in closer. ‘Playing games on the department’s time, İsak?’ He shook his head in mock disapproval. ‘Bad boy. What would Inspector Süleyman say?’

  Çöktin laughed. ‘Well done, I should expect, sir.’

  ‘Oh?’

  And then Çöktin proceeded to outline what had happened the previous day with the discovery of Gülay Arat’s body and the possible connection between her death and that of Cem Ataman.

  ‘I was aware of the Ataman boy,’ İkmen said as he slipped down into a chair opposite Çöktin and lit up a cigarette. ‘Inspector Süleyman told me it was suicide.’

  ‘Which it was. The girl’s death is still open to question, but . . .’ Çöktin sighed, ‘it’s just that two such similar and bizarre deaths in such a short space of time is unusual.’

  ‘People sometimes copy each other.’

  ‘Yes, although the actual method Cem used to kill himself wasn’t reported in the media.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘Then perhaps Cem and this girl knew each other somehow.’

  ‘Not obviously so,’ Çöktin said. ‘They didn’t live close to each other. Gülay Arat was still at high school – a different one to the place Cem had attended – he was a student at İstanbul University. But there is a possibility they may have had contact via the Internet, which is why I’m looking at their computers.’

  ‘At games?’

  Çöktin looked up at İkmen’s wry face and smiled. ‘I’ve only just started. I’m just seeing what they’ve got on their machines.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Both of the youngsters spent a lot of time on their computers. If they shared anything, it was an interest in the dark, supernatural side of life. The girl, Gülay, used to be one of those Goth kids.’

  ‘And their families?’ İkmen put his cigarette out in one of Çöktin’s ashtrays and then immediately lit another. ‘What did they have to add?’

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘Not much. The boy’s parents are both careerists, advertising sales. Gülay Arat’s father owns a couple of those loud nightclubs out in Ortaköy – I think her mother’s a drunk. None of them seems to have much of an idea about what their children did or were interested in. We only found out about Gülay’s computer habit from her young brother.’

  İkmen shook his head slowly and sadly. ‘So many of these poor kids now, offspring of the nouveaux riches – they have everything except their parents’ attention. It’s why they dress in black, talk about vampires and exist only in their computers.’

  ‘Yes, although quite a few working-class youngsters spend a lot of time on line too, you know.’

  ‘By on line, I suppose you mean on the Internet,’ İkmen said gloomily. ‘Yes, I know. My youngest son keeps on pestering me about getting a computer so he can go on line. He says it will help him with his homework. He’s only at middle school.’

  ‘A lot of primary school kids have them these days, sir.’

  İkmen shook his head again and stood up. ‘From what I can gather there’s more rubbish and stupid chat on that Internet than anything else. It’s like mobile phones. You know, my son Bülent spends a ridiculous amount of money and time calling and texting his friends. Even at work, because of this text messaging, he and his friends communicate all day long about nothing.’

 
; Çöktin smiled. Like a lot of the older officers in the department, İkmen was a technophobe. Although he was now more accustomed to his mobile phone than he had been, İkmen still couldn’t use the text function. The department had issued him with a computer some time ago, which he did use on occasion, although it was well known that his sergeant, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, was the real user of the equipment.

  ‘But I must go now,’ İkmen said as he walked towards the office door, ‘leave you in peace with your virtual cars or whatever that is on the screen.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He left and Çöktin returned to what he’d been doing before, which was, in fact, driving a Humvee at speed through the streets of Los Angeles.

  Nur Süleyman looked across the table at her son and frowned. Ever since that foreign bitch had taken his son, her grandson, away, Mehmet’s weight had dropped. He was always tired now too. Today, when she hadn’t been able to rouse him until eight thirty, was a case in point. He had been due at work at nine and, although she didn’t like his being a common policeman any more now than she had done when he’d started, she recognised that he needed to earn money. Unlike her husband who, she knew, was planning to spend the day as he always did – doing nothing.

  ‘Mehmet, I think you should see Dr Birand,’ she began.

  ‘I’ve told you, I am seeing a doctor, Mother,’ Mehmet said without looking up from his tea glass.

  ‘I don’t mean some police—’

  ‘I’ve been to see a very good doctor, thank you, Mother,’ he cut in, ‘and I am fine.’

  ‘No you’re not!’

  He looked up, angry now. ‘I am. Under the circumstances, I’m really holding up very well.’

  ‘Under the circumstances!’ Nur flung her arms in the air and shook her head. ‘Such circumstances! Our Yusuf gone with that baggage you would insist upon marrying! How that woman could leave you, I don’t know! At her age, she should have been kissing your feet in gratitude!’

  ‘Mother, you don’t understand! There were faults on both sides. It wasn’t just Zelfa.’