Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘And the digits in front of the telephone numbers?’

  She shrugged. ‘Correspondences of some sort? Like İbrahim Dede says, for Kabbalists everything is about correspondences. Each day of the week and then every hour of the day is ruled by a planet. Each planet corresponds to a Sephira, which is a characteristic of both God and man that come together in the central image of Kabbalah, the Tree of Life.’

  ‘Everything is interconnected.’

  ‘Yes! Each Sephira has its correspondent tarot card, zodiac sign, angels, demons, jewels, food, perfumes associated with it. As above, so below, İkmen,’ Gonca said. ‘That which is in heaven and that upon earth are one and the same and are completely interchangeable.’

  ‘Which is exactly what a magician does, isn’t it? He substitutes things, one for another, thereby manipulating matter via media like cards, visualisation, ritual.’

  ‘Indeed,’ İbrahim Dede smiled. ‘And when my fellows and myself turn in the sacred sema ritual of our founder the beloved Rumi, we on earth emulate the celestial spheres, become them indeed as we reach towards union with the universe and Allah. Maximillian could be anywhere in this world – or another.’

  İbrahim Dede’s eyes twinkled again and, just for a moment, İkmen had the feeling that he was being drawn, as if mesmerised, into their depths. And so, thanking the tiny old man and the bright gorgeous woman, he left and made his way down towards Eminönü and the far more temporal charms of the Mısır Çarşısı. As he walked through the main entrance into the bustling market, his sense of smell was assaulted first – by oregano, cumin, henna, coffee and the sweet aroma of hibiscus. To what celestial bodies and attributes, he wondered as he searched the stalls lining the great vaulting hall for one known as Afrodite Pazarı, does hibiscus correspond?

  When Süleyman arrived back at the station, Çöktin reported his conversation with İlhan Koç and the gist of the message he had left for Mendes.

  ‘I’ve asked him to tell me where I might go with regard to finding out the identities of Communion and Nika,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked him to reply to my e-mail address at home.’

  ‘Do you think that he will?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘There’s no reason why he shouldn’t, sir. If he’s as good as I think he is, I think he’ll route his replies through Hüsnü’s system anyway.’

  ‘OK.’ Süleyman rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. ‘Now this Hammer club, bar, whatever it is –’ he said – ‘we need to get in there, İsak. I want to hear people using this language and I want to get to the bottom of exactly what this Theodora’s Closet thing is.’

  ‘İlhan Koç said he thought it was almost certainly a transvestite site.’

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t know, did he?’ Süleyman replied. ‘I mean, why would Gülay Arat go on to such a site?’

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘Well, it is dedicated to the life and “works” of the Byzantine Empress Theodora, sir. She is, I’m told, something of an icon for such people. Maybe the Arat girl was an admirer, or maybe she just had some transvestite friends. After all, if you look at what she’s posted, it is all rather camp and she was only talking to Nika about sex – it couldn’t have been anything else.’

  ‘Maybe, but we still need to check the Hammer out.’

  ‘Raid the place.’

  ‘No. No, we, or rather some of our officers, need to go in there, have a drink and talk to a few people without attracting attention. As I said, I want our people to hear this language and get close to those who use it.’

  ‘Amongst a load of Goths and cross-dressers?’ Çöktin smiled. ‘Sir, if I might be frank, I cannot think of even one man who could or would be willing to dress like that.’

  Süleyman, although usually grave in most situations, smiled too. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘Which is why I’m going to ask Commissioner Ardıç to allow me to use female officers. Who knows, İsak, perhaps some of our ladies will enjoy the chance to dress in outlandish clothes?’

  ‘Maybe, sir.’

  Süleyman looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to see Ardıç in five minutes,’ he said. ‘Hopefully we can think about going tomorrow. Any movement on the dead girl from this morning?’

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘Not yet, sir. Although I understand that Constable Yıldız has been in contact with a man whose sister has been missing since yesterday morning. I don’t know any details.’

  ‘All right. Keep me informed,’ Süleyman said. ‘And let’s get any connections to Atlas Pasaj, newsgroups, et cetera, established sooner rather than later, this time, now we know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘But if we don’t find it, sir?’

  Süleyman, who was now busy gathering papers up for his meeting with Ardıç, said, ‘If we don’t find it, then we think again, İsak! These killings may or may not be, as I believe, of a ritualistic nature. One must keep an open mind.’

  ‘Sir.’ The younger man lowered his head in deference, but not so low that Süleyman couldn’t see the miserable expression on his face. Still obviously worried about his own usurpation of the law, the Kurd was probably wondering about what was going to happen next.

  But Süleyman, who hadn’t made his mind up about that yet, simply said, ‘Once I’ve finished with the commissioner, I have to go on to a private appointment. However, I do need to speak to Inspector İkmen in the very near future. I’d like you to arrange that for me, İsak. Tomorrow morning, provided that is convenient for him. I believe he’s still in the building.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Süleyman picked up his paper, checked his pockets and then made his way towards the door of his office.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, İsak.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  For someone who quite obviously knew why Max Esterhazy bought his goods and speculated about what he did with them, Doğa Kaş was a very unfazed individual.

  ‘The girl comes for him every week with a list,’ he said. ‘Can be anything – rosemary, cardamom, mint, cloves – sometimes essences – rose, musk.’

  İkmen looked down at the large sacks of herbs and spices stacked against the front of the stall. Little cubes of lokum on silver platters sat on some of the sacks, succulent inducements to curious tourists.

  ‘Before I met Max Bey, I always thought that people like him used cats’ blood and dead toads in their potions,’ he shrugged. ‘But then maybe he does. Maybe he gets those from other places.’

  İkmen smiled. Doğa Kaş, spotting a very obvious tourist, thrust one of the platters under his nose and said, ‘Turkish delight, yes please!’

  İkmen’s mobile phone began to ring and so he turned aside to answer the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Metin,’ İskender’s clipped, professional voice replied. ‘Thought you’d better know that Mr Esterhazy’s neighbours are reporting sounds coming from his apartment.’

  ‘Don’t we have a man outside?’

  ‘Yes, but only at the front. We sealed the back. Sergeant Karataş and I are going over now.’

  Remembering what İbrahim Dede had told him about the alleged talents of magicians, İkmen said, ‘Well, be careful.’

  ‘What of?’

  But İkmen didn’t really know. Max? Someone at odds with or jealous of Max? ‘Just be careful.’

  ‘Oh, and the blood work is back. Group A positive,’ İskender said, changing the subject rapidly, as was his wont, ‘the same as Esterhazy’s.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘But that’s only the blood found around the desk,’ he continued. ‘That over by the window is AB negative.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘So Max, maybe, and another . . .’

  ‘The blood around the desk was also older – it had dried into the carpet – than that over by the window.’

  ‘So shed, maybe, at another time.’

  ‘Possibly. Look, I’m just entering Esterhazy’s building now. I’ll speak to you later.’ And then he cut the connection.

  İkmen turned back to Doğa Kaş, w
ho had just been roundly ignored by several tourists, and said, ‘So, anything else you can tell me about Mr Esterhazy?’

  The merchant looked both ways up and down the market before replying. Then, leaning in towards İkmen, he said, ‘I think he has seen happier times, financially.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Doğa Kaş shrugged again. ‘Max Bey has always been a very good payer. I give him credit, but he’s never abused that – not until this year.’

  ‘So what’s gone wrong?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the merchant replied. ‘But he doesn’t pay regularly any more and for big orders like his . . .’ he threw his hands up into the air. ‘I tell you, Inspector, if he wasn’t such a nice man and if I wasn’t afraid of what djinn he might let loose in my business if I upset him, well . . .’

  For reasons that İkmen couldn’t really articulate, there was something disturbing about the notion of Max being in financial difficulty. Perhaps it was because he was a magician. After all, if those who could manipulate both spirit and matter couldn’t sort their finances out, what hope was there for the rest of mankind? And, further, Max had lived in the city for almost thirty years now, never with any sign of financial difficulty and always fully employed. What could have happened? And could his disappearance be connected to this in any way? Had he perhaps been killed because of debts he had to others? If he had, then he had obviously, from what İskender had to say, wounded his assailant or whoever at the same time. Except, of course, that Max’s blood – if it was indeed his blood – had been shed before the other blood type. His blood had dried into the carpet.

  İkmen, deep in thought, left the Mısır Çarşısı just as the merchants were closing up for the night. And although a young boy did thrust a bottle of something that declared itself a ‘Sultan’s Aphrodisiac’ in his direction just before he walked back through the main entrance, he resisted the temptation and went home to his wife empty-handed.

  They’d been talking about emigration from the countryside to the city. So many people, frequently pious peasants from the eastern provinces, came to work these days that a lot of İstanbulus complained that their city was no longer their own. It was a view that Mehmet Süleyman, now several glasses of Villa Doluca into the evening, could sometimes sympathise with.

  ‘And yet we are all peasants at root,’ the young man, Omer, husband of Çiçek’s friend Deniz, said with some passion, ‘except, of course, you, Çiçek.’

  Çiçek İkmen laughed. ‘Well, not entirely,’ she said. ‘My dad’s family, way back – I think his father’s grandfather – came from Cappadocia. One of Dad’s aunts still lives there, in Göreme.’

  ‘Oh, the Fairy Chimneys!’ Çiçek’s other friend Emine exclaimed delightedly. ‘How lovely!’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cappadocia, with its strange lunar landscape, fashioned by wild natural upheavals in the earth, was indeed a beautiful and magical place. Characterised by tall conical structures known locally as Fairy Chimneys – many of which are and always have been used as homes – the area is famous both for its ancient rock churches and for the fact that the current inhabitants openly believe in fairies. It was, Süleyman always felt, very fitting that the İkmen family should originate from such a ghostly place.

  ‘Mehmet’s family are real İstanbulus,’ Çiçek said as she smiled at the unaccustomed sight of Mehmet Süleyman in drink.

  ‘Only on my father’s side,’ Süleyman corrected. ‘My mother was born in Adana.’

  ‘Ah, like my father,’ Attila, Emine’s boyfriend, said as he poured himself and the other two men more wine. They’d all eaten their main course some time ago and were having a long, leisurely, very Turkish break before the presentation of the dessert.

  Çiçek lit a cigarette and then turned to Süleyman. ‘Your father comes from the city, though, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Süleyman smiled. ‘I can honestly say that my father is about as İstanbul as you can get.’

  Either the wine or the thought of the appointment he had at Krikor Sarkissian’s clinic the following afternoon had loosened his normally very tight rein on his personal details. But then what did it matter if these really very nice people knew a few things about him? They, like Çiçek, were educated grown-ups. They wouldn’t, surely, hold his connection to the old Ancient Regime against him?

  And so, for the first time ever in his life, he just said it. ‘My grandfather was brought up at the court of Sultan Mehmed the Sixth,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, so your family served—’

  ‘No, my family were the served,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Mehmet was born in a palace,’ Çiçek, who’d never seen him as easy and relaxed as this before, said excitedly. ‘Was it Yeniköy?’

  ‘Just outside Yeniköy,’ he said, and then smiling at the others around the table he added, ‘but we don’t live there any more. My father gave the house up a long time ago. Couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘And so you became a policeman,’ Omer said. ‘An educated, Ottoman policeman.’

  There was a kind of sneer behind Omer’s words that Süleyman didn’t particularly like.

  ‘We all do what we feel is best,’ he replied. Under the influence of the unaccustomed wine he wanted to tell the truth – that originally joining the police had been a form of rebellion against his parents – but he stopped himself. That might require some explanation about his parents and their lifestyle, which was somewhere he knew he didn’t want to go.

  ‘I can’t see that it’s “best” to be part of an organisation that represses and beats those it should be serving,’ Omer continued.

  ‘My dad doesn’t beat people up, Omer,’ Çiçek said spiritedly. ‘You like my dad.’

  ‘Çetin Bey is different,’ Omer said as he flung his napkin down on to the table and rose to his feet. ‘Please excuse me.’

  And then he left, presumably for the bathroom. When he was out of earshot, his wife rather nervously turned to Süleyman.

  ‘I do apologise for Omer,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

  ‘Omer’s brother was on a march recently, protesting about all this business with Iraq,’ Çiçek added. ‘He was arrested in Taksim.’

  Süleyman reached across for his cigarettes and lit up. He had hoped that this meal would not descend into the usual slanging match that accompanied meeting people who didn’t know him or what he did. But it had and so he felt compelled to explain.

  ‘I know it’s scant consolation to your husband,’ he said to Deniz, ‘but I don’t personally have anything to do with anything political.’

  ‘Well, no, of course . . .’

  ‘Like Çiçek’s father, I work in homicide. Occasionally something of a political nature might impinge upon what we do, but only in relation to a death or deaths that are unlawful anyway.’

  Deniz smiled nervously. No doubt worried, Süleyman thought, that he might report what her husband had said to someone in authority. What a joke! If she knew what he just let pass, who he allowed to work alongside him . . .

  Out in the hall, Çiçek and Emine’s telephone began to ring.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Çiçek said as she rose from the table and left the room.

  Emine’s boyfriend, Attila, who was both younger and more light-hearted than Omer, began talking about the difficulties of flying into and out of the former Soviet Union. A Turkish Airlines pilot, Attila was producing the sort of conversation Süleyman had anticipated and feared would come to dominate the evening. As he listened to both Emine and Deniz ask sensible questions and make coherent comments, Süleyman felt his mind begin to drift. Silent, he remained like that, until Çiçek, her face suddenly grave, reentered the room and walked over to him.

  ‘Mehmet, I’m sorry,’ she said as she placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘My dad’s on the phone, he wants to speak to you.’

  ‘OK.’

  He made his excuses, walked out into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Çetin.�
�

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mehmet,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ve already apologised to my daughter, but I feel that I ought to tell you that Metin İskender has been shot.’

  ‘Allah!’

  Süleyman sat down heavily in the chair next to the phone. Çiçek, who was, he noticed, looking at him from the door of the kitchen, furrowed her brow.

  ‘He’s alive,’ İkmen continued, ‘but it’s not good.’

  ‘Where is he? Where are you?’

  ‘We’re at Taksim Hospital. He’s in surgery.’

  ‘I’d better get over there,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘There’s no need,’ İkmen replied. ‘There are hordes of us down here – relatives, colleagues, friends . . .’

  ‘I want to be there, Çetin.’

  ‘All right.’

  And then without another word, Süleyman put the phone down. He put his head in his hands and attempted to calm his now laboured breathing. Metin İskender – shot? How and why had that happened?

  A very light touch to the back of his head made him look up. ‘What’s wrong?’ Çiçek said. ‘Dad wouldn’t tell me anything. Is he OK?’

  ‘Your dad’s fine.’ Süleyman managed a small smile. ‘But there is something else, Çiçek, and so I’m afraid that I’m going to have to go.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He went back into the living room to retrieve his jacket and make his excuses. Çiçek then escorted him to the front door and thanked him for coming.

  ‘I’ve had a very nice evening, Çiçek, thank you,’ he said. And then with one formal shake of her hand he was gone.

  After she had shut the door behind him, Çiçek leaned back against the wall, her eyes full of tears. Emine, who had just come out of her bedroom after retrieving her camera, walked over to her friend and put her arms around her shoulders.

  ‘Oh, poor Çiçek,’ she whispered, ‘you love him, don’t you?’

  CHAPTER 12

  He’d eventually managed to see the body at 8 p.m. Some female junior pathologist, together with the young policeman, Yıldız, attended with him. Apparently the senior pathologist was off duty. It was all very unsatisfactory.