Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘But Max is a good person.’

  ‘I do hope that you are right,’ she said.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  Shortly afterwards, with a promise to contact her as soon as he found out anything, İkmen brought Maria Salmon’s call to an end.

  As he put one cigarette out, so he lit another. Rather than providing any answers to the enigma that was Max Esterhazy, his conversation with the man’s sister had only served to raise more questions. Of course, he could see why Max had lied about his family. Although entirely innocent, even the children of known Nazis wouldn’t be exactly welcomed in most parts of Europe. That was understandable. But the fact that Max, given his true background together with his connection to his father, was involved in the occult was disturbing. And then, of course, there was Alison . . .

  Again, just the thought of her made İkmen shudder. Alison had been his friend. Nothing more. He’d been in uniform at the time and Alison – well, just as Maria Salmon had said, she’d been a backpacker. On her way to India, he’d met her in the Kapılı Çarşısı, all long blonde hair and big pink boots. Alison had made him laugh and because of that, and because she was English too, he’d introduced her to Max. She’d liked him a lot. However, things didn’t remain exactly civilised between the three of them for long. Max, just as he had with Çiçek, had been keen to introduce Alison to his world. But she’d been scared. A Catholic by upbringing, she’d seen Max’s arts as something dark and dangerous. İkmen supported her decision not to become involved, but this hadn’t gone down well with Max. The two men had, in fact, fought verbally over Alison, who left soon afterwards, without ever speaking to İkmen, at least, ever again. Much later she did turn up, but this time as a missing person last seen in Kayseri. İkmen, who in spite of his love for his wife and children had been silently in love with Alison too, had been devastated. But then so had Max, which was why it was so strange that he had told his sister Alison had gone off with a Turkish ‘chap’. He could only mean İkmen himself, and that again just wasn’t true. His relationship with Alison had only ever been friendly and respectful, even though it had hurt him considerably to keep it that way.

  İkmen had his head in his hands again when the phone rang at his side. It was İsak Çöktin. As he listened to what the Kurd had to say, he put his hand in his pocket and took out Max’s small, black address book.

  As soon as he’d left İkmen, Mehmet Süleyman had had to spend some time briefing the two female officers for the observation at the Hammer bar that night. Ayşe Gün had been, as was her wont, completely professional about it, even if young Muazzez Çelik was rather more excited about wearing large amounts of black lace than she should be. But, he reminded himself, the women were only, at this stage, observing and so the principal thing was for them to blend in. He and Çöktin would be on hand in the evening – which was why he had so wanted to get some sleep now. But fate, it seemed, had taken against him. Çiçek İkmen had arrived bearing what she claimed was a packet of cigarettes he had left behind on her dining table.

  ‘I thought you might need them,’ she said with a nervous smile.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She put the packet of Winstons down on the telephone table and then said, ‘Well . . .’

  Even his father, who was normally asleep somewhere in the house, was out. Mehmet was therefore entirely alone with someone he had, until late the previous night, regarded with fatherly affection. However, in the light of what İkmen had said about his daughter, he now had to treat Çiçek with extreme caution. The pretext she had used to gain access to his house had, after all, been extremely flimsy. But Turkish hospitality being what it is, he couldn’t just throw her out without so much as a glass of tea. And so they took their refreshments in the garden.

  ‘I didn’t realise that your house was next to a church,’ Çiçek said, pointing towards the small dome topped by a cross that could just be seen over the top of the ancient wall to her left.

  ‘Yes,’ he said as he placed the tea glasses down on the table before him, ‘quite a few Greeks live in the village. There are even several tavernas which are worth a visit.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He sat down opposite her and attempted a smile. He was both overtired and worried about his up-coming visit to Krikor Sarkissian’s clinic.

  ‘You’re very fortunate to live here,’ she said, he felt a trifle nervously. ‘Where I was brought up it’s mad, but then you know that!’ She laughed.

  ‘It is certainly quieter here in Arnavutköy,’ he said as he looked up at the back of his parents’ rather shabby wooden villa.

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  He shrugged. ‘Better if one can afford a yalı on the waterfront.’

  Or even better, a palace, he thought to himself. Little wooden houses in tiny village backstreets were things, he knew, most of the population couldn’t even dare to dream about. But the family’s old palace at Yeniköy had, it was said, just been sold yet again – this time, again it was rumoured, to someone whose wealth came from dubious sources. But that was life . . .

  ‘You know,’ she said as she leaned towards him, her face just a little flushed from the heat – or something, ‘when I was little, my dad always used to tell me that when I grew up I’d live in a yalı.’

  ‘I bet he said you’d pay for it yourself too,’ Süleyman said with a smile.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she laughed. ‘Dad, as you know, doesn’t believe that a woman’s only route to wealth is through her husband.’ She looked down at the floor and then added, ‘Unlike Mum.’

  ‘They both have their points.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  Çiçek then dug into her bag and produced her cigarettes and lighter. Mehmet, his head back now, looked up towards the sun.

  ‘Mehmet . . .’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Mehmet, I . . .’

  Hearing the nervousness in her voice he moved his head to look across at her. ‘What?’ She was, he couldn’t help but notice now, as red as a tomato.

  ‘No.’ She put her cigarettes and lighter back into her bag and then quickly sprang to her feet.

  ‘Çiçek?’ He rose too. ‘Çiçek, what is it?’

  ‘No. No.’ She shook her head distractedly as she made her way back towards the house. ‘I should never have come here.’

  With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Mehmet moved quickly to catch up with her, and when he did he took one of her wrists in his hand.

  ‘What is it, Çiçek?’

  She was crying. Poor kid. İkmen had said that she was struck on him but neither Mehmet nor, he imagined, the young woman’s father could have known it was this bad. ‘Çiçek?’

  ‘Oh, just let me go!’ she said as she tried to pull her wrist out of his grasp.

  ‘Not until you tell me what’s the matter.’

  She turned, her features now reddened and stained with tears, and then she said, ‘You obviously don’t know, do you?’

  Well, he did, but how could he say anything without betraying İkmen’s trust?

  ‘About what?’

  She pulled her wrist free from his grasp and ran into the house. With a shrug, Mehmet followed.

  ‘Çiçek!’

  She’d opened the front door and was almost in the street before she turned to him and said, ‘You don’t know how I feel about you, do you? Oh, I’ve made such an idiot of myself!’

  And then she ran down the steps and tore along the street, just like he’d seen her do many times when she was a rather wilful teenager.

  Mehmet went back indoors and heaved his tired body up the stairs to his bedroom. Poor Çiçek, but then poor me too, he thought. After all, it wasn’t her he wanted, was it – it was his wife, his child and his health. He would also, he thought as the bright sunlight about him began to fade to grey, enjoy an end to the deaths of these children in the city. That, too, would be very nice . . .

  By the time Çöktin arrived back at the station, İkmen had worked it out.


  ‘As above, so below,’ he said to the young man as he entered his office and sat down.

  Çöktin frowned.

  ‘It was Lale Tekeli’s number that gave me the key,’ he said, and placed Max Esterhazy’s address book down in front of Çöktin.

  ‘If you look here,’ he said, ‘all the numbers are in pairs. So you’ve got the four-digit area code for İstanbul, followed by the seven-digit subscriber number.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What Max has done is arrange all of the numbers in pairs and then swap the last two digits of the subscriber number with the paired number above it.’

  Çöktin looked confused.

  ‘The last two digits of Lale Tekeli’s number come from the phone number above. The one above hers comes from her number, which is below it. See?’

  Çöktin pulled a face. ‘Yeah. But why?’

  ‘What, the need for secrecy or the method employed?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Well, both.’

  ‘The word magician sums it up well enough, İsak,’ İkmen said, and then noticing that the look of confusion had not left the younger man’s face he added, ‘I won’t bore you with it. Just accept that it just is.’

  ‘Yes, but, sir,’ Çöktin said, ‘how can Lale Tekeli’s number be listed under S? And what are these other numbers in front of the area code?’

  İkmen leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Well, that I don’t know, İsak,’ he said. ‘I’ve called the number paired with that of Miss Tekeli, which it turns out was the number for Aygaz which, however hard you may try to juggle with the words “gas” and “canister”, will not add up to anything resembling the letter S. In addition, quite what Max does when he gets a number he cannot pair with another, I don’t know. I don’t even know whether knowing that Lale Tekeli was one of Max’s students is actually any help to you and Inspector Süleyman.’

  ‘I’m going to see whether either of the other dead youngsters went to him,’ Çöktin said.

  ‘Well, if they did, do give me their numbers to check out, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Sir, that this man was, as you call it, a magician . . .’

  ‘İsak, I barely understand what “magic” is myself,’ İkmen said as he rose wearily to his feet. ‘As you know, my mother practised a form of “magic”, for want of a better word. But from the little I know of it, what Max practises, Kabbalah, is a very high, powerful art, far removed from simple card layouts, coffee grounds and precognition. This is conjuration, ritual – the active pursuit of angels and demons by the practitioner.’

  Çöktin automatically looked away. ‘Sounds dangerous – for those who believe in such things.’

  ‘In the wrong hands it is,’ İkmen said as he gathered his books and papers into a not altogether sanitary carrier bag. ‘I don’t think . . .’ He was about to say ‘that includes Max’ but then in light of his recent conversation with Maria Salmon he paused. ‘In ritual the magician surrounds himself with those earthly things that correspond to the divine. As I said when you came in, as above, so below.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘As the digits interchange at the end of the phone numbers so things that represent other things may be interchangeable within magical ritual.’ Seeing that Çöktin was still confused, İkmen said, ‘For instance, if you want to work with a certain angel you get hold of as many of the things associated with that angel as you can. I don’t know – words, colours, bits of equipment . . .’ He paused briefly in order to light a cigarette. ‘I don’t honestly know where I’m going with this, İsak. I know so little about Kabbalah and yet I seem to be compelled to look for Max within its mysteries.’

  ‘One of which does seem to have paid off, sir.’

  ‘Yes . . . mad old fool that I am,’ İkmen muttered. And then, looking up and smiling again, he said, ‘I’m going back to Max’s now for a while, İsak; reverse some of those numbers and see who I get. I’m also going to try to get some slightly more expert advice too. You don’t know whether Constable Yıldız is about, do you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  İkmen smiled. For some time now Constable Yıldız had been, occasionally, ‘seeing’ the gypsy Gonca, and although İkmen knew where she lived he didn’t have her telephone number on him. Yıldız, young and probably very, very grateful, should, İkmen reasoned, have it with him somewhere.

  ‘Oh, no matter,’ he said as he led Çöktin out of his office and made his way down the stairs. ‘Keep in touch, won’t you, İsak?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  It was, Çöktin recalled, Inspector Süleyman who had used the word ‘ritualistic’ when talking about the murders of the two young girls. Maybe the association that had, in fact, broken down – or seemed to have done so – with Lale Tekeli, was not via Atlas Pasaj but through this magician. But then it was possible he was dead and anyway, hadn’t Osman Tekeli said that his sister never ever met Max Esterhazy on her own? He went back into the office that he shared with Süleyman and called Gülay Arat’s mother.

  Not only could the woman, who was yet again so obviously drunk, not recall anyone by the name of Maximillian Esterhazy, she could barely remember the name Gülay. Çöktin lifted the receiver and punched in the Atamans’ number.

  CHAPTER 15

  At just before four o’clock that afternoon, Metin İskender regained consciousness. İkmen was very quick to allow an eager Karataş the chance to go to see him.

  ‘Don’t push him, but just see if he remembers anything,’ he said as the big man left the apartment.

  Fortunately Alpaslan Karataş was accustomed to the sort of scene that was happening around his superior’s bed. A pale, post-operative figure attached to several pieces of equipment was surrounded by a swirl of relatives, all talking at once and offering each other and the patient items of food and drink. It was difficult to distinguish one relative from another under these circumstances, and even though Karataş knew that his boss’s wife was a much more cultured and stylish woman than any of the other İskenders, he couldn’t immediately recognise her. She, in the end, pushing roughly past Metin’s rakı-soaked father, found him.

  ‘The doctor says that Metin needs rest,’ she said anxiously. ‘But with all of these people, what can I do?’

  Karataş said that he’d go to look for the doctor and see what, if anything, could be done about the crowd. And so weaving past still weeping – and sometimes smoking – female relatives, he made his way to the nurses’ station. Two middle-aged female nurses were talking to a haggard-looking man who Alpaslan recognised from the previous night.

  When asked whether İskender was fit to be quizzed about the incident that had landed him in this place, the doctor said, ‘Yes, that’s OK. But I don’t know whether what, if anything, he tells you is going to be of any use. The brain can behave erratically after trauma and his memory of the event may be either temporarily or permanently impaired.’ Then he smiled. ‘I’ll come and move some relatives out of the way for you.’

  After about ten minutes they managed to get most of İskender’s family out into the car park. Only his wife, mother and sister remained – his father, having now woken from his drunken stupor, had disappeared off in search of more alcohol.

  Belkıs İskender sat down beside the bed and took her husband’s pale hand in hers. She then stroked his head while saying, ‘Metin, darling, Sergeant Karataş is here to see you. Look.’

  İskender opened his eyes to find Karataş’ large face before him. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Karataş . . .’ He reached one hand out to touch the face and said, ‘You are OK?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Karataş sat down on a chair beside Belkıs İskender. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

  ‘What for?’ The normally hard eyes now softened by drugs looked almost friendly.

  ‘For not being there to protect you, sir.’

  İskender smiled. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘Yesterday has gone.’

  ‘What, nothing?’

  İskender very slowly shook his he
ad. ‘I just remember lines,’ he said.

  Karataş frowned.

  ‘On a piece of paper, strange lines, nonsense.’

  ‘And this piece of paper, sir, it was—’

  Belkıs İskender, fearing that her husband was becoming distressed, said, ‘Metin . . .’

  ‘Sssh,’ her husband soothed. ‘I’m OK, Belkıs.’ Then turning to Karataş he said, ‘I’m sorry, Alp, I don’t know what it means. Just these lines . . . I think the piece of paper was near or on that man’s bed, you know the man . . .’

  ‘Mr Esterhazy, sir.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  Karataş looked down at İskender’s hands, one of which bore a cannula for a drip. Then he took his notebook and pen out of his pocket and placed them on the bed.

  ‘Sir, do you think you could draw these lines?’

  Belkıs İskender shot him an outraged look.

  ‘Yes,’ İskender said. ‘But it’s only a pattern.’

  Karataş handed him the notebook and pen and then watched as İskender, with painful slowness, drew a figure that zigzagged backwards and forwards across the page. As he did this, Karataş imagined İkmen’s face when he saw this nonsense. But then maybe he’d make more of it than the obviously annoyed Belkıs İskender. After all, as Karataş was only too aware, İkmen was investigating some very odd things back at the Esterhazy apartment. Just before he left, some gypsy drenched in jewellery had turned up. İkmen, he noticed, had greeted her with obvious enthusiasm.

  He didn’t think he’d be like this, gabbling on like a fool.

  ‘You see I have to meet my sergeant at six, and so I really don’t have a great deal of time,’ Süleyman said as he nervously paced the room in front of Krikor Sarkissian’s considerable desk. ‘So if we may, Doctor,’ he said, ‘conclude this business . . .’