Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Come here,’ he said.

  She went, afraid now – although quite why, apart from the vulnerability her nakedness made her feel, she couldn’t say. He reached inside his jacket and took a small bottle out of one of his pockets.

  ‘Use this,’ he said.

  She took the lid off and sniffed. It was musty and sweet. He unzipped his trousers as she poured a little drop of what looked like oil into her hand. This too was weird, but if it was what he wanted . . .

  ‘Come on!’

  Without looking down she rubbed the oil into his penis, watching his face as his stern mask closed its eyes upon her. And then suddenly there was nothing.

  Later she would have the impression of hands upon her, of a feeling inside somewhere between pleasure and pain and of light too – all around, white and harsh and startling.

  This was real strong-arm policing. Armed officers swarming all over the bar – the whole of Atlas sealed off by further groups of men and women in full riot gear. Controlling them all – Süleyman, marching up and down, threatening, demanding. Those youngsters who weren’t actually shaking were clinging to each other for support. İkmen would have been appalled.

  But Süleyman had had enough. ‘I want to see everyone’s ID card and all foreign passports,’ he said to the large group of people in the bar. ‘I will then be asking you some questions and showing you some photographs. You may not leave until I say so.’

  There was a murmur of dissatisfaction amongst the black-clad masses, but there was also a feeling that all they could do was bow to the inevitable.

  Süleyman seated himself at a table in an alcove and waited the few minutes it took Çöktin to return from the station. He’d gone back to get a picture of Fitnat Topal that Zuleika had faxed over. So far the girl hadn’t turned up at either Atlas or Max’s place, and Süleyman wanted to know whether anyone present had seen her. He began with the bar staff. There were four of them – two boys and two girls. He checked their ID cards and then lit a cigarette.

  ‘What do you know about this?’ he said as he took the picture Gün had discovered in the basement from the banquette behind him.

  One of the boys shrugged.

  ‘Well?’

  The other boy and one of the girls, the one without the scar at her neck, looked at each other. ‘I know it was a gift,’ the girl said. ‘To the owner.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Beyazıt Bey,’ she said. ‘Beyazıt Koray.’

  ‘And where is Beyazıt Bey at the moment? Do you know?’

  She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t come in very often.’

  ‘Well, do you have a telephone number for him?’

  ‘Hakan does.’

  The younger of the two boys gave Süleyman a mobile number, which he passed to Çöktin with instructions to call the man and get him down there. He then showed the staff photographs of Cem Ataman, Gülay Arat, Lale Tekeli and Fitnat. One of the boys said he thought he’d seen Cem before, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘What do you know about the people who come here?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what type of people come here and why?’

  The scarred girl, an expression of disbelief on her face, said, ‘Well, as you see.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People who like skate punk and trance. People who like to wear black.’

  He leaned across the table and took one of her hands in his, turning the arm as he did so. ‘People who like to cut themselves.’

  After first looking down at her arm, she flicked her eyes up to his face and said, ‘A lot of people cut themselves for many different reasons.’

  ‘And what is your reason, Miss . . .’ he looked down at her ID card to remind himself of her name, ‘Özbek?’

  She put her hand to her throat and looked down once again. ‘I have my own reasons.’

  ‘A lot of you young people involved in this scene do it.’

  ‘Maybe we do it out of frustration,’ the unscarred and seemingly older girl said. ‘Maybe it’s like a protest.’

  ‘Against what?’

  ‘Where do you want me to start?’ she said.

  Süleyman smiled. ‘Have you ever heard,’ he said, ‘of the American actor James Dean?’

  Hakan laughed.

  ‘So this,’ Süleyman flung his arms in the air to express his lack of language for this phenomenon, ‘this movement you have here is all about the disaffection of youth, nothing more.’

  ‘I guess . . .’

  ‘And so that couple over there –’ he pointed to a large, long-haired man standing beside an extraordinarily made-up woman, both of them very obviously middle-aged – ‘are just simply anomalies, are they?’ He paused. ‘I’ve seen at least three men and probably as many as ten women who are probably older than I am since I’ve been here. What’s going on?’

  The older girl, who was called Soraya, said, ‘Well, you obviously have a theory about it so why don’t you just come out and ask us about that?’

  Impressed by her boldness, Süleyman first smiled at her and then said, ‘OK. Satanism – tell me what you know about it.’

  İkmen didn’t get home until nearly midnight. A combination of no sleep the previous night combined with an overload of information about Max, his interests and past, had finally brought him to a standstill at just after eleven. So after he’d first rescued Karataş from Gonca’s attention and then taken the gypsy herself home, he’d headed for his own place and hopefully a little sleep.

  As he walked into the clean but shabby living room, he saw that his son Bülent was still awake, watching CNN on the family’s new satellite service.

  ‘I thought you’d be plugged in to MTV,’ İkmen said as he threw his briefcase down on to the floor and sat down.

  ‘Dad, do you think we’ll go to war?’

  He’d never really said much about the mounting tension between the United States, Britain and Iraq before. Indeed, for most of his short life, Bülent had concerned himself with very little apart from enjoying himself. But he had been worried about his call-up to the army for a time when he was younger and now, with that call-up imminent, he was concerned once again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘İnşallah we’ll be spared.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight.’ Bülent said it quickly, head down, obviously ashamed of this admission.

  ‘I know,’ İkmen sighed. ‘Do you remember we talked about it some years ago? I said then that I could understand your feelings, Bülent, and that still holds good today. But, unfortunately, this current situation is one that we just have to watch and wait to see what will happen.’

  ‘I know.’ And then he went back to looking at the TV again.

  Everyone was concerned, most of them in a quiet, accepting sort of a way. İkmen himself was worried – mainly for Bülent. But he was trying hard not to show it. After all, what did he or anyone else really know? It was thought, in fact the Americans and the British based their call for war on it, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – whatever that meant. Chemical and biological agents had, they said, been stockpiled by the Iraqi leader for many years. A rather cynical English reporter his brother knew said they knew this because they, the British, had sold them to him. But whether he still had them and, further, would actually use them against an enemy was difficult to guess. He’d heard, like a lot of other people, stories about the issuing of gas masks and possible vaccination programmes against things like smallpox for those living near the Iraqi border. But if he were honest about it, he tried not to think along these lines too often. Max, he knew, had been extremely worried about the prospect of war. Like İkmen himself, he was of the generation that had managed to avoid conflict. In İkmen’s case, too young for Korea, too old for any involvement in the Gulf or Afghanistan.

  Bülent switched off the television and yawned. ‘Çiçek was looking for you earlier,’ he said.

  ‘She could have phoned me; she’s got my numb
er.’

  Bülent shrugged. ‘I think she wanted to see you,’ he said. ‘She looked a bit, you know, agitated. When you didn’t come home she just left.’

  More problems, no doubt! İkmen couldn’t help thinking it. Just as he got one child settled, so another one seemed to ‘agitate’, as Bülent put it. He hoped this wasn’t about Mehmet Süleyman, though his gut feeling was that it probably was. If only some nice young man would just appear in Çiçek’s life and make it all better for her! But then, as he knew only too well, life was rarely like that and even if one did try to manipulate it to be so, like a Kabbalist, there were terrible dangers. What was Max Esterhazy doing? Or what had he already done? Whatever it was, and notwithstanding what Max’s sister had told him, İkmen couldn’t shake the belief that what he was doing had to be to the good. That Max was dead was unthinkable – and yet that blood . . .

  ‘I’m going to bed now,’ Bülent said as he dragged his long, tired body out of the room.

  Alone now, İkmen closed his eyes. Alison’s face, her skin white as paper, came into his head, smiling. With hindsight, she’d patronised him horribly – calling him ‘sweet’ and ‘dear’ and feeding him pistachios with her fingers. But there had been a moment, just once. On the stairwell at her flea-bitten backpackers’ pansiyon, it had been early but already hot. He’d taken her in his arms and he’d kissed her with a passion that had frightened him. He was a married man with three small children at the time, but he’d kissed that girl and she had responded to him. She’d wanted him to make love to her, she’d even used those words ‘make love’. Not sex, not a fuck, making love. But, of course, he hadn’t; even then he just didn’t do that sort of thing and probably for the best. After all, look where that sort of behaviour had landed Mehmet Süleyman. Or not. Happily, as he now knew, his friend did not have HIV and so, for the moment, he had got away with it.

  But the tendency towards illicit liaison had still to be inside him, didn’t it? Like the old Arabian Nights story of the djinn in the bottle, once out such things would only cause chaos. A door once opened, never closed again . . . Of course, İkmen himself had never been unfaithful to his wife. But if just that one illicit kiss were anything to go by then that which was forbidden was a fearsome drug. Even now he could see every detail of it in his mind as clearly as if he were watching a movie. The taste of her mouth, the feel of her breasts against the front of his uniform, that terrible rush of animal desire that had caused him to pin Alison to the wall with his body.

  And, although he tried to distract himself by lighting a cigarette, when İkmen opened his eyes he broke down completely and wept.

  ‘It’s called the Goat of Mendes. This lot like this sort of thing.’

  ‘I know what it is, Mr Koray,’ Süleyman said harshly. ‘It’s where you got it that interests me.’

  ‘One of my customers drew it,’ he said. Probably in his mid-thirties, rich and obviously unimpressed by policemen, Beyazıt Koray was taking it all very casually.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You want his name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hüsnü.’

  Süleyman looked across at Çöktin, who raised his eyebrows.

  ‘How do you know this man?’

  ‘As I said, he’s a customer,’ Koray replied. ‘He also helps me out sometimes with my computer system.’

  ‘Is he a hacker?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s odd,’ Koray added. ‘But then most of those Internet obsessives are odd, aren’t they? He doesn’t come in that often because he’s always got something to do on his own system.’

  ‘Why did he give you the drawing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe he thought it would look good in here. He’s like the rest of them – you know, on about demons and suchlike all the time. That picture of Marilyn Monroe was done by another customer. They like that sort of thing. This is one of the few places they can express that.’

  ‘Are you aware of the fact, Mr Koray, that images like this have been used to desecrate places of worship?’

  ‘No.’

  Süleyman leaned closer in towards him across the table. ‘Are you also aware of the fact that this establishment has a reputation for being a meeting place for Satanists?’

  Koray sighed and shook his head. ‘Just because the kids wear black . . .’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Look, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I sell these people drinks and somewhere to meet. What they choose to do beyond that is not my business. So they like copies of old horror film posters, wear black nail varnish and talk in flat voices – it’s a phase with most of them anyway!’

  ‘Even the ones who are forty-five?’

  ‘I’m not in the business of telling people what to do!’

  ‘You know they communicate in their own peculiar language?’

  ‘Some of the kids like to copy the transsexuals! They think it’s cool. What of it?’

  ‘Rumour has it that some of these disguised conversations concern devil worship,’ Süleyman said. ‘We think people meet here and then go on to other, secret locations where foul rites—’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Koray said emphatically. ‘Anyway, what do you want me to do? Tell them they can’t go elsewhere to worship the Devil? How am I supposed to police that myself?’

  Süleyman turned to Çöktin and said, ‘You’d better go and get Kasım’s friend.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Take a couple of the men with you.’

  When Çöktin had gone, he turned back to Beyazıt Koray and handed him the photographs of the three dead youngsters and Fitnat.

  ‘Do you know or have you seen any of these people, Mr Koray? Three are dead and one is currently missing.’

  Almost aimlessly he shuffled through the pictures until he came to the one that made his face blanch.

  Süleyman narrowed his eyes. ‘Mr Koray?’

  Beyazıt Koray looked down at the floor and then said softly, ‘Ah.’

  By three o’clock in the morning, the cells and some of the interview rooms were alive with what looked like a plague of ghouls. If anything, Süleyman’s desire to get answers to the questions that surrounded the recent deaths of the young people had increased. Specifically he wanted to come down hard on both Beyazıt Koray and Hüsnü Gunay. However, before he could question Koray he had to get his facts straight with Fitnat Topal.

  ‘Did Mr Koray rape you, Fitnat?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ She was rumpled and a little drunk too. Her lipstick and eyeliner had slipped down her face and bled into her white foundation cream.

  Constable Gün, still resplendent in black silk, said, ‘But you were in Mr Koray’s bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he didn’t penetrate your body?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what were you doing in his bed, Fitnat?’ Süleyman asked.

  She tried hard not to think about it, just in case she smiled, and then said, ‘Sleeping.’

  Süleyman, with a sigh, raised his eyes up towards the ceiling and then lit a cigarette.

  ‘All right, Fitnat,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave Mr Koray for a moment and go back to the story you told your father, which was that you were due to have an English lesson with Mr Esterhazy at his Sultanahmet apartment. Is this true?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Is this true, Fitnat? Did Mr Esterhazy indeed speak to you on the telephone the day before yesterday to arrange this appointment with you? It is very important that I know the truth and only the truth about this subject.’

  Fitnat looked down at her hands and sighed. ‘Well, it’s sort of true,’ she said. ‘I mean, yes, Mr Esterhazy did call me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, of course I am,’ she said a little more aggressively now. ‘I’ve been going to him for years! He called me and asked whether I would mind if we had our usual lesson at my place instead of his.’

  ‘At your home?’

  ‘No, at
Hamdı Baba,’ she said, naming a restaurant on Büyükada. ‘He’s done it before, in the summer. He said that because we’re having such a fine September he wanted to make the most of that if I didn’t mind. I said yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t meet him, did you?’

  Fitnat lowered her head. ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you do instead?’

  ‘You know what I did.’

  ‘I want you to tell me.’

  She looked up now, holding her head erect in a seeming show of defiance. ‘I went to see Beyazıt.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You know . . .’

  ‘Did any kind of sexual activity occur? Did he make you do anything—’

  ‘No he didn’t!’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I told you, we slept.’

  ‘All right! All right!’

  He got up and, after instructing Gün to watch the girl while he was away, he went out into the corridor, put one cigarette out and immediately lit another. Burhan Topal and Zuleika would be arriving soon to take the girl away, which was a mercy. He leaned against the wall and blew out smoke in rings until he saw Çöktin coming up from the cells below.

  ‘According to two members of his staff and a customer, Beyazıt Koray occasionally likes to take young ladies home,’ the Kurd said when he drew level with his boss.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Nothing Satanic, apparently,’ Çöktin said. ‘Clever, though, Mr Koray,’ and he smiled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The Kurd moved his head closer in towards Süleyman. ‘Apparently, he never penetrates them,’ he said. ‘No evidence, if you like, for fathers, brothers and sweethearts to act upon.’

  ‘And so . . .’

  ‘It is said, sir,’ Çöktin said still with a smile, ‘that Mr Koray is a very skilled individual.’

  ‘I see. Well.’ Süleyman cleared his throat. ‘However, all of this is really a side issue, is it not, İsak? What we really need to do now is interview Mr Gunay.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’