Harem

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘If they used only quality girls, as apparently they did,’ İkmen replied, ‘they wouldn’t talk. Women like the Heper sisters would rather die than have it known they’ve had sex for money.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain Hatice İpek, does it?’

  ‘No.’ İkmen lit yet another Maltepe cigarette. ‘But if both Miss Yümniye and Rat are correct about a recent change of ownership of this operation then Hatice İpek would fit. I mean, if one or more families are involved then I can’t see even the brightest of them having any understanding of what a lady may have to offer as opposed to some pretty kid or cheap gecekondu girl. And anyway, how many girls are there now who possess connections with the old order?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Süleyman frowned. ‘Except that surely the nature of the Harem would demand ladies. As I understand it, the originators were selling an Ottoman fantasy. Genuine paşa’s daughters sold at high cost to foreigners and maybe even Turks. Although I suppose that if we consider Hatice’s death, it could be that the clientele has changed.’

  İkmen shook his head dismissively. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘If the families wanted to start an operation like this of their own, there is nothing to stop them. According to Miss Yümniye and Rat, the original clients were rich and important, and I think the families took over this operation because they wanted to gain access to these important clients.’

  Süleyman leaned forward in his chair and put his chin thoughtfully in his hands. ‘But why? Why would these men accept ordinary working girls if they’ve had the real thing before? Shop girls and the like wouldn’t know how to behave appropriately. But then some of these original clients must be quite old now, mustn’t they?’

  ‘Old, rich and important,’ İkmen said with a thin smile. ‘In the early hours of this morning I thought about the possibility of blackmail.’

  The sound of the front door buzzer sounded from the hall outside, making both men look towards the living room door.

  ‘Hulya will get it,’ İkmen said and then just to make sure that she did, he shouted her name.

  Süleyman, his mind still on their talk, sighed. ‘What I also don’t understand is how, given that it was supposed to have been such a great secret, the families got to know about the Harem.’

  İkmen who, in spite of having got at least some sleep the night before, was still extremely tired, just shrugged.

  The living room door opened and Hulya came in.

  ‘Dad, Inspector İskender has come to see you.’ She turned to beckon the young officer into her father’s presence.

  Both İkmen and Süleyman made to stand up, but İskender motioned for them to stay where they were.

  ‘Sit down, Metin,’ İkmen said. ‘Can I offer you tea?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  He looked nervous, his hands fidgeted in his lap, like a man at an important interview.

  İkmen turned towards his daughter. ‘Can you do that please, Hulya?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  It really was quite amazing how much more pliant and even pleasant she had become since she had been seeing Berekiah Cohen. Balthazar could say what he liked about the children’s religious differences, but if this was the result, İkmen was glad – not that he had been bothered in the first place.

  After checking to see whether her father or Süleyman also wanted tea, Hulya left.

  ‘So to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Metin?’ İkmen asked and then added, ‘I can tell something is wrong.’

  ‘I’ve seen Zhivkov,’ İskender replied.

  ‘Well, I’d heard he was alive,’ Süleyman said, ‘but I didn’t know he was actually in town.’

  ‘Oh, he’s in town.’ İskender reached into his pocket and took out his cigarettes.

  ‘You’re sure it’s Zhivkov?’ İkmen asked.

  İskender lit up. ‘I watched him for nearly six months,’ he said. ‘There are hundreds of photographs of him in all sorts of situations on his file. Sometimes even now I get them out. It’s as if I keep having to remind myself about the true appearance of evil. It was him.’ İskender looked down at his cigarette. İkmen and Süleyman exchanged concerned glances.

  ‘Where did you see him, Metin?’

  Hulya entered briefly at this juncture to give the three men their tea. Only when she had gone did İskender reply.

  ‘Well, that was the really frightening thing,’ he said. ‘He just appeared.’

  ‘He would do,’ Süleyman said. ‘You weren’t expecting to see him and there he was.’

  ‘No, Mehmet.’ İskender put his hands over his face. When he had composed himself, he said, ‘Look, I know it sounds crazy, but Belkis and I were having dinner at the Malta Kiosk in Yıldız Park last night. We sat outside. I was watching the path that runs to the kiosk across the top of the hill. I saw families and couples puffing after the climb – and then there was Zhivkov, suddenly on the path, as if he’d jumped out of a trap door in the ground.’

  ‘Maybe he was behind the families and couples,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘They could have obscured your view of him.’

  ‘Yes, but they didn’t!’ İskender shook his hands out in front of himself in order to emphasise his point. ‘That’s just it! One moment the people were there with no one behind them and then suddenly there was the Bulgarian.’ He looked at the sceptical faces around him with something approaching panic. ‘Belkis will tell you. She thought I was having a heart attack!’

  ‘I don’t doubt that it looked like that, Metin,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘I tell you, Mehmet,’ İskender insisted vehemently,’ ‘it was just like that show Belkis and I once saw in Paris. David Copperfield, the American illusionist. One minute he wasn’t there, the next . . .’ He clicked his fingers.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘No, no.’ İkmen, who had been quietly deliberating for the last few moments, held up his hand to silence Süleyman. ‘Whatever you or I may think, Metin has had a genuine experience, I can tell that from his voice, and besides, I know him to be an honest man.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘If all life, as some believe, is an illusion anyway, then who are we to say what is and isn’t so?’ İkmen smiled. ‘And what was it Sherlock Holmes used to say? When you’ve ruled out all other logical explanations, whatever remains, however improbable, has to be the solution, or in this case the reality.’

  ‘So are you saying,’ Süleyman said, ‘that we should seriously believe that Zhivkov materialised out of thin air?’

  ‘Or appeared to do so, yes.’ İkmen looked at the two troubled faces in front of him. ‘Any ideas?’

  He’d been frightened twice in as many days. First by İkmen’s threats and then by the news that the informant known as Rat was dead. The latter, if not the former piece of news, had been designed to frighten him. The caller, someone whose voice he didn’t recognise, had gone into lurid detail. The lopping off of ears and other, more delicate parts . . . Saying, of course, that ‘this is what we do to those who betray us’. As if he needed reminding. As if, now, it had anything to do with him! The man he’d been well paid to protect, Hassan Şeker, was dead. It should have ended there. But it hadn’t and as Orhan Tepe knew only too well, it had everything to do with him because, and only because, of his insatiable desire for money. Of course, once one was involved in this sort of thing, one was in forever. If only he hadn’t needed to impress Ayşe so much! If only he, as İkmen had so acutely observed, hadn’t been so eaten up with jealousy of Süleyman.

  Hassan Şeker had been fucking Hatice İpek for over a year. He liked the girl and Tepe had believed him when he’d said that he hadn’t killed her. He knew who had, although he never revealed who it was. The only certainty was that it was neither Ekrem nor Celal Müren. They were, as Tepe was beginning to appreciate, only messenger boys – for whom he didn’t know. Soon, however, he was going to find out.

  A favour was, apparently, needed. Ekrem said that Te
pe’s presence would be required at some time during the course of the weekend. Tepe looked across at the elderly woman sitting opposite him, apparently asleep, and silently cursed his bad fortune. He was supposed to be on duty here in Kandıllı until Sunday morning. What was he going to do if he was wanted before then?

  ‘I would suggest that you attend to your Koran,’ Hale Sivas said, opening her eyes. ‘I can read in your face that your mind is troubled. But every answer to every question lies within the pages of the Holy Koran.’

  Tepe attempted a smile and said, ‘Yes, thank you, Miss Sivas, I’ll bear that in mind.’

  The old woman straightened in her chair and then scrutinised Tepe even more closely. She shook her head sadly.

  ‘No you won’t,’ she said. ‘My brothers always agreed far too readily to my suggestions, just like you. Neither of them has so much as opened the Holy Book for decades.’

  ‘Well, when we find your brothers you can ask them, can’t you?’

  ‘No.’ She gripped the arms of the chair tightly and then pushed herself up to a standing position. ‘My brothers are dead. Being with bad people rots the soul, you know, at first. Then later it takes the vile body with it. My brothers are dead and I don’t have enough piety even in my good soul to save them from hell.’

  She moved slowly towards the door, her headscarf pulled down tightly across her hair. Tepe briefly wished her dead. Ungrateful old bitch! Oh yes, she could afford a blameless soul living in a fantastic place like this, leeching off the successful brother she both loved and despised. If Hikmet Sivas had indeed come by much of his wealth by less than legal means then he’d done it in part for Hale. He loved her, according to İkmen; he deferred to her, wanting always to please her.

  He’d been like that himself with Ayşe. He’d so wanted to please her, he’d got into this mess in order to please her. But she, just like this old Sivas woman, hadn’t appreciated it. The one time he’d done something to fulfil his own needs and fantasies she’d first behaved like some stupid cock tease and then she’d gone crying to İkmen who had taken her side. Bastard! How he could call himself a man when he obviously didn’t understand a man’s needs was beyond Tepe. The fact remained, however, that İkmen would make trouble for him now. He’d have to get himself reassigned, and quickly. He shouldn’t think about that particular event with Ayşe now. No. The thought of how she’d looked, naked, afraid and bleeding, would only make him hard and there was no outlet for that here. With Ardıç in the building he couldn’t even find an empty bedroom in which to relieve himself – that would be too risky.

  Ardıç was watching him. He was convinced of it. He’d got rid of İkmen first and then İskender and had taken personal charge. But he’d kept him. Other junior officers, that old fool Yalçin, and him. What was Ardıç doing? All any of them did was wait, but for what? The only sensible thing that Hale Sivas had said during the course of her last little homily was that her brothers were probably dead. The people who had killed Kaycee hadn’t been messing around. And so if Hikmet or Vedat or both were mixed up with these people they were certainly in a lot of trouble. If the Mafia, which was the name being mooted in some quarters as the culprit in Kaycee’s murder, were involved, Tepe hardly dared think what might be happening to the Sivas brothers.

  ‘The fact is,’ İkmen said as he rose to pace his living room, which was something he did when he wanted to explore ideas, ‘that İsak Çöktin and a group of junior officers spent almost a whole day exploring Yıldız and its environs after Vedat Sivas went missing. Bar the cellars, everything they looked into was well and truly above ground.’

  ‘Well, it would be,’ Süleyman responded. ‘There is nothing else, apart from a stupid old story about secret tunnels.’

  İkmen, frowning now, stopped pacing. ‘I know the legend you mean. It would explain—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Çetin!’ Süleyman shook his head in disbelief. ‘I know Abdul Hamid was paranoid, but the old stories about his moving from place to place in tunnels because he was frightened of assassins were just journalistic sensationalism. If the tunnels existed, the staff at the palace would have taken Çöktin and his boys down there when they were looking round the place.’

  ‘If they knew they were there,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Well, of course they’d know!’

  ‘If the tunnels were blocked up many years ago—’

  ‘Only to be miraculously discovered by Zhivkov?’ Süleyman flung his hands petulantly in the air. ‘Oh, please!’

  İkmen turned away from Süleyman towards İskender. ‘Yıldız Park has undoubtedly featured in our lives of late. We searched the place because Vedat Sivas has worked there for many years.’

  ‘And Hikmet himself worked there too.’

  İkmen and İskender both looked at Süleyman.

  ‘My father saw him there in costume, making a Yeşilcam film,’ he said. ‘He was supposed to be a Janissary.’

  ‘When was this?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Before he went to Hollywood,’ Süleyman replied. ‘My great-uncle Selim, who was born in Yıldız, was showing my father around at the time.’

  ‘Ah,’ İkmen said.

  ‘My father didn’t mention tunnels, Çetin,’ Süleyman said with a smile.

  ‘Did you ask him?’

  ‘No. He’d think I was crazy.’

  İkmen took his mobile telephone out of his trouser pocket and handed it to Süleyman. ‘Perhaps you ought to put that assumption to the test, Mehmet.’

  With a disgruntled shake of his head, Süleyman took the phone from İkmen’s hand and stood up.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, ‘but if one of my wife’s colleagues comes for me with a straitjacket, I’ll hold you responsible.’

  He walked out onto the balcony for privacy – not from İkmen so much as from İskender. İkmen was familiar with the strained conversations that took place between members of the Süleyman family; Metin İskender was not.

  When he had gone, İskender turned to İkmen. ‘We still want Zhivkov for the murder of his wife,’ he said, ‘amongst other offences.’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen, frowning, lit another cigarette. ‘Has he been seen anywhere else in the city lately?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘So, given the strangeness of his appearance by the Malta Kiosk, he could be hiding out at the palace.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen sank back into the depths of his old, battered armchair. ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘when you and I were first working on the Sivas case, you felt that family might be involved somewhere along the line?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then we talked about Hikmet Sivas’s possible connection to the Sicilian Mafia.’

  ‘Which Ardıç saw no virtue in pursuing,’ İskender said regretfully.

  ‘Are you suspicious, Metin?’ İkmen asked. ‘Of Ardıç.’

  The younger man lowered his eyes, saying nothing but speaking volumes through his movements.

  ‘I thought so.’ İkmen shook his head sadly. ‘I am too. Nobody remains from the original team except Ardıç, old Yalçin, still strangely eluding death, and Orhan Tepe. I don’t like it. We’ve got Vedat Sivas, brother of movie star Hikmet who, it seems, has significant Italian connections, works at Yıldız, has done so for forty years. Zhivkov, Bulgarian gangster and man who decapitates women, seen emerging from the ether in Yıldız. Kaycee Sivas, decapitated—’

  ‘But by a different method,’ İskender said. ‘Kaycee was killed cleanly with one blow. Poor Nina Zhivkov had her head sawn off with a bread knife. Dr Sarkissian said it could have taken her up to an hour to die.’

  ‘What bothers me,’ İkmen said, ‘is that our families and theirs – the Americans, Sicilians, whatever – may have for some reason come into conflict in this city via Hikmet Sivas.’ He put his head on one side, frowning. ‘And police officers are in there somewhere too, senior police officers . . .’

  İskender nodded. ‘You mean Ardıç, I t
ake it.’

  ‘No,’ İkmen said, ‘I don’t actually.’ He looked at İskender with a serious expression on his face. ‘Men from Ankara. If you remember, Metin, it was after Ardıç went to Ankara that I was taken off the case and everything constructive about the investigation ceased.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments as the implications of this deduction sank in.

  Süleyman, returning from the balcony, placed İkmen’s phone down by his ashtray and resumed his seat.

  İkmen, watching him with red, tired eyes, asked, ‘Well?’

  Süleyman shrugged. ‘You were right and, astonishingly, I was wrong. There are tunnels, or rather subterranean passages, constructed by the Sultan to allow him safe transport from one part of the palace to another. My father went down into one underneath the main palace complex with his uncle. He thinks some of the other passages had been blocked off.’

  ‘And the Malta Kiosk?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. And that’s the point really.’

  ‘What is?’ İskender asked.

  ‘Nobody knows,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Abdul Hamid used separate architects and artisans for every different part of his palace. The men worked in shifts and were forbidden to associate. Only the Sultan knew the whole picture. The only clue we have is that the Malta Kiosk was at one time used to imprison the Sultan’s alcoholic brother Murad. According to my father, Abdul Hamid used to like to go and gloat over his elder sibling’s misfortune from time to time, so there could be a passage from the main complex out to the kiosk. And if that is the case it may pass underneath or near the path you observed Zhivkov on, Metin.’

  ‘And both Hikmet Sivas and whoever murdered his wife knew of the legends of Yıldız,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Did they?’ Süleyman asked. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Well,’ İkmen replied, ‘whoever sent Kaycee’s head to her husband had pinned a very pertinent note to the side of the box. It alluded directly to one of those legends.’

  ‘Yes,’ İskender said excitedly, ‘that’s right! You said at the time that Sivas probably knew what was in the box just from the words in the note!’