Harem

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Did I miss something?’ Arto interrupted. ‘Harem?’

  İkmen, mindful that not too much of this type of talk could be risked in his apartment, especially if the names of others involved were going to be used, changed the subject.

  ‘So what will you do now, Miss Yümniye?’ he asked.

  The old woman sighed. ‘Oh, I will go on as before, I suppose,’ she said. ‘It is important for me to keep my father’s house, until I become too confused.’

  ‘I will visit you,’ İkmen said determinedly. ‘I would like that.’

  ‘Would you? In addition to all these children you have, all this work you have to do?’ She turned to Arto Sarkissian. ‘I don’t think he looks well enough to take on any more responsibilities. So thin now! What do you think, Krikor dear?’

  ‘Arto.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘It’s Arto, Miss Yümniye, Krikor is my brother,’ Arto explained gently.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, looking down at the floor, embarrassed and flustered. ‘My silly head.’

  ‘I think that if Çetin says he will visit you there is little you can do to stop him,’ Arto said with a smile.

  ‘And we will of course both attend the funeral,’ İkmen added. ‘Now you will need some help with the arrangements, won’t you?’

  She said that she would appreciate that. And so that was what was discussed until the old woman and Arto Sarkissian left some time later. And despite the fact that İkmen, though tired, retained a reasonably cheerful countenance during the course of their visit, he quickly descended into dark thoughts afterwards. Sacrifice was a word that kept crossing and then re-crossing his mind. So many lives sacrificed and for what? So that those one didn’t even dare think about might sleep a little easier in their beds? So that the present sick, ruined and corrupt state of the world could be perpetuated for eternity? He and everyone he knew were just used. Shut up, speak out, sit down, do your duty, die. Where was the value or the latitude in that? Nine children he’d brought into the world, nine people to be moved around and manipulated like mannequins. He thought that he might cry again but he didn’t. There wasn’t anything left inside him to cry with and so instead he took Tepe’s mobile telephone out of his pocket and looked at it.

  The phone had been amongst the effects İkmen had been given to return to Aysel Tepe. Before he did so he thought that he might just check the instrument for messages, and sure enough there was one, which he played.

  ‘I’m sorry, Orhan,’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu’s rather muffled, miserable voice said. ‘I’m so alone. I miss you. Please call.’

  Desperation. A need for closeness whatever the price. A universal and, İkmen felt, a beautiful need. Because that was the point, wasn’t it? Men and women may be pushed around by those they cannot know, but if they can find closeness, that hedge against the darkness that is always lurking . . .

  He started the erase sequence on the phone just as Fatma came in and kissed him on the top of his head. With sudden energy he jumped to his feet and took her passionately into his arms.

  Three days later İkmen made arrangements to meet his colleagues early, for breakfast. That way they would avoid the heat of the day and the hordes of people who tended to gather in and around the Eminönü docks later on in the morning – commuters and tourists. However, none of them was so early that they risked missing the fishing boats. The catch was in and the fishermen, dressed as ever in their ornate just-for-tourists Ottoman waistcoats, were cooking it up for the excellent sandwich breakfasts they served. Indeed Metin İskender was already buying his. İkmen was sitting on a bench back towards the road, almost hidden behind a copy of Cumhuriyet. İskender turned briefly to ask him whether he would like some food too, but he declined.

  Mehmet Süleyman smiled. İkmen probably wouldn’t ever now get to grips with eating. Perhaps, like himself, it was because the older man had never truly been hungry. Although far from wealthy, the İkmens had never been dirt poor, not like Metin İskender, who had the largest fish sandwich possible wedged in his hungry mouth. Fish was still a feast for him, notwithstanding his wealthy wife. But then in the slum where he’d been raised, the people lived on whatever they could get and it was possible that Metin hadn’t eaten fresh fish at all until he was an adult. Other people’s discarded food, yes, but not all his own, paid for with his own money.

  As he watched the fishermen, Süleyman thought contentedly that so far it had been a very pleasant morning. Zelfa was a lot happier now that she had a definite date when she could return to work. Just the knowledge of it seemed to settle her and, for the past two days at least, she had appeared to be much more at ease with their son, Yusuf. She had even, strangely for her, admitted to some feelings of regret about having to return to her practice. She was, she said, starting to enjoy the baby and would miss him when Estelle Cohen took over the baby-care role in four weeks’ time. Life was good, or rather it would have been if there wasn’t still this terrible blackness that surrounded the events up at Yıldız Palace.

  As İskender joined them on the bench, İkmen, still hidden by his newspaper, spoke. ‘Hikmet Sivas is dead,’ he said flatly. ‘Had his throat cut. Apparently the perpetrators then proceeded to burn his house down. They must have been the most incompetent arsonists one can imagine. Stupidly, they failed to get out themselves.’

  ‘Who were they?’ İskender asked through a mouthful of bread and fish.

  ‘No one seems to know.’ İkmen folded his paper and placed it on his lap. ‘But Miss Hale is insisting that his body be returned here. She believes he won’t rest unless he’s interred next to their mother and Vedat. I must say I don’t know about the latter.’

  Süleyman lit a cigarette and sighed. ‘I wish I knew how and when he returned to America,’ he said. ‘I wish I knew something of the truth.’

  ‘You know that Vedat Sivas was involved with Zhivkov,’ İkmen said as he, too, lit a cigarette. ‘You also know that Zhivkov killed Kaycee Sivas.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ Süleyman snapped.

  ‘No.’

  The three men, each of them avoiding the others’ eyes, sat in silence save for the sound of İskender’s voracious chewing.

  ‘Zhivkov was involved in so many things,’ İkmen said at length. ‘It’s a pity we weren’t allowed to know what those higher up had planned for him. We stumbled into something.’

  ‘The man who,’ Süleyman stopped himself alluding to what had actually happened to him, ‘assaulted me was European.’

  İskender looked briefly into Süleyman’s eyes and then away again. The two men hadn’t spoken of their experiences since they’d been discharged from the Admiral Bristol. First Ardıç and then a very smart man wearing a genuine Rolex watch had, separately, advised them against it.

  ‘Zhivkov was involved in both the Sivas and the Hatice İpek case,’ İkmen said, omitting all details. ‘He had a prostitution thing going, based on some old legend, Vedat became involved and—’

  ‘You were convinced that the Harem thing was a fact,’ Süleyman said sharply. ‘You said that Hikmet Sivas had used the Harem.’

  ‘The Müren boys disposed of poor Hatice’s body. Apparently Celal rather liked her which was why she was laid out so sympathetically.’

  ‘I don’t really see where the Sivas people come into it,’ İskender said, watching, big-eyed, as yet more fish were thrown onto charcoal grills on board the gently bobbing boats. ‘I mean, why kill the sister-in-law of the man you’re working with?’

  ‘Zhivkov wanted Hikmet to bankroll his activities. Vedat had fallen under the Bulgarian’s spell,’ İkmen replied simply. ‘Unfulfilled younger brother – you know how it is.’

  ‘I don’t know why a great big, effectively foreign movie star who, you always said, had Mafia connections, could allow himself to be attacked by Zhivkov, Vedat notwithstanding,’ Süleyman said angrily. ‘None of it makes any sense to me! And we’ve been as good as gagged.’

  ‘And you would do anything t
o know the truth, would you, Mehmet?’

  Süleyman looked at him. ‘You know, don’t you?’ he said coldly ‘You got into the palace – with Vedat and the foreigners and General Pamuk.’

  ‘General Pamuk helped us, er, our forces, get to Zhivkov, Müren and the others,’ İskender put in nervously. ‘It’s quite—’

  ‘I was drugged, you know that!’ Süleyman said in a low, angry voice to İkmen. ‘You came to see me in the hospital. I remember!’

  ‘I’m going to have to go,’ İskender said suddenly, discarding what was left of his sandwich and rising to his feet. ‘I can’t be here.’ He looked at Süleyman who returned his gaze with pitiless eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Mehmet.’ And then he walked, very quickly, in the direction of the Galata Bridge.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Süleyman turned to İkmen once again. ‘Something very big happened, didn’t it, Çetin? Something foul.’

  İkmen looked down at the ground, the smoke from his cigarette causing him to squint. ‘It was Zhivkov.’

  ‘Not only Zhivkov!’

  İkmen looked up, straight into Süleyman’s eyes. ‘You have to do what Metin has done, Mehmet,’ he said softly.

  ‘So you asked us here to enjoy a fish sandwich, put aside any questions and then just walk away from this thing?’

  ‘I have to be certain that you will walk away,’ İkmen said. ‘Absolutely certain.’

  ‘It’s that big then, is it, Çetin?’ Süleyman asked, still with a lot of anger in his voice. ‘It goes right to the top, does it, just like we said before that bloodbath? I thought that you, of all people, opposed that sort of thing.’

  İkmen’s hand was at his friend’s throat before Süleyman could take a breath.

  ‘This goes beyond anything any of us understands!’ he hissed. ‘Beyond our city, beyond our country!’

  ‘Çetin!’

  ‘You mustn’t even dream about what you think happened that night, Mehmet! Don’t think about it, don’t speak about it – to anyone. That way you might stay alive!’ Aware that some of the few people around them were looking, İkmen let go of Süleyman’s throat and placed his hands back on his newspaper again.

  Süleyman breathed in deeply to steady his nerves.

  ‘We smashed a major crime family,’ İkmen said. ‘The bad men have gone. We did well.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve a brand new son and life is good.’

  ‘Yes.’ But when Süleyman looked at İkmen, his eyes were full of tears. ‘I’ve always looked to you for the truth, Çetin.’

  İkmen turned his head away. ‘Then perhaps in future you would be better served by looking to yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  He had invited that response but it nevertheless hurt İkmen deeply. He glared at Süleyman.

  ‘You of all people,’ he said bitterly, ‘should understand that rulers keep their own secrets, rulers employ lots of people to help them do that.’

  ‘Oh, so now you throw my ancestry at me as a way of salving your conscience!’

  ‘You built the palaces, threw up the walls, dug the secret rooms deep into the earth!’

  Süleyman, enraged, sprang to his feet.

  ‘Every man who sets himself above others is a flawed man,’ İkmen said, looking up into the burning eyes of his colleague, ‘They move people about like pieces on a chessboard. They make us do things, seal up our mouths, rip away even the deepest things inside us! Rob us of our honour!’ Despite himself, tears came to his eyes. ‘I cannot and will not tell you anything!’

  ‘After everything we have been through together, I don’t understand how you can trust me so little!’

  ‘And I don’t understand,’ İkmen said wearily, ‘how you can fail to appreciate that I’m doing this not because I don’t trust you but because I care too deeply about you to share something that will endanger and dishonour you.’ Roughly he wiped away his tears. ‘Isn’t it bad enough that I stink of it?’

  Süleyman sighed and then, somewhat deflated, sat down beside İkmen once again. He offered him a cigarette and then lit one up himself.

  ‘So where does all of this leave Jack the Ripper then?’ he said gently. ‘The agony of not knowing the truth?’

  A small flock of seagulls landed on top of what was left of Metin İskender’s fish sandwich and fought amongst themselves for the most succulent parts.

  İkmen smiled. ‘There’s something uncannily pertinent to this case about Jack the Ripper,’ he said thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. One of the theories about that mystery concerns the possible involvement of the British establishment at the time. The story goes that one of the British princes made a prostitute pregnant and that Jack was a government agent charged with clearing up his mess.’

  ‘But didn’t the killer murder several women?’

  ‘Yes. Only one of whom was the royal prostitute, or so it is said,’ İkmen explained. ‘The others were killed in order to build the legend of Jack the Ripper, to distort the truth and manipulate the common people like chess pieces, as I said before.’ He looked at Süleyman. ‘And we will never know the truth,’ he said, ‘because it is further postulated that everyone who knew about it who shouldn’t met a similar fate to those prostitutes.’

  ‘So this thing with Zhivkov . . .’

  ‘All you may safely know is that the world remains the same,’ İkmen said, staring not out at the brightening waterway in front of him but at the dull pavement beneath his feet. ‘As a prince you would know everything. But you’re not a prince any more, Mehmet, and so the secret chambers beneath the streets are forbidden to you. I’ve looked, as you know, into the face of something that I shouldn’t have and I wish that I hadn’t. For me the world has changed.’

  They both sat in silence for a while then. As the morning began to bustle around them, people getting on and off the hooting ferries, simitcis and vendors of all sorts of useful and useless things shouting their wares to the scurrying public, they seemed for a while to be a small pool of silence, a stopping place, an absence. It wasn’t that people avoided them, they didn’t seem to know that they were there.

  To İkmen this separation made some sense and in a way crystallised the difference he now felt between himself and others. But to Süleyman the experience was unnerving and so, with a brief touch of his colleague’s hand, he left. Without another word.

  İkmen, alone now, knew that they would never speak of what had happened up at Yıldız on that awful evening again. What they would talk of and how they would talk when next they met, he didn’t know. Nothing, no secret thing, had ever come between them before. Would it ever go away? İkmen wondered.

  A waft of foul-smelling air from somewhere deep within the ancient sewers beneath the city hit İkmen’s nose and made him get up and move. For a while it seemed to follow him, but then when he lit up one of his pungent cigarettes it began to abate. Turning his face away from where he felt the source of the smell to be, İkmen dragged heavily on his Maltepe and walked with purpose back to the station and the company of those who knew nothing but kept him close.