Süleyman, now with a lighted cigarette of his own, watched it all. The eye contact, the almost imperceptible pout of the lips, the bolder holding up of the OK sign made with the thumb and index finger which, in this society had another, more directly sexual meaning.
‘Trying to decide what to do?’
Süleyman turned quickly to find himself looking at a very good-looking man of about his own age. Expensively dressed, he smoked, like Süleyman’s father, his cigarettes through a long, metal holder.
Süleyman smiled and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, I think you’ll find a very . . . diverting group of people inside,’ the man said. ‘I think many might really take to you.’
‘Oh.’
The man had a very sensual mouth that smiled easily and eyes that, Süleyman noticed, gazed quickly up and down his body with practised intensity.
‘But it’s up to you,’ the man said with a shrug. ‘It’s always ultimately up to the individual, isn’t it?’
And then he made his way forward towards the building, his thick dark overcoat swishing about his tall, elegant form as he moved. What had he been, Süleyman wondered, the man who had come on so casually to the lone policeman? A lawyer? An advertising executive, or someone ‘big’ in PR? Whatever he was he had wanted to get into the hamam and he had wanted to take Süleyman with him. For just a moment, he smiled. He’d only ever briefly entertained thoughts that he might be homosexual and, although he was now sure that he wasn’t, it was still flattering to have been ‘hit on’ by another attractive man.
He was just about to leave when he saw another figure in another doorway about fifty metres down from where he was standing. Silhouetted against a glittering backdrop that featured distant glimpses of the Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn, he was tall, quite still and he was looking intently at the entrance to the hamam. Although he didn’t want to stare, Süleyman tried to keep this unmoving party in at least the periphery of his vision. He would, the policeman imagined, eventually make a move towards the hamam at some point. It was not, as had been very well demonstrated earlier, always easy for these men to visit such places. The desire was obviously evident, but so were the guilt, the shame and any number of other attitudes towards homosexuality that had been drummed into them at home, at school and at work. However, thus far, they all seemed to manage to conquer their fear and to eventually go in – except for this man, seemingly pinned to his doorway. He, like Süleyman himself, just watched.
Time passed. Half an hour, an hour . . . Although he wasn’t actually propositioned, Süleyman had to light a considerable number of cigarettes for people – unlike the watcher in the doorway further down the hill. No one, it seemed, except Süleyman, noticed him. The man, in his turn, watched the policeman back.
‘Mehmet?’
The voice was familiar and so Süleyman turned around quickly towards it. ‘Berekiah!’
It was his friend Balthazar’s son, Berekiah Cohen, Çetin İkmen’s son-in-law.
‘What are you doing here?’ the young man asked.
Süleyman, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t doing anything illegal or immoral, felt his face flush. ‘I’m, er, I’m’ – he lowered his voice so that only Berekiah could hear – ‘I’m working, actually, Berekiah . . .’
‘Oh, right.’ Berekiah smiled. He was young and had a really lovely face – a fact not lost on at least one other man in the vicinity who first smiled and then raised his eyebrows at the young man. Obviously accustomed to this sort of reaction in what was his home district, Berekiah just simply pulled a face and shook his head by way of reply.
‘I’d better let you get on then, Mehmet,’ he said to his friend and then he made his way off in the direction of his father’s apartment.
Süleyman, sweating a little bit now in spite of the cold, gave thanks to Allah that it had only been Berekiah who had observed what he was doing. If it had been the lad’s father, that voracious gossip Balthazar, then a story about Mehmet Süleyman having sex with another man in the street would already have begun to circulate amongst the law enforcement community. Süleyman breathed a sigh of relief and then turned back to look for his mysterious doorway man once again. But there was nothing to be seen. Some time during the course of his short exchange with Berekiah, the man had completely disappeared. As he started to move away, however, the attractive man who had spoken to him earlier emerged from the hamam. Passing Süleyman on his way up to Beyoğlu he smiled, exhibiting many shining teeth as he did so.
Allah alone knew what Menşure had told this poor old man about him! Probably a load of nonsense about how famous and powerful her cousin from İstanbul was. But whatever she had said had made Haldun Alkaya, a man already in grief, almost prostrate with humility and respect.
Even as a child on holiday with his parents, İkmen had never really had much to do with the really poor villagers. His uncle and aunt were wealthy and his father, whose forebears had originated from Cappadocia, had friends in the region who were, again, well off and educated. Places like Haldun Alkaya’s semi-derelict chimney house were extremely alien. Halfway up one of the steep hills that led out of the village towards the road to Nevşehir, Alkaya’s place consisted of just one conical chimney surrounded by a courtyard, the walls of which were topped with bundles of twigs. Usually chimneys, although at the heart of an individual’s property, made up only part of the Cappadocian’s home. Nearby caves would sometimes be utilised and for centuries people had built attractive stone houses on to the front or backs of existing chimneys. But that presupposed the occupants had money. Haldun Alkaya with his spare, two-room chimney lit only by the light from candles and his wood fire, was not one of them.
‘The only thing I had, the only thing I have ever had, was my daughter,’ the old man said as he lit his hand-rolled cigarette with a piece of paper dipped into the fire. ‘I accepted she was dead long ago, Çetin Bey. But still it is hard. Allah’s plan for us is sometimes difficult to bear.’
‘Yes.’
There were no chairs, only those saddle seats, the more ornate varieties of which were frequently sold to charmed tourists. Old ‘real’ ones like these were, however, far from charming to a middle-aged İstanbullu with a rather spare behind. The thing was hard and hideously uncomfortable.
‘Menşure Hanım has told me something about your daughter and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance,’ İkmen said, ‘so can you tell me, Haldun Bey, why she married Ziya Kahraman? I understand she had feelings for a boy of her own age, that he had feelings for her and that you knew about this.’
‘I did.’ The old man smiled, sadly. His face, like so many of the old, really hardworking peasants, was deeply lined and, in spite of the autumn weather, as brown as the earth. ‘Kemalettin Senar was a lovely young boy in those days,’ he said. ‘He had eyes for my Aysu and she had eyes for him. But I am a poor man, Çetin Bey, a widower since the day my little girl was born. Her little dowry was of no interest to Nalan Senar. When I spoke to her of it she made it very clear that she thought her son could do a lot better than Aysu. Her own people were very bad stock but she married money and so she thought she was something. As it has turned out, Kemalettin remains unmarried to this day, so maybe Allah has punished Nalan’s arrogance and greed.’
İkmen smiled. The majority of the villagers were religious, which was not something he was unaccustomed to, but, nevertheless, it wasn’t something that he was necessarily comfortable with.
‘When Aysu found out that Kemalettin’s mother was against their union, she was very upset,’ the old man said. ‘In fact, for a time, I feared that she and the boy might try to run away together. I kept her inside. But then that wasn’t really in Aysu’s nature. She loved me. She would never have left me. She was a good girl.’
Haldun Alkaya paused for a moment while he dried the tears that had flooded into his eyes on the cuffs of his fraying shirt.
‘I have never told anyone this before but Aysu offered to marry Ziya Kahraman, Çetin
Bey,’ the old man said. ‘She knew he had been asking me for her and so, once she knew that Kemalettin’s family would not accept her, she said she would marry Ziya.’
‘But he was a lot older than her, wasn’t he?’ İkmen said. ‘Didn’t that make you feel uneasy? You are a man, are you not, Haldun Bey, of fine sensibilities?’
‘I like to think so, yes,’ Haldun replied. ‘But I am also a poor man and, in those days, Çetin Bey, I was a poor man with a poor daughter no one but the most destitute peasant would consider. Aysu was a clever girl. Ziya Kahraman had only ever managed to have one daughter, Nazlı, by his first wife. His second wife he had divorced because she had been barren and Ziya Kahraman needed a son to take over his lemon empire . . .’
‘Lemon empire?’
‘The caves round here make very good storage for lemons,’ Haldun said. ‘Ziya’s father had left him many such caves as well as the Kahraman family lemon groves which are down on the south coast, by Alanya. Nazlı Kahraman is now a very wealthy grower of lemons. But that is beside the point. Aysu saw a way for us to maybe leave this poverty you see around you behind and so she married Ziya Kahraman.’
‘But didn’t you try to stop her?’ İkmen said, knowing that what he was saying probably didn’t make sense in the context of Muratpaşa circa 1983. After all, not everyone, even now, allowed their daughters to marry young Jewish boys they fell in love with as he himself had done.
‘No,’ the old man said. ‘May Allah forgive me, I admit that I experienced greed! She went to him, he and that evil daughter of his, and I only saw her twice before she disappeared. They made me speak to her through that great gate Ziya had made for his courtyard. She told me she wasn’t yet with child and I heard Nazlı order her about as if she were a servant. My daughter was used by Ziya and, I think that when he discovered that she, like his second wife, was not taking his seed, he killed her.’
İkmen, who had just reached into his pocket to retrieve his cigarettes, stopped and frowned. ‘But the police seemed, I understand, more interested in the possibility of Kemalettin being at fault.’
‘With respect to yourself, Çetin Bey, they would be.’ The old man sighed. ‘Ziya Kahraman used to be able to buy people. Miserly with those who worked for him, very free with money to people he wanted or needed. His daughter is just the same. Seventy years old she may be, but last year Nazlı Kahraman married a boy of twenty-five she met somewhere on the south coast. Oh, no, Ziya Kahraman was barely touched by the police at the time!’
‘But you think that he killed your daughter?’ İkmen said as he finally took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit up.
‘Yes. I have always believed she was murdered. Half the village still think that, somehow, Kemalettin Senar killed my daughter, but I do not agree. I know that the boy has since become rather strange, but I really do believe that is because he misses Aysu. He loved her so much! Now he just drifts, talking to himself and . . .’
‘So what do you think I can do about this, Haldun Bey?’ İkmen asked. ‘I am a policeman just like those in Nevşehir . . .’
‘Ah, yes, but you are from İstanbul, aren’t you!’ the old man said. ‘And in İstanbul you have tests that can be done to see who killed who sometimes years and years before. I have read it in newspapers.’ His face assumed a proud glow. ‘I can both read and write.’
İkmen smiled. Coming from İstanbul it was sometimes easy to forget that the ability to read and write was still, for some citizens of the Republic, a considerable achievement and one to be trumpeted.
‘In Nevşehir they will not do such tests on my daughter’s body,’ Haldun continued. ‘All they will say is that they will find out how she died. I said, “What about these tests to see who killed her?”, but that inspector over there, the same idiot who came here twenty years ago, he just ignored what I said and told me they would release Aysu to me as soon as they could. They would not even tell me whether they think she was murdered. I know that she was. I know that you must know that she was, too, or else why would you be here?’
İkmen smiled. A simple man he may be, but Haldun Alkaya was far from stupid. ‘So what exactly do you think I can do, Haldun Bey?’
‘Menşure Hanım tells me that you are an honest man, Çetin Bey,’ the old man said. ‘You are also a clever man. Not just me, but this whole village needs to know who killed Aysu. We will never be at peace until this matter is settled. As it is, those who believe the Kahramans to be wronged will not speak or do business with the Senars or with me either. It is very bad for business.’
‘But if, as you believe, Haldun Bey, Ziya Kahraman killed your daughter, if he’s now dead . . .’
‘Ah, but the tests can be performed on his relatives, can they not?’ Haldun said. ‘My friend Rahmi has a satellite dish and we saw this programme on his television about a murder in Ankara. The police there took some water from the mouth of a man who was the brother of a murderer.’
‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘DNA testing. And yes, we do do that in İstanbul, Haldun Bey. But if Nevşehir do not have the facilities . . .’
‘Then you will have to bring this DNA to them,’ the old man said. ‘Menşure Hanım told me that you came to Muratpaşa for some reason other than this. But the fact that you are here at this time is kismet and so you must help. Allah has sent you to us, Çetin Bey, in His infinite mercy, to heal the soul of our poor village.’
Even though he could feel the panic rising in his chest as the old man spoke, İkmen just nodded politely by way of recognition. How on earth was he going to ‘bring DNA’ to Nevşehir? If any of the local men were like the few country officers he’d met over the years who had been transferred up to İstanbul, introducing anything even slightly contemporary to them was going to be like trying to drag a caveman into the jet-age. And besides, he wasn’t a scientist who could ‘do’ DNA himself. He had no jurisdiction, no scientific knowledge, and he didn’t even really know the hellish village that well. Bloody cousin Menşure, he could have killed her, talking him up as if he were some sort of genius!
But then if he was going to stay, he would have to keep busy. Asking elderly Cappadocians about the possible appearance of an English girl in their midst in the 1970s was hardly likely to account for all of his time. And Muratpaşa, weird and lovely as he knew it to be, was also not İstanbul and İkmen knew that if he didn’t go home immediately he would get very bored. So why not hassle the local grunts and see whether he could help this lonely, poverty-stricken old man for a few days? Allah knew there were already quite enough poor people suffering injustice. Why should Haldun Alkaya be just another statistic?
İkmen looked deeply into the poor man’s fire and said, ‘All right, Haldun Bey, I’ll do what I can.’
‘I knew that you would,’ the old man said with a smile. ‘It was written.’
Chapter 5
* * *
Captain Altay Salman was pleased that his old colleague had not wanted to meet him at Menşure Tokatlı’s hotel. Although he had a lot of respect for the woman she did, he had to admit, make him feel both guilty – for his non-observance of Ramazan – and inferior in equal measures. But then meeting at the Tasmanian Devil was not exactly without its problems either. Just because Rachelle Jones was happy to serve non-fasting Muslims during the hours of daylight and even help them smoke their cigarettes, didn’t mean that she was necessarily comfortable to be around – at least not for Altay. As he sat in her discreet courtyard, sipping his coffee and making conversation, the good captain wished that the Australian would not display quite so much of her chest quite so close to his face. İkmen was late, and considering that he had made this appointment, effectively dragging Altay away from his wife and daughter, the captain was not a little annoyed.
At length the İstanbul man appeared, and Altay Salman forgave him immediately. İkmen, although not exactly a close friend, had always been an honest and helpful colleague as well as, periodically, great fun to be with in one or other of İstanbul’s numerous meyhanes.
The Australian moved aside to allow the two men to embrace and then went off to bring the captain more coffee and İkmen a glass of tea.
After thanking his friend for coming, İkmen said, ‘I’m sorry I rang you so late last night, but I’d just come back from visiting Haldun Alkaya and I was a bit fired up. Menşure believes that you know all there is to know about this Alkaya business.’
‘I know it’s split the village,’ Altay replied. ‘Alkaya and the Kahramans and their people don’t speak. Kemalettin Senar, who, if you are staying, you will have to make your own mind up about, drifts around even now under a cloud of suspicion. He doesn’t talk to anyone and behaves, well, oddly at times. I have no idea what might be wrong with him. His mother and brother can be quite vocal about Nazlı Kahraman, or, rather, what they think of her late father.’ He sighed. ‘But now that the police in Nevşehir have Aysu Alkaya’s body maybe this puzzle is about to be solved.’
‘And what do you know about the body?’ İkmen asked.
‘My nephew, who found it, said it was partially preserved,’ Altay said. ‘Scientists have believed for years that many of the caves round here can have that effect upon the human body, just like they do on the lemons. But anyway, the girl’s father could, apparently, tell it was her. In addition there were certain artefacts identified as having belonged to Aysu.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back. The father will be told later on today, then it will be all over the village. Nearly everyone here believes she was murdered anyway.’ He sighed. ‘There will be a ballistics investigation, but facilities with regard to DNA testing and those qualified to do that are limited. That’s why when Miss Tokatlı told me you were coming I was anxious to make contact. If anyone can get someone down from the Forensic Institute it has to be you.’
Rachelle Jones appeared with their drinks. She smiled as she placed them down on the small metal table, principally at Altay.
Dance with Death Page 6