Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  Çetin İkmen smiled back. ‘She seems impressed,’ he said as he watched the tall woman walk back towards her kitchen.

  Altay raised his eyes towards the heavens. ‘It’s the uniform,’ he said. ‘This is a village that has been hijacked by tourism, Çetin. All the old and the traditionalists spend half their time being scandalised while many of the young men and the foreign residents just want to jump on anything that moves. It’s been known that some tourists and some of my boys at the riding school have been followed by one or other sex-starved individual.’

  ‘Not keen on country life?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Oh, I love working at the school,’ his companion replied. ‘It’s great to watch boys who are just adequate riders become highly skilled. And we’ve got some very impressive horses. But socially it’s a little dull. I don’t, I must admit, mind that too much, but my wife isn’t very impressed. In fact, I wish that Sevgi and Miss Jones would get together. Whatever I may or may not feel about her, Rachelle Jones knows this village, its people, and has a tremendous appreciation for the countryside and its history. Also, I know my wife is keen not to lose her English language skills while she’s here. It would be perfect.’

  ‘What about your daughter?’ İkmen asked.

  He sighed. ‘Hande’s okay. She’s got friends and now that her cousin Ferhat is stationed here I feel I can let her explore the area in the safety of his company. This landscape is fascinating by anyone’s standards.’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen smiled again, mainly at the sight of probably the most phallic chimney in the village, which was situated just next door to the Tasmanian Devil’s kitchen. ‘I don’t know if I can do anything with regard to getting forensic movement on this,’ he said. ‘I’m only here for a week, but I can make some calls and see what I can do. I didn’t, after all, come here to get involved with this. I came for other reasons.’ He looked away briefly. ‘But I can see how contentious this is and so I’ll do what I can. I don’t want to upset the boys in Nevşehir.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ İkmen continued, ‘what are they like?’

  Altay shrugged. ‘Rural. They tend to be conservative and they are notoriously hard up. I actually have much more contact with the jandarma myself who, as you know, are principally city boys.’

  ‘We stick to our own, don’t we?’

  ‘We try to,’ Altay replied. ‘But they’re not bad in Nevşehir. I mean, they would probably be quite impressed, shall we say, to see you. I can’t say pleased exactly . . . I still get a bit of that attitude of “you’re a big shot from the big city who thinks he’s something special” from some of them, but . . .’

  ‘Because it would help if I could see the body myself,’ İkmen said. ‘Then I could at least describe it to colleagues back home.’

  Altay Salman let out a long, tired breath. ‘It may be possible,’ he said. ‘Let me speak to the local jandarma, they’ve far more experience with the police around here than I have.’

  İkmen offered his packet of cigarettes to Altay, who took one, and then lit up himself. ‘I’d be grateful,’ he said. ‘I can’t do much, but if I can get a proper forensic analysis underway it may, at least, go somewhere towards satisfying Haldun Alkaya. He seems to regard DNA as some kind of magical solution.’

  ‘Well he might,’ his companion said as he peered at İkmen through a curtain of smoke. ‘Just like so many of them. But you know, Çetin, that some think he may have been responsible for his daughter’s disappearance?’

  ‘How do they work that out?’

  Altay shrugged.

  ‘Some think it might have been an honour thing.’

  Both men looked up at the source of the Australian-tinged English that had just strolled up to their table.

  ‘Miss Jones?’

  Rachelle Jones put her cigarettes and lighter down on the slightly rickety metal table and sat down. ‘One of the many theories that have flown around this village at one time or another is that somehow poor little Aysu Alkaya managed to get away from old Ziya Kahraman and that her father, shamed by what she had done to the lemon king, killed her.’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen looked at the tall, handsome woman in front of him with a critical eye. Probably in her mid-forties, Rachelle Jones had both humour and, now he observed it closely, a sweet, almost juvenile yearning for the dashing captain in her eyes. İkmen instinctively felt that he was going to like her. However, she was a civilian and so he didn’t want to divulge too much about what he had discovered himself. Unlikely as it sounded, her theory was a point of view and one that was not unknown to İkmen. Sometimes runaway girls did fall foul of fathers and brothers wanting them to consent to or stay within abusive marriages with richer, often considerably older men.

  ‘There’s a lot of coercion put on some of the girls hereabouts,’ the Australian said. ‘That’s not a criticism. I know that’s just how it is, as I’m sure you do.’

  İkmen smiled. This woman was rather good at being realistic about the village while at the same time retaining her own opinions.

  ‘And then, of course, there’s the theory about poor little Kemalettin Senar,’ Rachelle continued. ‘But I’m sure you’ve heard about all that.’

  ‘Some people suspect him of involvement in the girl’s disappearance,’ İkmen said in the English that was obviously, in spite of her Turkish language skills, more comfortable for Rachelle.

  ‘Listen, I’ve worked out she was probably murdered all for myself,’ Rachelle said with a smile. ‘Look at Kemalettin and tell me whether you think he’s capable of murder? Oh, speak of the devil . . .’

  İkmen turned and saw a rather stooped figure standing at the entrance to the pansiyon’s courtyard. Extremely dark and probably in early middle age, the man surveyed the two officers and the woman with a frown that was almost fierce in its intensity. He wore a long brown overcoat that he now, very slowly, began to pull to one side.

  ‘Ah!’ The Australian was up and out of her seat like a rocket. ‘You can put that away as quick as you like!’ she said as she ran up to him and pulled his coat back around his body. ‘Shameful!’ she said in Turkish and then, reverting to English, she said, ‘Go on, get out of here!’

  İkmen gave Altay a quizzical look.

  ‘He tends to, er, manipulate himself sometimes,’ the captain said coyly.

  ‘Doing that in public places!’ Rachelle, again in English, said as she sat down and lit up a cigarette. ‘Dirty little tyke! Most of the time we all ignore it but when people are eating and drinking . . .’

  ‘Has he always done that, um . . .’

  ‘For years and years,’ the Australian replied. ‘Used to be quite a looker, but . . .’ And then, seeing that the man was still in her gateway, she said, ‘What did I say, Kemalettin? Go away!’

  Slowly, almost as if he were in a dream, the stooped, dark man shuffled off down the hill and towards the centre of the village. Once he had gone, the Australian woman smiled broadly, especially at Altay Salman.

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me for a minute if Abdullah Aydın took it up the arse,’ İzzet Melik said with some gusto.

  Süleyman, who had been talking to both his inferior and his colleague, Inspector İskender, turned to Melik and said, ‘I don’t think that speculation of the idle variety is of much value at this time, Sergeant.’

  Melik, stung, sniffed and then said, ‘No, sir.’ He was, after all, accustomed to, if not approving of, Mehmet Süleyman’s ‘sensibilities’.

  ‘Now if you don’t mind retrieving my black shoes from the menders on Yerebatan Caddesi . . .’ Süleyman put his hand in his pocket and gave the heavily moustachioed man a small ticket and a handful of banknotes. ‘It shouldn’t be more than five million.’

  ‘No, sir.’ Melik scowled and, as slowly as he felt he could get away with, he left.

  Metin İskender was a younger and smaller man than Mehmet Süleyman. Dapper and intelligent, he was also a man who had fought his way out of one of İstanbul’s mos
t notorious slum districts. He was therefore rather more accustomed to rough talk and even rougher attitudes than his more aristocratic friend.

  ‘You shouldn’t treat him like your valet,’ he said to Süleyman once Melik had finally gone. ‘He isn’t a constable.’

  ‘He never has anything of value to say,’ Süleyman responded haughtily. ‘His only input to any investigation in which he is involved is simply a list of his own prejudices. I think he sees people as types, sort of caricatures. The screaming homosexual, the nosy kapıcı.’

  ‘Most kapıcıs are nosy, Mehmet,’ İskender said with a smile, ‘but I take your point.’

  Süleyman lit a cigarette. ‘These incidents involving the person we call the peeper are a case in point,’ he said. ‘Melik believes that because the offender obviously enjoys the sight of attractive young men, his victims must of necessity be homosexual themselves.’

  ‘And aren’t they?’

  ‘Well, a significant number of them are, yes.’

  ‘Oh, so Melik’s ideas do have some merit, then?’ İskender said with a smile as he, too, lit a cigarette.

  ‘The boy who was actually penetrated says that he isn’t homosexual . . .’

  ‘But even if he isn’t, it still means that Melik, in the main, is absolutely right,’ İskender replied. ‘Come on, Mehmet, you just don’t like Melik. And I can see why. He’s dull, boorish and he makes some terrible noises when he eats. But İzmir reckoned he was a good officer, which is why you’ve got him.’

  ‘I’d rather have your sergeant.’

  ‘You keep your hands off Alp Karataş,’ İskender said sternly. ‘Not only is he my sergeant, we also get along as brothers. It’s bad that you’ve not found anyone you can really like since Çöktin left the service, but you have to try to make something work with Melik, even if you can’t really take to him.’

  Süleyman sighed. ‘I know.’

  ‘And besides, by the sound of it, this idea that the peeper may be targeting men who go to homosexual places might just yield something. It is somewhere to start at the very least.’

  This was true and was, indeed, the reason why Süleyman and İskender were having their meeting now. By climbing on to the ever-growing roofs of the old city, the person known as the peeper was demonstrating intention to look at certain and, possibly, pre-selected men. Some of the victims Süleyman had spoken to did seem to have some venues catering specifically for homosexual men in common. He knew that İskender had a very reliable homosexual informant whom he was quite keen to access.

  ‘So, this Elma . . .’

  ‘Is a very sweet little fruit whom I haven’t used for quite a while,’ İskender interrupted.

  ‘But he’s very involved in the homosexual life.’

  ‘Elma is that thing that Melik would relate to oh so well: the screaming drama queen.’ İskender shrugged. ‘He’s also a very good informant.’

  ‘Could you ask him whether there’s any mythology about the peeper amongst homosexuals?’

  ‘Yes, although I’ll have to pay him.’

  ‘Of course,’ Süleyman said. ‘Just tell me how much it is and I’ll reimburse you.’

  İskender fingered his empty tea glass which he had placed on Süleyman’s desk. ‘OK, I’ll set it up.’

  The midday call to prayer interrupted their conversation. Because he smoked heavily, Süleyman was inclined to have his window open for most of the time. But with the imperial mosques of Sultan Ahmet, Beyazıt and Süleymaniye, not to mention all the little local mescits so close at hand, hearing oneself think could be a problem at times. And so because neither he nor İskender were of a religious nature, Süleyman got up and closed the window.

  ‘I suppose it’s too soon to start putting undercover officers into known homosexual haunts?’ İskender said as he watched his friend walk back to his desk.

  ‘Yes.’

  He’d thought about it, though. He’d thought about whom he could and could not ask to perform such a task with more than a little shudder down his spine. Between the macho moustachioed variety like Melik and the horrified youngsters who were either too religious or too afraid of what their colleagues might think to volunteer for such an assignment there really wasn’t a great deal of choice. It was why he himself had ‘dabbled’ a little at the hamam in Karaköy. And yet Süleyman, as well as most other Turkish men, was aware of the ambiguity that exists about homosexuality. Although rather an outdated idea now, there was a time when many Turkish men believed that only the passive partner was truly homosexual. The ‘active’ person could therefore screw his chosen boy to his heart’s content and then go home to his wife and see to her with an entirely clear and, more importantly, masculine conscience.

  ‘I’ll consider the undercover option once I’ve explored some other ideas,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘So, how is the boy who was attacked on Sunday night?’ İskender asked.

  ‘Abdullah Aydın is still in a coma.’ Süleyman put his cigarette out and then lit another. ‘And you know how it is with those.’

  ‘Yes. May it pass quickly.’ The previous year İskender had been shot in the line of duty after which he had, briefly, fallen into a coma. Now fully recovered, he still bore the scar the surgeons had made in order to remove his shattered spleen. Sometimes it still hurt, when he was particularly tired or stressed. Unconsciously he put one hand over the scar now.

  ‘As yet, no one has seen the peeper’s face,’ Süleyman continued. ‘We know he’s tall, slim but well built, wears a ski mask and something like a body suit, but that is all we know. What might be locked away inside Abdullah Aydın’s head . . .’

  ‘If anything,’ İskender interrupted sharply. ‘You know that I still can’t recall everything about that time.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But İnşallah . . .’

  ‘He will be able to remember something, yes,’ İskender said. ‘But in the meantime I will speak to Elma.’ He sighed. ‘He’s not exactly easy, but you are my friend, Mehmet.’

  Süleyman smiled. It hadn’t been all that long ago when Metin, his friend, had been almost unapproachable. Elevated through the ranks at a young age he had been very aware of both the resentment this had caused in some quarters and of the fact that it was well known he had originated from the crime-torn district of Ümraniye. Wanting to impress his superiors as well as his middle-class wife, Metin had been very rule-bound, self-contained and, seemingly, arrogant. However, as the years had passed and he had worked with and grown to trust people like Süleyman and Çetin İkmen, he had mellowed into the much more approachable person he was now.

  İskender rose to leave. ‘So when is Çetin returning to us?’ he asked as he pushed the chair he had been sitting on underneath Mehmet’s desk.

  ‘Next Monday,’ Süleyman replied. ‘He has some family business in Cappadocia.’

  ‘Oh.’ İskender smiled. ‘Strange place, Cappadocia, isn’t it? My wife’s company publishes some authors who live out there. She always says that although they all write different things – fiction, travelogue, et cetera – the one thing they all have in common is that they are all universally strange – as people, I mean.’

  ‘I think that maybe that very special landscape has much to do with how people are there,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘How you said that without either laughing or using the word “penis”, I do not know,’ İskender said and then left the office, chuckling.

  Süleyman smiled, just for a while, until he remembered where young Abdullah Aydın was and what he was doing. Even if the boy survived, the peeper was going to kill someone soon. His behaviour had escalated from peeping and masturbating to assault in less than three months. He was obviously a very disturbed and dangerous person.

  ‘Inti! Inti! Inti!’

  The young man who had said these strange words and all of his colleagues collapsed into fits of laughter.

  Çetin İkmen, laughing now along with the young jandarma, said, ‘But what does that mean?’

  ‘Appa
rently it’s the name of the sun god,’ the young man, Private Ferhat Salman, said. ‘She’s from Peru in South America and that is, so she says, what they worship over there.’

  ‘But then she had to say something given how we found her,’ the shorter, more serious, Private Büker, put in. ‘I mean, dancing naked in front of some frescos in a chimney that used to be a church is not normal.’

  Ferhat looked at İkmen and, suddenly serious, said, ‘Nothing is normal in this crazy place, Çetin Bey. I never expected to find a mummy in that cave. It was gruesome.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible shock,’ İkmen replied.

  ‘Oh, I was fine with it,’ the young man blustered. ‘But I was with my cousin and her friend. Girls.’

  ‘But of course you had to protect them from the look of it,’ İkmen said with a smile.

  ‘Yes. Girls can become hysterical.’

  After he had left Altay Salman, İkmen had gone for a stroll through the village. As well as wanting to reacquaint himself with the place he also needed some time to think about the disturbing vision that had been Kemalettin Senar. If the lovely Aysu Alkaya had once loved him he must have been a very different man. It was, İkmen felt, as if the man had had some kind of breakdown. However, now that he was in the small gendarmerie at the edge of the village he was learning even more about the oddities of Muratpaşa. The young jandarma, and especially Altay Salman’s nephew Ferhat, had welcomed the policeman from İstanbul with open arms. They were, he very quickly discovered, only too willing to share the gossip that jandarma everywhere are famed for collecting – like the Peruvian expatriate and her naked dances to the sun god.

  ‘You know that Ümit Özal the carpet dealer sleeps with his kilims?’ Ferhat continued. ‘The story is that he’s so afraid that someone will rob him that he even takes his best examples to bed.’

  ‘There’s old Selim who pretends he has Parkinson’s Disease so that women will feel sorry for him and, possibly, agree to marry him out of pity,’ Abdulhamid Büker said.

  ‘But the foreigners are the worst,’ another young man with a very prominent scar on his face put in. ‘What about that English woman, Ferhat, the one with that slimy little gigolo?’