Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Come on! Come on!’ he muttered as the door finally gave way under a ferocious assault by fire-axes and fell backwards into the Cohens’ hallway.

  Without a thought in his head save the fate of his friends, Süleyman rushed forwards only to be held back by the large, meaty arm of a senior firefighter.

  ‘You can only be here if you’re prepared to do what we tell you,’ the man said roughly. ‘There could be ruptured gas bottles or anything in there. This is our territory, Inspector. Keep back.’

  Chastened, the policeman stood to one side as the senior fire officer and two of his men stepped over the shattered door and walked into the Cohens’ apartment. A fourth officer stood at the entrance, holding the medics and the policeman at bay until his colleagues gave him the all clear.

  After what seemed like an eternity, one of the men inside the apartment called out, ‘Nazir!’

  ‘Sir,’ the man at the entrance replied.

  ‘Clear in here. Three live ones. Send the medics through.’

  Three live ones. Three! As the doctors and nurses pushed past him in order to get to the family, Süleyman just took a moment to revel in the fact that the Cohens were alive. He didn’t know what kind of condition they were in but they were alive, and so as soon as the doctors had passed him, he followed them through into the apartment.

  He had to climb over a lot of familiar but shattered furniture in order to get to the main living room. Once there, however, everything was unfamiliar – the paucity of flooring, the lack of anything even resembling furniture, the doctors and nurses leaning over tiny, hunched figures, the huge blood spatters on the wallpaper. And when one of the figures suddenly and piercingly screamed, Mehmet Süleyman felt his mind melt with the horror of it.

  Although İkmen knew from what Fatma had told him that Hulya and the baby were all right, he felt his legs go weak and he had to sit down. What were believed to be terrorist attacks on two İstanbul synagogues, the Neve Şalom in Karaköy and the Beth Israel in Şişli, had resulted in heavy casualties. Mehmet Süleyman was, apparently, at the scene in Karaköy and had taken it upon himself to let Hulya know about her husband and in-laws as soon as he could. The Cohens lived opposite the Neve Şalom. İkmen could see their building or rather what remained of it, on Dr Ali’s small black and white television set.

  ‘Well, it’s good that your daughter and grandson are safe, isn’t it?’ Inspector Erten said nervously as he watched the elderly doctor pass İkmen a glass of water.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if her in-laws . . .’

  ‘Balthazar Cohen is someone I’ve known all my life,’ İkmen interrupted. ‘As well as a grandchild, we share memories, you know . . .’

  Erten looked away, although whether this was because he was embarrassed by İkmen’s anxiety or alarmed at Cohen’s Jewish name, the İstanbul policeman neither knew nor cared.

  ‘Drink your water, Inspector,’ Dr Ali said through what seemed to be a set of very ill-fitting false teeth. ‘It will make you feel better.’

  ‘Can I smoke?’ İkmen asked as he dug a hand into one of his jacket pockets.

  ‘This is Turkey,’ the doctor shrugged as he, too, retrieved cigarettes and a lighter from his jacket pocket and lit up. ‘I know as a doctor I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’ve resolved only to give up once we’re in the European Union. They’ll have banned it by then, anyway – look at Ireland.’

  İkmen, who had now lit up himself and who continued to stare open-mouthed at the television screen, didn’t answer. In view of what was happening in İstanbul everything else that was going on seemed very trivial – even his own state of health. In the wake of Fatma’s telephone call, İkmen had felt very sick and so Erten had immediately brought him across to the local doctor, Ali. When they had arrived, the elderly doctor was already glued to his television, watching the events Fatma had told İkmen about on the telephone unfolding bloodily across the screen. He duly took İkmen’s blood pressure, which was surprisingly normal, and then gave him a glass of water. It was only when TRT switched their reportage from Karaköy to Şişli that İkmen began to think about the other possibilities inherent in his current situation. After all, if Dr Ali was the only local physician in the village, it was very possible he knew just what afflicted Kemalettin Senar. He had certainly, according to Erten, attended the late Aysu Alkaya. Not that Dr Ali, in the absence of an official order, was obliged to say anything about his patients to anyone, police or otherwise, as İkmen well knew. But Dr Ali was not, it seemed, averse to such a conversation.

  ‘It is said, Inspector İkmen, that Nalan Senar’s father, “deli” Yurt, as he was known in the village, was an idiot,’ the doctor said.

  With half an eye still on the television screen and half on the doctor, İkmen said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Yurt drooled, talked nonsense and, on occasion, was known to expose himself.’

  ‘Like Kemalettin.’

  ‘Yes. In fact Kemalettin even looks a bit like old Yurt who was also dark, if not as dark as his grandson. But that is by the way. In spite of the nature of Kemalettin’s distracted condition one cannot, necessarily, attribute it to his grandfather. That would be most unscientific. After all’ – the doctor smiled – ‘diagnostic techniques were very primitive when Yurt was alive.’

  Although not entirely willing to tear his gaze away from the television screen, İkmen did, however, do so and, intrigued, looked the old man hard in the eyes. ‘Doctor,’ he said, ‘I know that you can’t actually tell me what Kemalettin Senar is suffering from, but do I take it that some sort of genetic, er . . .’

  ‘Some genetic diseases are now far more simple to track than they were in the past,’ Dr Ali said. ‘For instance, let us take, say, Huntington’s disease.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It is a form of early onset dementia. In Europe they called it something or other’s dance, because of the trembling the disease produces, like some saint’s movements, I don’t know. Anyway, initial signs first manifest at around about thirty or forty years of age. If it hasn’t started to show itself at fifty, one is probably OK. It is incurable and terminal but in recent years we have been able to test people both for the disease itself and for carriers of it.’

  İkmen raised his eyebrows. ‘And it’s genetic, you say.’

  ‘Yes. If a person has one parent who either develops the disease or is a carrier, he or she has a fifty per cent chance of developing the condition. If both parents are affected, it is one hundred per cent certain that any offspring will be affected. Of course with grandparents . . .’

  ‘So this Yurt had this condition?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the doctor shrugged as he knocked his cigarette against the side of his ashtray. ‘He was never tested, they couldn’t do it in those days. Huntington’s is only one possibility for Yurt’s condition.’

  ‘But then surely,’ Inspector Erten, who had been listening intently to this conversation, now joined in, ‘Nalan Senar, assuming that Kemalettin has this disease, has to carry it in her DNA, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Nalan Senar has never had a medical test in her life,’ the doctor replied with a smile.

  TRT’s coverage of the tragedies in İstanbul switched back to the devastated scenes on the streets of Karaköy, forcing İkmen’s eyes to fully attend to them once again. Not that he could make out anyone he knew from the small, grainy picture on the screen. Only what was left of the Neve Şalom synagogue and the façade of the Cohens’ apartment building could be seen with any clarity. If only he had taken Hulya up on her offer for her and Berekiah to come and look after the children while İkmen took Fatma with him to Cappadocia. But that would have meant that he would have had to tell his wife about Alison, and that would never have done! It would, however, have been preferable to what had happened . . .

  ‘But Kemalettin Senar has had tests?’ Erten, less concerned with İstanbul than İkmen was, asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wh
ich proved positive for this Huntington’s disease?’

  ‘That I cannot tell you,’ Dr Ali responded.

  ‘I understand.’

  İkmen, who had been listening in spite of the television set, once again turned his eyes away from the horrors of İstanbul and said, ‘OK, Doctor, let’s look at it another way, then, shall we? If you tested Nalan Senar to see whether or not she was a carrier of Huntington’s and you discovered that she was, would you be surprised? Or rather, would you be surprised if she wasn’t?’

  ‘I’d be very surprised if she wasn’t,’ Dr Ali said as he ground his cigarette out in his ashtray and then leaned back into his chair. ‘Nalan’s husband and his family were always very normal. When something like a murder happens, outsiders can view villages like Muratpaşa as hotbeds of aberration. But most people are normal here, really. The Senars, as they were, were very nice people. Tatar Senar married Nalan because she was beautiful and, more importantly, blond. Shallow, I know, but men will be men as we know . . . The Senars were always more prosperous and therefore more educated than Yurt’s family. Nalan was lucky that she managed to excite Tatar’s lust to the extent that she did. Mind you, once they were married he lost interest in her and the children very quickly. Even when he was dying he was still harsh with poor Turgut, impatient with Kemalettin.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Poor Kemalettin. But then the village, in general, is very accepting of his peccadilloes,’ the doctor continued. ‘None of us enjoys seeing a grown man abusing himself in the street but as you have probably observed yourself, Inspector, we generally let it go without comment. There is not, after all, any point in telling the poor man not to do it. I know that some try, but his mother and his brother barely notice any more.’

  Unless, İkmen thought, one is a certain American tourist that Turgut Senar seems to be taking a great interest in. He’d been furious when Kemalettin had manipulated himself in front of Dolores Lavell. And yet the American, as a previous visitor to the area, had witnessed this ‘phenomenon’ before. Turgut Senar also had seen the American probably many times in the past. This begged a question about why he was so enamoured with her now and not before? He was married, with a child, and so he had a lot to lose. Had the Lavell woman perhaps bought herself a face-lift since her last visit? He knew rich Americans did such things. But then maybe there was another reason for Dolores’ popularity with Turgut, which had nothing to do with her looks. But İkmen couldn’t think round that problem for the time being, and so after a few more seconds’ thought he said, ‘People in this village seem to be obsessed with blood, inheritance and what have you.’

  The doctor frowned. ‘Yes. There was considerable inbreeding in the past. Not now. It’s caused trouble over the years.’

  İkmen tore his eyes away from the television again, suddenly galvanised. ‘Did you know that Aysu Alkaya was pregnant before her disappearance, Dr Ali?’

  ‘No.’ He looked down at his desk. ‘I was as surprised, probably more so than many others, when I learned of it.’

  ‘Why is that?’ İkmen asked.

  Dr Ali sighed and then looked up. ‘Because of the deformity to her feet,’ he said. ‘I was convinced that Ziya Kahraman would reject her. I actually advised her not to marry him. Ziya was very anxious to produce an “untainted” son. I thought that once he saw her feet he would assume that they were the result of inbreeding and throw her out.’

  ‘But that didn’t happen.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Doctor, is the phenomenon of extra digits always connected to in-breeding?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Not always. But in a primitive place such as Muratpaşa was back in the nineteen eighties, that, as well as attributions of evil and ownership by Şeytan, were usually the assumptions that attend these cases.’

  ‘I see.’ İkmen turned his gaze back fully to the television once again. Someone was being brought out of the Cohens’ apartment building on a stretcher. He or she wasn’t moving.

  Mehmet Süleyman had wanted to stay with his friend, but at the same time he fully understood why that just wasn’t possible. He’d seen some terrible things – many of them worse than this – in the course of his career as a police officer, but he’d never felt so affected before; he’d never known a person’s screams so tear his heart in all of his life. Even out in the street where he now sat with Berekiah Cohen’s traumatised parents he could still hear the young man’s screams of pain as the doctor and nurse attending him attempted to free his shoulder from the enormous shard of glass that held him impaled to the wall behind what was left of his bed.

  ‘I don’t understand why he’s in so much pain!’ Balthazar said as he wept into the folds of the blanket a nurse had draped in his lap to cover the stumps of his legs. ‘Don’t these people have morphine or something?’

  ‘Morphine can only do so much,’ his wife said as she held on limply to Mehmet Süleyman’s hand, her eyes glassed over with shock. ‘Berekiah is fixed to the wall. There is blood just . . . it’s everywhere, it’s down the walls, it’s . . .’

  And then she screamed. Mehmet Süleyman threw his arms round her and held on so tightly his hands went first white and then blue. ‘They’re doing everything they can for him, Estelle. He’s young and strong . . .’

  ‘I knew that no good would come of it,’ Balthazar said as he shook his head violently from side to side. ‘I told Çetin Bey.’

  A man with a thick moustache and impenetrable, hooded eyes staggered across the piles of rubble in the street towards the ambulance beside which the Cohens and Süleyman were crouching.

  ‘I told the woman, too,’ Balthazar continued as he completely failed to register the face or form of the newcomer in their midst. ‘A Jew and a Muslim cannot be together, it’s like a dog and a cat . . .’

  ‘This, this . . . whatever this is has nothing to do with Hulya and Berekiah,’ Süleyman said. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘They’ve bombed our synagogue, Mehmet!’ the crippled man yelled. ‘And the Beth Israel over in Şişli!’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Inspector Süleyman . . .’

  In response to this entirely different voice, Süleyman raised his head from Estelle Cohen’s shoulder and looked up. ‘Melik?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to call your mobile phone,’ İzzet Melik replied gruffly.

  ‘Yes, I . . .’ He’d been aware it had gone off once. But he hadn’t been able to answer it. He’d been lost in the dizzying swirls of blood behind Berekiah Cohen’s screaming face.

  ‘Then I heard about all this and I came up,’ Melik continued. ‘It’s terrible.’

  Another scream from inside the apartment building caused Estelle Cohen to grasp on to Mehmet Süleyman still tighter. ‘My poor child! My soul!’

  ‘Sssh! Sssh!’ Süleyman soothed. ‘He’s going to be all right, Estelle. He’s young and he’s fit. He has a wife and a son . . .’

  Melik, who didn’t know the Cohens or understand Süleyman’s relationship to them, cleared his throat. So harsh was the sound that it caused Süleyman to look up at him again. ‘What?’

  ‘Traffic officer on his way home found a body round the side of the Saray Hamam two hours ago. Little homo with his throat slit. I was just wondering what we know about this peeper when the Neve Şalom went up.’ Just very slightly he smiled. ‘What a day, eh?’

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  The news that her father’s young wife had been pregnant when she died hadn’t come as a shock to Nazlı Kahraman, though she’d had to feign surprise for the benefit of that policeman from İstanbul. To not do so would have looked bad. Had he discovered that she had known that Aysu Alkaya hadn’t had a period for at least two months prior to her death he might have come to a very damning conclusion. But then in the accepted sense, officially, for want of a better word, Nazlı hadn’t known about Aysu’s condition any more than her late father. Aysu hadn’t told her husband, that man so desperate for a son, that man who would have treated his wife so
much more kindly had he known. Ziya’s daughter had failed to inform her father, too . . .

  Nazlı Kahraman looked out of her kitchen window and into the courtyard where her young husband was chopping logs for the stove. He had his shirt off and his well-sculpted chest gleamed with sweat. But the sight of him didn’t arouse any sort of interest or desire within her. That sort of thing was disgusting and besides, she was worried. Now that it was halfway through the afternoon she was very tired and hungry too. For all her protestations to her slack ‘Greek’ husband, she wasn’t finding Ramazan any easier as the years progressed. Nazlı walked out of her kitchen and, ducking her head under the rough tufa doorway into the hall, she grabbed the telephone from off the wall and dialled a number. While she waited for someone to answer she chewed her bottom lip with the top plate of her false teeth.

  When a man’s voice eventually came on the line she said, ‘Baha, it’s Nazlı Hanım; we need to talk.’

  Baha Ermis took a sharp intake of breath. ‘What for, Hanım?’

  ‘That policeman from İstanbul, he knows what I have always known about my “stepmother” and her delicate condition.’

  ‘Haldun Alkaya has told everyone.’

  ‘The İstanbul policeman İkmen wants me to have this DNA test at some point.’

  ‘So?’ Baha Ermis coughed suddenly and then, just as rapidly, he stopped. ‘You have nothing to hide, Nazlı Hanım.’

  ‘No, but maybe my father did.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ermis said. ‘Ziya Bey didn’t kill Aysu Alkaya. That madman Kemalettin did it. He got to her, got her pregnant . . .’

  ‘Baha, I need to trust you with this . . .’

  ‘Hanım?’

  She knew that she could trust him. Baha Ermis, like his father before him, was devoted to the Kahramans. It was indeed one of the reasons why Nazlı could never quite believe Baha’s story about how he’d seen Kemalettin Senar with Aysu Alkaya outside the Kahraman house on the night that the girl disappeared. Of course it was, had to be possible. But Baha was and always had been obsequious to her as well as being, in general, a gossip and a liar.