‘Çetin?’ He leaned forward in his saddle and squinted.
‘I’m just going for a last look around,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m off tomorrow.’
‘But it’s snowing and you have no coat.’
‘Rachelle Jones just made me aware of that fact, too.’
Altay Salman’s whole body tensed. ‘Rachelle Jones? Is she here?’
‘No, no.’ İkmen laughed. ‘You’re quite safe. She’s gone . . .’
‘Because she is a very predatory woman . . .’
‘Who, if you were not married, would probably make you a very happy man,’ İkmen said. ‘I like her. She makes me smile.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ The top of the captain’s cap was entirely covered with snow now, as were his long, thick eyelashes. They reminded İkmen of Süleyman’s. He wanted to be home very much now.
‘So where on earth are you going, Çetin?’ the horseman continued. ‘It’s snowing.’
İkmen pulled the jacket of his suit tightly around his chest and said, ‘I’m only going to the chimneys at the edge of the village. I’d like to be able to look back at Muratpaşa and see it looking snowy, quiet and romantic.’
‘Minus the people, then?’
‘Something like that.’
Altay Salman’s horse stamped against the cold and he patted his flanks to soothe him. ‘There, Süleyman, good beast.’
İkmen laughed. ‘You called the horse Süleyman! You know my ex-sergeant . . .’
‘I remember Mehmet Süleyman,’ the captain said with a smile. ‘But this horse isn’t named for him. This beast was born and bred in Cappadocia and came with his name when the riding school purchased him. You know, Çetin, if something does result from this DNA testing you have organised, you will be quite a local hero.’
‘Except with the perpetrator.’
‘Of course,’ Altay Salman said. ‘But one way or another the rifts that cross this village do need to be resolved.’
‘I know.’ İkmen looked up at the man on the horse, his eyes now squinting against what had become driving snow. ‘I hope Dr Sarkissian will be able to get here tomorrow.’
‘İnşallah,’ the horseman responded. ‘I’ll come by Menşure Hanım’s place in the morning to take my leave of you, Çetin.’
‘I would appreciate that.’
‘Don’t be out too long,’ the captain said as he spurred Süleyman the horse to trot onwards. ‘You don’t want to go back to İstanbul with a cold.’
İkmen put his head down and pushed on towards the edge of the village. When he reached the last outpost of Muratpaşa, a collection of dark and derelict fairy chimneys, he turned to look at the village as he had said that he would. Altay and his horse had long since disappeared and so all İkmen could see through the swirls of snow and ice were higgledy-piggledy cones and chimneys and what looked like sugar-coated fingers – ice-bound minarets – pointing up into a sky of almost total blackness. Street lighting in the village, unlike back home in İstanbul, was of a minimal nature and so all of the rocks and caves appeared unadorned and natural underneath snow that looked as if it were materialising, as opposed to falling through the night sky. And although there were no peris or indeed spirits of any sort that İkmen could detect present in what he was viewing it was a very magical moment for the policeman. But it was also very cold and so as soon as he had savoured the moment sufficiently, Çetin İkmen made ready to go back to Menşure Tokatlı’s hotel. If he hadn’t heard a noise coming from one of the derelict chimneys behind him he would most certainly have left that place in quite a hurry.
There was no light anywhere in the chimney that he could see and so İkmen flicked his cigarette lighter and held it out in front of him. He already had a cigarette between his teeth on the basis that if he wasn’t going straight back to the hotel he might as well have a smoke in this chimney before he set off for his room. After all, out in the billowing snow once again smoking was going to be a tough call even for someone as practised as Çetin İkmen.
This chimney, just like the other one he had explored before it, obviously hadn’t been lived in for a very long time. As well as possessing that dank, musty smell that chimneys get when areas of their interiors are exposed to the elements, there was also evidence, in the form of empty rakı bottles, that the place was sometimes used by Muratpaşa’s small cabal of drinkers. İkmen looked up and, through a hole in what had once passed for a ceiling, he felt a little snow and saw a little sky.
It had probably, he thought as he lit his cigarette and surveyed the scene around him, been an animal of some sort that had made the noise that had caught his attention. A cat or a dog. Just conceivably it could have been a wolf, not that they came down out of the mountains and into the villages on a regular basis. But it was very cold now and wolves, like all other sensible creatures, would be seeking shelter wherever they could find it. İkmen felt himself go colder than he already was. Perhaps he should telephone the jandarma just in case . . . But as well as feeling stupid, weak and cowardly for even thinking about calling for help, İkmen was also suddenly intrigued by something that had caught his eyes over by what used to be the old dwelling’s fireplace. Something large was wrapped in what looked like a blanket but turned out to be a considerably large wall tapestry. Of course ‘it’ could, İkmen knew, very well be a bundled-up alcoholic, and so he approached whatever or whoever it was with care. Holding his lighter out in front of him, he made a sweep down from the top of the bundle to the bottom. At the bottom he saw two very unpleasantly coloured feet. Inwardly he groaned. The last thing he needed on the eve of his return to İstanbul was some lengthy process involving getting medical attention for a dead or dying alcoholic. Then, however, for some reason he found himself counting the number of toes on each ghastly foot. There were six.
The blow, when it came, arrived hard and fast from behind İkmen’s head. By the time he hit the floor he was already unconscious.
Luckily the baby, Timur, had taken the formula milk Fatma had given him without either complaint or obvious distress. Of course he had to be missing his mother’s – Hulya’s – milk as well as the comfort of her breast, but the girl had other things besides her baby to think about now. Her husband, as far as Fatma knew, was still in intensive care over at the Italian hospital.
‘Hulya and her in-laws will have to come and stay here,’ Fatma said to her daughter Çiçek and son Orhan who had come to be with their mother in the wake of the Neve Şalom tragedy.
‘Isn’t the house Berekiah’s uncle gave them ready?’ Orhan asked. He was a pleasant-looking man in his thirties and one of two İkmen boys who had qualified as a doctor.
‘No, and with Berekiah sick for Allah alone knows how long, it could be standing empty for some time to come,’ Fatma said.
Çiçek, İkmen’s eldest daughter, looked out of the window at her side and through the darkness at the old imperial buildings across Divanyolu. The Sultanahmet Mosque with its six minarets could be seen as a smudged grey shape against the deep velvet of the midnight sky.
‘There were police all over the airport this morning,’ she said. ‘Looking for something, someone. I thought of Dad.’
The flight that Çiçek had been due to work on that morning – she was a Turkish Airlines hostess – had been cancelled. At first she hadn’t, like a lot of people, really known why. But when the airport TV screens began to fill with images of dead and dying people in Karaköy she had asked to be allowed to go home to her family. As she left she heard some of her colleagues ask each other, in hushed tones, whether Çiçek was indeed Jewish or whether that was just a rumour. She hadn’t bothered to stop to put them right on that point. Only her sister Hulya and the safety of her family had mattered then, as it did now.
‘Your father will be home tomorrow, İnşallah,’ Fatma said with a sigh, ‘to this madness.’
‘Berekiah is alive, Mum,’ Orhan said as he took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up. ‘He may not be as we would wish him to be . . .’
>
‘That Italian doctor told Sınan that Berekiah may lose the use of his right arm,’ Fatma said. Sınan, her eldest, was also a doctor, and was currently at the hospital with his sister Hulya. ‘He is a jeweller. He is right-handed. How will he work?’
‘If he does indeed lose some function he may get that back in time,’ Orhan said as he passed a cigarette across to his sister.
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘Lazar Bey won’t get rid of Berekiah,’ Çiçek said as she lit up and then exhaled shakily from tiredness.
‘Lazar is fortunate to be alive himself,’ Fatma responded with a shudder. ‘Only a bad cold and the mercy of Allah kept him away from his prayers this morning. Lazar’s is only a small shop, Çiçek; he must make a profit and he has his own son and grandson to think of. If Berekiah can’t work properly, can’t make the pieces that Lazar needs made, then he will have to let him go. Making a living is hard.’
They all sat in silence for a few moments while the truth of Fatma’s words sank in.
‘But to have Berekiah’s father here . . .’ Orhan began.
‘Oh, I can, if necessary, manage Balthazar Cohen,’ his mother said with some conviction. ‘And anyway, Estelle would be here too. I’ve only got Gül and Kemal left at home now.’
‘And Dad,’ Çiçek put in.
‘Yes, and . . .’
‘Dad won’t be able to support the Cohens as well as this family, you know,’ Orhan said. ‘The rest of us will have to contribute.’
‘Of course,’ Çiçek said simply, before she returned her gaze to the window once again.
Their mother looked at them, from one to the other, and smiled inside. Of course it was to be expected that well-raised children should help support their parents in times of trouble. There was a time when only female children ever left the parental home, anyway. Mothers were the empresses of their sons and daughters-in-law. But in İstanbul at least, that way of life had changed for a lot of families, including the İkmens. Çetin had, after all, worked hard all of his life in order to give his children, both sons and daughters, choices in their lives. That the older children, without question or complaint, always assisted with the cost of their younger siblings’ upkeep and education was a great help. That they should now volunteer for more of the same on behalf of just one young sister was nothing short of heroic. Fatma was in fact so proud that in that moment she broke down and wept.
Chapter 15
* * *
‘Menşure Hanım!’
One plump hand slipped out from inside the sleeve of a heavy Astrakhan coat and brought Menşure Tokatlı’s knuckles up to a pair of fleshy lips.
‘Arto Sarkissian,’ Menşure responded dryly as she watched the Armenian bend down and kiss her fingers. ‘It must be forty years since I’ve seen you. You haven’t changed.’
‘And neither have you,’ Arto said with a smile. ‘Still . . .’
‘I’m still wealthy, more suspicious than ever, but I’m no longer young,’ Menşure said tightly. ‘So don’t try to flatter me, Arto Sarkissian.’ And then she turned to the rather younger and slimmer man standing beside her cousin’s old friend and said, ‘And who is this?’
‘Atom Boghosian. He’s my cousin. From Munich.’ He then translated what he had just said into English, for Atom’s benefit.
Menşure, irritated that Arto Sarkissian had either forgotten or didn’t know that she could speak English, said, in that language, ‘So your journey from Ankara, was it difficult?’
‘Only when we got into Cappadocia,’ Arto responded as he and Atom followed Menşure into her restaurant. ‘It was not snowing in Ankara.’
Menşure motioned the two men towards a table and called to her cook’s daughter to bring them coffee and breakfast. ‘I won’t join you myself . . .’
‘Ramazan,’ Arto smiled.
‘Of course. Please sit,’ she said sternly. ‘I will go to find Çetin. He is generally up at this time.’ She then swept out of the restaurant with what looked like some sort of small fox in tow.
It was only 10 a.m., which, as far as Atom Boghosian was concerned, was still very early. In fact, he was a little bit resentful that his cousin’s friend wasn’t around to greet them. They had, after all, left Ankara very early in order to do this business in Muratpaşa and then Nevşehir.
In response to what he perceived as his cousin’s grave expression, Arto said, ‘Don’t worry about Nevşehir, Atom. You don’t have to come into the mortuary. And I’m not taking a whole corpse back to İstanbul, only samples.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Çetin is excellent company and speaks very good English,’ Arto continued as the cook’s daughter laid plates of bread, cheese, honey and olives in front of both of them. ‘We will not go on in Turkish, I promise. In fact, maybe you and Çetin can speak German together and confuse me. I don’t know how fluent he is, but I know that his father insisted he learn to some level. His father taught European languages.’
Atom didn’t comment. He had enjoyed Arto’s guided tour of Turkey so far and had been amazed when he had first seen the Fairy Chimneys, but he was starting to reach his limit. Whatever his mother said, he was German – he spoke German, thought in German – and he wanted to be home in Munich. None of this exotica had very much meaning, of any sort, for him.
They’d started their breakfasts by the time Menşure Tokatlı and what Atom Boghosian could now see was an enormous cat returned to their table.
‘Çetin isn’t in his room,’ Menşure said with a frown.
‘Maybe he’s gone out for a walk,’ Arto replied.
The woman fixed the Armenian with a very cynical eye.
‘I didn’t mean he was having a walk for pleasure,’ Arto corrected. ‘I mean that maybe he’s out getting cigarettes, or . . .’
‘Have you ever known Çetin to be without cigarettes?’ Menşure interrupted tartly. ‘Arto, please. You know Çetin.’
‘Yes.’ Arto sighed. It was unlikely. But then if İkmen were out and about, knowing that Arto and Atom were due to arrive, it had to be because of some sort of emergency. Maybe he’d received more bad news from İstanbul.
‘I’ve got his mobile number,’ Arto said as he slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket. ‘I’ll give him a call. He’s always got it with him.’
But the phone just rang and rang.
‘Maybe he’s out of range, in an area with bad reception.’
‘Try again in another few minutes,’ Atom suggested.
He did but still to no avail. By this time someone that Arto knew, though vaguely, Captain Salman, had arrived. He had, he said, last seen Çetin at the edge of the village the previous evening in the snow. As usual, he had been poorly clad for the dire weather conditions, but then that was Çetin all over. Arto said that he would try to ring Çetin’s mobile again in another few minutes. In the meantime, however, he asked Altay Salman to join Atom and himself for coffee and some background on just what had been happening in Muratpaşa since Çetin İkmen’s arrival.
He knew that he’d come to at some point during the course of the night, but just when that was, Çetin İkmen couldn’t even begin to know. He’d been in a vehicle of some sort, his face pressed hard up against the tapestry that had covered poor Aysu Alkaya’s body, but he hadn’t been conscious for long. Another, even harder, blow to the head had taken care of that. Who had hit him, he didn’t know. He’d seen and heard nothing of any consequence beyond the gruesome presence of Aysu Alkaya’s mummified corpse – or rather nothing that he could as yet recall.
İkmen sat up, his head thumping with pain. There was sky above him, grey and heavy with yet more of the snow that lay underneath his hands as he pushed himself into a sitting position. Out in the open, somewhere amid what looked like a very densely packed group of chimneys, he was strangely rather warmer than a man wearing only a thin summer suit should be. Not that it took İkmen long to find the source of the heat that seemed to be ensuring his survival. There was a smouldering bonfire in
front of him, and for about two metres all around it the snow had melted into the cool rivulets that had eventually woken him. At first he had thought that maybe he had wet himself, but it had, to his relief, been only this melted snow.
That whoever had attacked him was now warming him with this bonfire did seem strange. But İkmen moved towards it, clutching his bruised and in places bloodsticky head as he did so, simply in order to dry out his trousers and jacket. On closer inspection, however, İkmen discovered that the bonfire was a far-from-benign presence. Scooping up what he could of the melted snow around the pile he threw it wildly on to what was still unconsumed. Seeing that one brittle, six-toed foot was sticking out of the smouldering pyre, pointing towards him, İkmen made a grab for it. If he could just salvage something of her! But it came off in his hands leaving him holding just a dry pile of something that made him whimper into the harsh morning air.
Someone had tried to destroy Aysu Alkaya’s corpse. Someone had also tried to destroy him, too, and, given the total alienness and isolation of his surroundings, they were really quite likely to succeed. But then he remembered his mobile phone and his cigarettes. He put his hand into his jacket pocket to retrieve his smokes. They did not appear to be where they should. That did not, İkmen felt, bode well for his telephone.
Mehmet Süleyman had reached what, for him, was a momentous decision. Inclined by nature to be rather impulsive, he had opted, in this case, to take what İkmen called the ‘do nothing’ approach. Commissioner Ardıç was in, and he could have gone straight to his office screaming about compromised crime scenes and the seriousness inherent within the situation. But he didn’t. After he had called the Italian hospital to check on Berekiah Cohen, he just simply reviewed what he had so far on the Saray Hamam murder victim. Even when Melik arrived, neither he nor Süleyman spoke of what had passed between them the previous night. Only when Ardıç eventually called the inspector into his office did the two policemen exchange tense and worried looks.
‘Seems that young Nizan Tapan is not any more use dead than alive,’ the commissioner said as Süleyman entered his office and sat down.
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