Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

‘I don’t know why,’ Fatma said. ‘Country people. What are they to do with us, eh? The papers are saying that it is people from the country who blew up the synagogues, who nearly killed Berekiah.’

  Süleyman looked across at Hulya again. The girl very quickly turned her face away.

  ‘They say, these country people, that they are fighting for Islam when they do these things. But I am a Muslim, I love the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon Him, and I know He would condemn such slaughter . . .’

  ‘Mum!’

  Now that she had turned back again, Süleyman could see that Hulya’s eyes were full of tears.

  But rather than go to comfort her daughter, Fatma, her own eyes wet around the edges, said to Süleyman, ‘Berekiah will recover, but he won’t be able to do his own job again. His right hand is useless. The doctors haven’t told his parents yet, but Hulya has been told, haven’t you, Hulya?’

  The girl just nodded her reply.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Süleyman said. The fact that he had, to some extent, helped to rescue Berekiah from his shattered apartment did not now, he felt, make up for the tiny amount of time he had spent with the young man since. If poor Berekiah wasn’t to be a goldsmith any more, what was he going to do? Süleyman knew he had spent far too much time in pursuit of his own mystery, that which surrounded the peeper, to give what was a tragedy for the İkmen and Cohen families too much thought.

  ‘Yes, well, I won’t be happy until Çetin is home now as I think you will appreciate, Mehmet,’ Fatma said. ‘I want him back here where I can keep my eyes on him. What kind of a world exists outside this city, eh? What sort of a place is that?’

  ‘I threw Sergeant Lavell’s gun into the Kızılırmak River the day after I killed Aysu Alkaya,’ Nalan Senar told İkmen. ‘I made a special trip to Avanos to do just that.’

  It was unfortunately only too easy to see how the local police and jandarma had missed a Colt 45 in the Kızılırmak all those years ago. Avanos was not Muratpaşa, the main focus of their search, and so they probably hadn’t even bothered with it. The Colt 45, if it still existed at all, was probably now in the hands of some elderly shepherd who had come across it on one of his lonely journeys with his flock.

  ‘So you recognised Miss Lavell’s father from that picture,’ İkmen said to Turgut Senar.

  ‘It was a shock,’ the man replied as he looked very quickly over at his mother. ‘He was a nice man, Sergeant Lavell.’

  İkmen beckoned Dolores Lavell over to him and said, ‘Turgut has just told me he knew your father, Miss Lavell.’

  ‘So Kemalettin was telling the truth.’ She walked across to İkmen whilst looking at Turgut Senar.

  ‘I was a child,’ Turgut explained in English. ‘My father was never home. Sergeant Lavell was very kind, he taught me to shoot.’

  ‘And he left you a gun to practise with,’ İkmen said, also in English.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain why you then suddenly wanted to get close to Sergeant Lavell’s daughter . . .’

  ‘No, no,’ Turgut Senar put his head down and then said in Turkish, ‘I just did, it just happened.’

  And maybe it had. Maybe he had just wanted to get close to someone who was related to a man he had respected. Such hero worship could explain why Turgut had been so disgusted at Kemalettin when he had attempted to masturbate in front of Dolores. But from the way that Nalan was looking at her son, with almost a visible threat in her eyes, İkmen also knew that he could be wrong about that. There could be something else at play there, too, even though he didn’t know or understand what that might be. But then a woman who would knowingly kill her own grandchild had to be, by her very twisted nature, entirely enigmatic.

  İkmen settled Dolores Lavell next to him and then turned to Nalan Senar once again. ‘So Kemalettin is completely innocent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he know anything about your plan to kill me?’

  ‘I didn’t plan to kill you, Inspector! Turgut didn’t plan to kill you either!’

  ‘Oh, so hitting me over the head several times and then leaving me to freeze to death doesn’t constitute a threat to my life?’ İkmen asked with a cynical smile on his face. ‘Come on, Nalan Hanım!’

  ‘He wanted you dead!’ the woman said as she pointed one spiteful finger at Inspector Erten. ‘And him,’ she added as she swung round and nodded her head at Baha Ermis. ‘But I said no, you can’t kill someone during Ramazan!’

  İkmen looked towards the back of the room at where Arto, Atom and Tom were sitting and said, in English, ‘The countryside – the quiet, the serenity, the nature, the spite! Thank whatever God you favour for İstanbul.’

  The two Armenians and the Englishman smiled. But just before İkmen spoke again he was distracted by a loud, snapping sound which turned out to be the flat of Nazlı Hanım’s hand against Baha Ermis’s face.

  ‘So you did steal that corpse!’ she screamed. ‘Liar! And with the Senars!’

  ‘I didn’t know what I know now,’ Ermis sobbed. ‘I did it to once and for all put Ziya Bey’s reputation beyond all harm.’

  ‘Liar! You did it for the money!’ Nalan Senar sneered at him and then, turning to her rival, Nazlı Kahraman, she said, ‘If you didn’t pay your people in goat dung they would be loyal!’

  ‘I saw Turgut Senar drag you out of that chimney on the edge of the village, after he had hit you,’ Baha Ermis said to İkmen. ‘You interrupted him as he was getting the corpse. Then I came along. It’s true the Senars have money, I don’t. He and I, we did a deal.’

  ‘Which all fell apart when amazingly I survived,’ İkmen said and then, looking across at Ferdinand Mueller, he added, ‘What was it you said when you saw Mr Mueller’s balloon, Mr Senar? Kismet. And you were not talking about my cousin’s cat. You knew it was all over then, inevitable, your fate.’

  ‘He was driving far too close to where we’d left you!’ Ermis said as he looked with contempt at Turgut Senar. ‘I told him and he tried to kill me – in front of the foreigners.’

  ‘My mother and I are the only reason you are alive at all,’ Turgut Senar said to İkmen. ‘Ermis and your scruffy friend from Nevşehir wanted you dead!’

  İkmen turned to Inspector Erten and said, ‘Is this true?’

  For a moment it seemed as if the Nevşehir man would attempt to dissemble but instead he just sighed and said, ‘Yes.’ And then rather than look away he gazed into İkmen’s eyes and spoke again. ‘Nalan Senar offered me money to take Aysu Alkaya’s body and then help her and her son to destroy it. I went to see her just after you came to the mortuary. I was going to question her but she saw a great need in me. She offered me such a vast amount of money . . .’

  ‘So that was the Senars’ dog I heard barking in the background when I phoned to tell you about Dr Sarkissian,’ İkmen said. ‘But what about your job, man, your profession?’

  ‘What about it? What’s it done for me? I didn’t want or plan to kill you, Inspector, but when you threatened to come between me and money I’ve never had, well . . . I knew we needed to kill you and destroy your body. You’d taught me that much about DNA testing. But the Senars wouldn’t have it. Too religious, too superstitious, too rural. They stopped Ermis and myself doing what should have been done. I knew the cold would not necessarily kill you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And it didn’t and my poor man’s shoes gave me away. As I know you have observed before, Inspector, I have very bad shoes. These are, however, only a pale reflection of my life. I have never married, I – you know I have a degree from Erciyes University – have never been able to afford to do so. My father was sick for most of his life, someone had to pay for his treatment. I am an educated man and yet I eat plain pilav most days, I smoke the cheapest brand of cigarettes. I have nothing! I am fifty years old and I live with my mother and my maiden sister in a three-roomed flat in Avanos . . .’

  ‘You and fifty per cent of rural Anatolia, yes,’ İkmen responded sharply. ‘If police work in N
evşehir was not glamorous, or lucrative enough for you, why didn’t you move to İstanbul or Ankara? Millions of people do that. They send money home.’

  ‘My mother . . .’

  ‘I looked after my father until he was so old he didn’t even know what his name was!’ İkmen cut in savagely and then bearing down upon his rural counterpart he said, ‘I have nine children, Inspector Erten, a wife, a grandchild, a son-in-law who is currently unable to work, and a cat. I work both for and in spite of all that. The people in my life are what keep me going. İstanbul is a tough place.’

  ‘Yes, but you get paid more money . . .’

  ‘Because everything is much more expensive in İstanbul!’ İkmen said. ‘I’m sorry for you, Erten, in a way, but my life is no party either, you know. I can’t afford a new car or new furniture, my wife has worn the same winter coat for the last five years and, as you can see, I am not exactly an advertisement for Armani myself.’ And then suddenly and savagely, he grabbed Erten by the throat. ‘But I don’t throw a man into the snow to get my hands on some extra money! I don’t burn a dead body and the evidence it might reveal!’

  ‘All right, Çetin.’ He looked up into the face of Altay Salman who already had one hand on İkmen’s shoulder.

  ‘Arrest him,’ İkmen said as he pointed at the Nevşehir policeman.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And them,’ he said as he tipped his head in the direction of Turgut and Nalan Senar and Baha Ermis.

  ‘But my son didn’t kill anyone,’ Nalan Senar said as she watched one of Altay Senar’s recruits walk over to her and put his hand upon her arm.

  ‘You, Turgut, Baha and this creature here,’ İkmen said as he looked with contempt at Inspector Erten, ‘tried to kill me. You will all, as far as I’m concerned, face the full force of the law.’

  And then İkmen sat down in his seat again, his face grey with strain, and wept. Dolores Lavell, who was closest to him, put one of her arms round his shoulder until Arto Sarkissian lumbered over to comfort his friend.

  ‘All of this and I didn’t even find Alison,’ he sobbed in English to the Armenian.

  ‘Alison?’

  ‘I had an aunt Alison once,’ Tom Chambers said as he came up behind the policeman and the doctor. ‘She died before I was born. She came to Cappadocia, you know.’

  Chapter 21

  * * *

  Menşure Tokatlı pulled the curtains across her living-room windows, shuddering at the sight of the thick snow outside as she did so. If it went on like this for much longer Çetin, Arto and Atom could be stranded in the village for weeks.

  ‘God, this is amazing!’ Tom Chambers said as he finished his tea and then placed the empty glass down on to the coffee table in front of the fire. ‘Mum’s always wanted to know who it was Auntie Alison fell in love with over here.’

  ‘I didn’t know she loved me myself until recently,’ İkmen replied with a smile at the memory of his old British love on his lips.

  ‘How did you find out?’ the Englishman asked.

  İkmen sighed. ‘That’s a long story, Tom,’ he said. ‘There was another man, an English friend of mine, who loved your aunt. He told me. But what happened to Alison? You say your mother knew her sister came to Cappadocia.’

  ‘My grandparents got a postcard from Ürgüp, yes.’

  ‘As I told you,’ İkmen said, ‘I traced Alison to this area myself. The police in Kayseri made inquiries, but then the trail suddenly went cold as you say.’

  The young Englishman shook his head sadly. ‘She met some blokes out here, white South Africans with lots of money and a car of some sort. Alison’s aim had always been to get to India and these guys offered her a lift. Her body turned up in Peshawar in Pakistan about six months later.’

  ‘But there is no record of her leaving Turkey,’ İkmen said. ‘I checked in those early days. The police in Kayseri kept looking for several years.’

  ‘It’s thought they must have got over the border into Iran illegally. My mum got a postcard from Tehran,’ Tom said. ‘The South Africans were drug dealers, Inspector. People in Pakistan remembered them. Two cheery white blokes and a pretty blonde girl with pink boots. They used Alison to deflect attention away from themselves while they did their deals.’

  ‘But why did she die?’

  ‘The Pakistani authorities believed that Alison didn’t know what her chauffeurs were doing for a long time. Mum said she was a bit naïve. But then she found out and was appalled. Alison didn’t do drugs, Inspector.’

  ‘No, I know,’ İkmen said.

  Tom put his head down a little. ‘Yes. But anyway, the Pakistani police told my grandparents that once Alison knew about the drugs she wouldn’t play these blokes’ game any more and so they killed her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Shot her up with a mega dose of heroin. I imagine the idea was that when she was found the police would think she was just another Western junkie. But my grandparents had been making inquiries in Pakistan for some weeks by that time. She’d written a short note to them from Islamabad. I don’t know whether she knew about the drug dealing by then, but things had certainly turned sour for her by that time. Mum showed me this letter. It’s a sad little thing. It’s how we know about you, actually.’

  İkmen frowned.

  ‘My aunt said that she wanted to go back to Turkey. She said she’d met a man she liked very much in İstanbul. But he was a policeman and he was married with children . . .’

  ‘You know nothing about any of this,’ İkmen said in Turkish to Menşure and Arto. ‘Fatma . . .’

  ‘But if you were never unfaithful to Fatma,’ Arto said, ‘I think you can tell her the truth.’

  İkmen looked his friend very hard in the eyes and said, ‘Do you really think so? Tell me you believe in what you just said.’

  A moment passed after which the Armenian sighed and then said, ‘No, no, you’re right, Çetin. Maybe some things are best left unsaid.’

  ‘And I’ve spoken not a word about it to anyone except you for nearly thirty years, Çetin,’ Menşure Tokatlı said as she sat down beside a slightly bemused Atom Boghosian. ‘I’m not about to start now.’

  İkmen first shook his head and then looked up at the Englishman again and smiled. ‘So does Alison have a grave?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, in a cemetery in Guildford, that’s in Surrey where my grandparents used to live. My mum still visits sometimes, takes flowers . . .’

  Quite suddenly İkmen began to cry. He’d felt fine until that moment but now, maybe because Tom was talking about Alison’s grave, the place where her body was and now always would be, suddenly he could no longer control his emotions. Alison was dead and even though he had really known that she had to have died all along the reality of it hit him hard. Poor Alison, she’d left to continue her journey to India in a state of some agitation. She’d had to rebuff the unwanted advances of İkmen’s English friend Maximillian while at the same time she’d had to tear herself away from the man she did love: himself. If only they had both been single! But not only had İkmen been married, he had also had several children by that time, too. Only once had he kissed the lovely blonde girl with the big pink boots. It was just as she was leaving the city, at her pansiyon. It had been the most passionate moment he had ever shared with any other person apart from Fatma. He still on occasion dreamed about it.

  No one went to İkmen as he cried. Not even Arto felt it was appropriate for him to share in his friend’s misery. Whatever was going on in İkmen’s tired and unhappy head was between himself and what he recalled of this girl he apparently had had such a profound effect upon. Quite how he was holding together at all after the ordeal he had been through out in the valleys, not to mention what he had put himself through up in Menşure’s restaurant, was a mystery to everyone. Atom Boghosian for one could very easily have fallen asleep where he sat. And after a while he did indeed do this while the others just watched anxiously as İkmen cried himself slowly into silence.

  �
��He is your brother’s child!’ Altay Salman hissed through the snow at the heavily bundled-up woman at the door. ‘He is your blood!’

  ‘He’s a devil!’ the elderly woman replied fearfully. ‘Like the father of his murderess mother, he is mad. The woman my brother married has been taken to prison with that eldest devil-child of hers . . .’

  ‘Nalan and Turgut Senar are under arrest at the gendarmerie,’ Altay explained as he watched Sebla Ek’s tiny dark eyes dance nervously above her covered mouth and nose. ‘We can’t get out of the village until the snow clears a little. Then they will be taken to Nevşehir along with Baha Ermis and Inspector Erten.’

  The old woman waved a dismissive hand at the policeman and his vacant-faced charge. ‘I don’t know anything about it, only what my son has told me. Kemalettin made that Alkaya girl pregnant, Nalan has killed and Turgut knew about it. They are all damned.’ She leaned out of her door and forward into the snow a little and whispered, ‘I will be contacting my lawyer, too, you know. I have never been comfortable that my brother died under the care of that woman.’

  ‘Mrs Ek . . .’

  ‘Take the madman away, for the love of Allah!’ she said as she waved them away from her house and then closed the door behind her.

  Altay Salman turned to look at Kemalettin Senar. ‘I’ll have to take you home,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’

  It was three o’clock in the morning and the captain wasn’t happy about leaving Kemalettin, the only remnant of the immediate Senar family not in custody, alone. After what he had heard and with only his mother’s dog for company it was anyone’s guess what he might do either to himself or to the house for that matter. Sebla Ek had been Altay’s last hope. He’d already spoken to every other member of Kemalettin’s family in the village including Turgut’s wife, but none of them wanted to know even though several of the uncles had admitted that they could see why Nalan had done what she had. One had even expressed his gratitude towards her. After all, for a very long time, Nalan had saved the name of Senar from dishonour.