Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘If you were having trouble sleeping, why didn’t you take one?’ the Commissioner asked.

  ‘I don’t take them often.’ Mary looked down. ‘Usually I have to stay alert in case Kelime needs me in the night. But whenever I have a night off or, like last night when Mr Öden was with her, I do take pills to help me sleep. Generally.’

  ‘Why didn’t you on this occasion?’

  ‘I wanted to be alert in case Mr Öden needed me. Kelime was very sick.’

  ‘Does your employer know about your pill habit?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve not told him.’

  ‘No.’ She coloured a little. ‘Mr Öden is a very moral man. He doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs. Maybe I should have told him but I just didn’t know how. Will you tell him?’

  Teker said, ‘No. If you didn’t take them last night then they’re irrelevant to this investigation. But if this situation becomes more serious then maybe that subject will have to be addressed. I suggest you tell him yourself now, Miss Cox.’

  Mary nodded, but she looked extremely anxious. While Ömer Mungun sat with Öden in his lounge, Teker and Süleyman were with Mary in the kitchen. Small, pale and older than she looked, Mary Cox was a career nanny who had been all over the world with ‘her’ children. She’d never married and probably never would.

  Teker and Süleyman had, so far, told Mary nothing about why they needed to know where Öden had been the previous night. But now Teker said, ‘Miss Cox, do you know whether your employer is in a relationship at the moment?’

  Mary looked flustered.

  ‘You may answer without fear and truthfully,’ Teker said. ‘Your employer cannot discipline you for that. They don’t do that.’

  Teker knew that was a lie but she said it anyway. Hundreds of domestic workers were dismissed every year because they gossiped about their employers’ sex lives. But Mary Cox’s continued employment wasn’t her problem.

  Mary, however, shook her head. ‘Mr Öden is a very moral man,’ she said. ‘I have never seen him with any woman apart from the servants and his secretary.’

  ‘And what of them?’ Süleyman asked. ‘Has he . . .’

  ‘Oh, he would never abuse his staff!’ Mary was horrified. ‘No, no, no, no, no!’

  And yet it was well known that on his building sites he was a harsh boss who dismissed men he felt didn’t work hard enough and, it was said, was not above physically abusing them. It was possible he didn’t bring that into his home and also possible that he didn’t prey on his female domestic staff.

  ‘Mr Öden has always said that he will never marry anyone while Kelime is still at home,’ Mary said.

  Teker frowned. ‘Will Kelime ever leave home?’ she said.

  ‘With support she could have her own flat, er, apartment, one day,’ Mary said. ‘I know what a lot of people think about Down’s syndrome individuals but a lot of them can cope. I knew a married couple with Down’s back in England.’

  ‘Did you.’

  When Teker and Süleyman walked back into the salon, Öden said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Miss Cox says that you slept in your daughter’s room last night, Mr Öden,’ Teker said.

  He stuck his chin in the air. ‘I told you so. Why didn’t you believe me?’

  Ömer Mungun drove Teker and Süleyman back to police headquarters. The two uniformed officers followed on behind.

  As they drove through the pretty Bosphorus village of Ortaköy, Teker said to Süleyman, ‘Well, even with my gloves on, I don’t suppose Mr Öden is happy with the treatment I meted out to him. I imagine his lawyer will be on the phone to me in a few hours’ time.’

  ‘Madam, do you think that it’s possible those photographs of him with Mrs Ocal are composites?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘No, of course not! Whether he killed her or not is open to question and we’ll have to wait for forensics to guide us on that,’ Teker said. ‘But he was having sex with her. No question! He was worried and he was guilty.’

  ‘When you both left the room he didn’t say a word to me,’ Ömer said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Nothing. I got the feeling he was embarrassed,’ Ömer said.

  ‘If he’s been caught out in an affair, particularly with an ex-stripper, he probably is embarrassed,’ Teker said. ‘What I want to know is whether he murdered her or not. His political allies can all wring their hands in false shock at his liaison with a “filthy whore”, but we have to catch her killer, and if that is him . . .’

  A group of what looked like young boys in Guy Fawkes masks ran into the road in front of the car carrying an anarchy banner. Ömer slammed on the brakes. The boys stopped, laughed and then ran away. Nobody in the car said anything.

  Semih Öden looked across at his brother with disgust. ‘How could you?’ he said. ‘With a whore! How many people do we know who would have matched you with a clean, pious girl you could have married and had more children with?’

  ‘How could I?’ Ahmet Öden said. ‘With Kelime? How could I bring her a stepmother who might hate her?’

  ‘If the woman hated Kelime, you could divorce her!’

  ‘Or what if we had children, this woman and I, normal children? Would I love them more than Kelime because they are normal? Would I love them more because their mother was not a selfish slut like her mother? Would Kelime just fade into the background of my life and die without my noticing? That is not the right way of things. That is not the Islamic thing to do.’

  ‘And buying an apartment for a cheap gypsy and having sex with her is?’ Semih shook his head. ‘You delude yourself because you want this woman!’

  ‘Who is dead!’ Ahmet stood up and paced the salon. ‘How can she be? I saw her three days ago. Nothing had changed. She didn’t complain about being followed or leered at.’

  ‘She probably liked it.’

  ‘No she didn’t!’ Ahmet bent down to shout into his brother’s face. ‘Gülizar gave herself to me, alone. I did everything for her. Bought her an apartment, her clothes, surgery, I loved her. And before you say anything, my brother, I have built this business, I have given you a job, an apartment and a life of ease. Put this about, tell our friends about this and all that will go.’

  Semih shook his head. ‘I won’t tell anyone, Ahmet, and you know it,’ he said. ‘I just need to understand why because you are my brother.’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why you went with her. I know you didn’t kill her,’ Semih said.

  ‘Good! I just wish the police did.’ Ahmet sat down again. ‘I’d never find anyone as loyal and discreet as Gülizar. Why would I kill her? I know you are a man of the world, Semih. She would do anything sexual. No headaches, no not feeling well. Every time I went to the apartment I left satisfied. And she was beautiful. For as long as she gave me love like that, I would love her, old and wrinkled as she may have become in the end.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Don’t sneer! You don’t know what she was like!’

  ‘Then why aren’t you crying?’ Semih asked. ‘If you loved her so much?’

  Ahmet knitted his fingers underneath his chin. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m in shock?’ He thought for a while, then said, ‘I was always discreet when I went there. I wore a hat and a coat and I kept my head down. Occasionally I spoke to the kapıcı, but only to pass the time of day.’

  ‘Did you know she was taking photographs of you?’

  ‘I knew she had some. She really wanted them. We were apart so often.’

  ‘And yet you deny that you’re in them,’ Semih said.

  ‘I can’t own up to an affair with someone like Gülizar! It would ruin my reputation!’

  Semih leaned in towards his brother. ‘But if you don’t and they prove those photographs are genuine they will think that you killed her.’

  ‘They think I killed her anyway! That woman, Commissioner Teker, is from the east. She’s a devil-worshipping Yezidi.’ His teeth ground and his face contorted. ‘She’l
l do anything to stop people like us. Did you see her at Gezi, giving those hooligans hell? No. She likes them! She’s a commissioner of police and she isn’t doing her duty!’

  Semih said nothing. His brother often had strange ideas about people who opposed him. He’d thought the Greek archaeologist who’d tried to get him to rehouse the rubbish pickers of Gizlitepe was a spy. Now she was dead.

  Ahmet shook his head. ‘So much going on but I can’t let any of this distract me,’ he said. ‘The Negroponte house still has its secret intact and we must take it and destroy it. When the sun comes up you must go to Kadıköy and begin moving some of the larger bulldozers across the Bosphorus. Why leave them there to be destroyed by vandals anyway?’

  ‘But you still haven’t bought the Negroponte house!’

  Ahmet waved a hand dismissively. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I will get into that house and make that man sign it over to me. Even if I have to break his gates and his front door down.’

  Chapter 17

  ‘Mehmet Bey?’

  Süleyman looked up.

  ‘I apologise if I’m disturbing your work,’ İkmen said.

  ‘You’re not.’ Ömer Mungun had gone to Dr Sarkissian’s laboratory to get the Armenian’s preliminary findings on the body of Ayşel Ocal. He pointed to Ömer’s chair. ‘Please have a seat, Çetin Bey.’

  İkmen entered what had once been an office almost as familiar to him as his own. They had spoken since the previous autumn, after Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s death, but only when it had been strictly necessary and usually by telephone. This visit was unusual. Mehmet Süleyman tried not to feel joy or hope. But he smiled.

  ‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

  İkmen took a deep breath. ‘I know that you’re working on the Moda death,’ he said.

  ‘Ayşel Ocal, yes.’

  İkmen took another deep breath. Either he was nervous, or didn’t really want to be there – or both. ‘I’ve heard that last night you interviewed the property developer, Ahmet Öden,’ he said.

  Süleyman sat back in his chair. ‘What if I did?’

  ‘I have an interest in him,’ İkmen said. ‘In relation to the Hippodrome body. He had a dispute with my victim.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Mehmet, did you interview Öden last night or not?’

  Was he being evasive with İkmen just for the sport or had he been told to keep Öden close to his chest? Teker hadn’t wanted Öden brought in – yet – but if she knew that İkmen had an interest too, surely they could discuss the property developer, however ‘sensitive’ his position was.

  Süleyman got up, closed and locked his door, opened his window and offered İkmen a cigarette. He saw İkmen almost refuse and then capitulate. Süleyman sat down and they both lit up.

  ‘We think that Ayşel Öden, otherwise known as Gülizar, was Öden’s mistress,’ Süleyman said. ‘She owned that apartment outright, paid for with cash, and I’ve not met many twenty-something strippers who can do that.’

  He saw İkmen smile.

  ‘Can’t prove, yet, that Öden bought it for her, but photographs of him with her, without her and in various compromising positions were all over her computer and her phone,’ Süleyman went on.

  ‘So much for the saintly among us.’

  ‘He claims that the photographs are composites, created on computer, but he’s clutching at thin air,’ Süleyman said. ‘However, they don’t prove that he killed her. Ömer has just gone to the lab to get Dr Sarkissian’s preliminary report on the body.’

  ‘Found in the bath?’

  ‘Yes, wrists slit, but Dr Sarkissian thinks that she was almost dead when that was done. He’s looking for blows, toxins. What about your own involvement with Öden?’

  İkmen drew on his cigarette. ‘Twofold. One to do with this dispute he had with Dr Ariadne Savva, who set herself up as protector of the rubbish pickers he evicted in Gizlitepe, and another one centred round the old Negroponte House.’

  ‘Is that what some people called the Greek House on Kabasakal Caddesi?’

  ‘Yes. Owned by Madam Anastasia Negroponte, proper old Byzantine, and her son Yiannis.’

  Süleyman frowned. ‘Wasn’t he the one who came back from Germany after forty years or something?’

  ‘That’s him,’ İkmen said. ‘Always been questions about Yiannis. But his mother, if she’s his mother, loves him and that’s all that matters. Öden wants the Negroponte house and he’s been sending his men to rev up bulldozers outside the front door and playing mind games with Yiannis.’

  ‘Has he offered the Negropontes money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lots?’

  ‘It sounds like a lot to me and I expect it would to you as well. But the point is that neither Madam Anastasia nor her son Yiannis want to sell.’

  ‘Well then, Öden can’t—’

  ‘Oh now come on, Mehmet Bey, you know that these developers can do as they please now,’ İkmen said. ‘With the help of compliant advocates, they twist and torture the law into shapes where it’s possible for them to get what they want. And if that fails, they use force. And with the word “progress” on their side, well . . .’

  ‘Öden isn’t going to tear the Negroponte House down, is he?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘He wants to.’

  ‘Why? It’s an historic—’

  ‘He wants to build the best and most luxurious hotel on the Sultanahmet peninsula,’ İkmen said. ‘Make the Four Seasons look like a gecekondu.’

  Süleyman shook his head. If he was honest, he did like some of the new build apartments that were springing up across the city. Provided they weren’t in faux Ottoman style. But he didn’t like them when they were built at the expense of lovely old structures or made already poor people homeless. In his experience that just led to vagrancy, drug abuse and alcoholism.

  ‘How did you get involved with the Negroponte house?’ he asked.

  ‘Their old servant Hakkı Bey called me in. He knows me because I used to go there as a child. My mother would read Madam Anastasia’s cards. Then Mother died and then we had 1955,’ İkmen said. ‘And I know something else you’ve been working on which may relate to that year.’

  ‘You’ve been speaking to Ömer.’

  İkmen shrugged.

  ‘A body found in the Galatasaray Lise gardens,’ Süleyman said. ‘He may date from the awful events of 1955 or he may not. What we do know is that all the fatalities connected with the anti-Greek riots were accounted for long ago. The unusual thing about this unknown man is that his teeth have been extensively capped and filled using high-class materials and with a lot of skill. He wasn’t poor.’

  ‘So he was more likely to be Greek.’

  ‘But all the Greeks have been accounted for,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘A foreign visitor?’

  ‘Ömer has made contact with a dentist whose father was practising in Beyoğlu at the time. He did complicated remedial work for those who could pay. But it was a long time ago and the dentist’s father is dead. She told Ömer she’d try to find what remains of his records from that year if she can.’

  ‘Mmm. Madam Anastasia was badly beaten during the anti-Greek riots,’ İkmen said. ‘Never been the same since. Her husband Nikos was killed. Torn to pieces by the mob.’

  Süleyman shook his head. ‘I must’ve seen his name on a list of the dead. I don’t know whether we’ll ever know who the Galatasaray man was. It may not be possible now. The forensic archaeologist Dr Akyıldız—’

  ‘Ah yes, she worked with my Hippodrome victim on a rather older skeleton,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Oh?’

  He told Süleyman about Ariadne Savva’s find.

  ‘But if no Palaiologi descendants exist then how was she ever going to prove that particular skeleton was that of the last emperor?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘I don’t know and nor, more significantly, does Dr Akyıldız. Savva didn’t tell her.’

  ‘Frustrating.’


  ‘Like so many things in life,’ İkmen said.

  Süleyman wondered if he was referring to him and his behaviour towards women. But he said nothing.

  ‘The main reason I came here this morning was to alert you about my interest in Ahmet Öden,’ İkmen said. ‘And to tell you that if you want to speak to him and he isn’t at home he will in all likelihood be sitting in his car outside the Negroponte House. As you know there are no parking restrictions on the street and so theoretically he can sit there as long as he likes. I know he’s messing with Yiannis’ head, and it’s working. Yiannis is becoming hysterical and, much as I know he is committed to keeping that house, I fear he may sell just to get Öden out of his life. I wish I could do more to help him. But I must tread carefully.’

  ‘We all have to tread carefully with big businessmen,’ Süleyman said. ‘Did you know that when I went out to Öden’s place last night Commissioner Teker came too? In fact she led.’

  İkmen shook his head.

  ‘Apparently I’m not exalted enough to interview a builder on my own.’ Süleyman smiled.

  ‘Makes me want to weep,’ İkmen said. ‘And on top of that I have to be extra careful because I’m also investigating the death of Ariadne Savva, with whom Öden had some issues. I’ve no proof he killed her and, given the fact that her newborn baby was taken from her before she died, I can’t imagine that it was Öden. Why would he want someone else’s baby?’

  ‘Unless it was his.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ İkmen said. ‘Dr Savva was Greek and Mr Öden, I am reliably informed by the Negropontes’ servant Hakkı, comes from one of those families who attacked the Greeks in ’fifty-five. Back to that again. He’s also very vocal about his support for turning Aya Sofya into a mosque. He’s everything the people in Gezi Park hate. And I imagine he’s feeling threatened by what’s happening there.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes. Not that I’ve given it too much thought. My Kemal spends most of his time in Gezi these days while his mother rails against everything it stands for. I’ll be honest, I care, I understand. But I’m more concerned that any moment now I am going to discover a dead baby, because it has to be dead now. And then I’m going to have to tell Mr Savva that on top of the death of his daughter he’s going to have to absorb the death of his grandchild too.’