The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  He opened a big metal box in front of the dressing table mirror. Very thin writing paper sprang out. It was like the stuff people used to write on to send letters by air mail. Thin and so therefore cheaper to post. He picked up a sheet. It was covered in a shaky, pallid scrawl that he found he couldn’t make out. Then he realised it was written in Arabic script.

  Saira let another tram go. It was already hot, and being rammed in with a load of other heavily sweating people was not an attractive prospect. Then there was the way she looked. She had decided to wear the burqa the previous year. Her mother had been horrified, but after Saira had been on the Haj, it had just seemed right. And it had pleased Adnan. Not that her husband had forced her to cover. He hadn’t. But he’d been unable to hide his pleasure when she decided for herself.

  It was almost eleven o’clock. She was due at her in-laws’ apartment in Aksaray. She was going to be late. Even if she phoned them, she knew they’d be suspicious. Tophane to Aksaray wasn’t far and didn’t take that long, but she still wouldn’t get there on time. If only she hadn’t missed the bus from Beşiktaş to Tophane! Her mother-in-law particularly would think she’d been up to no good.

  The tram stopped and several people struggled to get out. Saira pushed her way in.

  ‘It isn’t Arabic, it’s Ottoman.’

  ‘Ottoman?’

  ‘Before Atatürk formulated the new alphabet in 1928, we—’

  ‘Yes, I know what Ottoman script is,’ Kerim Gürsel said. ‘But why is it here?’

  He held up one of the old woman’s letters.

  Constable Kahraman said, ‘Her father was an Ottoman commander.’

  ‘Even the children of the Ottoman elite had to learn the new alphabet, Constable,’ Kerim said.

  Kahraman shrugged. ‘Maybe she didn’t. Locked away in this house . . .’

  ‘And anyway, how do you know Ottoman?’ Kerim sounded surprised; most people considered Kahraman to be a bit ‘lacking’.

  ‘I don’t,’ Kahraman said. ‘I can’t really read it. I just know it when I see it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘My dad knew it,’ he said. ‘My grandfather never learned the new alphabet. He was an imam back home in our village, and all his books were in Ottoman. Dad taught me the alphabet one winter. But I can’t actually translate.’

  İkmen, who had been watching the exchange, took the letter from Kerim’s hand.

  ‘How many of these are there?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ Kerim said. ‘The box on the dressing table was full of them.’

  İkmen handed the letter to Kahraman. ‘Can you make out the signature on this? At least I think it’s a signature.’

  The constable carefully traced some script at the bottom of the page with his finger. Then he said, ‘It’s Kemal Rudolfoğlu.’

  ‘Her brother,’ Kerim said.

  ‘With whom she did not speak,’ İkmen said. ‘I wonder whether she replied to him by letter?’

  ‘Scene of crime have only just started work on the other apartments,’ Kerim said. ‘Do you want any letters like this kept to one side?’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘They may signify nothing of any importance, but if Fatima and Kemal were communicating by letter, I want to know what they were communicating about.’

  ‘You’ll have to get someone who can read Ottoman properly,’ Constable Kahraman said.

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen shook his head. ‘You know, the only time I have ever seen anyone write using the Ottoman script was when I once saw Dr Sarkissian’s father write a note to his ancient gardener. Sadly that was fifty years ago and Vahan Sarkissian is long dead.’

  ‘What shall we do, sir?’ Kerim asked.

  ‘Well, I understand that the government wants to put the learning of Ottoman back on the educational curriculum, but we can’t wait for that,’ İkmen said. ‘I imagine we’ll have to call upon an academic. Let’s see how many of these letters turn up, and then I’ll decide what to do next. If you find any letters in modern Turkish, keep those separate.’

  He walked out of the old woman’s bedroom. Kerim sent Constable Kahraman back to his duties in Fatima Rudolfoğlu’s bathroom.

  The boy was a living caricature. Raving, foaming at the mouth and occasionally laughing, he was a typical madman. Commissioner Hürrem Teker was deeply suspicious.

  ‘If ever I saw someone playing at being mad, that is it,’ she said as she closed the viewing hatch in the cell door.

  Mehmet Süleyman, whose ex-wife Zelfa had been a psychiatrist, had thought that way too – at first. But so far there was no forensic evidence that connected the boy to Ali Baykal’s killer. And Süleyman was now inclined to believe in the young man’s madness.

  ‘I have to say that he looks genuine to me, madam,’ he said.

  ‘And apparently to Dr Güven.’ Teker shook her head. ‘Psychiatrists are, I have to admit, a mystery to me. Why do you think this boy in genuine, Mehmet Bey?’

  ‘Apart from the lack of forensic evidence?’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘So far,’ he agreed. ‘It’s the way he looks at these entities he claims to see. All I can say is that I feel he really does see them. He follows them with his eyes. There’s a communication. I’m no expert, but I’ve seen enough of this behaviour in the past to get a notion of what is genuine and what isn’t.’

  He was alluding to his ex-wife, but Teker didn’t refer to Dr Zelfa Halman. One didn’t.

  ‘You think the boy sees the Devil?’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Süleyman replied.

  ‘You don’t believe in the Devil?’

  Teker was well known for her lack of religious conviction, but in spite of that, Süleyman knew that his answer needed to be politic.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I believe that evil exists. In this job it’s impossible not to believe that. But whether it is personified, I can’t say. I have no evidence for it.’

  ‘Except this boy.’

  ‘No. He sees something you and I don’t see. What I’m saying is that it’s real to him. He’s not faking. That’s what Dr Güven has observed.’

  ‘Mmm. I presume you know that the house I attended with Çetin Bey yesterday is called the Devil’s House?’

  ‘Çetin Bey mentioned it, yes,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Yes, he’s very comfortable with the occult,’ she said. ‘Rather in his element.’

  She began to walk away, but then she stopped.

  ‘Maybe have Inspector İkmen take a look at your boy, Mehmet Bey,’ she said. ‘Given his close relationship with things not of this world, I would be interested to see what he thinks.’

  Süleyman bowed. ‘Madam.’

  The covered woman had fallen out of the tram when a great crowd of people got off at Zeytinburnu. At first no one dared touch her, and so she lay on the platform surrounded by confused onlookers. Her face was completely covered and so no man even attempted to go to her. It was only when an equally heavily veiled woman whispered to the uncovered woman beside her, ‘I don’t think she’s breathing,’ that anyone dared investigate.

  This woman, a tired middle-aged seamstress, got down on her hands and knees and located the woman’s face without compromising her modesty. She put her hand against what she had to assume was an open mouth. Then she said, ‘No, she’s not breathing. Get an ambulance.’

  A man took his phone out of his pocket while a woman from the back of the crowd pushed her way forward.

  ‘I’m a nurse.’

  She knelt down on the ground beside the woman and began to remove her burqa. Some people gasped, but she ignored them. Once she’d uncovered the woman’s arms, she felt for a pulse. There was nothing. She ripped the cloth away from the woman’s face, then she tilted her head back and lifted her chin in order to clear her airways. She placed her cheek beside the woman’s mouth, but there was no sign of breath. Onlookers began to move in to see what she was doing.

  ‘Keep out of the way!’ she yelle
d. ‘Has someone called an ambulance?’

  A man’s voice said, ‘Yes.’

  The nurse began chest compressions, but in the almost certain belief that this was too little, too late. She’d seen bodies like this woman’s before. Sudden Adult Death Syndrome was more common than people thought. She looked at the face that had been behind the burqa, and was horrified by how young it looked.

  Chapter 4

  ‘I didn’t like Dr Tanis,’ Arto Sarkissian said.

  Çetin İkmen drained his gin and tonic and said, ‘Another?’

  Arto threw the last of his rakı down his neck. ‘Why not?’

  The Mosaik Bar was only a minute from İkmen’s apartment in Sultanahmet and had been his favourite watering hole for years. Even his cat, Marlboro, frequented the Mosaik, sitting on a stool beside his master and eating small pieces of fish donated by the staff. İkmen called one of the waiters over and ordered more drinks.

  ‘If he’d owned up and said that he hadn’t seen Fatima Rudolfoğlu for decades, I could have had some respect for him,’ Arto continued. ‘But he lied. Said he’d seen her to review her medication in April.’

  ‘How do you know he didn’t?’

  ‘Because Fatima Hanım was diabetic and he didn’t know,’ Arto said. ‘And I spoke to the prescribing pharmacist, who told me that none of her prescriptions have changed in over a decade.’

  ‘Sure the pharmacist doesn’t have personal stuff with the doctor?’

  Their drinks arrived, together with a small plate of anchovies for Marlboro, which İkmen put on the table so that the cat could eat alongside him.

  ‘I can’t be sure, no,’ Arto said. ‘But that still doesn’t account for missing Fatima Hanım’s diabetes. She could have had it for years. The man’s a disgrace!’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘That four extremely elderly people should be murdered in their own homes is a disgrace too,’ he said. He lit a cigarette. ‘Arto, can you read Ottoman? I know your father could . . .’

  ‘My father was an Ottoman,’ Arto said. ‘But I’m not, and so, no. My brother and I were brought up to be modern boys. You know that! Is this about those letters you found?’

  ‘According to the one officer we have who can just about make out the Ottoman alphabet, it seems that the Rudolfoğlu siblings wrote to each other a lot.’

  ‘How would you define “a lot”?’

  Marlboro hissed at a smaller, dirtier cat underneath the table and then very extravagantly ate a piece of fish. İkmen smiled. ‘We’re still collecting the letters,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea whether having some of them translated will shed any light upon the Rudolfoğlus’ deaths. But if we can find out why they were at odds with each other, maybe that will provide us with some clues.’

  ‘Forensics will take some time,’ the doctor said. ‘There’s a huge amount of material.’

  ‘Including the accoutrements of alchemy,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Yes, I saw your face light up. Do you think Kemal Rudolfoğlu actually practised it, or did he just like said accoutrements?’

  ‘I saw traces of what could have been chemical substances in some of the jars,’ İkmen said. ‘But whatever it was had desiccated, and so who knows when that equipment was last used?’

  Arto shook his head. ‘I remembered the name of the alchemist back in Üsküdar today. It was Manolis. Can’t recall any surname. My father just used to call him Manolis Bey.’

  ‘Do you know what he and your father used to talk about?’

  ‘Not really, although I have realised as I’ve got older that Father suffered far more from depression than we knew. I think he didn’t understand his place.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, on the one hand he was a Turkish patriot. He was devoted to Atatürk and the republic. But as an Armenian, was that right? In view of what is said to have happened to us in 1915? I know some of our relatives called my father a traitor. I also know that your father, Çetin, frequently defended my father to the Turks.’

  Whether or not the deportation and slaughter of over a million Armenians back in 1915 had been genocide perpetrated by the then Ottoman government was a topic that was still hotly debated. In the confusion and bloodshed of the First World War, it was well known that some Armenians had sided with the empire’s Russian enemies. Some said that Armenians had even gone so far as to kill their Turkish neighbours. But had the Ottoman government ordered their destruction? Many believed they had, including some Turks.

  ‘And how do you think Manolis the alchemist helped your father with that dilemma?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘I don’t know that he did. Maybe they just talked, one outsider to another.’

  İkmen noticed that Marlboro was looking at a small female cat with lust in his eyes. He distracted him with anchovies while she slipped away. ‘I’ll have to get you done,’ he told the cat.

  Arto raised his eyes. ‘You’ve been threatening him with castration for years. Either do it or don’t. I know you won’t.’

  ‘I am all talk, aren’t I?’ İkmen said as he rubbed the cat’s ragged head. ‘I don’t remember the alchemist as you do, Arto, but I do know that turning base metal into gold is only part of the alchemical story. The true magic of alchemy is the elevation of the soul to a higher level of enlightenment via study, experiment and the intercession of magical beings, both good and bad. Alchemy requires patience, dedication, solitude and a cavalier attitude to being misunderstood by most people.’

  ‘The Üsküdar alchemist was a bit of an oddity, as I recall,’ Arto said.

  ‘Yes, he was. As were apparently the Rudolfoğlu siblings,’ İkmen said. ‘Locked away in that old house for decades on end . . .’

  ‘Do you think their father really was evil?’

  ‘I don’t know. He may have been just another misunderstood alchemist. Perhaps he was an amateur chemist. We’re talking about the beginning of the twentieth century, when most people still believed in devils, demons and djinns.’

  ‘Some still do.’

  ‘Yes. Not that I am interested in Rudolf Paşa. It’s his suddenly murdered children that intrigue me. As far as I can tell at the moment, the four siblings lived in harmony until their mother died. After that – silence. Now this.’

  ‘Someone must have broken in,’ Arto said.

  ‘Yes, but why? Even local people are barely aware of the existence of that house, much less the story behind it. According to Fatima Hanım’s cleaner, none of the old woman’s jewellery appeared to be missing.’

  ‘Unless she took it herself.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘We will see. But if she did take the jewellery, why kill the old men?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘We’ve found very little cash. The cleaner went to the bank for Fatima Hanım, while that Osman character occasionally took money out for Yücel Rudolfoğlu. How the other old men managed, I don’t know. Maybe they went out occasionally? I’ve yet to hear from Ziraat Bank about their accounts.’

  ‘They all banked with Ziraat?’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen lit a cigarette. ‘You know, stabbing someone in the heart is a very deliberate and often symbolic act. It kills a person immediately. To do that to four members of the same family has to mean something.’

  ‘But by your own admission, Çetin, the world had largely forgotten the Devil’s House and its occupants.’

  İkmen stroked Marlboro’s head again. ‘Largely, but not completely,’ he said. ‘Someone knew them. Someone knew or thought they knew something very alarming about them.’

  The dead woman was called Saira Öymen, and according to her husband, she had suffered from a heart murmur. It was unusual for a young person to die from such a condition, but not unknown. She had been in a very stressful and confined environment when she died. But the police, who had brought her to the hospital from the Zeytinburnu tram stop, where she had been discovered, did not suspect foul play. Saira Hanım had been a good, pious, quiet woman who had simply been going to visit her in-laws.
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br />   But neither her virtue nor her known heart condition meant that Saira Hanım’s body could avoid an autopsy. Even though he was, in line with Islamic tradition, desperate to bury his wife, Adnan Öymen told Dr Şahin Uslu the truth. She hadn’t seen a doctor for months. There had to be an investigation.

  Dr Uslu had been a pathologist all his working life, so he knew that an external examination of a corpse was often just as informative as any internal observation. For instance, it was often possible to see whether a person had liver damage just by looking at the colour and condition of their skin. Dr Uslu removed Saira Öymen’s clothing, which he handed to his assistant.

  She’d been an attractive young woman. Slim, red-haired, and fair-skinned underneath the bruising that marked her torso and her left thigh. Dr Uslu wondered, as he often did when he was looking at a heavily bruised female corpse, whether her husband had hit her where it wouldn’t show. Not that it would show anywhere if a woman was covered. Unless he discovered that the bruising had played a part in the woman’s death, he wouldn’t mention it to the husband. There wasn’t much point. If Adnan Öymen was the sort of man who hit women, he wouldn’t change just because a doctor told him off. Wife-beating was all too common, which was sad and awful, and Dr Uslu shook his head at the thought of it.

  ‘Everything all right, Doctor?’ his assistant asked.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  Şahin Uslu’s father had hit his mother. A so-called modern man, pro-Western, anti-religion, Kemalist, he had beaten her into brain damage. It wasn’t something easily forgotten, even though Şahin had tried.

  Saira Öymen had been punched in the stomach, but the bruises just above her pelvis were not new. In fact her entire torso was discoloured by bruising that all looked slightly faded. Not so the top of her left leg, which was marked by one large, heavy dark purple bruise. He lowered his head to look at this more closely, which was when he saw the puncture wound.