The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘I apologise. I meant no offence.’

  The young man said nothing.

  ‘Did any of your family see anyone who might have attacked your father?’ Süleyman asked.

  Richard paused. Then he said, ‘To be honest with you, Inspector, I’ve not even asked my mother. At first she just screamed and cried, and now all she does is sleep.’

  Mrs Oates had needed to be sedated after her husband’s death.

  ‘Uncle Ben was walking alongside my dad when he was stabbed. But he says he didn’t see it happen.’

  ‘Did he notice anyone walk close to your father?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. Then he frowned. ‘Mind you, there was a kid . . .’

  Gila Saban had said there had been two.

  ‘He was sort of skipping along the pavement. Coming towards us. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, because he was just a kid. He must have passed us . . .’

  ‘At the same time as your father was stabbed?’

  He shook his head. ‘Around then,’ he said. ‘Sort of . . . I didn’t take much notice, because I was looking at Seraglio Point. The only reason I think I remember him at all is because of his eyes. Really, really pale, you know, quite . . . well, off-putting.’

  Chapter 8

  Dear sister,

  This is my annual Bayram letter. Again I ask with hope in my heart that you might finally comply with my request that can only be to the benefit of your soul. If it is the will of Allah that I outlive you, I will tell the entire tale, leaving no detail unexposed. I will not be mindful of the wishes of our brothers, Kanat and Kemal, as I have always been mindful of yours. I do not know whether they are aware that, on occasion, I can hear them both. These aural observations have left me in little doubt that Kanat lives in a hell of grief, while Kemal is become the kind of madman you and I both know only too well.

  Fatima Hanım, I beg you to end this. Free our brothers, me and yourself before it is too late. You know what it is you must do. Did I not say this on that very first day? In spite of everything I remain your most affectionate brother,

  Yücel Paşa

  Barçın Demirtaş rubbed her temples. Deciphering official documents in Ottoman script was hard enough, but the spidery handwriting of a very old man made it doubly difficult. Then there was the content, which was disturbing.

  Prior to this, she’d transcribed a letter from Fatima Hanım to Yücel Paşa, which seemed to tell a very different story, full of cheerful and seemingly heartfelt allusions to her affection for her brother. But Fatima’s letter had also been a plea. She wanted to see her ‘soul’ Yücel and look upon his handsome face once again before she died. If only he would just open the door to his apartment and let her inside, then all would be well and they would be happy again. From the dates on the letters it seemed she’d written hers about a week before his request that she do something to free them all.

  A knock on her office door temporarily interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Come in.’

  She heard the door open and then close. Turning around, she saw two men, both smartly dressed. The younger and darker of the two had the kind of slanted eyes she was accustomed to seeing in the east. The older, taller man was a type of person rarely seen outside western Turkey. Slim and muscular, he too had black hair, dappled with flecks of grey, but his features, though large, were sensual, his eyes a little sleepy. Barçın had a good idea who he was because Turgut had told her that one of the homicide inspectors was ‘thought to be handsome’. As usual, Turgut hadn’t a clue. Barçın felt herself blush for the first time in years. Her attraction to him was instant.

  ‘Constable Demirtaş?’ the taller man said.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, but I thought that since we are neighbours, we should introduce ourselves. I am Inspector Mehmet Süleyman, and this is my sergeant, Ömer Mungun.’

  She stood up and shook their hands.

  ‘I believe that Sergeant Gürsel has told you that if you have any problems while he and Inspector İkmen are out, you are welcome to come to either Sergeant Mungun or myself.’ He smiled.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mehmet Bey,’ she said.

  ‘No problem.’ He walked over to her desk.

  ‘These are the letters?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He looked at Sergeant Mungun. ‘Ömer?’

  Mungun picked up one of the letters and frowned. ‘Difficult handwriting,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘Nightmare.’

  He smiled. ‘I could probably transliterate,’ he said. ‘But Ottoman is not Arabic . . .’

  ‘I know,’ Süleyman said, a little high-handedly, she thought. ‘Sergeant Mungun is from Mardin, so he can speak, read and write many languages.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I come from Diyarbakır.’

  Sergeant Mungun’s sallow complexion turned bright red. What did that mean? Was he embarrassed that they were both from the east?

  ‘I, er, must confess that I knew you came from Diyarbakır. Sergeant Gürsel told me,’ Ömer Mungun said. ‘Um, he also told me that you like mirra.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

  ‘We, um, that is my sister and I, we make it at home. I can bring you some.’

  ‘That’s really kind,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘But in the meantime, we have work to do, Sergeant Mungun,’ Süleyman said. He bowed slightly. ‘Constable Demirtaş.’

  ‘Oh, er, thank you for your time, Mehmet Bey,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  When the men had left, Barçın sat down at her desk again. Her heart was beating fit to burst, and she was hot and exhausted. She’d never felt such a severe rush of lust in her life. And he was so meticulously polite! She breathed slowly to calm her nerves. What he had also been, however, was entirely disengaged. He’d agreed to look after her for Inspector İkmen, which he would do in an honourable manner. No more, no less. Sergeant Mungun, on the other hand, had looked at her the way she had looked at Süleyman.

  Barçın allowed herself a moment to steady her nerves, then she went back to the letters.

  ‘İkmen.’

  He took the call as he was walking towards Kabataş ferry terminal. He was on his way to meet Kerim Gürsel at the old Koço restaurant in Moda.

  ‘Çetin Bey, this is Murad Peker from Ziraat Bank,’ the caller said. ‘You requested information about the financial status of the Rudolfoğlu siblings.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I have emailed you full details, but I thought you’d like to know that, in short, the three brothers were effectively destitute.’

  ‘Destitute?’

  ‘For decades,’ he said. ‘Only Fatima Hanım had an income. She made monthly allowances to each of her brothers.’

  ‘But they never spoke!’ İkmen said.

  ‘Maybe not, but money was transferred from her account to each of her brothers on the twenty-seventh of every month,’ Mr Peker said.

  ‘And where did she get money from?’ İkmen said.

  ‘From her father, or rather her father’s investments. Rudolf Paşa bought shares in the 1890s in a German auto company called Daimler, which later became Mercedes Benz.’

  ‘Fortunate. And he left all of those shares just to his daughter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How strange.’

  ‘I thought you’d find that interesting,’ Mr Peker said. ‘You might also like to know that she was sole owner of the house, too. You may wish to pursue that through the family lawyer.’

  ‘I will,’ İkmen said. ‘Thank you.’

  He boarded the Kadıköy ferry deep in thought. If Fatima Rudolfoğlu had been the only beneficiary of her father’s legacy, why had she even allowed her brothers to live in the house? Maybe the letters Constable Demirtaş was transcribing would shed some light on the matter. He was also very keen to speak to the family’s lawyer, although Erdal Bey o
f the high-end firm of Kenter and Kenter was, apparently, still on his way back from his holiday in Hawaii.

  İkmen sat down next to a sad-looking man of about his own age whose clothes smelt of stale cigarettes and rakı. They looked at each other briefly, acknowledged a fellow weary attitude to life with a nod and then looked out of the ferry window.

  There were two basic ways in which what Rudolf Paşa had done could be viewed. Either his daughter was his favourite to the exclusion of all others, or for some reason he hated his sons. And what of his Turkish wife? As far as İkmen knew, the children had all been minors when their father died; why hadn’t he left his worldly goods to her? Or had he? All he knew about Rudolf Paşa’s wife was that she had been an Ottoman princess called Perihan. He didn’t know when she had died, or how. In fact, he realised, he didn’t know how the Paşa had met his end either.

  Bilal was anxious, and so he was smoking again. He hated himself for it, but his wife was relieved. He had been unable to go out and look for work that morning. Now he was sitting on the sofa, curled up in front of the TV set.

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so calm,’ he said to his wife when she sat down beside him. ‘You’ve seen CSI. They’ll know I’ve been in there.’

  Selin İnce had always known she was much more intelligent than her husband.

  ‘That’s a television programme,’ she said. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘The tests and all that are,’ Bilal said. ‘That’s what the police do now. They’ll know I’ve been in Fatima Hanım’s apartment, I tell you!’

  ‘Months ago, yes,’ Selin said. ‘I’ve cleaned since then; time has passed.’

  ‘They still might find a hair or something. Selin, they made me give a sample for DNA. DNA! If that matches to a hair they find in the old woman’s apartment . . .’

  ‘It means what? That you’ve been to the workplace of your wife. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Well, yes, I—’

  ‘You came with me one day because Fatima Hanım wanted her bedroom window frame nailed shut,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘Oh, I just hate having dealings with the police,’ he said. ‘That İkmen character made me nervous.’

  ‘Well, I have to prepare mantı for tonight’s dinner,’ Selin said. ‘Not all of us can just sit about. Pull yourself together. The old witch was nothing to you. Forget her.’

  She went into the kitchen and shut the door.

  Bilal curled into a ball and wondered whether it would have been better to tell İkmen about how he’d repaired Fatima Hanım’s window. But he already knew the answer to that question.

  The hospital’s test results were identical to his own. The victim, twenty-four-year-old Saira Öymen, had died from a dosage of heroin of about 100 milligrams. Not enough to kill a seasoned addict, but plenty to put an end to a non-user. In addition, the drug had been cut with caffeine. In a person with mild heart arrhythmia, like Saira, could that too be significant? A concentrated dose of caffeine could lead to uncomfortable palpitations, but it was unlikely that would have killed her. Combined with heroin, however, it had proved lethal.

  Arto Sarkissian was surprised that Saira hadn’t vomited, especially when she became unconscious. But then there had been little in her stomach to bring up. It was also quite possible that the unaccustomed heroin had depressed her system so severely she had rapidly lost consciousness and stopped breathing at the same time. Even then she could still have been sick, but . . .

  Mehmet Süleyman finally answered the call and Arto gave him his results and opinions. When he’d finished, he asked, ‘Have you questioned her husband yet?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a somewhat stiff-necked individual, but there’s no evidence he was on that tram – he has an alibi – and I can also say that he is almost certainly not a user. What I cannot understand,’ Süleyman continued, ‘is why anyone would kill someone using heroin. If the killer is a user himself, then why would he waste his own drug? And if he isn’t an addict, why go to the bother of getting hold of heroin in order to kill? We’ve so far had two other seemingly random killings in the city, neither of which has employed heroin as a weapon.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Arto said. ‘All I can tell you is that a heroin overdose can take hours to kill a user, but this, at most, took half an hour because she wasn’t an addict.’

  ‘So when do you think she died?’

  ‘I’ve looked at the CCTV footage from the tram, but unfortunately, like Sergeant Mungun, I can’t see her demeanour change because she is covered. Also, her body is held up by all the other passengers. But we know she got on the tram alive and we know it takes roughly forty-five minutes to get from Kabataş to Zeytinburnu. She was dead on arrival, so assuming the drug took half an hour to kill her, we’re looking at the attack happening ten to fifteen minutes after she boarded. Do you have no witnesses, Inspector?’

  ‘Only the woman who attempted to give her CPR, a nurse,’ he said. ‘You know how reluctant people are to come forward these days.’

  ‘Sadly, I do.’ Arto shook his head. Was İstanbul really becoming emotionally colder as it grew in size? He didn’t know. ‘I’ll email you my report,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  Arto put the phone down. What was happening in his city? Why were apparently innocent people being killed for no clear reason?

  ‘Well,’ İkmen said, ‘I must say that this case is revealing my appalling ignorance of İstanbul heritage. I almost feel as if I should hang my head in shame.’

  Kerim Gürsel had met him at the Koço restaurant and then taken him to the ayazma of St Katherine. It was his first visit to the shrine.

  ‘The ayazma is a Greek Orthodox shrine,’ Kerim said. ‘The people at Koço care for it on a day-to-day basis, but it is administered from the Aya Triada church on Bahariye Caddesi. I wanted you to see it so that you would understand my confusion over a story I’ve been told about this place.’

  ‘Concerning the Rudolfoğlus?’

  ‘Yes. A long-time local resident I met last night told me that when Kemal Rudolfoğlu was a boy, he reckoned about thirteen, he was caught desecrating this shrine by trying to dig up the floor.’

  ‘Did he know when, exactly?’

  ‘No. The reason I’ve brought you here, sir, is so you can see how solid this floor is.’

  İkmen looked down at the stone slabs beneath his feet.

  ‘So I’m here to disprove this person’s story?’

  ‘No,’ Kerim said. ‘Not necessarily. Kemal was young and the floor is very hard, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t try to pull the slabs up. What I . . . what we don’t know is why.’

  ‘And Kemal is dead,’ İkmen said. ‘Although we think he practised alchemy and we have been told that his father pursued a dark path. I’ve actually had that confirmed this morning. It’s possible he followed in his father’s footsteps, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, and we may also have some further corroboration,’ Kerim said. ‘I’ve arranged to meet with a priest at the Aya Triada at two o’clock. First thing this morning, I performed a search for someone with the surname Apion, but nothing came up. If the man I spoke to last night can be believed, Kemal Rudolfoğlu was prevented from damaging this place by someone called Konstantinos Apion, who was the Rudolfoğlus’ gardener.’

  ‘Long dead.’

  ‘Yes, but my source told me that he believes his son still lives in the city.’

  ‘And yet it seems not . . .’

  ‘On the face of it, yes,’ Kerim said. ‘But you and I both know that a lot of Greek and Armenian families changed their surnames to ones that were more, well, Turkish.’

  They had. Especially in the wake of attacks on Greek property in 1955.

  İkmen nodded.

  ‘I hope this priest, Father Anatoli, might be able to help. He does know the Devil’s House.’

  It was dark and damp inside the little sh
rine. İkmen could hardly make out the faces on the ikons in their glass cabinets. Although it provided some cool relief from the heat of the day outside, it was a melancholy place and he wanted to leave.

  ‘We’ll return to the crime scene and then go to see your priest at two,’ he said. ‘Who was your informant, by the way?’

  ‘An old man called Rauf Karadeniz. He used to be a lawyer. Not criminal. A little odd.’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Told me he lives with a fish he calls Zenobia. I don’t know what kind of fish. I didn’t dare ask, to be honest.’

  ‘This city has always been a hotbed of eccentricity,’ İkmen said. ‘I once had to go to a house in Sultanahmet where the resident, a young and rather pretty woman, had dug out a swimming pool in her basement for her twenty Van cats. She had entirely undermined the foundations of her neighbour’s property.’

  Kerim shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know the name Karadeniz,’ İkmen said. He began to walk towards the exit. ‘Come along, let’s get out of here. We need to talk about the Rudolfoğlus’ finances.’

  Commissioner Teker didn’t look up from her computer screen. But she knew that Süleyman had arrived, because she told him to sit down.

  He sat. Then she looked at him.

  ‘Three people have been murdered in public and you have let your only suspect go,’ she said.

  ‘With your approval, madam. The boy couldn’t possibly have killed victims two and three because he was in custody at the time.’

  ‘And yet he could have killed the boy in the Grand Bazaar,’ she said.

  ‘There was no evidence to connect him to that victim – except his very florid insanity. I couldn’t hold him just for that.’

  ‘And so what do we do now, Mehmet Bey?’ She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘People – and I include myself in that category – are beginning to wonder whether we have even the faintest idea about who we are looking for. Do we?’

  A man and what could have been either another man or a woman could just be made out from CCTV in the bazaar, and the one witness to the attack on the Englishman on the Galata Bridge had talked about seeing a boy and a girl messing around in the vicinity. The attack on the tram had no useful CCTV footage and no witnesses.