‘Yes, but . . . how? Weren’t they both armed?’
‘Imagine so,’ Akgunduz said. ‘Had nothing on them when they were found, though. Never seen anything quite like it. The whole place, what used to be a shop, just dripping with blood. Like something out of a splatter movie. It was like Dum had been unzipped.’
‘Unzipped?’
‘Cut from his chin to his groin. The Hungarian’s got no face and also no dick. If it’s a gang hit, that usually ends up in the victim’s mouth. Not this time.’
‘So where is it?’ Süleyman asked.
‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Taken as a souvenir, proof of death, who the fuck knows.’
‘But you think it was a gang hit?’
‘Best explanation so far, man,’ Akgunduz said. ‘Although there’s been no word on Dum being in blood to anyone lately. Locals said they saw a couple of junkies lurking about the place last night. But then you know Yeniköy people. Probably just some kids from religious families looking for a place to fuck.’
Süleyman frowned. ‘A couple as in a man and a woman?’
‘So the aunties of Yeniköy say.’
‘Well then you and I maybe need to talk,’ Süleyman said.
‘Much as I don’t approve of the police, and in spite of the fact that you haven’t bothered to come and see me for years, I do like you,’ Sami Nasi said. ‘And in that spirit I have been looking at anything relating to the Rudolfoğlus.’
Çetin İkmen smiled. Sami was a genuinely unknowable probable charlatan. But he did sometimes know things that others didn’t, and his heart was usually in the right place.
‘One of Grandfather Josef’s many hobbies was recording unusual deaths,’ he said. ‘My father said he always wanted to replicate some of the more lurid examples in an illusion. But he never did, and so I think he was simply just morbidly curious.’
‘Magicians have always been in the business of showing us life and death,’ İkmen said.
‘Yes. But to the point,’ Sami said. ‘In 1931, Josef made notes upon the death of Perihan Rudolfoğlu, minor Ottoman princess and wife of the late Rudolf Paşa.’
‘Interesting. Did this information come from press sources?’
‘No. Josef knew her doctor.’
‘The family doctor?’
‘No, her own doctor. One of those who had worked at the imperial court. I’ll come back to that. Anyway, Perihan Hanım died of kidney failure brought on by septicaemia.’
‘Not uncommon in the days before antibiotics,’ İkmen said.
‘No, but the doctor’s description of how she died is not for those with a weak stomach. Edited highlights include her abdomen swelling to twice its normal size, turning purple and then necrotising, the overwhelming smell of urine in the room where she died, the black pus she vomited, the fact that she became delirious and started screaming about being bewitched. Also she wouldn’t see her own children. Whenever the doctor suggested she might want to say goodbye to them, she went berserk, dragging her fingernails across her face and growling like an animal. The doctor, who was called Kevork Sarkissian – same name as your friend Arto – recorded that it took Perihan a week to die. Josef noted that Kevork told him he wanted to put her out of her misery, but Perihan wouldn’t take anything. All the way through her ordeal she kept repeating that her suffering was deserved.’
Being sick before the discovery of antibiotics had been gruelling and frequently agonising. İkmen’s father had told him all about it. But Perihan Hanım’s death had been particularly gruesome. Kevork Sarkissian, Arto’s grandfather, had been a court doctor and so he must have had access to the best pain control available at the time. But if his patient wouldn’t comply, what was he to do?
Arto obviously had no knowledge of this connection between his grandfather and the Rudolfoğlus or he would have told İkmen.
‘Do you know how Perihan got septicaemia?’ he asked.
‘No. There’s just the account of her illness and then her death, which apparently happened when she had her head down the toilet.’
İkmen only vaguely remembered Arto’s grandfather. But he had known Arto’s father, Vahan, who he recalled had not been the sort of man to throw things away. Both his sons had taken after him. Were Perihan Rudolfoğlu’s medical notes still somewhere in Arto’s vast Bosphorus-side house?
Later, when he couldn’t get hold of Arto, he told his wife about it. She said, ‘You know sometimes, in the old days, when women had abortions, they succumbed to septicaemia. My mother knew women that happened to.’
İkmen thought as he went to sleep that night about how Perihan had been widowed for three years when she died.
Chapter 10
Everything about the scene indicated frenzy. As Süleyman placed each photograph on Teker’s desk, they just got worse.
‘My informants tell me they know nothing,’ said the other man sitting in the commissioner’s office with Süleyman. This was Inspector Ahmet Cıngı, the public face of the organised crime team. ‘They’re lying.’
‘They’re career criminals, of course they lie,’ the commissioner said. ‘The gypsies have recently moved into Yeniköy real estate?’
‘Dum bought a yalı off some desperate paşa’s grandson,’ Cıngı said. ‘The old shop where he was found used to be owned by Armenians. The story is that Dum’s boys just walked in.’
‘Did they secure the property?’
‘They don’t need to. Word gets around in the criminal world. Firms try not to tread on each other’s toes. Usually.’
‘Even in Yeniköy?’ she said. ‘I know it’s not exactly a hotbed of organised crime, Inspector Cıngı, but what about squatters?’
Cıngı shook his head. ‘Commissioner, you know as well as I do that there’s no part of this city that is unaffected by organised crime. And I include what some may regard as legitimate businesses here. İstanbul is for sale and the competition is intense. Only the strong will survive, and there are people who have robust views about gypsies getting any kind of cut.’
‘Given your experience, who would you put in the frame?’ Teker asked.
Cıngı leaned back in his chair. ‘Dum started his criminal career working a car-parking scam with a load of other kids for an old Kurd in Tarlabaşı. Because a Kurd gave him his first break, he always had a soft spot for them. He’d had problems with the nationalist right-wing families; he was a gypsy, so to them he was scum. For his part, he saw them as a bunch of crazy fascists. Problem is that some of them work in the legitimate world now. They have expensive lawyers, and the protection of those who have influence.’
‘Yes, well, it was ever so,’ Teker said. ‘Are you saying that those you suspect are untouchable?’
‘I’m saying it may be problematic. And if none of these people are involved . . .’
‘Disturbing a nest of hornets is always a fearsome prospect,’ she said. ‘And so Inspector Süleyman, over to you . . .’
He looked up from the disturbing photograph.
‘When I spoke to Sergeant Akgunduz last night, he said that local people had reported seeing a man and a woman near the old shop in the last few days,’ he said.
‘Yeah. Auntie talk, you know,’ Cıngı said. ‘They described them as junkies. But I’m not sure they’d know a junkie if they fell over one.’
‘I accept that,’ Süleyman said. His parents lived in the genteel Bosphorus village of Arnavautköy, which was very like Yeniköy inasmuch as it had a large, if dwindling, population of nosy and fearful elderly people. ‘But as you know, Ahmet Bey, I am currently looking for a couple who we suspect may have attacked two individuals on the street. A third killing, which happened on a tram, may have been perpetrated by the same people, but we can’t as yet place such a couple on that vehicle. I’m not saying that Dum’s killing is part of this pattern, if indeed such a pattern exists, but looking at this picture I am struck by the disorganised nature of what happened in Yeniköy. Or rather that is how I’m reading it.’
‘You
know that gang members can create a disorganised scene to give that impression, right?’
‘Of course. But I don’t think we can afford to overlook my investigation,’ Süleyman said. ‘I am desperate to find this couple, and if they did kill Dum and now have firearms that once belonged to him, that doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Got any idea about motivation?’ Cıngı said.
‘None. No connection between the victims as far as we can tell. It appears random. Do you know why Dum went to that property yesterday?’
‘His wife says he was doing a check on all his recent acquisitions.’
‘So maybe he found our couple trespassing on his property.’
‘Maybe.’
Commissioner Teker drummed her fingers on her desktop. It was clear she wanted this meeting to end. She said, ‘I think it would be of benefit to both investigations for you to share information. This would be particularly useful with regard to forensics. Inspector Süleyman, I’d like you to attend the scene of Hasan Dum’s demise. It may be that you can identify something of interest to your investigation while you are there.’
The children wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d tried to hide behind the dustbins in front of the Syriani church, but they’d found him. They’d had help.
Now they were throwing rotten fruit and other stuff that may have been dog shit at him. He put his hands over his head. All he wanted to do was sleep. But they wouldn’t let him. Or rather, the Devil wouldn’t. He could see him standing behind the children, egging them on to torment him.
‘Oh God, but you do set me some tasks,’ Arto Sarkissian said as he embraced his old friend Çetin İkmen. ‘My father’s patients are one thing, but my grandfather’s . . .’
İkmen looked up at the Devil’s House. ‘I spoke to Dr Kötil at the Forensic Institute yesterday. There’s still much to go through, but what he did say was that none of the doors to the apartments appear to have been forced. There’s no sign of a break-in. So whoever got in was let in.’
‘Possibly,’ Arto said. ‘Çetin, even if by some miracle I manage to find my grandfather’s patient notes, what on earth is the significance of how Perihan Rudolfoğlu died? That happened in 1931!’
İkmen shrugged. ‘The siblings were all killed very deliberately,’ he said. ‘Also the killer was apparently let in. So he or she was known, probably. This, to me, all points to intent. They were killed for a reason, and unless they became drug dealers in their dotage or indulged in online gambling, I can’t see how they can have made too many enemies since the 1930s.’
‘Do you know yet who will inherit the house?’ Arto said.
‘Yes. I finally managed to speak to the family lawyer this morning.’
‘And?’
‘Fatima Hanım left it to her brothers,’ he said. ‘In the event of their deaths, everything has been left to the Oriental Club.’
Arto raised his eyebrows. ‘She wasn’t a member, surely?’
‘No, but her father was,’ İkmen said. ‘And he had a lot of power over his children.’
‘You don’t think the club . . .’
‘Not really,’ İkmen said. ‘But of course I can’t absolutely rule it out, since it is a beneficiary. I will have the pleasure of the club later. Just came to show Constable Demirtaş the house. She’s inside with Sergeant Gürsel. What brings you here?’
‘Oh, I’m off duty today,’ the doctor said. ‘I was passing.’
‘Passing? You live on the other side of the Bosphorus.’
‘Passing, in the area, what does it matter?’ Arto said.
A large apartment block was being built next door to Arto’s dignified Ottoman house. He hated being there, especially, as now, when his wife Maryam was staying with her sister in Chicago.
‘I don’t like to ask you to spend time digging through your grandfather’s things, but he did live in your house . . .’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll come and help you.’
‘And have two of us deafened by pneumatic drills, concrete mixers and the banal chatter of men who believe that rich people are better than they are because God has rewarded them with money?’
‘These are the workmen on the site?’
‘Mainly from the Black Sea coast, I am told,’ Arto said.
İkmen shook his head.
‘I will do my best to find what I can,’ Arto said. ‘I don’t ever remember my father talking about any of my grandfather’s patients, except those from his days at Yıldız Palace.’
‘Who did he treat? Not the sultan?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘His doctor was a Byzantine Greek. Grandfather Kevork attended to some of the young princes. Then during the First World War he worked as a field doctor treating our troops in Arabia. When the republic came in, my understanding is that he found work wherever he could. But I never heard him mention Perihan Rudolfoğlu.’
‘She was a princess,’ İkmen said. ‘Minor, admittedly. Don’t know how she was related to the sultan.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Arto said. ‘But for now I’m going to try a new coffee shop I’ve heard about over here.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Apparently it’s full of anarchists.’
İkmen smiled.
They’d finally found a place in İstinye. Home to a vast new shopping mall, this Bosphorus village still had the odd unexplored corner. They’d walked in silence from Yeniköy once they’d changed into the clothes in the rucksack. She’d wanted to just leave what they had been wearing, but Ali had found a plastic bag and shoved it all inside, then strapped it into the rucksack.
They found a gate first, which led to a pile of rubble and a few archways that had once been some sort of public building. They slept in the long dry grass for many hours. When Ali did finally speak, he realised that his voice was hoarse.
‘We’ll need to burn everything.’
She looked up at him from underneath a crumbling arch. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? It’s all covered in blood. We killed people.’
‘That’s the idea,’ she said.
He didn’t reply. She was mad. But it wasn’t as if he’d come into it blind, except of course that love was blind and he loved her.
‘We’ll burn everything and then move on,’ he said. He looked away from her. ‘And I mean everything.’
‘Can you read?’ she said.
The sudden change of subject brought him up short.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you seen anything about us in the newspapers?’
‘I haven’t been looking at newspapers.’
He emptied the bloodied plastic bag out on the ground, then added some pieces of wood that were lying around.
‘Unless you look, we won’t know if we’re famous,’ she said.
It had never occurred to Ali that Elif couldn’t read. But then when they’d first met, all he’d needed to know about her was that she was beautiful and she was in trouble. A pale-eyed, black-haired Kurdish girl was lucrative for the city pimps, who’d made her service fat businessmen from Russia. He’d freed her. What he hadn’t been able to do, however, was cure her addiction. How could he? Ali Erbil had been a heroin addict himself for ten years. They’d used together. They’d stolen from the designer shops his mother frequented in Nişantaşı to feed their habits. Now they were killing and she was loving it. He was helpless.
He put a match to the pile of wood and clothes and watched as it burned away the blood of those men who had terrified him. How had it happened? Ali wasn’t sure. One minute the men were shouting at them; the next, they were dead. Elif had launched herself at them like an animal, screaming, pushing that piece of glass in her hands up through the main man’s stomach, slashing at the other man’s throat as he piled in to help his fellow. They’d both been armed; why hadn’t they shot her? All he could think was that they had been as shocked as he had when it happened. Only when it was over did Ali realise that Elif was laughing. Now she had their guns.
And the penis she had cut from the dead body of the younger, taller man.
‘You must throw that on the fire too,’ he said when she took it out of her pocket. She didn’t want to, but he grabbed it from her and did it himself.
Then he said, ‘We’ll need to move on soon.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere we’ll fit in. I’ve had enough of those posh places.’
She smiled. ‘Tarlabaşı,’ she said.
The sight of those apartments in Moda would haunt Barçın. Even stripped of most of their contents, they had been dark and filthy. Some of the strangest stuff had been taken to a room just down the corridor where, so Sergeant Gürsel had told her, İkmen intended to spend time looking at it. What a strange little man he was. People whispered that he was secular, and yet he used terms like ‘magic’ and ‘alchemy’ and visited, so it was said, some very odd people.
Barçın looked at her desk. The Devil’s House letters had come to her in no particular order, and so every time she picked one up, she had to first search for the date, transcribe it into the Roman calendar, and then find out who was writing to whom. As far as she could tell, none of the letters had been delivered by post. She imagined the four old people slipping letters underneath each other’s doors like naughty children.
She began to read.
My dear Kanat,
I have taken your last, spiteful missive hard, as I imagine I was meant so to do. You accuse me of becoming our ‘foul’ father without for a second wondering why I may do some of the things that Rudolf Paşa did. How you and I could live in the same house and you have no knowledge of Father’s pursuits is beyond me. Those arts that you condemn may be used for ill or for good. My study is of the latter. You know why. Please leave me alone to put right that which you tear yourself apart over every day.
I remain your loving brother,
Kemal
This was dated 12 October 1945. What arts did Kemal mean, if not the art of alchemy? According to İkmen, his apartment had been full of alchemical paraphernalia. But what business was it of Kanat’s if he did that? What was it to him if his brother wanted to try to make ordinary metal into gold? And why should anyone tear themselves apart over it? It seemed that their father Rudolf Paşa had attempted the same thing, possibly through ill means or for a bad purpose. But what did that mean?
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