‘Disappointing,’ İkmen said.
‘Maybe.’
‘What do you mean?’ İkmen asked.
‘Well I don’t think he was telling the truth.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I saw recognition in his eyes,’ Süleyman said. ‘And also his demeanour has changed completely since we visited Moda. As I said before, he’s gone silent on me. Silent and motionless, to be exact. I fear he may be trying to convince me that his psychiatric assessment was incorrect.’
‘He’s attempting to pull a mad one,’ İkmen said.
‘Exactly.’
İkmen shook his head. ‘So common,’ he said. ‘They finally realise that prison with all its attendant horror may be in the offing and decide that going mad is probably the best way out of it.’
‘And in this case the psychiatrist has declared Ali Erbil’s girlfriend and partner in crime really mad,’ Süleyman said.
‘So even more incentive.’
‘Absolutely,’ he said.
The mortuary refrigerator made a very low-level humming noise. It wasn’t supposed to, but it was old and needed to be replaced. A chest of drawers of the dead. Arto Sarkissian found himself staring at it after Çetin İkmen’s call. Fatima Rudolfoğlu’s body was in number four.
He’d still been wrestling with the horror of what he’d found when İkmen rang. When he’d written his preliminary report on the woman, he hadn’t been sure. Now he was; in fact he’d known for some days. He simply hadn’t been able to write it down. Putting it on paper, baldly, in black and white, diminished it.
Fatima Rudolfoğlu had been a mother. The child had been delivered by Caesarean section, which made sense given the age Çetin İkmen had said was most likely, assuming that her father had impregnated her. Nine. Not that he could be entirely sure she’d been that young.
Arto wondered who had performed the section. His grandfather? If he had, surely that would have traumatised him much more than the deaths of Perihan Hanım and her baby? Maybe he hadn’t attended Fatima? But if he hadn’t, then who had? And why hadn’t that doctor also attended Perihan Hanım’s pregnancy?
Kevork Sarkissian had been a quiet old man. Arto remembered him as a presence in his father’s drawing room rather than an active member of the household. He’d been kind and affectionate to Arto and his brother Krikor. It was difficult to imagine him doing anything that would cause harm. Perhaps he had and perhaps he hadn’t. Çetin İkmen had asked Arto to speculate about whether his grandfather might have killed Perihan Hanım’s baby, but he couldn’t. It was too painful. Only concrete evidence could convince him that Kevork Sarkissian had been capable of that. He’d told İkmen, who had suggested that maybe Constable Demirtaş might come to the Peacock Yalı and help him search for his grandfather’s papers. Her Ottoman transliteration skills were becoming stretched.
However, it was what İkmen hadn’t said that had really struck home. A well-off Armenian doctor at the end of the First World War would have been a person at risk. Most Turks would have assumed that such a person would have welcomed the British, French and Greek occupying powers. Some had. But Arto’s father always said that the Sarkissian family had kept its collective head down. When work came along, his father did it, and when it didn’t, the family suffered.
Various scenarios came to mind, up to and including the idea that maybe Perihan Hanım had paid Kevork Sarkissian a very large sum of money to destroy her child and keep his mouth shut. From the little he knew about his grandfather, Arto couldn’t see it. But then he hadn’t been there. His father had never pretended that their family had suffered as much as some after the First World War. Many of the poorest had starved. But he had occasionally talked about how cold they had all been in the winter, about the servants who had been let go due to lack of money, and of the sight of the Sarkissian women scouring the streets for wood to burn, dressed in little more than rags. Had his grandfather committed the ultimate sin for money? Or had the Rudolfoğlus simply threatened to point the finger at the Sarkissians as traitors and then wait for those maddened by war wounds and hunger to destroy them?
Arto had never hated his job before. This was a new experience for him.
The caretaker had told him that Father Anatoli was at home. İkmen tried ringing his mobile one more time from outside the church, and then told Kerim to drive to Yusuf Kamil Paşa Sokak. He’d imagined that a priest had to live next door to his church, but apparently Father Anatoli and his wife lived in an apartment.
Yusuf Kamil Paşa Sokak was famous for the Barış Manço Museum. One of the few Ottoman houses left in the area, it was where the originator of Anatolian rock music and national treasure Barış Manço had lived until his death in 1999.
‘I used to love his TV show in the nineties,’ Kerim said. ‘From 7 to 77 on TRT 1.’
İkmen smiled. Although entirely disapproving of Manço’s long hippy hair, his wife had been a big fan, and had watched his music and chat show religiously for its entire eight-year run.
However, it wasn’t Barış Manço’s elegant house that captured İkmen’s attention as they drove down Yusuf Kamil Paşa Sokak, but the police car outside the apartment block opposite.
İkmen and Kerim Gürsel showed their badges to a uniformed officer standing beside the car.
‘We’re going to apartment number five,’ İkmen said.
‘You were called too?’ the constable said.
An ambulance pulled up behind İkmen’s car.
‘What’s going on, Constable?’ İkmen said.
‘Suicide,’ the young man replied.
The marble-tiled bathroom was very apt for the scene that greeted Çetin İkmen. A naked man with a long grey beard slumped in a bath filled with his own blood. Father Anatoli Ralli looked like a Roman general, forced by a jealous emperor to take his own life. In a room at the other end of the apartment a woman cried and screamed her misery in rapid Greek.
A young man with a strawberry birthmark on his neck was in charge of the scene. Sergeant Düzen had come from the Kadıköy police station. It was the first time he’d ever attended a suicide investigation, and not only did he have the deceased man’s howling wife to contend with; he also had to deal with one of İstanbul’s most recognisable police officers.
‘Do you think Father Anatoli might have been murdered?’ he asked İkmen when he came out of the bathroom.
‘I’m sure the post-mortem examination will reveal that,’ İkmen said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it looks like suicide, Çetin Bey,’ he said.
‘Me too. He slit his wrists. Just how the ancient Romans used to kill themselves,’ İkmen said.
‘But he was Greek.’
‘Strictly he was a Byzantine,’ İkmen said. ‘An heir to both the Greek and the Roman empires. He was also a priest in a religion that prohibits suicide. Did you find any sort of letter? Maybe to his wife . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ Düzen said. ‘This was on the bathroom floor.’
He held up a piece of paper. İkmen took it from him and said, ‘Greek.’
‘Yes. None of us can read it.’
‘My sergeant isn’t fluent, but he’s good enough,’ İkmen said. He told Kerim Gürsel to come out of the bathroom and translate.
While Kerim looked at what might have been the last communication from Father Anatoli, Sergeant Düzen said, ‘Inspector, Çetin Bey . . . er, may I ask how you came to be here? When I was assigned to this job . . .’
‘Coincidence,’ İkmen said. ‘If you believe in such things. I came to speak to Father Anatoli, but it seems I am too late.’
‘Oh, what . . .’
‘As I’m sure you know, I am working on the Rudolfoğlu murders,’ İkmen said.
‘Ah.’
Kerim Gürsel cleared his throat.
‘Kerim Bey.’
‘I think it might be a quote from something,’ Kerim said. ‘It sounds like it ought to be. “At his best, man is the best of creatures, but separated f
rom law and justice, he is the worst.”’
‘Very true,’ İkmen said. ‘Although I’ve no idea who said it. Might have simply been Father Anatoli in a moment of insight.’ He turned to Sergeant Düzen. ‘I’m assuming the woman crying is his wife.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there anyone with her?’
‘No. She can’t speak Turkish.’
‘How do you know that?’ İkmen asked.
‘Because she just yells away in Greek,’ he said.
‘Doesn’t mean she doesn’t speak Turkish,’ İkmen said. ‘When people are in shock, they do strange things. Was it her who called the death in?’
‘I don’t know,’ Düzen said.
‘Well someone must have done, and unless there’s someone else in this apartment . . .’
‘No.’
‘Then it must have been Mrs Ralli, and she had to have spoken Turkish in order to make herself understood,’ İkmen said. ‘You see? Simple.’
Marina Ralli had been born in İstanbul in 1949. But after the anti-Greek riots of 1955, her family went to live in Greece. She didn’t return to her birthplace until she met and married her husband Anatoli in 1970.
‘I found him when I came back from shopping,’ she told İkmen.
‘Did you have any idea that he might do this?’ İkmen said.
She paused for a moment before saying, ‘Not this.’
‘But he was unhappy?’
‘Always,’ she said. ‘People thought that because of his tough exterior he was a man without any feelings. But he was always fragile.’
İkmen put the piece of paper that had been found in the bathroom in front of her.
‘Can you tell me what this is?’ he said.
She read it, then looked up. ‘It’s Anatoli’s writing.’
‘We found it in the bathroom,’ he said. ‘On the floor. I believe it’s something to do with how a man is no better than an animal without justice.’
‘It’s Aristotle,’ she said.
‘Do you know why your husband might have written that and left it on the floor?’
The Rallis had never had any children. All Marina’s family were in Greece. She was hollowed out by grief. Only İkmen had been able to get anywhere near her, and that was because he was the only person in the mayhem of a crime scene who had exhibited patience. While she screamed and tore at her clothes, he had just sat and waited for the winds of misery and pain inside her to subside. Turkish women behaved in much the same way when they were bereaved. He had known that an end would come sometime. And it had.
She said, ‘My husband was a sad man and a sensitive soul. All that aggression he showed to the world wasn’t him. It was self-protection. He also struggled.’
‘With his faith?’
‘Yes. Many priests do. The modern world is not an easy place in which to bring people to God. Anatoli’s real problems were more down-to-earth. Being spiritual father to a congregation like ours can be a terrible thing.’
‘Why?’
She looked at the window, then down at her lap.
‘Hanım?’
She shook her head. ‘You’re a Turk,’ she said, ‘but I am going to say what I must and you can hate me or not, I no longer care.’
‘I won’t . . .’
‘We are an old community here in Moda,’ she said. ‘Most of my husband’s parishioners remember 1955. I know you people don’t want to talk about it, but that’s too bad.’
‘A terrible thing was done in 1955,’ İkmen said. His father had locked him and his brother in their old house in Üsküdar while he went out and looked for his Greek students. He’d only found two. But he’d brought them back and had later arranged transport to take them to Greece. He’d been one of many Turks who had tried to stop the slaughter.
‘Living with the memory of people wanting to kill you is hard,’ she said. ‘Anatoli had to listen to the stories often. Sometimes he would come home and lock himself away for hours.’
‘Did he ever tell you anything?’
‘No. What passes between a priest and his parishioner is private,’ she said. ‘But I know it wasn’t easy for him, and I don’t just mean the stories. There are so few of us in the city now, we are almost invisible. There is fear, resentment, there are things people do that they shouldn’t. And no, I won’t give you examples.’
She was hostile and he accepted that. The anti-Greek riots of 1955 had been the final bloody death knell for the Byzantine Greeks. Most had left the country. Those who remained, İkmen always felt, did so not out of defiance but with an air of inward-looking fatalism. Someone had to be the last Byzantine in order to finally put out the light.
‘When you are the repository of people’s stories of horror, of guilt, of anger and grief, unless you are very strong, you will break,’ she said. ‘Although . . .’
She shook her head.
‘Although what?’
‘I didn’t expect this,’ she said. ‘Not suicide.’
‘No one does. Marina Hanım, can you tell me whether your husband was particularly agitated lately? I will be honest with you. I consulted him a few days ago about a man of Greek origin.’
‘He never told me that,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t. He was a good priest; he shared his confidences only with God. To me he was always sad. Loving, but broken. What he didn’t do was break the rule of either God’s law or the law of this land.’
‘Which would make the quotation from Aristotle confusing,’ İkmen said.
‘It would if my husband hadn’t always believed himself to be bad.’
‘Are we not all sinners?’
‘Yes, but not like that,’ she said. ‘All through his life he’s . . . he believed that he had something bad inside him. He would never explain. I tried to reassure him that it wasn’t true. But he wouldn’t have it. He always said I knew nothing. When he was like that, he cried.’
‘Did he cry often?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know when he last cried?’
‘I comforted him one afternoon last week,’ she said. ‘We held each other, as we always did at such times, until his tears had dried. But I think he may have cried last night.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘That time he hid it from me. Just a few tears, but I could tell. I could also tell that he didn’t want to be comforted,’ she said. ‘Then he went to bed.’
‘Did your husband go out yesterday, hanım?’
‘To the ayazma of St Katherine, yes,’ she said.
‘To perform a service?’
‘No, for solitary prayer. He went when he could. I do know there were rumours some time ago that the shrine was going to close. I think some people believe it is unused. My husband made a point of going there to pray whenever he was able. It was a place that was very close to his heart. There were a few members of the congregation who used to go regularly too. I think Anatoli had some letters about it somewhere.’
Bad news spreads like blood. A tiny wound emits a drip that becomes a streak that turns into a pool. News of Father Anatoli’s death spread across the city along the thin tendrils of the Byzantine Greek community, oozing into the smallest outposts, like Tarlabaşı and Beşiktaş.
The man whose name had been Yiannis Apion, Mustafa Kaiserli, learned of it from his wife Ceyda. Although Jewish, she knew the Greeks through her husband. She’d met Father Bacchus, the priest of the Aya Triada in Beyoğlu, on the ferry. As soon as she finished with her tour group, she went home and told her husband.
Mustafa was not a demonstrative man, but the fact that he greeted her news with silence made Ceyda feel cold. Her husband had always liked Father Anatoli. His predecessor, Father Kostas, had been a significant influence on Mustafa when he was a child. When the old man died and Mustafa moved to Beşiktaş, he’d kept in touch with Father Kostas. Father Anatoli had continued this. Both his Greek past and his old home were important to him. When his father died, Mustafa had his body taken across the Bosphorus to Moda for buri
al. Father Anatoli had performed the funeral service. It had been incomprehensible to Ceyda. But all the Greeks had cried, all except her emotionally stunted husband.
Chapter 17
Ouija boards, astrology, Tarot cards and the gypsy women who practised witchcraft in the dark basements of Tarlabaşı were all gateways to the Devil. Çetin İkmen, as the son of a witch, wondered whether he too qualified as a demonic tempter.
‘Father Anatoli told you this?’ Süleyman asked the boy.
It was the first time that Çetin İkmen had seen the black-tracksuited boy, Aslan Gerontas. Thin and dark, he had several teeth missing, but otherwise, he was a handsome lad. It was a shame he was the epitome of most people’s conception of a madman. It was difficult to get past those staring eyes and nervous tics to the person underneath.
‘Priests know everything,’ the boy said, which İkmen took as a ‘yes’.
İkmen and Süleyman had decided not to tell Aslan about Father Anatoli’s death. Neither of them knew what effect it would have on him.
‘Priests and the lady I met,’ he said.
‘What lady?’
‘With the gun,’ he said.
Elif Büyük.
‘She knew I needed to protect myself.’
İkmen leaned forward. ‘Aslan,’ he said, ‘when did you know that the Devil was after you?’
For a moment the boy looked as if he hadn’t understood. But then he said, ‘He’s after all of us. He’s everywhere.’
‘Did Father Anatoli tell you that?’
‘I’ve known it all my life,’ he said. ‘A boy fell to the ground one day in the Grand Bazaar and the Devil took him. I saw him.’
‘How do you know that?’ İkmen said.
‘Because that lady who gave me the gun tried to save him.’
‘Tried to save him?’ Süleyman said. ‘The woman who gave you the gun?’
Elif Büyük had stabbed Ali Baykal in the side. At least that was what her lover Ali Erbil was saying.
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