The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘PKK . . .’

  ‘And the rest,’ he said. ‘The city was locked down. I was bored out of my mind.’

  ‘And so you joined the police.’

  ‘With about a million caveats from my father about not becoming one of the enemy. My sister had already left to go and train as a nurse.’ He suddenly looked serious. ‘Poor Dad.’

  Barçın drained her glass and poured herself another drink. ‘My mother took to her bed for a week when I got the bike,’ she said. ‘She was convinced I’d be working in prostitution within the year.’

  ‘Kurdish parents, eh?’

  They both toasted Kurdish parents, and Barçın wondered what it would be like to go to bed with Ömer. Şeymus, for all his athleticism, had been a very unadventurous lover. Later, when their relationship was over, she suspected that he went to working girls to indulge his more unconventional urges. He’d wanted to marry her, and so anything beyond straight sex had been out of the question. Did Ömer think that way? she wondered.

  Barçın went to the bathroom to refresh her make-up. Was it just the booze or did she really now find Ömer Mungun impossibly sexy? She’d not had sex since Şeymus and she wanted it. It was a hot evening and she was drunk, and the only image in her mind was of the two of them lying naked on her bed.

  Ömer wasn’t Şeymus, she told herself. But he was into her. Then again, where would be the harm if they just had casual sex?

  Ceyda Kaiserli put a jug of lemonade and three glasses on the balcony table and then went back inside the apartment. Mehmet Süleyman pulled a chair up to the table and sat down beside Çetin İkmen.

  Yiannis poured them each a drink.

  ‘My father, Konstantinos Apion, began working for Rudolf Paşa when he was a child,’ he said. ‘His father, Serafim, had worked as a gardener for various paşas over the years. Rudolf Paşa allowed him to design the garden of his house from scratch. It was a great opportunity. And it came with accommodation.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Before those apartments were built around it in the 1960s, there was a small row of stables that belonged to the Rudolfoğlus,’ he said. ‘There was also accommodation for grooms and other servants. My father was born there.’

  ‘So the Rudolfoğlus must have sold the land,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I guess. I don’t know,’ Yiannis said. ‘Growing up, I knew my father had worked for Rudolf Paşa and I knew that he’d been dismissed after Perihan Hanım’s death, but I didn’t know much else. Dad only told me the full story when he was dying. I’ll be honest: for a long time I thought it was the morphine talking. He had chordoma, which is a type of bone cancer that affects the skull and spinal cord. He had radiotherapy and painkillers, which became progressively stronger as time went on. By the time we got to the diamorphine stage, he was off his head, and so for a while I didn’t take any notice of his stories about the Rudolfoğlus. I hardly listened. But then his words began to seep into me, and what I’d been doing for years began to make sense.’

  Süleyman lit a cigarette. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Dad and Father Kostas, our priest when I was a kid – and later, Father Anatoli – always encouraged me to spend time at the ayazma of St Katherine. I knew that other people went there to pray for various reasons, but I just found it gloomy.’

  ‘And yet you did as you were asked?’

  ‘Until I met Rebekah.’ He shook his head. ‘Ceyda.’

  ‘Your wife.’

  ‘Yes. She didn’t want to leave Beşiktaş, and so I moved here with my dad. He died here. I knew that Rudolf Paşa was supposed to have been bad,’ Yiannis said. ‘He and Dimitri Bey did unspeakable things to the troops under their command in the desert.’

  ‘Do you know if this Dimitri Bey’s family are still in the city?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Maybe, maybe not, When people started changing their names in the fifties, nobody knew who anyone was any more. Father Anatoli would have known.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Father Kostas told him everything when he came to Moda.’

  ‘Everything about . . .’

  ‘About who the Rudolfoğlu siblings murdered, and why,’ he said.

  ‘And who was that, Yiannis?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘That, Inspector,’ he said, ‘was my sister.’

  Ömer took her home to her apartment. The kapıcı of the block saw them arrive, and Barçın said, ‘That’s Serkan Bey.’

  Ömer raised an eyebrow. Typical of his kind, the kapıcı was narrowing his eyes at the couple even before they entered his building.

  ‘Does he know what you do?’ Ömer asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Then I’d better show him my badge,’ he said. ‘I mean, what could be wrong with a fellow officer escorting a colleague home?’

  They’d kissed in an alleyway to the side of the restaurant where they’d eaten. She’d felt him go hard against her belly and she’d wanted him to fuck her then and there. But then he’d hailed a cab driven by a pious man and they’d had to keep their hands to themselves.

  Once past the kapıcı, though, all that changed. Loosened by drink, they stumbled up the staircase to her first-floor apartment, where he pinned her up against a wall. They fumbled with their clothing, laughing, until he lifted her up on to his penis and fucked her.

  ‘My dad and Perihan Hanım became lovers,’ Yiannis said. ‘They really were in love. She was still a young woman and beautiful. She’d been widowed for three years from a husband she had grown to hate.’

  ‘Why had she grown to hate him?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘I don’t know for sure. Maybe the rumours about him consorting with the Devil were true. Dad said he ignored his wife. The only person he cared about was his daughter, Fatima. And all the girl cared about was him. There were dark rumours about that.’

  ‘True?’

  ‘Again, I don’t know. But Dad would say that Fatima Hanım was known as the Devil’s child with good reason.’

  ‘Our pathologist is of the opinion that Fatima Hanım gave birth to a child,’ Süleyman said. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Once my father had been dismissed by the Rudolfoğlus, he had no further contact. Perihan Hanım was dead, and those bastards hated him and he hated them.’

  ‘We have been considering the possibility that Fatima Hanım had her father’s child,’ İkmen said.

  ‘She was nine when he died.’

  He shrugged. ‘Sadly, it happens.’

  Yiannis shook his head. ‘Dad never said anything like that. And neither did Father Anatoli.’

  ‘You’re sure Father Anatoli knew about this?’

  He looked away. ‘His predecessor told him,’ he said. ‘He and I talked about it.’

  ‘His predecessor told him what, exactly?’

  ‘That my dad was the father of Perihan Hanım’s little girl.’

  The third time they had sex, Barçın went on top. As she raised and lowered herself on his cock, Ömer squeezed her breasts. Even drunk, he was a better lover than Şeymus had ever been. When he finally came, he pulled her down on his chest and put his arms around her. Covered in sweat, Barçın knew that she was permeated by a heavy sexiness that just wouldn’t stop.

  How had she ever found this man irritating?

  She licked his stomach, his hips and his balls. She took his cock in her mouth. She heard him grunt and moan, then, all too soon for both of them, it was over.

  Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, she heard him say, ‘I thought at first that you didn’t like me. I thought that maybe I annoyed you.’

  ‘You did,’ she said. ‘A bit.’

  ‘Why? Was it the mirra? Was it too much?’

  ‘A little.’ She smiled. ‘But you’ve made up for it now, Sergeant.’

  Laughing, he rolled on top of her and parted her legs. She grabbed his cock and guided it inside her. But as she closed her eyes, it was Süleyman’s face she saw in her mind.

  İk
men felt genuinely sad for Konstantinos Apion. Perihan Hanım, who according to his son had been the love of his life, had died, and so had his daughter.

  ‘We had found out that Perihan Hanım died not long after her confinement,’ İkmen said. ‘Septicaemia.’

  ‘Yes,’ Yiannis said.

  Süleyman leaned forward. ‘Why didn’t you come to us with this before?’

  ‘May I have a cigarette, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  İkmen gave him one.

  ‘I gave up two years ago,’ Yiannis said. ‘But . . .’

  He smoked. Then he took a deep breath. ‘The child my father called Sofia was delivered by the doctor Kevork Sarkissian Paşa,’ he said. ‘Everything was normal and the child was healthy. Perihan Hanım was exhausted, but the doctor felt able to leave her in the care of a female servant. My father briefly saw the baby and he told Perihan Hanım that somehow they would bring her up and be together. But he was only sixteen. He knew nothing. I sometimes wonder what Perihan made of that. She was so much older and she must have realised it wouldn’t be possible.

  ‘That night she started to have pain. She was sick many times and so the servant took Sofia away. I think she was going to look after the child herself, but then her mistress started fitting. The servant sent a message to the doctor, but she didn’t dare leave Perihan Hanım, and so the child was alone in her cot in the bedroom next door. At some point between the time that the servant took the baby away and when the doctor went in to see her, Sofia died.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She was murdered,’ Yiannis said. ‘When my father saw the body, he thought that only she had done it. But it wasn’t just her, it was all of them.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Fatima Hanım and her brothers,’ he said. ‘They took turns. Each one of them knifing her through her tiny heart.’ He sobbed.

  İkmen looked at Süleyman. His face was grey.

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘She admitted it!’ Yiannis said. ‘To her mother, to my father, to the doctor! She said she’d done it to regain her family’s honour. They couldn’t have a Greek bastard in their midst!’

  ‘You are talking about Fatima Hanım?’ Süleyman said. ‘She was twelve.’

  Yiannis looked up, his face red with fury. ‘What does age matter when a person is truly evil? She was! Her brothers, behind her, cried! They begged forgiveness from their mother, but she told the doctor to take them from her bedroom and never bring them back. She said they were dead to her.’

  The boys had cried. Separation from their mother had been more than they could bear. But not Fatima. If this story were true, then she hadn’t cried. And so as a baby died, a great hatred was born. A hatred so intense it had governed all four of the Rudolfoğlu siblings’ lives right up until the moment someone else had killed them.

  ‘So do you understand why I didn’t tell you before?’ Yiannis asked.

  ‘I imagine you’re going to tell me that you didn’t kill the Rudolfoğlus,’ İkmen said.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said. ‘And if Father Anatoli was still alive, he would support me.’

  ‘Tell me what Father Anatoli knew about this,’ İkmen said.

  ‘More than I did.’

  It was late, and dark, and İkmen was exhausted from a day of hard work and by the awful details he’d just heard about a child’s death. If Fatima Rudolfoğlu had really orchestrated the killing of that baby, then no wonder some called her the Devil’s child. But had she? And what about the child she herself had once carried? Had she killed that too?

  ‘As I told you before, Father Kostas told Father Anatoli and—’

  ‘If Father Anatoli knew more about all this than you did, do you think he knew about a child born to Fatima Hanım?’

  ‘I don’t know. He never said. I’ve never heard that before. Inspector, as soon as I found out how the Rudolfoğlus had died, I knew that if you found out about Sofia you’d think I had killed them. But I swear I didn’t.’

  Süleyman said, ‘Did you confide your fears to Father Anatoli?’

  ‘Yes. He said that if I tried to hide from the police, it would go badly for me. So when you turned up, he gave you just enough information to find me, hoping you’d track down the real murderer in the meantime. But that didn’t happen. What puzzled him was how you knew of my existence.’

  ‘My sergeant was told by a local resident,’ İkmen said. ‘A man called Rauf Karadeniz.’

  Yiannis shrugged. ‘I don’t know him.’

  İkmen sighed. ‘So does your wife know about this?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is Greek pain. We bear it alone.’

  ‘But surely your wife would want to help you?’

  ‘Ceyda is Jewish,’ he said. ‘She’ll understand. Minorities live in their own bubbles here, you know, Inspector. It’s both our strength and our weakness. We wear our secrets like armour.’

  ‘So what about the ayazma?’ Süleyman asked. ‘Why were you encouraged to go there?’

  ‘Because that’s where Sofia is buried,’ he said. ‘Underneath the flagstones. Why do you think Kemal Rudolfoğlu was smashing the place up all those years ago? That bitch had told him to find her body and burn it. My father told me.’

  ‘And he stopped him.’

  ‘Yes. He beat him senseless too. They’d taken everything from him. His job, his home and his child. I was glad when I heard they’d all been murdered. But I say again, I didn’t do it. I had nothing to do with Father Anatoli’s death either. We met the day before he killed himself and we prayed at the ayazma. Then we went our separate ways. He appeared to me to be in good spirits.’

  ‘You didn’t speak about the Rudolfoğlus?’

  ‘No. We both prayed for Sofia, as we usually do. Then Father Anatoli told me about a meeting he’d had with the mayor of Kadıköy, who had assured him that there was no way the ayazma was going to be closed down, whatever some people of, shall we say, a bullying attitude towards religions that are not their own might think about it. He met me to reassure me.’

  ‘Did you see where Father Anatoli went after you left him?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I walked inland and got the historic tram back to Kadıköy ferry stage.’

  ‘OK,’ İkmen said. ‘But you know that we will now have to take you in and get a formal statement from you, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yiannis Apion hung his head. ‘This story cannot end well,’ he said. ‘My father knew that. Which was why he kept it to himself until he was dying.’

  Chapter 19

  Lifting her head was going to be a major military operation. Barçın’s father had been an alcoholic, and so she knew how devastating a hangover could be. As soon as she raised her head from the pillow, she knew that this one could be monstrous. And so she lay still, listening to the sound of gentle snoring from the man who slept beside her.

  There was no way she didn’t know what she’d done the previous night, or why she’d done it. She’d got drunk with a man she found moderately attractive and then she’d had sex with him. She didn’t regret it – not exactly. The sex had been urgent, but good. Without taking her head from the pillow, she turned it to look at him. Even sleeping and full of drink he looked good. And he was well endowed. She knew what she’d seen in him even if he wasn’t her perfect man. She stroked his chin with her finger and he opened his eyes.

  ‘Hi.’

  For a moment his face was static and she began to wonder whether he was regretting what they’d done. Would he roll over, call her a whore and leave? But then he smiled and said, ‘Hello, Barçın. Beautiful, beautiful Barçın.’

  He kissed her.

  When they finally parted, he said, ‘That really is almost the best way to wake up.’

  ‘What’s the best way?’

  He put his hand between her legs.

  She laughed. ‘Oh, but what’s the time?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Six. I’m on shift at eight.’ He brushed some strands of hair
away from her face. ‘We have time . . .’

  She too started work at eight.

  ‘Ah, but we have to leave before the kapıcı gets up,’ she said. ‘If he sees us he’ll be disgusted!’

  He pushed himself up and then leaned over to caress her breasts. Amazingly, he didn’t scream with pain as his head left the pillow. No hangover? That was impressive.

  He just smiled. ‘Let him be disgusted.’

  ‘Ömer!’

  ‘Oh come on, motorbike girl,’ he said. ‘You’re bolder than that.’

  But she pushed him away. ‘No, Ömer,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can get away with that story about working together last night, but if he actually sees us walking out of here together this morning, he will make my life a misery.’

  Ömer hung his head. He knew that what she was saying was true. Not so many years ago, it had seemed as if men and women could live together without being married, but that was becoming harder all the time. Religious and social conservatism was growing even in parts of the city that had exuded a more liberal atmosphere.

  He got out of bed. ‘OK.’

  ‘If he doesn’t see us leave, then he can fool himself that nothing immoral happened in his building,’ she said. ‘Even if he had his ear pressed to the door and heard our every gasp and scream.’

  ‘Did he try and stop the process?’ İkmen asked Kerim Gürsel when he sat down at his desk.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just opened his mouth for the swab like a good boy.’

  ‘It will take a while to compare it to our unidentified DNA samples,’ İkmen said. ‘But you know I don’t think it will be positive.’

  Süleyman looked up from his newspaper. He and İkmen had been up all night interrogating Yiannis Apion. Both of them were exhausted, but the younger man was tetchy too.

  ‘You swallowed Apion’s . . . Kaiserli’s . . . whatever his name is, his story,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘No.’ He put his newspaper down. ‘How many times do we hear the story about how they were in the right place at the right time but it wasn’t them? Then we find out that it was. What makes you think he’s different?’