Dance with Death (14 page)

‘The bus journey was not entirely pleasant, was it?’ Arto replied.

‘No.’

‘Then I will see you at Menşure Hanım’s sometime on Saturday morning,’ he said.

‘She will be delighted to see you again,’ İkmen responded.

‘And I, her.’

After the doctor had hung up, İkmen called Inspector Erten in Nevşehir. He wasn’t in his office, and so İkmen called the mobile number Erten had given him. Against a background of what sounded like a dog fight, Erten declared himself almost ecstatic at the prospect of DNA testing on Aysu Alkaya’s body. İkmen then went back in to finish his coffee. As he got up to leave he noticed that Kemalettin Senar was standing in the doorway of Muratpaşa Balloon Flights, quite still and not even close to playing with himself. He was in fact staring straight at İkmen, which made the policeman wonder just how long he had been doing so. What, İkmen wondered, was really wrong with Kemalettin Senar? Was it, as Nazlı Kahraman had implied, bad blood inherited from his ‘mad’ grandfather? Or was it something else?

Only three of the names that Ayşe Farsakoğlu had identified so far had been completely unknown to Mehmet Süleyman. The rest were well-known bullies and thugs, most of whom had convictions for assaults upon women and sometimes children as well as the homosexual target group. And although it was his belief that this peeper character was more subtle, with a far more complicated agenda than just plain violence, Süleyman had won approval to have all of these men brought in for questioning. The following morning was going to involve an extremely early start and he knew that what he should really be doing was going home to get some rest. But when most people were gathering together for iftar, Mehmet Süleyman was still wandering the narrow streets of Karaköy, particularly those that were closest to the hamam. The bad feeling he’d had about this place when he’d spotted the unknown figure in Zelfa’s garden hadn’t gone away.

Because almost everyone had stopped what they were doing in order to eat, there was very little movement around the baths and certainly no one lurking where he shouldn’t. Süleyman made his way up towards the Galata Tower and the apartment of his old friend Balthazar Cohen.

As soon as he arrived, Balthazar’s wife, who had been Süleyman’s affectionate landlady when he had lodged with the family some years before, began to fuss around him.

‘Oh, Mehmet,’ she said, more annoyed at herself than at him, ‘if only I had known you were coming for iftar.’

‘İftar?’

Estelle Cohen placed a hand on Süleyman’s arm. ‘Sometimes Hulya goes to her mother for iftar and sometimes we have it here. She isn’t actually fasting because of the baby, but . . .’

‘But you’re Jewish.’

‘Yes,
we
are,’ Estelle said as she led him by the arm into the main living area of the apartment, ‘but my daughter-in-law and my grandson are Muslims and so’ – she smiled – ‘we all do what we can.’

Süleyman bent down low and kissed her on the cheek. In so many ways Estelle Cohen was a second mother to him. Unlike his own mother, however, she didn’t nag, criticise or judge.

With the exception of its patriarch, the entire family was seated around an enormous selection of food containers laid out on a tablecloth on the floor. Around the tablecloth Berekiah, Hulya – holding little Timur – and Estelle reclined on large cushions in emulation of how Hulya’s nomadic ancestors would have taken their food. Balthazar, confined to his battered chair over by the television, waved his friend over to him as soon as he arrived.

‘Mehmet! Mehmet!’

Mehmet stopped briefly to embrace Berekiah and greet Hulya and the baby, and went over to sit next to the crippled man and his television, which was, as usual, tuned to one of the sports channels.

‘I don’t know why I’m watching
Trabzon Spor
,’ Balthazar said through what remained of a cigarette.

‘No.’

Balthazar had always supported Galatasaray to the extent that he would, until recently, rarely watch even other İstanbul sides. To be watching an out-of-town team meant that he had to be bored. But then, sitting in almost the same place since 1999 could not, Süleyman knew, be very much fun.

‘Mehmet, aren’t you joining us for iftar?’ Berekiah asked after he ravenously gobbled up a large piece of bread.

‘My son is keeping Ramazan now!’ Balthazar shrugged and huffed. ‘The Muslim father-in-law doesn’t keep it, but the Jewish husband does!’

‘Çetin Bey has never kept Ramazan,’ Süleyman said with a smile. ‘He says that if he did, it would make him a hypocrite and be an insult to True Believers.’

‘Mum made fodla,’ Berekiah said as he pointed at what looked like a group of very large bread rolls. ‘Mehmet!’

The fodla, a very old Ottoman dish, consisted of a rich lamb casserole encased in freshly baked bread. Süleyman had always liked it, especially the way that Estelle cooked the dish. But he placed a hand on his chest to indicate that he wasn’t hungry. He was far too wired up to think about food. ‘I was just passing,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ Berekiah stood up and came to join his friend and his father by the television. ‘Where are you going, Mehmet?’

Berekiah had seen him outside the hamam on Monday night and although Süleyman had, he thought, managed to explain his presence to the young man, he hadn’t been certain at the time that his friend had believed him. Now, given the slightly suspicious look on Berekiah’s face, he was even less sure.

‘Oh, I said that I would go up into Beyoğlu to collect some cakes for my mother,’ he said, knowing how lame he sounded.

‘Oh, I see,’ the young man responded with a smile and then he returned to his cushion on the floor and his food.

A rather awkward hour, for Süleyman, then ensued. Balthazar had always been a terrible gossip and some of his theories about the actions and behaviour of people they both knew swung between the salacious and the fantastic. Almost everyone, according to Balthazar, was engaged in some sort of activity he shouldn’t be doing. And when sex came into the equation, which it did for much of the conversation, Süleyman noticed that Berekiah sometimes looked at him questioningly. Did the young man think that perhaps he had gone to the gay hamam for reasons other than those connected to police work? The boy had known him for most of his life, surely he was aware that his friend Mehmet wasn’t like that?

As he was showing him out, however, it became apparent that Berekiah did have some anxieties in that direction.

‘Have you got anything to do with the investigation into this queer who attacks people?’ Berekiah asked as he watched his friend put his shoes back on at the front door.

‘I have an involvement,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Why?’

‘Well, you were at that hamam’ – he laughed nervously – ‘I mean, you weren’t there for yourself, were you?’

‘Why?’ Standing up now Süleyman was a good bit taller than Berekiah and, at this point in time, somewhat graver too. ‘Does it bother you that some men . . .’

‘This one who attacks young boys is evil,’ Berekiah said with some heat in his voice. ‘Evil!’

Although married, Berekiah Cohen was both young and attractive and, maybe, he had some anxieties about becoming a target himself. After all, Süleyman had not, with very good reason, issued any sort of statement with regard to the peeper’s obvious preference for gay men. That section of the city was already panicking of its own accord without the police making their lives even harder by pointing them out to the general public.

‘We don’t know for sure that this assailant is homosexual,’ Süleyman said as he opened the door of the apartment to let himself out.

‘But if he’s assaulting men . . .’

‘Berekiah, there can be a lot of reasons why people do things they do not like. Sometimes to punish others and in some cases, themselves, too.’

As soon as he was outside the apartment, Süleyman lit up a cigarette and made his way down towards the hamam. As he descended he passed the rather smart man who had spoken to him outside the hamam on that first occasion walking up towards Beyoğlu. As their eyes met, the man gave Süleyman a knowing look which could mean that he was still ‘interested’. There was something else in that look too, something the policeman couldn’t fathom. But it made his blood momentarily run cold. Was it possible this man had been in Zelfa’s garden, obsessively stalking him, perhaps? Such things did happen. But how? No, that was just paranoia. It had to be. It was impossible, wasn’t it? Once he was certain the man had moved on ahead of him, Süleyman turned back to follow him.

Although most of the bars in the village were effectively dead due to the combined elements of Ramazan and the end of the tourist season, there was one that still made a show of doing business. The Red Dragon bar, which was situated in a squat, windowless cone just behind the bus station, offered both a blazing open fire and a very comprehensive selection of rakıs. These were things that made it most attractive to Çetin İkmen and his friend Altay Salman, as well as a ragbag of local youth and bored expatriates.

‘I’ve always had, Allah forgive me, this feeling that Miss Nazlı Hanim must have had something to do with the death of Haldun Bey’s daughter,’ one of the youths said to the two policemen as he joined them, uninvited, in front of the fire.

‘And why do you think that?’ Altay Salman asked with, İkmen noted, some exasperation on his face. ‘You weren’t even born when it happened.’

The boy waved a hand dismissively and then downed what was left of his Pepsi-Cola. ‘Look how much money she has now,’ he said. ‘If Haldun Bey’s daughter had lived after Ziya Bey died, Nazlı Hanım would have had to share some of her fortune.’

‘I think it was a foreigner,’ another young boy who also just sat himself down with the men said. ‘Just because their own women are immoral they think that ours are like that too. I expect some American raped Aysu Alkaya – and then he had to kill her in order to avoid detection.’

‘And this “foreigner”, I suppose, also helped her to escape from the Kahraman house, did he?’ Altay said wearily. He turned to İkmen and added, ‘This village is full of chattering fools!’

‘I would agree with that.’ The voice came from the open door of the bar. Its owner, a tall, gaunt man in his early fifties, stood framed against the darkness outside for a moment before he sat down, without getting a drink, at a table on his own. The two boys then left the police officers’ table and went, their eyes all the time on the man who had just entered, to sit quietly by themselves.

‘Who’s that?’ İkmen asked in the lowered tone this apparition seemed to command.

‘That’s Turgut Senar, Kemalettin’s elder brother,’ Altay replied.

This striding fair-haired man and the small, shrunken figure he had seen earlier didn’t seem, to İkmen, to have too much in common – apart from blood, that was. But then if Turgut was out and about in the valleys all day, exploring the countryside and talking to people from all over the world, his mind and his body were going to develop very differently to those of someone who lived only inside some sort of delusion. Kemalettin Senar, whether or not it was because Aysu Alkaya’s death had messed up his life, was obviously a very disturbed man.

Another man, who was probably about thirty, and who had been sitting alone at the table next to İkmen’s, got up and went over to Turgut Senar, a grim expression on his face. But even as the man, who was dressed in dirty brown labouring clothes, towered above him, Senar remained seemingly oblivious to his presence. İkmen, hearing Altay Salman draw in a very sharp breath, whispered, ‘What is this about?’

Leaning in as close as he could to the man from İstanbul, Altay Salman whispered, ‘That’s Baha Ermis, head man out at the Kahraman lemon caves. Doesn’t come into town very often. His father was head man before him for many years. When Aysu Alkaya disappeared Baha was staying at the Kahraman house and swore that he saw the girl meet Kemalettin Senar out in the street in the early hours of the morning.’

‘Did he tell this to the police?’ İkmen asked.

‘Yes, but Baha was only a child at the time and a child, I understand, with a reputation for lying. I think that, although they put Kemalettin through it, Baha’s evidence was largely ignored. But he’s still fired up about it even now, as you can see.’

‘You may be able to ignore me, but you can’t ignore the truth!’ Baha Ermis said through broken teeth to the top of Turgut Senar’s head. ‘Aysu Kahraman’s murdered body will condemn that retarded brother of yours for the killer he is!’

Turgut Senar continued to look down at the floor as if nothing was happening.

‘They’re taking her body to İstanbul, for tests,’ Baha continued. ‘Tests that will show that your brother killed her and the child of Ziya Bey she was carrying in her belly!’

İkmen, frowning at Altay Salman, said, ‘He knows about the baby?’

Altay Salman shrugged. ‘Erten has told Haldun Alkaya. And we know he’s been telling the world of his woes. This is a village . . .’

‘Senar! Are you listening?’

In one smooth movement, Turgut Senar rose to his feet and punched Baha Ermis full in the face. Almost as quickly to his feet, Altay Salman ran over and pushed himself in between the two men. ‘Now come along, brothers,’ he said. ‘Don’t fight . . .’

‘Don’t tell us what to do, city boy,’ Turgut Senar said calmly.

‘Mr Senar, I am, may I remind you, a police . . .’

‘He’s from İstanbul!’ Baha Ermis cried as he pointed to Altay with one hand and held his bleeding nose with the other. ‘And him!’ he added looking across at İkmen. ‘He’s the one who’s going to take her to İstanbul for tests!’

‘Well, then, may Allah guide his steps,’ Turgut Senar said. ‘May . . .’

‘I think you should get out, now, Turgut,’ the thick-set old man behind the bar said. ‘I don’t want any trouble in my place! Especially not with policemen involved.’

‘Hakan . . .’