Dance with Death (37 page)

‘Out there in the wilds of Cappadocia’ – Ardıç shook his head – ‘I would have been furious with İkmen if he had died out there! Said he was going out there about family business, but he ends up getting involved with some ancient homicide. I don’t suppose you . . .’

‘I know nothing about it, sir,’ Süleyman said. And in part that was true. He hadn’t actually spoken to İkmen since he’d left to go off in search of English Alison. Even now he only had a very vague grasp upon what had happened to İkmen and no idea why. ‘Do you know when Inspector İkmen is coming home, sir?’

Ardıç pulled a face and then sighed. ‘You know what it’s like in the country in the winter,’ he said. ‘Snow. Masses of the stuff. When it clears İkmen and Dr Sarkissian will return to us. But until then?’ He shrugged. ‘I understand he has had an inspector from Nevşehir arrested for attempted murder. The creatures from the caves will be wanting him to stay to “clean up” their locality next!’ And then he laughed but without either warmth or mirth. ‘Officers should stay in their home towns or cities, if you ask me. İstanbullus are İstanbullus; we are different. No one can understand us like ourselves.’ He looked up sharply. ‘How is İzzet Melik coming along?’

Süleyman considered the question carefully. In light of what he and Melik had shared with Dr Mardin with regard to evidence tampering, the man from İzmir had proved himself honest and trustworthy. In general, however, he was his usual self – superficially boorish and unreconstructed. He would, Süleyman knew, irritate him enormously from time to time and the way he chewed sandwiches was particularly revolting. Melik, however, spoke Italian. Melik had sat by Berekiah Cohen’s hospital bed with Süleyman and talked to the young Jew about the little synagogue he knew in İzmir and all the friends of his who went there.

‘I think that he will work out – in the end,’ Süleyman said finally in answer to his superior’s question.

Ardıç nodded sagely and then smiled just a little. ‘Good.’

The snow had finally stopped falling just before dawn. And so although most of the inhabitants of Muratpaşa awoke to the prospect of yet another day’s fast, the idea that the snowfall may have finally come to an end was cheering – for most. Çetin İkmen, although well aware of how impossible the roads out of Cappadocia would be, was almost unreasonably anxious to get back to İstanbul. And although he had spoken to his wife, his son Orhan and daughter Hulya, he knew that wasn’t enough and he needed to be with them.

However, before any of that could happen he also had to make his own statement with regard to his own ordeal and so, once he had finished his breakfast, he went down to the tiny gendarmerie at the edge of the village. The three young jandarma not with the prisoners at the back of the building greeted him warmly, as did Altay Salman when he eventually arrived at lunchtime. The roads, he said, were getting clearer now and Nevşehir were anxious to have their four prisoners in the rather more secure environment of the police station. Transport, he told İkmen and the others, was apparently on its way. One of the young jandarma went to tell the prisoners this piece of information. When he returned, he came over to İkmen with a message from Nalan Senar. She apparently wanted to see the İstanbul man alone before she was transferred over to Nevşehir.

‘You don’t have to speak to her if you don’t want to,’ Ferhat the jandarma said. ‘To be honest, it won’t be easy if she wants to see you alone. We’ll have to move all the men in here.’

But İkmen, true to his nature, was intrigued. He also still had unanswered questions of his own about the Aysu Alkaya affair, questions he had been unable to formulate in the immediate wake of his frozen ordeal. He said he’d see Nalan Senar. And so the men were taken out of the cells at the back of the building and İkmen went in to see the woman alone.

‘Your eyes are very red, Nalan Hanım,’ he said, as he eased his thin behind on to the one small chair in front of the heavily muffled woman.

‘It’s cold and I haven’t slept.’

İkmen shrugged. ‘This is a cell, Nalan Hanım. It is not a pansiyon.’

‘I know that!’ she snapped. ‘I know . . .’

‘What do you want, Nalan Hanım?’ İkmen asked as he took out his cigarettes and then lit up. ‘Do you want to apologise perhaps for trying to kill me?’

‘I didn’t try to kill you, Inspector,’ she replied. ‘It is Ramazan. I saved both you and the souls of those who did desire your death.’

‘The cold would have killed me. It nearly did and you know it.’

‘You were never meant to be involved.’ She shrugged. ‘It was unfortunate.’

‘This carnage was all so that your family could retain their honour . . .’

‘It wasn’t only that,’ she said. ‘I was afraid of Ziya Bey and what he would do if he discovered what Kemalettin had done with Aysu but there was something else, too.’ She raised her face to look into his eyes. ‘Something I have never, with the exception of Turgut, told anyone.’

‘Something you wish me to keep secret now?’ İkmen asked.

She shuffled uncomfortably on the thin pallet she had been given to sleep upon. ‘Yes . . .’

‘I don’t know if I can do that,’ İkmen said. ‘But then . . .’

‘You know, Inspector, that there is more to this than just my family’s honour, don’t you?’

İkmen puffed hard on his cigarette and then said, ‘I suspect it, yes.’

‘What I may tell you will not change anything. I will still be punished for what I have done, I am resigned to my fate. It will make no difference to what will happen.’

‘So why tell me?’

She sighed. ‘Because you are not from this district, because I must tell someone. And maybe for you it will help. What you suffered out in the valleys had a reason that is not one I believe is trivial.’

He opened his arms and spread his hands wide. ‘Then speak.’

‘You will keep my secret? You . . .’

‘I will listen to what you say, Hanım, and then make a judgement,’ İkmen said.

For a few moments she sat in silence, thinking about what his words meant and then she said, ‘All right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘My son Kemalettin is not Tatar’s child. It wasn’t only Turgut who was friendly with Sergeant Lavell from America. As soon as my looks began to fade, my husband rejected me most of the time. He called me the Madman’s Daughter, went with whores in Kayseri and Nevşehir.’

‘I see. But Turgut . . .’

‘Oh, Turgut knows. He is the only one who does,’ she said. ‘When Kemalettin made Aysu pregnant I had to tell him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the colour!’ She wrung her hands until they became red. ‘When Kemalettin was born I was so relieved that he was white. For many years, in fact, I made myself believe that he was in reality my husband’s. He could have been Tatar’s, after all. But then as he grew I began to notice things – the colour and curl of his hair, different even from that of my dark father, a difference about the cast of his features . . . Then when he made Aysu pregnant . . . I had been to see Dr Ali about my husband. Tatar was dying by then and the doctor said he wanted to see me. He said that because I was soon to be alone he wanted me to consider having some tests for the disease he always believed had killed my father. It wasn’t entirely a shock to me as I imagined he felt it would be.’

İkmen recalled his own conversation with Dr Ali. ‘Huntington’s Disease.’

‘Yes.’ She looked surprised. ‘How . . . ?’

‘Just carry on, please.’ It was cold, and although he was pleased in a way that his suspicions about there being something more at play here than just ‘simple’ honour, he was also sickened by both the effects of his recent ordeal and the Byzantine nature of some of these relationships.

‘My father’s brother died in the same way, you see, and . . .’ She swallowed hard. ‘I wouldn’t have the test. But Dr Ali told me about how things are inherited, how some physical things and illnesses can suddenly come back in a family. Like a curse, like Allah exacting rightful punishment of the wicked. And so when Aysu became pregnant . . .’

‘You feared she would give birth to a baby with black skin. You feared that your infidelity would finally be exposed.’

She looked down at the floor once again. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m amazed that your son Turgut helped you in this,’ İkmen said. ‘Were his actions not dishonourable to his father?’

‘If Tatar and his family had ever found out they would have killed me and disinherited my boys. Even Turgut’s place in the family would have been questioned. He would have been the son of an adulteress. Turgut is a practical man, he always has been. He doesn’t love me, he moved his family out to get away from me and my bastard.’ She looked up, her eyes now full of tears. ‘Why do you think that he went with that American woman, Sergeant Lavell’s daughter? To get back at me! We both recognised her name years ago, Turgut and myself but because she was white we didn’t think she could be the sergeant’s daughter. But when Turgut saw that photograph of Dolores’ father, he knew. And so he took revenge to show me that he could have a foreigner, too, that he could in fact have his own brother’s sister!’

‘Half-sister.’

‘Yes, I know, I know!’

And yet when Kemalettin, poor unaware Kemalettin, had attempted to masturbate in front of Dolores, it had been too much for Turgut and he had become furiously angry with him and with the strangely incestuous act he was unwittingly committing.

‘When you killed Aysu, didn’t you realise that Kemalettin might have wanted to possess or even marry another woman? How were you going to deal with that?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know – then. After Aysu’s death, Kemalettin was very depressed.’ She looked up. ‘And then he was strange, like my father.’

‘And so you had him tested for Huntington’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he was positive, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes. His sister, you know, the American woman, she doesn’t have it.’

İkmen frowned. ‘Well, she wouldn’t, Hanım. That comes from your father.’

‘And hers too,’ the elderly woman said. ‘Sergeant Lavell and I met through Turgut and his interest in him. But we talked about my father when we spoke together. The sergeant was interested in my father because he saw some similarities between my family and his. His father and his father’s sister had something he called St Vitus’s Dance . . .’

And then İkmen remembered what Dolores Lavell had told him about her father’s disease, about the ‘dance’ Dr Ali had alluded to.

‘Turgut doesn’t have it, but poor Kemalettin, well, it was a certainty, wasn’t it? First his depression and confusion over Aysu and then his bizarre behaviour meant that he would never want to wed or be asked for in marriage. My secret was safe until . . .’

‘Aysu Alkaya came back to haunt you,’ İkmen said. ‘Why didn’t you or Turgut burn her body, Hanım, years ago?’

‘We, like you, are Muslims, Inspector. You know that we do not burn our dead. Although lots of tourists go to the Valley of the Saints, the cave with the mummy is not easy to get to and Turgut has always directed the more adventurous people away to other sites.’

‘Then if you’re such good Muslims why was her body burning when I finally came round out in that frozen valley!’

‘Ah, that was Baha, he is a person entirely without religion . . .’

‘You let him do it!’ İkmen said and then pushing his face into hers he said, ‘Allah, but you are a deluded woman, are you not, Nalan Hanım? I bet you couldn’t believe it when Aysu turned up almost intact. Ziya Kahraman would of course have understood about the preservative qualities of some of the caves and wouldn’t have made such an error. But you? The only way that body could be safe from forensic examination was if it were to be completely destroyed. You and Turgut knew that! I as much as told you and Erten, of course. All right, so I accept that Ermis may well have lit the match, but you didn’t stop him, you even encouraged him!’

‘His soul is not . . .’

‘Oh, but of course, he is just a money-grabbing little heathen, isn’t he, not an upright person like you!’ İkmen stubbed his cigarette out on the floor and then lit up another. ‘If you believe that Allah is all-seeing, don’t you think that he is aware of your deception?’

‘Aysu Alkaya was a harlot!’

‘Aysu Alkaya, just like you, Hanım, was a young girl who was unloved by her husband and who fell in love with a nice young boy. Your families, yours and the Kahramans! Allah!’ He threw his hands up in disbelief. ‘All of you talking about inheritance – of money, of physical features. Laughing at others like that carpet dealer who sleeps with his kilims. You all laugh at him! You all talk about the fact that you believe his parents were cousins. Ziya Kahraman, the richest man in the village, he wanted a “perfect” wife. Was he mad? If he was so concerned about in-breeding, why didn’t he go out of the village to find a woman? There were some tourists around even in those days. With all his money he could have had his pick of “perfect” women – both Turks and foreigners.’

‘I don’t know!’ She put her head in her hands so that she at least didn’t have to see his tirade, his infuriated, reddened face. ‘Maybe because it is wrong to lie with those not your own kind. Look at me.’

‘You were already married!’ İkmen cried. ‘And you were unfortunate. Dolores’ father was, I understand, a very nice person . . .’

‘He was very kind! He bought many things for Turgut.’ She looked up into his eyes again. ‘Then one day when Tatar was in Kayseri, Sergeant Lavell came to show Turgut how to shoot in the yard. Later when my son went off to play with some friends in the street, he came in to the house. I gave him water. We’d . . . noticed each other before. It happened almost without my knowing. I loved him! May Allah forgive me!’

And then she looked down at the floor once again. İkmen, rather more deflated now since his tirade, said, ‘Yes, I believe that you did love him. You took an awful risk. I’m sorry.’

Nalan Senar looked up. ‘It was a terrible, terrible . . .’