Deadly Web (22 page)

‘One of my officers is fighting for his life,’ Ardıç said as he looked from İkmen to Süleyman and then back again. ‘In addition, a foreign national has gone missing and, to my way of thinking, we’re not putting our backs into it. Care to explain?’

Although seated, softly spoken and outwardly calm, Commissioner Ardıç was holding on to his smouldering cigar as if his life depended on it. Those who knew him well, like İkmen and Süleyman, would know that he was in a very dangerous state.

‘Sir,’ İkmen began, ‘it’s complicated . . .’

‘It always is with you, İkmen.’ Deep brown eyes almost hidden beneath thick black eyebrows surveyed İkmen with some malice. ‘But the fact remains that İskender is still critical, he cannot speak and so we cannot ask him who attacked him. Until we can, or until some evidence to the contrary comes to light, I feel that the necessity to speak to this Maximillian Esterhazy is paramount. I am therefore issuing a warrant for his arrest.’

‘But, sir,’ İkmen said, ‘what could be Max’s blood was found in his study the day he disappeared.’

‘Yes, I know all about that,’ Ardıç said. ‘Dried-up, old stuff. I know about the other blood too. What I also know, however, is that the only prints found in the study came from Esterhazy himself, his maid and her boyfriend.’

‘Neither of whom has type AB negative blood,’ İkmen said.

‘No, but beyond the fact that the AB blood exists there is nothing else in that room to suggest the presence of its owner,’ Ardıç said, and then added caustically, ‘Are you sure İkmen, that your magician friend didn’t sacrifice small children? Sorcery, may I remind you, is still nominally a crime in this country.’

‘Sir!’

Ardıç pointed a thick finger at İkmen. ‘I want him found, İkmen,’ he said. ‘He was a teacher, I understand; get in touch with his students.’

İkmen then explained how he had tried to do this and why he had failed. Ardıç’s face appeared to grow redder with the telling.

‘Allah preserve us!’ he said under his breath as İkmen finished. ‘Well, we’ll have to put something out in the media then, won’t we? Why haven’t you come to me before about this?’

‘Well, sir—’

‘And you, Süleyman?’ he said, turning his attention now on the younger of the two officers. ‘What about these dead girls?’

Süleyman gave his superior a résumé of what had happened since they last spoke. ‘It seems to me, sir,’ he said, ‘that in spite of the rather disappointing lack of evidence from the children’s computers, Atlas Pasaj and its inhabitants are going to be worth what we plan for tonight.’

‘You’ve officers lined up?’

‘Yes, sir. However—’

Ardıç looked up sharply. ‘What?’

‘This new victim, Lale Tekeli, as far as we are aware, had no connection to Atlas Pasaj and no “dark”, shall we say, interests.’

‘Not as yet.’

‘No, sir. Miss Tekeli was a very studious girl and a devout Muslim.’

Ardıç leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Well, maybe she was just better at hiding her “dark” interests than the others. Not that I believe in any of that nonsense myself,’ he said. ‘Bring the poor deluded kids at Atlas in by all means, but you won’t find Satan or any of his demons with them – except, of course, their wealthy parents. So as I’ve said before, Süleyman, caution.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Ardıç turned back once again to İkmen. ‘Oh, and by the way, İkmen, it has recently come to my attention that at least one other place of worship, apart from the Church of the Panaghia, has been daubed with disturbing images. Maybe your magical Englishman—’

‘I went to Max to get help with that, sir!’ İkmen cried. ‘He didn’t understand the image in that form any more than I did!’

‘It is much more likely to be connected to things we suspect may be happening at Atlas Pasaj,’ Süleyman put in. ‘If Satanic practices are coming from anywhere it’s there.’

‘Well . . .’ Ardıç shrugged and then dismissed them.

Once outside Ardıç’s office, they both lit cigarettes.

‘I know this is going to sound bad, Çetin,’ Süleyman said, ‘but I’ve got a real fear about this Lale Tekeli.’

‘About her not conforming to Gülay Arat’s profile?’

‘Yes. With Cem, although he did certainly kill himself, and Gülay, there is a connection via Atlas Pasaj. But with Lale . . .’

‘Maybe they’re all connected in other ways we don’t yet understand,’ İkmen said, and then looking down at his watch he added, ‘I must get over to Max’s. I’m meeting Karataş over there.’

‘Going over what happened yesterday again?’

‘Yes, and also he has been seconded to me for a few days,’ İkmen said. ‘I think he should be at home, but . . .’ he shrugged. ‘Anyway, he’ll be useful to do the labouring work, fetching and carrying while I look through Max’s stuff. I don’t know whether this media idea of Ardıç’s will work.’

‘Why not?’

‘Max’s students are well off – rich parents. Would they want the aggravation of their children being associated with someone wanted in connection with a shooting? After all, you can always get another English teacher, can’t you?’

‘Maybe.’ Süleyman frowned. ‘What about Metin? Are you going back to the hospital?’

‘After duty, yes, And you?’

He lowered his eyes. ‘Yes, but only after –’ he turned away just a little – ‘I have to see Krikor Sarkissian tonight . . .’

‘Ah. Well.’

Süleyman forced himself to look round at his friend and then also forced a smile.

‘İnşallah everything will be all right,’ İkmen said and then, after just a moment’s awkwardness, he moved forward to take his friend in his arms. ‘Now go home and take a few hours’ rest,’ he said.

Süleyman, his head on İkmen’s shoulder, squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that were gathering behind his lashes.

The Tekeli apartment was small and very neat. Situated above a religious bookshop in the holy village of Eyüp, which is almost at the far northern tip of the Golden Horn, it was a very fitting place for the pious Osman Tekeli to live.

‘Are you going to visit the holy shrine while you are here?’ Tekeli asked Çöktin as he placed the cup of apple tea he’d made for him down beside his sister’s computer.

Çöktin, who had been looking intently at the screen, turned to him and smiled. ‘I don’t know, sir. It does largely depend upon time.’

‘I see.’ It wasn’t outright disapproval, but Tekeli obviously felt that Çöktin should make time. The latter, as he often did in situations like this, wanted to say that he was under absolutely no obligation to visit the shrine of Eyüb Al-Ansari or any other Muslim saint, but as usual he held his tongue. Eyüp village possesses a lot of old-world charm, and the tomb for which it is both famous and sacred, that of Eyüb Al-Ansari, the Prophet Muhammed’s standard bearer, is one of the holiest sites in Islam. It is therefore a very quiet and contemplative place – not the sort of area where one would wish to disturb the inhabitants with what might seem like an aggressive statement of one’s difference. Once Tekeli had returned to the kitchen, Çöktin took a quick sip from the cup and then turned his attention back to Lale Tekeli’s computer.

There were no games in evidence and, as far as he could see so far, no involvement in either chat rooms or newsgroups. What there seemed to be a lot of was school-work – essays in Turkish, English and German on subjects ranging from accounts of aspects of Islamic theory and practice to a geographical description of the Marmara region and essays entitled ‘Everyday Life in Britain’. Lale, it seemed, unlike Cem Ataman or Gülay Arat, didn’t have any ‘Gothic’, musical or just plain weird interests of any sort. And as Çöktin looked around the dead girl’s modest bedroom, he spotted what he thought was another difference too – money. Cem and Gülay came from rich families whereas Lale, it seemed, didn’t. But then the Tekelis were not poor either. Osman Tekeli was a school teacher and possessed a considerable library of mainly religious texts. He drove a very recent model Mercedes and the two of them were enthusiastic hadjis, which meant that they went to Mecca on the annual pilgrimage. All this took money, if not the vast amounts that the Atamans and the Arats exhibited.

However, there was something even more fundamentally different than money and which really did bother Çöktin. And so he made his way into the living room to speak to Tekeli again.

‘Sir,’ he said as he looked down at the small, grey man contemplating the blank wall in front of him, ‘if we are to apprehend Lale’s murderer, we need to know as much about her as we can.’

‘Why?’

To Çöktin, schooled for a number of years now in the still rather radical methods of both İkmen and Süleyman, this seemed like an odd question. But then for someone only accustomed to traditional police methods or, as he suspected in this case, no knowledge of the police at all, it had to seem a little strange. To many people, even some inside the force itself, the psychology of the victim and even the perpetrator was largely irrelevant.

‘Because, sir,’ he said, ‘the more we know about Lale, about what she thought, where she went and who she mixed with, the more chance we have of identifying where she might have met the person who ended her life.’

‘I’ve told you everything you need to know about Lale. She studied at my school – I took her and brought her home. We went everywhere together.’

‘Except when she went to meet her killer,’ Çöktin said.

Tekeli looked up. ‘She left this apartment without either my knowledge or permission,’ he said.

‘Yes, which means she must have done that for a reason,’ Çöktin said. And then he sat himself down in the chair next to Tekeli’s and smiled. ‘Look, sir, I know this must be hard, but I can’t see any sort of personal items in your sister’s room.’

‘She had none.’

‘No?’

Tekeli’s face pinched into a scowl.

‘Everyone has personal bits and pieces,’ Çöktin said. ‘Bits of broken jewellery, old watches, photographs, letters.’

‘My sister was a most pious girl,’ Tekeli said. ‘She didn’t have photographs.’

‘Well, letters and other things then!’ Çöktin said. ‘Mr Tekeli, I know you must, as I would myself in your position, want to protect your sister’s memory as the blameless thing I’m sure it is. But she must have had some stuff that was at least mildly embarrassing. Some soft toys or—’

‘All right! All right!’ Tekeli held a hand up to stanch the flow of Çöktin’s words and then rose to his feet. ‘If you must,’ he said, ‘if you must, I will give you what I have.’

‘Thank you.’

Max was a genius. İkmen had, of course, always known it, but being in his apartment, almost alone with his books and papers, only served to underline this fact. Tomes and volumes on every subject, some of them written by Max himself, graced the vast bookcases lining his study. And not just in one or two languages – so far İkmen had identified French, Latin and Hebrew as well as the to be expected English, German and Turkish. A Renaissance man, Max, versed in literature, science, the arts and magic. İkmen had been looking at a couple of what he hoped were not too complicated treatises on Kabbalism in English when he’d idly shuffled through a drawer in the desk and found Max’s passport.

Standard United Kingdom EU passport, it told İkmen nothing he didn’t already know – except, of course, the bit at the back. Funny, but İkmen had never thought about Max having ‘relatives or friends who may be contacted in the event of accident’, but then he, extraordinary as he was, had to have some family somewhere. Although quite how Mrs Maria Salmon was related to him, İkmen couldn’t know. A sister maybe, or a cousin? His parents, those noble Viennese who had sought refuge in Britain just prior to the Second World War, had to be dead now.

Well, there was only one thing to do and that was to call the number underneath the London address for this woman and see what happened. Max obviously hadn’t left the country but if Mrs Salmon was indeed a close relative he might have told her something about his movements. Given the nature of Max’s supposed disappearance, İkmen doubted this, but he punched the number into Max’s keypad anyway and then waited for an answer. While he waited, İkmen looked at a representation of the Kabbalist Tree of Life in a book by a woman who claimed to be Britain’s foremost Kabbalist. What Gonca had called Sephira – plural Sephiroth – were represented as circles connected by lines called paths. There were eleven Sephiroth, which apparently represented what the writer called ‘characteristics of both God and Man’. The paths he couldn’t make out, but what he did already know was that the Tree of Life also symbolised both Adam Kadmon – the heavenly, macrocosmic man and the ordinary human or microcosmic man. Just like Gonca had said, with Kabbalists it is all about that above and divine being essentially the same and interchangeable with that below or in the world.

‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, English and slightly tremulous.

‘Hello, Mrs Salmon?’ İkmen asked.

‘Yes. Who is this?’

İkmen explained who he was and why he was calling. And, although he was quite truthful when Mrs Salmon, who it transpired was Max’s sister, asked him about what had happened to her brother, İkmen didn’t go into detail.

‘I haven’t seen my brother for, oh, it must be fifteen years,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken to him since Christmas.’

‘That was, I take it, a seasonal greeting?’ İkmen said.

He heard her just gently smirk at his formality. He spoke English very well – his father had drummed the language into him and his brother at every opportunity – but he was, he knew, still rather more formal than most UK citizens of the twenty-first century.

‘Oh, I wished him a Merry Christmas, yes,’ Mrs Salmon said. ‘But he needed to speak to me about something else too.’

‘What was that?’

‘Well, look, it is rather personal actually,’ Mrs Salmon said with that vague English stuffiness Max himself could sometimes exhibit. ‘It concerned our parents, Maximillian’s and mine. I know you say you are at my brother’s flat but do you have an official number that I could call you on? Your police station? So I can verify you are who you say you are?’