River of The Dead (31 page)

‘Where a girl is murdered by her relatives because some meddlesome or envious neighbour impugns her good name? Of course!’ Taner said. ‘Some vicious, bitter old hag takes it into her head that some teenage child is no longer a virgin and the poor girl is strangled by her own brother or father. There was no truth in the allegation. The old hag didn’t even really know the kid, only by sight. But that is enough, that is plenty.’

‘So Brother Gabriel . . .’

‘İbrahim Keser is a liar. But he was undoubtedly behind Gabriel when he returned from the desert all those years ago. Everyone saw him. Minimal contact but again, enough. This is a small place, Inspector, a small poor place where people have very little of value. Their beliefs and their honour are very precious to them. But our lifestyle here is brittle because it is so old. Our beliefs and customs are threatened and made thin by a present that very few, including myself, can really understand. And so if someone might have deceived them, or they only perceive that as being the case, it can be serious. People can and do die over what you may consider such non-problems.’

The mobile telephone in her handbag began to ring and she took it out and answered it. The call could, Süleyman knew, be either business or personal and so, because he didn’t want to intrude were it the latter, he drifted back into his own thoughts. On the face of it Mardin seemed very different from İstanbul. For a start, with the exception of a couple of the restaurants and hotels, there was no discernible night life in the city. Few places served alcohol, and as soon as night fell the city was, as far as he could tell, pretty much shut for business. There were certain quarters of İstanbul, the religious district of Fatin for instance, that were like that. But the centre of the city was a twenty-four-hour riot of activity and life. All of that, however, was at a very surface level. Deeper within the life of İstanbul there were, he knew, uncomfortable similarities. Honour killing was not unknown and, on a far more mundane level, people cared about the opinions of others, sometimes to a ridiculous degree. His mother, for instance, still told her friends, even her lifelong bridge partner, that her son Mehmet’s wife was exactly the same age as he, even though Zelfa was twelve years his senior. His mother’s friend was not a stupid woman and had eyes in her head that had to inform her that what her friend Mrs Süleyman was telling her was a lie. But the old woman had never, Mehmet Süleyman knew in his soul, even hinted that she thought her friend might be mistaken. It wasn’t done.

‘Inspector?’

He turned to where Edibe Taner was sitting with her mobile phone cradled in her lap. Her conversation had obviously come to an end.

‘Do you remember the Jandarma captain we met in Birecik, Captain Erdur?’ she asked. Her face looked suddenly small and crushed. Süleyman frowned.

‘Yes? Has something happened to him?’

‘No.’ She breathed in deeply and then spoke on a rush of breath as if she wanted or needed her words to be over with as soon as possible. ‘The body he and his men pulled out of the Euphrates when we were there wasn’t an American soldier, it was Yusuf Kaya.’

‘What? What!’ He could hardly take it in. ‘No. It was in a uniform and—’

‘Inspector,’ she said, ‘the Americans tested the body. It was not one of their men. The DNA sample taken apparently by a doctor in Urfa matched exactly the sample taken from Kaya by yourselves in İstanbul. The dead body in the Euphrates belongs to Yusuf Kaya.’

Literally speechless now, Mehmet Süleyman simply sat.

‘Someone must have put him in an American uniform,’ Taner continued. ‘Obviously the face was taken off to disguise his identity. According to the captain, the Americans are very worried by the fact that someone clearly from or based in this country could take the clothes and identity discs of one of their servicemen in Iraq. We all know, or those of us who are realistic know, that there is movement across the border, but this particular incident is unprecedented.’

‘I’ve been chasing a dead man,’ Süleyman said. ‘For the last I don’t know how long, I’ve been chasing a dead man!’

‘The doctor in Urfa reckoned that Kaya probably died only shortly before his body was dumped in the Euphrates,’ Taner said. ‘He also told the captain that in his opinion Kaya’s body hadn’t been in the river for more than five or six hours before it was found. You started off chasing a live man, Inspector.’

He looked at her very hard for a moment and then he said, ‘You are sure, aren’t you?’

‘I have the captain’s word. Why would he lie?’ Taner said. ‘This isn’t his area. He didn’t know Yusuf Kaya. The DNA from the body in the river matches exactly that which is held in İstanbul.’

There was another short pause before Süleyman took his telephone out of his jacket pocket and said, ‘I must tell my colleagues in İstanbul.’

What woke Zeynep Kaya was no more than a click. If it had not been followed by a long sigh from the sleeping child next to her, it probably wouldn’t have woken her. But exhausted by grief though she was, when it came to one of her children being disturbed, she instantly went on to the alert.

‘Tayyar?’ she whispered to the child beside her. ‘Are you all right?’

He didn’t make a sound. Poor baby, to learn that his daddy had been killed at such a tender age! The police had been with them for hours, that unnatural cousin of hers telling them all that Yusuf wouldn’t ever be coming back.

‘Tayyar?’

She put a hand up to his mouth and felt absolutely nothing. Zeynep’s heart jumped to her throat just as she felt something move in the early morning shadows on the other side of her bed. Caught between a child who was not breathing and something or someone in the shadows who could mean her harm, she said, ‘Who’s there? What do you want?’

Surprisingly the voice that replied was familiar and, she had thought, friendly.

‘Tayyar is dead,’ it said. ‘Just like you.’

And then there was another click and Zeynep felt a raging pain in her chest. As she lay dying she saw through the open bedroom door one of her daughters fall over the balcony and into the courtyard below as a bullet, from somewhere, took her life away.

That morning was a lot warmer in İstanbul than the weather forecaster on the television said it was in Mardin. The south-east, apparently, was even under slight risk of snow. Çetin İkmen, who had been awake for much of the previous night, was, however, as cold as he imagined he would have been in Mardin. Yusuf Kaya was dead! He still couldn’t really believe it. But Arto Sarkissian had quickly confirmed Süleyman’s story and so it was certainly true. Who had killed Kaya and why were still mysteries, cloaked as they were in the gruesome details that surrounded the disposal of his body. Clearly it had not been sent down the river from Iraq to its final resting place in Birecik. The American owner of the ID tags had apparently been killed just outside Baghdad. Somehow his tags and maybe even his uniform had ended up on Kaya’s body in Turkey where, it was reckoned, the drug dealer had been killed.

So the hunt for Yusuf Kaya was off. The hunt for whoever had helped him to escape and had killed to do so was still however very much on – as was the search for Kaya’s own murderer. Monstrous though Yusuf Kaya had been, whoever had killed him had done so for a reason which, if İkmen was correct, was almost certainly drug-related. Someone as yet unknown was making a bid for Yusuf’s property. In the meantime the Cerrahpaşa administrator, Mr Aktar, was still in the cells at police headquarters. A considerable quantity of narcotics had been found in the garage of his rather nice house in Kumkapı and, as İkmen looked down at his watch now, he wondered how Aktar was feeling after a whole night without access to heroin. It was only five a.m., but he imagined the administrator was still up. İkmen’s wife Fatma certainly was. As she came into the living room he thought about pretending to be asleep but decided that it was probably best not to try to deceive her. She had been deceived quite enough by Bekir, whose potential child he had only told her about less than an hour ago. It hadn’t been easy.

‘So this girl, this Sophia,’ she began.

‘When I came back from the interview room she had gone,’ İkmen said, referring to the fact that Sophia the pregnant Bulgarian girl had walked out of his office and disappeared the previous afternoon. ‘I offered help, she appeared to be thinking about it, but then she disappeared. Fatma, we can only help her if she wants to be helped.’

Fatma looked outraged. ‘She is carrying our grandchild! Don’t you care about that?’

‘Well, of course I—’

‘You are a policeman! Look for her!’

‘Fatma!’

‘Çetin, this is our grandchild!’ Fatma said with tears in her eyes. ‘I know that you don’t care about Bekir, but you have to care about his child! The child is innocent!’

İkmen lit up a cigarette and then leaned forward in his chair. ‘Fatma,’ he said, ‘our son Bekir is a wanted man. When caught he will go to prison. This Sophia, his girlfriend, is an illegal immigrant who has sold her body on the streets. She is also, she says, an ex-heroin user. She may still be taking the stuff; junkies do lie, as we know. Of course I want to find her and try to protect that baby of hers. But it isn’t easy.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Fatma, I will try, it’s all I can do!’

She knew it was pointless to keep on at him about it and so she asked him whether he’d like a glass of tea. When he said he would, she left for the kitchen. Love her as he did, İkmen was glad when Fatma went out because then, to a certain extent, he could relax. Alone, at least he could think his own thoughts, and they were most certainly focused on Mr Aktar. What was he going to be like after over twelve hours without heroin? And, maybe even more interesting, how was he going to respond to the news about the death of Yusuf Kaya?

Süleyman looked down at the photograph of Bekir İkmen that Çetin had faxed over to the Mardin station the night before. He’d never actually met or even seen Bekir, but he could tell from the image before him that he was most certainly a member of the İkmen clan. He definitely had some of his father’s features and, by the sound of him, he had Çetin’s sharp intelligence too – albeit in a rather more toxic form.

‘This is your wanted man?’ Edibe Taner said as she looked over his shoulder at the image in his hands.

‘Bekir İkmen, my colleague’s son,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Although we don’t know, we think he may have had some connection to Yusuf Kaya.’

‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘I doubt he’s ever been here,’ Süleyman said. ‘Back home he was a “soldier” for a local beggar king and small time dealer called Hüseyin Altun. If he was connected to Kaya he may come here, if he thinks Yusuf’s still alive. Or he may just come because we’re near the border and he is, after all, on the run now.’

Edibe Taner sighed. ‘It’s horrible to be betrayed by a member of your family. Inspector İkmen has my sympathy.’ Then she picked her handbag up off her desk and said, ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes.’

He wasn’t really. In the wake of the call from Birecik, both he and Taner had spent much of the night informing Kaya’s family about his death. Their grief, especially that of his mother and his wife Zeynep, had been terrible. The women particularly kept on and on about his body and how they wanted it immediately for burial. The twenty-four-hour deadline, of course, had already passed, and getting the body to the family from the hospital in Urfa was still going to take some time. This only added to their distress which was in sharp contrast to the cold, dry grief they saw at the house in Dara later. Elizabeth Smith did not react with anything more than a hard swallow when Edibe Taner told her what had been found in Birecik. She’d stood in the middle of her wormwood-scented hall and hadn’t spoken a word. When Taner had told her that they would have to return in the morning to take a statement from her, she had only just managed to nod her head in agreement. Now, together with two constables who were going to scout round the area for the still missing İbrahim Keser, they were going out to see Elizabeth Smith once again.

‘We will go briefly to Mardin Prison on the way back,’ Taner said as they set off, ‘to see Musa Saatçi. Maybe we can get him out. But I can at least explain to him what has happened.’

‘He’s dead?’

‘Yes,’ İkmen replied for the third time in quick succession. ‘Yusuf Kaya is most definitely dead.’

‘Mm.’ Mr Aktar was sweating but his pallor was deathly grey and he was shivering. The Americans called this state ‘cold turkey’. İkmen thought how very appropriate that term was in this situation. ‘You’re sure it’s him? You’re sure he’s—’

‘Dead?’ İkmen sighed. ‘Yes.’ Of course, telling suspects lies in order to get them to offer up their guilt and that of others was not unknown and he could understand why Mr Aktar was so suspicious. But the administrator was also in the grip of such a wild need for heroin that he was now totally and utterly paranoid. Not that officially any connection between Kaya and Mr Aktar actually existed. He was where he was because of drug offences related to his personal use. But the mention of Yusuf Kaya’s name now, given the state that Aktar was in, had added significantly to his agitation.

‘You know what I want, what I need now, and so you have me at a disadvantage,’ Aktar said as he rubbed his cold dry hands together to generate warmth.

‘Mr Aktar, this is a police station. I cannot give you heroin,’ İkmen said.

‘I need to get out of here!’ He got up, paced the room once and then pointed down at İkmen. ‘Your officer assaulted me! He split my lip! I want my lawyer! Now!’

‘Sir, if you want your lawyer, you can have your lawyer,’ İkmen said. ‘You are entitled to pursue an action regarding alleged police brutality . . .’

Bloody İzzet Melik! So keen to get a result he’d gone tearing back to methods many had given up long ago and İkmen personally had always abhorred. He’d bawled him out once and, he imagined, Süleyman would have his own thoughts on the matter when he returned from Mardin. Of course İzzet had been backed up by the constable who had been with him at the Cerrahpaşa, but that didn’t make what he had done any more acceptable. Conversely it didn’t exactly save Mr Aktar either. And as he sat down in front of İkmen again, this time with tears in his eyes, it was obvious that he knew it.