On the Bone

by Barbara Nadel

  İkmen looked at Süleyman. ‘How Freudian.’

  Mehmet Süleyman’s ex-wife had been a psychiatrist. He rolled his eyes.

  ‘A few years ago, you may remember, a modern-day German cannibal called Armin Meiwes killed and ate a man for his own, and his victim’s, sexual gratification.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meiwes and his victim met on the Internet …’

  ‘Whence all horror and deceit flows,’ İkmen said.

  Teker smiled. ‘Which is precisely why that part of the investigation is going to be performed by a contractor. Have you gentlemen heard of the Dark Web?’

  ‘Where terrorists meet.’

  ‘Where, as you said, Inspector, all horror lives,’ she agreed.

  Süleyman said, ‘Don’t the techs monitor the Dark Web?’

  ‘Yes, but I am assured that if I want to get as deep inside it as I can, which is where those interested in cannibalism are more likely to operate, I need an expert.’

  ‘So you’re contracting this cannibal …’

  ‘We have a hacker,’ she said. ‘Reformed, of course. He’s coming here this afternoon. His name is Erol Bilici and I want you to brief him.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything. I have made very clear what could happen if he opens his mouth outside this building. I spoke to him last night and made him a financial offer he was unable to refuse. He sounds very intelligent.’

  ‘He’ll be hugely overweight and obsessed with computer games,’ Süleyman said.

  Teker smiled. ‘You may be surprised.’

  The old man was admitted on to the ward while his nurse from the Balat Jewish hospital and one of the Pink Angels, or volunteer carers, looked on.

  Although well cared for at the Or-Ahayim Hospital in Balat, Sarkis Aznavourian wished to die amongst his own people. Luckily, the Surp Pirgiç Armenian hospital had a bed.

  Nurse Peri Mungun took Mr Aznavourian’s notes from Nurse Turkan Polat and then invited her and the Pink Angel, Rosa Nabarro, to tea in the hospital’s garden. It was a beautiful day and so the women readily accepted.

  Peri had known Rosa, a woman at least twenty years her senior, for some time. They’d met when Peri and some other nurses from the German hospital, where she’d worked at that time, had been given a guided tour of the Or-Ahayim. Peri had been impressed by the dedication shown by the volunteer Pink Angels and had kept in touch with Rosa.

  A student brought their tea. Peri didn’t know Nurse Polat, and so various niceties had to be exchanged before any serious conversation could begin. But she knew she couldn’t miss this opportunity to talk about that strange disease Ömer had an interest in. How did she broach the subject?

  Eventually she said, ‘You know, I’ve been wondering ever since I came to work here about how prevalent genetic diseases are in other minority hospitals. I mean, we now take anyone who needs us. But our core work still involves people of Armenian origin. And that population is small.’

  ‘Yes, but genetic disorders generally arise as a result of intermarriage,’ Nurse Polat said. ‘And speaking just for the Jewish population, I have to say that they appear to be marrying out.’ She looked at her colleague. ‘What do you think, Rosa?’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I’m not ancient, I’m fifty, but marrying out was just not done in my day. Now my eldest son has a Muslim wife, and my daughter is married to a Greek. What can you do?’

  A slight expression of disapproval crossed Nurse Polat’s face. Maybe she was one of those Turks who thought that the minorities should be grateful to be able to marry out.

  ‘But then it’s a good thing too,’ Rosa continued. ‘Because of the genetic diseases. One of our neighbours back home in Karaköy suffered from beta thalassemia. Terrible anaemia she had. She died. And that’s a Sephardic disease. She was pure, she was, her family hadn’t married out ever. Thank God my father married an Ashkenazi, so please God, me and my brothers will have missed that particular bullet.’

  ‘Yes, but Ashkenazis have genetic disorders too.’

  ‘Everyone does, Peri love,’ Rosa said. ‘Even you lot.’

  Peri smiled.

  ‘I know. But because so many of our patients here are old people from pure, small minority populations, I’ve been doing some reading about genetic diseases we may or may not come across. Have either of you heard of Bloom syndrome?’

  Nurse Polat frowned. ‘No. What’s that?’

  ‘The worst part about it is that it predisposes sufferers to both cancer and diabetes,’ Peri said. ‘And there’s an appearance thing …’

  ‘Is that the one where they’re short but have long faces?’ Rosa asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s an Ashkenazi disease. Your Armenians won’t get it.’

  ‘No. But I found it interesting,’ Peri said. ‘Have you ever come across it?’

  Peri knew that Rosa knew what her brother did for a living. She watched the Pink Angel narrow her eyes. Rosa plumped pillows, washed floors and prepared food, and she knew everyone and everything that happened in the small community of the Or-Ahayim Hospital. She’d also worked Peri out.

  ‘Only once,’ Rosa said. ‘A good decade ago now. A young woman, pretty little thing. She was dying when she came to us. She had tumours all over her.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She died,’ Rosa said. ‘But it was a strange business. She was just dumped on our doorstep. Timür, who works in the kitchen, said he saw a man and a covered woman leave her, so we assumed she was Muslim. Then she started raving in her sleep, and one of our doctors recognised it as Yiddish. He came from France originally, that doctor, and so he had a bit of an idea she might have Bloom syndrome and did a test. We never knew who she was, but when she died, we had her buried in the Ulus Ashkenazi Cemetery. The hospital paid. What else could we do?’

  ‘You did your best,’ Peri said. ‘But you’ve seen no cases since?’

  ‘Not that I know about,’ Rosa said. ‘There are very few Ashkenazim left here. Most of them moved on to Israel at the end of the forties. Also, she was a strange one, that little lady.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, Ashkenazis generally look a lot more sort of Western than Sephardis. My mum was blonde, would you believe! But this lady, if I’d had to put a nationality to her, I would have had her down as a Kurd. All sparkly bright clothing underneath a full-on abaya. She was the strangest ethnic mix you’ve ever seen in your life.’

  Zenne Gül sat outside the office he’d been told to go to. It was clinical, and slightly squalid at the same time. He hadn’t been in places like this often. Thank God.

  He’d toned the whole zenne thing right down. No jewellery, no make-up, very conservative, male clothes. The only thing he hadn’t compromised on was fragrance. But then some of the men he’d seen since he’d arrived had smelled nice. That whole macho man thing was, in some places, going out of style. That look had always made his flesh crawl. His best friend Zenne Menekşe had a liking for the hairy-chested, sweaty type. Gül couldn’t understand it. Those men played rough, and they were usually married with umpteen kids. Menekşe had dated loads of them, and all he’d ever got for his pains was a black eye and a broken heart. But then Gül was wary of love and he knew it. He’d only ever had one real boyfriend, who had quickly ditched him when his parents made him marry a girl from their home village. Now he hung out with the girls at the squat, but that suited him. Getting another broken heart was not in his life plan. What Gül wanted was money, so that he could buy his own little club on the Mediterranean coast and get away from the insanity of the city.

  The door he sat beside opened. A grizzled head emerged.

  ‘Erol Bilici?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It wasn’t often that people used his real name. It was a bit weird.

  ‘Inspector İkmen?’ Gül said.

  ‘Yes.’

  The small, grizzled, tobacco-scented man shook his hand.

  There was only
one copy of the menu, and that was just for those who were curious. When the meal was over, it would be burned. Such a ridiculous amount of nonsense about a perfectly safe meat. Although was it? Safe? Of course it was. Boris Myskow hammered the steaks thin. Schnitzel of boar was on the menu, and he could hear his mother turning in her grave.

  He’d never even seen pork until he was an adult. Most kids in Boro Park were the same. People said it was the biggest Orthodox Jewish enclave outside Israel, and he could believe it. Even the rest of New York had been a mystery to him until he was sixteen. Then he’d got out. He clearly remembered thinking, ‘I don’t buy this shit.’ So why did the Turks? Not that the people he gave his little parties for did. He couldn’t understand what they said, but they said it drunk with pig inside their bellies, so they had to have contempt for their religion. Didn’t they?

  He hammered the steaks until they were almost see-though and then stopped. Such massive slabs looked far from elegant, and he was tempted to trim them down and throw the excess meat away. But did he dare do that? Should he eat the leftovers himself? He was tempted. It would be an experience. He decided to make mini schnitzels. Garnished with stuffed olives and anchovies, they would look elegant, which was what diners expected from him. Even these diners with their hairy knuckles and ill-fitting tuxedos.

  Boris had cooked for the cream of Turkish society. Academics, captains of industry, politicians, even princes. But this lot were different. Most of them straddled several worlds in their pursuit of material gain. At bottom they were opportunists and chancers, small-minded misogynists, in love with diamond-studded mobile phones and impossibly powerful cars. Boris allowed himself a chuckle as he remembered his first wife, Mary. She’d been one of those horsey British aristos whose whole family was mad. She’d called people like Boris’s diners ‘nouveau riche’.

  Why did they come to him? Was it because his food was better than anyone else’s, or was it because he was expensive – and a foreigner – and a Jew? It was all of the above and Boris knew it. They thought he didn’t understand the politics of their weird country, but he did. They were using him to show off. To each other. And he used them. Having them around meant that his business was safe.

  ‘You don’t have a record. I checked,’ İkmen said. ‘You must’ve been good.’

  Zenne Gül smiled. ‘I was lucky,’ he said. ‘And remember, Inspector, I did a maths degree. I was surrounded by geeky people who routinely shared tips about computers, the Internet, all that stuff. I stood on the shoulders of giants.’

  ‘And now I want you to do that again.’

  ‘It’s odd.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, if you’d said to me even yesterday morning that the police would come to me …’

  ‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ İkmen said, ‘we have our own team of techies who I would not presume to criticise. However …’ He opened his office window and offered Zenne Gül a cigarette.

  ‘Oh, can we …?’

  ‘I do,’ İkmen said. ‘And so does Commissioner Teker. Please …’

  Zenne Gül took a cigarette and lit up.

  İkmen, smoking too, said, ‘We, Commissioner Teker and myself, know that you have, in the past, accessed parts of the so-called Dark Web for the author Kostas Onassis.’

  ‘Do you read zombie fiction, Inspector?’

  ‘No,’ İkmen said. Although he knew that several of his children indulged.

  ‘Oh, it’s great fun.’

  İkmen didn’t really understand the amusement to be had from the idea of the dead chomping on the bones of the living, but he consoled himself with the notion that it was probably a generational thing. He was just too old.

  ‘Well I’m sorry, Mr Bilici,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t do a lot for me. But that’s beside the point. We’ve got you here because we seem to have a real cannibal situation in the city.’

  For a moment the zenne said nothing. Teker hadn’t given him any details.

  ‘A man known to residents of your squat, Ümit Kavaş, died of natural causes.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Gül said. ‘He was a nice person. But when he died, the police started asking questions. Uğur Bey reckoned you were trying to smear his name. After what happened to his father …’

  ‘We weren’t,’ İkmen said. ‘What we were trying to do was find out why a man of apparent integrity like Ümit Kavaş had human flesh in his stomach when he died.’

  Once again Gül was silent.

  İkmen smiled. ‘This is not pleasant, Mr Bilici,’ he said. ‘Or would you rather I called you Gül?’

  ‘Gül.’

  He was slightly in shock.

  ‘Not only had Mr Kavaş eaten human flesh, but it had been cooked,’ İkmen continued. ‘We know some things about the victim – his gender and his possible ethnicity, for instance – but we don’t know his identity. Basically, we want you to help us find out what sort of cannibal activity is going on in Istanbul. Was this a one-off incident, or do we have a cult of some sort on our hands? Tell me, do you think from your experience of him that Ümit Kavaş might have been involved in anything like that?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Ümit never struck me as a dark soul. He was very straightforward and honest.’

  ‘Can you help us?’

  ‘I can try,’ he said. ‘But there are two problems. First, since the Armin Meiwes case in Germany, people who like this sort of thing have gone even further underground, and second, I’ve never performed any of my research on the Turkish scene. Father Bacchus sets his books in Europe. I can speak English and German, and so I concentrated on those countries, plus the US.’

  ‘We haven’t, as yet, discovered any sort of Turkish scene,’ İkmen said. ‘The only recent case I’ve been able to discover is that of Özgür Dengiz in 2007.’

  ‘The Ankara Cannibal.’

  ‘Yes. A lone psychopath who was committed to a mental institution. I’ve read some of the case notes. He acted apparently on a whim. He didn’t cook his victim. What Mr Kavaş consumed, however, was part of an elaborate meal. Commissioner Teker has spoken to me about the conversation she has had with Father Bacchus, and it seems to us, if indeed we have anything here at all, that it’s probably a sexual fetish.’

  ‘Which is far removed from straightforward zombie fiction,’ Gül said.

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘Kink scenes can be dangerous. I know that may seem strange to you, coming from a man who does what I do now. But I’ve always kept away from that stuff. Doing research for Father Bacchus was one thing. I could look at what I found and not get involved. But he never wanted me to make contact. I assume you do.’

  ‘You will be protected at all times. I give you my word.’

  Gül put his cigarette out. ‘I had a friend who met a guy online in a very ordinary chat room about a year ago. This man seemed really nice. It was only when my friend got to his house that he discovered what a mistake he’d made. OK, he didn’t hurt my friend, but he did want him to lie in a coffin and play dead while he had sex with him. My friend made his excuses and left.’

  ‘You won’t have to get involved with any of these people,’ İkmen said. ‘We just need you to find them and make contact.’

  Gül nodded. He said nothing.

  ‘Zenne Gül?’ İkmen said.

  ‘I’ll do it, because to be honest with you, I want to clear Ümit’s name. If he ate human flesh, then it had to be by some sort of accident. I can’t believe he was …’ He shook his head. ‘Just so you know, accessing sites, should they exist, is the least of a job like this.’

  ‘So what’s the most of it?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘If you want to find these people, I’ll have to enter chat rooms,’ he said. ‘And if I want to be believed, that means opening myself up to a lot of people’s fantasies.’

  ‘I know that’s a risk.’

  ‘And how. Also, there is a practical problem.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I haven’t done any work for Father Bacchus for a long time,�
� Gül said. ‘My computer is ancient. I am most definitely an ex-hacker these days. That’s one of the reasons I like the squat so much. No one there really does tech.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ İkmen said. ‘We will supply everything you need.’

  ‘OK.’

  Zenne Gül felt his heart beat a little faster.

  Chapter 16

  It was so hot, she felt as if she might pass out. She went to the freezer room to get cool as much as anything else. It had been a very long night, but at least she’d finally met someone who had liked the missing Celal Vural.

  ‘What are you doing in here? Again?’

  Halide Can turned her wet red face towards Chef Tandoğan.

  ‘I’m so hot …’

  ‘You work in a kitchen. It’s one of the down sides,’ he said.

  Was there an up side?

  ‘You get to eat some of the finest food in the world and we pay you,’ he said. ‘But in return you have to work in heat. What’s the matter with you? Got a heart problem or something?’

  ‘No, Chef.’

  ‘Then stop hanging about round the freezers,’ he said. ‘I know what you people do.’

  What did he mean? And who were ‘you people’?

  She stood up. But she must have looked confused, because he said, ‘We know you all steal. Why do you think we get through so many of you?’

  He meant cleaners, and as far as Halide could tell, they got through so many because no one could stand such a dismal, poorly paid job for too long. But she didn’t say anything.

  ‘You chose to do a double shift, no one made you,’ he said.

  Halide left the room. He wasn’t wrong about that. She had offered to stay on once the restaurant had closed at midnight to stack the dishwashers after Mr Myskow’s dinner in the conference room ended. That hadn’t been until three in the morning. Now it was almost four, and, having loaded one dishwasher with dirty plates, glasses and crockery, she knew she had to face the long walk to the upstairs conference room to clean up there. She’d also assumed that the job included the upstairs kitchen. Being in Myskow’s kitchen, alone, was an opportunity she had to take. When Tandoğan had found her, she really had just been way too hot to go on, and she was lucky she still had the job. She couldn’t take a risk like that again.