On the Bone

by Barbara Nadel

  Bülent Onay didn’t have a police record, but he was a ‘person of interest’. As a student at Boğaziçi University, he’d been a left-wing activist, he’d been involved in the Gezi protests of 2013, and he now lived in the Art House squat in Karaköy. He also had a highly desirable Harley-Davidson motorbike.

  ‘There were two men in biker leathers when I visited,’ Süleyman said. ‘One dark and the other fair.’

  ‘Bülent is fair, sir,’ Halide Can said.

  ‘So this Bülent is close to Myskow?’ İkmen said.

  ‘No, sir, but Myskow likes him, according to Aylin. Seems odd to me that he even knows a casual chef.’

  ‘Maybe Bülent has talent.’

  ‘If he’s replicating Myskow’s recipes, then he must be good,’ she said. ‘What with the foams, airs and vacuum cooking, a lot of the chefs struggle with Myskow’s “vision” – his word, not mine. Only Romero just gets on and does it, and Bülent. Tandoğan struggles, which is why he’s so angry all the time.’

  ‘All life exists in a kitchen,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know if Bülent ever works with Myskow alone?’ Süleyman said. ‘Maybe at these private dinners he cooks?’

  ‘Aysel told me he has done, but I’ve not noticed him going up there myself,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know where else he works?’

  ‘What, because he’s casual? I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe he doesn’t. He’s well educated – apparently he speaks English like an Englishman – and he must have money to run the bike.’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned. Then he said, ‘And he’s due in tonight?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘See what happens,’ he said. ‘Try and have a conversation with him again, if you can. Do you think he’s telling the truth about Celal Vural?’

  ‘Why would he lie?’

  ‘Unless he had a hand in Vural’s disappearance,’ Süleyman said.

  Halide Can left to get some sleep before her next shift at the hotel.

  İkmen lit a cigarette. ‘I’m wondering how much I can ask Zenne Gül about Bülent Onay,’ he said.

  ‘Are they friends?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you trust Zenne Gül?’

  ‘I think so,’ İkmen said. ‘Find out for yourself. He’s due here in an hour.’

  ‘I have met him briefly.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘You don’t feel you should go out to Etiler?’

  ‘Kerim can handle it. He’s a big boy now. I just hope the body is that of Volkan Doğan, so that at least we can clear that situation away. To be honest with you, I am avoiding Dr Sarkissian at the moment.’

  ‘Why?’

  They had always been such close friends.

  ‘A property developer has bought the vacant plot of land next door to the doctor’s house. Yesterday he was shown what they plan to build on it.’

  ‘Is it huge?’

  ‘Not by modern standards, no,’ İkmen said. ‘Ten floors of glass and steel. Residences for the rich who want modern apartment living and Bosphorus views.’

  The doctor lived in what was little short of a mansion on the northern shore of the Bosphorus at Yeniköy.

  ‘I didn’t think redevelopment was allowed in Yeniköy,’ Süleyman said. ‘The rich live there.’

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ İkmen said, ‘that when money is involved, there is no protection, unless you’re the right kind of rich.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The kind that have influence in high places or an enormous amount of money to buy the bastards out.’

  The imam and the policemen were speaking in Turkish, so Radwan couldn’t understand them. But he could see when the old man put his hand in his jacket and began to search through his pockets. There was less than a second to make a decision.

  The boy ran. He heard shouting, then a scream, and then he thought he heard a gunshot. But he kept on running. The bus station was huge and modern and he didn’t know where he was going. All he knew was that he had to get home. Whoever was in Syria and whatever was happening, it had to be better than living in a place where no one understood him and most people looked down their noses. And in Istanbul, there were ghosts …

  Radwan could hear the sound of boots on marble as the police came after him. Was the bus station anywhere near the city, or was it in the middle of nowhere like so many of them? There was more shouting. Radwan jumped over a small pile of plastic toys for sale in the middle of a walkway. If only he could understand what people were saying!

  Imam Ayan had been kind to him, but once he got home, Radwan knew he’d forget all about Burak Ayan. Mustafa was dead already, and Burak had always been a crazy boy. Maybe it was because he was so small that he fell in love with ISIS. Perhaps being part of something like that made him feel bigger and stronger. Burak had always envied Mustafa. Radwan had seen how he looked at him, and Mustafa hadn’t helped. He’d sometimes talked about their mother, and how Burak had clearly inherited her delicate hawk-like Arab features.

  The police were gaining on him. Once he felt fingers just touch his shoulder. But he’d put on a turn of speed since then. Not that they were giving up. Radwan turned a corner, which was when a hand grabbed his arm and pulled him into a place that was dark and hot and smelled of oil.

  Zenne Gül had expected İkmen to be in his office. But he wasn’t.

  An exotic-looking young man called Sergeant Mungun said, ‘He’ll be with you as soon as he can. He’s with Inspector Süleyman, there’s a problem.’

  ‘Oh. Shall I come back later?’ Gül said.

  ‘No. Wait, please,’ Mungun said. ‘It’s not a problem with you. I will bring you tea.’

  He left.

  Alone in İkmen’s cluttered office, Gül put his laptop on the great man’s desk and sat down.

  Unknown to İkmen, as yet, he’d already made contact with the seller of frozen human meat and begun a conversation. The meat came, the seller claimed, from Eastern Europe. He or she further claimed that it had been obtained from a willing source. Gül had asked for more details but had received an angry response along the lines of ‘Why do you need to know?’

  He’d heard about willing victims before, and not just in the context of the German cannibal Armin Meiwes. Eastern Europe was frequently cited as a source for two reasons – first, the connection to the area of vampire legends; and second, because people in places like Romania were poor. The poor were vulnerable; they could be killed and not missed and then passed off as willing meat for those enthralled by the dark myths of Transylvania. But that still didn’t mean the meat on offer was genuine. If it existed at all. On the Dark Web, face-to-face meetings were even more hazardous to engineer than ordinary Internet negotiated assignations. Getting close to people who claimed to be so outlandish in their tastes could put one at grave risk. Gül had heard stories of people going to meetings being robbed, raped or blackmailed. Some, it was said, had even been killed.

  The office door slammed open and İkmen entered, followed by the handsome Süleyman.

  ‘Gül, I am so sorry I was not here for you,’ İkmen said as he sat down behind his desk. ‘You’ve met Inspector Süleyman, I believe.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Süleyman shook his hand. ‘Good afternoon.’

  ‘So, Gül, tell me where we are up to,’ İkmen said.

  It didn’t take long to get İkmen and Süleyman up to speed. Ömer Mungun came in with tea halfway through his exposition and then left.

  ‘You feel this particular line of enquiry is useful?’ İkmen said.

  ‘Yes. I can’t guarantee that it’s genuine, any more than I can say that for the ads on any number of sites,’ Gül said.

  ‘What makes this one stand out for you?’ Süleyman asked.

  Gül thought for a moment. To say that he had a feeling about it was too vague, even if he knew that over the years he had come to trust such a notion. Was it because this
advertisement had been so discreet?

  ‘Some of these so-called human meat sellers seem to enjoy decorating their advertisements with pictures of naked women and symbols denoting devil worship,’ he said. ‘Anecdotal evidence I’ve come across in the past would seem to suggest that these are not serious. Their aim is to get people with weird kinks to come to them. Their motive is generally sexual and involves instant gratification. The quicker the better.’

  He told them his theory about Eastern Europe.

  Süleyman said, ‘But this could still be nonsense, right?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. Real cannibalism is rare. It’s something people claim to have done or say they want to do. All life, however odd, is on the Internet. Much of it is pure fantasy. I’ve not said I’ll buy this person’s goods, just that I’m interested.’

  ‘OK. So what’s the next step?’

  ‘Purchase.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘How he or she wants it to work,’ he said. ‘I’ll almost certainly have to pay up front, and then the meat will either be delivered to me or we’ll agree to meet somewhere for the handover.’

  ‘How will you pay up front?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘Could be via Western Union,’ Gül said.

  ‘Bit old-fashioned, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll be that or Bitcoin.’

  ‘That I don’t understand.’

  ‘Fortunately I do.’

  ‘I will be guided by you, then.’

  ‘OK. I’ll be given a name, probably bogus,’ Gül said, ‘and if we assume the money will go by Western Union, the location of the office I’m to send it to. But this is all speculative, Inspector. Until I agree to actually buy the meat, I won’t know. It’s a risk.’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned. ‘How much does he want?’

  ‘I’ve said I’m interested in buying two kilos,’ Gül said. ‘He wants a thousand lire.’

  ‘Expensive.’

  ‘Of course. Which is something that makes me think it could be genuine. I can get it for half that price on other sites. But if this is a real phenomenon, then whoever is selling will sell high. It’s a trade that is full of jeopardy, and of course it’s also a moneymaking scheme. The seller, if genuine, is taking huge risks.’

  İkmen looked at Süleyman, who shrugged. ‘All right, say you’ll buy. I’ll get you the money. But you must say that you want to meet rather than have the goods delivered to your home. We can set up an address, but I’d rather you agreed a meeting place that we can observe.’

  ‘He’ll almost certainly want a conversation via Skype before that happens.’

  ‘So he can see you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  İkmen nodded. ‘OK. Let me know when that is and we’ll have an officer stand in for you.’

  Zenne Gül laughed. ‘You think?’

  ‘What’s the problem? We can brief him.’

  ‘Inspector,’ Gül said, ‘those who use the Dark Web are a particular breed. We know our own, and this person will smell a police officer, trust me.’

  ‘But I can’t let you go to this meeting,’ İkmen said. ‘Even with back-up from us. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘If you want to get a result, you’re going to have to,’ Gül said. ‘There isn’t time for me to teach your officer what he’ll need to know.’

  There was something about this police officer that made Defne Baydar’s skin crawl. Courteous and polite, he was nevertheless not a classical man’s man, and that made her uncomfortable. Being brought up around soldiers had made her expect a man to be as hard and emotionless as she was. And then, of course, it had been this officer who had suggested her family might be Jews.

  ‘How did you find my brother?’ she asked.

  If it was Volkan. This Gürsel man said that the body they had discovered in Etiler was in a highly degraded state.

  ‘We obtained the address from one of his friends.’

  ‘Volkan had no friends. He was simple.’

  She watched Sergeant Gürsel swallow. What did he have to tell her that he knew she wouldn’t like?

  ‘This friend, a lady, is a … well, a bad …’

  ‘You mean she’s a prostitute? I don’t believe it,’ Defne said. ‘Deniz Bey?’

  Her husband had been hiding behind his newspaper. Stupid man!

  ‘What?’

  ‘This policeman says that Volkan went to a prostitute. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.’ She turned to Kerim Gürsel. ‘This is nonsense. Whoever you’ve found in Etiler is not my brother.’

  ‘We have his kimlik.’

  ‘So you have my brother’s identity card! So what? This man could have taken Volkan’s identity when he killed or robbed him! Don’t you people think of these things?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Defne Hanım, of course Volkan went to prostitutes,’ her stupid husband said. ‘How else was he to fulfil his sexual needs?’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘Madam …’

  ‘Believe what you like. I knew he went to a brothel,’ Deniz Baydar said.

  ‘You knew!’

  He looked at the policeman. ‘Place in Karaköy?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the officer said. ‘A lady who has known Mr Doğan for many years. He planned, so she said, to entertain her at the address in Etiler. But then she heard nothing from him.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We had to get the landlord to use his duplicate key to get in. Mr Doğan had paid three months’ rent in advance and had also bought a considerable amount of clothing. Do you know where he got this money from?’

  Defne began to speak, but her husband interrupted her. ‘Volkan inherited money from his parents,’ he said. ‘My wife administered his account, giving him a monthly allowance.’

  ‘He paid his landlord in cash.’

  ‘Then he must have saved,’ her husband said.

  ‘It’s not him!’ Defne said. ‘Volkan had no sexual needs! His type don’t.’

  ‘Oh but they do, my dear. Everyone has sexual needs. Well, almost everyone.’

  Defne left the room. How could he shame her in such a way, and in front of a stranger? Just because he was an animal who used all sorts to satisfy his lust didn’t mean that everyone was like him. She understood and approved his stand on the notion of the Turks as a warrior race, but his beliefs about the nation tipped over into perversion. It had to be because he was really a Jew.

  She could hear the policeman talking to him and she cringed. Deniz had known for years that Volkan went to prostitutes. Why hadn’t he told the police that when her brother went missing? She found it hard to believe it was to protect her, but that was the only explanation she could find.

  Chapter 20

  The man looked at him and said something in a language he couldn’t understand. Radwan shook his head. He was young, this man, and very dark. Could he perhaps be from the Gulf? Or Saudi Arabia? But if he was, why wasn’t he speaking Arabic?

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Radwan said.

  Outside, in the bus station, he could still hear raised voices. The police hadn’t given up looking for him. He wondered what the imam had told them, if anything.

  ‘Why you run from Turkish police?’ the man said.

  He wasn’t a native Arabic speaker. His accent was weird.

  Radwan shrugged.

  ‘You want to go to the caliphate?’

  However he answered would determine whether Radwan got out of this small storeroom alive. From the way he was dressed, the man could be ISIS, a local Turk or a member of any number of rebel groups.

  ‘No …’

  ‘Why?’

  Radwan thought for a moment and then decided that his best course of action was honesty. ‘I want to go home,’ he said.

  ‘Syria?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is the caliphate now,’ the man said, and then he smiled. ‘You want to come to the caliphate?’

  ‘Well, yes, if Syria is the cali
phate now. If you put it like that …’

  ‘Good. Good!’

  And then the man hugged him. Radwan felt the knife in his belt touch his legs.

  ‘You didn’t ask Zenne Gül about Bülent Onay,’ Süleyman said to İkmen.

  ‘No. I decided against it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want him to be distracted,’ İkmen said. ‘If he’s going to pursue this meat line of enquiry for us, we need him to concentrate on that. Ömer is running further checks on Onay. And anyway I have another idea …’

  His phone rang. He picked it up. ‘İkmen.’

  Süleyman couldn’t hear the person at the other end of the line, but when the call had finished, İkmen said, ‘Gaziantep have Imam Ayan, but not the boy.’

  ‘They were travelling together.’

  ‘Yes, they were,’ he said. ‘But the kid made a run for it at the bus station and our country cousins, no doubt full of ayran and too much lahmacun, let the little bugger get away.’

  Süleyman shook his head. Gaziantep was a big city; they should have been on top of the situation. But they hadn’t been, and now this latest loss would just be chalked up to rural incompetence, like so many incidents in the past involving forces out of town.

  ‘They’re sending the imam back here,’ İkmen said. ‘He held his hands up to the charge that he was attempting to get to the caliphate. But he said the boy wasn’t. In which case, why take him?’

  ‘Oh, he was using the child’s local knowledge,’ Süleyman said. ‘Did he mention his son, Burak?’

  ‘Yes, he said he was planning to go in and get him out.’

  ‘Delusional.’

  ‘We know that. But how would you feel if it was your son?’ İkmen said. ‘I’d go, I’ll be honest.’

  ‘And you’d die.’

  ‘So what? It’s your child. We’ll interview the imam when he gets back. Gaziantep will carry on looking for the boy.’

  Süleyman said nothing. The child was as good as lost. He changed the subject. ‘What’s your other idea about Bülent Onay?’

  ‘We’ll see what Ömer can find,’ İkmen said. ‘Hopefully Constable Can will see Bülent tonight, and then, I think, surveillance.’

  ‘Not using Zenne Gül, who is on the spot?’