On the Bone

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I’ll be carrying a cool box, won’t I?’

  Chef Tandoğan reminded İkmen of one of those borderline insane chefs on television. Usually foreign, they spent more time shouting than cooking and seemed to enjoy terrorising both their staff and their customers. İkmen always wondered what it would be like to go to one of their restaurants, wait for a chef-induced scene and then arrest one of them.

  ‘She left, she wasn’t feeling well.’

  He barely looked at İkmen, this self-important little prick with his waxed moustache. Was he just being rude, or did he think that his offhandedness was fooling İkmen in some way? It wasn’t.

  ‘Mr Tandoğan,’ he said. Not using the title ‘Chef’ was designed to get his attention, and it did.

  ‘I beg your—’

  ‘Chef,’ İkmen said. ‘Miss Gurcanli is a friend of Miss Can, and she didn’t tell her she was unwell.’

  ‘How do you expect me to know that?’ Tandoğan said. ‘The woman was sick, she went home. Maybe Chef Gurcanli was busy at the time.’

  ‘Where was she working last night?’

  Tandoğan shouted at a boy to ‘Hurry up with that!’ and then said, ‘Here in the kitchen. Where else would she be?’

  ‘Upstairs in the conference suite with Mr Myskow?’

  ‘Why would she be there?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

  ‘She wasn’t up there.’

  ‘No? How do you know whether she was up there or not? She could’ve gone there after she left here.’

  ‘Why? She was unwell!’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ İkmen said. Then he looked at Kerim and nodded.

  Kerim took a piece of paper out of his pocket and held it up.

  ‘I’ve a warrant to close this kitchen,’ he yelled across what became a silent space.

  Then he made a call on his mobile phone.

  ‘You can’t—’

  ‘Oh, but I can, sir,’ İkmen said to Chef Tandoğan.

  ‘Yes, but Mr Myskow …’

  İkmen leaned in close to the chef. ‘His minders can’t really help him this time,’ he said. ‘Not with two people missing. That’s beyond careless, or so my boss, Commissioner Teker, thinks.’

  What he didn’t tell him was how unhappy Teker had been about requesting that warrant. If Constable Can hadn’t been one of their own, would she have done it? And who, if anyone, had she liaised with in security services?

  He didn’t know, and nor did he want to.

  ‘You’ll have to let Mr Myskow know,’ Tandoğan said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ İkmen said. ‘I will.’

  A group of officers who had been outside the hotel came in.

  ‘But we’ve got customers to serve!’ Tandoğan said.

  İkmen ignored him.

  The Brothers weren’t as scary as their counterparts in Jerablus had been. But then, as Burak’s men, they wouldn’t be. He wasn’t a bad boy, not really. Just a bit mad. As long as Radwan had known him, he’d been like that. Much more daring than his brother, who had actually been quite soft. It was difficult to believe that Mustafa was a martyr. It was weird he had this village named after him.

  Women from the village, which Radwan learned had been Christian, came with platters of rice and meat. The Brothers didn’t look at them. Only when the women had gone did they fall on the food liked starved hyenas. Radwan ate what he could get hold of while Burak went outside to take food to Brothers on guard duty.

  Although Burak had introduced him as a Brother from Istanbul, Radwan got the impression that his men weren’t very impressed. Once Burak had gone, at best they ignored him, at worst they pushed him out of the way of the food. But Radwan didn’t mind. He’d found Burak and so he could go back to the imam and tell him, and then he could make his way back to Aleppo. Except he didn’t know where the imam had gone …

  ‘Did you ever meet Brother Burak’s brother Mustafa?’ a man with grease running down his chin asked the company in general. He was a fat thing of about forty. What was he doing with a load of lads half his age?

  ‘No,’ a boy of no more than sixteen said. ‘Did you, Abu Daoud?’

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘But then I’ve not been to Iraq, unlike Abu Jemal.’

  On hearing his name, a reed-thin boy said, ‘What?’

  ‘You were in Iraq, Abu Jemal.’

  ‘Oh yes. Sinjar. Amongst the devil-worshippers.’

  ‘Where this supposed martyr Mustafa Ayan was,’ the fat man said. There was a mocking tone in his voice that Radwan didn’t like.

  ‘I never met him,’ Abu Jemal said. ‘But then he was martyred.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘A lot of good men died in Iraq,’ Abu Jemal said. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Radwan looked at the fat man, who pulled a face at him. Burak was leader of this group, but this older man seemed to be disrespecting him.

  ‘All I’m saying is that I remember when Brother Burak arrived from Turkey, and I can tell you that he came alone,’ he said.

  A man who hadn’t spoken before said, ‘How do you know he came alone? Maybe his brother was sent to Iraq as soon as they arrived.’

  The fat man raised his eyes to heaven but said nothing.

  For a while the men just ate in silence. Radwan didn’t like the fat man, Abu Daoud. His tone was spiteful, and he felt that he meant Burak harm.

  Then a voice from a distant, dark corner of the room said, ‘I cannot settle this matter. All I can say is this …’

  All eyes turned to that murky corner, where Radwan saw what at first looked like a bundle of rags but was in fact a boy of about his own age. Pale and thin, the boy had only one leg, and Radwan noticed that he had a drip attached to one of his arms.

  ‘So, Brother Salah,’ the fat man said. ‘What do you have to tell us?’

  The child’s parched lips moved into a slight smile. ‘You know that I have never agreed with you, Abu Daoud.’

  ‘I know you hate me.’

  The boy laughed. ‘If I had the strength to hate …’ he said. ‘No. Listen, in this matter you are right.’

  ‘Right?’

  There were eight men in that room, and they all sat up straight.

  ‘I know this from my wife.’

  His wife!

  ‘She works tending the wounded in Jerablus,’ he said. ‘A lone Turk came over the border with a stab wound to his face. On his left cheek.’

  Burak had a scar on his face. But which cheek was it, the left or the right?

  Then Burak came in and smiled at him.

  ‘This is fucking outrageous!’

  Commissioner Hürrem Teker had known she’d have to confront Boris Myskow directly, and so she’d held herself ready for a phone call from İkmen. Now she was outside the conference suite kitchen at the Imperial Oriental, hoping that she wasn’t watching the beginnings of the famous chef’s first heart attack.

  ‘Well you tell me what I should do, Mr Myskow,’ she said. ‘Two missing persons who were last seen alive in this building. What would you do?’

  He moved in to whisper in her ear. Westerners didn’t usually get that close. They generally didn’t like it.

  ‘Security forces are already inside this hotel, as you well know,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think they would have noticed if I’d murdered two members of staff I barely know?’

  This didn’t even deserve recognition, let alone an answer, and Boris Myskow knew it. With the sort of company he kept, he could do pretty much whatever he liked, and that included selling unlicensed wild boar.

  ‘My officers will need to get into this kitchen, as well as the one downstairs,’ Teker said.

  ‘Why? This Can woman never came up here!’

  ‘Never? Word is she came here to clear up the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Word is that you shouted at her,’ Teker said.

  ‘Word? Whose word?’

  ‘Word,’ she reiterated. ‘A
s in popular opinion.’

  He looked confused. It was great being able to flummox such an arrogant arsehole in his own language. And there wasn’t a thing his minders could do about it. Not this time.

  Hürrem Teker pushed past Boris Myskow and opened the kitchen door. Then she hailed her team.

  ‘In there,’ she said. ‘Leave no chicken leg unexamined.’

  Chapter 23

  Fatma had gone to sleep on the sofa in front of the TV. It was still banging out soap operas when her husband eventually made it home at 5 a.m.

  ‘Fatma?’

  Her eyes opened slowly.

  ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t get home last night.’

  She sat up. Her long iron-grey hair looked like an explosion, but unusually for Fatma, she smiled. ‘As long as you’re all right,’ she said. ‘You must be hungry and thirsty. I’ll make tea.’

  She went to get up, but he stopped her.

  ‘No, I’ll make the tea. I’m already up.’

  He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. He didn’t know how the activities of the previous night had worked out. Yet more meat samples had been taken from the fridges and freezers of the Imperial Oriental, but whether they were significant or not was impossible to tell. They hadn’t found any human heads, which was a mercy – in one way.

  What they had found was blood. Whether that was just sloppy meat storage practice remained to be seen. Significant amounts had been swabbed on the appliances in the main kitchen, particularly the fridges and freezers. Up in the conference suite they’d had to use Luminol to highlight areas of blood contamination. İkmen thought about how cleanliness was apparently much more of an issue when it came to Mr Myskow’s more exalted guests.

  The kettle came to the boil and he poured the water on to tea leaves in the pot. Fatma was never going to use tea bags. In the same way that Fatma washed the floors on her hands and knees and always boiled towels even if they fell apart in the process, she was never going to use tea bags. She had her ways of doing things that were not going to change.

  İkmen looked out of the kitchen window at the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque and wondered how long it would be before someone came along wanting to redevelop his apartment building. It was quite an ugly early 1960s lump, but his apartment was large and, significantly, he owned it. Not that ownership meant much to property developers. Or who and what a person did for a living.

  Uğur İnan, the textile designer, had only moved to the Karaköy squat after his house in Zeytinburnu had been compulsorily purchased. It had been one of the last gecekondu homes in the area. Those were the days! İkmen smiled. Time was that if a man could put up four posts and a roof in one night, he could claim that land as his own. Some of these properties had been very large, well built and sophisticated. Uğur İnan’s father had constructed his own gecekondu, and when he became famous, the designer had built his studio on the vacant plot of land next door. No wonder he’d set up the Art House; the uncertainty of gecekondu living was all he’d ever known. In the only interview İkmen had ever seen with İnan, he’d said that by setting up the squat, he was fighting for his life. His last stand.

  ‘You don’t want to go back to Turkey, do you?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  Burak shrugged. ‘You were safe there.’

  ‘I want to go back to Aleppo,’ Radwan said. ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘Well you’re in the caliphate now,’ Burak said. ‘So you are home.’

  They were sitting on a mound of earth outside Jerablus, overlooking the Turkish border. Kurdish militia known as the Peshmerga were moving into the area, and so all available ISIS fighters had been drafted in to protect the major towns and cities. They’d literally got their marching orders at two o’clock that morning.

  Roused from his sleep by a kick in the ribs from one of Burak’s men, Radwan had watched as Abu Daoud finished having sex with a terrified village woman and then pushed her away. Only Brother Saleh, the pale boy with the blue lips, had remained behind. Just before Radwan left, he had beckoned him over.

  ‘Your friend Burak is not who he claims to be,’ he’d said. ‘I believe my wife. He came alone. I’m dying. Why would I lie?’

  Radwan had not stopped thinking about the scar on Burak’s cheek. It was on the left.

  ‘But why would he lie?’ he had said.

  ‘A man with a martyred brother is a big man.’

  ‘All I know is that Burak and Mustafa left at the same time,’ Radwan had said. ‘Mustafa was a strong, big boy.’

  ‘Maybe so, but he didn’t make it to the caliphate,’ Brother Saleh had said.

  Now, alone with Burak, Radwan said, ‘How did Mustafa die?’

  ‘I told you. He went to Iraq, he fought the devil-worshippers. He fought bravely and was martyred. Why?’

  ‘He was my friend,’ Radwan said.

  ‘And he leads the way for us to make our martyrdoms even more famous than his,’ Burak said. ‘You know, Radwan, his death was truly glorious!’

  And it was at this moment that Radwan knew for certain that Burak was lying.

  ‘Is it OK if I get a bit more sleep?’ he said.

  Burak smiled. ‘As long as you make namaz. You know that anyone who misses namaz willingly even once is an unbeliever, don’t you?’

  Radwan, like his father had, only prayed on Fridays. But he agreed with Burak so that he could get away from him. In a way, it had been fortunate that Burak and his men had moved up to Jerablus, because it meant that when Radwan made a break for the border, he wouldn’t have so far to go.

  A knock on the door brought Gül out of a dream where his mother was still alive and was beating his father with a yard broom. If only she’d really done that, maybe she wouldn’t have died when she was barely forty.

  ‘Yes?’

  The door opened and Uğur İnan came in.

  Gül sat up in bed. ‘Good morning, Uğur Bey.’

  He smiled. ‘Good morning. Mind if I have a word?’

  ‘Sit down.’ Gül patted an empty space beside him on the bed.

  Uğur İnan sat. ‘Gül, I just wanted to speak to you about your new friend. I hope you don’t mind.’

  New friend? Who did he mean? Gül had danced from eleven the previous night until four o’clock that morning. His brain and his body were both addled. Then he remembered.

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Inspector Süleyman,’ Uğur said. ‘A very handsome and charming man, and believe me, I can see the attraction, but …’

  But if Gül said he was working for Süleyman, that could be a problem. People in the Art House didn’t do authority. Gül said all that he could say.

  ‘It’s just a thing.’ He smiled. ‘Nothing serious.’

  ‘Right. Because we can’t get too cosy with the police, you know. We’re illegally squatting this house and so one day they’re going to come in here and evict us. I’m sorry, and while I’d never interfere in your private life under ordinary circumstances, I’m going to have to ask you not to bring him here again.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘See him,’ Uğur said. ‘I wouldn’t rain on your parade for the world. I’m straight, but even I can see that he’s a doll. But not here. Do you mind?’

  Gül smiled again. ‘No. Not at all. I shouldn’t have invited him here, it was stupid. Just …’

  ‘You let your heart rule your head.’ Uğur patted his hand.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No problem.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll let you get back to sleep.’

  When he had left, Gül picked up his phone. If he didn’t call Süleyman now and tell him they were having a fling, he might forget. As he dialled the number, he laughed.

  The pain in his chest was fucking awesome. He’d always had secrets, but this was another level – one that was going to kill him if he wasn’t careful. Keeping stuff from his wife had been a walk in the park compared to this. Lying to his accountant was just something he’d always done. This was something else, and now he’d have to co
mpound it. His guests would have to go back to chicken chasseur and he knew they wouldn’t like it. Consequences could involve the cancelling of contracts, withdrawal of support, maybe even closure of the hotel. But what could he do when İkmen had barged in asking about a missing employee? A missing person was a missing person.

  And yet what puzzled Boris Myskow a little bit was how quickly the cleaner had been reported missing. Didn’t the police normally wait twenty-four hours before they opened an investigation on an adult? He wondered whether İkmen knew the woman somehow. Then he had a truly horrific thought that he had to banish from his mind if he didn’t want his heart to fail.What if İkmen hadn’t been frightened off by his friends in high places? What if he’d put that woman in his kitchen to spy on him? Nobody ever checked on such people. They could be anyone.

  Then he remembered that one of his junior chefs was a friend of the woman.

  The Twisted Boy brought the imam his lunch as usual, but he also brought his mother with him. Aylin Hanım did not mince her words. She’d stayed away when Imam Ayan had first returned, but now she had things to say.

  ‘You’re a silly old fool,’ she said. ‘Going to Syria! What were you thinking?’

  Her son, afraid of what the holy man might say in return, left.

  ‘You and I have lived through too much together for me not to tell you the truth,’ she said. ‘We did a bad thing to Zanubiya Hanım all those years ago. We did it with the best of intentions, but she had become a Muslim by then. What was the point?’

  ‘You didn’t say that at the time, Aylin Hanım.’

  ‘No, I didn’t, because you persuaded me that was what she wanted. But she was in and out of a coma, talking nonsense.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘One day she was here so her boys could see her, and the next …’ She shrugged. ‘If those boys don’t know who they are …’

  ‘It is my fault, I know,’ he said. ‘But I did what I did for the best.’

  ‘As I said.’

  ‘And now they are all gone,’ he said. ‘I have paid a hard price.’

  ‘And yet you still owe,’ she said. ‘And so do I. I have been thinking about this, Imam Ayan, and I have come to the conclusion that we must go to her now.’