On the Bone

by Barbara Nadel

  What would happen when Burak ended the call? Radwan looked at the gun on the ground and wondered if he could reach it before Burak. Then he saw the young man looking at him and decided that he probably couldn’t.

  ‘You want him to come back?’ he heard Burak say. ‘No one leaves the caliphate, old man.’

  He ended the call, dropped the phone on the ground and picked up the gun.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ Burak said.

  ‘Did he …?’

  ‘He told me lies to get me to return home, and then he asked that I let you go.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘He’s back in Istanbul. He wants to give you a home there, with him.’

  ‘My family …’

  ‘Are dead and you know it,’ Burak said. ‘But as you heard me tell the old man, no one leaves the caliphate, and so I can tell you now that I’m not letting you go.’

  But if Burak had spoken to his father, was there any reason for Radwan to stay?

  ‘So you’d better escape,’ Burak said.

  ‘What?’

  Burak turned his back. There was no one else about. For a moment Radwan didn’t know what to do. Then he ran.

  The woman was a man. Short and fat, he said he came from Raw, although Gül strongly suspected that he was the meat seller.

  ‘I got your payment.’

  He hadn’t asked for any ID. But then if he was Raw he’d seen Gül on Skype.

  ‘I need to see the meat.’

  Süleyman had told him he had to do this. Buying an empty cool box wasn’t a crime. But what did human flesh look like?

  The man grunted as he put the box down on the floor and opened the lid. Inside were bloodied plastic bags containing things that resembled chops.

  ‘It’s definitely …’

  ‘From Eastern Europe as we discussed,’ Raw, or whoever he was, said. ‘Do you want it or what?’

  Gül could see that eastern officer out of the corner of his eye. He was leaning against the rail looking at the Asian shore as it got closer. He had to accept the meat before they could arrest Raw.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  The man closed the lid of the cool box and gave it to Gül.

  ‘Nice doing business with you,’ the man said.

  And then they were not alone any more.

  Chapter 25

  The old woman didn’t cry. In fact she appeared to be quite composed. But Kerim could see that she was struggling with the news he’d just given her.

  ‘My brother was a worry, I won’t lie to you,’ Defne Baydar said. ‘A child-man. The ignorant used to say that my mother must have been frightened by a djinn when she was pregnant. But Volkan was just damaged.’

  ‘Is your husband home?’ Kerim Gürsel asked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘But I don’t need him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘With his friends in Karaköy, in a squat of all things,’ she said. ‘Now that our government is, it seems to me, at odds with pretty much all sections of society except one, those who fear what is happening to this country are a strange and diverse group. And you may tell your superiors I said that, Sergeant Gürsel, I no longer care. Better people than I have been accused of treason.’

  If Kerim was right, İkmen would be arriving at the squat at any moment. When he left the Baydars’ apartment, he called him.

  ‘He’s at work,’ Ziya said.

  Police made him nervous, and so he was sweating.

  ‘Where?’

  The policeman, İkmen, had come mob-handed with a load of uniforms and was looking around the place in a way that Ziya didn’t like.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘I’m aware of the fact that he sometimes works at the Imperial Oriental Hotel,’ İkmen said. ‘But he isn’t there. I’ve been there already.’

  Ziya felt even hotter.

  ‘Where else does he work?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s all casual stuff, you know.’

  The policeman shook his head. ‘No, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Which is why I’m asking you. Where’s Uğur Bey?’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘Well?’

  He was talking about things to Major General Baydar. Uğur Bey was worried. Now he’d be even more concerned.

  Where the border was exactly was a good question and one that Radwan couldn’t answer. But once in amongst the ancient ruins of Karkemiş he assumed he had to be back in Turkey. This was bandit country, where borders were porous, and so he couldn’t assume that he was safe until he cleared the area completely. He still had some of the money the imam had given him on the bus for food and drink. He didn’t know if it would be enough to get him back to Istanbul, but when morning came, he’d soon find out. The good thing about this area was that a lot of people spoke Arabic. If he got on a bus, someone would tell him where it was going and how much the fare would cost. Then, when his money ran out, he’d have to walk or beg, but he’d get to the city even though he knew that the ghosts of his family were waiting for him there. There was nowhere left to go.

  Burak had disappeared, leaving Radwan alone in the dark. He’d gone back to ISIS and his life as a big man in the caliphate. Only dying could ever top that. A little boy like Burak had to have been waiting all his life for such an opportunity. Radwan wondered if he even believed what the imam had told him about his mother. But it didn’t matter. Burak was going to die and that was what he wanted. Had his big, handsome brother wanted that too? There was no way of knowing. All Radwan could work out was how he felt and what he had to do. He’d have to learn to live with his ghosts and he’d have to learn to speak Turkish. Beyond that, he didn’t know what lay in store for him or why the imam wanted him back. He’d felt that the old man had liked him, but he didn’t know why.

  Maybe the imam just wanted a child, even if that child wasn’t his own.

  It was a gunshot that finally brought Radwan out of his reverie. This was followed by a tremendous pain in his forearm.

  ‘As long as people contribute towards the household budget, I don’t ask them where they get their money,’ Uğur İnan said. ‘Bülent is a very talented chef. He’s in demand all the time.’

  Cetin İkmen looked at the slim, dignified figure of Major General Deniz Baydar, who sat beside İnan, but he didn’t speak to him. When he got home, according to Kerim, he’d find his wife resigned to her brother’s death. There’d be nothing for him to do.

  ‘Why the interest in Bülent, Inspector?’ İnan asked. ‘Or is this simply about shaking this place up a bit?’ He smiled.

  Now İkmen had a choice. He could wipe the smile off Uğur İnan’s face or he could just leave him guessing. That said, even if he told him what he knew, would that make İnan’s bonhomie fade? He thought, What the hell?

  ‘Uğur Bey, we have been monitoring events at one of Mr Onay’s places of work, the Imperial Oriental Hotel, for some time. This is in connection to a missing waiter. But one of the pieces of information that has come to light during the course of that investigation relates to Mr Onay.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aysel Gurcanli had spent the time she wasn’t being questioned by Boris Myskow well.

  ‘There’s a second-hand freezer in one of the Imperial Oriental Hotel’s kitchens that came from this house,’ İkmen said.

  ‘From this house? I don’t think so.’

  ‘No?’ İkmen sat down without being invited. ‘Uğur Bey, did you and others here in the squat not demolish an outhouse?’

  ‘An old bathhouse, yes.’

  ‘Which contained a freezer?’

  ‘Well, yes, it did, but that went for scrap.’

  ‘Where?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where was it sent for scrap? And by whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some men came and took it …’

  ‘Bülent was the one who organised it, Uğur Bey,’ the major general cut in. ‘Remember?’

 
; Uğur İnan frowned.

  ‘So Mr Onay will know which company came for the freezer?’

  ‘Yes,’ Deniz Baydar said. ‘But what they did with it after that is not known to us. Maybe they sold it on to the hotel.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Except that Bülent Onay had been seen delivering the freezer by one of Aysel Gurcanli’s co-workers, a girl called Serra. Bülent, with whom Serra had once had a brief fling, had even asked her to open a door for him and his good-looking biker friend Ziya, who had been helping him with the appliance. Not that either of them had said who or what the old freezer was for. Or where it had come from. And Aysel had been of the opinion that Serra had been hurt by Bülent, so maybe she’d had an agenda regarding her old flame.

  Or maybe not.

  ‘I’d like to see where the freezer was kept when it was here,’ İkmen said.

  ‘The bathhouse,’ Uğur İnan said. ‘Which is no longer there …’

  İkmen smiled. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to see where it used to be, please.’

  ‘It’s pork.’

  ‘Not human flesh?’ Süleyman held up a piece of meat wrapped in a plastic bag for the man to see.

  ‘Do I look crazy to you?’

  Süleyman didn’t answer. Dressed as an elderly country woman, thirty-six-year-old Cüneyt Civan, AKA Raw, did not look like the average man on the street.

  ‘It’s pork. Test it,’ Civan said.

  ‘I intend to. Where did you get it?’

  Civan said nothing.

  Süleyman shrugged. ‘We’ll find out,’ he said. ‘So you may as well tell me. You told the man you tried to sell human flesh to that your supplier was in Eastern Europe. Is that where the pork comes from?’

  Again Civan said nothing.

  ‘You know, just because most people are Muslim in this country doesn’t mean that you can’t buy pig meat …’

  ‘I know that!’

  He was a testy little bastard. He’d been caught in the act of trying to sell something he’d advertised as human meat, had been found out and was now angry. Süleyman knew that whatever else he said, Mr Civan would ultimately blame someone other than himself.

  Süleyman leaned back in his chair. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your scam,’ Süleyman said. ‘Some of your meat has already gone for testing, so don’t try to lie to me.’

  ‘It’s pork, like I said.’

  ‘And why pork?’

  ‘Because it’s the closest meat to human flesh. Looks and smells the same. So I’m told.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  He sighed. ‘It’s the wife,’ he said. ‘Her habit, her problem. I never wanted this!’

  ‘“This” being?’

  He sighed again. ‘Look, I never knew there were so many weirdos in the world until I met her.’

  ‘Your wife?’

  ‘She’s Romanian. Legs up to her neck, a body you could drown in. Pity about the heroin addiction. We married, and the next thing I know I’m in debt to three local dealers.’ He shook his head. ‘I nearly killed the bitch when I found out! I’m just a fucking cab driver, you know? Then her brother comes over from Bucharest, so I’ve another addict to accommodate!’

  Süleyman was slightly satisfied that he’d been right about this man.

  ‘It was Nicolae’s idea.’

  ‘Your brother-in-law?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a whole online trade around Romania and the Dracula legend. All sorts of things from straight souvenirs to weird stuff like human blood and Dracula’s ashes.’

  ‘Fake.’

  ‘Most of it. Pigs, like I said. I don’t know whether the real fucking crazies out there on the Net know it’s fake or not …’

  ‘But you market it as genuine.’

  ‘Well wouldn’t you? I can make a few hundred lire from curious Muslims just with the pork, but I can make a few thousand from a pervert who wants to eat human flesh. And where’s the harm? I give them pig so they don’t have to go out there and kill some innocent on the street to get their kicks. So a pig died! So what!’

  Süleyman smiled. This little shit was completely unaware of what he’d done. But not for long.

  ‘Laws governing the sale of goods are not my forte,’ he said, ‘but I know you’ve broken a few.’

  ‘Yeah, well …’

  ‘You’ve also encouraged and facilitated an act of perversion at a time when we have reason to believe a real consumer of human flesh may be at large in this city.’

  ‘A real cannibal? I don’t know anything about that,’ Civan said. ‘I’m not into all that!’

  ‘Yes, but you know people who are.’

  ‘No I don’t!’

  ‘That isn’t what you told your customer, is it?’

  ‘Well what do you think I’d tell him?’ Civan said. ‘Sorry, friend, this is the first time I’ve done this.’

  ‘Our investigator said your operation was very professional.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks to Nicolae. If you want to know how “Raw” came about, and why, you’ll have to ask that bastard.’

  ‘Oh, and you’re going to give him to me, are you, Cüneyt Bey?’

  He thought about it for a moment. But only a moment. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘What’s he ever done for me except get me into trouble?’

  ‘So Nicolae …’

  ‘Oh, he’s not in the country at the moment,’ Civan said.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s in Romania. Buying up pork.’

  There was still a plug socket next to the place where the freezer used to stand outside the kitchen.

  ‘Why did you demolish the old bathhouse?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘It was a health hazard. We had rats,’ Uğur İnan said.

  ‘You’re very near the Bosphorus here.’

  ‘The foundations were rotten. The rats were coming into the house. My son has a baby, I couldn’t take the risk.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Whoever had demolished the bathhouse had done a good job. Barely a stone remained to indicate where it had once been, and the earth beneath had been flattened.

  İkmen looked up at the huge tattooed biker, Ziya, and said, ‘Do you recall which company came to take the freezer away?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Shame. Because you see I have a problem with this story I have been told about you and Bülent delivering a freezer to the Imperial Oriental Hotel.’

  ‘We didn’t. It went for scrap.’

  ‘I don’t disbelieve you,’ İkmen said, ‘but I can’t disbelieve the other story I’ve been told either. Do you see?’

  Nobody said anything.

  İkmen continued. ‘So if you could find out who took this freezer away for scrap, it would help me enormously.’

  He saw the major general narrow his eyes. He was thinking, Here we are again, the government persecuting me via the police. Or was he?

  Uğur İnan put a hand on İkmen’s shoulder. ‘I’m sure we can do that, Inspector,’ he said. ‘When Bülent comes back, I’ll ask him. We must have some paperwork somewhere. None of us knows where Bülent is at the moment. He may be out clubbing for all I know. Can we leave this until the morning? I’m sure he’ll be back before dawn, whatever he’s doing.’

  İkmen made him wait for an answer, then he said, ‘OK.’

  ‘Good.’

  Once he was back in his car, İkmen called Kerim Gürsel to ask him how he’d got on with the major general’s wife. He also asked him if he wanted to get some overtime in.

  Chapter 26

  Gül had hardly slept. After his debrief at police headquarters, he’d been taken home to the squat, where a lot of people had still been up. Too tired to think straight, he hadn’t paid any attention to what they were doing, but as soon as he’d got into bed, their voices had kept him awake. He couldn’t work out what any of them were saying, but he knew anger when he heard it.

  He’d taken a sleeping pill. But that had only served
to make him even more restless, and so in the end he’d smoked a bit of dope. That had given him two hours’ sleep. But it hadn’t been worth it. Awake now, he felt wrung out and wretched. Not even a cold shower could revive him. And there was no one to talk to. Whoever had been up in the night was sleeping in. Even the girls, Meltem and Ahu, were still in bed.

  Gül thought about the cross-dressed cannibal man and what Inspector Süleyman had said about him. Gül had been his first customer, and yet the operation had seemed professional. Could Gül have been wrong about Raw? He leaned on his windowsill and looked out into the street.

  The man, Cüneyt Civan, had needed money to pay his wife’s debts to drug dealers. A common story, even if his solution to it was uncommon. How did people think these scams up? He’d been a hacker for years and so he knew how people did these things, but not why. Just the thought of eating human flesh made him gag, and yet there was a market. Transgression was always attractive to certain people, and cannibalism was one of the ultimate manifestations of that.

  The police had been pleased with him. Süleyman had told him that because of his actions, an illegal trade in Eastern European pork had been unearthed. Sadly, no real cannibals had been encountered, but then how many of them really did exist? He’d helped Father Bacchus get material to create fictional monsters, but Gül had to admit that they were in all probability based on pure fantasy. Even on the Dark Web people lied.

  Gül had been aware of a man in the street below for some time, but he hadn’t paid him any attention. But now the man turned and Gül saw his face. It made him smile. What on earth was Pembe Hanım’s handsome beau Kerim doing outside the squat so early in the morning?

  Then he remembered what Kerim Gürsel did for a living and he frowned.

  Denial had always been Boris Myskow’s default position. That was what his therapist said. But this time his lies seemed convincing even to him. He had to go back to New York to personally take control of a failing restaurant on Madison Avenue. That was what he’d told his head chef and what he told himself.

  Of course his private party guests wouldn’t like it, but he couldn’t help that. The spooks who protected him said that if he was worried about the police, he needn’t be. But what did they know? He’d told them nothing, and as far as he was aware, they’d witnessed nothing either.