On the Bone

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘He just ran,’ the old man said, ‘towards the window and then out to his death.’

  ‘You’ve no idea why?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You were with him in his room for at least two hours,’ İkmen said. ‘You were the last person to see him alive.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but we didn’t talk. What was there to talk about? There is only so much state-sponsored persecution a person can stand. I take it this will mean that the Art House will close?’

  ‘Human remains have been found underneath the garden,’ İkmen said.

  Human remains! How had they got there? İsmet experienced a level of unreality he couldn’t handle. Not only had his delightful, talented, liberal father apparently committed suicide, but there was a body in the garden and he and his family were about to lose their home.

  Why had his father killed himself? İsmet stopped crying and looked Major General Baydar in the face. ‘This is your fault,’ he said. ‘Ever since you and all the other old fossils started to come here, it’s been less a protest squat and more a holding pen for the delusional!’

  ‘İsmet …’

  ‘Don’t try to get round me, Deniz Bey!’ İsmet said. ‘Ümit Kavaş was a friend. When he started visiting, everything was fine, but when he brought you people …’

  İsmet stopped talking as the crying took over again.

  İkmen put a hand on the young man’s shoulder as the police doctor supervised the erection of another small tent, this time over his father’s body.

  Chapter 29

  None of them had called him, not even Uğur. Bastards!

  He’d known that something was going on because of the call he’d got from Ziya the previous night. But things had clearly developed. Now the squat had police all over it and Bülent Onay knew he was entirely separated from his stuff for ever. He couldn’t go back inside now. The cops were loading people into minivans and taking them away. Unless he was really lucky, that had to mean they’d found the woman – and maybe the rest of it too. Not that they’d know what it was.

  Bülent pulled his hoodie down so it almost hid his eyes. The only place left for him to go was the hotel. Unless someone talked, and no one would, Myskow was entirely in the clear. Whoever had killed the woman had dug her grave in their garden and thrown her body in. Everyone had been able to see that the garden of the Art House was being dug over for weeks. Why wouldn’t a bad person use it to hide a body? That was the story that had been agreed, and if they all stuck to it, they’d be OK. Except that …

  No, he wasn’t going to think about it. He was going to be positive. At the very least, Boris Myskow would let him stay at the Imperial Oriental for a while until he sorted himself out. Boris did, after all, owe Bülent.

  ‘Tell me about the other members of the squat,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Tell you about them? Tell you what?’

  Zenne Gül was confused. One moment he’d been Süleyman’s golden boy, and now he was a suspect. But he knew nothing about the body they’d found in the garden!

  Panicking, he blurted, ‘I’ve known Meltem all my life. My mum used to work for her mum. She got me a room in the squat when I needed to move really badly.’

  ‘Because you were uncomfortable in Fatih?’

  ‘Yes, you know this, Mehmet Bey,’ he said. They’d talked about the religious people, the homophobia … ‘Meltem is religious, you know. And Ahu.’

  ‘Ahu Kasap.’

  ‘Yes. But their parents didn’t want them to cover, and they were part of Gezi and—’

  ‘Gül, slow down,’ Süleyman said. Then he smiled. ‘You’ve said you know nothing about the body in the garden …’

  ‘Do you know who it is? Who is it?’

  Süleyman held up his hand. ‘Slow again, please.’

  Zenne Gül took a deep breath.

  ‘In answer to your question, I do have a good idea who this person is, but until we have an official identification, I can’t say. Gül, apart from Meltem Baser and Ahu Kasap, can you tell me anything else about other members of the community?’

  ‘Everyone knows … knew Uğur Bey.’

  Gül didn’t know how Uğur İnan had died, only that he was dead. On the way to police headquarters, nobody had spoken. It was shocking and terrible. It was made worse by the fact that their last conversation had been an argument and it had been about the arrival of the police. Uğur Bey had blamed Gül for bringing his ‘boyfriend’ Süleyman into the house. Had the implication of that anger been that Gül had somehow allowed Süleyman to see or hear something he shouldn’t?

  ‘I met Uğur Bey at Gezi,’ Gül said. ‘Although I came to the squat much later than anyone else, that was where Meltem, Ahu and I met him and his friends.’

  ‘Who were his friends?’

  ‘Ziya and Bülent and poor Ümit Kavaş,’ he said. ‘And İsmet and Birgül.’

  ‘What about Major General Baydar?’

  ‘He was still in prison,’ Gül said. ‘All those military men only started visiting once the Art House had been established for some time. I don’t know when. Before I arrived.’

  ‘Why did these military types visit the squat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gül said. ‘They all talked to Uğur Bey. There was a lot of booze. Ziya and Bülent, if he was around, joined in too. And Ümit. Political stuff, I think.’

  ‘Squatters and soldiers?’

  ‘That was Gezi, though, wasn’t it? People from all sorts of places and backgrounds coming together for a common cause.’

  ‘Against a—’

  ‘I’m not saying a common enemy, Mehmet Bey,’ Gül said. ‘But there are unusual alliances now. I heard that Ümit didn’t like Major General Baydar much. He tolerated him. But then Ümit didn’t actually live with us. He was always polite to the soldiers. Because of his father, I guess.’

  ‘When did you last speak to Uğur Bey?’

  ‘Midday,’ he said. ‘Today …’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  It had just gone midnight.

  ‘Yesterday. He came to see me in my room. Inspector İkmen had already spoken to him and he was angry. He accused me of bringing you into the house so that you could find out things about us or see something you shouldn’t. I don’t know, that’s what it felt like.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what I was supposed to have found out or seen?’

  ‘No,’ Gül said. ‘But Uğur Bey was furious and that didn’t happen with him too often.’

  ‘Have you been aware of any unusual things happening in the house over the past few weeks?’

  ‘Only the demolition of the bathhouse,’ he said. ‘Ziya told everyone we had rats. I thought it was a bit extreme to demolish it. We could have put down poison.’

  ‘There was a freezer in the bathhouse, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, but I never used it. I don’t know that it actually worked.’

  Halide Can’s parents lived in the far north-east of the country, in the city of Trabzon. But there was a brother in Gaziosmanpaşa, and so it was he whose sleep was disturbed by a knock on the door in the early hours of the morning and who was asked to come and identify the body of his sister. While waiting for Murat Can to arrive, Arto Sarkissian prepared samples for DNA testing from the rotting and putrid pile of flesh that had been hidden by Halide Can’s body. In order to get close to what remained of whoever it was, he had to mask up, which even in the laboratory made him feel as if he was boiling alive.

  As he slowly picked his way through skin, fat, muscle and sinew, Arto, while concentrating on the job at hand, listened to Israeli superstar Ofra Haza’s Yemenite Songs on his iPod. He didn’t understand the words of what were modern adaptations of sixteenth-century rabbinical texts, but he loved the tunes.

  Only very small bones remained inside the flesh. Effectively butchered, it inevitably called to mind what he had found in Ümit Kavaş’s stomach. But where had those bones gone? Had they been boiled up for stock maybe? In spite of Ofra Haza’s beautiful vo
ice, Arto’s stomach turned. How did one actually perform what had to be the ultimate human taboo? How had an apparently nice man like Ümit Kavaş done so? Had he even known what he was eating? And if he hadn’t, then who had? And why had they given him human flesh in the first place?

  Although the restaurant service was still closed, they were in full cleaning and reordering mode. Without Tandoğan, Chef Romero couldn’t make himself understood and was about to go into a Latin-style meltdown. Zerrin claimed to have last seen him outside Mr Myskow’s office – presumably looking for menus or something. As far as Aysel Gurcanli knew, Myskow was still missing.

  It was hot in the Imperial Oriental’s kitchen. Given the situation, everyone was nervous, confused, and accidents were happening all the time. If someone didn’t do something about the situation soon, at the very least Romero would have a stroke. Aysel finished cleaning an oven and then asked Haydar, a very junior pastry chef, to cover for her. He wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed.

  Aysel took the lift upstairs. It opened just in front of Myskow’s office, and she was too tired for stairs. Nobody had said that Myskow had returned, and the police hadn’t called her back, so Aysel just opened the door and blundered in.

  Later she would wonder what, if anything, she might have heard from inside Myskow’s office had she stopped outside to listen. But now it was too late to go back.

  Aysel screamed. It wasn’t like her, but it just came out.

  Her colleague, Bülent Onay, dashed towards her with the knife he’d just used on Chef Tandoğan, and held it at her throat.

  ‘After Mr İnan fell from the window, you were heard to say, “What a ridiculously excessive thing to do”,’ Cetin İkmen said. ‘What did you mean by that?’

  ‘I thought that was self-evident.’

  There was much that Cetin İkmen shared with old soldiers like Deniz Baydar. They usually had a secular outlook on life and they had little time for irrational flights of fancy. But they could also be deeply prejudiced and not just against religious orthodoxy. Baydar looked at İkmen and saw a scruffy, undisciplined oddity. İkmen could see it all over his face.

  ‘The man threw himself out of a window,’ he continued. ‘Don’t you think that’s excessive?’

  ‘That depends why he did it,’ İkmen said. ‘Or if he did it.’

  Baydar glared at him. ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘I mean we only have your word that he threw himself out,’ İkmen said.

  ‘You think I pushed him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Our forensic team will analyse the room where the incident happened, and the body will be examined for signs of violence.’

  ‘We were friends,’ Baydar said. ‘Why would I kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘Why did we find a female body in the garden of a house that you, by your own admission, frequent often?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Because according to some of the other residents of the Art House, you’re always around,’ İkmen said. ‘You and until recently, I imagine after his son’s death, General Kavaş plus other military gentlemen …’

  ‘Well we have to meet somewhere!’ he said. ‘If we meet in the street or even in a café, we’re always under surveillance.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know!’ he thundered. ‘Uğur Bey kindly tolerated us because in many ways he shared our discontent. Our perspectives were very different, but there was a sympathy there, and a friendship. We first met years ago, when Uğur Bey designed the fabrics for the officers’ mess at Selimiye.’

  Major General Baydar had been with the First Army Corps, which was stationed at the Selimiye Barracks in Üsküdar.

  ‘What do you talk about at these meetings you have with other military men?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Trying to root out sedition, are you?’

  ‘I’m trying to find out who killed the woman in the garden of the Art House, and why Uğur Bey is dead,’ İkmen said.

  There was a moment’s silence and then the major general said, ‘I don’t just meet with other military men, as you put it. The Art House is a very sociable place, as I’m sure you know. People meet and talk there in a spirit of freedom of ideas and brotherhood.’

  ‘You know there are homosexual—’

  ‘We cannot agree on everything, that wouldn’t be democratic!’ Baydar said. ‘Our views differ, we debate.’

  And yet İkmen wondered what Baydar would do if he ever got into deep conversation with Zenne Gül. But according to Gül, that wouldn’t happen. Baydar rarely so much as glanced at him. He was far more interested in the girls who lived in the house.

  ‘What do you talk about in a spirit of freedom and brotherhood?’

  ‘Everything,’ Baydar said. ‘Politics, history, art …’

  There was a knock on the door, which opened, and a constable entered the interview room.

  İkmen said, ‘Yes?’

  The constable whispered in his ear. ‘You have a call, sir. It’s urgent.’

  ‘What is it?’

  These so-called urgent calls were often far from even vaguely important.

  ‘An incident at the Imperial Oriental Hotel,’ the constable said.

  Without the presence of Boris Myskow? This didn’t feel good.

  İkmen stood up and motioned for Ömer Mungun to rise.

  ‘I’m sorry, we’ll have to resume this interview later,’ he said to Major General Baydar. ‘Something has come up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘But it’s not good, Deniz Bey. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you!’

  ‘Then why are you?’

  Aysel Gurcanli struggled against the thick tape that pinned her to Boris Myskow’s chair.

  ‘I need to get out of here and I need to do it without worrying about you,’ Bülent Onay said.

  ‘Why were you in here with him?’ She looked at the body of Tandoğan, who lay across Myskow’s desk in his own blood.

  ‘He disturbed me.’

  Bülent went over to the window, looked out, then came back.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I needed cash,’ Bülent said. Then he placed a strip of tape over Aysel’s mouth.

  She watched him pick up the knife he’d used to kill Tandoğan, and a rucksack, and walk towards the office door. Had anyone heard her scream? Noises of all sorts happened in hotels, but surely a scream was different?

  Bülent opened the door quietly and left. Aysel knew that she was bound tightly to the chair and so would it make any difference if she struggled to free herself? She tried it for a few seconds, but it was painful and so she stopped.

  And then the door opened and she began to make grunting noises to attract attention. When she saw who had just arrived, though, she began to cry. Bülent Onay ran over to her and put his knife to her throat once again. He was followed by other men, including Cetin İkmen.

  Chapter 30

  İkmen down sat on one of the chairs in front of Boris Myskow’s desk.

  ‘Hello, Bülent,’ he said to the young man sweating heavily and holding a knife to Aysel Gurcanli’s neck. Who else could it be but Bülent Onay? He’d been seen in the hotel kitchen. People had described his appearance as ‘mad’.

  ‘I will kill her,’ Bülent said.

  ‘Under what circumstances?’ İkmen lit a cigarette. Oddly, there was an ashtray on Myskow’s desk, just beside the dead body. Americans didn’t smoke, did they?

  ‘You have to let me go.’

  ‘Oh. So you want a helicopter to the airport and a flight to South America?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You know it’s not happening, don’t you, Bülent? That’s fantasy,’ İkmen said. ‘As you can see, I have a group of officers with me who are all armed. The only way you’re getting out of here alive is by surrendering to us. Sorry.’

  For a moment, Bülent didn’t react at all. Then he said, ‘It all got
out of hand.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘All of it,’ he said.

  İkmen looked at Aysel Gurcanli. Her face was red and her breathing laboured. ‘Are we going to talk, Bülent?’ he said.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t know. I just want to go, you know?’

  ‘Yes. But we’ve ruled that out, haven’t we?’ İkmen said.

  In his agitation, Bülent could still harm Aysel – or himself.

  ‘Let Aysel go and we’ll give talking a go,’ he continued.

  He had entirely underestimated Bülent, who clutched Aysel Gurcanli tightly to his chest. İkmen regrouped. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘keep hold of Aysel but tell me about the body I’ve found underneath that of Halide Can.’

  Bülent breathed. ‘We killed a boy,’ he said.

  ‘By accident?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, and “we” are?’

  ‘Uğur Bey, Ziya, Ümit Kavaş and me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was a horrible kid!’

  İkmen began to feel cold. ‘When?’

  ‘Weeks ago. He and his brother and another kid kept on coming to the house and shouting abuse. Throwing stones … Months it went on for! Then it was really hot one afternoon and we … Uğur Bey, he lost it!’

  ‘His temper?’

  ‘Ziya, too. There were only the two brothers that afternoon. We caught them and dragged them inside. We meant to humiliate them …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘The little one just soaked up his punishment like a sponge. The bigger one …’ He looked down for a moment and then said, ‘His heart stopped. I don’t know why.’ He shook his head. ‘His brother saw all of it but he didn’t show anything. No emotion. I thought at the time it had to be because he was in shock, but … Ümit said we’d have to call the soldiers, Deniz Bey, even his own father.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ziya put the little kid in the toilet downstairs and locked him in. Everyone else was out but we knew they’d be back soon. Deniz Bey came.’