‘You can speak Turkish,’ Edibe Taner said.
‘Well, of course I can,’ Elizabeth Smith responded acidly. ‘Your country is my country now. I have adopted it. I said before, do your search. Get on with it.’
And so they did. For the secret love nest of a wealthy gangster, Yusuf Kaya’s house was very sparse. It was traditional too. There were no beds here, just rolled-up mattresses. No apparent concessions to someone who at least sounded like an educated American lady. Outside, empty outhouses gave forth nothing, as did the large cellar beneath the building.
‘When did you last see Yusuf Kaya?’ Taner asked the American as their search was coming to a close just over two hours after it had begun.
‘I saw my husband at his trial in İstanbul,’ Elizabeth Smith replied. She then added sneeringly, ‘Only the once. I went with your cousin, Zeynep. Yusuf’s other wife.’
But Edibe Taner betrayed no obvious emotion. She had deduced some time before that her cousin and Kaya’s mother and probably all of his family had to know about this Elizabeth Smith. On some level at least they obviously told her things about themselves, like who they were related to. One of the men guarding the American rolled up one of his sleeves, revealing the wormwood flower tattoo on his arm. The scorpion within Edibe Taner wanted to hiss with disdain. But she was not in this house to pursue old clan rivalries. Besides, in her position both as a police officer and as the daughter of a Master of Sharmeran she had to be above all that. After all, her own family, if reluctantly, had allowed her cousin Zeynep’s marriage to a hated wormwood.
‘Your husband was handed down a life sentence by the court in İstanbul,’ Süleyman said to the woman as he looked around the hall in case there was any piece of evidence present that he might have missed. ‘I personally requested that he serve a minimum of thirty years. Why do you stay? Your husband is never going to be able to live with you.’
Elizabeth Smith smiled again. ‘But Yusuf is out of prison now.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘And I do hope, Miss Smith—’
‘Mrs Kaya, please.’
‘Mrs Kaya,’ he said with some irony in his voice, ‘that you did not assist his escape. Because if you did . . .’
‘I would spend a very long time in a Turkish jail. Inspector Süleyman,’ she said, ‘I stay because I have made this place my home. I have nowhere to go back in the States. My husband has left me well provided for here. I have money, a home, I am guarded, I have friends . . . Also I can visit Yusuf. My home town, Boston, is a very long way from Kartal Prison, İstanbul.’
‘Mrs Kaya,’ Edibe Taner joined in, ‘this house is very empty. With your guards you are six people. But there is very little here. Are you going somewhere?’
‘No.’ Elizabeth Smith shrugged. ‘I live simply. What can I say? Besides, it’s Lent. Christians don’t adorn their homes until after Easter. It’s not the custom, is it?’
‘You are a Christian, Mrs Kaya?’
‘No, but a few of the men are. And I was raised a Christian. Now I attend the Suriani services when I can. Because that’s what we do in the Tur Abdin, isn’t it? We all join in with and respect each other’s beliefs. Or we should. My husband is of course a Muslim and has Muslim children by Zeynep. But he respects other religions and beliefs.’
‘My recollection of your husband, Mrs Kaya,’ Süleyman said, ‘is of a man not overly given to religion. And as for this area being free from factional strife . . . Why do you think that the army is here, Miss Smith? Why do you think the Turkish Republic guards places of worship out here?’
The room went silent as the rough men who guarded this woman looked at the guns at their feet with relish. They then looked at Süleyman with equal homicidal fervour. But under the gaze of the small troop of police officers, none of them moved.
‘Mrs Kaya,’ Edibe Taner said after a moment, ‘please do not leave the environs of Dara.’
‘Ah, but the Easter service in Mar—’
‘You may attend church in Mardin on Easter Sunday,’ Taner said. ‘In fact I will be there to make sure that you can go. But otherwise stay where you are, where we can easily see you. Oh, and I will need your mobile phone number too. I assume you have one of those.’
Elizabeth Smith said nothing then until Taner and Süleyman were nearly at her front door. Suddenly and angrily she burst out, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’
‘Haven’t you?’ Süleyman turned to look her straight in the eye. ‘Madam, how much do you know about this country?’
The American woman frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Did you meet your husband shortly before you married or were you together for some time prior to that?’
‘I lived in Turkey five years before I met Yusuf,’ Elizabeth Smith replied. ‘I was teaching English in İstanbul. I met Yusuf in İstanbul. I was with him for a while, you know.’
Süleyman resisted the temptation to ask her how she, an apparently decent American teacher, met a local drug dealer. There had been no drugs found in the house and so, on the face of it, this woman probably wasn’t a junkie. There was something else, however. ‘Do you understand where Turkish law stands on the subject of polygamy?’
‘I know it is illegal, but—’
‘Absolutely,’ Süleyman said. ‘It is illegal and yet you—’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she said, slipping into English. ‘People out here don’t worry about that. They—’
‘Well then people out here should worry!’ Süleyman replied, also in English. ‘Polygamy is against Turkish law. You, madam, will not leave this area until this matter, if not the return of your “husband”, is resolved.’
He then turned back to follow Edibe Taner and the other officers out of the door. Once out in the cold night air, he breathed deeply in order to settle his nerves. The officers who had been patrolling the outside of the house came over to join them.
‘Nothing here tonight,’ Taner said with a look of disappointment on her face. She then turned to Selahattin, who had been searching through the outhouses, and said, ‘We’ll keep the house under surveillance.’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
She told the men to get in the truck and head back towards the city. Just before she got in her car to follow on behind, Süleyman took hold of her arm, sniffed hard and then said, ‘What’s that smell? Sort of sharp and musty?’
Edibe Taner shook her head and assumed a lugubrious air. ‘That’s the smell of you being right,’ she said.
Mehmet Süleyman frowned.
‘You conjectured that Kaya’s American woman was actually surrounded by wormwood.’
‘She was, as you had predicted, surrounded by men of the wormwood clan.’
Edibe Taner smiled. ‘She’s also surrounded by actual wormwood too. It seems that the family grows it just behind the house. And the Kayas are traditionally growers of herbs. That smell you’re getting is the reek of the plant itself. Horrible, isn’t it?’
Chapter 12
* * *
Çetin İkmen didn’t get round to making a call to Mehmet Süleyman until nearly midnight.
‘I had to check first of all that Murat Lole was still alive before I assigned someone to watch him,’ the older man said. ‘Couldn’t, after all, give over precious human resources to a dead man. Think of the waste!’
Süleyman, although now very sleepy, nevertheless smiled. Everything in the city was budget-related these days. It was almost as if the police department had been hijacked by a party of particularly sour and puritanical accountants.
‘But anyway, Lole is under surveillance,’ İkmen continued. ‘All we have to do now is find nurse number three, İsak Mardin.’
‘You say that the dead nurse, er . . .’
‘Faruk Öz.’
‘Faruk Öz had this wormwood tattoo on his bicep?’
‘Yes. Which, if what you told me earlier, Mehmet, is so, could denote membership of Yusuf Kaya’s clan.’
They’d talked about the ‘wormwoods’
as well as the ‘scorpions’ earlier on in their conversation. The possible tattoo connection between Faruk Öz and the city and people of Mardin, as well as actually to Yusuf Kaya, had been a revelation. Öz, it had been thought, had originated in the west; now this was open to doubt. That Öz had started working at the Cerrahpaşa well before Kaya’s arrest meant that he could in no way have been a plant. But he had in all probability been a fortuitous resource with regard to Yusuf Kaya’s escape.
‘Öz may or may not have been his real name,’ Süleyman said. ‘But I’ll speak to Inspector Taner. Maybe if you can e-mail us a photograph . . .’
‘I’ll certainly get Ayşe to e-mail you a photograph,’ İkmen replied. Süleyman smiled. The older man, famously, didn’t ‘do’ technology, and although he could use e-mail now he was still way off sending attachments and preferred that his sergeant did that. ‘So you have discovered a second wife then, Mehmet. A woman, you say, surrounded by men with wormwood tattoos.’
Lying on his narrow but comfortable monastic bed, Mehmet Süleyman wearily shook his head. ‘Yes. Wormwood grows in the fields around the house where she lives, too. Stinks. She’s an American, the woman. Educated, a teacher by profession, quite attractive. What can she possibly get out of a relationship with a man who is not only in prison but already married to someone else?’
‘Exoticism? Adventure? That odd thing some women have for murderers? But then, Kaya has money . . .’
‘True, but there’s more to life than that. Kaya’s a cretin,’ Süleyman said. ‘I’m sure this woman could do better.’
‘Maybe she really does love him,’ İkmen said gloomily. ‘Maybe she is besotted by his bad boy image, or perhaps the strange myths that surround Mardin keep her inside what to me sounds like a harem-style fantasy.’
Süleyman shook his head and sighed. ‘I know my own wife is half Irish, but she has always known this country. What is it with these western women? What brings them here, makes them cover themselves in some instances?’
‘The irresistibility of the Turkish male,’ İkmen said, and laughed. ‘But seriously, maybe there is something here that they find chimes with them, a meaning they have not found back in the west.’
‘They’re running away.’
‘Or running to something.’ İkmen sighed. ‘You know, when I was a boy, I often used to dream about working in a foreign country. I think it is a common fantasy amongst women and men.’
‘Possibly.’ Süleyman paused to light a cigarette and then said, ‘Çetin, you know this snake goddess they have out here?’
‘The Sharmeran. Yes, I know of it.’
‘You know it’s real to the point that people actually believe that they see the thing?’
‘Some members of my family, as you know, Mehmet, come originally from Cappadocia,’ İkmen replied. ‘Land of strange volcanic shapes and eerie cave houses. Seemingly quite rational Cappadocians claim to see, from time to time, the famous local fairies.’
‘Do they claim to be able to communicate directly with them?’
‘Sometimes,’ İkmen said. ‘Your Inspector Taner – rather esoteric, is she?’
‘Underneath the toughness, yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘Not that far underneath, as it happens. I respect her enormously, Çetin. She has a difficult time as both a woman and a police officer in this city. I think she’s only really tolerated by the population because her father is a member of this scorpion clan and is a Master of Sharmeran. It’s some sort of companion to the being, or . . . That said, I’m not always comfortable with her judgement when it comes to things of an unseen or spiritual nature.’
İkmen asked him what he meant and Süleyman told him about the Christian family known as Saatçi, about Musa the father and Gabriel the miracle son.
‘Mm, that all sounds very eastern indeed,’ İkmen said when he had heard his friend out. ‘Have you spoken to any of the monks about this Gabriel?’
‘I did speak briefly to Dr Sarkissian’s friend, Brother Seraphim,’ Süleyman said. ‘All he told me was that Gabriel Saatçi was perfectly fine up until the arrest of his father. Apparently Gabriel went to see Musa at Mardin police station just after the arrest was made and the cops there, Taner included, let the two of them speak in private for a few minutes. Immediately afterwards Gabriel walked out of the city and seemingly disappeared.’
‘My logical police sense would cause me to think that perhaps Gabriel is implicated in this crime,’ İkmen said. ‘After all, there are many and various terrorist groups operating in that area, aren’t there? But if he is a real Suriani . . . Living saints rarely wage war, do they?’
‘Musa the father believes that once Gabriel returns from his sojourn with God, the Sharmeran or whatever, he will make everything right.’
‘On the basis that a man who can withstand the bite of a hundred vipers is probably pretty special . . .’
‘But my point, Çetin, in all this is that there is a possibility that Musa Saatçi is guilty, that he was hiding arms in his house for one or other terrorist group,’ Süleyman said. ‘Inspector Taner however will not have it, not in any way. Musa is innocent, and although I know that Taner’s mind is rather more open than that of most people around here, she is still basically a person who is totally comfortable with magical solutions.’
‘Well, that’s me too, Mehmet, as you . . .’ İkmen’s voice tailed off into silence.
Frowning, Süleyman said, ‘Çetin?’
When the older man spoke again it was in a low whisper.
‘I think that Bekir has just come back in,’ he said. ‘I need to speak to him.’
‘Why?’
İkmen lowered his voice still further. ‘Certain behaviours of his I am not happy with. Certain stories he has been telling that do not wholly accord with reality. In other words a replay, in part at least, of the behaviour that years ago resulted in his leaving his parents’ home and taking to the streets.’
‘Çetin, I’m sorry. I—’
‘Must go! I’ll call you tomorrow!’ İkmen hissed and then, suddenly, he was gone.
It was well past midnight by the time Edibe Taner got back to her small apartment in the city quarter known as New Mardin. Situated on the flat plain below the old city, New Mardin is where the greatest civic expansion has taken place in recent years in the form of new apartment blocks, municipal buildings and modern hotels. Taner was just digging into her handbag for her keys in front of her own, almost completely darkened block when she became aware that she was not alone. Instead of continuing to look for her keys she put her hand in her jacket pocket and drew out her pistol. For several seconds she just stood, waiting to see what happened. But then the feeling of threat passed. Nothing so much as moved or even drew breath in or around the entrance to her apartment block, and so after a few more seconds Taner put her pistol away, took her keys out of her handbag and let herself in. Although rattled by the activation of an instinct that, over the years, she had grown to trust, Edibe Taner was convinced that whoever or whatever had been with her outside had meant her no harm. In fact, whatever it had been had, she felt, probably been a friend. Before she headed for the lift up to her fifth-floor apartment, she put her head outside the main door again and called, very softly, ‘Gabriel? Is that you, Gabriel?’
As it often did, Gabriel Saatçi’s gentle face had come suddenly and unbidden into her mind. He could do that, her friend Gabriel, her saint Gabriel. Or was it because after she had dropped Inspector Süleyman off, she had remembered where she had seen and spoken to one particular guard at the American woman’s house before? The man was a neighbour of Gabriel’s father. A village man originally, and a nice enough person by all accounts. Or not. ‘Gabriel, my . . . my friend.’ Was he close by, perhaps? Was he looking at her and smiling as she wrestled with conflicting feelings of need for him and dread? Gabriel had always been a prankster.
But even after almost half a minute there was no reply and so she closed the door again and went and got into the lift. Why she thought
it had been Gabriel she didn’t know. Maybe because she had grown up with him she had developed a sort of a sense as to where he might be. Or maybe it was to do with the deeper feelings she knew she possessed. But if that were the case, why couldn’t she find him? It was something that her father might be able to enlighten her about at some time. If of course Seçkin Taner was still speaking to his daughter. The meeting between her father and Inspector Süleyman had not gone well. But then how the Ottoman from İstanbul could be expected to understand Mardin beliefs and customs Edibe Taner didn’t know. At times it was a struggle for her. She hadn’t seen the Sharmeran; she’d heard her a few times, but . . . Then there was the ‘Cobweb World’ of which, apparently, Cousin Rafik’s mother had spoken to poor Süleyman. That kind of phenomenon was best kept dark but then maybe Rafik’s mother just had to blurt it out sometimes. After all, she, if anyone, was part of the Cobweb World. Just as the name of one of the suspect nurses in İstanbul was part of the Cobweb World. Lole. She would have to tell Süleyman about that name at some point and why the young man who owned it couldn’t possibly be from Mardin. The Loles had disappeared into the Cobweb World for good. Difficult if not impossible sometimes to talk about that.
Taner opened the door to her apartment and put on the light in the hall. She slipped her shoes off at the door and then walked into her bedroom.
Captain Hilmi Erdur had not expected a visit from the American military, especially not in the middle of the night. The body of the faceless American corpse was still in the mortuary in Birecik and therefore under his jurisdiction. But tissue samples and fingerprints had gone off to the Americans and Erdur was, as far as he was concerned, simply waiting for confirmation from that quarter as to the man’s identity.
According to the information on the body’s dog-tags, which had eventually been found in one of the pockets of his trousers (odd in itself), he was a Private Jose E. Ramone. His uniform, which was characterised by a blue spade insignia, belonged to the 26th infantry regiment who were, so Erdur now knew, currently stationed in Ramadi in central Iraq. Once his identity was confirmed, Erdur could release the body to the US authorities and, when a Captain Chalabian of the US 26th arrived at the Jandarma station to see him, he thought that the American had come to arrange just that.
River of The Dead Page 16
