River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Private Jose Eduardo Ramone was killed two weeks ago in Baghdad,’ Captain Chalabian said without preamble and in perfect Turkish. ‘What’s left of his body, which is in Baghdad, is waiting repatriation to the US.’

  ‘So what—’ Erder began.

  ‘What you’ve got here, Captain, I don’t know,’ Chalabian interrupted. He was tall and fair and seemed to give the lie to his obviously Armenian surname. Armenians were not, Hilmi Erdur thought, like this. ‘But that Private Ramone’s dog-tags should turn up on an unknown body is of concern to me. There’s a lot of insurgent activity in the Iraqi territories to the south of your country.’

  Captain Erdur wondered whether to mention the somewhat vexed issue of active Kurdish PKK terror cells in that area, but the American got in first.

  ‘Whatever may or may not be said officially, the Kurds go in and out of Iraq,’ he said baldly. ‘You’ve Hezbollah also to contend with here, as do we.’

  ‘This is not the first time we’ve found body parts in the Euphrates,’ Erdur said.

  ‘Yes, I know. But, Captain, this is the first time you’ve found a US serviceman. Or not. You should know that the US military have not been able to identify the corpse.’ He shrugged. ‘We’ve run those DNA sequences and we’ve looked hard at those fingerprints but whatever we do we can’t make any of them fit any of our personnel. He could be an Iraqi, civilian or military, dressed in US uniform to disguise his identity.’

  ‘He has no face,’ Erdur said.

  ‘Exactly. Someone doesn’t want us to know who he is, do they? Look, I can run his prints and DNA past our Iraqi military colleagues, but I think we could have the body of an insurgent here.’

  Erdur sighed. What he’d do with the body of an unknown Iraqi civilian he didn’t know.

  ‘In the meantime I’d like to take a look at him, if I may,’ Chalabian said. ‘If he was someone active around our base, I could maybe recognise something that remains about him. I knew Ramone, of course, and I know it isn’t him. Ramone had his head shot to shit by a sniper.’

  Erdur took his American colleague to the mortuary. On the way he complimented him on his Turkish. It was very good. However, as soon as the words were out of his mouth, Erdur knew he’d done the wrong thing. This tall blond man, he had forgotten, had an Armenian surname.

  ‘My father’s people came originally from Diyarbakir,’ Chalabian responded tightly. ‘My grandparents only knew Turkish. Oh, and Armenian too, of course. But no one speaks that now. Turkish was useful. My dad encouraged me to learn it. We forgot Armenian. You know?’

  There was no tone of challenge in Chalabian’s voice, just a little bit of anger. Erdur thought that the American would probably want him to ignore it, which he did.

  ‘Here,’ he said as he pulled one of the refrigeration drawers out of the mortuary cabinet. He pulled the sheet covering the corpse aside to allow the American to see what lay beneath.

  As soon as Chalabian saw the body, he frowned. ‘How long was he in the water before you picked him up?’ he said.

  ‘We are not yet sure,’ Erdur replied. ‘Only one of our local doctors came to him when we found him. No one else was available. The pathologist from Urfa is due tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t know because I’m not an expert,’ Chalabian said, ‘but to me he doesn’t look as if he’s been in the water all that long.’

  They walked out into the chilly night air and Chalabian offered Erdur a cigarette, which he took.

  ‘Captain, you and I both know that your borders here in the east are porous,’ Chalabian began.

  ‘We do our best,’ Erdur replied with some heat in his voice. Confounded Americans! What did they know about dealing with multiple terrorist threats over decades? 9/11 had been dreadful but compared to the terrorist experiences of people in Europe and the Middle East over the past forty years, it had been a drop in the ocean. ‘We have Hezbollah to contend with,’ he continued. ‘There are al-Qaeda cells operating, we know that. And then there is the PKK.’

  He didn’t elaborate upon that final group. It was well known that the US government was somewhat lukewarm in its condemnation of that particular organisation. Chalabian, as if a little embarrassed, lowered his head slightly.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Captain, what exercises me is the fact that Ramone’s dog-tags have ended up inside Turkey. We’ve either got insurgents slipping over the border from northern Iraq or you’ve got people coming over to our side. Backwards and forwards, there’s movement anyhow.’

  Erdur puffed hard on his cigarette and then looked up at the stars. ‘There is the drug trade too,’ he said after a pause. ‘Opium grows very well in these border valleys. We try to control this trade as best we can. But during the time of Saddam Hussein things on the Iraqi side of the border were often quite unrestrained. Now, of course . . .’ He looked up at Chalabian and saw what he thought was a face that could be open to the truth. He gave it a shot. ‘Little has changed in that respect. If anything, in fact, the trade is more violent, the drugs more hotly contested.’

  ‘I know,’ Chalabian said with a sigh. He then, quite unexpectedly, put a hand on his Turkish colleague’s shoulder and said, ‘We’ve made a fucking mess of the whole thing, I know that. But, Captain, I knew Private Ramone and I liked him. I need to find out who stole his dog-tags and why. If people are throwing bodies carrying US ID into rivers then they have an agenda we don’t yet understand. We need to understand it, and soon.’

  Captain Erdur nodded his head in agreement. ‘When the doctor comes from Urfa he will take more DNA samples. Then, maybe, we will find out who this man is.’

  Çetin İkmen hadn’t been able to close his eyes. He’d tried, because he didn’t want to feel tired at work the following day. But he’d failed. Even before he’d been denied his own bed, the argument he’d had with Bekir, or rather the memory of it, had put paid to sleep. Not only had his son stuck to his grandiose lies about being a famous fighter of gypsies, he had been vicious in his resentment of his father.

  ‘How dare you check up on me!’ he’d roared when Çetin İkmen had told him about his conversation with the gypsy. ‘I know you resent me coming back, but—’

  ‘Bekir, you were a nightmare when you lived at home before,’ İkmen had countered. ‘You lied, you took drugs, you—’

  ‘I’m a different person now and you don’t like it!’ Bekir had screamed. Fatma, by this time crying in the kitchen, had begged her husband to stop.

  ‘Look what you’re doing to Mum!’ Bekir had said when he heard her cries and her tears.

  ‘It’s because of your mother that I need to be sure of you,’ İkmen had said. ‘Because if you break your mother’s heart again, Bekir, I will break every bone in your body!’

  Bekir had gone to what had once been Bülent’s room then, slamming the door in his young brother Kemal’s face as he did so. This had put Çetin İkmen in trouble with both his wife and his youngest son, who accused his father of being a ‘fascist’. Fatma just very icily told her husband to sleep on the sofa. And so Çetin sat, wakefully, smoking heavily until at just before six o’clock his mobile phone began to ring.

  ‘İkmen,’ he said gloomily into what he persisted in thinking of as its tiny, tiny mouthpiece.

  ‘Sir, it’s İzzet,’ he heard Süleyman’s sergeant say. ‘We’ve just received a call from Dr Eldem at the Cerrahpaşa. The prison guard Ramazan Eren died half an hour ago.’

  İkmen sighed and then groaned. With Eren dead, any chance of questioning a witness to Yusuf Kaya’s escape had gone. ‘How?’

  ‘Multiple organ failure,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘The doctor said it’s not uncommon in patients in coma.’

  İkmen knew that was so. He’d seen a few people both die in and recover from coma over the years. But Ramazan Eren wasn’t just anybody. He was possibly one of the last links in the chain that led back to Yusuf Kaya’s escape. He was certainly the last witness to the actual event whose whereabouts were known. His d
eath was therefore, for Kaya, really rather convenient. İkmen took his jacket off the cushion beside him and put it on.

  ‘And because Eren was under medical care when he died there will be no post-mortem,’ İkmen said as a statement of fact.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Unless of course we order one,’ İkmen continued as he checked his pockets for car keys and money.

  ‘Sir?’

  Suddenly energised, İkmen rose to his feet. Far too many people were dying around Yusuf Kaya for his liking. ‘The police,’ he said decisively. ‘I’m going to go over to the Cerrahpaşa now and I’m going to find out who was with or around Ramazan Eren before and during his death. I’m also going to order a post-mortem which I will want a police pathologist to perform.’

  ‘But sir, I understood from Dr Eldem that Eren’s body was going to be released to his family.’

  ‘Then it will have to be un-released,’ İkmen replied. ‘I want Dr Sarkissian to take a look at Ramazan Eren before he meets his maker.’

  ‘But sir, what will that—’

  ‘Look like? I don’t care,’ İkmen said. ‘If necessary I will say that I suspect foul play because maybe I do.’

  Even in a secular state like Turkey, Muslims are usually buried within twenty-four hours of death unless something about the demise is reasoned to be unnatural.

  ‘A lot of deaths have occurred around Yusuf Kaya’s route out of this city. Let’s see if we can at the very least find some sort of connection here,’ İkmen said. ‘Meet me at the Cerrahpaşa in fifteen minutes, İzzet.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  İkmen cut the connection and then walked determinedly out into the hall of his apartment. Kemal, who had just finished in the bathroom, scuttled nervously past him and back to his bedroom. The musty smell of his acne cream made İkmen wince.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  ‘Tomorrow is Easter Sunday,’ Edibe Taner said to Süleyman as they walked towards the high yellow wall that surrounded the Kaya family home in Mardin. ‘So all leave is cancelled and I for one will be in church.’

  ‘Protecting the Christians?’

  ‘In part, yes,’ she replied. ‘There will always be people who wish to harm others on the basis of their beliefs. The innocent have to be protected. But I will also be there to see whether Kaya’s American woman does indeed turn up.’

  ‘Which church?’

  ‘Mar Behnam Suriani church is where everyone goes,’ she said. ‘Musa Saatçi’s relatives will be there.’

  ‘Minus Gabriel.’

  She shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s Easter. Gabriel is a very observant man. Maybe he will just turn up for the service. Who knows?’

  The gate that led into the Kaya family compound was closed. Taner rapped on it hard and then stood silently next to Süleyman while they waited for someone inside to respond. Almost a minute passed before soft footsteps were heard approaching from inside. When the door opened they found themselves looking into the heavily kohl-rimmed eyes of Yusuf Kaya’s first wife, Zeynep.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, addressing Edibe Taner. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

  ‘Not even about Yusuf’s foreign woman down by Dara?’ Taner said as she pushed roughly past the woman and entered the courtyard. ‘I think that you do, Zeynep.’

  Zeynep Kaya looked her cousin straight in the eye and said, ‘Foreign woman? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Taner glanced around the seemingly deserted courtyard and then pulled Zeynep Kaya into the open door to a stable. Süleyman, looking round to see who may or may not be coming to Zeynep’s assistance, followed them. Beyond themselves, not a thing appeared to stir.

  ‘Well, the second wife in Dara, an American woman, knows you!’ Taner said as she held Zeynep Kaya up to the wall in front of her. ‘And, Zeynep, let me tell you, some of your husband’s thugs were guarding her.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any woman!’ Zeynep persisted. ‘It’s all lies!’

  ‘It isn’t, and you know it,’ Süleyman put in. He wasn’t happy to witness what was in effect one woman bullying another, but Zeynep Kaya needed to know that her continued lying was futile. She must surely be aware that her husband had a second wife. There was far too much evidence to support that contention.

  ‘Your husband was imprisoned in İstanbul for killing the prostitute he was living with,’ Taner said. ‘He has a daughter by Anastasia Akyuz. I don’t know how many other women he’s slept with over the years since he married you but I would imagine that it runs into double figures. Yusuf is a shit! He always was!’

  ‘He is my husband!’ Zeynep Kaya made as if to spit into Edibe Taner’s face, but then, with sudden terror in her eyes, she stopped.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ the policewoman roared. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ Suddenly, and with a force that surprised even Süleyman, she slapped Zeynep Kaya across the face. The woman’s cheek reddened immediately. ‘Like it or not, Zeynep, you remain a scorpion and as a scorpion you will accept my authority!’

  ‘Inspector Taner, I . . .’

  She turned and gave Süleyman such a cold look it was almost like gazing into the face of a snake. Then she turned back to her cousin.

  ‘Zeynep Kaya, if you lie to me, I will make sure that the Sharmeran never favours you with good fortune ever again!’ The woman beneath her hands looked terrified. ‘You know that I can do this! You know that my father can and will curse your rotten adopted family who, by the way, are nowhere around to protect you now, are they?’

  ‘Bilqis Hanim* is out,’ Zeynep said. ‘The men have taken her to see her sister in Nusaybin. She – the sister – is dying; she . . . Oh, Edibe, please, please do not curse us! I love Allah but I truly love my Sharmeran too . . .’

  ‘Then tell me the truth, Zeynep! Tell me now!’

  There was a pause. One of Taner’s hands was at Zeynep Kaya’s throat, but it wasn’t the physical consequences that were frightening the woman, it was the spiritual ones. Being cut off from or cursed by the Sharmeran was a very big deal indeed.

  ‘She, the woman, she is much better with Yusuf in terms of business,’ Zeynep said.

  ‘You mean she helps him run drugs and murder his rivals?’

  ‘I don’t know what she does!’ Zeynep said. ‘She fell in love with my husband in İstanbul. I – I think it was partly because of this place. She knew of the Tur Abdin. She was fascinated by it. She wanted to hear about the Sharmeran. And . . . Look, Yusuf told me he never loved her but she was good at business. It’s what he said! She is American and good at business. What do I know? I don’t understand Yusuf’s business!’

  ‘Oh, so you don’t know how or why he gives you expensive jewellery, buys up property and dresses like an Italian politician? What—’

  ‘No! No, I don’t know!’ Zeynep said, almost in tears now. ‘I don’t get involved in business! I have children, Yusuf’s children!’ And then suddenly her face turned into something less frightened and much more bitter. ‘That foreigner can’t give my husband children! My children, Muslim children, will have everything when my Yusuf dies! That’s all I care about! That’s all that anything in this world might mean to me!’

  ‘So the fact that Yusuf has been fucking—’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ Zeynep said. ‘I just—’

  ‘Where is he, Zeynep?’ Taner asked. ‘Where is Yusuf now? Tell me and no one need ever know that you were concealing information from us. Don’t tell me and I can’t be responsible for what happens – here in the city with the law, or beyond . . .’ she leaned forward and whispered into Zeynep’s ear, ‘out amongst the caves where the snakes gather and bask, the children of—’

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ As Zeynep spoke she shook in every part of her body. Süleyman had seen terror in his time but rarely had he seen it engendered by reference to things that to him were clearly only mythical. But then these people were not from his part of the world. Thes
e people were, he was coming to understand, almost wholly alien.

  ‘If I knew where Yusuf was I would tell you,’ Zeynep Kaya sobbed. ‘Do you, Edibe, think that I would risk the displeasure of my Sharmeran? I have children! I would never ever put them in the way of danger, not even for my husband!’

  Slowly Edibe Taner released her grip upon Zeynep Kaya’s throat and Süleyman began to breathe more easily again. In spite of the fact that the house was empty apart from Zeynep, he had been worried. What would the Kayas have done if they had come back and found Edibe Taner with her hands at Zeynep’s throat?

  ‘If they knew she’d spoken to us, they’d kill her,’ Taner said when, later, they walked back towards Republic Square.

  ‘Then why did she answer the door?’ Süleyman said. ‘She must have known, or had an idea at least, that it could be the police?’

  Edibe Taner sighed. ‘As a member of my clan, she cannot deny me,’ she said. ‘She knows who and what I am and what I can threaten her with. Around Kaya’s family she does whatever they dictate. But alone with another scorpion she must tell the truth. She opened that door because she wanted me to know what was real.’

  For Taner to be talking about anything ‘real’ seemed more than a little odd. This daughter of the Master of Sharmeran had more than a hint of the snake about her. Not that such things were in any way real to Mehmet Süleyman.

  ‘When are we going to start combing the surrounding countryside?’ he asked as they reached Avenue One and began making their way back towards the police station. ‘In İstanbul, we—’