‘The people of the Ocean are not perfect,’ Edibe Taner said. ‘Your husband is a drug dealer and a murderer.’
‘Mm.’ She didn’t deny it. But it didn’t seem to bother her too much either. ‘I first came here ten years ago,’ she said. ‘On a tourist trip. The place possessed my soul!’ She looked up into the sky once again. ‘This is a place where things are brought to life – empires, faiths. Between the great rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates. This is where civilisation began. I envy you growing up here, Inspector.’
‘I wouldn’t wish to be from anywhere else,’ Taner replied. ‘But, you know, this place does have its problems.’
‘Yeah.’ The American’s face darkened somewhat. ‘New Mardin. The crap apartments down there.’
‘I was thinking more about the conflict that exists here,’ Taner said. ‘The various terrorist organisations who base themselves here, war in Iraq, the dictatorship in Syria.’
There was a moment of silence as these two very different women looked at each other. Then the American said, ‘But things can change. They do and will.’
‘I wish I had your confidence,’ Edibe Taner said.
Whatever expression Elizabeth Smith made in response to this was hidden underneath her veil.
‘Miss Smith,’ Taner said, ‘you must know that the guards the Kayas have employed to protect you are not just for show. People are killed out here.’
‘Clan rivalry. I know,’ Elizabeth Smith said. ‘I know also that your cousin Zeynep, Yusuf’s other wife, would probably rather I was dead. But I also know she won’t do anything.’
‘No.’ Zeynep had obviously accepted the situation. However, Edibe Taner did have one question. ‘But, Miss Smith, why does Yusuf, or why did he, keep your existence such a close secret? I mean, it isn’t as if he cares about the law with regard to polygamy.’
The American laughed. ‘No. No, I was a secret, Inspector, because Yusuf feared his rivals might try to kidnap me. Hence all my guys in the house. Hence, in part, the reason I cover up in public. Foreigners fetch a good price here.’
‘Yes.’ Edibe Taner knew of several such cases of foreigner kidnap and it was undoubtedly very lucrative for the clan or group perpetrating the crime. ‘But I still don’t understand why you’re here, Miss Smith,’ Taner said. ‘Whatever you may have run away from in the USA cannot, surely, have been bad enough to make you want to become a willing prisoner?’
There was silence, and then the American said, ‘I told you, I love this place. It has possibilities. If one has money and loyal protection, as I do, one can build something special here.’
‘Something special?’
‘A life amongst the ruins,’ the American said. ‘A new life on the broken stones of the past.’
And then she left to go back into her house. It was only when Edibe Taner returned to her car that she realised that Yusuf Kaya’s American bride had only spoken about him in passing. She hadn’t once expressed what she might feel for him. She had actually exhibited more affection for her guards.
Chapter 15
* * *
Süleyman was not unaccustomed to security outside a church, although the level was rather higher than what he had experienced before. At the bottom of the narrow lane leading up to Mar Behnam there was an armoured car blocking off any vehicular access. Up to the church itself and just inside the precinct there were very many policemen and some women too. Edibe Taner greeted all of them. Looking very smart in a modest black suit, she was accompanied by Süleyman and her father Seçkin.
Constructed from the same honey-coloured stone as all the other ancient Mardin buildings, Mar Behnam was accessed via a small doorway in a tall, very blank-looking wall. Having seen the vast mansions with humble entrances in Gaziantep, Süleyman was unsurprised to find that in common with traditional Arab structures Mar Behnam was actually a church and outbuildings – the priest’s house, a school and assembly rooms – in considerable grounds. There was also a large marquee, a temporary structure where, Taner told him, the banquet the Surianis were giving after the service was to be held. He had expected the church itself to be huge, but it wasn’t. In fact the approach to the altar down between the rows of wooden benches on both sides was quite narrow. On either side of the benches were rows of arches which gave on to still more benches and small areas of devotion around paintings and cloth pictures on the walls. One of these representations was, as Brother Seraphim had told him, of the Sharmeran. Overhead there was a large and ornate chandelier from which strings of tiny fairy lights were suspended across to the ancient arches. Built originally, so Brother Seraphim had told him, in 569, Mar Behnam was definitely part of the Cobweb World. Just the memory of that term made Süleyman shudder, recalling as it did his recent conversation with the monk about Yusuf Kaya’s aunt Bulbul Kaplan. What her brother had done, putting out the eyes of her husband Gazi, must have made her hate her family. Such a thing was inhuman and if, as was obvious, she had found love and acceptance from Gazi and his family, why on earth would she even consider entertaining her nephew Yusuf? It seemed to be counter-intuitive and he wondered whether Edibe Taner might be able to shed some light upon it later.
Some sort of ceremony was taking place when Süleyman and the others entered the church. The red-and-gold-robed priest at the altar was intoning something in a language Süleyman imagined was Aramaic. A young boy in a white robe stood next to him, just to one side of the altar, which was bare with the exception of a simple metal cross and a painted altar cloth representing the Last Supper.
‘The service has not started properly yet,’ Edibe Taner said to Süleyman as they walked through the door. ‘The priest is just preparing for the ceremony now.’ She turned to her father and said, ‘Will you show Inspector Süleyman Mar Behnam, Papa?’
Seçkin Taner nodded his assent. ‘Please follow me, Inspector.’
Süleyman followed him straight up the aisle and to the right of the altar. The priest and the young boy appeared to take no notice of them at all. Various rough niches in the stone held boxes, candlesticks and, in one instance, a very old-looking skull. The Master of Sharmeran pointed to it. ‘That is the skull of Mar Behnam,’ he said. ‘He was the son of a Syrian king, a pagan.’
‘This church is named for him?’
‘And for his sister Mort Saro,’ Seçkin Taner said. ‘The father king killed Mar Behnam and Mort Saro because he didn’t like them being Christians. Then from beyond the grave the brother and the sister began to work miracles and the wicked father repented. If you are sick, Mar Behnam can make you well, so the Suriani believe.’
Süleyman smiled. Miracles were not really his area. He felt Çetin İkmen would have been far better placed to talk to this man about them than he was. Just then, however, there was a noise behind him and he looked round. A large group of people, the women with their heads covered by small lace scarves, the men very obviously in their best suits, were pouring through the door into the church.
‘Now the service begins,’ Seçkin Taner said. ‘Come, we must sit.’
The Master of Sharmeran and Süleyman sat on the right hand side of the church with the rest of the men. Edibe Taner, seated with the woman on the left, smiled over at both of them.
‘Now that we know from Inspector Süleyman that the nurse we thought was called Faruk Öz came originally from Mardin, and that there is at least a theoretical connection between Mardin and the name Lole, we must consider carefully what we do next,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said to İzzet Melik. ‘We always had a suspicion that Murat Lole was part of Yusuf Kaya’s escape plot. He possibly lied to us, too. Öz’s people are not, clearly, from Ankara. Although he may have told Lole that they were from the capital for some reason.’
‘The also significantly named Yusuf Mardin is still nowhere to be seen,’ İzzet replied gloomily. ‘As for the cleaners . . .’
‘I don’t know whether we’ll ever be able to trace them,’ Ayşe said as she looked down at the bulging ashtray on her desk. She sighe
d. ‘It’s possible, given the number of deaths that seem to be mounting up around this escape, that they may very well have been disposed of. We mustn’t forget either that there were only two nurses at the scene when Kaya escaped from the Cerrahpaşa.’
‘I contacted the Kartal Prison as İkmen asked to try to get them to protect the prisoner Ara Berköz,’ İzzet said. ‘But if the corruption there is as widespread as it could be at the Cerrahpaşa, I wouldn’t like to make a bet on his chances.’ He looked up at his colleague and frowned. ‘You know, Ayşe, I always knew that Yusuf Kaya was a rich and powerful drug dealer, but don’t you think that all this buying of people, all this killing, is excessive even by his standards?’
Ayşe sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She at least was not supposed to be working on this particular Sunday but she’d been unable to settle to anything not work-related at home. The hunt for Yusuf Kaya and the various twists and turns in that investigation was obsessing all of them. Crass though he could be, İzzet was a good person with whom to discuss theories and ideas.
‘He does seem to have a lot of power now,’ she said.
‘Tommi Kerensky, the Russian he killed, was at the top of the tree amongst the eastern European dealers,’ İzzet said. ‘There are quite a few Russians in the Kartal Prison that I would have at least imagined might have had a go at ending Kaya’s life inside. It’s all about revenge in their world, after all. And then there was the beggar king Hüseyin Altun, found stabbed . . .’
‘We know that Kaya and Altun knew of each other at least. Kaya supplied Hüseyin or his people with drugs. But the connection only really exists through Hüseyin’s lieutenant Aslan and his girlfriend Sophia. Altun’s death may or may not be connected.’
İzzet didn’t answer. Like Ayşe he just sat and looked ahead at nothing much really. The station was quite quiet, a lot of the uniformed officers having been assigned to the various Orthodox Christian churches in the city which were celebrating Easter. The official protection of most places of worship now was a sad fact of modern life. Some people, or so it seemed, would not even consider leaving others alone to do what they wanted to do in peace. But then peace wasn’t something İzzet and Ayşe were to experience for very much longer themselves. İkmen, looking even more tired and worn out than usual, burst into his office in a vast ball of grey cigarette smoke. For a moment he just looked at his sergeant sitting frowning at her desk and at İzzet Melik and then he said, ‘We’ve got to find this man.’
He held up the photograph of Bekir that his daughter Çiçek had put on to the computer for Fatma. Bülent had printed this copy out on to a large piece of photographic paper. İzzet looked up at the picture and said, ‘Who is he? What’s he done?’
‘He’s a shit who gives cocaine to children!’ İkmen said with real poison and yet at the same time real misery in his voice too. ‘He’s—’
‘That’s Aslan!’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said as she peered at the picture, nodding her head as she did so. ‘Hüseyin Altun’s old lieutenant. That’s a really good picture. Sure he sells cocaine to kids, I don’t know about giving . . . Sir?’
İkmen had almost fallen down on to the top of his desk. ‘Are you sure? You’ve seen him so infrequently,’ he said in what for him was a very small voice. ‘This is Aslan?’
‘We’re looking for him anyway, aren’t we?’ İzzet said. ‘Handy to get a photograph though, sir. Where did you get it from?’
There was a pause during which both Ayşe Farsakoğlu and İzzet Melik became rather concerned about the extraordinarily pale colour İkmen’s face had gone.
‘I got it from my printer at home,’ İkmen managed to say at last. ‘This man – Aslan – is also known as Bekir İkmen. He is the third and most troublesome of my sons.’
There had been no signal that Süleyman could discern to suggest that the service had actually started. The church just filled up with men wearing either very cheap and unfashionable suits or ensembles so up to the minute and expensive he was almost jealous. The old man who stood next to him was one of the former, a peasant in a jacket and trousers he had probably been married in. Beside him, all in a shade of cream that had, Süleyman recalled, been quite the thing for a while back in the 1970s, was a ‘simple’ man of about fifty. In all probability he was the older man’s son. Occasionally he made strange hooting noises and rolled his eyes and drooled, but nobody took any notice. Not even the headscarfed, clearly Muslim ladies who sat on the benches at the back of the women’s area of the church. In front of them were the far more aquiline and elegantly dressed Suriani ladies. Although much taller than most of the other women, Edibe Taner, right in the middle of the Christian group, looked very different from those around her. Her face was broader, more Asiatic. These Surianis were plainly Arabs. There was not, however, as yet, any sign of the American woman Elizabeth Smith, or of the Kaya men who guarded her.
The priest raised a smoking thurible of incense up until it swung and then proceeded to walk up and down the aisle blessing the congregation with its pungent contents.
Ayşe Farsakoğlu had been to İkmen’s apartment several times before. She knew it as a joyfully chaotic place where food and drink were always being pushed on anyone who came over the threshold. This day, however, was different. For a start, either the younger İkmen children were out or they were unnaturally quiet and Mrs Fatma İkmen was nowhere to be seen. Once Ayşe and İzzet had taken their shoes off at the door, İkmen led them to their left and into a small messy room.
‘This was Bülent’s room,’ İkmen explained as he closed the door behind them. ‘We let Bekir stay here when he turned up out of the blue. Then my youngest son, Kemal, began spending a lot of time with him. You can smell, even now he’s out, that ghastly spot cream or lotion or whatever it is that Kemal has taken to slathering himself with lately.’
Ayşe didn’t know what İkmen meant. The smell he was referring to meant something quite different to her. But she put on the plastic gloves they had all brought with them and began looking around.
‘My wife and the two younger children are spending the day with family,’ İkmen said. Fatma had taken the kids over to the home of the eldest İkmen child, Sınan. A doctor, Sınan was due to go abroad for a job interview the following day. If things went to plan he would soon be working in London. Just the thought of it made İkmen’s chest tighten a little with tension. Of course if Sınan got the job in London he would have to take it; it was what he wanted. But the loss of him on top of Bekir was not going to be easy for Fatma. Her children were almost gone now. Even her youngest was no longer really a child. İkmen tried hard not to think about Kemal snorting coke probably from the back of a battered old tobacco tin or something equally disgusting. His mobile phone began to ring. Ayşe Farsakoğlu picked up what had been Bekir’s rucksack and looked inside.
İkmen signalled for her to put the rucksack down and then said, ‘İkmen.’
‘Çetin, it’s Arto,’ the familiar voice of the Armenian pathologist said. ‘It’s about your dead prison officer.’
‘Ramazan Eren?’
‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’
İzzet Melik, who had been looking at the old Galatasaray football posters on the walls, turned round and looked at İkmen, frowning.
‘Yes?’ İkmen asked the Armenian. ‘And so?’
‘The toxicology came back with a positive result for diamorphine,’ the doctor said. ‘Enough to kill an ox. This death was not natural, Çetin. Who was the attending doctor over at the Cerrahpaşa?’
‘Eldem,’ İkmen said after a pause.
‘Well, Dr Eldem has some questions to answer,’ Arto said. ‘I suggest you get him in right away.’
‘I will,’ İkmen said. After thanking the doctor for his prompt attention he closed his telephone up.
‘Dr Eldem in trouble, is he?’ İzzet asked.
‘Yes,’ İkmen replied. ‘It would seem that someone gave Ramazan Eren an overdose of d
iamorphine.’
‘Dr Eldem.’
‘He would seem to be the most likely candidate at this time,’ İkmen said. ‘İzzet, I’d like you to get over to the Cerrahpaşa and pick him up. If he isn’t there get the director to give you his details. At the very least, Dr Eldem has some explaining to do.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Once Sergeant Farsakoğlu and myself have finished here, we’ll go back to the station and hopefully see you there,’ İkmen said as he escorted İzzet Melik back to the front door of the apartment.
‘Eldem may already have gone,’ İzzet said just before he left. ‘He was behaving cagily at the hospital yesterday, wasn’t he?’
‘If that is the case then I’ll have to go to Commissioner Ardıç,’ İkmen said. ‘As it is I think we’ll soon be needing more men and more powers to really get to grips with just where the trail of Kaya’s influence is taking us.’
‘Yes, sir.’
İkmen returned to Bekir’s bedroom where Ayşe Farsakoğlu was still looking down at the rucksack he had asked her to leave.
‘Bülent found the syringe in there,’ he said. ‘And some cocaine powder. I want the whole bag analysed. There are some twigs or something in there too. Not cannabis, but—’
‘Wormwood,’ Ayşe said with absolute confidence. ‘Like the tattoo on Faruk Öz’s arm. I recognised the smell as soon as I entered the apartment. The leaves in that bag are wormwood leaves.’
‘Ah, but the smell is Kemal’s cream.’
‘No, sir. If Kemal told you that was the smell of his cream, he was lying. The smell is wormwood,’ Ayşe said. ‘My grandmother used to put wormwood leaves amongst her clothes to discourage moths. It’s awful. I’d know it anywhere. This room reeks of it!’
‘We assumed that because Kemal was using some new cream,’ İkmen said slowly, ‘it had to be him. Since he developed spots he’s used some foul things on his skin. He told us he was using some new stuff. He told us it smelt just like this.’
River of The Dead Page 20
