River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  İkmen kissed his son on both cheeks and then headed towards the passageway leading to the departure gates. Bülent, shaking his head with agitation, made his way back towards the front entrance to the terminal. Outside in the car park one of his brothers was waiting to take him back to their parents’ apartment and the agony of his grieving mother.

  ‘Tommi Kerensky knew something about the Wormwood Route,’ Elizabeth Smith said as she looked Mehmet Süleyman clearly in the eyes. ‘The Syrian whore Yusuf used to bang when he was in İstanbul—’

  ‘Hana Karim?’

  ‘Yeah. She spilled it. She was doing Tommi too, which was why the both of them had to go. Yusuf for all his vision was a poor judge of character.’

  ‘He was a psychopathic killer.’

  ‘Yes, but he was a psychopathic killer who had nevertheless built a drug route into this country that was second to none.’

  ‘Why second to none?’

  ‘Because every part of the chain was discrete,’ she said. ‘People even half the way along the line had no idea who was at the end or the beginning of the process. Each took his cut in goods and no one knew more than was necessary to do his job.’

  ‘Except for Yusuf.’

  Elizabeth Smith leaned across the table and said, ‘He wasn’t scared of going to prison. Tommi Kerensky had put it about that Yusuf had something big on his hands before he was killed. Yusuf had already made millions of dollars and everyone wanted in. No one in that prison gave Yusuf any hassle and that included some of his gaolers.’

  ‘How did he get out?’ Süleyman asked.

  She smiled. ‘I bought a lot of people,’ she said. ‘Some of them at Yusuf’s request and some off my own bat. Some of the nurses at the hospital were known to him. Mardin people, as I’m sure you already know, are kind of close.’

  Süleyman looked down at the file on the table in front of him and said, ‘İsak Mardin, Murat Lole and Faruk Öz. Some of these are pseudonyms, as I am sure you know, but . . .’

  ‘The then administrator of the Cerrahpaşa, Oner, was a friend,’ the American said. ‘Unfortunately he couldn’t really handle what Yusuf had in mind and started to get a bit wobbly.’

  ‘Wobbly?’

  ‘He wanted out,’ she said harshly. ‘Yusuf sent a message that that wasn’t really an option and so he topped himself. You don’t split on your nearest and dearest out here – not unless you’re prepared to take the consequences. It could have all been over at that point if Oner’s replacement hadn’t been a user. Aktar, who fortunately got the job, has a big habit. Not that he knew too much until Yusuf was sprung.’

  ‘So who apart from the nurses—’

  ‘İsak Mardin had this doctor who liked to fuck him. Eldem. Not averse to getting rich either. He did as İsak said. We placed Mardin in the Cerrahpaşa to get Yusuf away. That was his purpose. He was waiting outside the hospital and got Yusuf and the others away from there.’ She leaned across the table and said, ‘The prison guards who went out with Yusuf to the hospital did as they were told, too.’

  Edibe Taner looked at Süleyman. ‘But they died, didn’t they?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Elizabeth Smith shrugged. ‘That was the plan.’

  ‘I’m sure neither they nor the police officers who accompanied Kaya to the hospital knew that,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Of course not!’ She laughed. To the inspectors in front of her this was a very disturbing phenomenon. ‘The coppers were entirely ignorant anyway. They had nothing to do with it. But that was, in part, Yusuf’s idea. If those who knew his movements were dead they couldn’t tell anyone what they’d seen.’

  ‘No. But you say in part. What do you mean by that?’

  She sat back in her chair then and looked down at her hands, suddenly subdued. ‘Some of those who died were not on Yusuf’s mental list,’ she said. Then she looked up with sharp, cold eyes. ‘But they were on mine.’

  ‘Because you wanted to take this Wormwood Route from Yusuf Kaya so you could use the money to forge some sort of “empire” or fiefdom here,’ Süleyman said, recalling what she had said to him back at Bulbul Kaplan’s farm in Birecik. But she didn’t react to the obvious jibe.

  ‘Murat Lole, İsak Mardin and Faruk Öz sprang Yusuf,’ she said. ‘But then afterwards Lole got greedy and killed Öz. İsak Mardin was with Yusuf by that time; that was the plan. Lole I believe either offed Öz at Mardin’s place or took the body there afterwards. Whatever, Mardin’s apartment was never going to be used by him again. The cleaners were taken care of by Yusuf, although one of them did prove useful, as you saw last night.’

  ‘One of the cleaners?’

  ‘The copper’s son, your friend’s son, the guy who worked for that beggarman, that Fagin character back in your city. You know the—’

  ‘Do you mean Hüseyin Altun?’ Süleyman asked. ‘From Edirnekapı? He and Bekir İkmen posed as hospital cleaners?’

  ‘Bekir İkmen and there was some kid as well,’ Elizabeth said, ‘but he was offed too, as I said. The İkmen guy killed Hüseyin Altun at Yusuf’s request. Altun had put Yusuf and İsak Mardin up for the night after his escape, which was risky. He had a big mouth. Yusuf was always going to use İkmen to kill Altun and to front his İstanbul operation because he was so smart. It was apparent, so Yusuf said, from their first meeting. But, well . . .’ She shrugged again. ‘I used him myself. I used anyone and everyone not in bed with the Kaya family.’

  ‘What did İsak Mardin do then?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘Lay low just outside İstanbul until I called him and Bekir to join us in Birecik last night,’ she said. ‘Yusuf, remember, had me plan his escape with him. What he didn’t know was that I was planning to double-cross him with guys I’d done deals of my own with.’

  ‘So let me see this correctly,’ Süleyman said. ‘To go back in time again now, you helped to arrange your husband’s escape from Kartal Prison. You got him out to Birecik where you extracted information from him and then you killed him, or someone else killed him.’

  ‘His aunty Bulbul did the actual killing,’ the American said. ‘She wanted to.’

  ‘Bulbul Kaplan?’

  ‘Yeah. You know that Yusuf’s dad pushed out her old man’s eyes?’ Elizabeth Smith shook her head in apparent disbelief. ‘Yusuf told me it was an agreed thing between the Kayas and the Kaplans. Gazi’s eyes go and there’s no more feud. Honour on both sides is apparently served. The Kaplans get to keep Bulbul, while the Kayas get to blind Gazi. All square. Good deal, huh? Except that old Gazi could never get a hard-on from that moment onwards and so Bulbul never had any kids. Resentful? I think so, don’t you? And not just of Gazi but of her family too. So there she is, she’s given up her whole life for a man who never touches her again.’

  ‘But why did she agree to see Yusuf Kaya?’ Taner asked.

  ‘Originally? I don’t know,’ the American said. ‘He fetched up there, she was nice to him and that was that. Maybe she saw him as some sort of child substitute. I don’t know. I never cared. Anyway, Yusuf himself hadn’t actually hurt her husband, had he? But then later I realised that she maybe had other plans for Yusuf all along. He took me to meet her a few months before he was arrested. We were business partners – he only married me because he wanted to feel he had some sort of control over me. He wanted me to know where his safe houses were. But when he was in prison I contacted her myself, just to be nice, you understand. She it was who started on about how she really wished that her nephew could get the old death penalty. I started thinking, because I knew I wanted the Wormwood Route for myself by this time, that maybe she had sussed me out and maybe also I could use her justifiable rage. She was a very ruthless woman, you know. Very ruthless.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that when her husband Gazi got wind of her plans to kill Yusuf he ordered her not to do it. He’d given his eyes to stop such things happening; the whole reason behind his sacrifice was to stop any further feuding. You can appreciate
the man’s point of view.’

  ‘Gazi Kaplan was blind. He couldn’t do very much to stop his wife, surely.’

  ‘He could do even less once she’d stabbed him in the chest,’ Elizabeth Smith said.

  Both Süleyman and Taner were truly shocked. Gazi Kaplan had not been found at the house in Birecik, it was true, but no one until now had thought about the possibility that he might actually be dead. Gazi Kaplan, until this moment, had simply been missing.

  ‘She killed him weeks ago,’ the American continued. ‘I don’t know where she buried him.’

  ‘And now Mrs Kaplan is dead I cannot ask her, can I?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘There’s no one left to ask,’ Elizabeth Smith replied. ‘She was dead by the time you got to the house. By the way, most of my boys were long gone by that time too.’

  ‘Your guards? To where?’

  ‘To where I’d arranged to meet them,’ she said. ‘That left only İbrahim Keser and the two boys we met in Birecik.’

  ‘Bekir İkmen.’

  ‘And Yusuf Mardin, yes.’ She smiled. ‘We’d agreed in advance to tidy Mrs Kaplan away. She did what she did for money. That was the bait, as well as Yusuf’s death, that I used to tempt her. She wanted to get away and have a bit of a life somewhere. But her price was high and I couldn’t have that. The captain of the Jandarma, however . . .’ she shrugged, ‘that was unfortunate. We didn’t know he was coming back. I got in the old woman’s bed and pretended to be sleeping Gazi. The captain didn’t disturb me and I thought he had to have bought my act. When he came back, Bekir and myself had just offed the old woman and so the captain . . . well, he had to go too, didn’t he?’ She smiled. ‘You guys did well, really. Although whether the Mardin posse would have done it without you, Inspector Süleyman, is probably doubtful.’

  Süleyman looked at Taner and then said, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Sure you do.’ The American smiled. ‘Take the compliment, Inspector. I mean nothing by it. I’m doomed. What on earth can I get out of you now?’

  Süleyman ignored her. ‘Miss Smith,’ he said, ‘you have told us that you had arranged to meet the rest of your men somewhere. Where is that? Where are the rest of your men now?’

  Elizabeth Smith took a deep breath and then leaned back into her chair. ‘Ah, well then, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ she said.

  Süleyman thought about all the Mardin families who had either disappeared or no longer had a patriarch. He thought about the proximity of Syria and Iraq and about how someone had dressed Yusuf Kaya’s corpse in an American uniform from Baghdad. Borders, even Turkish borders, were easy – if you knew the right people.

  ‘How did you get hold of an American serviceman’s uniform from Baghdad?’ he asked.

  She smiled, but did not speak.

  Süleyman felt himself shudder. He tried a different tack. ‘Tell me about Murat Lole,’ he said. ‘We know that Faruk Öz’s real name was Hasan Karabulut and that he was one of your husband’s cousins. Where did Murat Lole come into this?’

  ‘Van,’ she said.

  ‘Van?’

  ‘Where Faruk Öz trained as a nurse,’ the American said. ‘Where in fact Hasan Karabulut became Faruk Öz.’

  ‘How and why did he change his identity?’ Edibe Taner asked.

  ‘I believe he paid some criminal in Van to get him a new ID,’ the American said. ‘As to why . . . To get away from here, from Yusuf and from his connection to the clan. He was really a gentle boy. But Yusuf found out.’

  ‘And did what?’

  ‘And was very angry,’ she said. ‘Yusuf never liked to lose anyone. Faruk/Hasan was intimidated into telling Yusuf that he and his friend Murat had plans to work in İstanbul. He said that if Yusuf ever needed him while he was there he would be on hand to help him. He was buying himself some freedom. The poor kid was so desperate to get away he would have done anything. I think he planned eventually to just disappear. Mind you, if Murat hadn’t been in the picture . . .’

  ‘Murat Lole?’

  ‘Murat whatever he was calling himself that wasn’t Armenian, yes,’ she said.

  ‘So the name Lole . . .’

  ‘Is his real name, so he says, yes,’ the American said. ‘Claims he is a Lole whose family came originally from Mardin, just like the architect.’ She leaned forward in her chair then. ‘But as we all know only too well, some Armenians have changed their surnames over the years. I don’t know what Murat’s had been, but I do know that my husband fixed it for him to get all his papers changed into the name of Lole when the boys went to İstanbul. Murat had this belief that away from the east he could be who he wanted to be and use whatever name he felt like using. Yusuf believed that in a tight spot an Armenian would keep his head. Some people have this view of Armenians, you know.’

  ‘But Lole, surely, works for you?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘He killed Faruk/Hasan on Yusuf’s orders.’

  ‘You said before,’ Süleyman said, ‘that Lole killed Faruk/Hasan because he got greedy.’

  ‘So he did,’ she said. ‘Yusuf offered him money to kill Faruk. The boy had tried to leave the Kaya clan! When he was of no further use he was killed.’

  ‘But surely,’ Edibe Taner said, ‘Lole and Hasan Karabulut were friends?’

  The American woman crooked an eyebrow. ‘Honey, he was or is a man with a dream and big empty pockets wanting money. Bleak, I know, but the whole point about the Route and everyone around it is that no one can be trusted. Everyone double- and triple-crosses for billions of dollars. It’s Darwinism in action.’

  ‘And of course Lole is still out there somewhere,’ Süleyman said. ‘Do you have any idea where this man might be, Miss Smith?’

  ‘No, why should I?’ she said. ‘He’s Armenian, or at least that’s what he claimed. You Turks always say they’re so clever. He could be anywhere.’

  The man wept. Not a nice man, Dr Eldem had in all probability murdered the prison guard Ramazan Eren without so much as a flicker, but now that he knew his lover had died it was another matter. İzzet Melik looked across at Ayşe Farsakoğlu who just very slightly raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Dr Eldem, was the plan that you go and meet İsak Mardin somewhere after his rendezvous with the American woman?’ İzzet asked.

  It took the doctor a moment to gather himself. ‘Well . . .’ He gulped. ‘Well, of course. We—’

  ‘Where? Where were you going to meet up with İsak Mardin?’

  ‘I . . .’ The doctor wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and then gulped down a sob once again. ‘He was going to call me.’

  ‘Except that he wasn’t,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said. ‘Why would he? You’d done what he needed you to do. He was off to Miss Smith.’

  ‘I didn’t know anything about that. I—’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘You killed on the orders of İsak Mardin.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. Dr Eldem, you are a doctor. You are not going to kill on the orders of a thug or a madman or even a superior. You will, however, kill for love,’ İzzet said. He looked briefly across at Ayşe Farsakoğlu before continuing. ‘Many of us would. Now listen. Tell us who you phoned the night Ramazan Eren died. Who did you not manage to get through to?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu pounded one fist down on the table in front of her. ‘Sir, that cannot be! You must know who you were supposed to telephone and why. Why did you call this person, this apparent Syrian national?’

  There was a pause. Dr Eldem moved his head from side to side in agitation. Once he opened his mouth to speak and then changed his mind and retreated into silence again.

  ‘Dr Eldem, we will find the truth. İsak Mardin is dead. He died attempting to escape the Jandarma in Birecik along with a man called Bekir. You are protecting no one.’

  ‘Oh, no?’ He looked up sharply, his eyes full of tears. ‘How do I know he’s dead? How do I know you’re not just lying to me so that I will im
plicate İsak in something?’

  İzzet Melik sighed. ‘Doctor, if you want a photograph of the body, I can arrange it,’ he said. ‘But consider this: our conversation is being recorded. Our superior, Inspector İkmen, will not tolerate dishonesty or cruelty. If we lie to you, sir, we will be the ones to get into trouble. İsak Mardin is dead and so whatever you say about him now cannot possibly do him any harm. Now, how did you know to give Ramazan Eren an overdose of morphine and why?’

  His eyes welled with tears again but this time he held them back. ‘If Eren started to wake, İsak said, I was to call the number that I called,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that the phone was registered to a foreigner – I thought it would be İsak who would answer. He would tell me what to do. I knew only that İsak said we would make big money.’ He put his head down. ‘I was greedy. I am . . . İsak had told me that if Eren began to wake he would have to be killed. He said I should confirm it by phone but that wasn’t possible. No one answered.’

  ‘So you acted on the say-so of your lover,’ Ayşe said.

  ‘Yes.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Eren wasn’t supposed to survive Yusuf Kaya’s escape. İsak and the other nurses and cleaners were meant to get away with him and leave all the guards and the police officers dead.’

  ‘But Ramazan Eren survived.’

  He looked up. ‘He would have talked.’

  ‘Because he had been double-crossed,’ İzzet Melik said.

  ‘Yes. Apparently he was part of it.’

  ‘Just like İsak Mardin’s fellow nurse Faruk Öz,’ İzzet said. ‘Found dead at Mardin’s old house in Zeyrek. Was he double-crossed too, Dr Eldem?’

  The doctor was beginning to shake now, and with good cause. ‘Suddenly İsak was working not for Kaya but for some American woman,’ he said. ‘But Faruk Öz was related to Kaya and indebted in some way to him. He was from back there, back in their home out east. Murat Lole killed Faruk Öz apparently with Yusuf Kaya’s blessing. Lole was greedy. It all became confusing then. Then I didn’t know who was working for whom or . . . or if İsak really loved me.’