She looked at the rings on her fingers, moving her hand to and fro across her face, catching the light upon the stones. She appeared completely unmoved by his outburst. Ikmen looked at Suleyman, but the young man’s head was turned away from him in the direction of the curtains. Ikmen peered into the gloom to see what his colleague was observing. In a large brocade chair just in front of the curtains sat a figure, hunched up, its legs off the floor, drawn up underneath its chin. Whether it was male or female he couldn’t tell, but its eyes glittered through the darkness like a cat’s, its stare fixed upon Suleyman.
“Leonid Meyer was from a town called Perm.”
Ikmen turned away from the mystery in the corner and back to the old woman. That sounded familiar. “Perm? In the Ural Mountains?”
His answer surprised her. “Very good, Inspector!” She smiled a little. A very little. “After the Revolution in 1918 my family went to Perm. I met Leonid there. We ran away together.”
Ikmen stubbed his cigarette out in her ashtray. It was at times like this that he silently blessed his father for those long ago and, at times, boring lectures on the subject of European history. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “I would not have thought that Perm was a good place to be in 1918.”
She was temporarily taken aback. “Why?”
“The Bolsheviks were extremely powerful in that area then. Your family, surely, could not have been safe in such a place?”
“What leads you to that conclusion, Inspector?”
“You did not, madam, learn English from a book. You learned from an English speaker, a governess or nanny. This is obvious from your, I must say, amazing fluency. It follows that your family must have been wealthy and therefore at considerable risk in the Urals.”
She smiled. “You are a clever man, Inspector. And where did you learn your excellent English?”
“My father taught European Languages at the university for most of his working life. He taught me English. Unfortunately he did not share his knowledge of Russian with me. But I know a little of Russian history. Our house was always full of books on all kinds of different subjects.” Ikmen smiled. He took his cigarettes out of his jacket and placed them on the bed. “Why did you run away with Meyer? Why did he run away with you for that matter? He was a poor Jew, wasn’t he, and you…”
“We were in love.”
“But you didn’t marry him?”
“No.” She laughed. It was a deep, rasping sound, like a cough. “As you have quite rightly surmised, the relationship could not last. Whatever people say class will always and inevitably intervene in these matters. Leonid was a peasant. Imagine your daughter, if you have one, marrying that pretty sergeant of yours.” She waved her hand in Suleyman’s direction. “She would soon tire of him. He’s a peasant. Breeding, as the English say, and they are the experts, always shows. However soiled the clothing.”
Ikmen smiled and offered her a cigarette; she declined with a wave of her hand. “You came to Istanbul together, you and Meyer?”
“Yes. We parted and I met my husband, Mr. Gulcu.”
“Why Istanbul?”
“Why not?” Suddenly her eyes became misty as she stared beyond him into the darkness. Her expression soft now, almost tender. “I cannot tell you how it was in Russia. Everyone was dead, or dying. I would have willingly gone to hell to get away from it. There were so many dead. They lay in piles by the roadside. It was impossible to breathe for the smell. Everything was poisoned. Even your ruined country was a paradise by comparison.”
Ikmen had the feeling that she wasn’t quite with him anymore. Her mind was staked to a memory that was both horrific and very current to her. He instinctively lowered his voice, almost as if in prayer. “And your families, yours and Meyer’s?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, the pupils moving as if watching a scene being played out on the opposite wall. She mumbled something to herself in Russian. Then her eyes drifted slowly back toward him. He watched them move. Saw how difficult it was for her to tear them away. “They all died, Inspector, all of them.”
Ikmen heard Suleyman shuffle his feet on the carpet. He had given the young man little thought since the strange old woman had started speaking. He wondered in passing what his sergeant felt about being described as a peasant.
“Madam, from your experience, and presuming that you kept in contact with him, is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to kill Mr. Meyer?”
“Leonid and I did not see one another often, especially after my marriage. Leonid drank.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“Presumably because he liked it, Inspector. Addiction to alcohol is a very common vice among my compatriots.” She paused. A faint whimpering sound from the chair by the curtains filled the silence.
Suleyman leaned forward and pointed behind him to the source of the sound. “Madam, this person—”
The clouds disappeared as quickly as they had come and she laughed again. “You really are a peasant, aren’t you, my darling!” Although continuing to stare at Suleyman, she addressed Ikmen. “You must teach the boy to ignore servants, Inspector. People will think he has no class.”
Ikmen cleared his throat in a very obvious fashion. He didn’t want to go down the social-class road again. “Quite. Well, madam?”
She shrugged. “I can think of no one. Among his own kind, in that awful place where he lived, perhaps…”
“Other Jews?”
What she seemed to be suggesting had not occurred to him before. An enemy from within the community?
She looked him steadily in the eyes again. That piercing, reptilian stare of hers. “Jews or enemies of Jews.”
Ikmen looked back into her eyes and had the strangest feeling. It was like an understanding passed between them, the knowledge of a shared experience. Of course it was absurd—he had only just met the woman! But the feeling persisted. It was like déjà vu. And he knew that she was experiencing it too. He felt unnerved and shook his head slightly as if trying to loosen something distasteful from his mind.
“Mr. Meyer had a considerable amount of money. Did you know that?”
“No.” But she didn’t sound surprised. “Perhaps therein lies your motive, Inspector.”
“The nature of the killing would suggest not, madam.”
She raised an eyebrow, questioningly. “Oh?”
It was an effort not to be drawn by that ravaged but intelligent face. Ikmen had always been susceptible to high intellect. The urge to share knowledge with an equal was strong. Perhaps if he told her the details of the killing, Maria Gulcu could shed some light on to the murkier corners of the case. He was almost certain that she could. He didn’t know why. He wanted to tell her even though she—she seemed to know. The squalid, bloody apartment in Balat, she—But he held back. She coiled her arms around each other, slowly, like courting snakes. Despite her age the movement was sensual, almost suggestive. Ikmen felt suddenly repelled. He cleared his throat and became very businesslike again.
“The intimate details are confidential, madam.”
She gave a little shrug and cleared her throat. “As you wish.” It was a light dismissal, as if the subject didn’t matter to her. But it did.
Ikmen looked at his watch. It was getting late and the room and its occupant were beginning to oppress him. He needed to get out. Only then could he think his own thoughts again. While in that room it was impossible not to be affected, invaded, by her presence. There was, however, one more question that he had to ask.
“Do you know anything about Mr. Meyer’s involvement with a company called Şeker Textiles, madam?”
She looked away as she spoke, but Ikmen could just see out of the corner of his eye that her turned face was smiling. “Yes, he worked for them when he first came to this country. Until, that is, he had that falling out with his superior.”
“I don’t suppose you know what that was about, do you?”
She turned back to face him, the smile now gone from
her wasted lips. “It was in 1940 or thereabouts and the owner of the company, a Mr. Smits, was a very patriotic German. Need I say more?”
“No.” Ikmen sighed. “No, I think that speaks for itself.”
He then changed tack slightly, wanting despite the interest this whole situation held for him to be out and on his way now as soon as possible. “Is there anything else you can tell us about Mr. Meyer, madam?”
She looked down at her covers, picking idly at them with her fingers. “He drank, he lived in poverty, he had nothing and nobody. What can I say?”
“But you loved him at one time?”
Her face hardened into a scowl. “Yes, I did. There are sometimes reasons for loving someone that have nothing to do with the intellect or even the body. But I do not expect that you can understand that, Inspector.”
“I might if I knew what those reasons were.”
She put her cigarettes and lighter back under her covers and closed her eyes. “I am tired of this. Your curiosity is becoming prurient. Please go.”
She was not unpleasant, but Ikmen knew that, for the time being, further questioning was useless. She had spoken and that was that.
Ikmen put his cigarettes back in his pocket and stood up.
“Very well. Thank you for your cooperation, madam.”
She laughed, but without mirth. “Goodnight, gentlemen.”
The two officers moved toward the door. As Suleyman drew level with him, Ikmen felt the young man’s hand upon his shoulder.
* * *
Çiçek Pasaj is a small neon-lit alleyway. It extends from Istiklal Caddesi and, proceeding westward, fizzles out as it joins Balık Pazar, the fish market behind. It is lined with bars and small restaurants called lokantalar. It has, for as long as anyone can remember, been a magnet for both the working classes and the intelligentsia of the city. Hard, dedicated drinking and an air of down-at-heel eccentricity have always characterised this small area of insobriety. Now, of course, tourists make up a large part of its clientele, a new phenomenon reflected in the more sanitary appearance of the place. It was completely redecorated at the end of the eighties. Before that time, however, the word “raffish” would probably have been a most apt description.
Çetin Ikmen well remembered the old days of riotous fighting, of granite-hard and insistent prostitutes, of dirt, grime and cheap liquor. He mourned their passing bitterly. Not that he was concentrating on his surroundings at this time. Suleyman was very excited and he’d never seen him like this before. It came as a bit of a shock.
“I kept expecting Dracula to appear from under the bed or out of a cupboard!”
Ikmen refilled his glass and leaned toward his colleague. The accumulated drunken babble of Çiçek Pasaj was fairly loud, but he didn’t want the whole world to overhear their conversation. “Keep your voice down, Suleyman! I wish you’d have a drink. It would make you feel better!”
“And that person in the corner!”
“Let me give you a little advice about the world and your place in it, Suleyman.” He lit a cigarette. “The world is infinitely variable and as a police officer you, more than most people, will be exposed to its extreme quirks.” He looked down gravely into the depths of his glass. “The old Gulcu woman was unnerving though. I had the strangest sensation—”
“At least she didn’t want to drag you into that horrible bed!”
Ikmen roused himself from his reverie and chuckled. It was pointless trying to explain what he had felt in that peculiar apartment. He did not yet understand it sufficiently himself. “Oh yes, you were quite popular, weren’t you?”
Suleyman leaned heavily across the table. “I felt, well, like an object, a thing in front of that ghastly old woman and her dreadful granddaughter—”
“I thought the girl was quite attractive.”
“She kept looking at my—”
“Well, yes. The Lady Chatterley syndrome.”
“What?”
Ikmen laughed. “Nothing.” They fell silent. Suleyman’s excitement seemed to have temporarily blown itself out.
Ikmen took a gulp from his glass and rolled the liquor briefly around his mouth before swallowing. In the bar opposite, the old Lebanese accordionist struck up the “Marseillaise.” “Putting the house aside for a minute, the weird set-up et cetera, there were a lot of things that troubled me about that interview.”
“Like what?”
“All that stuff about her family moving to the Urals just after the Revolution. It doesn’t make any sense. Rich people like that, they would have been torn to pieces. And how did she, a wealthy Russian, get to meet an ordinary Jew like Meyer? Even after the Revolution, the different classes rarely mixed—apart from anything else they were on quite opposing sides during the ensuing civil war. And why would they, especially him, leave the country?”
“She said it was dreadful there. They were afraid. And they were in love.”
Ikmen stared steadily into space. “Or were they?” He shifted his gaze and looked at Suleyman. “I can’t imagine that woman loving anything. I know that’s a terrible thing to say about a person, but I can’t imagine it. I felt quite exhausted when I came out of that room. It was like I’d been leeched.”
“How do you mean, sir?”
Ikmen smiled gently. “Nothing.” Again, it wasn’t possible for him to explain how he felt. It was such a deep knowledge, almost inaccessible. On the face of it the Gulcus were just a rather eccentric Russian émigré family who were nervous of the police. But that old woman! When she had mentioned the enemies of the Jews it had struck him. The words could have been said by anybody and he would not have turned a hair, but from her … it was the obvious relish with which she used the words, that reptile look she had given him. Was she planting thoughts in his mind and, if so, why? What had produced that feeling of shared experience? Why had he got the impression that what he had seen in that dingy Balat apartment was no mystery to her? Ah, this was an old feeling, but it was one that over the years he had come to trust. He wasn’t done with Mrs. Gulcu yet—or indeed, with the as yet unseen Reinhold Smits.
“So what did you think about the old woman’s version of the Şeker Textiles story, Suleyman?”
“She seemed to be suggesting a similar scenario to the one that the Rabbi outlined.”
“Yes.” Ikmen smiled, but rather grimly, or so Suleyman thought. “I’m looking forward to meeting Smits. It isn’t every day that you meet someone who agrees with the late Adolf Hitler.”
“Not that we know that for certain.”
Ikmen raised his glass in agreement. “Not, as you say, that we know that for certain.”
He then swigged a long and satisfying draft from his glass and turned his attentions toward something he imagined his colleague had missed. “Suleyman, did you notice that man in the hall with the granddaughter?”
“Yes. You spoke to him, didn’t you?”
“Yes. That was Robert Cornelius, one of the Englishmen I interviewed at the language school yesterday. He was the one who was in the area at about the right time. The one I felt uncertain about.”
“Could just be coincidence?”
“It could.” Ikmen poured more liquor into his glass. “I’d like you to check him out though. We’ve got all his details back at the office. Send them through to London, will you? I’d like to know a bit more about Mr. Cornelius.”
“To Inspector Lloyd?”
Ikmen smiled, he always did when something made him recall his all too brief visit to London’s Scotland Yard some fifteen years before. John Lloyd and his colleagues had certainly shown his little band of Turkish detectives a good time during that crazy, faraway fortnight. Not that Ikmen and his fellows had learned a tremendous amount about policing, but the English beer had been excellent and Lloyd, at least, had over the years proved to be a most valuable link with the English police system. However, there were also other more domestic things that needed attention too. Ikmen cleared his throat. “Yes. I’d like a bit more on t
he Gulcus too. Get Cohen to do it. That and interviewing various derelicts should keep him away from drink and women for a bit.”
“Yes, sir.” Suleyman sipped his lemonade quietly, but his face was troubled.
“What is it, Suleyman?”
“Well, sir … Look, don’t you think we should be picking up a few people with form? Mr. Meyer had money and that district is crawling with thieves, drug-pushers and all kinds of other crazies. I can think of six who live within a kilometer of the apartment just off the top of my head.”
“I don’t seriously think it was robbery. What thief goes armed with a canister of sulfuric acid? The murder weapon and the acid were taken away by the murderer after the killing. The room was not turned over as if someone were searching for something. No, I still maintain this was personal. Meyer was meant to die and he was meant to die in that particular fashion. We’re not looking for some sick junkie who kills for the price of a fix, we’re looking for either someone who hates Jews or someone who hated Meyer. The more I think about this case, the more convinced I become that whoever killed Meyer had a motive. A very strong, even perhaps a justifiable motive.”
“Well—”
“I know I look as if I just scramble about drinking all day, but I have given this a lot of thought. There was no trace of our murderer, apart from his deed, in that apartment. Not so much as one print, so far. Even the body itself has not, according to Arto Sarkissian, yielded up anything of any use. And look at the act itself! On and off I’ve been thinking about it all day. The ghastly look of that corpse. The absolute terror in its eyes—” He broke off and stared into space, gently shaking his head as if he didn’t or couldn’t understand.
Suleyman finished his drink and put his glass down on the rough wooden table. He wasn’t convinced, but he was making the best of it. “Well, I’ll trust you, sir.”
Ikmen smiled. He knew Suleyman had reservations, but he appreciated his confidence. “Good. I suppose you want to go off home now?”
Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Ikmen series Book 1) Page 11
