Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Ikmen series Book 1)

by Barbara Nadel

  So here it was. Ikmen sighed and lit yet another cigarette. “Yes, thanks. How many bodies have you found?” Maria Gulcu’s last “Goodbye” flashed into his mind. That had sounded very final. Had she known?

  The fireman took a small cigar from his tunic pocket and joined Ikmen in a smoke. “Three so far. Do you have any idea as to how many persons might have been in the house?”

  Ikmen looked at faces in his mind and counted. Maria Gulcu (perhaps she had been beautiful once with those hypnotic blue eyes?), Nicholas, Sergei, crippled Sergei, Natalia and … poor old Robert Cornelius. Had he been there? Where else could he have been? Ikmen took a stab at it.

  “Five, I think,” he said. Then he remembered. “Oh no, six. There was a servant boy too. But I think that was the one who jumped from the roof.”

  The fireman smiled. “Ah yes. The one that nearly killed your colleague. That was you who dragged him back, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Ikmen turned away. He had no desire to discuss that matter any further. If people wanted to ascribe heroics he wanted none of it. The last thing he felt was courageous.

  The fireman must have understood and he left. Ikmen got to his feet and followed him toward what was left of the Gulcu house. There wasn’t much. All the upper storys had crashed through into the basement. The only thing that remained standing was the great black front door and its frame. It swung to and fro on its hinges, creaking in the dry, hot breeze blowing in from the waters of the Golden Horn. Behind it lay heaps of smoking rubble. What had once been window-frames, joists and brackets stuck up and away from the blackened mess like agonized limbs.

  The fireman who had just spoken to him cleared a small pile of rubble away from something that looked like a carbonized tree. A thing struck by lightning. Ikmen’s stomach lurched and he turned away. Too tired for bodies like that.

  “Sir?”

  Cohen was standing right in front of him and he hadn’t even noticed. He’d looked straight through the man as if he were a window. But then Cohen always had been shallow. Ikmen giggled stupidly at his own joke. “What is it, Cohen?”

  “Avcı just radioed in.” He smiled. It wasn’t easy because Ikmen looked like he was going out of his mind. “Your wife is fine, sir, and you have a son, who is also fine.”

  “Oh.”

  Cohen carried on smiling through Ikmen’s vagueness. There was little else he could do. “And Dr. Sarkissian’s at the morgue now, getting ready for the bodies to arrive.”

  Babies and bodies. Ikmen looked into Cohen’s large, sensual eyes. “They’ve found three bodies, four if you include the jumper.”

  “Yes, I know. It started on the top floor, you know, the fire.” Out of the corner of his eye Cohen could see things that looked like wooden statues being loaded on to stretchers. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. “Commissioner Ardiç would like to see you when you return to the station, sir.”

  “What a pity I don’t want to see him.”

  It was his usual cynical style, which relieved Cohen somewhat, but without his customary light touch. Cohen sighed. He’d never really understood this case. “What now then, sir?”

  Ikmen chanced one glance toward the firemen and then looked quickly back at Cohen. Even his ugly face was preferable to what they were digging out of the rubble. “Sit here and try to make some sense of it all for a bit. Then see Ardiç, I suppose. Wrap this thing up.”

  “What, you mean the whole Balat thing?”

  “Yes, I think so, Cohen.” He pointed behind him toward the remains of the house. “One day I’ll explain all that to you, as far as I understand it myself. The curtain’s fallen on this one.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Pity it fell before the denouement.”

  Chapter 26

  Fatma looked down at the baby in her arms and brushed his tiny face with her finger. He opened his mouth and screwed his eyes up tight. “Now then, don’t scream,” she said, “you’ll wake that horrible daddy.”

  But it was only a joke. Fatma knew that it would take a lot more than a crying baby to wake her husband at the moment. She was glad that most of the other children had gone out, however. It was the clouds that had sent them whooping down into the street, the promise of rain. Fatma welcomed it too. She looked out of the window at the darkening sky and felt a tremendous relief course through her body. The city hadn’t seen so much as a spot of rain for nearly two months. If only it had come a day earlier perhaps all those poor people wouldn’t have died in that terrible house-fire. And maybe then Çetin, would have got some answers to those questions that had been torturing him. He had finally got to bed at about midnight, after nearly forty-eight hours without sleep. He’d barely looked at his new son, he’d been so tired. Fatma hoped and prayed that his case was closed now. If it was he could take some annual leave. He had enough owing. But then with Çetin she never really knew. Where other people would just give up and move on to other things, Çetin would continue until he was satisfied, which was frequently a very tall order indeed. His desire to root out the truth at all costs was not one of those qualities that endeared him to her. His mother had always wanted to know things too. The Albanian witch had spent her short life dabbling in things best left undisturbed.

  It was so quiet in the apartment without the children, but Fatma liked it. Çetin and Timür were asleep, the younger man in his bed, the older one snoring gently in his chair opposite her. Çiçek was somewhere around, but she was being very quiet too. Ever since the baby had been born she’d been thoughtful. Fatma wondered whether perhaps the arrival of a new life had made her stop and consider her own existence. Birth could do that to a person. She remembered how she herself had been affected the first time she’d witnessed a human birth. Fatma smiled at the memory. She had been disgusted. That her lovely Aunt Mihri could be party to something that messy and undignified had shocked her. The eleven-year-old Fatma had resolved on the spot never to do “that” herself. Nine children down the line she had a somewhat different view.

  The front-door buzzer rang and luckily woke Timür from his light slumber. Fatma had not relished the thought of trying to open the door with her arms full of, at the moment, quiet and contented baby. The old man rose stiffly to his feet and wandered slowly past her, chucking the baby lightly under the chin as he went. Timür could drive Fatma mad, especially when he was in wild, irreligious mode, but she couldn’t fault him when it came to doing things for her when the babies were tiny. He would fetch, carry, sort out the other children—sometimes he would even cook. Only plain spaghetti and courgette, but it was a meal. Fatma sometimes wondered how often he had served that food up to Çetin and Halil after their mother died.

  She heard the sound of the front door opening followed by several deep male voices. Then Arto Sarkissian walked into her living room followed by her own husband’s handsome partner. She was surprised to see Suleyman as Çetin had told her that he was in hospital.

  Arto bent low and looked carefully at the baby. “Perfect.”

  Fatma smiled.

  Timür came back into the room and offered both men seats.

  Fatma looked at Suleyman’s white, drawn face. “I’m surprised to see you, Mehmet. Çetin told me you were in hospital.”

  “I was discharged this morning, Mrs. Ikmen.” He smiled weakly. “I think they needed the bed for someone who was really ill.”

  “You don’t look exactly fit to me!” said Timür. He had strong views about the public health service and its duty to the public, which he gave vent to frequently.

  Arto smiled. “I met the Sergeant as I was leaving to come here. He wanted to see Çetin, and of course the rest of you, as much as I did.”

  Fatma shifted the now sleeping baby in her arms in order to get a little more comfortable. Çetin’s still asleep, I’m afraid, but—”

  Before she could finish, an extremely crumpled individual entered the room, its eyes misted with sleep. “Hello everyone,” said Çetin. “Anyone care for a case conference?”

&
nbsp; * * *

  The three men waited until Fatma and the old man had left of their own accord before they actually started their deliberations. Çetin poured large brandies for himself and Arto and got a Coke from the kitchen for Suleyman.

  Arto was the first to speak. “I found what was left of a British passport on one of those bodies. It’s unreadable, but they are quite distinct, you know. Hard cover, gold lettering.”

  Çetin sighed. “I expect you’ll find it belonged to a man called Robert Cornelius.”

  “I intend to notify the Consulate.”

  Suleyman looked deeply into his can of drink. “What about the other bodies?”

  “Two women and three men.”

  Çetin smiled sadly. “Maria, Natalia, Sergei, Nicholas and the servant boy. I wonder which one of them killed Leonid Meyer? Because one of them did. If you want I’ll tell you the story as I see it. I told Ardiç yesterday.”

  “What was his reaction, sir?”

  “Well, Suleyman, he didn’t believe me, but then I never really expected him to. That it conveniently wraps up the case he liked, but, as he said, my reasons for pointing the finger at the Gulcus will have to be ‘reassessed.’ A picture of him lying to all the big nobs, the Israeli Consul and the Mayor et cetera, passed through my mind at the time and I thought how much he was going to enjoy it. Ardiç is good at lying. By the time he’s finished I will probably discover that I actually caught Reinhold Smits redhanded as he tried to knock off the poor old Rabbi and that that was the reason for his suicide.”

  “So what’s the truth of it then, Çetin?” Arto leaned forward in his seat and stared hard into his friend’s face.

  Çetin lit a cigarette. “Well, it’s wild, Arto, and it revolves around these two women”—he placed the two photographs he had discovered on Smits’s desk down in front of his colleagues—“who may or may not be one and the same.”

  “Who are they, sir?” Suleyman asked.

  “The woman with the two men is Maria Gulcu. Incidentally, that’s Reinhold Smits and the dark one is Leonid Meyer.”

  Suleyman looked closely at the face of Meyer particularly. It seemed to fascinate him, possibly, Ikmen thought, because the last time the younger man had seen Meyer had been under such appalling circumstances. But, at length, he pointed to the other photograph. “And this one?”

  Çetin smiled. “Ah, this one. Yes. This is a photograph, I have since discovered, of Tsar Nicholas II’s third daughter, the Grand Duchess Maria. The words below it refer to an inscription that was discovered on one of the walls in the Ipatiev House where the family died. They were written by Smits. If you look at the photograph of Maria Gulcu and then at this one, you can see the similarities.”

  Suleyman’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean…”

  “Now then, hold on,” said the good doctor, picking up both pictures and holding each in turn up close to his eyes. “We all, I hope, know how easy it is to see similarities where they do not really exist.”

  Çetin grinned.

  “For instance,” the doctor continued, “something that is absolutely unalterable is the width of a person’s face. If you look closely you can see that the Gulcu woman’s bone structure is narrow while this one is wide and, if I were called to make a judgment, I would say that the lovely Grand Duchess has a far more typically Russian shape to her countenance. The eyes, I admit, are very similar in character, but the noses, which are quite different types, do not, I feel, bear close examination.” He looked up in order to gauge the reactions of those around him. “I may be wrong, I mean I am no expert with photographic evidence…”

  “Oh, I don’t think that you are wrong, Arto.” Çetin smiled again, if a little sadly. “I, although I must say that I didn’t to begin with, share your opinion. Unfortunately Reinhold Smits, who left these on his desk for me to discover after his death, did believe that they were one and the same.”

  “Meaning what exactly, sir?”

  Çetin sighed heavily. “Meaning, in the absence of all of the protagonists in this story that I can only, at best, theorize about things like meanings.”

  “Well, tell us anyway,” said Arto as he replenished both his and Çetin’s drinks.

  “All right.” Çetin took a deep breath and, despite his still debilitating tiredness, launched enthusiastically into his story. “On or around 16 July 1918, Leonid Meyer, a young Bolshevik soldier, for want of a better term, found himself assigned to guard duty at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, which is where the ill-fated Romanov family were held at the time. Under the command of another Jew, Yacob Yurovsky, this posting was both dangerous—because of the large numbers of Royalist White Russian forces which were advancing into the area—and prestigious because he was going to kill the Tsar. And on 17 July 1918 Leonid Meyer and his comrades did just that. Shot the Romanovs, chopped up their bodies, destroyed them with sulfuric acid—poetic?—felt very pleased with themselves. With, that is, one exception.”

  “Meyer?”

  “Yes, Arto, Meyer. I mean, why else would he rave and cry and carry on about it over seventy years later and why would he have stolen this lovely picture here—which from its age and condition would seem to be quite genuine?”

  “He could have taken it as a trophy of ‘battle,’” said the doctor. “People do do things like that.”

  “I accept that,” Çetin replied, “but bear with me. Now, I don’t know whether Meyer met the girl who was to become Maria Gulcu before or after the events at the Ipatiev House, but whatever, somehow he came across this girl and somehow he convinced himself and her that she was the Grand Duchess Maria.”

  Suleyman, who had been silently deliberating his superior’s rather shocking words for some minutes now felt that he had to speak. “Oh, look, hang on a minute, sir! I thought you dismissed all that Romanov stuff some time ago?”

  Ikmen smiled. “I did. When I discovered that there couldn’t possibly be a link between the spinster Anna Demidova and Mrs. Gulcu, any Romanov connection with Meyer’s old crime, plus his gunpowder wounds, seemed to fall down around my ears. But in light of the history Smits instructed me to read, plus these photos, it all fitted that little bit too snugly.”

  “History? What history?”

  “He left me a book open at the page where that Belshazzar line was quoted. Apparently, just to enlighten you, it had been written on a wall of the Ipatiev House by one of the guards—oddly in the original German. However, that page also told me that just before the execution, some of the guards were changed and that nobody now knows who they were. Only the major players, like the commandant, Yurovsky, were ever listed—a point frequently glossed over by most other commentators because, on the face of it, it is a very minor detail. And who, after all, would have bothered with a little nobody like Meyer?”

  Suleyman still looked doubtful. “But then why and how would Meyer take some unknown girl and convince her that she was this Grand Duchess person?”

  “Perhaps he did it in order to assuage his own guilt. If this lovely girl were still alive, he could convince himself that his own part in the proceedings had never happened—it would seem to fit with what we know of his character. Perhaps he was actually the one who was solely responsible for her death—hence his obsession with her. But then again, maybe he simply saw her as somebody he could perhaps make money out of some day. Who knows? As to how? Well, maybe Maria Gulcu had herself been through some sort of trauma at around that time. It is more than possible; as we know she was from a wealthy family and her face was also covered with old scars. If indeed her whole family had been murdered, as she always claimed, it could be that she was sufficiently traumatised to accept almost anything that he told her then.” He paused in order to light another cigarette. “Anyway, at some point after these events, Meyer took the decision to take this girl, who may or may not have been his lover, out of the country.”

  “Yes, but if the White armies were advancing…”

  “If they had found out what he had done, the
y would have killed him. And in addition, they would have discovered that his ‘new’ Grand Duchess Maria was a fraud and would therefore have completely destroyed his delusion.” He looked around at his companions and smiled. “Because that’s where I believe we now are, gentlemen—in the world of delusion. And, in fact, everything that happened in both Maria and Leonid’s lives from here on was circumscribed and informed by that delusion. It was very intricate. Even her ‘cover’ name, Demidova, the same name as the Tsarina’s maid, was connected, albeit in a not immediately obvious way.”

  “You mean,” said Suleyman who was now struggling a little with the psychological intricacies, “that they both started actually to believe…”

  “Oh, yes. I think that, in order to understand why Meyer later died, basically because he had once been involved in an ultimately unforgivable crime against this family, we have to accept that they must both have become convinced. Yes, they believed and when Meyer came to this country and started working for Reinhold Smits, with whom he became acquainted, Smits believed also. In fact poor old Smits, it would seem, became infatuated with Maria Gulcu for a while. Whether Meyer or Maria or both of them gave him that old photograph of Grand Duchess Maria and for what reason, I don’t know. But I do feel that Smits knew about and was fascinated by this great secret that the little Jew and the young woman shared.”

  “So why did he dismiss Meyer from his job? If he was, as you say, so fascinated by this pair?”

  Ikmen sighed. “That I don’t know either—unless of course it was as Smits said it was—he had become a Nazi and there was no longer a place for a Jew in his sphere of influence. After all, Maria Gulcu was settled with her children by this time and was perhaps no longer in contact with Smits. Who knows? I do, however, believe that Meyer later blackmailed Smits about his old Nazi past. It is the only explanation I can see for his continued association with the German, plus the large amounts of money in his apartment. Allegiances like that have not been popular for some time—a fact which may have given Meyer the excuse he needed to take some sort of financial revenge upon Smits.”