Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I’m going to look at all these sites in more detail,’ Çöktin continued, ‘although I am inclined to think that Brain Damage is where I should be concentrating my efforts. The sheer volume of her involvement could be significant and there are certainly allusions to death and violence on there.’

  ‘Do you think that whoever runs this newsgroup or maybe someone who is significant within it could be manipulating these young people?’

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘It’s possible. There have, as you know, sir, been some accounts of forces abroad intercepting paedophiles who have been what they call “grooming” children for sex over the Internet. I need to spend more time on it and I need to get to grips with the boy’s computer in order to make a comparison.’

  ‘To see whether they did similar things on their computers?’

  ‘Yes. Similar games, newsgroups, things like that.’

  ‘You know a lot about these things, don’t you, İsak?’ Süleyman said as he regarded his deputy with a frown. ‘Do you belong to any of these groups yourself? I ask only out of academic interest.’

  Çöktin felt all the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Hoping that his rather delicate pale skin hadn’t reddened he said, ‘Yes, I do a little bit of posting.’

  Süleyman smiled. ‘What topics do you discuss, İsak?’

  ‘Music, films, you know,’ Çöktin forced himself to return a smile.

  ‘Ah,’ Süleyman laughed, ‘music for young people, I expect, eh, İsak? This African stuff I sometimes hear in Beyoğlu.’

  ‘Something like that, yes, sir,’ the younger man replied. And then he looked down at the screen and pretended to get absorbed into his work once again.

  CHAPTER 5

  İkmen had told his daughter not to worry unduly about the obscene graffiti on the wall of the Church of the Panaghia Mouchliotissa.

  ‘It’s probably the work of bored kids,’ he’d said when she had, amid some embarrassment, described it to him. But Hulya hadn’t been satisfied that he really understood what she’d described and so İkmen, if reluctantly, given the current heat wave, had gone over to Fener to see for himself. It had been an interesting trip that had resulted in a further excursion to Beyoğlu.

  Simurg bookshop, which is on Hasnan Galip Sokaği, is actually two shops side by side. Both are owned by the same person and they stock a wide selection of books and sheet music, both new and old. It’s a laid-back sort of a place, and one can browse Simurg’s stock for hours if required, provided one is prepared to shift the shop’s numerous sleeping cats from their literary beds. As both a book and cat lover, İkmen had a lot of time for Simurg and its regular clientele of argumentative old intellectuals – men not unlike his late father. Not that he had come for that unique Simurg ambience on this occasion. He’d come specifically to see Max, and Max always came into Simurg at around 6 p.m.

  İkmen, who had positioned himself by the main entrance, which was currently being guarded by a barely sentient Angora, was looking at a copy of Wuthering Heights in English when Max appeared.

  ‘Hello, Max.’

  İkmen spoke in English and also quite loudly. Up there in the clouds where Max existed, those on the ground could be difficult to hear.

  The tall, slim man in the doorway looked down and smiled. Max, though of indeterminate years, was, İkmen knew, about his own age. He’d always had grey hair, ever since İkmen had first met him in the 1970s. Quintessentially English, Max was nevertheless a much darker man than İkmen – something that had little to do with exposure to the Turkish sun over so many years. Max was just dark – in several different ways.

  ‘Hello, Çetin,’ Max said as he bent down in order to catch the smaller man in his embrace. ‘How are you?’

  İkmen replied that he was well, smiling as he observed Max go into his usual evening routine of feeding small and succulent pieces of fish and meat to his many feline fans at Simurg.

  ‘I wondered if I could take you for a coffee?’ İkmen said once the last cat had been fully satisfied.

  Max’s large green eyes lit up. ‘What a great euphemism that is!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Coffee! When you want a chat – coffee! Sex – coffee! Or, as I suspect in this case, information – coffee!’

  ‘Well, not exactly information, Max,’ İkmen said. ‘Expertise is really more the word, I think.’

  ‘Oh, spooky stuff.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK.’

  They went to the Pia café on Bekar Sokak, a low-key haunt of artists and writers that İkmen knew Max liked. They took a table outside and ordered two cappuccinos. After greeting several men İkmen thought looked like 1960s beatniks, Max lit up a long, thin cigar. İkmen took a Polaroid photograph out of his jacket pocket and laid it out in front of his companion.

  ‘Do you have any idea what this is, Max?’

  The Englishman squinted down at the image.

  ‘I took it myself,’ İkmen said, ‘which is why it’s not very good, I’m afraid. Can you make out what it is?’

  ‘It looks like the Goat of Mendes to me,’ Max said, ‘although I’ve only ever seen him depicted with either one or two penises before. There have to be—’

  ‘There are thirteen,’ İkmen cut in, ‘all with women ecstatically impaled.’

  ‘How fascinating!’ Max looked up. ‘Where’s the original?’

  İkmen sighed. ‘On the wall of the Church of the Panaghia in Fener. You know Hulya and Berekiah are renovating a place up there. They came across one of the monks, very distressed. He told them about it and then took them to see it. At first I thought it might be kids . . .’

  ‘Who knows these days?’ Max shook his head, his thin face bookish in its concentration. ‘But this is definitely the Goat who, as I’m sure an educated man like you will know, is an aspect, a very sexual manifestation, of Satan. It’s a very . . . Christian, a Western motif. Goya represented the Goat with witches and hags throwing themselves around him in an orgy of sexual desire. How long has it been there?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think it must be very recent.’

  Max leaned back in his chair just as the waitress came with the cappuccinos. At her approach, İkmen quickly stuffed the photograph back into his pocket.

  When the girl had gone, Max said, ‘And so the question is, I suppose, what is it doing there? And further, what might it mean?’

  ‘Brother Constantine has interpreted it as an attack. An act of desecration.’

  Max took a sip from his cup before continuing. As he lifted it to his lips, İkmen noticed that his hand shook. ‘So someone got to the church, drew it, probably at night, and then buggered off. But why and what its purpose might be . . . ?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m afraid that I can’t tell you, old chap.’

  ‘So there aren’t any . . .’ İkmen searched for the right word, but Max beat him to it.

  ‘Satanists in residence?’ he smiled. ‘There is, or rather was, a small group of very bored and boring English and American ex-pats over on the Asian side. I came across them a few months ago, or rather, they contacted me. Some gruesome Yank wanted me to replicate Aleister Crowley and raise the god Pan.’

  ‘Aleister Crowley?’

  ‘An early twentieth-century English magician,’ Max explained, ‘into heroin and fallen women. He tried to raise the god Pan in Paris and got into a bit of bother.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So as you can imagine, I’ve never been keen to give Pan a go myself. A most destructive and mischievous force.’ Max shuddered. ‘I told our American friend to go about his business in no uncertain terms,’ he laughed, ‘but not before I’d taken a small sample of hair from his jacket to work with.’

  ‘You cursed him?’ His mother had always used either hair or nails in her more malignant spells, İkmen recalled.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Max replied, ‘but I put a stop to their activities. I don’t like Satanists – all that negative energy. And anyway, people always confuse people like me with people like them, which, quite frank
ly, gives me the pip!’

  ‘That’s the only group you know of who might be involved in such activities?’

  ‘I’ve come across a few of you chaps, Turks, who meddle,’ Max said, ‘but if you don’t mind my saying so, Çetin, Turkish Satanists are pretty bloody useless. In fact, quite honestly, I don’t believe they exist at all in the conventional sense. I know you’ve come across it – some sick necrophiliac gets caught in a graveyard and says the Devil made him do it. But I’ve never come across one Turk in all the years I’ve been here who successfully worships and invokes Satanic forces. They get it all wrong. Maybe that’s why your Goat is so very atypical.’

  ‘Drawn by one of my ill-informed countrymen.’

  ‘Maybe. But then perhaps your assertion that it was just a kids’ prank does have some validity. There’s so much information now, what with the TV, computers and what not, people are constantly bombarded with things they barely understand. I look at all these so-called Goth kids running around in black with pentacles at their necks and it makes my blood go cold. They have no idea what they are dealing with. I mean, I know that we all live in uncertain times, what with this situation in Iraq and the possibility of war involving the Americans, but wearing black and courting Beelzebub is not the answer. Not for them.’

  İkmen could only, if silently, agree. His son Bülent was due to be conscripted into the army in 2003 and so if the Americans did decide to go into Iraq, possibly with Turkish support, it would include him. İkmen knew he would, if he could, do anything to change that situation – even maybe invoke ‘dark’ forces – assuming he knew how to do that and indeed felt desperate enough to do so. Though currently calm, these were anxious times. ‘You say that this image is incorrect,’ he said.

  ‘In my experience yes,’ the Englishman replied, ‘but I’ll check it out anyway, Çetin; speak to a few magical “faces”, as we say back home.’

  ‘I would appreciate it, Max.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no bother, old boy.’ Max’s eyes twinkled. ‘I’ll just add it to the list of favours I’ve done you over the years.’

  ‘It hasn’t all been one way, you know,’ İkmen said gravely as he sipped some of his coffee and lit up a cigarette. ‘I’ve done things for you . . .’

  ‘Yes, except where women are concerned,’ Max responded acidly. ‘If that girl—’

  ‘My daughter Çiçek is a big girl now with concerns quite outside what you call “spooky stuff”, Max. Above everything, she wants a man at the moment.’ İkmen’s face resolved into a grim expression. ‘If I’m right the man currently in question is somebody she shouldn’t even be looking at.’

  ‘You should let me train her in the arts,’ Max said with a dismissive wave. ‘She’d soon forget about men. I’ve only ever met one truly natural adept before and she was—’

  ‘As I’ve said before, Max,’ İkmen said firmly, ‘my daughter for good or ill will stay as she is.’

  ‘Oh, well . . .’

  And that, temporarily at least, was that. For the remainder of their time together the policeman and the magician spoke of ‘un-spooky’ things and eventually parted company at just before eight.

  As İkmen watched Max go he experienced that uneasy feeling the man always seemed to evoke within him. He liked Max. They’d met many years before when Max had come in to the station to report the theft of his wallet and a wand. Because he was a foreigner – and odd – İkmen had been called in to assist. The two men, as the Englishman later described it, ‘clicked’ immediately, and when İkmen did in fact manage to retrieve Max’s possessions a slightly weird and sometimes troubling friendship was born. But then Max was a very powerful Western magician, a Kabbalist, an adept and a close acquaintance of both angels and demons – whatever they were. So, in the same way that İkmen, the insightful witch’s child, had been both in love with and repelled by his magical mother, so he felt that a distance of some sort needed to be put between himself and Max. This was especially true when it came to İkmen’s daughter Çiçek. Max, on meeting the girl quite by chance with her father on the street one day, had nearly fainted when he saw her. She was, he’d said, quite the most naturally magical creature he had ever encountered and he wanted to ‘train’ her, as he put it, desperately. Whether Çiçek was ‘magical’ in Max’s sense of the word or not, İkmen didn’t know. That she possessed the ‘sight’ attributed to her father and grandmother was something he didn’t need some foreigner to tell him. But she’d never wanted to use it. Çiçek wanted to be ‘normal’, which was what her father was committed to making sure she was. And besides, there had been another pretty girl Max had wanted to train many years before and that had ended badly.

  At the moment, however, İkmen’s mind was rather more exercised by Çiçek’s growing fascination with Mehmet Süleyman. Married, albeit only in name, he was a man who always had trouble with women. And love the man with all his heart as he did, İkmen didn’t want such a man for a son-in-law. Women desired him far too much and every so often he would, İkmen knew, fall from grace. And just look at where his latest escapade, with a prostitute of all things, had landed him!

  İkmen rose from his seat and started to make his way back towards İstiklal Caddesi. According to Hulya and Berekiah, the Greek brothers in Fener were keen to paint over that – what was it Max had called it? – Goat of Mendes thing. But İkmen felt that was probably not a good idea. Not yet. Not until Max had spoken to some of his magical ‘faces’, as he’d called them.

  Süleyman finally left his office at just before nine. İsak Çöktin, still seemingly engrossed in Gülay Arat and Cem Ataman’s computers, said that he’d be responsible for locking the door when he left.

  Although he didn’t have an appointment at his friend Cohen’s place, Mehmet had promised to visit when he and Balthazar had spoken at Berekiah’s wedding. And so he drove over to Karaköy and parked in front of Cohen’s shabby apartment block. As he got out of his car, he was aware of a group of boys and girls walking up the hill towards him, but it was hot, he was tired and he didn’t pay them much attention. It was therefore quite a shock when one of them, a girl, tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Mehmet Bey,’ she said as she placed one seductive finger up to her black-painted lips.

  ‘Er, hello,’ Süleyman began, for a moment quite unable to place her.

  The girl laughed. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said, clicking her tongue in mock disapproval. ‘Naughty! We met at the Pera Palas, with my stepmother . . .’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘Fitnat.’

  ‘Burhan Bey’s daughter,’ Süleyman smiled. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘My stepmother has talked about you a lot since our meeting,’ Fitnat said with innocent, downcast eyes.

  Süleyman, well aware of what she was implying, said, ‘We’re cousins.’

  Fitnat didn’t reply.

  ‘I see you’ve gone back into black,’ Süleyman said, referring to her dark, ratty dress and macabre make-up.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the girl replied breezily, ‘I love it. I used to go to Atlas Pasaj all the time, but I don’t go quite so often now. Zuleika doesn’t like it and besides, I do have to be more serious about my studies – it’s important. But my friends persuaded Daddy to let me come tonight because it’s İlhan’s birthday and he’s going to get his eyebrow pierced.’

  A tall, thin boy in the middle of the little group of Goths smirked.

  ‘I take it,’ Süleyman said, ‘that Atlas Pasaj is where people who like dark clothes and—’

  ‘It’s where the Goths hang out, yes,’ Fitnat laughed, and then, moving closer towards him, she said, ‘Want to come along, Mehmet Bey?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’m a bit too old for that, don’t you?’

  ‘Depends what kind of music you like,’ Fitnat replied.

  ‘What sort of music do you like, Fitnat?’

  ‘Metal, skate punk . . .’

  ‘Skate punk?’ That was what Çöktin had said Gülay Arat had
liked. Proper Goth music, apparently.

  ‘Yes, we all like that,’ Fitnat said as the little group behind nodded in agreement. ‘Bands like Crunch are, as Zuleika would say, de rigueur for people like us.’

  ‘And Brain Dead?’ Süleyman said, citing the band that Gülay Arat had, it seemed, liked most.

  ‘Oh, they’re brilliant!’ Fitnat brought her arms seductively up to her wildly tangled hair and said, ‘Hey, Mehmet Bey, you know quite a lot about Goth music, why don’t you come along?’

  The boys and girls behind her turned away in order to laugh.

  ‘I don’t think so, Fitnat,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll have much more fun with your friends.’

  The girl shrugged.

  ‘You can answer me a question, though,’ he said as he placed his car keys into his jacket pocket.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Do these bands ever play live at the places you go to?’

  ‘Not on Atlas Pasaj,’ she said with a frown. ‘You have to go up to Kemancı for that.’

  ‘What’s Kemancı?’

  ‘It’s a club on Siraselviler Caddesi. Brain Dead have played there. Why? Want to go?’

  Süleyman laughed again. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, just don’t raid it then, will you?’ Fitnat said as she leaned across quickly to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Stepfather.’

  And then, giggling at her own naughtiness, she went back to her friends and they all ran up the hill towards İstiklal Caddesi.

  What a little flirt! Zuleika would be horrified if she knew her stepdaughter had come on to her ex-husband. Which was why Süleyman resolved not to tell her. But it had been an interesting exchange from a professional point of view. As far as he knew Gülay Arat had been out of the Goth scene for some time – there certainly had been few black weeds in her wardrobe. But she had obviously still liked their music. Had she, he wondered, ever gone to Atlas Pasaj or the Kemancı? He imagined she must have done at some point. It had been tempting to drop her name to Fitnat, see whether the girl had known her. But not in front of her friends. Maybe later, when Çöktin had had more of a chance to get to grips with her computer files. After all, tribes like the Goths were notoriously secretive and he didn’t want to compromise Fitnat in any way. Besides, he did, after all, know where she was if he needed to speak to her. He’d have to have someone else present if he did, though. Fitnat, with her eye for an older man, could, he felt, be quite dangerous.