Rakı, the strong anise-flavoured spirit that is one of the staples of every Turkish drinks cabinet, is something it is impossible not to have enough of. One shot is plenty, two excessive and any more than that may be said to constitute a suicide attempt. For some hardened souls, however, rakı can be a way of life. Rauf Ünver, second-rate jazz saxophonist, on his way home from a gig in Beyoğlu was, as ever, full of the stuff.
Of course, staying on at the club after the gig was over hadn’t been a very smart move. The two bottles he’d put away with a Greek trumpet player whose name now escaped him had been even stupider. Driving home now, just after dawn, or in fact at any time of the day or night, given his current state, was insane. Putting aside the very real danger of getting arrested for drunk driving, Rauf could also look forward to a beating from his wife, who was, no doubt, already picking out a suitable weapon for this purpose.
Rauf was just weighing up the relative merits of death by samovar attack as opposed to the slower, if no less painful, prospect of being force-fed the contents of the kitchen bin (she’d done this before), when something heavy hit the bonnet of his car. Somehow he found the footbrake, stopped the car and got out. Yediküle is not one of those 24/7 districts of İstanbul. Home to the Yediküle Castle, a fortress of both Byzantine and Ottoman construction, it is a district characterised by poor but respectable families living in closely packed Greek-influenced houses. So when Rauf got out of the car there wasn’t a sound save that of his own feet on the road.
Swaying, he felt only slightly, Rauf stumbled around to the front of his vehicle, which, he could now see, was spattered with what looked like blood. Just the possibility that it might be blood made him vomit immediately. Then when he saw the body lying face down in front of his wheels, he had to stick his fist in his mouth to stop himself screaming. From the look of it, the body was that of a young girl – and he had killed her.
Rauf looked around wildly at what to him was a blurred environment and then ran back to his car. There was no one about, no lights had come on in any of the windows above and, although in his drunken blurriness he’d gone far too far south, he was still only minutes from home now. If he got caught, and the police found out how much he’d had to drink, they’d put him away for ever. Whereas if he went home, washed the car and said nothing, he might get away with it. Rauf reversed his vehicle away from the body and then drove off in the direction of Zeyrek and home.
He’d been gone about five minutes when Mustafa Yenilmez, leaving for his job as a porter at the Hilton Hotel, came upon the body and raised the alarm.
CHAPTER 10
By the time Mehmet Süleyman arrived at the scene, Arto Sarkissian had already seen the body.
‘She’s a young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen,’ he said wearily as Süleyman approached him. ‘Stabbed through the heart – but no weapon as yet. She’s also been hit by a vehicle.’
Süleyman first rubbed his face with his hands and then lit up a cigarette. Allah alone knew what Çiçek’s friends were going to make of him at her dinner party. He hadn’t intended getting up this early and he looked, he knew, like something out of a zombie movie.
‘Suicide?’
‘My first impression is that is unlikely. It seems the car hit her post mortem.’ The Armenian shrugged and then, moving in more closely towards Süleyman, he said, ‘I think she has been sexually assaulted.’
‘Like Gülay Arat?’
‘Maybe.’
The two men looked at each other for a moment, their faces frozen with tension. Around them, officers moved both to secure the scene and keep local bystanders away. It was already getting hot and people were anxious to get about their daily business before the heat overwhelmed them.
A young uniformed officer and a man in what looked like a hotel porter’s outfit walked over to Süleyman. The officer saluted.
‘This man found the body, sir.’
Süleyman looked at the man, whose face was still white with shock.
‘Mustafa Yenilmez,’ he introduced himself.
‘What happened, Mr Yenilmez?’
‘I was on my way to work. I live just over there,’ he said, pointing towards a sagging, wooden building on the corner of the street. ‘I came out and here she was. I called you immediately.’
‘You didn’t see anyone else in the vicinity?’
‘No.’ He looked down at the blood-stained dust at his feet before continuing, ‘I heard a car just before I left the house.’
‘But you didn’t see anything.’
‘No.’
‘All right, if you’d like to give a statement to my officer . . .’
‘Yes.’
Yenilmez and the officer made off in the direction of the former’s home. Süleyman watched for a moment as forensic technicians began to take casts of the tyre tracks leading away from the corpse.
‘We need to find that car,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Süleyman took the doctor by the elbow and led him over to his car. ‘Come on.’
Once inside Süleyman’s great white BMW, the two men, now away from flapping ears, began to talk.
‘So I’ve got one boy – a suicide – one murdered girl, now possibly two,’ Süleyman said.
‘Identical mode if not perpetrator of said deaths and no sexual assault on the boy,’ Arto continued.
‘And Max Esterhazy missing, his apartment soaked in blood.’
‘Yes, I heard about that,’ the doctor said, ‘but I have no details. It would be better to talk to Çetin İkmen and Metin İskender about that.’
‘There could be a connection,’ Süleyman said, and then proceeded to tell the doctor about the hacker known as Mendes and the various connections that had been made to that name.
‘Yes, Mr Esterhazy was doing some research into that image for Çetin,’ Arto said. ‘Hulya and Berekiah were shown a most disturbing drawing of this Goat of Mendes scrawled on to the wall of the Church of the Panaghia. Çetin said that Mr Esterhazy reckoned the image was inaccurate in some way, but I don’t know how.’
Süleyman sighed. ‘Yes, I know about it. But I don’t know what Max thought about the image – I’ve not seen it myself – I’ll speak to Çetin.’ He then put his cigarette out and lit up another. ‘This city seems to be experiencing a veritable festival of unexplained death.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘This new girl has no ID,’ he said, returning to the practicalities of the job at hand. ‘Not that anyone’s been able to find.’
‘If she was thrown from a car—’
‘If, yes.’ Arto held a warning finger up to his colleague and said, ‘She was hit by a vehicle of some sort but whether she was thrown from one, I don’t know. Without wishing to tell you your job, Inspector, I would, if I were you, check out the houses in the street too.’
‘I’ll get Çöktin on to it.’ When he arrives, Süleyman added silently in his head. The Kurd had experienced, if anything, an even later night than he had. His cousin’s contact to Mendes had sounded like a very odd character and his way of communicating with the hacker paranoid and tortuous. İsak was, Süleyman knew, worried in case it didn’t work out. Çöktin feared, he knew, that if it didn’t Süleyman would take out his frustrations on him and tell their superiors about his film subtitling operation. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility, and, in one sense, Süleyman felt that Çöktin did deserve it, not because it was against the law but because for a serving officer it was such a stupid thing to do. But a few minutes later İsak did indeed turn up and, despite his deathly appearance, began working with a will.
Later, just after the body was removed, Süleyman phoned in a description of the victim to be circulated to all departments.
They’d been with first the boy, Turgut Can, and then his girlfriend, Ülkü Ayla, all night. And although neither İkmen nor İskender fully believed that either of them had killed Max Esterhazy, they didn’t think the couple were being entirely truthful either.
‘I just don�
�t get Can’s seeming obsession with Esterhazy’s books,’ İskender said as he slipped some papers into his briefcase.
İkmen, who was sitting on top of Sergeant Karataş’ desk, yawned. ‘You’ve not had the chance to look at them yet, Metin. Some of the photos and illustrations are titillating to say the least.’
‘But why couldn’t the boy buy fuck magazines like a normal person?’
‘Maybe because some of the practices in Max’s texts turned him on,’ İkmen said. ‘The combination of ritual, even if one doesn’t understand it, and sex can be very erotic. And these books are very rare. Even in England it’s difficult to get hold of some of those titles. Max has an excellent collection – all the greats of the Western magical tradition. Very powerful in the right hands, extremely perverse in some people’s opinions and worth a lot of money.’
‘But it would seem that Can didn’t actually steal any of them,’ İskender said, ‘so what . . . ?’
İkmen smiled. ‘Why bother when he can have a look at the naughty pictures and then fantasise while his girlfriend sucks him off? And besides, we know that Can knows Max is a magician and so he’d also, presumably, know that stealing from him would cause him to curse the perpetrator. He’d be too scared. Max’s power can be very frightening.’
İskender raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘But on a more mundane note,’ he said, ‘do you have any idea about where Esterhazy might have gone? You know him, after all.’
‘If I did I’d be looking there myself,’ İkmen replied. ‘To be honest, Metin, Max kept all the discrete parts of his life very separate. His magical life, his teaching, his old friends . . . I know he used to order his English teaching texts from Simurg. But I don’t know whether he actually knew anyone personally in or around the bookshop.’
‘Maybe we should check it out.’
‘Yes,’ İkmen sighed. ‘There’s a lot to do. I also need to find his address book, which may well help, and I want to get over to the Mısır Çarşısı too.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. The spice vendor Ülkü used to get sent to for various ingredients.’ He looked down at the notes he had taken of his most recent interview with the girl. ‘Someone called Doğa at Afrodite Pazarı. Apparently, he could always get whatever oddity Max was after. Maybe he is a magical practitioner of some sort himself.’
‘Allah protect us!’ İskender rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘I can’t cope with all this unreality!’
‘Then maybe you should busy yourself with obtaining the records of telephone calls to and from Max’s apartment,’ İkmen said. ‘And if you can chase up that blood work I’m sure that Forensic will thank you for it. I always lose my temper with them.’
‘Seems sensible,’ İskender said as he opened his office door to let İkmen through. ‘Now I’m going to go home, get a shower, have a rest and then come back and start again. Mr Can’s lawyer is with him at the moment. Perhaps things in that quarter, and possibly with Miss Ayla too, will have changed by the time I get back.’
İkmen started to make his way back to his office, thinking all the while about Ülkü Ayla and how sorry he felt for her. Max had probably worked to educate and protect Ülkü, a young country girl, but not to excess. After all, Max was a liberal as well as a magician. People, Max had often said, must be free to follow their own will, even if that desire is flawed. Nevertheless, Turgut Can had obviously not been approved of. And if Max had thought for a second that he was forcing Ülkü to give him oral sex, he would have dealt with him. One thing he would never have done, though, was use Ülkü for himself. That was patently ridiculous. There had been, as İkmen – and he alone, he believed – knew, no one since Alison. But that wasn’t something he wanted to bring up unless he absolutely had to . . .
‘Çetin, do you have a few minutes?’
İkmen looked up into the sunken eyes of Mehmet Süleyman. Allah, but how his poor friend had suffered these past few months!
Forcing a smile, İkmen pulled the chair over from Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s desk and motioned for Süleyman to join him.
‘Please.’
‘When is Sergeant Farsakoğlu due back from her vacation?’ Süleyman asked, observing the even more dire than usual state of İkmen’s office.
‘İnşallah, on Monday.’
Süleyman smiled. ‘Çetin,’ he said, ‘I think that you and I need to liaise about this Mendes connection. I know we’ve spoken before, but perhaps we need to think again.’
‘Yes. Your hacker,’ İkmen said, ‘and my Satanic image.’
He bent down to open his desk drawer just as Süleyman’s mobile began to ring. He didn’t, as he put one of Max’s books on to his desk, listen to the short conversation that passed between Süleyman and Arto Sarkissian, but at the end of it he noticed that Mehmet looked even graver than he had done when he arrived.
‘This is the actual Goat of Mendes,’ İkmen said as he opened the book at the relevant page. ‘It’s not always represented in such a . . . a graphic fashion, shall we say, but this is the illustration that was open on Max’s desk when we entered the apartment. The Goat in the act of initiating one of his acolytes.’
The picture, a woodcut, showed a man with a goat’s head and hoofs, having intercourse from behind with a wanton and ecstatic-looking young woman.
When Süleyman didn’t answer, İkmen continued, ‘It says in the text that the Goat’s penis is ice cold. Some acolytes describe it as metallic . . .’
‘Çetin, another girl was discovered with a knife in her heart this morning. Dr Sarkissian has just told me that this second girl, like the first, was assaulted from behind with something he thinks might have been made of metal. He’s just confirmed that the girl was murdered.’
The two men looked at each other for a moment, sweat running down their faces.
‘Max told me that he’d recently had an altercation with some Satanists. He said he’d seen them off,’ İkmen frowned. ‘Maybe he only thought that he had.’
‘Maybe. One boy has committed suicide with a knife, two girls have been murdered.’
‘I don’t know where suicide comes into it,’ İkmen said, ‘but then what do I know? The thing I asked Max to look at, the image scrawled on the wall of the Panaghia, was what Max described as atypical.’
‘The one with thirteen penises?’
İkmen went into his drawer again and retrieved his Polaroid photograph of the drawing.
‘Max had never seen anything like it before. Two penises, yes sometimes, but not thirteen. He was looking into its possible origins when he disappeared – or whatever.’
‘Do you think he could have disappeared because he was looking into its possible origins?’
‘I don’t know,’ İkmen sighed. ‘So what of your Mendes, Mehmet? The hacker?’
‘Not an easy person to contact,’ Süleyman replied. ‘I’ve left it with Çöktin. In light of what we’ve been talking about, however, I think I do need to reinstruct him. I know Çöktin doubts any Satanic connection to his hacker, but the name Mendes is a very unusual one. Maybe we need to ask Mendes why he uses it.’
‘You need to be careful how you do that,’ İkmen said. ‘People involved in magic are very secretive – they look for double meanings in everything. And so if he is into Satanism and he does suspect you are on to him he will disappear. Not literally, of course, but—’
‘I know what you mean, Çetin.’
‘Conversely, there may be no connection at all between your hacker and either the suicide, the murders or Max. I mean, your actual aim in contacting him is to get help from him to trace those weird messages on the kids’ computers.’
‘Yes.’ Süleyman did, for just a second, think about telling İkmen how and why Çöktin knew so much about Mendes, but then he thought better of it. Çetin was, he knew, far safer if he didn’t know, both from their own superiors and what would be his own divided loyalties.
‘So I’d do that,’ İkmen said. ‘What else are you doing?’
Süleyman
went through a list of avenues he was currently exploring finishing with ‘. . . and although Gülay got out of the scene, I still want to talk to these Goths. I don’t know why, but I feel that the Goth scene was, if not the cause, then the gateway to whatever the girl subsequently became involved with. And if this new victim was involved as well . . .’
‘I’m not saying kids into Gothic clothes and black and everything are necessarily Satanists,’ İkmen said, ‘but I would go along with you about the gateway theory. After all, if you’re going to recruit people to the cause of evil, why not do so from amongst the ranks of those who already wear the uniform and love the colour scheme?’
Süleyman smiled.
‘So what are your plans for getting to these kids, Mehmet?’ İkmen asked. ‘They’re not easy to access.’
‘Gülay used to go around with a little group of friends. I’ve interviewed one already. I’m in the process of contacting the others.’
İkmen riffled in his pockets for his cigarettes and when he’d found them he first offered one to Süleyman and then lit up himself.
‘Do you honestly think they’ll tell you anything, Mehmet?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think it’s unlikely.’ İkmen remained silent for a few moments, biting down on his bottom lip until he said, ‘Have you ever considered sending someone in to these clubs, undercover?’
‘I have but that takes time.’
‘If only we had an “in” on the scene, eh?’
‘Yes,’ Süleyman replied, ‘if only we did.’ And then he leaned back into his chair and smoked in silence for a while. He was, İkmen felt, mulling over something, possibly difficult, in his head.
Before İskender returned, İkmen felt a visit back to Max’s apartment was imperative. Whatever Süleyman might or might not be doing, it was important for him to try to track down Max’s address book and find his friends – if indeed he had any.
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