Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Except when she went to meet her killer,’ Çöktin said.

  Tekeli looked up. ‘She left this apartment without either my knowledge or permission,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, which means she must have done that for a reason,’ Çöktin said. And then he sat himself down in the chair next to Tekeli’s and smiled. ‘Look, sir, I know this must be hard, but I can’t see any sort of personal items in your sister’s room.’

  ‘She had none.’

  ‘No?’

  Tekeli’s face pinched into a scowl.

  ‘Everyone has personal bits and pieces,’ Çöktin said. ‘Bits of broken jewellery, old watches, photographs, letters.’

  ‘My sister was a most pious girl,’ Tekeli said. ‘She didn’t have photographs.’

  ‘Well, letters and other things then!’ Çöktin said. ‘Mr Tekeli, I know you must, as I would myself in your position, want to protect your sister’s memory as the blameless thing I’m sure it is. But she must have had some stuff that was at least mildly embarrassing. Some soft toys or—’

  ‘All right! All right!’ Tekeli held a hand up to stanch the flow of Çöktin’s words and then rose to his feet. ‘If you must,’ he said, ‘if you must, I will give you what I have.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Max was a genius. İkmen had, of course, always known it, but being in his apartment, almost alone with his books and papers, only served to underline this fact. Tomes and volumes on every subject, some of them written by Max himself, graced the vast bookcases lining his study. And not just in one or two languages – so far İkmen had identified French, Latin and Hebrew as well as the to be expected English, German and Turkish. A Renaissance man, Max, versed in literature, science, the arts and magic. İkmen had been looking at a couple of what he hoped were not too complicated treatises on Kabbalism in English when he’d idly shuffled through a drawer in the desk and found Max’s passport.

  Standard United Kingdom EU passport, it told İkmen nothing he didn’t already know – except, of course, the bit at the back. Funny, but İkmen had never thought about Max having ‘relatives or friends who may be contacted in the event of accident’, but then he, extraordinary as he was, had to have some family somewhere. Although quite how Mrs Maria Salmon was related to him, İkmen couldn’t know. A sister maybe, or a cousin? His parents, those noble Viennese who had sought refuge in Britain just prior to the Second World War, had to be dead now.

  Well, there was only one thing to do and that was to call the number underneath the London address for this woman and see what happened. Max obviously hadn’t left the country but if Mrs Salmon was indeed a close relative he might have told her something about his movements. Given the nature of Max’s supposed disappearance, İkmen doubted this, but he punched the number into Max’s keypad anyway and then waited for an answer. While he waited, İkmen looked at a representation of the Kabbalist Tree of Life in a book by a woman who claimed to be Britain’s foremost Kabbalist. What Gonca had called Sephira – plural Sephiroth – were represented as circles connected by lines called paths. There were eleven Sephiroth, which apparently represented what the writer called ‘characteristics of both God and Man’. The paths he couldn’t make out, but what he did already know was that the Tree of Life also symbolised both Adam Kadmon – the heavenly, macrocosmic man and the ordinary human or microcosmic man. Just like Gonca had said, with Kabbalists it is all about that above and divine being essentially the same and interchangeable with that below or in the world.

  ‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, English and slightly tremulous.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Salmon?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  İkmen explained who he was and why he was calling. And, although he was quite truthful when Mrs Salmon, who it transpired was Max’s sister, asked him about what had happened to her brother, İkmen didn’t go into detail.

  ‘I haven’t seen my brother for, oh, it must be fifteen years,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken to him since Christmas.’

  ‘That was, I take it, a seasonal greeting?’ İkmen said.

  He heard her just gently smirk at his formality. He spoke English very well – his father had drummed the language into him and his brother at every opportunity – but he was, he knew, still rather more formal than most UK citizens of the twenty-first century.

  ‘Oh, I wished him a Merry Christmas, yes,’ Mrs Salmon said. ‘But he needed to speak to me about something else too.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Well, look, it is rather personal actually,’ Mrs Salmon said with that vague English stuffiness Max himself could sometimes exhibit. ‘It concerned our parents, Maximillian’s and mine. I know you say you are at my brother’s flat but do you have an official number that I could call you on? Your police station? So I can verify you are who you say you are?’

  ‘But of course.’ İkmen gave her the station number with instructions on how to ask for his office. Mrs Salmon was obviously as cautious as her brother.

  ‘Your parents must have been very extraordinary people,’ İkmen said just before the conversation ended.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Getting out of Vienna, taking none of their fortune with them, just to get away from the horror perpetrated by the Nazis.’

  ‘Is that what my brother told you?’

  There was something very wrong here, he could detect that from her voice. ‘Yes.’

  He heard her sigh at the other end of the telephone. ‘Then you and I really do need to talk,’ she said. ‘In about an hour?’

  ‘That will be perfect.’ And with that İkmen replaced the receiver.

  After that it wasn’t easy getting back into what he’d been doing. What did that ‘Is that what my brother told you?’ mean? That Max had been lying about his past? If he had, then why?

  Karataş, his face still strained from his all-too-recent violent experiences, entered the room carrying a box.

  ‘Sir, this food is going off,’ he said. ‘It’s beginning to stink.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Fruit and vegetables.’

  ‘Well, we can’t dispose of anything yet,’ İkmen said. ‘Unless, of course, it’s meat. Leave it on the draining board for now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  İkmen glanced at his watch. It would take him only a few minutes to get back to the station from here and so he temporarily resumed his studies. Malkuth, the lowest Sephira, was representative of the earth and of matter. Because it was at the bottom of the tree, it corresponded to the feet. Its element was, of course, earth and the angel associated with it – they all had angels, demons, planets and ‘things’, just as Gonca had said – was something called Sandalphon. Then there were lists of gems, in this case rock crystal, virtues – discrimination – even perfumes; for Malkuth it was Ambergris. The magician, when working on, whatever that meant, a particular Sephira was supposed to surround himself with as much of this stuff and cultivate as many of these attributes himself as he could.

  But in terms of finding Max, with such a very basic knowledge of something the magician had spent his entire life cultivating, was İkmen actually achieving anything here? He looked up and put his chin in his hands. Knowing that Max organised his life in line with this system wasn’t helping. One just simply became mesmerised by the various correspondences – looking, as it were, for one’s favourite animal or fruit amongst the lists and seeing what it meant in Kabbalistic terms.

  He lit a cigarette. Sometimes, when looking for a missing person, İkmen could get some sort of sense about the likelihood of that person being alive or dead. But not in this case. Even though he knew Max, even though they had, in a way, come almost as close as any two men can, he still couldn’t tell. Something or someone, maybe even Max himself, was blocking his vision.

  CHAPTER 14

  Fitnat didn’t wake up until lunchtime. Well, she hadn’t got home until nine. But it had been worth it; in spite of her stepmother’s fury it
had been worth it. There were no regrets, and next time, she knew, it would be even better. Next time she’d have no fears about taking control, slipping him inside her body. She had, in truth, been a little too timid for that last night and anyway, she knew she really shouldn’t. What they had done had been enough – for now. She closed her eyes and briefly recalled what just the touch of her breasts against his penis had done to him.

  Oh, how she wished she could see him again tonight! But that wasn’t going to be possible. Tonight was a class night and so she knew she’d have to at least look over her notes before she went. That it all seemed, compared to him, so unimportant, almost silly, was aggravating but unavoidable.

  Fitnat reached underneath her bed for her folder and then stopped as she remembered so many other things about him. How good he’d tasted! How big! How he’d wanted her to have pleasure, touching every tender part . . .

  ‘Fitnat!’

  The voice was her father’s and so she hurriedly pushed the folder back under her bed again and assumed an innocent smile.

  ‘Coming, Daddy!’

  But then maybe she’d go to Atlas tonight and see him anyway. She had his number, after all. Maybe . . .

  Çöktin held the little model aloft and showed it to Osman Tekeli, who sniffed and turned aside when he saw it.

  ‘I don’t know where she got that from!’ he said angrily. ‘Abomination!’

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘A friend who visited Egypt?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know! I took it away from her!’

  ‘And how did Lale respond to that?’ Çöktin said as he put the model of the Egyptian god Anubis the Jackal on Osman Tekeli’s sideboard.

  ‘She cried.’

  ‘But she didn’t say where she got it from?’

  ‘It is immaterial,’ Tekeli snapped. ‘I didn’t ask!’

  ‘You just took it away and—’

  ‘She took it back once,’ Tekeli said as he sat down and then put his head in his hands. ‘But I retrieved it.’

  ‘How?’

  Even though his head was in his hands he turned aside to make his next utterance. ‘I beat her!’

  Not a few men would have been openly proud and feel fully justified in beating their own female relatives. But Tekeli, even though he had done it, wasn’t happy about it. Now, at the mention of it, he was crying.

  There were other sad little things in the sad little box. A hairgrip with a butterfly on it, a piece of red, sparkly material, a photograph of an elderly man and woman – very secular-looking – Çöktin wondered whether they were Lale and Osman’s dead parents. After all, quite a few of the new religious types came originally from secular families. And then there was a postcard. It was a picture of the twelfth-century Ulu Cami in Urfa. On the back of the card, which was addressed to Lale, were the words ‘Having a lovely holiday!’

  ‘Who’s this from?’ Çöktin asked.

  Tekeli looked up and shook his head. ‘One of her teachers.’

  ‘A nice religious picture, sir,’ Çöktin said. ‘Why did you confiscate this?’

  ‘Because it’s from a man.’

  ‘What, a male teacher?’ Çöktin frowned. ‘At your İmamHatip lisesi? I would have thought he would have known better.’

  ‘No, no, no! It’s one of her tutors.’ Tekeli shrugged. ‘She had extra lessons for certain subjects.’

  ‘And this man?’

  ‘English,’ he said. ‘Maximillian Esterhazy – a very good teacher.’

  ‘Maximillian Esterhazy?’ Çöktin sat down. ‘Sir, did your sister ever go to meet this man on her own?’

  ‘Only here or in public places,’ Tekeli said haughtily. ‘I would take her to a public place, like a çay bahçe, and they would have their lesson. Then I would return to pick her up. Mr Esterhazy, after this first little error, understood completely. He is a most intelligent and sensitive person.’

  ‘Our father, Inspector, was indeed a titled person,’ Maria Salmon said, İkmen thought wearily. ‘His name was Count Frederick Esterhazy and his father had been an aide to the old Emperor Franz Josef. Frederick, however, in later life, became a Nazi. And before you say anything about what Maximillian may have told you, that is the truth.’

  ‘Mrs Salmon—’

  ‘I don’t say it lightly, Inspector,’ she said. ‘If my brother were not missing I wouldn’t be saying it at all. It is a terrible admission. Our father was in the SS. I don’t think I need to elaborate about that, do I?’

  ‘No.’ İkmen raised his head from his hands to light a cigarette.

  ‘In 1945, when it was nearly all over for Hitler, my father put myself and my mother on a train going west. With the Russians advancing from the east and the British and Americans from the west, my father felt that my pregnant mother and I stood more of a chance of survival with the latter. This proved to be true, and my brother, Maximillian, was indeed born in London.’

  ‘So why did Max lie?’ İkmen said. ‘That was his father . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it was. And for years we thought he was dead. I’ll be honest with you, Inspector, I prayed that he was. But then suddenly my mother started getting letters, which I saw her hide – from places very far away in Brazil and Panama. Not only was my father alive, he was also making a lot of money – much of it for us. I left home at that point and I never went back. I would never, you understand, have told the British authorities about my parents, but I had to go; I couldn’t take his filthy money. Maybe my silence was wrong. My husband, Inspector, knows nothing of this.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘But to get to the point, with regard to my brother,’ she said, ‘Maximillian was brought up in some style by our mother. She told him the truth about our father – he must have been about ten at the time. But he kept that secret even then.’ She sighed. ‘He also enjoyed the money. I tried, as time went by, to get him to think about where the money came from and to question his own relationship with it. But Maximillian always reasoned it thus: “If I always do good with it, then it’s no longer dirty.” But as far as I can tell he’s never done anything much with it except live some sort of hedonistic expatriate life in your country.’

  ‘Many people, Mrs Salmon, end up washed up on our shores,’ İkmen said. ‘There is something, some people call it a poetic ennui, that can detain many foreign people of a romantic nature in this city. You know that Max has always taught English since he came here?’

  ‘I understood he did something,’ Maria Salmon said. ‘But I never knew what. Now, though, he’s going to have to work.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because our father died last year,’ she said. ‘In Panama City, I believe. His Panamanian wife took everything he had and Maximillian was left without an allowance. The call I mentioned last Christmas was from him to me, asking for money.’

  ‘You refused?’

  ‘I don’t have any money, Inspector. Both my husband and I are retired. We have children and grandchildren. And besides . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, I don’t think that my brother is a bad person. Please don’t think that I do,’ she said. ‘It’s just that . . . as soon as we knew that my father was alive, my mother started talking about the “old days” again, you know. About how well off we were under Hitler and how the philosophy behind Nazism was so romantic and . . . Maximillian read every book on the subject he could get his hands on. I tried to tell him the truth! And he would listen. But then he would say that there were things one could take that were good from National Socialism – he said that one day he would use those things to help people – all people, Jews, Gentiles . . .’

  Magic. Even I, an uninvolved Turk, İkmen thought, know that Hitler was fascinated by magic.

  ‘If my brother is missing, I can’t help you,’ she said wearily. ‘I have no idea where he might be or who he could be with. He’s never spoken to me about any of his friends over there. The only person I ever remember him talking about was Alison.’
/>   ‘Alison?’ Even all these years on, just the name made his heart jump.

  ‘Yes. Some backpacker, I understand. Left him for a Turkish chap.’

  Oh, no, İkmen thought, no, Max, that’s a lie and you know it.

  ‘Mrs Salmon, I appreciate your candour,’ he said. ‘I am so sorry to have revived what I can tell are painful memories for you.’

  ‘If Maximillian is missing you need to know as much about him as you can, don’t you?’ she said. ‘Even I know that. And I do care . . .’

  ‘Mrs Salmon, one last thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Magic.’ She would probably think that he meant stage show tricks, but . . . ‘Was Max ever interested in magic?’

  ‘What, you mean tricks? I believe he was in some conjuring society at Oxford.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘I hope you do mean tricks . . .’ There was something of a threat in her tone, a hardness that made İkmen pause. ‘Because if you mean what I think you mean, then you’d better be very sure of your facts. Hitler, as I’m sure most people now know, was very interested in the occult. Much of what he did was informed by astrology and the dark arts. I would hate to think that my brother was involved with such practices. They are very dangerous.’

  İkmen let out a stream of smoke on a sigh. ‘Well, Mrs Salmon,’ he said, ‘I would love to disabuse you of that notion . . .’ And then he went on to tell her about her brother’s interests, tempered with his own still sincerely held belief that Max only ever employed his knowledge and skills for good.

  ‘I’ve no idea how he got into that,’ she said when İkmen had finished his exposition. ‘God knows! Maybe he wasn’t just conjuring at university. But then he did sometimes do those card tricks, you know.’

  ‘He was a student of a rabbi, an apparently famous Kabbalist here in İstanbul, for many years,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe his interest began after he left England.’

  ‘Or maybe our father had a hand in it,’ she responded bitterly.

  ‘Your father was involved in the occult?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Not for sure. But he did know Hitler well and so he must have at least had an awareness of what the Führer was doing with regard to astrology and magic. You know, Inspector,’ she continued, ‘it chills my blood to think of Maximillian as student to a rabbi. Hitler not only sought to exterminate the Jews, he also wanted to take their wisdom from them and use it for his own purposes.’