Deadly Web

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I have heard of it,’ İkmen said with a sigh. ‘Men give it to girls and then . . .’

  ‘Rape them, yes,’ the doctor said very matter-of-factly. ‘But I warn you that we may never know. Rohypnol clears the system very quickly and so I don’t know whether the blood test will be very illuminating.’

  İkmen let the doctor in to Çiçek and then went outside to have a smoke. Metin İskender was still recovering from his bullet wound somewhere else in the building. As his condition had improved, staff had moved him to another part of the hospital. İkmen had never visited – too busy. Terrible! Metin had almost died, but because Max had had them all whirling around in circles with his sigils and portals and books featuring goat-headed men, İkmen hadn’t once been to visit him. Max had shot him, it seemed, because Metin must have interrupted him as he searched for Çiçek’s sigil. Where had he got the gun?

  Max had really planned all this. But had he done so before or after he’d come into contact with İrfan Şay? How, indeed, and where had he met Şay? Had he done so before or after he’d planned to execute his ritual? And what of the overendowed Goat of Mendes images on the places of worship? That, it now seemed, had just simply amused him and he could have just dismissed it to İkmen as the nonsense that it was. But he hadn’t because İkmen’s appearance had, it seemed, proved just too fortunate and tempting to miss. Revenge – thirty years on! Or was it? The surreal quality of his recent experiences on the Bosphorus coupled with his tiredness made İkmen question what was real and what wasn’t. Alison had been on the boat but it hadn’t been Alison, it had been Çiçek. Max had sliced off his own hand before his eyes – except that he hadn’t. Magician and illusionist seemed to be a more accurate title for Max Esterhazy now – or maybe he was and always had been just the latter . . .

  İkmen switched his mobile phone back on and waited to see whether he had any messages. He did, but only one, from Süleyman.

  It was a bizarre sight. One man in robes, another, leaning against the cell door, his clothes reeking of seawater, and the third man, exhausted beyond craziness, shouting his every utterance.

  ‘So Max caught you wanking over his books! What then?’ İkmen said.

  Turgut Can slumped still further down into his seat. Maybe, Süleyman observed, he was trying to get as far away as he could from İkmen’s furious questioning. But with Max now dead they had to find out as much as they could in any way that was open to them and that included from Turgut Can.

  ‘That was months ago. He threatened me, with magic. Max Bey frightened me.’

  ‘He was a magician, it’s what he did!’ İkmen shouted. ‘You shouldn’t have got involved with him! Why did you?’

  ‘I told you, he frightened me. And he offered me money.’

  ‘How much and what for – exactly?’

  ‘One thousand pounds – sterling.’ Turgut Can looked up, his eyes bright with greed. ‘Can you imagine?’

  ‘Yes, and sadly like most people, I can only do that,’ İkmen snapped. ‘So how were you to “earn” this vast amount of money, Turgut?’

  ‘At first all I had to do was throw some blood around Max Bey’s study.’ He paused briefly to take a cigarette from the packet on the table and light up. ‘On Tuesday. He would go out and I would distract Ülkü while I did what he had asked.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I took her to her . . . her bedroom and then I went alone, I said, to get cigarettes. But instead of going to the hall, I went to the study. Max Bey had left a covered bucket by the door and I picked that up to throw it when I saw him standing over by the window.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Max Bey. He said he’d had to come back because he’d forgotten something – some magical thing. I said he should go and he said that he would soon. I think when Ülkü heard a noise from the study that was probably him leaving.’

  ‘So you didn’t throw the bucket of blood at the walls?’

  ‘No, he did. I couldn’t, not with him there.’

  ‘Do you have any idea, Turgut,’ Süleyman said, ‘where this blood might have come from?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ask?’ İkmen said.

  Turgut Can shrugged. ‘No. I didn’t like to; he frightened me.’

  ‘So no curiosity about the provenance of a litre or so of blood?’ İkmen sat down, lit a cigarette and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Don’t answer that,’ he said. ‘I think the thousand sterling has already done that for you. What did you want the money for, Turgut?’

  ‘I don’t know. A car? There was a condition on the money too, which was that I was to leave Ülkü alone – maybe even get out of town.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Max Bey thought I was bad for Ülkü. He said he wanted for her to have a chance in life and with me around that wasn’t going to be easy.’

  ‘And you were all right with that?’

  ‘I liked Ülkü, but . . .’ he shrugged again, ‘there are many girls . . .’

  ‘When did you last see Ülkü?’

  ‘This – no yesterday afternoon – on Divanyolu. She didn’t know where to go or what to do, but how could I help her? Max Bey had told me to stop seeing her and so I just moved away from her.’

  ‘And what did she do?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘Well, she cried . . . and—’

  ‘You left her,’ İkmen said. ‘Alone and homeless, you with your thousand sterling in your pocket!’

  ‘No! No! No, Max Bey hasn’t paid me,’ the young man said bitterly. ‘After the blood thing and once I’d managed to get out of here, I didn’t see Max Bey until yesterday. That’s why I was on that boat with these stupid clothes and—’

  ‘You knew nothing of his activities between his disappearance and last night?’

  ‘No! I swear! He met me, yesterday. I don’t know how because I was just about to leave the city. But there he was at Haydarpaşa, waiting for me.’

  ‘Why were you leaving the city, Turgut?’

  ‘Because I was scared,’ he said. ‘You scared me. I didn’t think you’d take me in – Max Bey said that you wouldn’t – but you did and I talked a lot of rubbish, lost my nerve . . . I thought something might come back at me because of what I’d done, and I didn’t, by then, think I’d ever get any money from Max Bey. I was going home.’

  ‘But Max Bey offered you money to stay, did he?’

  ‘Yes. He said that he needed help with a boat. The person who was going to help him had let him down and so if I did it he would pay me.’

  The name İrfan Şay came unbidden into İkmen’s mind. Could it be that the businessman turned film-maker had taken fright at Süleyman’s sudden appearance at his home and gone off somewhere? There was a warrant out for his arrest; Süleyman had set that in motion already. Filming a murder did, after all, make one a confederate in that crime.

  ‘Did Max Bey, at any time, give you the impression that he was going to kill my daughter?’

  ‘No! No, I would never have agreed—’

  ‘But you would have been OK with him having sex with her?’ Turgut Can did not reply. ‘So did he take you to this boat or—’

  ‘I went to Eminönü with him – the western side of the Galata Bridge,’ only a spit away from where İkmen had first found the magician, ‘then he left and came back with the young lady later.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About seven.’

  ‘And how was the young lady when you first saw her?’

  ‘I thought she was drunk,’ Turgut said. ‘He, Max Bey, laid her in the bottom of the boat – I thought at first to sleep it off. But then later, when we were out on the water, he started undressing her and . . .’

  İkmen, his face white with tension, said, ‘And what?’

  ‘And he put her in those funny clothes and that wig. He’d already dressed himself and me up for this ceremony, but she didn’t look right for that with the blonde hair and big boots.’

  No, but she had looked like Alison and, as the now
late Max Esterhazy had told İkmen himself, she had to have that appearance if he was ever going to be aroused by her.

  ‘Did Max Bey have sex with her?’

  ‘No. But I know he was intending to do so,’ Turgut said. ‘He watched her dance about for ages. Then he said that he, and not the Goat, was going to have her. This time the Goat was going to watch – he said. But then he put that goat head thing on when you arrived and told me to cover my head with my mask. Then he called the devils.’ He looked up and shook his head. ‘When he cut his hand off like that I nearly fainted!’

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t cut his hand off, did he?’ İkmen said. ‘That was, it seems, something of an illusion, maybe even a joke, if you like.’

  Turgut Can nodded his head. ‘Oh, jokes, yes,’ he said. ‘Max Bey liked them – and puzzles. All that blood business in his apartment was a puzzle.’

  Süleyman frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  Turgut Can turned to İkmen. ‘It was for you,’ he said. ‘Max Bey said he needed to “disappear” for a while and so he did that thing with the blood to give you what he said was “something to think about”. I don’t know why, but he mentioned you by name and said that, well, it almost seemed as if it was some sort of challenge he was setting you.’

  ‘Max Bey wanted Inspector İkmen to believe that he was dead?’

  ‘Not exactly, no. There was the blood and then there was also some of his own blood too. I don’t know where that was. He said it was there somewhere. He just wanted to confuse everyone – even Ülkü! He didn’t think about what he was doing to her!’

  ‘Nor did you,’ İkmen put in tartly.

  Turgut Can lowered his head again. ‘No.’

  ‘And so do you know where Ülkü might be now?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘Because,’ İkmen said, ‘her possessions are still in his apartment. Also it may well be that some of Max Esterhazy’s assets are due to Miss Ayla.’

  Turgut looked up. ‘Like what? What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘But I shouldn’t spend any time thinking about that, Turgut, because they cannot, I promise you, have any relevance for you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that you, at the very least, misled this investigation and will therefore need to serve time in prison.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘You’re going to prison, Turgut. You’re not going to get any money.’ He leaned in towards him maliciously. ‘What a shame.’

  ‘But I haven’t hurt anyone!’ Turgut whined. ‘I didn’t even throw the blood across the room in the end. I did nothing! Ask Max Bey, if you don’t believe me!’

  İkmen looked across at Süleyman, who now joined them at the table.

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Turgut,’ he said. ‘Max Bey died shortly after he was brought into custody.’

  Turgut Can’s eyes flooded with fear. ‘You killed him.’

  ‘No. No, we found him dead in his cell,’ Süleyman said. ‘We don’t yet know how he died.’

  ‘So that’s what all the noise was about.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So now you only have me . . .’

  ‘Yes, Turgut,’ Süleyman said, ‘which is why it is even more important that you tell us everything you know. That you tell us the truth.’

  ‘I have told you the truth!’ He raked one nervous hand through his hair and said to İkmen, ‘It was about you, some of it. The blood, anyway. He wanted to confuse you. He had some thing, some feeling about you I didn’t understand. But the rest of it? I don’t know! I didn’t know he’d killed those people! I would never have done anything—’

  ‘We will see,’ İkmen said, and folded his arms across his chest. He looked very grey now – almost ill. But then aside from the shock of what had happened to his daughter he did also have to contend with the fact that someone he had considered a friend was now dead. And Max Esterhazy, notwithstanding all the recent revelations, had been a friend – once. Quite what had made him into what he eventually became, İkmen didn’t know. Maybe it had all started way back with Alison, and with a rejection that İkmen hadn’t even known about. Alison had loved him – a little, poor Turk over what was, outwardly at least, a suave, handsome and educated Englishman. Except, of course, that Max wasn’t and never had been an Englishman. By taking money from his father and by concealing that man’s location he had, in effect, taken a stance against the country that had nurtured him. He had profited from its enemy and, as well as lying to and deceiving İkmen, he had dishonoured his own past too. But contrarily, and possibly typically for Max, he’d done it for apparently the best of reasons – to save the city – to spare the lives of boys like Bülent İkmen and his friends. Only time would prove whether or not all the bloodshed had been worth it.

  CHAPTER 23

  Dawn came, bringing with it, as it sometimes did, a clutch of bodies for examination. And, as the dawn call to prayer faded into the already thick air above the city, the mortuary attendants arrived for yet another day of hard physical labour. Lifeless bodies are typically heavy and often unwieldy too – one had to be fit in order to be able to heave them around. Hacer Mardin, who had worked as a pathologist for just over five years, was very glad that she didn’t personally have to manhandle her charges. Her boss, Arto Sarkissian, was sometimes known to lend a hand in this way, but Hacer, being female, wouldn’t have been allowed to do so even if she’d wanted to. Some man or other – old, young, fit or frail – was always rushing to her aid. It would have been nice if it had been because she was pretty, but Hacer knew it wasn’t that. Men helped her because she was a woman in a man’s world and that, Hacer often felt, was a statement about her abilities or lack thereof. She’d even shared her theory with Arto Sarkissian once, but he hadn’t, she had to admit, had much time for it. Although he didn’t say anything, he was, she imagined, placing her in the ‘mad feminist’ corner of his mind. But that didn’t mean he didn’t trust her. Today, as happened sometimes now, she was the only pathologist in attendance, which meant that together with her assistants she alone would pronounce upon causes of death, and order, if necessary, further forensic tests. Four cadavers had come in overnight from various sources and so the early start she had made had been justified.

  Already on trolleys, the four bodies were still bagged. So, on the basis that it was better to see what she was up against as soon as possible, Hacer unzipped the first one immediately. Even without looking she knew that whoever was in there had been dead for some time. Hacer, despite her expertise and experience, just briefly felt her early morning glass of tea rise in her throat. Corpses like this frequently came apart in your hands, as it were, and it wasn’t something that was easily tolerated by anyone. Hacer zipped the bag up and went over to the second trolley.

  ‘That came in from police headquarters, Hacer Hanım,’ one of the attendants said. Whether the subtext was ‘police equals brutality equals a very messy body’ Hacer didn’t know, but she nodded her acknowledgement to the man and unzipped the bag. As she stared into it, life as usual went on around her. People scrubbed up, cleaned out fridges, turned up the samovar in the corner and talked about football. Hacer, however, was in a somewhat different space.

  ‘I hope this isn’t someone’s idea of a joke,’ she said as she moved around the trolley to confront the all-male group.

  ‘Hanım?’

  ‘The police headquarters body,’ she said. ‘What’s he done, escaped?’

  ‘With respect, Hanım, what—’

  ‘The bag, it’s empty,’ she said. ‘Are you sure it was full when you picked it up?’

  The two assistants who had collected the body looked at each other.

  ‘Yes,’ the older of the two said. ‘Certain. Not three hours ago, Hanım.’

  His friend nodded his agreement.

  Hacer Mardin sighed. ‘I’d better go and call the police,’ she said, and left for her office.

  The two men who had
brought what they believed was the body of a foreigner into the mortuary went over to the bag and studied it in some detail, both inside and out.

  That İrfan Şay hadn’t, apparently, left the country didn’t mean that he was any easier to find. However, his home, its occupants and contents were a good start and, at just after two thirty that afternoon, Süleyman and Çöktin returned with authorisation to search the premises. İkmen, for whom the disappearance of Max Esterhazy’s body had been the final straw, had returned to his home to get some rest. Both physically and emotionally exhausted, it was the only time Süleyman could ever remember seeing İkmen refuse a cigarette. Seemingly, not even nicotine could console him now.

  The only person at home when the police arrived was Şay’s twenty-five-year-old son, Emir. As smooth as, Süleyman imagined, his country-bred father was rough, Emir Şay claimed to know nothing of either his father’s business interests or his current whereabouts. But he didn’t either object to or appear unduly worried about the search, which led Süleyman to wonder just what, if anything, the young man did know. When the officers began searching Şay’s office, Emir sat himself down outside on the terrace with a large book that, it transpired, was a physics textbook.

  But while outside was all studious calm, inside the yalı things were far from serene. Şay’s office was small and cramped, and so working through his considerable paperwork wasn’t easy. After all, officially, he was a businessman engaged in the sale of electrical equipment and so most of his paperwork pertained to that. But there were also cameras, conventional and video, and what seemed like vast amounts of attachments, add-ons and lenses. It took the police a while to find any actual tapes, but when they did it very quickly became clear that they hadn’t been wrong about İrfan Şay.

  ‘That looks like Lale Tekeli to me,’ Çöktin said, pausing the tape on a frame of the girl’s terrified face. ‘It’s in a wooden room like the one we think she was murdered in.’