Harem

by Barbara Nadel

  The two men moved out of the way to allow the police photographer access to the body.

  ‘Sılay liked to regale the girls with stories of his past triumphs,’ İkmen said as he put his cigarette out in the accommodating silt. ‘My daughter doesn’t think that he had anything to do with where Hatice went last night, but he could be worth talking to. He may even know those she went with. When we’ve finished here I’ll have to go and tell Hatice’s mother. If you go to the pastane and ask after Sılay, they should know where he lives, he’s been going in there for years.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  They lapsed into silence as the photographer took pictures of the body from every conceivable angle. Not that there was anything dramatic about it, apart from the inherent tragedy. Cause of death had not yet been established. There was no blood or even any obvious bruising. İkmen’s first thoughts had been that perhaps Hatice’s death had been chemically induced. All of the city’s greatest mobs were known to have at least some involvement in the drug trade and if they’d given the girl a quick hit of cocaine to loosen her up and she’d reacted badly to it . . . But then what lay behind her elaborate clothing did not sit comfortably with the notion of rough, ignorant gangs involved in prostitution.

  İkmen’s musings were cut short by some rather chaotic sounds from the surface. Tepe walked, with some difficulty, over to the entrance and called up to find out what was happening. İkmen couldn’t hear what was being said but he turned when he heard Tepe laugh.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked as he watched his deputy attempt to suppress yet another giggle. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Dr Sarkissian has just arrived,’ Tepe said. ‘The men are, er, trying to work out how they might get him down here.’

  Dr Arto Sarkissian, pathologist, was Çetin İkmen’s oldest and most valued friend. An Armenian Christian, Sarkissian shared his friend Çetin’s intense love for their native city. His enjoyment of food, however, particularly sugar, showed itself in an ever expanding girth, which was something of a problem now. The entrance to the cistern was not large and the drop to the silt below, though quite manageable for one of average height, could be a problem for a short man like the doctor. All in all, getting him down to the site was not going to be easy.

  With a grunt of displeasure İkmen pushed past his deputy and made his way over to the entrance. A constable called Avcı was, without even attempting to conceal his giggles, surveying the scene below.

  ‘I’d really rather you didn’t laugh in the presence of a dead child,’ İkmen snapped as he peered up into Avcı’s now shocked face. ‘Had you used the time you’ve already spent laughing you might have come to the conclusion that a ladder is the solution to your problem.’

  Avcı, embarrassed, cleared his throat. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The doctor is an important man,’ İkmen continued, ‘you can’t expect him to just jump down into a hole in the ground. I’m most displeased.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll get a ladder right away.’

  ‘Yes, you do that,’ İkmen said. Then he fixed his eyes on a suddenly straight-faced Tepe. ‘And if I catch any of you laughing again I’ll exact the kind of revenge upon you that only I know how to.’

  Chatter and laughter, both above and below, ceased immediately. İkmen was, as everybody that worked with him knew, fair, honourable, generous to a fault and absolutely terrifying to have as an enemy.

  When the doctor did eventually descend into the cistern it was with dignity and relative comfort.

  ‘How is she?’ Mehmet Süleyman asked his father-in-law who had now joined him outside the hospital’s main entrance.

  ‘Still busy with childbirth,’ the old man replied drily. Then he smiled. ‘These things take time.’

  Mehmet, his eyes, even beneath his sunglasses, squinting against the intense midsummer glare, lit yet another cigarette and sighed. He hated hospitals. That his wife and his father-in-law were both doctors was ironic. That he found himself in hospitals and other medical establishments during the course of his work as one of the city’s foremost homicide detectives was grimly amusing.

  Years ago, when he’d first started the job under the tutelage of his old boss Çetin İkmen, he’d found such close proximity to the dead disturbing. Now, however, or rather on this particular day, it was the living that were giving him pause. Patients, hundreds of them, had passed before his eyes as he sat for hour after hour in the corridor outside the maternity unit. Bleeding, attached to drips, screaming for more painkillers – they couldn’t help being ill any more than the hard-pressed staff could help being too overworked to attend to everyone properly. It was just another manifestation of how pressurised all the services in the ever expanding monster of modern-day İstanbul had become.

  He turned to his father-in-law and smiled. ‘I had to come out here,’ he said wearily. ‘I was doing no good in there.’

  ‘You know that in Zelfa’s mother country, in Ireland, men go in to watch their infants being born,’ Dr Babur Halman told him. ‘They didn’t of course when Zelfa was born. In the nineteen fifties in Dublin it was still as it is here.’

  ‘Some men here do attend births,’ Mehmet replied. ‘I have heard of it. But . . .’

  ‘But you don’t really like the idea for yourself?’ Babur smiled. ‘Maybe not. Having experienced how my daughter can be when she is in pain, it is probably not a good idea.’

  The two men shared a brief, knowing look.

  ‘But I’m told that neither she nor the baby are distressed, in the medical sense, and so I’m not unduly worried,’ Babur continued. ‘You will have a son and I a grandson before the day is out. Inşallah.’

  Mehmet leaned back against the wall of the hospital and turned his slim, handsome face up towards the shade that was provided by a nearby tree. At thirty-six, Mehmet was twelve years younger than the blonde ‘foreign’ woman who was now in labour with their son. And although it was good to hear that his wife, who was a very elderly first-time mother, was doing well, there were other things on his mind too. His son, when born, would be the first male child to have been produced by a member of his generation in his family. It was, he knew, an event of considerable significance. Not that the birth of a male child was ever insignificant, that could never be the case within a traditional Turkish family like the Süleymans.

  Mehmet’s family had a noble pedigree. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century his ancestors had been prominent dignitaries in the Black Sea town of Trabzon. When, however, one particular forebear, a young man named Süleyman, exhibited outstanding courage in battle against the Russians, the Sultan of the day rewarded the family with property and Süleyman himself with the hand of one of his own daughters. This ancestor of the ‘ordinary’ Turk now known as Mehmet Süleyman had thus bestowed royalty upon his family and he and his descendants had continued to prosper, acquiring wealth and marrying other princesses. Things began to turn sour in the wake of the Great War and with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

  Now many kilometres as well as many years away from their old palace on the Bosphorus, the Süleyman family suffered as much as anyone from the rigours of hyperinflation. Mehmet’s father, the man some people still called ‘Prince’ Muhammed, possessed little now beyond his blood and his love for the French language to remind him of what his family had been. A grandson was, however, some consolation and even if the child’s mother was both a foreigner and of ‘common’ descent, the as yet unborn boy was eagerly anticipated. Mehmet’s mother would want to care for the child at every opportunity and, with Mehmet himself working for the police and Zelfa busy with her psychiatric practice, there would be ample opportunity for her to do so. Or not. Just the thought of it made Mehmet scowl. Although of ‘common’ descent herself, Nur Süleyman had pretensions. Backed up by a vicious tongue and almost unlimited spite, this made her a dangerous adversary. Mehmet himself had displeased her – once. Now he hated the sight of her.

  What, he wondered, would his mother do to stunt
and twist her grandson’s mind? She’d done a fine job on both Mehmet and his brother Murad. But then she would only be able to do that if he, Mehmet, let her and he had already decided that that was not going to happen. Somehow, although he didn’t yet know quite by what means, he and Zelfa would earn the money they needed to provide loving and responsible care for their son. And Nur Süleyman, wife of a prince, mother of ‘disappointing’ sons, would have no part in it.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  Eventually and inevitably good fortune runs out. If it did not, then all beings would be immortal. Whether this good grace and its subsequent withdrawal originates from Allah or the fickle arms of kismet or is simply a random act is debated frequently across the globe. And although those of a religious disposition possess their own firm answers to questions about the identity and purpose of the deity in charge of events, in accordance with their beliefs, even they are not immune from the pain that proceeds from loss. All that said, however, the human instinct is not to believe what has happened. The human reaction is to gain just a few more seconds of normality by vigorously denying that what has happened is indeed the truth.

  ‘No. No, you must be mistaken,’ Hürrem İpek said as she moved backwards, attempting to disappear into the corner of her settee. ‘No, it can’t be my Hatice, not . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid that it is,’ İkmen said. Both he and the female officer with him stood as they told her the news. Just like the officers who had come to inform her of Celal’s death, they had refused to sit. Celal! How her heart still hurt for her husband all these years on – how her body still ached for his.

  Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as Hürrem whispered a last gasp of denial. ‘No.’

  ‘Our doctor has yet to determine the cause of Hatice’s death,’ İkmen persisted. He was accustomed if not inured to this type of reaction.

  The female officer sat down beside Hürrem and took her hands.

  ‘But I have to warn you,’ İkmen continued gravely, ‘that we fear your daughter’s death was unlawful. You must prepare yourself for that.’

  Hürrem’s only reaction was in her eyes which widened.

  Officer Gün, who was a traditionally minded young woman, murmured the standard formulaic phrase for times like this. ‘May your head be alive,’ she said to Hürrem.

  İkmen signalled his agreement by inclining his head downwards slightly.

  ‘Oh, but I don’t want to be alive!’ Hürrem replied, her mouth thick with grief. ‘I want to die now! I want to . . .’

  And then she screamed.

  ‘I am so very sorry,’ İkmen said, his voice virtually inaudible behind the woman’s shrill torrent of pain. ‘Hatice was a good girl, a friend to my daughter . . .’

  ‘No!’

  She ripped her hands out of Gün’s grasp. They flew up to her face and into her hair, hacking, tearing, making her grief a visible, tangible thing. Something she could later look at in the bathroom mirror and know the reality of what had happened.

  İkmen and Gün for their part let her do it. For those for whom this was the way, you had to. Hürrem İpek was, like so many of the grieving relatives İkmen came across in the course of his work, a Muslim. And because all Muslims should be buried within twenty-four hours of death, not only did these relatives of the murdered have to come to terms with the demise of a loved one, they had to accept that burial within the prescribed time was impossible: cause of death had to be established, samples of tissue, fluids, etc., had to be taken and the body needed to be dissected. This, İkmen knew, was going to be very hard for the İpek family to bear.

  As Hürrem İpek tore great bloody clumps of hair from her head, İkmen raised his voice through her screams and gave her the only tiny chink of light that could penetrate her darkness.

  ‘I give you my word I will bring whoever did this to justice,’ he said. ‘I will not rest until it is done.’

  While officer Gün remained behind with Hürrem İpek, he left to make a brief visit to his own apartment. He told Hulya, who had been instructed to wait for him, that her friend was dead. Hulya cried, burying her head in her brother Bülent’s neck, until İkmen went over to her and took her in his arms. Rocking her gently back and forth he cooed into her ears in the way that he had seen Fatma his wife do when she soothed the children through their miseries.

  As soon as the 747 touched down at Heathrow Airport, London, Hikmet and Kaycee Sivas made their way to the gate where they were due to pick up the connecting flight to Amsterdam and then İstanbul.

  Kaycee, who was a little nervous about missing their connection, virtually ran. Hikmet, who was rather more accustomed to the way that things worked in the real world (not the USA), made his way in a more leisurely fashion.

  ‘The flight will probably be delayed,’ he said as he watched Kaycee’s long blonde hair flap up and down as she hurried. ‘This is Heathrow. It’s the busiest airport in Europe. I’ve never got through without a delay.’

  And, indeed, when they did eventually arrive at the gate in question the flight had been delayed by half an hour.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Kaycee said and flung first her hand luggage and then her long, slim body down onto one of the less than comfortable chairs. ‘I just hate all this waiting stuff.’

  Hikmet smiled. ‘Ah, well, you’re in Europe now,’ he said as he, too, lowered himself down onto a seat. ‘The Old World. Time is viewed rather more casually here than in the US. And as we head east, you’ll see, casualness becomes a virtual disregard. In my country time is almost irrelevant.’

  Kaycee scowled. ‘Great.’ But then she, too, smiled. ‘Ah, but what the hell,’ she took one of his hands in hers, ‘it’s an adventure. And anyway, where do I get off coming on like a movie star, eh?’

  He kissed her. ‘I married an academic for a very good reason,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Hikmet Sivas had been married three times before. In each case it had been to minor starlets with ideas above their fame. Not one of them had ever accompanied him back to Turkey – not one of them had ever wanted to. But Kaycee Durand was of a rather different order. Although she looked like a typical Angelino starlet, she was neither as young nor as dumb as many casual observers imagined. At thirty-two she was not, in fact, less than half her husband’s age and being a lecturer in astrophysics at UCLA she was far from stupid. Not that Hikmet always found her cleverness to his liking. Indeed her next inquiry was a case in point.

  ‘So, Hi,’ she said, using the shortened version of his name that seemed to sit far more easily with his American persona than Hikmet, ‘you gonna tell me the real reason for this sudden summer vacation or what?’

  Hikmet Sivas frowned.

  ‘I mean, I accept that there is probably some sort of family stuff going down . . .’

  ‘My brother and my sister are having . . . difficulties.’ He took his hand from hers and looked away.

  ‘Yeah, which you won’t specify,’ Kaycee replied. ‘Not that it matters a whole lot. It’s just that coming from the Big Easy as I do, I know all about family stuff and how weird that can be. I mean, I’ve had to go home before now just to take my mom over to the juju woman so she can get a husband spelled out of her life.’

  ‘It isn’t like that.’ Hikmet turned back to face her, his features suddenly and unusually taut. Such an expression, Kaycee thought, made him look what she imagined ‘very Turkish’ to be.

  ‘So how is it then, Hi?’ she asked. ‘What are these difficulties?’

  ‘They are Turkish,’ he said. ‘I can say no more because you just wouldn’t understand.’ And then with a hardness in his voice that was totally unknown to her, he added, ‘Just like I don’t understand your New Orleans juju women and their doings.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Read your book and wait for your airplane, Kaycee,’ he said. ‘You will have a good vacation in my country. You will like it. And then when all the difficulties are resolved, we will return to the States and you will
have lots of stories and happy memories.’

  He got up and walked over to the window. A British Airways European Airbus was slowly approaching their gate. Soon he would be home in beautiful Turkey. He was looking forward to smoking cigarettes again for a while but one would never have known this from his face which was indescribably sad.

  The district of Cankurtaran lies between the glorious, monument-ridden Sultanahmet area of the city and the Sea of Marmara. Characterised by rather down-at-heel if faintly picturesque streets, it is a district of small schools, lots of children and the ruin of a melancholy Byzantine palace called the Bukoleon, now little more than a wall with three enormous marble-framed windows set into it. The palace was a ruin even when Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453 and is said to have inspired the victorious monarch to quote the following lines when he first came across it:

  The spider holds the curtain in the Palace of the Caesars

  The owl hoots its night call in the towers of Aphrasiab.

  This district, especially around the old palace and Cankurtaran railway station, is not particularly safe. Robberies and muggings happen there and women are not advised to walk alone in these parts especially at night. Alcoholics, it is said, frequently gather to drink rakı in the old palace gardens. Sometimes they can become threatening and abusive. Sometimes they just stay at home to do that. Ahmet Sılay, one-time actor, now full-time drinker and teller of tales, was a case in point. Sitting on a kilim on the floor of his small cottage on Cankurtaran Caddesi this bright afternoon, Ahmet was entertaining a young police officer in his own unique way.

  ‘Yes, I like to talk to the girls in the pastane,’ he said in answer to Tepe’s question about Hatice İpek and Hulya İkmen. ‘They like to talk to me.’ He took a deep gulp from his rakı glass and then wiped one hand across his mouth. ‘I’m an interesting old bastard.’

  Tepe, who was sitting over by the sun-flooded window, found that his eyes were drawn to a photograph of a handsome young man on the table in front of him. It was a black and white print and showed an elegant fellow wearing one of those loose suits so typical of men’s fashions in the 1950s.