A Dead Man in Istanbul

by Michael Pearce

  He came back perturbed.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said to Ponsonby, ‘I don’t like this business.’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Effendi.’

  ‘Ill, is he?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Ibrahim mysteriously.

  Mohammed, it seemed, was frightened to go out.

  ‘Frightened!’ said Ponsonby. ‘What’s he frightened of?’

  ‘The Fleshmakers,’ said Ibrahim unwillingly.

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Ponsonby. ‘You go back and tell him –’

  But Ibrahim, it transpired, wasn’t at all anxious to tell him anything. In fact, he wasn’t willing even to go to his house. Ibrahim, it soon became clear, was as frightened as Mohammed was.

  ‘Damn it!’ said Ponsonby. ‘We can’t have this!’

  He decided he would go down to see Mohammed himself. That meant Ibrahim had to drive him. Ibrahim pleaded sickness; malaria, he thought, or dysentery, or – perhaps desperately – typhoid fever.

  ‘You can take us down to the bridge,’ said Ponsonby, ‘and we’ll walk from there. We’ll risk the typhoid fever.’

  Seymour had asked to go with him.

  Ibrahim took them down to the Galata Bridge and gave directions to the street where Mohammed lived. It was in one of the poorer parts of the city and as they drew closer they became aware of an all-pervading smell, a sort of rancid fetidness.

  ‘The tanneries,’ said Ponsonby.

  It was a whole district and carts piled high with skins and fleeces were coming and going continuously. In the big drying and tanning barns, steamy with heat and thick with flies, men were working stripped to the waist, their arms and torsos mottled with blood.

  About them were stacked skins in mounds up to thirty feet high and the ground was littered with little pieces of flesh. Everywhere there were heaps of discarded fleece. The heaps, oddly, were beautifully coloured, delicately tinged with copper and bronze by the processing. The sky was dark overhead with hawks circling, and every now and then one would dart down, pounce on some meat and then fly away again. And everywhere there were dogs scavenging, tearing at the meat and snarling at interlopers, human or canine.

  It was an awful place and they hurried through it and into the little streets beyond. The stench was just as great and the flies just as many. They settled on the faces of the children playing in the road and the children did not bother to wipe them away.

  Ponsonby frowned.

  ‘I would have thought he could have done better than this,’ he said. ‘We pay higher wages than most people.’

  One reason, perhaps, why Mohammed couldn’t live better became apparent when they reached his house. It was full of children. They spilled out into the road, a narrow alleyway strewn with rotting vegetables and smelling like the tanneries.

  The door was open and there was a woman inside. She wasn’t wearing a veil and when she saw them she tried to shut the door on them. Ponsonby wedged his foot in the door and stopped it from closing.

  ‘Mohammed,’ he called out. ‘It’s Ponsonby Effendi!’

  After a long moment, a quavery voice responded from inside.

  ‘It’s all right, Mohammed. It’s Ponsonby Effendi. No one is going to harm you.’

  There was an exchange of words between the man inside and the woman, and then the woman allowed them in. There seemed to be just one room. It was very dark but when his eyes grew accustomed, Seymour could see that a man was in a corner, lying on a mattress.

  Ponsonby went across and squatted down beside him.

  ‘What is it, Mohammed?’ he said, with surprising kindness.

  They began to talk in Arabic, which Seymour could only occasionally follow.

  At first Mohammed seemed barely able to speak, but gradually his story emerged. What Seymour didn’t gather then, Ponsonby explained to him later.

  Two nights before, said Mohammed, as he was making his way home, he had been suddenly seized by some men. One, or perhaps it was two, had held his arms and another had grasped him by the hair and pulled his head back. They had held a knife to his throat and asked him if he was a faithful servant of God and the Sultan. He had, of course, gasped that he was.

  ‘Why, then, do you aid the infidel and the Sultan’s enemies?’ they had asked.

  ‘I but stand at the door,’ Mohammed had protested.

  ‘You do more than that,’ they had said, and referred to his rowing the boat across for Cunningham. Mohammed had not known what to say except that the Effendi had bidden it and he was but a poor man, etc.

  ‘You are an enemy of the Sultan and you must die,’ the man had said.

  Racking his brain in his extremity, Mohammed recalled that some years before his father had done someone in the Sultan’s household a service, and he pleaded for this to be taken into account. The men had seemed for the moment taken aback.

  ‘From this you see that I am loyal,’ Mohammed had said, pressing home his advantage. ‘If I have done wrong, I am but foolish.’

  The men had conferred.

  ‘Are you sure that it was Bebek that this service was done for?’ they had said threateningly.

  ‘As sure as I am that your knife is at my throat,’ Mohammed had said.

  ‘It was his father that did the service, not him,’ one of the men had said.

  ‘Yet, for his father’s sake, Bebek would surely not wish that we kill him,’ someone else had said.

  They had conferred some more and then had released him.

  ‘For your father’s sake we will let you go,’ they said. ‘For his loyalty not yours. Learn from him.’

  ‘I will,’ Mohammed had promised, no doubt with fervency. ‘Oh, I will!’

  ‘Have nothing to do with the infidels! Shun their filthy ways! Lead an upright life!’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will!’

  ‘Tell no man what has happened to you. And this above all: tell no man what happened to you on that other day, the day the mad Effendi was shot.’

  Mohammed had muttered that the terjiman and the kaimakam had already asked him questions.

  They had seemed to accept that.

  ‘It may be, though,’ they had said, ‘that they will come again and ask you more questions. And that others will come, too. Say no more. No matter what they ask. Neither about what happened before, nor about what happened after. Nothing! Do you understand that?’

  ‘It would have been better to have killed him,’ one of the men had said.

  ‘Bebek would not have liked it. This is a better way to buy his silence,’ said the man who seemed to be their leader, ‘provided that he understands. You understand, do you?’ he had said, turning to Mohammed.

  ‘As God is my witness –’

  ‘He is your witness. And if you break your word, He will know, and so will we. Remember, not a word: neither about the before nor about the after. Be dumb, or else there is for you the long silence.’

  Then they had left him. Mohammed had managed to stagger home before collapsing. Since then he had lain on his bed thinking. He liked his job at the Embassy, he told Ponsonby, and he needed the money it had brought in. But, as he said, he also liked his life, and feared that he would lose it if he did not do as the man had said.

  ‘Take no heed of them,’ Ponsonby said. ‘They are but bandits. You can stay in the Embassy till all is forgotten.’

  But Mohammed said that the men were not but bandits. They had not sought to rob him. And they had spoken of the Sultan, and bidden Mohammed to lead an upright life. ‘It may be,’ he said, ‘that they are just men and true servants of the Sultan.’

  ‘How can they be just men and true servants of the Sultan when they seize you and threaten you and, if what you say is true, would even kill you?’

  ‘Just but severe,’ Mohammed insisted.

  It was then that he ventured to name what had so frightened Ibrahim when he had pronounced it to him earlier.

  ‘People speak of the Fleshmakers,’ he sa
id.

  When they got back to the Embassy Ponsonby went straight in to report to the Ambassador: and about half an hour later he came out and asked Seymour to join them.

  The Old Man looked at him over the top of his spectacles.

  ‘Well, Seymour,’ he said, ‘what, as a policeman, would you say?’

  ‘I would say that someone was trying to frighten witnesses.’

  ‘And why would they do that?’

  Seymour hesitated. ‘They obviously think the witnesses can tell us something.’

  ‘It is hard to think what,’ said Ponsonby. ‘I mean . . . Mohammed! What more could he have to tell?’

  ‘I know. Nevertheless, they are obviously worried that there is something.’

  ‘Even if, as I gather, he didn’t see the actual shooting.’

  ‘They seemed to me to emphasize the before and after. I shall have to look at those again.’

  ‘Please do so . . . And, if you could, before Lady Cunningham gets here!’

  ‘Meanwhile, what are we going to do about Mohammed?’ asked Ponsonby. ‘I told him he could stay in the Embassy.’

  ‘Well, he certainly could.’

  ‘And his eight children?’

  The Ambassador winced.

  ‘I suppose, at a pinch –’

  ‘I am not sure he would want to,’ said Seymour. ‘He might feel it was less dangerous simply to stay at home. He would be doing what they asked.’

  ‘We could go on paying him, I suppose. A sort of sick leave allowance.’

  ‘If we did that,’ said Ponsonby, ‘I wouldn’t like it to be generally known. Otherwise we’ll have all the staff wanting to stay at home and be paid one.’

  ‘But if it was just Mohammed, that could be managed, couldn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it could. Would you like me to see to it, sir?’

  ‘Please.’ The Ambassador thought. ‘It’s a little like giving in, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s only for a time. Until Seymour completes his investigations.’

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ said the Ambassador doubtfully.

  ‘There is one thing,’ said Seymour, ‘that I think we ought to pursue. This man Bebek.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the Ambassador, even more doubtfully.

  ‘Bebek is a senior official at the court,’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘His name was actually mentioned.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . they didn’t actually say that he had had anything to do with the attack. Just that he wouldn’t like it if things were carried too far.’

  ‘It might be worth talking to him.’

  ‘Well, yes, but it might also be counter-productive,’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘Delicate,’ said the Ambassador. ‘It’s always delicate with the court.’

  ‘And what would you ask him? Why they mentioned his name? Because Mohammed had mentioned it first, he would say. In connection with his father! Would you get anywhere?’

  ‘Nevertheless –’

  ‘If there was anything else,’ said the Old Man, ‘that pointed to him –’

  ‘But there isn’t!’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘Hmm.’

  There was a little pause.

  ‘I think we should proceed with caution,’ said the Ambassador.

  ‘Of course, sir, I respect your judgement,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Hmm,’ said the Ambassador. Doubtfully.

  He turned to Ponsonby.

  ‘If there was some other way of doing it!’ he said. ‘More . . . indirectly.’

  ‘Difficult for us to do it,’ agreed Ponsonby. ‘As an Embassy. Would raise all sorts of questions.’

  ‘And if Mr Seymour . . .’

  ‘Part of the Embassy, sir, from their point of view.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Pause.

  ‘Someone else, then?’

  ‘But who, sir?’

  ‘This fellow, Mukhtar, perhaps?’

  Seymour didn’t know much about international relations but he could see plenty of questions about this one.

  ‘Well, that is a possibility, sir,’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘Seymour seems to get on with him. Perhaps he could . . .’

  ‘Informally,’ said Ponsonby.

  ‘These things are often better handled informally.’

  ‘It is, after all, an attack on Embassy staff.’

  ‘Got to do something,’ said the Ambassador. ‘Lady C. . . .’

  ‘But must keep it in proportion. Not too little. But not too big.’

  ‘An informal word . . .’

  ‘Just so, sir. These things are really quite . . .’

  ‘Delicate,’ said the Ambassador.

  Hmm.

  Seymour took a chance and went to the theatre. Fortunately, Mukhtar was there.

  A word?

  Certainly.

  ‘I don’t want to take you from your work,’ apologized Seymour.

  ‘You won’t be.’

  He led Seymour to a coffee house nearby.

  ‘It’s the one the actors go to,’ he said, ‘and there are some questions I can ask while I’m here.’

  ‘How are you getting on?’ asked Seymour.

  ‘Slowly. I have had to work through everybody, you see. It could, in principle, have been anyone working here.’

  ‘An inside job, you mean?’

  The terjiman nodded.

  ‘I think so. The players had been rehearsing. They had all been onstage. The others still were. Miss Kassim had come off to change her costume. She was the only one in the dressing rooms at the time. But, of course, only the people involved with the production knew she was there. At that time and in that place.

  ‘Now, of course, it could have been someone who had come in casually off the street. But that is unlikely. The room in which she was changing was at the end of the corridor in a complex of other small rooms and there’s a porter at the outside door. You would not, I think, wander there by chance. And if you were coming in from outside and looking for her, the chance of you finding her there and at that moment, well . . .! No, I am proceeding on the assumption that it was someone who worked in the theatre.

  ‘So far I have been going through them. Everybody. Looking largely at time and place. Eliminating where I can. It ought to be easy since everyone here has to be in their place, either up onstage or to do with what’s up onstage, and if they’re not, the manager goes berserk.

  ‘But in fact it is surprisingly difficult. Yes, people should be in their places, but often they are coming from them or going to them. There is a lot of movement in the theatre and there are frequent changes.

  ‘But, of course, in the end it should be possible. It is just a question of working patiently through. And that is what I am doing.’ He smiled. ‘Even coming here –’ he looked round the coffee house – ‘to check on whether they actually were here when they said they were.’

  Seymour, interested professionally, nodded agreement. In these circumstances it probably would be just a question of working patiently through.

  A thought struck him.

  ‘You will want to check people who have left recently, too,’ he said. ‘People who worked here once and then left.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Mukhtar. ‘I shall have to do that.’

  Seymour told him about the saz player.

  ‘Saz player?’ said Mukhtar. ‘I did not know that.’

  ‘He was dismissed. That could be a motive.’

  ‘And,’ said Mukhtar, ‘the saz is a stringed instrument!’

  Seymour told the terjiman about the attack on Mohammed. Mukhtar listened with great attention.

  ‘There could be no question of possible identification, could there?’ he said. ‘Could he have seen someone? On the beach, perhaps?’

  ‘We’ve asked him this, and he’s said no. And the kaimakam made enquiries –’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mukhtar, ‘but I’ve been back since. I went to Abidé. I wanted to talk to the small boys who appeared on the beach afterwards. Well, I foun
d them, and two of them said they had seen someone.’

  He looked at Seymour.

  ‘A woman,’ he said.

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘Yes. At first I thought that that was just a figment of Cunningham’s romantic imagination, part of the beguiling story that he had been putting around. But the two boys were definite. They had seen a woman. She was climbing up from the beach. They thought that perhaps she had been looking for driftwood.’

  ‘Woman?’ said Seymour. He told Mukhtar about the enquiries he had been making.

  ‘Fruitless,’ he said. ‘This is the first confirmed indication that there was one.’

  ‘I checked at the village nearby,’ Mukhtar said, ‘the one the children came from. It is some way inland. The women there deny it. They would, of course. But I think they were speaking the truth. No one from the village, they said. Another village, then? But the nearest one is some way away and they were adamant that if someone had come, they would have known.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘My enquiries were thorough,’ he said, ‘but perhaps, in the light of what you say about the attack on the boatman, I should make them again.’

  ‘There is another thing,’ said Seymour. ‘What about this Bebek who was mentioned?’

  The terjiman was silent.

  ‘That is difficult,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Bebek is a very important person. He is high up at court. One does not go to him and ask questions just like that. Not if one is . . .’ he smiled a little ruefully, ‘just a simple terjiman. I could, of course, approach my superiors. But they . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I will have to think about it.’

  This was probably as far as he could go. Seymour sensed layers of, probably bureaucratic, complexity. But he could see that Mukhtar was thinking about it and he thought he had detected in him a considerable determination. The terjiman, he thought, would not let go.

  Well, Seymour had done what they had asked him to; and now, as the afternoon wore on into evening, he could give his mind to more important things.

  Like meeting Felicity.

  They had arranged to meet at the Sultanakhmet Mosque but when he arrived she wasn’t yet there and he waited outside.

  High above, on the little balconies of the minarets, the muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer. They walked round the balconies, stopping periodically to lean over and call, cupping their hands to make a megaphone. Their voices reached out over the city.