Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘So did your father know that Aysu was sweet on Kemalettin Senar?’ İkmen asked. ‘I mean before . . .’

  ‘Oh, he knew,’ Nazlı Hanım replied. ‘But once he’d identified the girl as suitable, he also knew that Kemalettin Senar couldn’t possibly be any sort of threat.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he paid Kemalettin’s mother to make a big fuss about the girl’s dowry.’

  ‘I thought that the Alkayas were poor?’ İkmen said with a frown.

  ‘Oh, they were, are,’ Nazlı Hanım said. ‘But if Nalan Senar were not such a greedy woman, it would have been enough. After all, the Senars have some money but they are no one. They say that their blood is pure and untainted by all the ills that afflict so many other families here, but that is nonsense. Nalan’s father was a raving lunatic.’ She tutted her tongue and sucked on her teeth. ‘And look at Kemalettin . . .’

  ‘I thought that he was mentally damaged, on account of Aysu,’ İkmen said.

  Nazlı shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ And then rapidly changing the subject she said, ‘I suppose some people have told you that my father or I killed Aysu.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, Inspector,’ she said, this time with a genuine smile. ‘I know that some ignorant people believe that. They say that Father locked her in, that I made her into my servant. But she was free to come and go and we shared the chores, she and I. I washed her clothes with my own hands.’ She held two ravaged claws aloft for İkmen to see. ‘I also know’, she continued gravely, ‘that Father was, and I am, innocent. The night that Aysu disappeared my father slept alone; I saw him retire. The three of us went to our own rooms. I slept all night and when I woke in the morning she had gone.’

  ‘I understand she took some belongings with her,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Some clothes and personal effects, yes. She also left the courtyard gate unlocked when she left.’

  ‘Really?’ According to Haldun Alkaya his daughter had been a virtual prisoner in the Kahraman house. ‘Did she have a key or . . .’

  ‘My father kept the key always by his bed,’ Nazlı said, tight-lipped around this admission, or so it seemed. ‘She must have crept in and taken it.’

  İkmen was just thinking about how he might ask her what she thought might have happened and why, when she said, ‘Of course, she left to be with Kemalettin Senar who probably also killed her.’

  ‘Why do you think that, Nazlı Hanım?’

  ‘Well, look at Kemalettin and tell me whether you think he is normal.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘He’s always been a bit odd. He was good-looking back then, but strange. Not in the least bit like his brother. But then Nalan has always over-protected him. Maybe she saw the seeds of his grandfather’s madness in him and wanted to save him and her family from embarrassment. But anyway, I don’t think that any girl would ever have been good enough for Kemalettin in Nalan’s eyes. With regard to their children, Nalan and my father had a lot in common. Nothing and no one was ever good enough.’

  Which had to explain why Nazlı Hanım had been a spinster for so long. İkmen turned briefly to look at the handsome young man who had been sitting silently underneath the kitchen window while they had been talking. The age gap between them was ludicrous and yet Erkan Erduran seemed too simple to be a typical, money-grabbing gigolo. He was also, on the face of it, completely clueless. He had no conversation, probably no education, and, when he did speak, a rather monotone voice. Of course he had to be good at something but that, İkmen felt, was probably something he didn’t want to think about – especially with the wrinkled face of Nazlı Hanım right in front of him.

  ‘No, I think that he did it,’ Nazlı said, her elderly eyes looking sleepily over both her considerable property and the village.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kemalettin Senar,’ she replied. ‘I think she ran away to be with him and that he killed her.’

  ‘But why?’ İkmen said. ‘If he loved her . . .’

  ‘Maybe it was an accident,’ the old woman said. ‘Or maybe she wouldn’t let him touch her until they could be married but he took no notice of what she said. Maybe he violated her and then killed her. But then, maybe, Allah forgive her, she killed herself once she realised all the money she had given up when she left my father. I hope that for the sake of her soul, suicide was not the case, but . . .’ She shrugged.

  İkmen didn’t tell Nazlı Kahraman that Aysu Alkaya had been shot in the back and could not, therefore, have possibly committed suicide. But maybe some of her other ideas were valid. That some sort of accident involving a gun, possibly purloined as insurance against the couple’s escape, could have occurred was not outside the bounds of possibility. That Kemalettin had been ‘odd’, sexually deviant or whatever, prior to Aysu’s disappearance wasn’t to be discounted either. After all, however much in love most men were with their youthful sweethearts, very few would descend so far into grief-induced madness as Kemalettin Senar had done.

  Later, as he wandered back to his cousin’s hotel, İkmen wondered again about these issues and about the money Ziya Kahraman had paid to Kemalettin’s mother. Had Haldun Alkaya known about that, and, the odd strange villager aside, what was the obsession with ‘untainted blood’ all about? He resolved to ask Menşure about it in the morning.

  The policeman from İstanbul, the one that was Menşure Tokatlı’s cousin, had spent a very long time in the house of the Lemon Queen, Nalan Senar felt. He’d gone in just before iftar and she’d watched the gate, the only way in or out of the property, ever since. It had been pitch dark by the time he took his leave just outside on Muradiye Sokak.

  Nalan Senar hadn’t followed him. She’d heard some of what had been said inside by pressing her ear against one of the cracks in the gate. Some of it had concerned her, but there hadn’t been anything that wasn’t true. Yes, she had taken money from the Lemon King to keep Kemalettin away from Aysu Alkaya. What of it? The old man had had plenty of money and she hadn’t wanted Kemalettin to have anything to do with the Alkaya girl anyway. No, what exercised the sharp brain that pulsed beneath Nalan’s brightly patterned headscarf was what they had been talking about at the beginning of their conversation. Something about an English girl and outsiders coming to the village many years ago. That made Nalan sweat. The subject of foreign visitors to Muratpaşa many years ago was not one she wanted anyone to discuss. If talk like that began, Allah alone knew where it would end. It was almost too terrible to think about. As soon as the policeman had gone she raced down the hill in the opposite direction towards her own house, a double-coned chimney that she shared with Kemalettin and their great yellow kangal dog, Zeytin.

  Once inside the courtyard, she lay back breathlessly against the wooden gate and pulled one plump hand across her sweating brow. The dog had barked in greeting when she arrived, but because she was indoors, Zeytin had soon shut up. Her son on the other hand was outside, naked in front of the shed that housed the gas cylinders. He looked across at his mother with an entirely static and unfathomable expression on his face. Nalan, for all her years of dealing briskly with him, suddenly felt her heart soften and she burst into tears.

  He woke up in the very early hours of the morning and was completely disorientated. He was not in his bedroom. It was one of his bedrooms, places he had lived at and slept in over the years, but it wasn’t his room at home in Arnavautköy. He would not, he knew, be able to hear his father’s snoring coming from the old man’s room across the hall. No, he was at Zelfa’s house in Ortaköy, the one he had gone back to with her after their wedding. He was also in Zelfa’s, and what had also been his own, bed.

  Although it was dark, there was enough light in the room for Mehmet Süleyman to see his wife as she slept beside him. From the expression on her face, which looked like a slight Mona Lisa smile, it would seem that she was at peace. If only he could feel likewise. Now that he had woken he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep and s
o he got out of bed and walked, naked, over to the small table and chairs that Zelfa kept in the area where the bay window protruded over the garden. There were no curtains or blinds on the windows, nor was there any need for them, the garden being entirely secluded behind ancient trees. Mehmet lit a cigarette and sat down at the little table to think.

  As soon as he’d kissed her, Mehmet had known that Zelfa was going to let him make love to her. For all her protestations about divorce he’d been able to feel an immediate response in her body as soon as he’d touched her. And because neither of them had had sex for a while they had both been greedy for passion and reluctant for it to end. The bedroom had only been the endgame as it were to the sucking and caressing that had started in the kitchen and passed briefly into the bathroom. That Yusuf seemed to have slept through all the groans and screams coming from his parents was nothing short of a miracle. The whole experience had been, on so many levels, fantastic.

  But now that he’d slept, Mehmet was beginning to wonder whether what had happened was more illusion than reality. Clearly both he and Zelfa had wanted sex, but had it meant anything more than that? He didn’t want his marriage to end, but whether that had more to do with Yusuf than Zelfa he still wasn’t sure. Just as she couldn’t trust him, he wasn’t certain that he could trust her either. After all, as a psychiatrist, Zelfa came up against some very twisted states of mind on a daily basis – different mindsets and behavioural patterns that could, perhaps, give her ideas about revenge . . . How cruel would it be to fulfil him sexually, which she had done, and then tell him that she still wanted a divorce, still intended to rip the very shirt from his back? All he could do was wait and see what happened in the morning.

  He looked out of the window into the garden, which was lit only by a weak quarter moon. Had he come to the house in Ortaköy with the intention of seducing Zelfa? Truthfully he could only answer ‘maybe’, but even that felt guilty as he thought about it. He’d come to see Yusuf and to talk and . . . one of the coniferous bushes down by the ornamental pond shivered slightly in the dead, night-time air. Moved, possibly, by a cat or a street dog passing through the garden, but there was something about the movement of this plant that caught Mehmet’s attention. And as a shiver became an actual parting of the bush fronds, he leaned down to get a closer look at what was causing this to happen. Just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped and, assuming it must have been an animal of some sort, Mehmet looked away in order to put his cigarette out in an ashtray. However, when he looked back into the garden – for just a fleeting second, no more – there was a figure standing on the lawn. It was definitely human and it moved with a speed that reminded Mehmet of several martial arts movies he had seen.

  He knew that even if his gun had been to hand it would have been useless to employ it. The human figure, man or whatever it was, had gone now. How long it had been there – while he and Zelfa made love, while they slept, while Yusuf slept – was impossible to know. Mehmet quickly went to check on his son and then stood panting with fear on the threshold of what had once been his bedroom.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  ‘You know it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the weather can charge around here,’ Çetin İkmen said as he looked out of the jeep at the snow-covered landscape. ‘Yesterday evening was very mild, I thought.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s the danger of it for people hiking in the valleys without the proper equipment,’ Altay Salman replied. ‘Snow or rain can arrive very quickly and quite violently sometimes. Every year we get the crazies out there communing with the peris and of course the foreigners who want to find “spiritual enlightenment” or something amongst the chimneys.’

  İkmen smiled. Although the road they were on now, which led from the village in to Nevşehir, was far from picturesque, it had been rather magical waking up in a white and sparkling Muratpaşa. Menşure had brought him tea and, although she had begged him not to drink it out on his balcony where everyone could see, he’d disobeyed her. He had stood for almost half an hour drinking, smoking and watching as pigeons, alighting on the overhead power cables, shook powdery snow down onto the streets below. Sand-coloured minarets, though not as grand as those he was accustomed to in İstanbul, pierced the silver-grey sky like elegant fingers, their tips just very lightly dusted with glittering ice.

  Shortly after an elderly neighbour of Menşure’s had called out the word ‘shameful!’ at the heavily smoking İkmen, Altay Salman had turned up with news from Nevşehir. The local police would allow the man from İstanbul to view Aysu Alkaya’s body provided he came that morning. Ever helpful, Altay had offered to drive İkmen in to the regional capital through what was not thick snow but was nevertheless something more easily tackled by a jeep than an ordinary saloon car.

  Once the formalities were complete, which included İkmen telling a very prematurely aged man – loosely his counterpart in Nevşehir – about the ‘glamour’ involved in working in İstanbul, they entered the mortuary. Small, its floors wet and muddy from numerous snow-covered boots, the place smelt strongly of formaldehyde and other disinfectants. One of the walls was covered with the refrigerated cabinets designed to store bodies and as he looked at them, İkmen was suddenly in his mind transported back to İstanbul and the laboratory of the Armenian pathologist, Arto Sarkissian. Friends since childhood, Arto, Çetin and their families had once spent a summer holiday together at what was now Menşure’s place in Muratpaşa. Arto and his brother Krikor had loved exploring the chimneys with Çetin and his brother Halıl as well as the frighteningly independent young Menşure. As poor, tired-looking Inspector Erten pulled open one of the drawers, İkmen wished that Arto could be with him now. After all, whatever what was left of Aysu Alkaya looked like, it wouldn’t mean too much to him.

  ‘She was shot in the back,’ Inspector Erten said as he removed the covering from the corpse. ‘The ballistic tests have identified the weapon as a Colt 45. Not the sort of thing a Muratpaşa grape grower would have.’

  ‘No.’

  As İkmen looked down at what was indeed a mummified body he thought about the gun. A Colt 45 was a serious weapon by anyone’s standards and Erten was quite right to point out that it wasn’t something the average Cappadocian would have had access to, especially not twenty years ago. A Colt was a military weapon, however, and if İkmen wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t a current Turkish military weapon. But then the ballistics department would know that and would, he hoped, have put that in their report to Erten.

  ‘I assume, this being the country, that quite a lot of those involved with the girl have or had guns?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘The Kahraman family possess a selection of shotguns,’ Erten replied. ‘They have papers for them. And of course the guide Turgut Senar has a Beretta.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’

  ‘I understand Mr Senar goes out into some of the more distant valleys,’ Erten continued. ‘I expect you have heard stories about wolves, Inspector?’

  ‘They’re all true,’ Altay Salman confirmed to İkmen. ‘A very real threat. I know about Turgut’s Beretta; he’s an excellent shot.’

  İkmen turned his attention back to the corpse.

  ‘You were right when you described the body as “mummified”,’ he said to Altay Salman. ‘How on earth did her father identify her?’

  ‘She has six toes on each foot,’ Erten replied. ‘It wasn’t well known, she was apparently ashamed of what she considered a deformity. Girls are so sensitive about these things because they fear it may prevent them from finding a husband. But the father knew and identified her from her feet and the clothes she was wearing, the things she was carrying. Oh, and I did also check with the doctor in the village – about the toes. He confirmed the father’s story. This is Aysu Alkaya.’

  Poor child, İkmen added in his mind. In love with Kemalettin Senar, all but sold to the elderly Ziya Kahraman – and with those weird, overly wide feet to contend with, too. What, he wondered, had Ziya Kahraman’s reactio
n been to his new wife when he saw those feet for the first time? According to his daughter, the Lemon King had been very keen to avoid any hint of in-breeding when it came to his theoretical son. Surely deformity, whatever its cause might be, had to have been forbidden too?

  ‘Our doctor says that there is evidence of bruising on the body,’ Erten continued. ‘But whether that is connected to the murder . . .’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t have so many facilities here as you have in İstanbul. This is an unlawful killing, but given the time that has elapsed all I can do is re-interview those remaining from that time and look for whoever may have owned or had access to a Colt 45.’

  İkmen, still looking down at the shrunken, expressionless face of Aysu Alkaya said, ‘If I could arrange for some samples of body tissue and clothing to be tested at the Forensic Institute, do you think that might help you?’

  ‘You mean DNA testing?’ Erten’s thin face broke into what was the closest he had probably ever come to a smile. ‘I’ve often thought that she must have some fibres or evidence of some sort from whoever killed her – maybe under her finger nails. I’ve seen a video of this. Now we know, in this age of scientific wonder, that it is almost impossible to commit an offence and not leave something of oneself behind.’

  ‘Yes, although a lot of time has passed since this offence was committed,’ İkmen cautioned. ‘There may be little or nothing of use here.’

  ‘No.’

  They all looked down at the dry, brittle body just barely enclosed in what was left of its şalvar trousers and tunic. It was truly a very sad sight.

  ‘Oh, you should also know that she was pregnant when she died,’ Erten continued. ‘Only in the early stages, but we will tell her father, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’ This from what İkmen had heard before was unexpected. It was also most illuminating. ‘Maybe we can test for the paternity of the foetus too,’ he said as he watched Erten cover the body once again. ‘I’ll do what I can.’