Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  Once outside the disturbingly un-smoke-filled office of his superior, Süleyman stopped to think for a few moments. In situations like that of Abdullah Aydın, doctors usually liaised with the investigating officer himself. Rarely, if ever, did they approach Ardıç unless it was to complain about police treatment of one of their patients. Süleyman knew he had done nothing wrong and so there were no fears there. But for the doctor to approach Ardıç, as opposed to himself, with news of Aydın’s deterioration wasn’t usual. It wasn’t even as if he’d been unavailable – he’d been in all the time! But there was only one way to find out and so Süleyman went back to his office and retrieved his car keys from his desk. It was lunchtime now and, even if Dr Arkın was keeping Ramazan, she would almost certainly be having a break at this time.

  The wonderfully weird Valley of the Saints, famed for its impenetrable caves and hermitages, might just as well have been the dull mining district around the Black Sea city of Zonguldak for all İkmen cared when he got there. He was out of breath and footsore; there wasn’t a bone in his body that seemed to be happy about this latest, crazy, physical adventure. While Turgut Senar pointed up at one of the triple-coned chimneys that the valley was famous for, İkmen found a piece of ground that wasn’t covered with snow, sat down on it, and rubbed his ankles.

  ‘The Valley of the Saints has for a long time been famous as a place of mystery,’ Turgut Senar said as the rest of his group, apart from İkmen, looked round with awestruck expressions on their faces. ‘People who could not fit in with ordinary life would come here. Some Christian monks who chose to live in the way of St Simeon of the Stylites came here. They lived in caves and prayed many metres up in the air at the top of the fairy chimneys.’

  ‘So this was like a place to escape from the world, I suppose?’ Dolores Lavell asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, many people, many, many things, have been hidden in this Saints’ valley.’

  Because she knew both Menşure and Rachelle Jones, Dolores Lavell had to have known about what had so recently been found in the Valley of the Saints, what had been hidden away in its chimneys for so long. But she didn’t comment upon anything pertaining to Aysu Alkaya; that came from the Englishman, Tom.

  ‘Wasn’t a body discovered here recently?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Turgut Senar replied. ‘But it was not a monk. They have been gone many years.’ And he laughed.

  ‘But where was the body discovered?’ İkmen asked in English. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘In a cave,’ the guide said noncommittally.

  ‘Which one?’

  Turgut Senar frowned before replying in Turkish. ‘How would I know? You’re a policeman, ask the cops in Nevşehir.’

  ‘Don’t speak so that no one else can understand, Mr Senar, it’s very rude,’ İkmen said before reverting to English again. ‘Well, maybe we’ll come across it during our exploration.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  İkmen could see that the guide was displeased about his interest in this subject and so he pushed it that little bit further. ‘There may even be an officer or two still at the scene.’ And then looking up at the Englishman he said, ‘Perhaps Tom and I will see what we can find.’

  ‘That’d be cool,’ the young man said as he reached down in order to help İkmen to his feet.

  ‘You are supposed to stick with the group,’ Turgut Senar said sternly. ‘I am taking everyone to the St Simeon Stylites chimney in a moment. It is on three levels of caves.’

  ‘OK,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘I will just wait outside and have a look round. I don’t suppose you would like me to smoke in the St Simeon chimney, anyway, would you, Turgut?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled, then.’

  And so the party made off towards one of the largest triple-coned chimneys with İkmen and Tom very obviously bringing up the rear.

  ‘He’s a bit of a control freak,’ the Englishman said to İkmen as he watched Turgut periodically turn round in order to see what everyone was doing.

  ‘He doesn’t want to lose any of us,’ İkmen replied as he winced against the pain from his feet.

  ‘He’s coming on to those American women though, isn’t he?’ Tom said.

  İkmen smiled. ‘I’m afraid it is a reality of our lives that some of our men will do this,’ he said. ‘Westerners have, in comparison to us, so much more money.’

  The two men watched as the rest of the party, led by Turgut Senar, entered the large sand-coloured chimney that was the St Simeon Stylites chapel.

  ‘Don’t you think that Western women and Turkish men can really have relationships then, Inspector?’ the Englishman asked.

  İkmen lit up a cigarette and sighed. ‘Oh, I think it can be genuine,’ he said. ‘Indeed, one of my own friends is married to a Western woman and loves her very much.’ He didn’t go on to talk about Süleyman’s difficulties with Zelfa, but then they were largely irrelevant to this conversation. ‘But they are matched in both class and intellect. It’s important. The problem occurs I think, when older women come here looking for some fantasy dark, handsome young lover. Usually they find poor waiters, boys who rarely got beyond primary school. These boys take the women’s money and they break their hearts with other Western women they are also involved with. Not that I am entirely sorry for these women. They are educated, they should know better than to fall for such a transparent fantasy. Why do you ask?’

  Tom shrugged. ‘I’m just interested. So what about this body, Inspector? Are we going to see what we can find?’

  ‘We will take what you British call a little stroll,’ İkmen said with a smile. And so the two of them set off down beside the chapel of St Simeon Stylites and very soon they disappeared from view. The valleys are like that. One can disappear and be rendered silent within them in a heartbeat.

  Dr Hazine Arkın was not taking a break. In fact, as Mehmet Süleyman could see, she was actually running from patient to patient.

  ‘We’re very short-staffed today,’ she said when he asked if he could just have a moment of her time. ‘What is it?’

  He explained to her what Commissioner Ardıç had told him about Abdullah Aydın.

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Then you’ll know I’ll tell your boss when it’s all right for you to interview him,’ she said.

  ‘I thought that was going to be later on today, Doctor,’ Süleyman said. ‘You said . . .’

  ‘Things can change, as I’m sure you are aware, Inspector,’ she said and then turned aside to speak to one of her nurses for a moment.

  When she had finished, Süleyman asked, ‘Has Abdullah Aydın’s condition deteriorated?’

  ‘Things have changed,’ she said. ‘As I told Commissioner Ardıç, I will let you know when . . .’

  ‘Yes, but Doctor, is his life in danger? If it is and he dies without my at least attempting to engage with him about his attacker, I am in dereliction of my duty. If that boy dies then this investigation becomes a murder investigation.’

  For just a moment she stopped, raked her hands through the tangle of her thick blond hair, and said, ‘I know that! Allah! What do you want me to do, eh?’

  ‘Let me see him.’

  ‘You can’t.’ On the move once again she looked down at the watch that was pinned to her white coat and said, ‘Look, Inspector, I have to be at a meeting in five minutes.’

  Almost at a run in his pursuit of her now, Süleyman said, ‘Doctor, if you can just tell me what the problem is . . .’

  ‘The boy is too sick to see you!’ she said as she rounded a corner and then opened a door into a room that appeared to be bulging with doctors. ‘Be told!’

  And then she slammed the door in his face and Süleyman was left alone. Whatever was wrong with Abdullah Aydın had to be serious to account for this total lack of co-operation from the medics. Usually they made exceptions for policemen. But not in this case. Whatever it was, this was serious. Not that Dr Arkın had been either willing or able to tell Süleyman in what wa
y. In fact, she had been almost studious in not being specific about his condition.

  Süleyman walked back down the corridor, wrinkling his nose at the hated smell of disinfectant as he did so. There was still an officer outside Abdullah Aydın’s room when he finally drew level with it. But it wasn’t the same man as before. This was someone Süleyman didn’t know at all. The constable, however, knew him.

  ‘I can’t let you in, sir,’ he said even before Süleyman had opened his mouth.

  ‘I’m not asking to come in, Constable.’

  ‘I think perhaps it might be better if you return to the station, sir.’

  Allah, but that was arrogant for a mere constable! ‘Do you indeed?’ Süleyman responded sharply. ‘What’s your name, Constable?’

  ‘Orders from Commissioner Ardıç,’ the young man said. ‘If you come here, sir, I’m to turn you away, and ask you politely to go back to the station. There’s a very sick boy in this room, sir, very sick.’

  ‘Yes, possibly with information . . .’

  ‘The boy’s quite unconscious at the moment, sir. Seen him myself.’

  ‘Have you.’

  The door to the room swung open just then and a small, harassed-looking nurse emerged. For just the briefest moment he was able to look into the room and could see that Abdullah Aydın was, as the rather unsettling constable had said, seemingly unconscious on his bed. But all the monitors, drips and drains had been removed, leaving Abdullah apparently free from any artificial biological assistance. Either his condition had to be improving or he had now actually died.

  As she sped down the corridor, Süleyman chased after the nurse who had just come out of the room and said, ‘Mr Aydın, is he . . . ?’

  ‘He’s very ill,’ the nurse said sharply.

  ‘But he’s not on any machines . . .’

  ‘He’s very ill,’ she reiterated and then, lengthening her stride, she pushed herself to outstrip him.

  It wasn’t right. Whatever was happening wasn’t normal and he was, so Süleyman felt, being deliberately kept in the dark with regard to why this might be. And yet for doctors and other policemen to, seemingly, prevent him from getting a description of a criminal who was terrorising the city didn’t make sense. Ardıç himself had prioritised catching the peeper right from the start. İkmen had been involved, the department had even consulted a criminal psychologist. Even the slightest chance of getting a description had to be taken – surely. As he left the hospital and went back into the street he wondered what İkmen would make of it all and even considered giving the older man a call. But İkmen was busy with his own concerns out in Cappadocia and the last thing he would need would be worrying developments emanating from İstanbul.

  Just down the hill from the Taksim Hospital on the left-hand side of Siraselviler Caddesi was a shop called La Cave. It was Turkey’s largest wine shop and was, Mehmet Süleyman knew, a favourite haunt of his aristocratic father, Muhammed. The old man, although virtually penniless these days, still fancied himself as something of a bon viveur, and he could quite often be seen in La Cave sampling some new and exciting shiraz. In part at least as a way of distracting himself from his current concerns, Mehmet Süleyman decided that it would be rather nice to buy the old man a bottle and to share it with him that evening. And so he made his way down, if distractedly, towards the emporium. He had just entered the cigar- and wine-scented shop and was about to be approached by one of the ever-smiling assistants when another, far more alarming presence, made itself known to him.

  ‘Sunel Bey?’

  The toffee-coloured voice, not to mention the immaculate appearance of Mürsel, made Süleyman jump.

  ‘Mürsel Bey. What a surprise.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Süleyman spotted the look of confusion on the assistant’s face. This, after all, was one of those places where Muhammed Süleyman Effendi and his family were very well known.

  ‘I trust it is a pleasant one?’ Mürsel said with a smile.

  ‘Yes . . .’ Afraid that the assistant could come over and blow his cover at any moment, Süleyman said, ‘Actually, I’ve just realised that I don’t really have time to look for wine properly now. I must go back to my er, my office . . .’

  ‘Oh, then I will walk with you,’ Mürsel said. ‘I, too, must return to business. I’ve just purchased what I hope is a very nice Beaune.’

  ‘Ah . . . Good.’

  Süleyman almost ran towards the door, much to the confusion of the assistant who had to move very quickly in order to open the door for Mehmet Bey and that man who had spent so much money on that old bottle.

  Once outside, Mürsel, who obviously thought Süleyman had another reason for wanting to get out of a shop he was in so quickly, smiled. ‘So what, apart from La Cave, brings you over to Cihangir, Sunel Bey?’

  In spite of being flustered, Süleyman didn’t miss a beat. ‘I have a sick relative in the Taksim,’ he said. ‘I came to visit her.’

  ‘Oh. May it pass quickly,’ Mürsel said, repeating the age-old formula of sympathy for the sick.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Mursel’s perfume was strong when he was some way off, and close to, as he was now, it was almost overpowering. ‘I’m going to the hamam tonight,’ he said.

  ‘Are you?’ Süleyman looked him straight in the eye.

  ‘If you’d like to join me . . .’

  ‘I have to go home,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘To your wife and your little boy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman felt himself blanch. Had he told Mürsel about Zelfa and Yusuf? He couldn’t imagine that he had, in fact he knew that he hadn’t. A lucky guess, perhaps, on the man’s part?

  Mürsel moved in even closer. ‘I think you’d have more fun at the hamam,’ he said. ‘I think you’d be so much more appreciated there, especially by me.’

  Knowing that if he wanted or needed to find out more about this man, he couldn’t just be blunt with him or rude to him, Süleyman found himself genuinely nonplussed. And so he started to walk away, back up the hill towards the hospital and his car.

  ‘Sunel Bey!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I really do have to go now, Mürsel Bey,’ he said without looking back to where the man was standing outside the wine shop. ‘Maybe another time.’

  ‘Oh, you can count on that, Sunel Bey,’ the other said with what sounded like a smile in his voice. ‘I shall hold you to it.’

  Süleyman shuddered. Whether he was the peeper, knew the offender or whatever, Mürsel seemed to have an uncanny knack of being where Süleyman himself was. Again, he wondered whether the man was following him and, if so, why. Sure he fancied or claimed that he fancied Süleyman, but İstanbul was full of attractive men, many of them considerably younger than he. Surely someone as attractive, wealthy and cultured as Mürsel could have his pick. No, there had to be something else – something that, only if he were lucky, would have nothing to do with his real profession. Ardıç had suggested that he pursue other lines of inquiry with regard to the peeper investigation. Having Mürsel followed could, possibly, be one of them.

  There wasn’t much to see beyond a few scraps of crime-scene tape and a rather sleepy jandarma on duty outside the chimney. Young and bored, he wasn’t one of the lads İkmen was familiar with from the village. But he was suitably impressed by the older man’s badge and quite cheerfully let the inspector and his English friend look at where Aysu Alkaya had breathed her last. Squeezing through into tunnels and dropping down through evil-smelling holes in the rough, flaky tufa wasn’t the most fun İkmen and Tom had ever had, but it was an experience if nothing else.

  ‘Not a lot to see,’ the young man said as he swung his torch around a narrow, tall chamber in the very back of the chimney complex. ‘Just another old monastery thing.’

  ‘Hermitages,’ İkmen said as he looked down at the rough-hewn floor beneath his feet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Not monasteries, hermitages,’ İkmen reiterated. ‘The Christian mystics who came h
ere did so to be alone, not in order to form a community. They were emulating the extraordinarily weird and solitary life of St Simeon Stylites.’

  ‘There’s a small fresco by the looks of it over here,’ Tom said in English. ‘Looks much better than those rough old things in the chambers up above.’

  İkmen looked across at the foreigner who was pointing down with the spare torch the jandarma had given him into what almost appeared to be a well in the corner of the chamber. Although his feet were now throbbing as never before, İkmen went over and looked at a portion of wall just below the floor.

  ‘What is it?’ he said as he squinted down at what he was surprised to see wasn’t like the usual ‘new’ frescos that were periodically discovered in one or other of the valleys. It wasn’t a vague scribble but a colourful and detailed representation of two figures. Probably of Byzantine origin, the picture showed one haloed man leading another male, covered in bandages and carrying a stick, out into a garden. ‘What does it mean?’

  The Englishman sighed. ‘Well it’s a long time since I went to Sunday school, Inspector,’ he said. ‘But I think that the figure with the halo is Christ and the other man, well, the bandages would seem to denote that he is dead . . . Then again, the stick seems to point towards some sort of disability. It’s either Christ raising Lazarus from the dead or Christ healing the leper.’ He looked up into İkmen’s face. ‘You’d need to ask an expert. But it’s a great fresco and if it is Lazarus, it’s quite appropriate, too.’

  ‘What do you mean, Tom?’

  ‘Well,’ he laughed a little to himself, ‘you might think this is silly, Inspector, but there is a story in the New Testament about Jesus raising this bloke called Lazarus from the dead. This girl whose body was found here, well, in a way she has been sort of resurrected too, hasn’t she? I mean, now whoever killed her can be pursued.’

  ‘I like that.’ İkmen smiled. ‘Yes. Now Aysu may reach out and claim a new life of justice for herself.’

  ‘Yes, and with your help she might just get it. Does this jandarma know anything about the fresco, do you think?’

  İkmen asked the lad, and he told him that once the police had finished their investigations ‘some art man’ was going to come down from Ankara to look at ‘that picture thing, whatever it is’.