Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Does anyone else outside the gendarmerie, the police and the “art man” known about this fresco?’ İkmen further enquired.

  ‘What, the picture thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ the jandarma replied. ‘Once Inspector Erten and the men from Nevşehir have finished we’ll guard this place because of the picture for a while. Don’t know how long. I suppose it has to be worth something, does it, the picture?’

  ‘I’d say so, yes,’ İkmen said and then he made his way back over towards the Englishman who had just taken a small camera out of his pocket. ‘It would seem that this fresco isn’t common knowledge round here.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The local police are expecting an expert from Ankara,’ İkmen said. ‘So maybe, Tom, you and I should keep its existence to ourselves.’

  The young man shrugged. ‘OK.’

  ‘So no photographs,’ İkmen said as he gently took the neat Olympus camera from out of the Englishman’s hands.

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Someone was murdered here, Tom,’ the policeman said softly. ‘People apart from our own photographers should not be taking pictures.’

  ‘No.’

  İkmen and the Englishman got back to the St Simeon chimney just as Turgut Senar and the rest of the party were emerging from inside.

  ‘So did you find the place where the girl’s body was found?’ the guide said as he looked down, without warmth, at İkmen’s cold, nipped face.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the policeman replied with a smile. ‘We did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’ İkmen said.

  ‘And did you go in? Did you see . . .’

  ‘I spoke to the jandarma on guard at the site.’

  After placing one hand on İkmen’s arm, Turgut Senar told the rest of the group that the transport to take them back to Muratpaşa would be arriving soon. He then turned back to the policeman with a grave face. ‘Tell me something,’ he said, ‘this DNA test the people in İstanbul will put the body through, what does it do?’

  ‘I’m not a scientist,’ İkmen responded. ‘I don’t know exactly. Why?’

  ‘Why do you think!’

  İkmen shrugged.

  ‘My brother didn’t kill Aysu Alkaya,’ Turgut said harshly. ‘I want this thing finished!’

  ‘Well, if nothing else, DNA analysis should do that, sir,’ İkmen said. ‘Any samples not belonging to the deceased will be analysed and checked against samples from all of those involved. If your brother wasn’t in that chimney then nothing of him will be present.’

  The guide frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ İkmen said, ‘that if we’re lucky, if DNA samples have survived from that time, we will be able to find DNA in hair, skin fragments, on clothes, that will give us the identity of the person or persons who were with Aysu when she died. Your brother, as well as others connected to the investigation, will be asked to supply samples for comparison.’

  ‘What?’

  İkmen took careful note of the whiteness of Turgut Senar’s face. ‘We take a swab from inside the mouth,’ İkmen said. ‘It’s quite painless. The material on the swab, which is unique to each person, gives our scientists everything they need to make a comparison. I doubt whether you will be required to give a sample yourself.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, because although each sample is unique, yours will be, as a full brother to Kemalettin, very similar. The same will be true for your mother. Quite distant familial links can, I am told, be traced in this way. So only one sample from your family, I imagine from Kemalettin, will be required in the first instance. Although that is of course up to my colleagues in Nevşehir; they may want everyone tested at the very beginning.’

  ‘Of course. I see.’ He looked down at the ground. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I hope, Mr Senar, that it will establish once and for all just who was with the poor girl on the night that she died. It should also determine the paternity of her child. İnşallah, what we discover will be satisfactory to all concerned.’

  And then İkmen walked off to join his young English friend, Tom. There was not, he felt, any further virtue in discussing DNA testing with Turgut Senar. The guide had obviously understood what the policeman had said to him, but his fear was, İkmen felt, considerable. It could of course just simply be down to the fact that Senar was a country boy unaccustomed to the scientific process, but there could be more to it as well. And being of a naturally suspicious nature, İkmen decided to find out, if he could, some more about Turgut Senar and his family.

  ‘I don’t always have people over for iftar,’ Menşure said as she watched over her cook and his daughter laying out the food on her huge kitchen table. ‘But seeing as you seem to have made so many friends . . .’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen idly stretched out and took a date from a little silver platter.

  He was just about to put the fruit into his mouth when he felt Menşure’s hand on his wrist.

  ‘It isn’t time yet!’ she said as she smiled at the shocked expression on her cook’s face.

  ‘Oh.’

  İkmen put the date back down on the tray and worked at looking a little sheepish.

  ‘Do try to at least pretend to keep Ramazan,’ Menşure said. ‘My cook has been preparing food for me for years, I don’t want him upset.’

  ‘No, Menşure.’

  As well as her own guests at the Fairy Chimneys Hotel, Menşure had also invited Altay Salman and his family and Rachelle Jones, ‘that Australian you like so much’.

  ‘I see the good captain has brought his wife and kid,’ she said in English to İkmen.

  Now that the sun had officially set, İkmen was indulging his occasional yearning for pestil, a dried fruit toffee of quite alarming glutinousness. ‘Mmm,’ he said through a tooth-rotting mouthful. ‘Lovely people. You know I think the captain would be very happy if you would befriend his wife. She’s very lonely.’

  ‘Oh, why not,’ the Australian said with a wry smile. ‘I’m sure she’s a very sweet woman. Do you know why I always seem to go for married men, Inspector?’

  İkmen swallowed what was in his mouth and then lit up a cigarette. ‘No, Miss Jones, I don’t,’ he said. ‘But the captain is a very charming and good-looking man and so he will always tend to attract attention.’

  And indeed there was a demonstration of that phenomenon happening before their very eyes. Not only Dolores Lavell’s friend, Emily, but also several other female guests were, or so it seemed, hanging on Altay Salman’s every word. His wife, Sevgi, who was, as İkmen could see, used to this sort of thing, just looked on with mild amusement as her husband held court for almost every other woman in the place. But not all. Dolores Lavell had brought a man of her own.

  ‘Turgut has invited me over to his mother’s place,’ she said when she briefly left Turgut Senar’s side to speak to İkmen and Rachelle Jones. ‘Tomorrow. Isn’t that great?’

  ‘Nalan Senar has quite a nice place. Some good frescos in one of her out-houses,’ Rachelle said. ‘Mind you, she’s a miserable old bird herself, and if you don’t like kangals, well . . .’

  ‘I’m just fascinated to go into such an old and extensive chimney home. I mean I’ve only just glimpsed inside an authentic, inhabited chimney home before.’

  ‘Well, if Turgut manages to persuade his brother to go out you should be all right,’ Rachelle said with a shrug.

  Dolores frowned. ‘What have you got against his brother, Rachelle?’

  ‘Nothing, but you’ve been coming here for long enough to know that all Kemalettin wants to do is wank, Dolores.’

  ‘He’s a sick man,’ the American said sadly. ‘I can relate to his pain. I’ve tended my own sick people.’

  And then she went back over to Turgut Senar who greeted her with what was, for him, an unaccustomed smile.

  Rachelle Jones, in emulation of the American, mouthed ‘I can relate to his pain’ at İkmen
before saying, ‘Christ! I know she’s American, but . . .’ Then looking across at Dolores and Turgut who were in close conversation she frowned. ‘You know Dolores has been coming here for a number of years now and this is the first time I’ve seen her with a bloke. And Turgut Senar.’ She shook her head. ‘Blimey, he’s got diplomas in being quiet and reserved!’

  İkmen laughed. ‘They started talking on our balloon flight this morning,’ he said. ‘Mr Senar is married, I take it?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ the Australian replied. ‘Like the lovely captain, Turgut never strays. Or rather, he didn’t stray until now. His wife’s a mousy little headscarf. But he likes her – or he did.’ She looked over again at Turgut Senar and Dolores Lavell and clicked her tongue in what seemed like irritation. ‘Funny. He must’ve seen Dolores about over the years.’

  ‘Maybe he has only just realised how much he likes her,’ İkmen said.

  Rachelle Jones looked at him through jaundiced eyes. ‘You mean maybe he needs a few million lire for something or other.’

  İkmen, smiling, shrugged.

  ‘I don’t trust him,’ Rachelle said, as she continued to look at the strange sight of Turgut Senar, the lonely valley guide, flirting with the usually very restrained American. ‘Look at the way he’s making her behave. She doesn’t come on to guys like that. Dolores is too sassy for that.’

  And so she had seemed to İkmen, when he’d first met her. But then perhaps both he and Rachelle had been wrong. That or maybe something about Turgut, rather than Dolores, had changed. İkmen looked over at Altay Salman and raised his glass of sherbet in salute. Even back in İstanbul where people were accustomed to men like him, Altay had been ‘bothered’ by women. Maybe it was the connection with horses? After all, every man had his ‘thing’, his gimmick. With Altay it was his horses, with Mehmet Süleyman it was his aristocratic past, with İkmen himself, well, he supposed it had to be his voice. What it was with Turgut Senar was difficult to see.

  When eventually Menşure Tokatlı had had enough of her guests she very skilfully got rid of them by announcing that the time had now come for her to feed her cat. Even those who didn’t know about Kismet and his penchant for violence were soon put in the picture by all who did and so everyone left very quickly after that.

  Later, alone in his room, İkmen smoked and thought about the fabulous fresco he and Tom had found in the chimney where Aysu Alkaya’s body had been found. The fact that the body had been found in such a significant, if unknown, place couldn’t be an accident. Maybe the fresco had even been ‘their’ secret, something known only to Aysu and whoever she had gone to meet in the Valley of the Saints. If she’d gone to meet anyone, that was, as opposed to being taken. Quietly, and probably willingly, she had left her old husband the night she had disappeared. But whether she’d gone to meet Kemalettin Senar or any other admirer she may have had for that matter was still unknown. It was hard to believe that Kemalettin had once been a desirable young man. Now obviously out of his mind in some capacity, at least Dolores Lavell could ‘relate to his pain’ in some way that, maybe, was at the root of Turgut Senar’s sudden liking for her. Perhaps they’d talked of Kemalettin and Dolores’ sympathy for the poor creature had touched the gruff countryman’s heart. After all, from the little that İkmen had seen of him, Turgut Senar was very protective of his brother.

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  It was dark, quite cold, silent and time to up the stakes. There had been rather more taunting and suggestion than had originally been envisaged, but all that was about to change now. This was pure skill. It could have been employed at any time over the past few months and weeks but holding back had been half the fun, if one were to be honest. Not that any of this was really about fun.

  The boy, a waiter and part-time whore, so it was said, came out of the Saray hamam, Karaköy without looking to either left or right. The knife that severed his carotid artery came out of nowhere. Clean, quick, totally without sound. The kid probably didn’t even know he was dead. Perfect.

  Although he was not someone who breakfasted regularly, İkmen decided to join Menşure’s non-Muslim guests for a cup of coffee and several cigarettes the next morning as it was to be his last day in the village. Her restaurant, which was at the top of the hotel complex, afforded views of the valleys almost as spectacular as those İkmen had seen from the hot air balloon. Although the American, Emily, waved to him as he entered, İkmen opted to sit with Tom, mainly because the Englishman was already puffing away at a cigarette, after the Turkish policeman’s own heart. As he sat down, ordering a coffee from the cook’s waitress daughter as he did so, İkmen noticed that Menşure was giving him a murderous look. If she had been one to keep Ramazan to the letter herself he would have shrugged his shoulders and tolerated her disdain. But he knew she cheated and so he dealt with her displeasure simply by ignoring it. After all, with Arto Sarkissian coming to pick him up later on that day, Menşure’s threats of Kismet-based retaliation could be, at best, limited.

  After passing the normal pleasantries people exchange at the beginning of a day, Tom said to İkmen, ‘You know that fresco that we saw yesterday?’

  ‘Sssh!’ İkmen leaned across the table in order to encourage Tom to lower his voice. ‘We don’t know if we can talk about that, remember? What of it?’

  ‘Well,’ Tom whispered, ‘I’ve been thinking. I know that cave we went into is quite remote, but the Valley of the Saints is on the tourist trail. How come no one has discovered such a treasure, or the body, for that matter, until now?’

  İkmen lit a cigarette and then leaned back into his chair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I have puzzled upon that myself. I have wondered whether the body was moved to that cave, which is a possibility. However, that does not solve the mystery of the fresco.’

  ‘Do you think that maybe someone has been making sure that no one enters that cave?’

  But before İkmen could answer, Menşure came over and said, ‘One of the boys has just told me that a policeman is downstairs for you, Çetin.’

  ‘What policeman?’ İkmen asked. ‘You don’t mean a jandarma?’

  ‘No, not some gossipy boy! That incompetent from Nevşehir,’ she said. ‘Looks like a homeless person. Got something urgent to tell you, apparently.’

  Erten. Although quite what he was doing in Muratpaşa İkmen couldn’t think. As far as he was concerned he was going to see Erten at the mortuary with Arto Sarkissian.

  ‘Better show him up,’ İkmen said as his mobile phone began to ring. ‘İkmen.’

  Menşure left but with an expression of deep disdain on her face. She wasn’t accustomed to being treated like the ‘help’ in her own place or any other place, come to that.

  ‘Çetin, it’s Arto,’ a tired voice at the other end of the line said.

  ‘I’ve a deep feeling of foreboding,’ İkmen said as he first smiled at Tom and then turned away to speak into the phone more privately.

  ‘And with good cause,’ his friend replied. ‘My gear box has blown, I’m having it fixed now, but I won’t be able to be with you until tomorrow.’

  ‘But you’ve only just bought that car!’ İkmen said, appalled.

  ‘I’ve had it five years, Çetin.’

  ‘As I said, it’s new,’ İkmen said which, compared to his own sorry vehicle, was the case.

  The Armenian ignored this last comment and said, ‘Look, what you need to do is make arrangements with the mortuary in Nevşehir for me to take my samples tomorrow. Do you think that will be a problem?’

  ‘If you give me a moment, I’ll find out,’ İkmen said as he beckoned the shambling figure of Inspector Erten over to his table. ‘My opposite number in Nevşehir has just arrived.’

  Erten, grey-faced, stumbled forwards. ‘Inspector İkmen, I must . . .’

  ‘My colleague the pathologist won’t be able to get here until tomorrow,’ İkmen interrupted. ‘Some problem with his car. Can we still get in to the mortuary and take samples tomorrow?�
��

  Erten, still nervous in his manner but smiling now, said there was no problem and so Arto Sarkissian made arrangements to pick İkmen up first before going on to Nevşehir the following morning. Once all of this had been organised, İkmen turned back to the young Englishman and said, ‘So it would seem I have an extra night here, Tom.’

  ‘That’s great,’ the boy replied. He had really taken to İkmen – a feeling the Turk experienced as mutual. ‘Maybe dinner tonight, or . . .’

  ‘I’d love to,’ İkmen said.

  Tom stood up and, nodding towards Erten, said to İkmen, ‘About eight? Here in the restaurant? I’m off to the underground city at Derinkuyu today and I can see you’re busy.’

  ‘Fine. That’s OK,’ İkmen said, smiling as he watched the young man walk out of the large, bright restaurant. He then turned his attention fully on to Erten. ‘So, you need to speak to me?’

  ‘I came over here this morning, Inspector,’ he said, ‘because, as I understand it, we will need to take some samples from those involved in the Aysu Alkaya case for comparison with what may be discovered in İstanbul.’

  İkmen, frowning, lit up another cigarette.

  Erten, mildly shocked by this behaviour, muttered, ‘Oh, I say.’

  ‘Yes? And?’

  ‘Oh, er, well, I was . . . Do we have to do that now, so that all the samples from everyone can be sent off to the laboratory together as it were?’

  ‘That would be ideal,’ İkmen said, ‘although unless you actually have a suspect in custody, you will either have to ask permission from those you wish to test or get a warrant to do so.’

  ‘Ah, yes . . .’ İkmen noticed that he was looking hungrily at the cigarette he was so casually smoking.

  ‘And you need swabs,’ İkmen continued. ‘Didn’t you speak to your doctor about all this?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Erten smiled his vague little smile and said, ‘But he said he’d never done such a thing. DNA, you know. He’s near to retirement, you see, and . . .’