Dance with Death

by Barbara Nadel

  Nazlı Kahraman took a deep breath. ‘I didn’t see my father go to bed the night Aysu disappeared,’ she said. ‘And in the morning he looked dishevelled. He had not changed his clothes.’

  ‘Ziya Bey was old, Hanım. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. Sometimes he would sit up at night going over the accounts, you remember?’ He didn’t add that Ziya Kahraman frequently did this in order to find areas in which he might make still more savings.

  ‘Only in his office,’ Nazlı replied. ‘And he wasn’t in his office. He was . . . elsewhere. Baha, did you really see Kemalettin Senar and Aysu outside our house that night?’

  ‘Well, yes, I . . .’

  ‘The police, you know, can use this DNA to tell who killed her. There can be no mistake. They will be taking my sample to look at both me and my father. Look, Baha, I know you have always been loyal and faithful to this family and I am very grateful, but . . .’ She swallowed hard. ‘Baha, on the life of your mother you must tell me the truth. Was Kemalettin Senar really outside the house with Aysu that night? Was it him or was it my father? I have to . . .’

  ‘I don’t know who it was, Hanım!’ the voice on the other end cried. ‘It was a figure, slim and a little hunched. It could have been Kemalettin, most likely it was him! With respect to Ziya Bey, Hanım, it must have been Senar who made Aysu with child. Ziya Bey was old . . .’

  ‘He took her the night of their marriage. There was blood on the wedding sheet, I saw it. But, well, if the child was Kemalettin’s then the police will be able to see that too with this DNA,’ she sighed. ‘What if my father knew he had been dishonoured, Baha? He would never have tolerated such a thing!’

  ‘Ziya Bey was an honourable man. The girl was a whore, what choice did he have?’

  ‘But we don’t know that he killed her. We must never speak of it! Not to anyone!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And yet . . .’ She leaned heavily against the wall as if deflated. ‘If the child was Kemalettin Senar’s, why would he, even a madman like him, kill both it and Aysu? I can see how he could run off with the girl, but . . .’

  ‘Kemalettin Senar is, as you have said, a madman. Who knows what he might do, Hanım?’ And then through gritted teeth he continued, ‘It was a bad day when the policeman from İstanbul came to this village. With his tests and DNA. Just because he is the cousin of Menşure Hanım, he thinks he can interfere . . .’

  ‘He is an agent of the law,’ Nazlı breathed fatalistically. ‘What can we do?’

  ‘There must be something,’ Baha Ermis replied. ‘Let me think about it.’

  Suddenly angered by his arrogant and obsequious posturing, Nazlı Hanım said, ‘Oh, for the love of Allah, you can do nothing! Stop fooling yourself, Baha! You are nothing! I’ll give you nothing! Why make yourself so small and humble for no reason? A closed mouth is all that I want from you!’

  And then she put the telephone back on the wall and closed her eyes. There was of course another dark and, Nazlı hoped, secret reason why her father could have killed Aysu Alkaya too. Those feet. Even if she had been pregnant with his child, her father could never have tolerated those ghastly deformities. As soon as he’d seen them, as soon as Aysu had tearfully allowed him to see them the morning after their wedding, Ziya Kahraman, so he had said, had decided that the girl was to be little more than his servant. Nazlı had been so pleased – then.

  The policeman from İstanbul was going to blow the village apart with his strange and frightening medical tests and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it now.

  ‘But of course Ziya Bey was the father of this child you say my Aysu was having!’ Haldun Alkaya cried as tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. ‘She was a good girl, untouched when she married! There was blood on her marriage sheet . . .’

  ‘Haldun Bey, I do not mean to cause offence,’ İkmen said. ‘But I must explore every possibility, it is my job.’

  ‘It was I who suggested this DNA testing, if you remember, Çetin Bey,’ the old man said. ‘To find the true killer of my daughter. Why would I bother for a whore? Maybe I would even have killed her myself?’

  İkmen did not respond to what had been one of the theories that had crossed several minds about Aysu Alkaya’s death over the years. Some men did, after all, consider it their right to kill any female relative who even remotely threatened the honour of their family. Sexual indiscretion was the most common cause of this type of scenario.

  ‘Apparently neither Nazlı Hanım nor her father knew of Aysu’s condition . . .’

  ‘Well, she would have been afraid to tell that monster Nazlı,’ Haldun Alkaya replied bitterly. ‘I would not have put it past her to abort my poor daughter had she known, to protect her fortune and her interests. And anyway, you only have her word that she didn’t know of my daughter’s pregnancy. She could have killed Aysu.’

  ‘But Haldun Bey,’ İkmen said, ‘with your daughter’s deformity . . .’

  ‘Ah, you know . . .’

  ‘You identified her body in part by her feet, sir,’ İkmen said. ‘You must have known how Ziya Kahraman felt about such “defects” . . .’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ The old man put his head briefly into his hands and then said, ‘I suppose you could say that we set out to trick the Lemon King, in a way, Aysu and I. We thought that once she was pregnant with his child none of that would matter. Ziya Bey was so captivated by my daughter.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you that Ziya Kahraman might become angry or feel cheated or . . .’

  ‘He never spoke a word of it to me,’ the old man said.

  İkmen silently wondered whether the Lemon King had felt too humiliated by this deception to speak. After all, it had been perpetrated by someone who must have been, to Ziya Kahraman, a very inferior person.

  ‘Haldun Bey,’ Inspector Erten said. ‘You never mentioned anything of this to us at the time, twenty years ago. We didn’t know . . .’

  ‘You’ve never known anything, stupid police in Nevşehir!’ Haldun Alkaya said as he waved his arms agitatedly in the air. ‘Twenty years and you do nothing! Nothing! Why should I parade my poor daughter’s defects in front of you, eh? Why don’t you have DNA as they do in İstanbul? Nevşehir is a city, İstanbul is a city . . .’

  İkmen smiled. ‘I think, Haldun Bey, that İstanbul and Nevşehir are rather different cities.’

  ‘So I’m a peasant who has never been to İstanbul, what do I know?’ the old man said.

  They all sat in silence for a few moments. Almost without thinking, İkmen had started to take the lead on this ancient case of Aysu Alkaya. Erten was not very forthright which, İkmen knew, one could get away with in the countryside. In İstanbul he would have been eaten for breakfast and his bones sucked dry many years ago. But then one was paid to be like that back in the city. And yet İkmen knew that he, too, was hardly on top form now. He wanted to be back in İstanbul. Fatma had said she’d heard from Hulya again and that the Cohens were all right, but Berekiah had been taken to hospital. No one as yet could comment upon his condition, but İkmen was anxious about it. Berekiah was, after all, not just the son of a friend. He was his little girl’s husband, the father of İkmen’s own precious grandson, Timur. But then to go now was not going to do İkmen any good. He only had to wait until the following morning for Arto Sarkissian to give him a comfortable and rapid ride back to the city.

  ‘If we find useful samples on Aysu’s body, we’ll need to take a DNA swab from you, Haldun Bey,’ İkmen said gravely.

  The old man shrugged. ‘I don’t have a problem with that. Why should I?’

  ‘Inspector Erten will keep you informed,’ İkmen said.

  ‘You are going, Çetin Bey?’

  İkmen looked round the shabby sparseness of the lonely old man’s chimney house and shook his head sadly. In a way it was a shame to leave now just as he felt he might be getting somewhere, working his way through this village’s psychological wounds. But what choice did he have? His life and problems were back in İstan
bul.

  ‘Yes, I’m going,’ İkmen said. ‘But my colleagues at the Forensic Institute and Inspector Erten will keep me informed about this case I am sure.’

  Erten smiled weakly, which gave İkmen very little confidence in what he had just said but he acknowledged his temporary colleague anyway. After leaving Haldun Alkaya, Erten and İkmen discussed how matters might proceed when Arto Sarkissian arrived the following day and then, once their business was concluded, the local policeman went back to his car for the journey home to Nevşehir. It had just started to get dark when İkmen met Dolores Lavell coming out of the Cappudocia Coffee Bean. She still looked upset and so he went over to her and said, ‘I’m sorry, Miss Lavell, I should have come after you when you left the Senars’ house today. I could see that you were upset. But I had some news from İstanbul . . .’

  ‘The bomb explosion.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I heard about that. I hope your family are OK, Inspector.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘My son-in-law has been taken to hospital. That is all I know. İnşallah he will recover.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked down at the ground, her brow furrowed with what looked like anxiety.

  ‘Miss Lavell, Dolores,’ İkmen began, ‘may I ask if it is not too intrusive, what your connection to Turgut Senar and his family might be? I believe you have been here before . . .’

  ‘Turgut and I just knew each other by sight until we took that balloon flight together,’ the American replied. ‘Apparently he’d tried to speak to me before but never had the courage to do so.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, at my age I should be flattered. He’s not young but he’s a fit, attractive man and all. I know he’s married . . .’

  ‘It didn’t strike you as strange that he, a married man, should wish to take you to meet his mother?’

  ‘I went to see a real traditional chimney house, Inspector,’ Dolores replied spiritedly. ‘Not hang out with Turgut’s mom.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ İkmen replied.

  ‘I’ll freely admit that me and Turgut had a thing together last night. I’m an American, I don’t have to live by these strict sexual rules you have over here. And I’m a grown-up. I can, so I do, and it isn’t as if I’m going to tell the guy’s wife. It’s casual . . .’

  ‘I’m not so sure whether that applies in Turgut’s case,’ İkmen said as he watched her nervously attempt to smooth the foundation cream that so liberally covered her face. ‘Turkish men are generally – serious.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you, Inspector, I’ve given that man no cause to believe he’s my one and only true love,’ Dolores said forcefully. ‘The sex was just sex, I can assure you. We did it then shook hands and went our separate ways like a couple of regular guys. The most intimate thing I’ve done with that man is show him an old photograph of my dear old dad. But then maybe for someone like him, someone who had such a minimal relationship with his father, my love for Dad is just endearing. Who knows?’

  And then with a toss of her head she left him to go, she said, to visit a small and apparently heavily frescoed rock chapel just behind the launderette on the Nevşehir road. İkmen, alone now, pulled his jacket closely in around his thin shoulders against the increasing cold and then phoned Fatma. Surely by now there had to be some more news about Berekiah.

  Zelfa wrapped the largest towel she possessed around her husband’s dripping body and then led him from the bathroom into their bedroom. When he had eventually managed to get home he had been covered in dust and blood, which was why she had taken him straight to the bathroom. He had been horrified by the blood. He’d said he didn’t know whose it was. He feared it had belonged to Berekiah Cohen. But now it was gone, washed away, unlike the images that would keep on replaying hideous sequences of terror on and on in Mehmet Süleyman’s head.

  As he sat down on the bed, he said, ‘Shouldn’t somebody be with Hulya at the hospital?’

  ‘Her brother Sınan is with her,’ Zelfa responded gently as she sat down next to him. ‘Fatma has taken Timur.’

  ‘Balthazar and Estelle are not capable,’ Süleyman said. ‘When Berekiah comes out of surgery they will go mad, I know they will! I must get back to them . . .’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’ He stood quickly and then raced, naked, over to where his wife had dropped his bloodied clothes earlier.

  ‘Mehmet, you can’t go back to the hospital. You’ve done enough today! You . . .’

  ‘I don’t know who bombed those synagogues,’ he said as he pulled his clothes on to his body with some violence. ‘But we should have known!’

  ‘What? The police?’ Zelfa switched rapidly into her own native language, English. ‘God Almighty, Mehmet, it was a terrorist attack! The whole point is that the security services don’t know it’s about to happen!’

  ‘It’s a failure,’ he said, ‘it’s part of a catalogue of failure! The peeper struck again last night! I know it was him. At the hamam, where the gay boys go. I know it! This time he killed. A young boy is dead because I don’t get it! I don’t understand what pattern this offender conforms to! Up on rooftops, down on the ground . . .’

  ‘Well, maybe there isn’t a pattern! Or maybe if there is, it’s something you can’t understand,’ Zelfa replied. ‘If he’s mentally ill there could be some sort of logic at play that you can’t get. I mean, I know we haven’t been together for a bit, but you’ve surely been married to me for long enough to understand the basic irrationality behind most disordered events.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but . . .’ He put his heavily stained jacket back on and then fumbled in its pockets for cigarettes.

  Zelfa moved forward and handed her packet to him. ‘Here, have these,’ she said. ‘I threw yours away. They were covered in . . .’

  ‘Berekiah’s blood.’

  They both stood looking into each other’s eyes for a few seconds as the import of his words really took hold. He then leaned forward and gathered Zelfa into his arms, squeezing her body tight against his ribcage.

  ‘If that boy dies . . .’

  ‘Sssh, sssh,’ she soothed, rubbing the back of his head with her hand as one would comfort a baby. ‘Come on, there is nothing you can do for the moment.’

  ‘I can go to the hospital. I can wait.’

  She pushed herself a little away from him and said, ‘Like that? Mehmet, you’ll frighten everyone, covered in blood. Please, please get some rest.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I’ll stay awake. I’ll let you know as soon as the telephone rings.’

  ‘As soon as it rings?’

  ‘The very second,’ Zelfa said as she led him back to the bed and, almost without his noticing, removed his jacket. ‘Lie down.’

  Oddly for him, he did as he was told and for a few minutes Zelfa, who had lain down beside him, was convinced that he was drifting off into some kind of, albeit fitful, sleep. But then it would hardly have been a restful sleep for Mehmet. With the exception of a brief detour to view what could be the body of the peeper’s latest victim, he had spent the entire day either at the hospital or amongst the ruins of the Neve Şalom Synagogue and its environs. He had as a consequence seen things that, hardened officer as he was, no one can see and not be affected by. Loss of life had been heavy.

  But Mehmet Süleyman was still destined not to sleep for a while. A shrill beeping from the table beside the bed indicated that he had a text message on his mobile telephone. One still tense arm shot out and he grabbed the instrument.

  ‘What’s this?’ he murmured.

  ‘Whoever it is, tell them to fuck off,’ Zelfa grumbled in English. ‘You need to sleep.’

  ‘Yes.’

  But as he read the message, Mehmet Süleyman knew that he couldn’t ignore it. İzzet Melik was not a man given to either high drama or unnecessary contact with his boss. So if İzzet wanted to see him, immediately, at the Saray Hamam in Karaköy, there had to be a very good reason.

  Whilst waiting for İkmen to appear in the restaurant, young Tom the Engl
ishman had got into conversation with the only other American woman, apart from Dolores Lavell, currently resident in the village. Emily Bronstein, though by no means a prudish woman, was nevertheless not entirely approving of her countrywoman’s behaviour.

  ‘To just go off with that guide,’ she said as she twirled her napkin in her fingers, ‘well, it’s a little cheap, I think. I’m not judging her, you understand, but . . .’

  ‘Oh, the Med is a place where Western women do go mad,’ Tom replied with a smile. ‘Years ago an aunt of mine . . .’

  ‘Tom!’ A small, thin hand landed on the Englishman’s shoulder, causing him to look up.

  ‘Inspector.’

  ‘I am so sorry that I am late,’ İkmen said as he pulled the chair next to the Englishman out and sat down.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Tom said cheerily. ‘Emily here has been keeping me well entertained.’

  İkmen looked across at the attractive, smiling woman and bowed his head just very slightly.

  ‘But now maybe I should go,’ Emily said. ‘Tom . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, please do stay, Miss, er . . .’ İkmen stuttered.

  ‘It’s Mrs Bronstein,’ the American said as she came to his rescue. ‘Emily. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but . . .’

  ‘Em and I were gossiping, actually, Inspector,’ Tom said and then, lowering his voice, he continued, ‘about Em’s fellow countrywoman.’

  ‘Miss Lavell?’

  Tom raised his eyebrows. ‘Seems it’s all on between her and that Turgut chap,’ he said. ‘Moved in for the kill on that balloon flight we took.’

  Menşure Tokatlı herself came to take their dinner order. Unnervingly she had Kismet the cat at her feet. As disinclined towards food as ever, İkmen just ordered a plate of mantı while Tom and Emily went for İskender kebab and chicken şiş kebab respectively. As Menşure and the cat moved away from the table, İkmen said in Turkish, ‘Is Kismet after scraps or does he have his eyes on perhaps a still-warm limb?’