Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  The doctor removed his glasses before minutely examining the blazer, frowning as he did so.

  ‘This is part of no uniform I’ve ever come across, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Looks quite old.’

  İsak Çöktin leaned his head to one side; a lock of dark red hair flopped across his forehead as he did so. Still slightly shaky from his recent encounter with two dead bodies – one, the owner of the Kuloǧlu apartment, the elderly Mrs Keyder, had been expected, but not the other one – being within the confines of the mortuary was not making him feel any better. Not, of course, that the pathologist, Dr Arto Sarkissian, was contributing in any way to Çöktin’s sense of unease. Rotund and, despite his profession, unfailingly jolly, the doctor had worked for the İstanbul police for almost the whole of his professional life, which, given that he was now fifty-eight years old, was a long time.

  ‘Do we know anything about the other body, Mrs Keyder?’ Sarkissian asked as he shifted his attention from the outside to the inside of the blazer.

  Çöktin shrugged. ‘She attended St Anthony’s church on a regular basis,’ he said. ‘It was the priest, Father Giovanni, who first raised the alarm. He tried to visit her, couldn’t gain access – the kapıcı of that building is a lazy, useless creature who’d “lost” his key to the apartment – so Father Giovanni called us.’

  ‘The woman was a Christian,’ Sarkissian muttered as he continued to turn the blazer over in his hands.

  ‘Yes.’

  Although a secular country, the population of the Turkish Republic is ninety per cent Muslim. There are, however, minorities who follow other faiths like this Mrs Keyder and also like both Arto Sarkissian and İsak Çöktin. Not that the latter’s faith, the native Kurdish religion of the Yezidi, was now or ever could be a topic of conversation. Sarkissian, however, like the recently deceased female body that lay in his laboratory, was a Christian. Unlike the woman, though like most of his fellow Armenians, he was Orthodox rather than Catholic.

  Coming across a faded label on the inside pocket of the blazer, the doctor squinted to see what was written there.

  ‘Do we know what Mrs Keyder’s origins were, by any chance?’ he asked. ‘I assume from her surname that her husband was Turkish.’

  ‘Most people who go to St Anthony’s are Italian, aren’t they?’ Çöktin replied. ‘Her first name was Rosita.’

  ‘Which may well be Italian,’ Sarkissian responded, his eyes still narrowed and fixed to the time-scarred label, ‘but then it could be Spanish.’ He looked just briefly up at Çöktin and smiled. ‘It is Spanish that they speak in Argentina, isn’t it, Sergeant?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Çöktin replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this jacket, blazer or whatever it is was made in Buenos Aires.’

  ‘We’re not certain what if anything was the connection between Mrs Keyder and the dead man,’ Çöktin said as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘Father Giovanni was, I know, of the opinion that the old woman lived alone. That was why he was so concerned.’ He sighed. ‘In view of this new development, I’ll have to go back and speak to him again.’

  Sarkissian put the blazer down on his desk and looked up. ‘I can’t help you much until I’ve finished my examination,’ he said. ‘I’ll be able to give you some more information about that tomorrow.’

  Çöktin lit his cigarette. ‘That’s fine. Provided Inspector Suleyman doesn’t need me, I’ll go out and see Father Giovanni later this evening.’

  ‘Inspector Suleyman is, I take it, busy at the moment?’ Sarkissian said with a smile.

  ‘My boss is always busy, Dr Sarkissian.’ Çöktin exhaled on a sigh. ‘You know some of the lads say that he’s becoming more like Inspector İkmen every day.’

  Sarkissian laughed. Çetin İkmen was currently the most experienced and successful detective in the İstanbul homicide division. Famous for his almost maniacal approach to his work, he was also Sarkissian’s oldest and dearest friend.

  ‘Well, Inspector Suleyman did work for Inspector İkmen for quite sometime, you know, Çöktin,’ he said, ‘and Çetin Bey’s “enthusiasm”, I shall call it, is infectious.’

  ‘Yes,’ Çöktin allowed his head to droop down towards the floor, ‘I know. But sometimes I wonder . . .’

  ‘What?’ Sarkissian, hearing the gravity in the younger man’s voice, frowned. ‘What do you wonder, Sergeant?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a criticism, you know, Doctor, but . . . look I’d do anything for Inspector Suleyman, he’s been very good to me . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But, well, you didn’t hear it from me, but I know that he’s got a Mafia boss in his sights. He’s been after him for some time. There’s information about this man all over his desk.’ He looked up into the doctor’s face. ‘He’s Russian.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Russians en masse had been coming to live and work in İstanbul ever since the disintegration of the old Soviet Union. Attracted to the relative affluence of the city, the Russians had almost taken over certain districts of İstanbul. And although the majority of these people wanted nothing more than just to make new and better lives for themselves in Turkey, some, like the pimps who sold their own women on the streets, had other, more criminal objectives. Others still, like the Mafia bosses who controlled sometimes vast and extremely wealthy crime organisations, moved to even blacker and more frightening rhythms. And although it was good that someone might finally be trying to tackle what had become an enormous problem for law enforcement in the city, the thought of it made both Çöktin and Sarkissian go cold. Just because the handsome Suleyman was an honest man didn’t mean that everyone he came into contact with or even worked alongside was of a similar mind. Less than a year before, the whole department had been rocked by the activities of an Eastern European gangster, Zhivkov, who had possessed an informant inside the department. Taking on organised crime, even though Zhivkov was now dead, was not something to be done lightly, and although Arto Sarkissian had no idea upon what basis Suleyman was acting, he just hoped that he knew what he was doing. The doctor had over the years seen at first-hand what these people did to those who opposed them. Just the memory of these incidents made him wince.

  ‘I’d better go,’ Çöktin said as he first ground out his cigarette in the doctor’s ashtray and then rose to his feet, ‘leave you to your work.’

  Sarkissian also stood up and started to move towards his office door. ‘We will speak tomorrow, Sergeant.’ He placed his fingers around the door handle and made ready to wish his guest goodbye.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘Goodbye, Sergeant.’ He opened the door out into the corridor.

  However, instead of going through it, Çöktin stopped, his face suddenly grave as if something troubling had just struck him.

  ‘Sergeant?’

  Çöktin bit his bottom lip. ‘Doctor, I assume that the man in the Keyder apartment must have been blind.’

  ‘He had two glass eyes,’ Sarkissian replied, ‘and so I’d say that was beyond reasonable doubt.’

  ‘But then don’t you think it’s very odd that he was wearing a military uniform? I mean, if he was blind . . .’

  Arto Sarkissian sighed. He’d seen so much that was odd or out of the ordinary over the years that sometimes he almost missed certain, less obvious strangeness, like this seeming anomaly with the unknown man’s corpse.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Sergeant,’ he said wearily. ‘People deal with situations in a variety of ways. Perhaps he used to be in the military and continued to wear the uniform after he lost his sight. Perhaps he couldn’t quite get over not being in the military in Argentina or wherever he came from.’ He shrugged. ‘But then perhaps he just bought the blazer from a second-hand clothes stall. Maybe Mrs Keyder bought it for him. I don’t know. Time will tell, or not.’

  ‘I know,’ Çöktin said as he moved past the doctor into the corridor beyond.

  ‘İnşallah, all will be revealed in the fullness of time,’
the Armenian concluded.

  And with that expression so redolent of all things Islamic, the Christian and the Yezidi parted.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘I feel,’ İkmen said as he leaned back in his battered leather chair and sucked hard on his Maltepe cigarette, ‘that some clarification about why Melih Akdeniz was planning to take his children out to Sarıyer is needed.’

  The attractive young woman sitting opposite, frowned. ‘Why? They didn’t go; they’ve not been spotted over there.’

  ‘No, but I feel I’d like to know what was planned anyway. Where in Sarıyer they were going and who, if anyone, they were going to see are questions we need to ask Melih Akdeniz.’

  The woman, Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoǧlu, had worked directly for İkmen for just over six months. Prior to that she’d been in uniform, and had worked on operations he had commanded. She’d known about him outside of work through his previous sergeant, who had once been her lover. Not that she liked to dwell on the late Sergeant Orhan Tepe for too long these days. Since Orhan’s death she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into her career, which was why, she assumed, İkmen had chosen her to be his deputy. He was, however, as Orhan had always said, an odd character. Details, like this Sarıyer business, something that on the face of it meant very little to the investigation, bothered him. But then sometimes, as Ayşe knew from past experience – particularly with İkmen – these details were often crucial to the resolution of an investigation.

  ‘Do you want me to call Akdeniz and let him know we’re coming?’ Ayşe said as she made to pick up her telephone.

  ‘No,’ İkmen replied, ‘let’s surprise him.’

  ‘He might be out.’

  ‘No, he won’t be.’ İkmen rose from his chair and put on his jacket. ‘The wife goes out, remember? Prostrate with grief she might be, but Eren Akdeniz is still the one who goes out to get the bread and cigarettes. Melih’s “great” work must continue . . .’

  ‘You don’t like Mr Akdeniz very much, do you, sir?’

  İkmen smiled. ‘As a professional, Ayşe, I don’t “like” or “dislike” anyone. But as you’ve so rightly observed, although my experience of Mr Akdeniz is as yet slight I know he’s not exactly my type of person. I can sympathise with the state his various drug habits have plunged that awful body of his into. I mean, he makes me look fat and healthy! But the “art” that has been fuelled by the drugs, well . . . I’m sorry but it does nothing for me, and as for his insistence that “the work” carry on in spite of the disappearance of his children . . .’

  ‘Some people deal with stress like that.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen said, ‘and I expect that if he were a traditional calligraphy artist or a Greek monk painting an ikon, I’d feel entirely different. But I’m afraid I find it difficult to appreciate the value of carpets depicting the inner workings of the scrotum or that “mosaic” of Tarkan.’

  ‘The one made of . . . ?’

  ‘Condom wrappers, yes.’

  ‘It’s a very good likeness,’ Ayşe said as she fought to suppress the laughter this work of art evoked in her. Tarkan, monumentally successful pop star, was practically worshipped by his teenage fans. Vast numbers of young girls screamed and fainted at his concerts, as she well knew, having been on duty at a few of them. Tarkan rendered in condom wrappers was an irony she could see only too easily.

  ‘I admit it’s a good likeness,’ İkmen said as he took his car keys out of his pocket and then picked up his lighter. ‘Akdeniz has talent. I can even appreciate some of the statements he’s making about society and culture, what I object to is the money art collectors and galleries give him for spending an afternoon gluing some bits of tinfoil on a sheet of paper. And all the nonsense the critics write about it. But then I’m old, what do I know?’

  Ayşe didn’t reply. İkmen was always a bit tetchy and had been particularly agitated for the past few months. She wasn’t sure why although there were rumours. His already bulging apartment – five of the nine İkmen children still lived at home – had recently swelled to accommodate another relative. And then there was the ‘problem’ of his daughter Hulya, who was in love with a young Jewish boy. Although İkmen himself didn’t care for or practise his religion, his wife was, apparently, a devout Muslim and both she and the boy’s father, an old colleague of both Ayşe and her boss, opposed the relationship. All that on top of the job had to be stressful.

  ‘Well, let’s get over there,’ İkmen said, opening the office door and allowing Ayşe to pass into the corridor. ‘I’d like to have a stroll around some of the streets lower down the hill while we’re there too. I know the men are doing house-to-house, but that’s intimidating,’ he smiled. ‘It’s cooling down now, let’s see if we can engage some of the locals in a little off-the-record conversation.’

  They walked side by side towards the stairs.

  ‘I haven’t worked in Balat for some years,’ İkmen continued. ‘I was still working with Inspector Suleyman at the time. In some ways the place has changed. Fewer Jews, more migrants, not as run down.’

  ‘Well, the houses are very beautiful,’ Ayşe said. ‘The Akdeniz house is stunning. If I had enough money I’d buy a house in Balat and restore it.’

  Although quite how, İkmen wondered, this beautiful policewoman would fit in with either the working-class locals or the eccentric artists he couldn’t imagine. But he kept these thoughts to himself as he followed Ayşe down the stairs and out to the car park.

  Father Giovanni Vetra, unlike some members of the foreign clergy, liked Turkey and the Turks, and had bothered to learn their language. Based at the church of St Anthony of Padua in Beyoǧlu for the past twenty years, he delighted in both the history and vibrancy of İstanbul. He had many friends in the city, one of whom had been Rosita Keyder.

  ‘I don’t know exactly when Rosita came to this country,’ he said as he passed the tiny cup of espresso coffee to Çöktin. ‘I know it was in the nineteen fifties, but when . . . ?’ He shrugged.

  Çöktin looked down at his cup and smiled. Turkish coffee was good but real Italian espresso, well, that was a treat. He took one glorious sip before moving to his next question.

  ‘Did Mrs Keyder ever talk about Argentina?’

  ‘Not often,’ the priest said as he leaned back into his metal patio chair and looked up at the now darkening sky. ‘By the time she met me, it was already a very long time ago. She spoke about it more in her early days here, to Father Carlo.’

  ‘He was your predecessor?’

  ‘Yes. Father Carlo knew the Keyders well – Veli, the husband, as well as Rosita. Unfortunately by the time I arrived to take over from Father Carlo, Veli was already dying. Poor Rosita has been alone now for nineteen years. There is a sister-in-law who lives in one of the Bosphorus villages, I believe, but I don’t think there’s anyone else. Rosita never had children and to my knowledge she never went back to visit any relatives she might still have had in Buenos Aires. She came to church and I visited her once a week.’

  ‘You never saw anyone else in her apartment when you were there?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  Çöktin looked down at the warm terracotta-coloured floor of the courtyard before replying. ‘Look, sir, this is at present confidential—’

  ‘Of course.’ The priest smiled. If nothing else he had to be accustomed to confidences.

  ‘We found another body, aside from that of Mrs Keyder, in the apartment,’ Çöktin said. ‘That of a young man. There was no ID on the body.’

  ‘A young man . . .’ Father Giovanni shook his heavy Roman head. ‘No. She never mentioned, certainly not to me, any other relatives apart from her sister-in-law, who was or is single. She had a few acquaintances at church, elderly ladies. This young man couldn’t have broken in to her apartment?’

  ‘We don’t think so.’ Çöktin finished his coffee and placed the empty cup on the table beside him. ‘He was wearing clothes we think Mrs Keyder may have given him and we believe he was blind.’
/>
  ‘Oh, how—’

  ‘The body has glass eyes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments after that, Çöktin, in a state of static agitation. Catholic priests, or so his boss, Mehmet Suleyman, had told him when Çöktin had spoken to him earlier, were privy to their parishioners’ innermost secrets during confession. Things said in confession were between the priest, the parishioner and God. This was, so Suleyman had said, absolute. His wife was a Catholic so he should know. But then if that were the case, perhaps Father Giovanni may know more about Rosita Keyder than he had offered so far. But how was Çöktin ever going to extract that information if it was told during confession?

  ‘Father Giovanni,’ he said, ‘I know this might be difficult for you, but—’

  ‘You want to know whether Rosita ever told me anything in confession,’ the priest smiled. Although neither handsome nor young, his face had a sort of hawkish, battered nobility that was easy to warm to. ‘No, she didn’t, Sergeant. And before you start wondering whether I’m lying to protect her, please remember that by lying I would be committing a sin. Had she told me anything pertinent in confession I would tell you that had happened. But she didn’t.’ He shrugged. ‘Rosita’s “sins” revolved around events like cursing a stubbed toe.’

  ‘I see.’ The priest’s statement, on the face of it, just added to the notion that nothing untoward had indeed happened in the Kuloǧlu apartment. If both Rosita Keyder and the young man died from natural causes the only problem the police would have would be one of establishing the latter’s identity. But that wasn’t criminal work and wouldn’t therefore concern Çöktin.

  As if reading the young officer’s thoughts, the priest asked, ‘Do you know yet how Rosita died?’