Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ İkmen replied. He didn’t actually like the saffron-coloured sweet at all but he knew that gypsies, just like his own people, tended to favour those who ate their food.

  ‘OK, please sit,’ Gonca said, sweeping one long arm across a vast rank of brightly coloured cushions. ‘This is my friend Nilufer, Miss Cemal, she’s a ceramicist. She’s been here longer than I have. I’m sure she won’t mind talking to you about our illustrious neighbour. Nilufer, this is Inspector İkmen, from the police.’

  She drifted off into what İkmen assumed was the kitchen.

  ‘I suppose this is about the poor Akdeniz children,’ the very respectable middle-aged woman at his feet said.

  İkmen pulled up the material around the knees of his trousers and lowered himself down on to a vast magenta-coloured cushion.

  ‘I’m trying to find out whether Mr Akdeniz has any enemies,’ he said.

  Nilufer laughed. ‘Well, that should keep you busy for a while!’ she said bitterly.

  ‘I must admit that he doesn’t appear to have many friends,’ İkmen said, ‘but whether or not that means he has actual enemies . . .’

  ‘Melih Akdeniz enjoys his notoriety,’ Nilufer said. ‘He has no respect for or appreciation of other people’s work. He thinks everyone apart from him is absolutely talentless and treats people with contempt and rudeness. Some say it stems from the fact that his family were Jews – Nabaro – they changed their family name to Akdeniz when they converted to Islam. It is said that Melih was originally shunned by the art world because of his background, but I think that’s unlikely. Artists are, in my opinion, very liberal. I think it’s more likely Akdeniz chooses to feel put upon and aggrieved. He’s so bitter at the world! Many years ago he smashed a ceramic piece I gave him as a gift – in front of my eyes! He’s an awful man.’

  İkmen sighed. So this was the woman Melih had called a bitch. ‘Well, yes, most unpleasant. But what I suppose I’m looking for is a deep enmity of either a personal or professional nature.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s dreadful to have your work destroyed in front of your face?’

  ‘I, er . . .’

  ‘Nilufer, as well as having been insulted by Melih, also hates his work, Inspector,’ Gonca said as she placed the small pot of zerde and a spoon she had retrieved from the kitchen into İkmen’s hands.

  ‘He’s just using the power of shock to sell his trash,’ Nilufer said disgustedly. ‘I mean, why else would anyone want to buy a urine-soaked canvas unless it’s to shock people? He’s always making some “statement”, using his notoriety to persuade stupid people to part with vast amounts of money to buy the stuff.’

  ‘In some cases, maybe,’ Gonca said as she bonelessly lowered herself down to the floor, ‘but I’m still enthralled by his early stuff, the hair carpets, the sex magic pieces . . .’

  ‘Sex magic.’

  Gonca turned her huge black eyes on İkmen and smiled. ‘Melih used to perform sex acts with women on large canvases. He’d paint the resultant stains in the astrological colours associated with the time and date of each act. Sometimes he’d adorn the staining with jewellery. I like the sex magic pieces, they’re very organic.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ Nilufer said darkly. ‘I just can’t see where the skill comes in.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should track down those women and ask them,’ Gonca said with a thick, mucoid laugh in her throat. ‘I mean, the things Melih is supposed to be able to do . . .’

  ‘Gonca!’

  İkmen, confused, turned to the gypsy with raised eyebrows. She reached out and put one large hand on his knee.

  ‘Melih Akdeniz is reputed to be both a very big – if you know what I mean – and a very skilful man, Inspector,’ she explained. ‘It was said, although I doubt whether this holds today, that Melih always pleasured two women at a time, one with his penis, the other with his mouth.’

  She licked her thick red lips, squeezed İkmen’s knee just once and then took her hand away, smiling around her cigar.

  İkmen plunged his spoon into the zerde and quickly ate a mouthful. ‘So your art . . .’

  ‘My medium is collage,’ Gonca said. ‘I work with tarot cards, tea leaves, oil and equestrian equipment, horsehair, horse sweat, flies. Stuff that is traditional to my people.’ She pointed towards what looked, to İkmen, like a large, hair-covered screen in the corner of the room. ‘That’s my latest piece,’ she said lazily. ‘The hair comes from my father’s stallion and from the heads of my ten daughters.’ She moved in close to him and added, ‘I call it the Tree of Life.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘A lot of us, including Melih, although his work is more abstract, like to invoke Kabbalistic images and themes here in Balat,’ Nilufer said, a trifle primly, İkmen thought. ‘The Tree of Life is the centre point of that magical system. I represent it myself in many of my works too. I suppose it must be an echo from Balat’s Jewish past.’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen smiled. He knew something about Kabbala, the ancient Jewish scheme of correspondences. It was, after all, the cornerstone of all Western magical systems. ‘But to get back to Melih Akdeniz . . .’

  ‘You want to know whether we know of anyone who might wish to harm him? Or whether indeed we would harm him by taking his children ourselves?’ Gonca asked with an obvious and visible twinkle in her eyes. ‘Inspector,’ she said, ‘I have twelve children of my own. I’d have to absolutely loathe Melih to want to add yet more mouths to my table. And I don’t loathe him, I quite like his work.’

  İkmen, father of nine children, could all too easily follow this line of reasoning – even if, as he well knew, some of the most prolific gypsy families made a lot of money by performing multiple kidnappings for various city gangs.

  ‘And until I spoke to him yesterday, to express my sympathy for his plight, I hadn’t so much as walked past his house for over twenty years,’ Nilufer said.

  İkmen turned to look at her. ‘But you dislike Mr Akdeniz . . .’

  ‘Oh, I hate the man!’ Nilufer said without embarrassment. ‘But I only feel pity for his children, having him as a father, and would wish them no harm.’

  Unless, İkmen thought, you’re so sorry for them that you’ve taken them somewhere, maybe even put them out of their misery . . . There was something he didn’t like about this small, seemingly prudish woman. Not that he had a bad feeling about her – he didn’t. But there was or didn’t appear to be any generosity in her soul. Unlike Gonca . . .

  ‘Unfortunately for you, Inspector,’ Gonca said with a laugh in her voice, ‘there are so many candidates for the “who hates Melih the most” title that your job is going to be very hard. There are his in-laws, for a start. He seduced their then unmarried daughter, made her pregnant. But then,’ she shrugged, ‘as the son of Ayşe of Üsküdar, you do have recourse to, shall we say, rather more unconventional methods than most of your peers.’

  İkmen looked into her fathomless black eyes and smiled. ‘You know . . .’

  ‘I’m a gypsy, Inspector, I know everything.’ She laughed fully and raucously. ‘You’re a famous man, always in the newspapers and, besides, gypsies of my mother’s generation knew the Witch of Üsküdar. She was very good with cards. Are you good with cards, Inspector, or do you just have feelings?’

  ‘My methods are quite my own,’ İkmen responded with a smile, ‘as I’m sure you know from the newspapers, Gonca Hanım.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Her face suddenly became serious. ‘And so what have your “methods” informed you about the Akdeniz children, Inspector?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do you think may have happened to them?’

  İkmen frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No, but what do you feel,’ Gonca said, as she moved once again closer in upon İkmen, ‘deep down in that place where emotion becomes truth? That place that the cards and the leaves and the oil speak to. In the dark . . .’

  The room telescoped, becoming small around him. Far
away or so it seemed, Nilufer Cemal finished what remained of her zerde and left to go to the kitchen – a small figure and background to the gypsy’s large hair-draped face. Had İkmen been unaccustomed to similar such experiences he would have been frightened, but he’d been having them since he was a child and so he knew where he was even if he didn’t know why. His mind, nudged by the gypsy, had entered that realm where his mother and certain members of his existing family were wont sometimes to venture. Some called it magic, others an ‘altered state’. He preferred ‘insight’ himself.

  But then suddenly there was such a crushing dread upon him that İkmen gasped for breath. Although he could neither see, hear, nor even in the conventional sense know anything out of the ordinary, the fear he experienced was suddenly overwhelming. Gonca saw it too.

  ‘They’re going through hell aren’t they,’ she said as the room resolved itself back to its normal state around her, ‘the Akdeniz children?’

  ‘I don’t know that.’ İkmen dropped his gaze.

  Gonca’s hand whipped across and fastened itself on to his chin, forcing him to look into her eyes. ‘Don’t lie! Not to a gypsy!’

  Nilufer Cemal, who had just walked back into what was an alarming tableau, cried out in order to stop her friend from getting herself arrested, ‘Gonca!’

  ‘Tell me, İkmen!’ the gypsy continued. ‘I know what you saw.’

  ‘Then you don’t need me to tell you, do you?’ İkmen said as he tore himself away from her grasp and jumped to his feet.

  ‘No . . .’

  She looked into his eyes and he looked back. He had to get out of this place and now, before the darkness inside came out of him and swamped this place of cheap glitter and soul-stealing tarot cards. That he and, yes, the gypsy knew also, was bad enough. But the other woman didn’t know and shouldn’t.

  İkmen walked towards the studio door and out into the house. Gonca, her large hips swaying provocatively beneath her long silk dress, followed. When he reached the front door, İkmen turned and, after looking to see whether Nilufer Cemal had followed her friend, he said, ‘You will speak about this to no one. Not even your friend.’

  Gonca raised one eyebrow, and taking the single card she had in the bosom of her dress, she held it up for İkmen to see. He turned away from it and, his face grey, let himself out of the house without another word.

  Constable Hikmet Yıldız knocked smartly on Inspector Suleyman’s office door and then waited to be allowed in. It wasn’t actually the inspector he’d come to see, it was Sergeant Çöktin, whom Yıldız knew was alone at present.

  A light, young voice called, ‘Come in.’

  Yıldız entered. The office Çöktin shared with his superior was small but bright. Like Suleyman himself it was generally tidy and, although some ashtrays and food and drink detritus were in evidence, there was a feeling of control within the room. Not too messy, things in their place, not too many smoking requisites . . .

  Çöktin, who had been searching for something in one of the filing cabinets when Yıldız entered, looked up.

  ‘Constable Yıldız,’ he said with a smile. He rather liked Yıldız, he was a bit like himself a few years back. ‘And what can I do for you?’

  ‘I was just wondering whether you’ve heard anything about that body we found yesterday, Sergeant,’ the young man said.

  Çöktin closed the filing cabinet drawer and moved towards his desk.

  ‘The elderly woman, Mrs Keyder, died of an aneurism,’ he said as he sat down and then switched on his computer screen.

  ‘What about the man?’ Yıldız asked. ‘What did he die of? When did he die?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Çöktin replied as he stared intently at the start-up sequence of his machine. ‘Dr Sarkissian has yet to get back to me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Çöktin looked up into a face that was obviously more than a little troubled.

  Yıldız shrugged. ‘I mean why if he knows what killed the lady doesn’t the doctor know what killed the man. They were found together, at the same time.’

  ‘I really don’t know, Constable,’ Çöktin said with a sigh. ‘Perhaps he just hasn’t got around to the man yet. Dr Sarkissian’s always so busy.’

  ‘Sergeant . . .’ Yıldız sat down in the chair opposite Çöktin’s desk and removed his cap. It was very hot and his brow was sweating heavily underneath his headgear.

  ‘Yes?’

  Yıldız wiped his face with his smooth, brown forearm. ‘Did you think there was anything odd about that man’s body?’

  Çöktin, who had found unsettling the fact that the body had two glass eyes that were also the most vivid purple, just simply grunted. Odd or not, there were no facts known about the corpse at the present time and so to ascribe strangeness to something that could be most ordinary was not a thing he wanted to do. It certainly wasn’t what Suleyman would do, or rather did. Always measured in his responses, the proud Ottoman could be counted upon to explore each and every possibility – when he was around. Ever since he had taken upon himself the task of bringing a small group of men suspected of involvement in organised crime to justice, Suleyman had become a distant, almost shadowy figure. One that his deputy was finding increasingly hard to reach.

  ‘The man was blind – it’s what we’ve told the press – what of it?’ Çöktin said.

  ‘Well, yes, but . . . not that, exactly . . .’

  ‘So what then?’

  Yıldız sighed. ‘I have a feeling, an uneasy feeling.’

  ‘Inspector İkmen has those,’ Çöktin said with a smile. ‘His generally prove valuable.’

  ‘Yes, I know. His mother was a witch.’

  ‘Perhaps you should talk to him about this then, Hikmet. Maybe he might be able to help you put what you’re experiencing into words.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  The ringing of Çöktin’s telephone brought their conversation to a halt. He picked up the receiver and stated his name. Yıldız stood up and made ready to leave.

  ‘Ah, Doctor,’ Çöktin said as he waved the younger man back into his seat. ‘Yes, I’ve just been talking about that with Constable Yıldız . . . Yes . . .’ As he listened his face, which at the beginning of the conversation had been relaxed, resolved into a frown.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Çöktin asked. ‘I mean . . . Well, yes, of course I have to bow to your medical knowledge, Doctor, but . . .’

  Yıldız, who had been watching Çöktin ever since the call came in, began to feel slightly sick. Whether it was as a result of the grave expression that was now etched on the sergeant’s face or whether something else was at play here, he didn’t know. But he felt what he could only describe later as ‘tingly’, as if all the hairs on his head and body had suddenly stood up straight.

  ‘OK,’ Çöktin said on a sigh, ‘I’ll be over straight away. I still can’t believe . . .’ He shrugged. ‘OK, Doctor, I’ll be there. Yes.’

  His conversation over, Çöktin replaced the receiver and then rubbed his face with his hands.

  ‘Inspector İkmen will be very proud of you, Hikmet,’ he said as he took his jacket off the back of his chair and then rose slowly to his feet. ‘Seems your feeling was right.’

  ‘Oh?’ Yıldız, aware that the more senior man was now on his way out, also stood up. ‘So was that man murdered?’

  ‘No.’ Çöktin made his way over to his office door and opened it. ‘It’s far stranger than that, Hikmet,’ he said. ‘Murder I can kind of understand but this . . .’ He shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t you come with me over to the mortuary and find out?’ Çöktin said. ‘You were the one who, after all, kind of anticipated this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll have to let Dr Sarkissian explain,’ Çöktin said as he made his way out into the corridor, ‘because I’m afraid, Hikmet, that I just can’t.’

  He then made his way towards the stairs, bearing a young man who felt very ‘tingly’ again i
n his wake.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘I think he was probably about twenty when he died,’ Arto Sarkissian said as he pulled the sheet back to reveal the unknown man’s head and shoulders.

  ‘But, let me get this right, you don’t know when that might have happened?’ Çöktin asked.

  ‘No.’

  Briefly the two men stared into each other’s eyes.

  ‘As I told you on the phone, Sergeant,’ Sarkissian continued, ‘this body has been embalmed.’

  Yıldız, who had been watching the proceedings from behind Çöktin’s shoulder, looked confused.

  ‘An embalmed body is one that has been treated and preserved,’ Sarkissian expounded. ‘It’s something that Muslims don’t do,’ he smiled. ‘You’re in the ground within twenty-four hours, but to some extent Christian bodies are preserved. Not like this but—’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The Armenian sighed. Although just as distressed by death as their Christian and Jewish neighbours, Muslims were, in Sarkissian’s opinion, much more pragmatic and practical about it. People died, you buried them and then, after all the frenetic activity around the funeral was over, you mourned. Debates about the immortality or not of the soul didn’t impinge until the body was in the ground. That was and always had been important.

  ‘Christians wait to bury their dead,’ the doctor explained. ‘Even in very modern countries, like the USA where most bodies are now cremated, there is a delay. There are numerous reasons for this. In some countries, especially Eastern European and Latin states, there exists a traditional anxiety with regard to premature burial.’ He looked up into two horrified faces. ‘Oh, it used to happen,’ he said, ‘and although it shouldn’t happen these days some people are still anxious about it. As well as that, Christians do like to view their dead.’

  ‘You mean like when the Greeks carry their priests through the streets after they’ve died?’ Yıldız asked.

  ‘Yes. The body is displayed and people come to pay their respects to it. But there is, of course, a theological reason too.’