‘You wanted to pursue it, Mehmet,’ İskender said – a trifle harshly, Suleyman thought.
‘Ardiç agreed,’ he responded defensively. ‘I’m being set up, we know that. We have to see where this is going to lead.’
İskender sat down in what was usually Çöktin’s chair. ‘It’s all a bit clumsy, though, don’t you think? I thought Rostov was supposed to be one of the cleverer mobsters.’
‘He is.’ Suleyman turned and made his way over to the seat behind his desk.
As he moved the chair backwards, İskender sighed. ‘You know,’ he said, biting nervously on his bottom lip as he spoke, ‘and don’t misinterpret this, but you were with that Russian girl for a very long time . . .’
‘She had a lot to tell me,’ Suleyman smiled, ‘and besides, we had to make what we were supposed to be doing look real. I mean, I know she was only playing a game, but I had to go along with it.’
‘She and Rostov must know that you were just playing along.’
‘Maybe.’ Briefly, but to İskender, significantly, Suleyman averted his eyes.
He had been with that whore an awful long time. İskender himself had almost had to go with one of her fellows just to make his presence there plausible. It was something Suleyman should have taken into account. But then when he’d come out of the woman’s room, he hadn’t looked as if he were taking much of anything into account. He’d looked ruffled, flushed, in fact just like some of the ‘real’ punters that İskender had seen coming and going from those awful greasy rooms at the back of the pavyon. The thought that Mehmet would, could go with such a creature had to be ridiculous – and yet it wasn’t an idea that was going away easily. And indeed, the more he looked at those still slightly averted eyes, the more the possibility of it grew inside his head. Mehmet hadn’t been happy, in his personal life, for a while. In spite of the privacy of his nature, a lot of people had deduced that Suleyman had problems – the rows he had with his wife, who made no secret of her marital dissatisfaction when she came to the station to see him, were legendary. However, to confront his colleague head on about his conduct was not, İskender knew, the way forward. Whatever had or had not happened, Suleyman would deny involvement with the girl. All that İskender could hope was that if anything had happened, Suleyman had been careful – in every sense of the word.
‘If no actual deal takes place but Rostov’s men appear for another purpose, you have the right to question them about their activities,’ Suleyman said, breaking through into his colleague’s secret but, both of them knew, suspected thoughts. ‘We are, after all, acting upon information received.’
‘And if no one appears and nothing happens?’
‘Then you stand your team down,’ Suleyman said. ‘I’ll be in contact with you. By that time my men and I may know what’s really happening.’
‘I still think that Rostov’s counting on us to be there,’ İskender said, frowning. ‘This “deal”, if it’s happening at all, could be taking place in a completely different part of the city. Like Ardiç said, a double bluff.’
‘That will become apparent.’
‘I just hope we’re not wasting our time – or worse.’
Suleyman frowned. ‘What do you mean, “or worse”?’
‘Walking into some sort of elaborate trap,’ İskender said gravely, ‘something we might have to pay for with blood. We know these people are armed. And if you remember what happened with Zhivkov and his men, we also know they have no compunction about using those weapons. These people, Mehmet, don’t give a shit that we’re the Law. Their own loyalties override everything.’
CHAPTER 8
‘They’ve been in there a very long time, Doctor,’ Çöktin said as he watched the small group of dark-suited men through the laboratory window.
‘They’re trying to come to some sort of conclusion,’ Arto Sarkissian replied, as he too watched the men through the glass.
There were four embalmers currently in Arto’s laboratory, looking at the unknown corpse, studying X-rays and carefully considering the data the pathologist had supplied about the chemical composition of the body fluids. And although Yiannis Livadanios, his brother Spiros and the Armenian undertaker Hagop Balian were obviously skilled at their craft, it was very clearly the Spaniard, Orontes, who was taking the lead. Shunning conversation, which generally proceeded in Turkish but sometimes in French, the Spaniard favoured looking at and touching the body as opposed to talking about what its appearance might mean.
‘I am told Señor Orontes is an enthusiastic expert on Dr Pedro Ara’s work, familiar with what is known about the mechanics of his technique,’ Arto said. ‘He comes from Madrid, where Ara himself was originally based, and has studied examples of the great man’s work in that city.’
‘You mean dead bodies,’ Çöktin observed sourly.
‘Yes.’
The Yezidi sighed. Even though Dr Sarkissian had explained why and how Christian people were so keen on preserving the dead, he still found the whole thing incomprehensible. Dead things were, well, dead things. One could and did mourn the passing of loved ones, often bitterly, but to try to hang on to them in corporeal actuality was weird. It wasn’t hygienic – or natural. Some people, for obviously desperate reasons that were entirely beyond Çöktin, did things with corpses. Dr Sarkissian had even intimated that this Ara person had ‘done things’ with the corpse of Eva Peron – an idea that made viewing Ara’s admirers lurking around the Kuloǧlu boy’s body a particularly grisly tableau. But then suddenly, and with what Çöktin imagined was a typically Iberian flourish, it was over. Orontes flung open the laboratory door and, without even so much as looking at his colleagues, invited Arto and Çöktin back inside.
‘It is my considered opinion,’ the Spaniard said without preamble, ‘that what you have there is a corpse that has been preserved according to the technique of Dr Pedro Ara.’
‘But not by him,’ Arto said.
The three other embalmers had now come to huddle respectfully around their leader, hanging on his every sibilant syllable.
‘I believe,’ Señor Orontes continued haughtily, ‘that it is possible this man’s corpse was originally treated by Dr Ara. It is a brilliant example of the embalmer’s art, quite exceptional.’
‘Well, at least I suppose that makes it unlikely that our man was a Turkish citizen,’ Arto said with a sigh. ‘The body being possibly old enough to have come from elsewhere. But quite what I’m supposed to do with him now . . .’
‘First find the balm he was treated with or allow me to apply an emollient to stop any further disintegration. He must be preserved. There are many, many museums and university departments both in Spain and South America who would be delighted to possess such an exhibit,’ Orontes said with a smile. ‘I could put you in touch—’
‘Until we know who he is and who he “belongs” to, if you like, “we” can’t do anything,’ Arto replied with some vigour. ‘In my opinion, he died naturally.’
‘And there is still a public health issue,’ a grave-faced Çöktin put in.
‘Indeed,’ Arto concurred. ‘Unless he is claimed by a foreign national and transported to that person’s country, eventually he will have to be buried.’
Orontes’ eyes blazed. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘No, that can’t happen!’ And with a wide sweep of his arm in the direction of the corpse, he said, ‘This is art, Dr Sarkissian!’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Çöktin snapped, ‘it’s a dead body and it needs to be given a decent burial!’
Orontes said something in Spanish which, at least to Çöktin’s ears, sounded particularly venomous. And although the other embalmers didn’t understand any more Spanish than Çöktin or Arto Sarkissian, they all nodded their agreement with whatever Señor Orontes had said.
It was clear to Arto that the situation between the Christian embalmers and the Turkish policeman was about to become critical. In theory, now that they’d done their job, he could just throw the undertakers out into the street. But
then there were several very good reasons why that wasn’t a bright idea. First, he’d need Orontes’ report to back up his own findings and, secondly, people as obsessed by death and the accoutrements of death as the Spaniard did tend to veer in the direction of the very odd. If, as he’d said, Orontes looked upon the Kuloǧlu corpse more as a work of art than a dead body, who knew what he might do to try to save it from the black clutches of a deep Turkish grave?
Smiling through a hideous picture that had just flashed into his mind of Orontes in ecstasy over his ‘artwork’, Arto put his hand on to the Spaniard’s shoulder and led both him and his colleagues through into his office.
‘But all of these issues are for the future,’ he said as he shot a reassuring glance towards Çöktin. ‘For now we all just need to digest for a while what has been discovered so unexpectedly in our great city. I have a little brandy and a few cigars we can enjoy. Now, about this balm . . .’
Seeing and appreciating what the doctor was doing, Çöktin smiled as he followed the dark-suited men back into Arto’s office. About a year ago, his boss, Inspector Suleyman, had told him that one of the doctor’s ancestors had been a physician at the court of the spendthrift and permanently enraged Sultan Abdul Aziz. Very few people around that particular monarch, especially towards the end of his life, had lived to tell the tale. However, that one of this rare group had been a Sarkissian was not surprising given the doctor’s talent for diplomacy. As he watched Arto pour out drinks and light cigars for the embalmers, Çöktin wondered at what a diplomat the man was – and what an outsider. Like Çöktin himself, accommodating, getting around things, flattering – playing the part of the loyal servant. How different they both were from the confrontational Suleyman, with his iron-clad opinions and his direct and certain commands. But then he was an aristocrat, an Ottoman, and although Turkey had now been a republic for over seventy-five years, that ruling mindset was still deep inside his bones. It was what made the man go after truly terrifying gangsters with so much confidence and panache. Çöktin had heard that something might be on with regard to Rostov that very night. He hoped that if things became difficult, Suleyman would remember what he’d seen of Arto Sarkissian’s diplomacy and attempt to employ his methods.
Reşad Kuran was a small man of about forty-five. Like his sister, Eren Akdeniz, he possessed the deep-set, heavily shadowed eyes of one who is always weary – that or the effects of many years of narcotic abuse.
‘This vehicle is very clean, sir,’ İkmen said as he peered into the back of the battered blue Renault van.
Reşad Kuran lit a cigarette and looked up into the darkness of the sky. ‘I take pride in my work,’ he said. ‘I take care.’
Tepabaşı was not the sort of district in which one would expect to find a close relative of a celebrity – narrow, washing-draped streets, perpetually dusty in summer and mud-choked in winter. It existed a few short minutes away from the bustle and glitz of İstiklal Caddesi, to the north of the traffic-swamped Tarlabaşi Caddesi, which led down, ultimately, to the Atatürk Bridge, which spanned the upper reaches of the Golden Horn. Now, at the height of summer, this populous and underprivileged district smelled of overripe fruit and cheap tobacco, its crumbling façades resounding to the sounds of babies crying and men shouting at women who had long since given up all of their girlish dreams.
‘So who do you work for, Mr Kuran?’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu asked. There was, she recalled, a Syrian Orthodox church somewhere in this area, a huge white place with chandeliers and paintings decorated with coloured lights inside. She’d been there once to the wedding of a girl she’d been at school with – a very dark girl; no one had even known she was a Christian until she’d married a man who not only wore a cross around his neck but looked like an ikon of Jesus.
‘For anyone who needs goods transported,’ Kuran replied with a shrug.
‘Including your brother-in-law, Melih?’
‘I work for Melih, yes.’
‘You went to his house to pick up a work of art last Friday night.’
‘Yes, I’ve told one of your officers this already. I took it over to some place in, er, Yeniköy – I don’t remember. Some rich collector.’
‘Rather an odd time to be doing a delivery, isn’t it?’ İkmen said. ‘At night?’
Kuran shrugged again.
‘So while you were at your sister’s house, did you see either your niece or nephew?’
‘No, they were in bed.’ Kuran’s eyes narrowed into a frown. ‘You don’t think that I had anything to do with their disappearance, do you?’
İkmen smiled. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said. ‘You tell me.’
Even by the weak light from the streetlamp, İkmen and Farsakoǧlu could see that Kuran’s face instantly flooded with blood.
‘I didn’t,’ he said as he waved his cigarette high up into the air to emphasise his point. ‘Why would I? I’m their uncle! I love them!’
‘I’m sure that you do, sir,’ İkmen replied as he took his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket, ‘but I’m afraid that my job dictates that I take nothing on trust and so I’m going to have to ask you to allow me to subject your vehicle to forensic analysis.’
‘What!’
‘Look, if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear,’ İkmen continued. ‘I need to check your vehicle for possible evidence.’
‘Those children have never been in my van!’
‘Then you’ve nothing to worry about.’ İkmen walked over to Kuran, punching a number into the phone as he went. ‘Now are you going to give us permission?’
‘But my business . . .’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, so I can’t refuse, is that what you’re saying?’
‘No,’ İkmen said as he placed the phone up to his ear, ‘you can’t. But I do always like to ask first. It seems, somehow, just that little bit more pleasant. Oh, and don’t leave the city, will you, Mr Kuran, not until we’ve cleared this matter up?’
As her superior turned away to speak into the mobile, Ayşe Farsakoǧlu smiled. How typical of İkmen to be both tough and polite at the same time. So few officers had that knack, and she felt it had to be better than the usual shouting, strong-arm stuff one generally witnessed at such times. Not of course that Reşad Kuran was looking particularly comfortable in spite of İkmen’s low-key approach. He just stood rooted to the spot, his eyes roaming nervously over the surface of his van.
The church of St Stephen of the Bulgars was a quietly extraordinary building. Standing just back from the shore of the Golden Horn, between Balat and Fener ferry stages, the church looked traditional enough – a dirty white, Eastern-influenced Gothic, typical of some nineteenth-century ecclesiastical buildings. To those unaware of its history, it appeared to be an ordinary building in every way. It was only when one realised that rather than being constructed from stone, St Stephen’s was actually made of cast iron that the uniqueness of the place began to seep into the consciousness. Cast in sections in Vienna where the building was designed, the various parts were individually shipped down the Danube to be finally assembled and erected in İstanbul in 1898.
Ever since that time, St Stephen’s had serviced the small Bulgarian community’s needs via a succession of Orthodox divines, none of whom had ever attracted the attention of the police. And, in spite of what Suleyman’s informant had told them about the corrupt priest of St Stephen’s and his involvement in the drugs trade, Metin İskender was not inclined to believe that anything rotten had invaded the place. According to the sultry Masha, at 11 p.m. that night one of the Fathers would come out of the church to take delivery of a large quantity of heroin from an associate or associates of Rostov. It was now 0.45 p.m., and there was not. so much as a whisper from the building beside which İskender and his four very ordinary ‘friends’ were sitting. It was, after all, summer, the park beside the church afforded uninterrupted views of the Golden Horn and the men were all chatting and smoking and, occasionally, laughing. Men did such th
ings, particularly working-class men, which is what this group appeared to be.
‘The fact that there’s a light on in there,’ the skeletal head of Constable Güney inclined towards the church, ‘would seem to suggest that someone’s in.’
‘Not necessarily,’ İskender said, his throat a little tight now, partially strangled by rising anxiety. ‘Christians often leave candles burning in their churches for their dead, I believe.’
‘Overnight?’
İskender shrugged. ‘They place them in sand usually. It’s perfectly OK.’
‘Audi in front of the gates,’ a thickset officer called Constable Avcı slid effortlessly into the conversation.
In line with received practice, only İskender turned to look at the car that had moved so quietly into the orbit of their operation. The three-tiered wedding-cake tower of the church loomed palely over the dark vehicle like an impassive Russian hit man. For several seconds there was, with the exception of İskender’s hammering heartbeat, perfect stillness.
And then without the slightest attempt at subterfuge, the double entrance doors to the church spread wide to reveal a tall, black-robed figure.
‘This could be it,’ İskender said, his head down as he took a light for his cigarette from his sergeant, Alpaslan Karataş.
The black-robed figure ran down the steps from the church into the surrounding gardens and over to the tall, wrought-iron gates. Someone, the officers couldn’t see whether it was male or female, got out of the Audi. As the priest began unlocking the gates of St Stephen’s the five police officers started to make their way slowly up towards Demirhisar Caddesi, a route that would take them directly in front of the church. Still chatting in low tones they glanced occasionally at what was happening over by the church until the owner of the car produced a large box from somewhere inside the vehicle. The cleric came forward, smiling, to take possession.
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