Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘No!’

  ‘If any of the samples inside your van match the children’s DNA we’ve gathered from the Akdeniz house, then you are looking at a lot of trouble. As you told us yourself, Mr Kuran, they’ve never ever been in your van, have they?’ İkmen said menacingly. ‘Now you told us that you took that work of art out to Yeniköy. Where in Yeniköy?’

  Kuran lowered his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘some wealthy place.’

  ‘What do you mean, “wealthy place”?’ İkmen, who was becoming increasingly impatient with this man, snapped, ‘A palace? A yalı? A yacht, perhaps? What?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘You keep on saying that, but you do, Mr Kuran,’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu said. Taking one very calm breath she continued, ‘It’s very simple. You took this art work from Balat to . . . ?’

  ‘What’s Melih’s art work got to do with the children? What does it matter where I took it?’

  ‘It matters, Mr Kuran,’ İkmen said emphatically, ‘because if Yaşar and Nuray, with or without your knowledge, were in your van at the time—’

  ‘But they weren’t!’

  ‘How do you know?’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu asked. ‘If you don’t know where you went then how can you be certain about what you were carrying?’

  Reşad Kuran put his head down into his hands.

  ‘You must have been drunk or on drugs,’ İkmen said with what sounded to Kuran like an iron certainty.

  ‘No! I’m clean, I never . . .’ Realising, suddenly, what the implications of what he’d just said were, Reşd Kuran looked up.

  ‘So if you’re so clean, why can’t you remember, Mr Kuran?’ İkmen said. ‘Do you perhaps have some sort of medical condition that affects your memory?’

  Reşad Kuran, who was now sweating even more heavily than he had been before, cleared his throat. ‘I want a lawyer,’ he said.

  İkmen nodded his assent. ‘Very well.’ As he rose to leave the room, he added, ‘I’ll tell your sister and her husband to go home. I think that might be for the best.’

  The guard opened the door to allow İkmen to leave.

  CHAPTER 13

  ‘I don’t know why Çetin recommended you come to me,’ Arto Sarkissian said as he folded his white-coated arms across his chest. ‘It’s my brother you really need to see.’

  Suleyman sighed. ‘Perhaps our friend, quite correctly, assumed that because I don’t really know your brother, I might be more comfortable approaching you first, Doctor.’

  The younger man’s face was, the Armenian noticed, quite grey with tension. That wasn’t surprising, given what he had just told him. To admit to infidelity was bad enough, but to further admit to unprotected sex with a prostitute – that was something else.

  ‘The best thing to do would be for me to call Krikor and make you an appointment at the clinic,’ Arto said as he reached across his desk to retrieve his telephone.

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘What?’

  Suleyman lowered his gaze. ‘But I mean I don’t want my employers to know.’

  ‘My brother is the soul of discretion, I can assure you,’ the Armenian responded kindly and, seeing that Suleyman wasn’t quite ready to hear himself discussed on the telephone, he put it down again. ‘Look, Mehmet,’ he said using, unusually for him, the policeman’s first name, ‘you can be tested for hepatitis B now. The result, whatever that might be, will be conclusive.’

  ‘And Aids?’ The word flashed fear into his eyes.

  Arto sighed. ‘Krikor will, of course, go into more detail than I can,’ he said. ‘Addiction and diseases of addiction are his speciality. But what I do know is that early testing for HIV, just after sexual or blood contact, isn’t conclusive. If you take a test now, you’ll have to have another one in three months and, maybe, I’m not sure, another one after that.’

  Suleyman rubbed his face wearily with his hands. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid!’

  Arto too found it difficult to credit. He’d been aware of Mehmet Suleyman for, he reckoned, fifteen years. He’d known him well for ten of those. To him, Suleyman was an honest and honourable man. Not that that had changed. A dishonourable man wouldn’t be this mortified. Because of the personal risk to his health and also because of the guilt and shame that he was exhibiting.

  The Armenian reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’ll get through this,’ he said.

  ‘Will I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Suleyman stood up and raked his hands nervously through his hair. ‘With my life and my marriage intact?’

  ‘That I don’t know,’ Arto replied, ‘but I know I don’t have to tell you that you must protect Zelfa now.’

  ‘I must tell her! Although, how . . .’

  ‘That I can’t help you with, I’m afraid,’ Arto replied. ‘That’s something I suggest you discuss with Krikor.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  Suleyman sat down again and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I’ll call him now,’ Arto said as he once again took hold of his telephone, ‘make that appointment as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Once everything was settled, Arto led his guest out into the corridor. It had been a very tiring evening; first that bloated drowning victim, now this dreadful situation with poor Mehmet Suleyman. How awful and how dangerous desire could be.

  ‘Dr Sarkissian!’

  Oh, yes, and of course there was also Señor Orontes.

  Arto sighed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You said that Dr Keyder might be permitted to view your unknown boy.’

  ‘I should really ask Sergeant Çöktin first,’ Arto interrupted. ‘That boy is, after all, his responsibility at the present time.’

  The severe woman at Orontes’ side sniffed unpleasantly.

  ‘I take it you are Dr Keyder,’ Suleyman said to her with a smile. So this was the woman who may or may not be Çöktin’s embalmer. Obviously the Kurd hadn’t managed to speak to her yet. This could be interesting.

  But Suleyman’s charm, which was legendary amongst most women he came into contact with, didn’t have the slightest effect upon Yeşim Keyder. ‘Yes,’ she responded coldly, ‘I am. And you are?’

  ‘I am Inspector Mehmet Suleyman,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Çöktin is my deputy.’

  ‘You know about my deceased sister-in-law?’

  ‘Mrs Rosita Keyder. Yes. May your head be alive, Dr Keyder,’ Suleyman said, repeating the old formulaic response to one recently bereaved. ‘I have been working on something else myself, but I am aware of some of what Sergeant Çöktin has been doing.’

  ‘It might, we thought, be a good idea for Dr Keyder to see our boy,’ Orontes said as he turned his attention entirely on to Suleyman. ‘She might recognise him.’

  ‘Sergeant Çöktin was under the impression that you knew of no young man who had any involvement in Mrs Keyder’s life,’ Suleyman said to the woman.

  Yeşim Keyder failed to respond.

  ‘So, can we see him?’ Orontes began.

  ‘I don’t—’ Arto began.

  ‘It’s all right, Doctor,’ Suleyman said as he turned to the Armenian with a smile. ‘I’ll take responsibility on behalf of Sergeant Çöktin.’

  ‘If you think it will be all right . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  Arto started to make his way back into his office, followed by Suleyman and the others. Pandering to Orontes’ unnatural interest in the Kuloǧlu boy’s body seemed to him wrong. Yet it wasn’t Orontes that interested Suleyman, but Dr Yeşim Keyder. This woman was the only connection they had to the embalmer. It would be interesting to see what her response to the corpse, which Çöktin had said she had to know, would be. As he put on the white coat Dr Sarkissian gave to him prior to entry into the laboratory, Suleyman, now temporarily distracted from his own problems, began to frown.

  ‘What do you think your brother might say?’

  Eren Akdeniz stared into the darkened garden outside the window, her eyes
fixed and empty. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Melih stopped applying paint to the piece of canvas in front of him and wiped away the sweat on his brow with his forearm. ‘I must finish,’ he said breathlessly. ‘If I don’t it’s all been for nothing. The work is the only thing now.’

  Eren turned to look at him. ‘And if the police come?’

  ‘I will deny everything!’ He took his medicine bottle out of his pocket and took a long draught from its neck. When he’d finished he wiped his hand across his mouth and placed the bottle down beside his canvas. ‘They’ve searched the house several times. If we get Yaşar and Nuray back here now—’

  ‘But they’re not ready!’ Eren said, tears of frustration springing into her eyes. ‘They won’t be ready yet!’ She moved across to where her husband was standing and stood in front of him. ‘I won’t have my babies mistreated like this! I want what’s best for them!’

  ‘What’s best for them is if the work proceeds,’ her husband responded in a low, menacing tone, ‘which it won’t if this fucking cancer takes me away or if the police get that necrophiliac to say what he shouldn’t.’

  ‘Don’t use that word!’ Eren screamed. ‘Not with my babies. He wouldn’t touch them!’

  ‘No, but you know as well as I do exactly what Reşad is,’ Melih said as he lowered himself wearily down into a chair and lit a cigarette. ‘At least this way he’s no longer fucking the living,’ and then briefly he laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Eren, that was glib. It’s just my way of dealing with stress.’

  ‘I thought that was fucking other women,’ Eren responded sharply.

  Melih smiled. ‘You’ve never really come to terms with my need for other women, have you, Eren?’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve pretended, joined in when I’ve wanted you to, said you’ve understood. But you’ve never really approved. Prudish . . .’

  ‘Shut up, bastard!’ She turned away and walked back towards the window once again.

  ‘Eren, if my work is to—’

  ‘Fuck your work!’ she screamed, her tearful eyes now beginning to drip with water. ‘Fuck you, Melih, with your ideas and your ego and that vicious thing inside you, eating . . .’

  ‘Eren!’ Slowly, and amid much pain, Melih rose from his chair, walked towards his wife and, once he was opposite her, he slapped her face with the full force of his hand.

  Eren didn’t so much as whimper.

  Several seconds passed in silence before she reached out to him and, tenderly taking his head in her hands, kissed him full on the lips. They embraced, again tenderly, Eren stroking Melih’s back like a mother gently patting her infant.

  ‘Melih . . .’

  ‘We have to get them back, Eren,’ he said sadly. ‘I’ve put too much into this to watch it fail now. I’ve worked, planned, done deals with devils. To a purpose, yes. This will be the greatest, most innovative artistic statement the world has ever seen.’ And he turned to her, his face drawn and stained with fear. ‘I hope that we might be able to trust Reşad, but what if we can’t?’

  She took her head from off his shoulder and moved back so that she was looking at him. ‘But, Melih, they’re not ready.’

  ‘I know!’ He sighed, a jerky ill little sigh. ‘I know. But what can we do?’

  Eren shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  Melih took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled a number on the keypad. ‘All we can do is get the children back,’ he said.

  ‘So that the show may begin?’ Eren said hollowly, looking out into the blackness of the garden once again.

  ‘Yes,’ her husband said as he placed the telephone up to his ear, ‘and we’ll all be together again.’

  It was 10 p.m. by the time the lawyer, a Miss Korcan, finally sat down opposite İkmen in Interview Room No. 4.

  ‘As I understand it,’ she said, fixing İkmen with clear and motionless eyes, ‘there is no physical evidence which connects Mr Kuran with the possible abduction of Nuray and Yaşar Akdeniz.’

  ‘No, although his van is currently under analysis at the Forensic Institute,’ İkmen replied, ‘and Mr Kuran did leave İstanbul just after the vehicle was taken and against my expressed instructions.’

  ‘Yes, he went to visit a Mrs . . .’ the lawyer looked at her client for clarification, ‘Edip?’

  Reşad Kuran nodded his agreement.

  ‘A Mrs Edip in Bursa, as I believe he explained to you, Inspector.’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘although quite why he would do such a thing . . .’

  ‘Oh, Inspector.’ Miss Korcan smiled a little, the policeman felt, shyly. ‘When one is in love . . .’

  ‘He’s hardly a besotted teenager, Miss Korcan!’ İkmen countered angrily. ‘And at thirty-seven Mrs Edip can’t exactly qualify for that status either!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And besides,’ İkmen continued, ‘as Mr Kuran knows only too well, my real concern is not with Mrs Edip or any of these other details that have come to light since the disappearance of Nuray and Yaşar. What fascinates me, Miss Korcan, is why your client appears to be incapable of remembering where he went and what he did on the night the children disappeared.’

  ‘Ah, but the children didn’t disappear on the Friday night, did they, Inspector?’ Miss Korcan smiled. ‘Mr and Mrs Akdeniz assert that the children were still in the house in Balat on the Saturday morning.’

  ‘An assertion that is completely unsubstantiated,’ İkmen put in.

  ‘Yes. But why would they lie, Inspector? Mr and Mrs Akdeniz are the children’s parents. They love their children.’

  From everything that Melih and Eren had ever said to him and from his own observations of them too, İkmen had to agree with this. And yet something wasn’t right. Kuran had left İstanbul for a reason, which had, he knew, everything to do with his van.

  ‘I would still like to know where you went after you visited the Akdeniz house on the Friday night,’ İkmen said, addressing Reşad Kuran. ‘You picked up a painting . . .’

  ‘Mr Kuran’s memory of that night is somewhat hazy,’ the lawyer interrupted smoothly, ‘as an insulin-dependent diabetic’ – İkmen looked across at Ayşe Farsakoǧlu who just shook her head very slightly – ‘Mr Kuran cannot always be counted upon to recall every detail of his daily existence.’

  ‘So if your memory’s that bad, how do you get and keep business, Mr Kuran?’ he asked. ‘If I wanted someone to deliver goods for me I’d want to know that person would know where he was going to, what he was doing and what he’d done.’

  ‘If you ask my brother-in-law—’

  ‘Your brother-in-law can’t remember either,’ İkmen cut in tartly. ‘I suppose that when you’re pouring morphine down your throat all day long, the world does tend to get a little indistinct. Given his past, I assumed at first that his use of the drug was recreational, but I believe it is prescribed. He must be very ill, our greatest living artist.’

  ‘I didn’t have Nuray or Yaşar in my van that night,’ Kuran leaned forward, speaking emphatically. ‘You can search my apartment, ask my neighbours.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ İkmen said as he ran one hand through his sweat-soaked hair, ‘I agree that we may not find anything of value in either your home or your transport. But that doesn’t detract from the fact, Mr Kuran, that I can’t understand how you can be so sure you don’t know where you went that night when you are, apparently, absolutely certain that Nuray and Yaşar were not with you. Does diabetes affect only parts of the memory? Please tell me because I’m interested.’

  Concerned if unfazed by the look of confusion on her client’s face, Miss Korcan said, ‘But in the face of only circumstantial evidence, all of this is irrelevant at this time. My client has admitted that he was in error when he went to Bursa to visit Mrs Edib and has agreed to stay in İstanbul until your investigations are at an end, Inspector. He has, despite the fact Mrs Edib is a married lady, given you her details in order that you may verify his story. I don’t see what may
be achieved by keeping him here at this time.’

  She was right. Beyond İkmen’s belief that Kuran had to be dissembling, there was nothing more to be said without embarking on the same circular argument they had been having for hours. Kuran couldn’t or wouldn’t explain why he didn’t know where he’d been on the Friday night in the apparently clear knowledge that the children weren’t with him. And until something came to light to force that issue they were at an end. Reluctantly, İkmen agreed to let Kuran leave.

  Miss Korcan, pleased with what was for her a most successful night’s work, led the way. However, just before Reşad Kuran got up to follow her, İkmen leaned across the table towards him and said, ‘Where are they, Reşad? Where are Nuray and Yaşar?’

  ‘Wh—’ As if shocked by electricity, Reşad Kuran’s head jerked backwards, robbing him temporarily of speech.

  ‘I will find them, you know,’ İkmen hissed as he watched the man in front of him stumble as he got up from his chair, ‘and then I’ll come for you.’

  Reşad Kuran turned and ran, his jacket hanging limply from his hands, into the corridor after his lawyer.

  When the room had returned to silence once again, Ayşe Farsakoǧlu went over to İkmen and stood in front of him.

  ‘Why did you say that, sir,’ she asked, ‘about the children?’

  İkmen lit a cigarette before replying. ‘To shock him . . .’

  ‘But what if he is telling the truth?’ she said. ‘What if he really can’t remember what he did? People are frightened of the police, it’s quite natural. He may have left the city simply because he was spooked.’

  ‘I take your point,’ İkmen said as he sat down wearily in the chair that Reşad Kuran had recently vacated. ‘But he’s a kiddie fiddler and I’m afraid I believe that once a kiddie fiddler always a kiddie fiddler. Nuray is a little girl . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Ayşe, sitting opposite now, sighed. ‘And Reşad is her uncle. Surely Mr and Mrs Akdeniz would have known something. Surely, for the sake of their daughter, they would have brought Kuran to our attention before?’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘He’s Eren’s brother.’