Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Melih, I don’t think that police people,’ Reşad Kuran ladled the last two words with pure contempt, ‘would either want to come or be capable of understanding.’

  ‘The women police can come,’ Melih laughed, swigging yet again from his bottle as he did so, ‘all except that stupid girl.’

  ‘Well then, maybe Sergeant Farsakoǧlu might be prevailed upon to attend,’ İkmen said, ‘although if I were you, Mr Akdeniz, I would be careful about over-stretching myself at this time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the artist snapped.

  ‘I mean that you appear to be needing rather a lot of your medication at this time, sir.’

  ‘You think so?’ the artist laughed. Bending down in order to be level with İkmen’s ear he said, ‘How do you know I don’t just take this stuff for fun?’

  İkmen smiled. ‘Because I have checked to discover whether it is prescribed for you, Mr Akdeniz,’ he said, ‘and because if it wasn’t you’d currently be in one of my cells.’

  ‘True.’ The artist stood up straight again and looked through the trees at the sun.

  ‘You’re going ahead with your show despite everything that has happened?’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu asked.

  Still looking at the sun, Melih replied, ‘Art is the only reality. My children know that. They are my works – I produced and own them.’

  To İkmen the artist looked sicker by the minute, especially with the full rays of the sun on his thin, grey features. Skeletal – both his appearance and his words were unnerving. He seemed, İkmen felt, on the very rim of death. There was even some sort of smell, a decay on the air.

  ‘The performance is based on Karagöz.’

  ‘I’d gathered that.’

  The artist looked down at İkmen once again, staring him now straight in the eyes. ‘By which I mean that the piece is in shadow,’ he said. ‘The theme, if not the storyline, is contemporary.’

  ‘Right.’ İkmen cleared his throat. ‘So these supplies, Mr Akdeniz . . .’

  ‘Costumes,’ Melih smiled. ‘For my puppets.’

  ‘Ah, so traditional Karagöz?’

  ‘The puppets wear the traditional gear, in a way, yes,’ Melih replied. ‘It is, as I’ve said, the theme that is modern, in a way . . .’ He looked vaguely distant again for a moment. ‘Our relationship, as a society, to ourselves is flawed. Like Hacıvat, the Ottoman pedant, we live in a land of delusion. Only the simplicity of the common, foul man, the Karagöz, if you like, is real and has value, that and only that can be a permanent everlasting statement. You know that Karagöz corresponds to the ‘Fool’, Tarot card?’ he smiled. ‘The Fool is the most potent symbol in magic – good and bad he is the ultimate mage. Materials, my materials – blood, strongly pigmented paints, piss – reflect both magic and honesty. My themes of biological sex – it’s not romantic, it shouldn’t be kind, and death, neither good nor bad, are staring a man in the face from the hour of his birth. Take it, push it in the eyes of our people, give them that finality that is the only reality. Condense and preserve it—’

  His tirade was cut off by the ringing of İkmen’s mobile telephone. As the policeman turned aside in order to answer his call, Melih Akdeniz, who had now been joined by a somewhat anxious-looking Reşad Kuran, sat down on the ground.

  Ayşe Farsakoǧlu, alarmed by the trembling that had suddenly taken over the artist’s body, went over to join the two men.

  ‘Mr Akdeniz.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m OK.’ He took his medicine out of his pocket and took a long, deep draught from its neck.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Reşad Kuran said as he looked, his eyes full of anxiety into Ayşe’s face. ‘He’s OK.’

  All three of them stayed like this, one watched the others watching until İkmen, his face set and grave, returned.

  ‘Mr Akdeniz,’ he said as he approached the group, ‘that was one of my colleagues, Inspector Suleyman. Your wife has—’

  Yet again İkmen’s mobile rang.

  ‘Shit!’ he muttered as he first held up a hand to indicate that Akdeniz should stay where he was and answered the call. ‘Fatma?’

  He moved quickly into one of the far corners of the garden, his deep voice muted by the abundant greenery that clung to every surface. Ayşe and the two men remained uncomfortably silent until he returned.

  When he did, there was something different about him. Ayşe couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, but something his wife had said must have upset him. That, or he was suddenly in a hurry for some reason.

  In one swift movement, he hunkered down beside the fallen artist. ‘All right, Mr Akdeniz, I’ve had enough of this now. Your wife deliberately gave one of my officers the slip this morning. One of my colleagues has just seen her at the house of a Dr Keyder – a woman currently under investigation by some of my fellow officers.’

  The artist, his eyes now heavy from the massive amount of medication he had taken that day, just looked blankly on.

  ‘Now you’re going to tell me why she was there and why she felt it necessary to keep her destination, apparently Sarıyer, where your children liked to go, from us.’ He looked up into the face of Reşad Kuran. ‘Or maybe you’d like to enlighten us, Mr Kuran. You deliver things. Have you ever worked for Dr Keyder? Did you perhaps deliver one of Melih’s paintings to her on that evening you seem to remember so little about? I haven’t got much time now so I’d appreciate an answer from one of you.’

  ‘My client is concerned,’ Lütfü Güneş said as he poured himself yet another whiskey and water, ‘that you may use the information he gave you about certain friends of his, fellow countrymen, to their detriment.’

  İskender frowned. Rostov wasn’t in the room with them, which was probably just as well, given the fury that seemed to have built up inside his colleague, Mehmet Suleyman. The latter, fresh from the private mortuary operated by Dr Keyder, sat brooding in the corner, his head in his hands, thinking no doubt rather unhelpful thoughts about that dead prostitute Masha.

  İskender cleared his throat before replying. ‘Well, sir,’ he said, ‘to be truthful I don’t know whether or not that might be a possibility. The fact that Mr Rostov believes that some of his countrymen may have unburied corpses in their homes doesn’t necessarily mean that we will approach them about that at this time. It is, further, a decision that someone far higher up will take, as opposed to myself.’

  ‘My client is also worried,’ Güneş continued, ‘about the security of his own daughter—’

  ‘That we cannot guarantee,’ Suleyman cut in sharply. ‘That thing down there—’

  ‘What will happen to Tatiana is not yet decided, Mr Güneş,’ İskender cut in with a very uncustomary smile on his face, ‘but whatever is done, you can assure Mr Rostov, will be performed with due regard to his fatherly feelings.’

  Suleyman sniffed audibly.

  İskender made his way over to where the lawyer was standing and placed a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘You may tell Mr Rostov that he has nothing to worry about at this time,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The lawyer threw what was left of his drink to the back of his throat and placed the empty glass down on one of Rostov’s many occasional tables. ‘I’ll go up to him now.’

  İskender bowed his head just slightly in recognition. Both officers watched Güneş’ back as he left for the upper storey of the mansion.

  When he’d gone, Suleyman rose to his feet. ‘So Rostov’s too prostrate with anxiety over his mummy to get out of his bed . . .’

  ‘Now, look, Mehmet,’ his colleague said as he walked over to stand in front of him, ‘we have to tread very carefully now.’

  ‘With a murderer?’ Suleyman, a good head taller than İskender, laughed unpleasantly down into his face.

  The smaller man raised a silencing finger. ‘We don’t know that he killed that girl, Mehmet.’

  ‘But who else—’

  ‘And furthermore, sad though each and every de
ath might be, we shouldn’t care.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  İskender, moving in closer to his colleague, now lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Look, Mehmet,’ he said, ‘I know you fucked her. It’s obvious. But—’

  ‘How?’ Incensed, his eyes blazing, Suleyman drew away from him. ‘How do you know that?’

  İskender raised his eyes upwards as if looking for inspiration from above. ‘Oh, Mehmet, please,’ he said wearily, ‘every time you’ve seen her you’ve been like a teenager. You were in that room with her for a very long time.’

  ‘I was . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t keep on lying to me, Mehmet!’ He moved away quickly and then threw himself down on to one of the large, gaudy settees. ‘I’m not going to tell anyone!’ Noting that his colleague hadn’t moved out of his outraged pose, İskender leaned forward. ‘The fact is, Mehmet, that if we want to make some sort of progress with the Eastern European mobs using what we know from Rostov we have to be careful. We can’t just go tearing into people’s houses looking for bodies and anything else we hope we might find using only Rostov as a lever. For a start Rostov could be lying. This Dr Keyder of yours wasn’t very forthcoming with any actual names, was she? But then even if it is all true, so what? If we only find bodies and the mobsters can verify who the deceased once were, they’ll just be taken away for burial. Unless we find drugs or arms, Malenkov and co. will be back on the streets very quickly. And they’ll be angry and they may go looking for Rostov. If they do we’ve got a war. Think about it,’ he said gravely, ‘you know what the Russians are like. Do you want to have shoot-outs in the streets of Beyoǧlu?’

  ‘No.’ Suleyman, temporarily deflated, looked down at the floor. ‘But why would Rostov lie?’

  ‘To buy a bit more time for Tatiana?’ İskender shrugged. ‘Maybe he thought he could prevail upon this embalmer woman to get on with the job while we looked into the activities of his friends. Who knows? That he’s still got her dead body is beyond me.’

  Suleyman moved forward and sat down. ‘So how do we proceed?’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Ardiç about what happened at the embalmers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  İskender took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit up. ‘We’ll wait and see what he decides,’ he said. ‘If he thinks this dead body angle is worth pursing I guess we’ll go in. But he has to be considering the fact that Rostov’s “friends” must know we’ve been here. If they put that together with our appearance at their houses and Rostov’s boys are on the street . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know. I know.’ He sighed.

  Suleyman’s mobile phone started to ring. He took it out of his pocket and placed it against his ear.

  ‘Suleyman.’

  ‘Inspector.’ The voice was female and familiar. ‘It’s Sergeant Farsakoǧlu,’ she said. ‘Are you free to talk, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was very formal, considering that they had once, if briefly, been lovers. But that was as it should be and Suleyman was pleased that she had at last accepted the situation.

  ‘Sir, I have a message from Inspector İkmen,’ she said. ‘Unfortunately one of his relatives has been taken ill and he’s had to go over to the Taksim State Hospital.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ This probably meant that his brother-in-law, Talaat, had taken a turn for the worse.

  ‘İnşallah the inspector’s relative will recover.’

  ‘İnşallah.’

  ‘But in the meantime, sir,’ she continued, ‘Inspector İkmen has asked, if you can, if you would meet him at the Taksim.’

  Suleyman frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘You contacted him earlier, about Mrs Akdeniz, Melih Akdeniz’s wife . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Inspector İkmen needs to talk to you about that, sir. Urgently. He feels there might be some sort of connection between his case and what you were doing out at Sarıyer.’

  Suleyman looked at his watch, more out of habit than necessity. Until Ardiç made some sort of decision with regard to Rostov and his countrymen, he wasn’t exactly needed anywhere. His appointment with Dr Krikor Sarkissian, something he didn’t in any way relish, wasn’t until 6 p.m. It was now two thirty.

  ‘All right, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘I’ll get over there as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll get a message to him to let him know you’re coming.’

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant.’

  They both cut the connection at the same time. Suleyman still frowning, put his phone back in his pocket. Metin İskender, who had only been privy to one side of the call, gave his colleague a quizzical look.

  ‘Çetin İkmen wants to talk to me about some connection he might have made between his missing children case and Dr Keyder,’ he said as he made his way towards the door of the salon. ‘The children’s mother, Mrs Akdeniz, was over at Dr Keyder’s yalı this morning.’

  ‘What was she doing with an embalmer?’ İskender asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Suleyman replied, ‘which is why I’m going to see İkmen now. I’ll keep you informed.’

  ‘Please do.’

  Suleyman left. Alone in Rostov’s vast and tasteless salon, İskender found his thoughts, wandering back to that evening he had spent in that pavyon, watching Mehmet Suleyman through a thick carpet of smoke, alcohol and cheap females – looking at the other man looking at Masha. She had, even he had to admit, been stunning in an obvious sort of way. Ripe and tempting . . . She had, they knew, worked for Rostov – all that stuff about Vladimir, one of Rostov’s boys . . .

  Mehmet was probably right when he asserted that Rostov had killed Masha. If, as they suspected, he’d used her to draw the police into what had in truth almost become a public relations nightmare, then it had to make sense to get rid of her. It had really been fortuitous for the police when Suleyman discovered Tatiana’s body in the freezer. If, indeed, it were fortuitous . . .

  İskender frowned. To follow Rostov and enter his house had been a police decision – one that Rostov could not possibly have influenced. But then, given that Masha’s status as an informant was so obviously suspect, it was a logical, even a predictable, move. And when Suleyman did arrive he found nothing beyond Tatiana. When you broke it down like this . . .

  İskender sat down and then looked at the floor beneath his feet. Below in the kitchen was Rostov’s daughter – or was she? As yet, no tests had been performed on the corpse; she hadn’t even been seen by Dr Sarkissian. She could, in theory at least, be almost anyone. But why then did Rostov guard her so jealously? No, that didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense but it did keep on representing itself in his mind. There was something else, about Tatiana, about the cleanliness of this house, something that failed to add up – something that İskender was not yet, to his frustration, able to see.

  At three o’clock that afternoon, Eren Akdeniz arrived back at the great ochre house in Balat. As soon as she was in, Melih locked the back gates and closed all of the curtains at the windows. Effectively blinded with regard to activities inside the artist’s house, Ayşe Farsakoǧlu, now partnered with Hikmet Yıldız, and now ostensibly protecting the Akdeniz family, leaned back in her seat and lit a cigarette. Even with all the windows open, the inside of the car was unbearably hot and she was uncomfortably aware of the pace of her own pulse every time she moved.

  The young constable, whose face still bore fresh and livid scars from Rostov’s attack upon him, looked across at her a little nervously before he lit up a cigarette of his own. Perhaps he thought she might disapprove of his smoking in her presence. But then he didn’t say a lot and so it was difficult to tell. Yıldız came, Ayşe understood, from one of the tower-block apartments near the airport. Not the most salubrious part of town – his parents were, in all likelihood, originally from the country. Maybe, she thought, his mother discourages him from associating with women.

  ‘You’re the beautiful girl with İkmen, aren’t you?’

  The depth and huskiness o
f the voice made Ayşe think, at first, that it had to belong to a man. However, the smiling face that had thrust itself into the open window was definitely female. It was also, Farsakoǧlu noticed, extremely voluptuous and exotic.

  ‘My name is Gonca,’ the woman continued. ‘I have met with Çetin Bey, he knows me. I’m an artist.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I, like most of the district,’ she said wryly, ‘have noticed you and your very cute companion watching the Akdeniz house. Melih is exhibiting his work tonight. Are you going?’

  Yıldız, in response to her words, blushed.

  She was very direct – it wasn’t something Ayşe Farsakoǧlu was accustomed to or, in fact, that she liked.

  ‘I am not at liberty to say,’ she responded haughtily.

  Gonca shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said lightly, ‘but I think it will be worth a visit. His work, if you know how to look at it, always shines with magical energy. He’s invited me and I’m going.’ She smiled. ‘But then I would.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Melih Bey and I are old friends,’ the gypsy continued. ‘We do things for each other, you know . . .’

  ‘I understand it’s performance art, based on Karagöz,’ Ayşe said.

  ‘Yeah. Shadow play with a contemporary theme.’

  ‘What theme?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she smiled. ‘Just because Melih and I occasionally pleasure one another doesn’t mean that he tells me anything about his professional plans. Artists don’t.’

  Now red to the hairline, Hikmet Yıldız cleared his throat in an obviously nervous fashion.

  Gonca laughed. ‘Has this old gypsy embarrassed you, little one?’ she said, oozing sexuality as she did so.

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘That poor little boy needs taking in hand,’ Gonca said to Farsakoǧlu, ‘in my opinion.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ Ayşe too cleared her throat nervously. This gypsy was a little too rich for her blood. What on earth would İkmen have made of such a person? Probably had a good laugh with her. ‘Do you know anything else about this performance, Miss . . . ?’