Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Ayşe,’ İkmen cut in, ‘stay where you are and keep Yıldız with you.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Look, just do as I say, Ayşe. I can’t explain, but I’m coming. Stay where you are.’

  Then, his fingers trembling in time to his pounding heart, İkmen ended the call and punched another number into the keypad. If what had just shot into his head would or could be true, he’d need some sort of steadying influence, first, to organise what had to be a product of insanity, and then, if that idea proved to be true, stop him from killing Melih Akdeniz.

  Krikor Sarkissian was a thinner and rather more grave version of his brother Arto. A doctor by training, his speciality was addiction and the diseases associated with it. The man sitting opposite, who had been referred by his brother, was, in common with all of his patients, very nervous.

  ‘Look, Mehmet,’ Krikor said as he doodled his pen unthinkingly across the bottom of his blotter, ‘these things happen. Men go with women that they shouldn’t, women purchase gigolos of dubious provenance. There’s no point punishing yourself for this. Dealing with the outfall is what should be exercising your mind.’

  ‘But I betrayed her,’ Mehmet Suleyman said miserably. ‘Zelfa . . .’

  Although immaculately dressed and perfumed, Krikor Sarkissian didn’t possess the kind of office one would expect an expert to inhabit. Situated in a picturesque but tatty Ottoman building just off Divanyolu, Krikor’s addiction centre was a place where people could obtain advice and assistance about giving up drugs and getting medical help. Funded by privately raised money, the centre was sometimes prey to raids by overzealous police officers keen to raise their numbers of successful arrests. Çetin İkmen, who had been instrumental in helping Krikor to realise his dream, did try to prevent such actions taking place. Krikor owed İkmen much when it came to the centre, which was why he was happy to see Mehmet Suleyman now. There would, of course, be no fee for this consultation.

  ‘You will have to tell your wife in order to protect her,’ Krikor said. ‘I don’t know whether you practise protected sex with your wife . . .’

  ‘I don’t practise any sort of sex with her at the moment,’ Suleyman responded miserably. ‘We haven’t had sex for months. If we had, I wouldn’t have gone with that Russian.’

  ‘You will still need to tell her, Inspector.’

  ‘I know.’

  Krikor looked through the notes he had already made on the pad in front of him and said, ‘I can test you for hepatitis B and do the first test for HIV today. With the latter, however, as I think my brother explained, you will need to come back in three months, whatever this preliminary test shows.’

  ‘What if this first test is negative?’ Suleyman asked.

  ‘That will be a good sign,’ Krikor said, ‘but it won’t be conclusive, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So there’ll be no way of knowing whether I am definitely HIV positive?’

  ‘No, but if what you’ve told me about this girl is correct, I wouldn’t be too worried.’ He looked down at his notes once again. ‘She displayed no obvious lesions, no bleeding as far as you know, you have no genital wounds.’ He looked up. ‘You have to suffer exposure to your blood supply from the virus, which is passed in bodily fluids. From what you’ve told me this is unlikely.’

  ‘But not impossible.’

  ‘No.’ They sat in silence for a few moments as Suleyman took in the information Krikor had given him. Now he was actually with the specialist, things didn’t look quite as bleak as they had done. However, Krikor admitted that he still couldn’t be certain and Suleyman would have to submit to the wretched HIV test come what may. It was just a mercy that Dr Krikor knew him and, in addition, knew to keep his status a secret from Suleyman’s employers. He wondered silently whether, in a fit of hurt and spite, Zelfa could be relied upon to do likewise.

  Krikor leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘You know, most people I test for HIV prove negative,’ he said. ‘It’s not an easy virus to catch, unless you routinely share your blood with others. Heroin addicts are the principal culprits, sharing needles. I’ve seen junkies as young as twelve who are HIV positive.’

  Suleyman shook his head sadly.

  ‘They come mainly,’ Krikor continued, ‘from the former Soviet Union. The girls are frequently on the streets. Most of the time I see them once or twice before they disappear. I know, as I’m sure you do too, that most of them end up butchered by their pimps or their punters in some hellhole . . .’

  ‘Masha, this girl I . . . she was from Russia,’ Suleyman said.

  ‘Yes, well, that is the downside to your story, Inspector,’ Krikor said with a sigh. ‘So many of them are infected. But even if my brother discovers that she was infected, that doesn’t mean that you are.’

  ‘No.’

  The silence rolled in once again, throwing an even heavier layer across the already thick late afternoon heat. But Krikor was accustomed to such reactions and knew that the only way forward was through action.

  ‘Well, I think it’s now time, provided you’re clear about everything so far, Inspector, to take some of your blood for testing.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ His mobile telephone began to vibrate against his thigh. ‘Oh, Doctor, my phone, I’m sorry,’ he said as he took the instrument out of his trouser pocket and placed it against his ear.

  ‘OK,’ Krikor smiled. Big men and their little toys. Mobiles were, of course, useful but . . .

  Suleyman, who had turned away to take the call, said, ‘Yes, I’m sure . . . Nabaro, definitely . . . No, no I didn’t see . . . She was out earlier. I’ll try again now . . . No . . . No, if she isn’t in I’ll meet you at Akdeniz’s house . . . No, I don’t . . . Yes, all right I’ll tell him to come too. Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . OK, goodbye, goodbye.’

  It all sounded very frenetic. When Suleyman turned to face him, Krikor raised a questioning eyebrow.

  ‘Now, Dr Sarkissian, I want you to believe me when I say that I’m not doing this just to get out of giving you some of my blood,’ Suleyman said, ‘but that was Çetin İkmen and—’

  ‘You don’t have to say any more,’ Krikor said as he held one silencing hand aloft. ‘I grew up with Çetin, remember?’

  ‘Then you know . . .’

  ‘That when an idea strikes him, everybody has to jump? Yes,’ he smiled. ‘You know when we were children we used to sometimes go and play out on the land walls, Edirnekapı. Wasn’t the mad place then that it is now. However, we were playing quite happily one day when Çetin suddenly gets it into his head that this very solid-looking section of one of the walls is going to fall down and crush us. He went mad, screaming for Arto, his brother and me to get out of the way.’

  Suleyman, who had now slipped his jacket back on, checked his pockets for car keys. ‘But it did fall down, didn’t it, Doctor?’ he said. ‘The wall.’

  ‘Of course it did,’ Krikor replied, ‘seconds after he pulled us out of the way.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry I’ve got to go, make a call . . .’ And with that he opened the door and rushed out into the corridor.

  ‘Give me a call when you’re free and we’ll rearrange,’ Krikor said to what was effectively thin air.

  CHAPTER 18

  It was seven o’clock by the time İkmen got to Balat. He’d asked Ayşe Farsakoǧlu to park her car away from the Akdeniz house, which she had done up on a piece of waste ground behind the Greek Boys’ School. Shortly after İkmen arrived, Suleyman and Çöktin drove up in the latter’s Toyota.

  İkmen went straight up to Suleyman and said, ‘She wasn’t in, I take it, Dr Keyder?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right.’

  Once everyone was together and quiet, İkmen spoke.

  ‘I’ve brought you all here this evening,’ he said, ‘for reasons, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to give you.’

  Yıldız and Çöktin, who were rather less accustomed to İkmen’s ways than the others, looked confused.

  ‘Because,’ İkmen
continued, ‘if I tell you and I’m wrong you will all think that I’m a lunatic.’

  ‘We won’t,’ Çöktin said.

  İkmen smiled. ‘You will, believe me,’ he said. He lit a cigarette and then coughed wetly for a few moments. ‘Now look, I want to gain access to Akdeniz’s house before his performance begins at eight.’

  ‘And if he doesn’t want to let us in?’ Suleyman asked.

  ‘Then we force our way in.’

  ‘But on what basis?’ Suleyman continued. ‘The man is, as far as I’m aware, a victim of crime. Are we searching for something or—’

  ‘You can leave the explanations to me,’ İkmen replied.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Come on,’ İkmen said as he started to make his way down towards the Akdeniz house. ‘We’ve got to get in there before the press or anyone else does. If I’m right about what has happened, the decent people of Balat will pull Akdeniz to pieces if they see what he’s done.’

  The four other officers followed in silence. Possibly forcing entrance into the house of a crime victim was not something any of them did every day. And if anyone apart from İkmen had asked them to join him in such an enterprise, they would have all walked off in the opposite direction. However, because it was İkmen, each and every one of them had a deep sense of foreboding about what they might be about to face inside Melih Akdeniz’s great ochre house.

  Balat houses were built to last. Surrounded by thick, high walls, every window ornately barred, the casual intruder thwarted by enormous wooden doors bolted through with iron – the people who had once lived in these hadn’t wanted too many surprises. But then where they’d come from – mediaeval Spain and Portugal – had been nothing but surprises – the fire, the rack, the thumbscrews. And although the Ottoman Empire had been many thousands of kilometres away from the clutches of the Holy Inquisition, people like Melih Akdeniz’s Jewish ancestors had taken no chances.

  İkmen walked up the small flight of stone steps that led to the heavy front door and knocked. ‘Mr Akdeniz!’

  Both the knock and his words echoed hollowly through the building like retreating ghosts. It was early, and no one else had yet arrived to view Melih Akdeniz’s performance. İkmen looked down at Suleyman and Çöktin, who just shrugged. Farsakoǧlu and Yıldız were covering the back and side entrances. İkmen could see the boy, his face drawn with tension, but not Ayşe.

  ‘Mr Akdeniz!’

  Minutes rather than seconds passed. The two younger men looked at each other with raised eyebrows, wondering how long it was going to take to batter such a heavy door down.

  ‘Mr—’

  ‘We’re not ready! Come back at eight!’ It was a woman’s voice – slightly slurred. Eren.

  ‘Mrs Akdeniz, it’s Inspector İkmen. Let me in please.’

  ‘I’ve told you the performance doesn’t start—’

  ‘Mrs Akdeniz, I’ve come to see Yaşar and Nuray. Will you let me in please?’

  A breathless silence followed and for just a moment, everything slowed: the looks of confusion on Suleyman and Çöktin’s faces, spreading across their features like the slowly encroaching darkness; İkmen holding his breath as he listened to the almost imperceptible sounds of the woman beyond the door – her gentle drugged breathing, the imagined beat of her heart.

  ‘Mrs Akdeniz,’ İkmen said slowly, ‘if you don’t let me in, I’ll have this door removed.’

  ‘The show . . .’

  ‘The show is over, Mrs Akdeniz,’ he continued. ‘Your husband—’

  ‘I must go to him!’

  The sound of her feet slapping as they ran on the cool tiled floor caused İkmen to shout, ‘Mrs Akdeniz!’

  He turned away from the door and looked down at Suleyman and Çöktin. ‘We’ll have to get this door down,’ he said.

  ‘But why?’ Çöktin asked, ‘I still don’t—’

  ‘Because the missing children are in there,’ İkmen said.

  ‘But . . .’

  A loud click from inside the thick garden walls preceded the flooding of the area with light. Yıldız, who was nearer the garden than anyone else, peered through a gap between the metal coach house doors. ‘There’s a light,’ he said, ‘behind some sort of screen.’

  ‘For the shadow play, yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Now how are we going to get this door—’

  And then there was the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

  At first, because he sprang back from his vantage point in front of the gates, the three men thought that it was Yıldız that had been shot. But it wasn’t. He had, however, seen it, or rather the outfall from it.

  ‘The screen’s covered with blood!’ he said as he continued to move away from the gates.

  İkmen and the others, who had now been joined by Ayşe Farsakoǧlu, ran over to the young man.

  ‘There’s only a padlock on the gates,’ Yıldız said as his face moved from tanned to green within the space of a second.

  Without another word, Suleyman took his pistol out of its holster and shot the padlock to pieces.

  ‘I don’t know what any of this is about, Çetin,’ he said as he pulled the chain that had held the padlock in place out on to the ground, ‘but . . .’

  İkmen roughly pushed Suleyman to one side. ‘Someone’s armed in there!’

  Çöktin, Farsakoǧlu and Yıldız drew their weapons.

  ‘Cover me while I open these gates!’ İkmen said.

  As he stepped forward his whole body trembled. Safety catches clicked off all around him as he pushed the gates inward.

  Inside the garden, standing on the path, the gun still smoking in her hands, stood Eren Akdeniz. The light from the powerful lamp behind the bloodied screen framed her head like a halo.

  ‘Put the gun down, Eren,’ İkmen’s voice trembled as he spoke. The expression on the woman’s face was so weird as to be completely indecipherable.

  ‘Someone must be hurt,’ he continued. ‘We need to come in so that we can help.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘Melih.’

  From somewhere inside the house came the sound of a door slamming. Çöktin, who was currently at the back of the group, moved slowly backwards out of the garden.

  ‘Please let us come and see Melih,’ İkmen said. ‘We may be able to help him.’

  ‘He’s dead . . .’

  ‘I’d like to see for myself, Eren.’ İkmen held out his hand towards her. ‘Please give me the gun so that I can make it safe.’

  She smiled as she gave it to him. Her face, just this once, struck İkmen as almost beautiful. Gently, for she was or appeared to be, in a different space from any of those present, he sat her down on one of the low garden walls and motioned for Ayşe to come and sit with her.

  ‘Now look, Eren,’ he said softly, lest he wake or disturb her from her fugue. ‘I’m going to leave you here with Ayşe while my colleagues and I go and see what we can do for Melih.’

  ‘The work is complete,’ she said. She looked so happy.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ İkmen straightened up and looked across at Suleyman and Yıldız. ‘The brother-in-law, Kuran, should still be around,’ he said nervously.

  ‘There was a noise from inside the house,’ Suleyman replied. ‘I think Çöktin’s gone off to investigate. What is all this, Çetin?’

  The big white and now red screen was strung between two trees at the top of a small flight of steps. İkmen put his foot on to the first one and said, ‘I fear we’re about to see the place where art and science meet.’

  And then before his nerve failed him he ran up the remaining steps and pulled the screen down with one adrenaline-fuelled tug.

  It was obvious that Akdeniz was dead. Half his head had simply disintegrated. But İkmen felt for a pulse anyway – it was just something you did. It also gave him a few more seconds before he had to look at what else had been behind the shadow play screen.

  Yıldız pushed past the Karagöz puppet and
switched off the floodlight.

  İkmen, looking now out of the corner of his eye, saw Suleyman approach one of the other traditional figures and say, ‘Whatever one may think of Akdeniz’s art, he was certainly a skilled craftsman. These are exquisite.’

  İkmen felt a painful squeeze in the pit of his stomach as he very slowly stood up and looked into the face of Nuray Akdeniz. He recognised the costume from his youth. All the old shadow play men used to represent women like this. She wore a long red coat called a ferace, which covered her whole body. On her feet she wore little red velvet slippers, while her head was encased in a blue bonnet called a hotoz. The thin yaşmak that covered the lower half of her face did nothing to hide those familiar features from İkmen’s gaze. But then the yaşmak in Karagöz had never been about modesty – it was about teasing, about the power women have over men and about the transparent nature of false modesty. İkmen extended a shaking arm towards the figure and took a corner of the ferace between his fingers. Up close he could see that the whole ensemble had been made up from red designer labels. It must have taken Akdeniz forever – which means he must have planned.

  İkmen looked across at Karagöz, slumped in front of a picture of a hamam painted on to camel skin. The huge penis-like nose that had been attached to the lifeless face might have thrown anyone else, but İkmen had seen, studied so many photographs . . .

  Somewhere, possibly from the Greek Boys’ School, a clock struck the half-hour. Seven thirty, almost showtime.

  ‘I wonder if he actually made them himself,’ Suleyman said as he took one of Karagöz arms in his hands. ‘I know not all artists do these days.’

  ‘In a sense you could say that he did,’ İkmen began.

  ‘It was, however, myself,’ an elderly female voice cut in, ‘that transformed them into art.’

  İkmen looked down to where she stood in front of a now motionless Eren Akdeniz.

  ‘You’ve come to see the show, Dr Keyder?’ he said.

  The embalmer looked beyond İkmen into the shocked face of Suleyman.

  ‘I take it from your expression,’ she said to him, ‘that you didn’t make the necessary connection yourself.’ She looked across at İkmen, ‘But you did, er . . . ?’