Petrified

by Barbara Nadel

  Suleyman met İkmen inside the cream-and coffee-scented Sultanahmet Pastane. Although İkmen wasn’t really given to breakfast as such, he did occasionally like to partake of a cappuccino and a chocolate pastry courtesy of the elegant proprietress, the widow Suzan Şeker. Only a year ago, İkmen had been instrumental in bringing the gangsters who had terrorised Mrs Şeker’s late husband Hassan, to justice. She was still very fulsome in her gratitude.

  ‘No payment,’ she said as she placed coffee and cakes in front of İkmen and Suleyman.

  ‘Mrs Şeker . . .’

  She held up a stern, silencing hand. ‘No, I insist. You either take my hospitality now or later,’ she said as she started to make her way back over to the chilled cake cabinet, ‘as you well know, Inspector.’

  İkmen shrugged his shoulders helplessly. His daughter Hulya worked at the pastane six evenings a week. Last time he’d insisted upon paying for his coffee and cakes, the girl had come home with enough pastry for the whole İkmen family which, given the size of his brood, was not inconsiderable.

  When the widow Şeker had gone, İkmen lit a cigarette while contemplating the mountain of chocolate on the table before him. Suleyman, looking on, lit up too.

  ‘I would appreciate it if you would sit in on my interrogation of Eren Akdeniz,’ İkmen said, coming straight to the point.

  ‘I thought that Sergeant Farsakoǧlu . . .’

  ‘Ayşe will be there too – only as an observer,’ İkmen said. ‘She’s already interviewed the woman once herself.’

  ‘And so why do you need me?’

  İkmen looked up, his face taut with what looked like anxiety. ‘I would like you to watch me,’ he said, ‘ensure that I behave professionally, with humanity.’

  ‘You feel tremendous anger.’

  ‘That woman allowed her own children to be murdered, embalmed and exhibited.’ He looked up into his friend’s face, his eyes dark with fury. ‘I don’t want to, but I need to understand that,’ he said. ‘I have to make some sort of sense out of it both for my own satisfaction and so that I can at least attempt to explain what has happened to those under my command.’

  Suleyman took a sip from his coffee cup and leaned back into his seat. ‘I understand Dr Sadrı is spending some time with Mrs Akdeniz this morning.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘I’ll see what he says. But personally I don’t believe that Eren Akdeniz is insane.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t believe that love is necessarily mad.’ He drew heavily on his cigarette and smiled. ‘Melih, for whatever reason – sexual, artistic, I don’t know – was more important to Eren than her children.’

  ‘Do you think that he had some sort of hold over her?’ Suleyman asked.

  ‘She was a lot younger than he – she was once his student, you know. I’ve seen him humiliate her and I’ve seen him respond with touching tenderness towards her. Whatever their relationship is, or rather was, it is far more complicated than we imagined.’

  Suleyman smiled. ‘Not long ago Zelfa would have been fascinated by such a challenge.’

  İkmen leaned forward so that he could lower his voice.

  ‘Have you told Zelfa about . . . ?’

  ‘No,’ Suleyman lowered his eyes, ‘I’ve still got to go back and see Dr Krikor. I was interrupted, by all this business, before I had a chance to start the tests.’ He looked up sharply. ‘I feel OK.’

  ‘That means nothing,’ İkmen responded sharply, ‘as well you know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You need to tell her now,’ İkmen continued, ‘get it over with and . . . I am not judging you, Mehmet. I just simply feel that . . .’

  ‘When are you planning to interrogate Mrs Akdeniz?’

  It was typical Suleyman behaviour. His private life entered the conversation, he became uncomfortable and brought the subject to a close. It was, İkmen always felt, one of those times when his friend’s Ottoman ancestry showed very clearly through his veneer of modern openness and tolerance.

  But the older man, accustomed now to the idea that sometimes Suleyman’s private life was what the Ottomans had called ‘walled’, just simply shrugged and said, ‘If we finish this and get over to the station, Dr Sadrı should be concluding his examination.’ He leaned back and sighed. ‘Do you know whether Dr Sarkissian has come up with anything to connect that Russian girl to our friend Rostov?’

  Suleyman looked down at the table and dug his fork into the side of one of the cakes Mrs Şeker had placed before them.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Which means I suppose that almost anyone could have drowned her.’

  ‘Yes.’ Suleyman scraped some of the chocolate from the side of an éclair and smeared it bad-temperedly into his mouth. ‘Except that I know that he, or one of his creatures, did it,’ he said. ‘What use was she once she’d attempted to set me up? An alcoholic, a junkie, HIV positive.’

  İkmen leaned forward again. ‘He’s sure about that?’

  ‘Yes. It was apparently quite well advanced.’

  They both sat in silence for a few moments after this. İkmen had been aware of the possibility that the prostitute Masha might be HIV positive, but he hadn’t known until this moment that it was a certainty. Looking across at his friend, the thought of it made his blood run cold. In his soul he was afraid for Suleyman. Perhaps this was how Rostov had intended his friend to be ‘set up’? Perhaps it never had had anything to do with discrediting him in a professional sense at all? Maybe by the time İskender had come into contact with Father Alexei, by the time Suleyman had entered the gangster’s unusually ‘clean’ house the damage had already been done? And yet, if that were the case, then what of the gangster’s child, that poor cold little parcel Suleyman had seen nestling in the depths of Rostov’s freezer? What of that?

  Metin İskender didn’t even attempt to introduce the small, sombrely dressed man at his side. There would be time for that soon enough. For the moment, however, there were other, more pressing concerns.

  He looked up into Rostov’s features with a grave expression on his face. ‘Bulganin, Malenkov and Vronsky are all in custody,’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’

  He watched as Rostov’s lawyer, Lütfü Güneş shot the gangster a nervous glance.

  ‘What for?’ Rostov sat down on one of his considerable settees and lit a cigarette.

  ‘For a variety of offences,’ İskender replied, ‘including in all cases the possession of unburied corpses, the identities of whom we have yet to verify.’ He sat down opposite the Russian and lit a cigarette of his own. ‘Your three “friends” don’t yet know that it was you who informed us about the corpses, but I don’t suppose it will take them too long to work that out.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that!’ Güneş began. ‘You’ve put my client in danger.’

  ‘However,’ İskender raised one hand in order to silence the lawyer, ‘we do also have the embalmer in custody too. So perhaps your involvement isn’t quite so obvious, Mr Rostov.’ He looked down at his fingers curling around the end of his cigarette. ‘Or at least it won’t be, provided you allow Mr Livadanios and myself to take Tatiana away with us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mr Livadanios is an undertaker,’ İskender said as he acknowledged the Greek with a slight incline of his head, ‘well versed in the Christian Orthodox rites and traditions to which you adhere, Mr Rostov.’

  ‘The law requires that we bury your daughter, sir,’ Livadanios explained. ‘We cannot leave her frozen.’

  ‘But Valery,’ Lütfü Güneş said as he turned to face his employer with a frown, ‘you wanted to have her embalmed. You wanted to keep Tatiana.’

  The Russian stubbed his cigarette out on a sigh. ‘Yes, well . . .’

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ Yiannis Livadanios said with that professionally kind edge such people were so good at giving their voices, ‘embalming wouldn’t have worked anyway.’

  Lütfü Güneş looked shocked. ‘What? Wh
y not?’ He looked down at Rostov and said, ‘But, Valery, weren’t you told—’

  İskender, if no one else, saw the Russian’s face change colour.

  ‘Bodies that have been frozen respond badly to the embalming process,’ Livadanios continued. ‘Once the thaw is complete, deterioration begins rapidly. Bacterial decomposition deep within the body moves very quickly to overwhelm the subject. It’s a most distressing thing to witness.’

  ‘According to you, yes,’ the lawyer, now leaning in towards the undertaker, said aggressively, ‘but what about all the other bodies this embalmer has treated? Didn’t they come from Russia in frozen—’

  ‘Apparently not. Part of Mr Vronsky’s defence is that his late mother was originally embalmed in Russia,’ İskender said as he attempted to retain his concentration on to Rostov’s seemingly ever-shifting features. ‘He brought her here to be more expertly treated by the embalmer we currently have in custody. He maintains that she is still a Russian “citizen”.’

  ‘But she wasn’t frozen?’

  ‘No, Mr Güneş,’ İskender said, ‘none of the other bodies we have discovered, except Tatiana, has been frozen. Apparently the fact that frozen bodies cannot then be embalmed is well known.’

  ‘Valery must have been wrongly advised.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  İskender knew it wasn’t really possible. Although he had only met her in person once, he’d heard enough about Dr Yeşim Keyder to know that the last thing she would ever compromise would be her professionalism. If nothing else, his memory of that startling photograph of a dancer she’d had on display in her yalı had to be significant. Like her mentor Pedro Ara’s famous dancer, Dr Keyder’s performer had, he now knew, been quite dead. Petrified within a perfectly preserved moment of artistry, this – and the fabulous Akdeniz children – were the kinds of subjects Dr Keyder would want to be associated with as opposed to some half-rotted urchin from Moscow. Just what and why Rostov had started all of this business with Masha, with poor little ‘Tatiana’, with his stories of bodily preservation, began to worry, as it had done before, at Metin İskender’s mind. This time, however, he came to a conclusion.

  Rostov said no more about the removal of Tatiana from his premises. As the undertaker, Güneş and the two uniformed officers İskender had brought with him, disappeared downstairs to the freezers he just sat very still, looking sad.

  İskender, still sitting opposite the Russian, crossed his legs. ‘Of course,’ he said after a pause, ‘Malenkov, Vronsky and Bulganin still have their dealers, runners, girls and boys.’

  ‘I’m a businessman, I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Out on the streets, waiting to either inherit their masters’ empires or join forces with another master who will pay them just as well, if not better.’

  He looked across at the Russian, who averted his eyes.

  ‘You’re a very clever man, Mr Rostov,’ İskender said as he helped himself to a cocktail cigarette from one of the golden boxes on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I’ve always considered myself to be bright, but you’ve beaten me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘No?’ İskender lit up and smiled. ‘Perhaps I ought to explain,’ he said, ‘although quite why I should do so to you.’

  Rostov very pointedly looked out of a window and into his sunlit garden beyond.

  ‘It’s like this,’ İskender said. ‘You want to take over. Everything. Drugs, prostitution.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Just hear me out, Mr Rostov,’ İskender said with a smile. ‘So how do you do that? You get something on your “friends” you know they won’t be able to either defend or hide.’ He leaned forward towards Rostov. ‘The bodies. Their sainted dead, incorruptible in time, unacceptable in a Muslim country.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  İskender ignored the remark and continued, ‘It must have taken some planning,’ he said. ‘To get that body into this country just as we were beginning to take an interest in such things. How did it happen, Rostov? Did you read about Dr Keyder’s sister-in-law in the paper? Did the good doctor even take you to see her greatest work, Miguel Arancibia, the unknown dead man of Kuloǧlu? And then, of course, you also set my colleague up with your prostitute. I was impressed by the way you knew so much about his difficulties at home.’

  Rostov turned back to face İskender. ‘This is all pure conjecture,’ he said. ‘You have no proof.’

  ‘I’d like to know who in my department sold Inspector Suleyman to you.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘“ . . . what you mean”?’ İskender, still smiling, rose to his feet. ‘I’m getting a little tired of that phrase, Mr Rostov.’

  Suddenly, with one quick, deft movement, he leaned forward, took a portion of Rostov’s hair between his fingers and pulled.

  The Russian, outraged, bellowed, ‘What!’

  İskender pocketed the hair as he moved towards the door.

  ‘If the DNA in the sample I’ve just taken from you matches that of “Tatiana”, you will have nothing to worry about, will you, Mr Rostov?’

  The Russian, still nursing the sore place on the top of his head, frowned. ‘And if it doesn’t?’

  ‘Then I will come after you,’ İskender said as he opened the door from the living room into the hall.

  ‘And do what?’ Rostov said.

  ‘And—’

  ‘And connect me to a prostitute to whom I have no connection?’ he laughed. ‘You seem to think I set up your Inspector Suleyman with such a woman for some reason.’

  ‘Yes I do. I don’t know what the original plan was, though,’ İskender said. ‘However, the result, that he found Tatiana and unwittingly assisted you in your mission against your countrymen, has worked to your advantage. Now you alone, if you want, can run this city.’

  ‘Except that I don’t want.’ Rostov leaned back comfortably in his seat once again. ‘Or rather there is no proof that I want,’ he said. ‘Just like there is no proof to connect me to this prostitute, there is no proof that any such plan existed. The body in my freezer is that of my daughter, as your tests will confirm.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  Rostov shrugged. ‘That isn’t my problem,’ he said. ‘Your tests will confirm that my daughter died a long time ago and that I brought her from Russia to be with me.’

  ‘I still don’t believe you,’ İskender retorted. ‘That corpse is frozen, there is no way it can be embalmed.’

  ‘And yet within the ice,’ Rostov smiled, ‘she is perfect, Inspector. You should go and see for yourself. Go now before—’

  ‘What about you?’ İskender asked. ‘Don’t you want to see your “daughter” before . . .’

  ‘No.’ He turned back to the window once again. ‘No, I’ve seen her many times.’

  ‘And now you can dispense with her.’

  ‘I can let her go, yes,’ he smiled. ‘That’s healthy, isn’t it?’

  İskender, stung by the cruel irony in the Russian’s voice, turned sharply on his heel and left. The Russian, smiling still, waited until the body had been removed from his house before he called his ex-wife to thank her for her understanding and assistance. Giving up Tatiana, and at such short notice, must have been a wrench. But then she had other children and he was going to reward her handsomely. If only he could thank Miguel Arancibia too. He owed him so much, that lovely – as he recalled so clearly – pride of Dr Keyder’s life. But then as Bulganin had said when he’d taken him to Kuloǧlu all those months ago, Miguel was the best example because Pedro Ara had, in truth, been far better than Yeşim Keyder.

  So many people to thank. Dear Masha – ah, but she was dead now. Still, he couldn’t have done it without her or without his friend in the police department who had known so much about Inspector Suleyman’s private life. He’d have to employ that informant again . . .

  What would be usual in a case such as this, Dr Sadrı the psychiatrist told İkmen, w
ould be for Eren Akdeniz to place the blame entirely with her husband. He was, after all, dead and therefore incapable of either confirming or denying anything she said. But Eren wasn’t like that. In fact as she sat down calmly opposite İkmen, Suleyman and Farsakoǧlu, Eren Akdeniz looked more like a person at a job interview than someone facing life imprisonment.

  ‘My husband was and still remains the greatest artist in the world,’ she said. ‘The Karagöz exhibit is exquisite. Don’t you agree?’

  İkmen found it hard to concur.

  ‘I think I would find Yaşar and Nuray of more interest if they were alive, Mrs Akdeniz,’ he said, ‘but I suppose I’m coming from a rather different perspective.’

  ‘You think it’s weird, don’t you?’ She narrowed her eyes to peer into his. ‘I expect you think that you just wake up one morning and do something like this?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She leaned into the hard back of her chair and looked across at Suleyman. ‘But it isn’t like that. There is pain. I felt their loss. I took drugs to dull the pain. But there are bigger things in life. Something like Karagöz, someone like Melih takes years of development, planning, preparation.’

  Briefly robbed of energy, she stopped what she was saying and stared blankly beyond the officers at the stained walls behind their heads.

  İkmen, after a brief glance across at Suleyman, said, ‘So why don’t you tell us about that then, Eren? Make us understand.’

  For just a moment she didn’t appear to have heard what he said. Suleyman lit a cigarette and thought about Masha and what Metin İskender had told him about Rostov. Now, İskender had said, Rostov would be making calls to the other bosses’ henchmen; soon he would control them all, plus a lot more lawyers like Güneş, a lot more dying girls like Masha.

  ‘My parents didn’t want me to marry Melih,’ Eren said, brightly now that she appeared to have moved out of her trance-like state. ‘I was very young and he was a Jew originally. Nabaro.’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said, recalling that it was just this name that had finally alerted him to what Melih had in mind.

  ‘But I married him anyway,’ Eren said. ‘I loved him.’