Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

  He walked back into the kitchen.

  Yiannis Negroponte swallowed. ‘We . . . You know what happened to my parents in 1955, Çetin Bey,’ he said. ‘We had to keep it secret.’

  ‘You employed very simple illusion,’ İkmen said. ‘Why did you open up the door to the garden? And why didn’t you just close this room up? What exactly is it, by the way?’

  Yiannis put his head down. ‘If I may, I’ll tell you when we’re alone.’

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘Nobody comes here, or came here,’ Yiannis said.

  İkmen walked towards him. ‘I will need to get a forensic team into that room.’

  ‘Why?’ He looked up.

  ‘Mr Negroponte, have you ever met a woman called Ariadne Savva?’ İkmen said. ‘Think carefully before you answer.’

  The house had become very quiet. The police had to be watching the building site. But in the silence would they hear the tapping on the walls and the sobbing of a dead man too? Even if she strained to hear it, she couldn’t grasp those sounds any more. Had a terrible thing been done, just as it had been done to her husband?

  Who had been the man who had taken Nikos away? Who had buried him alive? In her mind she’d tried to make his attacker turn so that she could see his face but her mind always went black.

  Why had the Turks turned on them like that? They had been their neighbours. And yet her father had always known. As children she and Nikos had wanted to bring their friends to see the fabulous red room underneath the house. But her father and Nikos’ father, her uncle, had forbidden it. ‘As Greeks we were the enemy, we remain the enemy and we will be the enemy in the future,’ her father had said. And he had been right.

  The tapping began again.

  ‘Where have you found these samples that could have come from my brother?’

  ‘I can’t tell you because, as yet, I don’t know,’ Ömer Mungun said. ‘But if we have your brother’s DNA . . .’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Semih Öden said. ‘But I don’t suppose I have a choice, do I?’

  He was already looking very comfortable at his brother’s desk.

  ‘I can get a warrant.’

  Semih shook his head. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘A strand of hair, from a brush or a comb for preference.’

  Ahmet Öden’s desk was covered in paperwork, mainly architectural drawings. ‘My brother’s bedroom is down the corridor, first on the left,’ Semih said. ‘There’s an en-suite bathroom. I believe there are brushes and combs . . .’

  ‘Would you like to accompany . . .’

  ‘No.’ He waved a dismissive hand while he looked down at the plans. ‘If you steal anything I’ll have your job. So don’t. I know what you people can be like.’

  Ömer was way beyond what his darkness and his sharp eastern features made people think he was. They thought he was a Muslim Kurd or an Arab. They’d never guess what he really was. People were stupid . . .

  The corridor was carpeted with something cheap looking in pink. Öden’s daughter liked pink. It had no doubt been very expensive. The door first on the left was open when he got there. In front of him was a king-sized bed with a figure lying on it. For just a moment, Ömer thought that miraculously Öden had returned. But then he saw it was a woman.

  When she became aware of him, Mary Cox, Öden’s nanny, sat up and wiped a hand across her eyes. They were red. But her skin was clear.

  ‘Miss Cox . . .’

  She turned her face away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ömer said. ‘I didn’t know you were in here. Mr Semih Öden gave me permission to look for something. I understand you’re ill . . .’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  As she shuffled off the bed, he looked away. She put a hand up to her face and then she left. Not a measles spot in sight. Süleyman would be interested.

  Ömer went into the en-suite bathroom and looked around. It was full of bottles and jars, male grooming products at their most excessive. Ahmet Öden was a good-looking man. He wanted to keep himself that way. Ömer picked up a basket of bath salts and saw that they came from Paris.

  Mary Cox had to be at least five years older than Ahmet Öden. In a timid sort of a way she was attractive but there was also a stiff, unhappy quality about her. Had she been crying on Öden’s bed because she missed him? It was very unlikely that Öden had been having an affair with her as well as with the gypsy in Moda. But Ömer wondered whether, in Miss Cox’s head, their relationship was more than just employer/employee? If it was, then what could that say about her testimony with regard to Öden’s whereabouts the night his mistress died?

  Ömer found the brushes and combs on top of one of the bathroom cabinets. There wasn’t much hair on any of them but he did manage to find a strand with a follicle and put it in an evidence bag. As he left the room he had a quick look in the small rubbish bin, which was where he found something that surprised him. It was an empty packet of medication. On the side was the legend ‘Viagra’.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you what my reasons are for wishing to have that room forensically examined, Mr Negroponte,’ İkmen said. ‘But I can ask you again whether the name Ariadne Savva means anything to you.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you again that it doesn’t,’ Yiannis said.

  ‘She was Greek, she was an archaeologist and we have reason to believe that she discovered a Byzantine structure that could be the room under this house. If you’d read a paper lately or watched TV you’d have to know that her dead body was found in the sphendone of the Hippodrome and that she’d not long before given birth. She may have been murdered, Mr Negroponte, and so we need to find her killer, and possibly her baby too. If it’s still alive.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any of it.’

  Three men in white overalls entered the front door and Süleyman led them down the stairs towards the kitchen.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They are forensic investigators,’ İkmen said.

  ‘There’s nothing down there! What is there for them to investigate?’

  ‘That’s what we’ll find out,’ İkmen said.

  Yiannis stood up. ‘I’d better go down. In case they need me.’

  İkmen put a hand on his arm. ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You can’t go down there. Not now.’

  Yiannis’ voice became hoarse. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it could be a crime scene,’ İkmen said. ‘If you go in, you may taint it.’

  Yiannis didn’t speak for some time. Then he said, ‘But what if something goes wrong, Inspector?’

  ‘Wrong?’

  ‘What if a pipe bursts or there’s a fire?’

  He said it slowly and a bit dreamily. İkmen felt very cold.

  ‘But nothing will happen, Mr Negroponte,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. And if it does, the forensic investigators will deal with it. You don’t need to be in that room now. You can leave it to them. Did you know Ariadne Savva?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? There’s an infant involved. We need to find it.’

  ‘No!’ Yiannis turned his whole body away, like a petulant child.

  İkmen knew nothing of Yiannis Negroponte’s early life in Germany. But he did know that, as a middle-aged man, he’d led a cloistered, rarefied life with two old people, one of whom was brain damaged while the other, İkmen suspected, didn’t believe Yiannis was who he claimed to be. His only pleasure seemed to be performing magic tricks for children – and simple illusions, it would seem, for adults.

  ‘Why did you seek to keep that room a secret?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Because it’s ours. Because this is our home, not a tourist attraction.’

  ‘If you were so worried, why didn’t you wall it up completely then?’

  Yiannis coloured. ‘Because, as I said, it’s ours! Our heritage. Why should we wall it up?’

  ‘To keep it secret—’

  ‘I
go down there, all right? I like it down there.’

  ‘It could be significant. You know that the Great Palace of the Byzantines was built in this area . . .’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ Yiannis said. ‘My family are Byzantine. It’s ours. Take Aya Sofya if you want, you’ve taken everything else. But leave us this.’

  ‘So it is Byzantine?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do other İstanbul Greeks know about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how can you say you’re claiming it for your community?’

  ‘I didn’t. I’m claiming it for my family,’ Yiannis said.

  ‘Mr Negroponte, what is that room? You said you’d tell me when we were alone. We’re alone now. What is it?’

  ‘It’s Byzantine.’

  ‘Yes, we know that,’ İkmen said. ‘What was it for?’

  Yiannis shrugged.

  ‘You don’t know or you won’t say?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody does.’

  ‘What about your mother? She’s lived here all her life. I imagine your family must have had some stories, even if they weren’t true, about such a significant monument.’

  There was a pause and then Yiannis said, ‘My mother knows nothing. Not any more. You know that, Çetin Bey. Not since 1955.’

  ‘She knows you.’

  They looked at each other. It was only when Süleyman came up from the kitchen that the spell between them broke.

  ‘May I have a word please, Inspector?’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’ He said to Yiannis, ‘I’ll be back, Mr Negroponte.’

  They moved into the salon. ‘The large, I don’t know what one would call it, the thing that looks like a porphyry sarcophagus in the middle of the room is luminol positive,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Is it.’ İkmen wished he’d been down in that room to see it. There was nothing, in his opinion, as eerie as the deep blue glow that emanated from even invisible blood traces when treated with the forensic chemical luminol. Every time he saw it, it thrilled him.

  ‘Over a large area,’ Süleyman said. ‘Very faint, because it has been comprehensively scrubbed.’

  ‘Can forensics get samples?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Don’t know. We’re just talking trace at the moment. But don’t hope too hard. As I said, the place has been scrubbed. What does Mr Negroponte have to say for himself?’

  ‘Knows the room is Byzantine, doesn’t know what it is and claims its existence isn’t any of our business.’

  ‘So why hide it?’

  ‘Exactly. Says he’s never heard of Ariadne Savva.’

  ‘Do you think he knows what a coincidence is?’

  İkmen smiled. ‘Oh I know he does,’ he said. And then his face fell again. ‘Yiannis Negroponte, I think, knows a lot of things. But he isn’t telling any of them.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I think a trip down to the station,’ İkmen said. ‘For Yiannis and for Hakkı Bey.’

  ‘And the old woman?’

  İkmen frowned. If neither Hakkı nor Yiannis were in the house to look after her, there was no knowing how she would react. She was very old. She might even die.

  ‘I’ll just take Yiannis,’ he said. ‘For the time being.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Can I leave you in charge of forensic?’

  ‘Of course.’

  İkmen returned to the hall and Yiannis Negroponte.

  ‘We will need to take a trip to police headquarters, Mr Negroponte.’

  Yiannis’ face whitened. ‘Why?’

  İkmen put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you when we get there,’ he said.

  Chapter 26

  Peri’s phone just went straight to voicemail every time he called and so, in the end, Ömer gave up. She was thin but she was tough and she was a nurse, so people would protect her. She could save their lives.

  He was just about to put his phone back in his pocket when it rang.

  ‘Sergeant Mungun?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hello. My name is Barçın Şişko, I work at the forensic institute. You left an old dental X-ray for us to try and identify. There’s what might be a name written on one corner.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ömer said. The old plate that Dr İnçi had managed to find for him.

  ‘I wish I could say that I’ve managed to decipher it for you, but I can’t,’ she said. ‘Or rather only partially.’

  ‘It’s better than nothing.’

  ‘I’ll send you an e-mail with a photo attached but what we’ve managed to pick out are the following letters. So we’ve a capital n, then another capital n then a gap, o, p, o and then t and e. Don’t know if that means anything to you?’

  Hakkı came and gave her a drink. She knew he’d put something in it to make her sleep but she didn’t say anything. The tapping and the breathing and the crying were driving her mad.

  She gave him back the empty glass just as a very handsome man appeared in her bedroom doorway. Tall, dark and slim, he had a wounded gravity around his dark eyes that reminded her of Nikos.

  ‘Sleep now, Madam,’ Hakkı said. ‘The police will not disturb you. When they find the thieving builders they will take them away and then we’ll be alone again. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  Why did he say those words? Didn’t he recall he’d said them to her when he’d taken her out of that hell on İstiklal Caddesi all those years ago? Hour after hour, or so it had seemed, he had told her that everything was going to be all right, that there was nothing to worry about. He even tried to soothe her as he slit the throat of a man, a Turk, who offered him money for her.

  The feelings never went away. The loss of her child, the loss of Nikos with his one live eye, the knowledge that she’d never do anything for herself again. And the images. A woman raped, right in front of her face, in the street, a priest with his beard torn out bleeding into a drain, faces stretched into caricatures of hatred.

  Her body wanted to sleep but as she looked at the handsome man in her doorway, her mind again tried to reach for who had carried her husband to his premature grave. But as he always did, he went as soon as she felt she was just about to see him. Getting smaller and smaller and further and further away as he broke away from her into the past.

  Anastasia Negroponte slept, watched by Hakkı and Mehmet Süleyman.

  ‘You will have to come down to the station some time, Hakkı Bey,’ Süleyman said. ‘And then you’ll have to leave her.’

  The old man, without looking up at him, simply said, ‘No.’

  ‘It’s animal blood,’ Yiannis said. ‘When Hakkı’s son Lokman came from the east he brought a goat as a present.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How’d he get it here?’

  ‘He has a truck,’ Yiannis said. ‘Hakkı and I slaughtered and dismembered it on the slab in the room. It’s cool in there. I’ve used it many times over the years.’

  He may have done. İkmen wouldn’t know for some time whether the blood traces that had been found on the slab could be subjected to further analysis.

  ‘What is the thing you call the slab?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It looks like a sarcophagus to me,’ İkmen said.

  Yiannis Negroponte said nothing.

  İkmen hadn’t chosen to speak to him in one of the smallest and darkest interview rooms in police headquarters. It had just worked out that way. And Kerim Gürsel, as well as Yiannis Negroponte, was sweating.

  İkmen passed a photograph across the table. ‘You know who this is?’

  Yiannis Negroponte looked down at a smiling photograph of Ariadne Savva without emotion. ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Ariadne Savva—’

  ‘Not this again!’

  ‘She worked at the Archaeological Museum,’ İkmen said. ‘She was an expert on Byzantine history. Yours is the sort of family she would have been interested in; your house would have been the type of house she woul
d have wanted to explore.’

  ‘But she didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t she?’ İkmen took Ariadne Savva’s photograph back and replaced it with a photocopy of some text. ‘I assume you read Greek.’

  Yiannis Negroponte looked at it.

  ‘I am told by our translator,’ İkmen said, ‘that this, a photocopy of two pages from Dr Savva’s private notebook, refers to a new and unknown Byzantine structure she calls only “red”.’

  Yiannis appeared to be reading it but İkmen couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was just making sure that their eyes didn’t meet.

  ‘Now it is possible that Dr Savva, an enthusiast for her subject, was also a fantasist . . .’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘But then maybe she wasn’t,’ İkmen said. ‘Because, as we know, you, Mr Negroponte, do have a red room, don’t you? And Dr Savva, when she was found, had a piece of porphyry stone in her left hand and as you may or may not know, there was none of that in the sphendone of the Hippodrome where her body was discovered.’

  Yiannis put the photocopy down. ‘I didn’t know this woman.’

  ‘Then you’ll be happy for us to do further tests on the blood traces we found in your red room,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why ask?’

  ‘Courtesy.’ He smiled. ‘I want to get this over with as soon as possible, Mr Negroponte. But mainly I want to find Dr Savva’s child if I can. So if you do know anything about her or the child I must urge you to tell me. Whatever has been done by you or by others, it will go better for you if you tell me about that baby.’

  ‘I know nothing about it.’

  ‘You are sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  İkmen sighed. Maybe Yiannis didn’t know anything about Ariadne Savva. Perhaps his room and the academic’s ‘find’ were not one and the same. There was no evidence, so far, that Yiannis had even met the woman.

  ‘Then we’ll have to wait and see what else our forensic team can find,’ İkmen said.

  It could be ‘N Negroponte’, but with the missing letters it could also be N N almost anything, foreign or domestic. Ömer couldn’t think of anything but he was sure that some other name had to fit. He just thought it was unlikely. But N Negroponte? Who was that? As far as he knew, N. Negroponte was Nikos Negroponte, Madam Anastasia’s late husband. And he was buried in the Greek cemetery in Şişli.