Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

  Kelime, in her own little world of Barbie, chuckled.

  The doctor left and Mary went to the toilet so she could cry her heart out on her own.

  ‘When we find Hakkı’s son, who is probably in some goat-fucking settlement with a broken gearbox, we will ask him what he knows,’ İkmen said. ‘But it’s intriguing.’

  He lit Süleyman’s cigarette and then his own. Other guilty smokers also haunted the car park, looking shifty. İkmen always made sure that he didn’t look in the least bit guilty and smoked openly and effusively.

  ‘When Hakkı’s grandfather went to work at the Negroponte House, he brought his wife with him,’ Süleyman said. ‘The couple were childless which, Hakkı claims, was down to his grandfather. Following this logic, when Bacchus Bey had an affair with Hakkı’s grandmother, she got pregnant.’

  ‘With Hakkı’s father.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he say any more than that?’ İkmen said.

  ‘Said he was one of the family and then he clammed up,’ Süleyman said. ‘If he is a member of the Negroponte family he won’t say anything against them, will he?’

  ‘No. But Mehmet, the fact remains that we found Öden in that house, in a room the Negropontes have kept secret, one way or another, for possibly centuries. Who else could have put him there? And have some faith in the forensics. There will be evidence of Yiannis or Hakkı, or both, inside that – what did you call it?’

  ‘Burial chamber.’

  ‘Death niche.’

  ‘You didn’t find forensic evidence for any Negroponte involvement with Dr Ariadne Savva,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘No. But then maybe they didn’t know her,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe there’s some other porphyry room hidden somewhere in this city that only she knew about. This is İstanbul, Mehmet, anything is possible. You know Professor Bozdağ told me that there are more classical Greek ruins in Turkey than there are in Greece?’

  ‘How was Professor Bozdağ when you left him?’

  ‘Like an excited five year old. I did think I’d have to tie him down or put him in a cell to stop him telling the world about the Red Room.’

  Süleyman smiled. ‘How did you persuade him?’

  ‘I told him that if he started telling everyone about it, they’d want to see it, and he’d have to beat them off with a stick to get to it. Not that I think that’s true.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I think that some people may well want to see it but others won’t. The turn-Aya-Sofya-back-into-a-mosque mob certainly won’t. If Ahmet Öden didn’t know about the Red Room he was going to get a nasty shock when he eventually bought the Negroponte House. Not that I think he didn’t know.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. For all his talk about the need for a truly luxury hotel in the Old City, with the Four Seasons just down the road, what was he trying to prove? And why the Negroponte House – why not the Alans’ place next door or as well as? Hakkı Bey himself told me that Öden’s father Taha was fanatically xenophobic. Ahmet’s not exactly on board with multiculturalism, is he? I know he’s an Aya-Sofya-must-be-a-mosque nut.’ He frowned. ‘You know some of them pray behind Aya Sofya?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell no one, but my wife included,’ İkmen said. He rolled his eyes. ‘She saw Hakkı Bey and his son on her way there the other day. She said she thought he was going to pray somewhere.’

  ‘He’s a Muslim, of course,’ Süleyman said. ‘His antecedents have been kept secret.’

  ‘Ah, secrets, yes,’ İkmen said. ‘What damage they do, eh?’

  ‘We all have them, Çetin. Sometimes for very good reasons.’

  ‘I know.’ İkmen still had a few, he’d once had a lot more. His sergeant had a big secret. He’d have to talk to him about that one day. He cleared his throat. ‘So Hakkı Bey is a Negroponte and we therefore have to assume that he won’t give us Yiannis.’

  ‘Ah, but wasn’t there something about Yiannis Negroponte being an imposter?’

  ‘Years ago, yes,’ İkmen said. ‘And I thought that Hakkı was suspicious of him. I think he may still be. But the other aspect to consider here is Hakkı’s feelings for Madam Anastasia. He loves her, she loves Yiannis. He won’t betray someone she loves.’

  ‘He loves her?’

  ‘He rescued her from the mob in 1955 and he’s looked after her ever since,’ İkmen said. ‘I’d say that was love. And she was very beautiful. I remember her well.’

  ‘And they are related.’

  ‘They are connected,’ İkmen said. ‘The only thing that I find truly odd is the way she refused to see Hakkı when we left the house. He’s been her right hand for almost sixty years. Why would she turn on him now?’

  A doctor came to take something called DNA. He was an odd little man with that pale red hair typical of some of the south eastern Kurds. Hakkı let him take mouth swabs and a blood sample. The doctor explained that the DNA would tell the police everything they wanted to know about him, including his ethnic background.

  He didn’t care. So they’d find out he was Greek? So what? He knew that anyway. He’d not been as Greek as Nikos Bey, which was why Madam had rejected him. But that didn’t matter any more.

  The doctor left. Then he heard another door open somewhere outside. For a while there was no sound but then he heard raised voices. He thought one of them belonged to Yiannis, but he couldn’t work out what he was saying. Or even if it was him. The cells were full of protesters from Gezi Park, the place was full to bursting. Alone, all he could think about was why Madam had suddenly rejected him.

  Chapter 33

  Ahmet had hundreds of e-mails. Semih would require help to answer them. But initially he needed to separate the urgent post from the trash. For some reason there was a load of stuff about Byzantine emperors, specifically about the last one, Constantine Palaiologos. Why? Had the end of Byzantium also been part of his brother’s obsession with the wretched Negroponte family and their room? He discarded it all. When he first saw the e-mail from dNa Search Team, he thought it was rubbish too. But then he opened it. He wished that he hadn’t.

  He’d understood and gone along with Ahmet’s plans for the Negroponte House for years. In a way he’d agreed with them. But he’d also known what they were based upon and he’d never been comfortable with that. Semih only just remembered his father, Taha, as a man who had been short on patience and would quickly resort to violence if his children disobeyed him.

  The story with the Negropontes was that Semih’s grandfather Resat had been offered a job by the then head of the family, Bacchus Negroponte. Resat had been a builder and the job he had been promised was gardening, but work of any sort was hard to come by at the time. However, this offer was suddenly withdrawn and the job given to Hakkı Bey’s grandfather. Why it happened was a mystery, but Resat Öden had accepted it as the will of God and never bore the Negropontes any ill will. Unlike his father. Years of poverty had followed the loss of that job, which Taha never forgot. And in 1955 he’d paid back all and any Greeks he could get his hands on, in blood. He’d also held in his mind what his father had said about a secret Byzantine room in the Negroponte House. It was, the old man had told him, a great marvel he must never tell anyone about. The last great Byzantine relic. But Taha had told Ahmet, who had seen the famous room and promised his father that one day he would destroy it. Which was exactly what Taha had wanted. It was great revenge.

  And now here was a report on what was described as a ‘very small’ blood sample taken from someone his brother had described as ‘male, allegedly ethnically Greek’. Who else could it be except Yiannis Negroponte? How had Ahmet got his blood?

  Semih Öden read it and then he read it again. Yiannis Negroponte had been arrested, along with Hakkı Bey, for the attempted killing of his brother. Soon one or both of them would almost certainly be charged with his murder. A phone call from the ward doctor that morning had let Semih know that his brother was fitting. The swelling in the brain, in sp
ite of their best efforts, hadn’t reduced and the doctor wanted to know if he could administer diamorphine to alleviate Ahmet’s distress. Semih knew what that meant. Once he was on regular doses of morphine, the end wouldn’t be far away. Lale and his other sister Rabia were at the hospital all the time. Semih wanted to be, but someone had to run the company and he’d have to get used to it.

  What he’d also have to get used to was not having to do as his brother told him. On the one hand this made Semih want to cry, but on the other it placed a piece of steel in his soul. He’d never wanted the Negroponte House. There were so many better places the company could build a hotel. So those Greeks had the Red Room of the Byzantine emperors? Good luck to them. His grandfather Resat had always had a great affection for that family. The bad blood raised by his father had only served to make Ahmet crazy and bring about this tragedy he was sure Yiannis Negroponte hadn’t sought. He could even see, now, why he’d tried to kill Ahmet. He also decided that it wasn’t his place to tell the police about that. They’d find out in time. They performed DNA tests themselves.

  Semih deleted the e-mail.

  Pale and hollow-eyed was how Çetin İkmen would have described Kerim Gürsel. Without looking up from his paperwork, he said, ‘Events in Beyoğlu keep you awake last night, Kerim?’

  After the government rally in Kazlıçeşme, police action in the Beyoğlu area had increased. A lot more people had been injured, including some of the doctors and nurses who’d gone to Gezi to treat the wounded. Samsun Bajraktar, ever the fount of all knowledge, had phoned İkmen at two a.m. to tell him that, ‘Your lot are punching medics now!’

  İkmen knew he needed to speak to Kerim. Yiannis Negroponte, who had refused to give a DNA sample the previous evening, was apparently having his breakfast in his cell and wasn’t due to come before İkmen and Dr Selim for a second, hopefully less fraught, attempt at DNA testing for another half an hour. But how to start? For a few minutes he thought about all sorts of things he could say to introduce the subject of Kerim’s sexuality without causing the young man to panic. But he couldn’t.

  ‘Kerim?’

  He looked up. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Kerim, what I’m about to say to you is said out of concern and not prejudice or accusation.’

  The pale face became still paler. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Kerim, I know that your marriage is one of convenience. I know your wife is not, unlike you, a lover of men.’

  He saw Kerim’s head sink slowly down into his shoulders. ‘Oh, God. How do you know?’

  The way he didn’t even try to deny it made İkmen admire him.

  ‘It’s not important, and it isn’t a problem,’ İkmen said. ‘Not for me. But—’

  ‘But you want me to resign because of other people.’

  ‘No. Oh, no, no, no, no, no!’ İkmen stood up and paced his office. Then he opened his window and lit a cigarette. ‘No, Kerim, I don’t. That’s the last thing I want. After the death of Sergeant Farsakoğlu, well, you’ve, you’ve . . .’

  Kerim had made him feel something like himself again.

  ‘Kerim, I want you to know that I will always, always fight your corner. And for what it’s worth, I don’t believe you’ll have any problems with Commissioner Teker either. But we live in what the Chinese call “interesting times”, which means we have some real challenges in our lives now. I want to tell you to be careful.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There’s nothing I’d like more than to see you at the World Aids Day march. I go every year with my cousin who lost a partner to Aids. But you must be careful. You’re still a young man at the beginning of your career and—’

  ‘Sir, you don’t have to—’

  ‘You have not replaced Ayşe. I still miss her,’ İkmen said. ‘I always will. But I’d miss you too. Selfishly, I don’t want to go through that again. Kerim, you can be open with me and you must.’

  There was a lot of noise coming from somewhere. İkmen shook his head. ‘Why do we have cells creaking under the weight of protesters? See what I mean about interesting times?’

  His office door flew open and smashed against the wall. Commissioner Teker, her hair unusually loose and tangled, put a bloodstained hand on the door frame. İkmen shot to his feet.

  ‘Down to the cells. Now!’ she said.

  The pistol lay two metres away from the body which lay face down underneath the cell window.

  ‘How did he get it?’ İkmen said.

  ‘He asked for tea,’ Teker said. ‘Sergeant Korkmaz brought it to him.’

  İkmen had seen custody sergeant Korkmaz weeping.

  ‘He didn’t know it had gone,’ Teker said. ‘Not even when he heard the shot.’

  ‘He was a stage magician,’ İkmen said. ‘They can take your balls without your knowledge.’

  He put a hand up to his head. Yiannis Negroponte had fought to refuse a DNA test the previous evening. Now they could take as much of his blood as they wanted, but he’d blown a hole in his skull, and so whatever the results, they would never be able to ask him what those results might mean.

  ‘God.’

  A crowd of officers stood behind him, jostling for position, trying to have a look. İkmen, annoyed by their prurience, elbowed one in the stomach.

  ‘Dr Sarkissian is on his way,’ Teker said.

  Voices from other cells demanded to know what was going on and who had been shot. Someone shouted, ‘Fucking shut up!’

  İkmen moved away from the cell.

  Looking at the weeping Korkmaz, he felt nothing but rage. He’d told the custody officers, including Korkmaz, that Yiannis Negroponte was a tricksy fellow who had been a stage magician back in Germany. ‘Didn’t you listen to what I said about that man?’ he asked.

  Korkmaz cried harder.

  ‘It’s no good fucking crying now!’ He turned to the other officers. ‘And someone check on the old man Hakkı Bey! If he decides to top himself we’ll never know what happened.’

  ‘Sir, there is the victim . . .’ Kerim began.

  ‘Oh, God! What? You believe in miracles now, do you, Sergeant Gürsel? Give me strength!’ He walked away. ‘If anyone wants me I’ll be smoking myself to death in the car park.’

  Lokman Atasu and his family had only got as far as Kayseri in their ancient truck. Although the gearbox hadn’t broken, as Çetin İkmen had predicted, the exhaust had blown and the local police had eventually found him at a breaker’s yard looking for a cheap replacement.

  When he heard what had happened to his father, he agreed to go back to İstanbul. He took his wife and children with him. They arrived at Hakkı’s flat in the afternoon, then Lokman went to see Madam Anastasia.

  It was odd seeing police officers stationed outside the gate to the Negroponte House. A covered woman who said she worked for social services took him into the salon where he met a smart police officer called Süleyman. He asked Lokman to sit down, which he was reluctant to do because he knew he had some oil on his clothes. He put some newspaper down and then he sat.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,’ Süleyman began.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘No. Your father is still in custody, but he’s all right. No, I’m afraid that not only is the man we found imprisoned in this house, Ahmet Öden, dead but Mr Yiannis Negroponte is dead too. He committed suicide.’

  Lokman began to shake. Yiannis Negroponte had been in police custody and everyone knew what happened to people in cells. Everyone knew that ‘suicide’ could be a euphemism.

  ‘Does Madam Negroponte know?’

  ‘No.’

  The officer was looking at him in a way that seemed to suggest he wanted Lokman to tell her.

  ‘She’s an old lady and very fragile,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Dad’ll have to tell her. She might be all right if he does it.’

  ‘Madam Negroponte won’t see your father,’ Süleyman said.

  That didn’t make sense. ‘Why not?’

  ‘We don’t know. We
thought that maybe you could tell us?’

  ‘No.’

  Süleyman leaned forwards. ‘Your father has told us that he, and so you, are related to the Negroponte family through your grandfather.’

  He’d never been comfortable with that. He wasn’t ashamed. In fact he was proud. But he’d always felt it undermined what he considered his identity. ‘Yes.’

  ‘An illicit connection but valid.’

  ‘I don’t know much about it,’ Lokman said. ‘Dad never behaved as anything more than a servant. He didn’t abuse it. What happened between his grandmother and Bacchus Bey was wrong. But we are who we are. Our blood isn’t pure.’

  ‘Unlike Madam’s.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lokman, what do you know about the Red Room?’

  He knew they’d found it. The police in Kayseri said that the property developer, Ahmet Öden, had been found walled up down there. They’d said his father had done it. Lokman knew nothing about that. What he did know about was bad enough, but he didn’t know about that.

  ‘It’s where the Byzantine emperors were born,’ he said. ‘The Negropontes and us protected it. It’s all part of the Greek past. Christian. But it’s also part of me, you know?’

  ‘Did you feel that Mr Yiannis Negroponte was “part of you” too?’ Süleyman asked. ‘It’s thought that your father has always been suspicious about his origins.’

  ‘Yeah. When he first came, we were. But Madam said she recognised him immediately. I think Dad thought he was not trustworthy because of the magic. And he couldn’t believe that the baby Yiannis had survived.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. I wasn’t born in 1955. Story was that a Turkish woman stole the baby from the back of the Negropontes’ shop. Madam said she saw her. Dad’s always had his doubts.’

  ‘Lokman, we have taken samples from Yiannis Negroponte for DNA analysis. You know what that is?’

  ‘Yes. It’s to find out who someone’s related to.’

  ‘Yes. So in order to find out if Yiannis was Madam’s son, we need to compare his samples to hers. It means taking blood from her. This is obviously a delicate matter and normally we’d ask your father to help persuade her, but . . .’