The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

‘Yes,’ Arto said. ‘But he sometimes consulted the alchemist when he didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘About how to treat his patients?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘About life. My father was a very sad man, you know, madam. I suppose these days one would call him a depressive. The alchemist was a very wise person; my father learned a lot from him.’

  ‘And so this . . . paraphernalia . . .’

  ‘I don’t know what it all means,’ İkmen said. ‘But I can see that he was trying to synthesise something in these flasks. He clearly used the fireplace because it contains burnt wood, and there’s a scorched retort stand in the middle of the detritus, probably used to hold a flask with something or other inside. Then there’s the skull, what looks like a wand . . .’ He picked up a book from a shelf. ‘Pentagram on the cover, written in Latin . . .’

  Arto held out his hand. ‘Let me see.’

  İkmen gave him the book.

  The doctor read, ‘Theatrum Chemicum – The Chemical Theatre – by Lazarus Zetzner.’ He opened the book. ‘Ah. Yes. Astrological signifiers, the Kabbalah . . .’

  ‘Isn’t that witchcraft?’ Teker asked.

  ‘Sort of. But a more accurate description would be magic,’ İkmen explained. ‘Alchemy wasn’t just about creating gold from base metals, it was also about transmutation of the soul.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure,’ İkmen said. ‘Becoming an enlightened being – something like that. Or rather, in some cases. Other alchemists professed to use magic to give themselves power. Some interpreted this as consorting with the Devil.’

  ‘God! Is this relevant, Çetin Bey?’ Teker said. Clearly tired of such arcane talk, she shook her head again.

  ‘It could be,’ he said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, madam, we have four dead bodies in a building where an alchemist once lived, a building that we have been told by local people is known as the Devil’s House.’

  Just circulating the Kurd’s description of Ali Baykal’s attacker and his or her accomplice to the officers on duty at the bazaar’s eighteen gates stretched Mehmet Süleyman’s patience. Separating out those who didn’t approximate these descriptions, and checking those who did, was interminable. But the bazaar had already been closed for almost one whole day; it couldn’t be shut for a second. The traders would riot.

  At 5 p.m., Mehmet Süleyman called his mistress, Gonca Şekeroğlu.

  ‘I got your text,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to be able to see you tonight. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah.’ She sighed. ‘You know I came to see you this morning. Cousin Barış called me to tell me there’d been an incident in the bazaar. He saw you. Sadly, I didn’t.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I miss you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ she said.

  He laughed. ‘You are a terrible woman, Gonca!’

  ‘Which is why you adore me.’

  She ended the call.

  Ömer Mungun, who had been waiting patiently to speak to his superior, said, ‘Sir, we’ve found a boy in a black tracksuit hiding in one of the workshops.’

  The five thousand shops in the Grand Bazaar didn’t reflect the overall size of the complex. Behind modern glass shop windows lurked cavities in stone once used by the Byzantines, where carpets were repaired and fake designer handbags created. Even the roof concealed silversmiths’ workshops, corridors full of clothing alteration specialists and men making leather belts.

  Süleyman said, ‘Where?’

  ‘In the roof above the Bodrum Han, behind a load of junk in the back of a leather workshop. The owner says he doesn’t know him.’

  ‘Has he spoken?’

  ‘No,’ Ömer said. ‘I’m not sure whether he can. He looks spaced out to me.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘I left him under guard in the owner’s office,’ he said.

  The two men walked south-westwards from the İç Bedesten to one of the bazaar’s many ancient caravanserais. The Bodrum Han was famous for its leather goods.

  When they arrived, they found a tiny, chaotic office space filled with smoke, leather offcuts, two enormous uniformed officers and a small, frightened-eyed boy.

  Ömer Mungun said, ‘Has he spoken?’

  ‘No, Sergeant.’

  A chair was found for Süleyman, who sat opposite the boy.

  ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Inspector Süleyman. Tell me your name.’

  The boy just shook. He had the sort of face that could have been sixteen or thirty. He was young, but it was impossible to tell how young. Süleyman looked at his feet. His trainers were shabby.

  ‘Are you Turkish?’

  Still the boy remained silent. Süleyman looked up at Ömer Mungun. ‘Did you find any ID on him?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He was very dark. Could he be perhaps a Syrian refugee?

  ‘Are you from Syria?’ Süleyman asked. But the boy didn’t respond.

  ‘A young man who works in this bazaar has been stabbed,’ Süleyman continued. ‘We need to find out who did it.’

  ‘I told him he looked like the offender, sir,’ the bigger of the constables said.

  Süleyman looked at him furiously. ‘Why did you do that? Are you stupid? Then again, I know the answer to that question . . .’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘If he does speak Turkish, you’ve just sent his brain into meltdown.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Oh don’t give me any ridiculous excuses!’ He looked at Ömer. ‘Where do we get these morons, eh, Sergeant?’

  But before Ömer Mungun could answer, the boy let out a sound that reminded Süleyman of the noise a cat makes when it’s calling for its mate. The smaller of the two constables pinned him to his chair with one, brutal arm.

  ‘What is it? What—’

  ‘Satan has started his work,’ the boy said. His voice was soft and gravelly and it made Mehmet Süleyman’s flesh turn cold. ‘The Lord of Hell is here. Right here.’ He looked into Süleyman’s eyes. ‘At your left elbow.’

  ‘Hasn’t that place been empty for years?’

  Alican Ablak was a man of indeterminate age. A fashion designer by trade, he had the groomed beard and smooth skin of what Kerim Gürsel would call a ‘hipster’. He also had a very nice apartment with views of the Sea of Marmara on one side and the back of the Devil’s House on the other.

  ‘No, sir,’ İkmen said. ‘Four elderly siblings lived there.’

  Ablak shook his head. ‘Don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘How long have you lived here, Mr Ablak?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Me? Five years.’

  The apartment building had probably been built in the 1960s, but the decor was most definitely modern. Matt black and dulled chrome was everywhere.

  ‘Five years?’ another, far deeper male voice said.

  İkmen turned in time to see an old man with a stick walking slowly into what the younger man had called ‘the drawing room’.

  ‘You were born here, Alican,’ the old man said.

  ‘Papa . . .’

  ‘From the police, yes?’ the old man said to İkmen as he sat down on an enormous black sofa.

  ‘Yes, sir. Inspector İkmen.’

  ‘Ah.’ The old man grunted as he settled himself. ‘I am Bülent Ablak, this silly boy’s father. With the exception of the two years he was married, my son has lived in this apartment all his life.’

  Alican’s face reddened. ‘Papa . . .’

  ‘And that’s fifty years ago.’ He laughed. ‘Contrary to appearances – I let my son decorate the place; well, why not? – this is my apartment, Inspector. Please, do sit.’

  İkmen sat on a large leather chair opposite the old man. ‘You have to forgive Alican,’ Bülent Ablak said. ‘In his line of work, they all lie about their age.’

  ‘Papa, you know that’s the way it is!’ his son said. ‘Fashion is just like that. It’s a youth thing.’

  ‘Wel
l, then fashion is a fool,’ Bülent said. ‘Fifty years old and going out to clubs with women young enough to be his daughter, Inspector! Can you believe that?’

  He could, but İkmen didn’t say so.

  ‘Mr Ablak, as I told your son, I’m here about the house next door,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, yes. I saw your vehicles outside the Devil’s House.’

  ‘You call it the Devil’s House?’

  ‘Oh, that’s not its real name,’ the old man said. ‘Don’t know what that is. I don’t think I ever have. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘There have been some . . . incidents inside the house,’ İkmen said. Together with Commissioner Teker, he was due to give a statement to the press in two hours’ time. If he hadn’t seen Alican Ablak standing on his balcony looking at the old building, he wouldn’t even have thought about joining in the house-to-house enquiries himself.

  ‘Do you see much movement in and out of the Devil’s House?’ he asked.

  ‘I occasionally see a middle-aged woman,’ the old man said. ‘But if you want to know whether I ever see the Rudolfoğlus, the answer is no. Not for years. But then how would I know them after all this time? They are my parents’ generation. To be honest with you, I never think about them.’

  ‘Any reason?’

  ‘What, apart from the fact that they entombed themselves when I was an infant in a house that can now hardly be seen through the weeds in its garden?’

  ‘Have you never been curious about them?’

  ‘If I ever thought about them, I imagined they must be dead. Are they dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said.

  ‘What? All of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Alican Ablak sat down next to his father. ‘You always told me that place was derelict,’ he said.

  ‘Well it is.’

  ‘Not if people lived there. Why—’

  ‘I didn’t want it to intrigue you when you were a child,’ he said. ‘You might have gone in there. Wouldn’t have looked good, would it? Son of a lawyer breaks into house? Also, to go into it all would have made me sound ridiculous.’ He looked at İkmen. ‘I don’t know how you stand on such things, Inspector, but I was brought up at a time when superstition of all sorts was frowned upon. Atatürk’s republic didn’t believe in ghosts or saints or any of the other supernatural rubbish our forefathers subscribed to. Pity they still don’t . . .’

  The old man looked miserable for a moment, then he continued, ‘But anyway, that place was thought to be cursed. That’s why it’s called the Devil’s House: because its original owner was believed by some to be the Devil.’

  Alican laughed. But İkmen didn’t.

  ‘Why did they think that?’ he said.

  ‘He beat his servants, but who didn’t in those days? He was a paşa, so he could do what he liked. I don’t really know,’ the old man said. ‘My mother disliked him just because he was a foreigner.’

  ‘What kind of foreigner?’

  ‘German,’ Bülent said. ‘He was seconded to the Ottoman army in the Great War by our ally the Kaiser. Got that house and a wife out of it too. Rudolf Paşa, Ottoman soldier and father of the four old fossils who rotted in that house.’

  ‘I’ve been told that none of the siblings spoke to one another,’ İkmen said. ‘They lived in separate apartments.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ Bülent nodded. ‘Why, I don’t know. There used to be stories.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I can’t remember, but I do know that my mother thought the four of them were bewitched.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Their father,’ he said. ‘According to my mother, Rudolf Paşa didn’t want anyone to be happy, and that included his own children. But then the Devil wouldn’t, would he?’

  Chapter 3

  Lolling his head out of his office window probably made him look mad, but Mehmet Süleyman didn’t care. He’d spent much of the previous night trying to make sense of the ramblings of a boy whose name he still didn’t know. The black-tracksuited youth was sometimes the Sufi poet Rumi, sometimes a fairy, sometimes a demon called Emre. By the time he called for a psychiatric assessment, Süleyman was beginning to think that maybe the boy really was some kind of mystical being. Not that it mattered. Forensic analysis of his clothes would reveal whether or not he was carrying any blood droplets from Ali Baykal.

  Süleyman lit a cigarette. At four o’clock that morning, what had been a case of violent assault had become a murder. Surrounded by his family, Ali Baykal had slipped out of the coma that had followed on from the surgery he had been given, and plunged into death.

  ‘Whatever the question, suicide is never the answer,’ he heard Çetin İkmen say.

  He looked back into his office. ‘Did I forget to lock the door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  İkmen closed the door and locked it.

  ‘Well, in terms of who caused the most chaos in this city yesterday, I’d say that you win.’ He sat down. ‘I just got to shut a few roads in Moda, while you closed the Grand Bazaar.’

  ‘Never again.’ Süleyman offered İkmen a cigarette. ‘In the last twenty-four hours I’ve been shouted at by shopkeepers, watched more CCTV footage in the company of Turgut Zana than is good for anyone . . .’

  İkmen lit up and laughed. ‘Poor Turgut, he can’t help the way he is.’

  ‘Maybe not, but . . . Then we had to take statements from some very bizarre witnesses, which culminated in what I can only describe as an audience with a boy who, by turns, believes he is a fairy, a poet and a demon. I had to call the psychiatrist. And all this against a background of a bazaar full of people, all of whom had to be processed before they could leave. If you were to include statements, the contact details the officers took down yesterday would reach to the moon. I’d put money on it.’

  ‘Oh don’t make bets,’ İkmen said. ‘I made one with Dr Sarkissian yesterday and ended up owing him a very expensive bottle of rakı. My gambling days are over. Where’s Ömer?’

  ‘I sent him home.’

  ‘Which is where you should be.’

  ‘Can’t. I’ve got to see Teker at ten.’

  ‘I’ve just seen her,’ İkmen said. ‘She’s a little, well, stressed . . .’

  ‘You know our victim died?’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Any idea about motive?’

  ‘None so far. He came from a nice, ordinary working-class family. Father was a railwayman until he died ten years ago. Mother lives off his pension and does some cleaning for a couple of pansiyons in Sultanahmet. One older sister, married with a baby. The kid was a normal twenty-year-old. Worked for a carpet dealer, into girls, computer games and music. No hint of radicalisation. Everybody liked him.

  ‘And you? What has happened in Moda?’

  ‘Four elderly siblings stabbed in their beds,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Mehmet, have you ever heard of an Ottoman commander called Rudolf Paşa?’

  ‘No. My father may have done, but . . .’ He shrugged.

  Muhammed Süleyman Efendi, Ottoman prince and Mehmet’s father, had been dementing for years. Once a valuable fount of imperial knowledge, he was cared for by his wife and Mehmet’s older brother Murad. He didn’t even know his own name.

  ‘Rudolf was German,’ İkmen said. ‘Lent to the empire by the Kaiser during the Great War. He stayed on, married a princess and lived out his life after the war in the house he’d moved into when he first arrived in İstanbul. Our four dead bodies are his children.’

  ‘They must be ancient!’

  ‘Indeed. The youngest, Fatima Hanım, was ninety-six. Their house is an enormous late Ottoman pile hidden behind what I can only describe as a madness of foliage, hemmed in by 1960s apartment blocks. However, it isn’t one house any more. At some point the siblings took up residence on different floors, which were converted into apartments. It’s said they had some sort of falling-out – I don’t yet know why
– and hadn’t spoken for decades. Strange, eh?’

  ‘Strange that you didn’t know about this before,’ Süleyman said. ‘I’ve always thought you knew every weird corner of this city.’

  ‘Oh, it gets weirder,’ İkmen said. ‘I eventually found out that the house was originally called the Tulip Kiosk. But no one who knows anything about the place calls it that. It is said that Rudolf Paşa was a bit of a bastard, who may have dabbled in black magic, and because of that, it’s known as the Devil’s House.’

  ‘Oh, the Devil again,’ Süleyman said wearily as he lit another cigarette.

  ‘Again?’

  ‘The boy I called the psychiatrist out to told me that the Devil was standing at my left elbow. He said, “The Lord of Hell is here.”’

  ‘Did he?’ İkmen said.

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman yawned. ‘Clearly mad.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Çetin İkmen looked out of the window and up into the brightening morning sky. Another hot day in the golden city on the Bosphorus, and yet again, he thought, they were pondering on the nature of evil.

  Kerim Gürsel had never been in charge of such a large crime scene before. Çetin İkmen was usually in control, but he’d had to return to police headquarters in order to brief Commissioner Teker. And so for a short period of time, Kerim was the boss.

  All the bodies had been removed the previous day. Now the forensic searches had begun. The scene-of-crime officers had started with Fatima Rudolfoğlu’s apartment, and a lot of the old woman’s possessions had already been taken away.

  Kerim walked back into the bedroom. Only the frame of the bed remained, the mattress and bedclothes having gone to the forensic institute for analysis. A number of small items had also been removed. As well as a lot of dried-out cosmetics and battered hairbrushes, the strange glass dressing table was home to many small boxes. They came in all shapes and sizes; some made from wood, others glass, and some of tarnished metal that might have been silver. He opened a couple and found sad little collections of used lipsticks, hair grips and even a couple of teeth.

  What had this woman done with her life? Locked away in a house with three brothers she never spoke to? The cleaner reckoned that Fatima Hanım had become demented over the past few months. Why had it taken so long? Kerim knew that he himself would have gone mad under such circumstances. If none of the old people had spoken to each other within living memory, then something terrible must have happened between them. Did that thing have anything to do with their deaths?