The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Seems likely,’ Turgut had said. ‘The way he got her to love him so obsessively is part of how paedophiles operate. She was a child. When her daddy did things to her, even if she didn’t like them, it made him happy, and the happier he became, the more he claimed to love his little girl. When he died, she got everything. Putting all the ridiculous Devil stuff to one side, Rudolf Paşa was a control freak. Alive or dead. And although İkmen may trust those privileged arseholes at the Oriental Club, I don’t. Rudolf was a member, and I’d put money on the notion that at least one of the other members knew what he was really like.’

  ‘But why kill them now?’ Barçın had said. ‘If someone knows all this, why now? The Club doesn’t need the money.’

  ‘How do you know? A lot of those old secular organisations are struggling these days.’

  Barçın left her room and went to visit Çetin İkmen. When she walked into his office, she found Inspector Süleyman with him.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry . . .’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ İkmen said and offered her a chair. ‘This concerns you, Constable Demirtaş.’

  She sat. ‘Sir?’

  ‘It seems we have a development,’ İkmen said. ‘Inspector Süleyman arrested two people yesterday in Tarlabaşı who, it would appear, are responsible for this spate of killings we’ve been experiencing on our streets. However, one of those people is also claiming that he and his partner stayed at a property that may be the Teufel Ev, as recently as two weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at Süleyman. ‘One of these people bit Sergeant Mungun? Heroin addicts?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He turned to İkmen. ‘Constable Demirtaş and I had a conversation when I returned to my office.’

  ‘He actually named the Teufel Ev?’ she said.

  ‘No. He says he doesn’t know the name of the place,’ Süleyman said. ‘But the description he’s given means that it could be. We’re taking him over to Moda and I’m going to let him show me where he thinks he stayed.’

  ‘Where he thinks he stayed?’

  ‘You know how vague the memory of an addict can be, Constable.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ She frowned. ‘Do you think these addicts may have killed the Rudolfoğlus?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Süleyman said. ‘It seems the woman killed the boy in the Grand Bazaar, the tourist on the Galata Bridge, a woman on a tram, and the gangster Hasan Dum and his bodyguard in Yeniköy.’

  ‘One woman killed all those people?’

  Barçın began to feel cold. That woman was down in the cells, just below her feet . . .

  ‘We think so, yes.’

  ‘So all this research I’ve been doing . . .’

  ‘Has shone a light on a chapter of this city’s history that had been lost,’ İkmen said. ‘And, of course, we cannot assume that these people killed the Rudolfoğlus. They had no motive that we can see at this time.’

  ‘They had no motive for killing anyone except Dum and the Hungarian,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘True. But they were simply getting off the streets in the basement of this house,’ İkmen said. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Personally, Çetin Bey, if the house in question is the Teufel Ev, I don’t think this couple killed your victims. They liked it there. They could shoot up in peace and dream the days away in relative comfort. The only reason they left, according to the man, was because they saw someone else in the basement.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘We don’t know. Another man, apparently. I spent most of last night trying to prise the truth out of this man we have in custody, and I’m still not sure he has a real grasp of the facts. And now he’s going into heroin withdrawal, that isn’t going to get any better.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he be put on to a heroin substitute?’

  ‘The psychiatrist has only just arrived,’ Süleyman said.

  Barçın felt as if the guns Turgut had primed had been spiked by this latest development. Until this man was taken over to Moda, there was nothing else to be said. She went back to her office and wondered how Gonca Hanım had reacted when her man had been called away from her bed.

  ‘Do you hear voices?’

  Elif had spoken to a psychiatrist only once before. The Syriani had found some washed-up alcoholic who said he was a psychiatrist to come and talk to her. He’d wanted to know why she kept on cutting herself. Of course it had been simple. She’d cut herself because she didn’t want smelly old men to desire her. Blood was a turn-off. They never wanted her when she was menstruating. So if she cut, they wouldn’t want her at other times either. But she hadn’t told the Syriani’s alcoholic psychiatrist that. She’d just said she didn’t know why she did it. Then he’d asked her whether she heard voices, and she’d said no. After that, the Syriani had let the psychiatrist have sex with her in lieu of payment. He had reeked of bourbon.

  This man smelt of cigarettes.

  ‘No,’ she said. It was vile the way her words slurred. It made her sound stupid.

  ‘What about visions? Do you see things that aren’t real?’

  He should talk to that boy she’d given the gun to! He saw the Devil everywhere.

  ‘No.’

  She’d sympathised with that boy. Just because she couldn’t see the Devil didn’t mean he wasn’t there. People wrote off kids like that too easily. Evil was real, and anyway, giving him the gun had been an adventure.

  ‘Do you remember attacking the police officer?’ the psychiatrist asked.

  ‘No.’

  Of course she did, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. The police took attacks on their officers personally, so if she could hide behind being mad at the time, maybe they’d let her out of this hellhole. What she knew for a fact was that Ali was not telling them a thing about her. He’d own up to everything and then she’d be this poor manipulated woman who the public would take to their hearts and make into a star. Or if he was tortured into telling on her, she’d become the city’s only female serial killer. That would be cool.

  ‘Do you remember attacking anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  The woman on the tram was the one that stuck in her mind. She hadn’t meant to do anything that day. But those judgemental eyes peeking over that niqab had been too blatant to ignore. The bitch was labelling her a whore because she wasn’t covered. She could see it. She always had her ‘works’ tin in her pocket – with her syringe loaded with gear and ready to go, her tourniquet, and a pipe the Syriani had given her many years ago. She’d shoved the needle into the cow’s leg when she got off at Beyazıt. Ali hadn’t even noticed. She’d only told him when they’d left the tram stop. The woman had sagged as she passed her but she hadn’t looked at her. Maybe she thought she’d been bitten by an insect.

  ‘Elif, I don’t think you’re telling me the truth,’ the psychiatrist said.

  She wasn’t, but how did he know? She wanted to say ‘fuck you’, but she didn’t. If she got agitated again they’d give her more of that medication that had turned her insides to rat-infested irritated gloop. Unable even to speak, she’d screamed in her head for what had seemed like days.

  ‘I am,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he repeated. ‘Elif, you should know that your partner has told us about the killings.’

  Of course he had. He’d confessed as she’d known he would.

  ‘He says that you committed these murders, and by that, I mean you alone. Ali’s involvement was as an accessory to your crimes only.’

  But no, that wasn’t right! Ali would never, ever have said anything like that.

  ‘He is co-operating fully with the police,’ the psychiatrist continued. ‘I should also tell you that it is Ali’s opinion that you are unwell and so not responsible for your actions. He wants you to get help. So do I. But I can only do that if you tell me the truth.’

  The Syriani had always said that: ‘If you tell me the truth, I’ll take care of you.’ But he’d lied. She’d told him the
truth, given him the tiny bit of money she’d taken for herself from whatever the punters gave her, and the lying bastard had beaten her until her eyes closed up. The truth was just another trap, and she wasn’t going to fall into one of those.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said. ‘You’re lying!’

  ‘Elif, I don’t think that’s very helpful . . .’

  She saw the two uniforms who had come into her cell with the doctor move closer. They thought she was going to attack the old prick.

  ‘I know what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘Fucking with my head. Ali would never tell lies. He doesn’t. I know he’s confessed and you’re just trying to get your claws into me too. Well it won’t work. Fuck you.’

  ‘Elif . . .’

  ‘This shit you’ve given me is killing me! You fucking bastard!’

  She was on him before she even knew. Nails tearing at his face, trying to get a mouthful of his flesh. A baton smashed into the side of her head, but still she tore away at anything and anyone she could grab.

  Then she felt a stabbing pain in her thigh, and after a few seconds her viscera was being gnawed by rats again, while inside her head she screamed for death.

  As he walked out of the cell, nursing a cut to his forehead, she heard the psychiatrist say, ‘Whether she’s mad or not, I don’t know. But she is dangerous. I have no doubt at all that she could kill if she wanted to.’

  And for once, he was right.

  ‘You are a fool!’ Selin shouted.

  Finally the kids were out of the house and she could berate her husband in peace.

  ‘I was fed up with being the poor relation!’ Bilal said. ‘The old woman didn’t need that boncuk! She didn’t need anything except a merciful death!’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Selin replied. ‘Fatima Hanım wasn’t the best employer in the world, but she paid me. Now I’m out of a job.’

  ‘Her father was a foreigner and a devil.’

  ‘Oh not that again!’ She threw her hands in the air in exasperation. ‘Ever since you got religion, you’ve been more downright pathetic than ever before. If you think I’m ever going to join you in that now, then you’ve another think coming.’

  ‘Apostates—’

  ‘I am not an apostate,’ she said. ‘I believe in God and I love our Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him. What I don’t believe in is this nasty religious one-upmanship that goes on these days. I don’t believe in judging people. Only God has the right to judge. So if Fatima Hanım was a child of the Devil, then let’s allow God to sort that out, shall we? And anyway, you were the one who committed the sin of theft, not me!’

  Bilal threw himself down into a chair. ‘My honour is at stake,’ he said. ‘Your family are all poor; you don’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, I think I do!’

  ‘Every time someone gets married or has a baby, it’s always me who gives the cheapest present,’ he said. ‘I’m sick of it!’

  ‘So get a job!’

  He began to stand, one fist raised.

  Selin pushed him back down again. ‘Raise a hand to me and your honour will be the least of your problems,’ she said.

  Bilal slumped, and for a moment neither of them spoke. At the very least he was going to have a criminal record for theft, so getting a job was going to be harder than ever. He was also still under suspicion for the possible murder of Fatima Hanım and her siblings, and had been forbidden to leave the city.

  When he did speak, he sounded like a petulant child. ‘Anyway, why isn’t that queer under suspicion? That one who used to suck Mr Yücel’s cock.’

  Selin flinched at the crudeness of his speech. ‘Osman Babacan?’ she said. ‘Yes, he’s gay, but why do you think he had sex with Mr Yücel? Proof?’

  ‘Those people always—’

  ‘Of yes, of course,’ she said, one hand on her hip, the other flailing a tea towel in the air. ‘I forgot. Gays always have sex with any man within a twelve-kilometre radius. Must have had sex with you then!’

  Infuriated, he stood up and slapped her across the face. ‘I am no queer!’ he roared.

  Selin held her burning cheek. ‘And Mr Babacan is no murderer! If they’d found any evidence against him, the cops would have dragged him in by this time. You are such a stupid bastard.’

  He raised his hand again. ‘Don’t speak to your husband like that, woman!’

  But Selin got in first. She punched him so hard that he staggered backwards into his chair, twisting his ankle as he fell.

  She loomed over him. ‘And don’t you dare touch me ever again, or I will besmirch your precious honour by killing you!’ she said.

  It wasn’t cold; in fact once again the weather was hot. But Ali Erbil shivered as he walked around Moda handcuffed to Mehmet Süleyman. He’d never had methadone before. The psychiatrist had said that it would ease his withdrawal symptoms from heroin, but it hadn’t. He felt like shit. Two other cops in plain clothes accompanied them, looking, they probably thought, natural. Ali’s time on the streets had taught him a lot. One of those things was that you could always pick out an undercover policeman. People were staring at them. He was sure of it.

  But that wasn’t his concern. What was exercising his mind was something that psychiatrist had told him back in his cell. Not in relation to himself, but to Elif. It had boiled down to the notion that if a person was found to be insane, then she or he would receive treatment in a hospital. Under these circumstances, Elif might well spend the rest of her life in hospital, but at least she wouldn’t have to live in some prison cell with a load of gangster women who would torment her, or with guards who would rape her. And the same applied to him. If he carried on being sane, he would be found guilty of assisting a murderer, and would go to prison however many strings his father might try to pull.

  Realisation had come during the long journey across the city and the Bosphorus Bridge to Moda. The psychiatrist had talked very easily to him. Did that mean he thought he was normal, whatever that was? If he did, then Ali would go to prison, which meant he’d never see Elif again. As far as he knew, men and women were held in the same building in a psychiatric hospital. Had he been too quick to tell Süleyman that Elif had killed those people? He hadn’t thought it through. He’d needed a fix and his brain had been all over the place.

  They stopped at that restaurant near the old pier head, the Koço. He’d been there once, as a child, with his parents. The inspector ordered tea and they all sat outside so that he could smoke.

  If Ali remembered correctly, there was some sort of Christian shrine nearby. But what was also nearby was that house. Hidden away behind tangled plants and trees like a lost castle from a fairy tale. They’d been happy there for a while, himself and Elif. How could he ever forget it?

  Gossip was a dangerous thing, especially in a small community. Rumours ran around the tiny Byzantine Greek population like rabid rats. It was insular and unhealthy, and it proved yet again to Father Anatoli that they were probably a society in terminal decline – at least in their pure form. Most of the young married out. Many to other Christians, some to local Muslims or Jews. It was sad, but it was also inevitable, and at the very least, a more inclusive community would hopefully put an end to some of the hysteria that plagued so many of his parishioners.

  He’d put a closed sign on the door of the ayazma so that he could be alone. An almost forgotten subsidiary to his church, the sacred spring of St Katherine had been the subject of some mad speculation over the years. In 1955, during the anti-Greek riots, people had said that the Turks had destroyed it. They hadn’t. In the 1990s, a story had gone around that the Turks who had taken over the Koço restaurant from its original Greek owners were going to brick up the shrine. Then at the beginning of the year someone had started a rumour that the local youth wing of the ruling AK Party were planning to have the ayazma closed.

  Father Anatoli had made an appointment with the local AK branch, who had assured him that the shrine was in no way under threat. But the rumour had persisted. Se
veral congregants had insisted upon guarding it at night whenever they were able, and Father Anatoli was under constant pressure to pray for its safety. Some people had put forward the idea of dismantling it and rebuilding it in the church. But that was unrealistic. The shrine was basically a cave. How did one even begin to rebuild a cave? It was ridiculous. But that idea, too, was persisting.

  He knelt in prayer until someone knocked at the door. Normally he would have told whoever was outside to go away. But he knew who it was and so he said, ‘Enter.’

  They almost went past the narrow alleyway that Çetin İkmen had told him led to the Teufel Ev. If you didn’t know where it was, it was unlikely, Süleyman thought, that anyone could ever find the place unaided. The alleyway led to a tangled garden barely contained by a low wall topped by metal railings. Even close up, the house was only just visible. According to İkmen, access to what had once been the driveway was around the other side.

  Overshadowed and hemmed in by 1960s apartment blocks, the type of building the Teufel Ev conformed to was familiar to the Ottoman Mehmet Süleyman. Classed as a ‘small palace’, it had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century in what was known as the new baroque style. That meant it was fussy and ornate. Mehmet Süleyman had been born in just such a building before his family had to sell in order to pay their creditors. The Ottoman elite had never been very good with money.

  The man cuffed to his wrist said nothing. The place he had described where he and Elif Büyük had hidden themselves away had sounded very like this house. But Ali Erbil wasn’t saying anything. Eventually Süleyman said, ‘Is this the place?’

  He just shrugged.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Süleyman said. ‘Is it familiar or isn’t it?’

  For a good minute Ali didn’t say anything. Had he even heard the question? He’d been extremely quiet on the journey across the Bosphorus. Had he maybe thought that he might not recognise the place? Or had the whole notion of an empty house in Moda been some sort of smack-fuelled fantasy?

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t recognise it.’