The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Yes,’ Aslan said. ‘She let the Devil out of him. I saw her.’

  ‘The Devil?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s at his strongest when there’s blood. Father Anatoli told me that.’

  ‘Mirra?’

  Barçın turned around. Ömer Mungun was standing behind her. He carried a tiny cup and saucer.

  As far as she was concerned, he was on sick leave. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said.

  She’d been completely wrapped up in her reading.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. Then he smiled. ‘I was bored.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be bored, you’re sick,’ she said.

  He put the cup and saucer on her desk.

  What she’d just read had given Barçın Demirtaş a lot to think about. She’d grown accustomed to feeling not exactly sorry for Fatima Rudolfoğlu, but to having some sympathy for her. More so since she’d received an email from İkmen. Fatima Hanım, he’d stated, had given birth to a baby when she was very young. It seemed most likely it was her father’s. Was that why her brothers had hated her so much? Barçın had assumed it was because Fatima alone had inherited her father’s property, but maybe it had more to do with her pregnancy. Even now a lot of men assumed that a girl who ‘got into trouble’ had brought her condition on herself whatever the circumstances. Back in the 1920s, that view would have been even more prevalent. And now this, from Fatima to Yücel in February 2015:

  If you and our brothers wish to do this, I will stop you. You will not taint my father’s house any further. Do you really think that you can invoke God’s mercy with such a pathetic gesture? You are all snakes! I curse you.

  What did she mean? What did the brothers want to do that would taint the house?

  She heard Ömer Mungun clear his throat. She had been a little tetchy with him, but he had interrupted her train of thought. And the mirra thing, sweet though it was, had begun to get on her nerves. It was obvious that he wanted to have some sort of relationship with her. Why didn’t he just ask her out? That way she could say no and the whole thing would be over and done with. Of course he was afraid that might happen, which was why he was saying nothing.

  Eventually she said, ‘I’m in the middle of something. Inspector İkmen needs me to focus.’ Then the guilt kicked in and she added, ‘If you’re back tomorrow . . .’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then maybe we can have lunch.’

  He smiled.

  ‘Talk about Mardin and—’

  ‘Great. But I’m also free tonight.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, OK then,’ she said.

  ‘About six?’

  ‘Fine.’

  She was already regretting her invitation as he left. Taken at face value, Ömer Mungun was a kind, intelligent, handsome young man. But he was from the east and so he had the capacity to turn into a monster of tradition, jealousy and sexism. Barçın cursed her own weakness.

  ‘I see it now. I see it. Ali gives me all the credit and so I become famous and he doesn’t. He loves me so much, you know.’

  The psychiatrist had given Elif a different drug, one that didn’t turn her into a zombie. It just agitated her so she couldn’t keep still. And she drooled. Every time she spoke, a line of saliva would drip down on to her chest, soaking her T-shirt.

  After interviewing Ali and Elif for a second time that afternoon, the psychiatrist had given his opinion of their crimes as a case of folie à deux. This condition, where the dominant partner in a couple – in this case Elif – transmitted their psychotic beliefs to the other in order to create an incident or perpetrate a crime, was very rare. Originally the psychiatrist had pronounced Ali Erbil sane. Then he’d pulled his silent act and that had changed. But neither policeman was convinced.

  ‘He didn’t betray me! I understand what he was doing!’

  Two big constables were in the cell with them; one by the door, the other behind İkmen and Süleyman.

  ‘Elif, are you saying that you killed five people without help from Ali Erbil?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Yes!’

  She threw her arms in the air and did a little dance.

  ‘Did you tell Ali that you were going to do that?’

  She danced and laughed but said nothing.

  Süleyman rephrased the question. ‘Elif, when you left the house in Moda, did you tell Ali that you intended to kill people?’

  This time she stopped. A large gobbet of saliva hung from her lip like a teardrop. ‘The house?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, the house in Moda,’ he repeated. ‘You stayed there, in the cellar. Remember?’

  ‘Cellar . . .’ It was just as if someone had flicked a switch in her head. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I was happy there.’ She sat on the floor.

  ‘But then Ali saw a man and he feared you’d be discovered.’

  ‘I didn’t see a man,’ she said.

  ‘But Ali did.’

  She shook her head. ‘We went. I hated it. I wanted to go back. But we kept on moving.’

  ‘You stabbed a man called Ali Baykal in the chest,’ Süleyman said. ‘In the Grand Bazaar.’

  She smiled. ‘A carpet boy,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  İkmen said, ‘You must have had a reason. Did the carpet boy maybe abuse you in some way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Killers are famous,’ she said. ‘If you kill, you can have any house you like. I know people who kill, they always have nice houses.’

  İkmen approached her slowly and sat down beside her. ‘What people?’ he asked.

  ‘People on the street.’ She looked up at him. ‘Don’t tell me it’s a lie, because I know it isn’t. People get what they want if they kill people.’

  She stood, suddenly. Her face became red and the uniformed officers began to move towards her. İkmen held up a hand to stop them, just as his phone began to ring.

  ‘People who kill go to prison,’ Süleyman said.

  Elif spat at him. One of the uniforms grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her to the floor.

  ‘Everything evil is famous and beautiful!’ she screamed. ‘I’ve seen it! I know!’

  İkmen answered his phone.

  Her grandmother, who had been called Muazzaz, had been a very unpleasant woman. One of the reasons why Selin İnce had never wanted to cover was because Muazzaz always had.

  It had been Muazzaz who had cared so passionately about Perihan Hanım. Her princess had been more dear to her than her own family. Selin’s mother Nazlı, Muazzaz’s only child, had been nothing more than an inconvenience. Completely cowed by Muazzaz, she’d looked after Fatima Hanım because her mother had told her to. When Nazlı had become too old to carry on cleaning at the Teufel Ev and Selin had taken over, she’d told her mother that she wasn’t going to take any crap from the old woman.

  ‘You’ve been treated like rubbish by the old witch all your life,’ she’d said. But then Nazlı had told her why she’d had to bend the knee to Fatima Hanım, and Selin hadn’t slept for a week.

  She wasn’t a religious woman, but she was superstitious, and although every rational bone in her body screamed that Fatima Hanım could no longer do her any tangible harm, she still feared her. That policeman, İkmen, could try as hard as he liked, but he’d never get anything more than what she’d already told him. Like that stupid lump, her thieving husband, he was going to be kept in the dark. After all, whether he existed or not, Selin didn’t want any trouble with the Devil.

  ‘He met someone, at the ayazma,’ Marina Ralli said.

  Now outside Elif Büyük’s cell, İkmen could still hear her raving inside. He looked across at Süleyman, who nodded and went back in. The constable he’d left holding her down was a massive character, not above sitting on those he wished to subdue. If he did that to Elif, he’d kill her.

  ‘Marina Hanım,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m sorry, we’re having a few problems here. What can I do for you?’

  �
�Anatoli met someone at the ayazma of St Katherine,’ she said. ‘The day before his death. I got around to looking at his diary. There is so much to do, I should have done it before . . .’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ İkmen said. ‘I understand. That you have done anything given the circumstances is . . . well, it’s amazing.’

  ‘The problem for me is that I know this person,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure that whatever made Anatoli kill himself, well, it can’t have had anything to do with him.’

  If she knew the man her husband had met at the ayazma, then he was almost certainly Greek. And as the wife of a Greek priest, she didn’t want to make trouble for one of Father Anatoli’s parishioners.

  ‘Hanım,’ İkmen said, ‘you told me that your husband cried the night before he died, after he’d been to meet this person. Can you remember whether he was particularly upset when he returned from the ayazma?’

  She paused for a moment. ‘He was quiet. Thoughtful. But then he often was. I really thought nothing of it until I heard him crying. If I’d imagined for a second that he was going to kill himself, I would never have gone out shopping in the morning. Çetin Bey, the man he met is a good man. He does no harm. I don’t want to cause trouble for him.’

  ‘And yet you’ve called me,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Because I must find out why Anatoli died.’

  ‘Precisely. In all probability this man had no influence on your husband’s decision. I expect they met, maybe prayed together and then parted without anything sinister passing between them.’

  ‘I think that too!’

  ‘So tell me his name so that I can eliminate him from my investigation,’ İkmen said. ‘I will speak to him. It will be an hour out of his life and nothing more. He may even know something about your husband that we don’t that might explain why he took his own life.’

  He heard her sob, just the once. For a moment he thought she might put the phone down on him. But then she said, ‘All right. His name is Mustafa Kaiserli, and he lives in Beşiktaş.’

  The massive constable had bruised her but not broken anything. Süleyman had sent him away and was now alone with Elif Büyük except for Constable Yıldız. The constable wasn’t a bad man, even if he was slightly dense. Once, long ago, he had been Gonca’s lover. But she’d tossed him aside, tossed everyone aside for Süleyman.

  ‘Elif, you must tell me the truth,’ Süleyman said. ‘No one is saying that you didn’t commit these murders, and I am not for a moment suggesting that Ali should take any of the credit for them. But he won’t talk now and so I need you to speak for him.’

  She said nothing. Süleyman briefly closed his eyes. Had the oafish Constable Alphan silenced her?

  He took the photographs İkmen had given him out of his jacket. There were four: views of the Teufel Ev from each side.

  ‘Do you know this place?’ he asked.

  He was sure that Ali Erbil had recognised it. Why he was not admitting to it was a mystery. But there had been a flicker in his eyes when he’d first seen it. Also, how many other places were there in Moda that fitted the description he had given during his first interview?

  ‘It’s called the Teufel Haus, the Devil’s House,’ he said.

  That caught her attention, and she looked up.

  ‘It’s said it was once owned by a German who was a magician,’ he said. ‘But it’s been lived in by four siblings for years. Until someone murdered them. Was it you?’

  Fixated on the images in front of her, Elif touched the pictures with almost reverential gentleness.

  ‘Elif, you have confessed to the murder of the carpet boy in the bazaar, the Englishman on the bridge, the lady on the tram and the two men in the shop in Yeniköy. Believe me when I say that there is no way the world will not know your name. Now I want you to tell me the truth about these four siblings. Three men and a woman, all over ninety years old . . .’

  He stopped because she was crying. Touching the photographs as if they were sacred relics, stroking them, kissing them and crying.

  ‘You were happy here?’ he asked.

  She didn’t answer, but he knew. Ali Erbil had said she’d been happy in that cellar. Now he knew where it had been. Probably the only place she had ever experienced stability. A pause for breath in a life hurtling towards the edge of a cliff.

  ‘You could sleep without worrying about being attacked,’ he said. ‘You could rest, take your smack in peace.’

  ‘Went shopping,’ she whispered. ‘Me. I went to the shops.’

  ‘This was your place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A knock at the door almost broke the spell that had taken hold of that cell. Süleyman told Yıldız to attend to it.

  ‘Elif,’ he said, ‘did you kill the four old people who lived in this house?’

  She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Because it would have jeopardised what you had come to see as your home?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know they were there,’ she said. ‘And even if I had, I wouldn’t have done anything. Not then.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Süleyman saw İkmen enter the cell. He held the girl’s gaze.

  ‘Elif,’ he said, ‘would you have killed all those people on the streets if you’d been able to stay in this house?’

  She frowned as if she had a pain in her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What I’m trying to get at is whether you killed just because you wanted to be famous, or—’

  ‘Only unhappy people want to be famous!’ she said. ‘Didn’t you know that? If we’d stayed at the lovely house, I wouldn’t have needed fame.’

  Süleyman felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into İkmen’s face.

  ‘I need you to come with me,’ the older man whispered.

  Elif Büyük looked down at the photographs of the Devil’s House. ‘Can I keep these?’ she said.

  Chapter 18

  He took her to his favourite restaurant. It specialised in south-eastern Turkish food. It was also on the same street as İkmen’s favourite bar, the Mosaik. Ömer knew that as well as Barçın, but she suspected there was probably an element of showing off in her date’s choice of venue. Not that she disliked him. Ömer Mungun was quite a catch. If only Barçın could get where he came from out of her head. And Mehmet Süleyman.

  They sat down at a table outside on the street. They decided between them to order a half-bottle of rakı, ice and a jug of water. Alcohol would, Barçın felt, make her feel more relaxed.

  When the drinks arrived, Ömer poured out large measures of the thick, clear rakı into tall glasses and then topped them up with water and ice. As the liquid turned cloudy, a strong smell of aniseed was released and Barçın took a long, luxurious drink.

  ‘I don’t come here as often as I’d like,’ Ömer said. ‘But they have some Arab specialities. I grew up with that food.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The fact that his eyes slanted upwards wasn’t helping. They reminded her of Şeymus.

  ‘I don’t know what you want to eat,’ he said. ‘But I like their Aleppo kebab. Do you know it?’

  She did. A hot, spicy lamb dish that came with a salad.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll have that too.’

  They talked and drank. Ömer was easy company, and after a while she forgot that maybe İkmen would walk along and spot them. He didn’t. Then Ömer asked her what she thought of his boss.

  ‘A lot of women fall for him,’ he said. ‘I get it. He’s like a movie star. Then there’s the whole Ottoman thing.’

  She smiled. She rather liked that too.

  ‘Other men are intimidated,’ he said.

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I used to be. But actually, when you get to know him, you realise that’s just him. He can’t help the way he looks or who his parents are any more than the rest of us. He’s not an easy man, but he’s been very kind to me. He struggles with himself.’

  She lit a cigarette. ‘Strug
gles with himself?’

  ‘He wants to be like Çetin Bey,’ he said. ‘A truly good man. A man who doesn’t carry a gun because he feels that if he can’t get out of a situation using his wits, then he’s not fit to be a police officer.’

  Barçın was shocked. ‘İkmen doesn’t carry a gun?’ she said.

  ‘Not unless he’s forced to,’ Ömer said. ‘On a day-to-day basis, no. He hates them, just as he hates violence of any sort. I’ve even heard it said that once, years ago, when the boss lost it, physically, with a prisoner, İkmen almost had him dismissed.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘Süleyman can have a terrible temper.’

  Barçın shook her head. That wasn’t good. But it didn’t make him any less attractive.

  ‘Would you rather I called you Yiannis or Mustafa?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘You can call me Mustafa. That will be easier for you.’

  He looked terrible. His skin was grey and his eyes blank. Sitting in a chair on the balcony of his apartment, Mustafa Kaiserli, aka Yiannis Apion, looked as if he’d just seen his own death.

  İkmen sat down opposite the man, while Süleyman stood. In the depths of the apartment, Ceyda Kaiserli cooked in silence.

  ‘I’ll call you Yiannis,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Are we going to police headquarters?’

  ‘And why would we do that, Yiannis?’ İkmen asked.

  He looked up for the first time. ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said. ‘Did Father Anatoli record our meeting in his diary?’

  ‘The one the day before he died? Yes,’ İkmen said.

  The food was great, the rakı even better. Ömer ordered a second half-bottle and they both began to get giggly.

  ‘My parents didn’t want me to become a police officer,’ Ömer said.

  ‘What did they want you to do?’ Barçın asked.

  ‘Well, my father and his father and his father and . . . you know how it goes, back to the beginning of time . . . they all herded goats down on the plain. So he wanted better for me, as you can imagine, and anyway, I’m allergic to goats.’

  She laughed.

  ‘So I went to university, in Mardin, where he could keep an eye on me, and then he bought me this shop, selling souvenirs to the tourists. It was all cheap rubbish, and whenever there was any trouble . . .’