The House of Four

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Rudolf Paşa’s adjutant,’ İkmen said.

  ‘In the First World War, yes,’ he said. ‘He called the paşa his devil. He said he used to stake men out in the desert to burn to death if they questioned him. Every day the Arabs harried them. They blew up troop trains and cut lines of communication. If they caught an Ottoman soldier, they tortured him to death. Rudolf Paşa did the same to them. My father resisted it at first. But in return for his compliance, the paşa turned a blind eye to my father’s many lovers, both male and female. In the city of Jeddah he had a harem of Arab girls, while on the field he took the handsomest and youngest men into his tent. All he had to do in return was allow Rudolf Paşa to bathe in the blood of his enemies, and sometimes his own men.’

  ‘I’ve been told that Rudolf Paşa and your father performed ceremonies invoking the Devil.’

  He smiled. ‘There are many stories. Who knows if any of them are true? My father was a soldier and a hunter. Rudolf Paşa practised the occult – oh my God, did he – but that didn’t include my father as far as I know. I’m not trying to excuse my father, you understand. He was a cruel man, and I’m sure he saw people he considered inferior to him as little more than animals, but he was a man of his time.’

  ‘Like Rudolf Paşa.’

  ‘Ah no, I do believe he was more than that,’ the old man said. ‘Call it an enchantment, but when the war ended, my father found that he couldn’t break ties with the paşa, in spite of the fact that by that time the city was occupied by the enemies of the empire. There was no Ottoman army. But still they met, they talked, and even after Rudolf Paşa died, my father continued to visit the family. When the paşa’s wife then also died, my father turned his attentions towards Fatima Hanım. You know for a long time my mother thought he was having an affair with Perihan Hanım, but she despised him. Maybe she knew how thoroughly brutalised war had made him. Or perhaps she’d seen him looking at her daughter. When he eventually told me the truth, I was twelve. He said, “Your real mother was just a girl, but she seduced me. She was the very Devil for a man’s body.”’

  He drank some more coffee. İkmen lit a cigarette.

  ‘I don’t just have diabetes, you know.’

  ‘Arthritis too, I believe,’ İkmen said.

  The old man tilted his head to one side. ‘A little,’ he said. ‘But I do have cancer.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘Hence the . . .’

  ‘I can’t take heavy food like bread any more. Will you put a dying man in prison?’

  ‘That depends upon what you tell me, Rauf Bey,’ İkmen said. ‘So far, in your story, you have only been guilty of being born to Fatima Rudolfoğlu.’

  ‘That’s true. So I was born Rouvin Rudolfoğlu. Apparently as soon as I appeared, Fatima Hanım gave me to my father and told him to take me out of her sight. Dear Zenobia, my mother, was waiting with a wet nurse to receive me, and I never saw Fatima Rudolfoğlu again until my mother took me to see her when I was twelve. By which time my father had told me who she was. I disliked her intensely and the feeling was mutual. But I liked her big house. I also liked the fact that she was the daughter of a paşa. I enjoyed that association and that name. Because you know, Çetin Bey, names are important. Names have power.’

  Arto Sarkissian rarely went to church. The last time had been for his mother’s funeral. But in the tiny shrine of St Katherine, he felt something. What it was, he didn’t know. A presence? A sense of peace? Or maybe it was just the sight of such a tiny skeleton. He touched it with one gloved hand.

  Behind him, Commissioner Teker said, ‘Can you estimate the age at death?’

  ‘Not exactly without further examination,’ he said. ‘But an educated guess would be newborn.’

  ‘That would fit.’

  Teker was apparently entirely disengaged. Arto felt like crying, while her voice was as dry and detached as dust. But then maybe she was just cutting off in order to protect herself. Hürrem Teker hadn’t had children. Now, without intervention, it was probably impossible. Arto had sometimes wondered whether she regretted that. He wished he’d been able to have a family. But Maryam’s health had always been so fragile, they’d never even seriously tried.

  He touched the tiny skull bones. What possibilities had been snuffed out when this child died? Why did people have to kill? With no gravestone or even a coffin, this little one was nameless, and that was very, very cruel. To be without a name was never to have put a footprint on the world.

  ‘Did you kill Fatima Rudolfoğlu and her brothers?’

  ‘You are getting far too ahead in the story,’ he said. ‘But just so that you know you’re not wasting your time, yes.’

  ‘Why now? Because you’re dying?’ İkmen wasn’t always blunt; in fact with elderly people he was usually gentle. But Rauf Karadeniz was . . . What was he?

  ‘I didn’t actually ever meet Yücel, Kanat and Kemal, you know. My mother – Zenobia – took me to the house, probably because we were summoned by the old witch, and introduced her to me as Fatima teyze, even though we all knew she wasn’t my aunt but my mother. But no one said that. You can imagine my confusion as a child, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember thinking that if that awful, grim woman was my mother, then what did that make me? My father was drinking heavily by then. He’d Turkified all our names, except my mother’s. He wanted to forget the past and blend in with the new order that was Turkey. He chose the name Karadeniz because his family came from Trabzon, which is on the Black Sea. He was, in many ways, a simple man. I became Rauf and my father was Deniz.’

  ‘Deniz Karadeniz? Seriously?’

  ‘He said he couldn’t think of anything else. Mother, however, remained Zenobia. She said that it was important to her to die with the name she was given at birth. I was not allowed that luxury.

  ‘When my father died in 1950, he was buried as a Muslim. Mother and I lived in a terrible leaky house near the French Church of the Assumption. I wanted to become a biologist when I was young. My entire existence revolved around my fascination with animals. Perhaps it was a rebellion against my father and his obsession with killing things. But we had no money and so I became a lawyer. I joined the partnership of Unal and Yilmaz on İstiklal Caddesi and I became a go-to guy in property law. I even, although I didn’t realise this until much later, had regular contact with Kenter and Kenter, Fatima Rudolfoğlu’s lawyers.’

  ‘Yes, we know.’

  He smiled. ‘And so you are ahead of me, Çetin Bey.’

  ‘Only just,’ İkmen said. ‘I feel that to be too far ahead of you would be almost impossible, Rauf Bey.’

  The old man appeared to ignore him. ‘So life continued. As I am sure your sergeant has told you – I feel he is a very observant young man – I was unable to love women, so I didn’t marry. Unlike my father, I couldn’t just change my sexuality at will. And in this society, where such things are frowned upon, I became very distressed. I didn’t want to become one of those sad men one sometimes saw cruising the back streets of Beyoğlu in the fifties and sixties, looking for like-minded males and getting beaten up by religious lunatics or, worse, arrested. That was when I started going to church with my mother. I even made confession to a priest. I also came into contact with Konstantinos Apion.’

  ‘Did he tell you about his connection with Perihan Rudolfoğlu?’

  ‘My mother introduced him as the Rudolfoğlus’ gardener,’ he said. ‘I thought little of it at the time. In those days I actively rejected that part of myself. But then I discovered that my mother was spending time with this man outside church. I wasn’t angry with her for this. My father was dead, and anyway, I’d never really loved him. Who could love a person who killed with impunity? Who even as an old man went to prostitutes and paid boys to come to the house so that he could bugger them in my mother’s bed? Then, one day, I was taking coffee in Koço and I saw them. My mother was veiled but I knew her by her tiny waist and her voice. Kon
stantinos Bey kissed her hand outside the ayazma and then they parted. They didn’t see me. Later that day I asked her what she had been doing, and she told me. Those bastards killed that man’s child.’

  ‘The child Sofia’s death was the key that unlocked the notion that the Rudolfoğlus’ murderer had to have some connection with their past,’ İkmen said. ‘You killed them in the way that you did in order to reflect—’

  ‘Ah, but you’re getting ahead of yourself again, Çetin Bey. Before that, we must consider Fatima Rudolfoğlu’s will.’

  He’d never seen a personality fragment in front of him before. He’d heard about the phenomenon that some called a nervous breakdown from his ex-wife Zelfa. But it still came as a shock.

  Ali Erbil walked into his cell and sat down. For a moment he seemed quiet but untroubled. Then it was as if his body rebelled. He began shaking and his face turned white.

  Süleyman said, ‘What’s going on?’

  He could see that Ali was trying to speak but couldn’t. He fell off the chair.

  ‘Call a doctor!’ Süleyman yelled into the corridor.

  He crouched down beside the man and checked to see whether one side of his face was drooping. It wasn’t, but now he was grinding his teeth and his eyes were rolling back in his head. Then he screamed. He carried on screaming even after the doctor came.

  ‘I don’t know when it was – years ago,’ the old man said. ‘Erdal Bey ran a problem by me as he sometimes did. It concerned a woman who wished to leave her property to her three brothers after her death. So far, so straightforward. But then in the event of the brothers predeceasing her, or after their deaths should they survive her, she wanted to bequeath her estate to her late father’s club. In addition, if one or more of the brothers survived her, they could live in the house they all shared for as long as they wished, provided the property and any monies remaining went to the club on their deaths. Relatively straightforward, I thought, until he told me that the woman also had an illegitimate son. This person was unacknowledged by the woman, who wished to have nothing to do with him. Erdal Bey had counselled that the son, if he knew of her, could mount a challenge to the will upon her death. But she stuck to her guns. You can imagine how I felt.’

  ‘Yes.’

  İkmen noticed that Rauf Bey’s cup was empty. ‘Would you like more coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  İkmen called a waiter to the table and ordered.

  ‘I advised Erdal Bey to keep on trying to make the woman see sense, which I believe he did for a while. But in the end Fatima Rudolfoğlu got her way. As she always did.’ He paused. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Çetin Bey, I never wanted her money or her property. In fact I put all of that out of my mind for decades. Other things took my attention. My mother died, and I finally managed to fill my home with beautiful living creatures. I also had the odd liaison. Then I got old. First arthritis, which was manageable, then diabetes, and then, finally, cancer. My own fault: I ignored symptoms for, well, years probably. I was told I was terminal in March. I saw Erdal Bey at the clinic. He had just been given the all-clear. I was happy for him. But seeing him like that brought Fatima Rudolfoğlu to mind once again. I stood outside that house for the first time in decades and I wondered whether any of them were still alive.’

  ‘How did you find out that they were?’

  ‘I went to the house again, and this time I saw a man coming out. I asked him if anyone lived there, and he said that it was occupied by three men and a woman. It’s difficult to express how that made me feel. The woman who had given birth to me and then taken away my identity was still alive. This woman for whom I was nothing – less than nothing. Who had only ever seen me once, out of curiosity rather than love. She was going to outlive me. I was furious. Had I not been furious, I couldn’t have done what I did to them.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ İkmen asked.

  His phone rang and he switched it off.

  The old man laughed. ‘What do you think happens when a group of deaf, half-blind old fools all live in the same building?’ he said. ‘No one hears or sees anything. They had squatters. In the basement.’

  ‘What about Fatima’s cleaner? And the man you saw. I assume that was Yücel’s carer?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only saw him the once. The squatters – a couple of junkies by the look of them – rarely turned up in the daytime. The Rudolfoğlus were alone. I killed them on a Sunday afternoon, when I knew that house would be effectively mine.’

  ‘So how did you do it?’

  ‘Sergeant Gürsel tells me that Çetin Bey and this Rauf Karadeniz are taking coffee in the Gazebo Lounge of the Çırağan Palace Hotel,’ Teker said. ‘Is this true?’

  Süleyman wiped sweat from his forehead. Ali Erbil’s physical symptoms had been bad enough, but when he’d started speaking what had sounded like utter nonsense, it had really unnerved him. What he needed was a lie-down. What he was getting was a dressing-down from the commissioner.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I left Çetin Bey parked up outside the Dolmabahçe Palace. Rauf Karadeniz is being brought here in connection with the Rudolfoğlu—’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘So why isn’t he here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘Have you asked Sergeant Gürsel?’

  ‘Yes, of course! He says that Çetin Bey is questioning the man over coffee!’

  ‘Then that is what he’s doing. Mr Karadeniz is diabetic, and my understanding is that he needed to eat.’

  ‘He could have eaten here, or from an ordinary büfe! Why the Çırağan Palace hotel? What’s he doing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She dismissed him. Back in his own office, he listened while Ömer Mungun updated him on the condition of Aslan Gerontas, which wasn’t good.

  When he’d finished, Süleyman said, ‘You know we’re going to get more of this, don’t you, Ömer?’

  ‘More crazy people?’

  ‘When I was born, this city had a population of two million. Now we are near enough sixteen million and counting. A vast number of them are poor, and those who aren’t are paranoid about becoming poor. We all press up against each other like rats in a sewer. We fight for survival, we steal each other’s food and we go mad. Even the slightest tendency towards weakness or insanity will be exacerbated in this environment. Had he lived in a small town on the Aegean, maybe Aslan Gerontas would not have disappeared into his religious mania. Perhaps the beauty of the coast and the fresh air would have allowed him to think more rationally. Who knows?’

  He closed his eyes. He was exhausted. Every day in this city exhausted him. But he only acknowledged it very infrequently.

  ‘Sir, would you like me to get you a drink?’ he heard Ömer say. ‘Shall I shut the door and open the window so you can have a cigarette?’

  He didn’t sound hostile any more. Maybe he’d worked through the demons Süleyman acknowledged he had aroused in him.

  He opened his eyes. ‘Thank you, Ömer,’ he said. ‘Tea would be good. And don’t take too much notice of me, I’m just tired.’

  Ömer left. But before he closed the office door, Süleyman caught a glimpse of Barçın Demirtaş across the corridor.

  ‘For a couple of weeks I had been walking around the house whenever the junkies were out. On that particular afternoon, I knocked on Fatima Hanım’s door.’

  ‘And she let you in? Who did she think you were?’ İkmen said.

  ‘I told her who I was. And yes, she let me in. I even took my shoes off like a good boy.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘I wanted to explain my situation to her,’ Rauf Bey said. ‘I was under no illusion that she’d do as I asked. But I had to give her one more chance. Of course, before she opened the door, she told me to go away, but then her curiosity overcame her.’

  ‘What did you actually want from her?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘My name,’ he said. ‘I wanted her to name me in her will as her son. I didn’t want mon
ey, I didn’t want that house. I told her that I knew she and her brothers were murderers, and she admitted it. She was proud of it. She asked me why I wanted the name of a murderer. I said because it was mine. Because I’d lived a lie all my life and she owed me. She laughed at me.’

  ‘And then you killed her?’

  ‘No, then she told me about my father and how she’d seduced him. It hadn’t been difficult. What was more difficult, for me, was hearing about her incestuous sex with her own father. She said, “We’re devils, all of us, and so are you.” If I fought what I was, I’d only become like my uncles, who she described as weak and sentimental.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they experienced guilt. Apparently Kemal had wanted to bring the baby’s body to the house to be buried in the garden. He’d been trying for years to, as he put it, “bring her back to life”, using the supposed occult magic that his father had studied. But he needed her body. What he’d done must have driven him insane. It had driven them all insane. Kanat’s apartment was like a sewer, full of filth and rats and cockroaches. Fatima refused to have the child’s body anywhere near her. She described her own mother as a filthy whore and her child as a Greek abomination. That was why they didn’t talk. Because she controlled all their lives and they hated her. They also hated each other, I believe. I think that every time they saw one another, they remembered what they’d done.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘She made me feel as if poison ran in my veins, and I hated her so much for it, I picked her up and laid her on her bed and told her I was going to kill her. I was going to smother her with a pillow.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because she tried to kiss me,’ he said. ‘Not as a son, but . . . You know, Çetin Bey, she was a devil. I know that sounds mad, but it’s true. She lay on that bed like a whore, daring me to kill her, telling me I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have my real name. And she wasn’t going to give it to me. I walked away. She thought I’d given up and she laughed. But I went into the kitchen and took one of the knives out of the drawer, and I pushed it through her brittle, evil breast. Had she closed her eyes, had she given me the luxury of not having to look into her black soul, I would not have killed the others. But she was still laughing when I killed her, and my hatred for all of them was so great at that moment that I knew they all had to die too.’ He was sweating now and he wiped his brow. ‘She had all their keys on a chain around her neck. I think she must have wanted to feel she had them by the balls every minute of every day.’