Belshazzar's Daughter (11 page)

as yet unspoken point.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, his far superior height forcing him to speak, as it were, to the top of Ikmen’s head.

‘Rabbi §imon seemed a little nervous about mentioning that Smits man.’

ikmen sucked hard on what was probably his fifteenth cigarette of the day. ‘Well, he would be.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, he’s a Jew, isn’t he!’

‘Yes.’ The look of blank confusion on his deputy’s face momentarily angered ikmen to a quite unreasonable degree.

‘If you gave the matter more than just a cursory thought you would know, Suleyman!’ He stopped and turned to face him, his eyes intent and, Suleyman was almost tempted to think, passionate. ‘That man’s parents went through the full horrors of the concentration camps. He knows, better than most, what anti-Semitism has done and can do.’

‘But this country had no involvement in that war, we were neutral and—’

‘And because we were neutral, Suleyman, people like Reinhold Smits could express their unsavoury views without let or hindrance.’ He raised his cigarette-bearing hand up towards Suleyman’s face, pointing his crooked fingers almost into the young man’s eyes. ‘We may have been at peace with our own indigenous Jewish population for a very long time, but if a Jew brings an accusation against a Turkish citizen, albeit of German extraction, it is a very serious matter. Not because the Jew will necessarily be found wanting, but because in his own mind he will be at a disadvantage. This is something that Rabbi SJmon wants to avoid at all costs and it is why, when we go to interview Smits, we must not allude to his suspicions in any way.’

‘But how—’

‘All we have to say, Suleyman, is that we obtained the address of §eker Textiles from the old man’s notebook and then let Smits explain himself and his involvement to us. As I’ve said before, and with no disrespect to the good Rabbi’s feelings, I don’t think that there is much to be gained from exploring some fifty-year-old item of racial discrimination.

Unless there were some other element involved …’

‘Like what?’

ikmen started walking again, hurling his finished cigarette butt as he went. ‘Like a reason why Meyer still kept details about his old employer over fifty years after the event.’ He shrugged, speculating. ‘Maybe Meyer screwed Smits’s wife in the last decade - who knows!’

Despite the fact that ikmen was so small, Suleyman did not find that he was easy to keep up with when he was tense and agitated like this. He had almost to run to catch up with him, asking breathlessly, ‘So is that what you meant when you said you thought that the murder was personal?’

‘Possibly. Possibly.’

‘But …’

Having reached ikmen’s car, which stood out markedly by virtue of its great age against even the humblest surrounding vehicles, they stopped once again. This time when ikmen spoke, he rather oddly addressed the ground. Only later would Suleyman consider why this might be.

‘As I’ve said before, Suleyman, it is at the moment my considered opinion that whoever killed Leonid Meyer did so for a personal reason. If the murderer had wanted to kill any old Jew just for the sake of doing so, he could have simply stuck a pillow over the old man’s face and had done with it. All the stuff with the acid - the bringing it to the apartment, the taking it away, the risk of screams from the old man, the overall danger of the whole enterprise - leads me to the belief that the method itself was key. To my way of thinking, if we can deduce why Meyer was killed in this way and for what reason, we will be able to track down who did it with comparative ease.’ He smiled. ‘And to that end I want you, when you get back to the station, to start working on the problem of who these other derelicts of whom the Rabbi spoke might be. If you can also arrange for us to go over to §eker Textiles, that would be good too.’

‘I’ll get on to it right away.’

‘Good.’ Ikmen opened the as usual unlocked door of his car and slid into the driver’s seat. ‘I’m going to go over to the hospital to try to speak to this Delmonte woman. I’ll see you later.’

‘All right.’

As Ikmen pulled out into the stream of traffic it occurred to Suleyman that the reason why his boss had been unable to look him in the eye was because he had been embarrassed.

Despite all Ikmen’s protestations to the contrary, something hideous and, most importantly, racist had taken place on his patch, in his city. He was embarrassed as well as disturbed.

Talking to the Rabbi, Suleyman thought, must have been quite a trial for him.

Beyoglu is a district characterised by great contrast. In the days when Turkey still had her Empire it was the diplomatic and commercial centre, not only of Istanbul, but of the entire Ottoman world. The Great Powers of the Victorian era, Russia, Great Britain, France and Germany, built imposing and elegant Embassies within its confines. Hotels, churches, shops and music halls sprang up; entertainment and luxury for diplomats and advisors far from the civilised, Christian world of Western Europe.

Turkey, the bankrupt ‘Sick Man’, courted the whole

continent but cleverly, and to the frustration of the Powers, remained unwed. Deals were struck, whole countries sold, plots were hatched in the Embassies and coffee houses around istiklal Caddesi, the capital’s centre of fashion.

The Sultan’s Jewish and Armenian bankers tiptoed from ambassador to ambassador making promises on the Ottoman Government’s behalf, securing vast, unsecured loans for their imperial master. In this manner great alliances were forged and the Europeans were hopeful, but the Ottomans never honoured these partnerships - they’d never had any intention of doing so. Their only interest was money, which they got. Turkey, and the East generally, were fashionable.

Every day more wealthy and romantic Europeans would arrive on the Orient Express; hungry for a stake in the expanding Ottoman railway system; selling arms; en route to Anatolia and the treasures of ancient Troy. In the Pera Palas Hotel Mata Hari plied her trade, while deposed Eastern European princes listlessly waited for death.

But when the Turkish Republic was born in the 1920s Ankara became the capital and Beyoglu slipped into a long decline. The great unwashed moved into its once graceful apartment buildings, and small shops selling cheap food and even cheaper beer appeared. Prostitutes started roaming the streets, luring the unwary into drinking clubs and cinemas offering films that left little to the imagination.

However, in the 1960s things again started to change.

There was a fresh confidence in the air and fashionable retailers moved back into the area. A new generation, this time largely Turkish, discovered the delights of istiklal Caddesi, the quaint bars of Ci^ek Pasaj and the candle-lit mysteriousness of a dozen Baroque and Gothic churches.

Soon tourists arrived, and the occupants of the old Embassies, demoted to Consulates in the wake of Atatiirk’s reforms, found themselves busy once again.

The mean alleyways and wide boulevards of Beyoglu

came back to life, but not exactly in the image of its previous imperial incarnation. The prostitutes, the cheap cinemas and the tawdry bars remained. Tastelessness and class side by side: the strip club and the grand Imperial Lycee, school for the sons and daughters of the rich and famous; poor peasants selling flowers on the street, the glitter of brass and gold from the windows of antique shops; packs of scavenging cats eating from dustbins outside the Armenian Orthodox High School.

Robert Cornelius loved Beyoglu, it was his favourite part of the city. It amused him that within the space of sometimes as little as fifty yards, you could purchase a Sachertorte or a new tyre for your car, see a pornographic movie and visit the Russian Consulate.

As he alighted from the tram at the end of istiklal Caddesi, he experienced an overwhelming contentment. It was good that Natalia lived in Beyoglu, good that he was finally going to meet her family, good that it was summer. The street was alive with noise, colour, the laughter of happy couples and families on their way to the picturesque little bars and restaurants. A welcome early evening breeze puffed gently up from the waters of the Golden Horn, ruffling the sleeves of his shirt and drying the thin line of perspiration down his spine. The dark fears and anxieties of the previous two days seemed now like bad dreams from an embattled and distant continent.

He walked back down the street, tracing with his steps the tram-lines along which he had just travelled. Karadeniz Sokak was not far; according to his map it was the second turning on the left. The map. He’d spent most of the day looking at it, stealing glances at the area marked Beyoglu while his students laboured, or not, at their exercises. The day had flown, he’d even managed to enjoy some of it, but now the real business was about to begin.

Robert was elated, but he was nervous. Because Natalia had always been so secretive about her family, he had no idea what they might be like. He didn’t even, he realised when he thought about it, know how many of them lived with her. Would it just be Natalia and one ageing relative? Or would there be dozens of names to remember: brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents? He walked past the calorie-packed window of a patisserie and looked at the cakes. His sweet tooth excited, he drooled. It had been a long time since lunch and he was hungry. What sort of food had the Gulcus prepared for him? Whatever it was, he hoped there was a lot of it.

The second turning on the left was just beyond the

patisserie. A slight gap in the endless procession of shop windows showed Robert where it was. A dark and noisy shoe-mender’s kiosk stood on the left-hand corner, a ladies’

underwear shop on the right. Robert paused.

Karadeniz Sokak was a long, narrow alley. It was old; tall Victorian buildings packed tightly on either side, some of them galleried, top-heavy, leaning towards each other as if attempting to kiss across the middle of the street. It sloped downwards, falling away from the main thoroughfare towards Mesrutiyet Caddesi and the green and white

confection of the Pera Palas Hotel. As he made his way forward, Robert could just see the front entrance of the famous building, the Art Deco canopy suspended over the revolving doors of the front entrance. Blackened with age, the structures on either side of him looked very mournful.

Some were uninhabited, their broken windows echoing to the sound of his footsteps as the other more joyful noises of life on istiklal Caddesi receded into the distance.

Number 12, Karadeniz Sokak was halfway down on the

right. Like the other buildings in the street it was tall; Robert counted four storeys plus basement. Unlike its neighbours it was not galleried and, strange in an area of solid brick and stone buildings, number 12 was made entirely of wood.

It had been very badly neglected. Though in places decorated with beautiful and delicately carved panels, the house as a whole presented a ravaged face to the world. Rot had invaded every plank, green mould and even grass grew on the windowsills and around the edges of the black front door. Although barely discernible, the bottom half of the house was at a completely different angle to the top, as if the structure had twisted five degrees at the waist. It was still very hot, despite the slight breeze, but all the windows were closed and shuttered. There was not a sound on the street, or from inside the house. A knot tightened in the pit of Robert’s stomach. Was this sad and neglected shell to be the scene of some cruel, deceitful joke? How could anybody live in it?

He mounted the steps up to the front door. He looked down into the litter-filled well of the basement. Two pairs of rodent eyes stared back at him. He tapped the heavy metal knocker twice and waited.

For at least thirty seconds nothing happened. The rats continued to stare; the silence closed about him like a straitjacket and Robert Cornelius felt the first stirrings of despair, followed quickly by anger.

Then, suddenly and without the usual warning noise of approaching footsteps, the door swung open. ‘Efendim?’

He was a man in late middle age, tall, bearded, very erect.

His bright, almost smiling blue eyes seemed to sparkle with vigour. Dressed in what must have been an extremely hot three-piece woollen suit, he looked much more like an Englishman than a Turk.

‘Er …’ Robert’s Turkish temporarily deserted him.

Clumsily, he pointed his fingers towards his chest and tapped. ‘Robert Cornelius.’

The tall man’s face broke into a gracious smile and he held out his hand in greeting. ‘Ah, good, you have come.

I am Natalia’s Uncle Nicholas.’

Robert took the proffered hand and shook it vigorously.

He was relieved. The release of tension showed on his face.

‘Hello. Nice to meet you.’

‘Please come in, young man.’ The man’s voice, like

Natalia’s, was heavily accented, but his English was better, more free flowing and natural. ‘Natalia has been waiting for you.’

Nicholas stood to one side and Robert entered a plush, lavishly decorated hall. It was all very red. Wallpaper, lampshades, carpet …

Suleyman sighed deeply. It had been a long day and now he wanted to go home. Very little progress had been made and he felt dissatisfied. True, he’d managed, without too much difficulty, to make an appointment to see Reinhold Smits, but tracking down Meyer’s derelicts had been quite another matter. Assuming, quite wrongly as it turned out, that the landlord, Mr Dilaver, would know who these people were had proved a waste of time - the latter only angering Suleyman by his constant questions regarding when he might be able to let the dead man’s apartment again.

Frustrated by Dilaver’s lack of knowledge, Suleyman had then driven back to Balat where he had performed two totally fruitless interviews: firstly with Meyer’s friend Mrs Blatsky and secondly with an insane-looking old woman who lived on the ground floor. Neither woman spoke

more than the most elementary Turkish and with his own complete lack of Ladino, progress had been impossible.

He had, just before he left Balat, come across one possible contender for the term ‘derelict’ lying across the doorway of the neighbourhood hamam, but the man in question, as well as being covered in his own vomit, had been so drunk as to be unintelligible in any language. It was at this point that Suleyman had decided that searching for derelicts would be a job most usefully delegated to his Ladino-speaking colleague, Cohen. When the Jewish constable returned for duty the following morning he would now find instructions to that effect on his desk. Suleyman pulled a sour face. Cohen would no doubt hate him