Belshazzar's Daughter (15 page)

‘So what did you think about the old woman’s version of the §eker Textiles story, Suleyman?’

‘She seemed to be suggesting a similar scenario to the one that the Rabbi outlined.’

‘Yes.’ Ikmen smiled, but rather grimly, or so Suleyman thought. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Smits. It isn’t every day that you meet someone who agrees with the late Adolf Hitler.’

‘Not that we know that for certain.’

Ikmen raised his glass in agreement. ‘Not, as you say, that we know that for certain.’ He then swigged a long and satisfying draught from his glass and turned his attentions towards something he imagined his colleague had missed.

‘Suleyman, did you notice that man in the hall with the granddaughter?’

‘Yes. You spoke to him, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. That was Robert Cornelius, one of the Englishmen I interviewed at the language school yesterday. He was the one who was in the area at about the right time. The one I felt uncertain about.’

‘Could just be coincidence?’

‘It could.’ Ikmen poured more liquor into his glass. ‘I’d like you to check him out though. We’ve got all his details back at the office. Send them through to London, will you?

I’d like to know a bit more about Mr Cornelius.’

‘To Inspector Lloyd?’

Ikmen smiled, he always did when something made him recall his all too brief visit to London’s Scotland Yard some fifteen years before. John Lloyd and his colleagues had certainly shown his little band of Turkish detectives a good time during that crazy, faraway fortnight. Not that Ikmen and his fellows had learnt a tremendous amount about policing, but the English beer had been excellent and Lloyd, at least, had over the years proved to be a most valuable link with the English police system. However, there were also other more domestic things that needed attention too. Ikmen cleared his throat. ‘Yes. I’d like a bit more on the Gulcus too. Get Cohen to do it. That and interviewing various derelicts should keep him away from drink and women for a bit.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Suleyman sipped his lemonade quietly, but his face was troubled.

‘What is it, Suleyman?’

‘Well, sir … Look, don’t you think we should be picking up a few people with form? Mr Meyer had money and

that district is crawling with thieves, drug-pushers and all kinds of other crazies. I can think of six who live within a kilometre of the apartment just off the top of my head.’

‘I don’t seriously think it was robbery. What thief goes armed with a canister of sulphuric acid? The murder weapon and the acid were taken away by the murderer after the killing. The room was not turned over as if someone were searching for something. No, I still maintain this was personal. Meyer was meant to die and he was meant to die in that particular fashion. We’re not looking for some sick junkie who kills for the price of a fix, we’re looking for either someone who hates Jews or someone who hated Meyer. The more I think about this case,

the more convinced I become that whoever killed Meyer had a motive. A very strong, even perhaps a justifiable motive.’

‘Well—’

‘I know I look as if I just scramble about drinking all day, but I have given this a lot of thought. There was no trace of our murderer, apart from his deed, in that apartment.

Not so much as one print, so far. Even the body itself has not, according to Arto Sarkissian, yielded up anything of any use. And look at the act itself! On and off I’ve been thinking about it all day. The ghastly look of that corpse.

The absolute terror in its eyes—’ He broke off and stared into space, gently shaking his head as if he didn’t or couldn’t understand.

Suleyman finished his drink and put his glass down on the rough wooden table. He wasn’t convinced, but he was making the best of it. ‘Well, I’ll trust you, sir.’

ikmen smiled. He knew Suleyman had reservations, but he appreciated his confidence. ‘Good. I suppose you want to go off home now?’

‘I think so.’ Suleyman reached behind him and put on his jacket. ‘By the way, sir?’

‘Mmm?’

‘What was all that stuff about peasants?’

‘Oh, you understood all that, did you?’

Suleyman stood up. ‘I understood the individual words.’

‘Mrs Gulcu is an appalling snob. She equates intelligence with class. She thought that because I am educated I must be aristocratic’

‘She thought I was a peasant though, didn’t she?’

Ikmen smiled again. ‘As I said before, the Lady Chatterley complex, the desire to have power over handsome young workers. A common fantasy among the upper classes, like their notion that all the peasants must by definition be stupid. Opinions, young man, that helped to bring Imperial Russia to her knees. Don’t let it bother you.’

Suleyman shrugged. ‘It doesn’t. She was wrong. It made her look stupid.’

Ikmen’s interest was aroused. ‘Oh?’

‘Until Atatiirk my family were very powerful on the Black Sea coast. Provincial Governors for centuries.’

Ikmen looked amazed. ‘You never told me?’

Suleyman’s face darkened slightly. ‘What’s the point?’

But his mood changed quickly and he laughed. ‘Anyway, maybe one of my ancestors had one of yours put to death.

They did a lot of that. Embarrassing, eh?’

Ikmen raised his glass to him. ‘History coming back to haunt us!’ But his voice faded as he spoke and he started to feel odd again. ‘Goodnight, Suleyman,’ he said, softly.

‘Goodnight, sir. I’ll pick you up at about nine if that’s OK.’

‘That’s fine.’

The young man left and the cheery noises of the drinking classes closed in around Ikmen. It was a fitting end to an evening drenched in ghosts that Suleyman’s ancestors should enter the conversation. The rich, the privileged and the cruel.

It was ten-thirty when Robert arrived at Rosemary’s apartment.

How he got there he couldn’t remember. Or why. It

was as if he had patched into that curious automatic device that takes over when you are very, very drunk. The one that gets you home but flatly refuses to let you know how.

Robert was a little tipsy, but by no means drunk. Mostly he was confused. In the hour or so since he’d left Natalia’s house, he’d been through many emotions. Fear had been uppermost, of course, fear that he had committed a grave error. That he had totally misjudged Natalia, indeed that he now knew even less about her than he did before. Fear that she wasn’t just quirky, but something terrible, her and her peculiar set of relations. It had made him feel bad, soiled somehow, a willing party to something both unclean and beyond his understanding. The arrival of the familiar policeman had simply served to underscore this feeling. He felt caught out, watched and deeply paranoid. He wondered what Natalia’s invisible grandmother had told them. He wondered what the woman was like and why she had not joined the rest of the family for dinner.

And yet he had been unable to say anything to Natalia or her family. When the policemen had gone - even in fact, now he thought about it, while they were still in the house - a sort of normality had been maintained. Nothing to do with either the events of Monday or the police had been so much as touched on. They’d played cards, talked about nothing; he’d stared at Natalia’s body, almost, but not quite, obscured by the thickness of her plain white dress.

Overriding everything, the demon of lust still wouldn’t leave him in peace. Perhaps Natalia possessed some magic, maybe she was skilled in the use of subtle aphrodisiacs …

He pressed the bell on Rosemary’s front door and tried to work out what he was going to say when she answered.

What he wanted from his colleague was ill formed in his mind. Basically, he supposed, it came down to comfort. He didn’t want to tell her anything, he wanted a cup of English tea with milk and some mindless platitudes; he didn’t want to be alone.

The door opened. ‘Hello, Robert!’

She had her hair in curlers and was dressed for bed. The BBC World Service on the radio whined in the background, the sound scarred and pitted by static.

‘Hello, Rosemary, can I come in for a minute?’

He’d only been to her apartment once before. It had been for her fiftieth birthday party the previous November.

Then it had been very cold. She had worn a blue velvet evening dress and had been escorted by her then beau, a twenty-five-year-old Kurdish boy. Since then there had been two Turkish boys and a Sudanese. Rosemary’s thirst for true love was dimmed by neither time nor difference in age. Robert found himself hoping that she wouldn’t get the wrong idea about his somewhat late appearance on her doorstep.

She smiled. ‘Of course, come in.’ Her smile was easy, but Robert could see that she was concerned. He looked briefly at his face in the small mirror by the door and realised why.

His face was white, his eyes black and staring. He looked like he had just wandered away from a nightmare.

She stood aside to let him pass and then ushered him into a very comfortable and tastefully arranged sitting room.

Robert sat down uneasily on the edge of a large brown sofa while Rosemary turned off the blaring radio.

‘So,’ she said, turning round to face him and smiling once again. ‘What can I do you for?’

For one horrible moment Robert felt that all his worst fears about Rosemary were about to be confirmed. But as she moved to sit in the armchair opposite him, he noticed that her smile was motherly, her movements a little coy and retiring.

‘Oh, just a chat really.’ He laughed nervously and brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his trousers. He had to say more than that! It was hardly justification for interrupting an ageing spinster’s comfortable night-time routine. But he couldn’t think of anything. He grinned instead and became silently irritated with himself. A good-natured but nevertheless tense quiet hung across the room.

‘That wind’s getting up,’ said Rosemary, nodding her head towards the window, apropos of nothing. She was as embarrassed as he. It was ridiculous. He had to say something. He had to say what was on his mind. Disguise it a bit, dress it up, but do it. It was, after all, why he had come. Not to talk about Natalia would be a

waste. Rosemary was older, experienced; she knew about love.

‘Love life’s a bit on the skids,’ he blurted finally. He chuckled slightly as he said it, his stiff upper lip planted firmly on his sleeve for all the world to see. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever get it right.’

‘Oh dear.’ She looked very old in her curlers, sitting with her hands clasped firmly together in her lap. She wasn’t relaxed either. It occurred to Robert that perhaps she was just as afraid of his unwanted sexual attentions as he was of hers. After all, he was hardly her type. It was not only for the weather that Rosemary had spent most of her working life in the Middle East.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she said after a pause.

‘Do you have milk?’

‘Lots. And sugar. Would you like one?’

Robert nodded. ‘Two sugars, please.’

‘The cup that cheers.’ She patted his hand and went out into the kitchen.

Several minutes later she returned with two large mugs of steaming tea and a rather serious question.

She gave one mug to her guest. ‘Look, Robert, I’m not prying, but is this lover of yours a local girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah.’ She eyed him critically. ‘I take it you’re quite serious about her?’

Robert took his cigarettes and lighter out of his pocket and lit up. ‘Yes I am. I only have serious relationships.

Screwing around isn’t really my style.’ It sounded smug even to him; he hated himself for saying it. ‘Not that I’ve anything against people who do, you understand …’

‘It’s all right, Robert!’ She was smiling again. ‘Some of us want to settle down and some of us don’t. Horses for courses and all that. But—’

‘Rosemary?’ He felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to tell her things. Not the lot, of course, just generalities. He sat forward and licked his lips nervously.

‘Yes, dear?’ She put her mug down on the coffee table, her face serious and concerned.

‘Rosemary, what would you do if you found out your

lover might have done something terrible?’

‘Like what?’

‘Stealing, drugs, prostitution …’ He carefully avoided the actual crime that was on his mind. ‘Not in the past, I don’t mean. I mean if he was doing it now, whilst going out with you?’

She looked thoughtful for a few seconds and then sighed deeply and picked up her mug once again. ‘I suppose it would depend upon how strongly I felt about my lover. If I weren’t that involved, of course, it would be easy - just ditch him. If I were involved, however …’

‘Would you inform the police?’ He was sitting on the edge of the sofa again, his fingers trembling slightly around the filter of his cigarette.

Rosemary sighed again. ‘If I were deeply involved, I don’t know. I like to think I’d do the right and morally correct thing, but I can’t be sure, Robert. At the risk of sounding awfully crude, I think it would largely depend on sex. I had one lover, a Turk he was, who made me tremble every time he came near me. It would have been very difficult to give him up to the authorities. It was hard enough giving him back to his wife!’ She paused. ‘I just don’t know is the short answer.’

Robert drank his tea in silence. When Rosemary spoke again she sounded helpless and lost. ‘You know this cultural difference between ourselves and the Levantines is a sod.

Knowing what’s really going on is often well-nigh impossible.

It’s so easy to get involved in things that you don’t really understand. On the one hand you could jump to an erroneous conclusion that could wreck your relationship. On the other, you could get yourself into a lot of trouble.’

Robert ground his cigarette out in the ashtray and finished his tea. ‘I just want to be married again, Rosemary. I know I’m at risk of making a mistake simply because my desire for a settled life is so strong, but … Honestly, if I lose this girl, I don’t know what I shall do. She’s got to me somehow, I don’t know what it is—’

‘Sex,’ said Rosemary flatly, a sad half-smile playing about her lips. ‘It’s always sex, dear. Bloody dangerous, it is! If your partner is good it can obsess you.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘Especially if you’ve had a bad time in the past.