Belshazzar's Daughter (25 page)

leading up to the front entrance of his block. His heart jumped. She looked stained and weary and a bead of sweat was running down her neck and between the swellings of her thinly concealed breasts. She did not smile as he approached. He drew level with her and looked down

into her face. She returned his gaze coldly, but there was a vulnerability there now that he had rarely seen before.

He liked that. It turned him on.

He took her roughly by the elbow and kissed her mouth so hard it was almost a bite.

Arto Sarkissian put the folder down on the metal draining board and pulled on a pair of surgical gloves. The report from the laboratory was bald, factual and very confusing. It had been a day or so since he had seen those peculiar marks on the cadaver’s right hand and forearm and he wanted to take another look. That the scientists at the lab would lie about such a thing was impossible, but Arto wanted to be sure. Not of course that his own naked eye could tell him much. But he felt an urge to confirm the facts, his own observations and the data from the tissue samples sent to the laboratory.

He looked across the bleak tile and chrome wastes of the windowless little room and moved towards one of the three marble slabs in the centre. A small hump covered with a white sheet and an unkempt and pathetic foot sticking out at an angle lay on the largest table. Everything was ready, except perhaps Arto himself. He wanted to rub his face vigorously with his hands, to try and pump some life-giving blood into his tired brain, but his surgical gloves both repelled and thwarted his attempt. It was late and he was tired.

Arto Sarkissian had been a police surgeon for fifteen years. In that time he had seen a lot of dead people.

Women, men, children, babies. At least one example of every stage of decomposition of the human form had

passed through his gentle hands. He tried, every time he pulled the covering sheet away and looked into what remained of another human face, to at least attempt to operate with some semblance of dignity. He knew he

always failed. Death was ugly, it was naked, it had no control over its bodily functions and it always stank. He stank too. Even after a shower he could still smell himself - their smell on him.

He drew the sheet up on either side of the corpse and folded it over on to its chest. He wanted to see the arms.

He had no desire to see the torso and the head again. He knew what was there, the blood, the acrid sulphuric acid - car battery acid. His stomach turned at the thought, but the lab’s analysis couldn’t be wrong. Someone had actually taken the trouble to drain a car battery. It took time, effort, the persistence of a driven and malicious psyche. He felt his face burn with anger and he was glad, for once, that he was alone with his ‘subject’.

He pulled the body’s right arm from under the sheet and held it, knuckles uppermost, to the light. There it was, patch of scar tissue one. Down the right-hand edge of the forearm, extending up the hand and stopping just short of the knuckles. He could even see the place where he had excised the tiny piece of tissue to send off to the lab. He turned the arm over and examined the palm of the hand.

Patch of scar tissue two, palm of the hand, extending to the tips of the fingers and the thumb. That he had missed such obvious blemishes during his first examination seemed strange to him now. The massive scarring leapt out at him, throwing itself into relief. Perhaps the appalling acid injuries had distracted his attention, perhaps he just wasn’t much good any more. He allowed himself a little laugh and pulled the heavy, cold arm up level with his eyes. ‘Severe burns, probably consistent with the handling or use of gunpowder’

was how the lab had described them. They were old too, sustained when the victim was a very young man, sixty or maybe seventy years ago. Arto looked at the deep discoloration and traced the edges with his finger. Where the damaged tissue met the healthy skin, ridges of hard, callused flesh had formed like small mountain ranges. It was obvious that no attempt had ever been made to repair the damage with grafts. Meyer had probably just bound the affected areas in bandage and hoped that infection wouldn’t set in, a not unusual way of dealing with a wound in the early part of the century. Arto wondered how his subject would have managed with the pain in the weeks or even months that it must have taken for his burns to heal. He could clearly see evidence of puckering, the painful fusing of pieces of burnt tissue. On the palm this was so bad that he doubted whether splaying of the hand had been possible since.

Arto replaced the arm and leant his back against the opposite slab. It was intriguing to speculate how the injuries had been sustained. Of course it was hardly germane to the current investigation, but then Arto wasn’t really concerned directly with that. Finding who had murdered Leonid Meyer was Cetin ikmen’s job and one that Arto didn’t envy him.

Rumour had it that the authorities wanted the Meyer case brought to a successful conclusion as soon as possible. He could imagine the pressure and it made him glad that he was an academic and not a man of action.

He walked back to the sink, removed his surgical gloves and threw them into a waste bin. Lolling down on the draining board, he pored once again over the results of the laboratory report. At the bottom of the second page, Dr Beige, the author of the document, suggested that a consultation with Faud ismail in ballistics might prove instructive should Arto wish to know how the burns were sustained. He did want to know, it had piqued his interest and he was certain that Cetin would be curious too.

Arto took off his lab coat and flung it into the laundry basket. He looked at his watch and saw that it was already nearly eight o’clock. He shrugged. His day was not finished, but it didn’t matter. His wife, God rot her, wouldn’t miss him. Arto scowled briefly and then turned his mind to other, more professional things. He had to telephone Cetin ikmen, pass on his latest findings, and give him the rather surprising news about the regurgitated food found near the entrance to Meyer’s apartment. It wasn’t the old man’s, and its main constituent was not usual, and yet it had been expelled on the day of Meyer’s death. Unless evidence turned up to the contrary it would seem very likely that it had belonged to the murderer. An odd thing which painted a curious picture. A torturer with a weak stomach, someone not cut out for killing. A calculated, brutal, but nevertheless amateur murder.

Arto walked through into his small adjoining office and picked up the telephone.

‘You went to police!’ Her voice was a screech, ugly.

‘I didn’t really have much of a choice, Natalia! They came and got me!’

She slapped the palm of her hand against her forehead and muttered a familiar Turkish oath.

‘They didn’t want to know anything about you!’ Robert lied. It seemed pointless at this stage to increase her anxiety, if that were possible. ‘They wanted to know about me, some incidents in my past. Back in London, years ago.’

She hopped nervously, almost pawing the ground with her feet, and yet despite her agitation she had, he felt, that look in her eye, that teasing sensual expression that never failed to arouse him. He felt his flesh stir. Hardly appropriate, given her distress, but he couldn’t help himself. Without thinking he put his hand out towards her and slipped it between the thin material of her blouse and her flesh.

‘No!’ She turned her head and pulled his hand away.

Eyes ablaze she punched him roughly from her with one hard, clenched fist.

Even under such fraught circumstances, it came as a shock. Robert gasped. He staggered a little from the blow, but managed to retain his balance, if not his dignity.

He knew he’d behaved badly, made a play for sex at the wrong time, but he still wanted her. For a few seconds they stood perfectly still, staring like two gladiators across the arena of Robert’s lounge, both, for different reasons, were breathing with difficulty. Although unable to think straight, Robert was hit by the distasteful notion that since the murder and his deepening suspicion about his lover, he had actually wanted her more. It was not the first time that thought had occurred. Even as they stood facing each other out, she twisted, spiky with anger like a weasel, he ached to get inside her body, to take her.

Robert knew that if he wanted to, he could rape her. In this mood she would fight, but it didn’t stop him wanting to do it. He was stronger than her, he’d proved it before.

He moved just a fraction of an inch towards her, but then he stopped. This was the bestial side, that side he’d wanted to leave behind, but hadn’t. Oh, if only she would come to him willingly! If only she loved him the way he loved her! But he knew now that she didn’t. He’d always really known. And yet that seemed to make him want her even more, if that were possible. He couldn’t, daren’t, touch her. His erection hurt and he crumpled down on to the sofa with a groan. ‘For Christ’s sake, Natalia!’

‘What?’ She looked at him with disgust, her lip curled; she knew what he wanted. Her head was very high and there was an icy light in her eyes. Cruel. ‘What you want, Robert?’

He groaned and leant forward as if trying to cover and protect his aching genitals. ‘I want you!’

‘You want fucking with me!’ she screamed.

It was so loud that Robert put his fingers up to his lips and went ‘Sssh!’ He didn’t want the neighbours, if they were in, to hear her language, or old Ali the kapici for that matter.

Especially old Ali. But she ignored him.

‘You want stinking piss inside my beautiful body!’ Hot tears flew from her eyes and splashed like rain in the air around her face. It was such an excessive, insane display that for a few moments Robert found himself incapable of either movement or thought. Only the faintly unpleasant sensation of his penis softening penetrated his absorption in her madness. She screamed again. ‘What I do, Robert!

You fucking go to police!’

Beautiful, tapered hands flew convulsively up to her face and long red fingernails clawed deeply into her cheeks.

Robert came to with a jolt. Christ, she’s going to tear her own eyes out!

In an instant he was up. He rushed across the room and caught her wrists in his hands before she drew blood. As he touched her, she screamed as if burnt, but he held on. Just gently, but nevertheless firmly, he shook her as if trying to vibrate some sense into her hysterical head.

Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then her

eyes closed and her lips curled and stretched back as if she were in physical agony. Robert pulled her still closer and stroked her face softly with one finger. Natalia gave in.

She toppled forward, crushing her head into his shoulder and he felt the wetness of her tears through his thin shirt.

She cried bitterly for several minutes. Her sobs were long and heartbreaking, like those of a small, distressed child.

Robert, of course, knew why she was so shaken by his visit to the police and he knew that he should hate her, even perhaps fear her, but he couldn’t. It was too late for that. He stared steadily ahead, rocking her. The thick heat pressed hard upon his sweat-soaked body and despite her presence he felt very alone. He’d slipped into this thing via the long corridor of love and now he couldn’t get out.

When he felt sure that she would do herself no further damage, Robert released her hands and put his arms around her shoulders. The force of his dark passion, that old, uncontrollable friend, had evaporated, and it was with a brother’s rather than a lover’s hand that he eventually led her over to the sofa and helped dry her sodden face with a tissue. Christ, she actually thought he had betrayed her!

How could she think that? Was she so afraid, was she so guilty? Did she place so little trust in him? Could she really not tell that it didn’t matter to him what she did or had done?

As her breathing regained a regular and steady rhythm once more, Robert slipped into his bedroom and returned a few seconds later with a bottle of gin and two glasses.

However she felt, he, at least, needed a drink. He sat down beside her and poured them both large measures.

She drank without thanks or expression, giving him no cause to apologise for lack of mixers.

Robert, a veteran of numerous lonely sessions with neat gin, gulped his down in one and then poured himself another. For what he was about to say, he needed some fortification. Over the last few days the truth had dawned almost without him noticing and although he had tried to fight it, he had an admission to make to her and he had to make it quickly before his courage died. He hoped that it would change things. Perhaps it would even make her love him, really love him.

He took a deep breath. ‘Natalia, if you did kill that old man it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to the way I feel about you. I love you.’

He heard her take a last gulp of gin and swallow. She stared blankly into her now empty glass and then poured herself another large measure of spirit.

For a second Robert wondered whether she had actually heard him. But she had. He knew she just didn’t know what to say. What he actually wanted himself was a mystery too.

An admission of guilt? Perhaps - although he shuddered away from the thought. He told her again. ‘I love you and I will do anything and everything I have to to help and protect you. I …’

It was a terrible admission and his voice failed him, his throat closing against revealing further evidence of the depths to which his infatuation had made him sink. He tipped his glass to his lips and then rested his head back against the wall behind. He stared fixedly at the ceiling and wondered what sort of thing he was becoming. He didn’t know. In love he became unpredictable, even to himself. Events happened; things, maybe parts of him, got broken or went missing - or so it seemed. It had never been any different. Even before Betty, even with ‘casual’ girls in pubs and at discos, it had always been the same. Take them home, possess them, put them in an apron and never let them go. A woman was comfort, warmth, a wall of breasts and belly against the blackness ‘out there’, against the cold and inevitable loneliness of life. Sometimes he got hurt or he hurt one of his lovers - that was inevitable, especially in view of the fact that there was only ever really room for one important lover in his life at any given moment. Quick screws, to which he did sometimes succumb, amidst much self-loathing, were one thing, but it was always the main lover that was important. In the end not much mattered, only her - whoever she happened to be at the time. And Natalia was the greatest of them all. He had realised that very early on, despite all the difficulties. She was beauty, his kind; he could lose himself in her flesh, her belly and breasts.