Belshazzar's Daughter (34 page)

She turned and went back into the centre of the room.

She pulled a confused Yusuf after her.

A few awkward seconds later the party started to come to life once more and Robert found himself alone. OK, so he’d done it, now what? Voices around him got louder again and he felt almost impossibly isolated. It hurt. He’d made a fool of himself. They’d all be thinking that he was jealous of Rosemary now, but was that a bad thing?

His words had been there for a purpose surely? They had been! His life was changing and there was no going back. He smiled, but not out of happiness. Of course!

Rosemary had to be hurt. It was essential she was kept at a distance. It had to be that way with people he cared about. His mind briefly touched against a vision of Natalia.

He frowned.

Reinhold Smits surveyed his new surroundings with ill disguised revulsion. And, in truth, there was little to admire in the hot, dingy little room in which he now found himself.

Painted in the muddy shades of green and brown that seemed to characterise so many public buildings, police interview room number five was hardly a place of peace and repose. And, ever fastidious, Smits noticed the little things usually disregarded by the customary occupants of this place: like the fact that the old tin that served as an ashtray had not been emptied since the last ‘suspect’ left; like the fact that the young constable guarding the door had very bad acne.

After fiddling briefly with the tiny, almost useless fan on top of the table, the young Sergeant Suleyman sat down in front of him and smiled. Then, pressing a button on the large and antiquated tape recorder beside him, he spoke a few unintelligible words into the machine before addressing him.

‘Could you please, sir, for the benefit of the tape, state your full name, age and occupation.’

Smits nodded first and then proceeded, his face taut and obviously strained. ‘My name is Reinhold Smits, I am ninety years old and I own several major companies trading in textiles, coal and white goods.’

Suleyman nodded his acknowledgement. ‘Thank you,

sir. Now, before I ask you any further questions, I must inform you that we are now in possession of information which confirms both your past allegiance to Nazi principles and your actions based upon these which include

the dismissal of several Jewish workers from your employ in the early 1940s. Do you understand what I am saying?’

He might have guessed. Indeed, subconsciously, he had probably already known that this would all come tumbling out at some stage. It was why he exhibited absolutely no surprise when it did come. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply, ‘I understand.’

‘Good.’ Suleyman paused for a moment, probably - so Smits mused, collecting his thoughts - because the lack of shock and horror had quite thrown him. ‘In view of what I have just told you, Mr Smits, why did you then plead ignorance of these facts during the course of our first interview with you?’

‘Because you were asking me to recall a time in my

life I would rather forget. Because if I owned up to such behaviour, you could make quite erroneous connections between myself and current events.’

‘And yet, sir, I think I would be correct in saying that you did know and dismiss from your employ one Leonid Meyer?’

Smits drew in a deep breath and, during the pause

between drawing it in and exhaling, he came to a decision that he hoped was the right one. ‘Yes, Sergeant, I did.’

The young man’s eyes, although slightly averted, showed a little triumph. Smits suddenly started to feel sick. ‘May I have a glass of water?’ he said, holding on to the scraggy thinness that was his throat.

The sergeant nodded briefly at the constable who responded by walking out to the water fountain in the corridor and returning with a cracked cup full of oily grey liquid. Smits nodded in thanks.

The sergeant described what had just happened for

the benefit of the tape before proceeding, which he did only when he felt that Smits was ready to start again.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘what was the nature of your relationship with Leonid Meyer?’

‘He was an employee of mine,’ Smits replied.

‘Was that all?’

‘Yes.’

‘You had no involvement with Meyer outside of work

then?’

‘No.’

It may possibly have ended there and later Smits would chastise himself for not leaving it at that point. But his own now-growing anxiety compelled him to ask: ‘Why?’

‘Well, sir,’ the young man replied, ‘because it has been suggested to us that Meyer and yourself may have been involved in a dispute over a woman.’

So that was it, was it? That was the game the old witch had decided to play with him! Smits felt his face blanch with anger, a reaction not lost upon his interrogator.

‘I get the impression, sir,’ the policeman said, ‘that this information is not new to you.’

‘No, you are right, it is not.’

‘And so … ?’ The young man shrugged as if urging Smits onwards.

Well, if the old woman was going to play dirty then so was he! Smits cleared his throat before answering, the better to enunciate with perfect clarity. ‘My dealings, Sergeant, with this woman never actually progressed beyond the acquaintance stage. I would suggest that if you want to know more about the machinations between her and Mr Meyer then you should ask the lady herself.’

‘Who

is she, sir?’

Smits sighed. ‘Maria Gulcu,’ he said, ‘or rather Maria Demidova, as she was then.’

He fancied he saw something register in the young

man’s eyes.

‘I met Leonid in 1919 when he came to work for my

father and through him I met Maria.’

‘I see.’ Once again Suleyman paused, marshalling his thoughts for the next question. ‘And did you, Mr Smits, ever vie with Leonid Meyer for the attentions of Maria?’

‘Yes. Although not in the way you might think.’

‘Oh? And what is that?’

‘I found her interesting, as opposed to sexually attractive and …’

‘And so you didn’t dismiss Meyer from your employ

because of her?’

Smits put his head down and murmured almost inaudibly, ‘No.’

‘So why did you dismiss Leonid Meyer then, Mr Smits?’

Smits continued looking at the floor. It was better to look truly contrite now. ‘Things changed a lot in the Germany of the 1930s. With the rise of Adolf Hitler a new confidence gripped everybody - including those of us who resided abroad. There was no longer any place for those of inferior pedigree within our sphere of influence.’

‘So you dismissed a man who had been your friend

because he was a Jew?’

‘Yes. But what you have to understand is that those were very different times. We—’

‘And these are views that you still retain?’

Smits looked up and found himself confronted by a pair of eyes that were utterly without either mercy or pity.

‘No.’ Although smarting from the onslaught, he now

attempted, if belatedly, to recapture some dignity. ‘No, I came to my senses many years ago now, Sergeant. And if I could have made it up to Leonid, I would have, but

‘You lost contact with Mr Meyer after his dismissal?’

To tell the truth was probably not that wise but then flying in the face of the evidence in Leonid’s address book probably wasn’t that wise either. ‘I still used to see Leonid from time to time,’ he said. ‘I was sorry for what he became in later years.’

‘You blame yourself for his alcoholism?’

‘In part.’

The young man frowned. ‘Only in part?’

What Smits said next came about via a conscious decision - a decision, furthermore, informed by his anger over this position he was in now: the one Maria had put him in.

‘Leonid Meyer had a past, Sergeant. I don’t know what it was, but I do know that even before he entered Turkey, he was already a broken man.’

‘Do you know why that was?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Do you know anything about how Leonid Meyer met

Maria Gulcu?’

This was a question he had not, foolishly, anticipated.

Smits felt, or fancied he felt, his heart flutter and, just briefly, he held his hand ready over the barrel of his chest.

‘No, I know nothing,’ he said, ‘nothing at all.’

The young man eyed Smits narrowly. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ Smits’s voice was small now, unsure and sadly so very like that of the old man he knew he was but so desperately didn’t want to be.

And then, quite suddenly, the attack began in earnest.

‘Did you kill Leonid Meyer, Mr Smits?’

‘No! What reason would—’

‘I don’t know what reason you would have had for doing it, Mr Smits, that’s what I’m asking you.’

‘But …’

‘It occurs to me that perhaps all this talk of your being a reformed character is as much a lie as all of the other falsehoods you have told us.’

Only now did Smits feel really afraid. Only now did the liberty that attended what was left of his life seem to be in real danger. It was an emotion that made Smits turn even more fiercely in the path of his own spite. ‘If you want truth, Sergeant, then you might try speaking to one who knows what that is!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that you should speak to Mrs Maria Gulcu, very soon, and that your questioning of her should show as little mercy as you have shown me!’

‘And why might that be, Mr Smits?’

‘Because she had something on him, I—’

‘What? What did she have on him?’

‘I …’

‘Where were you on the day that Leonid Meyer died,

Mr Smits?’

‘I was … I was at my home, it …’

The sergeant was leaning forward now, peering right into his face. ‘A large black car, just like yours, was seen in the vicinity of the apartment. Was it yours, Mr Smits?’

‘No!’

‘You’re lying. Now what is this thing that Mrs Gulcu had on Leonid Meyer? Where were you on the day of Meyer’s murder?’

‘I …’

‘Come along, Mr Smits, I do not have all day! What are you talking about? You are making very little sense!’

He watched, and to him it seemed as if the act were in slow motion, the young man brought his fist down hard upon the table. The impact was loud and, as it reverberated through his head, Smits felt his hold upon events slip rapidly away - like water going down into a drain. And then suddenly there was nothing - just blackness. Like a little death.

The old man moved his finger slowly down the list of names as he read: ‘Simonoff, Bagratid, Popov, Irimishvili.’

Ikmen raised one heavy, bored hand up in front of his face. ‘Who killed … ?’

‘Does it matter if your man’s name isn’t here?’

‘Not especially.’ Then, seeing the tired look on his father’s face as he turned to yet another tome, Ikmen softened his tone. ‘I’m sorry, Timtir, you must be bored too.’

The old man scowled. ‘Yes, well …’ He picked up another book from across the desk and gave it to his son.

‘This one’s in English, why don’t you look through that while I carry on with the rest?’

ikmen sighed. ‘All right.’

The book, which was called The Demise of the Tsarist Order, was, in his opinion, rather thin when one considered the immensity of the subject area. Turning first to the index and discovering, unsurprisingly, that Meyer’s name was not listed, he flicked randomly until he came to a chapter which, gruesomely he thought, was entitled ‘Executions’.

Like the material his father had read out before, this consisted of lists of murders of various prominent people, plus the names of those responsible. The most comprehensively documented case was, naturally, that of the last

Romanov Tsar Nicholas II and his family - the perpetrators of which the two men had already come across in the literature several times. Had Meyer been involved in that incident, they would have a real story on their hands.

But that event had been so thoroughly documented, and everybody concerned had been investigated so minutely, that Meyer’s involvement with it was totally impossible.

Besides, as Timur had said some time before, a lot of the killing that went on at the time was of very minor Tsarist officials and had been carried out by what amounted to roving bands of vigilantes. An uneducated and, probably, politically naive little Jew like Meyer would, it had to be admitted, most likely have been a member of one

of those.

ikmen turned the page and scanned once again for

familiar names. That the one which did finally catch his eye, which leapt from the page at him as if self-propelled, was one that had only been at the periphery of his consciousness made the experience, if anything, even more

shocking. For here, suddenly, was a connection that was real, a link between the present and a past so dramatic and so violent that he hardly dared breathe, much less think about what it signified. Demidova, a name from a telephone directory; Demidova here again in this book, the name of the Tsarina Alexandra’s maid - the woman who died in that long-ago hail of bullets with her imperial mistress. One and the same, maybe, this name? It wasn’t really possible, was it?

But as he read on further and as he took in fully details about how the last Russian monarchs had been killed, by firing squad, Ikmen couldn’t shake the image of Leonid Meyer the Bolshevik from his mind. Could it be … ? But then the names of all the men involved in that action were listed here in this book, as in so many others, and Meyer’s was not amongst them. And anyway the whole notion was absurd, just because this maid and Maria Gulcu shared a surname …

But he would have to ask the old woman anyway. His

interest was piqued now and—

‘Excuse me, but are you Dr ikmen’s son?’ A small

individual sporting an alarming pair of bottle-bottom glasses was suddenly at his elbow.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘There’s a telephone call for you,’ he said softly, ‘in the office.’

Annoyed that his train of thought should be broken

like this, ikmen replied tetchily, ‘Who is it? What do they want?’

‘It’s someone called Suleyman. He says it’s rather urgent.’

‘Damn!’ He turned and tapped his father on the shoulder.