Belshazzar's Daughter (4 page)

ikmen took one more look at the sheet-covered remains of Leonid Meyer and put his hand lightly on the doctor’s shoulder. Levity, even Arto’s well-meaning variety, was out of place here. It was like whistling in a cemetery. ‘Come on, Arto, let’s get out of here.’

‘All right.’ The doctor rolled down his sleeves and picked up his attache case from the rickety chair by the side of the bed. ‘There’s a body bag and transport on the way. If any relatives turn up you’ll have to tell them that I’ve got to do some more tests before I can release the body. It’ll be quite a long job.’

The two men moved towards the door.

‘What about the woman who found the body?’

‘Leah Delmonte? I sent her to hospital. She was in deep shock. I’d give it a good twelve hours before you contact her, Cetin. And when you do, be gentle, OK? When she’s had enough, you stop.’

‘Of course.’

Sarkissian looked almost tearful. ‘She’s an old prostitute, you know. Lot of them round here. But then that’s in the nature of poverty, isn’t it? The degradation of the self.’

ikmen often wondered what went on behind the merry

eyes of his old childhood friend at times like this. He was always so cheerful, so light, so disrespectful. The Inspector knew it was simply Sarkissian’s way of coping. His humour was a breastplate shielding the softness of the heart within.

‘Come on, Arto,’ he said, ‘you’re getting maudlin.’ He strode purposefully out of the room and stopped by the door to speak briefly to Avci. ‘All right, Constable?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good boy.’ He patted him gently on the cheek with

understanding. ‘We’re going to dust for prints now. IT

send forensic up as soon as I get downstairs. Give the lads any help they need and try to keep the neighbours away, OK?’

‘Yes, sir.’

ikmen turned to Sarkissian. ‘Ready, Arto?’

They walked along the balcony towards the stairs. The Abrahams had disappeared back into their apartment now*

but they could still be heard. The father weeping; the children, their voices angry, disgruntled by lack of sleep: each trying to find some small area of floor on which to rest their ill-nourished little bodies, ikmen sighed deeply, What hope was there for such people?

The two men descended the filthy stairwell.

‘I’ll let you have my report as soon as I can, Cetin.’

‘Good.’ ikmen lit a cigarette. ‘How is Maryam?’

A small but discernible cloud passed across the Armenian’!

features. ‘As ever. And Fatma?’

‘Staggeringly huge.’

Sarkissian smiled. ‘And how is Timiir? Still fighting Allah?’

ikmen laughed. His mirth echoed and bounced like a

ball, up and down the gloomy stairwell. ‘Oh yes. Some things, and my father is one of them, never change.’

‘When he dies he’s either going to get a dreadful shock, or he’s going to be unbelievably smug for all eternity.’

“I would think the latter, wouldn’t you?’

Sarkissian grunted in agreement.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the noise and glare that always seemed to surround police cars en masse. Sarkissian held out his hand and smiled. ‘I’m going to get down to the mortuary now.

I want to have everything ready when they bring the body in.’

ikmen took his hand and smiled back. ‘See you later, Arto.’

As Sarkissian left, Suleyman returned. He was looking pleased with himself, ikmen turned aside and hailed a tall man leaning sullenly against the wall of the apartment building. ‘Demir!’

The tall man straightened up and came to attention.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You and your men can go up now. The doctor and I

have finished.’

‘Right.’

‘Oh, and Demir?’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘The usual. Anything of interest, papers, anything at all, back to the station.’

‘Right, sir.’

Suleyman, now standing directly in front of his boss, was patiently waiting his turn. He had news.

‘All right, Suleyman, what have you got?’

‘A woman across the street, sir. A Mrs …’He consulted his notebook. ‘Yahya. Said she saw a man, a stranger, hanging around the corner here at about four, four-thirty yesterday afternoon.’

‘Any description?’

Suleyman smiled. ‘Quite good, actually, sir. Tall, about my height, very blond, fair-skinned. Could be Western European or Scandinavian. Apparently he was smoking a cigarette, just standing in the road.’

ikmen threw his cigarette butt on to the pavement and ground it out with his foot. ‘Well done, Suleyman. It might mean nothing at all, but get a statement anyway.’

He looked up and across the road towards the dark, silent bulk of the Byzantine Kariye Museum. He thought back to his last trip to the site. Marvellous thirteenth-century mosaics: the Birth of Christ, the Death of the Virgin Mary; holy pictures glittering through the thin light of a late autumn afternoon. Fatma, outside, too pious to enter; the children running riot around the narthex and annoying the foreign tourists. The hundreds of foreign tourists, he recalled, even then, in October.

Suleyman hadn’t moved. He was watching Ikmen. ‘I

know what you’re thinking, sir, but it doesn’t apply.’

‘What?’

‘The Kariye was closed. Been closed for weeks, sir, Emergency repair work.’

ikmen sighed. ‘Well, I suppose that cuts it down a bit Any thoughts on why a foreigner might come here if the Museum’s closed?’

Suleyman looked around at the district with undisguise(

distaste. ‘I can’t imagine, sir.’ He turned and made his way back to the opposite apartment block.

ikmen took a large pull from his bottle and watched two stout orderlies carried a blue body bag across the street and up the stairs. He was starting to feel weary. He leaned against the side of a waiting squad car and briefly closed his eyes, but Meyer’s burnt and smashed face reared up in his mind and he snapped them open again.

‘Sir?’ A short, very swarthy individual was standing at his elbow, his once-smart blue uniform hanging limply from his spare frame.

‘Yes, Cohen, what is it?’

‘Sir, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Sergeant Suleyman …’

‘Yes?’

Cohen shrugged. ‘Well, it’s just that I know this area. I was born here and one of my uncles still lives here. I just thought you’d like to know that there are some Europeans who work here, sir. Just a few streets away in Ayvansaray.

The Londra Language School. Teaches English, French, stuff like that. Been there years.’

ikmen pursed his lips, thinking. ‘Mmm …’

‘Well, it’s a possibility, what with the Museum being closed. There’s no other reason for tall blond men to come down here. I mean, even the tarts are a bit—’

Ikmen smiled. ‘Yes. Thank you, Cohen, very useful. Do you know where this place is?’

‘Oh yes, sir, I can take you there if you want.’

ikmen took another swig and lit another cigarette. ‘Perhaps tomorrow, if nothing better turns up. We’ll see what Sergeant Suleyman gets from this Yahya woman, see if anyone else saw this man. Could just have been some disappointed tourist who didn’t realise the Museum was closed.’ ikmen waved his constable off about his business.

Robert Cornelius didn’t like late starts. His first class began at eleven o’clock; two hours later than usual. Tuesdays! He hated them. What could you possibly do with two extra hours at the beginning of the day?

But he recognised that he was particularly tetchy on this occasion. The events of the previous afternoon had unsettled him. A whole night of questioning and requestioning his own senses and memory had resulted in no firm conviction.

Whom had he seen in Balat? He had seen Natalia. Well, he had seen her face. And that was the problem. If he had seen her face then why had she not acknowledged him?

What was it about that fleeting touch that had so unnerved him? Why had she run away? Oh, she could be obtuse, even cruel at times. But it was just her way, her charm even. Didn’t he like women like that? Well, obviously! His own history bore his preferences out time and time again.

He sighed heavily, sat down on one of the cheap plastic chairs on the balcony of his apartment and sipped his coffee Of course this worrying and agonising was pointless. He either asked Natalia what she had been doing in Balat, or he didn’t. He knew already he would choose the latter option. Ignorant bliss. Except that it wouldn’t be; he would worry, he would fantasise, he would look at her with jealous, suspicious eyes.

Being in love with someone is not easy. In the early stages of a relationship there is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of nervous tension. Will your lover meet you? Will she phone? Is the attraction mutual or are you just a meal ticket? Unfortunately, even when the relationship matures, the problems do not go away. They take on new and, if one is not too careful, even more destructive forms. Familiarity can often breed suspicion.

Robert had been seeing Natalia Gulcu for just over a year. Seven years his junior and dramatically beautiful in a dark, full-lipped way, she had stunned him at first sight He had been buying a bracelet for his mother in the Gold Bazaar. Natalia was both the merchant’s assistant and translator. She could speak two languages in addition to Turkish - brains as well as beauty. She had helped him a great deal on that occasion, his Turkish being quite ropy in those early days. She had persuaded him to purchase a gorgeous and expensive piece of jewellery and then she had teased herself into his bed. He had never had sex like it. He was hooked.

To his surprise, this sensual creature wanted to continue their relationship. On her terms, but he didn’t mind. And, like it or not, that aspect at least was familiar. In a way it Was comforting. As the months passed, lust became love and he showered her with presents to prove it. But this love of his was no easy taskmistress. In a whole year he had learnt little about Natalia. Her family, her history, even the location of her home, they were all still mysteries to him.

While he prattled merrily on about his friends, his parents, his brother, her personal details remained a closed book. He had to make do with vague hints and riddles. Some of her family members were Russian, hence her first name, but that was as far as he could get. And he didn’t push it.

He also didn’t push the infrequency of their meetings.

At least they were regular. Once at the weekend, and then again on Thursday afternoons, when they both worked short days. He wanted more, always had, right from the start, but that didn’t suit Natalia; she had other, unnamed things to do during the remainder of the week. So Robert was alone for most of his leisure time; alone, resentful and suspicious. That wasn’t unfamiliar ground either. And to make matters worse, he had to suffer all this in silence.

She was dominant, unchallengeable, very like his ex-wife in that way. And, he felt, quite capable of walking out of his life without a thought should she be crossed. It was not a happy arrangement. But since when had that been a feature of his personal relationships? Sometimes Robert would even consider finishing the thing himself. But then they would have sex again and he would realise that he could no more live without her than he could fly.

He put his empty cup down by his chair and lit a cigarette, it had crossed his mind that perhaps Natalia and her family lived in Balat, but that was absurd. It was a poor Jewish district and Natalia was neither of those things. She dripped jewellery in a manner that he found almost vulgar, dressing like the wife of a plutocrat, and a crucifix or two always adorned the long golden ropes around her neck. Unless, of course, she was married?

With tremendous self-control Robert stopped his racing mind dead in its tracks. The ‘married’ theory was not one that he would entertain. Whatever her reasons for behaving as she did, marriage could not be one of them, for no better reason than the fact that he refused to believe it. There was a limit, even to his paranoia and fretting - on the surface, anyway.

He looked at his watch and decided that the time had come to make a move. He had a job to do; a thankless, largely pointless job, but gainful employment none the less.

He would have to push away these thoughts about Natalia for the time being. He could once again rejoin his internal agonising when school was over at five-thirty, when he was free from the rigours imposed upon him by uninterested students, greedy school directors and demoralised fellow teachers.

Out on the street, Robert resumed his usual dreary daytime routine. On his way down to the Besjiktas. iskele bus stop he bought a morning paper from the man outside the grocery shop and scanned the first two pages. He was proud of the way that, over the past two years, he had managed to ,,; master the Turkish language, with its endless suffixes and prefixes, not to mention the nightmare of vowel harmony. It had not been an easy task. But Robert had persisted. Being effectively deaf and dumb in most situations had irked him.

Admittedly, with no close friends, and seeing Natalia only twice a week, he’d had plenty of time for study. But it was still an achievement.

A small article at the bottom of page two caught his eye.

The name Balat appeared in the title of the piece, so it was only natural he should notice it in view of recent events.

But it wasn’t about Natalia. Why should it be? An old man had been battered to death in one of the seedier apartment blocks. There were no details, just that the police were investigating.

He closed the paper, folded it in half and continued on his way to the bus stop. The air was hot and dusty.

The pollution left an acrid taste across his lips and in his mouth.

When he arrived at the Londra Language School, Robert found the place in a state of some confusion. The first thing he noticed was the police car parked in front of the entrance.

Two rather disreputable-looking officers were sitting in the front, smoking and failing to answer their blaring radio.

They ignored him as he passed and made his way towards his classroom. Typical police! he thought as he turned into the main entrance hall. It was then that he saw the students.