Belshazzar's Daughter (40 page)

Excited by her and also intoxicated by the situation. It had been a lot for a seventeen-year-old boy to take in. For days, although he’d been able to touch her, conversation with him had been impossible. It was almost as if his groping hands and searching tongue made up in some way for his inability to speak to her. But at the time, of course, she hadn’t analysed it. All she’d known then was the blood.

Three rivers: the one that poured from the wound on her face; the one that coursed painfully down her legs when he took her that first time; and the one she’d seen running down the wall just before they left. The one Leonid had slipped on as he tried to lift the woman’s dead body up on to his shoulders. She could still see the look of horror on his face as, filtered through the mist of smoke that had seared her half-closed eyes, she’d seen him look into the woman’s dead face. She’d wondered at the time what someone like him was doing there.

Not that she’d ever loved him. There had been gratitude and, just after they entered Turkey, a moment of great passion, probably brought about by relief, but not love. Leonid was a Jew, an animal, something ‘other’ and unpleasant a killer of Christ.

She looked across to where Nicholas was leaning against the wall and squinted narrowly the better to see him.

The first visitor she’d had after he was born had been Leonid. Even before Mehmet. Drunk, even then, Leonid had pinched the baby’s cheek affectionately before sitting on her bed and trying to persuade her to one of his insane schemes. But she had, as she had always done, refused and rebuffed him then too. Besides pain and frustration, she had actually given him very little.

Perhaps even as he lay dying, looking up at that filthy smoke-stained ceiling, his stomach and his throat burning white hot, he’d thought his pain then was a present from her. Perhaps at the last he’d even cursed her. She felt cursed.

When she’d first heard of his death, almost gagging at the horror of it, she’d felt cursed. And, in addition, Leonid’s death had opened her own son’s mouth against her and now there was no stopping it. Even from beyond the

grave, Leonid still had her by the throat. Nicky’s sullen eyes slid across her features in disgust and she looked away from them, down towards the picture of the pretty plump girl with chestnut hair that rested in her lap. The fat cheeks were unscarred, the eyes clear. She wished she knew where the original was, when and where it had been taken, but she couldn’t remember. There had been so many photographs.

‘Well, Mama?’

She sighed deeply and stubbed her cigarette out in a small terracotta ashtray. She looked at his face and was struck by the almost arrogant light she saw in his eyes.

That was new. But then Nicky had done a lot of thinking and his conclusions were leading him down a new and exciting path. Nicky had nothing to fear, the world and all its unknown delights waited for him - the tall bearded man emerging from the shadows. Maria cleared her throat.

‘I don’t know, Nicky. I don’t know.’

‘Well, Mama, it is your decision ultimately, but unless we do something I cannot see that things are going to get any better. Natalia has, and with your blessing I might add, already involved one unfortunate outsider. I understand your views—’

‘And I yours’ - she shot him a look like a dagger - ‘now.

But I’ve never lied to you, Nicky, whatever you may think.

The fact that you have changed your mind, that events have caused you to question—’

‘Events?’ He moved across to the bed and sat down

beside her. ‘What we are talking about here, Mama, is murder! Two people from this family were present at Uncle Leonid’s apartment on the day he died. And’ - he held a finger up to silence her - ‘before you allude, yet again, to Reinhold Smits, let me remind you that we, in addition, have a confession here. If Smits says he was there—’

‘Which he was!’

‘Yes, admittedly. But the fact remains, Mama, that Natalia told us all about how Uncle Leonid looked in death

some time before Smits contacted you and inadvertently confirmed some other descriptions - about the existence of the swastika, for instance. And with an admission of guilt and a detailed description of how it was done to poor Uncle Leonid originating from this house, I think that the chances of Smits being involved are rather slim.’

‘Oh, but Nicky, Natalia could have been wrong. She

could have got there just after Smits …’

Nicholas rubbed his eyes before replying. ‘But then, Mama, you are forgetting, are you not, just whose hands Natalia—’

‘She could be lying! You know what a wicked disgusting girl she can be!’

‘Well, she’s not lying about this, Mama. What on earth would be her reason for doing so? There really cannot be one, can there? You and I both know that.’ He knew she wouldn’t like this, but try as he might, he at least could not see any other way around the problem. ‘Basically, such matters as this are for the police anyway.

We must give them the information we have and let

them make the decision. This has gone on far too long already!’

She cast her eyes downwards now and he had the distinct feeling that what she said next was really the principal area of concern. ‘And what of the family?’

‘What of it?’

She looked up quickly, the movement of her neck snapping her now furious face forwards once again. ‘You say

what of the family? You say this after a lifetime of belief and tradition? You say it in the face of what you know are our hopes and aspirations for the future?’

Nicholas sighed. And here they were again, back full circle with the family again - the wearisome and to him now completely irrelevant concept of the family. When he spoke he did so slowly and deliberately as if to a child.

‘Mama, by the time the police and the immigration people have finished with us, we will be very fortunate if we are even able to lay claim to a couple of rented rooms.’

‘No, no, no! I cannot and I will not let go of everything that I am, that I feel. That is asking things of me that are beyond my endurance!’

Nicholas looked his mother steadily in the eyes and saw in them the things, or rather the lack of things, that he had always known were there. ‘And that is just about it, isn’t it, Mama? The fact that you can’t do what needs to be done is not because loved family members are involved.

It’s because of you and your delusions and your strange, crazy little world. It’s never been about us and that is why you have allowed us to become the pitiful monsters that we are.’ He stood up. ‘Look at me, Mama! I’m an old man and yet I wear the uniform of a regiment of soldiers who all died before I was born! I am a freak! And what is more, I am your freak! Look at me, Mama!’

She didn’t speak again and neither did he until he reached the door. But there he turned and, looking her full in the face, he said, ‘I’ll give you until tomorrow morning, Mama, and then I will do what has to be done myself. But if you have any honour at all, I suggest you make that move yourself. It will, if only in part, help to re-establish my respect for you.’ And with one tiny bow he was gone.

Alone, bitter and frustrated, Maria Gulcu attempted to rip her bedclothes to shreds, but found that all her strength had deserted her.

The Bar Paris was not the sort of place to pop into for a quick drink. Unless the intention was to get wildly and outrageously drunk, it was the kind of establishment that was best given a wide berth. The regular clientele was generally noisy, frequently criminal and many of them were no strangers to violence, ikmen didn’t go there often, but whenever he did he threw himself into the experience totally.

He held the grimy front door open for Suleyman and the young man watched as several highly painted prostitutes peered through the gloom in their direction.

The place reeked of old sweat and vomit. Suleyman didn’t even attempt to hide his disgust. ‘In here!’

‘Yes,’ ikmen replied simply, his face as innocent as that of a guide showing a tourist round a mosque.

‘You want me to go in here!’

ikmen shrugged. ‘The drinks are cheap.’ He let go of the door and stepped into the smoky gloom.

Suleyman watched the door close on him and sighed.

The choice was simple really. Either he joined ikmen in the alcoholic hell of the Bar Paris and risked life and limb at the hands of the various undesirables beyond its grim door or he went home to his mother. He pushed the door boldly aside and drifted towards the bar on a sea of smoke.

He saw ikmen immediately, sitting on a barstool, holding up a glass and shouting something he couldn’t make out at the barman. Even amongst such bizarre company as the Bar Paris provided, ikmen stood out as something especially shabby and unkempt.

Just before he reached ikmen, however, Suleyman saw an extremely tall woman in a green sequinned dress rush in front of him and grab the barstool he’d been heading for. As soon as she sat down the woman flung her arms around ikmen’s neck and kissed him affectionately on the cheek. To Suleyman’s surprise, rather than pull away from this unlooked-for advance, ikmen the devoted father and husband kissed the woman back - on the lips.

To say that he was shocked was an understatement. For a few moments he just stood and stared with his mouth open like a goldfish.

ikmen laughed. ‘Come over then, Suleyman. Come and

meet Samsun.’

He looked at the woman with her long hooked nose and grimy teeth and attempted a smile, ikmen placed a large glass of something that smelt dangerously close to petrol in his hand and made the formal introductions.

‘Samsun, this is Suleyman my sergeant. Suleyman, this is Samsun, a divine lady of dubious profession who also happens to be my cousin.’ He grabbed a sequin-clad knee between his fingers and squeezed. The woman giggled girlishly, her large Adam’s apple bobbing up and down against her blue and red pearl necklace.

‘Cetin, you always know how to treat a girl!’ The voice was very deep and contained just the slightest trace of a foreign accent, but it was unmistakably male. The creature put one hand on the bar and Suleyman noticed the thick mats of hair that grew on the knuckles just below the painted fingernails.

Suleyman tried not to freeze. ‘Hello,’ he said and quickly took a gulp from his glass. The nearest he could come to describing the effect the liquor had upon him was to liken it to being smashed in the face by a tank.

Samsun, seeing his distress, patted him gently on the back and looked concerned. ‘The brandy’s a little violent here unless you’re used to it.’

‘But worth cultivating, if only from a financial point of view,’ said ikmen, pulling his cousin’s heavy claw away from Suleyman’s back. He winked, slyly. ‘Now, now, Samsun, no touching!’

‘What, with a policeman? Are you mad!’

ikmen shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re Albanian.’

‘Which makes me crazy?’ Samsun pursed her lips in mock affront. ‘Anyway, I prefer gold-dealers, they’re very generous and they like to play femme in bed.’ She pouted the last word lasciviously at Suleyman.

The young man forced himself to make headway with

his drink. The only consolation he had was that he could see ikmen was fully aware of his discomfort. He wouldn’t have to endure this for long.

Samsun put her hand on ikmen’s shoulder and caressed his neck. ‘So what are you doing in this dump then, Inspector?’

‘Same as you, I suspect, minus the sex.’

‘Just wrecked or falling down drunk?’

ikmen looked into his glass and rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know yet, haven’t made up my mind.’

Samsun laughed and took a small gold cigarette case out of her handbag. ‘I always favour falling down if I’m not having sex, and you’re not, so …’

ikmen leant forward and stared into Samsun’s eyes. ‘You going to be here later, gorgeous?’

‘Why?’ Samsun narrowed her eyes. ‘Want a reading?’

‘I might,’ replied ikmen archly.

‘Well, it’s the real reason you came.’ Samsun lit a cigarette and breathed the smoke out into his face. ‘Want it now?’

‘No.’ ikmen inclined his head towards Suleyman. ‘When you’ve turned a few tricks.’

‘Like a girl with money in her handbag, do you?’

‘I find an enhanced ability to pay for my drinks endears a person to me.’ ikmen drained his glass and motioned to the barman to fill him up again.

Samsun screamed once again and Suleyman found himself wondering whether her jiggling breasts were the result of hormone treatment or some sort of clever prosthetic device.

‘Anyway.’ ikmen slapped his knee with his hand and then stood up. He looked across at Suleyman. ‘The sergeant and I have things to discuss, so I’m going to take him to one of the tables. Away from flapping ears.’

Samsun pouted. ‘Well, no fiddling under the table then, Cetin. Not unless you let me watch.’

ikmen held up one hand as if taking an oath. ‘Promise.’

He took Suleyman by the elbow.

Samsun noticed this and tutted furiously. ‘You’re a married man, Cetin! Remember!’

ikmen leant back towards Samsun and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’ve got eight children for an aide-memoireV

They smiled at each other and Samsun pinched Cetin’s cheek. ‘I’ll see you later then, little cousin.’

‘You will.’

ikmen steered Suleyman towards a rough beer-stained table in a particularly dark corner of the Bar Paris. All the action seemed to be concentrated around the bar itself and by the front door. This one corner, however, was empty.

‘Perfect,’ said ikmen as he sat down on a small stool covered with biscuit crumbs. ‘Sorry about all that, Suleyman.’ He pointed back towards where Samsun could still be seen languishing across the bar. ‘Family.’

‘Er, yes.’ Suleyman sat down opposite and cradled what was left of his drink in nervous hands. ‘Samsun as a name is, er …’

‘His real name’s Mustapha, but that sits a bit uncomfortably with the handbag.’ ikmen leant across the table

and whispered, ‘Rumour has it that he chose the name Samsun because he has a particular penchant for men from that city.’

There really was no reply to that and so Suleyman just smiled.

ikmen changed the subject. ‘Anyway, on the work front, a day of unrelieved ill fortune, I think you’ll agree.’