Belshazzar's Daughter (44 page)

‘Couple hours ago.’

‘You didn’t see where he went when he left, I suppose?’

Nat shrugged. ‘I’m busy, you know.’

It was not difficult to imagine what with. This wasn’t like Meyer’s murder, because this time they had clues. The murder weapon, especially if the assailant had been drunk, could yield fingerprints. Analysis of the victim’s clothes could be useful too. This had been a sloppy job, poorly executed in an open space. The surrounding area could hold untold treasures. And if Mr Nat had seen the tall blond stranger then other people must have done too. Maybe even sober people more able to give detailed and reliable descriptions.

Ikmen felt strongly that that must be so and dismissed Avci and the roaring Mr Nat for the time being.

‘Can I move the body when the mortuary attendants and forensic get here, Cetin?’

He’d almost forgotten about Arto. ikmen turned towards him and pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think so, although I want the whole area searched thoroughly, centimetre by centimetre. And I want the body and its clothing to have the same treatment too. I want to know everything about this one, right down to what his clothes are

made of, what he had for dinner. He was native Balat, I understand.’

‘Yes.’

‘Mmm.’ One victim native Balat, the other a Jew from elsewhere. There could always be connections through friends or friends of friends, but on the face of it it seemed unlikely. And ikmen wasn’t even sure whether it was really necessary to his theory. Perhaps in a way it was more necessary that there was no connection. But what he needed before he could even think about that was a break. ‘Arto, I want you to get going with this one as soon as you can and I want anything unusual reported directly to me immediately.’

‘OK.’

A van pulled up at the far end of the alleyway and

two suitably sepulchral-looking individuals got out. ‘Ah,’

said ikmen with a smile. ‘Your ghouls from the morgue, I believe, Dr Sarkissian.’

‘Yes.’ Sarkissian looked down at the body and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Time to go.’

ikmen moved out of the way and leant his back up

against one of the nearby wooden fences. Now all that he could do was wait. Wait for witnesses, wait for more information on the blond man in Mr Nat’s bar, wait for Arto and forensic to contact him. Being sure was absolutely essential, even though that deep part of him already knew.

He leant his head back against the fence and took in some deep, revitalising breaths. Oh he felt rough! But he had to keep going. He was close now. Two hands, two crimes but a cord connected their perpetrators. The roots if not the branches joined, known to one another. Now speed was vital. But before that there was just one more thing he had to do and it filled him with sadness. But do it he must because sometimes seeming cruelty is the only course of action left open. All he could hope was that in time he would be forgiven.

He was woken by a stray ray of sunlight touching his nose and the area just beneath his eyes. It wasn’t a rude awakening as it was still very early and the sun was not yet either very hot or particularly bright. But it was enough to rouse him and even before he opened his eyes he knew that he was in trouble.

The nausea, although not fierce, kept coming across him in waves and his mouth and throat felt tight, dry and scarred.

He turned to one side in an effort to assuage the rising sickness and discovered to his horror that his mattress was not below him. His slim gangly limbs clunked painfully against something much harder than that. He opened half an eye and found himself looking at a lot of gravel and one of those tall, thin Turkish gravestones.

Inside his head blocks of information started to shift and grind up against one another, like small children’s wooden bricks in a box. Obviously he’d had such a skinful that he hadn’t managed to make it home and had just flopped down into the first available space, which just happened to be a graveyard. He didn’t dare move his head. Instinct told him that if he did he would discover a headache too and it would not be one of those that responds to paracetamol.

Robert tested out various unamusing descriptions for the state he had been in the previous night. Wrecked, arse’oled, pissed, shit-faced, whammed, bombed, legless, rat-arsed. All very jolly and laddishly amusing if one conveniently forgot about the hangover that always followed these expletives.

But what had he done and where had he been? He opened his eyes fully, and, although the light hurt them, he made himself check his own body for damage. The sight of the crusted and dried blood on his shirtsleeves provoked an immediate reaction and he was sick all down his chest and on to the gravel.

As ikmen’s eyes travelled down the second page of Reinhold Smits’s nauseatingly perfumed little missive he found that his reaction to its contents was not what he thought it would be. Instead of anger, he felt only sadness - sadness for another life, irrespective of its owner, gone. Another totally unique individual completely and utterly wiped off the face of the earth. Beside such an enormity his little questions regarding the seemingly endless Leonid Meyer conundrum suddenly seemed really rather paltry.

As he picked up the telephone, preparatory to doing what he knew had to be done, ikmen caught sight of young Avci in the corridor just outside his office. In his present revolting condition, he would need, at the very least, someone to drive him and so he called him over.

As Avci entered the room, he smiled, one of his big, silly bovine smiles. ‘Yes, Inspector ikmen, sir?’

‘I need someone to drive me over to Bebek,’ ikmen

replied. ‘Are you up to it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, for the strength and fortitude of youth!’

‘You what?’

ikmen allowed himself the luxury of flopping back into his chair again. ‘Oh, nothing, just go and get my car ready for me.’

‘Sir.’

As Avci left, ikmen readdressed himself to the telephone and, once again, with a deep sigh, he began dialling.

Mehmet Suleyman sprinkled a little Monsieur Dior cologne on to his comb and dragged it lazily through his hair. He felt fine, but he had his doubts about ikmen. The ‘Old Man’ had been absolutely roaring when he left him and his strange cousin, whose ‘tricks’ had taken a remarkably short time to perform, had just ordered another round of drinks. Really he should have dragged ikmen away then or at least stayed around until he was finished and seen him home. But the Bar Paris wasn’t his sort of place and the time he had spent there had depressed him enough already. The constant hassling by prostitutes of uncertain gender hadn’t helped either. It seemed odd to him that a husband and father like ikmen could feel comfortable in such a setting. But then ikmen was odd all round. He didn’t seem to have the same values or beliefs as other people. He was uncompromising, he did things his way or not at all. It was a miracle he still had a job.

Downstairs the telephone rang and somebody picked it up. Mehmet briefly tidied up his new grey suit with a soft camel-hair brush and then spent a few moments inspecting teeth he knew already were perfectly clean. But then, with a totally unwanted breakfast and his mother’s endless inane chatter to look forward to, going downstairs did not hold much appeal for him. His mother was not a bad woman, but, like his boss, the world either conformed to her or she wasn’t interested.

However, it had to be done and so, leaving his teeth to their own devices, he made his way downstairs and out on to the terrace. As usual the table groaned beneath the weight of his mother’s spread of breakfast food: bread, cheese, olives, tomatoes, home-made rose jam, the ridiculously ornate silver coffee pot. It looked beautiful but he wanted none of it.

ikmen had taught him many things over the past five years and probably the greatest of these was the benefit of skipping breakfast in favour of a chocolate pastry at around midday.

He’d wanted to make it a habit, but it wasn’t easy with his mother.

He sat himself down beside the silent outstretched newspaper that was his father and poured himself a coffee. The swishing sound of clean skirts rustling around slim legs and the click-click of high heels on concrete signalled the arrival of his mother. Mehmet looked up and smiled. His father didn’t move.

His mother beamed. ‘I’ve just had your boss on the

telephone, Mehmet, he’s given you the day off. Isn’t that nice?’

‘The day off?’ It didn’t make any sense! Suddenly? For no reason? ‘Are you sure, Mother?’

‘Well, he was quite specific, Mehmet.’

Why did she always take offence so easily! His father put down his paper and looked confused. ‘What?’

His mother tutted impatiently. His father’s increasing vagueness never failed to irritate her. ‘Mehmet has been given the rest of the day off, Muhammed.’ She shouted at him too, like he was deaf. He wasn’t but it had never occurred to him to mention this fact - it seemed like too much trouble.

‘Oh.’ He lifted the paper once again and turned to the sports pages.

Nur Suleyman removed her son’s unused plate from in front of him and replaced it with another even cleaner version. Her son winced. She was such a mistress of the pointless that it almost hurt.

She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately.

‘We can go shopping if you like.’

The implication that he had a choice was almost laughable.

He couldn’t bear it. ‘I think I’ll just go and check.’

As he got up her hand fell from his shoulder and her eyes took on a hurt expression. ‘Oh, but Mehmet, I—’

‘It’s all right, Mother.’ Although he didn’t want to he made himself bend low to kiss her cheek briefly. ‘I do believe you, but there are a few things I have to check up on.’

‘Oh.’ It was a distracted little exclamation, the sort of sound people make when they’ve just been told something so awful that they can barely take it in. It was the sort of overreaction he was accustomed to.

He walked back into the house but even before he reached the telephone he’d made up his mind. Whatever ikmen said he was going into work and that was that.

Just before she left the house that morning, Natalia Gulcu went up to the top apartment to see her grandmother. As she had hoped, the old woman was still asleep as she entered and for a brief few moments Natalia merely looked at her, rather as one would view a vaguely interesting exhibit in a museum. She’d caused so much trouble for all of them, this old, old woman. Because of her, Natalia had both seen and done the most awful, unthinkable things. And yet still, unlike everyone else in her life, she loved her. Why? Well, it was obvious really. Without her and what she represented, who was she or any of them? If it hadn’t been for her, they would all be ordinary, boring - all the things that she had never wanted, or been instructed to be.

Natalia looked down at her watch and, noting that precious and precarious amounts of time were passing, blew one last kiss across the room at her grandmother and then shut the door behind her. She would attempt, inasmuch as she could, to put recent events behind her today. She was, after all, a gold merchant’s assistant and it was therefore her job to persuade, charm and cajole people to buy Mr Avedissian’s fine jewellery. And anyway, who knows whom she might meet in the course of her work? She often met interesting and exciting men and, subsequently, had said men. Perhaps, especially in view of the fact that Mr Avedissian was now on holiday and she was alone in the shop, she would get lucky today and lose herself in some nice, rich man’s excesses. Provided, of course, Robert Cornelius didn’t make an appearance. She frowned. Acceding to his request to continue their affair had been, she now felt, a mistake. She just hoped that it wasn’t a mistake she was one day going to have to pay for.

‘He shot himself through the mouth with a pistol.’ The doctor was still shaking his head in disbelief, just as he had been when ikmen had first walked through the door. ‘He had enough drugs in his possession to annihilate half the district and yet Reinhold chose to shoot himself through the mouth.’ He looked up and then, flinging his arms wide in a gesture of helplessness, asked, ‘Why?’

ikmen sighed. ‘I don’t know, I’m afraid, Dr imad. All that he put in his note to me was notice of his intention to kill himself plus some details about this case we are, or were, pursuing with his assistance.’

imad’s features darkened at this, his eyes taking on an accusatory tint. ‘Yes, your case,’ he said, ‘and your men < who, in my opinion, have quite a lot to answer for with regard to what has happened here.’

ikmen, who was now almost delirious with both the heat and the lack of sleep and his ever-present hangover, snapped back rather more sharply than he would have done under normal circumstances. ‘Yes, well, doctor, if you have a complaint against us, you know what to do.’

The doctor stood up and, needlessly straightening his perfect jacket, said, ‘And be assured, sir, that I will do it!’

ikmen, ably shadowed by the lumbering form of Avci, waved the medic on his way. ‘Well, off you go then!’

‘I will!’

Rather unprofessionally, or so ikmen thought, Dr imad slammed the door of the library behind him, causing several of the books near to the entrance to fall off the shelves.

Swearing copiously, if gently, under his breath, ikmen made his way back over to Smits’s desk and looked again at the assorted items assembled upon it. Just as Smits had written in his letter there were three things: two photographs and a book, The Death of Russia, which lay open at page 325. The page, which like the rest of the book was written in English, was marked up about halfway down: a line in red had been drawn under a phrase. It said: ‘This night Balthazar was murdered by his slaves’ and it was, apparently, something that had been found scratched upon the wall of the house where the unfortunate Romanov family had died in 1918. A reference, seemingly, to the justifiable demise of an autocratic despot - a concept which, to ikmen, sat uncomfortably with his own vision of Nicholas II, which consisted of a rather beleaguered, weak and misguided soul. Not that that particular aspect was what interested ikmen. That the quote had been written, so the author presumed, by one of the Romanov family’s captors was what had his attention now. The guards whose names he had seen many times before were here also, all present and correct. Except that they weren’t. As he read onwards he discovered what he hadn’t known before: that the guards were changed shortly before the executions and that a group of unknown and now probably unknowable guards had taken over from several of the more minor players in that awful drama, ikmen put his hand up to his forehead, which was now sweating profusely. He had a bad, bad feeling about all this.