Belshazzar's Daughter (45 page)

He shifted his attention to the photograph which lay beside the book - black and white - of three people wearing clothes that placed them almost certainly in the 1920s. The woman, who was laughing, wore a large cloche hat which, although pulled down quite far across her forehead, nevertheless clearly revealed her features beneath. They were,

ikmen could clearly see, despite her apparent merriment, just as sharp and snakelike as the older version of them he had seen in the Gulcu house. Young Maria. She’d been quite striking - as if she could ever be anything else.

In the picture she had her arms around the shoulders of two young men. Both of them wore the wide-lapelled suits of the period and the one that was so unmistakably Reinhold Smits smoked a long, thin cheroot. The second man, who was much shorter and darker than Smits and whose eyes had ; a vaguely closed, hooded appearance was, ikmen assumed, ; Leonid Meyer. Was it just ikmen’s imagination, or had Meyer looked troubled even then? Gently, he stroked the old print with his fingertips before he turned to the second photograph.

Stuck on to a plain brown backing board in order, ikmen imagined, to help preserve its ancient delicateness, this was a picture of a young girl - a young girl long ago, at the end of the last century. She had long, thick hair hanging in ringlets across her shoulders, which were covered by what looked like a printed shawl. Her face, though trying to be serious, had just been breaking into a smile when the picture was taken. You could, so ikmen imagined, almost see her breaking down into giggles as soon as the seriousness of the photographic session was over. Happy then, and young. He sighed. But what was written beneath the face was not so cheerful. In English, yet again, it simply said ‘Belshazzar’s Daughter’ which, when put together with the quote from the book, probably meant that this lovely young girl had been one of the last Tsar’s doomed daughters. Or maybe it didn’t.

Belshazzar, Balthazar … He looked back at the book. The phrase was, so the book stated, a quote from the German - by Heine - so perhaps the spelling was different, or …

He stared briefly at Smits’s letter which, cryptically, had exhorted him to ‘work it out, Inspector’. And then slowly as his eyes skimmed from item to item across the desk, all the disparate blocks of evidence he had accumulated over the weeks started to come together. Meyer’s crime; the name Demidova; that unknown ‘thing’ he had theorised Smits and Meyer ‘had’ over Maria; those weird and wild thoughts of his own - the ones he’d dismissed but now suddenly couldn’t.

He couldn’t! Not now that he could see that the faces of the smart 1920s woman and the young girl in the shawl were one and the same.

For reasons that he didn’t even begin to understand, Robert stuck to the back roads when he left the confines of the Old Imperial cemetery on Divan Yolu. Although he had no actual destination in mind, for want of any better idea he started making for Eminonu Docks and the Galata Bridge.

They were, after all, on his route back to his apartment, which was a place that, if he wanted, he could go to. Not, of course, that he would feel safe there. Not that he would feel safe anywhere. Covered in blood and aching from head to foot, his body felt as tense and assaulted as if he had been mugged which, until he found his wallet and credit cards safe and intact in his pockets, is exactly what he thought had happened to him. But then perhaps, and most likely, he had just been beaten up. People did that to drunk and unstable-looking folk. He remembered that from his time in the hospital. How, if you were a very ill patient, you could suffer a thousand indignities a day and nobody would so much as turn a hair. It had only been his iron resolve to not appear as totally paranoid and mad as he really had been that had saved him - until now.

As he passed by the entrance to a commercial garage, he saw that several of the mechanics turned to look at him. He tried to smile normally but then gave up as the awareness of the blood all over him and what that might signify to them hit him. If only he could remember - something, anything then perhaps he could make some sense of it all! But try as he might, nothing would come. As far as he knew he had gone drinking down by the Sea of Marmara and then next he had woken up in the graveyard. True, he had gone to wherever it was by the Sea of Marmara in order to try and blot out or exorcise some of the devils that were currently haunting him, but …

As he crested the top of one of istanbul’s many famous hills, he looked down upon the two great waterways that bisected this massive city: the Golden Horn and the mighty, sparkling Bosporus. Straight ahead of him, across the Golden Horn, he could see, as well as numerous banks and other assorted mercantile buildings, the Galata Tower, that strange, almost rocket-ship-shaped article where he and Natalia had once had a meal - long ago and far away in time. Just the thought of her made him want to cry. He hadn’t seen her for what seemed like such a long time and he had to acknowledge that, still fuddled with drink as he was, he couldn’t exactly picture her face any more. In spite of the directness of the hot sunlight above his head, he then sat down upon the pavement and put his head between his hands. Despite everything that he had done for her, despite persuading her not to give him the Big E, he knew within that instant that he had lost her.

How could he not have? He was a drunken madman who

had smashed some poor old fellow …

And then it began. Robert, his heart now beating like the clack of an old Gatling gun, suddenly, fully and horribly knew. The old man, the large piece of rock or whatever it had been, the absolute terror that it had all evoked - the being in Balat again. The blood that was not his own. The blood that belonged to a Jew!

His eyes now almost blinded by tears, Robert lifted his head and looked, or rather tried to look around him. Large, mobile, multicoloured shapes loomed out at him from the all-encompassing white glare. Were they people or devils from inside his own mind? He didn’t know anything except that they were threatening, except that they kept on saying ‘Jew-killer! Jew-killer!’ over and over and over again in his head.

With a speed and agility he never knew he possessed, Robert Cornelius suddenly sprang to his feet and, screaming his denial to the wind, flung himself down the hill towards the Golden Horn.

Avci slotted himself rather uncomfortably behind the steering wheel of the car and turned to ikmen. ‘So where now then?’ he said to what looked remarkably like a pile of old junk.

ikmen lifted his face from his shoulder and with a wave of one totally exhausted hand said, ‘Beyoglu, Karadeniz Sokak.’

Avci turned the key in the ignition and, as the car’s engine sprang into life, he asked, ‘So what are we going to do there then, sir?’

‘I think,’ ikmen replied slowly, which was the only speed at which his mind would work now, ‘that we are going to find out something really quite extraordinary.’

The telephone rang. He put his hand on the receiver and closed his eyes. Oh, please, please, please let it be ikmen!

This waiting, this being kept in the dark, was killing him.

He lifted the handset and spoke. ‘Suleyman.’

‘Is that you, Mehmet?’ It was a woman’s voice and he recognised it, but he couldn’t think from where.

‘Yes, this is Mehmet,’ he replied, then added tentatively, ‘Who is this please?’

‘It’s Fatma ikmen.’ Of course it was! ‘The girl on the switchboard told me that my husband is out so I thought I’d better speak to you. You don’t know where he is, do you?’

Suleyman sighed. ‘I wish I did. I know he was out

all night in Balat, but where he is now I just couldn’t say. One of the men thought he saw him getting into one of the squad cars, but he isn’t in any of those as far as I can discover now.’ He stopped. He was making it sound like ikmen was a missing person and probably frightening the man’s poor wife to death. That wasn’t very professional. ‘I’m sure he’s all right, Mrs ikmen,’ he added limply.

‘Oh so am I, it’s just that—’ She paused in a way that made him think she’d suddenly been grabbed by someone or something.

‘Mrs ikmen?’

‘It seems like I’m going to have my baby very soon.’

‘Oh.’ As far as Suleyman could remember the ikmens’

baby wasn’t due for about another month - not, of course, that he could ask Mrs ikmen about that.

‘One of my sons has called the doctor. But it’s my husband I really want.’

‘Yes I expect you do.’ Although he couldn’t think why, she wouldn’t even see him. ikmen would be with the other men: his father, sons and his wife’s brothers in the kitchen, smoking. Wouldn’t he?

‘So if you see him or hear from him will you tell him, Mehmet?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘Thank you.’ She sounded tired. He wondered how long she had been in labour. ‘Goodbye, Mehmet.’ She put the phone down.

Suleyman rubbed his face with his hand, replaced the receiver and wondered what on earth had possessed him to sound so confident. He didn’t know where ikmen was!

Nobody seemed to! All he knew was what he’d learnt from the switchboard girl: that there had been another murder in Balat the previous night and that ikmen had gone off somewhere with Avci. But where? Based upon their previous conversations, Cornelius’s apartment in Be§ikta§ was a possibility, although, not knowing where or if this latest murder fitted in with what had gone before … If anyone, Dr Sarkissian would surely know … but …

The door banged open and the edge crashed into the side of his desk. For half a second he hoped, but the man who entered, although short and dark, was in uniform and his heart sank. ‘Oh, it’s you, Cohen.’

Cohen jumped and swung round quickly. ‘Mehmet? What are you doing here?’

‘I work here, remember?’

‘Ah yes, I know. But didn’t old ikmen give you the

day off?’

Suleyman pulled a sheet of paper out of one of the

drawers underneath his desk and scanned down it for Sarkissian’s name and extension number. ‘He did, but I ignored him. I don’t understand what’s happening today, Cohen, I really don’t. Do you know anything about this Ś

latest murder in Balat?’

Cohen leant against the side of ikmen’s desk and lit a cigarette. ‘Well I should do, I found the body.’

Suleyman looked up sharply. ‘You?’

‘Yes, me. He was an old rabbi, the victim. My Uncle Zavi’s rabbi actually. Been cracked over the head with a lump of metal. I felt sick, I can tell you! Just walking along and you trip over something like that! I called the station, I called ikmen. It was late, can’t remember the time, I was a bit upset. Mind you, I was sane enough to realise that the Old Man was drunk!’

Suleyman frowned. ‘So why didn’t he call me?’

Cohen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Said nothing about it until this morning when he told me that he’d given you the day off. He was excited though, said he thought he might be close. What to,”

‘So he’s close and he blows me out!’ Suleyman rarely got angry, but when he did it was no half-hearted affair. He banged his fist down hard upon the top of the desk and gritted his teeth furiously. ‘Well, screw him! I would never have believed it! He doesn’t want to share the limelight, that’s it! How could he after all the work I’ve put in on this!’

Cohen moved behind ikmen’s desk and sat down. Mehmet, he knew of old, needed space when he raved. ‘You don’t know it’s like that, Mehmet.’

‘Can you think of another reason?’ This was less of a question and more of a challenge.

‘Well, not off the top—’

‘Precisely!’ Suleyman got up from his seat and paced the room like a caged cat. ‘He’s egotistical, everybody’s always said so and I like a fool have always defended him, but he is!’

ikmen’s telephone rang and Suleyman threw himself

across his desk and picked it up. ‘Suleyman.’

‘Hello, Suleyman, Dr Sarkissian here. Can I speak to the boss-man, please?’

‘He’s not here I’m afraid, Doctor, can I help?’

‘Yes, all right. Look, could you tell the Inspector this.

I’ve found a hair on the collar of the dead Rabbi’s coat. It definitely doesn’t come from the victim because it’s blond and fine. I would say it’s European. You can also tell him that the lab have found good prints all over the murder weapon.

If he wants comparisons done with his English suspect it’s going to be very easy.’

Suleyman’s mind raced. Of course! At the scene during the first murder, friend and lover of the Gulcus, a blond European hair … Why on earth hadn’t ikmen really grilled him after the first killing? He’d been there all the time. Of course he, Suleyman, was as much to blame, but—

‘Are you still there, Sergeant?’

‘Oh, er, yes, Dr Sarkissian, and thank you.’

Suleyman was much calmer and milder now. He put the telephone down and looked at Cohen. He smiled. ‘I think I know where ikmen is now. I don’t know how he’s getting there, but I know where. Get yourself ready, Cohen, you’re coming with me.’

When he reached the far end of the Galata Bridge, Robert Cornelius looked first up the great looming hill in front of him and then down the wide, sweeping coast road. There were advantages and disadvantages associated with each route. If he chose the coastal route he could go home, get cleaned up … And what? And possibly be arrested at the airport, that is if he could even get a ticket out of this confounded hot as hell country.

But what of up the hill? The going would be hard and with all the millions that lived up there up and about and going to work he would be seen for sure … But she was up there, Natalia, up there - high in the sky so far above him now, so perfect, so free … so wicked and evil and murderous! And if she hadn’t - yes, he could say it now, not out loud but in his mind - if she hadn’t killed old Meyer then none of this would have happened or would be happening now.

If only that were true …

If only he wasn’t entirely and absolutely of his own volition a murderer himself now. A man, furthermore, who would now have to go to the police. To do anything else would not be right, would not be him.

And for a few moments he stood outside his own mind and considered all of this. It calmed him. It was funny really; mild-mannered teacher, ex-public schoolboy … Some of his classmates were actors, writers, captains of industry now.