Ikmen 16 - Body Count (26 page)

‘The Mayan way of life doesn’t seem to me to be comfortable full stop,’
İ
kmen said.

The professor sat down behind his desk. ‘Do I detect that you’ve been doing some reading around the subject, Inspector?’

‘A little.’
İ
kmen smiled. ‘A catalogue of anxiety over crops and weather conditions and some really most spectacular self-harm.’

‘Ah, yes, the thorn through the penis ritual.’

‘Made my skin crawl.’

‘And yet,’ the professor said, ‘is that any better or worse than the self-flagellation practices that the Spaniards brought with them when they let their Catholic clerics loose on the Maya? We tend to think that anything that is not a monotheistic religion is by definition barbaric. But think about what the “civilised” Spaniards did in the New World. Plundered its gold and forcibly converted its people to Christianity.’

İ
kmen shrugged.

‘I’m not excusing the Maya,’ Atay said. ‘They were undoubtedly cruel and barbaric, but if you speak to their descendants, you get a sense of a whole lost perspective on the world. We – as in the monotheistic empires of Europe – just cut them out like a malignant growth. And who were we to do that?’

‘They had gold.’

‘Absolutely!’ he said. ‘That’s the thesis of my book and what will be my television programme.’

‘Gold?’

‘When the Ottomans fought the Spaniards for supremacy in the Mediterranean, it wasn’t just about Muslims versus Christians or one empire against another; it was ourselves and the Spaniards fighting over South American gold. Civilisations that for all we know held the key to curing some of the world’s most virulent bodily ills were sacrificed so that greedy Western empires could have more jewellery.’

‘When you put it like that …’

Atay smiled. ‘Ah, you have to go there to appreciate it,’ he said. ‘And of course the outfall from empire-building can be seen all over the world, can’t it? I don’t know what you think about the Middle East situation, but as an historian, I can’t help but lay the blame for the current mess firmly at the feet of the Ottomans who once controlled it and the British and the French who wrested it from them and then attempted to take it over. But I’m going on, I’m sorry.’

‘No,’
İ
kmen said, ‘it’s very interesting, sir.’

‘But you have crimes to solve. Real events in a real present. Academia doesn’t bother itself with too much of that.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’
İ
kmen said. ‘If what you’ve told me or pointed me towards with regard to the Mayan Long Count calendar turns out to be irrelevant to these offences, then that is something that I will accept with no ill will towards you, Professor. Exploring theories that might explain a crime is all part of our process, and even if such theories are wrong, we can at the very least discount them.’

‘True. And have you discounted the Mayan connection yet, Inspector?’

‘No,’ he said. Then he smiled. ‘I’m just having some trouble putting what is happening in a modern context. Maybe it’s easier if one is religious or believes in things like astrology or homeopathy.’

‘You don’t have a faith or …’

‘No, sir,’
İ
kmen said. The fact that he had always believed in magic as practised by his mother – and, via the tingling in his spine that sometimes told him when a significant event was happening in his life, his own magic too – wasn’t something he discussed with those he didn’t know well.

The professor stood up. ‘Well, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I imagine that by the time you get back to your desk, my student will have emailed those family trees to you.’

İ
kmen stood too. Of course this very busy man had things to do.

They shook hands.

‘And if you need my help again, for any reason, please do ask,’ Atay said. ‘Although this has not had a direct effect upon my family, I am in daily contact with my brother-in-law Faruk, who continues to suffer.’

‘I am sorry about that, sir, truly,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I will work as hard as I can to bring this offender to justice and I will study the family trees you have so kindly given me, minutely.’ And then he left.

Sezen
İ
pek was aware of the fact as she scanned through all the online editions of the national dailies that her breathing was ragged. What if her blackmailer had realised that she had been surrounded by police up at the Malta Kiosk and had decided just to go ahead and smear Rafik Efendi anyway? And what kind of proof, if any, did he have? He’d never said.

But the newspapers were devoid of references to elderly paedophiles and so Sezen felt herself begin to relax again. She made herself some tea and even had a croissant once she felt her stomach muscles unknot. Then, after a pause, she made a phone call. It was to someone she should have contacted a long time ago, someone she had known many years before. She waited for him to answer and then she said, ‘Abdurrahman Efendi?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Sezen
İ
pek. I heard about your loss …’

‘What loss?’ He sounded old. But then he was old, as was she.

‘Your nephew? The—’

‘I never knew him. What would he have been to me?’ he said. ‘He was a foreigner.’

‘I understand, but I call you out of courtesy, as one from the same background and a … a friend, long ago.’

There was a pause then, and she wondered what he was going to say next. His first utterances had been aggressive. How was he going to take her reference to the short liaison they’d had many years ago, before Leyla had been born?

When he did speak, he sounded deflated. ‘Oh, Sezen Han
ı
m, you must not mind me,’ he said. ‘I’m an old, sick man and my life is more of a burden than a pleasure to me these days. It is I who should have called you, when Leyla …’

‘Oh, Abdurrahman, you don’t need to …’

‘And then your uncle. What can I say, Sezen? Such terrible things! What have any of us done to deserve such evil in our lives?’

She didn’t even let herself think about her uncle and what he had done. Or Leyla. But what had Abdurrahman’s nephew done to deserve the death that had come to him on 21 March? Was it just because he was who and what he was in the same way that Rafik and Leyla had been? ‘It’s who we are,’ she said. ‘That’s why we’re dying. People don’t like us really, Abdurrahman Efendi, it’s all just lies.’

She heard him sigh. ‘Do you really believe that?’ he said. ‘You know, Sezen, in the last few days I have come to realise that maybe what we are doesn’t matter any more.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘We hear about these people nowadays, don’t we, people who want us to be caliphs, heads of Islam, figureheads to lead their jihad. But how can we do that and why would we want to? Most of the principal members of the family live abroad, and those of us who don’t, well, we don’t fit with these new Ottomans, do we? We drink and we smoke and we wear collars and ties on our shirts. It’s just an illusion.’

For a moment she was speechless. As a young man, Abdurrahman had been an almost dangerously vocal advocate for a return to Ottoman rule. What had changed his mind? What had made him so cynical? Suddenly she wanted and needed to see him, and she told him so immediately.

His response was unexpected and harsh. ‘But I don’t want to see you, Sezen Han
ı
m,’ he said. ‘All I want in life is to be left alone.’ And he put the phone down on her.

Sezen Han
ı
m cried. In spite of all those female cousins and nieces, distant relatives and hangers-on, she had no one. She was alone in a city that contained someone who was killing people like her, and she was afraid.

‘Do you know where he was going?’ Süleyman asked.

Gonca shook her head. ‘No. He travelled from Edirne with a group of gypsies.’

‘Do you know who?’

‘Some of the Edirne people come up to
İ
stanbul for H
ı
d
ı
rellez because they think they can make more money here.’

‘What was
Ş
ukru doing in Edirne?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Our father’s sisters live there,’ she said. ‘He’d gone to visit them.’

He sat back in his chair and drew on his cigarette. All the time he looked her in the eyes. ‘You didn’t tell me,’ he said.

‘I was going to.’

‘That’s easy to say.’ He leaned towards her. ‘I won’t be used just when it suits you, Gonca,’ he said. ‘Don’t manipulate my love for you, because I can cut that off in a heartbeat.’

Suddenly she felt sicker than she had done when she’d realised that
Ş
ukru was missing. Having only just reconnected with the love of her life, was she going to lose him again? She said, ‘I was wrong not to tell you, and yes, I do need you now, but Mehmet, I am so afraid for
Ş
ukru. He phoned and told me that as soon as he’d finished some business he’d come and see me. But he didn’t.’

‘Do you know where he was when he phoned you?’

‘My father has spoken to my aunts. They asked the people he travelled with from Edirne where they last saw him. It was in Ortaköy.’

‘Do you know anyone in Ortaköy? Does your brother?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she said. ‘You know, Mehmet,
Ş
ukru does go missing sometimes for long periods, but both my father and I have a bad feeling about this time. I tried to read the cards, but they were confused and I don’t know what to think.’

‘What else did
Ş
ukru talk to you about when he called you from Ortaköy?’

‘Oh, he was still mad that I was seeing you,’ she said. She watched his face for any sort of reaction, but there was nothing. She looked away so that she could concentrate on her memories of her last conversation with
Ş
ukru. ‘He said that he was going to move his family and my father away from Tarlaba
ş
ı
.’

‘To where?’

‘He didn’t say. Somewhere in the city. He’d talked to my father about somewhere on the Bosphorus,’ she said. ‘
Ş
ukru has money, but not lots. If he was going to move the family on to somewhere in the city, especially by the Bosphorus, then he’d need to get more business.’

‘Business? What do you mean?’

She looked away from him. ‘You know what
Ş
ukru does, Mehmet.’

There was no need for her to say any more. Mehmet knew that
Ş
ukru provided kids to pickpocketing rings, that he distilled illegal liquor and ran questionable cigarettes into Turkey from Eastern Europe. He was an unemployed bear man who had lost the home his family had owned for hundreds of years; what else was he supposed to do?

She watched him think, and then he said, ‘I’ll need to speak to your family in Tarlaba
ş
ı
; they’ll have to give me access to
Ş
ukru’s friends and associates.’

She was about to say that that would be impossible, but he silenced her. ‘No ifs or buts,’ he said. ‘I won’t arrest anyone for pocket-diving, prostitution or even illegal brewing. All I want to know is where your brother is.’

And then Gonca said the unspoken thing that had been in her mind ever since her brother had failed to visit her. ‘Because people are being murdered in the city?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘Nothing but that matters now.’

Fires happened on waste ground for all sorts of reasons. Discarded cigarette ends, kids messing around with magnifying glasses; sometimes in the summer everything was just so dry a spark from a passing car could set one off, but sometimes it was arson. Bedrettin Balbay hadn’t been a gardener up at Y
ı
ld
ı
z Park for long, but he knew that this fire, which stank like something he half recognised but didn’t dare give a name to, was a bad one. This fire however was not in the park, but across from his two-roomed apartment in Aksaray.

Once, long ago, the place where the smoke was coming from had been an office block. But that had been torn down at least ten years before, and now the area was just a tangle of thick bushes, old clumps of barbed wire and junkies’ needles. Sometimes the Eastern European prostitutes who plied their trade all over Aksaray took their customers there to have sex. But they didn’t, or so Bedrettin thought, usually light fires.

His wife, as she generally did whenever there was any sort of local trouble, told him to ignore it and just go to work. But he couldn’t. Working in the park had taught him that fire, if not quickly brought under control, could spread rapidly. Bedrettin called the fire brigade and then made his way out of his apartment block and over the road to where he could see both smoke and flames.

The seat of the blaze appeared to be behind some bushes at the back of the site. And although he knew that he should really wait for the fire appliances to arrive before he attempted to do any sort of investigating himself, Bedrettin began to pick his way through the wire, the needles and eventually the bushes. At first the fire was wreathed in too much smoke for him to be able to really make it out. But when the smoke began to clear and he could see the source of the smell that had offended him so much, everything he’d eaten that morning made a bid for freedom. What Bedrettin found himself looking at was a funeral pyre.

‘There’s nothing like getting your work done early,’ Çetin
İ
kmen said to Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu as they watched the fire officers check what remained of the pyre for flames. It was seven thirty in the morning and both
İ
kmen and his sergeant had been asleep when they’d got the call out to Aksaray.

‘But then that’s a salutary lesson to us, Ay
ş
e,’ he continued as, in the face of the human-flesh-scented smoke all around him, he lit a cigarette, ‘not to underestimate our offender. Usually he strikes at night on the twenty-first of the month, but today it’s in the morning. Who knew?’

Ay
ş
e, who was caffeine-deprived and nauseous, murmured, ‘Yes, sir.’

Once the fire chief gave him the signal that the pyre was safe,
İ
kmen walked over to it and looked at the blackened body that lay half consumed on what remained of a considerable wood pile. Beyond the fact that it was tall and therefore probably male, there was not a lot that could be deduced just by looking at it.
İ
kmen frowned. ‘Didn’t think the Mayans went in for cremation,’ he said.