The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) (25 page)

Yashim sat wearily on the divan. Palewski helped him tug off the shirt and looked closely at the wound. He pinched it between his fingers. “The brandy, man.” As the skin opened he sloshed the liquid into the wound and Yashim winced.

“Hold still. It’s the best thing for this stuff. I had some better, but it’s gone.”

Marta came in with bandages and a salve, but when she saw what Palewski had done she nodded. “It’s good, even if you stink.”

The men were silent while Marta applied the bandages to Yashim’s arm.

“I can fetch you tea,” she said simply.

When the door had closed, Yashim told his story. Doherty interrupted, with comments and exclamations—“Holy Jesus!” “I was right”—until Palewski told him to shut up.

“Forgive me, Father. Would you mind?” Palewski shook his head. “Who would kill Birgit, Yashim?”

Yashim trickled a little brandy into a glass. “I’m sorry.”

“Ach, Yashim. I had her destined for happy things,” he said simply. “Lovers, husband, children. I thought she’d eat cake and grow fat.”

Yashim knew what Palewski meant. Birgit had inspired them all with feelings of contentment: her gentle irony, her beautiful blue eyes, her delicious curves. None of them had seen anything but a generous loveliness. Not a man with a knife. It was as if they bore responsibility for being blind.

“No sign of the boys. I found the man who claims to own the place. I lost my temper—he’d been up there, treading in the blood. Then I threatened him. He stabbed me with a throwing knife, and bolted.”

“Was it him, then?”

“I’m not sure. He would have known who was at home, and who’d gone out, that’s true. He had a knife.” Yes: guilty or not, Ghika belonged to the dark fog that had crept upstairs.

“That landlord’s a shifty one,” Doherty remarked.

“He knew what had happened,” Yashim went on. “He didn’t tell anyone, but on the other hand, he didn’t try to hide. I found his footprints in the blood by the door, and I showed him the blood on the soles of his slippers. Whether he’s a killer, I don’t know.” He thought of the dingy room, and Ghika lying on the divan. “I think he went upstairs to look around, found her dead, and probably stole whatever he could lay his hands on.” Yashim worked his arm. “I’d better go and find the
kadi
.”

The priest uncorked the brandy and tilted it to his lips. “Needed that,” he muttered, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’d better get on.”

He paused at the door, but Yashim lay back looking faint and Palewski just jerked his head. The door slammed.

Palewski nodded at the door. “Yesterday Doherty was here ranting about blood and hellfire and all the rest, and I dismissed him because—well, because it isn’t how things are. Blood doesn’t just well up on the street, by some divine or diabolical command. And yet—it has done. At least, it’s a better explanation than anything I can think of. Czartoryski vanishes into thin air. A good and harmless girl…” He shook his head. “It’s like some biblical plague, hitting without rhyme or reason. The city devouring itself.”

“I know,” Yashim said. “I know exactly.”

55

A young district magistrate accompanied Yashim to the Italians’ apartment. He brought two orderlies along with a stretcher and a canvas cover.

There was no sign of the Italians. No sign of Ghika, either.

The young
kadi
went very white when he saw the corpse.

“This is a crime of Nazarenes,” he said, as the orderlies maneuvered the body onto the stretcher. “It is not in our imagination, such a violation of a woman. There is no way a Muslim could have done this.”

Yashim, who had been looking for jewelry or money, stopped his search for a moment.

“Say that again.”

“A Muslim could not have done this. Many other crimes, yes. I have seen many bad things. But this kind of killing? I will not believe it.” He shrugged. “She was a Nazarene, and she died at the hand of one of her own. Come, we will leave this to the orderlies.”

In the main room the
kadi
opened a window and stood looking out into the court.

Yashim prowled the room, opening the drawers of the chest, running his fingers along the shelves. He could hear the men arguing in low voices through the door.

“What are you doing, Yashim efendi?”

“Looking for her jewels.”

“She doesn’t need them anymore,” the
kadi
said. He gave Yashim a thin-lipped smile. “You saw her wear them?”

“Once, yes.”

“Probably the killer took them,” the
kadi
said. “Perhaps that was why she was killed.”

“Ghika could have taken them.”

“Ghika, the Italian men. All these sorts of people love money.” He stood at the window patting his hands together. “I have been wondering, Yashim efendi, if this is strictly any affair of mine. My concerns are with the faithful, not with Franks.”

“But this is your district,” Yashim reminded him. “Your jurisdiction.”

“These people, these unbelievers, come and go,” the
kadi
said. “I don’t mind telling you, this sort of inquiry doesn’t look good. It takes me away from my people, and gives them a—a—” He bunched his fingers together and shook them in the air. “A wrong association.”

Yashim looked around from a stack of bottles. “You mean—you won’t investigate?”

“It will be long, it will be in many languages I do not understand, among people for whom I feel—nothing. Do you see? On the one hand, I am a young
kadi
, at the beginning of my career. Who knows?” He looked up into the sky. “But on the other hand, the old ones watch me all the time. They think me inexperienced. They would think I am like the others of my age, who are Muslims on the outside but Franks inside. Those men who read Frankish books, and study how to dress and talk like giaours.”

He leaned against the windowsill, silhouetted against the daylight where Yashim could not read the expression on his face.

“In this business, this shocking business, the old men and my superiors would see only this. The giaour
kadi
! The young man who runs around for giaours! Sling the mud, that’s the proverb. Even if it doesn’t stick, the stain will remain.”

Yashim stepped up to him. He had found nothing in the flat. “I understand that a
kadi
follows justice, above all else.”

“Of course, of course, I was not forgetting justice. That’s what we all seek, isn’t it? But, Yashim efendi, among the giaours I am like a dog, who can bark but not talk.”

He laid his hand on Yashim’s shoulder. Yashim sucked in his breath. “It’s sore. The inflammation.”

“Yes, I forgot.” He dropped his hand but his voice remained soft and low. “I don’t say you are a Frank on the inside, Yashim efendi, because you’re not. You are a Muslim, and a Turk. I see that about you. But you know the ways of these sorts of people, hmm? Their talk, how they live, that sort of thing. Yes?”

He put a hand to his breast and bowed, smiling. “So we will have the Franks arrested, and also this Ghika, as soon as any of them appear. This is my job, and no one will think me a giaour if I am swift, and act without favor. Let them go to prison. You, my friend, must gather the necessary evidence—keep it simple, I need hardly add, we don’t want the judgment to involve many hours, and foreign speeches. Simple evidence. If it’s the Greek, if it’s the Italian—pshht!” He shrugged. “One of them did it. Maybe all of them, together. You know how these people are, working together, plotting and such. So that way we are swift, and not afraid to show all men are equal. I’m glad we can do this.”

“We work together,” Yashim echoed.

“Exactly.” Either the
kadi
missed the irony in Yashim’s tone, or he preferred to ignore it. “I will provide men, to set a trap. If those giaours—those Franks, or the Greek, turn up here, my men will pounce.”

“And if they don’t turn up?”

The
kadi
waved a hand. “I’m sure they will. By all means look for them if you can. Meanwhile, I’ll put two men in downstairs.”

The orderlies emerged from Birgit’s room with the stretcher.

“Take it down,” the
kadi
said. He turned to Yashim. “I’ll have her sent to the Catholic cemetery beyond Taksim.”

Yashim wondered if Birgit was a Catholic. He had a vague idea that the Danes were mostly Protestant, like other northerners. Doherty might know, if indeed it mattered where you were buried, or how the rites were observed, once you were dead.

It would matter to her people, he supposed. Her mother and father, the brothers and sisters she might have left behind, a family which no one in Istanbul knew anything about; friends and neighbors in a faraway country.

They followed the stretcher bearers downstairs. Birgit’s corpse was covered by a sheet.

“I’ll start by looking through Ghika’s room,” Yashim said.

The
kadi
nodded, and hurried out.

It took Yashim less than a minute to find the jewelry: it had been carelessly thrust under the mattress of the divan. There were several silver bangles, a string of pearls, and an earring that matched the one he had found upstairs, which Ghika must have missed. If Ghika had killed her he would have had time to hide the jewelry somewhere safer.

When he had pocketed the jewels he scanned the room again. He had found a bottle under the divan, and he set it upright on the small table. Otherwise there was little furniture, nowhere to hide anything. He squatted down and patted the floorboards one by one. In the far corner, beyond the grimy window, he felt movement.

The board lifted easily. The nails had been cut off on the underside, and in the cavity below, Yashim found several hundred silver
kuru
ş
, wrapped in a dirty cloth. He put it back where he had found it, let the dingy curtain fall back into place, and went out, closing the door.

56

“C
ZARTORYSKI
was lifted off the street,” Yashim explained as he sat with Palewski in the drawing room. “Birgit, who is romantically attached to the boy who wants to overthrow the Pope, has been murdered. The boys have disappeared.

“Is there any connection? That’s what I can’t make out. On the face of it, yes, obviously: Czartoryski and the Italians are liberals, whose common target is the settlement made at Vienna almost thirty years ago. A settlement that locks both their countries in an iron grip.

“But then, as you said yourself, the Italians aren’t really serious, are they? What did you call them? The Baklava Club?”

Palewski acknowledged the remark with a mirthless snort. “And Birgit didn’t care about politics.”

“Birgit, no.” Yashim ran his fingers through his hair. “I was such an idiot to provoke Ghika. He’s the only one who could possibly say what happened last night. I—I was enraged, sickened. Stupid.”

“It’s done, Yashim. And Ghika will come back. For the money.”

“I hope you’re right. He’ll need to drink.” He told his friend about the bottle beneath the divan.

“Revolting,” Palewski said. “I hate drunks. It’s what puts me off Doherty.”

“You were the one who befriended him.”

“Mea culpa. And I introduced him to the Italians.”

“Yes. He liked them.”

“Liked them? Doherty’s one of those who’ll go anywhere for a swig. They had the champagne.”

“And why is he in Istanbul?”

“As far as I can make out he’s come to ransack the Patriarchal Archives. Hunting for old documents. I have a hunch, based on speculation, prejudice, and various hints he’s dropped, that he’s looking for anything that might bolster the Pope’s claim to territorial dominion in Italy. Something like the Donation of Constantine, only more plausible.”

Yashim looked blank.

“You never came across the Donation of Constantine? Big thing in its day. The emperor Constantine divided the Roman Empire into an eastern and a western empire, when he founded his own capital here, at Constantinople. The city of Constantine.”

“I know all that.”

“So, several centuries later the popes found themselves struggling against the German emperor to be top dog in Europe, arguing over which of them had the right to appoint the bishops and collect the tithes. The Vatican produced a musty old parchment showing that Constantine had handed Europe—the western Roman empire—over to the popes. That was the Donation of Constantine. It shut the Germans up, for a few moments. It wasn’t until the fifteenth century, when it was all old hat anyway, that Lorenzo Valla proved it was a forgery. He analyzed its Latin, and it wasn’t current in the fourth century. Good bit of detective work, in fact. Egg on the pontifical tiara, and all goes quiet.”

“So it was just a piece of wishful thinking?”

“Yes. Unless, of course, Constantine did make the donation, and the Vatican just couldn’t prove it.”

“Because they couldn’t put their hands on it?”

“Exactly. And there have always been rumors that other forms of the donation do exist, confirming the Pope’s control of western Europe. They can’t be in the Vatican Library, obviously, or we’d have heard about them. After 1054, of course, the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches was irrevocable. The Orthodox church would have kept anything to the popes’ advantage to themselves. The Greeks hate a schismatic more than an infidel. ‘Better the sultan’s turban than the bishop’s miter,’ as they always said.”

“It’s very ancient history, though,” Yashim said dubiously. “This donation.”

“Don’t underestimate its importance. A foolproof donation would come in rather handy, when the Pope’s being assailed by all those liberals—like Giancarlo and his friends—who think he should concentrate more on God and less on Tuscany and Rome. That, I suspect, is why Doherty is in Istanbul. He’s ferreting among the Latin documents in the second library of Christendom, after the Vatican. The Patriarchal Archives.”

“He’s found what he wanted, then. Isn’t he going back to Rome?”

Palewski nodded.

“When did he arrive?”

“Three weeks ago. Shortly before the fourteenth. He reminded me of the date at the time, celebrating the Christian victory at Lepanto—it’s actually in the mass,” Palewski said thoughtfully.