Belshazzar's Daughter (38 page)

Although he’d successfully avoided dinner with his aunt and intended, the stupid marriage plans were still well and truly on course. And just to make sure that everyone was ‘happy’ about everything, Nur was now going to check on ‘Auntie’ and Zuleika for ‘dear Mehmet’ herself. He swung the car sharply to the left at the end of the Galata Bridge and fixed his mind firmly on to the practical considerations of his day.

‘I’ll drop you in front of the Yeni Cami, Mother,’ he said.

‘It’s easier for me to carry on to the station from there and it’s only a short walk across the road for you.’

‘If it’s simpler for you, darling.’ His rough translation of this whine was that she was deeply disappointed he was putting his desire to get to work before her. He resolved not to give in.

‘Good.’ He glanced quickly at her and could see that she was crushed, but he just carried on concentrating on his driving and trying not to feel bitter. Knowing his mother, there could now be very little time left for him to indulge his fantasies about big, buxom blonde women. He wished he’d started sooner, wished he’d gone out, fallen in love with one and brought her home. Sadly, he realised that if he was ever to have the woman of his dreams she would have to be a prostitute or some transient, and possibly superior, foreign tourist.

He brought the car to a halt beside the massive square in front of the Yeni Cami. Of all the magnificent mosques in the ‘old’ city, this was his least favourite. Uniformly grey, it always seemed to lower unpleasantly at him. The interior wasn’t much better either. Uninspiring. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that it had been built by a Sultan’s mother? He looked at his own mother and decided that this grim association probably didn’t help.

Nur kissed her son on the cheek and ruffled her fingers through his beautiful hair one last time. ‘I love you, Mehmet,’ she said as she swung her slim legs out of the car and on to the pavement. ‘I’ll give Auntie Edibe and Zuleika your regards.’

He smiled weakly in reply and once she was clear of the car he lowered his foot down on the accelerator.

But then he stopped. Over by the steps leading up to the mosque, something caught his attention. A uniformed officer was talking to what looked like a bundle of rags on the ground. He wasn’t making much progress as the bundle, from Mehmet’s point of view, appeared to be raving.

Of course he could have just driven away from the

situation and forgotten all about it, but the uniformed man was very young and the bundle had very nasty, livid little eyes. With a sigh, Mehmet switched on his hazard warning lights and got out of the car. The heat hit him like a sledgehammer and as he walked towards the incident he put on his sunglasses and took his badge out of his pocket.

A group of what were either English or American tourists crossed his path, including a very well-built blonde woman.

She was about forty and she stared at him as he passed. Just the right age too! he thought, sadly. But he didn’t stop, he could hear what the officer was saying now. He was in trouble. ‘Look, Metin, nobody killed her, she just died!’

The bundle, which Suleyman could now see had no legs, was not easily convinced. ‘She was a witch, they don’t just die! Look at her!’ He pointed one filth-encrusted finger at an even sorrier bundle of rags slumped against the wall opposite. ‘Somebody killed her!’

Suleyman nudged the uniformed policeman with his

elbow and showed him his badge. ‘What’s going on?’

he asked.

The noisy bundle keened pitifully and rubbed what was left of its legs with its hands.

‘This man’s friend has died. Sometime in the night. As far as I can see there’s nothing suspicious about it. The old beggars die all the—’

‘Oh, Sevin!’ He wasn’t an ancient man, like a lot of them, but he was old. Suleyman went down on one knee in front of him and looked at his face. It was wet with tears and his furious eyes were red as if he’d been drinking.

‘Sevin was your friend?’

The old beggar paused for a long time before answering.

Suleyman stole a glance at the other bundle balanced precariously between the wall and the step above him. If he hadn’t overheard that the deceased was female he would never have known. The eyes were shut and the heavily lined jowls had already started to sag. Her beard and moustache were both luxuriant and very grey. Repelled, he stood up again, just as the beggar man started to speak.

‘Last night, late, somebody came. I heard her talking.’

Suleyman

bent down towards him again. ‘Man or a

woman?’

‘Wasn’t human.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper.

‘Azrael! He murdered her!’

Suleyman turned round to look at the young constable.

‘The Angel of Death?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Like so many of them, sir, away with the bloody djinn! Sir, I can manage here if you want to get off.’

Suleyman looked at the constable. The boy was attractive; he was very young too, just starting. He suddenly felt very jealous and very old, but he didn’t show it. ‘All right, Constable, you’ll take care of, er …’

‘Metin, sir. Yes.’

Suleyman half-heartedly saluted the constable and made his way back down the steps.

Sad, sad people. But Suleyman didn’t dwell on Metin and his deceased friend for long. A big, ripe gypsy woman walked towards him carrying a large bundle of white linen on her head. Her strong face bore an expression of deep arrogance. He stopped and watched her, hands on hips. She didn’t deviate one millimetre from her chosen course, but as she passed him she swished her long, filthy skirt against his leg. Noticing this, she turned just for an instant and looked at him, but then with a deep, throaty laugh she continued on her way.

Because it had been so unexpected, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He felt vaguely sick. To start the day like that … It seemed like an omen. One heavy blue body bag and the van from the morgue holding up all the traffic crossing the Galata Bridge. Everybody else on the bus had gawped out of the windows, pressed their faces up against the doors - except him. Some of them had even laughed when the skinny young policeman had dropped what was probably ‘its’ legs. But not Robert.

It was hot and he knew that the body, although safely encased in plastic, was already crawling with flies and infected with the hideous larvae of maggots. Death was like that. How the Victorians could ever have thought it glamorous was beyond him. Death through the eyes of someone like Rossetti was dignified, erotic and smelt of musk and sweet summer roses. A lie. He thought of Natalia and her death. He looked around his half-empty classroom and tried to imagine how her face would slacken and sag as soon as rigor mortis disappeared. Like that awful, ugly picture of Marilyn Monroe on the mortuary slab he’d once seen in a book. But then why should she die? Unless she had an accident or someone killed her, it was mad! Unless, of course, she had killed somebody herself and then …

He picked a sheet of paper up off his desk and held it aloft for the students to look at. It was a picture of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Miraculously the sky behind the famous monument was blue. Even to himself, Robert’s voice sounded as dead as his morbid thoughts. ‘Who can tell me what this is?’

His question was answered by a small sea of open mouths and vacant faces. If the four Syrian boys and the Egyptian girl who made up his morning class knew, they weren’t telling. Perhaps they’d all perform brilliantly when it came to the exams, but Robert didn’t really think that was very likely. For the lads, at least, there were just too many distractions in sinful old istanbul. ‘Well?’ he asked again.

‘Anyone know? Any idea in which city you would find this building?’

The five teenagers looked hopelessly around the room for inspiration and, finding none, looked at Robert. He articulated slowly, as if to the inmates of an asylum, ‘It’s the Houses of Parliament and it’s in London.’

He put the picture down and reached for another. Then, suddenly, and quite out of the blue, he wondered what Ikmen was doing. His heart jumped as his hand touched a small black and white photograph of Buckingham Palace.

Natalia had rung and told him the policeman had been sniffing around again, talking about him and what he might have done behind his back. His poor darling had been so scared that at first she’d tried to bring their relationship to an end because of it. Robert had done well to persuade her not to do that to him - this time. But if ikmen were to go there again … Was it perhaps going to be his last visit? Or was he perhaps coming for him now? On his way to the school right now? Robert shuddered and held the second picture up to the class. He hid his head behind it and scowled. He hadn’t shaved again and his shirt smelt of old sweat. Rosemary had completely ignored him in the corridor. She wasn’t alone either.

‘What is this building?’

Again the silence from the class rose up and broke across him like a miserable, grey North Sea wave. His students’

brains were as dead as that body the police had taken away from the Yeni Mosque. Useless things, fit only to be driven away to the morgue and subjected to undignified surgical procedures. He wondered whether Turkey was one of those countries that permitted compulsory dissection of executed criminals. He imagined some awful Dr Mengele-style surgeon touching her dead breasts with his cold, rubber-clad fingers.

It couldn’t happen. It wasn’t a loud voice that entered his head, but it was insistent. It couldn’t happen, none of it.

He was going to be OK, she was going to be OK, they were both going to be together, for ever. He’d do anything. He even looked up towards the ceiling and promised a God he didn’t believe in that he’d do anything. Weird half-formed thoughts and ideas started crashing around him creating confusion. He knew this feeling. He hung on tight to the photograph of Buckingham Palace, but he felt sick and sweaty. He remembered that he hadn’t eaten again, but knowledge did not make what he was experiencing any easier to bear. He felt so ill, so full up with the heat, the flies, the rich and meaty smell of death. He tried to hang on. ‘What is this building?’

His head rolled. Underneath the photo he just caught a glimpse of his students’ white, frightened faces as his chin descended towards the desk. His fear went and was replaced by a sort of donnish curiosity. Then everything went blank and silent.

‘Look, if you don’t want to marry this woman, then just say so!’ To Ikmen it all seemed very straightforward. Suleyman’s mother wanted to marry him off to his cousin. Suleyman was not impressed. All he had to do was put his foot down with his mother. End of story.

‘I wish it were that simple.’ The young man sounded morbid and self-pitying and ikmen instinctively lashed out at him.

‘It is! You tell your mother politely but firmly “no”, and then you get out there!’ He pointed towards the office window. ‘You get yourself a big blonde bit who goes like a shit-house door during August and find true fucking love and a measure of happiness!’

‘Sir—’

‘Just do it, Suleyman! Like most aristocrats your family don’t have so much as a kurus with which to feed themselves, so what do you have to lose?’

‘I—’

‘Your mother, you can’t stand! Your henpecked father, you can’t respect! Your brother’s already made the break and married a Greek! Just follow his example!’

‘But—’

‘No!’ He’d already wasted quite enough time on Suleyman’s pathetic little problem. Sometimes people were so stupid and petty, Ikmen wanted to scream. Arranged marriages were easy - you just didn’t. He hadn’t! And besides, he was in a bad mood - he was sick of absolutely everything about the Meyer case. And he was especially sick of his total lack of progress. He changed the subject. ‘I’ve decided to bring Robert Cornelius in again,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with all this seeing what will happen nonsense.’ He raised one hand in anticipation of any protest. ‘And before you say anything, Suleyman, yes I do know that the notion of being easy on the Englishman was entirely my idea and was contrary to what the Commissioner wanted. However, unlike the Commissioner, I am always willing to admit my mistakes.’

Suleyman couldn’t help smiling - ruefully - an expression not lost on ikmen.

‘And whatever you may think, Suleyman,’ he continued, ‘I am now going to do what my nasty old superior wants and become a total bastard. And after all the games we have been party to over the past few days, none of the players involved in this farce can complain that they are not getting what they richly deserve.’

Suleyman, his mind at least temporarily diverted from his own personal troubles, lifted his chin in assent. ‘So what now, then?’

ikmen sat down and, placing a pen between his teeth, began to ‘smoke’ it for a while. ‘I want you to go to the Londra Language School and give Mr Cornelius the chance to clear his conscience of his own volition.’

‘And if he refuses?’

‘If he refuses then you tell him that we are going to check every typewriter in the school against the letter about Reinhold Smits. I think it would be instructive for him to know how foolproof this method is.’

Suleyman smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh, and Suleyman, take Cohen with you too. I think that a little show of force, albeit of a shabby nature, may be advisable.’

Suleyman gathered together the various pieces of equipment that he might need: keys, notebook, pens, ID …

‘What about Ferhat?’ he said.

ikmen took the pen out of his mouth and replaced it with a real cigarette. ‘I’ll deal with that, unless of course you see him. And if you do, get him to call in.’

‘OK.’

As the younger man made to leave, ikmen rose from

his seat. ‘Good luck, Suleyman,’ he said. ‘If we can get Cornelius to offer up whoever it was gave him the information about Smits, we might still get somewhere.’

‘And if he doesn’t offer up anyone?’

ikmen pondered for a few seconds before answering.

‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘if the typewriter business doesn’t persuade him then I think that a full review of his work permit might be our next step. I mean, if that is not totally in order then it could be necessary for him to come and spend a little time with us.’