Belshazzar's Daughter (43 page)

‘Something’s going to happen and I can’t take Suleyman with me. It’s too dangerous and—’

‘Rubbish!’ Her burning eyes as well as her voice shouted at him and he cringed. ‘Some ridiculous member of your family says that something is going to happen, but it isn’t!

Honestly, Cetin, for an educated man you can sometimes be so stupid! You’ll believe anything these weird people tell you! As long as they are mad or they’re filthy dirty or known to be a “witch” or—’

‘I’ve solved cases before with the help of—’

‘Yes, you have, or rather think you have!’ She pursed her lips and regarded him silently with deep distaste.

The telephone started to ring. The shrill, almost ghostly sound hurt Cetin’s ears and he groaned. This time of night it could only mean one thing and, judging by the exasperated expression on her face, Fatma knew that too. He reached across to the coffee table and picked up the offending instrument.

‘ikmen.’ The word was said with such a heart-rending and despairing tone that for a second the caller didn’t reply. He or she must have wondered what awful event or disaster the call had interrupted.

‘Inspector?’ It was Cohen’s thick, phlegmy voice, which, although it came as no surprise to Cetin, did not fill him with joy either.

‘What is it, Cohen? What do you want?’

‘There’s been another murder, sir, in Balat. Just behind my Uncle Zav’s house actually, a—’

‘Oh no.’ Cetin could already hear the recriminations that Ardig would throw at him, the fierce sound of his cigary voice beating and raging against the white walls of his office.

‘Jewish?’

He could almost hear Cohen shrug in that distinctly Jewish way of his. ‘It’s Balat.’

‘Know who the victim is?’

‘It’s actually Uncle Zavi’s rabbi, sir. Rabbi isak, seventy eight years old, native Balat.’

Another old man! Younger than the last and a different type of Jew to Meyer - as if that mattered. Cetin looked morbidly into the telephone receiver and wondered where the murder of Rabbi isak would leave his arcane and convoluted theories about Meyer and Smits and the Gulcu family and old, old crimes. He didn’t know and for the time being he couldn’t even think about that. What he had to do now was sober up fast and get down there.

‘All right, Cohen,’ he said. ‘Get a car over here to pick me up and I’ll be with you.’

‘Haven’t you got your own—’

‘Cohen, I’ve been out half the night, I haven’t been to sleep yet and I’m drunk! Just get me a driver and a car—’

Cohen giggled, ikmen knew they all secretly sniggered about his love for the bottle, but to have it done openly like this enraged him. It wasn’t on and he snapped, ‘Just get the car laid on, Cohen, you disgusting animal!’

He heard the still giggling reply ‘Yes, sir’ as he replaced the receiver with a bang. He could feel the muscles in his face were very strained and taut and for a few moments he neither spoke nor moved. Through the alcohol-soaked haze in his head he tried to think. Of course this killing might not be connected with Meyer’s at all, but he feared that it was.

The victim was a rabbi! How the man had died he wouldn’t be able to tell until he got to the scene, but he had a bad feeling. It was like the first time, late, late at night. There were differences, of course; this time he was drunk and this time it was not Suleyman who had called him but Cohen.

For that and that alone he was grateful. If it had been Suleyman he would have felt bad. But Suleyman was safely, he hoped, tucked up in his bed at home and if Cetin had anything to do with it that was where he would stay. He had, somehow, to give Suleyman the day off, but then he knew his sergeant wouldn’t wear that. Suleyman, like Fatma, couldn’t believe. They’d both worked hard at being ‘modern’ people, they both had the kind of religious belief that refuses to admit even the possibility of other kinds of forces in the universe.

Blinkered. It wasn’t a nice thing to think about two people for whom he cared but they were. Fatma particularly. No evidence, however watertight, was good enough for her.

He got to his feet and retrieved his jacket from the back of the chair. ‘I’ve got to go out, Fatma, I’m—’

‘Yes, I know.’ She looked tired, resigned and frighteningly pregnant. ‘I try to understand, Cetin.’

‘Will you be all right if I leave you?’

‘I always have been before.’

He put his hand in his pocket to make sure he really had replaced his keys. His fingers found them immediately. So he was drunk? But he obviously wasn’t that drunk, which was a relief. He got legless so seldom it was sometimes difficult to remember how he was with it, the kind of things he was liable to do.

He put his hand down to Fatma, offering to help raise her to her feet. ‘You should get back to bed, darling.’

She pushed his hand away, but she did it gently and without malice. ‘No, I’ll stay here now, Cetin. It makes little difference anyway now. Bed, chair, they’re all the same - painful. The baby’s resting on my back this time and it’s like having a permanent slipped disc’ She looked up at him and managed a half-smile. He looked so pathetic in his dirty, rumpled suit, his face thin and ghastly with tiredness. ‘You need some time off, Cetin ikmen. You look older than your father lately.’

Cetin let a little laugh escape from the back of his throat and he took one of her hands in his. ‘Timtir will outlive us all, especially me. But I know what you’re saying and one way or another I’ll finish this case and then I’ll take some time off. A long time.’

‘You will?’ She gave him a look of such sweet tenderness that he bent rather unsteadily over her and kissed the top of her head.

‘I promise. It will all work out, you’ll see. The case will close, the baby will come. I might even take you out, who knows?’

Through her tears she laughed. ‘I’d like to see that!’

He patted her hand before he let it go and walked towards the door. ‘I’d better wait downstairs. If any of my men come up here they’ll wake the whole block.’

‘All right.’ She raised one swollen hand up and gave him a tired little wave. ‘I love you.’

He felt the tears start in his own eyes and turned his head away from her. Silly, sentimental old fool! ‘I love you too, Fatma,’ he murmured as he disappeared into the hall. ‘I just wish I had the time to show you a bit more often, that’s all.’

The body wasn’t that unpleasant to look at, but Cohen tried to avoid it if he possibly could. Dr Sarkissian reckoned that death had probably been caused by a single blow to the head. Certainly there was no evidence of the terrible mutilation that had, apparently, been present on Meyer’s body. But it still wasn’t nice. The thin blood of old age was still dripping from the gaping wound in the Rabbi’s head and Dr Sarkissian had said as soon as he touched it that the flesh was still warm. Cohen turned away from the corpse and took two very large gulps of air. Who the hell would want to beat up a poor defenceless old rabbi, and why? It wasn’t often that he thought about being Jewish.

For most of the time Cohen saw himself as no different to the rest of his colleagues. But not this time. Whereas all the rest of the lads could quite happily stand around chatting and smoking while the doctor went about his grim task, Cohen couldn’t. Mercifully he’d never seen Meyer’s body, he’d been busy that night interviewing neighbours and had felt fine. But Rabbi isak was something different; he was his, he had found him.

That it had happened by accident was creepy too. He wasn’t even supposed to have been in that alleyway anyway.

But he’d been thirsty, desperate for a glass of tea, a little beer, anything. Uncle Zavi, like a lot of old people, rarely slept and besides he’d just wanted to talk to someone.

He

remembered the dull thudding sound as his foot met

dead flesh, the horrible moment when he shone his torch down into a face that was not ghastly but surprised. At first he hadn’t even thought he was dead and had even asked him to get up, get sober and get home. Until, that is, he’d noticed the blood seeping out of the back of his head.

Probably wrongly he hadn’t tried to revive him, not that that would have done much good. But it might have made him feel better. In retrospect there was no difference between administering first aid to a rabbi than to anyone else. Cohen hadn’t been able to touch him though, it had seemed wrong, sacrilegious somehow. He regretted that now, he also regretted blurting out about what he had found to Uncle Zavi. The poor old soul had nearly died himself when he told him and there hadn’t even been so much as a drop of brandy in the house to help him over the shock. People like Zavi shouldn’t have to deal with such things at their age.

‘All right, Cohen?’ ikmen was directly in front of him and was looking, for him, strangely concerned. ‘

Cohen tried to laugh. It was expected of him: sharp, randy little Cohen who doesn’t give a shit. But he failed.

‘Oh, Inspector, you’re …’

His voice trailed off, he didn’t know where; it left him high and dry, just staring at ikmen like a fool.

ikmen put his hand on Cohen’s shoulder and eyed him carefully. ‘You’re in shock, lad. Sit down.’

Cohen knew that he was and, uncharacteristically, sat down without protest.

ikmen moved towards a crowd of late-night, slovenly looking constables who parted to allow him through and for the first time he saw the body. It lay on the ground horizontally across the narrow alleyway and from even quite close it looked remarkably like a bundle of old clothes. But there was a face there, an old and leathery one, and the eyes were still open, just like Meyer’s had been. But the expression in these eyes was different. There was no horror, there wasn’t even any shock, there was surprise. The sort of pre-delight expression one sees on the faces of children when they have been given their birthday presents but haven’t yet unwrapped them. Behind the head, apparently pulling at something ikmen preferred not to think about, was Arto, his plump features illuminated by the thin light from a police arc lamp.

‘Ah, Inspector, good.’

‘Morning, Arto.’ ikmen took out his cigarettes and lighter and started working. His head was beginning to clear rapidly now, he was just entering the jumpy alert phase that often follows intense alcohol consumption and lack of sleep. ‘What have we got?’

Arto finished whatever it was he had been doing and stood up. ‘What we have is a very heavy blow, just one I think, inflicted by this piece of metal.’ He pointed to a strange-shaped, shiny lump near his feet. ‘It cracked the skull causing the massive haemorrhage which killed him.

Death would have occurred more or less instantaneously.’

ikmen lit his cigarette and puffed on it determinedly.

‘Time?’

‘An hour, maybe two hours ago. Some of the men are

out doing house-to-house already.’

ikmen crouched down and peered closely at the body.

The small hands were curled inwards in front of it like cats’

paws. There was something so innocent and touching about this sight that for a moment ikmen felt quite overwhelmed by sadness. ‘He was a rabbi, wasn’t he?’

Arto took off his surgical gloves and wiped his sweaty hands on a towel. ‘Yes. Rabbi isak. According to Mr Cohen who lives over the back there he was very popular around here.’

‘And now he’s dead.’ ikmen stood up again and gazed around him at the pathetic collection of rude dwellings that passed for houses in this quarter. ‘Where’s forensic?’

‘On their way, as is the van from the morgue.’

‘Good.’ ikmen sighed deeply. He knew that it was self indulgent but he couldn’t help thinking that he might have done more. And yet this was different. Whoever had killed Meyer had planned and gone prepared for what had to be done. But the Rabbi’s murder was another matter. He looked at the wide selection of stones, pieces of wood and lumps of metal that littered the alleyway, all potential murder weapons. The twisted, bloodstained hunk that sat at Arto’s feet had been chosen at random. An impulsive if crazed act that had caused instantaneous death. ‘Has the body been mutilated in any way?’ He had to check.

‘Not as far as I can see yet. I would think it unlikely.

Out in the open, albeit in a quiet place like this, the risk of discovery usually puts them off even if the desire to do so is strong.’

ikmen raised his chin upwards in agreement.

‘Sir! Inspector ikmen!’ The voice was young and he remembered vaguely hearing it somewhere before, although he

couldn’t quite place it. ikmen turned and saw the young, soft face of Avci directly behind him. He was with someone, a very short, heavily bearded man, the whites of whose eyes were scarred and cracked by heavy red veins, ikmen raised one eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

‘Sir.’ Avci was breathless with excitement; he’d found something, ikmen could just remember being like that once.

‘This man, Mr, er …’

The man waved one unwashed hand across Avci’s face

and grinned. The expression made him look like some sort of medieval demonic spirit, ikmen didn’t need the evidence of the reeking smell of whisky that came from his mouth to realise that he was very drunk. ‘Not Mr,’

he said, ‘just Nat. Everyone, all misters, they call me Nat.’

‘Ah well,’ said ikmen. ‘Mr, er, Nat, you, er …’

Avci could contain himself no longer. ‘Mr Nat saw a stranger drinking in his bar, which is just around the corner, earlier this evening. The man was a foreigner, couldn’t speak Ladino, and he was very drunk.’

‘He was shout, make some trouble, you know.’ Nat

swayed slightly and smiled stupidly. ‘Rosa throw him out, too drunk.’

It did cross ikmen’s mind to ask why Rosa, whoever she was, hadn’t thrown Mr Nat out also, but he decided not to. ‘What did he look like, this man?’

‘Oh!’ Nat’s torso lurched backwards a little from his legs and he hiccuped loudly. ‘Very big, tall. Hair was white, you know, like American or German, I don’t know. Too much drink, start to cry, make lot of noise.’

It was August and the city was full of tourists from all over the world, but ikmen couldn’t help wondering. A tall, fair, foreign man in the right place at the wrong time? ‘When was this?’