Dance with Death (29 page)

Captain Salman had decided to extend the search for İkmen into the valleys at the opposite end of the village up towards the troglodyte town of Ürgüp.

‘If the inspector has been taken as opposed to his becoming unwell or having an accident, any of the valleys hereabouts are fair game,’ he said to the assembled cadets, watching as he spoke, Dr Sarkissian allowing himself to be eased up on to a horse for the second day running. ‘The police from Nevşehir are searching house to house here in Muratpaşa,’ he continued with a nod towards a violently shivering Erten. ‘The jandarma are touring the local towns and villages, almost every able man in Muratpaşa is searching and Turgut Senar is out with his jeep once again. We will ride out in the valleys that lead to Ürgüp and beyond – if necessary.’

Horses already slick with sweat from early morning gallops, stamped against the cold snow-covered ground as their riders mounted up for another day amongst the Fairy Chimneys. They had gathered in front of the bus station, which, though at the very heart of the village, was also very convenient for entrance to the tiny, narrow path that gave access to the Ürgüp valleys. As they began to move off, Altay Salman made sure that he was level with Arto Sarkissian who, he now saw, was wincing with every movement of his mount, the ancient Yıldırım.

‘What’s your cousin going to do while we’re out?’ the captain asked, knowing from the previous day that to ask the Armenian about riding, his horse or his level of comfort only aroused his fury.

‘Atom got into conversation with that young Englishman, Mr Chambers, yesterday,’ Arto said through just slightly gritted teeth. ‘Got on well, apparently. He and Mr Chambers have gone out with that guide, Senar, again. That lovely Australian lady, however, Rachelle, has some business today.’

The Australian had, apparently, shared more than a few glasses of wine with the doctor the previous evening and, according to a somewhat disapproving Menşure Tokatlı, got along rather well with him. Her ‘business’ today probably included some sleeping off of the night before.

But then Turgut Senar’s jeep would be quite heavily filled without Miss Jones. As well as Tom Chambers and Atom Boghosian, he was also taking someone who was, to all intents, his enemy – Baha Ermis. How that had come about he couldn’t imagine.

Just before the riders turned into the pathway leading out of the village, Ferdinand Mueller came running across from his Land Rover and trailer which were parked outside his business. Menşure Tokatlı was standing next to the vehicle carrying the cat, Kismet, in her arms.

‘Captain!’ the German called out as he approached. ‘Can I speak to you?’

Altay Salman held one hand aloft to bring his men to a halt and then looked down at the German with a questioning expression on his face. ‘Mr Mueller?’

‘Ingrid and I are going to take a balloon up,’ he said, shrugging as he did so. ‘I know the weather isn’t ideal . . .’

‘It’s still snowing,’ Altay said with a frown. ‘Not so much now, but . . .’

‘Menşure Hanım was knocking on our door at four this morning,’ the German continued. ‘She’s frantic about her cousin. She’s convinced that a balloon will prove a much better method of finding him and she is probably right. I said no, but my wife, on the other hand, was of a different mind.’

Ferdinand Mueller’s Swedish wife, Ingrid, was both a very experienced balloon pilot and a very determined woman.

‘So you’re going up?’

‘Yes. I’m launching from Ürgüp.’

‘Not with Menşure Hanım or the cat, I trust,’ Captain Salman said as he nodded his head towards the woman and her feline.

‘No.’

‘Well, Mr Mueller, I have to trust you know what you’re doing.’

The German smiled. ‘I do and I know it isn’t strictly OK. But I’ll do it anyway.’

‘I’ve always found it hard to say no to Menşure Tokatlı,’ Arto Sarkissian put in miserably. ‘She’s a formidable woman and as for that animal of hers . . .’

The captain and the balloon pilot made sure that they could contact each other with ease and then Ferdinand Mueller went back to his Land Rover. As the vehicle with the balloon basket in tow made off for the flatlands north of Ürgüp, the horsemen watched Menşure Tokatlı march, in a very satisfied fashion, back to her vehicle and then drive off to her hotel.

As the mounted party entered the narrow pathway out of the village, Altay Salman turned round in his saddle and spoke to Arto Sarkissian. ‘With a balloon up, we stand much more of a chance today,’ he said in as reassuring a way as he could. ‘The Muellers are excellent pilots.’

And yet just the mere fact that he said what he did filled the doctor with dread. Balloons did not usually go up in the snow, not even in the kind of faint powdering they were experiencing now. The Cappadocian terrain, both at ground level and above, could be challenging at the best of times, but in the snow it was that much worse. Arto Sarkissian shifted his large behind uncomfortably in the saddle and allowed Yıldırım to follow Altay Salman’s magnificent horse, Süleyman.

‘I don’t know why Abdullah can’t come home now! Your lot, the police, they say no!’

Mehmet Süleyman watched in some admiration as Selcuk Aydın talked to him, gave out and received keys from his guests and berated what appeared to be one of Abdullah’s older brothers.

‘So the police say that Abdullah must go to this convalescent hospital in . . .’

‘Kaş, Kalkan – I don’t know! My wife knows.’ And then turning to his son he said, ‘Are you going to study or are you just going to sit there doing nothing?’

The young man, who was behind the reception counter with his father, ignored a key in the outstretched hand of a Canadian woman and said, ‘It’s physics. I don’t like physics.’

‘Please . . .’ the woman said.

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Selcuk Aydın replied in English as he took the key from the woman. Then glaring at his son, he shouted in Turkish, ‘I don’t care whether or not you like physics . . .’

‘Mr Aydın!’

Selcuk Aydın gave out one key and took in two while his son slowly moved out from behind the desk and walked towards the stairs. The lobby of the Emperor Justinian Pansiyon was typical of such establishments in the lee of the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofya. Dark and labyrinthine in layout, it served as a repository for keys and valuables, an office, and as a meeting place for those guests who liked to sit about, watch television and drink endless glasses of tea. It was not somewhere Süleyman had been since that very first day, the day when Abdullah Aydın was attacked. It wasn’t somewhere he was supposed to be now. Other officers, however, had been to see Abdullah’s family. Other officers had ‘recommended’ this convalescent hospital the boy was apparently going to be moved to the following day.

‘So you would prefer to have your son at home, Mr Aydın?’ Süleyman continued.

‘He’s made a good recovery,’ Selcuk Aydın said. ‘That doctor says so.’

‘Dr Arkın?’

‘Yes. A woman. Good though.’ He cleared his throat noisily. ‘He’s moving around now, is Abdullah. Slowly, but . . . There would be nothing to stop him answering the telephone here if you ask me. But then your colleagues will disagree.’

‘What was the name of the officer who spoke to you?’ Süleyman asked. ‘Who told you about the convalescent hospital?’

Selcuk Aydın thought for a few moments before he said, ‘Doğan. Inspector Doğan.’

Süleyman had never heard of such a person, although for the moment he kept that to himself. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know him, about thirty, short . . .’

‘More like forty-five!’ Aydın retorted as he typed something into his computer system underneath the reception desk. ‘Tall, like you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Süleyman said as he watched the pansiyon owner type yet more information into his computer. ‘That Doğan.’

‘And his boss, of course, but that was earlier on when he came up here. Just after my son woke up in hospital.’

Süleyman moved closer to the desk which was now, mercifully, free of clamouring tourists. ‘His boss?’

‘Big fat man,’ Selcuk Aydın said as he quickly looked up at Süleyman. ‘Commissioner.’

‘Commissioner Ardıç?’

‘That’s it,’ Selcuk Aydın said with a smile. ‘Commissioner Ardıç. It was him that told me you weren’t going to be working on Abdullah’s case any more. It was Ardıç who put me on to that Doğan fellow. He said he was going to be doing whatever needed to be done from now on.’

This was the first that Süleyman had heard of his demotion from the case and the first, too, that he had heard of this mythical Inspector Doğan. That all of this strange and, as yet, incomprehensible activity around Abdullah Aydın had come in the wake of the boy claiming to have seen the peeper’s face gave the policeman the shivers. If Abdullah had seen the peeper, then why wasn’t Süleyman himself allowed to have that information? He was being purposefully prevented from visiting the boy in the hospital. Could it be that this Inspector Doğan and Ardıç were dealing with this on their own for some reason? Why he should now be excluded from an investigation he had been pursuing since the first attack had happened, he couldn’t imagine. All he knew was that in order to make any sense at all, Ardıç’s actions had to be connected to what Abdullah Aydın, the peeper’s only witness, as far as Süleyman knew, had seen on the night of his ordeal. The peeper’s face was what had to be exercising the commissioner and his unknown colleague, Inspector Doğan. Did one or either of them know this face Abdullah possessed in the dark recesses of his mind? Or was it a face everyone would recognise? The face of someone famous or powerful? After all, if the peeper really was ‘someone’ then it was logical to assume that certain people would not want that fact to be connected with those crimes.

But Ardıç? Involved in corrupting evidence? Süleyman couldn’t in all honesty see that, but as he walked away from the pansiyon towards the opulence of the Four Seasons Hotel he knew that he couldn’t rule out that possibility either. There was, however, a somewhat dangerous way in which he could test his various theories.

For a moment he thought about putting his idea to İzzet Melik and perhaps enlisting his aid into the bargain. The İzmir man was currently interviewing that thug, Aslan Yılmaz, the one that Ayşe Farsakoğlu had identified as a possible peeper back at the station. It was just a bluff, of course. Yılmaz was far too stupid to be anything as clever as the peeper. But then Süleyman thought better of dragging Melik in any deeper than he already was and just continued on back to his office in silence.

The Englishman and the German Armenian didn’t have a clue about what was happening between their fellows. Tom Chambers had gathered, mainly because Rachelle Jones had told him the previous evening, that their driver Turgut Senar and their new passenger Baha Ermis were long-time enemies. But, though quiet, they seemed to be managing to be together with some level of equanimity.

As they passed from the reasonably flat roads of the village and out into the countryside, Turgut Senar broke his silence and said in English, ‘This valley is called the Valley of the Birds. It is because there are many bird houses up in the rock faces here.’

Both Tom and Atom looked up at the sheer white rock faces that rose up on either side of their vehicle. At intervals, brightly decorated dovecotes or pigeon houses had been roughly cut out of the tufa.

‘Captain Salman and his horsemen are in the valley to our right,’ Turgut continued. ‘That is the Valley of the Trees, although not everyone knows that it has a name. It is not famous.’

Baha Ermis, who Tom reckoned was in his thirties and rather unkempt for one who had introduced himself as an estate manager, said something to the guide who replied with a shrug. Rather than satisfy the younger man, this soundless response just seemed to suddenly and spectacularly infuriate him. Shouting erupted in the front of the jeep with both men attempting to raise their voices as high as they could as well as waving their hands aggressively at each other.

‘I don’t like the way this is going,’ Tom said to Atom as their vehicle swerved wildly to the left. He didn’t trust Turgut Senar as it was. The guide had, Tom thought, been rather more aggressive in his questioning of him about the ‘new’ fresco out at the Valley of the Saints than was comfortable.

‘Put your hands on the wheel!’ Atom shouted at Turgut Senar. Unfortunately in his panic he spoke in German, which was not a language anyone else in the jeep could understand.

‘Mr Senar,’ Tom began, ‘would you . . .’

‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ Baha Ermis said this in English, shaking Turgut Senar’s shoulders as he did so.

The guide responded with a furious welter of Turkish, but he nevertheless did as Ermis had requested and stopped the jeep immediately.

After a few moments of what was, for everyone concerned, tense silence, Tom Chambers said, ‘What on earth is wrong with you guys?’

Slowly, both the Turks turned round to face him. ‘You want to know what is wrong, Mr Chambers?’ Turgut Senar asked.

But before Tom could even think about replying, Baha Ermis was screaming again, this time with his face so close it was almost touching that of Turgut Senar.

‘For God’s sake!’ the Englishman said as he looked, in despair, at his German-Armenian companion.

Then the jeep rocked as the two men in the front got out to continue their argument in the cold morning air. As their passengers looked on helplessly, Turgut Senar and Baha Ermis went from shouting at each other to pushing and making obscene gestures. Something that had been said, or perhaps left unsaid, had caused this sudden and now rather frightening escalation.

‘Quickly goes off around here, doesn’t it?’ Tom said to Atom as they watched the two Turks square up for a fight.

Standing up, although far more conducive to staying awake than sitting down, hadn’t been an option for İkmen for some time. Inside the chimney it was probably possible, but outside in the snow it was just beyond him. To have any chance of being rescued he had to be visible and yet with the snow coming down again, though lightly, he knew that it wouldn’t be long before his rigid and battered body was indistinguishable from the rock he was sitting on. The possibility of death was, he realised, upon him. But just like every other time mortality had reared its head at İkmen in the past, he pointedly chose to ignore it. Although apart from his shivering he was completely unmoving now, his brain was working overtime on as many things as it could manage. Things which puzzled him about Muratpaşa and its inhabitants.