Dance with Death (35 page)

As Fatma bustled around him making tea, shouting at her youngest son, Kemal, and cooing over Hulya’s baby, Timur, Süleyman found himself thinking about the character he knew as the peeper. Mürsel had implied that this person had worked or rather served abroad at some time. He wondered where. Spies, of course, went everywhere, even to friendly countries where he imagined their presence was both known of and tolerated. But Mürsel had implied that the place the peeper had been sent to had been dangerous; a place of ‘tension’ was the way he had expressed it. Where had this man been? To one of the wilder former Soviet Republics? Or maybe to Afghanistan or even Iraq . . .

‘Arto Sarkissian has told me the snow has got even worse out there now,’ Fatma said as she set a glass of tea and an ashtray down beside her guest.

‘Eh?’

‘In Cappadocia.’ She sat down opposite him with a tired sigh. ‘That Çetin in that thin suit of his survived at all out in such a terrible landscape is a miracle for which we must thank Allah.’

Süleyman shrugged his agreement. ‘Do you know when he’ll be getting home?’

‘No. Arto says it is like January or February out there. So bad.’ She shook her head and then continued, ‘And of course Çetin is meddling.’

Süleyman smiled.

‘They tried to kill him, those country people!’ Fatma said. ‘Arto says it is very exciting, that Çetin is solving a mystery that is decades old. But I am still angry with him, Mehmet.’

He knew that she didn’t have a clue about Alison and so it couldn’t be that. ‘Why?’

‘For being manipulated by that Menşure Tokatlı. That woman has never needed help with anything related to business in her life and yet what do I get? Some rubbish about her not being able to cope. Why he didn’t just come out and say that Menşure wanted him to try to solve some old mystery in the village, I don’t know. What am I, a monster that he doesn’t tell me these things?’

As Fatma turned away to shake her head in despair, Mehmet and Hulya shared a smile. No, Fatma wasn’t a monster, but they both knew that she didn’t like him leaving the city no matter what the reason.

‘And as usual my husband has involved others in his schemes, too,’ Fatma continued. ‘I don’t yet know how, but in some way Arto Sarkissian was in Muratpaşa and ended up searching for Çetin. Then there was his cousin Atom from Germany.’ She looked over at Hulya who was now laughing. ‘You may snigger but it isn’t very funny for innocent people who get caught up in your father’s investigations.’

‘But it sounds as if Çetin is doing a good job out there in Cappadocia,’ Süleyman said.

‘Well . . .’

‘The police in a place like that have few resources,’ he continued. ‘They need help from those of us in the cities sometimes.’

‘Oh, but the people out in such places just feud and fight all the time!’ Fatma said. ‘I read the papers. If I were policing such places I’d give up, let them do what they want to each other! But Çetin . . .’

‘As an outsider Çetin can make clear-headed, unbiased judgements . . .’

‘Even when those barbarians try to kill him?’ She was, as usual, hiding her concern and her affection for her husband very badly.

‘Of course,’ Süleyman responded. ‘You know how he is. He cares.’

‘I don’t know why,’ Fatma said. ‘Country people. What are they to do with us, eh? The papers are saying that it is people from the country who blew up the synagogues, who nearly killed Berekiah.’

Süleyman looked across at Hulya again. The girl very quickly turned her face away.

‘They say, these country people, that they are fighting for Islam when they do these things. But I am a Muslim, I love the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon Him, and I know He would condemn such slaughter . . .’

‘Mum!’

Now that she had turned back again, Süleyman could see that Hulya’s eyes were full of tears.

But rather than go to comfort her daughter, Fatma, her own eyes wet around the edges, said to Süleyman, ‘Berekiah will recover, but he won’t be able to do his own job again. His right hand is useless. The doctors haven’t told his parents yet, but Hulya has been told, haven’t you, Hulya?’

The girl just nodded her reply.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Süleyman said. The fact that he had, to some extent, helped to rescue Berekiah from his shattered apartment did not now, he felt, make up for the tiny amount of time he had spent with the young man since. If poor Berekiah wasn’t to be a goldsmith any more, what was he going to do? Süleyman knew he had spent far too much time in pursuit of his own mystery, that which surrounded the peeper, to give what was a tragedy for the İkmen and Cohen families too much thought.

‘Yes, well, I won’t be happy until Çetin is home now as I think you will appreciate, Mehmet,’ Fatma said. ‘I want him back here where I can keep my eyes on him. What kind of a world exists outside this city, eh? What sort of a place is that?’

‘I threw Sergeant Lavell’s gun into the Kızılırmak River the day after I killed Aysu Alkaya,’ Nalan Senar told İkmen. ‘I made a special trip to Avanos to do just that.’

It was unfortunately only too easy to see how the local police and jandarma had missed a Colt 45 in the Kızılırmak all those years ago. Avanos was not Muratpaşa, the main focus of their search, and so they probably hadn’t even bothered with it. The Colt 45, if it still existed at all, was probably now in the hands of some elderly shepherd who had come across it on one of his lonely journeys with his flock.

‘So you recognised Miss Lavell’s father from that picture,’ İkmen said to Turgut Senar.

‘It was a shock,’ the man replied as he looked very quickly over at his mother. ‘He was a nice man, Sergeant Lavell.’

İkmen beckoned Dolores Lavell over to him and said, ‘Turgut has just told me he knew your father, Miss Lavell.’

‘So Kemalettin was telling the truth.’ She walked across to İkmen whilst looking at Turgut Senar.

‘I was a child,’ Turgut explained in English. ‘My father was never home. Sergeant Lavell was very kind, he taught me to shoot.’

‘And he left you a gun to practise with,’ İkmen said, also in English.

‘Yes.’

‘That doesn’t explain why you then suddenly wanted to get close to Sergeant Lavell’s daughter . . .’

‘No, no,’ Turgut Senar put his head down and then said in Turkish, ‘I just did, it just happened.’

And maybe it had. Maybe he had just wanted to get close to someone who was related to a man he had respected. Such hero worship could explain why Turgut had been so disgusted at Kemalettin when he had attempted to masturbate in front of Dolores. But from the way that Nalan was looking at her son, with almost a visible threat in her eyes, İkmen also knew that he could be wrong about that. There could be something else at play there, too, even though he didn’t know or understand what that might be. But then a woman who would knowingly kill her own grandchild had to be, by her very twisted nature, entirely enigmatic.

İkmen settled Dolores Lavell next to him and then turned to Nalan Senar once again. ‘So Kemalettin is completely innocent?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he know anything about your plan to kill me?’

‘I didn’t plan to kill you, Inspector! Turgut didn’t plan to kill you either!’

‘Oh, so hitting me over the head several times and then leaving me to freeze to death doesn’t constitute a threat to my life?’ İkmen asked with a cynical smile on his face. ‘Come on, Nalan Hanım!’

‘He wanted you dead!’ the woman said as she pointed one spiteful finger at Inspector Erten. ‘And him,’ she added as she swung round and nodded her head at Baha Ermis. ‘But I said no, you can’t kill someone during Ramazan!’

İkmen looked towards the back of the room at where Arto, Atom and Tom were sitting and said, in English, ‘The countryside – the quiet, the serenity, the nature, the spite! Thank whatever God you favour for İstanbul.’

The two Armenians and the Englishman smiled. But just before İkmen spoke again he was distracted by a loud, snapping sound which turned out to be the flat of Nazlı Hanım’s hand against Baha Ermis’s face.

‘So you did steal that corpse!’ she screamed. ‘Liar! And with the Senars!’

‘I didn’t know what I know now,’ Ermis sobbed. ‘I did it to once and for all put Ziya Bey’s reputation beyond all harm.’

‘Liar! You did it for the money!’ Nalan Senar sneered at him and then, turning to her rival, Nazlı Kahraman, she said, ‘If you didn’t pay your people in goat dung they would be loyal!’

‘I saw Turgut Senar drag you out of that chimney on the edge of the village, after he had hit you,’ Baha Ermis said to İkmen. ‘You interrupted him as he was getting the corpse. Then I came along. It’s true the Senars have money, I don’t. He and I, we did a deal.’

‘Which all fell apart when amazingly I survived,’ İkmen said and then, looking across at Ferdinand Mueller, he added, ‘What was it you said when you saw Mr Mueller’s balloon, Mr Senar? Kismet. And you were not talking about my cousin’s cat. You knew it was all over then, inevitable, your fate.’

‘He was driving far too close to where we’d left you!’ Ermis said as he looked with contempt at Turgut Senar. ‘I told him and he tried to kill me – in front of the foreigners.’

‘My mother and I are the only reason you are alive at all,’ Turgut Senar said to İkmen. ‘Ermis and your scruffy friend from Nevşehir wanted you dead!’

İkmen turned to Inspector Erten and said, ‘Is this true?’

For a moment it seemed as if the Nevşehir man would attempt to dissemble but instead he just sighed and said, ‘Yes.’ And then rather than look away he gazed into İkmen’s eyes and spoke again. ‘Nalan Senar offered me money to take Aysu Alkaya’s body and then help her and her son to destroy it. I went to see her just after you came to the mortuary. I was going to question her but she saw a great need in me. She offered me such a vast amount of money . . .’

‘So that was the Senars’ dog I heard barking in the background when I phoned to tell you about Dr Sarkissian,’ İkmen said. ‘But what about your job, man, your profession?’

‘What about it? What’s it done for me? I didn’t want or plan to kill you, Inspector, but when you threatened to come between me and money I’ve never had, well . . . I knew we needed to kill you and destroy your body. You’d taught me that much about DNA testing. But the Senars wouldn’t have it. Too religious, too superstitious, too rural. They stopped Ermis and myself doing what should have been done. I knew the cold would not necessarily kill you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And it didn’t and my poor man’s shoes gave me away. As I know you have observed before, Inspector, I have very bad shoes. These are, however, only a pale reflection of my life. I have never married, I – you know I have a degree from Erciyes University – have never been able to afford to do so. My father was sick for most of his life, someone had to pay for his treatment. I am an educated man and yet I eat plain pilav most days, I smoke the cheapest brand of cigarettes. I have nothing! I am fifty years old and I live with my mother and my maiden sister in a three-roomed flat in Avanos . . .’

‘You and fifty per cent of rural Anatolia, yes,’ İkmen responded sharply. ‘If police work in Nevşehir was not glamorous, or lucrative enough for you, why didn’t you move to İstanbul or Ankara? Millions of people do that. They send money home.’

‘My mother . . .’

‘I looked after my father until he was so old he didn’t even know what his name was!’ İkmen cut in savagely and then bearing down upon his rural counterpart he said, ‘I have nine children, Inspector Erten, a wife, a grandchild, a son-in-law who is currently unable to work, and a cat. I work both for and in spite of all that. The people in my life are what keep me going. İstanbul is a tough place.’

‘Yes, but you get paid more money . . .’

‘Because everything is much more expensive in İstanbul!’ İkmen said. ‘I’m sorry for you, Erten, in a way, but my life is no party either, you know. I can’t afford a new car or new furniture, my wife has worn the same winter coat for the last five years and, as you can see, I am not exactly an advertisement for Armani myself.’ And then suddenly and savagely, he grabbed Erten by the throat. ‘But I don’t throw a man into the snow to get my hands on some extra money! I don’t burn a dead body and the evidence it might reveal!’

‘All right, Çetin.’ He looked up into the face of Altay Salman who already had one hand on İkmen’s shoulder.

‘Arrest him,’ İkmen said as he pointed at the Nevşehir policeman.

‘Yes.’

‘And them,’ he said as he tipped his head in the direction of Turgut and Nalan Senar and Baha Ermis.

‘But my son didn’t kill anyone,’ Nalan Senar said as she watched one of Altay Senar’s recruits walk over to her and put his hand upon her arm.

‘You, Turgut, Baha and this creature here,’ İkmen said as he looked with contempt at Inspector Erten, ‘tried to kill me. You will all, as far as I’m concerned, face the full force of the law.’

And then İkmen sat down in his seat again, his face grey with strain, and wept. Dolores Lavell, who was closest to him, put one of her arms round his shoulder until Arto Sarkissian lumbered over to comfort his friend.

‘All of this and I didn’t even find Alison,’ he sobbed in English to the Armenian.

‘Alison?’

‘I had an aunt Alison once,’ Tom Chambers said as he came up behind the policeman and the doctor. ‘She died before I was born. She came to Cappadocia, you know.’

Menşure Tokatlı pulled the curtains across her living-room windows, shuddering at the sight of the thick snow outside as she did so. If it went on like this for much longer Çetin, Arto and Atom could be stranded in the village for weeks.

‘God, this is amazing!’ Tom Chambers said as he finished his tea and then placed the empty glass down on to the coffee table in front of the fire. ‘Mum’s always wanted to know who it was Auntie Alison fell in love with over here.’

‘I didn’t know she loved me myself until recently,’ İkmen replied with a smile at the memory of his old British love on his lips.