Deadly Web (3 page)

Before the Christian Byzantines built Yoros Castle, the site on which it now stands was a pagan shrine dedicated to Zeus. The Ancient Greek sailors who wished to pass safely through the straits would first make sacrifice here, pouring innocent blood into the earth for their god to take and use for his nourishment. That the ‘new’ religion of Christianity had appropriated this site was nothing unusual. Up-coming faiths often did this to old sites, stamping down hard on what had gone before, neutralising what had been ‘evil’ and making it their own. Up in the city, Aya Sofya, once a church constructed from the ruins of pagan temples, then a mosque, now a museum, was a perfect example. All this the girl with the swimming head had learned and understood.

Just below the castle, in a small clearing she had been taken to before, the girl stopped and sat down. Though still taut with excitement, she was beginning to feel hungry. But now was too late and, besides, there was too much to think about and do in the intervening time. Now she knew he had to be preparing to come to her. When the sun set he would arrive. She took her clothes off and piled them neatly in front of a tree. Then she sat down, legs crossed, and removed her crystal from her bag. She thought how beautiful it was as she stared into its transparent depths.

‘People commit suicide every day,’ Çiçek İkmen said as she put her cigarette out in a small, white ashtray.

Together with Mehmet Süleyman, she had moved from the main function room of the hotel and into the bar. Sitting at a distant table over by the hotel’s front windows, they had both decided to stay out of the orbit of the huge mirror that hung like a vague threat over the old, darkwood bar.

‘But then you, just like my father, must know that,’ Çiçek continued as, in unconscious mimicry of Çetin İkmen, she proceeded to chain-smoke. ‘Perhaps it was the boy’s youth that so affected you.’

Mehmet leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Maybe.’

‘Or maybe the method . . .’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’ He too took a cigarette from his packet and lit up.

‘OK.’ She crossed one slim leg over the other and settled back to look at the ornate and archaic décor.

He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Besides, although he knew she was aware that Zelfa had left him, he didn’t know whether Çiçek knew why. It was almost certain she didn’t know the whole story. She was so normal with him. People weren’t generally this casual when talking to those living under possible sentence of death. And HIV, AIDS – it wasn’t nice, not a comfortable death. But then two handfuls of the antidepressants he’d been prescribed plus half a bottle of rakı would fix it even before it began. Even taking the route the boy had taken . . . No, that was far too upsetting, too messy, too much trouble for all of those left behind. It was, however, compelling, strangely attractive and just at this moment he wanted it with all of his soul. But he couldn’t tell her that. Now smiling as her sister the bride entered the bar with their father, Çiçek was so obviously pleased that the young girl had got what she wanted. Tales of death were not appropriate here. He reined them in and forced a smile.

‘My sister looks dazzling, don’t you think?’ Çiçek said as she raised her champagne glass up to her lips.

‘You belong to an attractive family,’ Mehmet replied.

‘With one exception,’ Çiçek joked as she flashed her eyes briefly in the direction of her father.

Mehmet laughed. Small, thin and rumpled İkmen might be but, as he reminded the man’s daughter, her father had such charm and charisma that looks were largely irrelevant in his case.

‘Well, I suppose that my mum must agree with you,’ Çiçek said just after she drained her champagne flute. ‘She’s been with him for ever.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hey, you know Dad’s engaged a gypsy fortune-teller out on the terrace? He knows her; she’s supposed to be really good,’ Çiçek said excitedly. ‘Do you fancy having your cards read?’

Süleyman grinned. İkmen and his soothsayers, spiritualists and other assorted misfits! ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not for me. But you go.’

‘OK.’ She got up and left.

When she’d gone, just briefly Mehmet caught İkmen’s eye and watched as the older man’s features broke into a smile. He is, Mehmet thought, in a sense holding me close. He knows what I think and what my intentions could be. As the most successful and prolific homicide detective in the city he has a legal duty to protect me. And he is the son of a witch. And he loves me, I know, like a son. If I lay hands upon myself, he will stop me.

The sudden touch of a hand on his shoulder made him jump. İkmen, suddenly materialised at his side, took his face between his hands and kissed him hard on both cheeks.

The sunset call to prayer brought him just as he’d said. Wordlessly, from behind, he took her naked arms in his hands and entered her. It hurt. Terror briefly took over from desire and she just managed to stifle a scream. Big, hard and cold – as she knew it would be – slowly at first it moved inside her, agitating the pain. But then as the rhythm began to increase a curious thing happened – a sort of anaesthetic effect took hold, an absence of sensation that then suddenly blossomed into something she had never experienced before. A feeling somewhere between pleasure and pain, a glorious tightening of the senses. She gasped. Long, elegant hands reached around to pull and tease at her nipples and the girl let out a small, breathy scream.

Her body now moving in time to his, she took her hands away from the earth and kneeled up, her eyes closed. She’d been told about this moment, the one that was approaching with such ecstatic rapidity. She heard her chest wheeze as her body attempted to deal with the increased need for oxygen. He spoke now, possibly in Hebrew, and she, in response, began to gasp. The experience took him to another level, one that was so wonderful and yet at the same time so frightening for her that she screamed.

Let it finish, let it last for ever, she thought as the full force of orgasm broke across her.

And then with him still hard inside her, others, their faces hooded, came and touched her body too. Sharing their ceremony, his and hers. She didn’t see the knife because her eyes were closed. But she felt it, plunging into her heart as great flashes of white lightning flew all around the clearing like a display of fireworks at a wedding.

C
HAPTER
2

In spite of his father’s protestations to the contrary, Nurdoğan wasn’t convinced that he was right.

‘She must have gone to a club; she’s probably at Sırma’s,’ his father said as he took himself and his hangover out to his car.

But Nurdoğan knew that Gülay hadn’t seen Sırma for months. She hadn’t seen any of her old friends for quite a long time. He walked up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom.

‘Gülay’s bed hasn’t been slept in,’ he said to the red-haired woman lying on the bed eating grapes and smoking a cigarette. Her considerable make-up was still, he noticed, plastered to her face from the night before.

‘She’s staying over with Sırma,’ his mother coughed.

‘I don’t think she sees Sırma any more,’ Nurdoğan replied as he lowered himself down on to his mother’s slippery and, in his opinion, uncomfortable red satin sheets.

‘Well, that’s probably for the best.’ She smiled briefly. ‘Where’s Kenan? Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’

Nurdoğan’s young face hardened. ‘It’s Sunday.’

His mother just raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

‘Mum, it is eleven o’clock now and Gülay didn’t take her pump with her. It’s still by her bed.’

‘She’ll be OK.’ The woman ground her cigarette out on the plate she was also using for grape pips. ‘Why don’t you go out on your bike or something? Gülay will be here when you get back. It’s not that she hasn’t stayed out before, is it?’ she added tetchily.

She was always like this when she’d been out to the club with his father. The drink just seemed to carry on taking effect, blunting every real feeling she might possess. He was, he knew, supposed to leave her alone, carry on being in the care of Kenan and the small group of young girls who worked in the house, until she felt ‘better’ again.

There wasn’t really any great need to be worried about Gülay. Sometimes she did stay out, although not in recent months as often as she had. And, if Nurdoğan were honest, he would have to say that Gülay had been happier of late. But this time, for some reason he couldn’t really articulate, he was worried about his sister. She used to tell him everything, still in fact said that she told him everything, but Nurdoğan was no longer sure about this. Sometimes she just went off without telling anyone and she’d taken to locking herself in her bedroom. Nurdoğan had always been close to his big sister, the two of them in a sense allied against their parents. It was an alliance that had survived all sorts of teenage ‘phases’ on Gülay’s part. Only now, when she was ‘normal’ again, did there seem to be a problem.

Nurdoğan went downstairs and retrieved his bicycle from the garage. His father, who had taken his car out in order, apparently, to clean it, stopped talking to the large man Nurdoğan recognised as one of his club managers as he passed.

‘If you’re satisfied there are no signs of foul play, I’ll release the Ataman boy’s body for burial,’ the small, round man said with a smile.

Mehmet Süleyman shrugged. ‘I can’t see any reason to hold back,’ he said wearily. ‘He took his own life. Not to any rational purpose but—’

‘Yes, he did.’

The smile faded from the round man’s face. Dr Arto Sarkissian had been employed as a police pathologist for all of his working life and had, during that time, seen most things that people could do to others and themselves. But premature, seemingly needless deaths like that of young Cem Ataman still shocked him.

‘I’ll contact the family and make the necessary arrangements,’ he said, and then, as if putting Cem Ataman himself to one side, he moved the boy’s notes to the edge of his desk. ‘So what time did you eventually leave the party?’ he asked, changing the subject to something far more pleasant.

‘At about midnight,’ Süleyman replied. ‘I think everyone, including Hulya and Berekiah, had had enough by then.’

Arto nodded. ‘Yes. Weddings are tiring. Mine was. I would have stayed longer yesterday, but my wife doesn’t thrive well in the heat. I think Çetin understood.’

‘I’m sure he did.’

It was a safe assumption. Friends since childhood, the Turk Çetin İkmen and the Armenian Arto Sarkissian barely needed to speak now in order to know what the other was thinking. That Arto had been there to support his old friend at his daughter’s wedding had, both he and Süleyman knew, been enough.

‘I couldn’t help seeing you talking to my brother,’ the Armenian began.

‘Yes,’ Süleyman cut in quickly, ‘but not about . . .’

‘I realise that Krikor won’t have your results yet,’ Arto said, alluding to the second HIV test Süleyman had recently undergone at the hands of his addiction specialist brother.

‘No.’ Süleyman reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and lit up. ‘Çetin told me that Jak Cohen has bought the young couple a house,’ he said, reverting to the lighter side of the İkmen/Cohen wedding once again.

Arto shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Yes. Amazing. In Fener and needing some work, I understand, which is why they’ll be living with Mr and Mrs Cohen for a while. But to give them a house! I don’t know what Jak Cohen does over in England but he must be very good at it.’

‘I think he works in the entertainment business in some capacity,’ Süleyman confided. ‘His brother isn’t exactly forthcoming on the subject, which I suppose could lead one to all sorts of rather unsavoury conclusions.’

The Armenian laughed. ‘By which I take it you mean sex “work”.’

‘Maybe. But then if he runs strip or dancing clubs, so what? Such places are legal in Britain and so any money he earns from these pursuits would be “honest”.’

‘Nothing to disturb Çetin’s sleep then,’ Arto said.

‘We all know that Balthazar and his brothers can be a little morally selective, to say the least,’ Süleyman replied, ‘but I don’t believe that they’re bad people, and I’ve lived with them so I should know.’

‘Then all we can and should do is be happy for the young people.’

‘Yes,’ Süleyman agreed, ‘that is all we should do.’

Hamdı Alan had been a police constable for only three years. Based at the small and really quite picturesque station on the waterfront at Anadolu Kavaḡı, he didn’t get to experience much beyond the odd disagreement between drunken fishermen. Luckily Hamdı, whose main preoccupation in life was to find a nice Muslim girl, marry her and have children, liked it like that. No trouble meant more time sitting quietly in the sunshine, reflecting, or not, upon the meaning of life. However, this new situation – he didn’t know what to call it yet – had already rattled his customary peace and thrown him rapidly into a world he neither knew nor wanted to know.

The body had been discovered by an elderly woman who’d been up at Yoros grazing her small family of goats. Not so much shocked by the blood, most of which had soaked into the ground, as by the girl’s nakedness, she’d thrown her coat across the body in order to preserve the modesty of the deceased. Constable Fuat Ayla, who had offered, reluctantly, to accompany Hamdı up to the site, had pulled the coat away and then turned the body on to its back as soon as he arrived.

‘Obvious what happened,’ Ayla said as he stared down at the butchered body at his feet. ‘Killed herself.’

‘Yeah.’ She’d taken off all her clothes to do it and laid them very neatly in a pile at the edge of the clearing. She’d even put a lump of what looked like crystal on top to hold them down. Hamdı frowned. Something similar had, he was certain, occurred somewhere else in the greater city area . . .

‘Choosing to send her own soul to damnation.’ Ayla stuck a cigarette into his narrow, fat mouth and shook his head. ‘Can’t understand it.’