Deep Waters (7 page)

Paucity of blood at the scene indicated that Rifat had been killed elsewhere. In addition, the battering he had suffered, either on Reşadiye Caddesi or just before, had occurred, so Dr Sarkissian felt, post-mortem. İkmen was going to appeal for witnesses who may have seen something suspicious in the early hours of the morning, although given the heaviness of the fog at that time, it seemed unlikely that many people would have been around.

More interesting to Orhan than any of these details was the enormous scar, now also covered with bruises, the doctor had pointed out on the left-hand side of Rifat’s torso. It was consistent with the type of scar one would expect to have after kidney removal, and the autopsy had confirmed that young Rifat Berisha did indeed possess only one kidney; his body, as the doctor had put it, had almost been cut in half. To Orhan’s surprise, this was standard procedure; indeed Dr Sarkissian was full of praise for the work some unknown surgeon had performed upon Berisha. What was less clear, however, was why a seemingly healthy young man like Rifat had needed the organ removed in the first place. With no obvious sign of disease in the body, there was a possibility, the doctor had said, that Berisha had sold his healthy kidney. Orhan knew that the sale of healthy organs, usually to foreign buyers by poorer citizens of the Republic, was not unknown. Removal was usually performed abroad with the ‘vendor’ taking a short ‘holiday’ in London or Rome or somewhere else in western Europe. But such cases were difficult to prove. Police both in the Republic and abroad were faced with the fact that provided everybody in the transaction was happy, unscrupulous or simply unknowing, surgeons could carry on doing this without hindrance. And, the doctor had added, a poor Albanian like Rifat was a likely candidate for this sort of money-raising activity. For one whose mother had been, Orhan had learned just that day, an Albanian herself, İkmen’s comment on the doctor’s words had sounded rather callous. ‘What do you expect,’ he had said, ‘of a people addictively at odds with themselves?’

Quite what this meant, Orhan didn’t know, but if Rifat Berisha had sold one of his kidneys, he and his family had to have been in desperate straits. And people in desperate straits were very vulnerable, not just to the needs of rich foreigners but also to the whims and desires of any number of less than honest types. It would be interesting to know what, if anything, Rifat had in his system when he died. The toxicology tests, when completed, would indicate whether the nagging spectre of Albanian drug-running had any substance.

The tones of his mobile telephone broke into Tepe’s thoughts.

‘Hello?’

‘Orhan, it’s Inspector İkmen here,’ a familiar voice said. ‘I’m just ringing you to let you know that I’m mounting an observation on the Berisha house which I would like you to participate in. I’d like you in early.’

Tepe frowned. To mount an observation on a victim’s home at this early stage in the investigation was most irregular. But he knew of old that to question İkmen was usually a mistake. One would generally, even in the face of the old man’s most bizarre ideas, end up feeling stupid oneself.

‘Right.’

‘I’ll tell you all about it in the morning,’ İkmen said and then added, a little stiffly Tepe felt, ‘An interesting autopsy, I thought.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mmm.’ And then, or so Tepe thought, either running out of things to say or feeling awkward speaking to his inferior so late at night, İkmen concluded, ‘Very well then, Orhan, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’

And with that İkmen put his phone down, leaving Tepe listening to the hum of a disconnected line. He had no way of knowing what the old man had in mind but there had to be some reason why he wanted the Berisha house watched. The toxicology reports couldn’t possibly be complete yet, but perhaps the doctor or forensic had found something that maybe implicated the Berishas themselves or possible associates of the family in Rifat’s death. After all, as Orhan knew even from his limited professional experience, the bosom of one’s family is not always the safest place to be.

Although he thought about ringing Mehmet Suleyman as soon as he finished the call to Orhan Tepe, İkmen managed to resist the urge. The man was probably in bed by this time and besides, there was always the chance that a late call, even to Mehmet’s mobile, might wake up poor old Cohen. Completely immobile since the amputation of both legs just below the knee, ex-constable Balthazar Cohen, despite a battery of pain-killing and tranquillising drugs, slept very little these days. Troubled by tortuous visions of both past and possible future earthquakes, not to mention the spectre of his lost virility, Cohen spent his days and much of his nights in a state of unsettled angst. Even so, thought İkmen, it would be too bad to telephone just as Cohen had finally dropped off.

Anyway, quite what he would say to Mehmet, should he speak to him, was unformed in his mind. Samsun’s revelation that the Berishas were involved in a blood feud with the Vlora family troubled him. Did this have any bearing on Rifat’s death? If it did, and if it became known that he himself was related to another Gheg
fis
, that could, as Samsun had said, cause problems. He would have to be careful to keep his Albanian origins a secret. İstanbul, he knew, could be a very small place at times.

Hopefully, observation of the Berisha household would help to establish whether or not they were moving against the Vlora family. Engelushjia Berisha had not asked for her brother’s bloodied shirt. Perhaps this was a good sign – not that she would have been given it had she asked for it. If the Berishas didn’t move against their ‘enemies’, then all well and good, but if they did, he should perhaps do as Samsun had suggested and give the case to a disinterested party like Suleyman. It was crazy stuff. Although he had grown up knowing that the practice of
gjakmaria
existed amongst his mother’s people, İkmen had never considered that it might impact upon him personally. He knew that he had to beware of ascribing everything about this case to it, but the idea of blood revenge would not leave his mind. It was, he felt, another of those times when his late mother intruded on his mind.

Ayşe İkmen had died when Çetin, her youngest son, was ten years old. Despite numerous attempts to recall it, İkmen could not remember anything much about her last illness. All he could now recall was how he and his thirteen-year-old brother Halil had come home from school and found their mother dead in her bed. Not that Çetin had actually seen her. Halil’s much taller form had deliberately blocked his view – the older boy protecting the younger by screaming and bullying him out of the room. Halil hadn’t realised that Çetin had wanted to say goodbye. İkmen sometimes wished that he could tackle Halil about that time. He clearly remembered how, later that afternoon, Halil had allowed the policemen to look at her. Over forty years on from those events, there were still times when, feeling Ayşe close as he did now, İkmen fancied that some long-ago intoned spell might bring her back to life. Perhaps a visit to the Karaca Ahmet Cemetery was in order. Perhaps he needed to be with his parents again.

He lit a cigarette and looked out of his window as the gathering night-time fog started to swirl around and then obscure great hulking sections of the Sultan Ahmet Mosque.

When Engelushjia Berisha woke up that morning, it wasn’t only the coldness of the cheap linoleum beneath her feet that made her smart with pain as she jumped down from her bed. The memory of what they had done to Rifat hurt too. Where they’d cut his throat, it had looked like the necks of the still living sheep sacrificed in honour of the Prophet Abraham at Kurban Bayram, raw and outraged. Except that Rifat had not been a sheep, he had been a person and, like her other brother Egrem, he was dead – killed by a
fis
whose only purpose was to pursue all of her people until they no longer existed. And that point was not far away. Now there only remained her parents, possibly cousin Mimoza, although she was not related to the Berishas by blood, and of course herself.

As she started to pull on the first of the many jumpers she would wear on top of her thin cotton dress, Engelushjia began to cry. Her beloved brother Rifat’s death made her something she could never have imagined being, an only child. Her parents were both fearful and vengeful, and with her mother now pregnant again Engelushjia was the only member of the family who could safely go out into the street. She alone was a true woman, her milk uncontaminated by the blood of a man’s growing seed inside her. It made her wonder if, should a man ever love her, she might just kill herself after she had experienced her one taste of bliss. After all, there would be no one left to avenge her by that time. At least if she killed herself she would deprive the Vloras of the satisfaction. As soon as Rifat’s shirt was in the window, her father’s days would be numbered. There were any number of Vloras he could kill – and he would – but only one male Berisha – Rahman, her father. As soon as Mehmet, Aryan or Mehti Vlora had fallen victim to her father’s knife, Engelushjia knew that he would be nothing more than a walking dead man.

Why it had all started up again so suddenly, she didn’t know. Perhaps Rifat had done something that none of them knew about. Since Egrem’s death he had spent a lot of time away from home, often teasing that poor fool Mehti Vlora. And then there had, of course, been his trip abroad with that woman. Engelushjia still had the number Rifat had given her – she would have to let the woman know of his death; after what Rifat had done for her, she would want to know. It had been the woman who had given Rifat his car – not that their parents knew about that. They assumed he must have stolen it. But the car was not of immediate concern now for, with Rifat’s death, it had seemingly disappeared. Engelushjia knew better than to suggest that her parents report it missing to the police. Thinking it was stolen, they wouldn’t dare, and for her to tell them the hurtful truth about all that now was pointless. The fact was the Vloras, maybe even that moron Mehti, had killed Rifat and proved themselves dishonourable scum by all but cutting his head off. And in time they would kill her father too.

Attempting to swim against a rising tide of misery and panic, Engelushjia dried her eyes roughly on the sleeve of her jumper. In the kitchen there would only be tea to drink and nothing to eat, a fact that would normally depress Engelushjia. But not today. Today her stomach was sore and as tight as a current, wanting nothing except to have the whole thing over and done with once and for ever.

As she entered the kitchen she was reminded by her parents’ measured actions of the tortuous pace at which their tragedies would be played out. Rahman was patiently rolling a stack of cigarettes to get him through the day while Aliya, her belly big in contrast to her sunken, sleepless face, made tea like one in a dream. It had taken her father months to avenge Egrem’s death – the Vloras had still not found the body. They must have seen Egrem’s shirt disappear from the Berishas’ window, but they still did not
know
. And while they did not know, it had been thought dangerous but acceptable for Rahman and Rifat to go outside – except at night when all sorts could occur under the cover of darkness. But night-time was when Rifat had liked to go out most, and night-time was when he had died.

‘I don’t want any tea,’ Engelushjia said as her mother made to pour a glass for her.

‘Oh.’

‘I’m going out,’ the young girl said, throwing a scarf round her head and tying it tightly under her chin.

Looking up briefly from his cigarette making, his eyes red with sleeplessness, Rahman asked, ‘Where are you going? To do what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Engelushjia said without, her father noted, the usual tone of respect in her voice. ‘I feel restless, I—’

‘All the more reason to stay inside then,’ Aliya commented. ‘You’ve had a shock and with the streets so unsafe . . .’

‘Oh, the streets are safe enough for me, aren’t they, Mother?’ the girl retorted hotly. ‘Even the Vloras won’t touch a virgin girl, though I hate them all and wish them dead. Such is the stupidity of our customs!’

‘You should not abuse the laws laid down by Lek Dukagjini,’ her father said angrily. ‘Good Gheg that he was, he set them down for a reason.’

‘If a man’s honour is tainted he has no choice but to take his revenge in blood,’ Aliya added. ‘Even though it kills my soul, we must accept what has happened to Rifat and do the best that we can for him, which is to avenge his blood.’

‘So Father will kill a Vlora man and then those that remain will get to Father and kill him.’

‘If that is what Allah wills,’ Aliya said, lowering her eyes respectfully to the floor.

It was almost as if, in that moment, Engelushjia Berisha saw her parents with new eyes. What her father was saying was that he, the gentle Rahman Berisha she had always been able to take her troubles to, intended to kill a man for the second time. Her ancient-looking pregnant mother approved. And yet both of her brothers were dead because of this mad code of honour that, with a fierce suddenness she could not explain, now made absolutely no sense. As it was, her father couldn’t work for fear of assassination. Until she became pregnant, Aliya had supported the family with begging and stealing. Now that she was with child and therefore a legitimate target under the rules of the Kunan of Lek Dukagjini, they all relied upon handouts from Mimoza, although how long her Turkish husband would tolerate this was anyone’s guess. It was, Engelushjia thought, both desperate and mad to carry on like this. As tears sprang to her eyes for the second time that morning she said, ‘This has got to stop! I’m going out!’

‘But there is nothing you can do!’ her mother cried and moved forward to try to stop her daughter from leaving.

‘Leave it be, silly girl! This is men’s work!’ her father added sternly.

‘I don’t care!’ Engelushjia cried, freeing herself from her mother’s grasping hands and then breaking into a run. ‘My brothers are dead! Rifat was butchered like an animal! I saw it, Mother – me! I can’t lose any more of my family! I can’t!’