But was he telling the truth or was he lying? Whether or not he was the peeper, had this man followed Süleyman back to Zelfa’s house in Ortaköy on Monday night, gripped by a burning desire to see a man he had spoken but a few sentences to in the street? Homosexual life in the city could be, Süleyman knew, furtive, opportunistic and desperate, even in the twenty-first century. Then again was he – had he – seemed that available to this man? And what of Mürsel’s take upon the peeper? There had been almost admiration in his voice when he had spoken about this criminal. Hardly the fear that İskender’s informant had said was spreading in the homosexual community.
He entered his wife’s body with a sigh, whispering in her ears that he loved her as he did so.
‘Mehmet,’ she murmured as he began to move inside her.
Then his mobile phone began to ring.
For some reason he spoke in English as he withdrew from her, kissing her head as he did so, and picked up the ghastly instrument with his free hand.
‘Sorry, sorry, Zelfa,’ he said and then with less than good humour he flicked the mouthpiece of the telephone down. ‘Süleyman.’
‘Sir’ – it was a female voice, a little nervous, probably due to the lateness of the hour – ‘sir, it’s Ayşe.’
‘What?’
‘Sir, I’m sorry, but . . . Sir, I’m at Taksim Hospital. Abdullah Aydın came out of his coma about five minutes ago.’
Within fifteen minutes Mehmet Süleyman was washed, dressed and in his car en route to Ayşe Farsakoğlu and whatever was left of Abdullah Aydın.
Two of them, İkmen included, had been required to get into the balloon basket while it was still lying on its side on the ground. The balloon itself wasn’t yet inflated and so they slotted themselves into their individual wicker segments while the noise and heat from the gas jets above roared into the enormous red and gold bag. İkmen, disgruntled beyond belief that they were not allowed to smoke on the flight, eased himself painfully into his section, cursing the arthritis which recently seemed to be afflicting his joints. But then his father had suffered from it, and so why not he?
‘This is fun, isn’t it, Inspector?’ his companion said. He was Tom, the young Englishman he’d met on the bus.
‘At this precise moment, no, it is not,’ İkmen said. ‘I just hope that once we are in the air it all becomes worth the effort.’
Once the basket was upright they were joined by the other passengers who included Dolores Lavell and Turgut Senar who, İkmen had thought, they would be meeting up in the valley. Four young Korean boys, the rather attractive Asian/American woman İkmen had also met on the bus, and the pilot, Ferdinand Mueller, completed the party.
Taking off into the silence of the dawn was an exhilarating experience. The weather was perfect for ballooning. It was cold but bright and as they rose above the flat plain to the east of the village, they saw tiny lights come on inside structures that looked like things elves and trolls should live in. İkmen, who had foolishly refused the offer of the thick woollen poncho Ferdinand had given to all of his other passengers, breathed heavily on to his rapidly purpling hands.
Someone nudged his arm. ‘Here, put these on.’
Dolores Lavell held out a pair of thick, fake leopard-skin gloves.
‘No, Miss, er . . .’
‘I know they’re not exactly masculine, but the colour of your hands is giving me the horrors,’ the American said. ‘Please . . .’
İkmen shrugged and then with a small bow he took the gloves from her and put them on. It was, even he had to admit, a considerable relief.
İkmen, in common with the other passengers, had imagined a balloon flight to consist of rising to a certain height and then sailing along admiring the valleys, villages and small monastic settlements from above. As dawn began to burn into full daylight, the sky was an intense and, in places, almost lilac-blue, and he felt the urge to get even further into this soothing infinity of colour. But instead of going up, the German took the balloon down into one of the most famous valleys of the fairy chimneys, Beehive Valley.
‘The early Christians were well known for their cultivation of bees,’ Ferdinand said as he pointed to a large escarpment dotted with what looked like sightless windows. ‘This place here was a monastery,’ he continued, ‘but look, you can see that modern farmers have placed hives in front of it. It is a tradition here.’
What was also traditional was the collection of guano or, as Ferdinand put it, ‘pigeon shit’. Dove and pigeon cotes dug out from tufa had been constructed and also decorated by the now nameless former inhabitants of Cappadocia. That guano was still collected from these elaborate bird houses and used to fertilise the vineyards was another example of how things continued and persisted in this ancient place. İkmen felt it was a privilege to be able to get so close to the upper reaches of these ancient escarpments and chimneys. Unless one climbed, which was laughable even to consider, then this was the only way that close-up views of the dovecotes and the amazing geometrical decoration that adorned them could be seen. That the basket scraped along the tops of a couple of the larger trees was somewhat disconcerting, but neither the German nor Turgut Senar looked at all concerned about this. The latter was, in fact, apparently far too lost in his thoughts to be concerned about much that was outside his head. İkmen, intrigued by this dour brother of the strange Kemalettin, attempted to engage him in conversation.
‘It’s good to meet you under rather more convivial circumstances, Mr Senar,’ he said as the balloon began to gain height over the valley below.
‘I don’t like it when people question the integrity of my family,’ Turgut Senar replied tightly. ‘The night that Aysu Alkaya disappeared my brother Kemalettin was with me, all night.’ He looked up, challengingly. ‘You can check with the police in Nevşehir if you don’t believe me.’
‘Right.’ He was very vehement about it, İkmen felt, but he smiled anyway and said, ‘Well, soon, İnşallah, you will be able to gain some comfort from the forensic tests our doctor in İstanbul is arranging. Maybe the results from those will allow Muratpaşa to finally arrive at peace with regard to this matter.’
‘İnşallah,’ Turgut Senar repeated, then turned towards the American Dolores Lavell who was pointing down to the plain now so rapidly and amazingly far away from the balloon and its basket.
‘Look at that!’ she said as she pointed downwards, her eyes sparkling with amazement. ‘God, isn’t that just wonderful!’
İkmen looked down and saw a large troop of horses and their riders galloping wildly across the plain. Even from what Ferdinand said was nearly three hundred metres he could see that it was Altay Salman and his cadets roaring across the ground like their wild nomadic ancestors. Fulfilling the Turks’ destiny as unparalleled horsemen, they looked so free and made such a romantic sight that all around him İkmen heard the click of cameras as the Americans, the Englishman and the Koreans attempted to capture that which cannot be tamed.
After first looking at İkmen for a moment, Turgut Senar leaned over to speak to Dolores Lavell and to join in her almost childish delight.
‘Young Mr Aydın is very fortunate,’ the doctor said as she led Süleyman and Ayşe Farsakoğlu down the corridor towards the guarded room of Abdullah Aydın. ‘He’s young and fit and, apart from the scar on his chest, physically, he should recover.’
‘So you mean that psychologically . . .’
‘I have no expertise in that area, Inspector,’ Dr Arkın said shortly. ‘All I know is that Mr Aydın’s first words upon emerging from his coma concerned his desire to speak to the police. And now that I have examined him, I am satisfied that he is capable of doing so without incurring any ill effects.’
It had been nearly three hours since Süleyman had taken the call from Ayşe Farsakoğlu concerning Abdullah Aydın. Three hours during which the young man’s doctors had tested his responses and measured his vital signs and reactions for traces of remaining physical trauma. Now, just after dawn, it seemed that they were satisfied he could talk to Süleyman. The doctors told him the young man was most anxious to do so.
As they drew level with the door, the police guard who had been outside the room all that night moved aside.
‘Now look,’ Dr Arkın said as she placed her hand on the still-closed door. ‘I think that only you should enter, Inspector. Apart from anything else, Mr Aydın’s voice is still very weak and so no one beyond a person leaning over him will be able to hear anyway. Also I must insist that I be present. If I detect any agitation in his condition I will ask you to leave.’
‘Agreed.’
And so Ayşe Farsakoğlu sat outside while her superior entered the strange world of drips, monitors and catheters that was Abdullah Aydın’s temporary reality. Inside the room the light was subdued and as soon as he entered, the nurse who had been sitting at the side of the young man’s bed moved soundlessly to one side. There was an aura of contemplative calm in this spare, white place, almost like that encountered in a mosque.
At Dr Arkın’s behest, Süleyman sat down next to the small figure of the very pale man in the bed. There was some sort of tube, green in colour for some reason, attached to his nose while both arms were riddled with needles, cuffs and pads that both invaded and monitored his body. Under the bed there was a bag of something that looked very unpleasant and which Süleyman was careful to step over as he sat down. Zelfa would have been instantly at home in this environment, but to him hospitals were and probably always would be places of fear and horror.
As he leaned in towards the man on the bed, Abdullah Aydın opened his eyes. All around him monitors beeped and flashed in time to the inner workings of his body. He had great dark brown eyes, like a tired faun. He was very young. Süleyman took one of his hands in his. ‘The doctor has told me you want to speak to the police,’ he said. ‘My name is Inspector Süleyman. I work in homicide.’
‘He didn’t kill me, Inspector,’ a small, rasping voice said.
‘No, because you’re far too tough,’ Süleyman replied. Looking across at the doctor, he said, ‘His throat sounds so dry. Can’t he have some water?’
‘Mr Aydın has had all the water he is allowed for the moment,’ the doctor said.
A vague scrabbling near his wrist indicated to Süleyman that the young man wanted to speak once again. He leaned in still further in order to hear him.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Just listen.’
‘Yes?’
Abdullah Aydın took a deep breath and then said, ‘The man who stabbed me.’
‘Yes?’
‘I saw his face.’
‘How?’ The peeper, so far, had always covered his face.
‘I pulled it off,’ the boy said.
‘The mask?’
‘Yes.’
‘Abdullah, do you think that you could describe this man for us?’
He coughed, loudly, his throat straining against dryness.
‘I think that’s enough for now,’ Dr Arkın said as she inserted a hand between Süleyman and the boy.
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘Inspector, he’s had enough,’ she said sternly. ‘Come back in a few hours and things will be very different.’
The boy coughed while Süleyman, unmoving, continued to stare at him.
‘Inspector, I must insist.’
‘Right. Yes.’
He got up and moved aside. The nurse, who had been waiting for him to get out of the way, held a bowl under Abdullah Aydın’s chin. The boy, red in the face now, looked at Süleyman as if he were again trying to speak as the latter left the room.
Once outside Süleyman sat down next to Ayşe Farsakoğlu and said, ‘He says he saw the peeper’s face.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I don’t know whether he’ll be able to give us a description. We didn’t get that far. But I’d like you to contact Mrs Taşkiran just in case.’
Ayşe Farsakoğlu widened her eyes in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Well, Inspector İkmen still uses her,’ Süleyman said. ‘Although whether he does so because she’s a brilliant artist or because he just enjoys her eccentricities, I don’t know.’
‘No.’
‘But contact her anyway, will you? Tell her I may have a job for her.’
‘Yes, sir. You do remember we’re bringing in those known offenders for interview this morning?’
‘Mmm.’ He had in truth quite forgotten but he bluffed his way through as was his custom. ‘Yes, well, we’ll go ahead with that, anyway. I mean who knows what it may yield?’
They both returned to the station, then, Süleyman’s mind at least partly focused upon the subject of the police artist Dorotka Taşkiran. The daughter of Polish refugees, Dorotka Taşkiran had married into considerable Turkish Republican money, which had allowed her to indulge her passion and talent for art. Although an excellent portraitist – on which her attachment to the police department was founded – Dorotka was also a very experimental artist who had been known in the past to mummify small animals and take castes of gross human deformities. Now in her eighties she was still working on and off for Çetin İkmen, who had always maintained that she was the best police artist in the business. Süleyman, although not as tolerant of Dorotka’s strange habit of talking to her dead ‘sitters’ and usually frightening live witnesses a little, nevertheless felt that she would be the perfect choice of artist to work with Abdullah Aydın. Young people often responded well and with interest to her oddness and besides, if the Aydın boy did conform to the peeper’s type, he was almost certainly homosexual. Gay boys and old women. Guilty at his readiness to stereotype, Süleyman nevertheless felt that it was a match probably made in heaven.
The Asian/American lady’s name was Emily, İkmen discovered. She came from Los Angeles but was half Japanese. She and Dolores Lavell had been so thrilled by the sight of Altay Salman and his recruits that they had talked animatedly about them for some time. Turgut Senar had then told them about the traditions of horsemanship that were native to the district while both women marvelled at the vast antiquity of such practices.