‘How did you find out?’ the Englishman asked.
İkmen sighed. ‘That’s a long story, Tom,’ he said. ‘There was another man, an English friend of mine, who loved your aunt. He told me. But what happened to Alison? You say your mother knew her sister came to Cappadocia.’
‘My grandparents got a postcard from Ürgüp, yes.’
‘As I told you,’ İkmen said, ‘I traced Alison to this area myself. The police in Kayseri made inquiries, but then the trail suddenly went cold as you say.’
The young Englishman shook his head sadly. ‘She met some blokes out here, white South Africans with lots of money and a car of some sort. Alison’s aim had always been to get to India and these guys offered her a lift. Her body turned up in Peshawar in Pakistan about six months later.’
‘But there is no record of her leaving Turkey,’ İkmen said. ‘I checked in those early days. The police in Kayseri kept looking for several years.’
‘It’s thought they must have got over the border into Iran illegally. My mum got a postcard from Tehran,’ Tom said. ‘The South Africans were drug dealers, Inspector. People in Pakistan remembered them. Two cheery white blokes and a pretty blonde girl with pink boots. They used Alison to deflect attention away from themselves while they did their deals.’
‘But why did she die?’
‘The Pakistani authorities believed that Alison didn’t know what her chauffeurs were doing for a long time. Mum said she was a bit naïve. But then she found out and was appalled. Alison didn’t do drugs, Inspector.’
‘No, I know,’ İkmen said.
Tom put his head down a little. ‘Yes. But anyway, the Pakistani police told my grandparents that once Alison knew about the drugs she wouldn’t play these blokes’ game any more and so they killed her.’
‘How?’
‘Shot her up with a mega dose of heroin. I imagine the idea was that when she was found the police would think she was just another Western junkie. But my grandparents had been making inquiries in Pakistan for some weeks by that time. She’d written a short note to them from Islamabad. I don’t know whether she knew about the drug dealing by then, but things had certainly turned sour for her by that time. Mum showed me this letter. It’s a sad little thing. It’s how we know about you, actually.’
İkmen frowned.
‘My aunt said that she wanted to go back to Turkey. She said she’d met a man she liked very much in İstanbul. But he was a policeman and he was married with children . . .’
‘You know nothing about any of this,’ İkmen said in Turkish to Menşure and Arto. ‘Fatma . . .’
‘But if you were never unfaithful to Fatma,’ Arto said, ‘I think you can tell her the truth.’
İkmen looked his friend very hard in the eyes and said, ‘Do you really think so? Tell me you believe in what you just said.’
A moment passed after which the Armenian sighed and then said, ‘No, no, you’re right, Çetin. Maybe some things are best left unsaid.’
‘And I’ve spoken not a word about it to anyone except you for nearly thirty years, Çetin,’ Menşure Tokatlı said as she sat down beside a slightly bemused Atom Boghosian. ‘I’m not about to start now.’
İkmen first shook his head and then looked up at the Englishman again and smiled. ‘So does Alison have a grave?’ he asked.
‘Yes, in a cemetery in Guildford, that’s in Surrey where my grandparents used to live. My mum still visits sometimes, takes flowers . . .’
Quite suddenly İkmen began to cry. He’d felt fine until that moment but now, maybe because Tom was talking about Alison’s grave, the place where her body was and now always would be, suddenly he could no longer control his emotions. Alison was dead and even though he had really known that she had to have died all along the reality of it hit him hard. Poor Alison, she’d left to continue her journey to India in a state of some agitation. She’d had to rebuff the unwanted advances of İkmen’s English friend Maximillian while at the same time she’d had to tear herself away from the man she did love: himself. If only they had both been single! But not only had İkmen been married, he had also had several children by that time, too. Only once had he kissed the lovely blonde girl with the big pink boots. It was just as she was leaving the city, at her pansiyon. It had been the most passionate moment he had ever shared with any other person apart from Fatma. He still on occasion dreamed about it.
No one went to İkmen as he cried. Not even Arto felt it was appropriate for him to share in his friend’s misery. Whatever was going on in İkmen’s tired and unhappy head was between himself and what he recalled of this girl he apparently had had such a profound effect upon. Quite how he was holding together at all after the ordeal he had been through out in the valleys, not to mention what he had put himself through up in Menşure’s restaurant, was a mystery to everyone. Atom Boghosian for one could very easily have fallen asleep where he sat. And after a while he did indeed do this while the others just watched anxiously as İkmen cried himself slowly into silence.
‘He is your brother’s child!’ Altay Salman hissed through the snow at the heavily bundled-up woman at the door. ‘He is your blood!’
‘He’s a devil!’ the elderly woman replied fearfully. ‘Like the father of his murderess mother, he is mad. The woman my brother married has been taken to prison with that eldest devil-child of hers . . .’
‘Nalan and Turgut Senar are under arrest at the gendarmerie,’ Altay explained as he watched Sebla Ek’s tiny dark eyes dance nervously above her covered mouth and nose. ‘We can’t get out of the village until the snow clears a little. Then they will be taken to Nevşehir along with Baha Ermis and Inspector Erten.’
The old woman waved a dismissive hand at the policeman and his vacant-faced charge. ‘I don’t know anything about it, only what my son has told me. Kemalettin made that Alkaya girl pregnant, Nalan has killed and Turgut knew about it. They are all damned.’ She leaned out of her door and forward into the snow a little and whispered, ‘I will be contacting my lawyer, too, you know. I have never been comfortable that my brother died under the care of that woman.’
‘Mrs Ek . . .’
‘Take the madman away, for the love of Allah!’ she said as she waved them away from her house and then closed the door behind her.
Altay Salman turned to look at Kemalettin Senar. ‘I’ll have to take you home,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’
It was three o’clock in the morning and the captain wasn’t happy about leaving Kemalettin, the only remnant of the immediate Senar family not in custody, alone. After what he had heard and with only his mother’s dog for company it was anyone’s guess what he might do either to himself or to the house for that matter. Sebla Ek had been Altay’s last hope. He’d already spoken to every other member of Kemalettin’s family in the village including Turgut’s wife, but none of them wanted to know even though several of the uncles had admitted that they could see why Nalan had done what she had. One had even expressed his gratitude towards her. After all, for a very long time, Nalan had saved the name of Senar from dishonour.
‘Come on,’ Altay said as he placed a hand on Kemalettin’s shoulder.
They walked in silence along the top of the escarpment, their boots crunching through snow that was now at least fifteen centimetres deep. This ‘high’ road was where the wealthier residents of Muratpaşa lived – the Eks, the original Senar family, Menşure Tokatlı’s elderly uncle Fatih Tokatlı, and the Kahramans who had the biggest establishment of them all. Although there were street lamps, they were pale and insignificant even in this privileged part of the village and so Altay was quite grateful when they eventually made the lee of the Kahraman place with its large and bombastic outside light.
‘Now we’ll be able to see where we’re putting our feet,’ he said to Kemalettin Senar.
‘Yes . . . Aysu was murdered, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes, Kemalettin. I’m sorry.’
‘Mmm.’
The captain was as shocked as the strange man in his wake when the total silence of the night was broken by the sound of the Kahramans’ great wooden door creaking open.
‘Oh!’
Nazlı Kahraman looked drunk as she swayed in the doorway in front of them. She was loosely covered in a voluminous lace nightdress, her head swathed in a very vibrant pink scarf. For a moment she just smoked as she watched the two men look at the vision of her through the falling snow.
‘Nazlı Hanım?’
‘I heard you talking,’ she said in a voice that now sounded more dreamy than drunk.
‘Yes, Hanım,’ the captain replied. ‘I’m taking Kemalettin home.’
‘To an empty house?’
‘What else can I do?’ Altay spread his arms out wide to indicate the scale of his helplessness. ‘I’ve tried to get him taken in by his family but they don’t want to know. I have to take him home.’
Nazlı Kahraman sighed.
‘Good night to you, Hanım,’ the captain said as he saluted the elderly woman and prepared to go on his way once again. It was so cold and he was so tired he just wanted to get home to his own bed for a few hours.
However, before he had a chance to move forward, Nazlı Kahraman spoke again. ‘Kemalettin can stay here,’ she said. ‘He can’t be alone at a time like this.’
The horseman frowned. ‘But, Hanım, you were at Menşure Hanım’s place, you heard . . .’
‘He cuckolded my father, yes.’ She took a drag from her cigarette and then ground it out in the snow with one pink fluffy slipper. ‘But he and Aysu were young and my father was wrong to have married her. My father, you know, Captain, he was not a nice man. He didn’t kill Aysu and like Kemalettin he was falsely accused, but he wasn’t a good person.’
‘Hanım . . .’
‘I was never enough for him, you see,’ she said as she put her hand out towards Kemalettin and beckoned him forwards. ‘I adored him, but I was a girl and so I wasn’t enough. My father wanted perfection, a perfect boy.’
‘I’m not perfect,’ Kemalettin said as he tramped through the heavy snow to join her. ‘Mum always told me I was broken.’
‘Which you are,’ Nazlı Kahraman said. ‘But that doesn’t make you bad, Kemalettin.’
‘Are you sure about this, Hanım?’ the captain asked once the strange man had joined the old lady between the thick wooden posts of the courtyard gate.
‘If you mean will I exact revenge against this poor, wild creature, then no,’ she said. ‘You have my word.’
The captain saluted once again.
‘Someone has to make a start to heal this village,’ Nazlı Kahraman said. ‘And because of, or maybe in spite of, the fact that I have more money than anyone else, I think it is appropriate that person be myself. Maybe if I’d taken a bit more account of others, spoken to Aysu, paid Baha a living wage, some of what has happened would not have done so. Good night, Captain Salman.’
With one hand on Kemalettin Senar’s shoulder she pulled the gate closed and walked back towards her house. The captain for his part first lit a well-earned cigarette and then began to make his way down towards his home and hopefully a few hours’ sleep.
Chapter 22
Commissioner Ardıç spoke more to himself than to Mehmet Süleyman. ‘We live in terrible times,’ he said as he replaced his unlit cigar into his mouth. ‘But then if it is the will of Allah that we suffer in this way . . .’
Süleyman, still standing to attention in front of his superior’s desk, did not reply.
For a few moments Ardıç just looked up at him before he said, ‘Well, sit down, sit down!’
Süleyman did as he was told and then waited for his boss to take the initiative in the coming conversation they both knew they had to have.
‘You know of course that I tried to protect you from Mürsel Bey and whatever it is his kind do,’ the older man said wearily.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But’ – he shrugged – ‘you went your own way and now you as well as I have to actively work with Mürsel, and . . .’
‘From what he said to me, sir, it would seem that we give them information but they do not reciprocate.’
‘That is so,’ Ardıç said. ‘Yes.’
‘And so MIT . . .’
‘Let us not use names we do not understand, Süleyman,’ Ardıç said, in what Süleyman felt was a chilling echo of Mürsel’s own words. ‘You do not know who Mürsel works for and I, even if I did know, am not obliged to tell you. Do you understand?’
No, he didn’t, but he said that he did just in order to keep the peace.
‘You will continue to work on this peeper case for reasons I believe Mürsel has already discussed with you,’ Ardıç said. ‘But, in common with this latest peeper outrage, this murder, Mürsel and his people will have access to bodies and forensic material prior to our own specialists.’
‘But, sir,’ Süleyman began, ‘how will we keep people like Dr Sarkissian away from scenes? Last time, with Dr Mardin . . .’
‘Last time was a mistake, a mess, and I take full responsibility for that,’ Ardıç said as he looked gravely down at the shiny surface of his desk. ‘In future Mürsel’s team alone will be employed. Sarkissian and the head of the Forensic Institute will be told as much as they need to know. Such an event as happened on Saturday will not happen again. A lot happened on Saturday . . .’
Süleyman did not answer. Yes, a lot had happened on Saturday. People had been killed both inside and outside of two of the most popular and sacred synagogues in the city.
‘Berekiah Cohen . . .’
‘Is making good progress, sir.’
Ardıç nodded. ‘Good. İkmen will have been worried about him. I don’t like it when my men are upset.’
‘No, sir.’
Süleyman smiled a little to himself. Ardıç liked the world to believe that he was a hard and heartless being with no sense of either artistry or humour. And that was largely true. But at little moments like this he did show that he cared, if in a limited way, for those who were responsible to him. In fact İkmen always felt that Ardıç had more sympathy for his ‘men’ than he did for his own family about whom he spoke rarely and then mostly with intense exasperation.