Harem (31 page)

‘If they knew they were there,’ İkmen said.

‘Well, of course they’d know!’

‘If the tunnels were blocked up many years ago—’

‘Only to be miraculously discovered by Zhivkov?’ Süleyman flung his hands petulantly in the air. ‘Oh, please!’

İkmen turned away from Süleyman towards İskender. ‘Yıldız Park has undoubtedly featured in our lives of late. We searched the place because Vedat Sivas has worked there for many years.’

‘And Hikmet himself worked there too.’

İkmen and İskender both looked at Süleyman.

‘My father saw him there in costume, making a Yeşilcam film,’ he said. ‘He was supposed to be a Janissary.’

‘When was this?’ İkmen asked.

‘Before he went to Hollywood,’ Süleyman replied. ‘My great-uncle Selim, who was born in Yıldız, was showing my father around at the time.’

‘Ah,’ İkmen said.

‘My father didn’t mention tunnels, Çetin,’ Süleyman said with a smile.

‘Did you ask him?’

‘No. He’d think I was crazy.’

İkmen took his mobile telephone out of his trouser pocket and handed it to Süleyman. ‘Perhaps you ought to put that assumption to the test, Mehmet.’

With a disgruntled shake of his head, Süleyman took the phone from İkmen’s hand and stood up.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said, ‘but if one of my wife’s colleagues comes for me with a straitjacket, I’ll hold you responsible.’

He walked out onto the balcony for privacy – not from İkmen so much as from İskender. İkmen was familiar with the strained conversations that took place between members of the Süleyman family; Metin İskender was not.

When he had gone, İskender turned to İkmen. ‘We still want Zhivkov for the murder of his wife,’ he said, ‘amongst other offences.’

‘Yes.’ İkmen, frowning, lit another cigarette. ‘Has he been seen anywhere else in the city lately?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘So, given the strangeness of his appearance by the Malta Kiosk, he could be hiding out at the palace.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Mmm.’ İkmen sank back into the depths of his old, battered armchair. ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘when you and I were first working on the Sivas case, you felt that family might be involved somewhere along the line?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then we talked about Hikmet Sivas’s possible connection to the Sicilian Mafia.’

‘Which Ardıç saw no virtue in pursuing,’ İskender said regretfully.

‘Are you suspicious, Metin?’ İkmen asked. ‘Of Ardıç.’

The younger man lowered his eyes, saying nothing but speaking volumes through his movements.

‘I thought so.’ İkmen shook his head sadly. ‘I am too. Nobody remains from the original team except Ardıç, old Yalçin, still strangely eluding death, and Orhan Tepe. I don’t like it. We’ve got Vedat Sivas, brother of movie star Hikmet who, it seems, has significant Italian connections, works at Yıldız, has done so for forty years. Zhivkov, Bulgarian gangster and man who decapitates women, seen emerging from the ether in Yıldız. Kaycee Sivas, decapitated—’

‘But by a different method,’ İskender said. ‘Kaycee was killed cleanly with one blow. Poor Nina Zhivkov had her head sawn off with a bread knife. Dr Sarkissian said it could have taken her up to an hour to die.’

‘What bothers me,’ İkmen said, ‘is that our families and theirs – the Americans, Sicilians, whatever – may have for some reason come into conflict in this city via Hikmet Sivas.’ He put his head on one side, frowning. ‘And police officers are in there somewhere too, senior police officers . . .’

İskender nodded. ‘You mean Ardıç, I take it.’

‘No,’ İkmen said, ‘I don’t actually.’ He looked at İskender with a serious expression on his face. ‘Men from Ankara. If you remember, Metin, it was after Ardıç went to Ankara that I was taken off the case and everything constructive about the investigation ceased.’

They sat in silence for a few moments as the implications of this deduction sank in.

Süleyman, returning from the balcony, placed İkmen’s phone down by his ashtray and resumed his seat.

İkmen, watching him with red, tired eyes, asked, ‘Well?’

Süleyman shrugged. ‘You were right and, astonishingly, I was wrong. There are tunnels, or rather subterranean passages, constructed by the Sultan to allow him safe transport from one part of the palace to another. My father went down into one underneath the main palace complex with his uncle. He thinks some of the other passages had been blocked off.’

‘And the Malta Kiosk?’

‘He doesn’t know. And that’s the point really.’

‘What is?’ İskender asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Abdul Hamid used separate architects and artisans for every different part of his palace. The men worked in shifts and were forbidden to associate. Only the Sultan knew the whole picture. The only clue we have is that the Malta Kiosk was at one time used to imprison the Sultan’s alcoholic brother Murad. According to my father, Abdul Hamid used to like to go and gloat over his elder sibling’s misfortune from time to time, so there could be a passage from the main complex out to the kiosk. And if that is the case it may pass underneath or near the path you observed Zhivkov on, Metin.’

‘And both Hikmet Sivas and whoever murdered his wife knew of the legends of Yıldız,’ İkmen said.

‘Did they?’ Süleyman asked. ‘How do you know?’

‘Well,’ İkmen replied, ‘whoever sent Kaycee’s head to her husband had pinned a very pertinent note to the side of the box. It alluded directly to one of those legends.’

‘Yes,’ İskender said excitedly, ‘that’s right! You said at the time that Sivas probably knew what was in the box just from the words in the note!’

‘It would seem like it, wouldn’t it?’ İkmen said softly. He leaned his head back still further and closed his eyes. ‘Yıldız is connected to Vedat and Hikmet Sivas. Zhivkov appeared there yesterday. The question is, what is the connection, if any, between Zhivkov and the Sivas brothers?’

When Süleyman and İskender left, Hulya broached the subject of Berekiah Cohen with her father, but the front door buzzer cut her short.

The visitor, who was a short, middle-aged woman, had the reddest hair Hulya had ever seen. She wanted, she said, to see Çetin İkmen. Hulya led her through into the living room.

İkmen’s face showed true surprise when he saw her. ‘Sofia Vanezis!’

‘You touched my breast in nineteen fifty-nine,’ Sofia replied as a shocked Hulya left the room and shut the door behind her.

‘I—’

‘Miss Yümniye Heper told me I had to see you.’ Sofia sat down heavily in the chair nearest the door. ‘Miss Muazzez Heper is dead.’

‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen, who was unaccustomed to embarrassment of this order, rubbed one of his hands nervously across his chin. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Miss Muazzez always said I should never say anything and I never have,’ Sofia continued. ‘But now Miss Yümniye has told me that I must. So I will, but not all. Miss Muazzez said I must never tell all. I remember everything.’

‘Do you?’ İkmen sat down on the sofa opposite his guest and lit a cigarette. Sofia, with her swollen legs and stomach like a football, in no way resembled the girl whose breast he’d briefly squeezed in 1959. Only that red hair and that monotonous speech of hers, devoid of all emotion, were familiar.

‘Nineteen sixty-five. There was a room with no windows,’ she said, ‘gold cloth on all the walls, silk kilims on the floor, a very big bed, shiny sheets.’

‘This is the Harem.’

‘It is a place for sex. There was a man.’

‘And do you remember—’

‘I can’t tell you who he was. Miss Muazzez said no, under no circumstances. Miss Muazzez arranged everything so I could have some money from this man. He told me I had to forget what happened in that room with gold cloth walls, which I did. He gave me some money. I left. I was there thirty-one minutes. Exactly thirty-one minutes.’

Sofia Vanezis had always been odd. Some people, like Yümniye Heper, said she was ‘slow’. But that was a very long way from the truth, as İkmen could now appreciate. Sofia Vanezis was sharp, observant and almost certainly, he felt, autistic. And, if he was right about this, as long as he didn’t ask her for her opinion about anything or ask directly for this person’s name, he might yet find out who he was. Autistic people couldn’t, İkmen had heard somewhere, lie. They were, in effect, slaves to facts, devoid of the ability to fabricate.

‘This man . . .’

‘He had black hair, brown eyes. He wore a blue shirt and black trousers. I know his name, but I won’t tell you that. I saw him in a film once, before nineteen sixty-five. Mama took me to see it in nineteen fifty-nine. I don’t know what it was called, I can’t read. Nineteen fifty-nine. When you touched my breast. September. I told you to. I let you. It was Thursday.’

She rose, with some difficulty, as if to leave.

İkmen, impulsively, leapt from his seat and blocked her exit with his body. The man, the Harem customer Sofia had serviced, had been a film actor.

‘Sofia,’ he said hurriedly, lest she interrupt him again, ‘this man you saw in the film in nineteen fifty-nine, who was he in the film? Not his name, but the character he played. Do you remember?’

She looked at him without emotion.

‘I remember everything,’ she said. ‘He was Bekir, a very bad general.’

Ahmet Sılay had used the word ‘evil’ as opposed to ‘bad’ when he’d talked about that particular film. Hikmet Sivas’s performance in the part had been, Sılay had said, truly awful.

‘Dad?’

Hulya had come into the room and seated herself opposite İkmen without his even noticing.

He looked up wearily and then smiled. ‘Hulya.’

‘Who was that woman?’

İkmen sighed. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it right now, Hulya.’

‘Yes, but she said—’

‘I know what she said,’ he replied evenly. ‘And for the record I was twelve and she was about, I suppose, sixteen when the incident she mentioned happened. Boys touch girls and girls touch boys. It happens. Human beings, particularly young human beings, develop fancies for each other from time to time.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She looked down at her hands which were clasped nervously in her lap. ‘Dad, Berekiah Cohen has escorted me to work a couple of times and we went to visit Dr Halman together at the hospital.’

‘Yes, Hulya, I know. What of it?’

The girl looked shocked. ‘You know?’

‘Yes.’ Why did teenagers always think that their parents were completely ignorant about their lives? ‘You’re friends,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

‘Well, Mr Cohen, Berekiah’s father, wants us to stop seeing each other!’

‘But you’re only friends, aren’t you?’ İkmen watched her closely to gauge her reaction.

Hulya duly lowered her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘So there isn’t a problem then, is there?’

‘No.’ She looked up sharply now, with a challenge in her eyes. ‘But if Berekiah and I developed fancies for each other . . .’

‘Then that would be another matter,’ İkmen said. ‘You’re very young and as your father I would want some sort of assurance from Berekiah that he would treat you with respect. I am sure that he would.’

‘So you wouldn’t object to him because he’s a Jew?’

‘No.’ İkmen leaned forward and looked his daughter straight in the eyes. ‘But if Mr Cohen is worried because he fears you two might become involved then we have to respect his point of view, Hulya.’

Tears suddenly sprang into her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that the Jews of İstanbul have a very longstanding and honourable tradition in this city. Berekiah’s family fled here from Spain five hundred years ago and although they have always taken part in the life of our country, they have never married outside their religion.’

‘How do they know that?’ Hulya asked disdainfully as she roughly wiped a tear from her eye. ‘How can they know that?’

‘I don’t know,’ İkmen replied with a shrug, ‘but that is what they say. And it is important to them, so we have to respect that point of view.’

‘Yes, but Dad, what I want to know is whether you agree with it,’ Hulya said urgently. ‘I mean, if I wanted to marry Berekiah, say, what would you do?’

‘Beyond placating your mother and wondering where I might get some money to buy you a bed and a kitchen, you mean?’

‘So you would . . .’

‘I wouldn’t stop you, Hulya. But Mr Cohen and your mother might and I would be lying if I said that I’d actively fight them for you.’ He sighed. ‘However, I do hope that all of this is some way down the line,’ he said gravely. ‘I trust the two of you are still just friends. To marry someone so different requires sober thought. One has to consider language – the Cohens speak Ladino amongst themselves, you don’t – and children and, like it or not, the opinions of others.’

‘You always used to say that you didn’t care what other people thought,’ his daughter countered with some petulance.

‘I don’t,’ İkmen replied. ‘But I have skin like a crocodile’s.’

Hulya, in spite of herself, smiled.

‘I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ her father said earnestly. ‘Maybe you should stop meeting casually. It makes parents deeply suspicious. Ask Berekiah to come to dinner with us when your mother returns. Mr and Mrs Cohen will, I know, reciprocate. They might not like it, but they will do it.’

‘Mmm.’ Hulya looked down at her hands again and sighed.

‘I’m saying that I think you should take things slowly,’ İkmen said. ‘Marriage, even without all the cultural differences we’ve been talking about, is a very big step. You have to be certain it’s what you want and that the man you wish to marry is someone you can spend the rest of your life with. Sometimes that takes time. As you have unfortunately discovered today, I had feelings for at least one other girl before I met your mother. But since I’ve been married to her, there hasn’t been anyone else. But you’re still very young.’