Petrified (17 page)

The sound that came from Rostov as he launched himself at Yıldız was more animal than human. Fingers bent, he clawed at the young officer’s face with such ferocity that even when Suleyman, who had been quickly joined by Avcı and Karataş, did eventually manage to pull him off, the damage was already done. Leaving the other two to restrain the still screaming Rostov on the floor, Suleyman went over to Yıldız and took his chin in his hands.

‘Constable Gün!’ he called as he surveyed the tattered side of the young man’s face.

‘I thought he was going to rip my eye out!’ Yıldız said as the shock of the incident set in and he began to tremble uncontrollably. ‘I thought—’

‘Sssh!’ Suleyman, who was accustomed to the effects of shock, put his arms around the young man until Gün arrived to attend to him.

‘Call an ambulance,’ he said as he placed Yıldız into her care. ‘Go with him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

When they had gone he turned to look at Rostov, who was still being held down on to the freezing floor by the other two officers.

‘So what’s in the package, Mr Rostov?’ he said with what the others knew was frightening calmness. ‘I’m going to look anyway so you might as well tell me.’

‘If you take her out of here, I’ll kill you!’ the Russian screamed.

Both Avcı and Karataş looked up at Suleyman with questions in their eyes.

‘Her?’

‘Some woman’s body, must be,’ Karataş said as he turned back to look into the pale face of the Russian. ‘Some tart he did away with.’

‘No!’

And then suddenly all the rage seemed to drain out of him and Rostov began to cry. Suleyman, still not trusting, but nevertheless affected by this development, squatted down on the floor beside the Russian.

‘So what . . . ?’ he began.

‘It’s my daughter!’ Rostov shouted through his tears. ‘My daughter is wrapped in those bags!’

C
HAPTER
10

Ayşe Farsakoǧlu replaced the telephone receiver on its cradle and looked across at İkmen.

‘Reşad Kuran isn’t answering his phone,’ she said wearily.

‘Have you tried his mobile?’ her superior asked.

‘That is his phone, sir,’ Ayşe replied. ‘He’s only got a mobile.’

İkmen looked up. ‘One of us should go round,’ he said. ‘He can’t have gone far without his van.’

Ayşe lit up a cigarette. ‘He could have got on a bus.’

‘Yes.’ Of course he could. People did it all the time, traversing the vast tracts of Anatolia on cheap and, more importantly in this case, plentiful public transport.

‘Am I right in thinking that you’ve got a bad feeling about this, sir?’ Ayşe said as she attempted to catch the dark, hooded eyes of her superior.

İkmen lit a cigarette of his own, inhaled deeply and then sighed. ‘There’s something, I don’t know what, not right about that family, including Kuran,’ he said.

‘You mean like the way Melih Akdeniz just carries on with his work?’

İkmen waved a dismissive hand. ‘No, no. He’s an artist, it’s what he does. It’s odd to us, but art is, if I’m not much mistaken, an obsessive vocation for those who are involved in it. No, it’s . . .’ He looked up at the ceiling as if searching for the right words on its cracked, nicotine-stained surface. ‘I didn’t like the way Melih walked across that glass without feeling anything. He always carries that bottle around with him. Medication, I assume, but what for? We know he used to be a junkie. And there’s his wife . . .’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s obviously distraught,’ İkmen said, ‘but what I don’t get is how she can carry on assisting Melih under these circumstances. She was once, I believe, his student, but she’s got no career of her own now. What’s her motivation? Is Melih, his work, or both more significant to her than her own children?’

Ayşe shrugged. ‘Some women do love their husbands more than their children. It’s not that uncommon.’

İkmen smiled weakly. ‘I suppose not.’

‘Some men actually expect their women to be more attached to them than to their children.’

‘True.’ He wanted to ask her whether she was speaking from experience, but then decided against it. At thirty Ayşe was both beautiful and single. She’d had affairs – most significantly with her own predecessor, İkmen’s former sergeant, the now deceased Orhan Tepe – which had been at times somewhat complicated. Men had, İkmen knew, used Ayşe badly and although she didn’t have any children of her own, he could imagine men from her past asking her to sacrifice things that were meaningful to her for them. How lucky he and his wife were by comparison. Without doubt still completely in love, Çetin and Fatma İkmen nevertheless had identical views when it came to their children – they were absolutely paramount. Even that troublesome Hulya and her Jewish boyfriend . . .

‘And if you’re worried about what might be in Melih’s bottle,’ Ayşe cut into his thoughts, ‘then why not ask him?’

‘Oh, I’m not exactly worried about it,’ İkmen said, frowning over his heavily burning cigarette. ‘I’m not bothered if Melih’s moved on to some oral opiate or whatever it is. No, it’s not what it might mean that bothers me.’

‘I’m not with . . .’

‘To artists like Akdeniz everything they do, say and think has added meaning,’ İkmen said as he rose from his chair and began slowly to pace the room. ‘Everything is a statement. He’s always got that bottle, he’s seen me watch as he drinks from it. He could assuage my curiosity with one sentence. But he doesn’t because he’s an artist; it’s part of the performance that is his life. And as for all that pompous stuff about Karagöz . . .’

‘Karagöz?’ Ayşe laughed. ‘It’s satire.’

‘For the masses, yes. A bit of state-sanctioned and harmless social comment,’ İkmen said. ‘I know why Melih’s mentioned it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s planning to perform a Karagöz shadow play himself,’ he said. ‘That’s why he’s stretched that material across his garden. He’s going to light it from behind and use those things he’s sewing as props. Very innovative,’ he added sourly.

Ayşe shrugged. ‘Should be fun.’

‘Or not,’ İkmen responded gloomily. ‘I can’t stand Karagöz myself. It gives me the creeps.’

Perhaps, Ayşe thought, it was because of what the puppet show was associated with. Karagöz has always traditionally been performed during the Holy Month of Ramadan, when adult Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset. It is also sometimes performed as part of the celebrations following sünnet, the male circumcision ceremony.

İkmen’s reasons, however, were nothing to do with either of those events.

‘You know that the two central characters in the plays, Karagöz the peasant and Hacıvat the Ottoman were once real people,’ he said. ‘They worked as artisans at the Great Mosque in Bursa during the reign of Sultan Orhan.’

Ayşe shrugged. ‘If you say so.’

‘And because the two men joked and gossiped so much it irritated the Sultan and so he had them executed. Later when the guilt started to roll in, one of Orhan’s more obsequious subjects designed the now familiar Karagöz screen and puppets so that, in a way, the executed men could live again. The Sultan was delighted.’ He sat down again and sighed. ‘So what people have laughed at for centuries was born out of state-sanctioned murder. And, well, I always think that’s maybe why we’re only ever allowed to see the characters in shadow.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because in the shadow you can’t see the reality, the blood, the sag of the skin as the life retreats from it. It relegates reality to an illusion. Everyone’s dead but they’re still moving and criticising the status quo so that’s OK. It’s comfortable and cruel at the same time. By presenting the shadow play as a ‘statement’, Akdeniz is only inviting his audience to a funeral of dead, toothless ideas. After all, who takes dead men, djinn, gypsies and all the other Karagöz regulars seriously?’

It was strange that İkmen, who had worked with death almost all of his adult life should suddenly sink into such deep and reflective melancholy. But then it was said that his brother-in-law was dying, which had to have an effect upon him. And also he was no longer young. Perhaps he was feeling the weight of years piling up on him, as his children grew, as his wife’s hair turned from black to white as, perhaps, he felt his own powers of deduction shake beneath the weight of responsibility of looking for missing children – such a heavy load. Ayşe impulsively cut across rank and status and put her hand out to him. İkmen took it between his fingers with a small smile.

‘What do you mean, she’s your daughter?’

Suleyman, his officers and Rostov were now in the main body of the kitchen, away for the moment from the strange and contentious package in the freezer.

The Russian drew on his cigarette before replying. ‘I mean that what is left of my daughter, her body, is contained within those plastic bags,’ he said.

‘But I thought . . .’

‘That I was gay?’ Rostov smiled, not only at Suleyman but also at the two astounded officers who stood on either side of his chair. ‘I do like young men, yes. But it wasn’t always so. When Tatiana was born things were very different. I lived and worked in Moscow; I had a wife.’

Suleyman glanced briefly back at the freezer before asking, ‘So when was, er, Tatiana born?’

‘Nineteen ninety-two.’

‘And her death . . . ?’

‘She died in nineteen ninety-nine.’ The Russian’s face visibly sagged at the memory of it. ‘Leukaemia – and what is laughably called the Russian health service.’

‘So why’s she in your freezer?’ Karataş, not a man known for his empathy, asked. ‘Why haven’t you buried her, like a decent person?’

Rostov, who until this moment had appeared to be mollified, reddened to the ears.

‘Have you ever lost someone,’ he hissed, ‘someone whose face you can’t bear to see disappear into a muck-filled hole?’

Nobody answered. Somehow, although Suleyman could barely now remember the sequence of events involved, they had got from Masha and her tales of lost Russian boys and tantalising amounts of heroin, through gifts of incense to old priests, to this – a dead child, cold as the reputation of her mobster father’s heart.

‘The law demands that the dead must be buried,’ Suleyman began.

‘Your laws, yes,’ Rostov replied, ‘but I am not Turkish.’

‘I’m sure that Russian law—’

‘She stays where she is!’

‘But what for?’

All of them turned to face the source of the question, the large figure of Constable Avcı.

‘It’s not like you can look at her, all through those plastic bags and ice is it?’ he said. Not known for his intelligence Avcı nevertheless, on this subject, had a point.

Suleyman turned back to look down into the pale face of Valery Rostov.

‘Well, Mr Rostov?’ he said. ‘Can you give me any good reason why I should flout the laws of my own country and allow your daughter’s body to remain in this house?’

Rostov looked briefly at the two junior officers before returning his now concentrated gaze to Suleyman’s face. He was obviously considering something, a course of action designed perhaps to mollify these hostile foreign policemen in some way.

After a few moments, during which Suleyman successfully held his gaze, Rostov said, ‘I’d like to speak to you alone, Inspector.’

Suleyman considered the request for a few moments before saying, ‘All right. I’ll give you five minutes.’

‘Sir!’

‘It’s OK, Avcı,’ Suleyman said. ‘I—’

‘I won’t do anything!’ Rostov snapped. ‘Not with you lot crawling all over my property!’

Suleyman told Avcı and Karataş to leave and then seated himself down opposite the Russian.

‘So, Mr Rostov . . .’

‘I can make you rich beyond your wildest—’

‘I think this conversation just came to an end,’ Suleyman said as he rose smartly from his chair.

‘What about the bad press you’re going to get from last night’s event up at St Stephen’s?’ Rostov said as he watched Suleyman move towards the door.

Suleyman stopped. According to İskender the woman from Radikal was proving problematic, to say the least. And besides, if Rostov did actually admit that Betül Ertüg had been accompanying his man not, as he had originally said, to observe an act of Russian generosity but to set up the police, then who knew what else he would admit to? Masha’s involvement in all this perhaps? The name of the person inside the department who had told Rostov so much about Suleyman’s personal life? Obviously that poor little body in the freezer was Rostov’s weakness. He hadn’t wanted anyone to find it; he’d already fought to protect it once. For him as well as the police, things had not gone to plan.

Suleyman came back and sat down once again. ‘So you sent Betül Ertüg—’

‘No I didn’t,’ Rostov replied, averting his eyes as he spoke. ‘She was invited along to observe what my organisation is doing for the Orthodox community. She just happened to be there when you—’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Well, whatever the truth of it, I do have, shall we say, some influence with Miss Ertüg.’

‘You mean she’s a junkie.’

Rostov held both hands aloft. ‘I didn’t say that!’

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘Did you find any drugs in my house?’ Rostov shrugged. ‘No! I don’t deal drugs, I’m an antiques dealer.’

‘That’s not what I’ve been led to believe.’

‘Then you’ve been misled.’

‘What about Masha?’

The Russian took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly through his nose.

‘You know,’ Suleyman said as he leaned forward in order to get closer to his quarry, ‘the whore you sent to set me up? The woman who told lies about Father Alexei, who knew I’d find only a paragon of virtue here in this house.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rostov replied. ‘I’m gay, I don’t know whores,’ and then, suddenly looking Suleyman straight and coldly in the eyes, he said, ‘I don’t know anyone of that name, Inspector. No one of that name exists.’