Petrified (23 page)

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘but I don’t feel that it is entirely appropriate that this gentleman,’ he gestured towards Orontes, ‘is present at this time.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘I agree.’ Yeşim Keyder turned her cold eyes on to the Spaniard and continued, ‘You can go now, Señor Orontes.’

‘Ah, but—’

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she concluded. Turning away from him entirely she said to Suleyman, ‘Well?’

Suleyman waited until Arto Sarkissian had shown the Spaniard out and then returned before he began. He had a feeling that it might be useful to have a reliable witness, like the Armenian, to what he felt was going to be a somewhat unusual conversation.

‘So,’ he said as he lowered himself down on to one of the stools that were littered around the edges of the laboratory, ‘let us begin at the beginning, shall we? Do you know who embalmed this body, Dr Keyder?’

The woman remained standing. ‘Dr Pedro Ara,’ she said flatly, ‘a master—’

‘We know who Dr Ara was, Dr Keyder,’ Suleyman said as he looked across at Arto Sarkissian. ‘I have only just found out about this, but Dr Sarkissian and Sergeant Çöktin have done a considerable amount of research on Dr Ara and his methods.’

‘Then you’ll know he was a genius,’ Yeşim Keyder said. ‘You’ll know about Evita.’

‘Yes,’ Arto Sarkissian put in, ‘we do. However, she was the wife of a powerful dictator. This boy . . .’

‘Rosita’s family were prominent within the Peronist movement – military people.’ Yeşim Keyder finally sat down. ‘When Miguel died in nineteen fifty-one, Rosita’s mother engaged Ara to preserve the boy.’

‘That was a year before Evita died.’

‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Veli always used to say that Ara was only engaged by Peron because he had seen the miracle that was Miguel Arancibia.’

‘Veli being?’

‘My brother,’ she said. ‘He married Rosita Arancibia in nineteen fifty.’

‘In Argentina?’

‘Yes.’

Suleyman folded his arms across his chest. ‘Why was your brother in Argentina, Dr Keyder?’ he asked.

She looked him straight in the eyes. ‘My brother was a biologist. An academic. An uncle of ours had emigrated to Buenos Aires some years before. He managed to get Veli invited to a conference there and then helped him to secure a very good position in a university department.’

‘And you went with him.’

For just a moment she appeared to be slightly taken aback. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Well, somebody must have been, what’s the word,’ he looked across briefly at Arto Sarkissian, ‘maintaining this corpse since it came to this country in . . .’

‘Nineteen fifty-five,’ the woman interjected coldly, ‘and in answer to your implied question, yes, I did study under Dr Ara. I was privileged to be in receipt of his methods and formulas and, yes, I did and have maintained Miguel ever since Rosita and Veli removed him from Argentina in ‘fifty-five.’ She looked from Suleyman’s face to Sarkissian’s and back again, ‘When the Peronistas were overthrown everything connected with that regime was in peril,’ she said earnestly, ‘including Miguel.’

‘You helped to smuggle his body into the Republic.’

Yeşim Keyder shrugged. ‘If that’s the way you want to put it. Rosita’s family wanted Miguel to be safe. Veli hoped he could obtain work back here in İstanbul. I would look after Miguel. He is, after all, probably the finest example of Dr Ara’s art.’

‘Which you are now prepared to bury in the ground,’ Suleyman observed.

‘Now I don’t have a choice.’

‘But if you did, you’d keep him?’

‘Of course.’ She raised her head haughtily up on its thin neck. ‘Ara wasn’t just an embalmer, he was an artist,’ she said.

‘And do you consider yourself,’ Suleyman asked, ‘to be an artist also, Dr Keyder?’

She looked at him steadily and without expression.

‘Because,’ he continued, ‘having established, as I believe we have, that you possess the requisite skills to enable you to preserve the dead, I would further suggest that some people in this city consider you to be without equal.’ He leaned forward towards her. ‘Eastern European clients, Dr Keyder, people with a lot of money, and a profound interest in something they look upon as art.’

‘The preservation of a corpse isn’t a crime,’ she said with a look of distaste on her features.

‘No,’ Suleyman agreed, ‘it isn’t. However, possessing a corpse in a private home . . .’

‘What people may or may not do with one of my subjects is not my affair,’ she said with a petulant toss of her head. ‘I am by profession an anatomist. I have every official piece of paper and permit to allow me to practise.’

‘But you maintain these bodies, don’t you,’ Suleyman asked, ‘in people’s homes?’

Arto Sarkissian, for whom the whole connection between Çöktin’s dead boy and Suleyman’s investigation into the activities of Valery Rostov was still a mystery, looked confused.

The look in Yeşim Keyder’s eyes was one of restrained hatred. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. What of it?’

‘What, you mean apart from the public health issue?’ Suleyman responded coldly. ‘Now look, I don’t know whether or not you are aware of what type of people you are dealing with here, Dr Keyder. If you are then you will know that they generally make their money via illegal means.’

‘That isn’t my affair,’ she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘I produce works of great beauty for bereaved people. I continue the work of my mentor.’

‘If I’m not much mistaken,’ Arto Sarkissian put in, ‘some of your colleagues, like Señor Orontes, would be very interested in your methods and formulas.’

‘I’m sure they would,’ the old woman replied unpleasantly, ‘but they’re not getting them. I apply my balm to a considerable number of my subjects on a daily basis. Some of my clients, including Rosita, I trust to do it themselves. But I would never allow another professional to come into possession of my balm.’

Suleyman, his mind now fixed upon Rostov, rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘So where are these “subjects” then, Dr Keyder?’

‘Oh, I was under the impression that you knew,’ she answered bluntly, ‘but if you don’t, then that’s my affair. People come to me in confidence.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Yeşim Keyder rose to her feet with remarkable speed. ‘And so unless you intend to arrest me for something, I would suggest that—’

‘Dr Keyder, I can force you to let us see your records,’ Suleyman said. ‘Or I can have you followed in order to see which houses you enter.’ The look of disgust on her face only encouraged him to continue. ‘Your co-operation . . .’

‘Don’t threaten me, young man!’ Yeşim Keyder leaned towards him and hissed, ‘What I’m doing is no threat to national security. I’ve committed no crime. You’ll need to get authorisation. But do it if you must.’ Looking across at Arto Sarkissian, she said, ‘I will call the priest to make arrangements for Rosita and Miguel.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘And now I am going,’ she said as she picked her handbag up from the floor, ‘home.’

‘Don’t leave the city, will you, Dr Keyder,’ Suleyman said as the woman turned towards the door.

Without even looking back she replied, ‘It’s not possible for me to go far without endangering the integrity of at least some of my subjects as well you know.’

With that she left. Suleyman and Arto Sarkissian, now deprived of her presence, looked blankly at each other and then at the sheet-covered corpse that still lay, like a traveller from the past, in the centre of the laboratory.

C
HAPTER
14

Constable Ali Güney was bored. Ordered by İkmen to follow some man called Kuran, he was now in a dark and silent street in Balat sitting in his car outside a very tall, old house.

His instructions had been simple. Follow Kuran and report on where he went and what he did. Well, so far Güney had seen Kuran’s lawyer drop him at this house and then drive off. Kuran had gone inside and for well over an hour now that had been that. Dull.

Güney lit yet another cigarette and leaned back into his seat. Balat had always been known as a Jewish district. One of the men he’d trained with, Cohen, had apparently originated from Balat. But over the years a lot of the Jews had gone – to better parts of the city, to Israel and sometimes to places even further afield. Other migrants, from Anatolia and from places like Albania had since come to take their place. As if to underline this thought, two heavily veiled women passed in front of the car, their eyes averted from Güney’s vaguely curious gaze.

A few lights were on in the house. There wasn’t any noise, however. Not that this was unusual in this upper part of Balat. Apart from this house and the Greek school, there wasn’t actually much in the area. A couple of other big, old Jewish houses – places surrounded by thick, high walls, crouching behind heavy metal gates. Now home to quiet, pious families from places like Hakkari, Mardin and Kars. Sun-baked eastern towns where the lack of almost everything threw the inhabitants back onto their religion like exhausted castaways. Hard lives they have out there in the east, the city-born-and-bred Güney thought vaguely. Once, years ago, he’d been ‘out there’ to Mardin, a town not far from the Syrian border. It had been appalling. Full of arrogant soldiers, it had been hot beyond endurance and the only entertainment available, the local brothel, had been inhabited exclusively by women of over fifty. Some people complained about İstanbul, but when you compared it to other places it was like paradise.

A sharp, metallic sound from the direction of the house he was supposed to be watching made Güney sit up. It sounded as if something heavy was being flung down on to concrete . . . But before Güney could really begin to speculate what the sound might mean, something else happened that took all of his attention.

From somewhere inside the walled-in compound that comprised the house and garden, a great light came on. So bright, that, if Güney hadn’t known better, he might have thought that the sun had somehow come out at night. ‘Allah!’ he exclaimed, softly underneath his breath, just in case some unnatural or demonic thing might be at work in this silent old quarter of the long-gone Jews.

‘. . . so, as you can see, Doctor,’ Suleyman concluded, ‘the connection between the late Miguel Arancibia and my Russian mobster is both significant and fortuitous.’

The Armenian, who had been listening open-mouthed to Suleyman’s account, shook his head.

‘You know,’ he said slowly as he leaned forward in order to light the end of his guest’s cigarette, ‘whenever one thinks that one has experienced the most strange thing it is possible to experience, along comes something else. Like this.’

Suleyman smiled. ‘Superior embalming.’

‘Your loved ones, seemingly, preserved as in life, for ever.’ Arto Sarkissian leaned forward on to his elbows. His desk creaked beneath his weight. ‘And, if as you say there is also a vogue for these bodies, then Dr Keyder must be making a lot of money out of this.’

‘Yes,’ Suleyman dragged on his cigarette and frowned, ‘which makes you wonder why she was so keen to get her hands on the Kuloǧlu apartment.’

‘Indeed,’ Arto agreed. ‘She has a yalı out in Sarıyer,’ he shrugged, ‘but then maybe it wasn’t always so easy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ the Armenian said, ‘that perhaps the Keyder family were not always so fortunate. Maybe their roots lie in one of the less affluent districts of the city. Something a young friend of ours, Berekiah Cohen, said the other day, about how some poor Jews from here went to South America years ago . . .’

‘Yes, but the Keyders aren’t Jews and anyway they returned.’

‘Only because they had to.’

Suleyman sighed. ‘I’ll check it out.’ He rubbed the side of his face with his hand. The stubble on his face rasped against his palm. ‘Leaving the dead unburied is an offence,’ he said wearily, ‘but where we stand in relation to the activities of the embalmer is less certain.’

‘Are you going to attempt to gain access to her records?’ Arto asked.

‘In the morning. When I’ve had a chance to speak to Çöktin, I’ll go to Ardiç. The possibility of finding unburied corpses should be enough to get access. We can cross-reference those records with the names Rostov gave us. It may even give us legitimate access to some properties we’ve been wanting to look into for a while.’

Arto glanced down at the watch on his wrist and was shocked to find that it was already 1 a.m.

‘You don’t think Dr Keyder might destroy her records before you get there?’ he said gravely. ‘If, as you say, she’s involved with gangsters, then they must be relying upon her to protect their anonymity. Whatever the position may be with Dr Keyder, her clients are holding their corpses illegally.’

Suleyman shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Maybe she’ll excise the names. But surely she’d have to keep scientific records for her own reference.’

‘True.’

‘And we’ve always got Rostov’s information to fall back on. Well, at least while his daughter is in that refrigerator.’

‘It was odd the way Orontes and Dr Keyder came here together,’ the Armenian frowned at the memory of it. ‘He said that they met, but he didn’t say where or how.’

Arto shook his head as if to dislodge an unpleasant thought from his mind. ‘He’s a strange, unsettling man, Orontes,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel that I would want to trust him with a deceased relative.’

Exhausted by what had been a very busy and emotional night, both men lapsed into temporary silence. Staring, seemingly at nothing, they both remained silent and motionless for some minutes.

It was Arto who made the first move. Rising smartly, if shakily from behind his desk he said, ‘Well, Inspector, I think that we should return to our respective homes and get some sleep.’

Suleyman smiled weakly.

Arto reached around the back of his chair and retrieved his jacket. ‘I had to work on a woman your men dragged out of the Bosphorus earlier this evening,’ he said wearily. ‘Even now I find water-logged bodies extremely troubling.’