Dance with Death (12 page)

He knew that even if his gun had been to hand it would have been useless to employ it. The human figure, man or whatever it was, had gone now. How long it had been there – while he and Zelfa made love, while they slept, while Yusuf slept – was impossible to know. Mehmet quickly went to check on his son and then stood panting with fear on the threshold of what had once been his bedroom.

‘You know it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the weather can charge around here,’ Çetin İkmen said as he looked out of the jeep at the snow-covered landscape. ‘Yesterday evening was very mild, I thought.’

‘Yes, and that’s the danger of it for people hiking in the valleys without the proper equipment,’ Altay Salman replied. ‘Snow or rain can arrive very quickly and quite violently sometimes. Every year we get the crazies out there communing with the peris and of course the foreigners who want to find “spiritual enlightenment” or something amongst the chimneys.’

İkmen smiled. Although the road they were on now, which led from the village in to Nevşehir, was far from picturesque, it had been rather magical waking up in a white and sparkling Muratpaşa. Menşure had brought him tea and, although she had begged him not to drink it out on his balcony where everyone could see, he’d disobeyed her. He had stood for almost half an hour drinking, smoking and watching as pigeons, alighting on the overhead power cables, shook powdery snow down onto the streets below. Sand-coloured minarets, though not as grand as those he was accustomed to in İstanbul, pierced the silver-grey sky like elegant fingers, their tips just very lightly dusted with glittering ice.

Shortly after an elderly neighbour of Menşure’s had called out the word ‘shameful!’ at the heavily smoking İkmen, Altay Salman had turned up with news from Nevşehir. The local police would allow the man from İstanbul to view Aysu Alkaya’s body provided he came that morning. Ever helpful, Altay had offered to drive İkmen in to the regional capital through what was not thick snow but was nevertheless something more easily tackled by a jeep than an ordinary saloon car.

Once the formalities were complete, which included İkmen telling a very prematurely aged man – loosely his counterpart in Nevşehir – about the ‘glamour’ involved in working in İstanbul, they entered the mortuary. Small, its floors wet and muddy from numerous snow-covered boots, the place smelt strongly of formaldehyde and other disinfectants. One of the walls was covered with the refrigerated cabinets designed to store bodies and as he looked at them, İkmen was suddenly in his mind transported back to İstanbul and the laboratory of the Armenian pathologist, Arto Sarkissian. Friends since childhood, Arto, Çetin and their families had once spent a summer holiday together at what was now Menşure’s place in Muratpaşa. Arto and his brother Krikor had loved exploring the chimneys with Çetin and his brother Halıl as well as the frighteningly independent young Menşure. As poor, tired-looking Inspector Erten pulled open one of the drawers, İkmen wished that Arto could be with him now. After all, whatever what was left of Aysu Alkaya looked like, it wouldn’t mean too much to him.

‘She was shot in the back,’ Inspector Erten said as he removed the covering from the corpse. ‘The ballistic tests have identified the weapon as a Colt 45. Not the sort of thing a Muratpaşa grape grower would have.’

‘No.’

As İkmen looked down at what was indeed a mummified body he thought about the gun. A Colt 45 was a serious weapon by anyone’s standards and Erten was quite right to point out that it wasn’t something the average Cappadocian would have had access to, especially not twenty years ago. A Colt was a military weapon, however, and if İkmen wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t a current Turkish military weapon. But then the ballistics department would know that and would, he hoped, have put that in their report to Erten.

‘I assume, this being the country, that quite a lot of those involved with the girl have or had guns?’ İkmen asked.

‘The Kahraman family possess a selection of shotguns,’ Erten replied. ‘They have papers for them. And of course the guide Turgut Senar has a Beretta.’

‘Why “of course”?’

‘I understand Mr Senar goes out into some of the more distant valleys,’ Erten continued. ‘I expect you have heard stories about wolves, Inspector?’

‘They’re all true,’ Altay Salman confirmed to İkmen. ‘A very real threat. I know about Turgut’s Beretta; he’s an excellent shot.’

İkmen turned his attention back to the corpse.

‘You were right when you described the body as “mummified”,’ he said to Altay Salman. ‘How on earth did her father identify her?’

‘She has six toes on each foot,’ Erten replied. ‘It wasn’t well known, she was apparently ashamed of what she considered a deformity. Girls are so sensitive about these things because they fear it may prevent them from finding a husband. But the father knew and identified her from her feet and the clothes she was wearing, the things she was carrying. Oh, and I did also check with the doctor in the village – about the toes. He confirmed the father’s story. This is Aysu Alkaya.’

Poor child, İkmen added in his mind. In love with Kemalettin Senar, all but sold to the elderly Ziya Kahraman – and with those weird, overly wide feet to contend with, too. What, he wondered, had Ziya Kahraman’s reaction been to his new wife when he saw those feet for the first time? According to his daughter, the Lemon King had been very keen to avoid any hint of in-breeding when it came to his theoretical son. Surely deformity, whatever its cause might be, had to have been forbidden too?

‘Our doctor says that there is evidence of bruising on the body,’ Erten continued. ‘But whether that is connected to the murder . . .’ He shrugged. ‘We don’t have so many facilities here as you have in İstanbul. This is an unlawful killing, but given the time that has elapsed all I can do is re-interview those remaining from that time and look for whoever may have owned or had access to a Colt 45.’

İkmen, still looking down at the shrunken, expressionless face of Aysu Alkaya said, ‘If I could arrange for some samples of body tissue and clothing to be tested at the Forensic Institute, do you think that might help you?’

‘You mean DNA testing?’ Erten’s thin face broke into what was the closest he had probably ever come to a smile. ‘I’ve often thought that she must have some fibres or evidence of some sort from whoever killed her – maybe under her finger nails. I’ve seen a video of this. Now we know, in this age of scientific wonder, that it is almost impossible to commit an offence and not leave something of oneself behind.’

‘Yes, although a lot of time has passed since this offence was committed,’ İkmen cautioned. ‘There may be little or nothing of use here.’

‘No.’

They all looked down at the dry, brittle body just barely enclosed in what was left of its şalvar trousers and tunic. It was truly a very sad sight.

‘Oh, you should also know that she was pregnant when she died,’ Erten continued. ‘Only in the early stages, but we will tell her father, of course.’

‘Yes.’ This from what İkmen had heard before was unexpected. It was also most illuminating. ‘Maybe we can test for the paternity of the foetus too,’ he said as he watched Erten cover the body once again. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Thank you, Çetin Bey,’ his counterpart in Nevşehir said with a bow. ‘You know that I was the original investigating officer in this case. I was very young then. It has haunted me ever since. To solve this mystery would be the highest point of my career – my life, even.’

İkmen, a little embarrassed by such emotional words from a fellow professional, just smiled. If all of this did come to fruition, he hoped that Erten’s superiors would have the good grace to reward him properly. The poor man’s broken and flapping shoes made even İkmen’s hideous plastic faux brogues look stylish.

Altay Salman dropped İkmen off in the village before driving himself back to the riding school. They hadn’t spoken much about what they’d seen at the mortuary, mainly because İkmen had been trying to get through on his mobile to Arto Sarkissian. After all if anyone could ‘push things’ through the Forensic Institute with no questions asked it had to be a police pathologist. However, Arto’s assistant said he was on leave, and so İkmen tried to call him on his mobile. But he wasn’t answering it and so the inspector was forced to leave one of his stuttering, terribly inept answer phone messages.

As soon as he got inside Menşure’s hotel, İkmen lit a cigarette and wandered up into the restaurant area. Even if they weren’t eating themselves, Menşure’s kitchen and waiting staff had to be on hand for the needs and desires of her non-Muslim guests and friends. When İkmen arrived, Rachelle Jones and another, very heavily made-up foreign woman were sitting drinking coffee and eating börek with Menşure.

As soon as she saw him, the Australian smiled and said, ‘Inspector!’

İkmen bowed. ‘Miss Jones.’

‘God, doesn’t he have just the best voice ever!’ she said in English to her companion. The woman merely smiled by way of reply. Menşure lifted her eyes to heaven in exasperation. Rachelle Jones was a woman she could respect, mainly because she alone amongst the foreign residents of Muratpaşa had never succumbed to any of the greedy young gigolos, but liking her was rather more of a stretch.

‘This is Miss Lavell,’ Menşure said in English as İkmen sat down beside her. ‘From New Orleans in the States.’

The woman smiled. ‘Oh, you don’t need to be formal,’ she said in what İkmen found a most attractive Southern drawl. ‘My name is Dolores.’

İkmen rose to stretch across the table and offer her his hand. ‘Çetin.’

Menşure watched him sit down and then said to the American, ‘Çetin has nine children, you know, Dolores. In İstanbul. With his wife.’

‘Oh, how lovely,’ Dolores replied. ‘You know, Miss Menşure, I am a Catholic and we just love big families. I always wanted a whole load of brothers and sisters myself.’

‘Indeed.’

Although not religious, Menşure Tokatlı was an intensely moral woman with what, to İkmen, had always seemed a very strange attitude towards personal relationships. Like the English philosopher John Ruskin, Menşure had a really quite morbid horror of the human body and of the intimate ‘things’ it was sometimes required to do. And although she knew that Çetin loved Fatma with all his heart, she had been disappointed by his admission with regard to Alison. This Dolores woman was therefore going to be kept very much at arm’s length.

‘So when did you arrive in Muratpaşa, um, Dolores?’ İkmen asked.

‘Dolores has been coming to Cappadocia for years,’ Rachelle Jones answered for her.

‘Oh?’

‘My dad was a soldier stationed in Germany in the late fifties and early sixties,’ Dolores said. ‘He and his buddies went all over – Britain, France, Turkey.’

‘To Muratpaşa?’ İkmen asked.

The American laughed. ‘Yeah, but hey, what is this? Twenty questions?’

Menşure placed a reassuring hand on Dolores’ arm. ‘My cousin is a police officer. Asking questions is a habit he has.’

Dolores smiled. ‘Oh, how interesting,’ she said.

İkmen braced himself for the foreigner’s stock questions about human rights and how he, such a gentle man, could work within such a pernicious system. But strangely, neither they, nor any mention of a certain Alan Parker film
^*
from the 1970s, materialised.
Midnight Express
– the story of an American convicted of drug offences and confined in a prison in Istanbul. It was highly sensationalist and covertly anti-Turkish.

‘I know Dad came to Muratpaşa because he sent me a postcard,’ Dolores continued. ‘I was only a kid and all the shapes hereabouts fascinated me. I don’t know whether or not Dad stayed in this actual village, though. He used to tell stories about hiking through the valleys. I know he stayed in Ürgüp, which is where I went on my first trip. But then when I came to Muratpaşa I just fell plain in love.’

‘With the village,’ Rachelle Jones put in in Turkish. ‘Not some conscript half her age.’

İkmen smiled. ‘Has your father ever been back?’

‘Daddy died in 1977.’ Dolores’ eyes instantly filled with tears, as if her father’s death had taken place just the previous week.

‘I am sorry,’ İkmen said. ‘I did not mean to bring back painful memories for you, Miss Lavell.’

‘It’s OK.’ But she’d lowered her head now, carefully avoiding eye contact with anyone. Some people, as İkmen knew only too well, close down when they grieve.

It was Rachelle Jones who eventually broke the ensuing silence when she asked İkmen, ‘So, Inspector, what were you doing out with the dashing Captain Salman this crisp, snowy morning?’

İkmen couldn’t help but laugh. Very little got past village people, both natives and incomers. Rachelle Jones expressed this trait in a very direct way he found refreshing and amusing. But before he could reply he caught yet another of Menşure’s disapproving glances and so his response was not quite as illuminating as it could have been. ‘We had some business together,’ he said noncommittally.

‘Oooh,’ Rachelle mugged dramatically. ‘Old crimes. The murder of Aysu Alkaya?’ She smiled. ‘We all know now, Inspector, so you can be straight with us.’

‘Can I indeed? You seem to know a lot about this village, Miss Jones,’ İkmen said. ‘I may need a guide out to some of the more distant valleys if or when the snow clears. Can you recommend such a person?’

‘Yeah.’

He waited for her to continue, but she just kept on looking at him, smiling.

‘Er . . .’

‘Turgut Senar is the most experienced guide in the village,’ Menşure said in Turkish. ‘And yes, before you ask, Çetin, he is the brother of the somewhat unfortunate Kemalettin Senar.’

İkmen raised an eyebrow. Of course both Erten and Altay Salman had mentioned that Kemalettin’s brother was a guide. He had a gun. If Turgut Senar was so knowledgeable about the valleys – including, he imagined, the fantastic Valley of the Saints – was it possible that his brother also knew a thing or two about the more obscure caves and chimneys?