Dance with Death (18 page)

Dr Hazine Arkın was not taking a break. In fact, as Mehmet Süleyman could see, she was actually running from patient to patient.

‘We’re very short-staffed today,’ she said when he asked if he could just have a moment of her time. ‘What is it?’

He explained to her what Commissioner Ardıç had told him about Abdullah Aydın.

The doctor shrugged. ‘Then you’ll know I’ll tell your boss when it’s all right for you to interview him,’ she said.

‘I thought that was going to be later on today, Doctor,’ Süleyman said. ‘You said . . .’

‘Things can change, as I’m sure you are aware, Inspector,’ she said and then turned aside to speak to one of her nurses for a moment.

When she had finished, Süleyman asked, ‘Has Abdullah Aydın’s condition deteriorated?’

‘Things have changed,’ she said. ‘As I told Commissioner Ardıç, I will let you know when . . .’

‘Yes, but Doctor, is his life in danger? If it is and he dies without my at least attempting to engage with him about his attacker, I am in dereliction of my duty. If that boy dies then this investigation becomes a murder investigation.’

For just a moment she stopped, raked her hands through the tangle of her thick blond hair, and said, ‘I know that! Allah! What do you want me to do, eh?’

‘Let me see him.’

‘You can’t.’ On the move once again she looked down at the watch that was pinned to her white coat and said, ‘Look, Inspector, I have to be at a meeting in five minutes.’

Almost at a run in his pursuit of her now, Süleyman said, ‘Doctor, if you can just tell me what the problem is . . .’

‘The boy is too sick to see you!’ she said as she rounded a corner and then opened a door into a room that appeared to be bulging with doctors. ‘Be told!’

And then she slammed the door in his face and Süleyman was left alone. Whatever was wrong with Abdullah Aydın had to be serious to account for this total lack of co-operation from the medics. Usually they made exceptions for policemen. But not in this case. Whatever it was, this was serious. Not that Dr Arkın had been either willing or able to tell Süleyman in what way. In fact, she had been almost studious in not being specific about his condition.

Süleyman walked back down the corridor, wrinkling his nose at the hated smell of disinfectant as he did so. There was still an officer outside Abdullah Aydın’s room when he finally drew level with it. But it wasn’t the same man as before. This was someone Süleyman didn’t know at all. The constable, however, knew him.

‘I can’t let you in, sir,’ he said even before Süleyman had opened his mouth.

‘I’m not asking to come in, Constable.’

‘I think perhaps it might be better if you return to the station, sir.’

Allah, but that was arrogant for a mere constable! ‘Do you indeed?’ Süleyman responded sharply. ‘What’s your name, Constable?’

‘Orders from Commissioner Ardıç,’ the young man said. ‘If you come here, sir, I’m to turn you away, and ask you politely to go back to the station. There’s a very sick boy in this room, sir, very sick.’

‘Yes, possibly with information . . .’

‘The boy’s quite unconscious at the moment, sir. Seen him myself.’

‘Have you.’

The door to the room swung open just then and a small, harassed-looking nurse emerged. For just the briefest moment he was able to look into the room and could see that Abdullah Aydın was, as the rather unsettling constable had said, seemingly unconscious on his bed. But all the monitors, drips and drains had been removed, leaving Abdullah apparently free from any artificial biological assistance. Either his condition had to be improving or he had now actually died.

As she sped down the corridor, Süleyman chased after the nurse who had just come out of the room and said, ‘Mr Aydın, is he . . . ?’

‘He’s very ill,’ the nurse said sharply.

‘But he’s not on any machines . . .’

‘He’s very ill,’ she reiterated and then, lengthening her stride, she pushed herself to outstrip him.

It wasn’t right. Whatever was happening wasn’t normal and he was, so Süleyman felt, being deliberately kept in the dark with regard to why this might be. And yet for doctors and other policemen to, seemingly, prevent him from getting a description of a criminal who was terrorising the city didn’t make sense. Ardıç himself had prioritised catching the peeper right from the start. İkmen had been involved, the department had even consulted a criminal psychologist. Even the slightest chance of getting a description had to be taken – surely. As he left the hospital and went back into the street he wondered what İkmen would make of it all and even considered giving the older man a call. But İkmen was busy with his own concerns out in Cappadocia and the last thing he would need would be worrying developments emanating from İstanbul.

Just down the hill from the Taksim Hospital on the left-hand side of Siraselviler Caddesi was a shop called La Cave. It was Turkey’s largest wine shop and was, Mehmet Süleyman knew, a favourite haunt of his aristocratic father, Muhammed. The old man, although virtually penniless these days, still fancied himself as something of a
bon viveur
, and he could quite often be seen in La Cave sampling some new and exciting shiraz. In part at least as a way of distracting himself from his current concerns, Mehmet Süleyman decided that it would be rather nice to buy the old man a bottle and to share it with him that evening. And so he made his way down, if distractedly, towards the emporium. He had just entered the cigar- and wine-scented shop and was about to be approached by one of the ever-smiling assistants when another, far more alarming presence, made itself known to him.

‘Sunel Bey?’

The toffee-coloured voice, not to mention the immaculate appearance of Mürsel, made Süleyman jump.

‘Mürsel Bey. What a surprise.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Süleyman spotted the look of confusion on the assistant’s face. This, after all, was one of those places where Muhammed Süleyman Effendi and his family were very well known.

‘I trust it is a pleasant one?’ Mürsel said with a smile.

‘Yes . . .’ Afraid that the assistant could come over and blow his cover at any moment, Süleyman said, ‘Actually, I’ve just realised that I don’t really have time to look for wine properly now. I must go back to my er, my office . . .’

‘Oh, then I will walk with you,’ Mürsel said. ‘I, too, must return to business. I’ve just purchased what I hope is a very nice Beaune.’

‘Ah . . . Good.’

Süleyman almost ran towards the door, much to the confusion of the assistant who had to move very quickly in order to open the door for Mehmet Bey and that man who had spent so much money on that old bottle.

Once outside, Mürsel, who obviously thought Süleyman had another reason for wanting to get out of a shop he was in so quickly, smiled. ‘So what, apart from La Cave, brings you over to Cihangir, Sunel Bey?’

In spite of being flustered, Süleyman didn’t miss a beat. ‘I have a sick relative in the Taksim,’ he said. ‘I came to visit her.’

‘Oh. May it pass quickly,’ Mürsel said, repeating the age-old formula of sympathy for the sick.

‘Thank you.’

Mursel’s perfume was strong when he was some way off, and close to, as he was now, it was almost overpowering. ‘I’m going to the hamam tonight,’ he said.

‘Are you?’ Süleyman looked him straight in the eye.

‘If you’d like to join me . . .’

‘I have to go home,’ Süleyman said.

‘To your wife and your little boy.’

‘Yes.’ Süleyman felt himself blanch. Had he told Mürsel about Zelfa and Yusuf? He couldn’t imagine that he had, in fact he knew that he hadn’t. A lucky guess, perhaps, on the man’s part?

Mürsel moved in even closer. ‘I think you’d have more fun at the hamam,’ he said. ‘I think you’d be so much more appreciated there, especially by me.’

Knowing that if he wanted or needed to find out more about this man, he couldn’t just be blunt with him or rude to him, Süleyman found himself genuinely nonplussed. And so he started to walk away, back up the hill towards the hospital and his car.

‘Sunel Bey!’

‘I’m sorry, I really do have to go now, Mürsel Bey,’ he said without looking back to where the man was standing outside the wine shop. ‘Maybe another time.’

‘Oh, you can count on that, Sunel Bey,’ the other said with what sounded like a smile in his voice. ‘I shall hold you to it.’

Süleyman shuddered. Whether he was the peeper, knew the offender or whatever, Mürsel seemed to have an uncanny knack of being where Süleyman himself was. Again, he wondered whether the man was following him and, if so, why. Sure he fancied or claimed that he fancied Süleyman, but İstanbul was full of attractive men, many of them considerably younger than he. Surely someone as attractive, wealthy and cultured as Mürsel could have his pick. No, there had to be something else – something that, only if he were lucky, would have nothing to do with his real profession. Ardıç had suggested that he pursue other lines of inquiry with regard to the peeper investigation. Having Mürsel followed could, possibly, be one of them.

There wasn’t much to see beyond a few scraps of crime-scene tape and a rather sleepy jandarma on duty outside the chimney. Young and bored, he wasn’t one of the lads İkmen was familiar with from the village. But he was suitably impressed by the older man’s badge and quite cheerfully let the inspector and his English friend look at where Aysu Alkaya had breathed her last. Squeezing through into tunnels and dropping down through evil-smelling holes in the rough, flaky tufa wasn’t the most fun İkmen and Tom had ever had, but it was an experience if nothing else.

‘Not a lot to see,’ the young man said as he swung his torch around a narrow, tall chamber in the very back of the chimney complex. ‘Just another old monastery thing.’

‘Hermitages,’ İkmen said as he looked down at the rough-hewn floor beneath his feet.

‘What?’

‘Not monasteries, hermitages,’ İkmen reiterated. ‘The Christian mystics who came here did so to be alone, not in order to form a community. They were emulating the extraordinarily weird and solitary life of St Simeon Stylites.’

‘There’s a small fresco by the looks of it over here,’ Tom said in English. ‘Looks much better than those rough old things in the chambers up above.’

İkmen looked across at the foreigner who was pointing down with the spare torch the jandarma had given him into what almost appeared to be a well in the corner of the chamber. Although his feet were now throbbing as never before, İkmen went over and looked at a portion of wall just below the floor.

‘What is it?’ he said as he squinted down at what he was surprised to see wasn’t like the usual ‘new’ frescos that were periodically discovered in one or other of the valleys. It wasn’t a vague scribble but a colourful and detailed representation of two figures. Probably of Byzantine origin, the picture showed one haloed man leading another male, covered in bandages and carrying a stick, out into a garden. ‘What does it mean?’

The Englishman sighed. ‘Well it’s a long time since I went to Sunday school, Inspector,’ he said. ‘But I think that the figure with the halo is Christ and the other man, well, the bandages would seem to denote that he is dead . . . Then again, the stick seems to point towards some sort of disability. It’s either Christ raising Lazarus from the dead or Christ healing the leper.’ He looked up into İkmen’s face. ‘You’d need to ask an expert. But it’s a great fresco and if it
is
Lazarus, it’s quite appropriate, too.’

‘What do you mean, Tom?’

‘Well,’ he laughed a little to himself, ‘you might think this is silly, Inspector, but there is a story in the New Testament about Jesus raising this bloke called Lazarus from the dead. This girl whose body was found here, well, in a way she has been sort of resurrected too, hasn’t she? I mean, now whoever killed her can be pursued.’

‘I like that.’ İkmen smiled. ‘Yes. Now Aysu may reach out and claim a new life of justice for herself.’

‘Yes, and with your help she might just get it. Does this jandarma know anything about the fresco, do you think?’

İkmen asked the lad, and he told him that once the police had finished their investigations ‘some art man’ was going to come down from Ankara to look at ‘that picture thing, whatever it is’.

‘Does anyone else outside the gendarmerie, the police and the “art man” known about this fresco?’ İkmen further enquired.

‘What, the picture thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t think so,’ the jandarma replied. ‘Once Inspector Erten and the men from Nevşehir have finished we’ll guard this place because of the picture for a while. Don’t know how long. I suppose it has to be worth something, does it, the picture?’

‘I’d say so, yes,’ İkmen said and then he made his way back over towards the Englishman who had just taken a small camera out of his pocket. ‘It would seem that this fresco isn’t common knowledge round here.’

‘Oh?’

‘The local police are expecting an expert from Ankara,’ İkmen said. ‘So maybe, Tom, you and I should keep its existence to ourselves.’

The young man shrugged. ‘OK.’

‘So no photographs,’ İkmen said as he gently took the neat Olympus camera from out of the Englishman’s hands.

‘That’s a shame.’

‘Someone was murdered here, Tom,’ the policeman said softly. ‘People apart from our own photographers should not be taking pictures.’

‘No.’

İkmen and the Englishman got back to the St Simeon chimney just as Turgut Senar and the rest of the party were emerging from inside.

‘So did you find the place where the girl’s body was found?’ the guide said as he looked down, without warmth, at İkmen’s cold, nipped face.

‘Oh, yes,’ the policeman replied with a smile. ‘We did.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’ İkmen said.

‘And did you go in? Did you see . . .’