Dance with Death (25 page)

‘Penny for ’em.’

İkmen looked up into the smiling face of Rachelle Jones. She was muffled against the weather in a very long, thick fur coat.

‘Penny for what?’ İkmen replied in English.

‘Your thoughts,’ the Australian said. ‘It’s a saying. You say “Penny for your thoughts” when you want to know what someone is thinking.’

‘And do you want to know what I am thinking, Miss Jones?’

‘I’d like to know what you’re doing rolling around the village in the snow with no coat on,’ she replied as she boldly took one of his arms in hers. ‘You must be perished!’

‘I’m not warm, it’s true,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘But it’s not cold like this in İstanbul yet. I brought the wrong clothes. As you see, I am not a man of fashion. One of my colleagues, Inspector Süleyman, now he knows how to dress. He is a very elegant man, younger too, you would like him, Miss Jones.’

‘I might fancy him, but I’m sure I’d have a better time with you,’ Rachelle said as she kicked into a small drift of snow underneath a street lamp. Powdery, the snowflakes flew into the air like tiny swan’s feathers. ‘You’ve shaken things up a bit since you’ve been here.’

‘I’ve done little beyond putting some more advanced technology at the service of the police here,’ İkmen replied. ‘Oh, and I’ve upset some people by smoking in the street.’

‘You and me both! And that’s another reason why I like you,’ Rachelle said. ‘But you’re married and . . .’

‘Oh I am very married, Miss Jones. But then you know that from my cousin.’

They both laughed and then when they drew level with one of the roads leading up to her Tasmanian Devil pansiyon, Rachelle Jones stopped and took her arm away from the policeman’s.

‘I think I’m done with handsome blokes,’ the Australian said as she turned her face upwards into the freezing cold snowflakes. ‘I’d like a guy like you, someone who’s unconventional, makes me laugh.’

‘Not the good Captain Salman? He is an excellent fellow.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ She looked very, very sad as she sighed. ‘So you’re off back to İstanbul tomorrow.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I hope you have a good journey and I hope your . . . son-in-law, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope he’s going to be OK.’

‘Thank you.’

She then leaned forward and kissed him very quickly on the lips. Her mouth felt cold and wet but not in any way unpleasant for all that.

‘Miss Jones . . .’

‘See ya, İkmen,’ she said as she turned and waved him goodbye. ‘Christ, this hill is shit!’ she added as she began puffing her way up towards her property.

İkmen watched the Australian, with a smile on his face, until he could see her no more. Rachelle Jones was, he felt, a fine and excellent woman who deserved to be with a man who would treat her with the respect a knowledgeable expatriate like her was due. Just not him – or Altay Salman, for that matter. As he walked to the very edge of the village he saw the captain riding slowly towards him through the ever-thickening snow.

‘Çetin?’ He leaned forward in his saddle and squinted.

‘I’m just going for a last look around,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m off tomorrow.’

‘But it’s snowing and you have no coat.’

‘Rachelle Jones just made me aware of that fact, too.’

Altay Salman’s whole body tensed. ‘Rachelle Jones? Is she here?’

‘No, no.’ İkmen laughed. ‘You’re quite safe. She’s gone . . .’

‘Because she is a very predatory woman . . .’

‘Who, if you were not married, would probably make you a very happy man,’ İkmen said. ‘I like her. She makes me smile.’

‘Yes, well . . .’ The top of the captain’s cap was entirely covered with snow now, as were his long, thick eyelashes. They reminded İkmen of Süleyman’s. He wanted to be home very much now.

‘So where on earth are you going, Çetin?’ the horseman continued. ‘It’s snowing.’

İkmen pulled the jacket of his suit tightly around his chest and said, ‘I’m only going to the chimneys at the edge of the village. I’d like to be able to look back at Muratpaşa and see it looking snowy, quiet and romantic.’

‘Minus the people, then?’

‘Something like that.’

Altay Salman’s horse stamped against the cold and he patted his flanks to soothe him. ‘There, Süleyman, good beast.’

İkmen laughed. ‘You called the horse Süleyman! You know my ex-sergeant . . .’

‘I remember Mehmet Süleyman,’ the captain said with a smile. ‘But this horse isn’t named for him. This beast was born and bred in Cappadocia and came with his name when the riding school purchased him. You know, Çetin, if something does result from this DNA testing you have organised, you will be quite a local hero.’

‘Except with the perpetrator.’

‘Of course,’ Altay Salman said. ‘But one way or another the rifts that cross this village do need to be resolved.’

‘I know.’ İkmen looked up at the man on the horse, his eyes now squinting against what had become driving snow. ‘I hope Dr Sarkissian will be able to get here tomorrow.’

‘İnşallah,’ the horseman responded. ‘I’ll come by Menşure Hanım’s place in the morning to take my leave of you, Çetin.’

‘I would appreciate that.’

‘Don’t be out too long,’ the captain said as he spurred Süleyman the horse to trot onwards. ‘You don’t want to go back to İstanbul with a cold.’

İkmen put his head down and pushed on towards the edge of the village. When he reached the last outpost of Muratpaşa, a collection of dark and derelict fairy chimneys, he turned to look at the village as he had said that he would. Altay and his horse had long since disappeared and so all İkmen could see through the swirls of snow and ice were higgledy-piggledy cones and chimneys and what looked like sugar-coated fingers – ice-bound minarets – pointing up into a sky of almost total blackness. Street lighting in the village, unlike back home in İstanbul, was of a minimal nature and so all of the rocks and caves appeared unadorned and natural underneath snow that looked as if it were materialising, as opposed to falling through the night sky. And although there were no peris or indeed spirits of any sort that İkmen could detect present in what he was viewing it was a very magical moment for the policeman. But it was also very cold and so as soon as he had savoured the moment sufficiently, Çetin İkmen made ready to go back to Menşure Tokatlı’s hotel. If he hadn’t heard a noise coming from one of the derelict chimneys behind him he would most certainly have left that place in quite a hurry.

There was no light anywhere in the chimney that he could see and so İkmen flicked his cigarette lighter and held it out in front of him. He already had a cigarette between his teeth on the basis that if he wasn’t going straight back to the hotel he might as well have a smoke in this chimney before he set off for his room. After all, out in the billowing snow once again smoking was going to be a tough call even for someone as practised as Çetin İkmen.

This chimney, just like the other one he had explored before it, obviously hadn’t been lived in for a very long time. As well as possessing that dank, musty smell that chimneys get when areas of their interiors are exposed to the elements, there was also evidence, in the form of empty rakı bottles, that the place was sometimes used by Muratpaşa’s small cabal of drinkers. İkmen looked up and, through a hole in what had once passed for a ceiling, he felt a little snow and saw a little sky.

It had probably, he thought as he lit his cigarette and surveyed the scene around him, been an animal of some sort that had made the noise that had caught his attention. A cat or a dog. Just conceivably it could have been a wolf, not that they came down out of the mountains and into the villages on a regular basis. But it was very cold now and wolves, like all other sensible creatures, would be seeking shelter wherever they could find it. İkmen felt himself go colder than he already was. Perhaps he should telephone the jandarma just in case . . . But as well as feeling stupid, weak and cowardly for even thinking about calling for help, İkmen was also suddenly intrigued by something that had caught his eyes over by what used to be the old dwelling’s fireplace. Something large was wrapped in what looked like a blanket but turned out to be a considerably large wall tapestry. Of course ‘it’ could, İkmen knew, very well be a bundled-up alcoholic, and so he approached whatever or whoever it was with care. Holding his lighter out in front of him, he made a sweep down from the top of the bundle to the bottom. At the bottom he saw two very unpleasantly coloured feet. Inwardly he groaned. The last thing he needed on the eve of his return to İstanbul was some lengthy process involving getting medical attention for a dead or dying alcoholic. Then, however, for some reason he found himself counting the number of toes on each ghastly foot. There were six.

The blow, when it came, arrived hard and fast from behind İkmen’s head. By the time he hit the floor he was already unconscious.

Luckily the baby, Timur, had taken the formula milk Fatma had given him without either complaint or obvious distress. Of course he had to be missing his mother’s – Hulya’s – milk as well as the comfort of her breast, but the girl had other things besides her baby to think about now. Her husband, as far as Fatma knew, was still in intensive care over at the Italian hospital.

‘Hulya and her in-laws will have to come and stay here,’ Fatma said to her daughter Çiçek and son Orhan who had come to be with their mother in the wake of the Neve Şalom tragedy.

‘Isn’t the house Berekiah’s uncle gave them ready?’ Orhan asked. He was a pleasant-looking man in his thirties and one of two İkmen boys who had qualified as a doctor.

‘No, and with Berekiah sick for Allah alone knows how long, it could be standing empty for some time to come,’ Fatma said.

Çiçek, İkmen’s eldest daughter, looked out of the window at her side and through the darkness at the old imperial buildings across Divanyolu. The Sultanahmet Mosque with its six minarets could be seen as a smudged grey shape against the deep velvet of the midnight sky.

‘There were police all over the airport this morning,’ she said. ‘Looking for something, someone. I thought of Dad.’

The flight that Çiçek had been due to work on that morning – she was a Turkish Airlines hostess – had been cancelled. At first she hadn’t, like a lot of people, really known why. But when the airport TV screens began to fill with images of dead and dying people in Karaköy she had asked to be allowed to go home to her family. As she left she heard some of her colleagues ask each other, in hushed tones, whether Çiçek was indeed Jewish or whether that was just a rumour. She hadn’t bothered to stop to put them right on that point. Only her sister Hulya and the safety of her family had mattered then, as it did now.

‘Your father will be home tomorrow, İnşallah,’ Fatma said with a sigh, ‘to this madness.’

‘Berekiah is alive, Mum,’ Orhan said as he took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up. ‘He may not be as we would wish him to be . . .’

‘That Italian doctor told Sınan that Berekiah may lose the use of his right arm,’ Fatma said. Sınan, her eldest, was also a doctor, and was currently at the hospital with his sister Hulya. ‘He is a jeweller. He is right-handed. How will he work?’

‘If he does indeed lose some function he may get that back in time,’ Orhan said as he passed a cigarette across to his sister.

‘And if he doesn’t?’

‘Lazar Bey won’t get rid of Berekiah,’ Çiçek said as she lit up and then exhaled shakily from tiredness.

‘Lazar is fortunate to be alive himself,’ Fatma responded with a shudder. ‘Only a bad cold and the mercy of Allah kept him away from his prayers this morning. Lazar’s is only a small shop, Çiçek; he must make a profit and he has his own son and grandson to think of. If Berekiah can’t work properly, can’t make the pieces that Lazar needs made, then he will have to let him go. Making a living is hard.’

They all sat in silence for a few moments while the truth of Fatma’s words sank in.

‘But to have Berekiah’s father here . . .’ Orhan began.

‘Oh, I can, if necessary, manage Balthazar Cohen,’ his mother said with some conviction. ‘And anyway, Estelle would be here too. I’ve only got Gül and Kemal left at home now.’

‘And Dad,’ Çiçek put in.

‘Yes, and . . .’

‘Dad won’t be able to support the Cohens as well as this family, you know,’ Orhan said. ‘The rest of us will have to contribute.’

‘Of course,’ Çiçek said simply, before she returned her gaze to the window once again.

Their mother looked at them, from one to the other, and smiled inside. Of course it was to be expected that well-raised children should help support their parents in times of trouble. There was a time when only female children ever left the parental home, anyway. Mothers were the empresses of their sons and daughters-in-law. But in İstanbul at least, that way of life had changed for a lot of families, including the İkmens. Çetin had, after all, worked hard all of his life in order to give his children, both sons and daughters, choices in their lives. That the older children, without question or complaint, always assisted with the cost of their younger siblings’ upkeep and education was a great help. That they should now volunteer for more of the same on behalf of just one young sister was nothing short of heroic. Fatma was in fact so proud that in that moment she broke down and wept.

‘Menşure Hanım!’

One plump hand slipped out from inside the sleeve of a heavy Astrakhan coat and brought Menşure Tokatlı’s knuckles up to a pair of fleshy lips.

‘Arto Sarkissian,’ Menşure responded dryly as she watched the Armenian bend down and kiss her fingers. ‘It must be forty years since I’ve seen you. You haven’t changed.’

‘And neither have you,’ Arto said with a smile. ‘Still . . .’

‘I’m still wealthy, more suspicious than ever, but I’m no longer young,’ Menşure said tightly. ‘So don’t try to flatter me, Arto Sarkissian.’ And then she turned to the rather younger and slimmer man standing beside her cousin’s old friend and said, ‘And who is this?’