Deadly Web (12 page)

She opened the door and reached around to the small table she knew she’d placed her books upon. What made her look into the body of the room she was never to know. But the sight of the blood all over the floor and up the walls caused Ülkü to drop her books to the ground and run screaming back to her bedroom.

C
HAPTER
8

‘What time did your employer go out?’ The policeman, an Inspector İskender, was a small man with a big presence. Young, handsome and beautifully groomed, he had an iciness about his manner that the traumatised Ülkü found terrifying.

‘I . . . maybe five o’clock . . . I’d been shopping. He wasn’t in . . .’

‘It was five,’ a much more sure and certain Turgut said. ‘Ülkü called me as soon as she got in. I was nearby anyway and I saw Max Bey leave just before she called. They must have missed each other by seconds. It was five, I know.’

‘Was it necessary for Miss Ayla to be alone before you entered the apartment?’ İskender said, his attention now solely on the rough-looking boy sitting in front of him. ‘You were, after all, lurking outside. Were you perhaps seeking to seduce the young lady?’

‘No,’ the boy responded coolly. ‘Ülkü and I are, well, we are betrothed. I wouldn’t dishonour her in such a way. But Max Bey doesn’t like me. I have to “lurk” so I can get any time alone with her. He doesn’t think I’m good enough for Ülkü.’

‘And why should Max Bey care about the private life of his maid?’

Ülkü and Turgut shared a look before the former said, ‘Because he is a kind man.’

Noise from the study next door indicated a flurry of activity around the scene.

‘Excuse me,’ İskender said as he motioned for two officers to come and guard the young couple.

As he went into the study, İskender could see several people including İkmen. Together with İskender’s sergeant, Alpaslan Karataş and a couple of uniformed officers, they were studying the bloodstains closely. When İskender drew level with him, İkmen turned.

‘Maximillian Esterhazy and I are old acquaintances,’ he said. ‘Max is a brilliant man.’

‘What do you know about him?’

‘In his fifties, an English national of Austrian descent. He gives private English language classes, does a bit of freelance writing and editing. Unmarried.’ He looked up into İskender’s face. ‘I do hope this isn’t his blood.’

‘We won’t know that until either we find his body or someone else’s,’ İskender said. ‘Do you think he might be capable of violence?’

İkmen shrugged. ‘Who isn’t?’

‘Is he homosexual?’ İskender asked with that bluntness that was his trademark.

İkmen smiled. ‘Unmarried doesn’t necessarily mean gay, Inspector. Could mean that Max just has more sense than to marry. And, anyway, he’s totally into his art; he has no time for such things.’

‘What art?’

‘Max is a magician.’ İkmen felt rather than saw Alpaslan Karataş’ head turn towards him.

‘What do you mean? On the stage?’

‘No!’ İkmen lit a cigarette and sat down in one of Max’s tattered armchairs. ‘Max is a real magician. He is what they call in the West an adept: he studies magical systems; Kabbalah, Enochian magic.’

‘So he’s a charlatan?’

‘Depends on your point of view,’ İkmen replied with a shrug, ‘but if Max wants something to happen, it generally does.’

‘I’ve called for Forensic,’ İskender said as he sat down beside İkmen and also lit a cigarette. ‘Why did he come here?’

‘He likes it here. I think it suits his essentially stateless nature,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s written a few papers about Turkish magic, which were, I believe, well received back in his own country. I read one about the Yezidi. It was very good.’

‘Yezidi?’ İskender narrowed his eyes. ‘They worship Satan, don’t they?’

‘No, that’s a myth,’ İkmen said wearily. He wanted to expand on this and tell İskender that a man he frequently ate and drank with, Çöktin, was actually a Yezidi, but he resisted the temptation and just said, ‘Their practices are misunderstood. They’re not bad people and they’re definitely not Satanists. Max knows Satanists—’

‘In İstanbul?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why didn’t you get him to—’

‘People like Max, Inspector,’ İkmen said sternly, ‘move to their own rhythm. Max, in his own way, sorted out Satanists and other assorted weirdos in his own unique fashion.’

‘Until now.’

‘Possibly.’ İkmen shook his head. ‘Depends what all this means, doesn’t it? I don’t know how I’m going to tell Inspector Süleyman.’

‘Süleyman? He knows this man?’

‘I introduced them,’ İkmen said. ‘They get on. Similar backgrounds.’

İskender looked confused.

‘Inspector Süleyman comes from an aristocratic family and so does Max,’ İkmen said. ‘I think his father was a count. The Esterhazys left Austria and went to England just before the Nazis took over Vienna. They didn’t hold with Hitler. I think that Max and Inspector Süleyman like to spend time talking about where they might have been and what they might have done had history been different. Life for peasants like us, my dear Metin, isn’t complicated by the spectre of what might have been.’

The two men sat in silence for a few moments before Karataş, a large and, from the look of it, very old book in his hands, came over to them.

‘This was open on his desk, sir,’ he said as he placed the tome into İskender’s lap.

‘Well, if that isn’t a representation of Satan, I don’t know what is,’ İskender said as he pointed out to İkmen the large illustration on one of the pages.

The older man briefly closed his eyes and then as he opened them again he groaned. ‘In a sense, yes,’ he said. ‘The Goat of Mendes is what it’s called. Not that Max’s interest in it was for his own purposes.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. He was looking it up for me,’ İkmen said, and then proceeded to explain why he had asked for the magician’s assistance.

‘So, do you think that this Goat of Mendes thing has anything to do with all this?’

‘I don’t know,’ İkmen admitted. ‘Maybe. I hope that soon we might be able to ask Max himself. What is certain, though, is that we are going to have to follow it up. Çöktin knows, or rather is aware of, a computer hacker who calls himself Mendes. I know that Inspector Süleyman wants to be put in contact with that person and perhaps so do I.’

‘Or rather me,’ İskender said, İkmen felt a trifle tetchily, ‘because it is my case.’

‘Of course,’ İkmen put his head in his hands, ‘of course it is.’

Another silence followed, time during which the officers in the room now awaiting Forensic listened to the absence of sound as the blood dried on to every hard and soft surface.

‘But then again,’ İskender said, his head now tilted thoughtfully to one side, ‘I have to consider, assuming the absence of Mr Esterhazy, how far I might be able to get without any knowledge about “magic” . . . not far.’

İkmen looked up into hard and unfathomable eyes.

‘And so if, Inspector İkmen, you’d like to take that side of the investigation over for me, I would be most grateful.’ And then standing up quickly he added, ‘I need to take a statement from the maid and her boyfriend.’

‘Oh. Right. Yes. Of course, Metin.’

And then he was gone.

For a moment, İkmen looked across at Alpaslan Karataş who just shrugged. Metin İskender was a good man – clean, upright and unfailingly honest. But he was a strange character too. Stiff and rule-bound as so many of the men who had come from exceedingly poor backgrounds were, Metin was also the pampered pet of a rich wife who wanted nothing more than to get her husband to leave the police. She wanted him, so İkmen had heard, to explore his artistic side – wherever that might be. Not in tune with Maximillian Esterhazy and his ilk, that was for sure. But then, as soon as he heard about what had happened at Max’s apartment, İkmen knew he would have to, somehow, become involved. Apart from anything else, İkmen and Max shared something that only they knew about. Wherever Max was, assuming he was alive, of course, and whatever he’d done, İkmen wanted to help him.

Twice he had tried to call the place he knew Zelfa and the baby were staying and twice someone had just picked up the phone and then put it down again. Süleyman was not, therefore, in the mood for any objections from this overweight bureaucrat.

‘We know that the girl Gülay Arat was involved in the Goth scene,’ he told Commissioner Ardıç as he paced agitatedly around his superior’s desk.

‘But that was some time ago, wasn’t it?’

‘About six months.’

Ardıç wiped a large amount of sweat from his brow and lit a vast, black cigar. A few years older than İkmen, he was a good example of what can happen to large men when they are confined to their desks. He moved his stomach from his knees and on to the lip of a drawer. ‘So if she’d left the “Goth scene”, as you put it, why should we be concerning ourselves with it now?’ he said.

‘She still listened to the music right up until her death,’ Süleyman countered.

Ardıç yawned. ‘And this computer evidence you say Çöktin has?’

‘Newsgroups, yes.’

‘Are they odd or Gothic in any way?’

‘Some are odd, some are Gothic.’ Süleyman sat down opposite his superior and sighed. ‘The last person to communicate with her in this fashion used some words in a language we can’t as yet identify. It seems that Cem Ataman was in contact with either the same person or someone else who also knows these words.’

‘You think the boy’s suicide and the girl’s murder are connected?’

‘I don’t know,’ Süleyman said as he took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up. ‘Cem was a lonely, morbid boy – no one seems to know that much about his life. As far as we can tell, he wasn’t actually a Goth, although he was certainly interested in diabolism, and he did cut himself, which is what a lot of those kids do. And, as I’ve said, he was involved in a newsgroup that has a connection, through this odd patois, to one that Gülay Arat used. Çöktin is looking into it.’

‘He’s very good with computers, isn’t he?’ Ardıç said.

‘Yes. Although this newsgroup phenomenon is presenting him with some problems. I’ve authorised him to get some outside help.’

‘What do you mean?’

Knowing that the use of the word ‘hacker’ would precipitate an explosion of unwanted questions, Süleyman said, ‘A consultant with wide experience of Internet communication, sir.’

‘I see.’ Ardıç frowned. ‘You know the Ataman boy’s parents have requested the release of his body for burial?’

‘I have explained to them—’

‘Yes, I know, but I must admit that I can’t see why you need to hold on to it now, Süleyman. The doctor has, I believe, gleaned everything he’s going to glean from it. You may by all means retain the child’s computer and other effects, but I feel the body must now go.’ He coughed.

‘I see. And my request to re-interview Sırma Karaca and gain access to Gülay Arat’s other friends?’

Ardıç looked down at his desk, his eyes hooded and heavy. ‘You can do that,’ he said, ‘provided you try not to upset too many people. I am told that these weird children who go to Atlas Pasaj are generally from the privileged classes. You will have to be,’ he looked up pointedly at his inferior, ‘gentle with them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Notwithstanding the computer evidence, I’m still not entirely convinced that these two deaths are connected,’ Ardıç said on a sigh. ‘Young people do sometimes kill themselves and murders do happen.’

‘The girl had also been sexually assaulted,’ Süleyman said, ‘in what Dr Sarkissian believes is a most bizarre fashion. And considering the dark interests of these children—’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ He was getting tetchy now. Ardıç did when things were difficult like this. As İkmen so often said, Ardıç didn’t respond well to crime that was not straightforward. Bar brawls, vendettas and the occasional death of a prostitute were things that he related to. Anything subtle or complex was entirely beyond both his capabilities and his patience.

‘Look, Süleyman,’ he said, ‘by all means question these children, but take care. The Arat girl could have easily consented to the sex act Sarkissian detailed in his report. Her father, we know, runs a string of very dubious establishments where all sorts of things – drugs, porn, you name it – are rumoured to take place. Maybe she and some friends were re-enacting some awful porn movie . . .’

‘During the course of which one of them stabbed her through the heart?’ Süleyman shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘Well, don’t rule it out,’ Ardıç said harshly. ‘There’s some unbelievably weird stuff on tape and video CD these days. People will do just about anything. Some of it, it is said, for Hüseyin Arat.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Süleyman said as he tried to banish the thought that Ardıç might have watched some of this material from his mind.

Süleyman left his boss’s office soon afterwards. He’d got what he’d gone for – permission to interview Gülay’s friends. He didn’t need anything else. Except some sort of proof, in the real world, that he was doing the right thing. Gülay and Cem’s deaths could, as Ardıç had said, be completely unconnected. The Goth scene and even the messages from Nika and Communion could be totally meaningless in the context of the children’s deaths. After all, neither Nika nor Communion had said anything untoward to the young people – as far as the police could tell.

He was sitting in his office when the call came in from İkmen about Max Esterhazy. Where on earth could he be? And whose blood was spattered, as İkmen had put it, across his study? That Max had had a picture of the Goat of Mendes on his desk did, however, galvanise him. Like the connection between Nika, Communion and the two dead children, it might mean nothing, but the word ‘Mendes’ had cropped up in three different areas now – as a piece of graffiti on a church wall, as an almost mythical computer hacker and now in one of Max’s textbooks, something he’d been looking up for İkmen.