Deadly Web (21 page)

‘Like the Yezidi,’ Süleyman said.

They both, for just a brief moment, shared a look.

‘Yes.’

Then in response to the sound of crying they looked across at the nearest group of İskender’s relatives. But it was only his sister, Meral, finally giving way under the strain of her anxiety, as opposed to any news from the surgical team.

‘Poor woman.’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said, but then, perhaps not wishing to dwell upon what might or might not happen to Metin İskender he changed the subject. ‘Did you have a nice meal with Çiçek and her friends?’

‘Yes. It was excellent,’ Süleyman said and smiled. ‘They were all younger than me. It was like going to dinner with a favourite niece.’

‘You see Çiçek as a sort of a young relative then?’

‘Yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘I suppose it’s because I remember her when she was a kid.’

‘Mmm.’ İkmen put his cigarette out and then lit another. ‘You know I think she sees you in an altogether more romantic light.’ He held up a hand to silence what he felt might be protestation. ‘I know you’ve not encouraged her. I’m just alerting you to it, Mehmet.’

Süleyman, shaking his head, said, ‘But why?’

‘Because she’s lonely, you’re cultured, handsome and, most importantly, safe,’ İkmen said. ‘Çiçek had a crush on you when she was a teenager. Now she’s thirty, unmarried and, I think, becoming nervous about dating men she doesn’t already know.’

‘But I’m married!’

İkmen shrugged. ‘I know. Çiçek won’t do anything, Mehmet. She’s a good girl. I’m just letting you know so that if anything should ever crop up in conversation you can let her down gently. Honestly, children!’ He frowned. ‘Even when they’re adults they conspire to drive you insane.’

‘Estelle! Estelle!’

‘What . . . ?’

Berekiah Cohen turned over and stroked his wife’s sleep-sodden face. ‘It’s all right,’ he soothed. ‘It’s only my dad. Go back to sleep.’

He then threw himself back to look at the clock he’d been contemplating when his father’s cries had shattered the silence of the night. Three fifteen. Still nearly another three hours before he needed to get up for work.

‘Estelle!’

His father, as usual, was in the living room, propped up in that chair of his, surrounded by telephones and bottles of pills. Berekiah’s mother had either not heard or chosen to ignore his cries. Well, he wasn’t going to sleep, anyway . . .

Berekiah got up and, closing his bedroom door gently lest he wake Hulya, he made his way into the living room.

Squinting against the fierce neon light from the strip on the ceiling, he said, ‘What is it, Dad?’

‘I’ve run out of cigarettes,’ Balthazar snapped. ‘There’s more in the kitchen.’

Berekiah went into the kitchen and retrieved two packets of Marlboro for his father. ‘There you are.’

‘Your mother should have got up,’ Balthazar said grumpily as he lit one and breathed in deeply. ‘Why aren’t you in your bed?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’ Berekiah took a cigarette from one of his father’s packets and then borrowed his lighter.

‘Why not?’

Berekiah shrugged.

‘Well, you must know!’ his father said. ‘A young man just recently married goes to bed for only two reasons. If you’re not doing it then you should be exhausted.’ He frowned. ‘Everything is all right with Hulya . . . ?’

‘Of course!’

‘I only asked!’ Balthazar said as he held up his hands defensively. ‘You’re my son; I have an interest.’

Rather too much of an ‘interest’ to Berekiah’s way of thinking. Balthazar knew full well that Berekiah and Hulya were just fine. He did, after all, sleep in the next room. He just wanted to talk about sex. Perhaps, Berekiah thought, he should mention to Uncle Jak about getting his father some sex films and books before he returned to England. Maybe that would cure him of his seemingly insatiable need to know how many times he and Hulya made love in an ‘average’ night. God, the sooner they moved out into their new house the better – or not.

That graffiti on the wall of the Church of the Panaghia haunted him. So crude and unpleasant. A rutting thing with women impaled on its many penises. It looked as if it were killing them. And that church wasn’t the only one to have been visited by this ‘artist’. It was, in truth, another chance meeting he’d had with Brother Constantine that was really keeping Berekiah awake. Jak had been up in Fener all day and Berekiah had gone over after work to join him. He’d met the monk on his way from the Greek Boys’ School where he worked, to the local shops. In hushed tones Brother Constantine had told Berekiah that other terrible images had been found at the Ahrida Synagogue and at the Koca Mustafa Paşa Mosque.

‘Desecration!’ he’d whispered to Berekiah. ‘Almighty God under attack from the Devil himself! Here in Fener and Balat, the Evil One comes to attack our souls!’

When asked to elaborate about the images and discuss what other divines might be doing about them, Brother Constantine had been reticent.

‘Has anyone told the police about it, Brother Constantine?’

‘No. We don’t want them involved. The Patriarch has spoken to the Chief Rabbi, I know – and the Muslim clergy. It’s most disturbing for everyone.’

Berekiah said he thought that someone in the police should contact them. ‘I know that my father-in-law, Inspector İkmen, would be interested,’ he said. ‘He’s very worried about what he saw at your church. I’m sure that if he knew about these other—’

‘I know that you mean well, young man,’ the monk said kindly, ‘but I think this is something we need to sort out for ourselves. The police can’t, after all, protect us from demons, can they?’ and with that he continued on his way down to the shops.

But Berekiah wanted to tell İkmen. That the ugly drawings were proliferating was something that he felt his father-in-law would want to know. And besides, he and, more importantly, Hulya, had been upset by the experience. Jak was bringing in a different workman every day to do something nice to the house, but the area, if not the property itself, still felt tainted. Something about that image was striking at a place very deep within his psyche and he didn’t know why. Telling İkmen about the desecration of the other places of worship would, he knew, be breaking Brother Constantine’s confidence, but on balance he felt that he had to. Something bad had crept into Fener and if someone didn’t act to stop it, there was a possibility it might take root.

But now Jak, woken as he had been by Balthazar’s cries, entered the room and yet another conversation about sex began.

‘Are you going to see Demir Sandal again soon?’ Balthazar said, without preamble, to his weary-looking brother as he entered.

‘In a few days, yes,’ Jak said as he raked his fingers through his hair, smiling as he did so at Berekiah. ‘I can’t understand why you are so perpetually awake, Balthazar.’

‘Maybe it’s because I’m so bored!’

‘Then do something.’ Jak threw himself down into a chair and lit a cigarette.

Berekiah, sensing that an argument was brewing, left the room.

As soon as he had gone, Balthazar leaned forward in his chair and said, ‘If you would get me a girl, from Demir Sandal—’

‘Balthazar!’

‘All she’d have to do—’

‘Look, he’s going to give me some “new product” or other that’s supposed to be really erotic and I’ll get you some magazines,’ Jak said wearily. ‘But you’ll have to organise how and when you use them. Think of Estelle, for God’s sake!’

‘What other woman do I have to think of?’ Balthazar replied bitterly.

She’d thought that İlhan would probably never speak to her again. But he had – sort of. She’d run straight to the ferry stage after Zuleika had humiliated her in front of Mehmet Süleyman. If she hadn’t turned up, Fitnat would have got him to fuck her for sure. Not that it mattered now. Now there was another, better man.

A policeman had been to see İlhan, but she didn’t know what had been said. İlhan wouldn’t tell her. What he did say, however, was that he wasn’t going to go down to Atlas for a while. He didn’t want to talk about it and he’d still be her friend, but he just didn’t feel it was right at the moment.

She had been angry at first and had gone straight down to Atlas, drunk several vodkas and then gone into the Hammer. She didn’t go there often, but in such a black mood as she was, full of resentment towards her overcautious stepmother, it seemed somehow perfect. Full, as usual, with the customary selection of freaks with false fangs and big-breasted women with scars up their arms, she’d been surprised to find someone like him in there. Tall, dark, handsome and about the same age as Mehmet Bey. A man – interested in her – or so it seemed.

‘Are you a virgin?’ he asked as he laid her down on the bed and began to untie the laces of her bodice.

‘Yes.’

His sharp intake of breath told her that this had excited him. That he was fiercely attracted to her had been evident when they’d met at the Hammer. Talking, about her mainly, had quickly led to a kiss that had then become the feel of his erection against her belly. She’d gone back with him, at first rather more to spite her stepmother, who had to be worried about her by this time, than anything else. But now that she was here, in this great big Beyoğlu apartment, overlooking the Golden Horn, stylish and expensive – well . . .

He had a good body. She wanted to give him her virginity, even though she knew that she shouldn’t – even though she knew that she did need to wait. But for how long? She wanted it now! However, although he was excited this man proceeded slowly. Until the sun came up he teased both her and himself in ways she would never even have imagined. Without ever once coming close to penetrating her body, he made her feel things that brought her alive. And, when she did finally leave to the sound of the ferries making steam down at Eminönü, it was with a picture in her head of a bed battered and stained by orgasms created with hands, lips and breasts.

‘Call me,’ he said as he kissed her goodbye at the door. ‘I want to take you further.’

Fitnat, her hand clutching tightly the card he had given her, knew that she would.

C
HAPTER
13

Mehmet Süleyman was really too tired for this. Despite İkmen’s suggestion that he should, he hadn’t yet been home. The surgeons hadn’t finished operating on Metin İskender until 5 a.m. and at that point going home had seemed like a waste of time. Besides, although Metin was still alive, he was far from out of danger. The shot, as well as shredding part of his intestines, had also damaged his spleen to such an extent that it had to be removed. His wife, the normally cool and stoic Belkıs had, apparently, screamed like a peasant when she’d seen him for the first time just after Süleyman and İkmen had left. And now here was Mr Tekeli, brother of Lale, the latest victim, possibly, of what could be some sort of ritual killing, wanting answers.

‘She was stabbed through the heart,’ Tekeli said slowly, as if trying to get the facts straight in his mind. ‘But if you know this then why can’t I take her for burial?’

‘Your sister’s death is part of an on-going investigation into the rape and murder of young girls.’

‘She was raped . . .’ He said it slowly, as if to himself.

‘As I told you, sir, yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘I’m so sorry – for your loss and for the distress this is causing. I know how hard it must be to have one’s beliefs tested in this fashion but unfortunately I cannot release your sister’s body to you and, further, I must ask you to allow us access to her possessions.’

Tekeli first shook his head and then said, ‘What possessions? What do you mean?’

Süleyman looked across at Çöktin, who just simply shrugged. In a sense and in light of information Çöktin had just that morning received from the hacker Mendes, even if Lale Tekeli had a computer and had been involved in any of the sites that the other youngsters had been, it was doubtful anything concrete could come of it. As Çöktin had suspected from the start, there was no way of tracing either of the target contributors to the two newsgroups they had identified. Although local in origin, the source, as far as it could be traced, was in Argentina, where it was extremely doubtful any logs or records would have been kept. There was, however, some virtue in seeing whether Lale Tekeli conformed to the pattern so far.

‘We need, specifically, to look at any computer equipment your sister may have possessed,’ Süleyman said.

Tekeli looked up, his eyes red with barely contained tears. ‘She only used her computer for her academic work,’ he said.

‘Did she have Internet access?’

‘Yes, but she viewed only Islamic sites,’ he said. ‘I know, I monitored her. Lale was very studious, very pious. She even had extra tuition for some of her subjects.’ He began to sob. ‘Raped! She was always covered!’

‘Mr Tekeli—’

‘She wasn’t one of those closed at the top and open at the bottom girls!’ Tekeli said hotly, referring to the way that some Turkish girls cover their heads while wearing skirts slit to the thigh. ‘Some of her turbans were pretty – from the Tekbir shop, you know – but—’

‘Mr Tekeli, I know that this is going to be difficult for you to answer,’ Süleyman said, ‘but did your sister have any interests outside of learning and her religious obligations? Any friends—’

‘No. No, she was a good girl. You know, she wanted to be a teacher . . .’

They all sat in silence for a few moments until Tekeli spoke again. ‘If you think that looking at Lale’s computer will help, then you may have it,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Mr Tekeli,’ Süleyman said. ‘My sergeant, if he may, will accompany you home to do that.’

‘Whatever you think is for the best.’

And so Çöktin left with Tekeli while Süleyman prepared for the meeting Ardıç had called with İkmen and himself. But nagging away at the edges of his mind was something else too. Today was the day he had to go to see Krikor Sarkissian and get his test results. As he assembled all the information he needed for his meeting, he was disturbed by just how much his hands shook.