Deadly Web (25 page)

After about ten minutes they managed to get most of İskender’s family out into the car park. Only his wife, mother and sister remained – his father, having now woken from his drunken stupor, had disappeared off in search of more alcohol.

Belkıs İskender sat down beside the bed and took her husband’s pale hand in hers. She then stroked his head while saying, ‘Metin, darling, Sergeant Karataş is here to see you. Look.’

İskender opened his eyes to find Karataş’ large face before him. ‘Sir.’

‘Karataş . . .’ He reached one hand out to touch the face and said, ‘You are OK?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Karataş sat down on a chair beside Belkıs İskender. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

‘What for?’ The normally hard eyes now softened by drugs looked almost friendly.

‘For not being there to protect you, sir.’

İskender smiled. ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said. ‘Yesterday has gone.’

‘What, nothing?’

İskender very slowly shook his head. ‘I just remember lines,’ he said.

Karataş frowned.

‘On a piece of paper, strange lines, nonsense.’

‘And this piece of paper, sir, it was—’

Belkıs İskender, fearing that her husband was becoming distressed, said, ‘Metin . . .’

‘Sssh,’ her husband soothed. ‘I’m OK, Belkıs.’ Then turning to Karataş he said, ‘I’m sorry, Alp, I don’t know what it means. Just these lines . . . I think the piece of paper was near or on that man’s bed, you know the man . . .’

‘Mr Esterhazy, sir.’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

Karataş looked down at İskender’s hands, one of which bore a cannula for a drip. Then he took his notebook and pen out of his pocket and placed them on the bed.

‘Sir, do you think you could draw these lines?’

Belkıs İskender shot him an outraged look.

‘Yes,’ İskender said. ‘But it’s only a pattern.’

Karataş handed him the notebook and pen and then watched as İskender, with painful slowness, drew a figure that zigzagged backwards and forwards across the page. As he did this, Karataş imagined İkmen’s face when he saw this nonsense. But then maybe he’d make more of it than the obviously annoyed Belkıs İskender. After all, as Karataş was only too aware, İkmen was investigating some very odd things back at the Esterhazy apartment. Just before he left, some gypsy drenched in jewellery had turned up. İkmen, he noticed, had greeted her with obvious enthusiasm.

He didn’t think he’d be like this, gabbling on like a fool.

‘You see I have to meet my sergeant at six, and so I really don’t have a great deal of time,’ Süleyman said as he nervously paced the room in front of Krikor Sarkissian’s considerable desk. ‘So if we may, Doctor,’ he said, ‘conclude this business . . .’

‘Once you’ve sat down, we will,’ the Armenian said. ‘Please take a seat, Inspector. My chairs do not bite.’

Dr Sarkissian looked grave. That combined with his insistence that he sit down could only mean one thing. He had AIDS. Wringing his hands compulsively, Süleyman wondered how he might retain any sense of dignity in the face of such a thing.

‘Doctor—’

‘Sit down!’

It was an order. How dare he? Süleyman looked down at the small, elegantly dressed man behind the desk with undisguised fury.

‘Please,’ Krikor Sarkissian then added gently. ‘Please sit down, Inspector.’

And almost before he could think about what he was doing, Süleyman found himself sitting in the chair in front of Krikor Sarkissian’s desk, his head down, ashamed, like a naughty school child brought before his disapproving teacher.

‘Now I have your test results,’ Krikor said, ‘and I’m delighted to be able to tell you that you are clear of HIV infection . . .’

Where the tears came from he didn’t know, but it must have been a big place because there were so many of them. This, he thought as the tears just kept breaking across him, is not in the least bit dignified – and he felt ashamed. But he was also completely helpless in the face of such a release of tension, which is what this was. Aware only later of Krikor’s hand on his shoulder, his entire body shook for a good ten minutes after the doctor’s short but, to him, world-changing, statement.

Only when he had managed to retain his composure enough to raise his head from his hands did the Armenian speak to him again.

‘Now can you see why I wanted you to sit down?’

Süleyman, through sobs, smiled.

‘Even when it’s good news, people need to be looked after,’ Krikor said. ‘No one, whichever way the test results go, is ever prepared for this,’ he smiled. ‘Now I’m going to ask Matilde to make you a cup of coffee and then we’re going to talk.’

‘Yes, but I—’

‘Just five minutes,’ Krikor said as he held a hand aloft to silence him. ‘I think you owe me that.’

He’d only told him things he knew already, but as Mehmet Süleyman walked out of the doctor’s office and made his way towards the station, he knew why Krikor Sarkissian had done so. In future, and if he ever wanted to have any sort of second chance with his wife, things would have to be different. But then the past few months had, if nothing else, taught him that he could control his baser urges. Odd really, he’d been a master of self-control when he was younger. What had happened to change that he wasn’t really sure. But he knew that in the future he would have to revert to his former mode of behaviour again – which was no bad thing.

This didn’t, of course, mean that he couldn’t have sex, however. And when he went to see what Gün and Çelik had come up with as regards ‘costumes’ for the evening he felt that he probably needed it rather more than he had imagined he would. Çelik, with her long blonde hair tied into a messy bun at the back of her head, looked particularly stunning in her black lace ball gown.

But as soon as the women had gone, Süleyman, now partnered once again with Çöktin, resolved to keep his mind on the job at hand. Tonight, with any luck, they might get some sort of idea about what was going on at the Hammer and, if they were even more fortunate, who was doing it.

So far, Max Esterhazy’s address book had yielded his barber, Simurg bookshop and the home of a young girl who had once taken lessons from him, but was now at university in America. And when Çöktin did finally call İkmen back, on his way out to Beyoğlu, it was with mixed news.

‘Cem Ataman, the suicide, was one of Esterhazy’s students,’ he said. ‘But he stopped his lessons just over six months ago.’

‘And the other girl?’

‘I’ve yet to contact someone sober at the Arat house,’ Çöktin responded gloomily.

‘OK.’

İkmen replaced the receiver and looked across at the exotic figure of Gonca the gypsy, lying amid numerous tomes, atop Max’s old leather Chesterfield. When she felt his eyes on her, she looked up and smiled. Momentarily dazzled, İkmen looked away. All breasts, glitter and teeth, no wonder young Yıldız kept going back for more. At nearly fifty, it seemed Gonca had lost none of her appeal to the opposite sex. But how much of this was due to her self-confessed sexual appetite as opposed to looks and outright sorcery, İkmen wasn’t sure.

He picked the telephone receiver up and dialled yet another number. The woman who answered sounded vaguely familiar. But he went into his usual routine of introducing himself – until she stopped him.

‘You work with my ex-husband,’ she said.

And then he remembered. Zuleika Süleyman. Allah, but what a life she had led poor Mehmet all those years ago! Always buying things, forever, just like his current wife, suspicious of his every move.

‘Zuleika.’

‘Yes, now Zuleika Topal.’

‘Congratulations, Mrs Topal.’

‘So how can I help you, İkmen?’ she said, resorting to the high-handed tone she had always used with him when she was married to Mehmet. ‘And how did you get this number?’

İkmen told her about Max and how he had possibly disappeared.

‘Well, that’s very odd,’ she said.

‘Why is that, Mrs Topal?’

‘Because my stepdaughter, Fitnat, has a lesson with Mr Esterhazy tonight. She’s on her way, or rather she told me she was on her way to his apartment now.’

‘You know for certain that she had a lesson with him tonight?’

‘Yes. Well, I believe so,’ she said. ‘Mr Esterhazy telephoned her yesterday.’

‘Did you take the call?’

‘No, Fitnat did.’ There was a pause during which he thought he heard her smack those disapproving lips of hers. ‘Oh, unless . . .’

‘What?’

‘Fitnat likes to hang around with all those weird Goths at Atlas Pasaj. She knows I disapprove, but—’

‘Mrs Topal, does Fitnat have a mobile telephone?’

‘Of course! If she’s doing something she shouldn’t, it will be switched off, though.’

‘Can I have the number anyway? I really do need to track Mr Esterhazy down.’

‘Yes.’ She looked the number up and gave it to him. ‘Will you let me know if you manage to get hold of her?’

‘Of course,’ İkmen said. ‘I may even meet her. I’m at Mr Esterhazy’s apartment myself.’

‘But what about if she’s gone to Atlas?’

İkmen knew what Süleyman had planned for the Hammer, but he didn’t mention that to her. ‘I’m sure that if she’s there without your permission, we can pick her up,’ he said.

‘I would be very grateful, Çetin,’ she replied.

İkmen, holding back the laughter her unaccustomed use of his first name caused, said that he would do what he could and then, as soon as he’d put the phone down, he tried to call the girl’s mobile without success. And so it was then that he contacted Süleyman.

He’d wanted to speak to him anyway.

‘What did Krikor Sarkissian have to tell you?’ he said, coming straight, and rapidly, to the point.

‘I’m clean, thank you, Çetin,’ his friend replied. ‘Thanks be to Allah.’

‘Yes, indeed.’ İkmen agreed. Though in no way a religious man, he had secretly said one or two prayers for Süleyman. He’d also, as he was doing now, shed one or two tears for him too, although this time his silent tears were of relief rather than anxiety.

‘Is there anything else?’ Süleyman asked. He was obviously unaware of the effect this news was having on İkmen. But then, when it came to his private life, he could be somewhat closed off even with intimates like İkmen. The latter cleared his throat. ‘The name Fitnat Topal mean anything to you, Mehmet?’

‘Oh, yes, I know Fitnat,’ his friend said with more than a touch of disdain in his voice. ‘A little flirt.’

‘Did you also know that she was one of Max’s students?’ İkmen said. He then went on to report his conversation with Zuleika.

Süleyman was shocked. ‘But if she heard from Max yesterday . . .’

‘
If
she did,’ İkmen corrected. ‘Fitnat took the call herself and so until we speak to her, we won’t know. Zuleika thinks she may well have gone to Atlas Pasaj.’

‘Well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we?’ Süleyman replied. ‘Gün and Çelik have just gone in.’

‘Tell them to keep a lookout for her,’ İkmen said. ‘And if and when you find her I will need to speak to her.’

‘OK.’

İkmen replaced the receiver and then looked across at Gonca once again. This time she was deep inside the books, scribbling her findings down on a pad of paper.

‘Problems?’ she asked, not looking up as she spoke.

‘Complications,’ İkmen replied.

Gonca laughed. It was a deep, throaty sound. ‘What do you expect of a magician?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’ He lit a cigarette and then leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘You know, Gonca, I’ve been a friend of Max Esterhazy for thirty years and yet I’ve not known him at all.’

‘İbrahim Dede told me that the Englishman was the only pupil the old Kabbalist Rebbe Baruh would ever take,’ she said.

İkmen shook his head. Knowing what he now did about Max’s past, that seemed incredible. What had Max done? Had he, like Hitler before him, sought to rob the Jews of their magic by force? He couldn’t imagine it and yet . . . There had, he recalled, been a violence in Max that day they had argued about Alison. He’d accused İkmen of all sorts – wanting the girl for himself, meddling in things he didn’t understand.

Gonca, as could be her wont, suddenly lost patience with what she was doing and threw one of the books to the floor.

‘I could go on with these correspondences for ever,’ she said. ‘Meaningless unless we know what your magician might have planned. And as for this . . .’ She held the drawing that İskender had made in the hospital aloft for İkmen to see. ‘When I first saw it I thought that maybe it was the Lightning Flash.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it’s the way the practitioner draws divine light down from the top of the tree, the God-head, into his own material body at the bottom,’ she said. ‘Kabbalists can’t work without doing that – I think. It’s very complicated, all this, you know, İkmen. I’m just a simple gypsy . . .’

At that moment, Karataş, who had been making coffee for them all, came in from the kitchen.

‘If anyone comes to the door, I want to answer it,’ İkmen said as he watched the big man place a cup in front of Gonca. ‘It may be one of Max’s students.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So, Gonca, look, if you don’t think the thing İskender drew was this Lightning Flash then what is it?’

But Gonca, true to her nature, was rather busy looking at Karataş.

‘Allah!’

Only when he had left them did she return to their previous conversation.

‘I think it’s a sigil,’ she said. ‘A written or drawn talisman. Magicians use them to capture the essence of something or someone. If you have someone’s sigil you can, so they say, control that person. I don’t know what they mean and even looking through these books isn’t helping.’

‘But if Max came back to the apartment to get this . . .’

‘Sigil. Maybe he wants or needs to have control over that person,’ Gonca said. ‘But then do we know that it was Esterhazy who came here and shot your colleague?’