Deadly Web (26 page)

‘No.’ İkmen sighed. ‘No, but if Max is dead then surely I would feel – something . . .’

‘Would you?’ she smiled. ‘By your own admission, you don’t know him as well as you thought you did. There’s a lot of power in this place, you know, İkmen,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

And then she got up and started walking towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’

She shrugged. ‘To the kitchen.’

İkmen raised his eyes heavenwards and said, ‘Please leave Sergeant Karataş alone, will you, Gonca? For me? He’s had a very bad couple of days and he needs to keep his mind on his job.’

But Gonca just kept on walking, her long red skirts swishing seductively around bare ankles encircled with jingling bracelets. But then what, really, did İkmen expect? As his wife was always saying, ‘If you will always engage these outcasts to help you, you can’t expect them to be reliable.’ Which was true. Over the years he’d worked with a variety of people ‘on the edge’ as it were – transsexuals, gypsies, soothsayers, beggars. And sometimes they’d helped and sometimes they’d hindered. But what they had always consistently done was their own ‘thing’. Whatever the problem he needed help with, whatever the urgency of the information required, these sorts of people – those most like him, in reality – had always done whatever it was to the beat of their own drum. Not unlike Max. He’d gone for help to Max. He had sought him out over that Goat of Mendes image – the desecration of the holy places. Something, İkmen thought, the Nazis had done. But Max? No, Max wanted to do good. His sister had said so; İkmen himself had always believed it. But then, yet again, he thought, how well do I or did I know this man?

İkmen picked the piece of paper bearing the sigil up off the floor and looked at it. Utterly, as Gonca had said, meaningless. Just a squiggle in biro. And they didn’t even know whether it had anything to do with whoever came into the apartment and shot İskender or not. Maybe it was just a pattern – an innocent, zigzag doodle İskender had spotted somewhere in Max’s bedroom just before he hit the floor. İkmen put the piece of paper in his pocket and then scowled when he heard Gonca’s deep laughter coming from the kitchen.

C
HAPTER
16

The atmosphere, as well as the décor, inside the Hammer wasn’t what they had expected. There were no artificial tombstones, no fake cobwebs, not even a dark corner in which to be miserable. And although the clientèle was almost entirely made up of people in black clothes, with black make-up and heavily scarred arms, the harsh neon lighting gave the place more of a modernistic, Huis Clos feel than something Frankenstein’s monster might find familiar. Looking around now that they’d had a chance to get drinks and find a banquette on which to sit, the two officers admitted to each other that they felt overdressed. These Goths, or so it would seem when they compared the Hammer to other establishments in the Pasaj, were both super cool and serious about what they did – or didn’t. Getting to talk to people was, they both felt, going to be very difficult unless, of course, someone came to talk to them first.

‘That doesn’t seem very likely,’ Gün said as she tried to stare without hope into the depths of her mineral water.

‘Does seem to bear out the idea that this might be the place to come to get into more serious stuff, though, doesn’t it?’ Çelik replied.

‘I’ve seen no evidence of Satanism, have you?’ Gün, who was older and more experienced, responded.

Çelik looked down. ‘No . . .’

‘No, so don’t make any assumptions.’

The heavy trance music that had, until just a few moments before, thundered through every fibre of the building started up again. Çelik, who quite liked trance herself, started to move her head to the beat. Gün, on the other hand, shook her head in despair and then signalled to her colleague that she was going to try to find the toilet. The girl at the bar, a thin, drugged-out-looking individual with a spectacular scar at her throat, pointed Gün in the direction of the basement.

Down there, surprisingly, it was as bright as it was up in the bar and as she walked down the bright white corridor towards the toilet, Gün felt as if she were going into an operating theatre. Pictures lined the walls – some, like the doctored reproduction of that famous shot of Marilyn Monroe standing over an air vent, made her laugh. Marilyn with fangs and a tail! But then there was another of what looked like a genuine dead man that made her cringe. The one that really caught her attention, however, was a simple framed line drawing. She took her mobile phone out of her handbag and called Süleyman immediately.

Gülizar had been making money on the side like this for several years now. Her father drove a phaeton, taking trippers and sometimes naval cadets up to the monastery, but that didn’t earn him very much. And although her family had only the meanest sort of shack on the waterfront, there were fourteen of them and so extra money was always welcomed. What Gülizar did, therefore, was both useful and justified. Not that she was actively looking for work when she met him. It was dark and she’d just gone out to get some water when she saw him walking down the hill from the direction of the monastery. Thinking of anything but work, she walked over to see what he was doing. It wasn’t, after all, usual to see someone coming away from St George’s at this time of night. It very quickly became obvious what he wanted.

‘All right,’ she said. He gave her the money and she pulled him behind the nearest tree.

‘Not here!’ he said as he shoved her hand away from his crotch.

‘Why not?’

‘Up at the monastery.’

Gülizar frowned. It was quite a long climb up there, and deserted too.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s what I want!’ he hissed. ‘Now are you coming or—’

‘I’ll need an extra ten million,’ she said, ‘for the time and trouble.’

‘All right! All right!’

It wasn’t a long climb, but it was steep and she was too breathless to speak even if she’d wanted to. But then men in his condition – she’d felt he was already hard – didn’t usually want to talk – only sometimes they wanted her to when she did them.

When they reached the walls of the monastery, he told her to take her clothes off. Gülizar didn’t like this. ‘I told you,’ she said forcefully, ‘that I’m not doing the lot – only pulling you off.’

All this fuss just for a wank! She should have known . . .

‘Get your clothes off!’

Something in his tone told her that she should really do as she was asked. And so she removed her clothing and, ragged as it was, she piled it neatly on the ground beside her. Strangely, she felt very exposed and almost ashamed. Naked wasn’t something she was accustomed to being, most of her customers settling for just some quick, fumbling relief.

‘Come here,’ he said.

She went, afraid now – although quite why, apart from the vulnerability her nakedness made her feel, she couldn’t say. He reached inside his jacket and took a small bottle out of one of his pockets.

‘Use this,’ he said.

She took the lid off and sniffed. It was musty and sweet. He unzipped his trousers as she poured a little drop of what looked like oil into her hand. This too was weird, but if it was what he wanted . . .

‘Come on!’

Without looking down she rubbed the oil into his penis, watching his face as his stern mask closed its eyes upon her. And then suddenly there was nothing.

Later she would have the impression of hands upon her, of a feeling inside somewhere between pleasure and pain and of light too – all around, white and harsh and startling.

This was real strong-arm policing. Armed officers swarming all over the bar – the whole of Atlas sealed off by further groups of men and women in full riot gear. Controlling them all – Süleyman, marching up and down, threatening, demanding. Those youngsters who weren’t actually shaking were clinging to each other for support. İkmen would have been appalled.

But Süleyman had had enough. ‘I want to see everyone’s ID card and all foreign passports,’ he said to the large group of people in the bar. ‘I will then be asking you some questions and showing you some photographs. You may not leave until I say so.’

There was a murmur of dissatisfaction amongst the black-clad masses, but there was also a feeling that all they could do was bow to the inevitable.

Süleyman seated himself at a table in an alcove and waited the few minutes it took Çöktin to return from the station. He’d gone back to get a picture of Fitnat Topal that Zuleika had faxed over. So far the girl hadn’t turned up at either Atlas or Max’s place, and Süleyman wanted to know whether anyone present had seen her. He began with the bar staff. There were four of them – two boys and two girls. He checked their ID cards and then lit a cigarette.

‘What do you know about this?’ he said as he took the picture Gün had discovered in the basement from the banquette behind him.

One of the boys shrugged.

‘Well?’

The other boy and one of the girls, the one without the scar at her neck, looked at each other. ‘I know it was a gift,’ the girl said. ‘To the owner.’

‘Who is?’

‘Beyazıt Bey,’ she said. ‘Beyazıt Koray.’

‘And where is Beyazıt Bey at the moment? Do you know?’

She shrugged. ‘He doesn’t come in very often.’

‘Well, do you have a telephone number for him?’

‘Hakan does.’

The younger of the two boys gave Süleyman a mobile number, which he passed to Çöktin with instructions to call the man and get him down there. He then showed the staff photographs of Cem Ataman, Gülay Arat, Lale Tekeli and Fitnat. One of the boys said he thought he’d seen Cem before, but he wasn’t sure.

‘What do you know about the people who come here?’ Süleyman asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, what type of people come here and why?’

The scarred girl, an expression of disbelief on her face, said, ‘Well, as you see.’

‘What?’

‘People who like skate punk and trance. People who like to wear black.’

He leaned across the table and took one of her hands in his, turning the arm as he did so. ‘People who like to cut themselves.’

After first looking down at her arm, she flicked her eyes up to his face and said, ‘A lot of people cut themselves for many different reasons.’

‘And what is your reason, Miss . . .’ he looked down at her ID card to remind himself of her name, ‘Özbek?’

She put her hand to her throat and looked down once again. ‘I have my own reasons.’

‘A lot of you young people involved in this scene do it.’

‘Maybe we do it out of frustration,’ the unscarred and seemingly older girl said. ‘Maybe it’s like a protest.’

‘Against what?’

‘Where do you want me to start?’ she said.

Süleyman smiled. ‘Have you ever heard,’ he said, ‘of the American actor James Dean?’

Hakan laughed.

‘So this,’ Süleyman flung his arms in the air to express his lack of language for this phenomenon, ‘this movement you have here is all about the disaffection of youth, nothing more.’

‘I guess . . .’

‘And so that couple over there –’ he pointed to a large, long-haired man standing beside an extraordinarily made-up woman, both of them very obviously middle-aged – ‘are just simply anomalies, are they?’ He paused. ‘I’ve seen at least three men and probably as many as ten women who are probably older than I am since I’ve been here. What’s going on?’

The older girl, who was called Soraya, said, ‘Well, you obviously have a theory about it so why don’t you just come out and ask us about that?’

Impressed by her boldness, Süleyman first smiled at her and then said, ‘OK. Satanism – tell me what you know about it.’

İkmen didn’t get home until nearly midnight. A combination of no sleep the previous night combined with an overload of information about Max, his interests and past, had finally brought him to a standstill at just after eleven. So after he’d first rescued Karataş from Gonca’s attention and then taken the gypsy herself home, he’d headed for his own place and hopefully a little sleep.

As he walked into the clean but shabby living room, he saw that his son Bülent was still awake, watching CNN on the family’s new satellite service.

‘I thought you’d be plugged in to MTV,’ İkmen said as he threw his briefcase down on to the floor and sat down.

‘Dad, do you think we’ll go to war?’

He’d never really said much about the mounting tension between the United States, Britain and Iraq before. Indeed, for most of his short life, Bülent had concerned himself with very little apart from enjoying himself. But he had been worried about his call-up to the army for a time when he was younger and now, with that call-up imminent, he was concerned once again.

‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘İnşallah we’ll be spared.’

‘I don’t want to fight.’ Bülent said it quickly, head down, obviously ashamed of this admission.

‘I know,’ İkmen sighed. ‘Do you remember we talked about it some years ago? I said then that I could understand your feelings, Bülent, and that still holds good today. But, unfortunately, this current situation is one that we just have to watch and wait to see what will happen.’

‘I know.’ And then he went back to looking at the TV again.

Everyone was concerned, most of them in a quiet, accepting sort of a way. İkmen himself was worried – mainly for Bülent. But he was trying hard not to show it. After all, what did he or anyone else really know? It was thought, in fact the Americans and the British based their call for war on it, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction – whatever that meant. Chemical and biological agents had, they said, been stockpiled by the Iraqi leader for many years. A rather cynical English reporter his brother knew said they knew this because they, the British, had sold them to him. But whether he still had them and, further, would actually use them against an enemy was difficult to guess. He’d heard, like a lot of other people, stories about the issuing of gas masks and possible vaccination programmes against things like smallpox for those living near the Iraqi border. But if he were honest about it, he tried not to think along these lines too often. Max, he knew, had been extremely worried about the prospect of war. Like İkmen himself, he was of the generation that had managed to avoid conflict. In İkmen’s case, too young for Korea, too old for any involvement in the Gulf or Afghanistan.