Deadly Web (7 page)

Her mother first reached for a cigarette and then sat down beside her daughter, a grave expression on her face.

‘Sırma, you shouldn’t say such things about Gülay’s parents.’

‘Why not?’ Sırma sneered. ‘It’s the truth. Mrs Arat is always drunk and Mr Arat is a gangster.’

‘Sssh!’ her mother hissed. ‘We—’

‘Dad says he’s a gangster and he doesn’t care who hears him!’ Sırma retorted in response to her mother’s fearful reaction. ‘He has sex with young girls. Gülay told me. He even used to come into her bedroom . . .’

‘Sırma!’ Nervously her mother first lit her cigarette and then wiped away the sweat that had gathered at her hairline. ‘Sırma, you really shouldn’t throw around accusations like that about people.’

‘Yes, but it’s true!’

‘Maybe.’ She took a moment to draw a calming breath before continuing, ‘But if you only heard this from Gülay—’

‘Of course I only heard it from Gülay! Her dad wasn’t likely to tell me, was he? Or her stupid drunk mum.’

‘No, but I think that out of respect for Gülay’s memory you should keep that to yourself, Sırma,’ her mother said sternly. ‘The Arats are very influential people and I don’t think it would be wise to make such accusations against them.’

‘I’m only telling you,’ Sırma said sulkily, ‘so what does it matter?’

‘Well, it doesn’t. But don’t tell anyone else, will you, Sırma?’

The girl, looking down at her black varnished fingernails, shrugged.

‘Sırma?’

‘No.’

‘No what?’

Sırma rose from the sofa and began to walk wearily out of the room. ‘No, I won’t say anything to anyone else,’ she said. ‘Not that anyone’s going to ask me anything about it anyway . . .’

Who would want to? According to Gülay, no one had ever been interested in the way her father made her feel before. Apart from Sırma she had once told her grandmother about it, but she’d just hit her and told her not to tell lies. Her mother, or so Gülay had told Sırma, knew what her father was like. But then so long as there was alcohol in the house, she didn’t care about much else.

And people think I’m weird, Sırma thought as she slumped her way back up to her bedroom.

Mehmet Süleyman had just returned to his office when he received the call from Arto Sarkissian. As ever these days he hadn’t actually eaten very much, but he’d enjoyed the company. His cousin Tayyar, who had been his lunch ‘date’, was a very amusing man who had spent much of his life travelling the world with little more than his wits for company. He was also very well acquainted with another of their cousins, Süleyman’s ex-wife, Zuleika. Odd that both seeing and talking about Zuleika had occurred in less than a week. Sometimes months could pass without even a hint of her existence.

İsak Çöktin was still staring at the screen of Gülay Arat’s computer when Süleyman arrived. The younger man was fascinated by machines of all types and hadn’t so much as moved to get a drink since first thing that morning. However, the doctor’s call quickly distracted Süleyman from his deputy’s absorbed countenance.

‘The Arat girl was penetrated by something with a sharp or rough edge to it,’ the doctor said once he had completed the usual social niceties. ‘Quite large. I think from what I’ve seen it was probably made of metal.’

Süleyman frowned. ‘A metal what?’

‘Something long and phallic, I can’t really say any more than that,’ the doctor replied. ‘The rough or sharp edge could have been either an accident of manufacture or a deliberate flaw designed to evoke pain – I can’t say unless I can see the item. I do, however, know that the girl was a virgin prior to the assault.’

‘What about the timing of the assault with regard to time of death?’

‘You mean was she assaulted before or after death?’ Arto cleared his throat. ‘Certainly before and maybe for a short while afterwards.’

‘So at the point of death this “thing” operated by someone could have been inside her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about the notion that she took her own life?’

‘Almost impossible,’ the doctor replied, ‘now I’ve had a proper chance to look at her. The angle of the incision is all wrong for self-infliction. I think we must assume that unlawful killing has occurred.’

So she’d been murdered. ‘Right. Thank you, Doctor.’ And then looking over briefly at Çöktin, he said, ‘Gülay Arat was murdered.’

‘Ah.’

So involved was the sergeant in that computer he was barely breathing, let alone taking in what Süleyman was saying.

So when he’d finished his conversation with the doctor, Süleyman went to see what Çöktin was doing with the dead girl’s computer. Looking at the screen, he watched as his deputy flicked through what looked like snippets of conversation. Much of it was, or appeared to be, incredibly inane.

‘What’s this, Çöktin?’ he asked as he braced his hands against the back of the younger man’s chair.

‘Gülay Arat belonged to three newsgroups,’ Çöktin said. ‘She had an incredible involvement in one and less interest, but still quite a bit, in the other two.’

‘Newsgroups?’

Çöktin looked up at Süleyman and smiled. ‘Discussion groups, sir.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘This one is for fans of Brain Dead.’

‘That’s a band, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir. They’re a skate punk outfit, quite heavy and doomy.’

Süleyman drew a tired hand across his features. ‘“Quite heavy and doomy”?’ he repeated. ‘“Skate punk”? What are you talking about, İsak?’

‘It’s a youth thing, sir. Metal music, you know.’ And then seeing the look of incomprehension on his superior’s face he added, ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t really understand it either. I’m too old.’

‘Well, if you’re too old, I don’t know what that makes me,’ Süleyman said darkly as he continued to peer at the screen. ‘Are you sure this is actually about this band, İsak? Look there.’ He pointed. ‘Whoever that is is talking about kaymak.’

‘Oh, they go off the point all the time,’ Çöktin said, ‘just like real conversations.’

‘Yes, but kaymak!’

Çöktin looked up again at his now outraged superior. ‘Why not?’ he shrugged. ‘In real conversations we talk about food. Kaymak is food. I like it with figs myself. Newsgroups like this are, in effect, little neighbourhoods. People converse, make friends, sometimes they even argue.’

‘And you say that the girl was involved in several of these groups.’

‘Yes, this one and another one dedicated to another skate punk band, Rashit. Then there’s this other thing which calls itself “Theodora’s Closet”.’

‘What’s that about?’

‘I’ve only just glanced at it so far,’ Çöktin said, ‘but from what I can gather it’s about the Byzantine Empire. Aya Sofya, the Kariye – but mainly about, as you’d imagine from the title, the Empress Theodora.’

Süleyman put his hand in his pocket and removed his cigarettes. ‘So Miss Arat had intellectual as well as normal teenage interests. Cigarette?’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Çöktin took a cigarette from Süleyman’s packet and lit up. ‘I don’t think, from what I’ve seen of it, that Theodora’s Closet is exactly intellectual. It’s rather gossipy and a bit camp, actually. I should imagine that quite a lot of gay men post to that site, although I don’t suppose young Gülay Arat realised it.’

‘Mmm . . .’ Süleyman, cigarette in hand, returned to his desk. ‘What about these other “music” sites?’

‘The one she posted to most frequently, Brain Damage, is typical of the skate punk movement.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Dark, depressing and without hope,’ Çöktin replied. ‘İstanbul skate punks are, to me, anyway, indistinguishable from Goths. We know that Gülay was a Goth at one time, don’t we, and so her interest in Brain Damage, the Brain Dead newsgroup, is understandable.’

Probably like, Süleyman recalled, his ex-wife’s stepdaughter. He couldn’t remember her name, but he did recall that Zuleika had been very pleased that the girl was shedding her black weeds for a more ‘normal’ image.

‘I’m going to look at all these sites in more detail,’ Çöktin continued, ‘although I am inclined to think that Brain Damage is where I should be concentrating my efforts. The sheer volume of her involvement could be significant and there are certainly allusions to death and violence on there.’

‘Do you think that whoever runs this newsgroup or maybe someone who is significant within it could be manipulating these young people?’

Çöktin shrugged. ‘It’s possible. There have, as you know, sir, been some accounts of forces abroad intercepting paedophiles who have been what they call “grooming” children for sex over the Internet. I need to spend more time on it and I need to get to grips with the boy’s computer in order to make a comparison.’

‘To see whether they did similar things on their computers?’

‘Yes. Similar games, newsgroups, things like that.’

‘You know a lot about these things, don’t you, İsak?’ Süleyman said as he regarded his deputy with a frown. ‘Do you belong to any of these groups yourself? I ask only out of academic interest.’

Çöktin felt all the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Hoping that his rather delicate pale skin hadn’t reddened he said, ‘Yes, I do a little bit of posting.’

Süleyman smiled. ‘What topics do you discuss, İsak?’

‘Music, films, you know,’ Çöktin forced himself to return a smile.

‘Ah,’ Süleyman laughed, ‘music for young people, I expect, eh, İsak? This African stuff I sometimes hear in Beyoğlu.’

‘Something like that, yes, sir,’ the younger man replied. And then he looked down at the screen and pretended to get absorbed into his work once again.

C
HAPTER
5

İkmen had told his daughter not to worry unduly about the obscene graffiti on the wall of the Church of the Panaghia Mouchliotissa.

‘It’s probably the work of bored kids,’ he’d said when she had, amid some embarrassment, described it to him. But Hulya hadn’t been satisfied that he really understood what she’d described and so İkmen, if reluctantly, given the current heat wave, had gone over to Fener to see for himself. It had been an interesting trip that had resulted in a further excursion to Beyoğlu.

Simurg bookshop, which is on Hasnan Galip Sokaği, is actually two shops side by side. Both are owned by the same person and they stock a wide selection of books and sheet music, both new and old. It’s a laid-back sort of a place, and one can browse Simurg’s stock for hours if required, provided one is prepared to shift the shop’s numerous sleeping cats from their literary beds. As both a book and cat lover, İkmen had a lot of time for Simurg and its regular clientele of argumentative old intellectuals – men not unlike his late father. Not that he had come for that unique Simurg ambience on this occasion. He’d come specifically to see Max, and Max always came into Simurg at around 6 p.m.

İkmen, who had positioned himself by the main entrance, which was currently being guarded by a barely sentient Angora, was looking at a copy of
Wuthering Heights
in English when Max appeared.

‘Hello, Max.’

İkmen spoke in English and also quite loudly. Up there in the clouds where Max existed, those on the ground could be difficult to hear.

The tall, slim man in the doorway looked down and smiled. Max, though of indeterminate years, was, İkmen knew, about his own age. He’d always had grey hair, ever since İkmen had first met him in the 1970s. Quintessentially English, Max was nevertheless a much darker man than İkmen – something that had little to do with exposure to the Turkish sun over so many years. Max was just dark – in several different ways.

‘Hello, Çetin,’ Max said as he bent down in order to catch the smaller man in his embrace. ‘How are you?’

İkmen replied that he was well, smiling as he observed Max go into his usual evening routine of feeding small and succulent pieces of fish and meat to his many feline fans at Simurg.

‘I wondered if I could take you for a coffee?’ İkmen said once the last cat had been fully satisfied.

Max’s large green eyes lit up. ‘What a great euphemism that is!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Coffee! When you want a chat – coffee! Sex – coffee! Or, as I suspect in this case, information – coffee!’

‘Well, not exactly information, Max,’ İkmen said. ‘Expertise is really more the word, I think.’

‘Oh, spooky stuff.’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’

They went to the Pia café on Bekar Sokak, a low-key haunt of artists and writers that İkmen knew Max liked. They took a table outside and ordered two cappuccinos. After greeting several men İkmen thought looked like 1960s beatniks, Max lit up a long, thin cigar. İkmen took a Polaroid photograph out of his jacket pocket and laid it out in front of his companion.

‘Do you have any idea what this is, Max?’

The Englishman squinted down at the image.

‘I took it myself,’ İkmen said, ‘which is why it’s not very good, I’m afraid. Can you make out what it is?’

‘It looks like the Goat of Mendes to me,’ Max said, ‘although I’ve only ever seen him depicted with either one or two penises before. There have to be—’

‘There are thirteen,’ İkmen cut in, ‘all with women ecstatically impaled.’

‘How fascinating!’ Max looked up. ‘Where’s the original?’

İkmen sighed. ‘On the wall of the Church of the Panaghia in Fener. You know Hulya and Berekiah are renovating a place up there. They came across one of the monks, very distressed. He told them about it and then took them to see it. At first I thought it might be kids . . .’

‘Who knows these days?’ Max shook his head, his thin face bookish in its concentration. ‘But this is definitely the Goat who, as I’m sure an educated man like you will know, is an aspect, a very sexual manifestation, of Satan. It’s a very . . . Christian, a Western motif. Goya represented the Goat with witches and hags throwing themselves around him in an orgy of sexual desire. How long has it been there?’

‘I don’t know, but I think it must be very recent.’