River of The Dead (17 page)

The prisoner himself, however, was probably cleaner and tidier than the usual run of such individuals. Short and stooped, Musa Saatçi was probably somewhere in his late seventies. He had a long white beard, not unlike those Süleyman had seen on the monks at St Sobo’s, and, behind small wire-rimmed spectacles, a pair of very lively bright green eyes. Taner, noticing the look of slight confusion on Süleyman’s face, said, ‘The guards look after him. He isn’t a criminal.’

She looked and sounded absolutely sure about it. She was also adopting a deferential manner with this old man that Süleyman had not seen or associated with her before. It was almost as if all her toughness and ambition had suddenly dropped away from her.

The old man sat down in the chair Taner brought over for him and made himself comfortable. A conversation in what Süleyman imagined was probably Aramaic ensued, after which Taner said, ‘My dear uncle here speaks Turkish. I have told him you are a completely neutral and fair officer from İstanbul. He will listen to you.’

She obviously had a great deal of affection for the old man, but then so did the guard who brought him in a large glass of tea. He too addressed the prisoner affectionately as ‘uncle’.
^*

‘Yes, I will listen,’ the old man said in a deep, heavily accented voice. ‘For Edibe’s sake, I will listen.’ He then turned to Taner and added, ‘But it will change nothing.’

‘Just listen, uncle dear,’ Taner said. And then she looked across expectantly at Süleyman. He cleared his throat. According to Taner, Musa Saatçi had admitted neither guilt nor innocence with regard to the arms the police had found at his home. All he would say was that whatever was wrong would be all right once his son, the missing ‘miracle’ monk Gabriel, returned. The problem was that no one, Musa apparently included, seemed to know when that would be.

‘Mr Saatçi,’ Süleyman began, ‘Inspector Taner has described your situation to me in some detail. I understand you believe that all will be well when your son returns. But . . .’

‘When Gabriel comes back everything will be clear,’ Musa Saatçi said with a smile on his broad, brown face. ‘My son is a saint, young man. Everything will be well upon his return.’

‘Sir, I am . . .’ Süleyman, a man who once believed in God and now didn’t any more, felt embarrassed in the face of such, to him, blind faith. ‘Mr Saatçi, unless your son is coming home now, we don’t have the time. If you are innocent, as Inspector Taner believes, then you must tell us so, and you must also tell us who is actually the guilty party in this matter.’

Musa Saatçi looked down at the floor and frowned. ‘I have nothing to say to you, young man.’

Süleyman looked across at Taner, who just shrugged her shoulders helplessly. He leaned forward and whispered so that only the old man could hear him. ‘Mr Saatçi, I am from İstanbul. I belong to no clan or group, I have no religion and I have never been bought by anyone. I hate to see an obviously revered man like yourself in a place like this. Tell me the truth and I assure you that . . .’

He stopped because the old man was laughing. Not loudly or with a cackle in his voice, but sadly, with much shaking of his shaggy white head.

‘Young man,’ he said when he had finished, ‘I know that you mean well. I know that Edibe here has only my interests at heart. But if I speak before my boy returns and it gets out . . .’

‘It won’t get out!’ Taner said, leaning forward to squeeze one of the old man’s hands in hers. ‘Tell Inspector Süleyman only, if you like!’

‘And he will tell you, and . . .’

‘I won’t tell anyone, I swear it!’ she said. ‘I will simply find who has really committed this crime and arrest them.’

‘Which is exactly what I do not want!’ Musa Saatçi thundered. ‘Not until Gabriel—’

‘Mr Saatçi, you are charged with a terrorist offence,’ Süleyman said. ‘If your telling us the truth is dependent upon your son’s returning to St Sobo’s then he needs to do that very quickly. Mr Saatçi, do you know where your son is?’

Musa Saatçi turned away and said softly, ‘No.’

Süleyman looked again at Taner, who spoke to the old man. ‘Uncle Musa, if you know where Gabriel is—’

‘I do not!’

‘Uncle Musa, is it that you fear that the people who really own those weapons will hurt Gabriel in some way?’

There was a long and very still silence. It told both Taner and Süleyman almost everything they needed to know.

The man from İstanbul leaned forward once again. ‘Mr Saatçi,’ he said, ‘if we knew where your son was we would, and I would personally oversee this, protect him.’

The old man’s eyes were full of tears when he looked up once again. ‘You couldn’t protect Gabriel,’ he said. ‘My son is immortal, a living saint.’

‘So why do you fear for him so very much?’ Taner asked.

The old man shook his head. ‘There are more ways to kill a man than just by destroying his body.’

‘You fear for his soul? These people have dominion over Gabriel’s soul? How can that be?’ Taner said. ‘Uncle, Gabriel is a saint, he is a perfect soul! No one can change that! No one!’

But the old man didn’t answer. Süleyman, lost or so he felt in some sort of medieval world of saints and souls and miracles, leaned back in his chair again and sighed. He’d come out to Mardin to find Yusuf Kaya, not to get involved in something that to him felt like an episode from one of his son’s Harry Potter books.

The old man rose slowly from his chair and then leaned down to cup Edibe Taner’s chin in his hands. ‘All I ask is that you speak to your father for me,’ he said. ‘Ask him to ask the Sharmeran to protect my son.’

‘Uncle.’ Taner got to her feet and embraced the old man. ‘Gabriel is the Sharmeran’s own dear son, you know that. She will never, ever desert him.’

If Süleyman hadn’t known for sure that Taner was a Muslim he would have sworn that she was Suriani. Talking in reverent tones about a Christian holy man! But then of course there was the Sharmeran, too. What a thick brew people were in the east! Taner and the old man spoke in Aramaic again, until the guard returned to take Musa Saatçi back to his cell. Taner, her eyes wet with tears, followed. Süleyman, bringing up the rear, was flummoxed, confused and completely determined to find out just what this Sharmeran thing was really all about.

Like Zeyrek, where İkmen had just come from, Balat is one of those İstanbul districts that line the Golden Horn. Traditionally Balat had always been a Jewish quarter and some Jews did indeed still inhabit its ancient winding streets. But in recent years new people had come into the area – migrants from Anatolia who had come to the city in search of work, and also a small number of artists. This latter group included İkmen’s informant, whom he was visiting now. A tall and very beautiful middle-aged woman, she had lived and worked in Balat for some years.

‘I imagine you’ve heard that Hüseyin Altun, the beggar king of Edirnekapi, has died,’ İkmen said after one of the gypsy’s many daughters had given him tea.

The gypsy offered İkmen a fierce Birinci cigarette, which he took with gratitude, and then lit one up for herself.

‘Many of our people used to live in Edirnekapi,’ she said after a pause. ‘Long ago now. But I still keep an eye on what happens over there. Hüseyin was not one of our own, but I knew him. He was a beggar, a thief, a drug addict, some said an abuser of children . . .’

‘Do you know a lieutenant of Hüseyin’s, one of his ex-street kids, Aslan?’

‘Yes, I know Aslan,’ she said. And then she leaned forward in order to look intently into İkmen’s eyes. ‘He’s nowhere to be found now Hüseyin has gone.’

‘I don’t suppose you—’

‘Know where he is?’ she said, and then she sighed. ‘No. What I do know, however, İkmen, is that you move in pursuit of Yusuf Kaya, the escaped convict.’

‘A man from the east,’ İkmen replied. ‘Not one of your kind.’

‘A dangerous and cruel man,’ the gypsy said. ‘Did Hüseyin Altun have any connection to him?’

‘We think that Kaya may have dealt drugs to Altun. But there is no established connection between the two except via Aslan who, it is said, once went to Kaya’s apartment in Tarlabaşı.’

The gypsy smoked hard, nodding her head as she did so.

‘Since Yusuf Kaya escaped from Kartal Prison,’ İkmen said, ‘this city has experienced a lot of death. Two police officers and one prison guard were killed at the Cerrahpaşa, Hüseyin Altun was stabbed to death, Aslan has disappeared and just this morning I was called to a crime scene that may or may not have a connection to Yusuf Kaya. I believe it is possible that Hüseyin, Aslan or both of them may have aided Kaya’s flight from the city. It is further my opinion that our man from the east is systematically eliminating witnesses to his escape as he goes along. That is certainly how it is looking here in the city.’

Out beyond Gaziantep, according to Süleyman, things were rather different. But then not only were the people out there Yusuf Kaya’s own but none of them, so far, had even hinted at catching sight of the escaped convict.

‘I have never heard anything about Aslan being involved with Yusuf Kaya,’ the gypsy said. ‘He traded with drug dealers all over the city, Beyoğlu and beyond. That was just part of the job that Hüseyin had given him.’ She sighed. ‘What I do know is that Aslan left, went missing or whatever you call it, on the day that Yusuf Kaya escaped from prison.’

‘And . . .’

‘And the rumour is,’ she held up one finger in order to silence him, ‘that Aslan made a bid for power and that it was he who killed Hüseyin. That he did it at that time would seem to be coincidental.’

İkmen eyed the gypsy narrowly. ‘But you and I, we don’t hold unquestioningly with coincidence? Do we?’

‘If Aslan did indeed make a bid for power,’ she said, ‘then it failed. Hüseyin’s kids have scattered. His other lieutenant, Rahmi, runs a few of them, but he is weak . . . İkmen, the truth as I hear it is that Aslan is still alive but no one knows where he is. It is said he and Hüseyin were alone together the night Kaya escaped, the night when Aslan disappeared. With Hüseyin dead, who can say what truly occurred?’

‘Look, can you describe this Aslan to me?’ İkmen asked. ‘My Sergeant Farsakoğlu who over the years has had, on occasion, some dealings with Hüseyin Altun’s kids cannot reliably do that because she’s seen him very infrequently. We did speak to his Bulgarian girlfriend yesterday but we didn’t manage to get to what her lover looked like because the bloody kid gave us the slip!’

The gypsy smiled. ‘Poor İkmen, the street people have been giving you a hard time! Aslan is, from my recollection, a man who must now be about thirty. I wish I could say that he had some sort of distinguishing mark or feature, but I can’t. He has straight black hair, is of average height, weight . . . I’ve seen him maybe twice as an adult.’

‘You can’t say where or who . . .’

‘No.’ She smiled again.

‘No.’

He asked her whether she knew anything about the meaning of the flower tattoo he’d seen on the body of the young man at Mr Lale’s house in Zeyrek. She said that she didn’t. What he described didn’t have any meaning for her.

And so, the business of their conversation apparently over, they chatted of this and that until İkmen finally left about half an hour later. Before he went, however, he did have one last question to ask.

As he stood on the doorstep of her ramshackle studio, he said, ‘Have you ever heard of a Turk called Black Storm? A fighter by all accounts. Had some memorable bouts amongst your own men up in Sulukule.’

‘One of you fighting one of us in Sulukule and winning?’

‘Apparently so.’ His son Bekir had always been full of stories even as a child. He feared and hoped in equal measure that his incarnation as Black Storm was one of them.

Various small and dirty children, some of them the gypsy’s own, watched as she burst into laughter.

‘Oh, İkmen, that is priceless!’ she said. ‘That one of your men would beat one of our men in Sulukule? God help us, but that is just impossible! Impossible!’

‘Yes, but Black—’

‘Black Storm?’ She laughed again. ‘Black Storm? İkmen, I’ve never heard of such a person. If such a person did exist and did beat one of our men in a fight in our own quarter then you can rest assured that Black Storm is no longer in the land of the living now!’

And then she closed the door on him. İkmen walked back towards Zeyrek, closing his mind to at least one of Bekir’s stories as he did so.

Edibe Taner still hadn’t answered Süleyman’s question about just exactly who a Master of Sharmeran was or what such a person did. But when they got back into the city of Mardin, rather than drop him off at the police station along with Selahattin, she took Süleyman to one of Mardin’s two markets, the Revaklı Bazaar. Various tradespeople work at their chosen crafts in this area, including coppersmiths. It was to one of their workshops that Edibe Taner took Mehmet Süleyman now.

‘We have a saying here on the Ocean,’ she said as she led him towards a truly old, dingy and blackened portico, ‘that he who owns patience will own Egypt.’ She smiled. ‘I think that you have earned your place in the land of the pyramids.’

There was no sign up on the wall to tell the world who the hectic little coppersmith’s workshop belonged to. But two things were immediately apparent. First, there was a large brazier in front of the shop on top of which was a pot Süleyman recognised as a very large mirra coffee pot. Second, almost every copper artefact on view was characterised by the image of the Sharmeran. Hanging from the columns at the entrance to the shop, the wares provided a bright and shiny frame to the almost impenetrable darkness within. It was in fact only when Süleyman really looked hard that he noticed that there was another brazier or fire right at the back of the premises. He only saw that a living being was in the shop when Taner called into the blackness.

‘Papa? Papa, it is Edibe. Are you there, Papa?’