River of The Dead (22 page)

‘I’m a different person now and you don’t like it!’ Bekir had screamed. Fatma, by this time crying in the kitchen, had begged her husband to stop.

‘Look what you’re doing to Mum!’ Bekir had said when he heard her cries and her tears.

‘It’s because of your mother that I need to be sure of you,’ İkmen had said. ‘Because if you break your mother’s heart again, Bekir, I will break every bone in your body!’

Bekir had gone to what had once been Bülent’s room then, slamming the door in his young brother Kemal’s face as he did so. This had put Çetin İkmen in trouble with both his wife and his youngest son, who accused his father of being a ‘fascist’. Fatma just very icily told her husband to sleep on the sofa. And so Çetin sat, wakefully, smoking heavily until at just before six o’clock his mobile phone began to ring.

‘İkmen,’ he said gloomily into what he persisted in thinking of as its tiny, tiny mouthpiece.

‘Sir, it’s İzzet,’ he heard Süleyman’s sergeant say. ‘We’ve just received a call from Dr Eldem at the Cerrahpaşa. The prison guard Ramazan Eren died half an hour ago.’

İkmen sighed and then groaned. With Eren dead, any chance of questioning a witness to Yusuf Kaya’s escape had gone. ‘How?’

‘Multiple organ failure,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘The doctor said it’s not uncommon in patients in coma.’

İkmen knew that was so. He’d seen a few people both die in and recover from coma over the years. But Ramazan Eren wasn’t just anybody. He was possibly one of the last links in the chain that led back to Yusuf Kaya’s escape. He was certainly the last witness to the actual event whose whereabouts were known. His death was therefore, for Kaya, really rather convenient. İkmen took his jacket off the cushion beside him and put it on.

‘And because Eren was under medical care when he died there will be no post-mortem,’ İkmen said as a statement of fact.

‘No, sir.’

‘Unless of course we order one,’ İkmen continued as he checked his pockets for car keys and money.

‘Sir?’

Suddenly energised, İkmen rose to his feet. Far too many people were dying around Yusuf Kaya for his liking. ‘The police,’ he said decisively. ‘I’m going to go over to the Cerrahpaşa now and I’m going to find out who was with or around Ramazan Eren before and during his death. I’m also going to order a post-mortem which I will want a police pathologist to perform.’

‘But sir, I understood from Dr Eldem that Eren’s body was going to be released to his family.’

‘Then it will have to be un-released,’ İkmen replied. ‘I want Dr Sarkissian to take a look at Ramazan Eren before he meets his maker.’

‘But sir, what will that—’

‘Look like? I don’t care,’ İkmen said. ‘If necessary I will say that I suspect foul play because maybe I do.’

Even in a secular state like Turkey, Muslims are usually buried within twenty-four hours of death unless something about the demise is reasoned to be unnatural.

‘A lot of deaths have occurred around Yusuf Kaya’s route out of this city. Let’s see if we can at the very least find some sort of connection here,’ İkmen said. ‘Meet me at the Cerrahpaşa in fifteen minutes, İzzet.’

‘Yes, sir.’

İkmen cut the connection and then walked determinedly out into the hall of his apartment. Kemal, who had just finished in the bathroom, scuttled nervously past him and back to his bedroom. The musty smell of his acne cream made İkmen wince.

‘Tomorrow is Easter Sunday,’ Edibe Taner said to Süleyman as they walked towards the high yellow wall that surrounded the Kaya family home in Mardin. ‘So all leave is cancelled and I for one will be in church.’

‘Protecting the Christians?’

‘In part, yes,’ she replied. ‘There will always be people who wish to harm others on the basis of their beliefs. The innocent have to be protected. But I will also be there to see whether Kaya’s American woman does indeed turn up.’

‘Which church?’

‘Mar Behnam Suriani church is where everyone goes,’ she said. ‘Musa Saatçi’s relatives will be there.’

‘Minus Gabriel.’

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? It’s Easter. Gabriel is a very observant man. Maybe he will just turn up for the service. Who knows?’

The gate that led into the Kaya family compound was closed. Taner rapped on it hard and then stood silently next to Süleyman while they waited for someone inside to respond. Almost a minute passed before soft footsteps were heard approaching from inside. When the door opened they found themselves looking into the heavily kohl-rimmed eyes of Yusuf Kaya’s first wife, Zeynep.

‘What do you want?’ she said, addressing Edibe Taner. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’

‘Not even about Yusuf’s foreign woman down by Dara?’ Taner said as she pushed roughly past the woman and entered the courtyard. ‘I think that you do, Zeynep.’

Zeynep Kaya looked her cousin straight in the eye and said, ‘Foreign woman? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘Don’t you?’ Taner glanced around the seemingly deserted courtyard and then pulled Zeynep Kaya into the open door to a stable. Süleyman, looking round to see who may or may not be coming to Zeynep’s assistance, followed them. Beyond themselves, not a thing appeared to stir.

‘Well, the second wife in Dara, an American woman, knows you!’ Taner said as she held Zeynep Kaya up to the wall in front of her. ‘And, Zeynep, let me tell you, some of your husband’s thugs were guarding her.’

‘I don’t know anything about any woman!’ Zeynep persisted. ‘It’s all lies!’

‘It isn’t, and you know it,’ Süleyman put in. He wasn’t happy to witness what was in effect one woman bullying another, but Zeynep Kaya needed to know that her continued lying was futile. She must surely be aware that her husband had a second wife. There was far too much evidence to support that contention.

‘Your husband was imprisoned in İstanbul for killing the prostitute he was living with,’ Taner said. ‘He has a daughter by Anastasia Akyuz. I don’t know how many other women he’s slept with over the years since he married you but I would imagine that it runs into double figures. Yusuf is a shit! He always was!’

‘He is my husband!’ Zeynep Kaya made as if to spit into Edibe Taner’s face, but then, with sudden terror in her eyes, she stopped.

‘Don’t you dare!’ the policewoman roared. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ Suddenly, and with a force that surprised even Süleyman, she slapped Zeynep Kaya across the face. The woman’s cheek reddened immediately. ‘Like it or not, Zeynep, you remain a scorpion and as a scorpion you will accept my authority!’

‘Inspector Taner, I . . .’

She turned and gave Süleyman such a cold look it was almost like gazing into the face of a snake. Then she turned back to her cousin.

‘Zeynep Kaya, if you lie to me, I will make sure that the Sharmeran never favours you with good fortune ever again!’ The woman beneath her hands looked terrified. ‘You know that I can do this! You know that my father can and will curse your rotten adopted family who, by the way, are nowhere around to protect you now, are they?’

‘Bilqis Hanim
^*
is out,’ Zeynep said. ‘The men have taken her to see her sister in Nusaybin. She – the sister – is dying; she . . . Oh, Edibe, please, please do not curse us! I love Allah but I truly love my Sharmeran too . . .’

‘Then tell me the truth, Zeynep! Tell me now!’

There was a pause. One of Taner’s hands was at Zeynep Kaya’s throat, but it wasn’t the physical consequences that were frightening the woman, it was the spiritual ones. Being cut off from or cursed by the Sharmeran was a very big deal indeed.

‘She, the woman, she is much better with Yusuf in terms of business,’ Zeynep said.

‘You mean she helps him run drugs and murder his rivals?’

‘I don’t know what she does!’ Zeynep said. ‘She fell in love with my husband in İstanbul. I – I think it was partly because of this place. She knew of the Tur Abdin. She was fascinated by it. She wanted to hear about the Sharmeran. And . . . Look, Yusuf told me he never loved her but she was good at business. It’s what he said! She is American and good at business. What do I know? I don’t understand Yusuf’s business!’

‘Oh, so you don’t know how or why he gives you expensive jewellery, buys up property and dresses like an Italian politician? What—’

‘No! No, I don’t know!’ Zeynep said, almost in tears now. ‘I don’t get involved in business! I have children, Yusuf’s children!’ And then suddenly her face turned into something less frightened and much more bitter. ‘That foreigner can’t give my husband children! My children, Muslim children, will have everything when my Yusuf dies! That’s all I care about! That’s all that anything in this world might mean to me!’

‘So the fact that Yusuf has been fucking—’

‘I don’t care about that,’ Zeynep said. ‘I just—’

‘Where is he, Zeynep?’ Taner asked. ‘Where is Yusuf now? Tell me and no one need ever know that you were concealing information from us. Don’t tell me and I can’t be responsible for what happens – here in the city with the law, or beyond . . .’ she leaned forward and whispered into Zeynep’s ear, ‘out amongst the caves where the snakes gather and bask, the children of—’

‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ As Zeynep spoke she shook in every part of her body. Süleyman had seen terror in his time but rarely had he seen it engendered by reference to things that to him were clearly only mythical. But then these people were not from his part of the world. These people were, he was coming to understand, almost wholly alien.

‘If I knew where Yusuf was I would tell you,’ Zeynep Kaya sobbed. ‘Do you, Edibe, think that I would risk the displeasure of my Sharmeran? I have children! I would never ever put them in the way of danger, not even for my husband!’

Slowly Edibe Taner released her grip upon Zeynep Kaya’s throat and Süleyman began to breathe more easily again. In spite of the fact that the house was empty apart from Zeynep, he had been worried. What would the Kayas have done if they had come back and found Edibe Taner with her hands at Zeynep’s throat?

‘If they knew she’d spoken to us, they’d kill her,’ Taner said when, later, they walked back towards Republic Square.

‘Then why did she answer the door?’ Süleyman said. ‘She must have known, or had an idea at least, that it could be the police?’

Edibe Taner sighed. ‘As a member of my clan, she cannot deny me,’ she said. ‘She knows who and what I am and what I can threaten her with. Around Kaya’s family she does whatever they dictate. But alone with another scorpion she must tell the truth. She opened that door because she wanted me to know what was real.’

For Taner to be talking about anything ‘real’ seemed more than a little odd. This daughter of the Master of Sharmeran had more than a hint of the snake about her. Not that such things were in any way real to Mehmet Süleyman.

‘When are we going to start combing the surrounding countryside?’ he asked as they reached Avenue One and began making their way back towards the police station. ‘In İstanbul, we—’

‘In İstanbul you go tearing into all sorts of situations, I am sure,’ she responded breezily.

‘Inspector Taner, if you are implying that we somehow have it easy in İstanbul, then you are very much mistaken,’ Süleyman said. Her tone had irritated him. ‘Our problems are just as intense as your own. But when someone escapes from prison we do search for them. Here, beyond terrorising the rest of the Kaya family and only very slightly upsetting, as far as I could see, that American woman, we have investigated nothing.’

‘Oh, so I went to Gaziantep for
nothing
?’

‘No, I—’

‘Look.’ She took one of his arms in hers and then looked up, smiling now, into his face. ‘I did not mean to cause offence, Inspector, but . . . We work very largely with informants here. Many are gypsies who don’t of course belong to native clans. They are sometimes of use and sometimes not. But this region is a land of fortified cities and villages with allegiances even I do not always understand. On top of that we have to contend with many different armed groups. We are close to the border with Syria, not much further from the border with Iraq. Inspector, my officers and I cannot go bursting into places without compunction. We could die. You yourself were nervous when we were outside the house in Dara. Organisations like Hezbollah have bombs, they stockpile the things! And how do I really know that Yusuf Kaya is not associated with such people? I don’t.’

They had stopped in front of a little tobacconist’s shop above and behind which were three huge and magnificent arches. It was as if one of Mardin’s great mansions were hiding behind a humble and disproportionately small shop, which was indeed the case. Süleyman looked up at the structure and Taner looked at Süleyman. She sighed. It was now or never.

‘This is what is known as the Cerme family mansion,’ Taner said. ‘It was built at the beginning of the twentieth century by one of Mardin’s most famous sons.’

But he changed the subject back. ‘Inspector, I am sorry if I failed to understand your problems—’

‘The architect Serkis Lole,’ she said. The look on Süleyman’s face changed. ‘We should have had this conversation before, but—’

‘Lole? But I told you about Murat Lole when we were back in Gazi—’

‘I know. Serkis Lole was an ethnic Armenian,’ Taner said. ‘He built many beautiful palaces here in Mardin.’

‘So Murat Lole—’

‘Cannot be connected to Mardin,’ Taner said. ‘The Lole family, they . . . er, they emigrated in the First World War.’

Süleyman and Taner looked silently at each other. Both Turks, neither of them even wanted to breathe about the alleged massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces in Turkey in 1915. That the Lole family had emigrated from the city at around that time was difficult for the two officers. The Turkish Republic doesn’t recognise the Armenians’ allegations. The Armenian Republic, for its part, continues with this claim. And in the east it was an issue that was more sensitive and current than in the large western cities.