River of The Dead (36 page)

There was a pause and then İkmen said, ‘Well, you get her then, Mehmet. You get her so that she never sees the outside of a prison again.’

And then he ended the call. Alone until Constable Selahattin arrived to take him back to Mardin, Mehmet Süleyman stared into the night with still, exhausted eyes.

The small community of monks at St Sobo’s monastery were not accustomed to keeping irregular hours. Times for sleeping, eating, praying and working were strictly prescribed by rules going back millennia. But death is no respecter of tradition and when Edibe Taner knocked on the great gates of the monastery at four o’clock that morning she knew that she was about to turn their world upside down. Not that she cared. Leaning on her father’s shoulder for support, she looked down at the litter the two young constables had carried to the gates in front of her and wept all over again. By now, not just her colleagues and her father but almost all of Mardin knew that their saint was dead.

‘He died to save the rest of us,’ she said to Brother Seraphim once the other monks had taken the body away to be washed. ‘None of us knew that help was on its way and Gabriel just . . . he . . .’

‘God was working through Brother Gabriel,’ Brother Seraphim said as he took the shattered woman and her father into the monastery refectory. He sat them down and then poured mirra for them both to drink. The three of them sat in silence for a long time. Seçkin Taner, though stunned by his daughter’s news, was nevertheless trying to maintain at least an aura of composure for her sake. Seraphim didn’t really know anything beyond the fact that Brother Gabriel was dead. He had died protecting others, which was something that Seraphim could easily imagine happening. But how had he died? How had he got into a situation where others had wanted him dead?

Shivering as she spoke, Edibe Taner said, ‘I killed him. I put him in the way of danger. It was my fault.’

Seçkin Taner grimaced in pain. ‘Edibe . . .’

‘My dear, I’m sure you didn’t cause Brother Gabriel’s death,’ Brother Seraphim said. ‘You loved him. And he loved you. You were the very best of friends, I know that. Edibe, if Gabriel died protecting you then I know that he died a happy man.’

But his words just seemed to inflame her. ‘Tell me this, Brother,’ she said bitterly. ‘Why did Gabriel survive the bites of the snakes but die with just three bullets? If Allah was looking after him, if he was an immortal saint, then . . .’ She broke down and wept, howling her pain on to her father’s chest as he stroked her hair and cooed into her ear.

Brother Seraphim, clearly upset by her words, said, ‘I don’t know the answer to that question, Edibe. I wish I did. Maybe Gabriel needed his Sharmeran by his side for God to protect him. Maybe our brother was just too good for this wicked world. Who knows?’ And then he too put his head in his hands and wept.

They put the American woman into the smallest cell they had. If they had been able to find one that was actually windowless they would have pushed her into that. Nothing was too bad. Not because she was American, not even because she had killed or ordered the deaths of people that they knew and sometimes loved. The young constables put her where they did, said the bitter things they did to and about her, because she had killed their saint. Muslims to a man, the Mardin constables had all grown up with Gabriel, all knew him to be a special person, and they had all, without exception, liked and respected him. If this woman didn’t go away for ever they would want to know why. The police were not alone, either. As dawn broke over the Tur Abdin people began to come into the city and position themselves in the streets, tea gardens and cafés around the police station. Lütfü Güneş stood at the head of a small group of his people outside the Sehidiye Medrese. As Süleyman passed him on his way to the station, the Kurd smiled enigmatically in his direction. The İstanbul man wondered, as he had done before, just how and why this man had known about Elizabeth Smith, but he didn’t dwell upon the question long on account of the restive nature of the crowd around him. Whether they all knew who he was he couldn’t tell because none of them, so it seemed, was choosing or able to speak Turkish. In fact, amongst the many languages that he could hear around him there was only one word that he could recognise and that was ‘Gabriel’. Their saint, who was dead and whom it was obvious they wanted some sort of justice for. That was his job, or rather it was partly his job. When he reached the front entrance to the station the crowds behind him parted and he turned to see Edibe Taner walking towards him. Dressed in black, her face as white as paper, she wore an expression of such hatred that it took Mehmet Süleyman’s breath away.

‘It is my intention to conduct this interview in English,’ Süleyman said as he sat down in front of the American woman. He looked briefly over at Taner, who just shrugged before folding herself stiffly into the seat beside him. ‘This is because,’ he continued, ‘I want to have no mistakes, Miss Smith. I want you to understand exactly what I am saying and I want your answers to be free from any ambiguity that may arise if you have to translate what you say into Turkish. Do you understand?’

She shrugged. The fact that she didn’t actually answer him was annoying. But the irritation he felt was nothing compared to the anger that had flooded him as soon as he was once again in her presence. Not because of Brother Gabriel, whom he had hardly known, but because she had albeit indirectly been responsible for the death of İkmen’s son and she it was who had turned Edibe Taner into a silent, shadowy, almost ghost-like figure.

‘Miss Smith,’ he said before he could think too hard or too deeply about his own feelings, ‘I understand that you do not wish to have a lawyer.’

‘No.’

‘That is your choice,’ he said. He looked down at his notes and then briefly at Taner again, but her face was as blank as the wall behind Elizabeth Smith’s head. ‘Miss Smith, let us be rational, shall we?’

She frowned.

‘Miss Smith, you ordered my death and the deaths of my colleagues,’ Süleyman said. ‘I was there. I heard you. You witnessed the death of Gabriel Saatçi. Jandarma Private Güzer was killed by a man clearly associated with you and you were apparently aware of the place where Mrs Bulbul Kaplan and Captain Erdur of the Birecik Jandarma were buried. Captain Erdur we know was unlawfully killed, Mrs Kaplan we have yet to receive forensic evidence about. So, Miss Smith, make no mistake, you are going to prison. It is highly unlikely that you will ever get out. So when I say you must be rational what I mean is that you must look to your future, in prison, and you must consider how you might make that as easy or comfortable or however you wish to express it for yourself.’

‘You want me to spill?’

‘I want you to die,’ he heard Edibe Taner say in Turkish under her breath. He put a hand on her arm and held up a warning finger. The last thing he needed, because he was exhausted and furious himself, was a loose cannon at his side.

Whether Elizabeth Smith had heard what Taner had said he didn’t know. She didn’t respond until he said, ‘I want you to tell me everything. Miss Smith, we do not have capital punishment in the Turkish Republic and so the most a judge can sentence a criminal to is life in prison. I think we both know that that is already very possible for you.’

‘You want I should finger other people?’

‘I want you to start at the beginning and talk until your story is finished,’ Süleyman said. ‘I want you to tell me what happened when your husband Yusuf killed the Russian gangster, Tommi Kerensky.’

Çetin İkmen went to Atatürk Airport accompanied by his son Bülent. Because the young man worked for Turkish Airlines he had managed to talk to those who could get his father quickly on to a flight out to Şanlıurfa.

‘Dad, you mustn’t worry about Mum. She will be all right again, in time,’ Bülent said as he placed a hand on his father’s sloping shoulder. They both stood in front of the large departure board in the middle of the domestic terminal, İkmen openly smoking underneath a new No Smoking sign.

‘Your mother blames me,’ he said. ‘And maybe she is right.’

‘Dad, you couldn’t have prevented Bekir’s death. You told me he’d just killed a man. How could the officers who shot him have done anything else?’

‘No. No, I know I couldn’t have . . .’ He sighed. ‘Bülent, I did very little to find Bekir when he left home all those years ago.’

‘Çiçek told me he was a nightmare,’ Bülent said. ‘He stole from everyone. Mum was always in tears.’

‘But he was fifteen!’ İkmen said. ‘He walked out of our apartment and he was on the streets at fifteen!’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, I looked for him in all the obvious places at the time. But I didn’t really get stuck in. I didn’t go to the terrible, awful places.’

‘You probably couldn’t imagine him in that sort of context,’ Bülent said. He was having some trouble feeling anything about this brother who had appeared so late on in his life, disgraced himself and then run away and died. ‘Dad, you and Mum brought us up well. In some ways it’s a curse.’

‘What do you mean?’ His emotions sharpened by grief and tiredness, İkmen puffed on furiously.

‘I mean I couldn’t possibly have gone on the streets like Bekir did,’ Bülent said. ‘I think I speak for all of us, Dad, when I say that we as a family are all too pampered to be capable of such a thing. You’ve looked after us all much too well.’

‘Except Bekir.’

‘That was his choice,’ Bülent said. ‘He wanted to take drugs and beg and get involved in criminal activity. We didn’t and so he left.’

It was all so simple to Bülent. But then he’d been just a child when Bekir left; he’d never had any sort of relationship with his brother really. And although he was as shocked and sad as the rest of the family he did not feel any pain. İkmen looked up at the departure board and saw that his flight was boarding.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

Bülent put his arms round his father and kissed him. ‘We will start to make funeral arrangements,’ he said.

‘I’ll do my best to bring my son home tomorrow if I can,’ İkmen said. ‘But as I told your mother, it may be that Bekir’s body has to remain in Urfa until . . .’ He swallowed hard. ‘Your mother cannot understand why the body may have to be treated as evidence. She just hates me.’

‘Dad, go and get your flight,’ Bekir said.

İkmen kissed his son on both cheeks and then headed towards the passageway leading to the departure gates. Bülent, shaking his head with agitation, made his way back towards the front entrance to the terminal. Outside in the car park one of his brothers was waiting to take him back to their parents’ apartment and the agony of his grieving mother.

‘Tommi Kerensky knew something about the Wormwood Route,’ Elizabeth Smith said as she looked Mehmet Süleyman clearly in the eyes. ‘The Syrian whore Yusuf used to bang when he was in İstanbul—’

‘Hana Karim?’

‘Yeah. She spilled it. She was doing Tommi too, which was why the both of them had to go. Yusuf for all his vision was a poor judge of character.’

‘He was a psychopathic killer.’

‘Yes, but he was a psychopathic killer who had nevertheless built a drug route into this country that was second to none.’

‘Why second to none?’

‘Because every part of the chain was discrete,’ she said. ‘People even half the way along the line had no idea who was at the end or the beginning of the process. Each took his cut in goods and no one knew more than was necessary to do his job.’

‘Except for Yusuf.’

Elizabeth Smith leaned across the table and said, ‘He wasn’t scared of going to prison. Tommi Kerensky had put it about that Yusuf had something big on his hands before he was killed. Yusuf had already made millions of dollars and everyone wanted in. No one in that prison gave Yusuf any hassle and that included some of his gaolers.’

‘How did he get out?’ Süleyman asked.

She smiled. ‘I bought a lot of people,’ she said. ‘Some of them at Yusuf’s request and some off my own bat. Some of the nurses at the hospital were known to him. Mardin people, as I’m sure you already know, are kind of close.’

Süleyman looked down at the file on the table in front of him and said, ‘İsak Mardin, Murat Lole and Faruk Öz. Some of these are pseudonyms, as I am sure you know, but . . .’

‘The then administrator of the Cerrahpaşa, Oner, was a friend,’ the American said. ‘Unfortunately he couldn’t really handle what Yusuf had in mind and started to get a bit wobbly.’

‘Wobbly?’

‘He wanted out,’ she said harshly. ‘Yusuf sent a message that that wasn’t really an option and so he topped himself. You don’t split on your nearest and dearest out here – not unless you’re prepared to take the consequences. It could have all been over at that point if Oner’s replacement hadn’t been a user. Aktar, who fortunately got the job, has a big habit. Not that he knew too much until Yusuf was sprung.’

‘So who apart from the nurses—’

‘İsak Mardin had this doctor who liked to fuck him. Eldem. Not averse to getting rich either. He did as İsak said. We placed Mardin in the Cerrahpaşa to get Yusuf away. That was his purpose. He was waiting outside the hospital and got Yusuf and the others away from there.’ She leaned across the table and said, ‘The prison guards who went out with Yusuf to the hospital did as they were told, too.’

Edibe Taner looked at Süleyman. ‘But they died, didn’t they?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

Elizabeth Smith shrugged. ‘That was the plan.’

‘I’m sure neither they nor the police officers who accompanied Kaya to the hospital knew that,’ Süleyman said.

‘Of course not!’ She laughed. To the inspectors in front of her this was a very disturbing phenomenon. ‘The coppers were entirely ignorant anyway. They had nothing to do with it. But that was, in part, Yusuf’s idea. If those who knew his movements were dead they couldn’t tell anyone what they’d seen.’

‘No. But you say in part. What do you mean by that?’