Land of the Blind Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Barbara Nadel

  The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2015

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 9781472213754

  Cover photograph © plainpicture/Michelle Gibson

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Barbara Nadel

  Also By Barbara Nadel

  Dedication

  Praise

  Acknowledgements

  Cast List

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Two Weeks Later

  About Barbara Nadel

  Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel used to work in mental health services. Born in the East End of London, she now writes full time and has been a visitor to Turkey for over twenty years. She received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for her novel DEADLY WEB.

  By Barbara Nadel

  The Inspector İkmen Series:

  Belshazzar’s Daughter

  A Chemical Prison

  Arabesk

  Deep Waters

  Harem

  Petrified

  Deadly Web

  Dance with Death

  A Passion for Killing

  Pretty Dead Things

  River of the Dead

  Death by Design

  A Noble Killing

  Dead of Night

  Deadline

  Body Count

  Land of the Blind

  The Hancock Series:

  Last Rights

  After the Mourning

  Ashes to Ashes

  Sure and Certain Death

  The Hakim and Arnold Series:

  A Private Business

  An Act of Kindness

  Poisoned Ground

  To Ruth, Jeyda, Pat and Elsie.

  Also thanks go to Flora Rees and Darcy Nicholson at Headline.

  Praise for Barbara Nadel:

  ‘Inspector Çetin İkmen is one of the detective fiction’s most likeable investigators, despite his grumpy and unsociable character. Or perhaps because of it – we seem to like our detectives a little grouchy: think of him as the Morse of Istanbul’ Daily Telegraph

  ‘Intelligent and captivating’ The Sunday Times

  ‘Fascinating . . . Inter-gang drug war and racial prejudice are only two of the ingredients stirred into the incendiary mix’ Good Book Guide

  ‘Impeccable mystery plotting, exotic and atmospheric’ Guardian

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful thanks go to Ruth, Pat and Elsie as well as to everyone else who added their valuable insights into the events of summer 2013.

  Cast List

  Çetin İkmen – Istanbul police detective

  Fatma İkmen – his wife

  Kemal İkmen – his youngest son

  Samsun Bajraktar – his cousin

  Arto Sarkissian – Armenian police pathologist

  Hürrem Teker – Istanbul police commissioner

  Mehmet Süleyman – Istanbul police detective

  Gonca Şekeroğlu – his mistress

  Ömer Mungun – Suleyman’s sergeant

  Peri Mungun – Omer’s sister, a nurse

  Kerim Gürsel – İkmen’s sergeant

  Sinem Gürsel – Kerim’s wife

  Pembe Hanım – Kerim’s lover

  Dr Ariadne Savva – a Greek archeologist

  Meltem Doğan – her assistant

  Demitrios Savva – Dr Savva’s father

  Professor Ramazan Bozdağ – head archeologist at Istanbul Archeological Museum

  Dr Aylın Akyıldız – archeological pathologist

  Ahmet Öden – property developer

  Semih Öden – his younger brother

  Kelime Öden – Ahmet’s daughter

  Mary Cox – Kelime’s English nanny

  Ayşel Ocal (Gulizar) – Ahmet Öden’s mistress

  Dr İnçi – a dentist

  Madam Anastasia Negroponte – an Istanbul Greek

  Yiannis Negroponte – her son

  Hakkı Atasu – Madam Negroponte’s retainer

  Lokman Atasu – Hakkı’s son

  Nar Hanım – Gezi protester

  Madonna – Gezi protester

  Madame Edith – Gezi protester

  Iris – Gezi protester

  Melda Erol – Gezi protester

  Fatima Erol – Gezi protester

  Özgür Koç – Gezi protester

  He could only stand. A slight bend of the knees was all he could do and if he leaned forward his head touched the wall. Just out of reach, on the dirt floor, was a candle. It was wide and tall and if he put his left leg too near it his trousers began to crackle. His chest felt as if it was enclosed in the coils of a snake. The air, stale and thick with dust, irritated his lungs, forcing him to breathe consciously against the pollutants as well as the embrace of the imaginary serpent. On a ledge, just beside his left arm, was a tall jug of water. Within his reach, it must have been put there for him and at first he appreciated it. His mouth was dry and the first sip tasted delicious. The second, bitter.

  He forced himself to put the jug down. Why was the jug there, really? And what did it contain? If it was poison and he died, did it count as suicide if he hadn’t put it in the water himself? And if it was clean why had it been left there? To prolong his torment? To make him eke it out like a common prisoner? There was nowhere for him to pee except on the floor. He’d have to concentrate to get his arms down to unzip his fly. It wouldn’t be easy. He wanted to weep. But men didn’t.

  ‘Who is there?’ he called out. ‘Is anyone there?’

  He hadn’t expected an answer and he didn’t get one.

  The water shone in the candlelight. Entirely clear and pure. How could it be poisoned? Did he feel unwell? How could he tell? He was in a cavity about two metres tall by two metres long, the width he could only guess. Was it one metre or less? It meant he couldn’t sit unless he almost folded himself in half, or lay. When he thought about it, he could only just breathe. His hea
rt began to pick up its beat and he prayed. Not properly because he couldn’t prostrate himself. Would God listen? Of course He would! Where had that thought come from? He always listened and provided.

  Except maybe now? The thought had insinuated itself into his head almost before he’d noticed. Sin could be so easily fallen into. And he had just plummeted. Now he began to cry. There was fear. Doubt was a terrible sin and to sin meant that when death came he would not walk in the gardens of Paradise. He begged and begged for forgiveness, his voice slicing the silence, the power of his words causing the candle flame to gutter and twist. Afraid he’d blow it out by accident, he stopped. The flame became stable again and he prayed in his head.

  God was listening and He did care. All his life he’d done exactly what those more educated in the words of the Koran had told him. Not one request had he ever denied. Bar that moment of doubt, his soul was pure. His mind said, And your body?

  A noise came out of his mouth. Like a squeal. Then he began to shake. ‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh God!’

  Hearing his own voice tremble was not a comfortable thing. He begged. ‘Please, please help me. I’ll never do it again. Never.’

  And he waited and he waited. But no help came. He wanted and didn’t want water and the candle flame guttered again in time to his sobs. Still no relief came, no rest from the reality that he had been buried alive. Which he had been.

  Chapter 1

  ‘Porphyry,’ Çetin İkmen said.

  ‘What?’ His colleague, a rotund Armenian pathologist, continued to look into the deceased’s eyes.

  ‘The piece of stone in her left hand,’ İkmen said. ‘It’s porphyry.’

  ‘Is it.’ The pathologist, Dr Arto Sarkissian, looked at İkmen. ‘Forgive me, I’m rather more concerned that this woman has not long given birth. I can’t get excited about stone.’

  ‘There’s no porphyry in here,’ İkmen said. To prove his point he flashed the light from his torch around the darkened space. He’d never been there before. Although less than five minutes from his apartment, the sphendone or curved back edge of İstanbul’s Hippodrome was unknown to him. Or rather the interior of the ancient monument was. Thousands of tourists explored what remained of the Byzantine structure above ground every day, but Inspector Çetin İkmen and his friend and colleague Arto Sarkissian were underground. In what remained of a ruined gallery they were where the charioteers used to robe before the Games commenced and where wild animals – lions, tigers and bears – would wait their turn to fight each other to the death for the entertainment of the baying crowd in the arena. It was a place already soaked in blood. Now it was absorbing some more.

  ‘There’s trauma to the back of the head,’ Arto said.

  ‘Was that why she died?’

  ‘I don’t know. Won’t know until I can examine her properly.’

  It was impossible to stand up straight in that place. Earthquakes plus thousands of years had transformed what had been a double galleried Roman hippodrome into a crumbling, squashed wreck. The doctor could see that the woman was dead and even the non-medically trained police inspector could work out that the blood between her legs together with the severed umbilical cord meant that she’d given birth not long before. But beyond those facts, investigation became difficult.

  İkmen looked around again. When he’d first seen the woman and realised she’d just had a baby he’d run, hunched up against the sagging galleries above, looking for it. But he’d soon come up against spaces so small not even he could squeeze through them. He’d also feared he’d get lost.

  When he’d spoken to the two young men who had found the body – ‘urban explorers’ they’d called themselves – they’d told him they hadn’t seen or even heard any baby.

  Bilal, the smaller of the two, had said, ‘We opened the door and there she was. Alone. We called you immediately.’

  His friend, a lanky youngster in tight Lycra, said nothing.

  Bilal had told İkmen that they’d got permission to go underneath the Hippodrome from the local authority, Fatih, as well as from the holders of the key to the monument, the Archaeological Museum. And to İkmen’s surprise there had only been one key required to open the small green door that led into the back of the ancient site. Heavy and clearly old, the urban explorers’ key looked like something that might unlock a castle. It was also identical to a key the dead woman held in her right hand.

  ‘It’s possible she’s only been dead for an hour,’ Arto said. ‘There’s no sign of rigor. Mind you, it’s hot in here.’

  In spite of it being five o’clock in the morning, the city of İstanbul and especially the cramped cavities underneath the Hippodrome sweated in the heat. When summer arrived in the great metropolis on the Bosphorus it really made an impact.

  A photographer, a man even portlier than the doctor, came through the small green door and looked at Sarkissian expectantly. Clearly he didn’t want to have to squash his considerable stomach by bending for too long. The Armenian said, ‘I want all the usual shots, Ali. Pay special attention to the head and the sexual organs.’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  Çetin İkmen had to get out. He couldn’t breathe and he was beginning to feel nauseous. Outside, a gaggle of uniformed officers stood with the awkward looking urban explorers. One of the constables offered İkmen a cigarette which he took and lit up.

  ‘Thank you, Yıldız,’ he said.

  Constable Yıldız, a slim man in his mid-thirties, mumbled that it was nothing.

  The sun, coming up over the Asian side of the city, sent a ray directly into İkmen’s face and he winced. Bastard! Not only had he been wrenched from his bed by death, now the sun had it in for him too. If he’d had four hours sleep before his mobile phone had clattered in his ear at four fifteen, he’d been lucky. And now he had a missing baby to worry about too. Had the child died with its mother or had someone taken the baby away? Arto said the woman had a head wound. Had someone hit her deliberately with child stealing in mind? And who had cut the woman’s umbilical cord? There had been no sign of a knife or scissors. There’d been no ID either. Women usually carried handbags, but this one hadn’t. Then again, she had been giving birth. But she’d done that wearing what had looked to İkmen like an ordinary summer dress.

  ‘God help me, I can’t stay in there any longer,’ Arto Sarkissian said. Getting out through the tiny green door had been a challenge and the Armenian’s face was red from exertion.

  İkmen told one of his uniformed officers to share his bottle of water with the doctor.

  ‘Thank you.’ Arto Sarkissian shook his head. ‘What on earth was she doing giving birth in a place like that?’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘How old do you reckon she was?’

  ‘Mid to late thirties.’ The doctor drank some more water and then splashed a handful over his face. ‘From her general condition and her clothes I’d say she was urban, educated, secular. This is no little country girl raped by her uncle. Which makes one wonder why she gave birth in a place like that.’

  ‘She had a key,’ İkmen said.

  ‘She did.’

  İkmen tipped his head at the two urban explorers. ‘They got theirs from the Archaeological Museum. They hold some and so do the Municipality.’

  ‘So it’s fusty archaeologists and slimy local government officials for you then,’ Arto said.

  ‘Seems like it.’

  İkmen always looked disappointed even when he wasn’t, and dealing with government either national or local always made him depressed. Politicians were evasive, even when they didn’t need to be. It was a habit they all got into as soon as they attained office. Maybe it was mandatory.

  ‘I’ll determine cause of death and hopefully a more precise time as soon as I can,’ Arto said.

  İkmen nodded.

  A van arrived containing five white-clad individuals. The forensic team would investigate the corpse and the site and take samples before the doctor would be able to take the dead woman to his labor
atory. He walked over to liaise with the team leader leaving İkmen alone with his thoughts. It was always reassuring to work with his friend Arto Sarkissian. They’d known each other all their lives and each trusted the other completely. But if this woman’s death was a murder then someone was missing from İkmen’s team and he felt that lack like a knife to the soul. He looked up into the sky and wondered whether the religious people had something when they talked about souls and Paradise. And against every secular atom in his body he hoped that they had something because he didn’t want Ayşe Farsakoğlu to be nowhere.

  Commissioner Hürrem Teker knew what they called her. She’d known the name they’d given her when she worked in Antep. The policemen of İstanbul were no less subtle. Whereas in Antep she’d been The Stormtrooper, in the city on the Bosphorus they called her The Iron Virgin. If only they knew.

  Hürrem looked at the report of a suspicious death in Sultanahmet. A woman’s body had been discovered inside the back of the Hippodrome. She didn’t know it even had an inside. Çetin İkmen, one of her older and more interesting officers, was at the scene. Him, she liked. Life-scarred, cynical and given to some of the bad habits and addictions she had, İkmen was also, according to her predecessor, Ardıç, the most trustworthy police inspector in İstanbul.

  There was a knock on her door. However, this man she was about to see was another matter. ‘Come.’

  Inspector Mehmet Süleyman was a handsome man in his early forties. An immaculate dresser, he belonged to one of those old Ottoman families distantly related to the Sultans. Consequently he had the kind of naturally arrogant allure that a lot of women, Hürrem included, found very attractive. But he wasn’t always to be trusted. Commissioner Ardıç had told her so but Hürrem also knew it by instinct. Handsome men had always been her weakness, in the past, and they had consistently let her down.

  The door opened.

  Hürrem smiled at him. ‘Sit down, Süleyman.’ She pointed to a chair in front of her desk. She preferred using surnames as people did in the West rather than using the Ottoman appellation, ‘bey’. She considered it an anachronism in the twenty-first century; she also felt that if she called a man like this ‘Mehmet Bey’ she was colluding with the view some had of him as an ‘Ottoman gentleman’. The last thing Hürrem wanted to encourage in her officers was any sort of hierarchy that was not police-related.