On the Bone Read online

  Copyright © 2016 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 in Great Britain as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2016

  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: 978 1 4722 1381 5

  Cover photographs © James Hughes/Millennium Images UK and Nightman1965/Shutterstock

  Cover design by CraigFraserdesign.com

  Author photograph © Angus Muir

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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  50 Victoria Embankment

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  www.headline.co.uk

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Barbara Nadel

  Praise

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Cast List

  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

  About the Book

  In Istanbul – the golden city on the Bosphorus – ancient myths and modern evils are at work …

  On a buzzing street in the fashionable district of Beyoglu, a young man drops dead. Ümit Kavas’s death was natural but the autopsy betrays a shocking truth: his last meal was human flesh.

  Under desperate pressure from their superiors, Inspector Cetin Ikmen and his colleague Mehmet Süleyman begin their most obscure investigation yet. How did Ümit Kavas, apparently a good, liberal man, come to partake in the greatest taboo of all? Did he act alone? And who was his victim?

  Soon they find themselves embroiled in a dark web of underground worlds: of Turkey’s old secular elite; a community of squatters; and a new gastronomy scene breaking every boundary. But where does the truth lie?

  About the Author

  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, and the Swedish Flintax Prize for historical crime fiction for her first Francis Hancock novel, LAST RITES.

  To find out more, follow Barbara on Twitter @BarbaraNadel

  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

  On the Bone

  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

  Enough Rope

  Praise for Barbara Nadel’s novels:

  ‘Inspector Çetin İkmen is one of 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

  To Alex and Lia

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been possible without help from the following people:

  Earl Starkey and his wonderful assistant Gonca Özküçük who introduced me to the spectacular Zenne Segah. Leigh Turner CMG, Consul General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and the South Caucasus, who gave me tea and ‘the tour’. For perspective on the ‘Syrian situation’, Revd Canon Ian Sherwood, OBE, and, as ever, to my friend and fellow traveller Pat Yale. Plus I’ve also watched a lot of television cookery shows!

  Cast List

  Police:

  Inspector Cetin İkmen – middle aged İstanbul detective

  Inspector Mehmet Süleyman – İstanbul detective and İkmen’s protégé

  Commissioner Hürrem Teker – İkmen and Süleyman’s boss

  Sergeant Kerim Gürsel – İkmen’s sergeant

  Sergeant Ömer Mungun – Süleyman’s sergeant

  Arto Sarkissian – Armenian police pathologist

  Constable Halide Can – police officer

  Others:

  Fatma İkmen – Cetin’s wife

  Kemal İkmen – one of Fatma and Cetin’s sons

  Gonca Şekeroğlu – Süleyman’s mistress

  Sinem Gürsel – Kerim Gürsel’s wife

  Peri Mungun – Ömer Mungun’s sister, a nurse

  Boris Myskow – American celebrity chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

  Chef Tandoğan – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

  Bülent Onay – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

  Aysel Gurcanli – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

  Tayyar Zarides, also known as Cyrus – a Greek pork butcher

  Imam Özgür Ayan – a cleric

  Burak Ayan – the imam’s son

  Mustafa Ayan – the imam’s son

  Radwan – a Syrian refugee

  Azzam – a Syrian refugee

  Uğur İnan – originator of the Art House squat

  İsmet İnan – Uğur’s son

  Birgül İnan – İsmet’s wife

  Ziya Yetkin – a biker

  Zenne Gül – a male belly dancer

  Meltem Baser – Gül’s friend

  Ahu Kasap – Gül’s friend

  Pembe Hanım – Gül’s friend

  Celal Vural – a waiter

  Selma Vural – Celal’s wife

  Aylin Hanım – Imam Ayan’s neighbour

  Ramazan – Aylin’s son

  General Abdul
lah Kavaş – murder victim’s father

  Belgin Kavaş – murder victim’s mother

  Major General Deniz Baydar – retired soldier

  Defne Baydar – the Major General’s wife

  Father Bacchus Katsaros – Greek Orthodox priest

  Cüneyt Civan – Internet trader

  Mimi – prostitute

  Could guilt kill? Scientifically that had to be bullshit. But dying as a result of guilt, well, that could be possible, couldn’t it? The stress of carrying guilt could put pressure on the central nervous system, which could in turn affect the heart. Long-term stress could result in damage to the heart muscle. And heart disease was in the family.

  He felt hot, then cold, then hot again. His chest hurt. Indigestion, his body rejecting food it hadn’t been designed to eat. Or had it? Of course it hadn’t. He’d known it was wrong. But at the same time, he’d been curious. And it had looked good. Now he knew what Hagop meant when he talked about ‘crackling’, although he doubted whether his Armenian friend had ever had it like he had.

  He felt sick. It wasn’t good to be out on İstiklal Caddesi on a Saturday night when he felt so rough. Istanbul’s principal party street was buzzing with noise, food smells, tobacco smoke and a cross-section of humanity that made his head swim at the best of times. Now everyone looked frightening and disapproving. He felt they knew, and his chest tightened again. But how could they know? Sweat poured down his face. Years ago, when his family had taken holidays, he’d got food poisoning in Sicily. He’d thought he was about to die. But then he’d also had the shits. He gagged. Maybe it was coming out of the other end? He’d have to get to a side street or a shop doorway. He wasn’t far from the church of St Antoine. If he could stagger through the gates and on to the steps, he could sink down on the ground and maybe start to feel a bit better. But as he began to walk towards the church, he felt the world turn upside down and he hit the road with his shoulder.

  He saw people come. He heard them ask him if he was OK. But then he entered a blackness that he had, and hadn’t, been expecting.

  Chapter 1

  ‘Does this have to be done now?’

  Fatma İkmen looked up at her husband. Surrounded by tins, she was sitting on the floor in front of the food cupboard. She was uncomfortable and angry.

  He answered his own question. ‘I see it does.’

  He lit a cigarette.

  ‘Out!’

  Cetin İkmen loved his wife. They’d been together for over forty years and he had never regretted a day of it. But there were limits.

  ‘No.’ He sat down at the kitchen table.

  Fatma’s plump face turned red. ‘Nobody smokes indoors now,’ she said. ‘Only in brothels and drug dens.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He drank the tea she’d made for him before she started cleaning out the food cupboard. ‘Can’t say I really notice cigarettes when I’m raiding a bonzai factory in a godforsaken suburb full of hopeless addicts.’

  Synthetic cannabinoid, or bonzai, had been popular in Turkey for almost five years. Cheaper than cannabis or heroin, it was highly addictive and deadly. And although Inspector Cetin İkmen’s task in the Istanbul police force was to apprehend murderers rather than drug dealers, sometimes his quarry was one and the same.

  ‘Anyway, all that’s nothing,’ Fatma said as she wafted his smoke out of her face. ‘Are you going to help me sort out these tins?’

  ‘I’m going to work in a minute.’ He smoked.

  ‘Ah, what am I to do! It’s all over the television,’ she said. ‘Anatolia Gold.’ She looked at the tins and shook her head. ‘How could they?’

  İkmen rolled his eyes. Product giant Anatolia Gold had owned up to selling tinned products that contained traces of pork. Actually they’d been found out by government scientists, who had checked their white beans after people had complained that they tasted odd. They’d found the beans contained pork products, and in a Muslim country, that was headline news. All over Turkey, women just like Fatma İkmen were clearing out their food cupboards and wondering how much pork they’d already unwittingly eaten. Most of them feared for their souls and the souls of their loved ones. Expressly forbidden in the Koran, consumption of pork was considered a sin in Islam. Eating this unclean animal, either by accident or design, was a very serious infringement of Islamic law.

  ‘Are you not just a little worried that you might’ve eaten pork?’ Fatma said.

  ‘No.’

  She shook her head again. ‘I will never understand you, Cetin.’

  He smiled. ‘Well you haven’t done badly after forty years of marriage,’ he said. ‘Putting up with an atheist. But then I’ve not always found you easy to live with either. Now, I think, is one of those times.’

  She scowled.

  ‘Fatma, you’re one of the most genuinely pious people I have ever met,’ Cetin said. ‘You are the real thing, and that is rare these days. These women covering themselves in black …’

  ‘That’s not Islam. That’s an Arabian custom.’

  ‘I know that, and so do you, but sadly, certain young women who wear far too much eye make-up do not,’ he said. He leaned down towards her. ‘You’re not going to eternal damnation, Fatma.’

  ‘How do you know? You don’t believe in anything.’

  He shrugged. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense. If your God is as kind and loving as you always say he is, why would he condemn good people? Now if you’re talking about the God of the jihadis …’

  ‘Ah, don’t even think about them! It’s madness!’

  ‘Maybe.’ He stood up. Put his cigarette out and then lit another. ‘It looks like it to me, but not to everyone, and also you can’t arrest someone for talking out of their backside, can you? Or rather you shouldn’t.’

  Fatma stopped looking at tins. She frowned. ‘I think maybe you should, sometimes,’ she said. ‘All I see is hatred spreading.’

  ‘Some people don’t mind that.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Well they should.’

  He bent down to kiss her. ‘I agree.’

  The youngest of the İkmens’ eight adult children, Kemal, had just told his mother he was gay. His father had known for some time. Fatma had not been happy, but she had accepted what, deep down in her soul, she had known was coming anyway. Now all she had to do was reconcile her son’s sexuality with her faith. She seemed to be making a start by condemning religious fanatics.

  ‘If it were up to me, I would lock them all up,’ she said. Then she went back to her tins.

  Her husband smiled, said, ‘Yes,’ and left.

  ‘Human flesh? Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the doctor said. ‘And what is more, it has been cooked and was accompanied by an apple and plum sauce. Makes one wonder how that combination was arrived at. Was the apple included because it is claimed by some that human flesh is similar to pork?’

  ‘God knows.’

  ‘But I’m afraid, Commissioner, that someone died to provide Mr Ümit Kavaş with his last meal,’ Dr Arto Sarkissian said. ‘Which means that his body is now a crime scene.’

  Commissioner Hürrem Teker ran her fingers through her thick dyed hair. The pathologist was right. Kavaş’s body, although he had died of natural causes, couldn’t be released to his family.

  ‘The general will not be pleased,’ she said.

  ‘General Kavaş can be as displeased as he likes,’ the doctor said. ‘I can’t release the body.’

  ‘No.’

  It was easy for Sarkissian to say. As an Armenian Christian, he couldn’t understand the frantic need Muslim families had to bury the bodies of their loved ones. Christians didn’t believe a soul was in torment until its body was in the ground. Not that Hürrem Teker thought that General Kavaş believed in such things for a second. He had been a shaven-headed committed secularist, a follower of Atatürk, in his youth. He probably still was. But since he’d served a term in prison for alleged involvement in a plot against the Islamically rooted AK government,
his public stance had altered. Now he prayed. Now he was on the phone every five minutes demanding the return of his son’s body.

  The Armenian said, ‘The meat was rare. But that didn’t contribute in any significant way to Ümit Kavaş’s death. Though only thirty-five, he had advanced coronary artery disease.’

  ‘Like his father. He had a heart bypass years ago.’

  Hürrem was from a military family. Her father had known General Kavaş.

  ‘Pity the son didn’t,’ the doctor said. ‘What are you going to do, madam?’

  She leaned back on the side of a sink.

  ‘Well we can’t start yelling about cannibals. The more lurid media outlets will have the public hiding under their beds. It will be a zombie apocalypse, a left-wing plot, an attack on family values. Every testosterone-fuelled kid will be out on the street with a gun.’

  ‘That’s why I called you directly.’

  ‘Which I appreciate,’ she said. ‘It’s not easy. The area where Kavaş was found is jammed with restaurants and bars.’

  ‘I doubt that what Mr Kavaş ate had been served commercially,’ he said. ‘If anyone is trying to pass human flesh off as animal meat, then it can only be as pork. And as far as I know, there’s only one pork butcher left in this city.’

  ‘An Armenian?’

  ‘No, a Rum.’

  Rums, or Istanbul Greeks, were rare in the city now. Even rarer was one who butchered pigs.

  ‘Tayyar Zarides,’ the doctor said. ‘To his friends he uses his Greek name, Cyrus.’

  ‘Are you this man’s friend, Dr Sarkissian?’

  He smiled. Accustomed to the idea that all Turks thought that all non-Muslims knew each other, it still mildly amused him. ‘My brother is a fan of pork,’ he said. ‘Mr Zarides’s product is very good. He rears at a small farm in Thrace, and I am told his butchery skills are second to none. So why he would want to taint his product with human flesh …’

  ‘He probably doesn’t,’ she said. ‘But we must start somewhere. I imagine you’ve heard about this Anatolia Gold scandal?’

  ‘Pork fat in the beans. Yes.’

  ‘Tensions are running high. One of their factories in Kayseri has already been attacked.’