On the Bone Page 10

  Gül nudged her. ‘You’re thoughtful. Anything the matter?’

  She leaned against his shoulder. It was nice having a gay friend. She liked being able to be close to a man without feeling threatened.

  ‘Oh, I saw one of those boys who hangs around here sometimes,’ she said.

  ‘Was he rude to you? I hope you managed to get it together to tell him to fuck off.’

  Meltem said nothing.

  Gül hugged her. ‘Honestly, he’s just a moron,’ he said. ‘Uneducated and stupid. Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well tell Uncle Gül and he’ll make it better.’

  She laughed. ‘He’s got this idea that the two friends he hangs about with came in here and we killed them.’

  ‘He’s off his head!’

  ‘Of course, but he was so worried. He kept on at me about it until Deniz Bey came and rescued me.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’

  ‘The little horror got in?’

  ‘I left the back door open. I was throwing out old Anatolia Gold tins.’ She shook her head. ‘I know he’s probably mad or ill or something, but that boy was determined to get in here. And he was upset. Whatever I may think about the things he said, he believes them.’

  Neither of them spoke.

  Then Gül laughed, pulled Meltem on to his lap and hugged her even tighter.

  ‘Stop it, Meltem Abla, you’re giving me the creeps!’

  The park was dull without Burak and Mustafa, and because it was in an old water cistern built by Christians, it gave Radwan the creeps. Were there ghosts of priests in the walls? Would ancient artisans suddenly appear amongst the trees? He closed his eyes tight. It was hardest to bear at night, which was when he’d always been alone, ever since his family had gone. Back in Aleppo in the old days, he’d never had a moment to himself, and he’d loved it. Even that boy from Damascus, Azzam, would be some sort of company, but he hadn’t seen him since he’d told him off about supporting ISIS.

  Not that he did support ISIS. Radwan didn’t support anyone. He’d come to Turkey to survive. That was all. And now he had no family, he didn’t even know why he was doing that. Stealing and begging were not things he’d done before. His parents had always taught him that those activities were wrong. But if he didn’t steal and beg, he went hungry …

  He’d managed to grab a piece of bread from the kitchen of the squat when the old man had come in to talk to the girl. Then he’d just run. Now the bread was long gone and Radwan was hungry again. He missed Burak and Mustafa, and now that it was the depths of the night, he wished he had their company to look forward to in the morning.

  Why had Azzam told him that the boys had gone to Syria? He’d said their father was telling everyone that story, but how was Radwan to know? He didn’t speak Turkish. He knew they had said they wanted to go there at some point, but he’d thought it had just been a boast. On the day the two of them had disappeared, they’d all gone to the squat together and thrown stones, and then the man with the baseball bat had come out. They had run away, but then Burak had said he was hungry. Mustafa said that there was sometimes unused food dumped in the alleyway behind the café opposite the squat, and so Radwan, as he often did, volunteered to help. He spent a good ten minutes gathering old bits of cake and börek from bins. When he’d returned, the boys had gone. It had been a hot early afternoon and the street had been silent, as if they had never existed.

  Radwan had stood and looked at the squat for some time before moving on. He reckoned the boys couldn’t be far away and wondered whether they were playing a hiding game with him. Although they were a bit old for that.

  He’d gone down to the shore of the Bosphorus and the Karaköy ferry pier, but they hadn’t been there. While he’d looked, he’d eaten all the cake and börek he’d taken from the bins, which he had felt was fair enough. If the boys had gone, who else was there to eat it?

  Now he wondered whether Azzam hadn’t been right and the boys had gone to Syria. They’d both known that Radwan always volunteered to do whatever they wanted. Had they sent him to the bins just to get him out of the way? Had they then run off to catch a bus to take them to the Syrian border? And if they had, how much had his made-up stories about the bravery and courage of the ISIS fighters influenced them?

  Chapter 10

  ‘It’s called Bloom syndrome,’ Arto said.

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s rare,’ the doctor continued.

  Cetin İkmen flicked his cigarette ash out of the window. He knew his friend didn’t like him smoking, but it was his office. ‘You must’ve run every test under the sun.’

  ‘I did. When you’ve got no actual corpse, you need to obtain as much information as you can from what you have got.’

  ‘Yes, and I thank you for that. How significant is this?’

  ‘Our man was not a victim of Bloom syndrome, but a carrier,’ Arto said. ‘He didn’t have the disease himself, but he could have given it to his children. He would have inherited the gene from one or both of his parents. It’s rare, but it does occur more frequently in Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. It’s characterised by short stature, a receding chin, extreme light sensitivity and an increased propensity to diabetes and cancer. A nasty little disease. Thank God it’s not widespread.’

  ‘Ashkenazi Jews are uncommon here. Most Turkish Jews are Sephardic.’

  ‘Like your son-in-law.’

  He nodded. One of İkmen’s daughters had married a Sephardic Jew, a goldsmith called Berekiah Cohen.

  ‘But some of the Ashkenazim settled here during and after the Second World War,’ Arto said. ‘I would say that maybe our man was a tourist, but then his genetic profile would seem to suggest, at least in part, a Turkish background.’ He leaned across his friend’s desk so that he could whisper. ‘In the current climate in this part of the world …’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ İkmen said. ‘A Jew is cannibalised in a Muslim city. Believe me, this news brings me a heap of problems. I’ll have to tell Teker.’

  ‘You will.’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘Good job we kept it under wraps.’

  ‘Difficult for you.’

  ‘Downright impossible.’ He put one cigarette out and lit another. Then he said, ‘How was your meal last night?’

  ‘Overpriced.’

  He laughed.

  ‘But Maryam enjoyed it,’ Arto said.

  ‘That’s the main thing. I’m glad you got her out.’

  ‘So am I. As for myself? Well, we didn’t see Mr Myskow, much to Maryam’s disappointment, and the clientele were almost exclusively celebrity faux gourmets and footballers. There were a few real food aficionados who seemed to know what they were talking about. But there was also a lot of nonsense about provenance and molecular gastronomy. Went right over my head, if I’m honest. Then there was a rather odd table.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, everyone, including Maryam and myself, was dressed for dinner as befits a venue like the Imperial Oriental. Such places tend to be very unwelcoming if you turn up in a cheap suit. But there was a table of men who had done just that. Over by the service area, just out of the main body of the restaurant, eating what we were eating but looking like a bunch of off-duty cab drivers or security guards. Not a necktie amongst them.’

  ‘Really?’

  Knowing who was protecting Myskow’s boar trade, İkmen wondered whether they were spooks or, perhaps, bodyguards.

  ‘You asked me to report anything odd, and so I have,’ Arto said. ‘Could they be boar hunters, do you think?’

  So he’d definitely heard about the wild pig. Of course he had. The forensic lab was his second home.

  ‘I looked for it on the menu, but sadly it wasn’t there,’ Arto continued.

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘I do know that the Imperial Oriental doesn’t have a licence for boar. No one does. Putting two and two toge
ther with your recent outburst in the car park …’

  ‘Which I can’t talk about.’

  They looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Arto would know that if Cetin couldn’t talk to him about something, it had to be very serious.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ İkmen said. ‘I am grateful that you went to the Imperial Oriental last night and I’m glad that Maryam had a good time, but it has been pointed out to me that Mr Myskow’s establishment is beyond my investigation and so we need to abandon that line of enquiry.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He didn’t have to say any more.

  Soon afterwards, the doctor departed, leaving İkmen to ponder the implications of Bloom syndrome and wondering why his informant in the tourist trade hadn’t got back to him.

  Most nights Celal Vural walked back from the Imperial Oriental Hotel in Beyoğlu to his home in Kağıthane.

  ‘Around six kilometres,’ Kerim Gürsel said. ‘Every night!’

  Ömer Mungun shrugged. Back in his home town of Mardin, that was nothing. People, especially older folk, walked everywhere, sometimes all day long out in the olive groves and vineyards.

  The men had got together to share lunch in Gülhane Park as they criss-crossed the city chasing up male missing person cases from up to three months ago.

  ‘What choice did he have at that time of night?’ Ömer said. ‘It’s get a taxi or walk, and he wasn’t earning a whole lot of money.’

  He’d been to the shabby home Celal Vural shared with his wife and children in Kağıthane. Even his illiterate great-uncle, who lived in the middle of nowhere, had a better standard of living than the Vurals.

  ‘True.’

  ‘He caught the metro to work, so he only walked one way,’ Ömer said. He took a small bottle out of his pocket and poured a sticky syrup on to his egg sandwich.

  Kerim shook his head. ‘You know you have to forgive me for saying so, but I just don’t know how you can put that stuff on egg.’

  ‘Pomegranate molasses?’ Ömer put the bottle back in his pocket. ‘It’s how you know you’re from the south-east. If you have a desire to put it on everything, then you are; if you don’t, you’re not. My sister puts it on fish. I draw the line there.’

  ‘Right.’

  Kerim had bought lahmacun, which he’d folded into a roll and topped with parsley.

  ‘How was your morning?’ Ömer asked.

  ‘I saw two relatives of missing men,’ Kerim said. ‘An old man in Cihangir and a woman in Etiler. She was frightening.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think they call them cougars …’

  Ömer laughed. ‘She came on to you.’

  ‘Just a bit.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Oh, attractive. Tall, slim, blonde.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘And wearing some very fake breasts and old enough to be your mother,’ Kerim said.

  ‘But well preserved.’

  He shook his head. ‘Artificially so, yes. And really pushy. As soon as I walked in there, she made it very apparent what she wanted, and it wasn’t her missing husband.’

  ‘Ah,’ Ömer said. ‘Think she had anything to do with the husband’s disappearance?’

  ‘She has to be a candidate. Mind you, she was in Ankara when he went missing and so you can’t jump to conclusions.’

  ‘No, but you can also never underestimate the sneakiness of the human mind,’ Ömer said, ‘especially where unwanted spouses are concerned.’

  Kerim shrugged. ‘Find out anything more about Celal Vural?’

  ‘His wife told me he was under a lot of pressure. As well as looking after her and the kids, Celal sends money home to Trabzon to keep his ageing parents.’

  ‘A lot of men have to do that,’ Kerim said. What he didn’t say was that he knew that Ömer was one of them.

  ‘And although his wife told me initially that he liked his job at the hotel, this time she admitted he actually hated it. According to Mrs Vural, there were problems with pay – as in he didn’t always get paid on time – and his boss didn’t like him.’

  ‘What, the American?’

  ‘No. His manager.’ Ömer finished his sandwich and opened his notebook. ‘Ali Buyuk. Vural’s wife claims this Buyuk treated her husband like a dog. On his only night off, Thursday, he covered for his brother at a nargile place in Tophane. So Celal felt trapped. He could have done a disappearing act …’

  ‘Or …’

  Ömer’s phone rang. He looked at it. ‘İkmen.’ He answered, ‘Sir.’

  İkmen didn’t speak for very long. When he ended the call, Ömer said to Kerim, ‘Our victim could be Jewish, apparently. At least partly so. He’s a carrier of a rare disease called Bloom syndrome, which is more common amongst Jews.’

  Kerim frowned. ‘What does that mean? Do we have to ask people whether they’re Jewish, or if Bloom syndrome is in the family?’

  ‘So he says. I wonder if they’d even know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because a lot of people keep their ethnicity dark,’ Ömer said. ‘You know how it is. There was a family I knew well, I went to school with several of them. They all worked in the bazaar. Nobody knew the mother was Jewish until she died. Then they brought her body up here for burial. People said she was probably the last Jew in Mardin.’

  The call Burak Ayan had made to his father had come from Syria. The old man shook his head.

  ‘Did Burak say how his brother had died?’ Süleyman asked the imam.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘He just said that he was dead. He told me that he would become a martyr for both of them.’

  Süleyman frowned. ‘Which implies to me that Mustafa didn’t die in battle.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the imam said. ‘He didn’t say. But if Mustafa died in some other fashion, then maybe a little of what I taught my boys got through.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Martyrdom is, to me, a very specific thing. People use the term thoughtlessly these days, but to die in a street brawl or a house fire is not martyrdom. When a person dies for his faith, only then can that term be used. Simply to be a Muslim and to die is not enough, and that, I think, is what Burak was saying.’ He looked up. ‘Can you get Burak back for me?’

  He could soften the blow. But what was the point? ‘Not under current circumstances,’ he said.

  Kurdish fighters were beginning to take on ISIS on the Iraqi border, but no Turkish troops were involved.

  ‘I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘No. No.’ The imam’s eyes watered. ‘I know the Kurds are there. I’ve seen them on the television. I have Kurdish friends, I could go.’

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Süleyman said. It was all so bleak for the old man. Was it wise or stupid to leave him with some hope? In the end he said, ‘Do you have a photo of Burak? I can circulate it to officers near the border. Maybe if he comes back …’

  The old man shook his head, but he also stood. ‘I have never heard of anyone coming back from that so-called caliphate. But I’ll see what I can find.’

  He went to a room at the back of the house and returned a few minutes later holding a photograph.

  ‘It’s a little out of date,’ he said as he handed it to Süleyman. ‘The boys stopped taking photographs, except on their phones. I think this was taken last year.’

  It was unusual to see a real photo as opposed to a virtual one. It showed a small, thin boy with a beard holding a puppy. He looked about as warrior-like as the little animal in his arms.

  The young woman was attractive, but in a spiky, angular sort of way. She reminded İkmen a little of Ömer Mungun’s sister, Peri.

  ‘This is Constable Can,’ Commissioner Teker said.

  Had he seen the young woman before? Probably. İkmen saw lots of people in the course of his day. He smiled.

  ‘Constable Can has a friend who works at the Imperial Oriental Hotel,’ Teker said.r />
  ‘Her name’s Aysel,’ Can said. Her voice was light and very feminine, like a little girl. İkmen resisted the temptation to think about how that voice would work in a riot scenario.

  ‘What does she do, this Aysel?’

  ‘She’s a chef,’ the constable said. ‘Only a junior one. At the moment.’

  ‘But extremely well placed to see what goes on in the Imperial’s kitchen,’ Teker said.

  İkmen’s informant hadn’t got back to him and Teker had said she’d had an idea if that failed.

  ‘So, what, we’ll coach this—’

  ‘No, sir,’ the young woman said. ‘I’ll go in.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They want people to clean up,’ she said. ‘Restaurant kitchens always need them. It’s a terrible job. People do it for a short time, get sick of it and just leave.’

  ‘How do you know that you can get in?’ he asked.

  Teker and Can shared a look that İkmen didn’t understand.

  Then Can said, ‘I sometimes go to meet Aysel from work. I’ve met some of her colleagues a few times. I can have a job there if I want.’

  ‘You’ve already discussed it?’

  How did this lowly constable know that they even needed a presence inside the Imperial Oriental Hotel? Even if she had seen the fracas with Boris Myskow, only a very few officers knew that İkmen was continuing to pursue the chef.

  ‘I took Constable Can into my confidence,’ Teker said.

  Seemingly before İkmen had approached his informant. If indeed this had been her big idea. But if it had been, how had she known to approach Can? Did she somehow know this Aysel too? And how did a commissioner of police even know the name of a constable?