Dance with Death Read online

  Türkân and Hande looked at each other with big, frightened eyes.

  ‘In a cave at the northern end of the Valley of the Saints,’ Ferhat continued.

  ‘Ferhat . . .’

  He held up a hand to silence his cousin and then spoke again into the radio. ‘Well, neither, really, sir . . . No, it’s old but it isn’t a skeleton. I think it’s a, well it’s sort of a mummy, I suppose, sir.’

  A mummy? In that cave Ferhat had slipped into, the one next door to the cave where she had stood alone in darkness for all that time? Hande first put one fist up to her mouth and then buried her head in the folds of Türkân’s headscarf. Türkân looked at Ferhat, at the fear she could now see in his eyes, and then gently stroked her friend’s hair.

  Something unpleasant had come to pass in the land of the Fairy Chimneys and for once Hande, the city girl, was a lot more frightened than Türkân. After all, as any Cappadocian will tell you, out amongst the chimneys anything is possible.

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  It was one of those rare autumn days in İstanbul when the sun is hot enough to allow people to sit comfortably outside. Provided one goes to one of the old imperial parks or has a balcony or garden to sit in, days like this can be extremely pleasant. Indeed, one such private garden attached to a rather down-at-heel Ottoman house in the Bosphorus village of Arnavautköy rang to the sound of the companionable chatter of men, if not at peace with the world, at least getting along with it. Watched by a much older, elegant man sitting at a table, two attractive men in their forties were slouching in garden loungers, talking. The taller and more striking of the two was wearing swimming trunks and smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Well, look, if you want to go out to a club, then you go,’ he said to the other man who was slightly older and much more amused.

  ‘Mehmet, you haven’t been out for, how long?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t think about such things,’ Mehmet replied a trifle tetchily.

  ‘Murad is only thinking of your happiness, Mehmet,’ the elderly man at the table put in. ‘It isn’t right that you should be so lonely at your age.’

  ‘Father, I am not lonely,’ Mehmet said as he shot an arrogant glance across at Murad. ‘But if my brother wants to go to clubs and probably make an idiot of himself with women half his age then that is his affair.’ He stubbed his cigarette out in his ashtray and then immediately lit another.

  Muhammed Süleyman looked upon all of this with gently amused eyes. Both of his boys were currently without a wife and, he felt, quite unhappy too. But Murad, his eldest, was at least admitting it. A widower since the terrible earthquake of 1999, Murad had sole custody of his daughter Edibe and was very happy with that. But he recognised that now, four years on from that event, he needed something more than work and fatherhood in his life. Mehmet, on the other hand, had thrown himself into his work as a senior police officer as never before. Separated from his wife for a year, he still loved her and the small son he was forced to spend most of his time away from. Mehmet was, his father felt, a deeply unhappy man, now quite incapable, for most of the time, of enjoying himself. That both of his boys had come home to live wasn’t ideal either, mainly because their mother, who was mercifully out shopping now, nagged them about everything from remarrying to their choice of bread. Poor boys, Muhammed Süleyman thought sadly, it shouldn’t have been this way for you.

  ‘So how are you getting on with this new sergeant of yours?’ Murad said brightly. It was always better to change the subject when Mehmet was being moody and his work was generally a pretty safe topic of conversation.

  ‘İzzet Melik is an insufferable peasant!’ Mehmet snapped.

  ‘Ah, now come along, child,’ his father put in, ‘there is no class in modern Turkey. I know that we, our family, are of the old order . . .’

  ‘I was speaking psychologically, Father,’ Mehmet said. ‘İzzet’s people are probably far better off than ourselves. They’re middle-class İzmir folk. But the man is coarse, devoid of taste, and I don’t like the way he treats our female officers. It’s crude and offensive. My dislike of him has nothing to do with what we are, or were.’

  Until what was left of the Ottoman Empire became the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Süleyman family had been extremely wealthy. Related by marriage to several Sultans, the family had once owned property on the Bosphorus, which had only, finally, been sold when Mehmet was a child. Muhammed’s father had actually been a prince and there were still some, generally elderly, people, who insisted upon referring to the older Süleyman by the princely title of ‘Effendi’.

  ‘It’s a pity that İsak left,’ the old man said. ‘He was a nice lad, you seemed settled with him.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  It had now been almost a year since Sergeant İsak Çöktin had resigned from the İstanbul police force. A follower of the native Kurdish religion of the Yezidi, İsak had felt unable to continue with his duties when his private and professional lives had come into almost disastrous conflict the previous year. Since then Inspector Mehmet Süleyman had suffered first one young woman who couldn’t get on with what his department did and now İzzet. But then working in homicide was not, as Mehmet would have been the first to admit, for everyone. As the man who had been his own boss many years before, Inspector Çetin İkmen, was fond of saying, murder can be performed in any sick and foul way one cares to imagine and many that one cannot. Bringing those who engage in it to justice is not a task lightly done.

  ‘But then maybe what we’re doing at the moment isn’t stretching İzzet to his full potential,’ Mehmet said. ‘Who knows what he’s really like under pressure?’

  What they were currently engaged in was not actually a homicide investigation. Someone, as yet unknown, had been first peeping in to rooms occupied by young, unmarried men and then, later, this had escalated to sexual assault. Nobody had been killed yet, but as Mehmet Süleyman knew from experience, these situations did tend to progress and the assailant, a large man by all accounts, was apparently armed. In addition, the victim of a male rape was currently so traumatised that his psychiatrist had put him on suicide watch. It was, as his wife would have said in her native English language, ‘all going to come on top’ very soon.

  Muhammed Süleyman fitted a cigarette into his silver holder and waited for one of his sons to provide him with a light. It was one of the few vestiges that remained from the old man’s servant-crowded past and so his sons generally indulged this small peccadillo without complaint. Murad got up and lit it for him just as they heard the front door bell ring.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said as he looked at his elegantly unmoving father and barely clad brother.

  ‘If it’s your Uncle Beyazıt, come and warn us, won’t you?’ Muhammed said to Murad. ‘You know how he is and if he sees us smoking in the hours of daylight . . .’

  ‘He’s still very strict about Ramazan?’

  ‘My brother is still very strict about everything,’ Muhammed said gloomily. ‘But then I can remember when you were a good Muslim too, Mehmet. Not too many years ago.’

  ‘When grandfather was still alive, yes,’ Mehmet replied with a sigh.

  When Murad had gone, the old man turned to his younger son and said, ‘You know you should go out with your brother once in a while, Mehmet, if only to indulge him.’

  ‘I know.’ Mehmet first sighed and then leaned back into his lounger.

  ‘And anyway you wouldn’t make fools of yourselves, if that’s what you think,’ said Muhammed, smiling now, and adjusting his tie around his thin old neck until it felt just perfect. ‘You are both stunning men. You are handsome, cultured and kind. You are my sons.’

  Mehmet, amused, took off his sunglasses and looked at the old man with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Yes, Father, of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  The sound of more than one set of footsteps emanating from the house caused Mehmet to look around for something to cover himself up with. However, before he could f
ind anything, he found himself suddenly with his arms around what appeared to be a small human rocket.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Yusuf!’

  He was only two and a half but already he could run like a wild animal. Mehmet folded his arms around the child and covered him in kisses. Only when Murad cleared his throat did Mehmet look up to see his wife staring down at him.

  ‘We were passing,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be nice.’

  ‘Well, yes, thank you.’

  His wife then walked over to his father and, taking one of his hands in hers, kissed it and said, ‘Muhammed Bey.’

  ‘Zelfa, dear, how nice it is to see you,’ the old man said. ‘I trust your charming father is well?’

  ‘Yes, he is, thank you.’ And then she walked back over towards her son.

  Mehmet straightened up a little and after planting a few more kisses on his son’s face, he looked at his wife who, he suddenly realised, had lost a considerable amount of weight. Somewhat older than him anyway, it made her look a little haggard. He automatically frowned with concern.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked as she too frowned at him.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he smiled. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Would you like some tea, Zelfa?’ Murad asked before she could even begin to reply to Mehmet’s question. Turkish hospitality must, after all, be performed before anything else. ‘Assuming you’re not keeping Ramazan, that is . . . ?’

  ‘No, no I’m not. And yes, thank you, Murad, tea would be nice.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Murad, tea would be . . .’

  ‘No, I mean would you like to come indoors and help me?’ Murad said as he attempted to indicate with his eyes that his brother and his family should be left in peace.

  ‘Oh, yes, right . . .’

  After they had gone, Mehmet put his son down on to the grass. The youngster had a passion for the family cat Aslan who would let Yusuf do just about anything he wanted with him. He then offered Zelfa Murad’s lounger and then leaned back and looked up at the sun.

  Zelfa, whose mother had been Irish, came straight to the point. Speaking in English, she said, ‘I think we should get a divorce. I think we should discuss it.’

  Mehmet turned to look at her, suddenly both hurt and humiliated. It came out as anger. ‘Is there someone else?’ he said. ‘Is that what the weight loss is about?’

  ‘No!’ she said, her face red with anger. ‘Christ, Mehmet, can you be any more chauvinistic or what!’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I’ve lost weight because I’ve been under pressure at work and because I’ve been smoking like a trooper,’ she said and then, as if to prove her point, she dug into her handbag for a cigarette. ‘Dad’s going to be out of town this week and so I thought that, if it’s convenient for you, you could come over and we could talk about it one evening.’

  ‘What about him?’ Mehmet said as he tipped his head towards the child throwing a ball for the cat in the flower beds.

  ‘I thought that maybe you’d like to put him to bed and then we’d talk.’

  Mehmet shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  He could be such an arrogant bastard! And yet it had been Mehmet who had provoked this situation, Mehmet who’d gone off and screwed with a whore, been unfaithful to her! And yet, in spite of it all, Zelfa, who was after all a psychiatrist by profession, knew that she didn’t really want to divorce him at all. What she really wanted, right at that moment, was to lick every centimetre of his body.

  ‘I can’t go back, in my mind,’ Zelfa said. ‘I can’t trust you. And if I can’t do that, what’s the point?’

  He first sighed, lit a cigarette, and then said, ‘Is Wednesday convenient for you?’

  ‘Wednesday’s fine.’

  ‘OK.’

  And then he turned away to watch his son play with his cat and nothing more was said.

  Later, when Zelfa and Yusuf had left, Mehmet told his brother that he thought the idea of going out to a club was an excellent one.

  Menşure Tokatlı was not a woman to be trifled with. A soberly dressed old republican-style spinster, she was also the daughter of the late Faruk Tokatlı who had been something ‘big’ in the early tourist industry. Faruk, it was said, had been responsible for pushing tourism out into some of the more remote valleys as well as constructing several pansiyons and one hotel from existing fairy chimneys in Muratpaşa. Now Menşure, fifty-something and very determined, was in charge of the lot. Captain Salman of the Nevşehir police riding centre was openly afraid of her.

  ‘It’s about your daughter, Hande,’ she said without preamble as she accosted the captain outside the Fairy Chimneys Carpet Emporium.

  Captain Salman dropped what was left of his cigarette to the ground and very quickly brought one hand up to his cap in salute. ‘Menşure Hanım.’

  ‘She was with the boy, wasn’t she, her cousin, when he discovered the body out in the Valley of the Saints?’

  ‘Yes, Hanım, unfortunately . . .’

  ‘Well, what I want to know is whether she saw it at all. They’re not telling us whether it’s male or female and I really . . .’

  ‘Hanım, I think that you probably need to talk to the jandarma . . .’

  ‘I’ve tried that,’ the woman replied tetchily, ‘but they’re as obtuse as they can be. No, Captain, I need to get my information elsewhere, which is why I thought of Hande, or indeed yourself, because presumably as her father you will know what she knows.’

  ‘Yes.’ Captain Salman rocked backwards and forwards on the heels of his very shiny riding boots. ‘Hanım, why, may I ask, is this of interest to you?’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Menşure responded simply. ‘But a member of my family may have an interest and if he does, it is important that he gets here and away as quickly as possible. I can’t afford to have him around for too long during Ramazan.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Captain Salman asked. ‘Is he foreign or . . .’

  ‘No, he’s from İstanbul where he smokes openly, as I see you do, in the day during Ramazan. But that is all right there, as you know. Here things are different and I really do not want him outraging my neighbours. You’d take note of that yourself if you have any sense. Now, Captain, can you help me or can’t you?’

  ‘Hanım, if I knew why your relative needs to know this . . .’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Captain,’ Menşure said shortly. ‘That’s his business. But if I tell you his name then, as an İstanbul police officer yourself, maybe that will change things?’

  Captain Salman frowned. She was, it seemed, trying to dazzle him with ‘big’ names. Who was it to be? The Commissioner? The Director himself, maybe? Captain Salman’s mind went, temporarily, wild with possibilities.

  ‘Well, Hanım,’ he said, ‘you can try.’

  And so she told him the name; Captain Salman smiled very broadly and then immediately told her what she wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, he’s such a big boy! He’s such a hero!’

  Strangely, when his pretty young mother considered how high in the air he was, little baby Timur was nowhere near to tears. But then he was in the hands of his grandfather who, whenever the baby was near to him, assumed the consistency of jelly and an IQ of 20.

  ‘Dad, you’ll make him dizzy,’ Hulya said as she watched her father, Çetin İkmen, dance around the room with her infant.

  ‘No, no, he’s fine, aren’t you, my little pigeon?’ Çetin İkmen said, more to the baby than to his daughter. Little Timur just gurgled.

  An older, plumper woman with her hair pulled behind her ears by a headscarf came into the room and tutted, albeit good- naturedly, at what she saw.

  ‘I don’t know who is the more childlike, the baby or your father,’ Fatma İkmen said to her daughter.

  ‘I think it’s Dad,’ Hulya said with a smile.

  ‘I think you’re right.’

  Both of the women laughed, mainly because seeing the middle-aged Çetin İkmen s
o besotted was very amusing. He and Fatma had raised nine children of their own, but Timur was the first grandchild, named for Çetin’s own father, and therefore very special indeed.

  ‘Berekiah’s father isn’t quite as silly as Dad, but he has revealed a softer side in the weeks since we’ve had Timur,’ Hulya said referring to the father of her husband with whom the couple and their baby currently resided. ‘But then he isn’t well, is he?’

  ‘Mmm, Allah tests us all,’ Fatma said. She didn’t find it easy feeling sorry for her daughter’s father-in-law, Balthazar Cohen. Although he had never risen through the ranks of the police as Çetin had done, Balthazar had been far more successful with women. In fact, for years he had made his wife’s, Fatma’s friend Estelle, life a misery. But all of that had stopped in the wake of the great earthquake of 1999 when Balthazar, trapped under the apartment building of his latest mistress, had lost both his legs. And now his son Berekiah had married outside the Jewish faith and Balthazar’s grandson was to be a Muslim. Allah was, Fatma thought again, really testing Balthazar Cohen. But then the phone rang in the hall and Fatma left the room to answer it.

  Once she had gone, Hulya said, ‘So, Dad, are you busy?’

  Inspector Çetin İkmen hugged the small baby to his thin chest and said, ‘Not really. I suppose I should be glad, no one’s killing anyone. I’m helping Mehmet Süleyman out with something, but . . . He’s got another new deputy who may or may not work out.’ And then he changed the subject. ‘How is your house coming on?’

  ‘Oh, slowly.’ Hulya sighed. One of Berekiah’s uncles had bought them a house up in the old Greek quarter of Fener on the Golden Horn. Almost derelict, the place needed a lot of work, which was what Hulya’s husband was spending so much time doing.

  ‘Too slowly, eh?’ İkmen asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  ‘Yes.’

  Balthazar Cohen, as well as being very ill, was also very difficult to live with. He didn’t like the fact that his grandson was to be brought up a Muslim and he didn’t like the fact that his own sexual adventures were at an end. İkmen himself wasn’t crazy about any of his relatives having any sort of contact with religion – he couldn’t understand why his wife insisted on keeping the fast during Ramazan – but, like the rational secularist he was, he just lived with it.