On the Bone Read online

‘To whom?’

  ‘To Zanubiya Hanım,’ she said. ‘We must go to where she is and we must beg her forgiveness. It is the only way we will ever have peace.’

  Everyone was out. Even Zenne Gül had left the building to go shopping. It was the first time Birgül İnan had had the place to herself in a long while. But baby Barış was hot and grumpy and wouldn’t stop crying.

  She took him out into the relative coolness of the garden, where they both sat on a beach mat underneath the huge umbrella her father-in-law Uğur had brought back from one of his trips to London. But still the baby cried. Eventually Birgül took him into the kitchen and put him in his high chair. Then she filled one of the large old laundry bowls with cool water and took it out into the garden. When she went back indoors to get Barış, she said, ‘Let’s see if a little paddle cools you down, shall we?’

  It did. Shaded by the umbrella, Barış sat naked and content in the bowl and stopped crying. Birgül, her arm around his middle, lay down behind him and half closed her eyes. It was a pity the garden was such a dust bowl; she just had to hope that the boys would make a good job of planting it up. Neither Ziya nor Bülent really knew what they were doing. Only old Deniz Bey knew anything about gardens. Long ago his family had owned a cotton plantation on the Çukurova plain. He’d grown up hearing things about how to condition soil, and watering and all that stuff.

  Birgül wondered where the old man had got to. He usually spent most afternoons and some evenings at the squat, where other ex-military types were wont to gather around Uğur Bey. Ümit’s father General Kavaş had been one of them until Ümit died. The people who flocked to her father-in-law were a weird and diverse bunch. Birgül herself had come from a family of pious academics, but she’d rebelled when she went to university and met İsmet. Most people thought they were married, but they weren’t. They’d never felt the need. Her parents considered Barış a bastard and had told her they never wanted to see him. That was their loss. But it was hers too. If and when the squat was raided, they’d need somewhere to go and they couldn’t all fit into İsmet’s grandmother’s tiny place in Üsküdar. They’d have to find somewhere to rent, which was a joke.

  Rents in Istanbul were immense. The two covered girls, Meltem and Ahu, both students, would find it impossible to get anywhere they could afford. Their staunchly secular parents just about paid their university fees. They’d stop well short of funding lifestyles of which they didn’t approve. And then there was Zenne Gül …

  Birgül had just started to drift into a semi sleep when she heard Deniz Bey shouting.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing out here in this wasteland with your baby?’ he roared at her.

  Birgül sat up. ‘Oh, er …’

  ‘This isn’t a garden, not yet!’

  He marched over to her and took the umbrella down.

  ‘Silly girl! This is totally unsuitable!’

  Barış looked up at the shouty man and began to cry.

  ‘Have they given it a ridiculous name yet?’ Cetin İkmen asked.

  Arto Sarkissian raised his eyebrows. ‘Sadly.’

  ‘What is it?’

  They were sitting in İkmen’s office with Kerim Gürsel.

  ‘The Flagship,’ the doctor said.

  ‘May they be forgiven,’ İkmen said.

  Arto Sarkissian shook his head. ‘But I haven’t come here to talk about the new building that is going to dwarf my house and turn my wife into a nervous wreck. I’m here to tell you that the body we think is Volkan Doğan, is. According to dental records …’

  ‘Have you taken DNA samples?’

  ‘Yes. But we won’t know about that for a few days. And in answer to your next question, Cetin, I have requested an ethnic profile just in case Mr Doğan was secretly Jewish. I know it’s probably not relevant to the Ümit Kavaş case because Doğan died naturally, but I know you’re curious.’

  İkmen smiled. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if one’s oldest friend has to get himself up to his elbows in the dead for a living, I can think of no one who does that with better grace and efficiency than you. Your memory never ceases to amaze me, Arto. Do you ever forget anything?’

  ‘My own name occasionally,’ he said. ‘And once my wedding anniversary. But never again. Will you tell Defne Hanım?’

  İkmen sighed. ‘I will take the coward’s way out and get Kerim to do it. You know I’ve always had problems with religious types, but in their way, the old republican military elites are just as aggravating. Especially the wives. Like Ottoman princesses, some of them.’

  Arto laughed.

  ‘Why is it that everyone in this country is obsessed with being someone they’re not? And why do they want to be? I’m working class and I’m proud of that. Even if I suddenly became rich, I’d still be working class because that’s what I am. I can’t bear the waste that accompanies being rich. I don’t want Police sunglasses, in spite of my profession. I know Mehmet Süleyman wears them, but then …’

  ‘He’s the genuine article,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Exactly. His grandfather had a servant whose sole purpose was to help him put on his boots.’

  ‘Full employment in those days.’

  ‘Serfdom in all but name,’ İkmen said. Then he smiled. ‘You know, Arto, during the course of this investigation I have deliberately avoided going to the squat where Ümit Kavaş was a regular visitor. I know of it, I’ve been past it, but I’ve never been in. For a while I couldn’t think why that was.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then self-realisation,’ he said. ‘Remember when we used to dream about hitting the road when we were kids? Joining the hippies in their beaten-up old vans and going to Kathmandu?’

  ‘Ah, yes, I think we were going to find ourselves through the medium of free love and a lot of drugs.’

  ‘Indeed. And socialism,’ İkmen said. ‘Equality, fraternity, all that.’

  ‘All good stuff.’

  ‘Absolutely. But I got married and had the kids and you went off to university and began cutting dead people up. Wise choices and choices I wouldn’t change. But I do sometimes wish we’d had a few months living the dream. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But Cetin, the Art House people live their dream in dangerous times. This is no longer the 1960s.’

  ‘I know.’ He sighed. ‘And there’s a young man living in the Art House I need to speak to.’

  ‘I thought your zenne came from the Art House?’

  ‘He does,’ İkmen said. ‘But there’s someone else I need to contact. Bülent Onay. He knew Ümit Kavaş and he works, on a casual basis, at the Imperial Oriental.’

  The cemetery caretaker was a Muslim of the type the imam didn’t like. He was clearly a man who enjoyed a drink, evidenced by his bright red nose and the bottle of rakı only partly hidden behind his desk. More to the point, he was a hypocrite.

  ‘What do you want in here?’ he asked the imam. ‘This is where they bury Jews.’

  ‘Do I have to have a reason?’ the old man said.

  Aylin Hanım, from behind her niqab, said, ‘What’s it to you? We want to visit a grave. Let us in.’

  ‘You’re Muslims, these are Jews. You should be ashamed of yourselves!’

  Imam Ayan had lost his wife and both his sons. He wasn’t in the mood for arguments. ‘I come to visit the grave of a relative,’ he said. ‘How dare you judge me! Do you see me judging you for your drinking!’

  The man almost visibly shrank.

  Once in the graveyard, the imam said to Aylin Hanım, ‘Thank you for backing me up.’

  ‘I know a bigot when I see one,’ she said. ‘Can you remember where it is?’

  ‘It is burned into my memory.’

  They walked past the monument to the people who had died in the 2003 bombing of the Neve Şalom synagogue and walked towards the back of the cemetery. Aylin Hanım had only been to the Ulus Ashkenazi cemetery once before, when the stone that marked Zanubiya Ayan’s grave had been set many years before. It had been
a private affair attended only by a rabbi, a doctor from the Or-Ahayim Hospital, the imam and herself. The world beyond those four people believed that the unknown woman who had died at the hospital had passed without a name. But the imam had met with the rabbi, who had spoken to the doctor, and money for a stone decorated with a Star of David had changed hands.

  The old man kneeled on the ground when they arrived. The name on the monument was the one the imam’s wife had been given at her birth: Zanubiya Klarfeld.

  The imam, crying, stood up, and together with Aylin Hanım he prayed. Then he asked forgiveness and made his dead wife a promise. If their son Burak ever came back from Syria, he would bring him to this place and tell him the truth about the mother he looked so much like. Although whether he would ever tell Burak what the doctor at the Or-Ahayim had told him about his mother was something else.

  Chapter 24

  Aysel Gurcanli sounded anxious.

  ‘Mr Myskow has barely looked at me before,’ she told Cetin İkmen. ‘Now he’s asking questions about where I live, what my ambitions are and who I like to socialise with. What do I do?’

  She was on a cigarette break and was obviously not entirely alone, because she was whispering.

  ‘Keep your answers general and do not mention Halide,’ İkmen said.

  ‘But what if he brings her name up?’

  That surely had to be his objective.

  ‘Say you don’t know her that well,’ İkmen said. ‘Say you met her in a club and that it is in that context that you socialise. You know nothing about her life outside that.’

  ‘OK.’

  But she sounded nervous. She wouldn’t want to lose a job at such a prestigious hotel. Would Myskow threaten her? And if he did, what would that mean?

  Meat samples from the freezers both upstairs and downstairs at the Imperial Oriental had come back clean, as in none of them were human. But there was still the issue of the bloodstains.

  ‘Aysel Hanım,’ he said, ‘Mr Myskow is in no way secure. Between ourselves, he is sourcing certain meats without a licence.’

  ‘Oh God!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ İkmen said. ‘I doubt you’ve had contact. This time we only found samples in the upstairs kitchen’s freezer, where I understand you don’t work.’

  There was a pause, and then Aysel said, ‘The freezer upstairs? There is no freezer upstairs, Cetin Bey.’

  Radwan could see the border. The weird shapes of the ruined city of Karkemiş stood jaggedly on the skyline in front of what remained of the sunset. In spite of the ISIS men, he didn’t want to leave Syria again. But Burak was not going to go anywhere with him. He was a big man in ISIS now. Radwan couldn’t tell Burak what the imam had told him. It wasn’t his place. He put his gun down and moved forward. He couldn’t cross into Turkey with that, and he didn’t want to.

  He hoped the imam was still in Gaziantep. All he wanted to do was tell him that he had found Burak and then leave. Maybe one or more of his brothers or sisters was still alive. Until he got to Aleppo, he wouldn’t know.

  He felt a hand land on his shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing, Radwan?’

  He recognised Burak’s voice. He’d have to make something up. But his mind just wouldn’t. He said, ‘I need to tell your dad that you’re OK. I promised.’

  ‘My dad?’ He laughed. ‘Why? He knows where I am. I told him.’

  ‘I need to tell him,’ Radwan said. ‘I promised.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not? I’ll come back.’

  ‘Because nobody leaves,’ Burak said. ‘Don’t you understand? If it please God I could be dead tomorrow, and then you’d be lying to him, wouldn’t you?’

  At first, Radwan didn’t know what to say. When the words did come, he wondered whether he should have said them. ‘Your dad needs you to come back. He’s got something he has to tell you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Radwan said. ‘He must. Come with me.’

  ‘No. You’ll stay. No one leaves the caliphate.’

  Radwan regretted ditching his gun. But it was too late now.

  ‘I’ll have to lock you up,’ Burak said.

  That just wasn’t possible. He would go mad. ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I mean you can’t lock me up,’ Radwan said.

  Burak shouldered his rifle.

  Radwan tried to think. If he told Burak what the imam had told him, would it shock him out of what he was doing? Or would it just make him go insane with fury? He wouldn’t know until he did it.

  ‘Burak,’ he said, ‘your dad told me that he lied to you about your mother.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She wasn’t a Christian. She was a Jew,’ he said. And then Radwan closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears. He neither wanted to see nor hear his own death.

  The ferry was packed. They always were. Day and night they heaved with humanity, most of them trying to get seats by a window. Beşiktaş to Kadıköy was one of the major commuter routes, and so even after office hours were over it was crowded.

  Zenne Gül looked for a seat as far away from others as he could get. It wasn’t easy. Seconds after he’d sat down, he found himself surrounded by women carrying large bundles and children hassling for sweets. He wanted to look out of the window to distance himself from them and to avoid looking at Süleyman and his officers. The young eastern man was the closest to him, reading a newspaper.

  The ancient diesel engines gathered power. Apparently new ferries were to be put into service that would be quieter and more efficient. Gül hoped they didn’t replace the old ones, as he was very fond of them. Some people had said that the new ones would have fewer windows and wouldn’t allow food and drink on board, which would be awful. One of the great delights of the old ferries was the way you could get a glass of tea and a ring of simit bread by the window.

  The ferry pulled away from the Beşiktaş pier and began to make its turn towards Asia. Gül hadn’t seen anyone with a cool box. But then it just wasn’t possible to look at everyone when boarding. Getting on via the duckboards laid down by the ferrymen was not for the faint-hearted, and most people had to use all their concentration just to avoid falling into the water. But now that he was on, Gül could look around.

  Arto Sarkissian was a wonderful man in so many ways. Everyone who came into contact with him liked him. Unless that person was the property developer who had bought the land next door to his house. Cetin İkmen couldn’t imagine they got along. But he was really popular at the Forensic Institute. He could wind the scientific staff there round his little finger.

  And he’d just done it again.

  Aysel Gurcanli had been absolutely certain that the kitchen on the first floor didn’t have a freezer. And yet İkmen had seen one. He’d instructed the forensic team to take samples from it. Upstairs, the use of Luminol had revealed a large area of bloodstain that had been largely cleaned away. There had been one tiny dot of crusted blood that might or might not have originated from the same sample. If they could analyse that, they would.

  With Aysel’s phone call, when İkmen had learned that the freezer on the first floor was apparently unknown to her, that analysis had become urgent. Cetin had told Arto, who had gone straight to the Forensic Institute with one simple instruction. Now, finally, he was calling from his mobile.

  İkmen picked up. ‘Arto.’

  ‘Well, the girls and boys of the Institute have worked miracles,’ Arto said.

  ‘You have a result?’

  ‘I do. Basic, as you requested. More tests will be performed subsequently …’

  ‘Get on with it!’

  ‘The blood inside the freezer is human.’

  ‘Thank you,’ İkmen said. ‘Thank you very much, my friend.’

  ‘Pleasure.’

  İkmen put his phone down. It was important at this point not to get too anxious. The human blood in the freezer could have got the
re as a result of a cut finger. Although because it was at the outer edge of a large stain highlighted by Luminol, was it part of that or just a coincidental artefact?

  As a tiny lone blob, it wasn’t enough to go back and challenge Myskow with. Or was it? The next step was genetic profiling, which meant that if the blood had come from Celal Vural or Halide Can, they would know. İkmen thought that perhaps Commissioner Teker should be aware of this, and so he called her.

  He’d missed the possibility of meeting a cannibal on a ferry because of this blood.

  Five minutes of the twenty-minute-long journey had already gone, and Gül could only see one person with a cool box. It was a woman. What was more, it was a very traditional-looking woman, bundled up in lots of heavy clothes and a headscarf. But then he looked again, because there was something unusual about her.

  She was wearing sunglasses.

  Not only did country women like this one rarely wear sunglasses, it was also almost dark. Had she been a hip young thing, this would have made a difference. There was a man standing up reading a book with sunglasses on. But then he looked like an underwear model.

  Gül looked at the woman, and after a few seconds she appeared to look at him. He expected her to come over. But she didn’t. Was she even the right person?

  The woman looked away. Maybe not. Then after a few seconds she got up and went outside to the outer deck. Gül followed.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Radwan said. ‘Ask your dad. Phone him now. I swear to God—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  Radwan opened his eyes in time to see Burak put his gun on the ground and take his phone out of his pocket.

  ‘Move a muscle and I’ll kill you,’ he told Radwan.

  The boy stood like a statue while Burak punched a number into his phone. The sky was beginning to darken, and with little light pollution from the largely destroyed villages in the area, it would soon be as black as death.

  The time it took for the imam to answer seemed like for ever. But when he did, Burak got straight to the point. ‘Radwan tells me I am a Jew. Tell me he’s lying.’

  Radwan couldn’t hear what the imam said, but whatever it was, it took a long time. It only ended when Burak said, ‘I’m not coming back, and making up lies about my mother won’t change my mind.’