Harem Read online

  Perhaps it was his peasant background. Peasants were always only too willing to believe the miraculous. Every year his mother would take his father out to that Armenian church, the one where a miracle cure was supposed to take place at one or other of their festivals. Nothing ever happened, but his mother still went, a headscarved Muslim woman, dragging a rakı-soaked lush in her wake. Mystery and magic. Like the way Zhivkov, pure evil in his eyes, consistently escaped death. Some sort of demon, he had to be! Peasant thinking again. Süleyman thought rationally about tunnels built by his fabulous, aristocratic ancestors; he conjured up devils and djinn and things that reach out and grab you in the night.

  His heart missed a beat, he felt it distinctly. Not even a second’s warning. Something large and black wrapped itself round his throat and lifted him clean off his feet.

  ‘I’m a police officer!’ Süleyman held his ID aloft to the eye slits in their balaclava helmets.

  The one who had his foot on Süleyman’s chest glanced at it briefly before shrugging at his colleague in what might have been a meaningful fashion. Who were they, these huge, black-clad men bristling with guns?

  ‘Who are you?’ As soon as he’d asked the question he knew it was pointless. Their only answer was to roll him over on his stomach and cuff him. Next came a rough piece of cloth which covered his eyes. Clearly his police ID did not impress them. Did they even recognise it for what it was? Were they going to kill him?

  He felt one of them squat down beside him, heard something unzip beside his ear.

  ‘Sleep,’ a voice said, just before something painful speared his bicep. Sleep, one word, short, staccato, in English. Süleyman’s mind flew down a deep black hole with sickening rapidity.

  He’d been right, the door was unlocked. In an effort to contain his nervousness İkmen put a fist up to his mouth and bit down hard on his knuckles. Briefly he looked around. There was nothing to see beyond the trees and bushes sweeping away down to the blackening mass of the Bosphorus at the bottom of the hill. No Süleyman or İskender, yet. They would come but in the meantime he felt exposed. There was no evidence to support the idea that there was anyone about but themselves but just in case security should pass and glance up at the building, he ought to get inside.

  The door moved easily and without squeaking. İkmen entered the dark hall, his eyes quickly scanning for the door Süleyman had described, the one all the men had walked through. There it was. He put his head back round the main door and looked for his colleagues again. They were both taking their time. That was unlike Süleyman at least. İkmen frowned. If anything had happened to either of them he would never forgive himself. He looked at the inner door again. There didn’t appear to be any kind of light behind it, suggesting that wherever the men had gone was some distance from it. He hoped it, too, was unlocked. If it wasn’t he could probably get it unlocked. It would be nice to know for certain, however. He looked outside once again. Nothing. This was getting worrying, he was older and far more unfit than the others.

  He returned his gaze to the door inside. It couldn’t do any harm just to check it out while he was waiting. And so he did, unable to believe his good fortune when the thing sprung soundlessly open under his hand. Whatever else they may have done, the old sultans always made sure that their palaces worked. Best builders, best carpenters, plumbers who really understood water tables. Pity the criminals who’d built all those abominations that had folded in on themselves during the earthquake hadn’t looked to history for a little guidance.

  Where were Süleyman and İskender? He looked over his shoulder at the open main door and felt his heart begin to pound. Nothing. This wasn’t good. Something must have happened. Either that or they’d just gone. Neither of them had been happy about this. Oh, but that was preposterous. İskender might possibly have left but İkmen couldn’t believe that Süleyman would desert him.

  If they hadn’t deserted him but had come to some sort of harm, shouldn’t he try and find out? Where to start looking? Beyond the doorway in front of him lay a long corridor flanked by other doors and culminating in a very large portal, under which he could see a sliver of light. If he really strained his ears he could hear voices.

  To listen outside the door was going to be too dangerous. No, he’d have to try and glean what he could from whatever lay behind one. of the adjoining doors. But what about Süleyman and İskender?

  There was no sound or movement from outside and standing where he was he was totally exposed. He’d have to assume they weren’t coming. If he stood here wondering why, he’d never achieve anything. He took a few steps forward onto the carpet and paused. The floor beneath was marble and so it wouldn’t creak. Briefly he reminded himself just who was behind that door at the end and moved rapidly towards the door beside it.

  Sweating heavily now, he checked all round the door for chinks of light. There were none. A raucous laugh from the lit room beside him caused him to react without thought and the next thing he knew he was in an entirely black room. He wasn’t alone, however.

  ‘They won’t buy it, you know. They’ll kill you all in the end.’

  The voice was American, the words English, tinged with a Turkish accent.

  Although his hands really didn’t want to move at all, İkmen took his pencil torch out of his jacket pocket and switched it on. At first he had thought he recognised the voice but he couldn’t equate it with the figure tied up against one of the huge old imperial radiators. Spattered with blood, half of its hair pulled out by the roots, it looked more like an incomprehensible work of modern art than a person. Only the extraordinary and mesmeric eyes confirmed that İkmen had indeed recognised the voice.

  ‘Mr Sivas?’

  ‘And what is your particular method of torture?’ Hikmet Sivas said acidly.

  ‘Mr Sivas, it’s me,’ İkmen said in Turkish. ‘Inspector İkmen.’ He stepped over to the prone figure and squatted down beside him. ‘What has happened to you?’

  He started to work at the ropes with his fingers. The great dark eyes looked up into his. ‘Is this a trick?’

  ‘No! Mr Sivas, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to kill the man who murdered my wife. But now,’ he smiled crookedly, ‘he’s going to kill me.’

  ‘There are some men meeting in the room next door to this. Some of them are very bad men. One of my officers is with them.’ İkmen looked through the blood-stained lashes and into the bruised eyes. ‘I want to know why.’

  Hikmet Sivas started to laugh. İkmen slammed a hand over a mouth now ruined by broken teeth. ‘Be quiet!’ he hissed.

  When Hikmet Sivas eventually managed to regain his composure, İkmen took his hand away and resumed his work on the ropes.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘They’re all here because of me,’ Sivas said, ‘because I always wanted to be the centre of attention.’

  İkmen frowned as he worked one of Sivas’s hands free.

  ‘I wanted to be a movie star.’

  ‘Which you are.’

  ‘Which is an honour that I bought,’ Sivas corrected. ‘I sold the cream of Turkish girlhood, not to mention my own sense of who I was, to a group of very highly placed Sicilian American gentlemen who, in return, made me a star. I know you’ve seen one of the gowns we dressed the girls in, Muazzez Heper told me. Muazzez and Yümniye dressed all of my girls, you know.’

  İkmen stopped what he was doing and sat back. ‘The Harem. You ran it?’

  ‘Yes, I started it. It was my idea. Some cheap little Neapolitan, the only Hollywood executive who would even let me through the door when I first arrived there, told me that the only thing about Turks that people were interested in was their harems. He’d read that the odalisques would do anything for their master without a word. He said to me that as a Turkish national I was of no use to him, Valentino and all that Middle Eastern vogue was over. If, however, I knew of a harem . . .’

  ‘Well, you can’t have done. Nobody could in the nineteen sixties, there weren’
t any.’ İkmen shook his head at such ignorance.

  ‘No, of course not, which is why I had to create one. In the early days they were genuine Ottoman ladies. Desperate, poverty-stricken aristocrats,’ Sivas said as İkmen freed his other wrist. ‘I thought I’d only have to do it once. I came home. I set it up. I invited the Neapolitan to come visit our exotic homeland. I even, because Vedat worked here, said he could fuck them in a genuine palace.’ His eyes glazed over at the memory of it. ‘I got Muazzez and three others, separately you understand. He did everything it’s possible for one human to do to another and they, poor desperate things, didn’t even squeak. He, the Italian, really got off on it. He liked the silence, the compliance – it was like playing with fat, dusky dolls, he said.’

  ‘And so this Neapolitan rewarded you.’

  ‘He told his friends.’ Sivas scowled. ‘It was so different. They’d done everything else, his friends. Starlets, kids, boys, Marilyn. Now Turks, silent, subhuman, fat princesses. And so in return for giving the Cosa Nostra and their friends a genuinely Ottoman experience I became a star. In the sixties everyone came here,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Some of them on state visits. They even paid me. They still do.’

  ‘You entertained them all here?’

  ‘In the rooms the madman built underneath the palace. The Republican government had bricked them up but the people who worked here knew where they were. Everyone searches for treasure under the pavements of this city, Inspector. İstanbulis are always on the lookout for a quick fix. So once a year I would come home and once a year Vedat would dress the rooms most beautifully.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘We entertained only the very best: godfathers, politicians, movie stars, world leaders. No one in their right mind would ever have thought that such a thing could happen in a backwater like Turkey. My customers were thrilled. I was thrilled. A peasant boy from Haydarpaşa who was not only a movie star but also the originator of the most exclusive club in the world.’

  ‘Which you also used yourself,’ İkmen said, recalling the story told to him by Sofia Venezis.

  Hikmet Sivas frowned. ‘No, why would I? I was young and attractive. What makes you think—’

  ‘Sofia Venezis, a Greek woman,’ İkmen said, ‘does the name mean—’

  The wounded star interrupted him with a soft laugh. ‘If you mean the idiot girl that Muazzez made me meet,’ he said, ‘then I know who you’re referring to but I can assure you that I never had sex with her. I couldn’t use her either for my customer or myself. She was like a running commentary of inconsequence. For Muazzez’s sake I listened, told her not to say anything about our meetings to anyone then gave her the money she could have earned. I was rich by that time.’

  Suddenly the door to the room adjoining banged open. Laughter followed. İkmen, his hand over Hikmet Sivas’s mouth once again, switched off his torch.

  ‘I trust your journey will be a comfortable one,’ a deep voice said in heavily accented Turkish.

  A smooth, native voice replied, ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘Your involvement will be invaluable, General.’

  ‘As will the money we will make.’

  And both men laughed.

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Only when he was absolutely certain that no one was outside did İkmen switch his torch back on again.

  ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he asked Sivas as he held the torch close up to his once handsome face.

  ‘Well, of course I do,’ the star replied haughtily. ‘Everyone in there wants my photographs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Even when I was young I believed in the value of insurance,’ Sivas said, rubbing his freed wrists with his bloodied hands. ‘I photographed everyone who used the Harem, in flagrante, you understand. Not for blackmail but, as I said, for insurance should any of the studio bosses I worked with decide to curtail my contract before I wanted them to or in case somebody even more important should decide to reject my application for American citizenship. I keep them all in sealed envelopes . . . somewhere.’ He smiled. ‘Nobody, apart from Vedat my brother, knew about the photographs until last year.’

  ‘And so what changed?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Vedat changed, Inspector,’ Sivas replied. ‘I thought at first that this Bulgarian person, Zhivkov, was simply emulating my idea. OK, I couldn’t understand how he’d managed to find out, how he’d been able to force Vedat to give him the girls’ costumes and introduce him to our clients, but Vedat was here, I was in the States. I’ve always loved my brother. I closed my mind. But then some of our clients told me Zhivkov was trying to blackmail them.’ He sighed. ‘Even then I continued to ignore it. And then, one day, after a very severe beating, or so he claimed, Vedat called to say that Zhivkov knew about the photographs and wanted them. I told him to go to hell.’

  ‘So who else knew what was going on?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘No one. Oh, my Italian friends and people a little higher up, shall we say – knew about the blackmail and got really wired. But they didn’t know about the photographs. I couldn’t tell them. They’d have killed me. But then when Vedat called to say they’d killed a girl in one of our dresses . . .’

  ‘Hatice İpek.’

  ‘I don’t know what the kid’s name was. Anyway, Vedat hadn’t been honest with me. There’d been no beating. Vedat wanted the photographs just as much as Zhivkov. I have pictures, Inspector, of people so important that they would silence even the most prominent members of the Cosa Nostra – some of whom are in that room now.’

  ‘So what you’re saying,’ İkmen said slowly, ‘is that Zhivkov wants to get hold of these pictures so he can have power over the Mafia.’

  ‘Amongst others. People don’t like to see pictures of desperate young girls going down on their leaders. They tend to vote such people out. They don’t like to see their role models jacking off as they watch top Mafia godfathers fuck little princesses up against walls.’

  ‘You have photographs of such things?’

  ‘Almost every prominent man connected with the Cosa Nostra for the last forty years. Men who either belong to the organisation or men the mob put where they are today. You’d be amazed at the number of faces you’d recognise – not all of them American.’ He smiled. ‘If I’d wanted to I could’ve brought down governments with what I’ve recorded. Not bad for a stupid Turk.’

  No, it was very clever. In fact for a poor boy from Haydarpaşa whose only experience of the world at that time had been through his involvement with the Egyptian film industry, it was remarkable. There had always been rumours that certain criminal organisations controlled politicians in certain countries; they were also rumoured to run Hollywood, some union organisations, etc., etc. Now here, suddenly, or so it would seem, was the proof. Gleaned, almost innocently, by a man who just wanted to cover his back.

  ‘And your wife?’ İkmen asked. ‘You said you left your house in order to avenge her.’

  Sivas’ eyes filled up immediately. ‘They killed Kaycee in order to show me they meant business about the photographs,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘I came to İstanbul to try and sort things out – about the dead kid and of course I needed to lay it on the line to Zhivkov about the photographs. But he pre-empted me. I couldn’t believe how I underestimated him. He took Kaycee. Without thinking I involved the police and Zhivkov killed her. There was no blackmail involved. He’d always intended to kill Kaycee. He felt it would be an object lesson for me – like “You’re next unless you do as I say.” Stupid bastard didn’t know how much I loved her. I’ll never give him his photographs now. And anyway those who really hold the power, I don’t mean those godfathers in there, know now. I made some calls before Zhivkov caught up with me.’

  ‘Then why are the Mafia bosses in there with Zhivkov now?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Zhivkov’s told them he already has the photographs. He’s impatient. Vedat can describe them; he’s seen them, after all,’ Sivas replied. ‘Of course he needs them in actuality at some p
oint, which is why I understand they’re coming back later to try and persuade me all over again.’

  ‘Sssh!’ İkmen switched off his torch and held his breath. He was certain he could hear movement outside the door. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of illumination in the room he noticed that the radiator he was leaning against was next to a window, in front of which hung a pair of full-length, heavy curtains. What made him pull the curtains round himself he didn’t know; it was just a feeling, ‘that thing you do, like your mother’ as his father used to say.

  The younger son of the witch Ayşe İkmen concealed himself behind the curtains just before the door to the room flew open and the light came on.

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  Ali Müren’s hand hadn’t even managed to get inside his jacket, much less reach for his gun, before they eliminated him. The silenced shot hit him in the heart, killing him instantly.

  There had been fourteen men sitting round the table; now there were thirteen.

  Zhivkov, who was at the head of the table beside Vedat Sivas, made as if to stand up.

  ‘Sit down!’ The black-clad figure spoke in English. Others, also all in black, spread out around the room.

  Orhan Tepe turned to the man sitting next to him, one of Zhivkov’s bodyguards and said, ‘What is this? What—’

  ‘Shut up!’ The butt of a hand weapon hit him on the back of the neck, silencing him.

  The room was full now. Two men in black for every man at the table. In response to some sort of signal, one of each pair placed his handgun up to the head of the man sitting in front of him.

  Some of them whimpered, one of the Americans crossed himself. Tepe just kept thinking that he was going to die and it was all his own fault. There was no reason for him to be here, apart from his greed, apart from the fact that he’d had to have Ayşe. Even now on the point of death she was in his mind, the image of her blood dripping sensuously down his fingers. He felt himself stiffen and it almost made him smile.