A Chemical Prison Read online

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Um.’

  Arto Sarkissian, moving surprisingly rapidly for such a plump and uncomfortably dinner-suited man, ran down the steps of the house and into the street. Rapidly scanning the assembled crowd, his keen eye quickly caught İkmen’s and the latter excused himself to the ladies. He joined his friend.

  ‘I want to bring the body out now,’ the doctor whispered into İkmen’s ear, ‘but I don’t want this lot looking on when I do so.’

  ‘All right.’ He turned around in order to look for some sort of support and found that Farsakoǧlu was at his side. ‘Get hold of some of the men,’ he said to her, ‘and get this lot shifted.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  However, rather to İkmen’s surprise, she didn’t act upon this immediately.

  He looked at her questioningly. ‘And? Yes?’

  ‘Oh, it’s, er …’ She smiled, her face just very slightly red.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s just … er … Did you say that Sergeant Suleyman is back again tomorrow, sir?’

  ‘Yes, from his vacation. And?’

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled. ‘Good. That means you’ll have, er, more support.’

  ‘Just get these awful ghouls moved for me, will you, Farsakoǧlu? Now would be nice.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She moved away, looking, so İkmen could not help but notice, just a little bit too happy.

  The doctor raised a wry eyebrow. ‘She’s a little keen, isn’t she?’

  İkmen flung a much-needed cigarette into his mouth and lit up. ‘I often wish,’ he said wearily, ‘and this is without any disrespect to the man, that my sergeant would be struck down by some sort of ugly virus.’

  Arto Sarkissian smiled. ‘I know what you mean. I assume that Farsakoǧlu knows that he’s married?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ İkmen replied sourly, ‘everybody knows that he’s married, especially Suleyman himself.’

  ‘Oh.’

  As Sergeant Farsakoǧlu and a small squad of men attempted to disperse the crowd, both İkmen and Sarkissian drew their jackets tightly around their bodies. There was a stiff wind blowing up from the nearby Sea of Marmara now that was distinctly autumnal in character.

  Chapter 3

  Fatma İkmen slumped down on to the floor beside the telephone and stared, glassily, at the instrument. While half of her mind hoped that it would ring of its own volition, the other half wondered whether she should take the initiative and risk disturbing Çetin by calling him herself. He was obviously very busy with something which, she reasoned, could only be work. She imagined him all sleepless and tetchy, barking out orders from his untidy desk and squirming about uncomfortably in his dinner jacket. Then she looked down at herself, at her great, uncomfortably swollen belly and tried to put from her mind other reasons why he might have been out all night. The sort of women who would have been attending Krikor Sarkissian’s fund-raising evening were not women like herself. Plastic surgery (like Arto’s wife Maryam underwent so regularly), and for that matter surgery of a conventional nature, was commonplace to them. That she was still living with these huge and wretched fibroids which had chosen to inhabit her uterus was more a tribute to her poverty than any fears she may have had regarding operations – although that was all part of it too, of course.

  But then, what on earth would any of those lovely society women want with Çetin? Small, thin and, if she were perfectly honest, really quite ugly, her husband was hardly a catch to be boasted about within the salons of the rich and famous. He was middle-aged with no money, had too many children, few prospects and … and yet his charm was as undeniable as it was infectious. When he wanted to, Çetin could make a woman feel like an empress – he’d made her feel so on many occasions. Until quite recently. Until this fibroid business had started, bringing with it a great deal of pain, endless bleeding and absolutely no interest in sex. Dr Koç had said that it would all stop when her change began. As hot flushes and dry skin rolled in so the fibroids would shrink and, eventually, disappear. Fatma pulled a sour face. Well, that was something to look forward to anyway! She’d have a face like a lump of old leather but at least her stomach would be flat!

  As she sat thinking these morbid and defeatist thoughts her youngest child, four-year-old Kemal, appeared from out of her bedroom, trailing a blanket behind him.

  ‘Can I have a drink now, Mummy?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, in a minute.’

  ‘I’m really thirsty.’

  ‘Yes, and I said that I’d get you a drink in a minute.’ She eyed him miserably. It wasn’t his fault that he was so young and full of energy and she was so old and tired. ‘Mummy’s not feeling very well and—’

  ‘Poor Mummy!’ With the sweetest will in the world he threw himself upon her in order to provide comfort, unfortunately landing on her fibroid-encrusted belly.

  Fatma, squealing in agony but at the same time so appreciating his gesture, both held on to and pushed away her little one as he attempted to cover her face with wet early-morning kisses. ‘Oh, Kemal, darling!’

  ‘Fatma!’ It was a man’s voice, old and heavy with thick mucus.

  Gently she moved her child over to one side so that he was sitting next to her and then whispered in his ear, ‘It’s Grandad, sssh!’ Then, calling out in response to the voice, she said, ‘Yes, Timür, what is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got that Greek under my bed again,’ the elderly voice continued. ‘He’s driving me mad with his singing, as usual.’

  Fatma sighed heavily. She frequently found herself in situations like this with her father-in-law these days. On top of the children and her own problems it was really too much. She would have to speak to Çetin – again. She took a deep breath before replying. ‘He’ll go if you ask him to leave nicely, Timür.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how will he get out?’ The old man sounded, as ever, genuinely concerned. But then that was all part of it, the fact that he now actually believed these things.

  ‘He can easily climb out of the window and get down the fire escape,’ Fatma continued, thinking all the time about how absolutely mad she would sound to someone outside the family.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ answered the old man, ‘I’ll ask him to do that then.’

  ‘All right.’

  And as she listened to the sound of Timür İkmen gently inviting his guest, whose name she now learned was Nikos, to leave, Fatma İkmen looked back at the telephone. But still it didn’t, wouldn’t ring. Her eyes now stinging with tears, Fatma began to stand up, heaving with her the little springy body of her youngest child. She was, she thought, just like a big, fat miserable old goat. ‘Come on,’ she said to Kemal, ‘let’s get you that drink.’

  The little boy smiled and hugged her neck.

  Mehmet Suleyman entered his office looking smart, tanned and thoroughly worn out.

  İkmen, his eyes red and watery from lack of sleep, raised his weary head from the papers before him on his desk and grimaced. ‘A vacation to mark down to experience, I take it, Suleyman?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the younger man replied, ‘you could say that.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Suleyman slid his briefcase underneath his desk and sat down. ‘You’re wearing a dinner jacket, sir,’ he observed. ‘Is there something I should know?’

  İkmen lit a cigarette and, once he had recovered from the heavy bout of coughing this precipitated, he said, ‘I was at a fund-raising event over at Dr Sarkissian’s last night.’

  ‘For his brother’s drug project?’

  ‘Yes, although I wasn’t there for very long. Almost as if to underline Krikor’s efforts some young drug addict went and got himself strangled at a house down by the Topkapı Palace.’

  ‘Oh. Any details?’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘Some. Although there is a lot of work to be done which is why I am so very glad to welcome you back, Suleyman. Forensic are over at the house now, which is on İshak
Paşa Caddesi, but I’d like you to go over too. Get a feel for the crime.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Suleyman, almost in spite of himself, smiled. It was good to be back; despite everything he might say about the job when he was fed up, it was very good to be back.

  ‘In fact, perhaps it would be a good idea if I get back over there myself too.’ İkmen stood up rapidly, in the way that he did when he was very tired and needed to motivate himself. ‘You don’t mind driving, do you? I think I’d have an accident if I did.’

  ‘OK.’ Suleyman took his keys out of his pocket and jangled them in his hand.

  ‘Oh, and, er …’ İkmen looked down at the floor in a rather studied fashion. ‘I should, er, perhaps warn you that young Sergeant Farsakoǧlu may well still be on duty.’

  ‘So?’

  It was said in such obvious innocence that İkmen was for a moment quite taken aback.

  Suleyman, seeing his superior’s confusion, asked, ‘Why?’

  İkmen wasn’t very good at tackling subjects like this and so, after a brief moment’s thought, he decided that the best course of action would be to take the coward’s route out. ‘Oh, it’s just that she’s a bit keen, that’s all. She tends to chatter on when you’re trying to think.’

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t noticed that, but …’ Suleyman shrugged. The fact that Sergeant Farsakoǧlu was beginning to display an interest in him was probably, İkmen thought, still quite unknown to Suleyman, which would be entirely in character. Over the years many women had been attracted to him without his apparent knowledge. But the subject died then and there as the two men prepared themselves for the day to come.

  ‘There’s something odd about this crime scene,’ İkmen said as he made ready to leave his office.

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Well, I’d really rather you saw the place yourself, without any preconceptions, before we talk about it. I came to the scene yesterday evening with a very tired brain, which may have made me deduce things incorrectly. You see what your fresh, vacationed brain can do with it and then we’ll talk.’

  ‘All right,’ Suleyman smiled, ‘although I can’t promise that my brain is fresh after what can only laughably be called a vacation.’

  İkmen frowned. He had hoped, together probably with Suleyman’s parents, that this latest vacation would help heal some of the wounds between his deputy and his wife. Poor Suleyman hadn’t been happy about his marriage, which had been an arranged one, from the start. Five years on and with a very expensive break in Alexandria behind them, things didn’t seem to be any better. ‘Was it really that bad?’ he asked.

  Suleyman’s smile didn’t move, but his eyes became sad. ‘It was worse.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Suleyman sighed. ‘I wanted to walk and talk, wander about on the Corniche, look at the little that remains of Alexander’s city, but all Zuleika wanted to do was spend our money in the bazaars …’ He shrugged. ‘Well, anyway, shall we go, sir?’

  İkmen walked over and patted him affectionately on the back. ‘Yes, let’s get to work. To be honest, I could do with a drink, just to start my day off.’

  In recent years İkmen’s once legendary habit of drinking during duty hours had been most ruthlessly curtailed. In an effort to clean up his subordinates, İkmen’s boss, Commissioner Ardiç, had done much to take what some used to describe as the joy out of the job. With İkmen’s drinking gone, only cigarettes, or so it appeared to him, remained as sources of pleasure during the course of the day – and there were rumours that Ardiç had plans for those too.

  They moved towards the door and, in an attempt to alter the air of melancholy that had enveloped them, Suleyman changed the subject. ‘And how are your wife and children then?’

  ‘Oh, Allah!’ İkmen struck his thoughtless brow with the heel of his hand, ‘Fatma! In all this madness I haven’t even thought to contact her. She’ll kill me!’

  With rapid, fumbling fingers he reached for the mobile telephone in the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Now if I can just get this thing to work …’

  The house on İshak Paşa Caddesi had never had a number. Officially it didn’t have a name either, although any letter addressed to ‘The Sacking House’ would have got to its destination without any problem. Quite whether the property deserved its name, no one now knew, but that the legend behind it survived did give the place a sort of notoriety, deserved or otherwise. The grocer had told Sergeant Farsakoǧlu the old story.

  ‘When the Ottoman Sultans ruled the Empire from their great palace of Topkapı, they were wont to collect numerous treasures, including many wives and concubines. Like so many with so much, they didn’t actually always want all of them. Some of them would displease, if you know what I mean, in the bedroom and … Well, anyway, they had a very special way of disposing of those they didn’t like: they threw them into the water just off Seraglio Point. It was the eunuchs that did it. They stitched the women up in sacks and then heaved them into the Bosphorus. This house is called “The Sacking House” because at one time a maker of sacks lived in it. It is said that it was he who made the sacks into which the young girls were placed before being thrown to their watery graves. Whether the story is true or not, I don’t know. But it used to be said that this was a wicked place and, as the Prophet Mohammed, blessings and peace be upon him, is my judge, I feel that given recent events that just might be so. Places, like people, can be evil, Officer, and this is one of them.’

  Sergeant Farsakoǧlu rubbed her tired eyes with her fingers and looked up once again at the time-scarred façade of the house. In the strengthening light of the morning, which was proving to be one graced with a little weak sunlight, it looked far more welcoming than it had done the night before. If it hadn’t been for the two constables stationed either side of the front door, it would have looked like a perfectly normal dwelling for this part of the city. And if Farsakoǧlu hadn’t known that a young boy had recently met his death in there she, like most people, would have given the house very little thought.

  But she did know, and she knew other things about this house too. She knew that the windows had been nailed shut in the room where the boy had died and that they had been like that for some time. She felt the strangeness of the place right through to her bones. Who, she wondered, lived in a house with no food, no books or papers – no little things, with the exception of some rather fine crystals, to mark the place as their own? It was almost as if the dead boy had been somehow materialised on that bed out of thin air – there was nothing except him and who he was, nobody as yet knew.

  The grocer, who had been standing silently by her side during these musings, cleared his throat. ‘Will that be all then, Officer?’

  ‘Oh, er, yes, thank you for your help.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s nothing.’

  As the grocer sauntered back to his shop a car pulled up and two men got out. As they approached her, the sight of one of the men made Sergeant Farsakoǧlu’s face redden. Quickly she put her hands up to her cheeks in order to cover their colouring, a movement not lost upon old İkmen who was eyeing her most keenly.

  ‘Ah, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘we’re just going into the house for a bit. Forensic OK?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, ‘all very hard at work.’

  ‘Good.’ He lit a cigarette and smiled. ‘You should be getting off home soon, you must be exhausted.’

  ‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath before addressing İkmen’s partner. ‘Hello, Sergeant Suleyman,’ she said, ‘did you have a good vacation?’

  His smile was such a beautiful thing to see that she found herself looking away as he replied, scared that he would see her reaction and know what she was feeling.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sergeant,’ he said. Then, turning immediately to İkmen, ‘Shall we go in now, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As the two men moved forward, İkmen turned to Farsakoǧlu and said, more as an order than a suggestion, ‘Go home and get some sleep now, Farsakoǧlu, there’s nothing e
lse for you here at present.’

  And then they were gone, up into that strange house of death, one old and small and bowed down by the accumulated heaviness of time, the other so straight and tall and yet also, in his own beautiful way, marked by the passage of weary years. Perhaps, she thought, it was dealing with death which made them like that. Maybe if one looked upon it too frequently that was how one’s eyes would end up looking – heavy and yet hollow, hurt in a way that only they could understand. But then again, if some of the more gossipy constables were to be believed, there was more than that at play in the case of Mehmet Suleyman. Cohen, who probably knew Mehmet better than most, had upon several occasions intimated that things were not entirely perfect between the sergeant and his wife. Not that this was any of Farsakoǧlu’s business. That she was so violently attracted to Mehmet was a source of great shame and anxiety. Whether the Suleymans were getting on together or not was immaterial to the fury with which Mrs Suleyman would react if she found out that someone else desired her husband. After all, the lady was Turkish and that was how a Turkish woman would react. She knew that was how it would affect her. If Mehmet belonged to her she would tear the head off any other woman who looked at him.

  With heavy limbs and an even heavier heart, Sergeant Farsakoǧlu started the long climb up towards the great monuments and home.

  The room, seen now in daylight, was slightly larger than he remembered. But then with the body gone that was quite logical. For some reason that İkmen had never been able to fathom, a dead body appeared to fill a room in a way that a live one just didn’t. Perhaps it was the fear that touched them all in the presence of a corpse which made it seem like that? Despite the advances scientists had made in the study of death the process was still largely a mystery, and although İkmen had no time for the notion of life after death, there was always something troublesome hanging around those who had recently died. The only thing that he could liken it to was a vague feeling of being observed. But that had quite gone now and, as he watched Suleyman scanning the apartment for the first time, İkmen was aware that now they could just be any two men looking around a room. Such was the transitory nature of tragedy.