Belshazzar's Daughter Read online

  He pointed at the students. “Don’t you think somebody ought to be teaching this lot, Rosemary?”

  A collection of light and delicate fingers tapped him on the left shoulder. Robert deflated at their touch. Turning round quickly he found himself staring into the plump, self-satisfied face of Mr. Edib, the School Director.

  “Good morning, Robert!” he beamed from beneath his mustache.

  “Good morning, Mr. Edib!” Robert replied.

  “Has Miss Hillman”—he indicated Rosemary with a sweep of one manicured hand—“told you about our guests?”

  “Yes, Director, I know the police are here.”

  “Good, Robert. Is just a few questions, that’s all. The Inspector is in my office. He will see you now.”

  “Now? I’ve only just arrived!”

  The Director shrugged. “You are next on the list. I have been sent to get you.”

  Robert sighed and got a good grip on his briefcase before making his way toward the wide sweep of the staircase leading to the upper story.

  * * *

  He was the oddest policeman Robert had ever seen, in the flesh at least. Disheveled, red-eyed, reeking of both booze and cigarettes, he was like some sort of crime novel character, a refugee from the 1950s. Thin almost to the point of emaciation, he shifted constantly in his seat as if desperately trying to find a position that suited him. Between frequent swigs from a large brandy bottle on the desk, he would clutch his stomach with his left hand, as if trying to massage away a pain. Robert speculated that he must have an ulcer the size of a grapefruit.

  He smiled when Robert entered, but he didn’t get up. A hand crowned with yellow and splitting fingernails indicated to the Englishman where he should sit. Robert sat. The policeman lit up a long brown cigarette and cleared his throat. There was a large map of the Balat district on the Director’s desk before him underneath the bottle which, Robert noticed, was only half full.

  The policeman consulted a small, shabby piece of paper in his right hand. “Mr. Robert Cornelius?”

  It was a deep, amazingly sober and cultured voice. Robert could not help wondering whether some strange act of ventriloquism was at work. The President of Turkey’s voice relayed through the body of a dockside wino.

  “Yes, I’m Robert Cornelius.”

  The policeman’s face broke into a wide and surprisingly white smile. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “My name is Inspector Ikmen and I work for the Istanbul Police Department. I apologize for taking your time like this, but a very serious crime was committed near here yesterday and I must ask you some questions. It is only routine, I assure you.”

  His English was perfect. So much so that after a while Robert found that it irritated him. There was a feeling of being bettered and outshone. It reminded him of the time his best friend at school won the year prize for English. He had congratulated him, but what he had really wanted to do to him was much more primal and violent.

  The policeman shuffled in his chair and clutched at his stomach again. He took a long pull from his bottle and slammed it down noisily on to the outspread map.

  “Now,” he gasped through this latest onslaught of neat spirit, “let me give you some details. Yesterday a murder was committed in Balat, the district bordering Ayvansaray. The victim was an old man called Leonid Meyer. It was a vicious attack.” He rubbed his eyes with his fingers, hard, almost as if he wanted to push them through to the back of his head. “The victim was battered repeatedly about the head with a blunt instrument of some sort. It is imperative we apprehend the murderer as soon as possible.”

  “Of course.”

  “Our doctor has fixed the time of death at between four and five-thirty yesterday afternoon. In a moment I will show you where it occurred. In the meantime let me explain why we are intruding upon the lives of yourself and your colleagues.”

  He ground his cigarette out in the Director’s blue glass ashtray and immediately lit another. With a big friendly smile he offered the packet to Robert, but the latter declined. Although a hardened smoker, even Robert was beginning to feel that the shuttered little office was becoming too fuggy for comfort. It reminded him of every Accounts Department of every office he had ever visited.

  “We don’t have any witnesses.” A smoke-enveloped hand flew through the air in a large and expansive gesture. “But at about half past four a woman in the block opposite remembers seeing a tall fair man standing outside the victim’s apartment, here.”

  He leaned over the map and indicated an intersection of two streets that were all too familiar to Robert. The disturbing sight of Natalia reared large in his mind once more. There was only one apartment block on that corner; it was the one from which he had seen her emerge. He felt the blood drain from his face; his hair shifted and straightened on the top of his head.

  “Now, the Kariye Museum was closed yesterday. The usual coachloads of tourists were not, therefore, present. As you know, apart from the Museum, the district has little to interest visitors. This school being the only other source of significant numbers of foreign men in the area, it was only natural—”

  “It was me.” His voice contained an iron certainty. But his eyes shifted nervously. It had come out very quickly. It had caught him unawares.

  “Pardon?”

  Robert attempted a smile. The little man craned forward.

  “It was me,” he repeated. “I was on that corner yesterday afternoon. I go that way most afternoons. It’s on my route home. I remember stopping there at about four-fifteen, four-thirty. It was so hot, I had to stop and rest for a while. I had a smoke.”

  It was done. His voice had trembled slightly as he said it, for no good reason, but it was out. And why not? He’d done nothing wrong, he had nothing to hide. The Inspector took a small notebook from the pocket of his raincoat and started writing.

  “So for how long did you stop, sir?”

  “About five minutes. Long enough to get a bit rested and finish my cigarette.”

  The little man scribbled furiously. “What did you see or hear, if anything, while you paused?”

  Robert thought. What had he seen? One little old woman in a doorway and then … It was a dilemma. It also sounded, to his internal ear, ridiculous and stupidly complicated. There were too many “maybes.”

  Maybe it had been Natalia. Maybe she had been running away from that apartment block for some reason. Maybe she had seen something, maybe she had done … Maybe? His heart jolted. Maybe not. He had no way of knowing. He couldn’t make a judgment—any judgment. He didn’t want to know. Did he? But the truth! His old schoolboy values of honesty and decency shrieked for release. He knew that he was pausing just that little bit too long, but he had to make a decision. He didn’t know where a long exposition of the facts would lead, but he felt certain that it would bring anxiety.

  “Well, Mr. Cornelius?” The alcohol-misted eyes were turned full upon his face like the beams of tiny searchlights.

  When Robert finally spoke, the lie seemed to come easily. “I only saw an old woman in a doorway.” He laughed nervously. “If you know anything about Balat, Inspector, you’ll realize that they’re rather a shy and retiring lot.”

  “Are you certain?” The eyes bored steadily into his face once more.

  Robert had a fleeting doubt; he felt it become visible on his face, but only for a second. “I’m certain,” he said gravely, dropping his earlier light and good-humored manner.

  The policeman grinned. “Good. That at least has cleared up one mystery. Thank you for being so frank and open, Mr. Cornelius.” He pushed his notebook and a rather chewed pen in Robert’s direction and took yet another long swig of brandy. “Perhaps if you could just write that down for me, together with your full name and address…”

  “Like a statement?”

  “Yes. Just a few lines setting out the facts. It’s just for the records, sir. I don’t think we’ll be needing you again after today.”

  It sounded innocent enough, committing half the
truth to paper. Robert picked up the pen and started writing. Another waft of smoke swept from the policeman’s mouth in his direction, stale and acrid. But it was less bitter than the feeling Robert had in the pit of his stomach as the great gap where he should have recounted seeing Natalia yawned large on the paper before his face.

  He signed, dated and added his address to the bottom of his account, then passed it back to the policeman who read it and put the notebook back on the desk with a smile.

  “You write in Turkish, Mr. Cornelius!” He was obviously impressed.

  “I try,” Robert said, “although my Turkish is nowhere near as good as your English.” The Inspector threw back his head and laughed. The resultant sound was brittle and tubercular. “I wish my father could hear you say that, sir! Oh yes, that would give him a lot of amusement!”

  Robert was at a loss as to how to respond. He just wanted to be out of that stuffy room as soon as possible. Perhaps then he could put what he had just done behind him. Robert leaned forward. “Can I go now, Inspector?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” He stopped laughing and wiped his eyes with the cuff of his raincoat. “Of course you can. Forgive me, sir. I have been awake nearly all night working on this case.”

  Robert got up from his chair and bent across the desk, extending his hand toward the policeman. “Goodbye, Inspector.”

  They shook hands. The little Turk’s hand, Robert observed, was like the rest of his body. Dry, warm and grimy.

  “Goodbye, sir, and thank you. We will be in touch should we need you again.” Robert winced, a reaction not lost on the policeman. “But I don’t think we will.”

  The Englishman’s face relaxed and he walked toward the door. He was free. Now he could forget.

  As Robert pulled the door shut behind him the policeman’s smile vanished and he looked down at the short statement the Englishman had just given him. His expression said nothing about what he thought of the document, but there was a distinct sense of unease in the smoke-sodden air around him.

  Chapter 3

  Sergeant Suleyman looked down at the meager collection of papers, books and documents on the table and sighed. Each item neatly packaged in individual plastic bags, every one labeled in a fine and cautious hand. It wasn’t much to show for a long lifetime. A passport, a couple of photos, a few bills, books of various sizes.

  Ahmet Demir entered the office and placed another bag down upon the table. “Is that everything?” Suleyman asked.

  “Just about, sir,” replied Demir. “We’ve a few scraps of paper left, torn bits, rubbish, you know. Then that’s it.”

  “Good.”

  “When’s the Inspector due back?”

  “I don’t know really. He’s been interviewing up at that language school all morning. I suppose it depends how he gets on.”

  Suleyman bit his lower lip nervously. It was nearly midday, Ikmen had been working for a very long time. He would be tired now; tired and irritable. Of course at the school he would conduct himself with characteristic professionalism. When he returned to the station, however …

  “How did you get on at the Museum, sir?” Demir’s voice cut across Suleyman’s musings.

  “Nothing much. Two women were turned away at about lunchtime. There’s been a ‘Closed’ notice outside for weeks. Balat has little to interest tourists when the Museum is closed.”

  Demir shrugged. “I’ll just go and finish off then, sir.”

  “Oh, Demir…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Any luck with the fingerprints yet?”

  Demir yawned and rubbed his eyes. He was shattered. “No, not really, only the victim’s. No sign of forced entry. Looks like the murderer just walked in through the door, did what he had to and left. I don’t think he can have touched anything.” He smiled weakly. “That old man lived like a pig, you know, sir. There was even a heap of vomit over by the door.”

  Suleyman pulled a face.

  Somewhere deep inside, Demir sneered at his discomfort. He didn’t have a lot of time for Ikmen’s handsome, fastidious young sergeant. He continued with only thinly disguised glee. “Dr. Sarkissian wants to take a look at it, fish around—”

  “All right, Demir!” Suleyman waved him out of the room. He’d heard quite enough. Demir closed the door behind him as he left. Suleyman squeezed uncomfortably between the recently acquired evidence table and his desk and sat down.

  Owing to lack of space, Ikmen and Suleyman were required to share an office. For men involved in such serious work it was an insult really. Tiny, cramped and airless, the whole room was dominated by Ikmen’s enormous mahogany desk. He worked in total confusion, mountains of paper, files and ashtrays reared up and out from the sides of this impressive edifice. Suleyman’s desk, by contrast, was small, neat and functional. His tall figure dominated the empty wastes of wood in front of him. Suleyman’s paperwork lived where Allah intended, in drawers and on the shelves above his head.

  It was an unconventional partnership. Suleyman, young, unmarried, clean-living and quiet, was an odd fish to find in the same pool with Ikmen. But unlike all the other sergeants the Inspector had worked with before, Suleyman pleased him. Ikmen could trust him. There was nothing underhand, sly or competitive about the man. None of that awful trying to score points off the boss and make him look stupid that seemed to be the overriding obsession of most young sergeants in the station. Suleyman, for his part, knew that he was valued and it pleased him. His pay was low and the conditions of the job were often dreadful, but working with Ikmen more than made up for all that. Ikmen taught him about life, “the raw material of homicide,” as he put it. There were so many elements. Even a simple thing, like sex, could be so involved. Since working with Ikmen, Suleyman had come to see that life was a lot more complicated than he had originally thought.

  The office door flew open and smashed against the corner of the sergeant’s desk. A bony hand clutching a large bottle and an overpowering smell of stale cigarettes preceded the visitor into the room.

  “Hello, sir.” Suleyman stood up.

  Ikmen headed straight for the table wedged between the two desks and placed his bottle on it. He delicately fingered each small plastic bag, peering red-and watery-eyed at their contents.

  “This is Meyer’s stuff, I take it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ikmen motioned for Suleyman to resume his seat and grabbed a small handful of bags. He squeezed behind the bulk of his desk and sat down. A skyscraper of cardboard files obscured Suleyman’s view of Ikmen almost completely.

  “I found our tall foreign witness at the school,” said a disembodied voice. “An Englishman, a Mr. Cornelius. He was having a rest and a cigarette on that corner at about four-thirty yesterday. Said he saw and heard nothing, but I wonder.”

  “What makes you think that, sir?”

  “Unsteady, nervous eyes. Not quite right, Mr. Cornelius. Don’t ask me how!” He paused. “Hesitation too. Seemed to take him an awful long time to decide that he hadn’t seen or heard anything.”

  “Perhaps he was just considering. Searching through his mind to make sure he didn’t miss some minor detail that might be of use to us.”

  “You’re too trusting.” Ikmen sighed deeply. “Come over here will you, Suleyman. Help me look through this lot.”

  Suleyman got up from his seat and, squeezing round the evidence table, made his way to the “business” side of Ikmen’s desk.

  “One Turkish passport.” Ikmen held a small, flat, green thing up to the light. He screwed his eyes up against the hot glare from outside the window and grunted impatiently. “Suleyman, do you think we can have that window shut, please? There’s dust blowing all over me and it’s not helping.”

  The dust which in the summer billowed up continually from the road below was indeed unpleasant. Suleyman, however, found it infinitely preferable to Ikmen’s cigarette smoke. The window and its degree of openness was a constant bone of contention between them.

  “But, sir!
”

  “Just do it, will you? If you die from passive smoking I promise to support your aged parents.”

  Suleyman stretched behind Ikmen’s back and pulled the edge of the rotted window-frame downward. Dust and grit already in the room fell and settled on every surface as the gentle breeze that kept it aloft was extinguished. The smoke from Ikmen’s cigarette wafted straight into his face. He grimaced and fanned it timorously with his hand.

  “What’s this?” said Ikmen, holding up a small plastic-covered volume. “Address book.”

  He unwrapped the item and started carefully flicking through its yellowing pages. Suleyman craned his head down over Ikmen’s shoulder to get a better view. At first glance the book appeared to be empty. Page after page of blank sheets appeared before the policemen’s eyes.

  “Not exactly a socialite, was he, sir?”

  Ikmen ignored, on principle, all and any of his sergeant’s rudimentary attempts at wit and so continued to work his way methodically toward the end of the volume. It was only when he reached the very last page that his efforts were rewarded. Suleyman looked at the four separate blocks of black, spidery script and frowned.

  “What kind of writing is that?”

  Ikmen held the page very close to his face. The effort of trying to decipher the characters caused him to screw his face up and squint.

  “Cyrillic,” he said after a pause. He rubbed his unshaven chin with his hand. “I think so anyway.”

  “Cyrillic?”

  Ikmen twisted his head around and looked hard into Suleyman’s face. Whatever the state was teaching young people in schools and colleges obviously did not extend to providing them with enough pointless trivia.

  “Cyrillic script,” he expounded with great patience, “is that used by people belonging to the Slavic ethnic group. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians…”

  “Ah.”

  “Logical really. Neighbors seemed to think he was a Russian émigré, didn’t they?” He stared down at the strange characters. “By the way, Suleyman, what happened at the Museum?”