Belshazzar's Daughter: A Novel of Istanbul (Inspector Ikmen series Book 1) Read online

  “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?”

  “Nothing. Saw nothing, heard nothing.”

  “Like my Mr. Cornelius. Did you contact the hospital?” He took his eyes away from the address book and looked into his cigarette packet. His face whitened. He looked up sharply. “Oh no, I’m out of cigarettes!”

  It was a violent, but at the same time plaintive outburst. A cry for help. Suleyman chose to ignore it. A small revenge for the closure of the window.

  “Miss Delmonte is still too traumatised to be interviewed, sir. You can take it up with her doctor if you like, but…”

  Ikmen wasn’t listening. A real crisis had occurred. The worst. He threw the empty cigarette packet down on the floor and put his head in his hands. The sort of tantrum Suleyman had feared earlier threatened. Ikmen was overtired and something like this, a lack of cigarettes, was all that was needed to set him off. The young man knew that he had to be very careful.

  “I can’t function like this!” Ikmen raised his head again and snapped out an order. “Go and ask Cohen for some cigarettes.”

  Suleyman clambered his way toward the door. No progress could be made while Ikmen was craving nicotine.

  “Oh, and while you’re at it, ask that lot if any of them can read Cyrillic script. It’s unlikely, half of them have trouble with Turkish, but you may as well ask.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Suleyman left, pulling the door shut behind him as he went. Ikmen looked down at the little address book again. If the Department was, as he had always suspected, full of half-educated morons, it didn’t really matter. He knew a man who could decipher strange and exotic alphabets of almost any sort with no problem. The cigarette crisis, however, was quite another matter. If that one wasn’t resolved in the very near future there was going to be a tantrum of catastrophic proportions. He had been without nicotine for more than five minutes. Ikmen’s Law clearly stated that the maximum time between each cigarette should be no greater than three minutes, barring sleep and death. His fingers twitched nervously, aching for something carcinogenic to hang on to.

  Ikmen’s telephone rang. He scrabbled wildly amid the confusion heaped upon his desk as he attempted to locate it. Pens, paper, ash and dust flew everywhere. He narrowly missed tipping an ashtray into his own lap. Then with a creak, a groan and a loud slap as cardboard hit linoleum, a great pile of files avalanched to the floor and revealed, at last, the offending article. Ikmen picked up the receiver and scowled. The fingers of his left hand ached. He hoped that Suleyman wouldn’t be long. He spoke into the phone.

  “Ikmen.” What now? he thought gloomily.

  The tumultuous silence at the other end of the line left Ikmen in no doubt as to the identity of his caller. Only one person ever really made him sweat for an answer.

  He groaned. “Hello, Fatma.”

  Her voice was deep, soft and tired rather than angry. “Just one question, Çetin. How do you expect me to feed us all on two hundred lira?”

  Ikmen shut his eyes for a second and ground his teeth angrily. Stupid! He could have left a few notes for her on the kitchen table, but he hadn’t. He checked quickly inside his jacket pocket for the bulging wallet he knew already was there, and groaned again. “Oh, no! I’m sorry, Fatma. I got called late last night and in the rush—”

  She remained frighteningly calm. “It’s all right. We’ve all had bread for lunch. Just…” It wasn’t all right and her voice broke. Fatma’s battle with her anger was over. Her composure snapped. “Just don’t bother to come home at all!”

  “I—”

  “There is not so much as a tomato in the refrigerator! Of course we have enough brandy for the combined armed forces of NATO…”

  Suleyman came back into the office and threw a full packet of cigarettes on to Ikmen’s desk. The Inspector was on them like a starved hyena. He even smiled, weakly. “… have eight children and yet you still behave as if you were a single…”

  Fatma’s voice was getting even louder. But Ikmen was on his way to personal sanity again. He excused himself to her.

  “Just a minute, Fatma.” He put his hand over the shouting receiver and lit up immediately. “Thanks, Suleyman. Any Russian speakers on the force?”

  “Not one, sir.”

  He took his hand away from the telephone and spoke to his wife once again. This time he was more collected, less afraid, as if tar and nicotine had invested him with courage.

  “Sorry, Fatma. Look, I’ll send a man round with some money right now. Is Timür there?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Can I speak to him?”

  “If you want. Just get that money to me!”

  She banged the receiver down and he heard the sound of her slow, heavy footsteps, padding laboriously down the apartment hall. He looked across at Suleyman. “There’s something I want you to do.”

  “Sir?”

  He put his hand in the pocket of his jacket and drew out a bunch of keys. “Here are my car keys. Drive round to my apartment and”—he pulled a large wad of notes out of his wallet and placed them in Suleyman’s hand—“give my wife this.”

  “Your car, sir?”

  “Yes!”

  Suleyman made as if to go but Ikmen held up a hand to stop him. “And that’s not all. Pick my father up while you’re there.”

  “Sir?”

  “My father can speak Russian.” He gestured toward Meyer’s tiny address book lying open on his desk. “He can decipher this for us.”

  “Bring him here, sir?”

  “What do you think!”

  The silence at the other end of the phone ended with the arrival of a dry and querulous voice. “Çetin?”

  Suleyman put Ikmen’s keys and money into his trouser pocket and left the office. “Hello, Timür. Sorry to bother you, but … I’ve got something here I don’t understand and I need your help…”

  * * *

  Robert Cornelius had reckoned without his conscience. He didn’t like lying. It made him feel bad. There was that previous experience of course, which had, against his expectations, been resolved in his favor. But this he felt was different. This was, somewhere along the line, going to rebound upon him when he least expected it. He was convinced. Perhaps it was a function of having attended public school that made him think like this? Seven very impressionable years of being told you cannot expect to get away with anything has a lasting effect. His masters had in the main been right too. Robert had rarely got away with anything. Barring that one exception. Or rather two? Those out-of-character explosions of violence that had led to so many lies, so much guilt.

  It made him feel quite bitter sometimes—often. Child and man he had always, like it or not, paid his dues. It was the whole reason why he was so nice, so easy to get on with. Unpleasant acts came back upon a person. Pleasantness and honesty, however insincere, were merely tools, aids to self-preservation. Common sense.

  He looked at the faces of the students sitting before him. Two were diligently working their way through the exercise on page nine. A minor but nevertheless satisfying victory for academia. There were ten in this set and the usual form was for him to set work and then watch the whole class stare out of the window for the next half-hour. The two who were working, Turkish boys, had obviously either taken fright at the notion of the impending exams, or been bullied into it by their parents. There could be no other reason. Robert knew how the minds of adolescents worked better than most.

  Eight years teaching at an inner-London comprehensive had given him tremendous insight. He shuddered. Even five years on, the merest thought of Rosebury Downs School made him cold, his mouth dry and parched. He could still see their faces: Billy Smith, the Norris twins, that little blond bastard who always sat by the radiator. Robert pulled his mind away quickly.

  He looked at his watch. Thank God! Only five more minutes of t
his class and then break time. Coffee, fags, the comparative safety of the staff room. There were other people to talk to in there. Fellow teachers—inane, boring, often downright annoying, but they provided what he desperately needed. Distraction from his own thoughts. That nagging and persistent desire to do something very unwise. And pointless. What good would questioning Natalia do? The damage, the concealment was done. Whether or not she was in Balat was surely academic now? Anyway, maybe she had gone there in connection with her work? It was unlikely, but then anything was possible, wasn’t it?

  But still his mind refused to let him rest. Natalia had always emphasized the fact that their relationship had to be built upon mutual trust. How would it look if now, after just over a year of (admittedly uneasy) peace, he started putting her through the third degree? Knowing Natalia as he did it would almost certainly mean the termination of their affair. But the doubts remained. That she had nothing to do with the murder, he was certain. But what had she been doing there? That afternoon stroll had a definite dreamlike quality, both at the time and in retrospect. Perhaps it was the archaic nature of the quarter? A district of the city that had got caught up and detained somewhere halfway along its journey toward the present. A place of ghosts. It had been hot too, very, very hot. His head bare; the heat haze; dizziness; a recovering but nevertheless untreated gippy stomach …

  But really such excuses were puny. Close investigation would no doubt reveal—what? Names and faces from many and various points in time became confused, missorted, like jumbled cards in his head. He had to stick with the bad stomach! That was a fact, all the rest was—He made himself look at his wrist.

  The class was over. Thank Christ! His musing subsided into the deep feeling of relief that swept across him.

  “All right, everybody,” he said. “Books away now.”

  There was a frantic scraping of chair legs against the floor as ten suddenly animated teenagers leaped from their seats and made toward the door of the classroom, their faces smiling, voices chattering merrily as they pushed past him. Robert was reminded of the Bible story about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. He didn’t understand. Surely learning was supposed to be a pleasurable and mind-expanding experience?

  “Complete the exercise on page nine at home!” he shouted above the general multilingual babble. Then added in a barely audible voice, “If any of you can be arsed.”

  The students left the classroom. The more academically inclined would probably return for one or two of the afternoon sessions. The rest, Robert knew, would repair to Taksim Square and the exotic delights of McDonald’s. There they could do what they did best: spend money, imbibe plastic Americana of the worst kind and show each other their jewelery. Very like their English counterparts in fact, although probably minus the flick knives. Just like teenagers all over the world.

  Robert gathered his papers, pens and textbooks together and put them into his briefcase. There had been very little point taking them out in the first place, but … He locked his case with its small brass key and leaned heavily on the top of his desk. Even if he did go and see Natalia, how the hell was he going to broach the subject of Balat? Even to him it sounded ridiculous. What business was it of his anyway? The decision to lie to the police about Natalia’s presence had been his and his alone. She had seen him. She must have done. Logically, if there had been anything, well, dodgy, she would have contacted him. He was after all her lover, and weren’t lovers supposed to share the bad as well as the good?

  Robert Cornelius picked up his briefcase, checked his pockets for cigarettes and made his way purposefully toward the staff room. Perhaps half an hour of undiluted cricket scores and the relative merits of Turkish manhood would cure his ridiculous internal wrangling.

  * * *

  Timür Ikmen was less a person and more a total experience. If Mehmet Suleyman thought Çetin Ikmen was a larger-than-life character, the Inspector’s father had to rank among the immortals.

  The drive back to the station was interesting and not just because Ikmen’s old Mercedes handled like a dead cow. Like his son, Ikmen senior existed in his own private smoke cloud. Tiny, bent double and cruelly twisted by arthritis, Timür Ikmen reminded Suleyman of the old, gnarled olive tree that stood at the bottom of his grandparents’ garden. Ikmen senior, however, unlike the tree, talked continuously. It wasn’t just idle chatter either. Much of it was prurient and, at times, downright offensive.

  The questions started as soon as Fatma Ikmen eased him, his teeth gritted against pain, into the car.

  “So what do you do with yourself when you’re not on duty then, young man?”

  The old, generally, liked to hear that the young were behaving themselves. Suleyman’s reply was quite truthful too. Reading, the occasional visit to the opera, accompanying his father and grandfather to the mosque whenever duty permitted. He might have guessed that the old man would not react in the normal manner; after all, he was an Ikmen. Suleyman was to regret his own rash and foolhardy honesty.

  “Good-looking young man like you! It’s a waste!”

  “Pardon?”

  “A waste! It’s boring! How old are you?”

  “Twenty-eight, sir.”

  “Virgin?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “I said, are you a virgin?”

  “Well, I, er…”

  Sex was not the only subject upon which the old man expressed strong views during their short journey to the police station. Religion (“don’t understand it”) and contemporary Turkish politics (“an aberration”) also got an airing. By the end of the journey, Mehmet Suleyman was left in no doubt as to the character and opinions of his passenger. He was an atheist, an anarchist, an intellectual snob and a libertine. He also possessed marvelous spirit in the face of his “bastard illness.” He still wanted to do things: travel, learn new skills, meet women. Not women his own age—only young and pretty ones. It occurred to Suleyman that Timür Ikmen did not so much live life as intimidate it.

  When they arrived at the police station, they found Çetin Ikmen waiting for them on the pavement. As the car came to a halt he opened the door and peered inside. Suleyman’s pale face spoke eloquently about his recent experiences.

  “Ah, I see he’s been talking at you,” said Ikmen as he lifted the old man from his seat.

  “Can I help, sir?” Suleyman offered.

  Ikmen was just about to reply in the affirmative, but the old man pre-empted him. “I’m not a filing cabinet!”

  Ikmen sighed deeply. “It’s all right, Suleyman, I can manage.” He moved his head close to his sergeant’s ear and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The best thing you can do is make sure there’s a glass of tea ready up there for the old bastard.”

  The very confused young policeman, somewhat thankfully, left the Ikmens to their own devices.

  * * *

  The old man looked at the shakily executed script in the address book and frowned. Slowly he inserted one twisted claw into the top pocket of his jacket and withdrew an ancient pair of spectacles. Rather than put them on, he simply held them up to his eyes and peered.

  “All right, Çetin?” he said.

  Ikmen took a pen from the middle of the mess on his desk and opened his notebook.

  “Yes, OK.”

  “Right, the first one is Rabbi Şimon, 33, Draman Caddesi, Balat. Then, er…” He peered very closely, moving his spectacles down until they almost touched the paper below. “Maria Gulcu, 12, Karadeniz Sokak, Beyoğlu. Um, Sara Blatsky, 25/6, Gürsel Sokak, Balat, and finally, Şeker Textiles, Celaleddin Rumi Caddesi, Üsküdar.”

  “Telephone numbers?”

  The old man looked down at the page again. “For the Rabbi and the textile company, yes. Look here.”

  Ikmen peered at the top set of figures and carefully copied them down on to the back of his hand. He then picked up the telephone receiver and jammed it hard against the side of his head.

  “I’ll ring this Rabbi Şimon right now,” he said
and then, waving his hand in the general direction of his two companions, added, “You two amuse yourselves in whatever foul way your hearts desire.”

  Timür Ikmen raised one eyebrow and said something that Suleyman couldn’t quite catch—although the chances of the word not being an oath of some sort, he knew, were quite slim. For a few moments silence reigned as the old man and the young policeman both tried to decide what and what might not be suitable topics for conversation.

  As soon as Ikmen received a reply on the telephone, he turned away from the others in order to obtain some privacy.

  One long, nicotine-stained finger tapped down hard against the cover of the little address book, waking the hot and slightly soporific Suleyman from his reverie.

  “That’s a curious combination,” he said, “that foreign first name, ‘Maria,’ coupled with the Turkish surname.”

  “I suppose so.” Suleyman hadn’t really thought about it until now. “But then there are a lot of mixed marriages these days. Could even be one of the victim’s relatives. He was, apparently, Russian by birth and considering that no relatives have come forward so far—”

  “How old was this person?” asked Timür.

  “The neighbors seemed to think that he was about ninety.”

  The old man smiled sadly. “Old enough to be my father.”

  “Yes.” It was a curious, if not, in view of Timür Ikmen’s extremely raddled appearance, a disturbing thought. “Yes, I suppose he would have been.”

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

  Suleyman frowned questioningly. “Mr. Ikmen?”

  “Why anyone would want to kill anything that old. I’m nearly seventy-three and I’m totally fucking useless. But somebody of my father’s vintage…” He shrugged his shoulders helplessly as his son replaced the telephone receiver with a satisfied grunt. “Rabbi Şimon will see us at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Suleyman.”

  “Good.”

  Ikmen turned to face his father and smiled. “Well, thank you for coming in and helping us with that bit of translation, Timür. It’s saved me a lot of time and aggravation.” Timür looked at the grubby floor beneath his feet and sighed. “I suppose you want me to go now, don’t you?”