Dance with Death Read online

‘I’m not queer, Inspector!’ Duruşan flung one long arm out in the direction of his home. ‘Ask my friends, ask my mother!’

  ‘Duruşan, look . . .’

  ‘I am not queer!’ he hissed. And then, moving in still closer towards Süleyman’s face, he said, ‘And anyway, even if I was, do you think I’d tell you? I’ve heard what you do to such people. I’ve heard you take delight in telling their families.’

  Süleyman shrugged. ‘Some officers may do that, but not me. I am only interested in catching this criminal. I want to get hold of him before he kills someone.’ He sighed. ‘But I need help, Duruşan. I don’t know, but I think that this man targets his victims prior to doing what he does. Maybe he does just spot a boy on the street, follow him and then climb up to his window late at night. But he may also be observing men in places where homosexuals meet. Now . . .’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything.’ Duruşan put his glass of tea down on to the table and went to take his jacket off the back of his chair.

  Süleyman leaned back in his chair and watched him. ‘If you’ve nothing to hide then there’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘No. But, well . . .’ Flustered and now flushed too, Duruşan realised he’d made a mistake.

  ‘So what can you tell me then, Duruşan?’

  ‘I’ve told you, I . . .’

  Süleyman drew in closer to him again. ‘I am not a fool, boy,’ he said. ‘I know what you are and I honestly do not care. But if you want other boys like you to be free of this monster then I would suggest that you consider helping me.’

  Duruşan sank back into his seat once again and picked up his half-finished tea.

  ‘I don’t want my parents or anyone to know,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘And I’d rather you didn’t tell that sergeant who was with you, either. I didn’t like him at all.’

  Allah, but İzzet was becoming a liability! Like a great, tactless ox.

  Süleyman lit up a cigarette before replying. ‘I will treat any evidence that you give me as anonymous,’ he said. ‘In effect it will be between you and me alone.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Duruşan frowned. So young and so afraid! And yet wasn’t this the fate of so many of these young gay men outside the very wealthy and enlightened districts of the city? Süleyman wondered.

  ‘All right,’ the boy said after a pause. ‘All right, no parents and . . . You won’t raid anywhere I tell you about, will you?’

  ‘Duruşan, all I want to know is where you meet other . . . boys and I want to check these places out. I mean, look, if several different victims tell us about several different places they go to that they have in common then maybe we can start looking at other people who patronise these establishments.’ And then, with a purposefully steely tinge to his gaze, Süleyman said, ‘I want to catch this man and put him where he can’t hurt anyone ever again. But until I do, no boy or young man will be safe. Do you understand what I’m saying, Duruşan?’

  Duruşan did, and so the two of them had the conversation that Süleyman had wanted. The boy was nervous, of course, and Süleyman knew that the others would be equally as wary when he spoke to them. But there wasn’t anything else to do at the present time. Forensic evidence on the peeper so far was very sketchy with no DNA samples in common at any of the sites. With this line of inquiry there was a possibility that staking out places like this gay hamam Duruşan had mentioned might be of interest. Although if he did that one thing was for certain, İzzet Melik was not to be a part of any resultant investigation team.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  Menşure put İkmen in one of her larger cave rooms. ‘On the ground floor,’ she’d said when she’d first shown him inside. ‘You smoke too much to go upstairs.’ But even so, even at ground level, he still had a spectacular view of the Muratpaşa valley and its almost straight ranks of chimneys in white, pink and even green shades of tufa.

  As soon as he’d hurled what few clothes he’d brought with him into the wardrobe, İkmen opened the door out to the small balcony in front of his room and stepped into the dust-sodden air of Muratpaşa. He’d first come to the village as a child, to visit his Aunt Şerefe and Uncle Faruk. Both the pansiyon, now a hotel, and his cousin Menşure had been a lot smaller in those days and there hadn’t been anything beyond a bakkal and a couple of bakeries down in the village. There certainly hadn’t been carpet shops or restaurants with names like Turkish Delight and The Bedrock Pub. Even when Alison had visited the district in the seventies it had still, basically, been the same as it had been in the fifties. If, of course, Alison had ever got to Muratpaşa. Menşure had told him the news about the body as soon as she’d seen him. It wasn’t, couldn’t be her. In a way it was disappointing and yet in another way it was a relief – the thought that maybe Alison could be alive somewhere.

  İkmen sat down on one of the little rickety chairs on the balcony and closed his eyes. Menşure said that she was going to come with a tray of tea and some börek for them both. She was also going to tell him something about the girl whose body had been found. It was, she said, an interesting and perplexing story. If he wasn’t too much mistaken, İkmen sensed that his cousin might even want him to get involved with this ‘case’ or whatever it was. Not that that was possible. He was outside his jurisdiction and besides, given this new and potentially fatal twist to the peeper scenario, he was really needed back in İstanbul and so he’d have to go. Altering his ticket and cancelling part of his leave wouldn’t be problematic.

  ‘I don’t know that we should sit out here where we can be seen.’

  İkmen opened his eyes. Menşure and her tray of goodies had come in to his room almost without a sound.

  ‘Oh, Ramazan . . .’

  ‘You forget country bumpkins like Muratpaşa folk really take it seriously,’ Menşure said as she set the tea glasses and börek down on the small table inside İkmen’s room. ‘Come in and let’s eat.’

  ‘OK.’

  At first they talked about their families – or rather, İkmen spoke about his and Menşure spoke about her late parents and the odd visit she would sometimes get from another cousin from Ankara. Not so much lonely as alone, Menşure Tokatlı was not an unhappy woman – except when she didn’t get what she wanted.

  ‘Now look, Çetin,’ she said at length, ‘about this Alkaya body. I think that you . . .’

  ‘Menşure, I’m out of my jurisdiction,’ İkmen said as he lit up a cigarette. ‘And besides, I really do need to be in İstanbul. I only came because I thought if it was Alison . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ she responded somewhat harshly. ‘You know that it has been such a long time now, Çetin. You must give this Alison business up. I have never been comfortable knowing about it while your wife remains ignorant.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But in the early days I needed you to keep a look out for her. The local police were never that bothered enough for my liking. I know we’ve never been that close, but I have always trusted you, Menşure.’

  ‘I am flattered, Çetin, truly, but . . .’

  ‘Menşure, I have always and will always love Fatma. But my wife is, if you can understand, always attainable.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that Alison as a foreigner, especially back in those days, was unattainable. I’ve never been under any sort of illusion about my own physical appeal. I’m an ugly man and yet here was a beautiful foreigner who wanted me over and above her own and very handsome countryman. Even I have some vanity. It was intoxicating.’

  ‘And rather juvenile now, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, but,’ he sighed, ‘I have to know what happened to her, Menşure. What happened to that impossible dream?’

  ‘Yes, but as I’ve said, Çetin, you must move on. Now look, I know you say you should be back in İstanbul, but hear me out,’ Menşure said as she held up an imperious, silencing hand. ‘When Aysu Alkaya went missing just over twenty years ago, this village was riven by suspic
ion and rumour. To some extent it has remained so ever since. But now that Aysu’s body has materialised, well, it’s about to get a lot more intense yet again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ İkmen said as he mentally bowed to the inevitability of Menşure’s argument.

  Menşure, who didn’t normally smoke, but who would occasionally ‘treat’ herself, took a cigarette from İkmen’s packet and lit up.

  ‘Aysu Alkaya was a very beautiful young woman of nineteen and the delight of her father Haldun’s eyes. He was very indulgent and, for a peasant – Haldun has a few grape vines, a couple of goats, you know the score – really quite liberal. So much so that when a boy he knew his only child had eyes for made it known that he was interested in her, Haldun made himself ready for a wedding.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Poverty, basically,’ Menşure said with a sigh. ‘Aysu and her father were poor. The boy, Kemalettin Senar, came from a much wealthier family, but he was very young . . . Anyway, somehow Aysu then caught the eye of one of our local dignitaries, Ziya Kahraman. He was a widower, he was seventy years old, and he spent months bothering Haldun Alkaya for Aysu’s hand in marriage.’ Catching the slightly raised eyebrows of her cousin, she said, ‘You know it happens, Çetin. Even in İstanbul it still sometimes happens. But anyway, Haldun resisted. Despite his poverty he wanted what was best for Aysu. There were arguments, raised voices in the street. But then, suddenly, for no reason that anyone has ever been able to really fathom, Haldun gave in and Aysu married Ziya Kahraman.’

  İkmen put his cigarette out and then immediately lit another. ‘A seventy-year-old man with a girl of nineteen. Ugh! That’s like my Hulya marrying my father!’

  Menşure put a hand up as if to push that thought away. ‘So Aysu went to live with Ziya and his maiden daughter, Nazlı, who must have been about fifty at the time.’

  ‘Allah!’

  ‘And of course partly because Ziya Kahraman was old he was traditional too. Aysu was rarely allowed to leave the house where, it was said, she was basically Nazlı’s servant. Things would change, of course, if and when Aysu became pregnant’ – İkmen pulled a disgusted face – ‘but as far as we know, she hadn’t become pregnant by the time she disappeared.’

  ‘So what about the disappearance?’

  Menşure shrugged. ‘One night she was in the Kahraman house, the next morning she was gone. There was a rumour that when he wasn’t actually sleeping with her, if you know what I mean, Ziya made Aysu sleep in his cellar – locked her in. There were lots of rumours. But anyway, somehow the girl got out and she had never been seen again until this week. At the time the jandarma and the police in Nevşehir questioned everyone. They were most enthusiastic, shall we say, in their questioning of poor Kemalettin. Half the village, including Aysu’s husband, were convinced that he had somehow abducted her. For years the Kahramans and their supporters regularly accused the boy and his family of this, that or the other crime against Ziya and his missing wife.’

  ‘So now that a body has been found, what does this mean?’ İkmen asked. ‘I mean, do you know how the girl died, Menşure?’

  ‘No.’ She put her cigarette out in the ashtray and then sipped her tea. ‘But I do know that the police in Nevşehir think that she was murdered.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I know, or rather I am acquainted with a certain Captain Salman who is an instructor up at the new police riding school. He’s from İstanbul . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen said, ‘I know him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And so . . .’

  ‘And so Captain Salman told me to tell you that the Nevşehir police think that Aysu Alkaya was murdered. No one else in the village knows. They will very soon, but Captain Salman felt that, if you were going to try and help out, you needed to know the facts now.’

  ‘I never said I was going to help out, Menşure. I came here – well, you know why I came here. But I can’t actually do anything here and I’ve a very stressful job waiting for me back in İstanbul.’

  ‘Yes, I appreciate that, but this village will fracture once the truth is known, Çetin,’ Menşure said. ‘Fingers will be pointed and unless someone makes sure that proper evidence is collected, DNA or whatever it is, then someone could end up getting hurt or worse. They do their best in Nevşehir, but they don’t have your level of sophistication . . .’

  ‘Or my budget,’ İkmen said with a sigh. ‘Menşure, I cannot tell the police in Nevşehir how to do their job! They will do their best with what they have available to them. They will make decisions they feel are appropriate.’

  ‘Some of them make decisions in line with how much money certain people are willing to pay them. The police are poor here, Çetin. Even you are wealthy in comparison.’

  ‘Menşure, I can’t get involved with this!’ İkmen stood up and threw his arms wildly into the air. ‘I have no power in Cappadocia! And anyway, I need to get back to my own life. Fatma is alone and, as you have so rightly said, I need to at least try to put Alison behind me now. I need to accept, maybe, that I will never know the truth about her. But I think I have to do that at home.’

  ‘Well, then, we’ll all have to live with the possibility that we’ll never know who really killed Aysu Alkaya, won’t we? Innocent people will have to deal with malicious whisperings, pointing fingers and knocks on their doors at midnight! I thought of you immediately that body was discovered. I thought about the English girl and how desperate you have been to learn the truth about her. I’ve kept your secret for many years despite my own misgivings. You could at least repay my thoughtfulness.’

  İkmen lost his temper. How dare she try to effectively blackmail him like this! ‘You could have told me the body wasn’t Alison’s before I even got on that bus! You knew and you didn’t call me, Menşure!’ he cried. ‘That is very manipulative, you know!’

  She stood up and walked towards him. She was almost a whole head taller and for a moment İkmen thought that she might just shout him down. But in fact, when she spoke, she used a very gentle tone: ‘Just talk to Haldun Alkaya, Çetin,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  İkmen sighed and then sat back down again with his chin in his hands. Well, what an unusual day this had turned out to be! No sleep, no Alison and now Menşure was begging for something from another human being. He took his gaze away from her face and looked out at the fairy chimney across the road. A woman wearing a long coloured headscarf was pulling a goat up a flight of outside steps into what İkmen knew was, traditionally, the family room in houses like this. What on earth was she going to do with a goat up there? And then he realised that he couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question. This was, after all, rural Turkey, out among the chimneys where peris laughed and djinn danced and where anything and everything was possible. For just a very small moment he felt a tingle of excitement.

  Quickly, before he changed his mind, he looked up at his cousin and said, ‘All right. I’ll talk to this Alkaya man but I’m promising nothing beyond that. Understand that, Menşure? Nothing.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘And if I am staying, I may as well make some inquiries about Alison,’ İkmen continued. ‘After all, if I am to move on, I do have to know that the past is really behind me. I mean, what if she’s living in some tiny hamlet hereabouts?’

  Menşure viewed her cousin narrowly. ‘I think it’s unlikely,’ she said. ‘But if you must then you must.’

  It had been a long day and what Mehmet Süleyman really wanted to do was go home and go to bed. But curiosity had got the better of him. And so here he was now, in the lee of a tall, brooding building belching steam from a rough steel chimney pipe, surrounded by several furtive-looking men.

  When he had finished with Duruşan Efe, he’d decided to go on and visit the peeper’s first victim who lived in Kumkapı above his uncle’s restaurant overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Small and terrified of almost anything one could
name, Şevket Tezer had appeared before Süleyman shaking almost as much as he had when he’d first seen the peeper. It had seemed almost cruel to ask this lad any more questions, but Süleyman had done it anyway. He’d also told the boy he knew he was gay. Şevket cried by way of reply. Yes, İzzet Melik had been right about at least these two boys plus Ali Ceylan, who had woken to find the peeper actually masturbating in his room. They were all, at the very least, ‘interested’ in men and they had all mentioned two places that they all had in common. This, the Saray Hamam, tucked away amid the vertiginous and seedy streets of Karaköy, was one of them.

  As Süleyman looked up at the forbidding black bulk of the hamam he wondered at why he’d never noticed this place before. He had, after all, lived in Karaköy for a number of years with his old colleague Balthazar Cohen when his first marriage to his cousin Zuleika had come to an end. A voracious appreciator of women with no morals, Cohen had quickly shown Süleyman all of the local whore houses, pavyons and gazinos that the district had to offer, but he’d never shown him this. Perhaps Cohen didn’t know that this place even existed. One could be forgiven for overlooking such an ugly structure and men, after all, had never been to Balthazar’s taste in any shape or form. There had been a time when he had suspected his friend Mehmet Süleyman of such practices, when the latter had, indeed, been young and painfully repressed. But that was a long time ago and Süleyman was now both a father and an erstwhile lover of his wife and, at times, of other women too. So this was a whole new world . . .

  As he leaned up against the shuttered doorway of the hardware store opposite, he watched as the men around the hamam conformed to what seemed to be a standard routine. This started with hanging around looking as if one didn’t know or even care where one was, perhaps accompanied by the lighting of a cigarette, either from one’s own or another’s lighter. Moving closer to the building and sometimes to other men in the vicinity then ensued, followed by a final dash to the main entrance at the side of the great, brooding structure.