Land of the Blind Read online

  ‘But space is so limited in that area,’ Semih said. ‘I don’t know why you don’t build something here or in Yeniköy. Give them Bosphorus views. They can moor their yachts—’

  ‘Semih, you disapprove,’ Ahmet said. ‘I’ve got that. But you’re young, you don’t really remember your father. Trust me and the memory of our father on this. This was his dream. It’s my job to fulfil that. Be my brother, do your job and I will always take care of you.’

  His brother said nothing. It was his way of backing down and Ahmet knew it.

  Ahmet Öden stood up and took back the envelope he’d given to his brother. ‘I’m going to have that site whether the Negropontes like it or not,’ he said. ‘The man says his family have been in this city for over a thousand years. Well, that’s long enough. It’s now time for them to leave.’

  A knock on Ahmet’s office door was followed by the appearance of a small, headscarfed woman.

  ‘Ahmet Bey, there is a policeman here to see you,’ the maid said.

  ‘A policeman? Why?’

  ‘He says he needs to speak to you, Beyefendi.’

  Ahmet waved a hand. ‘Tell him I’m out,’ he said. ‘Tell him if he wants to speak to me he’ll have to wait.’

  The girl left.

  ‘Police?’ Semih queried. ‘What have you been doing, brother? Anything I should know?’

  ‘No. I live a good life, Semih, as well you know. If I won’t or can’t talk to the police then that is because I choose not to. The days of jumping to attention every time one of my “betters” calls me are over. I’ll complain. Now I do what I want, what I think is best and what it is written I must do.’

  Çetin İkmen felt as if he was back at school. He wondered whether Kerim Gürsel, shuffling uneasily from foot to foot and knitting his own fingers, felt the same.

  ‘You have to make an appointment to see Mr Öden,’ Commissioner Teker said. ‘You can’t just arrive.’

  İkmen and Gürsel had only just returned to the station from Ahmet Öden’s house in Bebek.

  ‘So if he wasn’t in, how come he’s complaining to you now?’ İkmen asked. ‘How did he know I went to his house if he was, as I was told, out?’

  ‘His staff told him, apparently,’ Teker said. Then she shook her head. ‘Listen, İkmen, Gürsel, we all know what Mr Öden is—’

  ‘An arrogant—’

  ‘A man of some force,’ she said. ‘And also someone who is very powerful. If, as you say, İkmen, he had a run-in with the late Ariadne Savva then he may well have wished her harm. I do not buy into his holy image so don’t worry about that. But would he kill her? Over a few derelicts in Kadıköy?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ İkmen said. ‘But that child is still missing—’

  ‘Or dead.’

  ‘Or dead,’ he said. ‘And Öden has a connection. I’m only doing my job, madam.’

  Hürrem Teker sat down behind her desk. İkmen could still see her predecessor Ardıç sitting there sometimes. Fat, sweaty and world-weary, he’d always tried to do his best and Teker, thankfully, seemed to be the same.

  ‘I know, İkmen,’ she said. ‘And I commend you for it. But we have to tread carefully with people like Öden. Especially at the moment.’

  ‘Gezi . . .’

  She looked up at Gürsel.

  ‘The park is quiet now, but people are still gathering and I fear it may all start up again if the authorities don’t back down over this mall – which they won’t,’ she said. ‘And we are on their side, which means that by extension we are on the side of Mr Öden.’

  ‘Sides are irrelevant, we have to find that baby,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I completely agree, but—’

  ‘But what?’ İkmen said. ‘We find the baby and we find out how Ariadne Savva died. That’s all that matters.’ He leaned on her desk. ‘Madam, Ariadne’s father will be here tomorrow. The man has lost his daughter. If I can’t put his grandchild in his arms . . .’

  Teker sighed. ‘İkmen, we’ve been through Sultanahmet and we’ve found nothing. How far do you think this infant has travelled? And how realistic is it to think you’ll put the child in its grandfather’s arms? Whoever killed the woman, if she was killed by someone, probably killed the child too.’

  ‘Then why wasn’t it with its mother?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘I only have theories,’ İkmen said. ‘One of which is that the killer was the child’s father.’

  The room went quiet for a moment.

  ‘We don’t know who got Ariadne pregnant,’ İkmen said. ‘She kept that a secret. And nobody has come forward to say they were her lover. Assuming he didn’t kill her, why not?’

  ‘Because that person might be married?’ Teker suggested.

  ‘Or embarrassed,’ İkmen said. ‘Ariadne moved in limited circles, madam. The men in her life were few. But Öden, albeit as an enemy, was one of them and so I need to speak to him. And I need to do that as soon as possible and without, if I can, being subjected to a load of arrogant point-scoring and rank-pulling.’

  She looked up at him, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  And then she told them both to go.

  İkmen, with Gürsel in tow, marched down to the station car park and lit a cigarette. Once he’d calmed down enough to speak he said, ‘You know, Kerim, Mr Öden’s refusal to see me has really made me suspicious. I know in all probability he is just asserting himself over me for his own pleasure, but I’m finding it hard to shake the idea that something else is going on too.’

  Chapter 4

  They watched, Süleyman leaning against a lamp post, smoking, while Ömer Mungun ate a corncob. They could have been any two businessmen taking a break from their office. In stark contrast to the uniformed Robocops stalking the park and the people who continued to gather there, they were also much more invisible than the two undercover officers Süleyman had spotted in the crowd. He tipped his head at one of them. ‘Him,’ he said. ‘See? Looks like a refugee from San Francisco in the 1960s.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘He looks like an old hippy,’ Süleyman explained. ‘It’s too much. You see any other men wearing flowers and dancing to a tune in their own head? And her.’ He waved a hand towards a girl wearing a long dress and smoking what looked like a joint. ‘If that’s cannabis she’s puffing I’m a Persian.’

  ‘No smell,’ Ömer said.

  ‘We’d smell dope from here. And she’d be stoned. I’m surprised the people around her haven’t noticed. She might as well have “cop” written in neon above her head.’

  They were standing at the end of İstiklal Caddesi casually, and unofficially, looking at a scene that was, so far, quiet and colourful. The weather was warm, people sat outside tents, some playing flutes or recorders, while pretty girls walked past holding rainbow flags in support of lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgendered citizens. There was a tension that could sometimes be seen on the faces of some of the younger men but in general the atmosphere was calm. An older man walking hand in hand with a woman held up a placard which said, ‘Architects Say No to Taksim Redevelopment’.

  ‘Do you think we might have to get directly involved in this, sir?’ Ömer asked once he’d finished his corn.

  ‘It should be unlikely, but I don’t know,’ Süleyman said. ‘If this protest grows then we’ll be involved whether we like it or not. The whole city will be.’

  Ömer wanted to ask his superior what he thought about the protests, but he didn’t. Officially they both had a duty to uphold the rule of law, which protests of any sort clearly threatened. He surmised that Süleyman didn’t like the idea of the Ottoman-style shopping mall which was meant to replace the park. He knew he hated the new faux Ottoman housing developments that had been built all over the city in the last few years because he’d said so. He was, after all, the real thing. Grandson of an Ottoman prince and scion of one of the old empire’s most prestigious dynasties, Mehmet Süleyman came from old money. He had real class, which even a countr
y boy like Ömer could see. He’d met his boss’s parents once. Living in genteel poverty in Arnavutköy, the old woman had looked heartbreakingly sad while the old man, who had dementia, talked to himself in French about his father’s eunuchs and the family’s long-dead Greek physician.

  Süleyman put his cigarette out. ‘Well, Ömer, let’s go and see these bones.’

  An incomplete skeleton had been found in the grounds of the Galatasaray Lisesi, one of the most prestigious schools in Turkey. Housed in a large nineteenth-century building on İstiklal Caddesi, it was also Süleyman’s old alma mater.

  He began walking. ‘I think it’s probably a job for the archaeologists, but I imagine the students must be excited,’ he said.

  Ömer followed him, silently wondering whether Süleyman was going to meet up with any of his old teachers.

  Sitting outside when the weather was warm was one of the few real pleasures Anastasia Negroponte had left. Eighty-seven years of life had stripped most of the meat from her bones and even her wonderful black hair, which had retained its colour until her seventies, had now turned white.

  From the street beyond her gates, a young man looked at her as if she was an exhibit in a museum. She knew what he thought. It was the same as most people: that her mind didn’t work, that she was an idiot, a living tragedy, only notionally alive.

  But although her face moved only with difficulty, Anastasia was still there. On days like this, Hakkı would put her chair in the garden and she would drink mint tea through a straw while he, her last remaining servant, tended to the plants. Years before there had been the cook too, the driver, Yılmaz, and later on Hakkı’s wife Sırma and their two children. But Sırma had died, the children had gone and the cook and Yılmaz were just distant memories. Now there was just Hakkı – and Yiannis. If she moved her neck as far to the left as she could manage she could see him standing outside the front gate. With his long legs apart, he looked substantial and, knowing Yiannis, a little fierce. But he’d be useless against a bulldozer.

  Anastasia looked away. Seeing that Hakkı was watching her she called him over.

  He bent low so that he could hear her. Between her weak voice and his poor hearing communication was not always easy. ‘T-tell Yianni come inside,’ she said.

  Her own voice had irritated her for over fifty years. She still wasn’t used to it.

  Hakkı bowed. ‘Yes, Madam Anastasia,’ he said.

  He left some sort of flower on her table when he went. It was red and round but she didn’t know what it was. She couldn’t remember. Apart from those things she could never forget, her memory was random. In that sense she was an idiot. But the passers-by she sometimes heard who said that she didn’t know who she was were wrong. Anastasia Negroponte knew exactly who she was. She knew where she lived, because her ancestors had lived in the same place for over a thousand years, and she also knew that she was in danger of losing it all.

  And Anastasia Negroponte, for all her age and her disabilities, was not about to let that happen.

  ‘Mr Ahmet Öden?’

  İkmen held his police ID up to the window of Öden’s Range Rover Evoque.

  Öden leaned his head out and took off his dark glasses.

  İkmen smiled. ‘Inspector Çetin İkmen,’ he said. ‘I tried to contact you at your home yesterday but you were out.’

  ‘I’m out now,’ Öden said. ‘What do you want? How did you find me?’

  İkmen hadn’t waited for Commissioner Teker to gently ask Ahmet Öden for an appointment. Having Kerim stake out his house from early that morning had been much more effective. And they’d ended up almost on İkmen’s doorstep, in Sultanahmet.

  ‘I need to speak to you about a woman called Ariadne Savva,’ İkmen said. ‘She was an archaeologist up at the museum and—’

  ‘She that woman who’s died?’

  ‘She is dead, yes, sir,’ İkmen said.

  Ahmet Öden had kept his engine running ever since İkmen had first seen his car pull up in front of the old Negroponte mansion. People like him often claimed to be ‘green’, but if this behaviour was anything to go by then conspicuous consumption was probably more his thing. İkmen didn’t like it but he made himself ignore it.

  ‘We’re trying to trace all Dr Savva’s contacts in the city,’ he continued. ‘Of which I believe you were one, Mr Öden.’

  ‘Why would I know an archaeologist?’

  İkmen lit a cigarette. He saw Öden bridle.

  ‘Do you have to do that, Inspector?’ he said.

  İkmen smiled. ‘No law, as yet, against it out in the open air, sir,’ he said. ‘Now about Dr Savva, I believe you knew her due to her philanthropic activities with the rubbish pickers in the Gizlitepe district of Kadıköy—’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘Dr Savva tried to help the rubbish pickers made homeless by your redevelopment project in Gizlitepe.’

  ‘Their landlords made them homeless, not me,’ Öden said. ‘Carry on saying I did it and I’ll have my lawyer on you.’

  These modern urban developers liked litigation. İkmen ignored it. ‘Back to Dr Savva . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, I remember her,’ Öden said. ‘Kept on about how I should do something about the rubbish people. I told her what I told you, “it’s the landlords”. But she wouldn’t listen. She had this agenda about the buildings, which I think were more important to her than the people. All this talk about how valuable old, filthy buildings are supposed to be. What’s that? I build nice, modern homes that are clean. Gizlitepe was just old gecekondu property. What was the point?’

  İkmen wondered where Ahmet Öden wanted him to start. But of course he couldn’t. If he got into his stride about preserving the past and the value of traditional neighbourhoods he would never stop. Instead he said, ‘Whatever Dr Savva’s motives might be, she disagreed with you over the fate of the rubbish pickers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You even threatened her over it.’ As he watched Öden’s face darken, İkmen added, ‘Allegedly.’

  ‘Who told you I threatened her? I didn’t! It was those rubbish pickers, wasn’t it?’ He wagged a finger in İkmen’s face. ‘If you’re looking for the woman’s killer then don’t come to me! I live my life according to my faith, which means I can’t kill.’

  ‘I never said she was killed—’

  ‘Those down-and-outs are drunk most of the time. Anything could have happened when she was with them. I warned her. I didn’t threaten her but I warned her about them.’

  ‘What did you think those Dr Savva only wanted to help might do to her, Mr Öden?’

  ‘I don’t know. What do I know of such people? But I said it would end badly and it has.’

  ‘Not in Gizlitepe. Her body wasn’t found there,’ İkmen said. ‘It was actually found here.’

  ‘Where? In that house?’ He pointed.

  İkmen looked over his shoulder. The Negroponte house had all but disappeared behind its old trees and twisting plants in recent years. As a small child Çetin and his brother Halıl had often been invited into that garden with their mother, Ayşe. Madam Anastasia liked to have her fortune told and İkmen’s mother had been a well-known witch who read the cards and the coffee grounds. Back then Anastasia had been a young woman with a young husband who owned a very successful tailoring business on İstiklal Caddesi. The Negropontes were Byzantine Greeks who had been living in the city since it wasn’t much more than a village. Even as a small child İkmen had found them fascinating. But then in 1955 they had, along with most of their community, suffered the most horrific violence at the hands of their Turkish neighbours. Anastasia’s husband was killed and she was left brain damaged. Her newly born child suffered another fate, depending upon whose story one believed.

  ‘Why do you ask about that house?’ İkmen said.

  ‘I have an interest in it,’ Öden said.

  İkmen felt the back of his neck tingle. Although he would never have described himself as a witch like his mother, he had inherite
d a sensitivity to what people said and did and what it might mean. Some of his colleagues called it second sight. He just accepted it was what it was.

  ‘And that interest is—’

  ‘None of your business,’ Öden said. ‘Was the foreign woman’s body found in that house or not?’

  ‘If you’d read whatever paper you take yesterday you would have seen that the body of a woman was found in the ruins at the back of the Hippodrome,’ İkmen said. ‘So no. A short walk from here, but not here.’

  ‘I can’t help you with this,’ Öden said. He got out of his car. Two men İkmen hadn’t noticed before walked towards him. ‘I’ve got work to do. As I said before, if you want to know who killed that woman, go and speak to those drunken rubbish pickers.’

  ‘Sir.’ İkmen put a hand on Öden’s arm and felt him cringe.

  ‘Don’t touch me.’

  The two men with him didn’t look as if they approved either. İkmen took his hand away. ‘For legal reasons you will have to make a statement about your involvement with Ariadne Savva even if we do have to make an appointment with you to do it,’ he said.

  Öden shrugged. ‘Then do it. Call my office in Üsküdar. Make your appointment and then come and see what a modern friend of the people looks like. You know they call my offices “the soup kitchen” over there because I feed all of Üsküdar’s good poor people.’ Briefly he moved in close to İkmen. ‘Don’t take that foreign woman’s word over mine,’ he said. ‘I do everything I can for the needy in this city, everything.’

  Then he and his companions walked away. İkmen wondered what, if anything, Mr Öden did for the bad poor of Üsküdar. He was about to leave and go back to the station but he saw Öden knock on the great gates outside the Negropontes’ house and he was intrigued.

  He heard him call out ‘Yiannis!’

  But no one answered him and so he called again. When no reply was forthcoming this time, one of Öden’s men tried the door. But it was locked. The three of them stood around talking for a while and then they moved off. But not back to their cars.