Land of the Blind Read online

  Öden wanted the house. Alone now, İkmen couldn’t think of any other business he might wish to do with Anastasia, her servant and the man alleged to be her son. Yiannis Negroponte, a baby barely three months old, had disappeared in the anti-Greek riots of September 1955. Everyone had assumed he had died. But then in 1997 a forty-two-year-old man had arrived at the Negroponte house claiming to be Yiannis. He’d come with a story about being rescued from the back of the Negropontes’ shop in Beyoğlu by a childless Turkish woman. She and her husband had taken him with them when they moved to Germany for work which was why, when he’d arrived, he’d had such a strong German accent. That had been the story, but few people had accepted it. Except for Anastasia Negroponte. Whether her old servant, Hakkı, believed Yiannis was genuine was not known. A dour man in his mid-eighties, he, like his mistress, rarely left the house.

  Yiannis on the other hand was often out. He liked to entertain with magic tricks and would trawl the streets, the tea gardens and coffee houses for an audience. He was an odd man, whoever he was. İkmen looked at the house and lit another cigarette. If Ahmet Öden was trying to buy the Negroponte house, he wondered whether he was doing so at Yiannis’ behest. Anastasia was as old as wood and would die soon and the site had to be worth a fortune. Yiannis wasn’t a young man but he could still have a very comfortable life if he cashed in his mother’s property. And, at least since he’d moved into the Negroponte house, he’d not had a comfortable life, locked in with only the old woman and her retainer for company. Even back in the 1950s when İkmen used to go to the house as a child, the place had been damp, and he still remembered their old store rooms with a shudder. Spiders as big as his hand had clambered over the Negropontes’ wine racks and there were spooky arches, blackened with age, which dripped with stale smelling water. Much as he’d always loved going there, İkmen had sometimes suffered nightmares over that house when he was young.

  The skeleton, which was very dark brown, was hidden from view. Attached to the palm tree underneath which the body had been found, a tent concealed Dr Arto Sarkissian and his many instruments of investigation.

  One of the Lise’s students had found what he had thought was a joke skeleton hand coming out of the ground by the tree. It was only when one of his teachers took it away from him when he was playing with it in class that further investigations had been made. The hand had been part of a whole skeleton that had been entwined around the roots of the palm tree.

  ‘Doctor.’

  Sarkissian looked up. ‘Ah, Inspector Süleyman,’ he said. He nodded at Ömer Mungun. ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘So tell me about it,’ Süleyman said.

  The doctor crossed his arms. ‘Well, our body is that of a man. He has some quite elaborate dental work in his mouth and so it’s reasonable to deduce that he wasn’t poor. He’s adult but I can’t tell how old yet. I don’t know how he died. What I can say with some certainty though is that even if he died unlawfully, that happened a long time ago.’

  ‘What do you mean by a long time?’

  ‘Decades,’ he said. ‘Look at how degraded the skeleton is.’

  ‘If it’s so old why wasn’t it discovered before?’ Ömer Mungun asked.

  ‘There can be various reasons,’ the doctor said, ‘but mainly it’s because the earth beneath our feet, much as we don’t like to think about it, is very rarely static. Even if we didn’t live on a seismic fault this would be the case. But because İstanbul is in an area of earthquake activity this phenomenon is even more pronounced. He just rose to the surface one day. Enmeshed in palm roots.’

  Süleyman moved closer to the skeleton. ‘Have they damaged it?’

  ‘Not much, no. Palm roots are not as deep or as hardy as, say, mature olive roots. It’s time that has caused the most damage. He died a long time ago. I’ve called a friend to help me determine when that might have been.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Dr Akyıldız. She’s one of our few archaeological pathologists. Although I may well be able to determine this man’s age and how he died, she is more expert than I at pinpointing when. For all I know he could have been here for twenty years or seventy.’

  Süleyman nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘We’ve already had the press sniffing around,’ the doctor said. ‘I believe at least one of the students at the Lise has a media mogul in the family. So this will be in the papers and on the TV news. But do I think this is a job for the police? No. If our friend here was poisoned with strychnine sixty years ago there’s no need for urgency.’

  ‘Unless his killer is still alive,’ Süleyman said.

  The doctor shrugged. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as Dr Akyıldız and myself have got any news.’

  Süleyman sighed. ‘And in the meantime I will have to tell the Commissioner . . . What?’

  ‘Tell her that we’ve found an historical skeleton in the grounds of the Galatasaray Lise, cause of death unknown,’ Sarkissian said. ‘In all seriousness, this is a story that will soon get lost in today’s climate. Have you been up to Gezi Park?’

  ‘Yes,’ Süleyman said. ‘All quiet.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘You think it’s going to kick off again, Doctor?’ Ömer Mungun asked.

  The Armenian looked down at the ground. ‘I do.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’ Süleyman asked.

  For a moment the doctor said nothing. Then he leaned towards the two officers. ‘People can’t take much more redevelopment. You know what I mean? I know you know Tarlabaşı neighbourhood, Inspector.’ Süleyman and Mungun had worked on a case in that area the year before. It was where Gonca’s father had lived. ‘The poor move out of picturesque slums, the developers knock the slums down and build hideous tower blocks which the rich move into. The poor live on the streets because they’ve nowhere else to go.’

  ‘It’s like this in every major European city. It’s the free market economy,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘It’s wrong,’ Sarkissian said. His red face showed his passion. ‘Those people in the park know it. And so do all the thousands who will join them.’

  Süleyman shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. ‘We’ll see. Now, Doctor, do you have any idea when you and your colleague will be able to tell us more about this skeleton?’

  Clearly any sharing of opinions about Gezi Park was over. Sarkissian cleared his throat. ‘Three days, maybe less. Three to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Good.’

  By the time Süleyman and Mungun left through the vast metal school gates, İstiklal Caddesi was full of young people wearing face paint and brightly coloured hats. They carried banners that had slogans on them saying, ‘Hands Off Gezi Park,’ and ‘Another Shopping Mall? No, Thanks!’

  ‘I used to sometimes get out of school at lunchtime and buy kokoreç from a stall in the Balık Pazar,’ Süleyman said. ‘That was before İstiklal was pedestrianised. I can’t tell you how thick with fumes the air was.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘This street has changed a lot over the years. Not all of it for the better.’

  ‘It’s good the fumes have gone, sir,’ Ömer said.

  ‘Oh yes, they were bad,’ Süleyman said. ‘But the boy who used to sell me the kokoreç my parents so disapproved of, I wish was still in business.’

  ‘Why isn’t he, sir?’

  Süleyman took a deep drag from his cigarette. ‘Because he fell through the cracks, Ömer. He lost his home to the developers, his wife took his children away to live with her parents in Mersin. Working’s difficult if you’re homeless. He slept underneath his stall for months until it all got too much for him. One night he drank half a bottle of cognac and then cut his own throat.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘Çetin! Çetin!’

  Hands grabbed at his pyjama top. It was dark and he was disorientated. ‘What?’

  ‘He’s only just come in! Kemal!’

  ‘Kemal?’ İkmen turned his head to look at his bedside clock. ‘It’s four thirty,’ he said. ‘In the morning.
’

  ‘Yes! Yes! And that boy has only just got in.’

  ‘He’s not a boy, he’s twenty-one.’

  His wife, Fatma, put her bedside lamp on.

  ‘God!’ İkmen screwed up his eyes and buried his face in his pillow. ‘When I was twenty-one I had a son of my own and another one on the way. He’s a man.’

  Fatma İkmen shook her long grey hair. ‘In law, he may be,’ she said. ‘But you know how silly he can be. Easily led. He’ll’ve been up to that park in Beyoğlu.’ She pushed her husband to the edge of the bed. ‘Go and talk to him.’

  İkmen swung his legs down on the floor and stood up. He felt groggy and his mouth tasted indescribable.

  ‘Go on!’

  He walked to the bedroom door. ‘Only if you don’t follow and keep putting your contribution in. If you want me to talk to Kemal then I will, but not with you censoring me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t,’ he said.

  Pausing only to find a cigarette in his jacket pocket and then light it, İkmen knocked on his son’s bedroom door. The youngest of the nine İkmen children, Kemal was the only one still living at home. ‘Kemal?’

  There was no answer. İkmen didn’t know when the boy had got in but it couldn’t have been long before. ‘Kemal!’

  There was a sort of snorting sound and then a voice said, ‘What is it?’

  İkmen opened the door to a room he didn’t want to illuminate. Even in the dark he could see that it was a chaos of clothes, books, computers and dirty tea glasses. Something in the middle of the mess reared up. ‘What do you want, Dad?’

  ‘Your mother says I’m to tell you not to go to Gezi Park,’ İkmen said. ‘Have you been to Gezi Park, Kemal? Tell me the truth.’

  There was a pause and then Kemal said, ‘Yes. And I’m going to go tomorrow too. I haven’t got any lectures so why not? Why? Going to try and stop me?’

  ‘No,’ İkmen said. ‘On the contrary I applaud your commitment.’

  ‘So why are you telling me off?’

  ‘I’m not, but your mother’s worried. She asked me to speak to you. So I’m speaking.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Do you want me to go to Gezi or not?’

  ‘I want you to do what your conscience tells you to do whilst keeping safe and avoiding confrontation. And I want you to call me and most definitely not your mother if anything goes wrong.’

  ‘Dad, are you saying that you support what people are protesting about in Gezi?’

  There was a pause before İkmen spoke. ‘My job is to uphold the law and protect the people of this city from harm. My opinions don’t matter. Things that do matter are people’s lives, their homes and their liberty.’

  ‘So you do—’

  ‘I support no one,’ he said. ‘And I support everyone. Policemen are not supposed to be political. Now go to sleep and remember what I told you. Oh, and try not to be so late next time, Kemal. Your mother is a trial when you’re out beyond one a.m.’

  ‘OK.’

  İkmen left the boy, finished his cigarette and then went back to bed.

  Fatma was sitting up, knitting. Nervously. One of their daughters, Gül, had just had her first baby and Fatma was producing whole new woollen wardrobes for it every week.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Had he been to the park?’

  İkmen got into bed beside her. ‘He had.’

  ‘Well did you tell him not to?’

  İkmen lay down. ‘I told him to be careful and not to come home so late,’ he said.

  ‘But did you tell him not to go to that park?’

  He looked her in the eyes. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why? I—’

  ‘Yes, Fatma, I know what you told me to tell him,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t do that and you shouldn’t have asked me.’

  ‘But you went—’

  ‘To shut you up, yes,’ he said. He put a hand on her arm. She didn’t pull away. ‘Fatma, you know that I love you more than life. You know, I hope, that I respect the way you live the religious life with every part of your being. I know that—’

  ‘Çetin, I don’t want another shopping mall to be built where Gezi Park is,’ she interrupted. ‘Just because some of the people who do want it are religious too, doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. I just don’t want Kemal to get hurt. Some of your colleagues in the park have been . . . zealous . . .’

  ‘Bastards,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me started.’ He put his arms out to her. ‘Come on, we need to sleep.’

  Fatma put her knitting down beside the bed and slid down into his embrace. ‘Oh, Çetin,’ she said, ‘if anything were to happen to Kemal I’d never forgive myself.’

  ‘For what? Being his mother?’ He hugged her.

  ‘You know. Just look after him, Çetin. Do that for me.’

  ‘I will have as many eyes trained in Kemal’s direction as I can,’ İkmen said. And then he kissed her. ‘Don’t worry.’

  Fatma closed her eyes and soon she was asleep. But Çetin was awake now and thinking, about Ariadne Savva and her unknown, lost child. Where was it? Hospitals and doctors’ surgeries in every part of the city had been contacted, it was all over the media. There had even been yet another press conference. Every day he saw hundreds of people walking along holding small babies or pushing them in prams. At the very periphery of his consciousness most of the time, they passed him by like ghosts. It could be any one of them or none.

  And had Ariadne even known she was pregnant? Nobody around her seemed to have noticed her expanding girth very much, but had that included Ariadne herself? Had her first intimation of pregnancy been as she was passing the Hippodrome? Had labour pains forced her to hide herself away in the sphendone? But there had been so little blood there. And wouldn’t she rather have got help? Or did she maybe think that ‘the Turks’ wouldn’t help her? Surely she’d lived in the city long enough to know that was very unlikely? But then whether she knew she was pregnant or not wasn’t really the point. Who, if anyone, had killed her and may have taken her baby, was.

  Mehmet Süleyman walked down the hill to where he’d parked his car. He’d hardly slept, but not because he was having passionate sex with Gonca. At almost midnight large sections of her extended family had arrived at the house. He had recognised three of her brothers, a sister and her eldest son, but all the others had been unknown to him. A colourful mob passing around bottles of cognac and rakı, they had settled themselves into Gonca’s studio and then talked at the tops of their voices until dawn. He’d gone to bed, but their noise had kept him awake. And when they had finally gone and Gonca had joined him in bed she’d had the temerity to ask him why he was still awake! Noise didn’t seem to affect gypsies. Why was that?

  And now he knew all their business. They’d all got together to talk about what had been going on in Gezi Park, who they knew was taking part and how they could maybe use the protests to draw attention to the way their traditional neighbourhoods had been developed. There had been a lot of talk about the police. None of the gypsies so much as hinted at any fear of the authorities. Rather they expressed their anxieties through their fears for others.

  One had said, ‘The people they beat are like the hippies from the 1960s. Peace lovers, they just let them kick them.’

  ‘And transsexuals,’ another said. ‘Pulling their hair and shouting filthy insults at them.’

  An old voice put in, ‘All the transsexuals I know carry weapons. None of them would hesitate to defend their honour. What kind of weak transsexuals did you see, Metin?’

  People had laughed and then there had been more drinking. They’d all wanted to go to Gezi Park and that had included Gonca. But in the end the young people were chosen. Some nephews and nieces, students who would blend with the crowd.

  Süleyman passed a heavily bearded man and his wife, whose face was covered by a niqab. Beyond the Greek school, over the hill, was the district of Çarşamba where a lot of pious Muslims like this couple lived. S
üleyman was not convinced that outward appearance necessarily reflected inner piety but he didn’t know how else to describe such people.

  In the very earliest days of the twenty-first century some artists, young intellectuals and gypsies had moved into the Fener/Balat area with the idea that they’d build a vibrant community of like-minded people. To an extent that had happened, but the pious presented what, to Gonca at least, felt like a dour presence. She talked about them looking down their noses at those who were not like them and mouthing bad words at her daughters. Süleyman didn’t know whether they did such things or not. The people who had complained about his relationship with Gonca were much less obvious than the men and women of Çarşamba. They were his colleagues. Anonymous and hidden in the vastness of the department, they could be anyone. They could even be someone he knew well. The only thing he did know was that it couldn’t be İkmen or Ömer Mungun. If İkmen had a problem with Gonca he would have told Süleyman to his face, but he liked the gypsy, who was closer to İkmen’s age than Süleyman’s. And Ömer Mungun wasn’t going to draw attention to himself unless he had to.

  Süleyman opened his car door with his remote control. As the BMW bleeped in response, some children who were picking through rubbish on the pavement ran up to him and asked for money. He gave them one lira each then got in his car and drove away.

  When Yiannis pulled the cotton thread he’d put in his mouth out of his eye all the children screamed and pulled faces. One little girl held her baby brother up high so he could see. But he was so young he could barely focus.

  ‘There you see, magic,’ Yiannis said. ‘Anyone want to see a kitten come out of this box?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘I do, but my mum does say you’re evil,’ one boy said.

  Yiannis Negroponte put the small box on the ground in front of him and then covered it with a silk scarf.

  ‘Oh? Why does your mum say that?’

  ‘Because magic is evil,’ the boy said.

  ‘Where’d your mum get that from?’

  The boy shrugged.

  A girl said, ‘Kitten! Come on! Let’s see the kitten!’