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

  Ikmen lit another cigarette and rolled a second across to the Rabbi. “Oh.” He paused. “What can I say? There are, and always have been, elements who discriminate against others for no good reason. I would be doing the Jews of Balat a disservice if I told you not to be vigilant. As you’ve probably noticed, we’ve increased the frequency of our patrols in this area. But my honest opinion?” His face became very grave. “I think one person killed Leonid Meyer. A very deeply disturbed individual with some kind of crazy reason of his own.”

  “Well, the swastika—”

  “Oh, yes, I grant you that whoever it was doesn’t care for Jews, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. The method used to kill him was very specific, it had to be him and it had to be that way. Personally I think there was a definite motive. This was a personal act against Mr. Meyer himself. I may yet be proved wrong, but—”

  “So you’re saying you don’t think there’s any movement or organization behind this?”

  “I can’t be absolutely certain, but I don’t think so. I will, nevertheless, be talking to this Smits man in the near future. I’ve received no information to suggest a sudden upsurge in anti-Semitism in this city. Such an eventuality is, however, being taken very seriously at a level much higher than myself. The intelligence-gathering agencies are on full alert. Looking at it from a purely selfish point of view, you must remember that Israel is one of our allies in this region.”

  “Of course.”

  Ikmen stood up. “Well, we’d better not take up anymore of your time, Rabbi.”

  Şimon rose to his feet and offered his hand to Ikmen. “No trouble. It’s very good of you to take the time to be so reassuring.”

  The two men shook hands. Suleyman put his notebook and pen away and joined his boss. “Goodbye, Rabbi Şimon.”

  “Goodbye, Sergeant.”

  He led the two policemen into the hall and unlocked the door for them.

  “I’ll keep you informed,” said Ikmen as he walked through the doorway.

  “Thank you.”

  Suleyman stepped out into the sunlight, taking his sunglasses out of his pocket as he went. The Rabbi was just about to go back inside when Ikmen stopped him.

  “Rabbi?” His face was quizzical, but shocked somehow, as if a frightening thought had just crossed his mind.

  “Yes?” The Rabbi’s voice showed concern. The little Inspector looked suddenly almost ill.

  It wasn’t an easy question for Ikmen to ask but he asked it. “How do you feel when you look at a swastika?”

  The Rabbi’s face went pale and he sighed. “Oh.” He tried to think of a way of describing his feelings that was logical and not too tainted by emotion. He wanted the Inspector to understand him, but nice, passionless words just wouldn’t come. “Haunted, Inspector. And trapped. It’s like I’m in a cage with a ghost and I know I can never be free.”

  The two men looked at each other and to the Rabbi’s surprise he realized that the Inspector had understood him. How, he couldn’t say, but he was glad. He was always glad when someone else, someone Gentile, finally understood. Every time it happened it meant that number 17564 receded that little bit further into the past.

  * * *

  “What are you planning to cook for our visitor tonight?”

  Anya Gulcu looked up from her book. A tall, bearded man had entered the drawing room and was making his way toward the chaise upon which she reclined. Despite his advanced age, he walked with great purpose, his bearing straight-backed and proud. She could not help but notice that by comparison the years had not been nearly so kind to her. Thin, wasted, her hair chewed, straggly and gray, Anya had long since given up the struggle with her decaying appearance. She frowned as he approached and put her book down on the small occasional table in front of her.

  “What would you recommend, Nicholas?” she said stiffly.

  He sat down in a battered wing chair at the head of the chaise and crossed his hands in his lap. “He’s an Englishman, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.” She smoothed the long skirt of her crisp lace dress with her hand. Her mouth moved nervously as she waited for him to speak again.

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult, then. Have you consulted Mama?”

  Her voice quavered. “Er, no. She is not going to attend, and in view of … circumstances, I thought it better not to bother her.”

  Nicholas sighed. His face suddenly looked tired and resigned. “Oh, yes. Of course. By the way, you know that letter she received today? You don’t know what—”

  “No! No!” Anya swung her legs down on to the floor and perched nervously on the edge of the chaise. Her tiny hands fluttered shakily up to her face. “What are we going to do, Nicky?”

  He leaned forward. He looked at her sternly, but not without kindness. Taking both her hands in his, he pressed them gently away from her face. It was obvious that her nervousness irritated him, but he tried to hide it. He loved her.

  “We are going to be calm, Anya. We are going to think clearly and carry on just like we always have. Talking of which…” He looked down at his elaborate cherry-red and gold tunic and frowned. “I don’t think these clothes are going to be very suitable for tonight, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  He pursed his lips. This time he let his impatience show. Why did she have to have everything explained to her! “Think, Anya, think! Mr. Robert, whatever he is, is a stranger. He won’t understand. We don’t want to alarm him, do we? What goes on in this house when he is not here is not his concern, is it?” He looked away from her, toward the door and the stairs beyond. “There’s no reason to worry him with trivial details.”

  “Yes, of course, you’re right. I’m sorry, Nicky.”

  He got up from the chair and strode across to the large bay window. He looked out into the street, strong, yellow sunlight illuminating his features. He couldn’t bear to look at her when she was apologetic and mousy. Even when they were children this particular mood of hers had irritated him. She always did it when she was frightened, when she wanted someone else to take the responsibility, do her thinking for her.

  “I will buy some lamb, potatoes and rice,” he said firmly. “You can roast the meat and potatoes, English people like that sort of thing.” He turned to look at her. “Do you have some salad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do that with it then.” He paused. Her eyes were downcast, miserable. “You can do that, I presume, Anya?” He hadn’t meant that to sound nasty, but he knew that it had. He chastised himself almost immediately.

  “Yes.” She looked up suddenly, panicking. “Nicky, I honestly don’t know how I’m going to do this!” Her lips trembled; she was on the very edge of tears.

  He closed his eyes and threw his arms outward in a gesture of despair. “You just have to, Anya. It’s for Natalia, remember? Your daughter?”

  “But…”

  His impatience with her finally got the better of him. “For the love of God, Anya! You know what you’re supposed to do, don’t you! Didn’t we go over it enough times for you? The man is a visitor, no one in particular, that’s all! Nothing can possibly go wrong!”

  She moved her head slightly, as if agreeing, but her eyes wept and her hands clutched nervously at her bodice.

  * * *

  It was midday; outside the sun was at its zenith, hot, strong, debilitating. But inside it was dark. Thick, purple curtains were drawn tight across every window; the unnatural light from a single oil lamp glowed sickly in the heavy darkness.

  The apartment was richly furnished in purple, gold and the deep midnight black of mahogany. Heavy furniture, seasoned by long years of usage.

  In the middle of the room, and dominating it, was a bed. Its foot was long, tapered and shaped like the prow of a ship. Carved and gilded waves, captured in mid-roll, sprang from both the prow and the headboard. Reaching nearly to the ceiling, this headboard provided an anchor for the meters of lilac net curtaining that hung stiff and brittle with age down on to the pillow
s and across the floor. As generously wide as it was long, the bed itself was covered by a purple brocade counterpane, its edges dangling close to the floor, frayed and soiled by mice.

  On top of this cover, lying on its side, rested the body of a woman. A full-length lilac gown engulfed her skinny body, and a veil of thick, gray hair covered her shoulders and the upper part of her face. Though at rest, her breath did not come easily. She wheezed, her lungs rattling and creaking with mucus every time she breathed out. Crêpy, age-spotted hands clutched at the cover beneath her, tightening and relaxing with the rhythm of her breath.

  Outside, in the city beyond the purple curtains, a thousand muezzins called the Muslim faithful to midday prayer. “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet…”

  The woman on the bed stirred. For a second her breathing stopped, held prisoner in her throat. Her face strained as she tried to remember what should have been reflex. She folded back the corner of life and looked at its alternative. She made a gagging sound in the back of her throat. Then her muscles relaxed and the breath flowed out of her. Her hands clutched and then released the bedclothes one more time, and she opened her eyes.

  Through a lattice of dry hair, Maria Gulcu surveyed her domain. Sideboard, table, washstand, pictures on the wall—nothing had changed. Even corners of the room she could not see were unaltered. She didn’t have to look, she knew. Ikon screen top left-hand corner, two gold brocade chairs over by the window, the photograph album sitting on the card table next to the door. Everything in its place, as it should be. Well, nearly everything. What was wrong?

  There was something at the back of her mind. An anxiety, a dread. What was it? It was recent; that was its problem. The closer she was to an event, the quicker it faded from her mind. Ten years ago, twenty, seventy—ah, yes, seventy, or rather seventy-four was easy. She kept count. A breath away.

  Every second recorded, marked, stowed safely and forever. Faces: some brutal, some loved beyond understanding. And a girl. A girl with deep blue eyes and long chestnut hair, tiptoeing on the rim of womanhood. Like the others—but not like the others. She could see the girl, could call her up at will. Getting close to the others was becoming easier with the passing years too. Maria knew why and she welcomed it. Time was gathering pace. Brutal. Hated time. There was too much. Now when she didn’t need it there was too much. Then …

  But what about yesterday?

  She turned slowly on to her back and stared at the ceiling. Her eyesight had deteriorated considerably over the last few years. There was a pattern on the ceiling, she remembered it well, but all she could see was a blur. She pushed the unwanted memory of the ceiling paper out of her mind and turned back on to her side once again. What was it?

  And it was then that she saw the letter. Thick, stubby writing on perfumed pink paper. So very typical. Ah, yes. Ah, yes. It was someone that was out of place, not something. There was a gap in the cast-list of her life. Her eyes filled with tears. Slowly connections formed in her mind as the recent nightmare returned. She pushed her hair out of her face and reached for a handkerchief in the pocket of her gown. Tears, caught and held static in the folds and creases of her face, bitter with salt, stung her skin.

  How could she have forgotten? She dabbed her eyes with a corner of the handkerchief and patted away the moisture that had gathered on her flaccid cheeks. She had turned away for a second and now he had gone.

  * * *

  The two men walked in silence as they made their way back to their respective cars. Although the suspicious, almost hostile nature of the stares they were attracting from the local inhabitants was partly at the root of this phenomenon, there was another reason too. Uncharacteristically, it was Suleyman who first articulated this latter, as yet unspoken point.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, his far superior height forcing him to speak, as it were, to the top of Ikmen’s head. “Rabbi Şimon seemed a little nervous about mentioning that Smits man.”

  Ikmen sucked hard on what was probably his fifteenth cigarette of the day. “Well, he would be.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he’s a Jew, isn’t he!”

  “Yes.” The look of blank confusion on his deputy’s face momentarily angered Ikmen to a quite unreasonable degree. “If you gave the matter more than just a cursory thought you would know, Suleyman!” He stopped and turned to face him, his eyes intent and, Suleyman was almost tempted to think, passionate. “That man’s parents went through the full horrors of the concentration camps. He knows, better than most, what anti-Semitism has done and can do.”

  “But this country had no involvement in that war, we were neutral and—”

  “And because we were neutral, Suleyman, people like Reinhold Smits could express their unsavory views without let or hindrance.” He raised his cigarette-bearing hand up toward Suleyman’s face, pointing his crooked fingers almost into the young man’s eyes. “We may have been at peace with our own indigenous Jewish population for a very long time, but if a Jew brings an accusation against a Turkish citizen, albeit of German extraction, it is a very serious matter. Not because the Jew will necessarily be found wanting, but because in his own mind he will be at a disadvantage. This is something that Rabbi Şimon wants to avoid at all costs and it is why, when we go to interview Smits, we must not allude to his suspicions in any way.”

  “But how—”

  “All we have to say, Suleyman, is that we obtained the address of Şeker Textiles from the old man’s notebook and then let Smits explain himself and his involvement to us. As I’ve said before, and with no disrespect to the good Rabbi’s feelings, I don’t think that there is much to be gained from exploring some fifty-year-old item of racial discrimination. Unless there were some other element involved…”

  “Like what?”

  Ikmen started walking again, hurling his finished cigarette butt as he went. “Like a reason why Meyer still kept details about his old employer over fifty years after the event.” He shrugged, speculating. “Maybe Meyer screwed Smits’s wife in the last decade—who knows!”

  Despite the fact that Ikmen was so small, Suleyman did not find that he was easy to keep up with when he was tense and agitated like this. He had almost to run to catch up with him, asking breathlessly, “So is that what you meant when you said you thought that the murder was personal?”

  “Possibly. Possibly.”

  “But…”

  Having reached Ikmen’s car, which stood out markedly by virtue of its great age against even the humblest surrounding vehicles, they stopped once again. This time when Ikmen spoke, he rather oddly addressed the ground. Only later would Suleyman consider why this might be.

  “As I’ve said before, Suleyman, it is at the moment my considered opinion that whoever killed Leonid Meyer did so for a personal reason. If the murderer had wanted to kill any old Jew just for the sake of doing so, he could have simply stuck a pillow over the old man’s face and had done with it. All the stuff with the acid—the bringing it to the apartment, the taking it away, the risk of screams from the old man, the overall danger of the whole enterprise—leads me to the belief that the method itself was key. To my way of thinking, if we can deduce why Meyer was killed in this way and for what reason, we will be able to track down who did it with comparative ease.” He smiled. “And to that end I want you, when you get back to the station, to start working on the problem of who these other derelicts of whom the Rabbi spoke might be. If you can also arrange for us to go over to Şeker Textiles, that would be good too.”

  “I’ll get on to it right away.”

  “Good.” Ikmen opened the as usual unlocked door of his car and slid into the driver’s seat. “I’m going to go over to the hospital to try to speak to this Delmonte woman. I’ll see you later.”

  “All right.”

  As Ikmen pulled out into the stream of traffic it occurred to Suleyman that the reason why his boss had been unable to look him in the eye was because he had been embarrassed. Desp
ite all Ikmen’s protestations to the contrary, something hideous and, most importantly, racist had taken place on his patch, in his city. He was embarrassed as well as disturbed. Talking to the Rabbi, Suleyman thought, must have been quite a trial for him.

  Chapter 5

  Beyoğlu is a district characterised by great contrast. In the days when Turkey still had her Empire it was the diplomatic and commercial center, not only of Istanbul, but of the entire Ottoman world. The Great Powers of the Victorian era, Russia, Great Britain, France and Germany, built imposing and elegant Embassies within its confines. Hotels, churches, shops and music halls sprang up; entertainment and luxury for diplomats and advisors far from the civilized, Christian world of Western Europe.

  Turkey, the bankrupt “Sick Man,” courted the whole continent but cleverly, and to the frustration of the Powers, remained unwed. Deals were struck, whole countries sold, plots were hatched in the Embassies and coffee houses around Istiklal Caddesi, the capital’s center of fashion. The Sultan’s Jewish and Armenian bankers tiptoed from ambassador to ambassador making promises on the Ottoman Government’s behalf, securing vast, unsecured loans for their imperial master. In this manner great alliances were forged and the Europeans were hopeful, but the Ottomans never honored these partnerships—they’d never had any intention of doing so. Their only interest was money, which they got. Turkey, and the East generally, were fashionable. Every day more wealthy and romantic Europeans would arrive on the Orient Express; hungry for a stake in the expanding Ottoman railway system; selling arms; en route to Anatolia and the treasures of ancient Troy. In the Pera Palas Hotel Mata Hari plied her trade, while deposed Eastern European princes listlessly waited for death.

  But when the Turkish Republic was born in the 1920s Ankara became the capital and Beyoğlu slipped into a long decline. The great unwashed moved into its once graceful apartment buildings, and small shops selling cheap food and even cheaper beer appeared. Prostitutes started roaming the streets, luring the unwary into drinking clubs and cinemas offering films that left little to the imagination.