On the Bone Read online

‘Well then perhaps I should take Maryam to the Imperial Oriental to sample Mr Myskow’s food,’ the Armenian said.

  Of course he’d picked up the gossip.

  It was a warm day, but the imam was cold. The Twisted Boy came to give him his lunch and found him hunched over a fire.

  ‘Imam Ayan,’ he said as he put the bowl of lentil soup his mother had prepared for the old man down on a table. ‘If you want to be warm, you should go outside.’

  ‘If I go outside, I have to talk to people.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘People ask for guidance.’

  The Twisted Boy manoeuvred himself into a chair beside the imam. Born with spina bifida, his real name was Ramazan, and his main job in life was to support his widowed mother. She cooked for those who couldn’t, like the imam, and received small sums of money for her labours. Ramazan delivered her food.

  ‘There’s a policeman talking to people in the coffee house,’ the boy said. ‘The simitçi says that he wants to know about some boys who come from here and make trouble in other places.’

  ‘What boys?’

  ‘He didn’t say. I thought that you could tell him about Burak and Mustafa.’

  ‘Burak and Mustafa don’t make trouble in other places!’

  Ramazan didn’t comment either way. The imam knew that the boy was as aware of his sons’ shortcomings as he was.

  ‘Because they’re missing,’ Ramazan said. ‘Maybe …’

  ‘Where they’ve gone, nobody else can follow,’ the old man said. ‘What good would it do to get the police involved?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just saying.’

  ‘Well don’t. There’s two lira on the sideboard for your mother; take it and go.’

  With difficulty, Ramazan stood and left.

  Alone with his fire and his soup, the old man looked at the text he’d received that morning from Burak. All it said was ‘Mustafa is dead.’

  Ömer Mungun recognised the type. He saw them everywhere. A woman in her mid twenties, who looked older and was way too hot. She staggered into Süleyman’s office under a heavy burden of small children, baby buggies, shopping and toys. She wore a thick woollen headscarf and a long black coat.

  Ömer offered her a chair, but she said she preferred to stand. Instead, some of the children clambered on the chair. Others ran around Ömer’s superior’s desk. The woman let them.

  ‘My husband’s gone,’ she said.

  Ömer took a pen out of a young girl’s hand just before she scribbled on Süleyman’s office chair. He’d really drawn the short straw when he and Kerim Gürsel had divided up their workload. Kerim was out interviewing the families of missing persons in their own homes. He was probably being given glasses of tea, cakes …

  ‘Mrs …’

  ‘He’s called Celal Vural,’ she said.

  She appeared to be entirely oblivious to the chaos her five children were causing. Another kid, a boy this time, had one of Süleyman’s cigarette packets in his hand.

  Ömer gave up. ‘Look, I can’t do anything with your children destroying my office,’ he said. ‘Let me explain: I share this office with my boss, who is a very particular individual. Can you please get them to sit down?’

  He sat and waited for her to arrange her children on the floor with bags of sweets. But even when they were settled, she still stood.

  ‘He’s been gone for nearly a week,’ she said.

  Ömer opened a new page on his computer screen. ‘Can you please sit down, Hanım.’

  She perched on the edge of the chair, her handbag on her lap like a shield.

  ‘What’s your husband’s name again?’

  She told him. ‘He’s thirty,’ she said. ‘We live in an apartment in Kağıthane.’

  Right next to the upmarket Etiler district, Kağıthane was only starting to experience gentrification. Traditionally it was working class, like this woman.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  The smallest child, little more than a baby, blew a large snot bubble.

  ‘He went to work and he didn’t come back,’ the woman said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  Ömer typed.

  ‘When was he due to come home?’

  ‘Sunday morning.’

  He looked at her. ‘Your husband works nights?’

  ‘More evenings,’ she said.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a waiter,’ she said. ‘He works in Beyoğlu mostly, although he does do a few hours at a nargile place in Tophane on Thursday evenings, covering for his brother on his night off. He’s not been there this week and so his brother’s been angry.’

  Ömer looked up. She was worried, and so going into detail he didn’t need. ‘Where was your husband working when he disappeared?’

  ‘At the hotel,’ she said. ‘I’ve spoken to them but they haven’t seen him. He left on Saturday night after work and they thought he’d come home. But he didn’t. He’ll lose his job, I expect.’

  ‘What time did he leave?’

  ‘Just after midnight, when his shift finishes.’

  ‘Which hotel does he work at?’ Ömer asked.

  ‘The Imperial Oriental,’ she said. ‘In the restaurant.’

  Holding on to Pembe Hanım’s bags after a shopping spree was not something that was alien to Zenne Gül. In spite of the fact that Pembe was so much taller than he was, he remained the man and so was eligible for the task of pack mule. Now they were drinking coffee in the Sugar and Spice Café and gossiping.

  ‘You know we’ve got rats,’ Gül said.

  ‘Ugh!’ Pembe waved a hand. ‘You should leave, darling. I told Sinem Hanım where you were living and she was stunned. I mean, you can do so much better than a squat.’

  ‘I like the people.’

  ‘Mmm?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t be vulgar!’ Gül laughed. ‘I don’t fancy any of them. But I do believe that what Uğur Bey is doing is good. He’s created a communal arts centre. Nobody cares what your background is as long as you are creative and have a basic appreciation of the values that informed Gezi.’

  ‘So no holy people.’

  ‘You know we have covered girls, Pembe.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not covered girls like the ones you see trailing behind their men in Fatih. Your girls all want to be doctors and have parents who live in Nişantaşı. The veil’s just their teenage rebellion.’

  Gül shook his head. ‘They’re not teenagers, they’re my friends. But let’s not argue. I like the squat because you get all sorts of people in and out. From covered girls to old ex-con generals. And they accept me just as readily as I accept them.’

  ‘Yes, but what about the fact that it’s temporary?’ Pembe said. ‘I mean, you said yourself that my Kerim Bey has been sniffing around Karaköy. Believe me, I’ve tried to find out why, but he won’t say – whatever I do …’

  Gül laughed. ‘You are so cruel to that man.’

  Pembe touched Gül’s hand. ‘Don’t be mean,’ she said. ‘I look after his wife, who I do love dearly, and he gets the most spectacular sex. But he won’t talk about his work.’

  ‘The police will come, we know that,’ Gül said.

  ‘And then they’ll smash the place up and take all your stuff. You’ll probably get beaten up into the bargain. Then you won’t be able to work.’

  Gül drank coffee. ‘Uğur Bey gave me a room when I was desperate,’ he said. ‘I owe him, and if I’m honest, I think we need to make a stand against the way the city’s being taken over by tower blocks. Gezi isn’t finished, and it won’t be until that stops. I mean, that place I lived in on Sultan Selim Caddesi should’ve been fine. I always liked that area, but it’s changed.’

  ‘The religious—’

  ‘Look, Pembe, I don’t have a problem with religious people. Not in the ordinary way of things.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re lunatics!’

  ‘No. No they’re not,’ he sai
d. ‘I know you can’t stand anything like that, but I feel differently. My mum was religious. My sisters cover. My problem was with the young boys. A lot of them are high on bonzai and know nothing about religion, but they jump on board the train because some of the carriages carry people who promise them a world of excitement. They call it jihad and it comes at them through the Internet. They are the reason I moved, not because of a lot of old men mumbling unhappily into their beards every time they saw me.’

  Pembe felt a little put down. But she ignored it. ‘So the rats …’

  ‘The rats are in an old bathhouse out the back of the kitchen,’ Gül said. ‘Ziya, the biker with the tattoos, was in there last night with a very large knife. I swear he believed I hadn’t seen it, but it was all too visible. They’re probably all dead now. He’s a pretty thorough guy.’

  ‘Good. You don’t want vermin.’

  ‘No. But …’ Gül shook his head.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The building’s dilapidated and we’re near the water, but I’ve never seen any rats. Ziya went in there with a knife the size of a small scimitar.’

  ‘Oh, you know what those macho types are like, darling,’ Pembe said. ‘Everything’s a tiger in the bushes to them.’

  Chapter 8

  Cetin İkmen felt both elated and nervous. While Ömer Mungun’s investigation into the disappearance of Celal Vural provided an opportunity for further monitoring of Boris Myskow’s restaurant, with the American under official protection, how was that going to look?

  Commissioner Teker said, ‘We’ll have to come clean.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘I’ll have to contact his lawyer,’ she said. ‘Let him know what’s happened.’

  ‘Thereby alerting Myskow, who for all we know may have something to do with Vural’s disappearance.’

  ‘Mrs Vural said that her husband was happy in his job,’ Ömer Mungun said.

  ‘Maybe he was,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe he’s run away with another woman and his employers have nothing to do with his disappearance. But knowing what we know about Mr Myskow’s activities, we also know that he breaks the law. And he gets protection while he does it. If it’s Vural’s flesh that was in Ümit Kavaş’s stomach … But then it can’t be. He didn’t go missing until the Saturday night.’

  Teker sighed. ‘No, he didn’t. All right, not the lawyer,’ she said. ‘But I’ll have to contact someone.’

  They all knew who she meant.

  ‘And yes, I know you hate spooks,’ she said. ‘I do too. But we don’t know what interest they have in Boris Myskow, or why.’

  ‘They’re protecting him. He knows they’re protecting him!’

  ‘Of course. But he may not know why,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he thinks their interest is in his wild boar activities. But they may only want him to think that. They move to the sound of a different drum.’

  ‘Usually to our detriment,’ İkmen said.

  The rivalry between the police and the security services was well known and long-standing. It was at its most intense when their investigations overlapped. With countries on almost every border with Turkey in states of conflict, this happened more often than ever.

  Teker said, ‘Sergeant Mungun, you’re working with Inspectors İkmen and Süleyman on the Kavaş case, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘How did you come into contact with this Vural woman?’

  ‘Along with Sergeant Gürsel, I’ve been assigned to assess our missing persons file,’ he said. ‘Because our victim could be almost anyone male who went missing any time from one week ago to, well …’

  ‘Yes, I know what freezers can do, Sergeant Mungun.’

  ‘When we’re working together, we split tasks. Today Kerim, Sergeant Gürsel, was out interviewing friends and relatives of the missing and I was working in the office. Mrs Vural came into the station and was directed to me.’

  ‘I see.’ She looked at İkmen. ‘How many missing persons do we have at present?’

  ‘More than we thought,’ he said.

  ‘Once you’d taken into account a possible historic element?’

  ‘Forensic have assured me that frozen meat can be pleasantly edible for up to a year,’ İkmen said.

  She nodded. ‘Sadly, that is a phrase that will not pass quickly from my mind, but I know what you mean.’ Then she said, ‘Leave it with me. Somehow we will have to find a way of getting back into the Imperial Oriental Hotel without upsetting Mr Myskow or his friends. Thank you, Sergeant Mungun, you may go.’

  ‘Madam.’

  Mungun left. İkmen made to follow him, but Teker held up a hand.

  ‘Not you, Cetin Bey.’

  He closed her office door and sat down.

  ‘Have you put anyone in place at the Imperial Oriental yet?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve sent texts,’ İkmen said.

  ‘To an informant?’

  ‘I listened to what you said last night, and how even here we have to be careful. He works in the tourist industry. He’s not got back to me, but he will.’

  ‘I assume you can trust this person?’

  ‘I could finish his career,’ İkmen said. Then he added. ‘I’m not proud of that, but …’

  ‘Frightening times make spooks of us all,’ she said. ‘Let me know when he gets back to you. If he doesn’t, I have an idea.’

  Everyone in the Çarşamba area of Fatih district had perfect children. Mehmet Süleyman had been expecting it. Had he asked the same questions of fathers in the upscale secular district of Nişantaşı, he would have got the same answers. As it was, the kufi-wearing religious denizens of the Çarşamba coffee houses were quite certain that their kids would never cause trouble in other parts of the city.

  One elderly man who apparently had a twelve-year-old son had said, ‘Why would they? We don’t bring our children up to stray. Here our boys have their mothers, their mosque and the friends they will have for the rest of their lives. Why would they want to go somewhere else?’

  Süleyman could have made more than a few suggestions, but he hadn’t. He saw the contempt in the eyes of some of the teenage boys he came across – and the envy. It was all very well for those youngsters who were content with the simple life of the neighbourhood, but a lot were not. When he’d sat down outside the first coffee house he’d come to, he’d seen the way some of the kids looked at his mobile phone. They had them too, but few had the latest models. They were carried by slightly older men in their twenties and thirties who otherwise gave the appearance of sober, traditional piety. Along with the stylish phones went beards, black şalvar trousers and tunics that in some cases strained to cover their well-developed chests. Some were Syrian refugees, but a lot weren’t. Long gone were the days of skinny migrant men from Anatolia living in shacks in old Byzantine cisterns. These men were connected. What they were not were the stone- and abuse-throwers the squatters had described. There were plenty of candidates for that, running around the streets being ‘perfect’. But now they’d been warned, maybe the harassment would stop. For a while.

  He was about to walk back over the hill to his mistress’s much more convivial district when he noticed that a man was staring at him. Not unusual behaviour in a district like Çarşamba. Süleyman was about to ignore it when the starer, an old man, walked over.

  ‘I need to speak to you, bey efendi,’ he said, addressing the policeman formally.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But not out here. Would you come to my home?’

  ‘Yes. What is your name?’

  ‘I am Imam Özgür Ayan,’ he said. And then he began to cry.

  Meltem was conflicted. On the one hand, she loved living at the Art House, because she could pursue her writing in peace. She was also able to share a room with her best friend, Ahu. They’d been to school together at Notre Dame de Sion. Ahu shared her views on everything, including covering. But there were down sides. The house could get v
ery noisy on occasion, a lot of the residents smoked, and there was alcohol. However, at the present time, Meltem was more concerned about food than anything else. The Anatolia Gold scandal didn’t seem to bother anyone in the house except Ahu and her. She’d spoken to Uğur Bey about it many times and he had assured her that the kitchen was guaranteed pork-free. But then she’d seen a tin of beans in one of the larders. It had been an Anatolia Gold product from the previous year. It had to be contaminated. Either Uğur Bey had missed it or he’d lied. Either way, she knew she couldn’t trust him.

  Now it was dark and most of the residents were out. Uğur Bey had taken his family over to Üsküdar to visit his mother, Ahu was at a study group evening and most of the others were out at local bars. She had the kitchen to herself.

  The fridge contained bottles of beer, but there was nothing she could do about that. As long as she wasn’t drinking alcohol herself, that was all right. Alcohol was contained. What was so frightening about pork was that it could be anywhere. Ziya had some slices of something meaty on his shelf, which was directly above hers, but she didn’t dare touch it. Instead she moved her food towards the back of the fridge so that it didn’t sit underneath his stuff. But it wasn’t really the fridge that bothered her. It was the larders.

  She’d just seen one tin of beans and that had freaked her. How many more were there? What if there were a lot and she threw them all out? Would people be angry, or wouldn’t they notice?

  But whatever happened, there was no point prevaricating. She either looked or she didn’t. She knew the one tin she had found was in the cupboard nearest the back door. She started there. The offending tin was still there and, now that she looked more carefully, it wasn’t the only Anatolia Gold product on the shelves. There were lots more behind. Meltem shook her head. Was it all right to touch tins that contained pork? If only her parents had been religious, she would have grown up knowing such things. But her entire family was secular and so she, like Ahu, knew very little. Maybe when Ahu returned from her study evening she’d be able to advise her.

  Meltem opened the back door. If she threw the tins straight into the bin and then washed her hands, that had to be OK. She could carry four tins at a time, and as far as she could see, she’d need to make about five trips.