On the Bone Page 9

  It was on her fourth trip that someone grabbed her from behind.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’ Süleyman said.

  Imam Ayan shook his head. ‘The shame. I know it’s ridiculous, but I felt that if I just ignored it, they’d come back and all would be well. I told people they’d gone to visit their uncle, my brother, in Afyon. But then it became unbearable and so I told the truth. Some people here applauded, said the boys were martyrs. And in spite of all my learning, my years and years of study devoted to Islam, I wondered. I tricked myself into believing that if I told the police, I would be committing a sin. I deluded myself.’

  Süleyman sat down beside the old man. ‘Do you have any idea where Burak was texting from?’

  ‘I have my phone.’ He held it out. ‘You can take it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Imam Ayan was not of a generation that could easily deal with mobile phones. Süleyman quickly scrolled through the text register.

  ‘So the text came first. When did you receive the call from your son?’

  ‘About two.’

  ‘Any other calls since?’

  ‘A couple. Local people.’

  There was a number unknown at 2:23.

  ‘I’ll have to get our technical people to try and trace it,’ he said.

  ‘He called from Syria.’ The imam shook his head. ‘From that terrible place they all go. What did I do wrong, bey efendi? I have always tried to live by the Holy Koran. I have spoken out about the horrors that people commit in the name of our religion. These are people I warned my sons about every day!’

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ Süleyman said. ‘Do you know who Burak and Mustafa might have been associating with in recent months? How old are they?’

  ‘Burak is nineteen, Mustafa seventeen – he is the larger of the two. They have no work. That has been a problem. Too much time spent in that park.’

  ‘The one in the cistern.’

  ‘Yes, all sorts hang around there. I have nothing against the refugees who have come from Syria, but not all of them are good people. Some of the boys who beg in the streets also steal.’

  ‘Your sons befriended these Syrians?’

  ‘Some. But what do I know? My wife, a Syrian herself, died many years ago, and I haven’t been there for the boys like a mother can. I’ve had to work.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Did your sons have some curiosity about their mother’s country?’ Süleyman said.

  He shrugged. ‘Not that I know about. All that interested them, apart from being in the park, was that computer I got them.’

  Süleyman looked around the room, but he didn’t see a computer.

  ‘It’s in their bedroom,’ the imam said. ‘Oh, they nearly drove me mad asking and asking for that thing.’

  ‘When did you get it?’

  ‘Last year,’ he said. ‘An Apple. I paid so much money for it! But they were delighted. On it every night.’

  Süleyman began to feel cold. Hanging around with a few Syrian refugees probably hadn’t done the boys too much harm. Even mixing with local austere and pious youth probably wasn’t enough. But if the Ayan boys had been radicalised, then the Internet had probably been their greatest influence.

  ‘Can I see the computer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The old man took him to a small room upstairs where two neat beds were overshadowed by a very large computer screen.

  ‘I bought the best and biggest one that I could afford.’

  ‘Can I switch it on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Süleyman sat down on one of the beds and started the machine.

  ‘Is it password-protected?’

  ‘Oh yes, my neighbour Imad Bey set that up for us. It is the name of my late wife, Zanubiya.’

  He spelled it out while Süleyman typed.

  A sound like the opening chords of a military march heralded the coming of the screen saver, which was ghastly.

  She didn’t know who was speaking. He didn’t introduce himself. He just arrived in her office.

  ‘You see the difficulty we have,’ Commissioner Teker said.

  ‘I do.’

  He was younger than her, probably forty, and looked as if he had a drink problem. Unshaven and, by the look of his eyes, sleep-deprived, he stank of cigarettes and cheap aftershave. His whole demeanour was that of a man who hunted and was hunted for a living.

  ‘We thought, begging your pardon, that Boris Myskow had entered our jurisdiction when we discovered wild boar in his freezers,’ Teker said. ‘We were clearly wrong. But a missing person is most definitely under our jurisdiction.’

  ‘I can see you’d think that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, isn’t it?’

  He scratched his head.

  ‘One of his employees has gone missing,’ she continued. ‘His wife has contacted us expecting that we fulfil our duty and look for him. She says that the last time she saw him was on Saturday evening, when he left for work at the Imperial Oriental. No one called her from the hotel to say that he hadn’t arrived, and so she, and we, have to assume that he completed his shift. If we don’t look for Celal Vural, it will seem odd.’

  ‘Myskow is not your business.’

  ‘Maybe not, but he is Vural’s employer. We have to question him. Can you see my problem?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  His hands fidgeted. She knew the score. He needed a cigarette. But she didn’t open her window and offer him the chance to smoke, as she routinely did with Cetin İkmen. Whoever he was, he marched to the kind of drum that could damage her for breaking the rules, even in a small way.

  ‘So what do I do?’ she said.

  She hated having any sort of contact with people like him. Spooks made her blood boil. She knew that sometimes they were needed. But she didn’t have to like it.

  The man sighed. ‘I’ll get back to you,’ he said.

  ‘And will that take long?’

  It wasn’t easy not to shout at him. A woman and her children were without their breadwinner. For them it was serious, and if Celal Vural’s body turned up in a rubbish bin somewhere in the meantime, it could be as serious as it got.

  The man stood. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he reiterated.

  Teker wondered how long it would take. The man’s organisation could be very quick to move when they wanted, but they could also be glacially slow when they didn’t. She remained seated. ‘I need an answer.’

  ‘You’ll get one.’

  ‘Soon.’

  He looked down his nose at her, barely suppressing a sneer. She knew what he thought of her. She was an old bag who should have retired years ago. She looked into his eyes and could see that he’d marked her in his head. A troublesome woman.

  Fuck it. ‘Unlike you, I have to deal directly with the wife and the wider public,’ she said. ‘Make sure it’s soon, and close my office door on your way out.’

  She very pointedly looked at her computer.

  He slammed the door when he left and she cursed him. ‘Arsehole!’

  ‘You!’

  Meltem had recognised the boy who hurled abuse at them immediately. Small, dark and dressed in dirty black clothes, he was one of the kids from Fatih district. But he wasn’t usually on his own.

  ‘Where are the other boys?’ she asked.

  She’d had to fight him off. He’d come in through the kitchen door and put his hand over her mouth. She’d bitten it. Then she’d punched him. Now he was crouched in a corner beside the washing machine, holding his hand up to staunch the bleeding.

  ‘Well?’

  She towered over him. He didn’t meet her gaze. Nor did he speak. But then she remembered that he probably didn’t understand what she was saying. İsmet Bey had tried to talk to him and found out that he only spoke Arabic. Meltem had studied Arabic at university. She said, ‘OK, let’s get down to business, shall we? What do you want? And what’s this rubbish about İsmet Bey doing something bad with your friends?’

 
The boy’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she said. ‘That easier for you? Or are you so surprised that you’ve just been bitten by a covered woman that you need some time to absorb the shock?’

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘Lost your voice, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  He mumbled into his own hunched chest. Meltem shook her head.

  ‘So you now know I can speak your language,’ she said. ‘Then let’s talk, shall we? What do you want? Why won’t you leave us alone, and what do you think we’ve done with your friends?’

  ‘I don’t know. Killed them.’

  ‘Killed them?’ she laughed. ‘Why would we do that, eh? They’re just kids like you. Honestly, if you think you and your loud-mouthed friends are anything other than an annoyance to us …’

  ‘They came here and then they disappeared,’ the boy said.

  ‘What, inside the building? That’s stupid. No one would just let people like them in here. This is the second time you’ve broken in here, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some man hit me.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘But I do know those boys you hang around with. They’re not here.’

  Slowly, the boy stood. He was very small.

  ‘I thought that because you are a sister you would understand, but you don’t.’

  Meltem clicked her tongue. Why did men and boys with any sort of Islamist agenda think that she would automatically agree with anything they said?

  ‘If you weren’t talking rubbish then I might,’ she said. ‘If your friends have disappeared, it’s nothing to do with us. Maybe they’ve run away to do what they think in their twisted little minds is jihad.’

  Meltem had had quite enough of these kids.

  ‘And anyway, you assaulted me,’ she said. ‘I think your story about your friends is nonsense. You just wanted to get in here so you could steal from us.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh I think the young lady is right.’

  Meltem recognised the voice; it made her smile.

  ‘Deniz Bey.’

  He was old enough to be her grandfather, but Major General Deniz Baydar was charming, handsome and possessed the most exquisite manners. He was also a friend of Uğur Bey.

  ‘I didn’t know you could speak Arabic,’ Meltem said.

  ‘Ah, there is a lot that isn’t known about me,’ Deniz Bey said.

  ‘All good?’

  ‘Of course!’

  They both laughed.

  Deniz Bey changed to Turkish. ‘So what is …?’

  Meltem saw his face drop.

  ‘Bey efendi?’

  ‘Wasn’t there a boy here just now?’ the old soldier said.

  Meltem turned her head and saw that the Syrian had gone.

  Chapter 9

  One of the Ayan boys’ favourite websites was entirely in English.

  ‘Think they just liked the pictures?’ Cetin İkmen said.

  Mehmet Süleyman winced. On the screen, men dressed entirely in black nailed a man already covered in blood to a cross. The victim’s screams were hard to bear. He turned the sound off.

  İkmen leaned back in his chair.

  ‘If the Ayan boys have gone to Syria, what does the imam want us to do about it?’ he said.

  Süleyman sighed. ‘I think he has some notion that we can get the surviving boy back.’

  ‘Well we can’t. If he’s in Syria, then that’s that. All we can do is find out whether these particular boys radicalised any other kids and warn their parents. Why wasn’t the imam on top of this?’

  ‘To be fair to Imam Ayan, his sin, for want of a better word, was not one of radicalisation but of omission,’ Süleyman said. ‘The boys’ mother died when they were small, and he didn’t spend much time with them. She was Syrian, by the way.’

  ‘Ah. Family still in the country?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Süleyman said. ‘She was a Christian. She converted to Islam when she married the imam.’

  ‘Mmm, few Christians in Syria now. Unless the family were from Damascus, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes, but even if they are still in the country, the boys wouldn’t have gone to them, would they?’ Süleyman said. He pointed to the computer screen. ‘They’ve gone to be with this lot. We’ll have to see what else the technicians can get off this machine and from the imam’s phone.’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘I take it you got a less than enthusiastic greeting in the neighbourhood?’

  ‘If the Ayan boys were sharing this material with their friends, it probably found some willing viewers,’ he said. ‘But then maybe that’s my cynicism speaking. Not all bored young boys will be attracted to this.’

  ‘But a proportion will be.’

  ‘Yes. Sadly. I did ring Uğur İnan at the squat, and he said they’d had no trouble from kids in the last few days. I wonder if a whole group have gone.’

  ‘Did you ask the imam if he knew of any other cases?’

  ‘Yes, and he said he didn’t. I know you don’t like clerics …’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t like them.’

  ‘You have issues,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘But Imam Ayan did do quite a brave thing by talking to me. Maybe it’ll lead to others coming forward.’

  ‘Or trouble for the imam?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. Say what you like about that area, people do respect their religious leaders. If Ayan is vocal about his disgust for what his boys have done, maybe others will follow.’

  İkmen turned the computer screen off. ‘I can’t take any more of that. How has the world got into this state, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  They sat in silence for a few moments, then İkmen said, ‘And this isn’t even part of our investigation, which may have got rather more complicated in light of a finding from the forensic laboratory that Dr Sarkissian has promised to talk to me about tomorrow morning.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Our cannibalised victim was a carrier of a rare disease, apparently.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘He wanted to be a hundred per cent certain the results were correct before he told me,’ İkmen said. ‘But apparently, according to the doctor, if the lab is right, we could have even more problems with this investigation.’

  ‘Arto?’

  He looked up. Had he really been staring at his napkin?

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Maryam Sarkissian said. ‘Are you not feeling well?’

  Cetin İkmen had suggested he come to this very prestigious restaurant and keep his wits about him, and he was drifting off into space. But then that too was indirectly because of Cetin İkmen. Waiting for the kind of phone call he was expecting was hard. If that first test on the consumed human flesh was confirmed by a second, then they were in an even more bizarre world of possibilities than they’d been in to begin with. Every part of him wanted it to be wrong. But every part of him also knew that it wasn’t.

  ‘I’ve decided on the scallop tartare with nasturtiums,’ his wife said.

  Arto looked at the menu. Unlike Cetin İkmen, he enjoyed food. But this wasn’t his kind of meal. Things like scallops and foie gras didn’t excite him. A large bowl of lentil soup, or even tripe, was more his sort of thing. Eventually he settled on prawns.

  When the waiter had taken their order, he got on with the job at hand and looked around. He could remember when the Imperial Oriental had been called the Kazanjian Hotel, after its one-time owner, Zenor Kazanjian. Arto’s parents had often dined at the old restaurant, not that Zenor Kazanjian had been running the place even then. He and his family had left the city for the USA by that time. When he looked around, Arto could see only one man he recognised as Armenian. He wondered if he, a local car dealer, came because the restaurant had once been Armenian-owned.

  ‘How clever of you to get a cancellation,’ Maryam said.

  ‘Thank y
ou.’

  Oddly, it had been easy. He had wondered whether maybe Istanbul had fallen out of love with Boris Myskow’s revolutionary cooking. But the place was full. He must’ve just got lucky. He smiled at his wife. ‘You look lovely.’

  She turned her head away slightly. Going out in public was still a strain for Maryam Sarkissian. An innate feeling of inferiority had plagued her all her life. This had not been helped by multiple plastic surgery operations designed to improve what she considered to be her flawed looks and thereby bolster her self-esteem. None of it had ever contented her, and for years she’d been almost a recluse in the huge Sarkissian house on the shores of the Bosphorus. Now she was getting out a few times a month. She had been delighted when her husband had booked this meal.

  ‘I’ve seen Chef Myskow on the BBC,’ Maryam said. ‘Do you think we’ll see him in here tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  There were plenty of other celebrity types on show. Arto could see one talk-show host and several footballers. However, there was also, behind a pillar nearest to the service area, a table featuring a very incongruous group of men. Although quiet and well behaved, unlike everyone else they were not dressed for dinner. They weren’t dirty, but their clothes were ordinary, cheap, and not one of them wore a tie. They looked a bit like a group of un-uniformed security guards on a cigarette break, though obviously they weren’t smoking.

  But then Arto’s phone rang and he forgot about the tie-less men in the corner.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  Meltem pushed Gül away, but she laughed as she did so.

  ‘I’m telling you, the old man has the hots for you,’ Zenne Gül said.

  ‘Deniz Bey is very proper,’ Meltem said. ‘He always behaves like a gentleman, and anyway, he’s married.’

  ‘To a much older woman than you.’

  Gül threw himself down on the biggest floor cushion in the room and leaned his head back. ‘I am exhausted!’

  Meltem sat down beside him. ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘Carrying Pembe Hanım’s shopping,’ he said. ‘Never again. I am half her size. You know, when she was a man, she was actually in the marines.’

  It was dark outside now, and Meltem was tired. But she was anxious too. The appearance of the Syrian boy had unnerved her. Deniz Bey had told her the child was simply an unfortunate derelict, maddened by war. But until very recently he had always turned up in the street with others. Two boys who spoke Turkish. Older than the Syrian, they’d been rude and aggressive. One of them had called her a whore. She’d ignored him. Why did the Syrian boy think that anyone in the squat would want to invite such people inside? She hadn’t seen them. But what he wasn’t deluded about was the fact that the other boys seemed to have gone somewhere.