River of the dead by Barbara Nadel

Convicted killer and drug baron Yusuf Kaya has
escaped from a high-security prison in Istanbul,
leaving a trail of bodies and blood in his wake;
it is clear he's had inside help.

As Inspector ikmen begins to investigate,
his troublesome son unexpectedly returns to the
family home, ikmen's wife is overjoyed, but
ikmen can't help but feel uneasy. As he delves
deeper into Kaya's past, those associated with
the prison break begin to disappear at an
alarming rate. Then, suddenly, ikmen's own son
vanishes...

Meanwhile, Inspector Mehmet Suleyman travels
to Kaya's hometown of Mardin, a dangerous city
in southeast Turkey, where the missing gang
leader might be hiding out. On his way there
Suleyman makes a gruesome discovery: the
faceless body of an American soldier floating
in the Euphrates river.

It isn't long before the two inspectors uncover a
terrifying conspiracy of drug running, murder,
blackmail and betrayal...

headline£19.99
Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel used to
work in mental health services. Born in the East
End of London, she now writes full time and has
been a regular visitor to Turkey for over twenty
years. She received the Crime Writers'
Association Silver Dagger for her novel Deadly
Web. She is also the author of the highly
acclaimed Francis Hancock crime series set in
World War Two.
By Barbara Nadel and available from Headline

The Inspector Ikmen series:
Belshazzar's Daughter
A Chemical Prison
Arabesk
Deep Waters
Harem
Petrified
Deadly Web
Dance with Death
¦A Passion for Killing
Pretty Dead Things
River of the Dead

The Hancock series:
Last Rights
I IAfter the Mourning
Ashes to Ashes

h
BARBARA
MAD

headline
Copyright © 2009 Barbara Nadel

The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2009 by
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

1

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with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of
reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of
licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

All characters in this publication are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7553 3564 0 (Hardback)
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To Alex, Pat and Lisa - fellow travellers
on the road to the east.
Cast of Characters

'IIstanbul
Cetin ikmen - Istanbul police inspector
Mehmet Siileyman - Istanbul police inspector - ikmen's protege
Commissioner Ardic - ikmen's and Suleyman's boss
Sergeant Ay§e Farsakoglu - ikmen's deputy
Sergeant Izzet Melik - Suleyman's deputy
Dr Arto Sarkissian - istanbul police pathologist
Fatma ikmen - Cetin ikmen's wife
Zelfa Siileyman - Mehmet Suleyman's wife
Cicek ikmen - Cetin ikmen's daughter
Bekir ikmen - Cetin ikmen's son
Kemal ikmen - Cetin ikmen's son
Biilent ikmen - Cetin ikmen's son
Yusuf Kaya - escaped prisoner
Ramazan Eren - prison guard
Cengiz Bayar - prison guard
Ara Berkoz - prisoner
Mr Aktar - hospital administrator
Dr Eldem - neurologist
tsak Mardin - nurse
Murat Lole - nurse
Faruk Oz - nurse
Sophia - Bulgarian girl, a beggar


In the east

Inspector Edibe Taner - Mardin police inspector
Captain Hilmi Erdur - of the Birecik Jandarma
Se§kin Taner - Edibe Taner's father

Seraphim Yunun - a Syrian monk

Gabriel Saati - a Syrian monk

Musa Saatci - Gabriel Saatci's father

Zeynep Kaya - Yusuf Kaya's wife

Bulbul Kaplan - Yusuf Kaya's aunt

Anastasia Akyuz - a prostitute

Elizabeth Smith - an American

Ibrahim Keser - works for Elizabeth Smith

Ltitfii Giines - a Kurd

Lucine Rezian - elderly Armenian woman
Prelude

'I'm going to be sick!'
The figure in the wheelchair slumped forward as if to emphasise the
point. Prison guard Ramazan Eren, who was pushing the chair, said,
'Hang on, Yusuf, we're nearly there.'
'You should have cuffed him,' police constable Mete said angrily.
'He's having a heart attack!' Eren responded sharply.
There were four men with the individual in the wheelchair - two
police constables and two prison guards. The man in the chair, their
charge, was Yusuf Kaya: drug dealer, murderer and one of Istanbul's
most notorious criminals. Late the previous evening, back in his cell at
Kartal High Security Prison, he had started experiencing chest pains.
The prison doctor had been called and had found little to concern him.
But then in the early hours of the morning Kaya's condition had seemed
to deteriorate. The prison governor ordered Ramazan Eren, the guard
who had first reported Kaya's illness, and a colleague, Cengiz Bayar,
to take the prisoner to the Cerrahpa§a Hospital for further tests and
possibly treatment. There they had been joined by two police officers.
Yusuf Kaya was known to be a very violent offender and, sick or not,
no chances were being taken.
The officers had just rounded the corner on their way to the cardiology
clinic when Yusuf Kaya began to complain of feelings of nausea.
Up ahead was a group of young men, a couple of whom appeared, to
Cengiz Bayar, to be in uniform.
'Look, Yusuf, there are some nurses,' he said. 'We'll get them to find
you a bowl or something.'
He called out to the men, four in all, who began walking towards the
officers and their wheelchair-bound charge.

1
'We're talking this man to cardiology,' Cengiz Bayar said as the group
drew level with them. 'Could you--'
But the pain from the knife or whatever it was that one of the men
thrust into his chest was so awful it took his power of speech clean
away. One of the police officers began to shout, but Yusuf Kaya soon
put a stop to him. Miraculously well again, he leapt up from the wheelchair,
took something sharp from the hand of one of the unknown men
and killed the policeman stone dead.
The last two things prison officer Cengiz Bayar saw in this world
were his colleagues collapsing around him in fountains of blood and
a very fit Yusuf Kaya running off to freedom down the hospital
corridor.

'Who are you?' Kemal ikmen asked.
'Who are youT the man with the thick gold chains round his neck
replied. There was something aggressive in the man's approach that
Kemal, for all his teenage bravado, didn't like. There was also, more
strangely, something about him that was vaguely familiar too.
'Listen, son, does Inspector Cetin ikmen live here or not?' the man
continued gruffly. 'If he does, I'd like to see him, and if he doesn't--'
'Yeah, but who wants to know?' Kemal interrupted. The boy's father,
Cetin ikmen, was a high-ranking and successful officer in the istanbul
police force. He therefore had a lot of enemies as well as some very
odd and unnerving relatives who, like Cetin ikmen's late mother, came
originally from Albania. It was well known that some Albanian gang
members could be very 'flash', just like this gold-covered creature at
the apartment door.
'You're beginning to get on my nerves, boy!' the man said.
Kemal, for all his bluster, felt his face go cold with fear.
'Does Inspector ikmen live here or not?'
If this man was a relative he was, if Kemal were honest with himself,
really out of character. The Albanian relatives were weird - one of them
even dressed up as a woman - but they weren't exactly frightening, not
like this man. Cold sweat invaded the underside of Kemal's shirt collar.
Almost unconsciously he said, 'Dad?'
But his father didn't appear. Instead it was his mother's voice that
came from inside the apartment.

'Kemal, who is it?' Fatma ikmen said.

The man in front of him blinked as if reacting to something irritating
around his eyes, and nervously licked his lips.

'It's a .. .' Kemal began, but then his words simply faded in his throat.
'It's . . .'

'Oh, for the love of . . .' The sound of a woman grunting somewhat
painfully to her feet was followed by the shuffling of slippers across
carpet. Fatma ikmen, her head covered with a floral scarf, burst out of
the living room into the hallway behind her youngest and, she often
thought, silliest child Kemal. How difficult was it to answer a door?
She pushed Kemal roughly out of the way, and then she stopped.

Kemal, who could only see the strange man's face from where he
was standing, frowned when he saw this person give his mother what
he felt was a very familiar smile. His mother in response said only,
'No!'

'Oh, yes!' the man said as he opened his arms in front of her. 'Oh
yes it is!'

'I can't. ..'

'Mum, it's me, Bekir!' the man said.

'It is? It isV Fatma ikmen threw her short, plump body into the arms
of someone Kemal had always thought of as almost a myth. Bekir, his
bad boy rebellious brother, had run away from home when he was
fifteen. Kemal hadn't even been born then. And until this moment not
a word had been heard nor hair been sighted of him since. His father,
pounds tin ikmen, who had followed the boy's mother out of the living room
and was now standing beside Kemal with a smouldering cigarette between
his lips, had privately believed that his third son had died some years
before. While Fatma cried copiously into the arms of her long-lost child,
pounds tin didn't move from his position at all. He just looked. And when
the man Kemal now knew was his brother smiled at their father, the
youngster noticed that Cretin ikmen did not smile back. In fact, if anything,
Inspector ikmen looked appalled about the appearance of this ghost from
the past.
Chapter 1

Every police officer in the city of Istanbul spent almost every waking
moment looking for the escaped convict Yusuf Kay a. For three days and
nights the entire city, or so it seemed to its residents, was turned upside
down. Every bar, every nightclub, every bathhouse - anywhere Kay a
might have had a market for his cocaine and his heroin - was raided.
Every one of his old neighbours in his home district of Tarlaba§i was
questioned. Those not drifting into or out of a heroin-induced haze
claimed to know nothing about him. Those drugged up to the eyes didn't
know what year it was. But the investigating officer, Inspector Mehmet
Siileyman, knew Tarlaba§i of old. Yusuf Kay a had in fact been arrested
by the handsome and urbane Siileyman the previous summer. On what
had probably been the hottest day in that July, Siileyman and his men
had raided Kaya's crumbling fifth-floor apartment and found a considerable
quantity of heroin and two dead bodies. One was Kaya's mistress,
a Syrian prostitute called Hana; the other was a rival drug dealer, a
Russian called Tommi Kerensky.
When Siileyman and his men raided the apartment, Hana had been
dead for some days. But as the inspector's informant had intimated,
Tommi had been tortured for many hours and had only just died when
the police arrived. Kay a, calmly as was his wont, was sawing one of
the Russian's legs off when he was arrested. That someone so dangerous
- 'psychopathic', the psychiatrist who had assessed him after his arrest
had said - was free once again was a frightening thought. And while
his colleague pounds tin ikmen worked on trying to determine from the
Cerrahpa§a Hospital just who those nurses and cleaners who freed Kaya
might have been, it was up to Siileyman to find out whether the prisoner
had been or was back home.
Less than a week after the arrest, Kaya's landlord had rented his apartment
out to another man. Adem Ceylan was a known heroin user who
was a familiar sight in rougher parts of the city like Tarlaba§i. For years
he'd been living, on and off, with a German woman called Regina who
was also a junkie, known to the police as a very persistent beggar in
the main Beyoglu shopping area of Istiklal Street. Filthy and screaming
with hatred for just about everyone and everything, Regina could terrify
even quite large groups of tourists into giving her money.

Adem let the tall inspector and his shorter, fatter sergeant izzet Melik
into what passed for his sitting room and then, breathlessly, sat down.

'Those stairs don't get any easier!' he said as he coughed on a soggy
hand-rolled cigarette.

Suleyman looked around, unsurprised that the place looked almost
identical to what he'd seen of it the previous year. Even the chairs and
tables were Kaya's. But then junkies were not the best housekeepers
going and he was simply relieved that his officers had cleaned up
Tommi's blood before they left. Both Suleyman and Melik declined the
foul seats that Adem offered them.

'You know of course about Yusuf Kaya,' Suleyman said without
preamble.

Adem nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'I was a bit frightened that he might
come back here. Went to see my landlord as it happens, I was so worried.
Not for myself, you understand, but with Regina .. .'

It was hard to reconcile the image of the spitting, cursing Regina
with someone who needed to be protected, but both Suleyman and Melik
nodded anyway.

'What did your landlord tell you?' Suleyman asked.

He had already spoken to Kaya's old landlord himself. That too hadn't
been a comfortable experience. The landlord, though not a drug user or
even a drinker, was a man unaccustomed to personal hygiene. As his
many, many grime-stained children ran around their father, Suleyman
watched in horror as the landlord's hair moved to the rhythm of a million
or so blood-sucking nits. It wasn't a sight that an experienced police
officer in his forties, like Suleyman, hadn't seen before. But it was one
that even now turned the stomach of a man who came from a gracious,
if impoverished, Ottoman family. As it happened, the landlord had, as
he always did, claimed to know nothing about anything. But maybe
speaking to someone not in authority, like Adem, was different.

'My landlord reckons the Christians know something,' Adem said
darkly.

'The Christians?'

Adem tipped his head in the direction of the window behind his chair.
'Over at the church,' he said. 'That Hana, the one he ... Well... She
was a Christian. Sudani. Every Sunday over at the Virgin Mary church
she was. Atoning for her sins, I imagine. But Kaya, so my landlord says,
was a Christian too.'

Izzet Melik rolled his eyes at yet another stupid myth. 'Kaya isn't a
Christian,' he said. 'I think some people round here would like to think
he's different from them. But he's a Muslim.'

'Yes, but my landlord says that the Christians at the church--'

'Kaya comes originally from Mardin, which is a city with a considerable
Christian population,' Suleyman said. 'But he himself is not one
of them. As you say, his unfortunate victim was, and you may remember
that many people, including myself, attended Hana Karim's funeral
service at the Virgin Mary church. The clergy over there know little of
Kaya.'

Adem shrugged. 'I'm just going on what my landlord said.'

izzet Melik turned his heavily mustachioed face towards his boss and
shook his head. There was no point in continuing the conversation with
Adem. He obviously had some sort of fixation, whether in reality taken
from his landlord or not, that Yusuf Kaya was a Christian. Anything
more about the escapee he claimed not to know.

Once outside the rotten and peeling apartment building, both izzet
Melik and Mehmet Suleyman lit up cigarettes.

'What do you think, Inspector?' izzet said as he looked down the
litter-strewn street, through the tall line of dilapidated nineteenth-century
apartment buildings. The church, to the left of where the men were
standing, was the only building in the whole quarter that looked cared
for.

Suleyman sighed. 'I don't think Kaya came back here,' he said. 'Why
would he? His old henchmen are either long gone or dead. I think he's
probably abroad by now.'
'The people who sprang him were certainly professional,' izzet Melik
said.
'Absolutely. To kill three officers and effectively disable, probably
permanently, a fourth takes some doing.' He looked around at the hot,
filthy street with distaste, and then added, 'You don't find people like
that in Tarlabas§i. Or rather' - he smiled - 'I don't think you do.'
'It's only the priests at the church who aren't stoned out of their
minds round here,' izzet said.
'Yes, and Kay a himself when he lived here,' his superior agreed.
'Until the unfortunate Tommi tried to move in on the quarter, Mr Kay a
had this very big market for his products all to himself.'
'Kaya never used himself?'
Suleyman smiled again. 'Oh, no, izzet,' he said. 'Yusuf Kaya was a
very good drug dealer. He never, ever touched his own products. It was
because he was always straight, basically, that he killed Hana Karim.'
izzet frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'It is said that Yusuf noticed that Hana's behaviour changed some
time towards the end of 2004. He watched her and discovered that she
was having an affair with another man. If he'd been off the planet on
heroin he would never even have noticed. Doesn't mean he's not a raving
lunatic, however, as we well know. One does not cross Yusuf Kaya.'

Tucked away behind a small suite of lecture rooms, the office of the
administrator of the Cerrahpa§a Hospital was both clean and quiet.
Mercifully distant from the chaotic medical business of the hospital, it
was a place where, he hoped, pounds tin ikmen could interview the facility's
senior managerial official in peace.
'What you have to understand, Inspector, is that hospital cleaning
staff come and go all the time,' the administrator, a small, tired-looking
man behind a large dark-wood desk told him. 'Some, of course, mainly
the middle-aged women with families, have been with us for years. But
two young men like the ones on the security footage ...' He shrugged.
ikmen had just viewed the somewhat fuzzy security tape which showed
the murder of Yusuf Kaya's guards and his subsequent escape. The
cleaners and the nurses - all male - who had liberated the gangster had
been both young and quick. Together with Yusuf Kaya, three of them
had taken a guard or a police officer and, seemingly without any hesitation
or remorse, stabbed him. In all but one instance the wound had
proved fatal, ikmen looked across at the clearly shaken hospital administrator
and said, 'The surviving guard ...'

'As you know, Inspector, he is still unconscious. Dr Eldem cannot
be sure when or even if the unfortunate man will awaken. Neurology
is not an exact discipline, as I'm sure you know.'

'Indeed.' This wasn't the first time ikmen had had to wait for a
potential witness to come out of a coma. Some years previously he had
actually had to wait for one of his own colleagues to surface before he
could question him about an incident. But in this instance, he knew he
had to accept that the prison guard, Ramazan Eren, might never recover.
Mr Eren's heart had been grazed by his assailant's weapon and he had
lost a vast amount of blood. Whether he would ever regain consciousness,
and, if he did, whether he would still have normal mental capacity,
were moot points.

'As you saw for yourself, the security footage wasn't clear,' ikmen
said as he pulled one of the administrator's ashtrays towards him and
lit up a cigarette. 'We can't identify any of the people caught by it, even
those, like Kaya, whom we know. We may have more to go on once
the images have been enhanced but that is by no means a certainty. Do
you have any possible names for the cleaners or the nurses?'

The administrator switched on his computer terminal. Hospitals were
such public places! In one sense that worked against criminal activity,
because of the large numbers of people around. But in another, provided
the timing was right, hospitals were wide open in that regard. Yusuf Kaya
had been rescued very early in the morning, when the hospital was probably
at its quietest. The only problems the rescuers had experienced had
to have revolved around the timing of the attempt. It had been the prison
governor who had made the decision to have Kaya sent to the Cerrahpa§a
in the early hours of the morning. True, he had been encouraged to make
some sort of decision by members of his staff, including Ramazan Eren,
who had apparently been alarmed by Kaya's condition. But unless the
governor himself was involved, the placing of the cleaners and nurses at
the scene had to have been a speculative act. The hospital administrator
had admitted that tracking down a couple of casual cleaners was probably
well-nigh impossible, but the nurses could have been, indeed in
Ikmen's mind had to have been, 'embedded' within the hospital for some
time. Even so, on the morning in question, they had to have been activated
by someone, told that Kaya was coming. And that someone had
almost certainly been a person or persons inside the prison. If that person
or persons was either Ramazan Eren or Cengiz Bayar or both, they had
paid a very high price for their treachery. But then Yusuf Kaya, as Ikmen
knew from his friend Mehmet Siileyman, was a ruthless, unfeeling
psychopath. The death of two 'bent' prison guards, if that was indeed
what they had been, would simply serve to save him anxiety and money,
because if cash hadn't been involved somewhere along the line ikmen
would be very surprised. In addition, there were the two dead police
officers ...
'There are three male nurses who have not reported for duty since
that morning,' the administrator said as he peered at his screen, 'isak
Mardin from Zeyrek, Murat Lole from Karakoy, and Faruk Oz, who
lives in Gaziosmanpa§a.'
Ikmen frowned. Yusuf Kaya, it was well known, came originally from
Mardin. What were the chances of one of these nurses having that name?
'I'll need their contact details,' he said. 'All of them.'
The administrator frowned. 'You'll contact these men?' He looked
over at his computer screen once again. 'Lole and Oz work in the same
department, orthopaedics. I believe their supervisor has already tried or
maybe even succeeded in speaking to them. Would you like to speak
to someone in the department?'
'Yes.'
ikmen, or rather some of his officers, would almost certainly be paying
all the missing nurses a visit in the very near future, but it certainly
wouldn't hurt to speak to their colleagues and superiors too.
Several hours later, when he emerged from the Cerrahpa§a, Ikmen had
a slightly clearer picture about isak Mardin, Murat Lole and Faruk Oz.

Both Oz and Lole worked on the orthopaedics ward, as the administrator
had said. Mardin's speciality was cardiac care, which made sense in relation
to his possible appearance on a corridor leading to the cardiology
clinic. Lole had been contacted by his superiors since the Kay a incident
and was apparently at home with a bad cold. Ikmen himself had spoken
to the man on the telephone and Lole had readily agreed to be interviewed
by the police. Mardin and Oz were seemingly uncontactable. After lighting
up a cigarette in the lee of the ambulance station, Danen called his sergeant,
Ay§e Farsakoglu, and told her to assemble a squad of officers to meet him
at Isak Mardin's address in Zeyrek.
When he'd finished the call, ikmen dropped his mobile telephone
into his pocket with a sigh. In spite of the seriousness of having a
murderer like Yusuf Kaya on the run in the city that was both his home
and his passion, ikmen was finding it hard to concentrate. All he could
think about was the son who had come home after nineteen long and,
for his wife Fatma particularly, painful years. A difficult and at times
violent child, Bekir ikmen had begun to take drugs - just cannabis to
start off with - from the age of thirteen. No threats about endangering
his own liberty or putting his father's career at risk had had any effect,
and Bekir had quickly tired of cannabis and gone on to cocaine, acid,
amphetamines - anything he could get his hands on. By the time he ran
away from home two years later, his brothers and sisters, as well as
pounds tin ikmen himself, were almost relieved. Living around Bekir and his
drug-fuelled rages had been difficult and it was only Fatma ikmen who
actually cried when it became clear that her third-born son was not
coming home.
pounds tin ikmen looked out over the top of the traffic jam on the coastal
road, Kennedy Street, at the shining waters of the Sea of Marmara
beyond. From the front entrance of the hospital, one could see the many
vast tankers that had recently passed through the Bosphorus straits. One
could also see much of the city of istanbul itself. To his left, ikmen
could just make out the minarets of the Sultan Ahmet or Blue Mosque.
Almost encapsulating the spirit of the city in itself, the mosque had been
built in a district that for ever afterwards took on its name. Sultanahmet,
the very centre of the old city of imperial mosques, Ottoman palaces

II
and the teeming Grand Bazaar, was where the ikmen family lived. Until
Bekir had somehow made his way back, it had been home to pounds tin,
Fatma and their four youngest children. For the past nineteen years they
had been, in totality, a family of ten - eight children and two parents.
Now they were eleven, as it was meant to be, as was right. Except that,
for Qetin ikmen at least, it wasn't. His son Bekir was, to all intents and
purposes, a very personable man of thirty-four. By his own admission
he'd spent many years battling various addictions. He had, he said, spent
the time he'd been addicted to heroin in the crime-ridden district of
Edirnekapi, up around the old Byzantine city walls. Walking distance,
provided one was fit, from the ikmens' apartment in Sultanahmet. Walking distance! One could feel, and his wife Fatma did feel, very guilty about
being so near and yet so far from a beloved child for such a long time.
Qetin ikmen, however did not. Now clean and bright and shiny and, he
said, gainfully employed in the tourist industry, Bekir was still wrong. How, Ikmen didn't know. But that he, Bekir, was now on his own in
the Ikmen apartment with only Fatma for company made pounds tin feel
uneasy. The superstitious and suspicious blood that ran in his veins,
inherited from a mother known for her witchcraft, would not allow the
inspector to delight in his son's return.

The landlord of the house where isak Mardin had lived until a few
days before was very certain that the young man had been 'weird' and
'wrong' - after he'd run off without paying his rent.
'He was forever body-building, the woman who lives in the apartment
below told me,' Mr Lale told Ay§e Farsakoglu. ikmen hadn't yet
arrived, so Sergeant Farsakoglu, together with constables Yildiz and
Orga, had found the landlord of the house on Zeyrek Mehmet Pa§a Alley
and gained admittance to a now empty apartment.
'Bang, bang, bang, all night long, so Miss ... whatever her name is
downstairs said,' Mr Lale continued. He was a thin, lugubrious man of
about fifty who, winter and summer, wore a thick knitted hat, as a lot
of people who came originally from the countryside did. 'Lifting weights,
see,' he said, moving his arms up and down to demonstrate, 'and banging
them down on the floor afterwards.'

'Yes, Mr Lale,' Ay§e said with a polite smile. 'I do know what
weightlifting is about.'
In spite of the fact that more women were joining the Turkish police
all the time, Ay§e still found some male members of the public very
patronising. This man wouldn't have dreamed of doing his awful demonstration
for either of the young male constables who were looking round
the apartment with her. But for her, their superior, Mr Lale obviously
felt he had to make himself plain. After all, Ay§e was an attractive
woman in her early thirties, so it was almost unthinkable that she wasn't
stupid.
'What someone in his profession was doing lifting weights, I don't
know,' Mr Lale said as he lit up a cheap, rank Birinci cigarette. 'I mean
a nurse, I ask you! What kind of job is that for a grown man?'
Suspecting that this overtly macho attitude towards nursing was allied
to a few other prejudicial feelings, Ay§e said, 'So would you want to
be handled by a woman if you were in hospital, Mr Lale?'
'I've never been in a hospital in my life!' He relayed this fact as if
it were some sort of badge of honour.
'Yes, but if you did have to go in ...' Ay§e, seeing the look of hostility
on the landlord's face, decided to give up. After all, his attitude towards
this Isak Mardin was irrelevant. Where Mardin was now, what he was
doing and what he had done were the only subjects she should be concentrating
on now. After all, this man could have just murdered a prison
guard, or one of the unfortunate police officers who had accompanied
Yusuf Kaya to the Cerrahpa§a. One of their own . . .
'Mr Lale,' she began.
'Sergeant!'
A call from what had apparently been isak Mardin's bedroom caused
Ay§e to excuse herself to go and see what Constable Yildiz wanted.
The room, which contained little beyond an ancient-looking metal
bedstead and the built-in cupboard Yildiz was looking into now, overlooked
the Golden Horn. The nineteenth-century wooden house had five
storeys and this apartment was on the fifth. So even though there were buildings behind the house, because they were smaller than Mr Lale's
place isak Mardin had had a wonderful view. Even with the thunderous

traffic on the Atatiirk Bridge pounding across to hip and happening
Beyoglu over the water, the sight of the great inlet with the European
city beyond was still absolutely breathtaking. And on a wonderful spring
day like this one it would, under normal circumstances, have made Ay§e
want to sing and shout from the sheer joy of simply being alive in such
fabulous weather. But the circumstances were far from normal.
'I found this in this cupboard,' Constable Yildiz was holding a thin
red and gold scarf very gingerly by one corner.
'That's a Galatasaray scarf,' Mr Lale said from the doorway, once
again anticipating complete ignorance on Ay§e's part. 'He supported that
lot.'
Mr Lale, by referring to what is probably Istanbul's most famous
football club as 'that lot', signalled that it was not a particular passion
of his own. Ay§e, whose brother was a fanatical Galatasaray fan, smiled.
'Bag it up for forensic, please, Constable,' she said to Yildiz. 'Thank
you for that, Mr Lale.'
Any examples of DNA found on the scarf or indeed on the bedding
or the other, very few, items in the apartment could be useful; although,
as her boss Inspector ikmen had told her earlier, isak Mardin was probably
a pseudonym. Yildiz had just put the scarf into a bag when ikmen,
his thin face red and flustered, arrived.
'I apologise for being late, Sergeant,' he said to Ay§e Farsakoglu as
he tipped his head in greeting to Mr Lale. 'But I've just had a telephone
call from Commissioner Ardic. We need to get back to the station now.'


Chapter 2

Try as he might, ikmen couldn't get away from the fact that the man
on the screen had to be Yusuf Kaya. 'Where did this film come from?'
he asked as he watched again the short movie footage of Yusuf Kaya
eating a plate of pastries.
'A patisserie called the Nightingale is where it was taken,' the large,
heavily sweating man puffing on a cigar across the desk replied. 'When
was yesterday lunchtime, twelve thirty.'
'I didn't know that patisseries had security cameras,' Mehmet
Siileyman said as he sat down next to ikmen and ran the small snippet
of film yet again.
'Where does not have at least one camera these days?' the large man
responded gloomily. 'I don't know how many speed cameras there are
between the centre of the city and Ataturk Airport, but if it goes on like
this all traffic officers will lose the use of their legs. Sitting in rooms
looking at screens all day long!'
Commissioner Ardic, who like ikmen was in his late fifties, was not
a man with whom new technology sat easily. He had gained enough
knowledge to be able to operate his own computer and his mobile telephone
and that, to Ardic, was enough. Wall-to-wall security and speed
cameras were, he felt, neither right nor necessary. Except in this one
instance.
'Fortunately for us the proprietor of the Nightingale thought he'd
seen this particular customer before - on TRT News - and so he took
this down to his local station yesterday evening.'
Yusuf Kaya's image had been all over the media since he'd absconded.
'So where is the Nightingale?' Mehmet Siileyman asked. 'It's not a
name that is familiar to me.'

Ardic lowered his considerable behind into his groaning leather chair.
'Gaziantep,' he said.
'Gaziantep!'
Ikmen, still fixated upon the images on his superior's computer screen,
said, 'Look at him! An intelligent operator like Kay a must have seen
the cameras in that place. You know, I think he's actually enjoying being
observed. Arrogant bastard!'
'Yes,' Ardic said to Siileyman, 'our friend does seem to have got very
far east in a very short space of time.'
'If he's eating, as he must be, baklava from Antep, then I envy him,'
Ikmen said as he leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. 'The centre
of the pistachio nut universe, Gaziantep. They make the most sublime,
nut-crammed baklava.'
'I didn't think that food was very high on your list of priorities,
ikmen,' Ardic said, one bushy eyebrow raised.
ikmen looked up, took a long drag from his cigarette and smiled. 'I
make an exception for baklava and chocolate, sir,' he said. 'They are
so very bad for one.'
Ardic, who had to be at least twice ikmen's weight, said, 'Quite.' He
turned back to Suleyman. 'On the basis that Kay a originates from Mardin
and that much of the profit from his crime empire here in the city went
back to his home town, we think that's possibly where he's headed.
However, it is also known that he has friends in Antep, and so an
Inspector Taner from Mardin has been despatched to investigate that
connection. You, Suleyman, will rendezvous with Taner at Gaziantep
airport tomorrow night.'
'Sir?'
This seemed, to Suleyman, to be somewhat of an over-reaction. Surely
if Mardin were on to it, this Taner person could deal with Kay a without
help from istanbul.
Ardic looked narrowly at Suleyman. 'It was you who originally apprehended
Kaya and he was serving his sentence in this city when he
absconded.' He paused to relight his cigar, which had gone out during
the course of their conversation. Then he lowered his head a little and
added, 'And besides, this time Kaya and his people killed our own.'

Siileyman exchanged glances with ikmen, who drew a long, thin
breath into his lungs.
'I don't think that either of you knew Constable Mete or Constable
Kanh.'
He was right. Neither ikmen nor Siileyman had known either of the
men who had been killed by Yusuf Kaya's people.
'Didn't know them myself,' Ardic continued. 'But what I do know
is that the only thing those officers were doing that night was their duty.
They were called upon to provide escort to a prisoner, which they did,
and they died for their pains.' He pulled himself up very straight in his
chair then and said, 'Know them or not, Mete and Kanh were Istanbul
police officers. If Kaya is out east, I want him brought back here. I
don't want some eastern types getting hold of him.'
'Sir, Kaya was, as you say, imprisoned in Istanbul,' ikmen said. 'Surely,
if he is caught, we--'
'Mardin have issues with Kaya,' Ardic said contemptuously. 'His
crime empire here in the city apparently helped to fund still more illegal
activities amongst his relatives in the east. They want him and so do
we.' He looked across at Siileyman and frowned. 'Make sure you get
hold of Kaya, not this Inspector Taner. We want him serving time in
istanbul. He will serve time in Istanbul.'
Siileyman sighed. 'So it's a competition, then, between myself and
Taner. istanbul versus Mardin.'
'If you wish.' Ardic cleared his throat. 'It is one that we will win.'
'Sir, Mardin is a very small city with limited resources and a lot of
problems,' ikmen began. 'I don't think--'
'You, ikmen, will continue the investigation here,' Ardic said. 'Your
own sergeant as well as Siileyman's deputy Sergeant Melik will assist
you. Now, I understand some male nurses have gone missing from the
Cerrahpa§a.'
ikmen told Ardic about the three men he was currently pursuing,
while Siileyman descended into silence. In spite of being a professional
woman herself, his wife Zelfa wouldn't like the idea of his going away
for an uncertain length of time. For a woman who was half western,
and had indeed been brought up in her mother's country of Ireland, she

was intensely possessive. But then Mehmet, much as he adored his intelligent
and considerably older wife, hadn't always been faithful to her.
That said, going to Gaziantep and then maybe on to Mardin was not
like going to Paris. Antep was famously dull and ugly and, at only fifty
eight kilometres from the Syrian border, Mardin was the back of beyond.
As far as Siileyman was concerned it was not a city famed for its alluring
women. In summer Mardin was infested with snakes that, without even
visualising a serpent, made Siileyman shudder. Not that the snakes were
what really bothered him. Mardin had other associations too - with
terrorism and with the internal war Turkish troops had been fighting
against the separatist Kurdish organisation, the PKK, for decades. The
conflict was bitter and vicious and loss of life on both sides was heavy.
In addition, now there were other dimensions too. Hezbollah were known
to be operating in the area and there were rumours of al-Qaeda cells
also. Anyone, even out of uniform, who represented the Turkish state
was at risk. Snakes were nothing compared to that.

Murat Lole lived in a small second-floor apartment on Biiyiik Hendek
Street in Karakoy. It was a location that was sadly familiar to ikmen
because it was close to the Neve §alom synagogue which had been
attacked by al-Qaeda-inspired suicide bombers back in 2003. His sonin-law,
Berekiah Cohen, who had lived opposite the synagogue had
been badly injured in the explosion. The union of ikmen's daughter
Hulya, a Muslim, and his old friend Balthazar's son, a Jew, had seemed
like an example of tolerance and hope for the future when the two
youngsters first got married. But now that Berekiah could no longer
work and Hulya by contrast had to work all the time, cracks were beginning
to show. The apartment where the Cohens had once lived was
now repaired and repainted, which pleased ikmen, even if it did only
serve to underline how easily buildings could be fixed compared to
people.
When he and Ay§e Farsakoglu arrived they found the orthopaedic
nurse indeed in thrall to a very bad cold. About thirty, slight, with a
pleasant face and ready smile, Murat Lole showed the two officers into
a poorly furnished but tidy living room, which smelt strongly of coffee.

It put ikmen in mind of the coffee houses of his youth, back in the
fifties when even enlightened men like his father went to all-male cafes
to play backgammon, talk about football and drink the thickest, darkest
Turkish coffee imaginable.
'You don't expect to get a really bad cold at this time of year,' Murat
Lole said as he ushered them towards a rather battered sofa under the
window. 'But then I don't work with well people, do I?'
'Orthopaedics,' Ikmen said. 'Bones not infections.'
'They often come in with infections,' Murat Lole said as he sat down
on a small hard chair and blew his nose loudly. 'After all, if you have
a cold and then break your leg, it can't just be left until the cold has
gone, can it?'
'Mr Lole,' Ay§e said, 'we've come to talk to you about the escape
of a prisoner, sent for treatment to the Cerrahpa§a.'
'That was the last day I was at work,' Lole said. 'I wasn't really well
then, but. . . That prisoner was being taken to cardiology. I didn't see
him, but I heard about it, of course.'
'You have a colleague,' ikmen said. 'Faruk Oz.'
'Faruk and I were on shift together that night,' Lole said.
'All night?'
'We came on at eight the previous evening and I at least finished at
eight the following morning. I don't remember seeing Faruk. But then
we're not that close and I was feeling very bad by then and wasn't
noticing much, to be truthful.'
'During the course of an average shift, do members of staff come
and go from the ward very much?' Ay§e Farsakoglu asked.
'Yes,' Lole said, 'a lot. We go to get drugs, check new patients in,
take existing patients to the lavatory ...'
'Do you know if you were on the ward at four a.m.? Was Faruk with
you?'
Murat Lole shrugged. 'I remember I was on the ward when all the
commotion reached us,' he said. 'I was actually in the toilet trying to
clean up my nose and splash some water on my face to wake myself
up. I heard someone scream about people being stabbed. I don't know
where Faruk was. Obviously, I was alone at the time.'

'Can you remember seeing Faruk Oz in the hour or so before the
incident?' ikmen asked.
For a few seconds Lole was silent, and then he said, 'No. No, I can't.
He may very well have been on the ward, but I was not personally with him.
As I said, this cold wiped me out. I shouldn't even have been at work.'
'Mr Lole,' Ay§e said, 'do you have any idea where Faruk Oz might
be now?'
'If he's not either at his apartment or at work, then no.'
'You don't know where his family live, where he's from?'
'No.' Lole shrugged again. 'Faruk and I are only work colleagues.
Although ...' He paused, thinking, and then said, 'I think his parents
might live in Ankara. I don't know whereabouts.'
Faruk Oz's apartment in Gaziosmanpa§a had been searched by constables
Yildiz and Orga while Ikmen was with Commissioner Ardic. He hadn't
been there, even though, unlike isak Mardin's, many of his possessions
appeared to be still in situ. Significantly, however, no one in Oz's block
had seen him since the night of Yusuf Kaya's escape. He too had disappeared.
Ay§e asked Murat Lole whether he knew anyone by the name of isak
Mardin. He said that he didn't.
'isak Mardin is also a nurse at the Cerrahpa§a,' ikmen said.
'It's a big place, Inspector.'
'Mr Mardin worked on the cardiac care ward,' Ikmen continued. 'He
too has been missing since the incident with Yusuf Kaya. Mr Lole, do
you know whether Faruk Oz knew isak Mardin?'
'No. Inspector, I've never heard of isak Mardin before. As I said, the
hospital is a very big place.'
The interview continued until finally, taking pity upon Lole and his
obviously fragile state, ikmen thanked him for his time and prepared to
leave. As he rose from his seat, he said, 'Mr Lole, I'm sorry, but I must
ask. The smell of coffee . ..'
'Oh.' The nurse frowned, then smiled again almost immediately.
'Sorry, I can't smell anything at the moment. But I know what you
mean. That isn't me, Inspector. Next door there's a couple from the east.
You know how strong they like their coffee out there.'
Although ikmen himself had barely been east of Ankara in the whole

of his life, he knew what Murat Lole meant. Once, years before, he'd
had to pick up a prisoner from Nusaybin on the Syrian border. In many
ways Nusaybin is far more an Arab than a Turkish town, and the coffee
there had been so thick that ikmen had almost been able to stand a
spoon in it. As he recalled, Nusaybin was quite close to Mardin, from
whose airport he remembered having travelled. He had never seen the
city itself, however. As he and Ay§e walked out into the street and back
to his car, ikmen identified some feelings of envy for Siileyman. Mardin
had always been one of those semi-legendary places, almost an Anatolian
Shangri-la. In Mardin, it was said, Christians, Muslims and Jews all
lived in harmony in big, beautiful, honey-coloured mansions. The place
was infested with snakes but there was some sort of snake goddess who
the locals swore protected them from potentially fatal bites. Siileyman,
if he did indeed get there, would tell ikmen all about it upon his return.
If he returned. Like most istanbullus, ikmen automatically feared for
those going out east. Out east, fabled cities notwithstanding, terrorists
and armed clan chiefs were most certainly amongst one's neighbours.
Of course, Ardic had chosen Siileyman to go after Kay a because he
had made the original arrest. That was the reason, because Ardic had
said so. But that ikmen was seventeen years older than Siileyman did
cross the older man's mind. Dodging bullets required a certain turn of
speed. Unless they already lived out east, it wasn't somewhere the 'old'
went. But then, with Bekir back in his life once again, would ikmen
really have wanted to be anywhere else? There were things he had to
say to his son: details about his past that needed clarification, for instance.
And as he looked around at the very ordinary little street in Karakoy
where his car was parked, the one with the Nave §alom synagogue, he
was reminded that there was his sad daughter Hulya to support too. With
little time for friends and not wishing to bother the already over-burdened
Fatma, ikmen's daughter was turning more and more to her father for
advice and comfort these days.
As he got into his car beside Ay§e, ikmen looked up and saw Murat
Lole looking at him fixedly through the window. He was drinking from
a very tiny coffee cup.

Mehmet Siileyman made a point of reading his little boy, Yusuf, his
bedtime story that night. Of course, he'd see him in the morning, before
the child left to go to the brand new nursery that had just started up in
Ortakoy. Zelfa Siileyman had been delighted that somewhere so apparently
professional and child-centred had opened up virtually on their
doorstep. But then Ortakoy, once a quaint Bosphorus village, had become
in recent years a very chic Istanbul suburb. So chic, in fact, that the couple
often had difficulty parking their own cars for all the Ferraris, Lamborghinis
and Aston Martins that, in the summer months particularly, lined their
once very countrified street of wooden cottages. That otherwise very
modern young people wanted to be associated with somewhere as quaint
and historical as Ortakoy was something that Zelfa, a psychiatrist, had
various theories about. Not least amongst these theories was one concerning
the fact that very few of the nouveaux riches youngsters who hung around
the clubs and bars of Ortakoy came from native Istanbul families. Most
of them came originally from dirt-poor villages in the east. By inhabiting
a place like Ortakoy, so Zelfa claimed, they were in effect buying a piece
of history, or rather buying into a past that was completely alien to them.
They thought, she said, it gave them a cachet, legitimised maybe their
excessive cars, houses and clothes. Zelfa's husband, like her father, was
a genuine istanbullu as well as being from an Ottoman dynasty related
to the now deposed imperial family. There were still people in the city
who insisted upon calling Mehmet's father Prince Muhammed Siileyman,
even though the old man had been born well after the Ottoman Empire
had crumbled to dust. But that was Istanbul.
'You know Gaziantep has got a fantastic museum,' Zelfa said to her
husband as he came into the living room and sat down.
'Yusuf isn't very pleased about this trip of mine,' Mehmet said as he
lit up a cigarette and then let the smoke out of his nose on a frown. 'He
wanted to know when I was going to come home and I just couldn't
tell him. When I find, if I find, Yusuf Kaya.'
Zelfa moved away from the television set she'd been watching and
sat down next to her husband. Snuggling in close to his side, she changed
to English, the language with which she was really more comfortable
than Turkish. Her voice, which was husky, was also imbued with a

strong southern Irish accent. 'I'm not mad about your going off myself,'
she said. 'I suppose Ardic wouldn't send ikmen out there because of
his age.'
'I don't think it's anything to do with that,' Mehmet said. 'And anyway,
Cetin is hardly an old man, is he?' he added loyally, ikmen, as well as
being a legend in policing circles, was also his friend, and as such ikmen
could never truly be old. 'No, I have to go because it was me that
arrested Kaya originally.'
'You have an insight into the way his mind works.'
Mehmet frowned. 'I don't know about that,' he said. 'But I am going
to Gaziantep and maybe Mardin too and I cannot do anything about it.'
Zelfa sat up and looked at him. 'Well, if you must go to Gaziantep,
you can at least try to stimulate your mind by going to the museum.
They've got the Zeugma mosaics there - you know, from that ancient
site they flooded to build a dam? They're supposed to be the most
marvellous examples of mosaic art in the world.'
She was insatiable when it came to cultural things like art. She was
also, he knew, trying very hard not to mention or even perhaps think
about all the dangers that being out east could involve. 'You'd like a
brochure of some sort, Zelfa?' he said.
'I'd like a big book full of beautiful colour pictures of the mosaics,'
she replied forcefully. 'God Almighty, Mehmet, if I can't go myself and I'm forced to be without you, I have a right to expect something.'
'So Gaziantep baklava . . .'
'Oh, I'll have some of that too,' she cut in playfully. 'And you can
get some for your son as well.'
They both laughed. But then there was a serious silence, a moment
during which he saw the fear of what could happen 'out there' reflected
in her eyes. He was about to lean over and kiss her when his mobile
phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and answered it.
Zelfa, cuddling into his side, said, 'If that is Ardic . . .'
Mehmet said, 'It's Cetin.'
'Ah.'
'Mehmet, I'm so sorry I didn't get very much time with you today,'
ikmen said. 'You're off to Antep tomorrow and so I won't see you.'

'No.'
Zelfa, suddenly agitated as she was wont to become at anxious times,
got up and walked back towards the television.
'I just wanted to say that I will continue to find out what I can here
and I'll contact you every day,' ikmen said.
'I will also pass anything that I find on to you,' his friend replied.
'How did you get on with that nurse in Karakoy this afternoon?'
ikmen told him about his meeting with Murat Lole. He added that
although the man's story about what he had been doing at the hospital
when Kaya escaped checked out in every available way, he still didn't
trust him. Mehmet asked him why.
'It's a stupid thing really,' ikmen said. 'Basically, all the time Ay§e
and I were with him, I could smell very strong coffee, like the real hard
Turks in the old days used to drink. I asked him about it, because you
don't find many people these days who drink that stuff, and he told me
that the couple next door, people from the east, were making it. Then
after we left I looked up at his apartment and saw him at the window
drinking from a tiny coffee cup. Of course he could have been given
the coffee by his neighbours, but I don't really think so. I think that he
lied to me. A senseless, silly lie that makes me distrust him. Why would
he do such a thing?'
'I don't know,' Mehmet said. 'But if you have a bad feeling about
this man, Qetin, then we should watch him. I never knew your mother
but I trust absolutely the intuition of the Witch of Uskiidar's son.'

'Yes.' Mehmet heard his friend sigh. When he spoke again, the younger
man noticed that ikmen's voice was lowered. 'I just wish I didn't have
similar - as in bad - feelings about my own son.'
'Bekir?'
'Yes.'
Mehmet Siileyman had never met Bekir ikmen and would probably
not do so until he returned from the east. But ikmen had told him a few
things over the years: how Bekir had stolen from his brothers from the
age of twelve, how he had lied about his drug-taking, and the terrifying
stand-up fight he'd had with his father just before he ran away from home.

'We still don't know anything approaching the truth about where he's
been, what he's done and what he's now doing,' ikmen said. 'I don't
know what it means, but. . .' He raised his voice once again and seemed
to cheer up. 'But I just wanted to wish you a good journey, Mehmet.'
'Thank you, Cetin. I'll do my best to acquit myself with honour and
dignity in the face of eastern hostility - as well as eastern food, of
course.'
They both laughed. The previous year, Suleyman's deputy izzet
Melik had been sent to the shores of Lake Van, also in the east, in the
course of an investigation and had lost several kilos in weight. He had
enjoyed the spicy eastern food very much, but sadly it had not suited
his constitution.
'Be safe, my friend. Go soon, come back quickly,' ikmen said, and
cut the connection. Siileyman put his phone back in his pocket. Suddenly
tearful, he turned away quickly lest his wife see his weakness. Cetin
was like a very loving older brother, always there, always watching his
back. He too knew what the realities of working out east could be.
ikmen, like everyone else, read the papers, watched the news from what
some called the front. Suleyman was going to miss him very much.
'Oh,' he heard his wife say as she watched the television, seemingly
oblivious. 'Gaziantep twenty-eight degrees tomorrow. You'll get a
suntan.'
She was trying to make light of it. Suleyman knew that he himself
couldn't think about it too much. Couldn't think about his wife, his
child, or his friends back in Istanbul either. He thought instead about
what Inspector Taner might be like, how far Yusuf Kay a might have got
and how strange and foreign 'out east' was going to be. Try as he might
to concentrate on how interesting it might all prove, he couldn't help
but feel afraid.

Chapter 3

Although it wasn't dark when he arrived, to Suleyman, because he was
tired, it felt like the middle of the night. Oguzh Airport at Gaziantep
was hardly a glamorous or even seemingly businesslike terminal.
Surrounded by far more covered women than he was accustomed to, as
well as several distinctly rural-looking men who smelt, he suspected, of
goat, he had to wait an eternity for his luggage to be unloaded from the
flight from Istanbul. When his small suitcase did arrive it looked as if
it had been kicked around a dusty floor for the duration of the journey.
He took hold of it with a look of misery on his face, wiping his now
sweating brow with his other hand as he did so. It was considerably
wanner here than it had been in Istanbul. But then spring in the far
south-east could be quite hot. In Mardin, which was even further east
and to the north of Antep, it could be either as hot as hell or freezing
cold. Places like Mardin were unpredictable.
What was not, he felt, unpredictable, however, was what this Inspector
Taner was going to be like. He'd be deferential to a man from Istanbul,
which was no problem at all, unlike the small-mindedness he would
almost certainly exhibit, which would be. Physically he would either be
short and thin or short and stocky. People from the far east, in his experience,
rarely grew to any great height. He would definitely have a
large and luxuriant moustache. And as Suleyman passed through Customs
and entered the arrivals hall there, indeed, was a small, thin, middle
aged man holding up a sign with his name on it. His moustache was of
heroic proportions. Suleyman, moving forward, forced a smile. When
he got near to the small man, he put out his hand. After all, averse as
they sometimes could be to hand-shaking in the east, it was his custom
and he was the guest, as it were.

But to his surprise and, for a fraction of a second, his irritation, the
man with the sign did not take the offered hand. Siileyman was just
about to let his arm drop when another hand, a long, slim thing with
painted nails, took and shook his fingers firmly. He looked up and found
himself staring into the face of a tall, very handsome middle-aged woman.
'Inspector Suleyman?' Her voice was deep and smoke-scarred. 'Edibe
Taner.' She shook his hand enthusiastically. Then, looking down at the
small man holding the sign, she said, 'This is my cousin, Rafik. He
lives here and will drive us into the city. Welcome to Gaziantep, Inspector
Suleyman.'

It was late and the hospital administrator was obviously tired. But ikmen
needed to get to the truth.
'Listen, sir,' he said, 'I need to know who exactly isak Mardin and
Faruk Oz are. They are both missing, and either one could be implicated
in what amounts to multiple homicide.'
The administrator rested his chin in his hands and sighed.
'Now, am I right in my belief that Lole and Oz's qualifications are
in order but Mardin's are not?'
'Mr Mardin came to work here only a few months ago,' the administrator
said. 'It was at a time when we were experiencing some staff
shortages.'
'So Mardin isn't--'
'Yusuf Mardin was engaged by my predecessor, Mr Oner. I was
not in on the interview and so I don't know what might or might not
have been discussed. All I know is that although there is a note about
Mr Mardin's qualifications in his file there are no photocopies of his
certificates.'
'As a rule, you photocopy certificates?'
'Yes. As I said, the hospital was under a lot of pressure with regard
to staff at that time. Mr Oner might very well have not taken photocopies
due to an oversight. Such a thing is not unknown.'
'Well,' Ikmen said, 'I suppose we'd better talk to Mr Oner, hadn't we?'
The administrator pulled a strained expression. 'I'm afraid that won't
be possible,' he said.


"Why not?'
'Mr Oner died last month. That's why I'm sitting here now.' Then,
seeing ikmen's instantly suspicious look, he said, 'Mr Oner had been
under a lot of pressure for a very long time. Sadly, he took his own
life.'
His suspicions raised even further, ikmen said, 'How did he do it?
How did he kill himself?'
The administrator, apparently aware that it was important for his
future liberty that he tell the policeman everything he knew, nevertheless
lowered his voice. 'He ingested disinfectant,' he said. 'A hideous,
hideous way to die.'
In view of his 'hideous' demise, Mr Oner's oversight with regard to
Mardin's qualifications could possibly be understood. Although why a
man working in a hospital, around so many drugs that could have eased
him comparatively gently into the next world, should chose to kill
himself with disinfectant was mysterious. It was a very painful way to
die, especially in a place where an overdose of everyday painkillers
could be obtained with little difficulty. But then if he were truly out of
his mind at the time . . .
ikmen had learned quite a few things of interest since he'd come
back to the Cerrahpaga. He'd learned that the cleaners involved in the
rescue of Yusuf Kaya could not, so far, be either named or identified
by any member of the hospital staff. He'd learned that isak Mardin was
a very new employee while, by contrast, Faruk Oz and Murat Lole had been working at the hospital for eighteen months. Oz and Lole were
fully qualified nurses, while Mardin's status was, due to lack of copied
certification, more open to question.
'Can you tell me where Mr Mardin worked before he came here?'
ikmen asked after a pause.
The administrator looked down at the three files in front of him and
picked one up.
Could it have really been some sort of conspiracy, ikmen wondered?
Had the late Mr Oner given isak Mardin a job at the Cerrahpa§a with
a view to using the nurse to assist in Yusuf Kaya's escape? Or had
Mardin come to Oner and blackmailed him, by some means, into giving

him a job? Had Oner known that he planned to enable a very dangerous
criminal to escape justice? Had the former administrator killed himself
because he couldn't live with that knowledge? And where, if anywhere,
did Oz and Lole fit into this picture?
Or was Ikmen racing ahead of himself, creating scenarios that did
not really have any basis in fact or true validity?
'Mr Mardin worked at the Urfa Hospital in §anhurfa,' the administrator
said. 'He came recommended by them,' he added.
'Did he?' ikmen cleared his throat. 'Do you have a name I can contact
at the Urfa Hospital? I'll need to verify this.'
The administrator copied something down on to a piece of paper and
handed it over to ikmen.
'Lead cardiac consultant at the Urfa,' he said. 'Would have been isak
Mardin's overall superior. He will be able to comment on his work.
You've not been on to his ward here, have you, Inspector?'
'No. That is one of my tasks for tomorrow,' ikmen said. 'I am
going to see the cardiologist who had been due to examine our escaped
prisoner.'
'He gave your officers a statement at the time.'
'I am aware of that.'
The administrator didn't reply. It wasn't that he was either evasive
or hostile. He just, ikmen felt, had nothing more to add. For himself,
the policeman had done everything he believed he could for the present.
It was early evening and he had a full diary of interviews and meetings
for the following day - not least of which was with his team, which
temporarily included Siileyman's sergeant, izzet Melik.
If, as he was coming to believe was just possible, the plot to spring
Yusuf Kaya went back a considerable way, there was a possibility that
people still present in the Cerrahpa§a knew about it. And then there was
Mr Oner, the now deceased previous administrator. Why had he died in
such an unnecessarily painful fashion? Had he in fact been killed rather
than taken his own life? Yusuf Kaya was well known for his brutality.
Had he ordered a hit on the man isak Mardin? Had Faruk Oz or maybe
even Murat Lole been somehow persuaded to either support or turn a
blind eye to his venture? Were any of the three nurses truly involved


anyway? The security footage was very unclear and there was not, as
yet, any evidence that connected any one of them in any way to Yusuf
Kay a.
His brain humming with numerous possibilities, ikmen left the hospital
soon afterwards. As he made his way back to his car he found himself
thinking about isak Mardin's previous job in § anhurfa. Far down in the
deep south-east, 'Urfa', as it was known locally, was not far from
Gaziantep where Siileyman had to be by that time. Rather than think
about how strange it was that he was so reluctant to go home since
Bekir had returned, instead he thought about his friend and wondered
how he might be coping, having to work with some peasant from the
back of beyond.

The drive from the airport into the city was not exactly a picturesque
trip. Gaziantep was heavily populated and industrialised. Factories, car
repair garages and line upon line of almost Soviet-style tower blocks
marched relentlessly across the dusty landscape like ranks of silent,
depressed soldiers. The man at the wheel, Inspector Taner's cousin Rafik,
reminded Siileyman a little of Cetin ikmen. Thin and sporting a thick,
black moustache, he drove a battered old Mercedes similar to the one
that ikmen had kept alive for so many years. Unlike ikmen, however,
he did not talk continuously, even if the amount of smoking that went
on was very familiar. Inspector Taner herself was quite another matter.
The last thing Siileyman had been expecting, especially way out in
the wild, wild east, was a female officer. He had thought about the
possibility of Taner's being a young man, but a middle-aged macho
character had been what he anticipated. An image of a tall and attractive
woman had not even entered his mind. Inspector Edibe Taner was,
Slileyman reckoned, somewhere in her forties. Slim without being thin,
she had thick shoulder-length hair that was coloured a dull but affecting
shade of dark purple. Like her long, red fingernails, her face was heavily
painted and she had thick black lines round her eyes that made her look
more Egyptian than Turkish. Everything about her seemed to speak of
strength: her long straight nose, her firm jaw, her large and muscular
bustline.

'I've booked you into a hotel called the Princess,' she said as they
sped past a large and very brash Jeep dealership. 'As I expect you are
well aware, Inspector, hotels in general in this part of the world are not
up to Istanbul standards. But the Princess, Rafik tells me, is clean if
basic'
'You won't get bedbugs,' the man at the wheel muttered.
Siileyman smiled. They were a direct pair, which he liked, and there
was a little private fun to be had for someone whose family had been
princes staying in a hotel called the Princess. 'I'm sure it will be fine,'
he said.
'Once you've checked in I've taken the liberty of organising dinner,'
Taner said. 'It's the best restaurant in town, believe me.'
'Thank you.' Siileyman saw Rafik smile and wondered what it meant.
Was Taner joking with him, perhaps?
'We need to talk about what you know of our friend Yusuf Kaya and
what developments have occurred with regard to him since I've been
here,' the woman continued. She offered Siileyman a long black Sobranie
cigarette, which he gratefully accepted, and then lit one up for herself.
'Do you drink, Inspector Suleyman?' she said after a pause.
'Sometimes,' he said. 'I don't have a problem or--'
'I do,' Taner said with a smile and what Suleyman felt was astonishing
candidness. 'Raki.'
'Ah.' There wasn't really very much that he could say to that. Before
he could think of any way in which he might move their conversation
forward, the car turned into a dark and rutted side street. On one side
was a tiny coffee house with several men sitting outside at low tables,
playing backgammon. On the other was a six-storey sixties-style block
sporting a scruffy sign which said Princess Oteli.
'We're here,' Taner said as she swung her long, slim legs out of the
car door. The men at the coffee house opposite watched, almost mesmerised, as she stood up and then smoothed her mini skirt a very
short distance down her thighs.

'If you get into a fight with a gypsy you have to know what you're
doing.'

'Oh, well, I imagine you do!'
Ikmen, sitting with his wife in the living room, could hear his son
Bekir and his daughter pounds cek talking in the kitchen. Bekir's stories
regarding his 'lost' years were becoming a feature of everyone's evenings
now that he was back home once again. Relayed in an almost casual
tone that could be regarded as modest, they often drew a response of
breathless excitement from Bekir's siblings. He was engaged at that
particular moment in telling his younger sister about the time he'd apparently
spent living on the streets of Sulukule up by the old city walls. A
gypsy quarter, it was a place that had a reputation, mainly for the high
cost of its dancing girls and the toughness of its men.
'Dad engaged a gypsy fortune-teller for Hulya's wedding,' ikmen
heard his daughter say. 'She was very good.'
What a pity the gypsy in question hadn't been able to predict that
Hulya and Berekiah's marriage would come under so much strain. But
then the fortune-teller wasn't just a seer, she was an artist and one of
Ikmen's informants too. And although she lived in the district of Balat,
she like most gypsies knew Sulukule well. If Bekir had, as he was now
telling his sister, a reputation as a fighter up in the gypsy quarter, the
fortune-teller would know about it.
'I called myself the Black Storm,' he heard Bekir say. 'And I won
every fight I ever had in Sulukule.'
ikmen looked across the room at his wife, who was darning one of
Kemal's socks. It was a really old-fashioned thing to do in what had
become an era of cheap, throwaway clothes. But Fatma ikmen was not
a woman given to behaviour she perceived to be wasteful.
'What do you think about all these stories Bekir tells?' ikmen asked
his wife when he finally managed to catch her eye.
'I'm just glad to have him back, wherever he's been,' she replied.
'Aren't you?'
'Well, of course!' He said that, but was it true? pounds tin ikmen alone
had, finally, had to deal with Bekir when he reached the height of his
bad behaviour at age fifteen. Fatma and the other children had known
about the stealing, of course; he'd stolen from every one of them. They'd
also known about the cannabis and the drink. But pounds tin had kept

quiet about the harder drugs he knew his son was taking. The cocaine
and the amphetamines had been between pounds tin and Bekir, as had the
former's knowledge of the latter's drug-dealing exploits. Bekir at fifteen
had been a nightmare. Taking drugs, dealing, getting drunk, fighting . . .
There had been women too, ikmen recalled, ladies of his wife's age
who, if indirectly, had helped to fund Bekir's various drug addictions.
The boy had not, his father could not easily forget, always treated those
women with even the most basic kindness. Allah, but the black eyes
and cracked ribs that some middle-aged women were prepared to tolerate
in exchange for a firm, young body!
Fatma, her concentration on her needlework now broken, said, 'Cetin,
are you sure about that? Are you sure you're really happy about Bekir
being home again?'
She was no fool. After thirty-seven years of marriage there was little
she didn't know or couldn't deduce about her husband.
ikmen took in a deep breath and then leaned forward. 'Oh, Fatma,'
he said, 'I don't know. The circumstances of his leaving were so ...'
'But that was years ago, Cetin!' Fatma said. 'He's changed now. Even
you can see he's not on drugs any more.'
Bekir didn't appear to be, it was true. In fact apart from cigarettes
he didn't seem to 'do' anything, and that included alcohol. That, in
particular, pleased Fatma, who was a sincere and observant Muslim. But
all of that notwithstanding, ikmen himself was not happy. A doubt, something
he often objectified by envisaging it as the voice of his dead mother
whispering in his ear, was nagging. Ay§e, his Albanian mother, the local
witch of the Asian district of Uskiidar, was not happy with Bekir. He
made her skin tingle, ikmen made a mental note to drop by the fortuneteller's
colourful studio in Balat before he returned home the following
evening.

During Ottoman times, before the Republican era, Gaziantep was known
just as Aintab. Then in 1921, when what is now the Turkish Republic
was fighting for its existence against the forces of France, Great Britain
and Greece as well as the Sultan's royalist soldiers, Aintab was
Turkicised to Antep and given an honorific title. In recognition of the

34

I
heroic resistance put up by Antep's citizens to the French army in 1921,
Atatiirk, the Republic's founder and first president, said that from then
on the city was to be known as Gazi or 'warrior hero' Antep. Since
that time Gaziantep had been a largely Turkish city, but remnants from
its more cosmopolitan past remained, as Mehmet Siileyman was discovering.
The house that Inspector Taner and her cousin took him to for
his meal that night was a case in point. It was located in the old Sahinbey
quarter of the city, an area which had a distinctly Arabian feel to it,
underlining in effect the comparative closeness of Gaziantep to Syria.
Once through the low doorway that led directly from the dark, narrow
street into the courtyard of what looked like a great mansion, one could
very easily not be in Turkey at all. In fact, Siileyman thought as he
watched a pretty marble fountain bubble away gently in the middle of
the chequered courtyard, places just like this existed in Damascus,
Jerusalem, Amman or any other Arab city one would care to name. The
pungent smell of spices that permeated the building added to the general
sense of exoticism.
'I hope you don't mind,' Taner said as she directed Siileyman towards
a dining table, already set with cutlery and napkins, in one corner of
the courtyard. Above it and slightly overhanging into the space below
was the upper storey of the house, which was accessed by a broad marble
staircase from the ground level. Up there Siileyman could see ornate
doorways and delicate fanlight windows of tremendous beauty.
'What a wonderful place,' he said, genuinely impressed.

'Please sit down,' his hostess replied. She did not respond to his
delight in his surroundings, nor did she tell him what the place was.
Her cousin left them and walked towards a doorway just underneath
the staircase, saying something in a language Siileyman didn't understand.
As
they sat down, Inspector Taner spoke. 'As you know, Yusuf Kay a
was picked up on security cameras in a patisserie called the Nightingale,'
she said. 'Not that that is important now. What is, however, is that Kay a
has friends, of sorts, in Gaziantep.'
'Do you know who they are?'
She took a piece of paper out of her handbag and pushed it across

the table. It was a map of the centre of Gaziantep.
'There is a house, here, just off Giizelce Lane.' She pointed to what
was, to Siileyman, a fathomless spot on the map. 'It is a brothel.'
'You think that Kaya might be hiding out in a brothel?'
'A friend of his runs the place,' she said. 'A woman called Anastasia.
Kaya put her on her back when she was little more than a child.'
'That was in Mardin?'
'Yes.' Ardic had said that Mardin wanted Kaya as much as or perhaps
even more than the police in Istanbul. And if he had been turning the
city's girls to prostitution ... 'Do you like lahmacun?' Taner beckoned
an old black-clad woman carrying two steaming plates over to the table.
'Er, yes . ..'
Lahmacun is a type of thin bread topped, usually, with rather spicy
meat and vegetables. Because it generally involves cheese too it is often
referred to as Turkish pizza. In the east, as a rather wary Siileyman knew
all too well, lahmacun could be very heavily spiced indeed. As the
elderly lady put the plate down in front of him he viewed the pile of
slices with some caution.
'Together with the local police I'm going to be raiding the brothel
tomorrow morning,' Taner said as without so much as a flicker she
folded a great wedge of lahmacun into her mouth. 'We've been watching
the place since yesterday, but we don't know whether Kaya is in there
or not. However, one thing is for sure: to raid at night when the place
is full of customers will only give him any cover he might need to
escape. We'll get in there while they're all asleep.' She smiled grimly.
'It will be very strange for me to meet Anastasia again. I haven't seen
her for over twenty years.'
'No?' He would have liked to quiz Taner more closely on the matter,
but as soon as he'd put the lahmacun into his mouth the whole of his
alimentary canal had caught fire. The chillies were lethal!
'Anastasia and myself are of an age,' the inspector replied. 'I am a
Muslim, she a Suriani Christian, but we went to school together. She
was very pretty, but a nice girl too, you know.' She smiled more openly
this time. 'Not many girls are both pretty and nice, Inspector. As a man
you may not be aware of that.' Her face dropped and became altogether
I

I
more grim. 'Yusuf Kaya, who as you know is fifty this year, is a few
years older than Anastasia and myself. When she was fifteen he raped
her. He wanted her badly, but she didn't like him and so he took her
by force. Of course her family didn't want her back.'
The old woman returned, this time carrying a bottle of something
clear. She hovered, seemingly nervously, until Taner turned to look at
her with a very casual eye.
'Raki?' Taner asked Siileyman.
He'd finally managed to get through the first slice of lahmacun and
was starting on his second. He was, he felt, getting used to it now, maybe
because his mouth had been numbed by the pepper.
'Yes. Thank you,' he said.
The old woman didn't even look at him as she poured some of the
clear, viscous liquid into his glass. Then she filled Taner's glass and
left. There was no sign, or didn't appear to be any sign, of Rafik.
'Yusuf Kaya set up a brothel on the edge of a small village down on
what we call the Ocean,' Taner said as she topped up both their raki
glasses with water. Then, seeing his confusion, she added, 'It's what
outsiders call the Mesopotamian plain.'
'Ah.'
'Even at seventeen he was enterprising. He had Anastasia because he
wanted her and then he let other men have her for money. The Kayas
are a very bad clan, Inspector Siileyman. But they have power, you
know?'
He'd heard. The clans of Mardin, like the clans associated with some
other cities in the east, were notorious for the power they wielded over
their members and often over non-relatives around them too. Between
the clans and the various terrorists it was difficult to know who was the
most dangerous.
'But, Inspector,' Siileyman said, 'you describe this woman, now, as
Kaya's friend. Surely if he ruined her life ...'
Edibe Taner shrugged. 'What can one say?' she said. 'Some women
are like that. Some women adore their abusers. Psychologically it can
be a way for an abused woman to come to terms with what has happened
to her. If she loves her abuser then what has happened cannot be abuse.


Yusuf Kay a is a married man but Anastasia Akyuz is still, it is said, in
love with him. What is also said is that her daughter, also living in the
brothel, is his daughter too.'
'So Kaya is very likely to be with them.'
'He was seen just yesterday here in Gaziantep. It's possible.' She took
a swig from her raki glass and then looked up at the darkening sky above
and sighed. 'Inspector, I have spent most of my professional life fighting
these clans. They're clever. I can't guarantee what, if anything, will
happen tomorrow. But if you want to come along with me, provided you
are content to let the Gaziantep police take the lead, you may do so.'
Was that stuff about letting the Gaziantep police take the lead some
sort of code for 'we know how arrogant you istanbullus are, we know
you always want to take over'? If so, then it was probably best to let
it just go over his head. After all, what did a country bumpkin like Taner
know about him? She might be wearing a smart suit and expensive
make-up, but that didn't stop her being merely a big fish in a very small
pool. He said he'd like to observe the raid just as the next course, ribs
of lamb that appeared to be stuffed with rice, appeared. It was then that
Taner's mobile telephone rang.
She looked down at the instrument and said, 'I have to take this.'
Then, without another word, she got up and left the table.
'You'll want to wait for her, I suppose,' the old woman, who was
still standing by the table waiting to serve them, said. 'To eat?'
'Oh, er, yes,' he said. 'Yes, I will, thank you.'
'As you wish.' There was a slight foreign tinge to her voice. But then
a lot of people in this part of the country did not speak Turkish as their
first language. Maybe the old black-clad woman was an Arab? Perhaps
that was the language he had heard Rafik speaking earlier?
She was just about to leave when Siileyman, his curiosity piqued by
this place he knew absolutely nothing about, said, 'What is this building?
Can you tell me?'
The woman, who was small and he could see now was very angular,
almost like one of those pictures of witches one sometimes saw in books
of European fairy stories, stopped. 'You want to see the Zeytounian
house?' she said.

Siileyman instantly recognised the name as one of Armenian origin.
The old woman, who did not give him her own name at any point, led
him up the stairs to the first floor of the building. Just to the left of the
stairs was a large doorway surmounted by a very ornate stained glass
fanlight. The door was ajar and Siileyman could just make out that the
interior was lit by a flickering flame, possibly candlelight.
'The house was built by Dzeron Zeytounian in the nineteenth century,'
the old woman said. 'The Zeytounians were rich, educated people.'
She pushed the door open and he found himself looking into another
world. The old woman quite clearly knew this, because what she said
next indicated that she had, perhaps, read Siileyman's mind.
'These rooms belong to the Cobweb World,' she said. 'They exist in
a time not even I can remember.'
He could see three rooms, all with worn but still beautiful parquet
floors. Curtains faded almost to white hung at the few windows, and
the rooms were indeed lit by four large collections of flickering candles.
Although the furniture was sparse, Siileyman could see that it was both
old and very good. Two sagging but still regal armchairs graced one
room, their once bright brocade covers nibbled by vermin. In another
room, on top of a small bamboo and teak table was a radio almost as
big as a modern TV set, the international stations on its dial given in
French: Londres, Maroc, Allemagne.
But it was not the furniture or even the fabulous floors that really held
his attention. The walls and the ceilings, which were panelled in ornate
cream-painted wood, were also covered with paintings. Great fluffy clouds
above his head barely concealed cherubs casually leaning upon golden
harps. At picture rail level, large arched hunting scenes predominated: illustrations
that looked as if they would be more appropriate for the country
house of an English gentleman than the mansion of a wealthy Armenian.
Finally, between panels painted with a Grecian urn motif and cupboards
fronted with delicate wooden filigree, there were portraits. The women,
unveiled and wearing clothing typical of nineteenth-century Europe, stared
out solemnly from hooded oriental eyes. The men wore fezzes, their faces
also solemn but this time in some cases recognisable.
'That is Dzeron Zeytounian,' the old woman said as she pointed to

a particularly severe-looking portrait. 'This one here is Midhat Pa§a.'
Midhat Pa§a Siileyman knew. It had been Midhat who had tried to
persuade the autocratic and paranoid Sultan Abdul Hamid to grant his
people a modern constitution back in the 1870s. He had paid for his
social concern with his life. Strangely, next to Midhat's portrait was one
of the sultan concerned, his dark skin and hooded eyes making him look
as if he could almost be related to the Zeytounian ladies.
Instinctively - for this long dead sultan, for all his faults, was one of
Siileyman's forebears - the policeman put his hand up towards the
portrait.
The old woman said, 'You have a connection to the Cobweb World. I
know it and I can see it too.' He turned to look at her and saw that she
was smiling. 'The Cobweb World is Ottoman, it is Armenian, Syrian,
Jewish. Ancient, even beyond the Byzantine times. It has always been,'
she said. 'You will find the Cobweb World everywhere if you go to Mardin.'
He wanted to know how she apparently knew about his possible trip
to Mardin; how she knew or claimed to know that he was from an
Ottoman family, for that matter. But he just went on staring at the portrait
of Sultan Abdul Hamid. During the latter half of his reign some of his
opponents had 'accused' him of having Armenian blood. 'This Cobweb
World of which you speak . ..'
'Is what remains of things gone by. Meaningful things,' she said
gently. 'In other places things die, but here ... Belief means that some
corpses retain some life. Then again, some things never die in the first
place. Some faiths are alive and--'
She was cut off by a furious female voice coming from the ornate
doorway. Turning slowly and reluctantly from the portrait in front of
him, Siileyman saw the angry figure of Inspector Taner berating the old
woman roundly. What language she was speaking he didn't know, but
the effect it had on the old woman was instant and she moved away
quickly without another word. Taner, breathing heavily, looked across
at Siileyman and smiled. 'I apologise for that,' she said. 'She speaks out
of turn. Madly.'
'She was actually quite interesting,' Suleyman said. 'And this
building--'


40
I
'It's very late,' the policewoman cut in, rudely, he thought. 'The stupid
old woman has let our food get cold. Rafik will take you back to your
hotel now. We have to start early in the morning.' She held her arm out
towards him in a gesture that he felt would brook no argument. 'Come.
Let's go.'
'This is a marvellous place. It--'

Taner moved forward and took Siileyman physically by the arm. 'It's
an old, dead house,' she said matter-of-factly; 'it has no interest or
meaning for someone like you. Dinner is over. Come.'
She pulled him roughly out into the cool, southern night.

Chapter 4

Secretly, ikmen had expected more. Scientific procedures were so
sophisticated now that near miracles were, or seemed to be, almost
daily occurrences. He passed the photographs in his hands over to the
pathologist and sighed.
'Useless,' he said. 'They tell us nothing.'
Dr Arto Sarkissian adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose
and squinted. '£etin, to be fair,' he said, 'these men are wearing stockings
over their faces. The enhancement shows that very clearly. We
couldn't see that before. All we had was some security film of men
dressed as cleaners and nurses.'
'Now we have men dressed as cleaners and nurses with stockings
over their faces,' ikmen responded caustically. 'Hardly useful.'
'Hardly possible, in the real world, for photographic enhancement to
peer through the distorting effect of ladies' hosiery,' Arto said, himself
peering sternly over the top of his glasses at the policeman. 'I think that
the laboratory has done extremely well.'
ikmen grunted. Arto Sarkissian and pounds tin ikmen had been friends
since childhood. Their fathers had been friends also and the two boys,
together with ikmen's brother Halil and Arto's brother Krikor, had spent
almost every waking moment together when not at their respective
schools. Although financially far and away above ikmen with his huge,
riotous band of children, the pathologist retained a closeness to his old
friend that was entirely free of competition or artifice of any sort.
'I suppose now I've got to start looking for ladies' stockings in dustbins
and on landfill sites,' ikmen said gloomily.
'At least you know now that you have to look for stockings,' Arto
replied. 'The men who freed Yusuf Kay a may even have discarded their

masks amongst the clinical waste at the Cerrahpa§a. There are many
avenues you can go down in pursuit of DNA samples, Cetin.'
'Mmm.' Ikmen lit a cigarette and sighed. The doctor had come to the
policeman's office in order to discuss the post-mortems he had performed
on the police officers and the prison guard who had died during Yusuf
Kaya's escape. That he'd walked into an examination of stills from the
Cerrahpa§a security camera film footage was purely accidental.
'I thought that stockings were a thing of the past these days,' ikmen
said, still miserably. 'I thought those wishing to hide their faces these
days wore scarves or novelty George W. Bush masks.'
Arto laughed. 'Maybe Yusuf Kaya's team are just old-fashioned boys,'
he said. Then, pointing at the photograph in his hand, he added, 'But
maybe not. You know that the weapons used to kill the men I examined
were not knives.'
'Not knives?' ikmen frowned.
Arto waddled heavily over towards his friend and put the photograph
on his desk. He was a short, very stout man just on the brink of actual
obesity.
'What the enhancement shows very nicely here is an absence of
knives,' he said, pointing at the photograph. 'See here. Something glints,
but as to what that thing is .. .'
Cetin peered downwards and then said, 'Yes, but the glinting is ...
Admittedly I can't actually see anything . . .'
'That's because the weapons they used were glass,' Arto said.
'Glass?'
'Admittedly large and very sharp shards of toughened glass, but glass
nevertheless,' Arto said.
His friend looked up and asked what even he knew was a pointless
question. 'Are you sure?'
Arto Sarkissian was always sure; that was why he was so good at
his job. 'Wounds to all three bodies contain glass particles. Also, the
shapes of the incisions are so irregular they can't have been produced
by a conventional blade. These stills, which show an apparent absence
of actual weaponry, only serve to confirm my findings.'
'Yes, but... Glass?'

Arto stumbled back to his chair and sat down again. 'Why not?' he
said. 'Glass is very effective as a weapon, and if a piece of glass is found
on a cleaner or a nurse it is unlikely to be confiscated even by a police
officer.'
'Well ...'
'They could be in the process of disposing of a dangerous shard found
on a ward or in a corridor. Glass can turn up anywhere. In the right
context, like that of a cleaner, being found in possession of glass can
be viewed as a good thing.'
He was right. It could be looked upon as entirely innocent. But far
from giving the policeman a sense of progress in the Kaya case, the
new information only served to unsettle him still further. Frowning again,
he said, 'The more I learn about Kaya's escape the more I am convinced
it was planned down to the last second. Glass! They might have considered
different weapons for weeks . . . months!'
'And yet planning at such an exact level implies, to me at least, complicity
from the only person who could possibly engineer Kaya's escape from the
beginning: the prison governor. Or am I being simple-minded?'
Cetin Ikmen nodded his head. 'I can see your point,' he said. 'And
yet so far I can find no evidence for that. The governor made a decision
based upon what the prison doctor and then the guards told him about Kaya at the time. It took him some hours to come to the conclusion
he reached and Kaya's condition had deteriorated before he did
anything. You don't send a dangerous psychopath out of incarceration
unless you're very certain that something is really wrong.'
'What about the prison doctor?'
'He was interviewed only hours after Kaya's escape,' ikmen said.
'The officer who interviewed him reported that he smelt of alcohol,
although whether or not he had examined Kaya whilst drunk isn't known.
He says he didn't recommend immediate transfer to the hospital. Kaya
had raised blood pressure but in the doctor's opinion he was more likely
to be having a panic attack than anything else.'
'So how did Kaya come to get a transfer to the Cerrahpa§a?' Arto
asked.
'The governor says that his guards recommended it,' Ikmen replied.

'They claimed, he says, that Kaya was breathing with difficulty and had
turned an alarming shade of grey. The governor duly went to see Kaya
and found him as he had been described. He then called the Cerrahpa§a
to request an ECG and asked the guards to prepare the prisoner for
transfer.'
'That's his version of the story,' Arto said.
'Without Yusuf Kaya himself and with the only surviving prison guard
still in a coma, there can only be one version at this time,' ikmen said.
'I've looked at telephone calls into and out of the prison, both landline
and mobile - I've found nothing in the least bit suspicious.'
'And so you question absent nurses and speculate about chimerical
cleaners,' Arto said. 'By the way, DNA samples gathered from the scarf
said to belong to one isak Mardin came up with no matches to anyone
known to us.'
ikmen sighed. 'Oh, joy,' he said gloomily.
The doctor cleared his throat. 'So Mehmet Siileyman is out east in
pursuit of Yusuf Kaya.'
'He's in Gaziantep at the moment,' Ikmen replied. 'Kaya was picked
up on a security camera at a patisserie down there.'
'What happens if Yusuf Kaya isn't in Gaziantep?'
ikmen shook his head wearily. 'Then my friend will have to go to
his home city of Mardin.'
'Oh, yes, of course, I remember now,' Arto said. 'A real eastern boy,
Yusuf Kaya.' They sat in silence for a moment and then he said, 'You
know, I've an old friend in Mardin, a Syrian. Seraphim Yunun he's
called. He's a monk at the monastery of St Sobo, which is just outside
the city.'
Ikmen, who had never heard of Seraphim Yunun, said, 'How did you
get to know him?'
'Oh, Christian circles, you know,' the Armenian said breezily. Not
that he was religious in any way, as far as ikmen was aware. But unlike
the policeman, who was nominally a Muslim, Arto was nominally a Christian, and in a country that was over ninety per cent Muslim, like
Turkey, the minorities did tend to know one another.
'Nice man, Seraphim,' the Armenian continued. 'I wonder, if Mehmet

Siileyman does go to Mardin, whether I should put him in touch? I
mean, I don't want to labour the point, but one cannot encounter too
many friendly faces in such an outlandish place.'
'Call him on his mobile.'
'Mm.' Arto frowned. 'I might just do that,' he said. 'My recollection
of accommodation in Mardin, admittedly some years ago now, is not a
pleasant one. I imagine that much has changed in twenty-odd years, but
if Inspector Siileyman does find himself in need of a clean bed and
intelligent company, he could do worse than stay at the monastery of
St Sobo.'

'Police!'
Less than a second later, and without further warning, a constable
smashed in the front door of the brothel with a pickaxe. Inside, women
screamed while the deeper voices of their erstwhile customers howled
in fury. Armed police, both plainclothed and in uniform, pushed their
way into the building shouting, 'Stay where you are!' Taner and
Siileyman, bringing up the rear, arrived inside when the raid was all but
over.
Some of the brothels in Istanbul, in Siileyman's experience, were rough
but this filthy little house in Gaziantep was just pathetic. The madame,
the Anastasia Akyuz of whom Taner had spoken the previous evening,
had obviously once been attractive. Now in her late forties, she was overweight,
unkempt and disappointed. Badly dressed in a thin, dirty-looking
housecoat, she stood smoking beside the shattered front door of her premises
as officers from the Gaziantep police constabulary made her various
'girls' and their clients step outside. Several 'respectable' people from
nearby flats and houses hurled random insults at the women as, in dribs
and drabs, they appeared.
'I haven't seen Yusuf for years,' Anastasia said to a clearly sceptical
Taner, when she and Siileyman emerged from the sad little house of ill
repute.
'Anastasia,' Taner replied with a smile, 'don't protect him. He married
a Muslim girl and gave her a lot of children. Money but no active
support, you know how he is. He was convicted in Istanbul for, amongst

other things, the murder of his mistress. Who knows how many more
women he has, how many children? Yusuf Kaya is totally faithless and
not worth a thought!'
Anastasia Akyuz put her hands on her ample hips and said, 'Edibe,
I don't know where he is.'
'He's a shit!' the officer from Mardin said.
Two women, neither of whom Siileyman felt could be under sixty
years of age, came out of the brothel clutching ugly nylon nightdresses
around their skinny varicose bodies. Someone in a house nearby shouted
out, 'Filthy whores!' Inside the brothel the sound of crockery being
smashed against floors and walls underlined the fact that the local police
were being far from low-key about this raid.
One of the sixty-year-old hookers looked at Siileyman, cleared her
throat and then said, 'What are you looking at?'
He didn't respond.

Inspector Taner, who didn't.turn a hair at all the violence and shouting
emanating from the brothel, said, 'Anastasia, where is Giilizar? Is she
with her father?'
'Giilizar is at college in Damascus. She's a good girl,' the woman
said.
'You brought her up in this brothel!'
'Yes, and I protected her!' Anastasia pointed to her own chest, a large
mound of flesh surmounted by a thick, gold crucifix. 'I sent her to
university! I pay!'
'Not Yusuf Kaya?'
'No! I don't see Yusuf, as I told you.'

'Yusuf Kaya who, until he was arrested in Istanbul last year, was in
charge of a drugs empire worth tens of thousands of dollars,' Taner said.
'Not a kuru§ for his daughter, though, no?'
Siileyman remembered that squalid flat in Tarlaba§i where Yusuf Kaya
had lived. Thousands and thousands of lire in sports bags in his filthy
bedroom as well as in bank accounts all over the city.
'Give him to me, Anastasia.' Taner bore down relentlessly on her
victim. 'He's been seen here in Gaziantep. Where would he stay if it
wasn't with you, eh?'

Before the woman could answer one of the Gaziantep officers put
his head out of an upstairs window and shouted, 'Inspector Taner!'
She looked up at him, shielding her eyes from the early morning sun
with one long, thin hand.
'Something you might like to see, Inspector,' the officer said.
'I'll come up,' Taner said. She turned back to Anastasia and pointed
rudely into her face. 'If you have been concealing things from us,
Anastasia
She walked back into the house and up the stairs. The raid itself had
been a pretty standard hit on a brothel in that it had involved a degree
of wanton destruction, women well past their prime crying and screaming
and unattractive men attempting to escape across neighbouring rooftops.
Neighbours and passers-by gawped, and some of the younger police
constables looked decidedly sheepish. Siileyman had seen it all before
and, if he were honest, he hadn't had enormously high hopes of finding
Yusuf Kay a in this brothel. Psychopathic he might be, but Kay a was far
too devious to make the mistake of staying with someone as obvious
as Anastasia.
In truth, Siileyman was still puzzling over what the old woman at
the Zeytounian house had meant by the 'Cobweb World'. If it was that
such places were stuck in the past by virtue of neglect, he could understand
it. But whether intended or not there had been, he felt, something
more esoteric behind what she had said. Unlike Cetin ikmen, who had
a natural sympathy with and understanding of things unseen, Siileyman
was far from comfortable with the metaphysical, in spite of the old
woman's words. And yet he'd felt something in that room beyond
natural curiosity, and the old woman had said that going to Mardin
was going to expose him to more of the Cobweb World. The thought
of it made him shudder. Now that Kay a was not, it seemed, in Gaziantep,
it was very probable that he'd gone back home to his dreadful clan in
Mardin, apparently the epicentre of the Cobweb World. In his mind
he conjured pictures of his befezzed Ottoman ancestors. Would he feel
them at his side when he went to Mardin? Was the Cobweb World a
kind of permanent and possibly tangible haunted state of being? He
was linking that thought to why, possibly, Inspector Taner had been

so keen to get him out of the Zeytounian house when he felt a tap on
his shoulder.
'She's not right, you know.' Anastasia Akyuz blew a lungful of cigarette
smoke into his face.
'I'm sorry?' It was like waking violently from a very peculiar dream.
'Edibe Taner,' the woman continued. 'I knew her at school. She wasn't
right there either.'
Siileyman frowned. 'What?'
'Well, why would she want to go and join the police? Why would
any woman?' Anastasia moved in closer to Siileyman and looked him
critically up and down. 'I heard her say you are from Istanbul.'
'Yes, I am.'
'You know Yusuf.'
' Yusuf Kaya is known to me,' he said. He didn't tell her he'd arrested
him.
'Edibe thinks that I still keep in touch with him, but I don't,' she
said. 'Why does she think that I send my daughter to university in Syria?
I am Suriani, yes, but Turkey is my country. I send Giilizar to study in
Damascus because I don't want her father to find her. I know what Yusuf
is, even--'
'Anastasia!'
She looked up. The voice came from the top of the tatty stone and
mud brick house. Inspector Taner was waving what looked like a small
piece of paper at her.
'You need to see this.' She disappeared from the window.
Anastasia shook her head and closed her eyes. 'God!' she murmured.
Outside with Siileyman and the brothel keeper again, Taner pushed
the paper underneath Anastasia's nose.
'Why is there a photograph of Yusuf Kaya underneath your bed,
Anastasia? I think it was taken recently, and it was taken here in this
house.'
Briefly, the brothel keeper put her head in her hands. Then she looked
up and said, 'Look, Yusuf came here last year, I admit it. Maybe two
months before he was arrested. I... Look, Edibe, I admit I still had a
thing for him then, we went to bed ... but I don't let him see Giilizar

and I don't know where he is now. I haven't seen him since that time,
I swear to God.'
'Why should I believe you?' the Mardin policewoman said. 'You told
me you hadn't seen Yusuf for years. That was a lie.'
Anastasia groaned. Edibe Taner put the photograph into a small plastic
bag and slotted it into her handbag.
'Miss Akyuz,' Siileyman said urgently, 'if you know anything at all
about where Yusuf Kaya might be you must tell us - now. Aiding and
abetting an escaped prisoner is, as I am sure you know, a very serious
offence.'
The woman's dark, make-up-smudged eyes darted round nervously
for a moment until she said, 'I haven't seen Yusuf this year, I swear. I
swear! But I know that one of his aunts lives at Birecik. She broke from
the Kaya clan in Mardin and married this farmer from there. They don't
speak to her, but I know Yusuf has used her place in the past. He'll use
anyone.' She cast her eyes downwards. 'Her name is Bulbul, that's all
I know. She lives on a farm outside Birecik with her husband. He's a
lot older than her, I think.'
'Where is Birecik?'
'South of here,' Edibe Taner said. 'It's on the Euphrates.' She smiled
at the woman and said, 'Thank you, Anastasia. You did the right thing.'
Furious now, Anastasia Akyuz turned away with tears in her eyes.
Inspector Taner flicked her head at Siileyman, indicating that they
should go. But before she left she put one of her hands on Anastasia's
shoulder and said, 'And next time, if there is a next time, Yusuf seeks
the warmth of your bed for the night, be kind to yourself, Anastasia,
and say no.' She let go of the woman and took Siileyman by the arm.
'Where are we going?' Siileyman said, looking down at Taner's strong
hand on his bicep.
'To headquarters here and then on to Birecik,' she answered casually.
'No point being here if Kaya is elsewhere.'

'Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!' Fatma ikmen put her fingers to her lips and waved her
other hand as if in warning. 'Bekir is still asleep!'
'Mum, it's eleven o'clock,' her son Biilent replied. 'Even I'm up!'

When he had returned from performing his military service the
previous year, Biilent, who was now in his early twenties, had gone to
live with his sister pounds ek in an apartment near Atatiirk Airport. Like his
sister, Biilent worked as cabin crew for Turkish Airlines and, again like pounds ek, he flew all over the world on a regular basis. Unlike his sister,
Biilent didn't really remember his brother Bekir. He did not therefore
share her apparent joy at seeing him again. In fact, Biilent found the
older man not a little patronising and his mother's attitude towards him
irritating in the extreme. Fatma was behaving as if Bekir was a baby.
'So what tasty little treat have you been cooking up for him today?'
Biilent said as he entered the kitchen, which smelt strongly of cooked
sugar and butter.
'Bekir was always a great one for baklava,' Fatma said as she turned
the heat up on the samovar in the corner of the kitchen. 'Tea?'
'Yes, thank you. You're making baklava?' Biilent said, astounded.
'Mum, you can buy that stuff from the patisserie down the road. Did
you make the pastry and--'
'Yes, yes, yes! What is wrong with that?' his mother interrupted
angrily. 'Do I have to ask you what I may or may not do in my own
kitchen?'
'No, of course not,' her son said. 'But Mum, I know that if you make
baklava from scratch, as in you make the pastry too, it's really hard and
time-consuming, and--'
'My mother did it without complaint,' Fatma said, pouring tea from
the samovar pot into a small tulip glass for Biilent.
Baklava, which consists of nuts, a lot of sugar and layer upon layer
of very thin buttery filo pastry, is not an easy dessert to make. All but
the most enthusiastic cooks did as Biilent had suggested and bought the
stuff ready made from a pastry shop. Fatma ikmen did indeed like to
cook, but even she had, to Biilent's knowledge at least, always drawn
the line at baklava.
'So where have you been this week, my son?' Fatma said as she
ushered Biilent, a tall and still very thin young man, into a chair by the
kitchen table.
'Holland,' he said, slipping a hand into his denim jacket and taking

I
out a packet of cigarettes. 'We were meant to be just shuttling there and
back but on Tuesday the plane developed some sort of engine trouble
and we had to lay over for the night.'
'Oh?' Fatma sat down across the table from her son and watched him
light up a cigarette. Just like his father. She didn't approve, but she
accepted that smoking was something that most of her children did. 'In
Amsterdam?'
'Yes.' There was another smell underneath the sugar and the butter
that was really quite unpleasant. What it was, Biilent couldn't imagine,
beyond knowing that it was organic in some way. Something of rot or
mould . . .
'That you are having the opportunity to visit so many places is very
nice for you,' Fatma said. 'But also you must be careful too, Btilent. In
some of these places
He knew full well what this was about. 'Mum, in Amsterdam I did
not, I promise you, use either drugs or women of easy virtue,' he said.
To use even the word 'prostitute' would have outraged her. That said,
he wasn't lying. He'd got very drunk in Amsterdam but he hadn't done
anything else beyond look at what others got up to. 'I'm not stupid, you
know. Not now.'
When he was a teenager, Biilent had had the odd brush with drugs,
but nothing, Fatma knew, on the scale of Bekir's involvement. What
had happened to her third son and what he had done as a result of it
was unique within the Ikmen family. Only the day before she had learned
that there had been a period in Bekir's life when he had begged for
money for drugs. Then, apparently, he had been literally on the street.
Cold in spite of the fierce summer heat, he had pulled at the clothes of
rich European and American tourists to get their attention. Then he'd
asked for money for some mythical child's life-saving operation, money
he would later use to buy heroin.
'I think I'd feel better if at least some of my children paid attention
to religion,' Fatma said. 'I know your father doesn't care for Islam but
you know, Biilent, at times, for me, my religion has been the only thing
that has sustained me. I--'
'Oh, Mum, not religion.' The voice was tired, smoke-scarred and lazy.

Biilent looked up into the tanned and rather amused face of his errant
brother.
Fatma, instantly on her feet and alive with what could have been
anxiety, said, 'Bekir, my son, do you want a glass of tea? I'm cooking
baklava for you, and--'
'Mum, calm down!' Bekir said as he watched Biilent light up another
cigarette. 'Can I have one of those, brother?'
With a shrug Biilent tossed a Marlboro across the table. Fatma almost
ran towards the samovar.
'Mum, it's OK,' Bekir said. 'There's no hurry. You don't need to
fuss.'
But she did and Biilent at least knew why. His mother was afraid that if she didn't do exactly what Bekir wanted, he'd leave again. The first
time he left, apparently, it had been because he wasn't getting his own
way all the time. But he'd been a teenager back then.
'So, Mum, are you ready for the dentist?' Biilent said once his mother
had given his brother some tea.
'Dentist?'
Biilent rolled his eyes. 'Mum, that's why I'm here,' he said. 'You've
an appointment at midday over in Beyoglu, remember?'
Fatma put a hand up to her mouth and said, 'Oh, my . ..'
She had forgotten. 'You're always frightened and one or other of us
always takes you,' Biilent said.
'Oh, Biilent, I...'
'Oh, well, no harm done,' he said. 'Get your coat and we'll go. There's
time.'
At first she didn't answer. She was thinking about something that
very soon, and to Biilent's intense irritation, became apparent.
'Biilent, I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I can't go to the dentist today.'
'Mum, you have toothache, or you had it last week,' Biilent replied.
'You've got to go.'
'Oh, but. . .'
'Mum, if you have toothache you must go to the dentist,' Bekir said.
She put a hand on his arm. 'Bekir, darling, I have so much washing
to do. And then there's baklava baking ...'

'Do the washing another time,' Bekir said. 'And if you tell me what
time to take the baklava out of the oven, I can do that for you. I'm not
going anywhere today.'
But Fatma was adamant. 'No, no,' she said. 'I can't have you doing
that, Bekir.' She looked across at Biilent. 'I'll go and telephone the
dentist. Cancel.'
Without another word, she left the room. This, Biilent knew, was not
healthy. His mother wasn't leaving the apartment in case her prodigal
son suddenly upped and disappeared again. Bekir knew it too, Biilent
felt. In spite of his soothing words Bekir was sitting across the table
from him looking very smug. Biilent knew he'd have to speak to his
father about it soon, and also about that quite irritating musty smell that
seemed to be all over the apartment these days.

Chapter 5

About an hour's drive to the east of Gaziantep (or forty minutes with
Inspector Taner behind the wheel) is the town of Birecik. Sitting astride
the Euphrates river, Birecik is famous for two things: the dam of the
same name that lies to the north of the town and the fact that the shores
of the Euphrates at this point are home to a particularly ugly, if rare, bird
called the bald ibis. So unusual is this creature that every year people
come from all over the world to see it. Not so the dam, the building of
which necessitated the flooding of numerous local villages including the
site where the fabulous mosaics of Zeugma, now in the Gaziantep museum,
had been discovered. As they drove at lightning speed towards the town,
Suleyman thought gloomily that he'd never managed to get to the museum
on Zelfa's behalf. Even though he knew that his wife had only mentioned
Zeugma as a distraction from the fear she felt at his going away, he was
sorry he hadn't been able to see the mosaics. Now he didn't know whether
it was ever going to be possible. He and Taner had brought all their
luggage with them on this trip. Chances were they were either going to
stay in Birecik or move on eastwards.
It was midday by the time they reached what was a rather scruffy
town, albeit one with a fabulous Roman fortress that Taner told him had
been captured by Christian crusaders in the tenth century. Not that such
a span of time was considered to be that vast in the east. As the Mardin
policewoman was very quick to point out, her father had older things
in his yard back home.
The Euphrates river is to the west of the town and is spanned by a
bridge that was constructed back in the 1950s. It was in a teahouse on
a cliff overlooking the bridge and the river below that Taner and Suleyman
met the captain of the local Jandarma. Clad in the familiar green uniform

of the paramilitary force that polices many rural areas in Turkey, Captain
Hilmi Erdur, whom Taner had contacted by telephone earlier, was young
and very tired-looking.
'Sir, madam,' he said, bowing to both Siileyman and Taner as they
approached him, 'I do apologise for my appearance. I'm afraid we had
an incident last night and as a consequence I have not slept for almost
two days. Please ...'
He pulled out chairs for them and then called for tea and a clean
ashtray.
As usual, Inspector Taner got straight to the point. 'Captain, we're
looking for a woman called Bulbul. She comes originally from my city of
Mardin and she is the aunt of the escaped convict Yusuf Kaya. I don't
know her exact age but I made a call back to the station in Mardin just
before we left Gaziantep and a colleague there reckons she must be somewhere
in her sixties. He, my colleague, thinks that Bulbul is probably the
sister of Yusuf Kaya's father. Apparently, or so it is said, she met a Birecik
man in the bazaar in Mardin back in the late fifties and love blossomed.
She left with him, and there was quite a scandal at the time. I don't know
the man's name; apparently it is not spoken of in Mardin. All that is known
is that he is a farmer and he is a lot older than his wife.'
Captain Erdur looked grave. 'Like everyone else, I have heard of
Yusuf Kaya, and I know that his family are powerful and dangerous. I
didn't know that his aunt lived in Birecik.'
'You know a lady fitting this description?'
'A Mrs Bulbul Kaplan lives with her elderly husband Gazi on his farm
just to the east of here,' the captain said. 'The Kaplans are involved in
olive-growing. They have money and a lot of power round here. I am
surprised to learn that Bulbul was once a Kaya - if indeed that is the case.'
'Are the Kaplans known to be violent?' Taner asked.
The captain shrugged. 'What can I say? I don't know of any actual
criminal connection. But they have money and their men have been
known to defend the family honour against outsiders. The Kaplans
always have the best of any clan-based fight here in Birecik.'
A young boy brought three glasses of tea and an ashtray, set them
all down in front of the officers and left.

'At the time, back in the fifties, apparently people wondered why the
Kayas didn't go after Bulbul when she left Mardin with her lover,' Taner
said. 'But if her lover was a member of a very powerful clan maybe it
was deemed unwise to challenge them. After all, Bulbul was only a girl,
wasn't she? Hardly worth spilling male blood for, was she?'
The overt bitterness in her voice made both of the men, for a
moment, look away. Siileyman at least wondered just how hard life
for a woman on the force in Mardin could be. He suspected it wasn't
at all easy.
'But anyway,' Taner said, recovering her composure, 'we think that
Yusuf Kaya may have been or indeed may be even now staying with
his aunt here in Birecik.'
The captain frowned. 'You think Kaya would stay with someone who
had dishonoured his family? Who told you such a thing?'

'We learned that Kaya might be staying with his aunt from a woman
who has been involved with him for many years,' Siileyman said. 'And,
Captain, as for Kaya's having any qualms about staying with someone
like this aunt, he is a person entirely free of such concerns. He's a
psychopath, and as such he will use anyone or anything to achieve his
objectives or preserve his own life.'
'You arrested him in Istanbul?'
'I did.'
The young jandarme rubbed the sides of his face with his hands and
then stared out into the distance, across the Euphrates, apparently deep
in thought. Taner and Siileyman let him do so for a while, but when the
silence went on the Mardin officer said, 'Captain, what are you--'
'Oh, no, not again,' he murmured in reply. 'Not again!'
'Not again? Captain ...'
He rose quickly to his feet and pointed to the river in front of them.
'There,' he said, 'there in the Euphrates, another present from bloody
Iraq! Another creature forsaken by Allah!'
Siileyman looked in the direction in which the jandarme was pointing,
but all he could see was a small patch of what looked like sand in the
middle of the Euphrates river.

'So Yusuf Kay a was in here when he first became unwell,' ikmen
said.
'Yes.' The governor of Kartal Prison looked across the small room at
the policeman and blinked owlishly through his thick, round spectacles.
In spite of the day's being warm it was cold in that dark little cell and the
governor shuddered. 'Kaya fought with another prisoner earlier in the day.
He went berserk. He was put into solitary both to protect the other inmates
and as a punishment. I'm sure you know how it is, Inspector.'
pounds tin Ikmen did. Unlike, or so he had heard, most western European
prisoners, Turkish inmates loathed being in solitary for even the shortest
period of time. Most of them, also unlike their western counterparts,
hated two- and three-man cells as well, favouring the large dormitory
style of incarceration that was now being phased out across the whole
of Turkey.
'Do you know what the fight was about?' ikmen asked.
'No.' The governor was quite blunt and also seemingly unconcerned.
But then that was no surprise. Prison was a harsh place; sorting out
differences between individuals was not something the authorities did
a lot of. As if to underline his position the governor said, 'We keep
order, Inspector ikmen, as you know. Keeping order when those in your
care are murderers, rapists, terrorists and drug dealers takes up all of
your time.'
'I understand that, sir,' ikmen said. 'But I will need to speak to the
prisoner with whom Kaya fought.'
The governor looked at him steadily through his spectacles and said,
'Do you think that Kaya might have had help to escape from within
this institution?'
ikmen took a deep breath of the fetid, damp air around him. 'I don't
know, sir, but--'
'Because, Inspector,' the governor added quickly, 'if you think that
any of my officers were involved you are very much mistaken. Apart
from anything else, officer Bayar died during the course of the escape,
while officer Eren is still fighting for his life. Other prisoners are one
thing, but my officers
'Sir, you said yourself that no other officers apart from Eren and

Bayar were involved with Kaya that night,' ikmen said. 'We can't speak
to Eren yet, but we have spoken to the other significant person, your
doctor, who gave it as his opinion that Kaya was only experiencing a
panic attack that night.'
'Yes, I know that. I--'
'You, sir, as far as I can tell, on the advice of Officer Bayar made
the decision to send Kaya to the Cerrahpa§a because you and or Bayar were afraid that he might be having a cardiac arrest.'
The governor sighed. 'Our doctor, between you and me, Inspector,
is sometimes . . .' He frowned. 'Well . ..'
'Sir, we know that the doctor drinks,' ikmen said. 'I can understand
why you sent Kaya to the hospital, believe me I can. But what interests
me is how he got there.'
'How?'
ikmen looked down at the small hard bed built into the cold cell wall
and decided that he didn't need to sit down that much, however hard
his back was aching.
'Sir, it occurs to me that if Kaya had not been in solitary that night
the chances of your detecting his supposed cardiac problems would
have been slim. On the dormitory his cries for help may well have been
drowned out by the moans and cries of other men, as well you know,'
ikmen said. 'As you also know, when Kaya escaped from the Cerrahpa§a
he ran out of there like a teenager, and so I think that we can safely
say that he was faking his cardiac arrest. The doctor's assessment was
therefore accurate - any prisoner just about to put an escape plan into
action would be panicking and his blood pressure be raised. So now I
need to speak to the prisoner he had been fighting with earlier in the
day. Because it is that prisoner who put Kaya into solitary. That prisoner,
sir, whether by accident or design, allowed Yusuf Kaya to escape
from this prison.'

Three of Captain Erdur's men were on the shoreline when Erdur,
Siileyman and Taner arrived. Two of them made sure that people stayed
as far back as possible while the third waded out into the river to retrieve
the dead body.

'This is what had me up all night last night,' the captain said wearily
to the two visiting officers.
'Another body in the Euphrates?' Siileyman asked, genuinely
surprised.
'When I said they came up from Iraq, I wasn't lying,' Captain Erdur
said.
'You mean from the conflict with the Americans?'

'Oh, yes,' Erdur said. 'Insurgents, terrorists - whatever they're called maybe.
Often I think just poor ordinary people caught up in that nightmare
over there. We're rarely able to identify them. The one we found last night
was a woman, a young one.' He looked down for a moment and then
muttered, 'It's tragic'
Inspector Taner, whose stiletto heels were sinking a bit in the thick
river mud, said, 'What do you do with them? Do you repatriate, or--'
'Captain Erdur!' The man in the middle of the river with the apparently
yellow clad body was waving.
'Yes?' Erdur said. 'What is it?'
'This is an American soldier,' the young jandarme said.
' What!' Without another word Captain Erdur plunged into the waters
of the Euphrates and waded towards his man and the waterlogged
body.
Siileyman, alone now with a decidedly unsteady Inspector Taner, said,
'Can it really be an American soldier, do you think?'
'I've heard stories about Iraqi bodies being found in the Euphrates,'
she said. 'It's been happening for a while. But I've never heard anything
about any Americans. Maybe it isn't. Let's see.'
She stumbled a little as the mud sank beneath her, but Siileyman
resisted the temptation to assist her. She would not, he felt certain, appreciate
it. As a woman in what was very much a man's world, Taner felt
she had a lot to prove. Female officers were somewhat like this in
Istanbul, although there the distinctions between men and women were
much less marked than he imagined they would be in Mardin. His
thoughts were interrupted by the sound of retching coming from the
middle of the Euphrates. The young jandarme who had originally gone
to retrieve the body was being sick.

'Yiiksel! Giizer!' Captain Erdur yelled over at his remaining men on
the banks of the river. 'Come and help!'
The two young men left the few curious locals they had been talking
to and ran into the water. As they went in so the other officer came out,
looking decidedly white around the face. Siileyman went up to him and
said, 'Are you all right?'
The young man shuddered and then said, 'Not really, sir.'
'Had you never seen a body before?'
'Oh, I've seen bodies before, sir. Several, actually, but never like that.
Not ever like that!'
His eyes had a glint of horror in them. It was something, this shocked
and appalled look, that Siileyman had seen many, many times before
amongst victims of crime.
'Was it an American soldier?' Taner asked.
'Oh, yes,' the young man said. 'I recognised the uniform. But. . . but
- madam, sir - the body, it... it had, it has, no face! Someone has ...'
He leaned forwards, retching again. When he stopped he said, 'Someone,
some ... some animal has scraped it all away!' He vomited, missing
Siileyman's shoes by at most a centimetre.
Siileyman looked up at Taner and then at the figure of Captain Erdur
emerging slowly from the river. His face, though not white and shocked,
was grey with both strain and fatigue. When he got close to the little
group he said, 'Nightmare! An American soldier without dog-tags. Where
do I even start?'
'You'll have to pass it up to your commander,' Siileyman said. 'The
American military will have to be informed.' It was self-evident, but he
said it anyway. 'Captain, the face of the body ...'
'Gone,' he said, confirming what his still heaving officer had just told
them. 'Looks like it's been hacked off with a knife. Anything goes over
in that poor wretched country these days! People are turning into beasts.'
He looked down for a moment and then scanned the cliff behind them,
where a few local people had gathered. Then he frowned. Touching
Suleyman on the arm, he said, 'Inspector, turn round and look behind
you.'
'What?' But he did as the captain had asked and turned round to look

up at the cliff, the track that led up to the top and the tea garden they
had just left.
'Up there, on top of the cliff,' the captain said. 'The lady with the
green headscarf, that is Bulbul Kaplan.'
Siileyman squinted up into the sunlight and saw a short, dumpy woman
whose head was indeed covered with shiny green silk. Unlike the rest
of the onlookers, she was, he felt, looking not so much at what was
happening in the river as directly at him.

Ikmen didn't as a rule have a lot of time for prison guards. In his
experience they were often people who were really frustrated police
officers. Having failed to make the grade for the police, many prison
guards slotted resentfully into the incarceration service and spent much
of their time taking out their ire on the prisoners. But they had their
uses and at this moment ikmen was very glad that he had a couple of
big brutish examples with him. The governor had agreed that, provided he didn't take Ay§e Farsakoglu with him, he could interview the inmate
who had fought with Yusuf Kaya on the day of his escape. Apparently
the man in question, Ara Berkoz, was a violent rapist on whom just
the sight of an attractive woman acted as a provocation, ikmen
entered the room the governor had set aside for the interview and
found himself looking at a huge, black-bearded man with small but
intensely bright blue eyes. On his shoulders were the firmly planted
hands of the two guards always allocated to Ara Berkoz every time
he had a visitor. The rapist, the governor had told him, had a tendency
to bite when agitated and so letting him sit without restraint of some
sort was not really an option, ikmen told the huge man who he was
and why he was asking for help.
'You fought with Yusuf Kaya, just before he escaped, out in the yard,
didn't you, Ara,' he said.
Ara Berkoz didn't speak for a very long time. Irritating though this
was, it did give ikmen a chance to take the man in. On first glance one
saw only the bulk and those extraordinary eyes, but now that ikmen
really looked he could see the scarring too. Not just on his barely clad
torso but on what could be seen of his face also, tens if not hundreds

of sealed-up cuts, ikmen wondered where he'd got them, who had
inflicted them. Less mysterious was the way in which Ara Berkoz's
black, tangled hair moved in rhythm to a plague of hungry headlice.
'Anyone,' the deep, low voice said menacingly, 'who criticises Yildiz
the Body is going to have it coming.'
ikmen blinked. Yildiz the Body was a young supermodel. Born in
the very run-down and troubled district of Edirnekapi, Yildiz Efe had
been dubbed 'the Body' by the modelling agency that had hired her,
aged sixteen, in 2003. Three years later she was a multimillion-lire
industry and owned one house in Istanbul and another one somewhere
on the south coast. Girls all over Turkey idolised the Body mainly
because she was so very, very thin.
Just to clarify, ikmen asked, 'You fought with Yusuf Kaya because
he was critical of the supermodel Yildiz?'
Ara Berkoz's face distorted briefly into something that might have
been pain. 'He said nasty things,' he said. He moved, seemingly to put
one of his hands into his trouser pocket. The guards took his arms and
held them hard. Ara's eyes filled with tears. 'I just want to get my
picture!' he said. 'Let me get my picture!'
Beyond knowing that the psychiatrist who had assessed Ara Berkoz
after his arrest had given him a mental age of twelve, ikmen knew little
about the man before him. He looked up and said to the guards, 'Let
him have his picture.'
The guards looked at each other and then the one on the left said,
'Ara, you can have your picture if you let me get it for you.'
Ara Berkoz made a thin whining noise in his throat. Both guards
pushed his arms up and then the one on the left put a hand at the top
of his hip.
'Ara,' he said, 'do you have a blade in with your picture? If I hurt
myself getting the photo out there will be repercussions.'
The rapist, his arms raised up in the air, hands hanging into his filthy,
tangled hair, looked like a trapped animal. The guard on the right leaned
towards ikmen and told him what the policeman felt he knew already.
'Ara here hurts himself when he gets upset,' he said. 'He likes to cut.
Got a body like a war zone.'

'I haven't got a blade,' Ara Berkoz said. 'I wouldn't put a blade in
with any of my pictures, especially not my special pictures.'
Carefully, the guard on the left put his hand into Ara Berkoz's trouser
pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He threw it gingerly on to the table
in front of the prisoner, whose eyes lit up when he saw it. Once his hands
were free again, Ara Berkoz very gently opened out the folded sheet and
with a contented sigh smoothed it out and stared at it. It was a topless shot
of Yildiz the Body lying flat out on a beach somewhere. Although thin to
the point of danger, her breasts were enormous, artificially enhanced and
to Danen really quite painful-looking. Once the rapist had settled himself
and seemed content, Ikmen spoke to him again. 'Ara,' he said, 'when you
fought with Yusuf Kay a about Yildiz, who started the fight?'
'Don't know.' Fixated on the picture, he wasn't really listening. Or
didn't want to listen.
'Did Yusuf insult Yildiz first or was there a conversation before you
started to fight?' ikmen asked.
'Don't know.' This time his voice was, if anything, even softer and
more somnolent than before. Maybe letting Ara have his picture hadn't
been such a good idea. Far from helping him to relax and open up, the
photograph appeared to be mesmerising him. ikmen looked up at the
guards holding Ara Berkoz and, seeing no interest in either of their
faces, came to a unilateral decision to help things along in his own way.
After all, the guards were meant to be there to protect him.
He leaned forward and snatched the photograph out of Ara Berkoz's
fingers. A howl of agony from the prisoner was followed by a terrifying
break for freedom which had ikmen, until the guards managed to get
their charge fully under control, cowering against the wall.

'What in the name of ... Why did you do that?' the guard on the left
said as he wrestled a spitting Ara Berkoz back into his seat.
'You're lucky he didn't bite you!' the other guard observed. 'Allah!'
'Ara,' ikmen said breathlessly, completely ignoring the prison officers,
'Ara, did Yusuf Kay a or anyone around him want you to fight him
the day he escaped? Did he--'
'Give me back Yildiz! Give her back to me!' He gnashed his teeth
and cried at the same time. 'Give her to me!'


'We'll have to take him back to his cell!' the guard on the left said.
'Can't have him like this!'
'No!' Ikmen said. 'No, don't do that!' Then, looking straight into Ara
Berkoz's tiny furious eyes again, he addressed him directly. 'Ara, if you
tell me exactly what happened before you fought with Yusuf Kaya you
can have Yildiz back. I swear it!'
'Give her back! Give her back! Give her back!'
'Tell me the truth and you can--'
'We're out of here,' the guard on the right said as he and his colleague
pulled Ara Berkoz out of his chair.
'No!' ikmen wailed.
Allah, but what was this? He was supposed to be interviewing this
man! But it had all gone wrong and now it looked as if his chances of
getting at something, anything, were slipping away.
'Ara,' ikmen said as he walked towards the prisoner, 'tell me what
happened and you can have your picture - now!'
He held the rumpled photograph out towards the wild and furious
man, who stopped and looked at it. It was just out of reach. Then Ara
raised his head and said, 'Yusuf said he'd give me that lovely photograph
if I had a row with him. I could even beat him, too.'
'Is that the truth, Ara?' ikmen said. 'Are you sure?'
'Yes.'
The guards were pulling him out of the room now. 'That's enough,
inspector,' one of them said. 'You're tiring the poor brute.'
ikmen, following nervously, handed the photograph back to the prisoner
and said, 'Thank you, Ara. Now look, did anyone else know ...'
The guard on the left pulled Ara Berkoz out of the room just as he
was saying something ikmen could neither hear nor understand. The
guard on the right stayed behind and said to ikmen, 'He's far too agitated
now. He needs to cool right down.'
There was a look that could have been alarm on the man's face. Had
it been the suggestion of some other person's being involved in Yusuf
Kaya's escape that had got this man and the other guard so very agitated?
That Kaya's escape had been facilitated by both inmates and guards at
the Kartal Prison was not a new or revolutionary notion. Now Ara Berkoz

had admitted that the contention was, at least in part, true. He had, in
exchange for a photograph of Yildiz the Body, argued and then fought
with Yusuf Kaya on the day of the latter's escape. The fight had ensured
that Kaya was put into solitary confinement, after which he had gone
into his cardiac arrest routine. But if Berkoz had helped him then maybe
others had too. Maybe others amongst his jailers . . .
'I'll be back to see Mr Berkoz again soon,' ikmen said as he stared
very steadily at the guard in front of him. 'Make sure that he stays well,
won't you?'

In spite of Bulbul Kaplan's far from fashionable appearance, she and her
husband were obviously wealthy. Their house, a new villa-style building
with multiple balconies - just like those holiday homes of the rich down
on the south coast - was full of things like plasma screen televisions,
American fridges and tiny, intricate CD players. Outside, surprisingly,
there was no car, but the reason for that soon became apparent.
'My husband, Gazi, is resting,' Bulbul Kaplan said as she ushered
Siileyman and Taner into her considerable living room. 'He's elderly.'
She looked down briefly, and then added, 'And blind.'
Hence the lack of car, Stileyman thought. Bulbul Kaplan, once she
had, like her neighbours, tutted and shaken her head at the appearance
of the dead American soldier in the Euphrates for a little while, had
agreed to talk to Siileyman and Taner very readily. She didn't know
what it was about, of course, but she did know that it had to concern
her old home town in some way. She had indeed had the surname of
Kaya before her marriage. On the way over in Inspector Taner's car she
had commented upon the policewoman's own surname.
'I knew a Taner back in Mardin,' she had said. '§eymus Taner was
a coppersmith in the bazaar.'
'My grandfather,' Taner had responded immediately.
'Your grandfather!' Bulbul Kaplan had opened her big blue eyes very
wide. 'Allah! But he was a Master of Sharmeran too, was he not?'

'He was,' Taner said. 'Now my father Seckin has that honour.'
'Seckin? You are Sec.kin's daughter? Allah! But now I can see it in you! Yes, the good bones

She had wittered on about how attractive, kind and intelligent Taner's
father was, although quite what the designation Master of Sharmeran
might mean Siileyman didn't know. As far as he was aware the
Sharmeran was a mythical eastern Turkish snake goddess. An ugly thing,
he had always felt, the Sharmeran had the head and torso of a woman
and the tail and belly of a snake. To be candid, this image, which one
saw occasionally on pictures and plates in antique shops in Istanbul but
apparently just about everywhere east of Kayseri, gave him the creeps.
What on earth did a Master of Sharmeran do, and did the fact that such
a bizarre title even existed mean that the people of Mardin and places
like it actually believed in the existence of that deity? Surely someone
like Edibe Taner was far too pragmatic and modern to take any notice
of such nonsense?
But the Sharmeran wasn't spoken of for long and later, at the farmhouse,
talk turned to other things. While Bulbul Kaplan prepared tea, she
and Taner spoke of other Mardin characters, the bazaar, the new and
apparently very smart hotels, and the Ocean, the great luminous
Mesopotamian plain below the city. Maybe, Siileyman thought, if they
did have to go to Mardin he could stay in a hotel after all. They sounded,
from the way Taner described them, really quite good. That said, the
monastery Dr Sarkissian had recommended just outside Mardin, St Sobo's,
would certainly be more peaceful, and the doctor's old friend, the Syrian
monk Seraphim Yunun, had sounded charming. The doctor had called to
let him have Seraphim's details just that morning. Apparently the Syrian,
like Siileyman himself, was very appreciative of old buildings.
'Mrs Kaplan,' Taner said as she took a glass of tea out of the older
woman's hands and sat down, 'we have to talk to you about your nephew,
Yusuf Kaya.'
Bulbul Kaplan looked upwards, presumably to where her husband
was sleeping, and then sat down beside Taner. She looked, Siileyman
felt, strained now. Up on the cliff with a dead body below her she had
been fine, but. . .
'I... I don't see my family, Inspector Taner,' Bulbul said slowly.
'There was a ... a falling-out, as I am sure someone back home would
have told you.'

'I know that you left Mardin in order to marry your husband, yes,'
Taner said. 'But, Mrs Kaplan, any enmity that might have resulted from
that did not I think impact directly upon your nephew Yusuf.'
Bulbul Kaplan looked at Taner, genuinely struck. 'Not impact?
Inspector, I left my clan! You are from Mardin - you know! I married
a man they did not want me to marry! How could that not impact upon
the son of my brother? I know that Yusuf is a criminal but he is still a
Kaya; he still protects the family honour!'
'And yet, Mrs Kaplan, we have reason to believe that you have seen
Yusuf in recent times.'
'Who?' Bulbul Kaplan was indignant. Again she looked upwards. She
lowered her voice before she spoke, but she was obviously upset. 'Who
says that I see Yusuf? Yusuf is in prison in Istanbul!'
'Mrs Kaplan, it doesn't matter who says what,' Taner said. 'Have you
seen your nephew Yusuf in the last few days?'
'Last few days? He's in prison! Yusuf Kaya is--'
'He escaped, Mrs Kaplan,' Taner said. Both she and Suleyman looked
at the two working, if silent, plasma television screens in the room.
Bulbul Kaplan, unlike her husband, could see, and if she could see she,
like the rest of the country, had to know that Yusuf Kaya had escaped
from Kartal Prison the previous weekend. She was lying and Inspector
Taner as well as Suleyman and Bulbul Kaplan herself knew it. Not that
Taner even began to allude to such a notion.
'Have you seen or spoken to Yusuf Kaya in the last few days, Mrs
Kaplan?' Taner asked.
'No!' She was trying to keep her voice down but her tone was still
hurt, though quite forceful too.
'So did you see him before he went to prison?' Taner asked.
'No!' Bulbul Kaplan leaned towards the other woman and said, 'I
don't have anything to do with my family. That all finished when
I married Gazi. They don't see me, I don't see them.'
'And yet how did our informant know about even your existence if
you have no contact?' Taner asked. She would not reveal Anastasia's
name or where she lived, but she was going to use what she had said
to get the truth from Bulbul Kaplan. 'The information we received is


not from a person you could possibly know. Yusuf does know this person
and through him, so this person says, he or she is aware of you and of
your relationship with Yusuf Kaya. Mrs Kaplan, if Yusuf Kaya came
here'
'All right!' She flung her arms up into the air and then let them rest
in her lap. 'All right, Yusuf came here.' It was not much more than a
whisper now.
'When?'
'Last year.'
'When last year?'
'I don't know! Last year!'
'Why? Why did he come here, Mrs Kaplan?'
The older woman sighed. 'Yusuf was just a baby when I left Mardin,'
she said. 'Last year he came and found me.'
Taner frowned. 'What for? Weren't you worried about that?'
'In case he took revenge on behalf of our clan? No,' Bulbul Kaplan
said. 'He came offering the hand of friendship and I saw no reason not
to take it from him. To me he was kind and polite.'
'And your husband?' Siileyman asked. 'What did your husband make
of that?'
Clan rivalries, especially in the east, were notoriously intractable. He
could no more imagine Yusuf Kaya and Bulbul Kaplan cosying up after
such an incident than he could see the convict figuratively in bed with
her husband.
Bulbul Kaplan looked down at the floor. 'Gazi was in hospital at the
time. His eyes ... He has operations from time to time ...'
'So Yusuf Kaya came to visit you when your husband was in hospital,'
Taner said. 'Did it not occur to you, Mrs Kaplan, that perhaps that was
planned? For Yusuf to see you alone? To accept your hospitality ...'
'Yusuf appeared and I have no doubt that it was planned, but...'
She smiled a little. Her face was round and pleasant, only her amazing
blue eyes giving a clue as to the beautiful girl she must once have been.
'My husband's family have been good to me, but they are not my blood.
Yusuf,' she looked up and said simply, 'is. He's a nice man, at least he
was to me. What he has done--'

7!
'Yusuf has killed people,' Siileyman said. 'Until we arrested him he
was one of the most powerful drug dealers in Istanbul.'
Bulbul Kaplan shrugged. 'He is my nephew. When I spoke to Yusuf
it was like talking to my father once again.'
'Did he ask you for money?'
'I gave him food and drink, he stayed one night,' she said. 'He came
because he was curious to meet me, that was all.' She sat up straight
and added, 'I appreciated it too. But I haven't seen him since. I couldn't
allow it anyway, not with Gazi.. .'
'No.'
She seemed to be genuinely sad about not being able to see her
nephew again. They must have got on well but, as Siileyman at least
knew only too well, whatever their relationship might be it was purely
on Yusuf Kaya's terms. Bulbul Kaplan might think that Yusuf Kaya
loved her, but that was unlikely. Yusuf Kaya loved only himself. He'd
come to her in all probability because he needed somewhere in the
Gaziantep area, apart from Anastasia's brothel, to hide out at the time.
After they left, Inspector Taner confirmed his suspicion. 'Kaya was
seen back in Mardin in March of last year,' she said. 'We received a
report that he and his brother Metin, another delightful character I do
not think, were doing drug deals with some of the gypsies out on the
Ocean. But when we arrived the two men had gone and we were left
with one young boy with powder round his nose and a woman out of
her mind on ketamine. I assume Yusuf headed up here after that.'
'He wasn't seen again in Mardin?' Siileyman asked.
'No, but Metin was,' she said. 'I found him myself with his head
down the toilet of a local restaurant. Dead.'
'Dead?'
'Coke overdose. That or his brother made him snort enough to kill
him. That would not be outside Yusuf's range of behaviours, as you
know. Not of course that his family would ever believe that.'
Siileyman looked up above the olive trees outside the Kaplan house
towards the now darkening sky. It had been a long and ultimately frustrating
day. 'What now?' he said to Taner as she fired up the engine of
her gutsy Volkswagen Golf.

Taner lit a cigarette and said, 'If Kay a isn't in Gaziantep any more
and he isn't here . . .'
'You don't think he's here in Birecik?'
She shrugged. 'Bulbul Kaplan could be lying. She did lie, as we
know, when we first spoke about Yusuf. Her relationship with him, if
it indeed exists, is odd for those involved in clan business. I will ask
Captain Erdur to keep watch on Bulbul Kaplan and her farm.'
'And so ...'
'And so on to Mardin,' Taner said with a smile. 'As far as we know
Kaya has not left the country and if he hasn't done that then he'll be
with the people who love him most. His family.'

Chapter 6

There was no way anyone could have got any sort of idea what the
Mesopotamian plain looked like under cover of darkness. All Siileyman
knew as he sat beside Taner as she wrestled her car over uncomfortably
rutted road surfaces was that he was exhausted. After a night of very little
sleep, he'd been up since the crack of dawn and now here he was powering
on into the back of beyond where the only lights that could be seen came
from tanks on their way out east to fight the Kurdish separatists, the PKK.
Someone - an informer, the local Jandarma had reckoned, Taner told him
- had been beheaded by one or other group of terrorists in a village near
to Mardin. It was not, after all, just the PKK who operated in this area.
There was also Hezbollah and possibly al-Qaeda too, Taner expounded
breezily, as well as some other little splinter groups - Marxists, religious
fundamentalists, ultra-nationalists. That she seemed to be happy going back
to what to Siileyman appeared to be a hotbed of violence was odd. But
then Edibe Taner was not your run of the mill policewoman.
Through half-closed, bloodshot eyes he looked at her. She was a very
attractive woman and yet, strangely for him, he felt nothing for her.
Mehmet Siileyman was and always had been in love with his wife. But
that he had a weakness for other women he was the first to admit. It
was partly because he himself was attractive and women came on to
him. But he could also make the running himself, as he knew only too
well. Inspector Taner had the look of a woman who would make any
feelings she might have for a person well and truly apparent. But maybe
that was just an illusion. Maybe the fact was that, however professional
and liberated she appeared, she was still an eastern woman with all the
modesty and restraint that went with such a background. But then again,
perhaps in view of the fact that she had shown absolutely no romantic

interest in him he was just choosing to think that that was so. It was
possible she was indeed a very liberated woman who simply did not
fancy him.
'You'd still like to stay at St Sobo's?' she said suddenly, in that harsh
staccato way of hers.
The monastery where Dr Sarkissian's friend lived was, so Taner had
told him, about ten minutes by car from the centre of Mardin. In the scheme
of the geography of the city it was no further away from police headquarters
than the hotel Taner had had in mind for him. That Taner herself
obviously wanted him to stay at one of the new hotels in town was evident
- she was nothing if not a woman imbued with civic pride - but that was
not really his problem. Brother Seraphim and a degree of peace and quiet
had the feel of something far more attractive to Siileyman.
'Yes, I would,' he replied into the darkness of the road ahead.
'I don't blame you,' Taner said with a sigh. 'The monks are interesting
and, like you, educated. In the hotel you'd be bombarded with Syrians who've come over the border for the Easter services at our churches and
monasteries.'
He turned to look at her. 'Easter? Is it Easter?'
'Next weekend, yes,' she said. And then she yawned. 'We'll all be
on duty then - cops, Jandarma, military.'
'In the churches.'
'Protecting the Christians, yes,' she said. 'We wish them happy Easter
as they go in to worship while we wait outside with tanks and guns just
in case any lunatic or band of lunatics might have ideas about killing
them. But then I believe you protect the churches in Istanbul, don't
you?'
There was a measure of security in all places of worship in the city,
but rarely were tanks employed as part of the process.
'Yes .. .'
Far, far away in the distance, unless he was very much mistaken, a
glimmer of light was just beginning to be discernible. He didn't have
any idea about how long they had been on the road, whether he had in
fact slept for a short time or not, but he felt that dawn had to be happening
some time soon. That could be the beginning of it.


'We're about an hour away now,' Taner said as she lit yet another
cigarette. She'd chain-smoked ever since they'd left Birecik. 'When we
reach Mardin we'll get some breakfast first and then I'll take you out
to the monastery. I expect you'll want to sleep for a while.'
He looked across at her. 'Won't you?'
She laughed. 'Maybe. Paperwork, you know?'
He did. From Istanbul to Mardin and beyond, they all had paperwork.
Siileyman's head slumped forward and he went to sleep, to Taner's
amusement, yet again. When he woke up he was looking down upon
what appeared to be a vast, green sea.

Ikmen had just finished e-mailing the main points about his visit to the
Kartal Prison the previous day to Siileyman when izzet Melik entered
his office. Such a marvellous thing, e-mail! And everyone had it! Even
monasteries! Arto Sarkissian said it would be absolutely no problem for
Siileyman to pick up his messages at St Sobo's.
Melik shut the door behind him and sat down.
'Yes,' ikmen said, still staring fixedly at the screen with an expression
of wonder on his face.
'That nurse, at the Cerrahpa§a, sir,' izzet Melik said, 'Murat Lole ...'
'What about him?' ikmen said as he closed down his system with a
contented sigh. It had only been in the last month that he'd been able
to do this.
'He's gone back to work at the hospital, sir,' Melik said.
'No reason why he shouldn't,' ikmen said. 'We have no evidence that
he was involved in Kaya's escape.'
'Sir, we're coming up negative with searching the hospital rubbish.'
'You've found nothing that could be a nurse's uniform? Stockings?'
'No.'
ikmen frowned. 'Glass?'
'Oh, there's a lot of that,' izzet said wearily. 'Tones. But it's going
to take forensic some time to first sift through it and second match any
blood found on the glass to that of Kaya and his accomplices or victims.
The glass has to be matched to the fragments Dr Sarkissian found inside
the bodies.'

'No shards have been found that could conceivably have been used
as weapons?'
'The killers either smashed them up or took them away,' izzet replied.
'Wouldn't you?'
Ikmen looked gloomily down at the top of his desk. 'No news about
the surviving prison guard, I suppose, izzet?'
'No, sir. Still in a coma, I'm afraid.' He rose to his feet and made
ready to go. 'I tell you who I do have news about however, sir, Hiiseyin
Altun.'
ikmen looked up sharply. 'The king of the Edirnekapi beggars?'
'The same.'
'What of him?'
'He's dead,' izzet said with an unconcerned shrug. 'Been so for some
time, apparently. Stabbed.'
Ikmen was shocked. Not that he'd actually known Hiiseyin Altun personally.
For all his faults the talented beggar, who came from and lived in the
run-down district of Edirnekapi, had never killed anyone. Even when his
need for heroin had been at its most acute, Altun had always preferred
street-based extortion - often via his ragged gang of street kids - to murder.
Altun, ikmen knew, was known to have bought his drug of choice from
dealers in or around his begging beat in Beyoglu. Whether he had ever
bought from Yusuf Kaya, Ikmen didn't know. But Altun had been a junkie
and so anything had to be possible. Ikmen made a mental note to try to
find out about the circumstances of Hiiseyin Altun's death and what the
dead beggar had actually been stabbed with.
'Do you know, izzet, whether a post-mortem was performed on Altun's
body?' he asked.
'Yes,' izzet replied. 'Dr Sarkissian's assistant did it.'
'Thank you, Sergeant,' ikmen said as izzet Melik left his office. A
very brief visit from his friend's junior but one that had provided some
illumination. As he watched izzet figuratively dance round Ay§e
Farsakoglu in the corridor, ikmen pondered yet again on how well Yusuf
Kaya's escape had been planned. So far there was no evidence at all,
either material or human.

'Now you see why we call it the Ocean,' Edibe Taner said as she swept
her arms outwards to encompass the vast plain below them. Although
she had planned to take Siileyman actually into the city of Mardin for
breakfast that morning, a telephone call to Brother Seraphim at the
monastery of St Sobo had changed her mind. The Brothers would be
delighted to offer Inspectors Siileyman and Taner breakfast in their refectory.
Now, parked on an outcrop of rock just outside the ancient honey-coloured
monastic building, Taner and Siileyman were standing beside her car looking
down upon just a fraction of the Mesopotamian plain.
'Perhaps because this area, whether you are religious or an atheist,
is acknowledged as the cradle of civilisation it has many names,' Taner
continued. 'The plain in its entirety from Diyarbakir to Baghdad is called
Al Jazeera. That is an Arabic term meaning "the island".'
'The island? I thought it was an ocean,' a horribly weary Siileyman
replied. There was a slightly chill wind coming off the vast patchwork
of bright green, pale green and yellow fields and settlements below.
Contained only by the mountains and hills that seemed to provide almost
a frame for the vast shimmering plain, the 'island' was an almost overwhelming
onslaught of colour, shape and competing smells - flowers,
animals, the earth itself. Siileyman felt dizzy.
'To the Arabs it was an island, but the Suriani this area is called the
Tur Abdin,' Taner continued. Remarkably she seemed to be not only
awake but really quite fresh-looking too. 'Tur Abdin, which is Aramaic,
, means the "Slaves of God" which refers to the fact that this place was, and to some extent still is, a place of monasteries. It is a sacred place,
special.' She looked at him pointedly. 'I believe this, even though I know
that it is tainted.'
'Tainted?'
She breathed the cool air in deeply, all cigarettes well and truly out
now. 'By gangsters like Yusuf Kaya,' she said. 'People like that make
trouble for the ordinary people of Mardin. I don't like that. There are
others too, but. . .' She stopped there, as if she'd said too much, and
then she smiled. 'People here in Mardin do not always speak what you
would recognise as Turkish,' she continued. 'We are close to Syria here
and so many people speak Arabic. The Suriani speak Aramaic amongst

themselves. Then there are the Kurds who have their own dialects. I
speak both Arabic and Aramaic and so you don't have to worry about
those. The Kurdish dialects . . .' She looked down at the ground briefly.
'We can manage.'
They, as in the Mardin police, would have to manage the Kurdish
dialects somehow, Siileyman thought. Although relatively quiet in recent
months, the whole area had been by turns closed to outsiders and under
curfew for many years, in part, at least, because of the Kurdish separatists.
Even through his half-sleeping state, Sixleyman had noticed how
much military traffic - tanks, armoured cars, troop carriers - there had
been on the road east of Birecik. He looked around at the wonderful
and yet frightening absence around him and, although not exactly cold,
he shuddered.
'I have just the thing for cold bones,' a deep male voice cut in.
Siileyman turned round and saw a very upright man of about sixty
standing behind him. Heavily bearded, he was dressed in a long black
robe, while on his head he wore a dark cap embroidered with stars.
Inspector Taner, on seeing him, first smiled and then stepped forward
to take one of his hands, which she kissed.
'Brother Seraphim.'
'And this, I take it, Inspector Taner, is Inspector Siileyman from
Istanbul.'
'Yes, Brother.'
He held his hand out to Siileyman which, for a moment, gave the
Istanbul man pause. Was he supposed to shake the monk's hand or kiss
it? Things were obviously done very differently out here, but then Brother
Seraphim as a friend of Dr Sarkissian had to know that. Siileyman smiled
and shook the monk firmly by the hand.
'Come inside,' the monk said as he led the two officers towards the
huge stone monastery building. Its walls were studded with numerous
arched and latticed windows and covered with intricate, if to Siileyman
incomprehensible, carvings.
'I do hope that you will like the room we have prepared for you,
Inspector,' Brother Seraphim said as he mounted the stairs towards the
main door of the monastery. 'It is simple, I am afraid, but clean.' And

then he turned round and looked upon both of them with troubled eyes.
'We live, sadly, in difficult times.'

He put the strange dream he was to have later down to the unaccustomed
location, his utter exhaustion and that damn coffee too!
Once inside the monastery, Brother Seraphim had ushered him and
Taner into a very light and clean dining room. There, seated at a plain
wooden table, they had been plied with a variety of food and drink,
including bread, cheese, preserves and meat, fruit juice and coffee.
Literally sick with tiredness by that time, Siileyman had opted just for
coffee. He had not paid attention, however, to the kind of coffee he was
being given.
Mirra coffee is a traditional beverage in south-eastern Turkey. Bitter
and thick in a way that ordinary Turkish coffee does not even approach, it is boiled and reboiled so many times over a twenty-four-hour period
that, eventually, it achieves the consistency of dark syrup. Beloved by
the people of the south-east, especially Mardin, it has a kick like a bull
and can stain a china cup on contact. It is also deemed exceedingly rude
to refuse one of the tiny cups of mirra one is routinely offered by almost
everyone on the Ocean. Siileyman eventually drank three of these
thimble-sized cups which led to the kind of head-spinning experience
one would normally associate with alcohol poisoning. Luckily Brother
Seraphim was well aware of the rapid change of state in his guest and,
while Taner carried the Istanbul officer's luggage, the monk very gently
raised Siileyman from his chair and took him to his room. As they all
walked into what was a small but bright and clean-smelling chamber,
the monk said, or rather Siileyman thought he heard the monk say,
'We've looked and looked and still we can't find him. I think he must
have gone to her . ..'
Then he lost consciousness. He was adrift on a sea of green fields
being tossed and turned by what looked like vast snakes or eels. Strangely
these creatures did not provoke any sort of fear, rather a curiosity that
extended to the fact that although he was under water he could, somehow,
breathe.
'Inspector Siileyman. Inspector Siileyman.' It wasn't said along with

physical movement, as in someone shaking him awake. It wasn't even
said with much urgency. But he was nevertheless brought out of his
serpent-filled world by a voice that was firm in its intention.
Siileyman blinked. 'Brother Seraphim?'
Whether the monk was smiling underneath that huge beard of his
was impossible to tell. But his voice was soothing and apologetic. 'I
am so sorry to wake you, but Inspector Taner has arrived and apparently
you need to go somewhere with her,' he said. 'Were it up to me
I would have let you sleep, but
Siileyman, with some difficulty, sat up. Still fully clothed, he must,
he now saw, have just collapsed on to that small but comfortable bed
and then not moved a muscle. He looked out of the narrow arched
window at his side and saw a huge, green 'sea' sweeping down into a
misty nothingness, just as in his dream. He shook his head and said,
'What time is it?'
'It is midday,' the monk replied. 'I have telephoned my friend Arto
Sarkissian to tell him you have arrived. He sends his greetings and was
relieved to know that you were safe.'
Safe? Siileyman rubbed his face with his hands and tried to make his
brain think straight. Now that he was in the east, of course people would
routinely enquire about his safety.
'I need to have a wash,' Siileyman said at length. 'Can you please
tell Inspector Taner I'll be with her as soon as I can?'
'Of course.' The monk rose to his feet and began to walk back towards
the door.
'Oh, Brother Seraphim?'
He turned. 'Yes?'
'Do you know if Inspector Taner has managed to get some sleep too?'
Brother Seraphim shook his head. 'Oh, no,' he said as if this were
the most natural thing in the world. 'She doesn't need to.'
'Doesn't
'Her father, Seckin Taner, is a Master of Sharmeran,' the monk said
gravely. 'Those people are not like the rest of us, Inspector, as I am sure
you will very soon learn.'

Chapter 7

It was difficult to see what the prison guard Ramazan Eren really looked
like. Lost underneath a spider's web of tubes, canulas and tapes he could
have been any age; almost, ikmen felt, any sex. Dr Eldem, Eren's physician,
standing on the other side of the bed from ikmen and Ay§e
Farsakoglu, said, 'He sustained one stab wound to the chest which grazed
his heart. We've stopped the bleeding, but as to the damage caused ...'
He shrugged. 'To be honest with you, Inspector, this man in lucky to
be alive on any sort of level.'
'I know it is impossible to say when he may regain consciousness,'
ikmen began. 'However--'
'However nothing,' the doctor responded shortly. 'It is not when he
regains consciousness, it is (/".'
'His brain is exhibiting electrical activity,' Ay§e Farsakoglu said as
she looked up at the monitor above Eren's head.
The doctor, offended as some physicians can become when confronted
with a non-medic with some knowledge, blustered, 'Just because his
brain is showing activity doesn't mean that he will ever recover. If he
wakes he may be perfectly normal in every way but then again he may
emerge a blithering idiot. One must be patient, madam. He who owns
patience, owns Egypt, as is said!'
It was not a saying with which either ikmen or Ay§e was familiar,
but they got the gist of it anyway, ikmen, who thought the whole
conversation had become far more hysterical than it needed to be,
said, 'I'm going to continue to post a guard at the door of the ward
just in case one of Kaya's people should try to come back and finish
Mr Eren off.'
'You do as you wish,' the doctor said as he made his way over to

the door leading out of the room. 'Whether this man recovers or not is
in the hands of Allah!' And then he left.
Ay§e Farsakoglu breathed a sigh of relief. 'Not very helpful,' she
said, watching Ramazan Eren breathe with the aid of a respirator.
'What else can he say?' ikmen shrugged. 'None of us can know when
or if this man will wake. Until he does, of course, we can't know exactly
what happened when Yusuf Kay a was rescued. All we do know is that
Eren was supposed to die and so we have to guard him for the foreseeable
future. By the way, Ay§e, did Sergeant Melik tell you about
Hiiseyin Altun?' He knew that she'd arrested the beggar a few times in
the past when she was still a constable working the beat.
'Yes,' she said without emotion. 'No loss.'
'Stabbed, wasn't he?'
'Apparently,' she said, still without any great interest.
ikmen took his eyes off the waxen figure beneath the pipes and the
tubes and looked into Ay§e's face. 'I spoke to Dr Sarkissian's assistant.
It was she who performed the autopsy on Altun earlier this morning,'
he said. 'Apparently he was stabbed with a serrated metal blade of some
sort. Not glass.'
Ay§e frowned. 'Glass? You think that Altun may have been killed by the same people who killed the police officers and the prison guard?'
ikmen shrugged. 'Altun died just after Kay a escaped. He hung out
around Beyoglu, he was a junkie, the chances are he knew Yusuf Kaya.
It's ... well, it's .. . Kaya has seemingly cleaned up so much in the wake
of his escape, I find myself wondering whether Altun could have been
a part of it.'
Still frowning, Ay§e said, 'You have one of your .. . intuitions, sir?'
'Maybe, maybe not, Ay§e,' ikmen said. The further away in time he
got from his late mother, the witch of Uskiidar, the more unlikely her
powers and his own seemed to be. Or at least that was how he had come
to feel about it recently. This was after all the twenty-first century, and
no one sane believed in such things, did they?

Yet although Hiiseyin Altun did not have any observed connection
to Yusuf Kaya, his feeling that one did indeed exist was strong.
'Ay§e,' he said as they prepared to leave the hospital room, 'you

arrested Hiiseyin Altun several times. Did you ever get involved with
the kids in his street gang?'
'When I or some other officer could catch them, yes,' she said. As
they left the room she added, 'There were several boys I think I might
know by sight. A girl too. Blond hair and I think she might have been
foreign, Bulgarian maybe. This was years ago; they must all be grown
up now. Oh, and there was a boy called Asian too. I think that was his
name, Asian ...'
Just before she closed the door behind her, Ay§e heard a very faint
groan from the man on the bed. She and ikmen went and got Dr Eldem
immediately, but he said the groan was only a physical response to the
pain the patient was probably still experiencing even in coma. It meant
nothing. It did not signal the end of Ramazan Eren's sojourn in darkness.
He gave him more diamorphine for the pain and all three left.

The twenty-first-century city of Mardin is actually two very different
places. Both exist in the shadow of the fortress of Mardin which sits
atop the peak that dominates the whole area, Mazi mountain. To the
west of this huge, craggy pile is New Mardin. It consists of high-rise
apartment blocks, supermarkets, bus stations and most things modern
people need to lead a reasonably comfortable modern life. In the lee of
the fortress itself is Old Mardin, which is quite another place. Basically,
Mardin city is clustered around one street which is actually called Avenue
One. Above and below this street exist the many winding lanes, alleys
and literally thousands of stone steps that make up the old city. The
buildings, which are made of yellow limestone, seen from the vantage
point of the Mesopotamian plain below the city, seem to almost hang
from the side of the mountain in waves of washing-draped confusion.
Between Avenue One and the much newer road far below it that delineates
the southern boundary of the city, Avenue Two, are very few places
accessible to anything bigger than a motorbike. So it was that Edibe
Taner and Mehmet Siileyman were forced to walk down to their destination
from the place where she parked her car on Republic Square,
which is about a third of the way along Avenue One.
For Siileyman, who had travelled in Taner's car along Avenue Two

in order to get into the city and had therefore stared open-mouthed at
yet more immense views over the Mesopotamian plain, the main focus
of the city, Republic Square, proved to be a disappointment. As well as
being an important stop for the many minibuses running to and from
the new city and the surrounding villages, the square also acted as a
somewhat makeshift car park. Taner parked her vehicle in front of the
entrance to a branch of Akbank, outside which two of her uniformed
colleagues stood leaning their elbows on the stocks of their sub-machine
guns. Siileyman stepped out into a thin layer of mud and litter and looked
up at a range of buildings that looked as if they had originated in the
1960s. An ugly kebab restaurant with plastic flowers on a tatty upstairs
veranda was only bested by a truly hideous building that announced
itself as the Hotel Bayraktar. Almost Soviet in its blockishness, the Hotel
Bayraktar had noticeably more bullet holes in its masonry than unshattered
windows. Siileyman imagined that this had to be a legacy of the
violent struggle between the Turkish army and the PKK that had caused
Mardin to be closed to outsiders from time to time. He was in fact going
to ask Taner about it when suddenly he noticed that he was surrounded
by a group of tiny boys.
'You like guide?' one asked him in English.
It was a surreal moment. He hadn't long been awake, he was in a
place that so far looked like a cross between some sort of mythical
mountain land and Leningrad, and he was being spoken to by a child
with a wildly divergent accent in a foreign language. For a moment, he
just stood silent, like a mute.
'He's with me. Go away!' was what he thought he heard Inspector
Taner say, although he couldn't be sure. What she spoke was Turkish,
but only just. The little boys melted back into the almost invisible
alleyway whence they had come.
'I'm sorry about that,' Taner said as she wandered towards him, a
cigarette hanging idly from her lips. 'Kids here can smell an outsider.
And as you see, this is not a wealthy city, so if you do feel like slipping
them the odd kuru§ to go away, that's up to you.'
As he looked at her, Siileyman became aware of the truly wonderful
building behind her. Constructed of yellow sandstone, it was reached

via a sweeping staircase made from the same material. It was a three
storey, flat-roofed building fronted by a series of graceful arches on each
level. In effect the building was terraced to allow upper storeys to have
semi-private spaces where one could walk, seek the shade or shelter
from the rain. Unlike the Zeytounian house in Gaziantep, this mansion,
as he imagined it had to be, was not surrounded by a thick, high wall.
'That is the Mardin museum,' Taner said when she saw him looking
up at it. 'One of the newer buildings in the old city.'
'Newer?'
'It's nineteenth-century,' she said. 'It was built as the Syrian Catholic
Patriarchate. Now it's our museum. Come.'
She led him across the square, past the 1960s kebab restaurant and
into an alleyway that, in terms of architectural style, owed more to
Damascus than to Istanbul. It was bounded by high stone walls, and as
they walked towards Yusuf Kaya's family home they passed many
donkeys and mules laden with all sorts of bundles and baggage.
'In Mardin we use donkeys to carry our rubbish away,' Taner explained
as they approached a tiny doorway in a very high, yellow wall. 'You
have trucks in Istanbul, we have donkeys here.' She smiled. 'In terms
of global warming, I think we are better.' And then she stopped. 'Now,
Inspector, when we go through this doorway we will be in the family
home of Yusuf Kaya. Unlike most of the mansions of Mardin, which
are divided into flats, this house is just one dwelling for one family. So
everyone you will see from now on will be connected to Yusuf Kaya
in some way. As I told you in the car, I interviewed his wife, his mother
and a whole host of relations when he first escaped from prison and our
officers have been watching this property ever since. But now I want
you to meet them too. Or rather I want them to see that you, the officer
who arrested him in Istanbul, is not easily going to let Yusuf go. They
will be very nice and polite to you, even though they hate you almost
as much as they hate me. They'll make you drink mirra. I'm sorry.'
'Hate you? Why do they hate you?' Siileyman asked.
Edibe Taner, who still hadn't slept since Birecik, said, 'Because I'm
a woman and a police officer and therefore very unnatural. I belong to
a different clan, my father is a Master of Sharmeran ...'

'Which means? Master of Sharmeran?'
'Come on, we must go inside now,' Taner said, bending her head to
get through the tiny door in the thick high wall. 'We are expected.'
Siileyman, still none the wiser about the exact nature of a Master of
Sharmeran, followed. As he went through he pushed past a man whose
head and face were almost totally obscured by a thick woollen shawl.
The man looked at him briefly though glittering black eyes and then
ran off down the alleyway in the direction of Avenue Two.

Cicek Ikmen found only her youngest brother Kemal at home when she
turned up at her parents' apartment in Sultanahmet. In between their
various flight shifts, Cicek had learned enough from her brother Biilent
about their mother's behaviour to make her feel alarmed. As one of the
older ikmen children, Cicek remembered all the trouble Bekir had caused
before he ran away and all the heartache his departure had left behind
it. But her mother and Bekir were out, so she had to try to get some
sort of view on her mother's behaviour from her sullen teenage brother
Kemal. Biilent had also mentioned some sort of smell that seemed to
be suddenly present in their parents' home.
'Kemal,' she said as she sat down behind her mother's large kitchen
table, 'how are things? With our brother Bekir?'
The boy, who was fiddling rather ineffectually with the samovar,
looked sheepishly across at this sister who was old enough to be his
mother. 'OK,' he said, pushing a hank of greasy black hair away from
his spot-encrusted forehead.
'Do you think that Mum spends a lot of time with Bekir?'
'Maybe.' He had poured some tea into a glass for his sister and was
now trying to top it up with water from the samovar, but he was trying
to turn the handle the wrong way. Like almost all of her brothers, Kemal
had been indulged by their mother to such an extent that he was domestically
useless. Only Biilent seemed to have emerged from this child-like
dependence upon women and that was because Cicek, who lived with
him, flatly refused to indulge him.
But she had to make an exception and help this boy because otherwise
he was going to break the samovar. 'Out of the way.' As she pushed

him aside she felt the heat from his blushing face. She also smelt something
very unpleasant and, as Biilent had put it, 'musty' too. It was
coming, she felt, from Kemal. Knowing, because she knew her mother
so well, that it couldn't possibly be the smell of dirty or unaired clothes,
she had to assume that it came from something else Kemal was doing.
'What's that smell, Kemal?' she asked as she finished making up her
glass of tea.
'Smell?' He blushed again.
'Yes, smell,' his sister said. 'Like a sort of yeasty or musty smell.'
He didn't respond. She took, she knew, an evil delight in his embarrassment.
But then he was a moody, awkward and tedious boy. Her
mother had been over forty when she had him and he'd aged her. 'You
must be able to smell it, Kemal.'
'Cream for my spots,' he mumbled. 'It's a new one. Smells a bit.'
His entire head was red now and she noticed he was actually sweating.
Finally she felt ashamed of herself. Poor Kemal. He was the only one
of her siblings to have suffered horribly with acne and now he was
having to apply vile-smelling creams in an attempt to alleviate his misery.
But at least there wasn't some sort of damp or rot in the apartment that
she needed to tell her father about. Not that Cetin ikmen would exactly
go into overdrive in order to fix such a problem. He was nothing if not
totally careless about his home. But it had bothered Biilent enough,
together with their mother's behaviour, to warrant a visit from Cicek,
and now that the smell was dealt with she went on to other matters.
'Kemal,' she said as she drank her tea and then lit up a cigarette.
'Mum and Bekir--'
'I'm not going to say anything against him if that's what you think!
You're just like Biilent, just totally jealous and stuff!' her still brick red
brother flared. 'Bekir's cool! I like him!'
And without another word he stomped out of the kitchen and went
to his room. Cicek, alone in the kitchen now, was frankly rather shocked.
Kemal had never been easy even as a small child, but one thing he had
never been before was in any way partisan with regard to his siblings.
He had, in the past, either hated or disregarded them all with equal force.
Now suddenly he had a favourite. Cicek wondered why. But then,

recalling how manipulative her brother Bekir had been when they were
children, she thought that perhaps Kemal's behaviour wasn't that difficult
to understand. Bekir, as she recalled, had always delighted in playing
people off against each other. He'd done it with her and her older brothers
who had actually fought, basically over Bekir. What, she wondered, was
he doing with Kemal now? Who was he pitching the boy up against,
or was it everyone?
Later, bored with Kemal's seething silence and fed up with waiting
for her mother, Cicek left. As she walked down the hall to retrieve her
shoes from the rack by the front door, the musty smell if anything got
even stronger.

The house the Kaya family and their attendants now lived in had once
been the home of a wealthy Syrian Christian family. The two-storey
house was arranged in the traditional way in that the family lived on
the upper storey and used the courtyard and the rooms down below for
cooking, storage and servant and animal accommodation. Not that they
had servants, as such. Those wild-eyed men who served Siileyman and
Taner with mirra coffee at the request of the women of the house were
not like the ancient retainers the man from Istanbul could remember
his grandfather employing. These were no soft-spoken remnants from
a previous age, not with guns in their belts and resentment on their
faces.
Suleyman had seen Yusuf Kaya's wife, Zeynep, before. She, together
with one of her sons and some other women, had attended her husband's
trial in Istanbul. Compared to many gangsters' women he had come
across in the past, Zeynep Kaya was very low-key indeed. Whereas
some would scream, curse and even fight those around them when their
men were sentenced to long prison terms, Zeynep Kaya had remained
silent behind the chiffon scarf that had covered her head and mouth for
the whole of the proceedings. One of her sons, a boy in his early teens
Suleyman reckoned, had done enough of the other sort of thing for both
of them. But this time no young boy, nor indeed any children, were in
evidence. There was just Zeynep and an old veiled woman who Taner
told him was Yusuf Kaya's mother, Bilqis.

As they sat down on the floor beside the table upon which the mirra
was being served, Taner said to Siileyman, 'Bilqis Kay a speaks only
Arabic. I will translate.'
As they sat, Zeynep Kay a followed them solemnly with her dark,
wrinkle-encrusted eyes. She looked to be about the same age as her
husband, but now that her face was uncovered Siileyman could see that
much of what she must have felt at Yusuf's trial had settled bitterly
around a mouth that was small, tight and mean. There was something
else too: a tattoo which she wore on her left cheek. Siileyman could see
;that it was a scorpion.
The older woman growled something which Taner told Siileyman was
a greeting. In his turn he thanked her for her hospitality, which she
seemed to understand. She then told him to drink his mirra, something
which Edibe Taner translated with some hesitation. Her guest so obviously
did not like the stuff. But Siileyman gamely raised the small cup
he had been given to his lips and took a sip without so much as a
murmur.
'I haven't seen my husband and neither has any of our family,' Zeynep
Kaya said without looking at either Taner or Siileyman.
'To hide Yusuf, who is a convicted criminal under prison sentence,
would be counted as an offence,' Taner responded in, Siileyman noticed,
the same rather harsh accent as the gangster's wife. 'Whatever your
¦? feelings might be, Zeynep, you have children to consider.'
'And my husband is the father of those children,' the woman snapped
with now raw and open hatred. 'They are my world, all of them.'
'Zeynep, you're not a fool,' Taner said. She calmly sipped her coffee
and then lit a cigarette. 'Yusuf has other women from here to Istanbul,
and probably beyond. He--'
'Yusuf is my husband--'
'Yusuf killed the prostitute he was living with in Istanbul,' Taner
butted in forcefully. 'He murdered her, as you know from the trial. When
Inspector Siileyman here arrested your husband, Yusuf was in the process
of sawing the legs off a business rival he had just tortured to death!'
The old Arab woman said something that, to Siileyman, sounded
vicious and spiteful. Edibe Taner responded, he noticed, in kind. When

she had finished speaking the Mardin officer said to Siileyman, 'Bilqis
Kaya has just reminded me that as a native of Mardin I should not be
helping outsiders against my own kind.'
Siileyman raised an eyebrow.
'I have told her,' Taner continued, 'that her son Yusuf is in no way
"my own kind", that she herself should want her very dangerous and
disturbed son to be caught for his own sake if nothing else, and that
anyway you as well as all your colleagues in Istanbul will not rest until
Yusuf is apprehended.'
'Anyway, how could my husband even get into the city without you seeing him?' Zeynep said, leaning across the table towards Taner. 'No
one does anything without you having your eyes and ears everywhere,
knowing--'
'And now I have an officer from Istanbul with me,' Taner responded
with a smile on her face. 'Someone you won't be able to even think
about influencing. Zeynep, if you or any member of your family knows
where Yusuf is and I find out, I will make sure that as many of you as
possible are punished for it.'
'Oh, you are so spiteful, Edibe Taner!' Zeynep Kaya said. 'Spiteful
and alone!'
There was a moment of silence while Taner looked at Zeynep Kaya
with a studiedly casual expression on her face. They were of an age,
Taner and Yusuf Kaya's wife, the latter maybe a few years older. But
one was married and one was not and in places like Mardin that would
always give a woman like Zeynep the higher status whatever job her
rival, as it were, might choose to do.
'You only persecute those no longer in your circle,' the gangster's
wife pushed on. 'At least we don't harbour guns for terrorists. Not like
your Christian friends--'
So quickly did Taner jump to her feet that for a moment Suleyman
wondered whether she had accidentally dropped her coffee in her lap.
She certainly looked as if she might have been scalded.
'What others may or may not be doing is nothing to do with you!'
Bent at her slim waist, she hissed down at the gangster's wife still seated
by the table on the ground.

'You believed him, your "saint",' the woman continued. 'Can't believe
your own blood, no! But some monk whose own family are terrorists--'
'Shut your mouth, Zeynep, or I will shut it for you!' Taner looked as
if she might be about to spit at the woman before her. 'And don't you
talk to me about blood, don't ever talk to me about blood!'
The police officers left, Siileyman in Taner's furious wake. She
explained nothing about whatever had just happened in the Kaya house
beyond saying to Siileyman, 'Well, now the bitches know who you are!'
In silence they passed up the litter-strewn alleyway that led back to
Republic Square. Distracted by the overwhelming smell of mirra that
seemed to be coming from almost everywhere, Siileyman didn't notice
the old man come up behind them until he was actually level with Taner.
When she saw the old man, a small flat-capped peasant in a sheep's
fleece jerkin, suddenly and spectacularly Taner smiled. Then, after a
short and tender embrace, they spoke. What they spoke in, Siileyman
couldn't even begin to fathom. All he knew was that it was neither
Turkish nor Kurdish nor even Arabic.
They talked, Taner and the man, for minutes rather than seconds, the
policewoman saying not a word by way of explanation to the clueless
Siileyman. During the course of their conversation her face was by turns
grave and joyful and, when the old man finally left her to disappear
down some tiny, dark passageway, she bade him farewell with a smile
and a kiss. Then, her face set straight once again, she was going to walk
on without another word when Siileyman challenged her. 'Who was
that?' he asked.
'No one,' she replied, with harsh lack of grace that was so rough it
was almost as if she had slapped him in the face.


Chapter 8

The e-mail from ikmen to Siileyman was very typically the product of
one who had grown up without either Internet access or text messaging.
It began with Dear Mehmet, and it ended with his own full name, pounds tin
ikmen. But what it contained was informative and that was the main
thing.
Apparently Yusuf Kaya had been helped to get into solitary confinement
at the Kartal Prison by another inmate. 'Glamour' pictures had,
so ikmen said, changed hands in return for this favour. However, ikmen
was still not convinced that this prisoner, Ara Berkoz, had been the only
person in the prison involved in Kaya's escape. The wounded guard was
still in a coma and so he couldn't enlighten anyone, but ikmen was still
sure neither about him nor about any of his colleagues. In addition, the
two nurses, Faruk Oz and isak Mardin, were still nowhere to be found.
Apparently ikmen had tried to call the doctor in §anhurfa for whom
Mardin was supposed to have worked before coming to istanbul, but
no such person existed. The previous administrator of the Cerrahpa§a,
a Mr Oner, had according to Mardin's file spoken to this non-existent
man. But Oner had apparently committed suicide and so wasn't available
for comment. Lole, the third nurse who had gone 'missing' after
Kaya's escape, had returned to work. Lole, or rather his coffee, had
disquieted ikmen as Suleyman recalled. Finally there was a message,
sent via ikmen, from Ardic. It basically reiterated his desire for Suleyman
to 'beat the locals to Kaya.'
'Inspector?'
He turned round to see Brother Seraphim standing behind him.
'I know it's late, but there is a man at the monastery gate, a Kurd,
who is insisting upon seeing you,' the monk continued. 'I know him.

His name is Liitfu Giine§. He is not a troublesome man in my experience
and I think that he is genuine in his desire to see you.'
'You don't know why he wants to see me?' Siileyman asked.
'No, he won't say. I've let him into the monastery compound but I
can ask him to leave just as easily.'
Siileyman shut down his e-mail and stood up. 'I'll see him,' he said
wearily.

It hadn't been ikmen's idea to hang around Beyoglu looking for beggars.
Ay§e had been quite happy to try to find any remnants of Hiiseyin
Altun's child gang by herself. It was after all a pleasant evening and
plenty of people were about, visiting the clubs, bars and restaurants of
istiklal Street and its environs. But then ikmen wasn't just with Ay§e
for professional reasons. He couldn't bear the way that his wife was
obsessing over Bekir. It was excessive and it made him fear for her.
Because Bekir would hurt her again; ikmen knew that to the very bottom
of his soul. The boy might be back, ostensibly clean, tidy and ready to
put his life back together,, but that didn't mean that his father had to
trust him. Somehow Bekir was going to mess things up again, and just
at the moment ikmen couldn't bear to even be in the room with him.
So he was out on the streets with Ay§e watching gangs of probably
foreign children sit outside the Tiinel railway station, staring at tourists'
handbags.
'I haven't heard one of that lot speak Turkish,' he said, tipping his
head towards a large sprawl of kids leaning against the ATM machine
just inside the station entrance.
'Eastern European Roma, I think,' Ay§e replied. 'Not that Altun didn't
have some of those on his payroll. No one could ever have called Hiiseyin
a racist. He'd allow anyone, regardless of their race or religion, to share
in his criminal lifestyle.'
The sun was setting now and although the day had been warm it was
still early in the year and the evenings could be cold. As they came out
of the station, quite a few of the tourists stopped to put on jackets and
cardigans. Sometimes as they did so they put down bags and rucksacks
which the lolling kids, as well as the adult men who were always lurking


I
around children like this, would view hungrily. Hiiseyin Altun had been
one of the first and probably the most notorious adult leader of a child
criminal gang, but he had, in recent years, faced some very stiff competition,
ikmen watched carefully as the latest group of tourists readied
themselves for a night out on the town, scanning the scene for signs of
small hands diving with amazing speed into unattended bags. But
although the children seemed largely unaware of anyone looking in their
direction, the smart men in sports wear with them did not. One, a very
muscular character probably in his early thirties, stared directly at ikmen
for some time before saying something to a boy of about twelve in a
language Ikmen couldn't understand.
But in spite of the obvious suspicion that the men and their kids were
harbouring, none of them moved. One of the antique red and gold trams
that run up and down istiklal Street disgorged people at the station and
then took on more passengers just off the strange little funicular railway
that carries people up the steep hill that rises from Karakoy at the bottom
to the southern end of istiklal Street at the top. A well-trodden tourist
route, Tiinel had been targeted by genuine beggars as well as by thieves
for some years.
ikmen looked away. Staring at these men and their kids wasn't
achieving anything, and besides, he and Ay§e were not there to catch
street urchins stealing wallets, they were there to look for remnants of
Hiiseyin Altun's gang. Although ostensibly prompted by one of his 'feelings',
the notion that the escape of Yusuf Kaya from prison and Altun's
death were connected in some way was not really mystical in origin at
all. Kaya was a drug dealer who had been in the city on and off for
many years, Altun a native istanbullu had been a junkie. Both of them
had wandered up and down istiklal Street for years and had to have at
least known of each other. An increasing number of people seemed to
have been either killed, injured and maybe bribed too around Kaya's
escape. Why not a pathetic junkie who might or might not have harboured
the escaping convict? After all, Kaya must have needed to hole up somewhere
before he took off for Gaziantep. ikmen's eyes strayed on to a
dark art nouveau building known as the Botter House. It was one of his
favourite city buildings and it saddened him that it was now so unkempt.


With so much of Beyoglu under repair or repaired already this building
stood out as a rare sad case. The word was that apparently there was
some problem over the ownership of the place. A pull at his elbow ended
his musings.
'Sir, over there,' Ay§e whispered, 'by the simit seller's cart.'
He looked across the square in front of the station towards the glasscabinet-topped
cart from which an old man was selling the bread rings
called simit. He was taking money from a girl with long blond hair. She
in turn clung on to the simit he had given her as if her life depended
on it. But then she was probably hungry. Thin though she was, the girl
was also in the advanced stages of pregnancy.
'That's Huseyin Altun's Bulgarian girl,' Ay§e said to ikmen. 'I wonder
who the father of her child can be?'
Ikmen said, 'Let's ask her, shall we?'
They both walked over to the simit cart.

It was the man with glittering black eyes who had pushed past him
outside the Kay as' house in Mardin.
'Yusuf Kaya has a second wife,' the Kurd said without even a pretence
of preamble.
He wouldn't actually enter the monastery buildings, so they had to
talk in the freezing cold courtyard at the middle of the monastery
complex. Siileyman was wearing his overcoat but even so it was still
far from warm and he remained exhausted. But the Kurd, who was
himself wearing a thick woollen shawl, had insisted. He didn't want the
monks 'involved' as he put it. They were good people.
'She is a foreigner,' Liitfii Giine§ continued.
Siileyman, surprised to say the least by this revelation, was also
straining to understand the man's eccentric accent. 'What kind of
foreigner?' he asked.
'American.'
'American?' That out in a place like Mardin was very, very foreign.
'Are you sure?'
'He keeps her in a house out by Dara,' the Kurd said.
Siileyman didn't know either what Dara was or where it was.

'Dara is a village out on the Ocean,' Liitfii Giine§ explained. 'She is
an American, she is his wife and she lives there surrounded by wormwood.'
Thinking
that perhaps he had misheard, Siileyman said, 'Wormwood?
As in wormwood the--'
'Wormwood,' the Kurd interrupted. 'As I say.' He held up one silencing
hand. 'But I'll say no more. No one else will tell you that this woman
exists and you need to know.'
'Do Kaya's mother and his wife Zeynep--'

'Of course they know!' the Kurd said contemptuously. 'But they won't
speak and you need to know.'
'Why?' Siileyman asked. 'Is Kaya with this American wife? Is he
hiding with her now?'
Liitfii Giine§ shrugged. 'I don't know and I don't care,' he said.
'If you don't care, why are you telling me?'
The Kurd looked down at the ground. 'I don't want a war with the
Kayas,' he said. 'I don't personally bear them any ill will. But Yusuf
wrongs everyone and my name should not be spoken to his clan.' He
looked up, his eyes wet with either the cold or emotion or both. 'I
rejoiced when Yusuf Kaya went to prison. Someone must put him back
there and it must be someone from outside.'
'Inspector Taner--'

'No one will tell Taner anything,' the Kurd said with bitterness in his
voice. 'She betrays her own kind! The only reason she is still alive is
out of respect for her father.'
Seckin Taner, the famous and mysterious Master of Sharmeran, as
Siileyman recalled. 'Master' - whatever that might mean - of a mythical
snake goddess, what nonsense! And yet it meant something powerful
to these people seemingly irrespective of their ethnicities or religions.
It also apparently helped to keep the local inspector breathing.
The Kurd took a cigarette out from underneath the folds of his shawl
and lit up. 'Go to the American wife,' he said, 'and find Kaya. Only a
person without a clan can arrest him without starting a war in the city
and out in the Ocean.'
He turned to leave, but Siileyman put a restraining hand on his

shoulder. 'Have you seen Kay a since he escaped from prison? Have you
seen him here in the Tur Abdin?'
The Kurd looked at him with obvious distaste. 'No, I have not,' he
said. 'Why would I?'
'And wormwood? What--'
'Ask your unnatural woman about that,' he said, echoing the sentiments,
Suleyman recalled, of the Kay a women. Taner was unnatural
because she was a policewoman and maybe for other reasons too. Maybe
her being the daughter of a Master of Sharmeran put her in an ambiguous
place. Maybe people around her were both jealous and fearful, admiring
and awestruck in equal measure.
The Kurd left and then, in spite of the lateness of the hour, Suleyman
called Edibe Taner.

The Bulgarian girl told Ikmen and Ay§e Farsakoglu that her name was
Sophia. Whether that was in fact her real name was not ascertained at
that point. She did not however, whatever her name was, want to talk
about Hiiseyin Altun. Nevertheless, mainly due to Ay§e Farsakoglu's.
easy and tactful manner, she was persuaded that accompanying the officers
to one of the cafes in the lovely Belle Epoque-style passage known
as Tiinel Gecidi was going to be far more pleasant than going with them
to police headquarters. As she plonked herself down grumpily in one
of the wrought-iron chairs amid the luxuriant plants that almost
overwhelmed the passage she said to Ay§e, 'I want latte and a piece of
tiramisu.'
Ay§e looked at her boss for confirmation. 'Get the lady what she
wants, Ay§e,' he said. 'I'll have tea if places like this do tea.'
She went into the indoor section of the cafe they had chosen to sit
outside - mainly because no one else was sitting there - and ordered,
ikmen, although anxious to discover what, if anything, Sophia might
know about Hiiseyin Altun's associates, kept quiet until his deputy
returned. He did not, after all, know this heavily pregnant, and heavily
accented, girl at all.
'So, Sophia,' Ay§e said when she re-joined them at the table, 'it's
been quite a while. I see that you're pregnant. Congratulations.'

The girl looked up at Ay§e with a sneer on her lips. 'What you want,
Sergeant Farsakoglu?' she said. 'I don't do nothing now, you know.'
'Sophia, I didn't see you begging,' Ay§e said. 'I just want to talk.'
She fixed the girl with her eyes. 'About Hiiseyin.'
Sophia shrugged. 'Is dead, I hear.'
'Yes, he is dead,' Ay§e said. 'Someone killed him.'
'Huseyin, he was a bad man, he use heroin,' Sophia said without
either surprise or emotion. 'I am away from him.'
'Sophia.' Ikmen smiled at her. 'I am Sergeant Farsakoglu's superior.
I know you've done nothing wrong. But we need to find out if Huseyin
knew a man called Yusuf Kaya. He was a drug dealer, lived over in
Tarlaba§i.'
Sophia did not respond in any obvious way to this. 'A lot of drug
dealers in Tarlaba§i,' she said.
'Yusuf Kaya is a middle-aged man. Tall, dark, apparently attractive
to woman,' ikmen said. And then he added, 'Last year he was convicted
of the murder of a Sudani prostitute and a Russian drug dealer known
as Tommi Kerensky.'
At this last name, Sophia looked up. This time there was fear on her
face. 'Tommi? The man who kill Tommi? Is in prison--'
'Is out of prison now,' ikmen said. 'Escaped.'
Whether consciously or otherwise, Sophia's hands grasped her enormous
belly and she said, 'That is very bad, I think.'
'Sophia, do you, or rather did Huseyin know this man, this Yusuf
Kaya?'
The waiter appeared then and so at least a minute was spent organising
drinks while ikmen took in the enormous size of the cake Sophia
had made Ay§e order for her. As the girl spooned the first great cream
laden glob into her mouth she briefly closed her eyes. Only when Ikmen
repeated his question did she open them again. Then she frowned.
'Some years ago and once only I go to the apartment of the man who
kill Tommi,' Sophia said. 'I recognise the place from the television last
year. They show this as the place Tommi died.'

ikmen looked briefly across at Ay§e and then said to Sophia, 'How
did you come to go to that apartment, Sophia? Why?'

The Bulgarian girl put her spoon down beside her gooey tiramisu, as
if she had suddenly gone off her food, which indeed she had. But she
said nothing for some time and so Ay§e, after a pause, answered for her.
'Sir, Sophia was a heroin user.'
'Well, I'
'I don't do the junk no more!' the girl said vehemently. 'But I...
Then I. . .'
'Just tell us about your visit to Yusuf Kaya's apartment,' Ikmen said.
'You're not in any trouble and whatever you did while you were there
is a long time ago and of no concern to us now.'
Ay§e put a hand on Sophia's shoulder. 'Just tell us,' she said. 'It's OK, honestly.'
Sophia swallowed hard and then said, 'I go there to buy junk.'
'From Yusuf Kaya?'
She nodded. 'Hiiseyin know him.'
'Hiiseyin took you there?'
'No.'
ikmen frowned.
'Hiiseyin tell Asian to take me,' she said. 'Asian tell me this man he
is Hiiseyin's friend.'
ikmen had heard the name Asian before, from Ay§e. He looked at
her now for an explanation.
'Asian is one of Hiiseyin Altun's lieutenants, sir,' Ay§e said. 'Used
to be one of the street urchins. He's been with Hiiseyin for years.'
'Maybe we should go and talk to this Asian,' ikmen said as he lit up
a cigarette. The name Asian had also, he now recalled, possibly caused
a reaction from the comatose prison guard, Ramazan Eren. When Ayse
had uttered the name, he had stirred. It might have been, as the guard's
doctor had said, just a coincidence, but nevertheless ikmen did feel a
need to see this Asian person, whoever he was. 'Where does this Asian
live?'
'He is gone,' Sophia said. Still not touching her food, she looked
incredibly sad. 'Before Hiiseyin body is discovered he is gone.'
'Sophia,' Ay§e said, 'you just told us you haven't been seeing Hiiseyin
Altun. You've given up heroin, so you say, and--'


I




'I do give up junk!' Sophia said, tears now in the corners of her eyes.
'But. .. but I don't give up Asian.' She looked down at her swollen
belly and began to sob. 'Asian is father of my baby! He live with me,
but now he have gone.' She rose quickly from her seat and looked down
into Ikmen's face. 'I am afraid he is dead, like Hiiseyin.'
'Why do you think that, Sophia?' ikmen said. 'Why do you think
that Asian might be dead?'
'Why else he leave me?' she said tearfully. 'Why else he leave his
baby?'
And then with a turn of speed amazing in a pregnant woman, even
a young one, she ran headlong back along the passage towards istiklal
Street. Ay§e ran after her but after a few minutes' desperate searching
out on the main thoroughfare she had to admit defeat and returned to
the cafe and pounds tin ikmen. Sophia had been and probably still was a
beggar. She knew the streets and all the hiding places they concealed.

Chapter 9

Below Mardin and the monastery of St Sobo, the Mesopotamian plain
stretched into a misty and unknowable place. As flat as a salt-pan, the
plain was nevertheless a very interesting and intricate jigsaw of multicoloured
fields, dusty roads and the occasional rough, mudbrick building.
On the roads, which on this unexpectedly bright spring morning were
clear save for the occasional errant goat, the only other humans on the
move were a group of gypsies. No more than twenty in number, the
gypsies looked at Edibe Taner's car as it passed with blank, closed-off
eyes. The women, whose faces and heads were completely uncovered,
wore bright dresses, many of them covered with sequins that reflected
the pale yellow light of early morning, making their wearers look like
carriers of stars.
'The turn off to Dara is just here,' Taner said, pointing to a track
which led off to the left. The signpost actually said Oghuz, which was
the name, apparently, of the modern village that had grown up around
the ancient site of Dara.
When Siileyman had telephoned Taner late the previous evening, after
Liitfu Gunes, had come to see him at the monastery, she would have
liked to set out for Dara straight away. Partly because she believed that
Siileyman was exhausted, but mainly because she knew that looking for
anyone out on the Ocean in the dark was going to be difficult, she had
agreed to leave the journey until the morning. But she had started early.
That Yusuf Kaya apparently had an American wife was something
completely unknown to her and she was intrigued. She and a constable
called Selahattin had called at St Sobo's at five a.m. Luckily Brother
Seraphim and the other monks were accustomed to early rising on
account of their devotions, so it hadn't taken Taner long to have Siileyman

roused and then pushed inside her car with a tiny glass of tea in one
hand and a cigarette in the other. As they came out of the city, she
explained what she felt Siileyman's guest had meant when he had said
that Yusuf Kaya's American wife was surrounded by 'wormwood'.
'Kaya's clan, like all of us who belong to families from the plains,
tattoo themselves,' she said.
Siileyman remembered seeing a tattoo on Zeynep Kaya's left cheek.
It had been, as he recalled, a scorpion.
'This kind of tattoo we call Dakk,' Taner said. 'Well, the Dakk for
Kaya's clan includes a wormwood flower in the design. They are known
locally as the "wormwoods" for this reason. When your informant said
that the American woman was surrounded by "wormwood" what he
meant was that this woman is guarded by members of the Kay a clan.
To leave the wife of such a prominent man, even a foreign wife, alone
is unthinkable.'
'So not--'

'Oh, don't get me wrong, actual wormwood does grow on the plains.
The Dakk that we wear reflect our environment and the Kaya family
do grow and sell herbs including wormwood. But we are, trust me,
looking for a house that is guarded by Kaya family members or retainers.
Although how such a unique event as an American can have been kept
secret. . .' She tipped her head back and called to the constable behind
her. 'Selahattin, have you ever heard of such a thing?'
'No, Inspector,' the young man said. 'But then each clan is a closed
book, isn't it? That much I have learned since I came to work in this
city.'
'Selahattin is from Trabzon,' Taner said. Then she smiled. 'Black
Sea people too busy trading to be bothered with clans and such
nonsense, eh?'
The young man smiled. People from the Black Sea coast, probably
because of their proximity to sea and land routes to other cultures, have
a reputation for cunning business practice.
Once they had turned off the main route from Mardin down to the
D400 and thence to the Syrian border, they soon came upon what looked
to Stileyman like a series of vast overturned monoliths. Massive grey


sharp-cut rocks stuck out of the ground at alarming angles. Seeing where
his gaze was fixed, Taner said, 'Those were the quarries that provided
the stone needed to build Dara. Just before we get into the village is the
ancient necropolis. Dara's first inhabitants were Byzantine and so the
graveyard is Christian. Inspector Siileyman, did you get any sort of idea
from your informant about where this house might be?'
'No.' And then a thought struck him. 'Inspector,' he said, 'about Dakk.
Kaya's wife Zeynep was tattooed, I noticed. But not with a wormwood
flower - with a scorpion, on her left cheek.'
'Zeynep Kaya was not born a member of his clan,' Taner said. 'There
is some level of marriage between relations within the clans, but clan
members do marry out, particularly if the match is advantageous.'
'So the scorpion ...'
'Is the Dakk of the Taner clan,' she said. 'She turned her head away
from the road for a moment and rolled up the sleeve of her jacket. 'Like
this.'
The tattoo was on her forearm. Long and black, its stinger held threateningly
above its head, this scorpion was much more expertly drawn
than Zeynep Kaya's had been.
'Zeynep is my cousin,' Taner said. 'She is the daughter of my father's
younger brother. Because of what my forebears were and what my father
is, many clans want a connection with us.'
This was obviously the Master of Sharmeran business again. But
Taner related to Zeynep Kaya ... Siileyman was shocked. He knew that
he shouldn't be, because that was just how things were, or could be,
out in the east. Everyone was related in the end to everyone else. That
notwithstanding, his Istanbul-raised sensibilities were rather rattled.
'Inspector . ..'
'Of course no one in Dara will tell us whether or not a foreign woman
connected to Kaya lives hereabouts,' Taner said.'Yusuf Kaya has always
been feared and, by some, admired on the plains.'
Deciding that now was probably not the time to ask Taner about her
father - if such a time indeed would ever come - Siileyman turned his
mind back to the job in hand.
'So we look for a house, houses . ..'

'No.'
He looked across at her face, which was smiling in profile.
'Selahattin,' she said, 'will take you sightseeing. Dara is a very interesting
site and one that you should see while you are here. In fact, I'd
go so far as to say that local people will expect you to see it.'

The woman who lived on the fourth floor of Mr Lale's boarding house
in Zeyrek had been going on for months about the garden at the back
of the building. Mr Lale had told her that if it bothered her that much
maybe she should plant some flowers or something in it herself. That
had shut the old bitch up!
But ever since that nurse, that isak Mardin, had just upped and left
without paying his rent, the top flat had been empty, and Mr Lale needed
the money. A couple of people had come to have a look since the nurse
disappeared, but none of them had wanted the flat. To be honest, it
wasn't very big, and besides, word had got out that the police had
searched the place and that had put people off. Mardin was after all
missing and the last thing any putative tenants wanted to face was the
possibility of suddenly coming across the nurse dead underneath their
floorboards. So when elderly Miss whatever on the fourth floor suggested
that tidying up the garden might help to encourage prospective tenants,
Mr Lale had decided that that was what he would do.
No gardener, he nevertheless made an early start. Dragging a shovel
and a bag of flowers behind him, Mr Lale strolled miserably round to
the back of his property and surveyed the bald lumpen patch of earth
that was his garden. It wasn't a very promising vista. But then, as Miss
whatever had told him, some people made really fabulous flower displays
out of very much less. As he began to dig, at random really, Mr Lale
mused on the fact that none of the existing tenants used the garden.
Occasionally the young man in the basement parked his bike against
the back fence but more often than not he kept it inside. However, as
Miss whatever had said, summer was only round the corner and a pretty
garden would make people stop and look and not in a bad way.
It had rained a few times in the past few weeks, as it often did in
Istanbul in the spring. So the ground was variable, dry in some places,

muddy in others. Because of this, Mr Lale gained no impression that
the earth had been turned over by anyone else. But that must have been
the case because after about an hour, in a corner of the garden nearest
to the passage at the side of the house, his shovel hit something hard.
Closer inspection of the object revealed it to be one of those very thick
plastic bags sometimes used to cover electrical goods. There was something
in it, too. But what it was was not electrical. It was a human arm,
just beginning to break down and rot. Horrified, Mr Lale could see that
the arm had once been very large and well developed.

Siileyman didn't see the logic of what happened next. He asked Constable
Selahattin what he thought.
'They do some very strange things around here, sir,' the constable
said as he too followed the troupe of teenage tour guides into the heart
of Dara. Edibe Taner had simply handed the two men over to the boys
while she went off to make enquiries on her own. 'I imagine the inspector
has gone to see something or someone she feels might be of use. There
are some people here, sir, well a lot really, who won't speak to outsiders.
They won't even speak to one of their own while an outsider is present.'
'My understanding, however, is,' Suleyman said, 'that this American
wife is a person unknown to anyone outside the Kay a family.'
'And yet your informant knew, sir. Amazing to me he should care to
talk to you, but. .. And you say he wasn't a Kaya. So if he knows
maybe others do too. I imagine this is what the inspector is assuming.'
Liitfu Giines., so Brother Seraphim had told Suleyman, wasn't even
distantly related to the Kayas. So, Suleyman reasoned, if he knew so
indeed could others. But how did Taner know who, if anyone, she could
talk to about words spoken by a man Suleyman had refused to name?
Constable Selahattin in part answered this question.
'There are all sorts of alliances and pacts and things between the
various clans that no one from outside can possibly understand,' he said.
'They won't talk to the likes of us unless there's really no choice, or it
would actively endanger them to talk to their own.'
Following the group of boys down a rutted, bramble-strewn track,
they came to the ruins of a massive cistern cut into the rock.

'You can't even draw lines along ethnic divisions around here,'
Selahattin continued as the boys, guides educated and paid by the local
municipality, waited for the men to catch up with them. 'Half of these
kids here are Arabs and in Mardin itself you find Turkish families who
only two generations back were Arabs or Christians or Jews or all three!
So the alliances there, even now, can be confusing.' He smiled. 'But I
leave all that to the locals. I just catch the odd pickpocket from time to
time.'
Siileyman was certain that wasn't entirely true. After all, why employ
someone as apparently neutral as Selahattin if there wasn't some higher
purpose in mind? The young man was intelligent and obviously very
fit. Perfect for hiking out into the mountains in pursuit of terrorists of
all kinds.
The boy guides, who were indeed largely of Syrian Arab ancestry,
began their spiel about Dara. As the smallest of the lads talked about
how the city had started life as a Byzantine garrison town known as
Anastasiopolis, Siileyman was struck by two things. First how durable
some ancient names were. Yusuf Kaya's Christian lover in the brothel
in Gaziantep had been called Anastasia. And second, he wondered
whether that really was Edibe Taner's car driving out of Dara back
towards the Mardin road?

'Dad!'
Ikmen was just outside police headquarters when he was stopped by
the sound of Cicek's voice. He turned and smiled. Breathless from running
to catch him up, Cicek tottered into her father's arms and kissed him
on the cheek.
'I came home to see you all yesterday, but only Kemal was in,' she
said as she put a hand up to her heaving chest.
'He didn't say anything about your visit,' ikmen said as he kissed
her back and took one of her arms in his.
Cicek raised her eyes to the sky in exasperation. 'Kemal!'
'So, my soul, what was your visit about?' ikmen asked. 'Was it just
a social call or did you want to talk about something in particular?' He
suspected from the rather serious look on her face that it was the latter.

IK)

I
(Ti9ek had never been a person to mince her words. 'Dad, I'm worried
about Mum,' she said. 'More specifically, I'm worried about Mum and
Bekir.'
'Ah.' Ikmen put his free hand in his pocket and retrieved his cigarettes.
'I know that she is going to be more protective about Bekir than
she would be normally for a while,' Qiqek continued. 'But when
Biilent was at home the other day he saw Mum cancel a dental appointment
she made ages ago in order to stay in with Bekir. What's more,
Biilent said that although Bekir did make various noises to Mum about
how she should go to the dentist, once she'd cancelled he looked
smug and pleased with himself.' She drew still closer to her father
and took one of the cigarettes that he offered her. 'Dad, Biilent can
barely remember Bekir but I do and, glad as I am to see him again,
he was trouble.'
Ikmen lit up their cigarettes and sighed. 'He says he's changed, that
he's off drugs . ..'
'And Kemal is coming under his spell. Thinks that Bekir is "cool"!' Qiqek drew shakily on her cigarette and then said, 'Dad, I know it's
suspicious and cynical but I can't and don't trust Bekir. What he put us
all through, years ago, but with such obvious delight...'
'£icek.' ikmen put a hand on her shoulder. 'My darling, I must be
honest and say that I don't trust him either. I can't tell you why; I have
no evidence that he is or has been doing anything wrong. He says that
he will leave us soon. Apparently he has a job down on the south coast
for the summer.'
'Do you know what it is?'
'No.' He rubbed his face wearily with his hands. 'I want him to go.
I don't know why, he's not being unpleasant and he is my son, but...
He says he's leaving soon and I want your mother to have some good
times with him first. She doesn't know about this yet and you're not to
tell her. I mean, yes she is behaving in a silly fashion right now, but
how can I tell her that? Her son has returned after one and a half decades
doing who knows what--'
'He says he fought gypsies, travelled and all sorts,' £icek cut in.
'Yes, and I must try to find the time to go to Balat and talk to my


gypsy connection,' ikmen said. 'I'm not saying that I don't believe any
of Bekir's stories, but... You know, pounds cek, I think that your mother
does know on some level what is going on with regard to Bekir and her
behaviour towards him. She's not a fool.'
'No, I know.'
ikmen puffed hard on his cigarette and said, 'I will go and see my
gypsy. She knows everyone.'
'Sir!'
It was, ikmen recognised immediately, Ay§e Farsakoglu's voice.
Turning towards his place of work he saw her standing in the doorway
holding a mobile telephone to her ear.
'Ayse?'
'Sir, we have to go out to Zeyrek now! isak Mardin's landlord has
found something that could be significant in his garden!'
ikmen smiled at his daughter, kissed her again and took his leave of
her. Qicek, used to such oblique and unexpected partings, began to go
about her business. As she left she said, 'Oh, and Dad, there's a smell
in the apartment. Don't know what it is. Kemal says it's his spot cream,
but. . .'
'Yes, it is, apparently,' ikmen said as he ran off towards the station.
'Ghastly, I know, but...'
'OK, Dad,' pounds cek said. 'I'll leave it with you.'
But her father had gone.

Interesting though the history of the ancient city of Dara was, Suleyman
felt that there had to be more constructive things he could be doing
with regard to the recapture of Yusuf Kaya. All this detail about
Byzantine garrisons and wars with the Persians was making him feel
as if he were on the edge of the world. And when one of their young
guides pointed towards some tiny white cube-like buildings in the
distance and said, 'Syria,' it only served to increase his sense of dislocation.
But there was nothing he could do. Inspector Taner was running
this investigation and she'd taken off in her car to who knew where
over an hour ago.
The young guides told the officers that they had been employed to

take tourists round the site mainly because visitors had complained that
they were being hassled for money by gangs of greedy kids.
'They are mainly gypsies, of course,' one of the lads said when they
all sat down at the end of the tour at a tea garden on the edge of the
town. The children in question probably weren't exclusively gypsies,
but Siileyman let it go.
The tea, which was served to them by an elderly man, was hot and
strong and was very welcome in spite of the now rapidly increasing
heat. Constable Selahattin said, 'When the sun does come out at this
time of year, it can be very hot.' He smiled. 'It can also still rain and
even snow on occasion too. This place is unpredictable.'
They sat and talked of this and that with their young hosts for almost
an hour and then, as quickly as she had gone, Edibe Taner reappeared.
Once back inside the car, she didn't speak to either of the men about
where she had been until they had well and truly cleared Dara village.
Even when she did speak she didn't say from where or from whom she
had gained her information.
'There is an old house at the back of the necropolis,' she said, 'that
belongs, I am told, to the Kaya family. Occasionally, generally after
dark, a tall veiled woman is seen taking exercise outside in company
with armed men.' She pointed out of the car window, beyond the tumbling
tombs of Dara's former masters, towards a large sandy hillock at the
back of the graveyard. 'Behind all that. I think we should return tonight
and'
'Inspector, forgive me,' Stileyman said, 'but now that we have this
information, wouldn't it be better to investigate now? Yesterday you felt
that night-time was not the best time to be out here. I mean, I don't
know who your informant was, but surely that person could tell the
woman and her guards that you have been told about this.'
She looked away from the road for a moment, her face proud and
stern. 'They won't talk,' she said with absolute certainty. 'They wouldn't
dare.'
It was not a statement that invited any sort of response, and Siileyman
kept his counsel. Had Taner been perhaps to see Liitfti Giine§, the Kurd
who had come to see him? It wasn't likely. In line with the man's request,

he hadn't told Taner his name, and anyway, if Liitfii had wanted to talk
to Taner he would have done so a long time before. No, she had seen
some other person or persons and quizzed and probably threatened them
with something or other too. She was, he was coming to see, a very
powerful woman - daughter of a Master of Sharmeran or not.
'I will arrange for a squad to surround the house tonight and then
you and I will go in and talk to the inhabitants,' Taner said to Stileyman
after a pause. 'It's safer that way. That's my decision.'
She clearly knew her territory and her people, so there was very
little in that to argue with. Not that it didn't leave Siileyman feeling
uneasy. To surround the house at night seemed to him an unnecessarily
aggressive act. Surely, to stop at the house and maybe for him to ask
for directions in order to get the lie of the land would be a better plan?
But then he didn't know the area or the people. What he did know of it was, he had to admit, more tense, violent and generally unstable than
anything he had ever come across in Istanbul. Apart from all the different
ethnic groups and terrorist organisations active in the area, there was
drug growing and trafficking and last, but certainly not least, the
powerful clans that controlled life both up in the city and down on the
plain.
'Now we will go to Mardin Prison,' Taner said as she accelerated the
car past a herd of startled goats and made for the crossroads. 'There is
someone there I would like you to meet, Inspector Siileyman.'
'Oh?'
From the back of the vehicle, Selahattin said, 'Musa Saatci.'
Taner said, 'Indeed.'
Suleyman, frowning, said, 'Is Musa Saatei something to do with
Kaya?'
'Oh, no,' Taner said breezily. 'Not at all. Musa Saatci is the father
of a man who is a living saint.'
A living saint? Suleyman squashed down his suspicions and said, 'So
why is he in prison, this father of a saint? What is his crime?'
'He is on remand and so has not yet been convicted of any crime,'
Taner said. 'But just under eight weeks ago, an old friend of Musa Saatci
when visiting him discovered that the old man's house was full of

weapons: guns, grenades and rocket launchers. That old friend is one
of our officers.'
'So this Musa Saatci is a terrorist?'
Edibe Taner sighed and shook her head sadly. 'No,' she said. 'He is
a very pious Christian man whose son has performed miracles in this
area. The guns are not Musa's. But he won't tell us who they do belong
to.'
'And now Gabriel has gone missing,' Selahattin said from the back
of the car.
'Gabriel?'
'Gabriel Saatc,i, Musa's son,' Taner said. 'He is a monk at St Sobo's.
But shortly after his father was arrested, he disappeared. Everyone is
looking for him. When we were at the Kay a house yesterday I spoke
to a neighbour about him. We are all very worried. Even if one is a
Muslim, Gabriel Saatci is very special.'
'Why is that?' Siileyman asked.
Without a hint of scepticism in her voice, Edibe Taner said, 'God via
the Sharmeran gave Gabriel the power to withstand snake bite when he
was a young child. Gabriel SaatcJ was bitten by vipers and yet he lived
unharmed. He is an immortal saint.'

I

Chapter 10

Mr Lale was not a man to take a tongue-lashing from anyone. Not even
a senior police officer.
'I had to know whether it was him or not,' he said to ikmen as he
looked across, without emotion, at the plastic-bag-framed face of the
dead body that was currently being examined by the police pathologist,
Arto Sarkissian.
'By "him" I take it you mean isak Mardin your ex-tenant?' Ikmen said
tightly. The bloody stupid man had tampered with a crime scene!
'Who else would I mean?' Mr Lale replied. 'Of course isak Mardin!'
He sighed. 'It was a relief to find that it wasn't him. I mean, I know
he owes me rent, but--'

'So having tampered with the body in order to satisfy your
curiosity--'
'My peace of mind!' Mr Lale interrupted. 'To put my mind at rest
that the body in that bag wasn't one of my tenants. With that great big
arm sticking out at me, it could easily have been him. He built his body;
it was his obsession. And if it had been him maybe one of my other
tenants might have killed him. Imagine that! Imagine living with the
knowledge that someone in your house had been killed by someone else
in your house. Imagine--'
'Mr Lale, hysterics will get us nowhere!' ikmen snapped. 'I'm quite
rightly angry because you have contaminated a crime scene. You pulled
that bag apart to reveal the face and in the process you have almost
certainly destroyed at least some of the evidence this man's assailant
may have left behind. This man is clearly not isak Mardin. I have to
find out who he is and why he was buried in your garden.'

It was at this point that the pathologist rose to his feet and beckoned
to Cetin Ikmen. 'Ah, Inspector . . .'
Ikmen looked over at his friend and then, without another word to
the landlord, he made his way over to him. 'Arto.'
The Armenian looked on as the policeman lit up a cigarette and then
said, 'Cause of death, as far as I can deduce right now, is a deep stab
wound to the neck.'
Thinking back to the other recent stabbings connected with the
absconding of Yusuf Kaya, which by virtue of happening in isak Mardin's
garden this one could also be, he said, 'Glass?'
'No, short-handled knife. Probably a flick knife. He's about thirty. In
good health as far as I can see.'
'ID?'
'He's naked.'
ikmen groaned.
'Forensic are on their way,' Arto said. 'They'll have to turn over the
property.'
'Won't please the landlord too much,' ikmen said, nodding his head
in the direction of Mr Lale.
The Armenian looked at the small, woollen-capped old man with
some disdain and said, 'He contaminated the scene?'
'Yes.'
Arto sighed.
'Thought it might be his missing tenant, our missing nurse, isak
Mardin,' ikmen said. 'I must admit that I thought it might be him too.
But it isn't.' He sighed. 'I wonder who it is and whether he has or had
anything to do with Mr Yusuf Kaya or not?'
'I do not know,' Arto said as he bent over the body once again.
ikmen, puffing heavily on his cigarette now, hunched his shoulders
in misery.
But just before he hunkered down to go about his work again, Arto
Sarkissian turned and said, 'Oh, and he has a tattoo.'
'A tattoo? Where?'
'On his left bicep. It's a flower, wound around with what look like
tree branches. Quite well done. I have seen worse.'

'Oh, well, that's something,' ikmen said. Tattoos were, he knew, often
a good way of tracing an unknown person. And if no other evidence
pointing to the identity of this man was found, that tattoo could prove
very useful.

It was strange to see anyone, unrelated to that person, kiss a prisoner's
hand. But Edibe Taner did just that when Musa Saatci was brought
into the interview room. It was, Siileyman decided, a foul place. Not
that any prison could be described as pleasant, but this place, maybe
because of its remoteness, felt worse than any other jail he had visited
before.
The prisoner himself, however, was probably cleaner and tidier than
the usual run of such individuals. Short and stooped, Musa Saatci was
probably somewhere in his late seventies. He had a long white beard,
not unlike those Siileyman had seen on the monks at St Sobo's, and,
behind small wire-rimmed spectacles, a pair of very lively bright green
eyes. Taner, noticing the look of slight confusion on Suleyman's face,
said, 'The guards look after him. He isn't a criminal.'
She looked and sounded absolutely sure about it. She was also adopting
a deferential manner with this old man that Siileyman had not seen or
associated with her before. It was almost as if all her toughness and
ambition had suddenly dropped away from her.
The old man sat down in the chair Taner brought over for him and
made himself comfortable. A conversation in what Siileyman imagined
was probably Aramaic ensued, after which Taner said, 'My dear uncle
here speaks Turkish. I have told him you are a completely neutral and
fair officer from Istanbul. He will listen to you.'
She obviously had a great deal of affection for the old man, but then
so did the guard who brought him in a large glass of tea. He too addressed
the prisoner affectionately as 'uncle'.
'Yes, I will listen,' the old man said in a deep, heavily accented voice.
'For Edibe's sake, I will listen.' He then turned to Taner and added, 'But
it will change nothing.'

'Uncle' is used by Turkish people as a term of respect for their male elders.

'Just listen, uncle dear,' Taner said. And then she looked across expectantly
at Siileyman. He cleared his throat. According to Taner, Musa
Saatci had admitted neither guilt nor innocence with regard to the arms
the police had found at his home. All he would say was that whatever
was wrong would be all right once his son, the missing 'miracle' monk
Gabriel, returned. The problem was that no one, Musa apparently
included, seemed to know when that would be.
'Mr Saatci,' Siileyman began, 'Inspector Taner has described your
situation to me in some detail. I understand you believe that all will be
well when your son returns. But...'
'When Gabriel comes back everything will be clear,' Musa Saatci
said with a smile on his broad, brown face. 'My son is a saint, young
man. Everything will be well upon his return.'
'Sir, I am ...' Siileyman, a man who once believed in God and now
didn't any more, felt embarrassed in the face of such, to him, blind faith.
'Mr Saatci, unless your son is coming home now, we don't have the
time. If you are innocent, as Inspector Taner believes, then you must
tell us so, and you must also tell us who is actually the guilty party in
this matter.'
Musa Saatci looked down at the floor and frowned. 'I have nothing
to say to you, young man.'
Siileyman looked across at Taner, who just shrugged her shoulders
helplessly. He leaned forwards and whispered so that only the old man
could hear him. 'Mr Saatci, I am from Istanbul. I belong to no clan or
group, I have no religion and I have never been bought by anyone. I
hate to see an obviously revered man like yourself in a place like this.
Tell me the truth and I assure you that. . .'
He stopped because the old man was laughing. Not loudly or with a
cackle in his voice, but sadly, with much shaking of his shaggy white
head.
'Young man,' he said when he had finished, 'I know that you mean
well. I know that Edibe here has only my interests at heart. But if I
speak before my boy returns and it gets out. . .'
'It won't get out!' Taner said, leaning forward to squeeze one of the
old man's hands in hers. 'Tell Inspector Siileyman only, if you like!'

'And he will tell you, and
'I won't tell anyone, I swear it!' she said. 'I will simply find who
has really committed this crime and arrest them.'
'Which is exactly what I do not want!' Musa Saatci thundered. 'Not
until Gabriel--'
'Mr Saatci, you are charged with a terrorist offence,' Siileyman said.
'If your telling us the truth is dependent upon your son's returning to
St Sobo's then he needs to do that very quickly. Mr Saatci, do you know
where your son is?'
Musa Saatci turned away and said softly, 'No.'
Siileyman looked again at Taner, who spoke to the old man. 'Uncle
Musa, if you know where Gabriel is--'
'I do not!'
'Uncle Musa, is it that you fear that the people who really own those
weapons will hurt Gabriel in some way?'
There was a long and very still silence. It told both Taner and Siileyman
almost everything they needed to know.
The man from Istanbul leaned forward once again. 'Mr Saatci,' he
said, 'if we knew where your son was we would, and I would personally
oversee this, protect him.'
The old man's eyes were full of tears when he looked up once again.
'You couldn't protect Gabriel,' he said. 'My son is immortal, a living
saint.'
'So why do you fear for him so very much?' Taner asked.
The old man shook his head. 'There are more ways to kill a man
than just by destroying his body.'
'You fear for his soul? These people have dominion over Gabriel's
soul? How can that be?' Taner said. 'Uncle, Gabriel is a saint, he is a
perfect soul! No one can change that! No one!'
But the old man didn't answer. Siileyman, lost or so he felt in some
sort of medieval world of saints and souls and miracles, leaned back in
his chair again and sighed. He'd come out to Mardin to find Yusuf Kaya,
not to get involved in something that to him felt like an episode from
one of his son's Harry Potter books.
The old man rose slowly from his chair and then leaned down to cup

Edibe Taner's chin in his hands. 'All I ask is that you speak to your
father for me,' he said. 'Ask him to ask the Sharmeran to protect my
son.'
'Uncle.' Taner got to her feet and embraced the old man. 'Gabriel is
the Sharmeran's own dear son, you know that. She will never, ever
desert him.'
If Siileyman hadn't known for sure that Taner was a Muslim he would
have sworn that she was Suriani. Talking in reverent tones about a
Christian holy man! But then of course there was the Sharmeran, too.
What a thick brew people were in the east! Taner and the old man spoke
in Aramaic again, until the guard returned to take Musa Saatci back to
his cell. Taner, her eyes wet with tears, followed. Stileyman, bringing
up the rear, was flummoxed, confused and completely determined to
find out just what this Sharmeran thing was really all about.

Like Zeyrek, where ikmen had just come from, Balat is one of those
Istanbul districts that line the Golden Horn. Traditionally Balat had
always been a Jewish quarter and some Jews did indeed still inhabit its
ancient winding streets. But in recent years new people had come into
the area - migrants from Anatolia who had come to the city in search
of work, and also a small number of artists. This latter group included
ikmen's informant, whom he was visiting now. A tall and very beautiful
middle-aged woman, she had lived and worked in Balat for some
years.
'I imagine you've heard that Hiiseyin Altun, the beggar king of
Edirnekapi, has died,' ikmen said after one of the gypsy's many daughters
had given him tea.
The gypsy offered ikmen a fierce Birinci cigarette, which he took
with gratitude, and then lit one up for herself.
'Many of our people used to live in Edirnekapi,' she said after a
pause. 'Long ago now. But I still keep an eye on what happens over
there. Hiiseyin was not one of our own, but I knew him. He was a
beggar, a thief, a drug addict, some said an abuser of children . . .'
'Do you know a lieutenant of Hiiseyin's, one of his ex-street kids,
Asian?'

'Yes, I know Asian,' she said. And then she leaned forward in order
to look intently into ikmen's eyes. 'He's nowhere to be found now
Hiiseyin has gone.'
'I don't suppose you--'
'Know where he is?' she said, and then she sighed. 'No. What I do
know however, ikmen, is that you move in pursuit of Yusuf Kaya, the
escaped convict.'
'A man from the east,' ikmen replied. 'Not one of your kind.'
'A dangerous and cruel man,' the gypsy said. 'Did Hiiseyin Altun
have any connection to him?'
'We think that Kaya may have dealt drugs to Altun. But there is no
established connection between the two except via Asian who, it is said,
once went to Kaya's apartment in Tarlaba§i.'
The gypsy smoked hard, nodding her head as she did so.
'Since Yusuf Kaya escaped from Kartal Prison,' ikmen said, 'this city
has experienced a lot of death. Two police officers and one prison guard
were killed at the Cerrahpa§a, Huseyin Altun was stabbed to death, Asian
has disappeared and just this morning I was called to a crime scene that
may or may not have a connection to Yusuf Kaya. I believe it is possible
that Huseyin, Asian or both of them may have aided Kaya's flight from
the city. It is further my opinion that our man from the east is systematically
eliminating witnesses to his escape as he goes along. That is
certainly how it is looking here in the city.'
Out beyond Gaziantep, according to Siileyman, things were rather
different. But then not only were the people out there Yusuf Kaya's own
but none of them, so far, had even hinted at catching sight of the escaped
convict.
'I have never heard anything about Asian being involved with Yusuf
Kaya,' the gypsy said. 'He traded with drug dealers all over the city,
Beyoglu and beyond. That was just part of the job that Huseyin had
given him.' She sighed. 'What I do know is that Asian left, went missing
or whatever you call it, on the day that Yusuf Kaya escaped from
prison.'
'And ...'
'And the rumour is,' she held up one finger in order to silence him,

'that Asian made a bid for power and that it was he who killed Hiiseyin.
That he did it at that time would seem to be coincidental.'
Ikmen eyed the gypsy narrowly. 'But you and I, we don't hold unquestioningly
with coincidence? Do we?'
'If Asian did indeed make a bid for power,' she said, 'then it failed.
Hiiseyin's kids have scattered. His other lieutenant, Rahmi, runs a few
of them, but he is weak . . . ikmen, the truth as I hear it is that Asian is
still alive but no one knows where he is. It is said he and Hiiseyin were
alone together the night Kay a escaped, the night when Asian disappeared.
With Hiiseyin dead, who can say what truly occurred?'
'Look, can you describe this Asian to me?' ikmen asked. 'My Sergeant
Farsakoglu who over the years has had, on occasion, some dealings with
Hiiseyin Altun's kids cannot reliably do that because she's seen him
very infrequently. We did speak to his Bulgarian girlfriend yesterday
but we didn't manage to get to what her lover looked like because the
bloody kid gave us the slip!'
The gypsy smiled. 'Poor ikmen, the street people have been giving
you a hard time! Asian is, from my recollection, a man who must now
be about thirty. I wish I could say that he had some sort of distinguishing
mark or feature, but I can't. He has straight black hair, is of average
height, weight.. .I've seen him maybe twice as an adult.'
'You can't say where or who . . .'
'No.' She smiled again.
'No.'
He asked her whether she knew anything about the meaning of the
flower tattoo he'd seen on the body of the young man at Mr Lale's
house in Zeyrek. She said that she didn't. What he described didn't have
any meaning for her.
And so, the business of their conversation apparently over, they chatted
of this and that until ikmen finally left about half an hour later. Before
he went, however, he did have one last question to ask.
As he stood on the doorstep of her ramshackle studio, he said, 'Have
you ever heard of a Turk called Black Storm? A fighter by all accounts.
Had some memorable bouts amongst your own men up in Sulukule.'
'One of you fighting one of us in Sulukule and winning?'

'Apparently so.' His son Bekir had always been full of stories even
as a child. He feared and hoped in equal measure that his incarnation
as Black Storm was one of them.
Various small and dirty children, some of them the gypsy's own,
watched as she burst into laughter.
'Oh, Ikmen, that is priceless!' she said. 'That one of your men would
beat one of our men in Sulukule? God help us, but that is just impossible!
Impossible!'
'Yes, but Black'
'Black Storm?' She laughed again. 'Black Storm? ikmen, I've never
heard of such a person. If such a person did exist and did beat one of
our men in a fight in our own quarter then you can rest assured that
Black Storm is no longer in the land of the living now!'
And then she closed the door on him. ikmen walked back towards
Zeyrek, closing his mind to at least one of Bekir's stories as he did so.

Edibe Taner still hadn't answered Suleyman's question about just exactly
who a Master of Sharmeran was or what such a person did. But when
they got back into the city of Mardin, rather than drop him off at the
police station along with Selahattin, she took Siileyman to one of Mardin's
two markets, the Revakli Bazaar. Various tradespeople work at their
chosen crafts in this area, including coppersmiths. It was to one of their
workshops that Edibe Taner took Mehmet Siileyman now.
'We have a saying here on the Ocean,' she said as she led him towards
a truly old, dingy and blackened portico, 'that he who owns patience
will own Egypt.' She smiled. 'I think that you have earned your place
in the land of the pyramids.'
There was no sign up on the wall to tell the world who the hectic
little coppersmith's workshop belonged to. But two things were immediately
apparent. First, there was a large brazier in front of the shop on
top of which was a pot Suleyman recognised as a very large mirra coffee pot. Second, almost every copper artefact on view was characterised by
the image of the Sharmeran. Hanging from the columns at the entrance
to the shop, the wares provided a bright and shiny frame to the almost
impenetrable darkness within. It was in fact only when Suleyman really

looked hard that he noticed that there was another brazier or fire right
at the back of the premises. He only saw that a living being was in the
shop when Taner called into the blackness.
'Papa? Papa, it is Edibe. Are you there, Papa?'
A few seconds later a small, soot-stained man appeared. Of indeterminate
age, he wore a thick canvas apron over what looked like one of
the oldest brown suits in the world. When he saw Edibe Taner, his large
mouth split open into a smile revealing teeth the colour of black treacle. ¦ 'Edibe!' He walked forward with his arms outstretched. The normally
upright and stately Edibe Taner crouched down into her father's embrace
and then bent down even lower to kiss both his hands. Just as she had
done with Musa Saatci, Edibe Taner was apparently putting aside her
detached, professional persona once again
'Edibe.' The coppersmith went on to speak to his daughter in one of
those languages that were completely unknown to Siileyman. Whether
it was Arabic or Aramaic he couldn't even begin to know. When they
had finished, the Mardin policewoman introduced Siileyman to her father.
'Inspector Siileyman, this is my father, Seckin Taner,' she said. 'Papa,
this gentleman is the policeman from Istanbul I have been working with.'
No handshakes were exchanged. Just the polite bow of one eastern
gentleman to another. Siileyman was not entirely comfortable with this,
but he smiled anyway and said, 'Sir, it is a pleasure. It is an honour to
work with your daughter.'
Seckin Taner took these compliments with a straight but contented
face and then invited his daughter and Siileyman to join him in his shop.
To Siileyman's relief, he appeared to speak fluent Turkish, even if what
he said next filled the istanbullu with horror.
'You must take mirra, Inspector,' he said.
'Papa's mirra is the finest on the Ocean!' his daughter enthused. 'You
will like this, Inspector. I know you will.'
'Oh. That's nice. Thank you,' he replied without enthusiasm.
The coppersmith pushed several plates along the bench at the back
of his shop to make space for them to sit. Now that he was closer,
Siileyman could see that the fire was enclosed by a low, dark wall whose
top was cluttered with what looked like branding irons of various sorts.

'The smith's forge,' Seckin Taner said by way of explanation. Then,
smiling to reveal those heavily stained teeth yet again, he added, 'Copper
like any metal must always be coaxed into position by fire. Please sit
down, Inspector.'
With one eye on Edibe Taner, who appeared to be doing something
worrying with the mirra pot and a handful of not such small cups,
Siileyman sat. Seckin Taner sat down next to him and said, 'Now, my
daughter tells me you want to know about the Sharmeran.'
'Yes, although to be truthful, sir, it is your role as what your daughter
describes as a Master of Sharmeran that really interests me,' Siileyman
replied. 'Unless I am mistaken, this would seem to be some sort of
social duty?'
Seckin Taner put a restraining hand on Siileyman's thigh. 'I will come
to that. First things first.' He picked up a large plate with the serpent
image on it and said, 'This here is the Sharmeran, my mistress. Queen
of snakes and protectress of Mardin. Back in the dark times before the
Prophet Muhammed, blessings and peace be upon him, before even
the Prophet Isa of the Christians, there was a young boy who was tricked
by his friends into getting lost in the caves that cover the mountains around
here. In trying to find his way out the boy only succeeded in getting
himself deeper and deeper inside the mountains until eventually ...'
'He found himself in a cave full of poisonous snakes,' Edibe Taner
said as she passed a slightly reddening Siileyman a cup of steaming
mirra. 'He called upon his god to help him but still the snakes writhed
at his feet and snapped at his ankles. Just as the boy had given up all
hope a strange figure came into view . ..'
'The Sharmeran!' Seckin Taner clapped his small hands in delight.
'Queen of the snakes! She ordered her children to leave the boy alone
and then, because she is a good and tender-hearted goddess, she told
the boy she would show him how to get out of the caves and find his
way home.'
His daughter took a large gulp of mirra from her cup before continuing
the story. 'Of course the Sharmeran in her great wisdom made this
conditional on the boy's promising not to reveal her location to anyone.
A goddess can have only certain human visitors, you understand.'

Siileyman smiled in what he hoped was not a hugely embarrassed
fashion.
'The boy promised. But he was faithless!' Seckin Taner said with
regret in his voice. 'The sultan of the city as it was then was dying. On
the advice of his vizier he had offered the hand of his daughter as well
as half the kingdom to anyone who could tell him where the Sharmeran
lived.' He leaned towards Siileyman suddenly, and whispered, 'The meat
of the Sharmeran can give eternal life! The sultan wanted to catch her
and eat her!'
'Which of course, with the boy's help, he did,' Edibe said. 'Or rather
he ate some of her flesh. The sultan's men only managed to cut a small
amount of flesh from her because she fought them off. The Sharmeran
was wounded, but she recovered. She escaped and lives still, unlike the
sultan.'
Siileyman frowned. 'Yes, but you
'Young man.' Seckin Taner smiled and patted the policeman's knee
once again. 'Do you not think that if the Sharmeran can bestow life,
she can also take it away? The Sharmeran may offer a man her flesh to
give him life. But if he takes it for himself, he will be doomed. The
sultan died as did the faithless boy, as do all who abuse our Sharmeran.
She, however, lives still both in the mountains and in our hearts.'

'My father makes representations of the Sharmeran,' Edibe Taner
said, smiling at her father. 'She allows certain people to do this. My
father is a Master of Sharmeran because my grandfather also had that
honour and his father before him. Father knows and loves his Sharmeran
with all his heart.'
There were some parts of this story that could be interpreted as pure
examples of faith, of love in the heart of something divine and yet unseen.
But Siileyman had the distinct impression that nice smart Inspector Taner
and her father were talking about a being that actually existed in the
flesh. That, clearly, had to be a misunderstanding on his part.I
Seckin Taner leaned towards Siileyman once again and said, 'I also,
alone but for one other, know where my mistress lives. That is why II
am the Master of Sharmeran. That is why people respect a mere coppersmith
whose father could not either read or write.'

So there was no misunderstanding after all. Siileyman felt quite cold.
Edibe Taner, seeing the slightly chilled pallor on his features, fetched
him a fresh, hot cup of mirra to help revive his colour.
'Only Gabriel Saatci knows the secret too, but he is the Sharmeran's
own true child,' Seckin Taner continued. 'The Sharmeran's children are
bound to protect her from faithless humanity. Thirty-five years ago, by
accident he says, Gabriel walked into the Sharmeran's cave and was
bitten on every part of his body. But he didn't die because the Sharmeran
and the Prophet Isa together ordained that Gabriel should be a beacon
for mankind. A living saint.'
'Ah, Gabriel, whose father--'
'Papa, I took Inspector Siileyman to meet Uncle Musa. I thought,
because he is an outsider, he might encourage Musa to talk. But nothing
happened.'
'Nothing would,' Seckin Taner said. 'Musa has no control over Gabriel.
The boy will return when God and the Sharmeran will it and not before.'
Siileyman frowned. It was a mild expression of what he was feeling
within. This conversation was, he thought, rather like several he had
had over the years with various wilder members of Cetin Ikmen's family.
In the realm of the unseen he was, he knew, out of his depth. The only
way forward was to attach as much of this fantasy as possible to something
that might be provable and observable.
'Was Gabriel Saatci treated by a doctor?'
'Of course,' Seckin Taner said. 'The doctor said that he should have
died.'
'So if Gabriel is missing, could it not be that he is with the ... in the
cave where you believe the Sharmeran--'
'You think I haven't looked?' the coppersmith interrupted. 'I am the
only other human who knows the location of that cave, and I can tell
you that unless my mistress is hiding Gabriel for some reason, he is not
there.'
'So where do you think he might be?'
'I don't know.'
Siileyman turned to the coppersmith's daughter. If any progress was
to be made these people needed some reality imposed upon them. 'Musa

Saatci is of the opinion that everything will be all right when his son
returns.'

'Yes,' she said. 'When Gabriel comes back there will be a resolution.'

'But what if Gabriel doesn't return?' Siileyman said. 'What if Musa
or Gabriel or both of them are terrorists? What--'

'Gabriel cannot be a terrorist. He is a living saint,' Seckin Taner said.
He was beginning, Siileyman could tell, to grow agitated with the man
from Istanbul's seeming lack of understanding about his world. 'That
just isn't possible!'

'But what if it were possible?'

'It isn't!'

There was a pause. While Seckin Taner inwardly railed, Siileyman
looked into the face of his daughter Edibe and thought that he saw just
a very little seed of confusion on her features. Not that she said anything
apart from simply reiterating, softly, her father's beliefs and position.

'Edibe, you should take your friend away now,' Seckin Taner said,
getting up and turning back to face his forge once again.

Edibe Taner, obviously embarrassed now, first shrugged at Siileyman
and then said to her father, 'Papa, Inspector Siileyman has not come
here to help us find Gabriel. He is here to find Yusuf Kay a. I took him
to meet Uncle Musa only because I am fearful for him. To be accused
of terrorist offences is such a serious thing. I thought that talking to an
outsider might help him.'

Seckin Taner turned to face his daughter with fury on his features.
'You of all people should know that when Gabriel returns is beyond our
control! No outsider or anyone else can change that!' He turned back
to his forge and murmured again, 'You should know that.'

'Yes, Papa.' She lowered her eyes just for a second and then, moving
out of the shop, she flicked her head towards Siileyman, indicating that
he should follow her. 'We must go now. We must work.'

As he left, Siileyman saw Seckin Taner's shoulders shrug. He saw
hurt on Edibe Taner's face as well as that slight suggestion of confusion
he had seen earlier. Maybe, he thought, staying in the mythical past
was easy for a Master of Sharmeran, maybe that was what being a
Master of Sharmeran really meant. But being the daughter of one as

1

well as a serving police officer was, he could see, far more complex.
What he could only now appreciate too was why Edibe Taner had resisted
his questions about the 'Master of Sharmeran' appellation for so long.
He imagined she felt that men from Istanbul could not be expected to
understand such things. In the case of this particular man, she was right.

Chapter 11

The nurse had of course been quite right to call the patient's doctor to his
bedside. Ramazan Eren, the prison guard, the only survivor from Yusuf
Kaya's bloody break from the hospital, looked as if he might be starting
to regain consciousness. Dr Eldem, his physician, came immediately. The
nurse stayed for a moment while the doctor looked at the various monitors
that surrounded the supine body of the guard. He was as she had
found him, gently murmuring, his eyelids fluttering open to reveal bruised,
jaundiced eyes and then closing again just before she left. Dr Eldem was,
after all, quite capable of dealing with whatever might happen next and,
if he needed help, he could always ring to summon other doctors and
nurses on the unit. In the meantime, as Dr Eldem himself had told her,
there was another coma patient who needed turning. She didn't need
telling twice. She'd seen enough pressure sores on coma patients in her
time to make her terrified at the thought of such abominations on her Iward. The doctor also told her not to tell the police guard at the entrance
"to the ward about what might be going on. Ramazan Eren may or may
not be waking up. There was no need to tell the world about it yet.
Once she had left the room, Dr Eldem eyed the patient Ramazan Eren
1and his seeming struggles to regain consciousness with some distaste. After
a few seconds had passed, and totally at odds with received hospital guid1ance,
Dr Eldem took his mobile phone out of his pocket and switched it
on. He searched through the phone's directory until he came to the number
that he wanted and then selected it. Just under a minute passed before the
automatic answerphone clicked in. Dr Eldem snorted impatiently.
'Where are you? It's Eldem,' he said flatly. 'He's awake. What the
hell do you want me to do about him?'

The afternoon had been spent preparing for the activities of the night
to come. Edibe Taner had had to obtain permission from her superiors
to search the as yet unknown Kaya house down on the plains. If
the woman, Kaya's second wife, was indeed an American citizen, she
wanted to avoid any sort of diplomatic gaffe. Once permission had
been given she was obliged to construct a team to carry out the operation.
This she created entirely from officers not native to the area,
including Mehmet Siileyman. Together in her car on their way to
Dara, Siileyman finally plucked up enough courage to tackle his
colleague on the subject of her father.
'Inspector, I did not mean to cause offence to your father,' he said,
looking at her strong profile silhouetted against the fading sun as it
dipped behind the mountains. As usual she was driving, fast.
Edibe Taner smiled. 'It's all right,' she replied. 'I understand. You
probably find us here in Mardin very strange. I don't imagine that personal
relationships with snake goddesses are common occurrences in Istanbul.'
'No.'
'What you have to understand is that Mardin is one of those places
where the differences between states of existence are small.'
Mehmet Siileyman didn't comment. This could, he felt, very quickly
turn into one of those conversations that he sometimes had with pounds tin
Ikmen: worrying conversations about the nature of reality, if indeed such
a thing even existed.
'My father has a relationship with the Sharmeran. One day I too will
do so. I must be introduced to her soon, as my father is old now. When
he dies I will take his place,' Inspector Taner said. 'That said, Inspector,
with my "modern" head on I can think that utterly impossible. Maybe
my father experiences some sort of delusion or hallucination when he
goes into that cave, I can think. Maybe what he calls his relationship
with the Sharmeran is in fact just a series of internal musings in his
head. But to him and to the many other people round here who claim
to have seen or heard the Sharmeran moving across the Ocean in the
night, it is very real and it does bring comfort, joy and reassurance of
the continuance of our lives here. I'll be honest, I believe in the Sharmeran
with my whole soul. I am a police officer working for my country, which

1
I love. But I am also convinced that when I am a Master of Sharmeran,
my mistress will come to me. The Sharmeran is our deity; that we alone
can see her is only right. As for Gabriel Saatci. . .' She shrugged. 'I am
sorry that I got you into all that. It was desperation on my part. I know
that those weapons in Musa Saatci's house are nothing to do with him.
But his insistence upon not saying a word until Gabriel comes back is
driving me insane!'
'Why do you think that Gabriel has gone missing?'
'I don't know. I wish I did. Gabriel is a ... well, he is a friend, and . . .
None of the monks at St Sobo's have a clue. He just left.' Very briefly
she took her eyes off the road ahead and looked at him. 'But know this,
Gabriel Saatci is no fake. I saw him, all those years ago, his body covered
in bites, his mind half mad from snake venom. His survival was a
miracle.'
She looked back at the road again then and briefly flashed the truck
behind which contained the five other officers who had been assigned
to the operation.
'This is where we turn off,' she said.
'Right.'Although Siileyman was thinking about the upcoming mission
and feeling nervous about what they might find beyond Dara - after all,
in this part of the country seemingly straightforward scenarios had in
the past turned out to be terrorist traps - he was also still concerned
with issues supernatural. 'So, Inspector, would you say that Mardin and
its legends are by way of being a sort of halfway house between what
I understand as reality - the present, the concrete - and some sort of
other consciousness, echoing back to the past, maybe?'
'My city, Inspector Siileyman, is certainly a place that at the moment
owes much to the past,' Taner said. 'Albeit a rather fragile past at times.'
Siileyman, recalling what the old woman in the Zeytounian house
had said to him, murmured the phrase she had used. 'The Cobweb
World.'
'The Cobweb World? Where did you hear that?' Taner said.
'That old woman who served us dinner back in Gaziantep used it to
describe the just barely living world of the past in which she exists,'
Siileyman said. 'I think she either knew or deduced that I am descended

from an Ottoman family - one doesn't get a lot more redundant than
that - and applied it to me. She said that Mardin was part of the Cobweb
World too and that if I went there I would understand it.' He smiled.
'If only that were true!'
There was a silence that went on just a little bit too long to be natural.
Suleyman turned to Taner, whose eyes were fixed firmly and now grimly
upon the road ahead.
'Forget the woman in Gaziantep,' she said. 'People say she is mad.
Maddened by such thoughts.'
'She related her world of the past directly to me,' Suleyman said.
'But your Ottoman past is just that,' Taner replied. 'You cannot disappear
back into it. You can only feel its sorrow. You are not like us,
Inspector. You do not live half in and half out of different worlds. Your
lack of understanding is quite normal.'
'That is not what the old woman said,' Suleyman countered.
But Taner didn't answer him.

Ay§e Farsakoglu was accustomed to the fact that her boss, Cetin ikmen,
often worked long into the night. Mehmet Suleyman was less inclined
to operate in this fashion and so izzet Melik found that he was rather
more reluctant than his other two colleagues when he finally joined them
at just before eight p.m. Not that ikmen was making any of them work
within the grim surroundings of the police station. Because the evening,
though cool, was very pleasant, he had chosen to meet in one of the tea
gardens on Sultanahmet Square. Opposite the incongruously Gothic
fountain that had been donated to the city by Kaiser Wilhelm II just
before the First World War, the tea garden in question was famed for
the fact that it offered its customers water pipes. By the time izzet joined
them, both ikmen and Ay§e were very happily smoking on the mouthpieces
of cloth-covered tubes connected to large, ornate water containers.
'My late father used to smoke the straight tobacco, tombeki, whenever
he had a narghile,' ikmen said as he let a large lungful of smoke
out on a sigh. 'He would consider my only being able to stand the apple flavoured tobacco indicative of a lack of a sense of adventure. Poor
Father.' He looked up and saw izzet Melik standing in front of him.

'Ah, Izzet!' He patted the carpet-covered cushions on the bench beside
him and said, 'Sit down and tell us what you have been doing. Would
you like a narghile?'
izzet Melik said that he would, with molasses-flavoured tobacco, and
then he sat down. Ay§e Farsakoglu, with whom izzet had been enamoured
for a number of years now, gave the slightly rough-round-the-edges
officer a small, tight smile. She was fond of izzet but, in spite of her
single status, she was not fond of him in that way. ikmen called for
another narghile as well as three glasses of tea and then began to quiz
Suleyman's sergeant who, earlier in the day, he had given a very important
job.
'How did it go at the mortuary?' he asked once the waiter had left
to fulfil their order.
'I took the consultant orthopaedic surgeon from the Cerrahpa§a with
me and he identified the body as that of Faruk Oz,' izzet Melik said.
'According to the consultant, Oz was a very good worker.'
ikmen sighed. 'So now we know for certain that at least one of the
nurses who went missing directly after Yusuf Kaya's escape is dead.'
'Dr Sarkissian confirmed that cause of death was loss of blood due
to severance of the carotid artery. Stabbed in the neck with what the
doctor reckons was a straight-bladed knife,' izzet said.
Ay§e Farsakoglu puffed on her narghile and then said, 'Time of death?'
izzet shrugged. 'Doctor can't be certain. The body's been in plastic
and under the ground for some time. Some days, he reckons.'
'Which could mean,' Ikmen said, 'that he was killed at or around the
time of Yusuf Kaya's escape.'
'If we take it as read that Kay a or his agents are killing those who
have assisted him in order to confound our investigation,' Ay§e said.
'Indeed.' ikmen frowned. 'Well, whatever may be the truth we will
have to get Murat Lole in and ask him some questions.'
'Of course, the person we really need to speak to is isak Mardin,' Ay§e said. 'But...'
'Mardin is still missing,' ikmen said. 'But, of course, that Oz's body
should turn up in Mardin's garden in Zeyrek cannot be, I think, coincidental.
Zeyrek is a long way from Oz's home in Gaziosmanpa§a.


Not that they were friends or even knew each other, according to Murat
Lole.'
'Lole denies that he was friendly with Mardin too, doesn't he?' izzet
asked as the waiter turned up with his narghile and tea for all three of them.
'He does,' ikmen said as he took the narghile from the young waiter
and indicated that he would set it up for izzet himself. He wanted to
get on with their discussion without further interruption. 'But Mardin,
we think, is originally from the east and may very well have some sort
of connection to Yusuf Kaya. He gave a hospital in §anliurfa as reference
for his job at the Cerrahpa§a. But that was a lie that the then director
of the hospital, the one who killed himself, apparently colluded in. With
the help of the current administration I have discovered that there is no
record of isak Mardin working at any hospital in §anhurfa.'
'So Mardin could have been a plant?' Ay§e said. 'Someone sent in
to be part of Kaya's escape plan?'
'Yes.' ikmen puffed on his narghile and then said, 'Lole and Oz were
at the Cerrahpa§a some time before Kaya was sent to prison. So the
likelihood of their being plants is slim. Kaya wasn't even in prison when
they started nursing there. But Mardin, who has not been at the hospital
for long, could have recruited them when he took up his post. Nurses
don't earn much; the offer of big money could have swayed any dedication
to their profession. Maybe Mardin and Oz took Kaya back to Zeyrek
after the incident at the hospital and then one or other of them killed
Oz in order to silence him.'
'What about Lole?' Ay§e asked.
ikmen shrugged. 'I don't know. Maybe he's part of it, maybe he isn't.
There were only, we think, two nurses involved in the actual escape,
remember.'
'Yes, but could he be in danger if Mardin is still out there?'
'If Mardin is out there,' ikmen said. 'Maybe he's lying dead somewhere
too.' And then, turning to izzet, he asked, 'What about forensics
on Oz's body?'
'They're working on it, sir,' izzet replied. 'But nothing obvious yet.
However, I did find out what that tattoo he had on his arm was.'
'Oh?'

'It's the flower of the wormwood plant,' izzet said.
Ikmen frowned.
'It's the stuff that gives absinthe its potentially lethal effect.'
'I know what wormwood is, izzet,' ikmen said. 'I'm just trying to
imagine what, if anything, it might mean. I went to see my gypsy earlier
today and asked her about tattoos. The gypsies are rather fond of them,
as you know. But a wormwood flower?' He frowned again. 'I've never
heard of anyone in the city, not even the gypsies, being involved in the
production of absinthe. La Fee Verte has never, to my knowledge, been
one of their particular passions.'
'La Fee Verte?'
'It means "the Green Fairy",' ikmen said. 'It's what absinthe was
called during its heyday in nineteenth-century Paris. The Green Fairy
was a beautiful and addictive mistress and is implicated in the deaths
of numerous French artists.'
'My grandmother used to put wormwood leaves in with the winter
blankets when she put them away for the summer,'Ay§e said. 'Wormwood
has a strong smell which helps to keep the moths away. There was some
sort of stomach remedy which used to contain wormwood too, but I
don't know what that was called. I know they used to grow wormwood
near her village.'
'Where was that?' Ikmen asked.
Ay§e shrugged. 'I don't really know,' she said. 'Out east. There was
some sort of trouble - when isn't there out there? Anyway, my grandparents
moved first to Afyon where my father was born and then here
in about 1930. But I can still remember my grandmother using wormwood
in her remedies and laying the leaves amongst the blankets. The
horrible smell tends to stay with you.'
'Mm.' ikmen puffed thoughtfully. 'Murat Lole.'
The other two looked at him for several moments before, at last, izzet
Melik spoke.
'Sir,' he said as he put the mouthpiece of his narghile down and then
drained his tea, 'shouldn't we pick him up? For his own safety if for
no other reason?'
Cetin ikmen smoked without comment.

'Sir,' Ay§e said, 'I think that Sergeant Melik has a point. Whether
Lole is innocent or guilty we do need to get to him, and soon.'
After yet another pause, Ikmen nodded sagely. 'I agree,' he said.
'With one little difference.'
Ay§e and izzet looked at him questioningly.
'If,' ikmen said, 'Murat Lole is in league in some way with Yusuf
Kay a, maybe if we make him think he is in no danger from us he might
lead us to some very valuable information. I say we have him watched,
followed day and night. That way we can learn something about what
he is doing as well as providing some level of protection too. What do
you think about that?'

Neither Edibe Taner nor Mehmet Siileyman nor indeed any of the officers
with them knew exactly what was behind the front door of the
house outside Dara. They were all well aware that they could very easily
be walking into a trap. The PKK had been quiet for some time in and
around Mardin, but Suleyman's informant about this house had been a
Kurd. Then there was Hezbollah ... How difficult would it be for one
of their people to mislead a police investigation team into a trap?
Taner knocked with her fist on the ancient wooden door, which was
covered in carved Armenian script. Civilisations had always met in this
place of confluence. They also fought, died and sometimes, like the
ancient Persians, disappeared completely.
'Police!' she called out, confident that she had carefully positioned
three of her officers at the back and sides of the property. 'Open up!'
But not a sound came from either outside or inside the building.
Instinctively, Siileyman looked down at the ground for any evidence of
wiring. Soon Taner's officers would have to force the door and the man
from Istanbul did not want any of them to fall foul of such a basic thing
as a booby-trapped entrance.
As if reading his mind, Taner said, 'Don't worry, we won't force it
unless we're sure it's OK.'
'Right.'
She took her gun out of her jacket pocket and smiled. 'But I guess
we'd better get ready in case someone comes out--'


'What do you want?'
The door snapped open simultaneously with the sound of a man's
voice. The man in question, a tall young individual carrying an AK-47
assault rifle, regarded the police team with what looked like fury.
'Police,' Taner reiterated as she moved her gun from her right hand
to her left and took out her ID card.
'What do you want?'
Taner, frowning at the man now, said, 'Aren't you--'
'Oh, stop playing silly games like a little boy pretending to be a
soldier!'
The voice was female, it was annoyed, it came from somewhere behind
the man at the door and it spoke in English. Taner stepped into the house
and the 'little boy' in front of her stood to one side, suddenly looking, in
spite of his weapon, really rather sheepish. Siileyman followed.
The woman in front of them was not exactly beautiful. But she was
tall, slim and angular and had the most startling cascade of thick red
hair hanging down her back. She was, Siileyman reckoned, probably
somewhere in her mid-thirties. When he, Taner and the two officers
behind them had all crossed the threshold, they'd seen that the woman
was surrounded by a group of heavily armed local men. Seemingly they
had been waiting for them. The woman, when she spoke again, did so
once more in English. She had an American accent. For a while Taner,
Siileyman and the others assumed it was the only language available
to her.
'We always have at least one man a kilometre in front of the house,'
she said in what Siileyman could now tell was probably an east coast,
New England type of accent. 'The house is not accessible by road from
any other direction. We knew you were coming. What do you want?'
Edibe Taner cleared her throat. She knew, by sight at least, all of the
men who surrounded the woman. They'd passed her on the streets of
Mardin before. There was one man in particular with whom she knew
she had shared polite greeting in the past. But not now. Now all of them
stared down the officers with snarls on their faces. 'I have papers to
search this house,' she said in English, holding up her authority to search
for all to see.

'Search this house?' the woman said as she just very slightly smiled.
'Whatever for?'
'We think this house is property of a prisoner who escaped,' Taner
said.
'Oh, you mean my husband? Yusuf?' The woman laughed. Then,
turning very pointedly towards Siileyman, she said, 'I assume you are
in charge--'
'No,' he interrupted. 'Inspector Taner is lead officer here. My name
is Inspector Siileyman. I come from Istanbul.'
The woman raised her eyebrows. 'Of course. It was you who arrested
my husband.'
'I put Yusuf Kaya in prison for what should have been his whole
life,' Siileyman said. 'I saw first hand, madam, what your husband was
capable of.' Her face quickly clouded.
'What is your name?' Inspector Taner asked.
The woman looked her straight in the eye and said, 'Hiirrem.'
The men around her, though armed, shifted nervously. Siileyman hoped
that none of them lost their nerve and accidentally let off the odd automatic
magazine. No one in the house would survive.
'Your American name,' Taner persisted.
'My'
'You are a foreign person,' Taner said. 'I must see your passport.'
'I don't know that I have it to hand. I--'
'Just tell us your name for the moment,' Siileyman cut in. He was
getting tired of this woman's game-playing and wanted to get on with
the search. While all this was going on, Kaya could be trying to slip
out of the building. 'What is it?'
The woman sighed. 'My passport is in the name of Elizabeth Smith,
the name I was given at birth.'
'Thank you.' Siileyman said. 'So, Miss Smith, I assume that all of
these guns you have here are registered?'
'But of course.' She smiled.
'Excellent.' Siileyman bowed his head slightly and then turned to
Taner and said in Turkish, 'Let's go through this place.'

The armed men in front of them moved forward as if to try to mount

a challenge, but Elizabeth Smith told them, in Turkish, to put their
weapons down. Continuing now in Turkish, she told the officers, 'We
don't, after all, want to have any sort of accident, do we? Yusuf my
husband isn't here. Search anywhere and everywhere you like.'
'You can speak Turkish,' Edibe Taner said.
'Well, of course I can,' Elizabeth Smith responded acidly. 'Your
country is my country now. I have adopted it. I said before, do your
search. Get on with it.'
And so they did. For the secret love nest of a wealthy gangster, Yusuf
Kaya's house was very sparse. It was traditional too. There were no
beds here, just rolled-up mattresses. No apparent concessions to someone
who at least sounded like an educated American lady. Outside, empty
outhouses gave forth nothing, as did the large cellar beneath the building.
'When did you last see Yusuf Kaya?' Taner asked the American as
their search was coming to a close just over two hours after it had begun.

'I saw my husband at his trial in Istanbul,' Elizabeth Smith replied.
She then added sneeringly, 'Only the once. I went with your cousin,
Zeynep. Yusuf's other wife.'
But Edibe Taner betrayed no obvious emotion. She had deduced some
time before that her cousin and Kaya's mother and probably all of his
family had to know about this Elizabeth Smith. On some level at least
they obviously told her things about themselves, like who they were
related to. One of the men guarding the American rolled up one of his
sleeves, revealing the wormwood flower tattoo on his arm. The scorpion
within Edibe Taner wanted to hiss with disdain. But she was not
in this house to pursue old clan rivalries. Besides, in her position both
as a police officer and as the daughter of a Master of Sharmeran she
had to be above all that. After all, her own family, if reluctantly, had
allowed her cousin Zeynep's marriage to a hated wormwood.
'Your husband was handed down a life sentence by the court in
Istanbul,' Siileyman said to the woman as he looked around the hall in
case there was any piece of evidence present that he might have missed.
'I personally requested that he serve a minimum of thirty years. Why
do you stay? Your husband is never going to be able to live with you.'
Elizabeth Smith smiled again. 'But Yusuf is out of prison now.'

'Oh, yes,' Siileyman said. 'And I do hope, Miss Smith--'
'Mrs Kay a, please.'
'Mrs Kaya,' he said with some irony in his voice, 'that you did not
assist his escape. Because if you did ...'
'I would spend a very long time in a Turkish jail. Inspector Siileyman,'
she said, 'I stay because I have made this place my home. I have nowhere
to go back in the States. My husband has left me well provided for here.
I have money, a home, I am guarded, I have friends ... Also I can visit
Yusuf. My home town, Boston, is a very long way from Kartal Prison,
Istanbul.'
'Mrs Kaya,' Edibe Taner joined in, 'this house is very empty. With
your guards you are six people. But there is very little here. Are you
"going somewhere?'
'No.' Elizabeth Smith shrugged. 'I live simply. What can I say?
Besides, it's Lent. Christians don't adorn their homes until after Easter.
It's not the custom, is it?'
'You are a Christian, Mrs Kaya?'
'No, but a few of the men are. And I was raised a Christian. Now I
attend the Suriani services when I can. Because that's what we do in
the Tur Abdin, isn't it? We all join in with and respect each other's
beliefs. Or we should. My husband is of course a Muslim and has Muslim
children by Zeynep. But he respects other religions and beliefs.'
'My recollection of your husband, Mrs Kaya,' Siileyman said, 'is of
a man not overly given to religion. And as for this area being free from
factional strife ... Why do you think that the army is here, Miss Smith?
Why do you think the Turkish Republic guards places of worship out
here?'
The room went silent as the rough men who guarded this woman
looked at the guns at their feet with relish. They then looked at Siileyman
with equal homicidal fervour. But under the gaze of the small troop of
police officers, none of them moved.
'Mrs Kaya,' Edibe Taner said after a moment, 'please do not leave
the environs of Dara.'
'Ah, but the Easter service in Mar--'
'You may attend church in Mardin on Easter Sunday,' Taner said.

'In fact I will be there to make sure that you can go. But otherwise stay
where you are, where we can easily see you. Oh, and I will need your
mobile phone number too. I assume you have one of those.'
Elizabeth Smith said nothing then until Taner and Siileyman were
nearly at her front door. Suddenly and angrily she burst out, 'I've done
nothing wrong!'
'Haven't you?' Siileyman turned to look her straight in the eye.
'Madam, how much do you know about this country?'
The American woman frowned. 'Why?'
'Did you meet your husband shortly before you married or were you
together for some time prior to that?'
'I lived in Turkey five years before I met Yusuf,' Elizabeth Smith
replied. 'I was teaching English in Istanbul. I met Yusuf in Istanbul. I
was with him for a while, you know.'
Siileyman resisted the temptation to ask her how she, an apparently
decent American teacher, met a local drug dealer. There had been no
drugs found in the house and so, on the face of it, this woman probably
wasn't a junkie. There was something else, however. 'Do you
understand where Turkish law stands on the subject of polygamy?'
'I know it is illegal, but--'
'Absolutely,' Siileyman said. 'It is illegal and yet you--'
'Oh, for heaven's sake!' she said, slipping into English. 'People out
here don't worry about that. They--'
'Well then people out here should worry!' Siileyman replied, also in
English. 'Polygamy is against Turkish law. You, madam, will not leave
this area until this matter, if not the return of your "husband", is resolved.'
He then turned back to follow Edibe Taner and the other officers out
of the door. Once out in the cold night air, he breathed deeply in order
to settle his nerves. The officers who had been patrolling the outside of
the house came over to join them.
'Nothing here tonight,' Taner said with a look of disappointment on
her face. She then turned to Selahattin, who had been searching through
the outhouses, and said, 'We'll keep the house under surveillance.'
'Yes, Inspector.'
She told the men to get in the truck and head back towards the city.

Just before she got in her car to follow on behind, Siileyman took hold
of her arm, sniffed hard and then said, 'What's that smell? Sort of sharp
and musty?'
Edibe Taner shook her head and assumed a lugubrious air. 'That's
the smell of you being right,' she said.

Mehmet Siileyman frowned.
'You conjectured that Kaya's American woman was actually
surrounded by wormwood.'
'She was, as you had predicted, surrounded by men of the wormwood
clan.'
Edibe Taner smiled. 'She's also surrounded by actual wormwood too.
It seems that the family grows it just behind the house. And the Kayas
are traditionally growers of herbs. That smell you're getting is the reek
of the plant itself. Horrible, isn't it?'

Chapter 12

Cetin Ikmen didn't get round to making a call to Mehmet Siileyman
until nearly midnight.
'I had to check first of all that Murat Lole was still alive before I
assigned someone to watch him,' the older man said. 'Couldn't, after
all, give over precious human resources to a dead man. Think of the
waste!'
Siileyman, although now very sleepy, nevertheless smiled. Everything
in the city was budget-related these days. It was almost as if the police
department had been hijacked by a party of particularly sour and puritanical
accountants.
'But anyway, Lole is under surveillance,' ikmen continued. 'All we
have to do now is find nurse number three, isak Mardin.'
'You say that the dead nurse, er ...'
'Faruk Oz.'
'Faruk Oz had this wormwood tattoo on his bicep?'
'Yes. Which, if what you told me earlier, Mehmet, is so, could denote
membership of Yusuf Kaya's clan.'
They'd talked about the 'wormwoods' as well as the 'scorpions' earlier
on in their conversation. The possible tattoo connection between Faruk
Oz and the city and people of Mardin, as well as actually to Yusuf Kaya,
had been a revelation. Oz, it had been thought, had originated in the
west; now this was open to doubt. That Oz had started working at the
Cerrahpa§a well before Kaya's arrest meant that he could in no way
have been a plant. But he had in all probability been a fortuitous resource
with regard to Yusuf Kaya's escape.
'Oz may or may not have been his real name,' Siileyman said. 'But I'll
speak to Inspector Taner. Maybe if you can e-mail us a photograph ...'

'I'll certainly get Ay§e to e-mail you a photograph,' ikmen replied.
Siileyman smiled. The older man, famously, didn't 'do' technology, and
although he could use e-mail now he was still way off sending attachments
and preferred that his sergeant did that. 'So you have discovered
a second wife then, Mehmet. A woman, you say, surrounded by men
with wormwood tattoos.'
Laying on his narrow but comfortable monastic bed, Mehmet Suleyman
wearily shook his head. 'Yes. Wormwood grows in the fields around the
house where she lives, too. Stinks. She's an American, the woman.
Educated, a teacher by profession, quite attractive. What can she possibly
get out of a relationship with a man who is not only in prison but already
married to someone else?'
'Exoticism? Adventure? That odd thing some women have for
murderers? But then, Kay a has money
'True, but there's more to life than that. Kaya's a cretin,' Suleyman
said. 'I'm sure this woman could do better.'
'Maybe she really does love him,' Ikmen said gloomily. 'Maybe she is
besotted by his bad boy image, or perhaps the strange myths that surround
Mardin keep her inside what to me sounds like a harem-style fantasy.'
Suleyman shook his head and sighed. 'I know my own wife is half
Irish, but she has always known this country. What is it with these
western women? What brings them here, makes them cover themselves
in some instances?'
'The irresistibility of the Turkish male,' ikmen said, and laughed.
'But seriously, maybe there is something here that they find chimes with
them, a meaning they have not found back in the west.'
'They're running away.'
'Or running to something,' ikmen sighed. 'You know, when I was a
boy, I often used to dream about working in a foreign country. I think
it is a common fantasy amongst women and men.'
'Possibly.' Suleyman paused to light a cigarette and then said, '£etin,
you know this snake goddess they have out here?'
'The Sharmeran. Yes, I know of it.'
'You know it's real to the point that people actually believe that they
see the thing?'


I
'Some members of my family, as you know, Mehmet, come originally
from Cappadocia,' ikmen replied. 'Land of strange volcanic shapes
and eerie cave houses. Seemingly quite rational Cappadocians claim to
see, from time to time, the famous local fairies.'
'Do they claim to be able to communicate directly with them?'
'Sometimes,' ikmen said. 'Your Inspector Taner - rather esoteric, is
she?'
'Underneath the toughness, yes,' Siileyman said. 'Not that far underneath,
as it happens. I respect her enormously, Cetin. She has a difficult
time as both a woman and a police officer in this city. I think she's only
really tolerated by the population because her father is a member of this
scorpion clan and is a Master of Sharmeran. It's some sort of companion
to the being, or ... That said, I'm not always comfortable with her judgement
when it comes to things of an unseen or spiritual nature.'
ikmen asked him what he meant and Siileyman told him about the
Christian family known as Saatci, about Musa the father and Gabriel
the miracle son.
'Mm, that all sounds very eastern indeed,' ikmen said when he had
heard his friend out. 'Have you spoken to any of the monks about this
Gabriel?'
'I did speak briefly to Dr Sarkissian's friend, Brother Seraphim,'
Siileyman said. 'All he told me was that Gabriel Saatci was perfectly
fine up until the arrest of his father. Apparently Gabriel went to see
Musa at Mardin police station just after the arrest was made and the
cops there, Taner included, let the two of them speak in private for a
few minutes. Immediately afterwards Gabriel walked out of the city and
seemingly disappeared.'
'My logical police sense would cause me to think that perhaps Gabriel
is implicated in this crime,' ikmen said. 'After all, there are many and
various terrorist groups operating in that area, aren't there? But if he is
a real Sudani... Living saints rarely wage war, do they?'
'Musa the father believes that once Gabriel returns from his sojourn
with God, the Sharmeran or whatever, he will make everything right.'
'On the basis that a man who can withstand the bite of a hundred
vipers is probably pretty special


'But my point, Cetin, in all this is that there is a possibility that
Musa Saatci is guilty, that he was hiding arms in his house for one or
other terrorist group,' Siileyman said. 'Inspector Taner however will not
have it, not in any way. Musa is innocent, and although I know that
Taner's mind is rather more open than that of most people around here,
she is still basically a person who is totally comfortable with magical
solutions.'
'Well, that's me too, Mehmet, as you ...' Ikmen's voice tailed off into
silence.
Frowning, Siileyman said, 'Cetin?'
When the older man spoke again it was in a low whisper.
'I think that Bekir has just come back in,' he said. 'I need to speak
to him.'
'Why?'
Ikmen lowered his voice still further. 'Certain behaviours of his I am
not happy with. Certain stories he has been telling that do not wholly
accord with reality. In other words a replay, in part at least, of the behaviour
that years ago resulted in his leaving his parents' home and taking
to the streets.'
'Cetin, I'm sorry. I--'
'Must go! I'll call you tomorrow!' ikmen hissed and then, suddenly,
he was gone.

It was well past midnight by the time Edibe Taner got back to her small
apartment in the city quarter known as New Mardin. Situated on the
flat plain below the old city, New Mardin is where the greatest civic
expansion has taken place in recent years in the form of new apartment
blocks, municipal buildings and modern hotels. Taner was just digging
into her handbag for her keys in front of her own, almost completely
darkened block when she became aware that she was not alone. Instead
of continuing to look for her keys she put her hand in her jacket pocket
and drew out her pistol. For several seconds she just stood, waiting to
see what happened. But then the feeling of threat passed. Nothing so
much as moved or even drew breath in or around the entrance to her
apartment block, and so after a few more seconds Taner put her pistol

away, took her keys out of her handbag and let herself in. Although
rattled by the activation of an instinct that, over the years, she had grown
Ito trust, Edibe Taner was convinced that whoever or whatever had been
Iwith her outside had meant her no harm. In fact, whatever it had been had,
she felt, probably been a friend. Before she headed for the lift up to her
fifth-floor apartment, she put her head outside the main door again and
called, very softly, 'Gabriel? Is that you, Gabriel?'
As it often did, Gabriel Saatci's gentle face had come suddenly and
unbidden into her mind. He could do that, her friend Gabriel, her saint
Gabriel. Or was it because after she had dropped Inspector Siileyman
off, she had remembered where she had seen and spoken to one particular
guard at the American woman's house before? The man was a
neighbour of Gabriel's father. A village man originally, and a nice
fkenough person by all accounts. Or not. 'Gabriel, my . . . my friend.'
mWas he close by, perhaps? Was he looking at her and smiling as she
wrestled with conflicting feelings of need for him and dread? Gabriel
¦had always been a prankster.
But even after almost half a minute there was no reply and so she
closed the door again and went and got into the lift. Why she thought
it had been Gabriel she didn't know. Maybe because she had grown up

hwith him she had developed a sort of a sense as to where he might be.
Or maybe it was to do with the deeper feelings she knew she possessed.
But if that were the case, why couldn't she find him? It was something
that her father might be able to enlighten her about at some time. If of
course Seckin Taner was still speaking to his daughter. The meeting
between her father and Inspector Siileyman had not gone well. But then
how the Ottoman from Istanbul could be expected to understand Mardin
beliefs and customs Edibe Taner didn't know. At times it was a struggle
for her. She hadn't seen the Sharmeran; she'd heard her a few times,
but. .. Then there was the 'Cobweb World' of which, apparently, Cousin
Rafik's mother had spoken to poor Suleyman. That kind of phenomenon
was best kept dark but then maybe Rafik's mother just had to blurt
it out sometimes. After all, she, if anyone, was part of the Cobweb
Jg:World. Just as the name of one of the suspect nurses in Istanbul was
part of the Cobweb World. Lole. She would have to tell Suleyman about

that name at some point and why the young man who owned it couldn't
possibly be from Mardin. The Loles had disappeared into the Cobweb
World for good. Difficult if not impossible sometimes to talk about that.
Taner opened the door to her apartment and put on the light in the
hall. She slipped her shoes off at the door and then walked into her
bedroom.

Captain Hilmi Erdur had not expected a visit from the American military,
especially not in the middle of the night. The body of the faceless
American corpse was still in the mortuary in Birecik and therefore under
his jurisdiction. But tissue samples and fingerprints had gone off to the
Americans and Erdur was, as far as he was concerned, simply waiting
for confirmation from that quarter as to the man's identity.
According to the information on the body's dog-tags, which had eventually
been found in one of the pockets of his trousers (odd in itself),
he was a Private Jose E. Ramone. His uniform, which was characterised
by a blue spade insignia, belonged to the 26th infantry regiment who
were, so Erdur now knew, currently stationed in Ramadi in central Iraq.
Once his identity was confirmed, Erdur could release the body to the US authorities and, when a Captain Chalabian of the US 26th arrived
at the Jandarma station to see him, he thought that the American had
come to arrange just that.'
'Private Jose Eduardo Ramone was killed two weeks ago in Baghdad,'
Captain Chalabian said without preamble and in perfect Turkish. 'What's
left of his body, which is in Baghdad, is waiting repatriation to the US.'
'So what--' Erder began.
'What you've got here, Captain, I don't know,' Chalabian interrupted.
He was tall and fair and seemed to give the lie to his obviously Armenian
surname. Armenians were not, Hilmi Erdur thought, like this. 'But that
Private Ramone's dog-tags should turn up on an unknown body is of
concern to me. There's a lot of insurgent activity in the Iraqi territories
to the south of your country.'
Captain Erdur wondered whether to mention the somewhat vexed
issue of active Kurdish PKK terror cells in that area, but the American
got in first.

'Whatever may or may not be said officially, the Kurds go in and
out of Iraq,' he said baldly. 'You've Hezbollah also to contend with
here, as do we.'
'This is not the first time we've found body parts in the Euphrates,'
Erdur said.
'Yes, I know. But, Captain, this is the first time you've found a US
serviceman. Or not. You should know that the US military have not been
able to identify the corpse.' He shrugged. 'We've run those DNA sequences
and we've looked hard at those fingerprints but whatever we do we can't
make any of them fit any of our personnel. He could be an Iraqi, civilian
or military, dressed in US uniform to disguise his identity.'
'He has no face,' Erdur said.
'Exactly. Someone doesn't want us to know who he is, do they? Look,
I can run his prints and DNA past our Iraqi military colleagues, but I
think we could have the body of an insurgent here.'
Erdur sighed. What he'd do with the body of an unknown Iraqi civilian
he didn't know.
'In the meantime I'd like to take a look at him, if I may,' Chalabian
said. 'If he was someone active around our base, I could maybe recognise
something that remains about him. I knew Ramone, of course, and
I know it isn't him. Ramone had his head shot to shit by a sniper.'
Erdur took his American colleague to the mortuary. On the way he
complimented him on his Turkish. It was very good. However, as soon
as the words were out of his mouth, Erdur knew he'd done the wrong
thing. This tall blond man, he had forgotten, had an Armenian surname.
'My father's people came originally from Diyarbakir,' Chalabian
responded tightly. 'My grandparents only knew Turkish. Oh, and Armenian
too, of course. But no one speaks that now. Turkish was useful. My dad
encouraged me to learn it. We forgot Armenian. You know?'
There was no tone of challenge in Chalabian's voice, just a little bit
of anger. Erdur thought that the American would probably want him to
ignore it, which he did.
'Here,' he said as he pulled one of the refrigeration drawers out of
the mortuary cabinet. He pulled the sheet covering the corpse aside to
allow the American to see what lay beneath.

As soon as Chalabian saw the body, he frowned. 'How long was he in the water before you picked him up?' he said.
'We are not yet sure,' Erdur replied. 'Only one of our local doctors
came to him when we found him. No one else was available. The pathologist
from Urfa is due tomorrow.'
'I don't know because I'm not an expert,' Chalabian said, 'but to me
he doesn't look as if he's been in the water all that long.'
They walked out into the chilly night air and Chalabian offered Erdur
a cigarette, which he took.
'Captain, you and I both know that your borders here in the east are
porous,' Chalabian began.
'We do our best,' Erdur replied with some heat in his voice.
Confounded Americans! What did they know about dealing with multiple
terrorist threats over decades? 9/11 had been dreadful but compared
to the terrorist experiences of people in Europe and the Middle East
over the past forty years, it had been a drop in the ocean. 'We have
Hezbollah to contend with,' he continued. 'There are al-Qaeda cells
operating, we know that. And then there is the PKK.'
He didn't elaborate upon that final group. It was well known that the
US government was somewhat lukewarm in its condemnation of that
particular organisation. Chalabian, as if a little embarrassed, lowered his
head slightly.
'Yes, well . ..' He cleared his throat. 'Captain, what exercises me is
the fact that Ramone's dog-tags have ended up inside Turkey. We've
either got insurgents slipping over the border from northern Iraq or
you've got people coming over to our side. Backwards and forwards,
there's movement anyhow.'
Erdur puffed hard on his cigarette and then looked up at the stars.
'There is the drug trade too,' he said after a pause. 'Opium grows very
well in these border valleys. We try to control this trade as best we can.
But during the time of Saddam Hussein things on the Iraqi side of the
border were often quite unrestrained. Now, of course .. .' He looked up
at Chalabian and saw what he thought was a face that could be open to
the truth. He gave it a shot. 'Little has changed in that respect. If anything,
in fact, the trade is more violent, the drugs more hotly contested.'

'I know,' Chalabian said with a sigh. He then, quite unexpectedly,
put a hand on his Turkish colleague's shoulder and said, 'We've made
a fucking mess of the whole thing, I know that. But, Captain, I knew
Private Ramone and I liked him. I need to find out who stole his dog
tags and why. If people are throwing bodies carrying US ID into rivers
then they have an agenda we don't yet understand. We need to understand
it, and soon.'
Captain Erdur nodded his head in agreement. 'When the doctor comes
from Urfa he will take more DNA samples. Then, maybe, we will find
out who this man is.'

Cetin Ikmen hadn't been able to close his eyes. He'd tried, because he
didn't want to feel tired at work the following day. But he'd failed. Even
before he'd been denied his own bed, the argument he'd had with Bekir,
or rather the memory of it, had put paid to sleep. Not only had his son
stuck to his grandiose lies about being a famous fighter of gypsies, he
had been vicious in his resentment of his father.
'How dare you check up on me!' he'd roared when Cetin ikmen had
told him about his conversation with the gypsy. 'I know you resent me
coming back, but--'
'Bekir, you were a nightmare when you lived at home before,' ikmen
had countered. 'You lied, you took drugs, you--'
'I'm a different person now and you don't like it!' Bekir had screamed.
Fatma, by this time crying in the kitchen, had begged her husband to stop.
'Look what you're doing to Mum!' Bekir had said when he heard
her cries and her tears.
'It's because of your mother that I need to be sure of you,' ikmen
had said. 'Because if you break your mother's heart again, Bekir, I will
break every bone in your body!'
Bekir had gone to what had once been Bulent's room then, slamming
the door in his young brother Kemal's face as he did so. This had put
Cetin ikmen in trouble with both his wife and his youngest son, who
accused his father of being a 'fascist'. Fatma just very icily told her
husband to sleep on the sofa. And so Cetin sat, wakefully, smoking
heavily until at just before six o'clock his mobile phone began to ring.

'ikmen,' he said gloomily into what he persisted in thinking of as its
tiny, tiny mouthpiece.
'Sir, it's Izzet,' he heard Siileyman's sergeant say. 'We've just received
a call from Dr Eldem at the Cerrahpa§a. The prison guard Ramazan
Eren died half an hour ago.'
ikmen sighed and then groaned. With Eren dead, any chance of questioning
a witness to Yusuf Kaya's escape had gone. 'How?'
'Multiple organ failure,' izzet Melik said. 'The doctor said it's not
uncommon in patients in coma.'
ikmen knew that was so. He'd seen a few people both die in and
recover from coma over the years. But Ramazan Eren wasn't just
anybody. He was possibly one of the last links in the chain that led back
to Yusuf Kaya's escape. He was certainly the last witness to the actual
event whose whereabouts were known. His death was therefore, for
Kaya, really rather convenient, ikmen took his jacket off the cushion
beside him and put it on.
'And because Eren was under medical care when he died there will
be no post-mortem,' ikmen said as a statement of fact.
'No, sir.'
'Unless of course we order one,' ikmen continued as he checked his
pockets for car keys and money.
'Sir?'
Suddenly energised, Ikmen rose to his feet. Far too many people were
dying around Yusuf Kaya for his liking. 'The police,' he said decisively.
'I'm going to go over to the Cerrahpa§a now and I'm going to find out
who was with or around Ramazan Eren before and during his death.
I'm also going to order a post-mortem which I will want a police pathologist
to perform.'
'But sir, I understood from Dr Eldem that Eren's body was going to
be released to his family.'
'Then it will have to be un-released,' ikmen replied. 'I want Dr
Sarkissian to take a look at Ramazan Eren before he meets his maker.'
'But sir, what will that--'
'Look like? I don't care,' ikmen said. 'If necessary I will say that I
suspect foul play because maybe I do.'

Even in a secular state like Turkey, Muslims are usually buried within
twenty-four hours of death unless something about the demise is reasoned
to be unnatural.
'A lot of deaths have occurred around Yusuf Kaya's route out of this
city. Let's see if we can at the very least find some sort of connection
here,' ikmen said. 'Meet me at the Cerrahpa§a in fifteen minutes, Izzet.'
'Yes, sir.'
ikmen cut the connection and then walked determinedly out into the
hall of his apartment. Kemal, who had just finished in the bathroom,
scuttled nervously past him and back to his bedroom. The musty smell
of his acne cream made ikmen wince.

Chapter 13

'Tomorrow is Easter Sunday,' Edibe Taner said to Siileyman as they walked
towards the high yellow wall that surrounded the Kaya family home in
Mardin. 'So all leave is cancelled and I for one will be in church.'
'Protecting the Christians?'
'In part, yes,' she replied. 'There will always be people who wish to
harm others on the basis of their beliefs. The innocent have to be
protected. But I will also be there to see whether Kaya's American
woman does indeed turn up.'
'Which church?'
'Mar Behnam Suriani church is where everyone goes,' she said. 'Musa
Saatci's relatives will be there.'
'Minus Gabriel.'
She shrugged. 'Who knows? It's Easter. Gabriel is a very observant
man. Maybe he will just turn up for the service. Who knows?'
The gate that led into the Kaya family compound was closed. Taner
rapped on it hard and then stood silently next to Siileyman while they
waited for someone inside to respond. Almost a minute passed before
soft footsteps were heard approaching from inside. When the door opened
they found themselves looking into the heavily kohl-rimmed eyes of
Yusuf Kaya's first wife, Zeynep.
'What do you want?' she said, addressing Edibe Taner. 'I've nothing
to say to you.'
'Not even about Yusuf's foreign woman down by Dara?' Taner said
as she pushed roughly past the woman and entered the courtyard. 'I
think that you do, Zeynep.'
Zeynep Kaya looked her cousin straight in the eye and said, 'Foreign
woman? I don't know what you're talking about!'

'Don't you?' Taner glanced around the seemingly deserted courtyard
and then pulled Zeynep Kay a into the open door to a stable. Siileyman,
looking round to see who may or may not be coming to Zeynep's assistance,
followed them. Beyond themselves, not a thing appeared to stir.
'Well, the second wife in Dara, an American woman, knows you!'
Taner said as she held Zeynep Kaya up to the wall in front of her. 'And,
Zeynep, let me tell you, some of your husband's thugs were guarding
her.'
'I don't know anything about any woman!' Zeynep persisted. 'It's all
lies!'
'It isn't, and you know it,' Siileyman put in. He wasn't happy to
witness what was in effect one woman bullying another, but Zeynep
Kaya needed to know that her continued lying was futile. She must
surely be aware that her husband had a second wife. There was far too
much evidence to support that contention.
'Your husband was imprisoned in Istanbul for killing the prostitute
he was living with,' Taner said. 'He has a daughter by Anastasia Akyuz.
I don't know how many other women he's slept with over the years
since he married you but I would imagine that it runs into double figures.
Yusuf is a shit! He always was!'
'He is my husband!' Zeynep Kaya made as if to spit into Edibe Taner's
face, but then, with sudden terror in her eyes, she stopped.
'Don't you dare!' the policewoman roared. 'Don't even think about
it!' Suddenly, and with a force that surprised even Siileyman, she slapped
Zeynep Kaya across the face. The woman's cheek reddened immediately.
'Like it or not, Zeynep, you remain a scorpion and as a scorpion
you will accept my authority!'
'Inspector Taner, I...'
She turned and gave Slileyman such a cold look it was almost like
gazing into the face of a snake. Then she turned back to her cousin.
'Zeynep Kaya, if you lie to me, I will make sure that the Sharmeran
never favours you with good fortune ever again!' The woman beneath
her hands looked terrified. 'You know that I can do this! You know that
my father can and will curse your rotten adopted family who, by the
way, are nowhere around to protect you now, are they?'

'Bilqis Hanim is out,' Zeynep said. 'The men have taken her to see
her sister in Nusaybin. She - the sister - is dying; she . . . Oh, Edibe,
please, please do not curse us! I love Allah but I truly love my Sharmeran too ...'
'Then tell me the truth, Zeynep! Tell me now!'
There was a pause. One of Taner's hands was at Zeynep Kaya's throat,
but it wasn't the physical consequences that were frightening the woman,
it was the spiritual ones. Being cut off from or cursed by the Sharmeran
was a very big deal indeed.
'She, the woman, she is much better with Yusuf in terms of business,'
Zeynep said.
'You mean she helps him run drugs and murder his rivals?'
'I don't know what she does!' Zeynep said. 'She fell in love with
my husband in Istanbul. I - I think it was partly because of this place.
She knew of the Tur Abdin. She was fascinated by it. She wanted to
hear about the Sharmeran. And . . . Look, Yusuf told me he never loved
her but she was good at business. It's what he said! She is American
and good at business. What do I know? I don't understand Yusuf's
business!'
'Oh, so you don't know how or why he gives you expensive jewellery,
buys up property and dresses like an Italian politician? What--'
'No! No, I don't know!' Zeynep said, almost in tears now. 'I don't
get involved in business! I have children, Yusuf's children!' And then
suddenly her face turned into something less frightened and much more
bitter. 'That foreigner can't give my husband children! My children,
Muslim children, will have everything when my Yusuf dies! That's all
I care about! That's all that anything in this world might mean to me!'
'So the fact that Yusuf has been fucking--'

'I don't care about that,' Zeynep said. 'I just--'

'Where is he, Zeynep?' Taner asked. 'Where is Yusuf now? Tell me
and no one need ever know that you were concealing information from
us. Don't tell me and I can't be responsible for what happens - here in
the city with the law, or beyond ...' she leaned forward and whispered

Hanim. Polite form of address for a woman.

into Zeynep's ear, 'out amongst the caves where the snakes gather and
bask, the children of--'
'I don't know! I don't know!' As Zeynep spoke she shook in every
part of her body. Suleyman had seen terror in his time but rarely had
he seen it engendered by reference to things that to him were clearly
only mythical. But then these people were not from his part of the world.
These people were, he was coming to understand, almost wholly alien.
'If I knew where Yusuf was I would tell you,' Zeynep Kaya sobbed.
'Do you, Edibe, think that I would risk the displeasure of my Sharmeran?
I have children! I would never ever put them in the way of danger, not
even for my husband!'
Slowly Edibe Taner released her grip upon Zeynep Kaya's throat and
Suleyman began to breathe more easily again. In spite of the fact that
the house was empty apart from Zeynep, he had been worried. What
would the Kayas have done if they had come back and found Edibe
Taner with her hands at Zeynep's throat?
'If they knew she'd spoken to us, they'd kill her,' Taner said when,
later, they walked back towards Republic Square.
'Then why did she answer the door?' Suleyman said. 'She must have
known, or had an idea at least, that it could be the police?'
Edibe Taner sighed. 'As a member of my clan, she cannot deny me,'
she said. 'She knows who and what I am and what I can threaten her
with. Around Kaya's family she does whatever they dictate. But alone
with another scorpion she must tell the truth. She opened that door
because she wanted me to know what was real.'
For Taner to be talking about anything 'real' seemed more than a
little odd. This daughter of the Master of Sharmeran had more than
a hint of the snake about her. Not that such things were in any way real
to Mehmet Suleyman.
'When are we going to start combing the surrounding countryside?' he asked as they reached Avenue One and began making their way back
towards the police station. 'In Istanbul, we--'
'In Istanbul you go tearing into all sorts of situations, I am sure,' she
responded breezily.
'Inspector Taner, if you are implying that we somehow have it easy

I







in Istanbul, then you are very much mistaken,' Suleyman said. Her tone
had irritated him. 'Our problems are just as intense as your own. But
when someone escapes from prison we do search for them. Here, beyond
terrorising the rest of the Kaya family and only very slightly upsetting,
as far as I could see, that American woman, we have investigated nothing.'
'Oh, so I went to Gaziantep for nothing?'
'No, I'
'Look.' She took one of his arms in hers and then looked up, smiling
now, into his face. 'I did not mean to cause offence, Inspector, but...
We work very largely with informants here. Many are gypsies who don't
of course belong to native clans. They are sometimes of use and sometimes
not. But this region is a land of fortified cities and villages with
allegiances even I do not always understand. On top of that we have to
contend with many different armed groups. We are close to the border
with Syria, not much further from the border with Iraq. Inspector, my
officers and I cannot go bursting into places without compunction. We
could die. You yourself were nervous when we were outside the house
in Dara. Organisations like Hezbollah have bombs, they stockpile the
things! And how do I really know that Yusuf Kaya is not associated
with such people? I don't.'
They had stopped in front of a little tobacconist's shop above and
behind which were three huge and magnificent arches. It was as if one
of Mardin's great mansions were hiding behind a humble and disproportionately
small shop, which was indeed the case. Suleyman looked up
at the structure and Taner looked at Suleyman. She sighed. It was now
or never.
"This is what is known as the Cerme family mansion,' Taner said. 'It
was built at the beginning of the twentieth century by one of Mardin's
most famous sons.'
But he changed the subject back. 'Inspector, I am sorry if I failed to
understand your problems--'
'The architect Serkis Lole,' she said. The look on Siileyman's face
changed. 'We should have had this conversation before, but--'

'Lole? But I told you about Murat Lole when we were back in
Gazi--'

'I know. Serkis Lole was an ethnic Armenian,' Taner said. 'He built
many beautiful palaces here in Mardin.'
'So Murat Lole--'
'Cannot be connected to Mardin,' Taner said. 'The Lole family,
they ... er, they emigrated in the First World War.'
Siileyman and Taner looked silently at each other. Both Turks, neither
of them even wanted to breathe about the alleged massacre of Armenians
by Ottoman forces in Turkey in 1915. That the Lole family had emigrated
from the city at around that time was difficult for the two officers.
The Turkish Republic doesn't recognise the Armenians' allegations. The
Armenian Republic, for its part, continues with this claim. And in the east
it was an issue that was more sensitive and current than in the large
western cities.
'No person with the name Lole has been in this city for nearly a
century,' Taner said. 'It is no longer a name associated with Mardin,
except as something from the past. That man can have no connection
to this place.'
'You could have told me all this before,' Siileyman said bitterly.
But she didn't answer him. She just looked long and hard into his
eyes and then she walked away.

Cetin ikmen was very sorry for Mrs Eren, who only wanted to take
her husband's body away from the hospital and have him buried. But
he wasn't prepared to let sentimentality cloud his judgement in this
case.
'I have to be certain this man died of natural causes,' he said to an
obviously furious Dr Eldem.
'If, ikmen, you are impugning my honour or my professionalism--'
'I am impugning neither,' Ikmen said. 'But, Dr Eldem, Mr Eren here,'
he pointed to the sheet-covered body on the bed behind him, 'was the
last known witness to the flight of Yusuf Kaya. He might very well have
been able to tell us some more facts about that incident.'

'But he won't be able to do that now, will he?' the doctor cut in
shortly. 'He's dead.'
ikmen looked back at the body once again and said, 'Clearly.'


Mrs Eren, a small headscarfed lady in her thirties, wept silently and
alone in a corner.
'This poor lady--'

'Is going to have to wait for her husband's body,' ikmen said. 'Doctor,
I have to be sure that Mr Eren died of natural causes.'
'As I told you, multiple organ failure--'
'Yes, quite common in those in coma. But it can also occur when
certain substances are introduced to the body with the intention of killing
the subject,' ikmen said in as low a voice as he could, given the presence
of the weeping widow. 'Now, Doctor, do you have a list of nurses,
doctors and other members of staff who attended Mr Eren, please?'
After glaring at ikmen for a second or two, Dr Eldem went off in
search, apparently, of information. Almost immediately izzet Melik
arrived.
'Sorry I'm late, sir,' he said in a low voice as he sidled up to ikmen.
'Got a call from Inspector Siileyman. He tried to call you but of course
your phone was off.'
'Mmm? And?' ikmen was not comfortable with the widow Eren still
in the room and hoped that Arto Sarkissian would arrive soon to take
charge of the body.
'Inspector Taner in Mardin had never heard of Faruk Oz, but if we
could send over that photograph she might be able to identify him as
someone else,' izzet said. 'However, she does know the name Lole.'
'As in Murat Lole,' ikmen said.
'Not exactly,' izzet said. 'Years ago a very famous architect called
Serkis Lole lived in Mardin. He was Armenian. Taner told the inspector
that there are now only two Armenian families in Mardin. Neither of
them is called Lole.'
'So our Lole could be a descendant of a famous architect.'
'Apparently Inspector Taner thinks not, sir,' izzet said, and lowered
his voice. 'The, er, the Loles left Mardin in the First World War.
Emigrated, so Inspector Taner told Inspector Siileyman.'

'I see.' Ikmen understood. 'So where does he come from, this Murat
Lole?'
'Originally? Don't know,' izzet replied. 'I don't think we asked him.'

'Then we must ask him,' ikmen said. 'If he is involved in some sort
of conspiracy he'll lie. Maybe if Inspector Taner says there are no Loles
left in Mardin that name is an alias anyway. Go and see him, izzet. Tell
him that his colleague Faruk Oz has died.'
'Don't you think he knows?'
'Maybe.' ikmen shrugged. 'Gauge his reaction.'
'Yes, sir.' The younger man began to walk away.
'Oh, and izzet. . .'
izzet Melik turned. 'Sir?'
'Can you e-mail Oz's photograph over to Mardin? And one of Murat
Lole?'
'Already done, sir.'
'Good.'
izzet turned to go again but once more ikmen stopped him. 'izzet!'
'Sir?' There was a tired if not downright obstreperous look on his
face now. izzet Melik was not a man easily pushed around even by his
superiors, ikmen went over to him and took him to one side.
'Also phone the Kartal Prison for me, if you will,' he said. 'Speak
to the governor. I want his personal assurance that the prisoner who was
instrumental in getting Yusuf Kaya into solitary, Ara Berkoz, is being
protected. If deaths around the escape of Yusuf Kaya are going to accelerate,
I don't want even Berkoz to become yet another statistic. Kaya's
reach is, as I am only now beginning to fully appreciate, long. If you
have any trouble with the governor, get him to contact me.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Oh and izzet,' ikmen concluded, 'not a word about this background
to the family Lole. Not to anyone. Not relevant anyway, not as yet. Keep
it in mind, though. I will.'
ikmen waved izzet Melik on his way and then went back to contemplating
the sheet-covered corpse on the bed and the woman weeping
in the corner. He wished fervently for the swift arrival of Arto
Sarkissian.

Inspector Taner tapped the image of the man on the computer screen
and said, 'His name is Hasan Karabulut.'

'This is the dead nurse? Faruk Oz?' Siileyman said as he peered across
at the screen, frowning.
'It is what your colleagues from Istanbul have sent us,' she said.
'Hasan Karabulut is a distant cousin of Yusuf Kaya. He has a clan Dakk
to prove it, although Hasan in my experience was a decent lad, not at
all in favour of drugs or violence or anything else that Yusuf Kaya does.'
'Hasan Karabulut trained as a nurse in Van,' Constable Selahattin
said, referring to a cardboard-covered file as he spoke.
'Hasan Karabulut was an orphan,' Taner continued. 'But he was taken
in by his mother's sister, a spinster lady. She looked after him and kept
him away as much as she could from his father's family, the Karabuluts,
who are related to the Kayas.'
'Yes, but if he had a Dakk . ..'
'Hasan was tattooed as a child. A lot of people are,' Taner said. She
sighed. 'I knew that he had left the city to seek his fortune somewhere
else. But I had no idea that he had taken on an assumed name.'
Stileyman hoped that she was telling him the truth. Their altercation
outside the Cerme mansion had left him unsure. Between her impenetrable
beliefs and her civic loyalty and her apparent inability to discuss
such difficult issues as Murat Lole and his possible antecedents, Taner
was making him nervous.
'Do you think he took on another name in order to be able to assist
Yusuf Kaya?' he asked.
'I don't think so.' She shook her head. 'Apart from the fact that the
timing doesn't work - Hasan/Faruk was working at the hospital in
Istanbul before Kaya even went to prison - he would never have done
that.'
'Why?'
'Because Hasan's beloved aunt, the one who took him in and cared
for him when his parents died, hated Kaya. She hated what he did and
the power that his family exerted on almost everyone around them.'
'So maybe if we speak to her .. .'
'She lives in a hospital out beyond Midyat,' Taner said sadly. 'She
doesn't even know what her own name is these days. Hasan must have
gone to Istanbul to make a new life. There was nothing but heartache

or a life of crime for him here. Maybe, somehow, Yusuf Kay a or those
around him got to know where he was.'
'What about the other picture?' Siileyman said. 'The so-called Murat
Lole?'
Edibe Taner sat down on her ancient office chair and lit a cigarette.
'I don't recognise that face at all,' she said. 'It doesn't look anything
like the pictures of the Lole family members they have in the museum.
At least I don't think so.'
'Do you have any idea where those Loles might be now?' Siileyman
asked.
'No. As I told you,' she said, 'they left Mardin.'
'But that said, this Murat Lole could be a member of the--'
'Whoever that is,' Taner said as she continued to stare at the picture,
'he doesn't come from Mardin. If this man was part of the plot to spring
Yusuf Kaya from prison he did not do so because of any local connection.
But Hasan?' She became animated again. 'Hasan, of all people.
Maybe Yusuf offered him money?' Then she shook her head. 'No. No,
there has to be some other explanation.'
'The third nurse, called isak Mardin,' Siileyman smiled grimly at the
name, 'was employed at the Cerrahpa§a under false pretences, with the
knowledge of the then director.'
'The one who killed himself?' Taner said.
'Yes.' Siileyman sighed, 'isak Mardin's qualifications from a
hospital in §anliurfa didn't check out. Theoretically he's still out there
somewhere.'
Taner looked up. 'And the cleaners? What of the people dressed as
cleaners who were supposed to have been at the scene too?'
I
'Of those we have no knowledge,' Suleyman said. 'The hospital's
records with regard to cleaning staff is sketchy to say the least. Inspector,
I know that you said that Hasan Karabulut's aunt was ill. . .'
'Demented.'
'But maybe we should go and see her? Maybe even through dementia
the old lady might know something?'
Edibe Taner didn't say that she agreed but she did promise to callJ
the hospital where the aunt was living in Midyat. Then she took him


168
1
back to St Sobo's. Easter Sunday was, she said, going to be a busy time
for all of them and Siileyman, at least, should now try to get some rest.
'The American woman will be coming up from Dara with her guards,'
Taner said as she leaned out of her car to speak to him at the gates of
the monastery. 'One of them I know quite well. He lives in an apartment
across the courtyard from the Saatcis. He's a new resident in as
much as he came to the city as an infant. Comes originally from the
plains. I think he's a Sudani. I want to speak to him if I can. I think
he's one of only a few Christians who work for the Kayas. His loyalty
may well be a little looser than the other guards'.'
Siileyman smiled. In his experience it was money rather than religion
that generally bound people together.
'I'll come and get you at seven thirty,' Taner continued. 'And don't
eat anything; there's a huge meal laid on in the church after the service.
Everyone is invited.' She fired up the engine of her car but then thought
of something else and said, 'Oh, and my father will be attending the
service too. Men and women sit separately in Suriani churches, so he
will look after you.'
And then she left. The smile on Siileyman's face faded as he thought
once again about how Edibe Taner had concealed information from him.
Unpalatable information, but information none the less.

Chapter 14

As soon as he got home from school that afternoon Kemal ikmen, as
had become his custom of late, went straight to his brother Bekir's room.
But Bekir wasn't there, so he went first to the family living room and
then to the kitchen. His mother was standing at the sink washing up tea
glasses. The only other occupant of the apartment, seemingly, was his
brother Biilent.
'Looking a bit worried, Kemal,' Btilent said as the youngster put his
head round the door and frowned into the room. 'What's up?'
'Do you know where Bekir is?' Kemal mumbled.
'In his room,' Fatma ikmen said. 'He was tired after last night.' She
shook her head at the memory of the argument Bekir had had with his
father the previous evening. Just like the bad old days! 'He went for a
lie-down.'
'He isn't there,' Kemal said.
'Oh, well, then maybe he's watching TV.'
'He isn't in the living room. I've looked.'
Fatma's face turned white. Biilent saw it, stood up and immediately
took charge. In all probability Bekir had just let himself out to go and
buy cigarettes and not bothered to tell anyone. Such thoughtlessness
was typical of him. Such terrified over-reaction in his mother was, these
days, typical of her.
'Let's have another look,' he said to his brother. The two of them set
off from the kitchen and went round the apartment until inevitably they
came to what had become Bekir's room. Biilent, whose room it had
been, looked at the unmade bed and the dirty glasses on the floor with
some distaste. He hadn't been the tidiest person in the world when he'd

had this room, but he'd only been a kid then. Bekir was years older
than Biilent was. What a slob!
Kemal began searching on the floor and looking in the cupboards for
some reason. Biilent, frowning, said, 'You won't find him in there.'
'No, I...'
The boy looked hot, red-faced and flustered. Only when he finally
lighted upon a small rucksack underneath the bed did he finally stop
and sit down breathlessly on the floor. 'Oh, he's left his rucksack, so . . .'
He held the thing on his lap like a trophy. 'He must be about.'
'He's gone out, that's all,' Biilent said. He then lowered his voice and
continued, 'You know, Kemal, you really mustn't over-react like this.
Mum's already anxious enough about Bekir. I know you really like him
too and that's great. But you have to try to be a bit calm for Mum's
sake.'
Before the boy could answer, Biilent heard his mother's voice from
the kitchen. 'Boys, have you found your brother yet?'
Biilent turned towards the bedroom door and said, 'I think he's just
out, Mum. There's nothing to worry about.'
But by the time he turned back Kemal had opened the rucksack and
seemed to be searching frantically inside it for something. There was
an expression on the boy's face that Biilent didn't like. His panic also,
seemingly, was making that bloody spot cream he insisted upon using
smell even worse than usual.
'Kemal! What are you looking for?'
The boy looked up, his reddened face slathered in sweat.
'Er . . .'
There was guilt there too. Biilent had been a teenager himself not
long before; he knew that kind of look. He made a dive for the rucksack,
which made his brother scream.
'What are you doing?' Kemal squeaked. 'It's--'
'It's Bekir's, not yours, so give it here!' Biilent said as he tussled
with the boy on the floor. 'Give!'
'No!'
'Kemal, what is in this bag? If you don't show me I'll...'
'Ow!' Kemal cringed as his older and stronger brother prised his

pudgy fingers away from the bag. 'No, it's private! Mum, Biilent is
bullying me!'
'Biilent?' Fatma ikmen couldn't believe it. Biilent was such a kind
and considerate boy. She began to move towards the bedroom.
But now Biilent had the rucksack in his possession and was looking
inside. Kemal, crying on the floor, was making threats apparently on
behalf of Bekir about what would happen to people who 'messed with
his stuff'. But Biilent wasn't listening. The first thing he took out of the
bag was a small sprig of greenery that smelt alarmingly like Kemal's
face. The second thing he pulled out, and luckily just avoided hurting
himself with, was a used and bloodied syringe. As his mother entered
the room, he was in the process of dabbing one of his fingers in the
small amount of white powder that had gathered in one of the bag's
side seams. Not that Biilent, who had been to a few night clubs in his
time and was also a policeman's son, didn't know what that was.
'Allah, what have you got there!' Fatma said as she looked at the
syringe in her son's hand.
Biilent just touched his tongue with the powder and said, 'Coke.'
'Coke?' Fatma frowned and then looked down at Kemal, still crying
on the floor. 'Coke?'
'Cocaine,' Bulent said bluntly. And then, holding the bloodied syringe
up to the light, he added, 'Not this, I don't suppose, however.'
'What
'He couldn't even be bothered to dispose of his syringe!' Bulent said angrily. 'I could have stabbed myself on it! Allah alone knows what he's
got floating around in his blood!' Seeing that his mother either wouldn't
or couldn't understand, he said, 'Mum, Bekir has been shooting up heroin.'
'But you said coke . . .'
'I don't know why he's got cocaine too,' Bulent replied. 'Maybe he
just deals that, or takes it as well as heroin. Who knows?' He picked
up the sprig of greenery he had taken out of the bag first and said, 'And
as to what this is ...'
'You mean he's on drugs? He said he'd done with all that,' Fatma
said. 'He said he was clean!' Her attention was caught by her weeping
youngest son on the floor and she frowned. 'Kemal?'

'Kemal here was rather more worried about getting hold of this bag
than he was about finding Bekir,' Biilent said. He leaned down towards
his brother. 'Kemal, have you been taking drugs with Bekir?' he said
in what to the teenager was a very menacing fashion. 'Has he been
giving them to you? Tell me the truth, boy!'

Seraphim Yunun had never had a moment's doubt about his vocation.
Even when in the past it had seemed sometimes as if St Sobo's could
not possibly survive another year, he had always known that it would.
As he had lived, so, he knew, he would die under holy orders. If only
Brother Gabriel would return, then all would be well whatever may or
may not be going on outside the monstery walls. Although he hadn't
seen the miracle for himself, Brother Seraphim knew many who had
been there when Gabriel Saatci had walked back into Mardin covered
in snake bites. He'd seen the report the doctor had written on Gabriel's
injuries at the time. No one could survive such an onslaught! Only a
saint with God at his right hand. Easter Sunday would arrive in the
morning and Seraphim would pray even more fervently for Gabriel's
return. Maybe the saint would, like the Christ himself, rise again
triumphant on the third day.
'Brother Seraphim!'
It was the policeman from Istanbul, Arto Sarkissian's friend. Brother
Seraphim smiled. 'Inspector?'
Mehmet Siileyman had spotted the monk as he was about to go back
to his room. Now he jogged across the central courtyard of the monstery
to speak to him.
'Brother, if I may have a moment of your time . ..'
'Of course.' Brother Seraphim opened his hands in a gesture of
acceptance. 'Would you like to come and sit up on the roof? It's a lovely
afternoon and the view from up there is definitely something you should
see before you leave St Sobo's.'
'Thank you.'
The monk led Siileyman up a steep flight of outdoor steps cut into
the side of the building, which led from the courtyard up to a large flat
roof. At one corner was the ornate, fluted bell tower while at another,

beside a smooth white dome, was a stone bench that Brother Seraphim
took Siileyman over to now. As they sat down the policeman looked
around at the rolling vineyards in front of the monastery and the jagged
and forbidding-looking mountains behind. Near the tops of the peaks
were what looked like very rudimentary buildings. Although how anyone
would or could get up to such a place and then build Siileyman could
not imagine.
As if reading his mind, Brother Seraphim pointed to the structures
and said, 'Those are very ancient. I don't know when they were built
or by whom, except that brothers most certainly made them.'
'Monks?' Siileyman sat down on the bench, still looking at the mountains
beyond.
'They are hermitages,' Brother Seraphim said. 'Constructed by
brothers whose road to God was to be of a solitary nature. It is an ancient
and honourable Christian tradition, although few choose the life of the
hermit these days. The last of that kind here in these mountains died
back in the 1960s.' He smiled. 'But when Brother Gabriel went missing
we, or rather some of the younger brothers, did risk venturing up into
the old dwellings to look for him. It has been feared for some time that
terrorists might haunt some of the old hermitages. But our brothers didn't
find them, thank God, or sadly brother Gabriel either.'
'Some people think he's with the Sharmeran,' Siileyman said. It came
out, he thought, with a tinge of irony. The reply however was totally
and utterly straight.
'Maybe he is.'
And then they both just looked. Down in front of the building men
in wide salvar trousers were raking the ground between the neat rows
of grapevines. Above, in a sky that, though cold, was a deep and almost
sea-like blue, an eagle hovered silently on invisible thermals. Without
noise or great movement the world of the Tur Abdin outside the cities
and settlements was one of timeless and eerie beauty.
'What you have to understand, Inspector,' Brother Seraphim said in
a low, slow voice, breaking the silence, 'is that many people of religion
here accept a certain blurring of the edges of doctrine.'
Suleyman frowned.

'Tomorrow, I understand, you will attend the Easter service in Mar
Behnam church. There you will see a lot of things that at first sight
might appear contradictory. For instance, as well as cloth pictures
depicting the lives of our saints, Mar Behnam has a representation of
the Sharmeran on its walls. In addition to Christians, both Sudani and
Armenian, there will be Muslims also - Turks and Kurds. They will
take the service as seriously as their Christian brothers and sisters, and
many people whatever their religion will pay homage to the Sharmeran.'
'Inspector Taner said that her father would be attending,' Siileyman said.
The monk shrugged. 'Seckin Taner, like you a Muslim, is a man of
enormous faith. Sec. kin Taner is a prime example of the blurring of the
lines of belief.'
'But, Brother,' Siileyman began, 'you must see how this is a struggle
for someone like me to take in.'
'Of course.'
Again a moment of silence passed while the eagle swooped down
upon something beyond the vineyards.
'I don't know and often don't understand where allegiances lie here,'
Siileyman continued. 'I am obliged, because of my ignorance, to take
much on trust. Part of the time I don't even know what people are saying
because I don't speak any languages apart from my own, English and
French. I've come here to apprehend Yusuf Kaya and yet. . .'
'And yet you feel no closer to him now than you did back in Istanbul?'
Brother Seraphim smiled. 'If Yusuf Kaya is in the Tur Abdin then he
will be so well hidden that only a lapse of concentration on the part of
his guards or the man himself will give him away. It will come about
by accident. Edibe Taner knows this.'
'And yet,' Siileyman said, 'people were sometimes willing to tell
Inspector Taner things. Where certain people might be, and--'
'Gypsies,' the monk said simply. 'They're poorer than most folk.
Sometimes they sell information to the police, sometimes they work to
help the clans with their guns and their drugs. There are other informants
too, I believe.'
'Liitfii Giine§, who came here to see me just after I arrived,' Siileyman
said. 'He told us some--'


'You went off to Dara the following day,' Brother Seraphim cut in.
'I, of course, do not know what it was you did there.'
Exasperated, Suleyman said, 'Yes, but by saying that, by implying
you do, you--'
'Inspector, the Tur Abdin is a very beautiful and very dangerous place.
A man, or a woman, must wear many faces in order to survive.'
'And so anyone may or may not know anything . . .' He paused,
started to rake his fingers frustratedly through his hair but then lit up a
cigarette instead. 'Brother Seraphim, what do you know about Liitfii
Gunes.? I haven't seen him since he came to see me. Do you think that
he might have led us in the direction he did for reasons associated with
an agenda of his own?'
The monk sniffed the cigarette smoke with obvious pleasure. He had
only given the habit up six months earlier. 'What I know of Liitfu Gunes.
is that he is a Kurd who loves only others of his own kind,' he said.
'His family is not a great clan even though I know his people have
ambitions. It is one of those groups who have been known to assist
those more important than themselves in the past. My understanding is
that some of Liitfu's people have had some involvement with drugs. A
couple of the clans, as you know, involve themselves in peddling that
misery; the Kayas are only one of them. I don't know whether the Gunes,
family have ever helped the mainly Turkish Kayas, but they have been
involved with some of the other, Kurdish clans. Therein may lie his
motive for informing. I'm not saying that is so, but...'
'But I may have to return to Istanbul without Yusuf Kaya,' Suleyman
said.
'If God wills.'
Suleyman took in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. 'Brother
Seraphim, have you ever heard of something called the Cobweb World?'
There was a pause during which Suleyman turned to look at the monk,
who was frowning.
'Where did you hear that expression, Inspector?'
'An old woman used it to me in Gaziantep. She said that I was part
of the Cobweb World on account of my coming from an Ottoman family.'
'An Ottoman family? You are from an Ottoman family?'


'Yes.'
Brother Seraphim shook his head and said, 'And the woman, she
was . . .'
'I don't know,' Siileyman replied. 'I was met in Gaziantep by Inspector
Taner and her cousin and they took me to this house, an old Armenian
place, where the woman was a sort of cook.'
'Mm.' Brother Seraphim put a hand up to his heavily bearded chin.
'The cousin, was it a man called Rafik?'
'Yes.'
'Ah.' He nodded gravely now. 'Yes, well, that would explain it.'
'Explain what?'
'The woman you met was Lucine Rezian. She is Rafik's mother and
although once married to Seckin Taner's brother, she is an Armenian.'
'But I thought.. .'
'Armenians remain here. A few,' Brother Seraphim said. 'Like the
Suriani, the Yezidi Kurds and Ottomans like you, they are part of
the Cobweb World. What do I mean by that? Inspector, the Cobweb
World is what just about remains from the past. The modern world
of the Tur Abdin is about the PKK, Hezbollah, the military and the
divisions that some want to drive between religions and clans. Things
that in the old days would have been ignored. Our reality, the Cobweb
World, is delicate and fragile and it clings precariously to the old
buildings here just as surely as it clings to old men like me.' He
smiled. 'You are young. But if you are an Ottoman then you must
know that world too. For you, I think, it must be one of diminished
status, of the sadness you must sometimes feel when your fine manners
are ignored. And I expect that you probably speak French with a very
fine Parisian accent.'
Stileyman too began to smile. What the monk was saying was very
familiar, as was his assessment of Siileyman's own place in this abode
of the past, the dead and the dying out. His father, the prince, he knew
would be the last of his family to be referred to by that title.
'But the Taner family are good people,' Brother Seraphim said.
'Inspector Taner's grandfather, §eymus Taner, was not entirely happy
for his second son to marry an Armenian Christian, but he allowed the

match. He was genuinely sad when his son, Lucine and young Rafik
moved to Gaziantep for work. Lucine is a slightly guilty secret in that
family. Even now, even in private, how does one speak about Armenians
and what might or might not have happened long ago? I lay no blame
anywhere but. .. Edibe Taner, you know, speaks Armenian, but she
would never use the language in your earshot. She has difficulty with
Lucine, with her place in the past. But she loves her. Edibe recognises
things of herself in the old woman. The Kayas, on the other hand . . .
They were furious when Yusuf's aunt Bulbul decided to go off with a
man from the town of Birecik.'
Siileyman told him he knew something about this story and had indeed
met Bulbul Kaplan in person.
'The husband was upstairs when we visited,' Siileyman said. 'We
were told he is blind . . .'
'Gazi Kaplan is blind,' Brother Seraphim said. 'It is said that Yusuf
Kaya's father put his eyes out with his own hands. His punishment,
apparently, for marrying his sister in secret.'

When a child is at risk, all thoughts of other things fly from the mind
of a parent. For once Qetin ikmen's mobile telephone was off.
'What did you take?' he said to the cowering figure of Kemal as the
boy stood in front of his father's chair in the ikmen living room. Over
by the door out to the balcony, Fatma ikmen was being hugged and
comforted by her son Biilent. 'Kemal!'
The teenager tried to stop himself from shaking but without success.
'What has that no-good brother of yours been giving you, Kemal?'
ikmen said in a way that everyone else in the room knew was terrifyingly
controlled.
'Cetin, we don't know that Bekir--' Fatma began.
'He was a lying, drugged-up thug at fifteen, why should he be any
different now?' ikmen said.
'Cetin!'
ikmen threw his arms in the air, finally giving way to the fury inside.
'I only let him stay to please you, Fatma! I would have thrown him on
to the street without a thought!' And then he leaned forward and glared

up at Kemal yet again. 'What did he give you, Kemal? What did you
take from that snake of a brother of yours?'
But Kemal could only cry. Hot, fat tears sliding down his hot, red
face.
'Kemal!'
'Dad, as I told you, there was coke loose in the bag,' Biilent said.
'The syringe . . .'
'The syringe I will send off to the forensic institute for analysis,'
ikmen said. He looked up pointedly at Biilent and continued, 'In the
meantime, I want Kemal to tell me what--'
'C-coke,' the teenager stuttered out between sobs. 'I - he - he let me
sniff it. It was--'
'Got you as high as a Boeing 747 no doubt!' ikmen yelled. He stubbed
the cigarette in his hand right out and instantly lit up another. 'Did you
like it? Coke?'
The youngster hung his head and whispered, 'Yes.'
'Did he give you anything else? Anything in a syringe?'
'What, heroin? No,' Kemal said. 'No, he kept that for himself.'
The room became very quiet then. It went on for some time. The
silence was finally broken by Cetin ikmen rising sharply to his feet.
He looked at his watch.
'It's six o'clock now,' he said. 'When was Bekir last seen?'
'I saw him go into his room just after two,' Biilent replied. And then,
holding on tightly to his mother, he said, 'What are you going to do,
Dad?'
There was another, this time very short silence. Cetin ikmen swallowed
hard and said, 'I'm going to report the fact that a thirty-four-year
old man was giving my child drugs. I'm going to circulate Bekir's details
and description and have him arrested.'
No one either moved or spoke again until Fatma said softly, 'I took
a photograph of Bekir the other day, Cetin. Cicek put it on the computer
for me. You can have that if you think it will do any good.'
And then she went over to her youngest son, took him in her arms
and kissed him. 'Allah forgive me,' she said softly.

'I don't understand,' Edibe Taner said to the veiled woman who stood
in front of her. The light over the plains was fading now and soon Dara
would be in darkness.
Underneath her veil, Elizabeth Smith smiled. 'What don't you understand?
Why I dress like this outside the house? My marriage? Yusuf?
What?'
'Any of it,' the policewoman said.
She had intended to go home after she left Mehmet Siileyman at
St Sobo's. But then, as she had done periodically ever since Gabriel's
disappearance, she had gone out looking for him. She had not, however,
ended up in Dara purely by chance. She had an officer watching the
place and she wanted to check up on him too. Elizabeth Smith was such
an oddity in that setting that when she had seen her strolling in her
garden, fully covered, the temptation to go and talk to her had been
overwhelming.
'I cover myself when I'm outside the house out of respect,' the
American said.
'Women in the Tur Abdin do not generally cover their faces, just their
heads,' Taner replied.
The heavily made-up eyes above the veil closed and then opened
again. 'You know, Inspector,' Elizabeth Smith said, 'I may have been
born and raised in Boston, but my people were Southern Baptists.'
'What does that mean? Is it a religion?'
'Southern Baptists are very strict and austere Christians,' the American
said. 'They go the extra kilometre, as you would say. No drinking, no
cussing, no sex outside marriage. I lost contact with all that years ago.
I wanted to travel and my folks didn't approve of that and so I left. But
I still have some of the old values. The respect, at least.'
'So now you go to the Suriani church ...'
'It's a fine spectacle, yes.'
'Miss Smith, I...'
'What's a nice American girl doing marrying a gangster, covering her
face and living in a house without running water?'
'Miss Smith, you live in a house surrounded by armed men! You are
a prisoner. Willing, but

The clanking sounds of the bells that some people put round the necks
of their goats drifted over from the vastness of the Ocean's fields. The
veiled woman looked up into the darkening sky.
'When a person finds herself alone in the world, different priorities
can take over,' she said. 'My respect for this place and its people, its
purity, is paramount.'
'The people of the Ocean are not perfect,' Edibe Taner said. 'Your
husband is a drug dealer and a murderer.'
'Mm.' She didn't deny it. But it didn't seem to bother her too much
either. 'I first came here ten years ago,' she said. 'On a tourist trip. The
place possessed my soul!' She looked up into the sky once again. 'This
is a place where things are brought to life - empires, faiths. Between
the great rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates. This is where civilisation
began. I envy you growing up here, Inspector.'
'I wouldn't wish to be from anywhere else,' Taner replied. 'But, you
know, this place does have its problems.'
'Yeah.' The American's face darkened somewhat. 'New Mardin. The
crap apartments down there.'
'I was thinking more about the conflict that exists here,' Taner said.
'The various terrorist organisations who base themselves here, war in
Iraq, the dictatorship in Syria.'
There was a moment of silence as these two very different women
looked at each other. Then the American said, 'But things can change.
They do and will.'
'I wish I had your confidence,' Edibe Taner said.
Whatever expression Elizabeth Smith made in response to this was
hidden underneath her veil.
'Miss Smith,' Taner said, 'you must know that the guards the Kayas
have employed to protect you are not just for show. People are killed
out here.'
'Clan rivalry. I know,' Elizabeth Smith said. 'I know also that your
cousin Zeynep, Yusuf's other wife, would probably rather I was dead.
But I also know she won't do anything.'
'No.' Zeynep had obviously accepted the situation. However, Edibe
Taner did have one question. 'But, Miss Smith, why does Yusuf, or why

did he, keep your existence such a close secret? I mean, it isn't as if he
cares about the law with regard to polygamy.'
The American laughed. 'No. No, I was a secret, Inspector, because
Yusuf feared his rivals might try to kidnap me. Hence all my guys in
the house. Hence, in part, the reason I cover up in public. Foreigners
fetch a good price here.'
'Yes.' Edibe Taner knew of several such cases of foreigner kidnap
and it was undoubtedly very lucrative for the clan or group perpetrating
the crime. 'But I still don't understand why you're here, Miss Smith,'
Taner said. 'Whatever you may have run away from in the USA cannot,
surely, have been bad enough to make you want to become a willing
prisoner?'
There was silence, and then the American said, 'I told you, I love
this place. It has possibilities. If one has money and loyal protection,
as I do, one can build something special here.'
'Something special?'
'A life amongst the ruins,' the American said. 'A new life on the
broken stones of the past.'
And then she left to go back into her house. It was only when Edibe
Taner returned to her car that she realised that Yusuf Kaya's American
bride had only spoken about him in passing. She hadn't once expressed
what she might feel for him. She had actually exhibited more affection
for her guards.

Chapter 15

Stileyman was not unaccustomed to security outside a church, although
the level was rather higher than what he had experienced before. At the
bottom of the narrow lane leading up to Mar Behnam there was an
armoured car blocking off any vehicular access. Up to the church itself
and just inside the precinct there were very many policemen and some
women too. Edibe Taner greeted all of them. Looking very smart in a
modest black suit, she was accompanied by Siileyman and her father
Sec. kin.
Constructed from the same honey-coloured stone as all the other
ancient Mardin buildings, Mar Behnam was accessed via a small
doorway in a tall, very blank-looking wall. Having seen the vast
mansions with humble entrances in Gaziantep, Suleyman was unsurprised
to find that in common with traditional Arab structures Mar
Behnam was actually a church and outbuildings - the priest's house,
a school and assembly rooms - in considerable grounds. There was
also a large marquee, a temporary structure where, Taner told him,
the banquet the Sudanis were giving after the service was to be held.
He had expected the church itself to be huge, but it wasn't. In fact
the approach to the altar down between the rows of wooden benches
on both sides was quite narrow. On either side of the benches were
rows of arches which gave on to still more benches and small areas
of devotion around paintings and cloth pictures on the walls. One of
these representations was, as Brother Seraphim had told him, of the
Sharmeran. Overhead there was a large and ornate chandelier from
which strings of tiny fairy lights were suspended across to the ancient
arches. Built originally, so Brother Seraphim had told him, in 569,
Mar Behnam was definitely part of the Cobweb World. Just the memory

1X5
of that term made Siileyman shudder, recalling as it did his recent
conversation with the monk about Yusuf Kaya's aunt Bulbul Kaplan.
What her brother had done, putting out the eyes of her husband
Gazi, must have made her hate her family. Such a thing was inhuman
and if, as was obvious, she had found love and acceptance from
Gazi and his family, why on earth would she even consider entertaining her nephew Yusuf? It seemed to be counter-intuitive and he
wondered whether Edibe Taner might be able to shed some light upon
it later.
Some sort of ceremony was taking place when Siileyman and the
others entered the church. The red-and-gold-robed priest at the altar was
intoning something in a language Suleyman imagined was Aramaic. A
young boy in a white robe stood next to him, just to one side of the
altar, which was bare with the exception of a simple metal cross and a
painted altar cloth representing the Last Supper.
'The service has not started properly yet,' Edibe Taner said to Suleyman
as they walked through the door. 'The priest is just preparing for the
ceremony now.' She turned to her father and said, 'Will you show
Inspector Suleyman Mar Behnam, Papa?'
Seckin Taner nodded his assent. 'Please follow me, Inspector.'
Suleyman followed him straight up the aisle and to the right of the
altar. The priest and the young boy appeared to take no notice of them
at all. Various rough niches in the stone held boxes, candlesticks and,
in one instance, a very old-looking skull. The Master of Sharmeran
pointed to it. 'That is the skull of Mar Behnam,' he said. 'He was the
son of a Syrian king, a pagan.'
'This church is named for him?'
'And for his sister Mort Saro,' Seckin Taner said. 'The father king
killed Mar Behnam and Mort Saro because he didn't like them being
Christians. Then from beyond the grave the brother and the sister began
to work miracles and the wicked father repented. If you are sick, Mar
Behnam can make you well, so the Suriani believe.'
Suleyman smiled. Miracles were not really his area. He felt Cetin
Ikmen would have been far better placed to talk to this man about them
than he was. Just then, however, there was a noise behind him and he

looked round. A large group of people, the women with their heads
covered by small lace scarves, the men very obviously in their best suits,
were pouring through the door into the church.
'Now the service begins,' Seckin Taner said. 'Come, we must sit.'
The Master of Sharmeran and Siileyman sat on the right hand side
of the church with the rest of the men. Edibe Taner, seated with the
woman on the left, smiled over at both of them.

'Now that we know from Inspector Siileyman that the nurse we thought
was called Faruk Oz came originally from Mardin, and that there is at
least a theoretical connection between Mardin and the name Lole, we
must consider carefully what we do next,' Ay§e Farsakoglu said to izzet
Melik. 'We always had a suspicion that Murat Lole was part of Yusuf
Kaya's escape plot. He possibly lied to us, too. Oz's people are not,
clearly, from Ankara. Although he may have told Lole that they were
from the capital for some reason.'
'The also significantly named Yusuf Mardin is still nowhere to be
seen,' izzet replied gloomily. 'As for the cleaners . ..'

'I don't know whether we'll ever be able to trace them,' Ay§e said
as she looked down at the bulging ashtray on her desk. She sighed. 'It's
possible, given the number of deaths that seem to be mounting up around
this escape, that they may very well have been disposed of. We mustn't
forget either that there were only two nurses at the scene when Kaya
escaped from the Cerrahpa§a.'
'I contacted the Kartal Prison as ikmen asked to try to get them to
protect the prisoner Ara Berkoz,' izzet said. 'But if the corruption there
is as widespread as it could be at the Cerrahpaga, I wouldn't like to
make a bet on his chances.' He looked up at his colleague and frowned.
'You know, Ay§e, I always knew that Yusuf Kaya was a rich and powerful
drug dealer, but don't you think that all this buying of people, all this
killing, is excessive even by his standards?'
Ay§e sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.
She at least was not supposed to be working on this particular Sunday
but she'd been unable to settle to anything not work-related at home.
The hunt for Yusuf Kaya and the various twists and turns in that

investigation was obsessing all of them. Crass though he could be,
Izzet was a good person with whom to discuss theories and ideas.
'He does seem to have a lot of power now,' she said.
'Tommi Kerensky, the Russian he killed, was at the top of the tree
amongst the eastern European dealers,' izzet said. 'There are quite a
few Russians in the Kartal Prison that I would have at least imagined
might have had a go at ending Kaya's life inside. It's all about revenge
in their world, after all. And then there was the beggar king Hiiseyin
Altun, found stabbed
'We know that Kay a and Altun knew of each other at least. Kay a
supplied Hiiseyin or his people with drugs. But the connection only
really exists through Hiiseyin's lieutenant Asian and his girlfriend Sophia.
Altun's death may or may not be connected.'
izzet didn't answer. Like Ay§e he just sat and looked ahead at nothing
much really. The station was quite quiet, a lot of the uniformed officers
having been assigned to the various Orthodox Christian churches in the
city which were celebrating Easter. The official protection of most places
of worship now was a sad fact of modern life. Some people, or so it
seemed, would not even consider leaving others alone to do what they
wanted to do in peace. But then peace wasn't something izzet and Ay§e
were to experience for very much longer themselves, ikmen, looking
even more tired and worn out than usual, burst into his office in a vast
ball of grey cigarette smoke. For a moment he just looked at his sergeant
sitting frowning at her desk and at izzet Melik and then he said, 'We've
got to find this man.'
He held up the photograph of Bekir that his daughter Cicek had put
on to the computer for Fatma. Biilent had printed this copy out on to a
large piece of photographic paper, izzet looked up at the picture and
said, 'Who is he? What's he done?'
'He's a shit who gives cocaine to children!' ikmen said with real
poison and yet at the same time real misery in his voice too. 'He's--'
'That's Asian!' Ay§e Farsakoglu said as she peered at the picture,
nodding her head as she did so. 'Hiiseyin Altun's old lieutenant. That's
a really good picture. Sure he sells cocaine to kids, I don't know about
giving . . . Sir?'

IXX
ikmen had almost fallen down on to the top of his desk. 'Are you
sure? You've seen him so infrequently,' he said in what for him was a
very small voice. 'This is Asian?'
'We're looking for him anyway, aren't we?' izzet said. 'Handy to get
a photograph though, sir. Where did you get it from?'
There was a pause during which both Ay§e Farsakoglu and izzet
Melik became rather concerned about the extraordinarily pale colour
ikmen's face had gone.
'I got it from my printer at home,' ikmen managed to say at last.
'This man - Asian - is also known as Bekir ikmen. He is the third and
most troublesome of my sons.'

There had been no signal that Siileyman could discern to suggest that
the service had actually started. The church just filled up with men
wearing either very cheap and unfashionable suits or ensembles so
up to the minute and expensive he was almost jealous. The old man
who stood next to him was one of the former, a peasant in a jacket
and trousers he had probably been married in. Beside him, all in a
shade of cream that had, Suleyman recalled, been quite the thing for
a while back in the 1970s, was a 'simple' man of about fifty. In all
probability he was the older man's son. Occasionally he made strange
hooting noises and rolled his eyes and drooled, but nobody took any
notice. Not even the headscarfed, clearly Muslim ladies who sat on
the benches at the back of the women's area of the church. In front
of them were the far more aquiline and elegantly dressed Suriani
ladies. Although much taller than most of the other women, Edibe
Taner, right in the middle of the Christian group, looked very different
from those around her. Her face was broader, more Asiatic. These
Surianis were plainly Arabs. There was not however, as yet, any sign
of the American woman Elizabeth Smith, or of the Kaya men who
guarded her.
The priest raised a smoking thurible of incense up until it swung and
then proceeded to walk up and down the aisle blessing the congregation
with its pungent contents.

Ay§e Farsakoglu had been to ikmen's apartment several times before.
She knew it as a joyfully chaotic place where food and drink were
always being pushed on anyone who came over the threshold. This
day, however, was different. For a start, either the younger ikmen children
were out or they were unnaturally quiet and Mrs Fatma ikmen
was nowhere to be seen. Once Ay§e and izzet had taken their shoes
off at the door, ikmen led them to their left and into a small messy
room.
'This was Biilent's room,' ikmen explained as he closed the door
behind them. 'We let Bekir stay here when he turned up out of the blue.
Then my youngest son, Kemal, began spending a lot of time with him.
You can smell, even now he's out, that ghastly spot cream or lotion or
whatever it is that Kemal has taken to slathering himself with lately.'
Ay§e didn't know what ikmen meant. The smell he was referring to
meant something quite different to her. But she put on the plastic gloves
they had all brought with them and began looking around.
'My wife and the two younger children are spending the day with
family,' ikmen said. Fatma had taken the kids over to the home of the
eldest ikmen child, Sman. A doctor, Sinan was due to go abroad for a
job interview the following day. If things went to plan he would soon
be working in London. Just the thought of it made ikmen's chest tighten
a little with tension. Of course if Sinan got the job in London he would
have to take it; it was what he wanted. But the loss of him on top of
Bekir was not going to be easy for Fatma. Her children were almost
gone now. Even her youngest was no longer really a child, ikmen tried
hard not to think about Kemal snorting coke probably from the back of
a battered old tobacco tin or something equally disgusting. His mobile
phone began to ring. Ay§e Farsakoglu picked up what had been Bekir's
rucksack and looked inside.
ikmen signalled for her to put the rucksack down and then said,
'ikmen.'
'£etin, it's Arto,' the familiar voice of the Armenian pathologist said.
'It's about your dead prison officer.'
'Ramazan Eren?'
'Yes,' the doctor said. 'I'm afraid I have some bad news.'


I
izzet Melik, who had been looking at the old Galatasaray football
posters on the walls, turned round and looked at ikmen, frowning.
'Yes?' ikmen asked the Armenian. 'And so?'
'The toxicology came back with a positive result for diamorphine,'
the doctor said. 'Enough to kill an ox. This death was not natural, Cetin.
Who was the attending doctor over at the Cerrahpa§a?'
'Eldem,' ikmen said after a pause.
'Well, Dr Eldem has some questions to answer,' Arto said. 'I suggest
you get him in right away.'
'I will,' ikmen said. After thanking the doctor for his prompt attention
he closed his telephone up.
'Dr Eldem in trouble, is he?' izzet asked.
'Yes,' ikmen replied. 'It would seem that someone gave Ramazan
Eren an overdose of diamorphine.'
'Dr Eldem.'
'He would seem to be the most likely candidate at this time,' ikmen
said, 'izzet, I'd like you to get over to the Cerrahpa§a and pick him up.
If he isn't there get the director to give you his details. At the very least,
Dr Eldem has some explaining to do.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Once Sergeant Farsakoglu and myself have finished here, we'll go
back to the station and hopefully see you there,' ikmen said as he escorted
izzet Melik back to the front door of the apartment.
'Eldem may already have gone,' izzet said just before he left. 'He
was behaving cagily at the hospital yesterday, wasn't he?'
'If that is the case then I'll have to go to Commissioner Ardic,' ikmen
said. 'As it is I think we'll soon be needing more men and more powers
to really get to grips with just where the trail of Kaya's influence is
taking us.'
'Yes, sir.'
ikmen returned to Bekir's bedroom where Ay§e Farsakoglu was still
looking down at the rucksack he had asked her to leave.
'Biilent found the syringe in there,' he said. 'And some cocaine
powder. I want the whole bag analysed. There're some twigs or something
in there too. Not cannabis, but--'


'Wormwood,' Ay§e said with absolute confidence. 'Like the tattoo on
Faruk Oz's arm. I recognised the smell as soon as I entered the apartment.
The leaves in that bag are wormwood leaves.'
'Ah, but the smell is Kemal's cream.'
'No, sir. If Kemal told you that was the smell of his cream, he was
lying. The smell is wormwood,' Ay§e said. 'My grandmother used to
put wormwood leaves amongst her clothes to discourage moths. It's
awful. I'd know it anywhere. This room reeks of it!'
'We assumed that because Kemal was using some new cream,' Ikmen
said slowly, 'it had to be him. Since he developed spots he's used some
foul things on his skin. He told us he was using some new stuff. He
told us it smelt just like this.'
'As I said, he lied to you. The smell is wormwood,' Ay§e persisted.
'And, sir, I would suggest that it was being used to cover the scent of
any narcotics Bekir might have been carrying in that bag. Your son was
using heroin himself, as well as sniffing coke and giving that to your
other boy. He might have been carrying cannabis too at some stage and
that really can smell. But with wormwood around he'd know no one
would be able to detect anything else he was carrying. He'd even maybe
be confident enough to leave the apartment and go down the street with
the stuff. Only our own drug dogs would get past wormwood - maybe.
And your son wasn't likely to come up against one of those, was he?
Have you found any more drugs in this room?'
ikmen, suddenly deflated by being taken for what he felt was a fool,
sat down shakily on Biilent's old bed. 'No ...'
'Have you looked?'
'No, not. ..'
He looked awful. Ay§e went and sat down next to him.
'Sir, I will look round and then we will, as you have suggested, call
forensic,' she said gently. 'I suspect if your son had a large amount of
heroin, cocaine or whatever here in this room he has now taken it with
him. You have no idea where he might have gone?'
'No.'
'Well, sir,' Ay§e said as she looked around the room once again, 'all
I can suggest at this stage is that, assuming that your son Bekir and the


192
I
late Hiiseyin Altun's lieutenant Asian are one and the same, we pick up
Sophia the Bulgarian girl again.'
'Sophia?' For a moment ikmen looked confused. But then as light
began to dawn in his brain he said, 'Of course, Sophia! The girl who
was, er, um . ..'
'The girl who is pregnant, she says, with Asian's child,' Ay§e said.

There was no accompaniment of any sort. When the beautiful young
women in the Suriani choir began to sing their voices soared alone until
they were answered by the deeper sounds of the men's choir which now,
as if by magic, appeared from behind a large spangled cloth that hung
beside the altar. Beyond was a rough-cut stone doorway out of which
now processed men and boys of all ages from ten to eighty. Both men
and women continued to sing until the areas to both sides of the altar
were filled with people and with sound. The service had been going on,
so far as Suleyman could tell, for at least an hour and a half. Where on
earth was the American woman and why didn't Edibe Taner look at all
agitated about the fact that she hadn't shown up? But then, if she had
the house outside Dara under surveillance, maybe she knew something
that he didn't. He looked across the aisle meaningfully, or so he thought,
at the policewoman, but she didn't respond. She was, like the rest of
the congregation with the exception of Suleyman, singing. More unintelligible
minutes passed. Then the priest, carrying before him a large
metal cross wrapped closely in a blood red cloth, began to process round
the church, followed by the men's choir.
He'd heard Arab women ululating before - from a distance. Close
to, as it was now, it was both eerie and deafening. What it meant in this
context he didn't really know, although from the tears in the people's
eyes he assumed they were probably mourning the suffering of their
Christ. All of them wanted to touch the red-robed cross as it passed,
and if they managed to do so they smiled at those around them. It was
as he was watching the procession move round the back of the church
that he saw a covered woman, surrounded by the guards he'd seen at
Elizabeth Smith's house, walk through the door. The group separated,
she slipping to the women's side of the church and her guards coming

19T
to stand behind Siileyman and Seckin Taner on the men's side. No one
had reacted in a noticeable fashion to their arrival. The women's ululations
continued to roll around the inside walls of the church, making every hair on Siileyman's head and body stand up as, in his mind at
least, the Cobweb World all but enveloped him.

Chapter 16

Between his apartment on Biiyiik Hendek Alley and some nameless
little street somewhere, probably less than a kilometre away in the
district of Cihangir, Murat Lole managed to lose his police 'tail'. One
young constable, whose first time on such an assignment this was,
plus one slightly older and more experienced officer were the culprits.
Apparently the younger one had been distracted by the sight of a
group of dancing girls crossing a street on their way to one of the
nightclubs of Beyoglu. His older colleague had clearly been equally
entranced, ikmen was incandescent with rage, but not just with the
two officers. In fact he didn't spend very much time berating them
at all, because when izzet Melik brought Dr Eldem in he turned his
attention to him.
'Our pathologist, backed up by toxicology reports from the forensic
institute, has proved that the cause of the prison officer Ramazan Eren's
death was not spontaneous multiple organ failure,' ikmen said as he sat down opposite the doctor. 'Cause of death was poisoning via a massive
overdose of diamorphine. You were in charge of this patient, Dr Eldem.
Explain this, will you.'
The doctor didn't answer. He sat, impassively, in front of ikmen and
izzet Melik, his face expressionless. For a moment ikmen just looked
back until he turned to izzet Melik and said, 'Sergeant, did you say that
Dr Eldem has waived his right to legal representation?'
'Yes, sir,' izzet replied. 'I don't know why; he wouldn't say.'
ikmen leaned across the interview room table towards the doctor and
said, 'That wasn't very bright, Dr Eldem. As the responsible physician
to a man who has died via an overdose of hospital quality diamorphine
you're not in a particularly good place at the moment.'

'Other people had access to that room apart from me,' Dr Eldem said
calmly. 'I know I didn't kill the guard. It's up to you to prove it.'
'And I will,' ikmen said. 'Apart from the fact that nurses are not
in the habit of walking about unsupervised with lethal doses of
diamorphine . . .'
'I think you'll find that sometimes they do,' Dr Eldem said. 'After
all, it's nurses you've been questioning up until now with regard to this
prison break thing, isn't it? Wasn't it nurses who were supposed to have
helped that man, whoever he was, escape?'
'Yes, although, Dr Eldem, we do now think that in order for Yusuf
Kaya's plan to fully realise itself he had to have help from some people
rather higher up the food chain than a few young nurses,' ikmen said.
'And besides, if I look at the nurses we have been considering and what
they were doing when Mr Eren died I find that one has completely
disappeared, one spent the day in and around his home in Karakoy and
the other one is dead. You, Doctor, so the sergeant here tells me, were
packing to leave to go somewhere when he arrived.'
There was a moment of silence as the doctor appeared to take in what
had just been said to him. There was also a very faint flicker of what
ikmen felt could possibly be fear.
'Er, the nurse in Karakoy, he . . .'
'We have been following him,' ikmen said with a smile he had to
really force on to his face. Murat Lole, unless rediscovered soon, was
going to be a very sore point. 'The other one we found dead outside
the lodging of the third nurse in Zeyrek.'
'Oh, well then, the nurse from Zeyrek, the third one, must have killed
him,' Dr Eldem said. 'There is your answer. And just because he, this
other nurse, is missing doesn't mean that he isn't around. He could have
come into the Cerrahpa§a and killed my patient and--'
'Yes, he could,' ikmen said. 'Theoretically. But, Doctor, I don't think
that he did. isak Mardin, the name by which this nurse goes, worked
in cardiac care. Now, he hasn't been on his own ward since the night
of Yusuf Kaya's escape. He'd cause a stir if he turned up there now,
but on an unknown ward he would stand right out. Especially a ward
with a police officer, remember, on the door.'

1%

I
'But if this Mardin killed this other--'
'Oh, we don't know that Mardin killed the other nurse,' ikmen
answered with a smile. 'The body was found outside his lodging house.
Anyone, in theory, could have done it. Personally I think that Nurse
Mardin is either a very long way away or dead.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Because a lot of people are dying around the fact of Yusuf Kaya's
escape,' ikmen said. 'In all probability Yusuf or those who work for
him are clearing up the "mess" around the incident as quickly as they
can. After all, when you buy a lot of people, you have to be certain that
your investments are going to do as they have been told. There's only
one way in which you can be absolutely sure of that, however.'
'Say you won't pay up until the job is over and then kill the person
before he can collect,' izzet Melik put in with a smile.
. Both ikmen and Melik had imagined that the doctor would be fazed
by such a revelation, but he didn't seem to be. His face remained impassive
and he did not appear to be unduly uncomfortable in his seat.
'Unless, of course,' izzet Melik said, 'this, whatever it is, isn't just
about Yusuf Kaya's escape.'
ikmen looked at Siileyman's sergeant questioningly. The doctor cleared
his throat.
'What if it's about something bigger?' izzet said. 'Yusuf Kaya is a
drug dealer. Significant, but not a huge player. The Russian dealer he
took down, on the other hand, was very powerful indeed, and yet not
one of Tommi Kerensky's fellow gang members in the Kartal Prison
even tried to avenge their old leader's death. Kaya was left alone. Kaya
got out of prison with help, possibly from Eren or the other dead guard,
possibly from who knows who! Then, at the Cerrahpa§a, help again!'
He leaned forward and snarled into the doctor's slightly whitening face.
'We're struggling to keep the dealers in check, keep the addicts we
already have under control. But I think that something bigger is in the
pipeline and I think that Yusuf Kaya and at least some of his little
minions, including I think you, Dr Eldem, know what it is.'
Every so often izzet Melik made connections like this. It was at such
times that his often irritating macho swaggering was worth putting up


with, ikmen looked at his colleague with admiration as various elements
of his own and Mehmet Siileyman's recent experience began to click
into place.
'Dr Eldem,' he said after a pause, 'what does wormwood mean to
you?'

The feast the parishioners of Mar Behnam had prepared in the marquee
in the church garden was considerable. It was also, Seckin Taner took
pains to point out to Siileyman, entirely pork free.
'As Christians they can eat pork,' he said. 'But they all have Muslim
friends and relations sometimes too and so out of kindness to us they
don't do that. They serve wine, of course,' he shrugged as if this other
Islamic prohibition were nothing, 'but one can take or leave that.' He
moved very close to Siileyman's ear and said, 'But take it if you can is
my advice. They make truly excellent wine.'
Siileyman smiled and then watched as Seckin Taner took a plate and
helped himself to a very generous portion of the feast. The man's daughter
was not long behind.
Edibe Taner looked up at Siileyman and raised a questioning eyebrow.
'I understood nothing beyond the blessing of the Republic, but that
said it was very interesting,' he said in answer to her silent query. 'I've
been to Orthodox churches before but I've never seen anything like that.
Is the congregation usually that large?'
'At Easter people's relatives from Syria come across the border to
spend a few days in the city,' Taner said, and then she lowered her voice.
'According to the officers watching the Dara house Elizabeth Smith and
her men didn't leave until well after the Easter service had started. She
is either not as keen on Suriani spectacle as she would like us to believe
or something in her house detained her.'
'I'd forgotten she'd be covered,' Siileyman said, referring to the
American's veil.
'To remain a secret, she'd have to be when she left the house,' Edibe
Taner replied. 'That's what she told me when I stopped in Dara yesterday.'
'You visited her?'
'She was in her garden, covered. I was intrigued.

Siileyman wondered what Taner had been doing in Dara without him.
But he didn't ask and moved on to present events.
'Are any of her guards still at the house?'
'Two,' she replied. 'But I doubt whether there is very much to see
there. I think that she will have anticipated that we might want to take
a look while she is away. However, she and her entourage did arrive in
a very large truck. I can have that searched. Especially today, especially
with it parked out on Avenue One.'
Siileyman looked over and watched as several people kissed Elizabeth
Smith's hand. The language she spoke to them in was clearly Aramaic.
She was obviously a woman who learned fast.
'Don't you think that someone like her is too clever to carry what
she shouldn't in her car?' he asked.
Edibe Taner was about to answer when some sort of commotion began
to bubble up amongst the group of people who were standing at the
entrance to the church grounds. Quite a few of the people appeared to
want to get out.
Siileyman said, 'Any idea what's going on?'
'No, but I'll go and see,' Edibe Taner said. And then with just the
lightest of touches on his arm she added, 'You wait here.'
She ran down to the now boiling knot of people, shouting at them to
let her through as she did so. Seckin Taner, who was eating a very fat
stuffed vine leaf, came over to Siileyman and said, 'What's going on?'
'I don't know,' Siileyman replied. 'Your daughter has gone to sort
out some sort of incident down by the entrance.'
Seckin Taner shrugged. 'Some idiot wanting to come in and shout
and protest about the celebration of Easter, I expect,' he said gloomily.
'Inspector, the older I get the less tolerant I become with intolerance.'
Siileyman smiled.
'If people don't like something I don't know why they can't just keep
their prejudices to themselves.'
By this time many of the people who had been inside the marquee
eating, drinking and talking had come outside to watch what was going
on down by the entrance. Edibe Taner had disappeared. Siileyman could
see one police uniform in the midst of the crowd, but its wearer was

very isolated and was shouting something in Aramaic that the man from
Istanbul couldn't understand.
'What'
'He's telling them to get out of the way,' Seckin Taner said. 'Look,
now they're clearing to either side of the door.'
They were, if reluctantly, moving out of the policeman's way. Some
of the women, particularly, were crying. What on earth could possibly
be upsetting them so much? Once the officer had moved the people
there was a pause. Then, alone at first, the tall slim figure of Edibe
Taner walked across the threshold and into the church complex again.
Just inside she turned and paused. It was as if, Slileyman thought, she
was talking to someone behind her. He was very soon proved right when
the figure of a man, his clothes ripped and muddy, his beard and hair
straggly and unkempt, stepped into the church grounds behind her. The
whole great crowd of people both down by the entrance and outside
the marquee gasped.
'Mar Gabriel!'
Suleyman turned quickly to Seckin Taner, but he knew what the
Master of Sharmeran was going to say before he said it.
'Gabriel Saatci has returned to us,' Seckin said. Then, raising his
hands to heaven in a gesture of supplication, he added, 'May Allah be
praised.'

'According to Mardin police station, Inspector Suleyman is at church,'
Ikmen said as he lowered himself down into the chair behind his desk.
'That's why his mobile phone is off.'
Ayse Farsakoglu sighed. 'Those Orthodox ceremonies last a long
time, sir.'
'I know.' ikmen lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. Ay§e
didn't usually have any trouble talking to her superior but on this
occasion she was finding being alone with him hard. That the slimy
Asian of the old Hiiseyin Altun gang was his son was both appalling
and incredible. Although ikmen himself had had little to do with Altun
or his child thieves in the past, the police as a whole were always
picking up one or other of the youngsters for various infringements

of the law. Not that Asian had ever been in police custody to Ay§e's
knowledge. The little shit had been one of Hiiseyin's early recruits
and was consequently very cunning and street savvy. Still, the fact
that Asian had not once been arrested in spite of his involvement with
drugs was--
'I never helped my son, you know, Ay§e,' ikmen said in one of those
eerie moments when he appeared to be reading her mind.
'Sir, I...' Flustered, she stammered a rebuttal, but her face was red
and sweating and told, to ikmen, a slightly different tale.
'It's all right, Ay§e,' he continued. 'I know that I will have to answer
questions about Bekir and quite rightly so.' He cleared his throat. 'I
came into contact with Hiiseyin Altun only once, when the junkie who
lived next door to him was murdered for less than a quarter of a gram
by some even more desperate addict. I spoke to Hiiseyin but neither he
nor the dead-eyed kids in his kitchen knew anything. They were, just
coincidentally, telling the truth. But my son wasn't there. I think I would
have felt something if my own blood had been in that room.'
There was a pause and then Ay§e said, 'I believe you, sir. You've
certainly had no dealings with Hiiseyin since I've worked for you. But as for me?' She shrugged. 'I've had little contact with Hiiseyin since
I've worked for you too. Before, though, I knew him quite well and
Asian I knew by sight. He was cocky and sneaky and I know that he
got some of the younger ones hooked on heroin, including Sophia.'
'The mother of my grandchild,' Ikmen said softly.
As soon as she'd made the connection between Bekir ikmen and
Asian, Ay§e had been haunted by this notion. 'Yes,' she said and then
very quickly changed the subject. 'Sir, I didn't know that he was your
son. Only now, looking at that picture and then looking at you, can I
see any resemblance. But it isn't strong, sir.'
'No.' He tapped on the top of his desk with his fingers. 'I'll have to
tell Dr Sarkissian.'
'He knew your son.'
'Of course.' He smiled and then, sighing, he frowned once again.
'But later. Ay§e, I have called Commissioner Ardic, on his day off, and
he is not, as you can imagine, very pleased about that.'

A mental picture of the commissioner's red and angry face came into
Ay§e's mind. That was Ardic on a reasonably good day. 'Sir?'
'If I want to instigate a full search for my son, I have to go through
him,' Ikmen said. 'Total honesty is the only way I can move forward
with this. I also have to tell him, as I am telling you, that I think the
timing of my son's sudden reappearance was no accident.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean I think it is possible that my son might have been mixed up
in Yusuf Kaya's escape,' ikmen said. 'I don't know how. But Sophia
told us that Asian knew Kay a. My son turns up at my home on the same
day that Kay a escapes. Hiiseyin Altun has been killed.'
'Yes, but'
'Coincidence or not,' ikmen interrupted, 'Altun, an albeit petty drug
peddler, goes to join luminaries like Tommi Kerensky whose "soldiers",
as Izzet pointed out earlier, did not take revenge upon him when he was
in prison. My son appears with drugs and wormwood. Wormwood grows
around one of Yusuf Kaya's houses in Mardin. All the names of the
nurses at the Cerrahpa§a lead back to Mardin
'Sir, it's all circumstantial.'
ikmen lowered his head.
'Until Inspector Siileyman or someone finds Yusuf Kay a or until
someone speaks to make these connections real in some way, we won't
know,' Ay§e said. 'Sir, believe me, I can see why Sergeant Melik thinks
that there's some sort of conspiracy at work here.'
'Yusuf Kaya didn't just escape to escape but to do something specific
too,' ikmen said. 'Ay§e, I don't have to tell you how competitive the
drug trade is now.'
'Since the Taliban were effectively taken out of the picture in
Afghanistan, it's gone crazy, yes,' Ay§e said. 'I hate the Taliban; they're
so violent towards women it makes me want to weep. But they did
control the heroin. Now it's anyone's game and there's so much money
to be made it is ridiculous.'
'Kaya behaved with total recklessness when he murdered Tommi
Kerensky,' Ikmen said. 'Inspector Siileyman told me at the time that at
his trial Kaya didn't appear to care about where he was or what was

happening to him. What if Kaya was in the process of making the biggest
deal of his life?'
'But sir, the drug trade moves very quickly,' Ay§e said. 'When Yusuf
Kaya was put in prison someone else would have jumped into his shoes
if he had an outstanding deal.'
'This is true,' ikmen sighed. But then he frowned again and said,
'Unless it was bigger than a deal. . .'
'Bigger than a deal?'
Ikmen's telephone rang and he leaned across his desk to pick it up.
'ikmen.'
Bigger than a deal? What could possibly, for a drug dealer, be bigger
than a deal?
ikmen put the receiver down and then stood up. 'Ardic is in his
office,' he said. 'I must go and see him.'
Just before he left, and although her mind was still puzzling over
what he had just said, Ay§e told her boss that she personally would look
for Bulgarian Sophia.
'If you find her, then bring her back here,' ikmen said with a smile.
'Sophia should know who Asian is from me. I'd like to help her if I
can, but... Oh, and Ay§e, Sergeant Melik has gone back to the
Cerrahpaga. He has some notion that possibly the administrator may
have some more to tell us.'

Underneath all the filth and beyond the obvious lack of nutrition, Gabriel
Saatci was clearly a good-looking man in an ethereal sort of way. It was
impossible to even guess at his age, but if he had been to school with
Edibe Taner then he was probably in his mid to late forties. As he moved
through the silent crowd, Siileyman noticed that he was laying a trail
of blood behind him which looked as if it had to be coming from his
feet. Filthy hands held a wooden box out in front of him, and his dark,
almost fierce eyes concentrated on it intently. No one spoke. Edibe Taner,
walking behind the monk, did so with obvious caution. Then suddenly
Gabriel Saatci looked round at the assembled company and spoke in a
low, deep voice. What he said Suleyman couldn't tell, and although
he knew that Seckin Taner would in all probability translate for him, he

was loath to speak to anyone at such a seemingly delicate moment. All
he could make out was the name Ibrahim in there somewhere.
Not one member of those assembled moved for a long time. Even Edibe
Taner remained absolutely still behind her old friend Gabriel. It must have
been a good five minutes before one of Elizabeth Smith's guards stepped
down from outside the marquee and approached the living saint. He was
a short, tough-looking man of again probably about forty-five or so.
Siileyman remembered seeing him at the house outside Dara. As the man
approached him, Gabriel Saatci began to berate him. This time Seckin
Taner leaned over towards Siileyman and provided a translation.
'Brother Gabriel says this man, Ibrahim Keser, must no longer torment
his father. He says that he must face him himself, like a man.'
'What does that mean?' Siileyman asked. 'Whose father? Gabriel
Saatci's father?'
Seckin Taner shrugged. 'I imagine so. The man, Keser, is neighbour
to Musa Saatci. That is all I know.'
As he stood, shaking either with rage or under the force of a torrent
of Aramaic abuse, Ibrahim Keser bowed his head.
'Brother Gabriel says this man is a dog and an unbeliever,' Seckin
Taner said.
'The man is a Christian?'
'Yes. But Brother Gabriel means in general, I think. I think he means
that Keser is a man without God, you know?'
A man not unlike himself, Siileyman thought. Years ago he had loved¦
Allah and the Prophet. He'd gone to the mosque regularly with his
father, his grandfather and his uncle. When had he banished Allah from
his life? It wasn't as if he were even a happy atheist like Cetin Ikmen!
A loud click made Siileyman attend to the scene before him again.
It was followed by gasps of shock from everyone around him. The monk
had opened the wooden box now and was holding it up. Two sinuous
snakes' heads appeared at the opening and one of the creatures began
to writhe. The monk spoke in a low, trembling voice while the man
standing in front of him sweated. Edibe Taner, still behind the monk,
spoke softly to him whilst holding back the officer at her side with one
hand. The policeman in question had drawn his pistol.

'Brother Gabriel says he will prove to this dog that his miracle is
real,' Seckin Taner said to Suleyman. 'My daughter says he must not
do this here with all the ladies and the children around.'
'But
Edibe Taner spoke again.
'My daughter says that if the snakes get away the police will kill
them.'
The monk apparently ignored her then, and Suleyman watched as
Edibe Taner's face went grey. Gabriel Saatci picked one snake up in
each hand and then held the two of them aloft. He said something which
Suleyman didn't understand. But this time he didn't get a translation
because Seckin Taner had run down to take charge.

'Mr Oner, your predecessor, died last month as a result of ingesting
disinfectant,' izzet Melik said to the pale man in front of him. 'It was
Mr Oner who gave isak Mardin a job here in the hospital. Last year Mr
Oner also employed the nurses Lole and 6z. 6z, whose real name was
actually Hasan Karabulut, a relative of Yusuf Kaya, the escaped convict,
is now dead, and Lole deliberately gave our officers the slip earlier
today. Now, sir, one of your patients, a man who was a witness to the
prisoner Yusuf Kaya's escape from this very hospital, has been declared
unlawfully killed by an overdose of diamorphine. We have questioned
the doctor entrusted with his care, Dr Eldem, and we are not satisfied
with his explanation of that death.'
'Why not?' The hospital administrator shook as he spoke. Once he'd
given this thuggish policeman Eldem's address he hadn't expected to
see him again. Well, not so soon, anyway. 'Why aren't you satisfied?'
'Because we don't believe that Dr Eldem is telling the truth,' izzet
replied. 'Everything comes back to this hospital and I want to know
why. Oz we know knew Kaya, Lole is a name famously associated with
Kaya's home town of Mardin and of course Nurse Mardin has a connection
that speaks for itself. It also, sir, speaks of an arrogance and a
confidence on the part of whoever has been orchestrating these events.'
'These events? What do you mean "these events"?'
'I mean, sir,' izzet said, 'the ease with which Kaya and whoever was
with him got out of this building. I mean the way that the tape in your
security cameras is so frankly over-used and fuzzy.'
'The men on the film were wearing stockings or some such over
their heads. Of course nothing much could be seen! Your superior told
me so!'

'Did he?' izzet looked round quickly to make sure the door to the
administrator's office was closed. It was and, since it was a Sunday,
there was no noise coming from the corridor outside. 'Well, I'm telling
you that was only part of the problem we had with that film. It was
fucked! Old damaged tape! How many times did you use it, eh? How
much money did that save you?'

izzet pulled one large arm back and then hit the hospital administrator
sharply, if not hard, across the face. His lip split open, just a little
bit, immediately.
'You can't--'
izzet walked round to the back of the administrator's desk and took
his head in the crook of his arm. 'I can do whatever I like,' he hissed.
'And I will until you, sir, tell me just what is going on here!'
A thin dribble of blood oozed down on to the administrator's chin.
'I -1 can't. . .' He struggled to breathe, let alone talk. There was a long
pause before either of them spoke again.
'Sir, I am very sorry that I hit you,' izzet said. 'I am truly very sorry
for that. But you must understand that people are being killed. Sir, to
be party to an escape from prison, to even be involved in drugs is one
thing. But to be an accessary to murder ...'
'I am not an accessary to murder!'
'Dr Eldem will eventually tell us what we need to know,' izzet said.
'He was packing his bags for a journey when I got to his house. That
makes me very suspicious.'
'About me?' izzet had loosened his grip slightly upon the administrator's
throat now, enabling him to speak much more easily. 'It was I
who gave you Eldem's address. Were I in league with him for some
reason, why would I do that?'
After a moment, izzet let him go and walked round to the front of
the desk again. He sat down and put his head in his hands. 'I'm sorry,'
he murmured through his fingers. 'I am really, really sorry. I . . .'
There was a pause. The administrator took a tissue out of the box on
his desk and held it up to his bleeding lip. After a few moments' apparent
thought he said, 'Well, you have a hard job to--'


'Oh, that's no excuse,' izzet said, as he looked up red-eyed into the
administrator's face. 'I just had this theory and people were listening to
me for once and . . .'
'You got a little carried away,' the administrator said.
izzet swung his arms out to his sides in a gesture of hopelessness
and then said, 'Sir, if you wish to complain you may do so. I have no
defence to offer whatsoever.'
The administrator sat back in his chair and once again dabbed the
tissue against his lip.
'I'll even, sir, support you,' izzet said. 'I have a problem with my
temper, or I can do, and--'
'Sergeant, I don't think that there will be any need for that,' the
administrator said. 'I. ..' He looked down at his desk and smiled and
then he said, 'Accept that I don't know anything about this Kaya business,
which is the truth, and we'll say no more about it.'
izzet sat and considered what had just been said to him for some
little time. Or looked as if he was.
'There's no risk to you,' the administrator said. 'I'm telling the truth,
after all.'
A little more time passed in silence before izzet Melik stood up to
shake hands with the man beside his desk. 'I'll write up that you simply
had nothing to add,' he said. Then, in what could have been interpreted
as a gesture of affection, he placed one of his hands on the top of the
administrator's arm.
'Sergeant
And then he pulled the shirt sleeve, hard. The arm that had been concealed
inside was thin and covered in a spider's web of angry track marks.
izzet stared the man straight in his frightened eyes and said, 'I thought
I caught a glimpse of something when you rolled up your sleeves to get
into Dr Eldem's Personnel file. You just about caught yourself in time,
but I saw you. I had to be sure, however. Now I am.' Then he called
out to the officer he knew had been outside the door all the time.
'Constable? Get in here!'
The door opened while the administrator just looked down at his own
arm with horror. 'You, you . . .'

'Now, sir, in answer to your question about why you would give me
Dr Eldem's address if you were in league with him, let me tell you that,
as you well know, there isn't much a junkie will not do to save his own
skin.' He turned round to face Constable Doga. 'Let's get this man down
to the station.'

'Seckin Bey is asking for Mar Gabriel to give the snakes to him,' the
young Suriani girl said to Siileyman. 'They will not bite Seckin Bey.
He is their master.' The daughter of one of the Master of Sharmeran's
friends, she had come over to translate for the man from Istanbul.
Siileyman looked down at the girl in horror. 'What kind of snakes
are they?'
'Vipers.'
Seckin Taner was approaching the monk now, his arms outstretched.
As he moved past the terrified figure of Ibrahim Keser he spoke softly
and gently to Gabriel Saatci who, though trembling also, Siileyman could
see did appear to be listening to him now.
'Seckin Bey says that this is not the way, that the Sharmeran will be
displeased with him if he hurts anyone,' the girl said.
The monk screamed then, a hail of what to Siileyman sounded
like pure invective.
'Mar Gabriel says that this man, Mr Keser, must confess his sins. He
says that he will perform his miracle now.'
Arms as thin as tree branches raised the snakes high up into the air
as the monk began to sing. Seckin Taner very calmly carried on talking.
'What. . .'
'Mar Gabriel will now let the snakes bite him,' the girl said. 'I wasn't
born the first time that he performed his miracle.'
The implication being that this was all very exciting. Edibe Taner,
still behind the now swaying monk, looked about as far from excited
as one could get. She said something and almost immediately the monk
dropped to his knees. For a moment Siileyman thought that he had been
shot. Then he remembered about the snakes. They were no longer in
the monk's hands.
Someone screamed and Edibe Taner, the armed constable still at her

side, shouted something into the air. But whatever she said had little
effect upon the people in the courtyard and the garden, who were running
as far away as they could from where the monk had fallen. It wasn't
until almost a minute had passed that anyone, including Siileyman,
realised that Seckin Taner now had a viper in each hand and was holding
them aloft for all to see. He was smiling and, though restrained, the two
serpents seemed to be comfortable enough in his company. His daughter,
now down on the ground beside the monk, was calling for help. A
balding man of about fifty and Siileyman himself ran over. As he passed
Seckin Taner he saw that the Master of Sharmeran was placing the
snakes back in the box they had come from.
'Dr Kozlu,' Edibe Taner said to the balding man in Turkish, 'he just
collapsed.'
The doctor took the monk's thin wrist between his fingers and then
looked at his watch. But Siileyman could see that the monk was, if very
shallowly, breathing.
'I thought he'd been shot,' he blurted as Edibe Taner regarded her
friend with great concern.
She ignored him. 'Doctor .. .'
'Well, he has a pulse,' the doctor said. 'Just collapsed. But from the
state of him I'd reckon he's probably dehydrated.' He took a mobile
phone out of the pocket of his jacket and switched it on. 'I'll admit him
to the hospital.'
'He'll be all right, won't he, Doctor?' Edibe Taner asked. But Dr Kozlu
was too busy on the phone to answer her. She looked down at the monk's
face and, with tears in her eyes, said something to him in Aramaic. All
around people were gathering to see what had happened to their saint.
But now more police officers had come into the grounds and they were
holding a lot of the people back.
When she finally did manage to speak to anyone apart from the monk,
Edibe Taner said to Siileyman, 'The American woman's guard is Ibrahim
Keser. Ibrahim Keser, Uncle Musa's neighbour. Gabriel was goading
him. Accusing him! Inspector, will you make sure that Keser doesn't
leave the church, please?'
Siileyman said he would. However, search as he might, he couldn't

find Keser, Elizabeth Smith or any of her other guards anywhere. He
ran out on to Avenue One to see whether a large truck was still parked
by the pavement. But it wasn't.

Sophia the Bulgarian girl was almost certainly not a regular churchgoer.
But pregnant and alone in a foreign country she would in all probability,
Ay§e felt, make an exception for the Easter service.
The church where the Bulgarian and Macedonian community in
Istanbul worship is called St Stephen of the Bulgars. Situated in the old
Greek quarter of Fener it stands in a small iron-fenced park beside the
southern shore of the Golden Horn. It is a unique building in that it is
constructed entirely of prefabricated cast-iron sections. Cast in Vienna,
it was floated down the Danube and then erected piece by piece in Fener
in 1871. An ornate, heavily ornamented building in the neo-Gothic style,
St Stephens is, to those unaccustomed to it, an oddity. As Ay§e Farsakoglu
walked past those members of the congregation leaving the church she
looked around the dark and in places rusted interior with some curiosity
but not very high hopes. Although Orthodox ceremonies did go on sometimes
for many hours it was late and she imagined that Sophia had
probably returned to wherever she was living now. But she was proved
wrong. At the back of the church, underneath a particularly dark
and rusted ornamental niche, sat the girl, seemingly lost in thought.
'Sophia?'
She looked up and Ay§e saw that her eyes were very sore and red
looking. She said nothing, so Ay§e sat down beside her and offered her
a tissue from her handbag. Clearly the girl had been crying, but there
was no need to state the obvious.
'Sophia, we need to talk,' Ay§e said, after a pause during which the
girl blew her nose loudly.
'What about?' Her voice was thick with both phlegm from what
sounded like a cold and misery.
'About Asian.'
'Piece of shit who did . . .' Sophia shook her head and then looked
up into the roof of the building and said, 'I am sorry to the God! Sorry!
Sorry!'

'Sophia
The girl got up and walked out of the church. Ay§e, following, stayed
silent until Sophia stopped at the top of the steps up to the building and
said, 'Sorry. I cannot be in church and say bad words.'
'That's OK, I understand,' Ay§e said. And then, aware that other
worshippers were looking at them, she said, 'Sophia, come on, let's sit
on one of the benches in the garden.'
It was a lovely day and the girl shrugged her agreement easily enough.
Waddling down the steps and into the garden she looked as if she were
about to give birth any minute. Once they had found an appropriate
bench the two women sat down, Sophia with some difficulty.
'Doctor says baby is big,' she said as she plonked herself down with
a grunt. 'Blood pressure is bad, so I will be glad when baby comes.'
'I'm sure you will,' Ay§e said with a smile. It was not ideal to be
talking about things that Sophia obviously found difficult in the final
stages of her pregnancy, but Ay§e really didn't have any choice.
'Asian ...'
'Shit!' Sophia put her hand into the pocket of her dress and took out
a packet of cigarettes. Not a good idea, as Ay§e knew, in pregnancy, but
she let it go. It was not, after all, strictly her business. 'Last night he
come after so long! I say if he think he can have baby he can fuck off!'
Ay§e felt her face colour at this news. So Bekir ikmen had been to
see his very pregnant and now rapidly smoking girlfriend.
'Do you know where he had been?'
'Been? No. Has gone now.'
'Gone where?'
Sophia shrugged. 'He say there is a lot of trouble. I say, did you kill
Hiiseyin? He get very angry, say no, say he just have to go away.'
'Sophia,' Ay§e asked, 'did Asian stay with you last night?'
'Yes,' the girl said, 'sure. He wants the sex but I say no because I
am like elephant. I give him blow job.'
'Ah.' Some of the eastern European girls were very frank, and although
no prude by any means, Ay§e was sometimes a little bit shocked if she
were honest. Also, although Sophia didn't yet know it, the man she was
talking about was actually Ay§e's boss's son.

1

'He leave this morning,' Sophia said. 'I say him he go this time, he
go for good! But he go!' She shrugged her arms wide and sniffed. 'Fuck
off. He won't see baby. I will not permit. Fuck off to him!'
In Ay§e's experience Asian had always been a shit, which made
equating him with the close and loving ikmen family so hard. When
Ikmen had said that he wanted to help Sophia he had meant it. He knew
she was a foul-mouthed, former (possibly) junkie. How different the
father was from the son! If any revelations were to be made, however,
that was for ikmen and him alone to do.
'Sophia,' Ay§e said, 'do you remember Inspector ikmen, the man I
introduced to you the other day?'
'Your boss?'
'Yes.'
Sophia shrugged.
'He'd like to speak to you, about Asian,' Ay§e said. 'It's all right - he
won't ask you lots and lots of questions. I think you've told us probably
all we need to know. But he would like to talk to you. I've got my car
with me if you don't feel up to walking.'

Izzet Melik literally jumped out of his seat when ikmen entered his
office.
'Sir, I have the administrator of the Cerrahpa§a downstairs,' he blurted.
'He's a junkie, sir. I suspected before, but--'
'So if he's a junkie, what of it?' ikmen said. 'Did you find heroin in
his office?'
'No, but'
'Then why is he here?' ikmen asked. 'We have Dr Eldem who might
or might not have killed the guard Ramazan Eren. Do you have reason
to believe that the administrator was in on that with him?'
'Well, no, not directly, but junkies are very vulnerable as we know,
sir, and if this plot involving Kaya did indeed go right through the
institution ...'
'We don't know that it did.'
izzet Melik knew of course about ikmen's son Bekir and he was
aware that the inspector had also just come from Ardic's office, so it

was understandable that he was subdued. However, he had thought
that ikmen was in all probability at least willing to run with his notion
of something big involving Kaya and drugs and maybe the deal of a
lifetime.
'The administrator has, by the look of him, a very big habit,' izzet
said, his eyes shining with his need to go with this. What of course
he couldn't tell ikmen was that the administrator had tried to bribe
him. By offering to 'forget' about the slap the policeman had given
him in return for backing up his story about knowing nothing about
Yusuf Kaya, he had attempted to pervert izzet's investigation. But izzet
had slapped him, and even though he had done so to force the administrator
to do what he did, it was still not something the sergeant wanted
to own up to. After all, as a means to an end it had been both clumsy
and desperate.
ikmen sighed. The interview with Ardic hadn't been easy. His superior
had been sympathetic to his situation and believed that ikmen had
been unaware of his son's alter ego, Asian. But Ardic was also urging
ikmen to exercise caution. He had accepted that if Kaya had indeed
escaped when he did for a criminal, drug-related reason, then people
both high and low in the hospital and in the prison could be involved.
However, because of ikmen's 'involvement' via Bekir and the possibility
that that could soon be public knowledge made Ardic tell ikmen
to tread softly. He then issued instructions instigating a full search for
Bekir ikmen plus a warrant for his arrest. At the very least he had given
illegal drugs to Ikmen's son Kemal, a minor.
'Sir,' izzet continued, 'I know you think, as I do, that Kaya's escape
is about much more than just his freedom. So much money must have
been either handed over or promised to make what happened possible.
And even if money didn't change hands then promises were made and
I think they must have been big promises. Sir, Mr Oner, the current
administrator's predecessor who gave jobs to Lole and Oz and underwrote
Mardin's questionable work record, killed himself for some reason.
He was solvent, married with children, no mistresses or creditors as far
as I can see. Why did he do that if he wasn't either guilty about something
he'd already done, or scared about what was about to happen on

his watch? Or was he indeed killed by someone else because maybe he
was weak and unreliable?'
'izzet!'
Melik was getting carried away now and, although ikmen agreed with
a lot of what he was saying, he could not force his investigation onward
using only circumstantial evidence. He also, as Ardic had been quick
to point out, had to consider his own rather delicate position now.
'izzet, I will talk to the administrator,' he said. 'But I don't think that
I can yet prove that all these people are actually involved in any sort
of conspiracy. Dr Eldem we know was packing to leave when we picked
him up, and Constable Roditi is minutely examining the hospital drug
records as we speak. But we - well, I - you know that my son could
possibly be part of this. I--'
His mobile phone began to ring. With a sigh he took it out of his
pocket and said, 'ikmen.'
What izzet saw then was a change in his superior's already grave
expression. His face dropped and then he put one of his hands over the
telephone and said to izzet, 'I'm sorry, a personal call. Would you mind?'
He pointed towards the office door. 'I'll be with you when I can, izzet.'
izzet Melik left and ikmen took his hand away from the phone. 'Where
the hell are you?' he hissed. 'And why did you leave one of your filthy
syringes in the bedroom I so generously let you use? Do you hate us
all so much?'
On the other end of the line, Bekir sniffed. 'No I don't hate you. I
used you, yes. I needed to be somewhere where no one would even
think of looking for me. Not even Hiiseyin knew where I came from
and so being with you was OK. The syringe? Dad, I'll be honest: I'd¦
found a bigger bag underneath the bed that was much more suitable.
So I put all my stuff in there and then I needed to get high and so I
threw my used works in the old bag. Doesn't matter to me now that
you know I'm still on the gear.'
'I never thought you were off "the gear",' ikmen said. 'Your mother,
however, was and is another matter. And Kemal ...'
'Little monster caught me jacking up so I gave him a few lines of coke
to shut him up,' Bekir said as if what he was saying was something of

absolutely no importance. 'You and Mum have spoilt that boy. He's a vile
brat.'
'Where the hell are you?'
Bekir laughed. 'Dad, I am away,' he said. 'Things haven't worked
out quite as I had hoped, and--'
'What do you mean, things haven't worked out as you had hoped?'
'You'll see,' Bekir said lightly. 'I imagine that because you're such
a good police officer, such a good man, the whole country is looking
for me now. You won't find me.'
'Why'
'Because that's what it's all about, Dad,' Bekir said: 'routes. Routes
in, routes out, routes for the movement of whatever you may want.'
'Bekir, what was the drug dealer Yusuf Kaya to you? What--'
'Goodbye, Dad, and thanks for the free food and board.'
There was a sharp click and the connection descended into a low,
dead whine. For a few seconds Ikmen attempted in vain to try to find
the number from which his son had called, but it had been withheld.
Strictly, of course, he should have at least tried to record the call, but
he hadn't. What however Bekir had told him, if indirectly, was that he
was leaving the country. Routes in and routes out, routes for anything
a person may want...
ikmen jumped to his feet, opened his office door and ran back down
the corridor towards Ardic's office.

Looking at Edibe Taner sitting beside Gabriel Saatci's hospital bed was
like watching a middle-aged married couple try to cope with sudden,
catastrophic sickness. The arm not attached to the glucose and saline
drip that was now beginning to revive the monk was pressed against
the side of Edibe Taner's face. From time to time she would move her
head to kiss his brown, parched flesh. The inspector was not, Siileyman
knew, married. Maybe Gabriel Saatci was the reason behind that? If
Taner was, as seemed more than possible, in love with him, maybe other
men had never stood a chance. But he had chosen God. Whether he had
chosen God over Edibe Taner, Suleyman did not know. What was clear
to see, however, was that there was a great affection and understanding
between these two.
'Oh, Inspector Siileyman,' she said when she saw him. 'Come and
sit with us.'
There was a chair already beside hers and he went and sat on that.
As he did so she said something to the monk in Aramaic.
'I've just told Gabriel that we must speak in Turkish,' she said. 'You
need to know what has been happening, Inspector Suleyman.'
He looked over at the monk, who smiled. For a contemporary of
Taner's he had aged badly. But then that was probably in part due to
the harshness of his vocation. Brother Seraphim had told him that no
one prayed harder or fasted more rigorously than Brother Gabriel. All
the lines and dryness on his face aside, Suleyman could see why his
colleague might find so much in this man to be in love with. The huge,
upward-slanting green eyes were part of it, as were the plump if rather
pale lips. The greater portion of his allure, however, was the facility he
seemed to have, without effort, of holding one's attention. As soon as

those eyes were on someone's face it was as if that person and only that
person existed for Gabriel Saatci. Siileyman felt genuinely and almost
hypnotically drawn to this man.
'Inspector Siileyman,' the monk said in his deep, dark voice. 'The
man from Istanbul.'
'Yes.' He smiled. 'Brother Gabriel, I have been looking forward to
meeting you.'
'Have you?' The monk frowned. 'Looking forward to seeing how the
snakes cannot kill me?'
'No.'
'I was,' he said with yet another of his sudden glittering smiles. 'I
was telling Edibe that was what the days and weeks have been about.
Preparing myself.'
And then he looked away from Siileyman and smiled up at Edibe
Taner. Returning his smile, she said, 'Gabriel prayed and fasted in the
caves and the mountains. To God to give him strength and courage and
to the Sharmeran to assure her that he would never harm her children.'
'When Christ rose I knew I was ready,' he said. 'I gathered the serpents
and I came down the mountain.'
'OK, but why? Why do something, or rather replicate something, that
Inspector Taner told me you did many years ago?'
There was a pause then while the monk looked at Siileyman as if he
didn't understand what he had been saying.
After a while it was Edibe Taner who explained. 'Inspector
Siileyman, Gabriel did what he did to clear his name. Ibrahim Keser,
the guard of the American woman I told you to go and try to find
at the church, lives next door to Gabriel's father. He and his family
came from the plains when Ibrahim was an infant. Ibrahim Keser says
that he saw Gabriel's miracle of the snakes out in the desert when he
was a child. He says he spied upon the attack, saw everything and then
followed Gabriel as he made his way, pouring with blood and venom,
back into the city.'
'And is this true?'
'Ibrahim Keser was certainly behind Gabriel when he came into
Mardin,' Taner said. 'But he said nothing about seeing anything untoward,

either as a child or even later on in his life. But then a few months ago
he went to Musa Saatci and told him that he wanted him to do a favour
for him.'
'He asked my father to conceal some weapons for him in his house,'
Gabriel Saatci said. 'My father of course refused. Ibrahim had never
been, as far as my father knew, involved with any terrorist organisation.
But there was a connection to the Kaya family and they are not people
to become involved with. But then Ibrahim threatened my father. He
said that if my father didn't do as he said he would tell everyone that
what he saw me do with the snakes in the desert was nothing more than
a parlour trick. I was, he said, a charlatan.'
'And so your father did as he asked in order to protect you, or rather
your reputation.'
'Yes. I know that the miracle I was granted truly happened,' Gabriel
said. 'I also know that many of my people take comfort from that
proof of God's love. These are nervous times. Our people do not need
uncertainties.'
'Uncle Musa didn't tell Gabriel about any of this until after the arms
had been discovered and he was at the police station,' Taner said.
'I went to the mountains to pray and to gain strength because I knew
that the only way I could defeat Ibrahim was to let the serpents have
me again,' the monk said. 'My father would not countenance just going
to the police and telling them about the blackmail. I had to prove myself
and then reveal the story behind my actions afterwards. But. . . but I
failed'
'You didn't fail anything!' Edibe Taner said as she once again gripped
hard on to his arm. 'I was trying to stop you and then you collapsed.
You were very dehydrated, Gabriel.'
'My father will be furious I didn't manage to do what we had agreed.'
He coughed a little and then took a sip of water from a small glass
beside his bed.
'But I am glad,' Taner said. 'Not because I think the snakes would
have harmed you, I know that they would not. But now I can release
Uncle Musa.'
'Father will say there is now a shadow over my vocation ...'

'No. He won't. He won't!' She reached up and very tenderly touched
his eyes and his lips with her fingers. 'He will know as I do that it
was the will of Allah that you collapsed and through the good offices
of the Sharmeran that my father was there to take good care of her
children.'
They looked into each other's eyes as if no one else existed in the
world. These two, if a long time ago, had been meant for each other.
The monk had given up much to follow his God. Siileyman cleared his
throat after a moment and Edibe Taner looked round.
'So, Inspector,' he said, 'the arms.'
'Whose are they? We don't know,' she said. 'Ibrahim Keser didn't
tell Musa Saatci anything.'
'But because he works for the Kay a family it would seem reasonable
to assume that they are--'
'Maybe. But Keser doesn't work for Yusuf Kaya's family in the city,
remember. He is employed to look after the American woman.'
'And so?'
'And so Zeynep Kaya or even Yusuf's own mother herself may not
know anything about them,' she said. 'The weapons came from Ibrahim
Keser, remember, based out at Dara. Now I know that Zeynep knows
about the American woman, but it is my belief that it is Elizabeth Smith
and not Zeynep who knows where Yusuf is.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Because Yusuf is a man of "honour",' she said, rolling her eyes at
the irony inherent in the term as she did so. 'I don't believe he would
put his wife, his mother and his family in the city in harm's way. The
American woman is expendable. The arms came via one of his men in
Dara, where she is.'
'Were there many weapons?' Stileyman asked.
Edibe Taner frowned. 'There were ten AK-47 assault rifles, two crates
of grenades and a rocket launcher. It would be a good haul from a terror
organisation. From a clan it is impressive.'
'Who were they hoping to attack with so much hardware?'
Edibe Taner sighed. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Hopefully we will find
out more when we pick up Ibrahim Keser. A group of our officers are

joining up with the small local force in Dara right now. With luck, by
the time the day is over we'll have Keser in custody.'

Ikmen really wasn't ready to tell Sophia that he was the father of her
boyfriend Asian. He said he just wanted to help. She was pregnant and
alone and he was concerned about her.
But Sophia wasn't convinced. 'What is it you want?' she said when
he offered to find her a clean and safe place to stay. 'You want fuck
me? What is about you Turkish men and pregnant women?'
He tried to convince her that he was not in any way after her body,
but she wouldn't believe him. And so eventually he told her the truth.
'My wife doesn't even know about this yet,' he said to the girl as
she sat stunned before him in his office. 'But Sophia, when she does
she will want to help as much as I do.'
'You want my baby! Cannot have,' Sophia growled darkly. Years on
the streets had made any notion of trust absolutely alien to her.
ikmen sat on the edge of his desk next to her and sighed. 'No,' he
said, 'I don't want your baby. But I do want to help. I don't know of
course precisely where you live, Sophia, but I know it is in Edirnekapi.
I went to Hiiseyin Altun's place up there, just the once, some years ago
and so I think I know how you might be living.'
She turned her head away.
'Sergeant Farsakoglu tells me you have a doctor, but I know many
doctors who will really care for you.' Junkies and those associated with
them did frequently have access to doctors, some of whom were the
types of practitioners only just on the right side of the law. 'I know
some very good doctors,' he said. 'My family will pay your costs and
I can find you somewhere decent to live, at least for the moment. This
isn't charity, Sophia, this is making up in part for what my son has done
to you.'
He told her to think about it while he went off to join izzet Melik in
one of the interview rooms with the hospital administrator. The man
now had one of the Cerrahpa§a's own lawyers with him, a nondescript
man in a grey suit, ikmen sat down and looked at the piece of paper
izzet Melik passed to him. For several seconds he just read it in silence.

Then he put the paper down and looked up into the small grey eyes of
the administrator, Mr Aktar. He had a rather bruised split lip.
'This is a letter of resignation for your employers, not me,' ikmen
said, tipping his head towards the paper on the table.
'Now that your officer has ... discovered my addiction, I feel that, given
that my job is to do with health care, I cannot continue,' Mr Aktar said.
His lawyer nodded his agreement.
'So what will you do then, Mr Aktar?' ikmen said. 'What's the career
plan now? You're not ready for retirement yet, I imagine. I believe you
have dependents.'
'Yes.'
'Inspector ikmen, Mr Aktar is as you can see willing to own up to
his addiction,' the lawyer said. 'He has not done anything criminal with
regard to care of patients at the Cerrahpaga. In addition, he is alleging
that a level of police brutality was used upon him by your officer here,
Sergeant Melik.'
ikmen looked briefly at Melik, knowing with certainty that what the
lawyer was saying was absolutely correct, izzet had ideas about this
case and was out to prove them whatever. Back in his home city of
izmir there had been some complaints about izzet Melik. But any discussions
about that would have to come later, ikmen said, 'The constable
who was with Sergeant Melik when he was interviewing Mr Aktar at
the Cerrahpa§a assures me that nothing beyond the tearing of his own
shirtsleeve by your client in what I imagine must have been a fit of
remorse occurred.' He hadn't actually spoken to the constable in question
but he knew that in all probability that was what Melik had told
him to say. 'Mr Aktar, this is not about you just handing in your resignation
at work and all this goes away,' he said. He looked over at the
lawyer. 'As administrator of your hospital Mr Aktar is ultimately responsible
for what happens in it. So far a prisoner has escaped from your
institution, probably with the help of Cerrahpa§a nurses. The only
surviving witness to that event died, in suspicious circumstances, whilst
under the care of one of your doctors. We have that doctor in our custody
right now.' He leaned forward into Mr Aktar's now lightly sweating
face. 'You know, he looks as afraid, if not more so, as you. What or


who are you afraid of? Is it the escaped prisoner, Yusuf Kaya? Did he
threaten to kill you if you didn't agree to help him? Or is it much more
selfish than that? Did Yusuf buy you with heroin?'
'No! No, I'
'Stole it from your employers?' ikmen said. 'A hospital is a wonderful
place for a junkie to work, isn't it? My own drug of choice is tobacco.
It would be like me working in a cigarette factory.'
'I didn't steal from my employers!' Mr Aktar said. 'Never!'
'So where did you get your heroin from?' izzet Melik asked.
'I can't tell you that! You know I can't tell you that!'
'We can search your house,' ikmen said with a shrug. 'I know we'll
find some there, we're bound to. As for where it came from, if you
don't tell us, we will ask around. We know a lot of people who know
people . . .'
'Ask around!' Mr Aktar said defiantly. 'It'll do you no good!'
He was afraid, ikmen could see it very clearly in his face.
'Mr Aktar,' he said, 'you should know that if my officers find
heroin at your home, I will have the right to detain you here for
further questioning.'
Aktar looked over at his lawyer who simply said, 'He can do that.'
Mr Aktar looked back at ikmen but said nothing.
After a pause, ikmen said, 'It's my belief that you are probably even
more afraid than I can imagine, Mr Aktar. All I can say is that I know
that drug dealers, Yusuf Kaya included, are violent and dangerous people
who will slaughter entire families to get what they want. But you know
we can provide protection ...' He saw Aktar's face briefly break into a
small, thin smile. 'But whatever you may think of that, the fact remains
that unless you decide to cooperate with us, you could be here for some
considerable amount of time. Note, Mr Aktar, that we don't allow drug
taking on our premises, and think for just a moment about how long
you can normally manage between fixes before you start wanting to
climb up the wall.'
The administrator didn't appear to respond at all except that when
he spoke his voice was obviously strained. 'What about my allegation
of police brutality?' he said.

'What about it?' Ikmen replied. Then he leaned forward again and
said, 'Now, Mr Aktar, are my officers going to search your house or
not?'

'Ibrahim Keser was not either in or around the house in Dara,' Edibe
Taner said with a sigh as she put her phone back in her bag. 'The
American woman told our officers she hadn't seen him since the Easter
service. They're hiding him somewhere.' She sat down on the low wall
in front of the hospital, where Siileyman joined her. He, at least, had
only been in the hospital for just over half an hour but the sky was
already dark. Such a long and tiring Easter Day! In all the madness he
had even forgotten to wish his wife a happy Easter. Not that Zelfa was
a religious woman and cared about such things, but she was nominally a
Catholic and so he should have phoned to send his good wishes anyway.
But at that moment there was something else, something rather more
immediate, troubling him.
'Inspector,' he said, 'if the people of Mardin believe so passionately
in Gabriel's miracle, why was his father so afraid that the word of just
one person could discredit his son?'
'Inspector Siileyman,' she replied, 'you are a sophisticated man from
Istanbul. Even the languages you speak are sophisticated. French and
English! Allah, those people don't even have a notion of clan or the
power of one's neighbours or ...'
'I think they do,' Siileyman said, 'but maybe in a way that is perhaps
unfamiliar to people in a place like this. In Istanbul there are certainly
clans.'
'Inspector, here, what a man's neighbours believe about him, about
his sons and about the honour of his daughters, can affect his whole
life! Sometimes men can even kill because of the opinions of others.'
'You mean so-called "honour" killings?'
'Where a girl is murdered by her relatives because some meddlesome
or envious neighbour impugns her good name? Of course!' Taner said.
'Some vicious, bitter old hag takes it into her head that some teenage
child is no longer a virgin and the poor girl is strangled by her own
brother or father. There was no truth in the allegation. The old hag didn't


even really know the kid, only by sight. But that is enough, that is
plenty.'
'So Brother Gabriel
'Ibrahim Keser is a liar. But he was undoubtedly behind Gabriel when
he returned from the desert all those years ago. Everyone saw him.
Minimal contact but again, enough. This is a small place, Inspector, a
small poor place where people have very little of value. Their beliefs
and their honour are very precious to them. But our lifestyle here is
brittle because it is so old. Our beliefs and customs are threatened and
made thin by a present that very few, including myself, can really understand.
And so if someone might have deceived them, or they only perceive
that as being the case, it can be serious. People can and do die over
what you may consider such non-problems.'
The mobile telephone in her handbag began to ring and she took it
out and answered it. The call could, Siileyman knew, be either business
or personal and so, because he didn't want to intrude were it the
latter, he drifted back into his own thoughts. On the face of it Mardin
seemed very different from Istanbul. For a start, with the exception of
a couple of the restaurants and hotels, there was no discernible night
life in the city. Few places served alcohol, and as soon as night fell the
city was, as far as he could tell, pretty much shut for business. There
were certain quarters of Istanbul, the religious district of Faith for
instance, that were like that. But the centre of the city was a twentyfour-hour
riot of activity and life. All of that, however, was at a very
surface level. Deeper within the life of Istanbul there were, he knew, uncomfortable similarities. Honour killing was not unknown and, on a
far more mundane level, people cared about the opinions of others,
sometimes to a ridiculous degree. His mother, for instance, still told
her friends, even her lifelong bridge partner, that her son Mehmet's
wife was exactly the same age as he, even though Zelfa was twelve
years his senior. His mother's friend was not a stupid woman and had
eyes in her head that had to inform her that what her friend Mrs Suleyman
was telling her was a lie. But the old woman had never, Mehmet
Suleyman knew in his soul, even hinted that she thought her friend
might be mistaken. It wasn't done.

'Inspector?'
He turned to where Edibe Taner was sitting with her mobile phone
cradled in her lap. Her conversation had obviously come to an end.
'Do you remember the Jandarma captain we met in Birecik, Captain
Erdur?' she asked. Her face looked suddenly small and crushed. Siileyman
frowned.
'Yes? Has something happened to him?'
'No.' She breathed in deeply and then spoke on a rush of breath as
if she wanted or needed her words to be over with as soon as possible.
'The body he and his men pulled out of the Euphrates when we were
there wasn't an American soldier, it was Yusuf Kaya.'
'What? What!' He could hardly take it in. 'No. It was in a uniform
and'
'Inspector,' she said, 'the Americans tested the body. It was not one
of their men. The DNA sample taken apparently by a doctor in Urfa
matched exactly the sample taken from Kaya by yourselves in Istanbul.
The dead body in the Euphrates belongs to Yusuf Kaya.'
Literally speechless now, Mehmet Siileyman simply sat.
'Someone must have put him in an American uniform,' Taner
continued. 'Obviously the face was taken off to disguise his identity.
According to the captain, the Americans are very worried by the fact
that someone clearly from or based in this country could take the clothes
and identity discs of one of their servicemen in Iraq. We all know, or
those of us who are realistic know, that there is movement across the
border, but this particular incident is unprecedented.'
'I've been chasing a dead man,' Siileyman said. 'For the last I don't
know how long, I've been chasing a dead man!'
'The doctor in Urfa reckoned that Kaya probably died only shortly
before his body was dumped in the Euphrates,' Taner said. 'He also told
the captain that in his opinion Kaya's body hadn't been in the river for
more than five or six hours before it was found. You started off chasing
a live man, Inspector.'
He looked at her very hard for a moment and then he said, 'You are sure, aren't you?'
'I have the captain's word. Why would he lie?' Taner said. 'This isn't


his area. He didn't know Yusuf Kaya. The DNA from the body in the
river matches exactly that which is held in Istanbul.'
There was another short pause before Siileyman took his telephone
out of his jacket pocket and said, 'I must tell my colleagues in Istanbul.'

What woke Zeynep Kaya was no more than a click. If it had not been
followed by a long sigh from the sleeping child next to her, it probably
wouldn't have woken her. But exhausted by grief though she was, when
it came to one of her children being disturbed, she instantly went on to
the alert.
'Tayyar?' she whispered to the child beside her. 'Are you all right?'
He didn't make a sound. Poor baby, to learn that his daddy had been
killed at such a tender age! The police had been with them for hours,
that unnatural cousin of hers telling them all that Yusuf wouldn't ever
be coming back.
'Tayyar?'
She put a hand up to his mouth and felt absolutely nothing. Zeynep's
heart jumped to her throat just as she felt something move in the early
morning shadows on the other side of her bed. Caught between a child
who was not breathing and something or someone in the shadows who
could mean her harm, she said, 'Who's there? What do you want?'
Surprisingly the voice that replied was familiar and, she had thought,
friendly.
'Tayyar is dead,' it said. 'Just like you.'
And then there was another click and Zeynep felt a raging pain in
her chest. As she lay dying she saw through the open bedroom door one
of her daughters fall over the balcony and into the courtyard below as
a bullet, from somewhere, took her life away.

That morning was a lot warmer in Istanbul than the weather forecaster
on the television said it was in Mardin. The south-east, apparently, was
even under slight risk of snow. Cetin ikmen, who had been awake for
much of the previous night, was however as cold as he imagined he
would have been in Mardin. Yusuf Kaya was dead! He still couldn't
really believe it. But Arto Sarkissian had quickly confirmed Siileyman's
story and so it was certainly true. Who had killed Kaya and why were
still mysteries, cloaked as they were in the gruesome details that
surrounded the disposal of his body. Clearly it had not been sent down
the river from Iraq to its final resting place in Birecik. The American
owner of the ID tags had apparently been killed just outside Baghdad.
Somehow his tags and maybe even his uniform had ended up on Kaya's
body in Turkey where, it was reckoned, the drug dealer had been killed.
So the hunt for Yusuf Kaya was off. The hunt for whoever had helped
him to escape and had killed to do so was still however very much on
- as was the search for Kaya's own murderer. Monstrous though Yusuf
Kaya had been, whoever had killed him had done so for a reason which,
if ikmen was correct, was almost certainly drug-related. Someone as yet
unknown was making a bid for Yusuf's property. In the meantime the
Cerrahpa§a administrator, Mr Aktar, was still in the cells at police headquarters.
A considerable quantity of narcotics had been found in the
garage of his rather nice house in Kumkapi and, as ikmen looked down
at his watch now, he wondered how Aktar was feeling after a whole
night without access to heroin. It was only five a.m., but he imagined
the administrator was still up. ikmen's wife Fatma certainly was. As she
came into the living room he thought about pretending to be asleep but
decided that it was probably best not to try to deceive her. She had been

deceived quite enough by Bekir, whose potential child he had only told
her about less than an hour ago. It hadn't been easy.
'So this girl, this Sophia,' she began.
'When I came back from the interview room she had gone,' ikmen
said, referring to the fact that Sophia the pregnant Bulgarian girl had
walked out of his office and disappeared the previous afternoon. 'I
offered help, she appeared to be thinking about it, but then she disappeared.
Fatma, we can only help her if she wants to be helped.'
Fatma looked outraged. 'She is carrying our grandchild! Don't you
care about that?'
'Well, of course I--'
'You are a policeman! Look for her!'
'Fatma!'
'£etin, this is our grandchild!' Fatma said with tears in her eyes. 'I
know that you don't care about Bekir, but you have to care about his
child! The child is innocent!'
ikmen lit up a cigarette and then leaned forward in his chair. 'Fatma,'
he said, 'our son Bekir is a wanted man. When caught he will go to
prison. This Sophia, his girlfriend, is an illegal immigrant who has sold
her body on the streets. She is also, she says, an ex-heroin user. She
may still be taking the stuff; junkies do lie, as we know. Of course I
want to find her and try to protect that baby of hers. But it isn't easy.'
'Yes, but'
'Fatma, I will try, it's all I can do!'
She knew it was pointless to keep on at him about it and so she asked
him whether he'd like a glass of tea. When he said he would, she left
for the kitchen. Love her as he did, ikmen was glad when Fatma went
out because then, to a certain extent, he could relax. Alone, at least he
could think his own thoughts, and they were most certainly focused on
Mr Aktar. What was he going to be like after over twelve hours without
heroin? And, maybe even more interesting, how was he going to respond
to the news about the death of Yusuf Kaya?

Siileyman looked down at the photograph of Bekir ikmen that pounds tin had
faxed over to the Mardin station the night before. He'd never actually



met or even seen Bekir, but he could tell from the image before him that
he was most certainly a member of the ikmen clan. He definitely had
some of his father's features and, by the sound of him, he had Cretin's
sharp intelligence too - albeit in a rather more toxic form.
'This is your wanted man?' Edibe Taner said as she looked over his
shoulder at the image in his hands.
'Bekir ikmen, my colleague's son,' Siileyman replied. 'Although we
don't know, we think he may have had some connection to Yusuf Kaya.'
'I've never seen him before.'
'I doubt he's ever been here,' Siileyman said. 'Back home he was a
"soldier" for a local beggar king and small time dealer called Hiiseyin
Altun. If he was connected to Kaya he may come here, if he thinks
Yusuf's still alive. Or he may just come because we're near the border
and he is, after all, on the run now.'
Edibe Taner sighed. 'It's horrible to be betrayed by a member of your
family. Inspector ikmen has my sympathy.' Then she picked her handbag
up off her desk and said, 'Are you ready?'
'Yes.'
He wasn't really. In the wake of the call from Birecik, both he and
Taner had spent much of the night informing Kaya's family about his
death. Their grief, especially that of his mother and his wife Zeynep,
had been terrible. The women particularly kept on and on about his
body and how they wanted it immediately for burial. The twenty-four
hour deadline, of course, had already passed, and getting the body to
the family from the hospital in Urfa was still going to take some time.
This only added to their distress which was in sharp contrast to the cold,
dry grief they saw at the house in Dara later. Elizabeth Smith did not
react with anything more than a hard swallow when Edibe Taner told
her what had been found in Birecik. She'd stood in the middle of her
wormwood-scented hall and hadn't spoken a word. When Taner had
told her that they would have to return in the morning to take a statement
from her, she had only just managed to nod her head in agreement. Now,
together with two constables who were going to scout round the area
for the still missing ibrahim Keser, they were going out to see Elizabeth
Smith once again.

'We will go briefly to Mardin Prison on the way back,' Taner said
as they set off, 'to see Musa Saatci. Maybe we can get him out. But I
can at least explain to him what has happened.'

'He's dead?'
'Yes,' Ikmen replied for the third time in quick succession. 'Yusuf
Kay a is most definitely dead.'
'Mm.' Mr Aktar was sweating but his pallor was deathly grey and
he was shivering. The Americans called this state 'cold turkey', ikmen
thought how very appropriate that term was in this situation. 'You're
sure it's him? You're sure he's--'
'Dead?' ikmen sighed. 'Yes.' Of course, telling suspects lies in order
to get them to offer up their guilt and that of others was not unknown
and he could understand why Mr Aktar was so suspicious. But the
administrator was also in the grip of such a wild need for heroin that
he was now totally and utterly paranoid. Not that officially any connection
between Kay a and Mr Aktar actually existed. He was where he was
because of drug offences related to his personal use. But the mention
of Yusuf Kaya's name now, given the state that Aktar was in, had added
significantly to his agitation.
'You know what I want, what I need now, and so you have me at a
disadvantage,' Aktar said as he rubbed his cold dry hands together to
generate warmth.
'Mr Aktar, this is a police station. I cannot give you heroin,' ikmen
said.
'I need to get out of here!' He got up, paced the room once and then
pointed down at ikmen. 'Your officer assaulted me! He split my lip! I
want my lawyer! Now!'
'Sir, if you want your lawyer, you can have your lawyer,' ikmen said.
'You are entitled to pursue an action regarding alleged police brutality ...'
Bloody izzet Melik! So keen to get a result he'd gone tearing back
to methods many had given up long ago and Ikmen personally had
always abhorred. He'd bawled him out once and, he imagined, Siileyman
would have his own thoughts on the matter when he returned from
Mardin. Of course izzet had been backed up by the constable who had

been with him at the Cerrahpa§a, but that didn't make what he had done
any more acceptable. Conversely it didn't exactly save Mr Aktar either.
And as he sat down in front of ikmen again, this time with tears in his
eyes, it was obvious that he knew it.
'Inspector ikmen, I am a weak man, I know that,' he said. 'I am not
a fool, however, and I know, as you do, that I would sell my soul to
Satan for some of my dear, vile drug now.'
ikmen lit a cigarette and then said, 'I know.'
Mr Aktar sighed. 'But I do love my wife and my two sons and
although I know that I have put them at risk both now and in the past,
I cannot subject them to real, actual harm.' He looked up into ikmen's
eyes and said, 'Do you know what I mean?'
He was trying to say something possibly about his involvement with
Kaya, but he was a junkie. Could what he was saying be trusted?
ikmen frowned. 'No, Mr Aktar, I do not,' he said. 'But why don't
you tell me?'
'Do you swear before Allah that Yusuf Kaya is dead?' Aktar said as
he leaned, sweating and panting, across the interview room table. 'Do
you swear it?'
He was clearly coming apart after his night without heroin. But was
what he was about to tell ikmen, if anything, the truth? There was only
one way to find out. ikmen raised his right hand. 'I swear.'
Aktar licked his lips once, looked over his shoulder at the absence
of anything except a wall behind him and said, 'Can I get out of here
afterwards?'
'Mr Aktar, that will depend upon what you are going to tell me,'
ikmen said.
Several moments passed before Aktar breathed in deeply just the once
and then said, 'It's called the Wormwood Route. It is, or was, going to
make us all very rich. Myself and Mr Oner were going to be set up for
life. Yusuf Kaya and Mr Oner were friends from way back. When Mr Oner
died the plan was already in place. I knew nothing about it or who, apart
from ourselves and Kaya, were involved until it happened. Kaya planned
it that way. He also told me that, apart from owning up to knowing him
or giving his location away, I was to give you whatever information you

asked me for. I was to protect no one but Kaya. He called me to tell me
specifically. He also wanted to assure me that I could have, come the day,
all the junk I could ever want. Only if I betrayed him would bad things
happen. If I betrayed him, he said, my wife and children would be raped
and murdered in front of my eyes. He'd said the same thing to Mr Oner,
his old friend. That was why he killed himself. He couldn't back out and
he knew he couldn't go through with it either. He didn't want his family
to die. He was half mad with desperation. You are sure, aren't you, Inspector
Ikmen, that Yusuf Kaya is dead?'

The front door of the house was open, but there was no one at home.
Siileyman and Taner went right through the building but found not one
living soul anywhere. There were signs, however, in what had to be or
have been the American woman's bedroom, that Elizabeth Smith was
probably on the move. Clothes from an open wardrobe were scattered
across an unmade bed, while someone had spilled a number of aspirin
tablets across the floor. Neither of the officers spoke. Occasionally one
or other of them would look out of a window at the constables searching
in and around the garden. But everything out there was quiet too.
After a while, and mainly because he just couldn't stand the silence
any longer, Siileyman said, 'She's gone.'
Edibe Taner stood still for just a moment, looked at him, and then
continued to go through a stack of papers on a table. Elizabeth Smith
had definitely said she would see the police in the morning. But she
wasn't anywhere to be seen and neither were her guards, keepers or
whatever the men who lived with her were called. Siileyman at least
had a creeping sense of something happening over which he was failing
to exercise control. It was not something pleasant.
They continued looking, playing the answerphone machine, reading
letters and notes in a kind of frozen fugue until eventually, and almost
mercifully from Siileyman's point of view, Taner's mobile phone began
to ring. She answered it and, although he couldn't make out a word of
what the person at the other end was saying, he could hear that he or
she was shouting. When Taner finally came off the phone her face was
white.

'We must get back to the city,' she said as she pushed the mobile
back into her bag and got her car keys out of her pocket. 'Something
terrible has happened.'

Constable Selahattin had never seen anything like it. He, like all Turkish
men, had served in the army and had seen action and violence. Since
he had been stationed in Mardin he had been witness to the aftermath
of gang and clan violence. But this was off the scale.
'They're all dead,' he said as he stood in the middle of the Kaya
family's courtyard. 'Five adults, including Kaya's wife and mother, and
eight kids. One was a baby.'
Tayyar, the two-year-old child had been called, Edibe Taner remembered.
Conceived she imagined on some visit home when Yusuf Kaya
was still free. She looked down at the splashes of blood that had settled
in the dust of the courtyard and fought to hold back her tears. Zeynep
had been a silly, weak and easily manipulated woman but she had once
been a Taner and Edibe was sorry that she and all her poor children
were dead. Even Yusuf Kaya's indulgent mother hadn't deserved to die.
'No one saw anything, of course,' Constable Selahattin added bitterly.
'Thirteen people are shot and no one sees or hears a thing.'
Ignoring the ire in his voice, Edibe Taner said, 'If they were all shot
as they slept then I expect the assailants used silencers.'
'There are several sets of footprints in the house,' Selahattin said as
he pulled himself and his emotions back to business once again.
'It would be difficult for one person to shoot thirteen even with a
silenced weapon,' Taner said. 'I'd like to know exactly how many sets
of footprints we have, please, Constable.'
'Madam.' He nodded his head.
Edibe Taner looked up at Siileyman. 'The scene will have to be forensically
examined. Whoever did this cannot have arrived too long after
we left last night. I can't see that the entrance has been forced.'
'No.' He waited until Selahattin had gone to join his fellows in the
family's bedrooms before he took Taner to one side. 'Inspector,' he said,
'we must follow up the American and her men.'
She frowned. 'You think they did this? Why?'

'How should I know?' He wanted to add that he didn't come from
the back of nowhere where people believed at least five impossible
things before breakfast as she did. But he just about managed to restrain
himself. What had happened wasn't her fault, but this mass slaughter
was so shocking and sickening that he had to get at least some of his
anger out of his system. 'All I know, Inspector, is that these people are
dead and Elizabeth Smith and her men are missing.'
'You don't think it could be some sort of power struggle, do you?'
she said. But before he could answer she saw something that made her
jerk up her head and run over to the entrance to the mansion. Siileyman
took the opportunity afforded by her temporary absence to think. With
someone as powerful and pervasive as Yusuf Kaya dead all kinds of
fault lines could open up in his family. Even Yusuf in prison had probably
had a kind of control, but Yusuf dead was just a void, an emptiness
which would either remain empty or be filled. He was wondering whether
any Kaya family members still remained alive and if so who when Taner
returned with her father, the Master of Sharmeran.
'My father would like to speak to you,' Inspector Taner said to
Siileyman in what amounted to an almost sulky tone. And then she leftI
to walk towards the stairs leading up to the family rooms on the first_
floor of the building.¦
Seckin Taner took Siileyman by the arm over to a far corner of the
courtyard. Once there he spoke in surprisingly good English. 'I am
speaking this language because not a great many people here can say
more than a few words in it,' he said. 'Inspector Siileyman, because of
who and what I am, people do not tell me so much of their lives, if you
know what I mean. I will not lie, and no one would dare try to silence
me so I know very little. But there are exceptions to this.'
'Mr Taner--'
'I tell you because I know you will use what I say with wisdom. You
are not involved,' Seckin Taner said. 'Inspector Suleyman, a person
known to me has told me that figures were seen coming out of this
house just before dawn. One of those figures was definitely Ibrahim
Keser. Apparently he had been staying with Bilqis Hanim and her family
since last night.'
1
'But we were here last night, Mr Taner,' Siileyman said. 'Telling the
family of Yusuf Kaya's death.'
'Then he was probably being hidden,' Seckin Taner said. 'He was
one of Yusuf's men. They would have trusted him.'
'Which would have allowed him to be here and possibly let others
in to kill them,' Siileyman said. 'But why? Why would he do that?'
The Master of Sharmeran shrugged. 'That I don't know,' he said.

I

'If it had been just a large amount of heroin then the idea that everyone
not absolutely key to the operation was expendable would not have been
worth the risks involved,' Mr Aktar said. 'The Wormwood Route is--'
'About getting heroin into the city amongst packets of wormwood
leaves,' Ikmen said. His face was dark, bitter at the thought of what he
had found in Bekir's rucksack. And the terrible boy hadn't even cared!
Holed up with his very convenient police officer father! Had Bekir helped
Yusuf Kaya to escape from the Cerrahpa§a, or from the prison? Had he
killed his old boss Hiiseyin Altun for that, that...
'No, it's more than that,' Mr Aktar said as he gulped greedily from
the bottle of oral morphine ikmen had requested for him from the police
station doctor. Already he'd drunk enough to knock over a camel, but
Mr Aktar was a junkie and so it just had the effect of making him calmer,
more 'normal'. 'The Wormwood Route is what it purports to be: a route,
a way in which, basically, heroin can get out of Afghanistan, through
Iraq and into this country.'
'So it's a mapped-out route, a safe route through friendly towns and
villages?'
'In part,' Mr Aktar said. 'I don't know the details. I was only interested
in the product, you understand. I was promised money but I wanted
my fix. That's it, that's . . .' He sighed. 'The Wormwood Route is more
than a map. It's also contacts, names, faces, drop-off points, bribable
border guards ... Apparently it took some years to organise and only
Yusuf Kaya, it was said, knew every detail of it. My predecessor Mr
Oner knew Yusuf Kaya as a child; they went to school together. He told
me before he died how ruthless Kaya was. He told me that he killed
the Russian Mafia boss, the one he was sent to prison for, because the

Russian had been competing for parts of the Wormwood Route. I should
have got out then. Gone. Where? I--'
'Mr Aktar,' ikmen said, 'are you sure that Kaya was the only person
to know the precise details of this route?'
'That is what Mr Oner said.'
ikmen sat back in his chair and briefly looked up at the ceiling. Kaya
was dead and so, possibly, if what Aktar had said was true, was the
Wormwood Route. But that was assuming that whoever killed Kaya
hadn't managed to get the information from him first. 'Mr Aktar - the
nurses, Lole, Mardin and Oz,' ikmen began.
'Oz, or whatever his real name was, was some relative of Yusuf Kaya.
Mr Oner knew him too,' Aktar said. 'Anyway, Mr Oner gave him a job.
Lole was a friend of Oz, but I knew nothing about him. Apparently his
name is Armenian and that was some sort of joke to Mr Oner, although
I never understood it myself.'
Lole, ikmen recalled, had been the name of Mardin's greatest architect.
Clearly a 'joke' only for those in the know.
'Whether Lole and 6z were recruited to help in Kaya's escape, if
they actually did, I don't know,' Mr Aktar said. 'But I have always been
suspicious about isak Mardin, the third nurse. Mr Oner took him on not
long before he ... before he died. They spoke a lot, Mr Oner and Mardin.
Maybe he was brought in for ... You have to understand my role was
to know nothing. Nothing!'
'And so Dr Eldem . . .'
'Did Dr Eldem kill the prison guard? I don't know,' Mr Aktar said.
'If he did then it was via an arrangement with Kaya that I know nothing
about. You have to understand, Inspector, that things like the Wormwood
Route are only secure so long as as few people as possible know exactly
what is going on. This route is worth billions of dollars! People die for
this thing!'
'We will provide you with protection.'
'What?' Mr Aktar laughed. 'You'll what? Inspector ikmen, with all
due respect, even with Kaya dead, your "men can't protect me. Half if
not more of the people involved in this will know of my existence at
least. They will know when someone talks. They'll have contacts in the


police. I could be shot dead leaving this station now. Not that it matters.'
He leaned forward across the table and frowned. 'Look after my family.
With Kaya gone they might stand a chance. But forget me. If they want
me dead for talking to you, that is what they will have. Save my wife
and children. They are innocent.'
Ikmen looked into the drug-hazed eyes of the administrator and then
gravely nodded his head. 'All right,' he said. 'If you want to be ruthlessly
honest...'
'I do.'
'Then tell me absolutely everything you know.'
'And you'll get my wife and children out of the city?'
'I will put your wife and children where no one will find them.'
Mr Aktar thought about it for a few seconds and then he said, 'All
right. All right. I know something about Dr Eldem .. .'
'Just let me make a call first,' ikmen said as he took his mobile phone
out of his pocket and activated the keypad. 'I must update my colleagues
in Mardin first.'

No one spoke until they were inside the car. The old man, Musa Saatci,
was tired, anxious and very grateful to be getting away from Mardin
Prison. He was also keen to see his son.
'Can we go to see Gabriel at the hospital now, Edibe dear?' he said
as soon as Inspector Taner had started up the engine.
'Of course,' she said. She was just about to ask the old man something
when Siileyman's mobile phone rang. She waited a few moments
for him to finish the call, but when it became clear that he was going
to be some time she spoke to Musa Saatci again. 'Uncle,' she said, 'do
you have any idea why Ibrahim Keser wanted you to hide those armaments
for him?'
The old man hung his head. 'To my shame, I do not,' he said. 'He
threatened my boy's honour. That was enough for me. Was I wrong to
be so worried about Gabriel's reputation, do you think?'
'Uncle Musa, everyone who matters to you believes in Gabriel's
miracle.'
'Then I was wrong.'

'No.' She took her eyes briefly off the road ahead and looked at him.
'You are a good father. You know there are vicious tongues in this city,
people bent on the destruction of others not in their clan, their political
or religious group. Gabriel is a bright light in this darkness. Gabriel
brings all right-minded souls together whether Christian, Muslim, Kurd
or Jew. Uncle Musa, if Gabriel were a fake it would diminish us all.'
'But Gabriel isn't a fake!'
'I know that,' she said. 'It's just that. . .' And then she told him about
the death of Yusuf Kaya and the slaughter of his family. As she spoke
Musa Saatci's eyes filled with tears. He had not, by his own admission,
liked the Kaya family but he had had an affection for Yusuf's mother
Bilqis Hanim. She, like he, had been a Syrian. In the back of the car,
Siileyman, still on the phone, was frowning and concentrating hard.
'Ibrahim Keser had become one of Yusuf Kaya's people,' Musa Saatci
said as soon as he felt able to speak again. 'He was often at Bilqis
Hanim's house. When he was not, he was either at his home next to my
own or out about his business, whatever that was.'
'Guarding an American woman, a second wife Yusuf had taken down
near Dara,' Inspector Taner said.
'An American?'
'Some sort of adventuress, I think, Uncle Musa,' Taner said. 'You
know, one of those western women who are in love with "the east" and
take on its culture and its customs.' In fact she felt that Elizabeth Smith's
love for the Tur Abdin went much deeper than that but she didn't, even
after talking to the woman, really understand how or why.
'Ah.' Musa Saatci shrugged. 'I've heard of such women. There is, it
is said, a French woman married to a man from Bingol who has not
just become a Muslim but has willingly covered herself completely. It
is really quite odd. Most strange,' he said. 'Most strange.'
'Or maybe not,' a male voice from the back of the car put in.
'Inspector Suleyman?'
'That was a colleague from Istanbul,' Suleyman said.
Taner looked at him in her rear-view mirror. 'Saying?'
'Saying that they have discovered that Yusuf Kaya was a far more
important player in the drugs world than even we imagined.' He put

his head round the side of the front passenger seat and said, 'Mr
Saatci, have you ever heard about something called the Wormwood
Route?'
'The Wormwood Route?' The old man thought for a few seconds
before shaking his head. 'No. I know of wormwood the plant, of course.'
'Which grows behind the American woman's house in Dara,' Taner
said. 'What is this Wormwood Route, Inspector, and how does it relate
to Kaya?'
'The Wormwood Route is a method whereby heroin from Afghanistan
may enter this country without being discovered,' Siileyman said. 'Yusuf
Kaya was, according to my colleagues in Istanbul, at the centre of it.
Maybe our American woman was not just besotted with Yusuf and his
very quaint land and its people after all.'
'You think she could have been part of this?'
'The Wormwood Route is reputed to be worth billions of dollars,'
Siileyman said. 'What if Elizabeth Smith were part of it? Zeynep Kaya
said that her husband had the American because she was good at business.
What if he really did have her only for that? What if she were
part and parcel of this route? It would be worth living in the middle of
nowhere for a few years for that sort of money, wouldn't it?'
For billions of dollars it would be worth living almost anywhere.
Also, Ibrahim Keser, one of Elizabeth Smith's men, had been seen at
the Kaya family home just prior to the massacre. Not that Siileyman
could talk to Taner about that in detail now, not with Musa Saatci with
them in the car. Later, he and she would have to have another conversation,
possibly whilst on the line back to ikmen in Istanbul.

'I have no idea what relevance this has to anything!' Dr Eldem said
indignantly.
'Have you or have you not been conducting a homosexual relationship
with the nurse isak Mardin?' pounds tin Ikmen reiterated.
The doctor paused for a moment and then said, 'Homosexual
relationship? Ludicrous! Who told you such a thing?'
'What makes you think that anyone told us anything?' ikmen asked.
'Maybe you were observed. Maybe it is a fact of record, or--'

Dr Eldem laughed. 'I am not homosexual,' he said. 'Who's saying
these things? Is it Aktar?'
He knew that they had Mr Aktar in custody. But even so, why he
should think that the information came from him ikmen didn't know. It
had, of course, but in theory at least, anyone at the hospital could be to
blame.~
'Why would you think that Mr Aktar would say such a thing?' he
said.
'Well, you have hirh here, and--'
'So? So we have him here. What makes you think that he has been
talking about you?' He smiled. 'Dr Eldem, we have been talking about
something quite different with Mr Aktar. With you I wish to discuss
first isak Mardin and second the Wormwood Route.'
There was a frozen, deadly silence. He'd asked Eldem about wormwood
before and the good doctor had wittered on about its properties
and the manufacture of absinthe. But now that ikmen knew how to talk
about that plant in a significant way, things appeared to be different.
Dr Eldem's eyes fixed on a spot somewhere on the wall above ikmen's
head.
'Because you know, Dr Eldem,' he continued, 'we know what that
is now. We also know that Yusuf Kaya, the only person apparently to
know all the ins and outs of this innovative drug route into this country,
is dead.' He watched the doctor very carefully but detected only a very
slight shift in his demeanour. 'What this means,' he continued, 'I don't
really know. But at a guess I would say that the route, unless someone
has managed to get that information from Kaya, is now not as valuable
as it once was. A lot of people have died for it. And of course if someone
did manage to get Kaya to part with his secrets before he died, quite a
few more people will still die before this thing is over. Anyone, I should
imagine, connected to Kaya. Dr Eldem, you tried to make a call from
your mobile to a phone registered in the name of a Syrian national an
hour before the guard Ramazan Eren died.'
'You looked at my phone records!'
'Of course,' ikmen said. 'Answer the question.'
'But I didn't get through. It was ... it was not picked up.'


I
'Who didn't pick it up?'
'Well, the, the er, the--'
'Were you telephoning Yusuf Kaya or was it your lover isak Mardin?'
'But you said it was a Syrian national. You--'
'Dr Eldem, you made the call. You know!' ikmen said. 'I think that
the name the telephone is registered in is a fake anyway.' He paused.
'Dr Eldem, you telephoned someone I think may well have been Yusuf
Kaya or someone connected to him and very soon afterwards Ramazan
Eren died. Now we know that the cause of his death was not, as you
would have it, natural. He was despatched with diamorphine.'
'I'
ikmen held up a hand to silence him. 'Doctor, you were there. Alone.
The cameras outside that side room at that time indicate the presence of
no other person. You plainly lied about the cause of Mr Eren's death and
we know that you have been conducting an affair with the nurse isak
Mardin. You even, we have been told, on occasion repeat rather irritating
little eastern sayings you have learned from him. I think that you know
something about the Wormwood Route and I have a feeling you
know where isak Mardin might be.' He leaned across the table and looked
intently into the doctor's eyes. 'Faruk Oz is dead; the nurse calling himself
Lole deliberately gave us the slip. We need to find isak Mardin and so
if you know where he is I suggest that you tell me.'
The doctor licked his lips and then was motionless for some time
before he spoke again. When he did his voice was cracked and strained
with emotion. 'When Mr Eren began to come round from his coma he
was in some considerable discomfort. I, er, I gave him diamorphine
'You poisoned him with diamorphine,' ikmen corrected. 'Dr Eldem,
the only way that a judge will look upon what you have done with even
mild sympathy is if you come clean about everything else right now.
Now, who did you make that call to and where is isak Mardin?'


Edibe Taner visited the families of every man she even remotely recalled
as having recognised from Elizabeth Smith's bodyguard. In some cases
the wives and children of these men were in, in others they were nowhere
to be found. 'Gone away' was all that the neighbours of the disappeared
would say. Where families remained behind there was clearly some
confusion. They knew of no house in Dara, no American woman with
or without Yusuf Kaya. Ominously, the wife of one of these men said
that her husband had gone out the previous afternoon and had not yet
returned. Had this man been maybe with Ibrahim Keser at the Kaya
house too? Ibrahim Keser was a sore point for Edibe Taner.
'Why would my father tell you that Keser was seen at Yusuf Kaya's
house last night and not me?' she demanded of Siileyman once the two
of them were alone. As soon as they had dropped Musa Saatci off at the
hospital, Siileyman had told his Mardin colleague everything - hence
the widespread search for Elizabeth Smith's guards.
'Your father fears reprisals,' Suleyman said. 'If I as an outsider own
such information, if it is seen to come somehow from me, no one is at
risk. Everyone in your department knows it came from me. That will
filter out. It is I who suggested we trace Elizabeth Smith's guards,
Inspector.'
What had been done had been done at his suggestion, it was true.
Also, she knew full well why her father had done what he had. She,
much more than Suleyman, knew all about clans and how they worked.
'Madam!' Selahattin ran up to her as she leaned against the wall of
the mansion where two of Elizabeth Smith's guards had, apparently,
lived.
'Yes?'

'Madam, no one fitting the description of the American has passed
legally into Syria,' Selahattin said. 'None of the other names you've
given me have come up either.'
'What about the airport?'
'Nothing,' he replied. 'Of course, madam, there is always the possibility
that they crossed into Syria illegally. Or into Iraq.'
'Where they might just as well have disappeared,' Taner said. PKK
fighters were known to come and go across that particular border all
the time. And although neither Elizabeth Smith nor her men were Kurdish,
deals between organisations of all sorts and clans were known to happen
often.
'Maybe if Elizabeth Smith has somehow found out the details of the
Wormwood Route she and her men are using that,' Siileyman said.
Taner was silent for a few seconds before, frowning, she lit a cigarette.
'But how, if Yusuf Kaya was the only person to know all the details of
the route, would she come into possession of that knowledge?' she said.
'Kaya was killed in or around Birecik where someone dressed his body
in American paraphernalia from Iraq.'
'How do we know that person wasn't Elizabeth Smith?' Siileyman
said. 'Not even you knew that she existed until a few days ago. She or
some of her men could easily have gone to Birecik. Maybe Kaya's aunt
was lying? Maybe Elizabeth met up with her husband at his aunt Bulbul's
house?' And then he frowned. 'But then ...'
'But then what?' Taner shrugged.
'But then Brother Seraphim told me that rumour has it that Yusuf
Kaya's father put out the eyes of Bulbul's husband Gazi Kaplan.'
'That old story.'
'You've heard it?'
'Years ago,' Taner said dismissively. 'I know that the Kayas are ruthless
and tough, but...' She shrugged again. 'It can't be true. Apart from
anything else the Kaplan family would have retaliated.'
'Yes, but...'
'Mrs Kaplan told us her husband was blind,' Taner said. 'She also,
if you recall, said that her husband had had surgery on his eyes. Why
would he have eye surgery if he has no eyes? And how would Bulbul

Kaplan know Elizabeth Smith? Yusuf kept her very quiet. Why would
he tell a very distant aunt about her?' Edibe Taner began leading her
small squad of officers back to the police station.
'My informant knew about the American woman,' Siileyman said as
he took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up.
Taner turned to look at him. 'And your informant was?'
Liitfii Giine§ the Kurd, had sworn Siileyman to secrecy. Now maybe
he would have to break that confidence. In light of the existence of a
drug route apparently worth billions could Siileyman allow anyone
anonymity? Could he allow anyone trust? He looked up at the high
yellow stone walls around him, walls behind which were many, many
eyes and ears, and then he said, 'I'll tell you back at the station.'
They finished the journey in silence. It was only broken, at the end,
by Siileyman's mobile phone which rang just after he had entered the
station and was about to ascend the stairs. He turned away from his
Mardin colleagues in order to answer it.
'Siileyman.'
'Mehmet, it's Cetin!'
Ikmen. He was very breathless by the sound of it.
'Cetin. Are you all right?'
'Mehmet, listen,' ikmen said. 'You and Taner have got to go to the
place where Kaya's body was found.'
'Birecik?'
'A Captain Erdur of the Jandarma, you've met him I believe--'
'Cetin, what is this?' ikmen was, he knew, perceptive but he hadn't
realised that the man was now reading people's thoughts at long distance.
'I've just been talking about Birecik.'
'My son Bekir is in Birecik,' ikmen said. 'Dr Eldem of the Cerrahpa§a
told us that the nurse isak Mardin left istanbul with Asian, in other
words my son. They are headed for or have already reached the town
now.'
'But why? Why is your son in Birecik, Cetin?'
'Because the Wormwood Route, this thing these people all fight and
kill to find out about, is something that he has a keen interest in,' ikmen
said sadly. 'Mehmet, I fear my son may have killed for this. Like the

hospital administrator, he is addicted to heroin. He will do anything to
secure his supply.'
'The administrator has told you about Birecik?'
'No, I told you, one of his doctors. I'll tell you about it later. But
both the administrator and this doctor are implicated. In exchange for
protection for his family, the administrator told me some interesting
facts. Mehmet, this drag route is huge. Those involved in it have a very
long reach. I don't know who or what you will find at Birecik, but Yusuf
Kaya died there and Captain Erdur of the Jandarma is going to see the
aunt who lives there now.'
'Bulbul Kaplan?'
'If that is the woman's name, yes,' ikmen said. 'He said he'd call
you, but you must get out there now, Mehmet. You must. . .' He faltered
just a little and then he said, 'Mehmet, my son is a bad man, and he
must pay for whatever he has done, but. . . Look, just try, if you can,
to ... try not to let them kill him, will you?'
'Cetin ...'
'It would break his mother's heart, you understand. Break his mother's
heart.'
Siileyman took a deep breath and then said, 'Of course I will try to
do what I can, Cetin.'
'Thank you.'
And then he cut the connection. Siileyman looked across at Taner
who was standing at the bottom of the stairs staring at him, frowning.

The Kaplans' smart villa was quiet save for the sound of a television
broadcasting some sort of sporting fixture inside. That Mrs Kaplan was
reluctant to let members of the Jandarma into her house wasn't unusual.
Her husband was upstairs asleep and she didn't want to wake him.
However, when she learned that the captain and his men were looking
for out-of-towners, bad people from Istanbul apparently, she let them in
to have a quick look round. One could not, the old woman said, be too
careful in such circumstances.
As soon as the jandarmes had satisfied Mrs Kaplan and themselves
that her house was quite safe, they left. Captain Erdur even telephoned

Inspector Siileyman from Istanbul to tell him that everything was quiet.
But he didn't really believe in his soul that that was the case. Siileyman
was trying, he said, to persuade Inspector Taner, that rather formidable
female from Mardin, to join him on the journey, apparently, across to
Birecik. She was not, however, entirely convinced of the need to leave
her home city at this point. Many people had died there in the last
twenty-four hours.
Erdur had spent some time talking to Inspector Cetin ikmen from
Istanbul before he'd been to the Kaplans' house. One of the people the
inspector was seeking in connection with drug offences was his own
son. Not that Bekir ikmen had turned up yet, to Captain Erdur's knowledge.
In fact everything at Bulbul Kaplan's house had been just perfect.
The lady herself had been modestly dressed, busy and cheerful. The
house was clean and quiet and even old Mr Kaplan, always a problem
apparently with his somewhat erratic sleep patterns, had not so much
as stirred when they had looked round the house. But then that was the
issue really, that was the reason, in part at least, why Captain Erdur
could not feel content. Gazi Kaplan, though rarely seen by anyone in
recent years, was a mad old man who shouted, appealed to Allah for
help and sometimes screamed as well. The story was that he'd contracted
an eye disease many years before and had ever since endured a lot of
pain and had needed some surgery. He was, famously, very easily agitated.
Not, however, it would seem, by a troop of heavy-footed young
jandarmes.
And so Captain Erdur drove back to the Kaplan house later on that
afternoon. He told Private Yiiksel exactly where he was going and
why. Nevertheless, it wasn't until very much later, when inspectors
Siileyman and Taner, a couple of constables and some bizarre-looking
civilian arrived from Mardin that anyone thought to try to contact the
captain. Inspector Taner called his mobile phone but it was, apparently,
switched off.

'Why, Edibe, do you think that a person like my father fears and despises
the Kaya family so very much?' Gabriel Saatci said as he walked out
of the Jandarmerie towards Inspector Taner's car.

They had gone to the hospital so that Taner could bid the monk
goodbye before they set off for Birecik. But then he had insisted upon
accompanying them. When he'd first seen them together, Siileyman had
been convinced that Edibe Taner was in love with Gabriel Saatci, but
he had not been entirely sure that her feelings had been reciprocated.
Now it seemed, from the looks that he gave her and the words that he
spoke, that the monk loved the police officer in return. He also had
information, it transpired.
'Your father has never liked the Kayas,' Edibe Taner replied as she
unlocked her car door and then got in. 'No decent people do. My father
was horrified when my uncle let Zeynep marry Yusuf Kaya. But then
my uncle isn't a very nice man.'
Siileyman, who was going to travel with Taner and Brother Gabriel,
signalled to the small group of jandarmes who were going to follow
them to the Kaplan house that they were about to move off. As he stood
by the car, the monk repeated what he'd said back in the Jandarmerie.
'Yusuf Kaya's father could not bring himself to tell another Muslim
the fearful violence he had done to Gazi Kaplan. He told only someone
who was a very young monk at the time: Brother Seraphim.' Then he
looked at Siileyman. 'Inspector, you must think badly of us. That Brother
Seraphim only shared his certain knowledge with his brothers for such
a long time must seem strange to you.'
'It would seem to me, Brother Gabriel,' Suleyman said as he got into
the car, 'that a lot of people had their suspicions anyway.'
The monk climbed into the front passenger seat and said, 'Indeed.
But no proof. Had there been proof that the story was true the truce
between the Kayas and the Kaplans would have been worthless. More
blood would have been spilled.' He turned round in his seat to look
Suleyman in the face. 'That was the deal, you see, the one that no one
at St Sobo's could speak about.'
'What deal?'
'That the Kaplans pay for the dishonouring of Bulbul Kaya with
Gazi's eyes.'
Edibe Taner fired up the engine while Suleyman sat and struggled
with feelings of shock and revulsion. The Kayas and the Kaplans had

actually traded a young girl's body for a young man's sight! It was so
monstrous that he began to feel his head pound with rage. Allah, but
what could that young man and that young woman have felt about their
vile relatives? What could Bulbul Kaplan have felt about Yusuf Kaya?
'Inspector, we'll go off with Private Yiiksel and the others now,'
Constable Selahattin said, bending down to talk to Taner through the
window.
'All right,' Taner said. 'You're looking for strangers, remember? Any
strangers, but particularly any young men resembling the man Bekir
Ikmen, also known as Asian. He may or may not be travelling with
another young man called isak Mardin. We don't have a photograph of
him but just be aware that this ikmen or Asian may not be alone.'
'Yes, Inspector.'
He left to join his other colleague and a group of jandarmes around
a jeep which then sped off towards the centre of Birecik. Edibe Taner
waved to the other jeep behind her car to let privates Giizer and Bilge
know that they were heading along the banks of the Euphrates river
towards the house of Bulbul and Gazi Kaplan.
Just before she put her foot down on the accelerator, she turned to
Gabriel Saatci and said, 'When we get there, you stay in the car,
understand?'
The monk did not so much as turn in her direction. He just looked
up into the now rapidly darkening sky and frowned.

'Fatma?'
She was standing at the window, looking across towards Sultanahmet
Square and the darkening bulk of the famous Blue Mosque. It was dusk
but she hadn't as yet put any of the apartment lights on. No one apart
from his wife was, seemingly, at home. It was preternaturally quiet and
it made Cetin ikmen shudder.
'Fatma, are you all right?' he asked as he walked over to her and put
a hand on her heavily cardiganed shoulder. He felt her flinch beneath
his touch and he shook his head and sighed. 'I had no choice,' he said.
'Even you must see that.'
'They will kill our son, your colleagues]' she responded bitterly.

'Bekir is involved in a drug supply operation that is probably the
biggest this country has ever seen,' ikmen said. He sat down on the arm
of the chair that stood beside his wife and lit a cigarette. 'People have
been murdered because of it.'
'Our son hasn't--'
'Fatma, I don't know whether Bekir has killed anybody or not.' The
words almost choked him but they were nothing but the truth. Bekir
might very well have killed someone on his road into or within the
Wormwood Route plot. The prospect of billions of dollars did that to
people. 'Mehmet Siileyman is out there and he has gone to the town
the corrupt doctor told me Bekir was heading for,' he continued. 'Fatma,
Mehmet will protect him if he can. That's all we can do.'
'You ordered his arrest.' She said it in a frighteningly quiet voice.
'You.'
ikmen puffed on his cigarette, his back to his wife, the Blue Mosque,
the ancient Byzantine Hippodrome. 'I had no choice,' he said.
'Because of your job?'
'Because what our son has done is wrong,' he said. 'As well as being
whatever he is in this plot he also gave Kemal cocaine, he got that girl
pregnant and then just left her ...'
'He is our son.'
'He was stealing from his brothers and sisters when he was a teenager!'
Ikmen turned to look at his wife with anger in his eyes. 'For years we
put up with his drug-taking, his lying, the violence he perpetrated wherever
he went! He was a nightmare and I will be honest with you, Fatma,
I was glad when that boy left this family all those years ago! I was
glad!'
They looked at each other, her eyes wide with the fury his words and
even the look on his face was making her feel. Then she drew one hand
back slowly and deliberately and smacked him full on across the mouth.
For several seconds neither of them so much as breathed, ikmen, his
face sore from the great slap she had dealt him, simply sat as his eyes
watered with the pain. It wasn't the first time she'd hit him. It had
happened when Bekir had originally left the family home. Then, as now,
she was completely unrepentant.

'Bekir needed you and you let him down.' Fatma turned to look
back at the Blue Mosque once again. 'Always at work. Always spending
what time you did have with the children who pleased you. Sinan and
Orhan with their medical studies, pounds cek learning languages to travel
the world.'
'You are as proud of our children as I am!' ikmen growled, now for
the first time touching a hand gently to his aching mouth.
'Of course I am,' she said. 'But Bekir was different. He needed . . .
he needed .. .'
'He needed what, Fatma?' ikmen looked up at her face in profile.
She was still very beautiful to him. 'Needed what?' He sighed. 'Go on
and say it, woman, because it's what is in your head.'
His words made her angry again, but then that had been the intention.
Making Fatma angry got to the root of her worries, made her say
the things he did and did not want to hear. 'He needed moral guidance!'
she said.
'Religion.'
'Absolutely religion!' she shouted. 'Islam would have saved that boy!
I begged you, pounds tin ikmen, to give our children the choice about religion,
to at least take the lead with them, guide them! But you wouldn't
have it!'
'You wanted me to take them to the mosque and I said no,' he said,
struggling to control himself now. This if anything was the fault line in
their long, long marriage. It had always been, and remained, the only
real point of disagreement between them. 'You took them from time to
time. I was not averse to your brothers' taking the boys .. .'
'But whenever we came back you ridiculed us!' Fatma said, beginning
to weep with the sorrow of it all. 'You looked at the girls with
their heads covered and it angered you!'
'Yes,' he said, 'yes, it did.' He stood up, calm again now for some
reason he couldn't even begin to fathom, and began to move back to
the living-room door.
'Religion is a wonderful thing, pounds tin. Faith is--'
'Faith would have done nothing for Bekir.' ikmen cut her off cruelly
and then said, 'I have asked Mehmet Siileyman to do what he can for

our boy, I can do no more. You pray if it makes you feel better. I don't
believe it. You knew that when you married me.'
He made to leave the room and, suddenly panicked by his unusually
cold demeanour, she said, 'Where are you going?'
'Back to work,' he said with a small, tired shrug. 'Back to work.'
And then he left. Fatma ikmen, alone again, tried to pray with all her
heart, but found that she could only cry.

'What do Gazi and Bulbul Kaplan do for a living?' Stileyman asked the
Jandarma officer Private Bilge. They were looking round what was
turning out to be a very empty and silent house.
'I don't know,' the young man replied. He took a piece of paper off
the kitchen table, looked at it and then put it back again. 'The actual
Kaplan family are rich,' he said. 'They all live off each other, and .. .'
Edibe Taner came into the kitchen and both men looked towards her.
'There's no one here,' she said, running her hands agitatedly through
her hair. 'Where can they have gone? The old man is blind, and--'
'I'd just like to find the captain,' Private Bilge cut in darkly. 'It's not
like him to be out of contact. Can't see his jeep anywhere.'
'Maybe, Private, he's gone on somewhere else.'
The house did not, to Suleyman's way of thinking, have any sort of
ominous atmosphere. Maybe it was because it was so modern. But there
was a smell. It wasn't, he knew, the vaguely sweet and metallic smell
of blood, but it was faintly disturbing. He didn't know why.
'Where's Private Guzer?' Taner asked.
'Outside,' his colleague replied.
'Let's go and join him,' Taner said. 'There's no point being in here;
there's nothing.'
They went outside to where Brother Gabriel stood beside Taner's car
looking up at the stars. He wasn't supposed to have left the vehicle and
Edibe Taner was very quick to hustle him back inside. Siileyman meanwhile
took his small pencil torch out of his pocket and switched it on.
The earth was poor, dusty and rutted, and as he made his way towards
the back of the property he was very aware of the fact that his shoes
were really quite unsuitable for the countryside.

Private Giizer, a figure also shining a torch down towards the ground,
was over by an outbuilding of some sort, a garage or a barn.
'Anything?' Suleyman asked as he walked over to where the young
man was standing.
'Not in that shed, sir, no,' the jandarme replied. Then he frowned.
'But if you look on the ground there are some fragments.' Cloth by the
look of them, torn pieces that looked as if they had been dragged into
or embedded in the dust. Some of them were quite bright, like fabric
women might favour.
'Have you looked behind the shed yet, Private?' Suleyman asked.
'No, sir. Not yet. I've only just got here.'
'Let's do that now, shall we?'
They walked together round the side of the shed, past what Suleyman
imagined was a very old piece of agricultural machinery - a large rusted
metal thing. The smell he'd noticed earlier was getting stronger.
'Nothing inside, sir?' the young private asked as they rounded a corner
of the shed.
'No,' Suleyman replied. 'No one in. Do you have any idea about
where Mr and Mrs Kaplan may have gone, Private?'
'No, sir,' Giizer said. 'People out here in the country generally don't
go far. Especially not the old folk. Not at night.'
Suleyman scanned what he could see of the flat area around the house
and its outbuildings. His small torch was useless here and so he just squinted
unaided into the darkness. The banks of the Euphrates were less than half
a kilometre away and he began to wonder whether indeed this was where
Yusuf Kay a had met his death. At the hands of his aunt? Could that possibly
be the case? Could the old lady have done it on her own, or--
'Sir, the earth's been turned.'
'What?' He'd seen something, just very faintly against the almost
black horizon, something sticking up above the olive trees in the field
behind the house.
'Sir, the earth has been turned here,' Private Giizer said.
Because he couldn't make out what the object in the field might be,
Suleyman looked down to where the jandarme was shining his torch.
At his feet was a large area of churned and scuffed-up earth.

'Do you want me to get a shovel?'
But Siileyman just pushed at it with his foot. The smell he'd noticed
earlier became much stronger. It didn't need any more force than a foot
because in less than thirty seconds a very dead and dusty human hand
had come to light. It was attached to an equally dead and dusty arm.

Mrs Bulbul Kaplan wasn't alone in what was in fact a very hastily dug
and shallow grave. Captain Erdur lay beside her, his throat cut, his still
open eyes filled with surprise. Private Giizer put a hand up to his head
and then breathed deeply through his mouth. The captain had been his
superior, and he had respected him.
Siileyman took his mobile phone out of his pocket and said, 'We'll
need the services of the police in §anliurfa. This is a crime scene; we
need forensic support. I hadn't been expecting this. I don't think any of
us had.'
He had just started to work through the directory of numbers in his
mobile and had heard what he thought was Giizer shuffling his feet next
to him when the phone was suddenly and violently wrenched out of his
hand.
'Giizer!'
But Private Giizer hadn't touched Suleyman. In fact Private Giizer
was unlikely to touch anything again. Before he could even look to see
where his phone had gone, Suleyman gazed on horrified as Private Giizer
slumped slowly to the ground. Blood poured out of his mouth and also
out of the great gaping stab wound in his back. The person standing
behind him holding what had certainly killed the jandarme was a man
he had never seen before. Probably in his early thirties, he held, as well
as the knife, a small pistol which was pointed at Siileyman's head. He
said nothing. Even when Suleyman wheeled round to try to locate his
other colleagues the man just stayed where he was, smiling.
'What?'
And then lights! The thing he had vaguely seen on the horizon in the
darkened field behind the house lit up. Its engine roaring into life as its
lights came on, a truck of some considerable size lumbered through the
trees and over towards what was a very rickety back fence. The person

who had knocked Siileyman's phone out of his hands, the person standing
behind him now, rammed the barrel of a gun hard into his temple and
then ripped his own gun out of its holster underneath his jacket.
'Who ...'
'Get them all over here; we'll finish the lot of them together!' a male
voice behind his head called. Siileyman tried to speak but as he watched
the truck heading towards the fence he found that he was completely
dumb. What were these people going to do, run them all over? And
where were the others anyway? Where were Inspector Taner and her
beloved monk? Where was Private Bilge? The person behind him pushed Siileyman in the direction of the smirking man who had killed Private
Giizer. Stumbling over the bodies of Bulbul Kaplan and Captain Erdur,
he almost fell on to the outstretched knife, but he recovered himself in
time. However, as he stumbled, he did look behind again and saw that
Taner, Private Bilge and Brother Gabriel were being herded by the man
who had grabbed him plus someone else too. It was a woman.
'You can't get any more in that pit, for God's sake!' Elizabeth Smith
said to her two men. 'In fact let's just finish them and leave them where
they fall. We're leaving. What does it matter?'
The truck had stopped moving now and someone had got out. As the
figure moved towards the rickety garden fence, Siileyman saw that it
was Ibrahim Keser.
Her face a splash of white horror in the darkness, Edibe Taner
looked down at the body of Bulbul Kaplan and said, 'Did you kill
her? What'
'She'd done her bit,' Elizabeth Smith said simply. Then, leaning in
to place her gun against Taner's head, she said, 'That's how this operation
works, Inspector. Haven't you worked that out yet?' She smiled.
'Yusuf did his bit when he set the whole thing up. All sorts of people
did their bit when he got out of prison and then escaped from the hospital.
Now . . .'
'The Wormwood Route. You or your people have just killed for it as
you've gone along, haven't you, Miss Smith?' Suleyman said. 'That's
what it's been about all the time - money.'
'Yes and no,' she responded. 'Very good detective work.' Then she

turned to the man at her elbow and said, 'Bekir, this is Inspector
Siileyman.'
The young man was far from the image of his father but he was
enough like Cetin ikmen for the experience of seeing him to take on an
air of the surreal. Siileyman stared. To be killed by someone who looked
like his friend, was indeed part of his friend, was a monstrous concept. Bekir looked at him with barely contained glee. It was almost as if he
were looking forward to it.
'You need money to survive in the cradle of civilisation,' the American
said. 'Money buys you immunity from all sorts of clan violence and
terrorist activity. Like the Persians and Byzantines, Inspector Siileyman,
I want my little empire and I want it to be here. Yusuf would have
squandered the money on women and shitty apartment blocks in new
Mardin. Now get over to the pit.'
Pushing and shoving, the American's men lined them up behind the
pit where Bulbul Kaplan and Captain Erdur lay. Like a firing squad. Every
part of Siileyman's body was cold and although he wanted to turn to Edibe
Taner and tell her he was sorry for not having at least attempted to protect
her, no part of him could actually move. As the three men now in front
of them prepared their weapons to fire, Siileyman inwardly railed at the
fact that Ikmen's child was part of this. And all for what? For a method
whereby death-giving drugs were about to swamp every city, town and
village not just in Turkey but in many other countries as well. All because
Elizabeth Smith wanted to live in some sort of eastern fantasy.
'Put your weapons down.'
For just a moment he thought that they were saved, that maybe the
other Mardin constables and the jandarmes they were with had come to
rescue them. But the voice that urged Miss Smith and her men to give
up their violence was neither demanding nor in any way alarming.
'Put your weapons down and just go,' Gabriel said. 'You were leaving
anyway, so leave. We will not follow. You've taken the officers' weapons
and telephones. What can we do if you go?'
He was, Siileyman noticed, moving very slowly towards the American
and her cohorts.
'Go!'

'Brother Gabriel!' Siileyman said.
The monk turned, and by the light of the truck's headlights Siileyman
saw him smile.
'It's all right,' he said calmly. 'It's fine.'
And then he began to run towards them. Edibe Taner screamed.
'Gabriel!'
All three men shot at him and all three men had terrified expressions
on their faces as they did so.

'Allah, what was that!' Bekir ikmen said as he turned to the man on
his left. 'What happened there?'
Edibe Taner, screaming, threw herself across Gabriel Saatci's body
and shook him by his lifeless shoulders.
'That was a saint,' Ibrahim Keser said with both arrogance and fear
in his voice. 'You killed a fucking saint! I killed a fucking saint!'
'Bekir,' Siileyman began, 'you--'
It was like a curse at first. There was nothing to hear and yet suddenly
there was blood. Pouring out of Bekir ikmen, out of Ibrahim Keser and
out of the mouth of the other man who stood beside them. They'd killed
a saint and now they were paying. And to think that he, Siileyman,
hadn't believed in any of this! To think that Edibe Taner, an officer
hidden away and obscured in the country, had known what he had not.
There was something, there was a--
'Don't move, Miss Smith! If you move I'll kill you too!'
Whose voice was that? He couldn't make any sense of it until he
heard Taner screaming once again.
'Selahattin! Selahattin, help me!'
And then the men came forward out of the darkness. Two Mardin
policemen and three jandarmes. They all held pistols with silencers
attached. Two of them grabbed the American by her arms and then
forced her down on the ground so that they could search her.
'Madam!'
Constable Selahattin ran to Taner and helped her to cradle the monk's
head against her shoulder. Her clothes were drenched in his blood, her
mouth full of it where she had kissed and kissed and kissed his face.

Once he could speak again, Siileyman said to Private Yiiksel, 'How
did you ... how did you get here?'
Private Yuksel put a hand on his shoulder and said, 'It was the river
again, sir.'
'The river?'
'When we got into town some kids reported seeing a vehicle down
this way in the river. They said they thought it might be a jeep.'
'And?'
'And, sir, we don't know yet,' Yuksel said as he looked down at
the dead body of his former boss, 'but I imagine it was probably . . .
his.' He grimaced. 'Sir, the river gives and takes - bodies, vehicles,
everything.'
'I must go to Inspector Taner,' Siileyman said. And he stepped over
corpses and mindlessly went to her.
'Edibe ...'
Her eyes were blasted. A for ever sleepless, tortured and brutalised
animal. She folded herself over the dead body of her love and then she
began to ululate her grief. A trilling mourning overpowering and snuffing
out the sounds of the American being led away, and the death agonies
of the three men on the ground in front of her.

Bekir ikmen didn't actually die until he had been in the ambulance on
the way to hospital in §anhurfa for nearly half an hour. Siileyman, who
chose to ride alongside his old friend's son, saw all the efforts that were
made to save his life, but he knew inside that none of them would work.
The young man's internal organs were shattered by bullets. There was
no way back.
When the vehicle arrived at the hospital he was given the option of
having the doctor who pronounced life extinct call pounds tin ikmen. But
Siileyman said he would do that himself. He owed it to ikmen to let him
know that he had failed. Bekir Ikmen had proved impossible to save.
'You didn't kill him,' ikmen said when Stileyman's story finally came
to its bloody and horrific end. 'And even those who did, did so for a
good reason.'
His voice was not only tired, it was dead too. Like a ghastly horror
movie one can only just stand. In the background the sound of Fatma
ikmen screaming a hellish soundtrack.
'£etin, I am so sorry.'
He didn't reply. The screaming continued and then he just said, 'I
will get the first flight that I can.'
Stileyman heard his friend light a cigarette and then he heard his wife
berate him for it. ikmen did not react at all. ikmen was just doing what
he always did, getting everything done. There was almost no option, for
Sixleyman at least, but to take the same stance himself.
'I have to go back to Mardin,' he said. 'Inspector Taner needs me.
She can't interview the American woman without some support. And . . .'
'And you want to know how this all came about,' ikmen said. 'Of
course you do. Of course you do.'

'Cetin, I will tell you everything. I--'
'My dear Mehmet,' ikmen said, 'we already have part of the picture.
If this American is to be the key to more knowledge about the
Wormwood Route . . .'
'I think she knows it,' Siileyman said. 'I mean all of it. I hope that
is the case.'
'So ...'
'It's my belief that Elizabeth Smith orchestrated almost everything.'
There was a pause and then ikmen said, 'Well, you get her then,
Mehmet. You get her so that she never sees the outside of a prison
again.'
And then he ended the call. Alone until Constable Selahattin arrived
to take him back to Mardin, Mehmet Siileyman stared into the night
with still, exhausted eyes.

The small community of monks at St Sobo's monastery were not accustomed
to keeping irregular hours. Times for sleeping, eating, praying
and working were strictly prescribed by rules going back millennia. But
death is no respecter of tradition and when Edibe Taner knocked on the
great gates of the monastery at four o'clock that morning she knew that
she was about to turn their world upside down. Not that she cared.
Leaning on her father's shoulder for support, she looked down at the
litter the two young constables had carried to the gates in front of her
and wept all over again. By now, not just her colleagues and her father
but almost all of Mardin knew that their saint was dead.
'He died to save the rest of us,' she said to Brother Seraphim once
the other monks had taken the body away to be washed. 'None of us
knew that help was on its way and Gabriel just. .. he . ..'
'God was working through Brother Gabriel,' Brother Seraphim said
as he took the shattered woman and her father into the monastery refectory.
He sat them down and then poured mirra for them both to drink.
The three of them sat in silence for a long time. Seckin Taner, though
stunned by his daughter's news, was nevertheless trying to maintain at
least an aura of composure for her sake. Seraphim didn't really know
anything beyond the fact that Brother Gabriel was dead. He had died

protecting others, which was something that Seraphim could easily
imagine happening. But how had he died? How had he got into a situation
where others had wanted him dead?
Shivering as she spoke, Edibe Taner said, 'I killed him. I put him in
the way of danger. It was my fault.'
Seckin Taner grimaced in pain. 'Edibe . . .'
'My dear, I'm sure you didn't cause Brother Gabriel's death,' Brother
Seraphim said. 'You loved him. And he loved you. You were the very
best of friends, I know that. Edibe, if Gabriel died protecting you then
I know that he died a happy man.'
But his words just seemed to inflame her. 'Tell me this, Brother,' she
said bitterly. 'Why did Gabriel survive the bites of the snakes but die
with just three bullets? If Allah was looking after him, if he was an
immortal saint, then . . .' She broke down and wept, howling her pain
on to her father's chest as he stroked her hair and cooed into her ear.
Brother Seraphim, clearly upset by her words, said, 'I don't know
the answer to that question, Edibe. I wish I did. Maybe Gabriel needed
his Sharmeran by his side for God to protect him. Maybe our brother
was just too good for this wicked world. Who knows?' And then he too
put his head in his hands and wept.

They put the American woman into the smallest cell they had. If they
had been able to find one that was actually windowless they would have
pushed her into that. Nothing was too bad. Not because she was American,
not even because she had killed or ordered the deaths of people that
they knew and sometimes loved. The young constables put her where
they did, said the bitter things they did to and about her, because she
had killed their saint. Muslims to a man, the Mardin constables had all
grown up with Gabriel, all knew him to be a special person, and they
had all, without exception, liked and respected him. If this woman didn't
go away for ever they would want to know why. The police were not
alone, either. As dawn broke over the Tur Abdin people began to come
into the city and position themselves in the streets, tea gardens and cafe's
around the police station. Lutfii Giines, stood at the head of a small group
of his people outside the Sehidiye Medrese. As Siileyman passed him

on his way to the station, the Kurd smiled enigmatically in his direction.
The Istanbul man wondered, as he had done before, just how and
why this man had known about Elizabeth Smith, but he didn't dwell
upon the question long on account of the restive nature of the crowd
around him. Whether they all knew who he was he couldn't tell because
none of them, so it seemed, was choosing or able to speak Turkish. In
fact, amongst the many languages that he could hear around him there
was only one word that he could recognise and that was 'Gabriel'. Their
saint, who was dead and whom it was obvious they wanted some sort
of justice for. That was his job, or rather it was partly his job. When he
reached the front entrance to the station the crowds behind him parted
and he turned to see Edibe Taner walking towards him. Dressed in black,
her face as white as paper, she wore an expression of such hatred that
it took Mehmet Siileyman's breath away.

'It is my intention to conduct this interview in English,' Siileyman said as
he sat down in front of the American woman. He looked briefly over at
Taner, who just shrugged before folding herself stiffly into the seat beside
him. 'This is because,' he continued, 'I want to have no mistakes, Miss Smith. I want you to understand exactly what I am saying and I want your
answers to be free from any ambiguity that may arise if you have to translate
what you say into Turkish. Do you understand?'
She shrugged. The fact that she didn't actually answer him was
annoying. But the irritation he felt was nothing compared to the anger
that had flooded him as soon as he was once again in her presence. Not
because of Brother Gabriel, whom he had hardly known, but because
she had albeit indirectly been responsible for the death of ikmen's son
and she it was who had turned Edibe Taner into a silent, shadowy, almost
ghost-like figure.
'Miss Smith,' he said before he could think too hard or too deeply
about his own feelings, 'I understand that you do not wish to have a
lawyer.'
'No.'
'That is your choice,' he said. He looked down at his notes and then
briefly at Taner again, but her face was as blank as the wall behind Elizabeth
Smith's head. 'Miss Smith, let us be rational, shall we?'
She frowned.
'Miss Smith, you ordered my death and the deaths of my colleagues,'
Siileyman said. 'I was there. I heard you. You witnessed the death of
Gabriel Saatci. Jandarma Private Giizer was killed by a man clearly associated
with you and you were apparently aware of the place where Mrs
Bulbul Kaplan and Captain Erdur of the Birecik Jandarma were buried.

Captain Erdur we know was unlawfully killed, Mrs Kaplan we have yet
to receive forensic evidence about. So, Miss Smith, make no mistake, you
are going to prison. It is highly unlikely that you will ever get out. So
when I say you must be rational what I mean is that you must look to
your future, in prison, and you must consider how you might make that
as easy or comfortable or however you wish to express it for yourself.'
'You want me to spill?'
'I want you to die,' he heard Edibe Taner say in Turkish under her
breath. He put a hand on her arm and held up a warning finger. The last thing he needed, because he was exhausted and furious himself, was
a loose cannon at his side.
Whether Elizabeth Smith had heard what Taner had said he didn't know.
She didn't respond until he said, 'I want you to tell me everything. Miss
Smith, we do not have capital punishment in the Turkish Republic and so
the most a judge can sentence a criminal to is life in prison. I think we
both know that that is already very possible for you.'
'You want I should finger other people?'
'I want you to start at the beginning and talk until your story is
finished,' Suleyman said. 'I want you to tell me what happened when
your husband Yusuf killed the Russian gangster, Tommi Kerensky.'

Cetin Donen went to Atatiirk Airport accompanied by his son Biilent.
Because the young man worked for Turkish Airlines he had managed to
talk to those who could get his father quickly on to a flight out to §anhurfa.
'Dad, you mustn't worry about Mum. She will be all right again, in
time,' Biilent said as he placed a hand on his father's sloping shoulder.
They both stood in front of the large departure board in the middle of
the domestic terminal, ikmen openly smoking underneath a new No
Smoking sign.
'Your mother blames me,' he said. 'And maybe she is right.'
'Dad, you couldn't have prevented Bekir's death. You told me he'd
just killed a man. How could the officers who shot him have done
anything else?'
'No. No, I know I couldn't have ...' He sighed. 'Biilent, I did very
little to find Bekir when he left home all those years ago.'

'£icek told me he was a nightmare,' Biilent said. 'He stole from
everyone. Mum was always in tears.'
'But he was fifteen!' ikmen said. 'He walked out of our apartment
and he was on the streets at fifteen!' His eyes filled with tears. 'Oh, I
looked for him in all the obvious places at the time. But I didn't really
get stuck in. I didn't go to the terrible, awful places.'
'You probably couldn't imagine him in that sort of context,' Biilent
said. He was having some trouble feeling anything about this brother
who had appeared so late on in his life, disgraced himself and then run
away and died. 'Dad, you and Mum brought us up well. In some ways
it's a curse.'
'What do you mean?' His emotions sharpened by grief and tiredness,
ikmen puffed on furiously.
'I mean I couldn't possibly have gone on the streets like Bekir did,'
Biilent said. 'I think I speak for all of us, Dad, when I say that we as
a family are all too pampered to be capable of such a thing. You've
looked after us all much too well.'
'Except Bekir.'
'That was his choice,' Biilent said. 'He wanted to take drugs and beg
and get involved in criminal activity. We didn't and so he left.'
It was all so simple to Biilent. But then he'd been just a child when
Bekir left; he'd never had any sort of relationship with his brother really.
And although he was as shocked and sad as the rest of the family he
did not feel any pain, ikmen looked up at the departure board and saw
that his flight was boarding.
'I have to go,' he said.
Biilent put his arms round his father and kissed him. 'We will start
to make funeral arrangements,' he said.
'I'll do my best to bring my son home tomorrow if I can,' ikmen
said. 'But as I told your mother, it may be that Bekir's body has to
remain in Urfa until . . .' He swallowed hard. 'Your mother cannot
understand why the body may have to be treated as evidence. She just
hates me.'
'Dad, go and get your flight,' Bekir said.
ikmen kissed his son on both cheeks and then headed towards the

passageway leading to the departure gates. Biilent, shaking his head with
agitation, made his way back towards the front entrance to the terminal.
Outside in the car park one of his brothers was waiting to take him back
to their parents' apartment and the agony of his grieving mother.

"Tommi Kerensky knew something about the Wormwood Route,' Elizabeth
Smith said as she looked Mehmet Siileyman clearly in the eyes. 'The
Syrian whore Yusuf used to bang when he was in Istanbul--'
'Hana Karim?'
'Yeah. She spilled it. She was doing Tommi too, which was why the
both of them had to go. Yusuf for all his vision was a poor judge of
character.'
'He was a psychopathic killer.'
'Yes, but he was a psychopathic killer who had nevertheless built a
drug route into this country that was second to none.'
'Why second to none?'
'Because every part of the chain was discrete,' she said. 'People even
half the way along the line had no idea who was at the end or the beginning
of the process. Each took his cut in goods and no one knew more
than he had to to do his job.'
'Except for Yusuf.'
Elizabeth Smith leaned across the table and said, 'He wasn't scared
of going to prison. Tommi Kerensky had put it about that Yusuf had something big on his hands before he was killed. Yusuf had already
made millions of dollars and everyone wanted in. No one in that prison
gave Yusuf any hassle and that included some of his gaolers.'
'How did he get out?' Siileyman asked.
She smiled. 'I bought a lot of people,' she said. 'Some of them at
Yusuf's request and some off my own bat. Some of the nurses at the
hospital were known to him. Mardin people, as I'm sure you already
know, are kind of close.'
Siileyman looked down at the file on the table in front of him and
said, 'isak Mardin, Murat Lole and Faruk Oz. Some of these are pseudonyms,
as I am sure you know, but...'
'The then administrator of the Cerrahpa§a, Oner, was a friend,' the

American said. 'Unfortunately he couldn't really handle what Yusuf had
in mind and started to get a bit wobbly.'
'Wobbly?'
'He wanted out,' she said harshly. 'Yusuf sent a message that that
wasn't really an option and so he topped himself. You don't split on
your nearest and dearest out here - not unless you're prepared to take
the consequences. It could have all been over at that point if Oner's
replacement hadn't been a user. Aktar, who fortunately got the job, has
a big habit. Not that he knew too much until Yusuf was sprung.'
'So who apart from the nurses--'
'isak Mardin had this doctor who liked to fuck him. Eldem. Not
averse to getting rich either. He did as isak said. We placed Mardin in
the Cerrahpa§a to get Yusuf away. That was his purpose. He was waiting
outside the hospital and got Yusuf and the others away from there.' She
leaned across the table and said, 'The prison guards who went out with
Yusuf to the hospital did as they were told, too.'
Edibe Taner looked at Suleyman. 'But they died, didn't they?' she
said.
'Yes.'
Elizabeth Smith shrugged. 'That was the plan.'
'I'm sure neither they nor the police officers who accompanied Kaya
to the hospital knew that,' Suleyman said.
'Of course not!' She laughed. To the inspectors in front of her this
was a very disturbing phenomenon. 'The coppers were entirely ignorant
anyway. They had nothing to do with it. But that was, in part, Yusuf's
idea. If those who knew his movements were dead they couldn't tell
anyone what they'd seen.'
'No. But you say in part. What do you mean by that?'
She sat back in her chair then and looked down at her hands, suddenly
subdued. 'Some of those who died were not on Yusuf's mental list,' she
said. Then she looked up with sharp, cold eyes. 'But they were on mine.'
'Because you wanted to take this Wormwood Route from Yusuf Kaya
so you could use the money to forge some sort of "empire" or fiefdom
here,' Suleyman said, recalling what she had said to him back at Bulbul
Kaplan's farm in Birecik. But she didn't react to the obvious jibe.

'Murat Lole, isak Mardin and Faruk Oz sprang Yusuf,' she said. 'But
then afterwards Lole got greedy and killed Oz. isak Mardin was with
Yusuf by that time; that was the plan. Lole I believe either offed Oz at
Mardin's place or took the body there afterwards. Whatever, Mardin's
apartment was never going to be used by him again. The cleaners were
taken care of by Yusuf, although one of them did prove useful, as you
saw last night.'
'One of the cleaners?'
'The copper's son, your friend's son, the guy who worked for that
beggarman, that Fagin character back in your city. You know the--'
'Do you mean Hiiseyin Altun?' Siileyman asked. 'From Edirnekapi?
He and Bekir ikmen posed as hospital cleaners?'
'Bekir ikmen and there was some kid as well,' Elizabeth said, 'but
he was offed too, as I said. The ikmen guy killed Hiiseyin Altun at
Yusuf's request. Altun had put Yusuf and isak Mardin up for the night
after his escape, which was risky. He had a big mouth. Yusuf was always
going to use ikmen to kill Altun and to front his istanbul operation
because he was so smart. It was apparent, so Yusuf said, from their first
meeting. But, well...' She shrugged again. 'I used him myself. I used
anyone and everyone not in bed with the Kaya family.'
'What did isak Mardin do then?' Stileyman asked.
'Lay low just outside istanbul until I called him and Bekir to join us
in Birecik last night,' she said. 'Yusuf, remember, had me plan his escape
with him. What he didn't know was that I was planning to double-cross
him with guys I'd done deals of my own with.'
'So let me see this correctly,' Siileyman said. 'To go back in time
again now, you helped to arrange your husband's escape from Kartal
Prison. You got him out to Birecik where you extracted information
from him and then you killed him, or someone else killed him.'
'His aunty Bulbul did the actual killing,' the American said. 'She
wanted to.'
'Bulbul Kaplan?'
'Yeah. You know that Yusuf's dad pushed out her old man's eyes?'
Elizabeth Smith shook her head in apparent disbelief. 'Yusuf told me it
was an agreed thing between the Kay as and the Kaplans. Gazi's eyes


f
go and there's no more feud. Honour on both sides is apparently served.
The Kaplans get to keep Bulbul, while the Kayas get to blind Gazi. All
square. Good deal, huh? Except that old Gazi could never get a hard
on from that moment onwards and so Bulbul never had any kids.
Resentful? I think so, don't you? And not just of Gazi but of her family
too. So there she is, she's given up her whole life for a man who never
touches her again.'
'But why did she agree to see Yusuf Kaya?' Taner asked.
'Originally? I don't know,' the American said. 'He fetched up there,
she was nice to him and that was that. Maybe she saw him as some sort
of child substitute. I don't know. I never cared. Anyway, Yusuf himself
hadn't actually hurt her husband, had he? But then later I realised that
she maybe had other plans for Yusuf all along. He took me to meet her
a few months before he was arrested. We were business partners - he
only married me because he wanted to feel he had some sort of control
over me. He wanted me to know where his safe houses were. But when
he was in prison I contacted her myself, just to be nice, you understand.
She it was who started on about how she really wished that her nephew
could get the old death penalty. I started thinking, because I knew I
wanted the Wormwood Route for myself by this time, that maybe she
had sussed me out and maybe also I could use her justifiable rage. She
was a very ruthless woman, you know. Very ruthless.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that when her husband Gazi got wind of her plans to kill
Yusuf he ordered her not to do it. He'd given his eyes to stop such
things happening; the whole reason behind his sacrifice was to stop any
further feuding. You can appreciate the man's point of view.'
'Gazi Kaplan was blind. He couldn't do very much to stop his wife,
surely.'
'He could do even less once she'd stabbed him in the chest,' Elizabeth
Smith said.
Both Siileyman and Taner were truly shocked. Gazi Kaplan had not
been found at the house in Birecik, it was true, but no one until now
had thought about the possibility that he might actually be dead. Gazi
Kaplan, until this moment, had simply been missing.


'She killed him weeks ago,' the American continued. 'I don't know
where she buried him.'
'And now Mrs Kaplan is dead I cannot ask her, can I?' Silleyman
said.
'There's no one left to ask,' Elizabeth Smith replied. 'She was dead
by the time you got to the house, by the way. Most of my boys were
long gone by that time too.'
'Your guards? To where?'
'To where I'd arranged to meet them,' she said. 'That left only Ibrahim
Keser and the two boys we met in Birecik.'
'Bekir ikmen.'
'And Yusuf Mardin, yes.' She smiled. 'We'd agreed in advance to
tidy Mrs Kaplan away. She did what she did for money. That was the
bait, as well as Yusuf's death, that I used to tempt her. She wanted to
get away and have a bit of a life somewhere. But her price was high
and I couldn't have that. The captain of the Jandarma, however . . .' she
shrugged, 'that was unfortunate. We didn't know he was coming back.
I got in the old woman's bed and pretended to be sleeping Gazi. The
captain didn't disturb me and I thought he had to have bought my act.
When he came back, Bekir and myself had just offed the old woman
and so the captain ... well, he had to go too, didn't he?' She smiled.
'You guys did well, really. Although whether the Mardin posse would
have done it without you, Inspector Suleyman, is probably doubtful.'
Siileyman looked at Taner and then said, 'Oh, I don't know.'
'Sure you do.' The American smiled. 'Take the compliment, Inspector.
I mean nothing by it. I'm doomed. What on earth can I get out of you
now?'
Suleyman ignored her. 'Miss Smith,' he said, 'you have told us that
you had arranged to meet the rest of your men somewhere. Where is
that? Where are the rest of your men now?'
Elizabeth Smith took a deep breath and then leaned back into her
chair. 'Ah, well then, that would be telling, wouldn't it?' she said.
Suleyman thought about all the Mardin families who had either disappeared
or no longer had a patriarch. He thought about the proximity
of Syria and Iraq and about how someone had dressed Yusuf Kaya's

corpse in an American uniform from Baghdad. Borders, even Turkish
borders, were easy - if you knew the right people.
'How did you get hold of an American serviceman's uniform from
Baghdad?' he asked.
She smiled, but did not speak.
Siileyman felt himself shudder. He tried a different tack. 'Tell me
about Murat Lole,' he said. 'We know that Faruk Oz's real name was
Hasan Karabulut and that he was one of your husband's cousins. Where
did Murat Lole come into this?'
'Van,' she said.
'Van?'
'Where Faruk Oz trained as a nurse,' the American said. 'Where in
fact Hasan Karabulut became Faruk Oz.'
'How and why did he change his identity?' Edibe Taner asked.
'I believe he paid some criminal in Van to get him a new ID,' the
American said. 'As to why ... To get away from here, from Yusuf and
from his connection to the clan. He was really a gentle boy. But Yusuf
found out.'
'And did what?'
'And was very angry,' she said. 'Yusuf never liked to lose anyone.
Faruk/Hasan was intimidated into telling Yusuf that he and his friend
Murat had plans to work in Istanbul. He said that if Yusuf ever needed
him while he was there he would be on hand to help him. He was buying
himself some freedom. The poor kid was so desperate to get away he
would have done anything. I think he planned eventually to just disappear.
Mind you, if Murat hadn't been in the picture . . .'
'Murat Lole?'
'Murat whatever he was calling himself that wasn't Armenian, yes,'
she said.
'So the name Lole . . .'
'Is his real name, so he says, yes,' the American said. 'Claims he is
a Lole whose family came originally from Mardin, just like the architect.'
She leaned forward in her chair then. 'But as we all know only
too well, some Armenians have changed their surnames over the years.
I don't know what Murat's had been, but I do know that my husband

fixed it for him to get all his papers changed into the name of Lole
when the boys went to Istanbul. Murat had this belief that away from
the east he could be who he wanted to be and use whatever name he
felt like using. Yusuf believed that in a tight spot an Armenian would
keep his head. Some people have this view of Armenians, you know.'
'But Lole, surely, works for you?'
'No, no,' she said. 'He killed Faruk/Hasan on Yusuf's orders.'
'You said before,' Suleyman said, 'that Lole killed Faruk/Hasan
because he got greedy.'
'So he did,' she said. 'Yusuf offered him money to kill Faruk. The
boy had tried to leave the Kay a clan! When he was of no further use
he was killed.'
'But surely,' Edibe Taner said, 'Lole and Hasan Karabulut were
friends?'
The American woman crooked an eyebrow. 'Honey, he was or is.
Man with a dream and big empty pockets wanting money. Bleak, I know,
but the whole point about the Route and everyone around it is that no
one can be trusted. Everyone double- and triple-crosses for billions of
dollars. It's Darwinism in action.'
'And of course Lole is still out there somewhere,' Suleyman said.
'Do you have any idea where this man might be, Miss Smith?'
'No, why should I?' she said. 'He's Armenian, or at least that's what
he claimed. You Turks always say they're so clever. He could be anywhere.'

The man wept. Not a nice man, Dr Eldem had in all probability murdered
the prison guard Ramazan Eren without so much as a flicker, but now
that he knew his lover had died it was another matter, izzet Melik looked
across at Ay§e Farsakoglu who just very slightly raised her eyebrows.
'Dr Eldem, was the plan that you go and meet isak Mardin somewhere
after his rendezvous with the American woman?' izzet asked.
It took the doctor a moment to gather himself. 'Well .. .' He gulped.
'Well, of course. We--'
'Where? Where were you going to meet up with isak Mardin?'
'I.. .' The doctor wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and then gulped
down a sob once again. 'He was going to call me.'

'Except that he wasn't,' Ay§e Farsakoglu said. 'Why would he? You'd
done what he needed you to do. He was off to Miss Smith.'
'I didn't know anything about that. I--'
'No, you didn't,' izzet Melik said. 'You killed on the orders of isak
Mardin.'
'No!'
'Yes. Dr Eldem, you are a doctor. You are not going to kill on the
orders of a thug or a madman or even a superior. You will, however,
kill for love,' izzet said. He looked briefly across at Ay§e Farsakoglu
before continuing. 'Many of us would. Now listen. Tell us who you
phoned the night Ramazan Eren died. Who did you not manage to get
through to?'
'I don't know.'
Ay§e Farsakoglu pounded one fist down on the table in front of her.
'Sir, that cannot be! You must know who you were supposed to telephone
and why. Why did you call this person, this apparent Syrian
national?'
There was a pause. Dr Eldem moved his head from side to side in
agitation. Once he opened his mouth to speak and then changed his
mind and retreated into silence again.
'Dr Eldem, we will find the truth, isak Mardin is dead. He died
attempting to escape the Jandarma in Birecik along with a man called
Bekir. You are protecting no one.'
'Oh, no?' He looked up sharply, his eyes full of tears. 'How do I
know he's dead? How do I know you're not just lying to me so that
I will implicate isak in something?'
izzet Melik sighed. 'Doctor, if you want a photograph of the body, I
can arrange it,' he said. 'But consider this: our conversation is being
recorded. Our superior, Inspector ikmen, will not tolerate dishonesty or
cruelty. If we lie to you, sir, we will be the ones to get into trouble, isak
Mardin is dead and so whatever you say about him now cannot possibly
do him any harm. Now, how did you know to give Ramazan Eren an
overdose of morphine and why?'
His eyes welled with tears again but this time he held them back. 'If
Eren started to wake, isak said, I was to call the number that I called,' he

said. 'I didn't know that the phone was registered to a foreigner -1 thought
it would be isak who would answer. He would tell me what to do. I knew
only that isak said we would make big money.' He put his head down. 'I
was greedy. I am ... isak had told me that if Eren began to wake he would
have to be killed. He said I should confirm it by phone but that wasn't
possible. No one answered.'
'So you acted on the say-so of your lover,' Ay§e said.
'Yes.' He shook his head slowly. 'Eren wasn't supposed to survive
Yusuf Kaya's escape, isak and the other nurses and cleaners were meant
to get away with him and leave all the guards and the police officers
dead.'
'But Ramazan Eren survived.'
He looked up. 'He would have talked.'
'Because he had been double-crossed,' izzet Melik said.
'Yes. Apparently he was part of it.'
'Just like isak Mardin's fellow nurse Faruk Oz,' izzet said. 'Found
dead at Mardin's old house in Zeyrek. Was he double-crossed too,
Dr Eldem?'
The doctor was beginning to shake now, and with good cause.
'Suddenly isak was working not for Kaya but for some American
woman,' he said. 'But Faruk 6z was related to Kaya and indebted in
some way to him. He was from back there, back in their home out east.
Murat Lole killed Faruk Oz apparently with Yusuf Kaya's blessing. Lole
was greedy. It all became confusing then. Then I didn't know who was
working for whom or ... or if isak really loved me.'

'It was in effect a violent putsch,' Siileyman said to Edibe Taner. 'Everyone
who was in the way, knew too much or was a threat had to go.'
The interrogation of Elizabeth Smith was going on well into the night
and they were taking a short break before going back in to speak to the
woman again.¦
'Elizabeth Smith identified two types of people she could target,' he
continued, 'those local people who secretly disliked or actively hated
the Kayas and those outsiders who didn't know or care about Yusuf
Kaya. It was all motivated by greed, of course. Makes you wonder how
Miss Smith ever managed to get even a thug like Kaya to marry her.
After all, it was the place, here, that she was in love with, not Yusuf.
But then she says, and Zeynep Kaya told us too, that their marriage was
a business arrangement on Yusuf's part also. She wanted an "empire"!
Allah!'
'She had all the Kayas killed,' Edibe Taner said as she hugged her
tea glass to her chest. She was cold with weariness and grief, and what
they had just been told by Elizabeth Smith had made her feel no better.
'And that was always the intention,' Siileyman replied. 'At least some
of the arms that Ibrahim Keser blackmailed Musa Saatci into hiding for
him were to be used against the Kayas. The rest I imagine were to
further her own power and influence in the Tur Abdin. To terrorise. But
then this thing, this route, is worth billions and so of course you're going
to use guns and grenades and even rocket launchers to protect it. She
wanted the Wormwood Route to herself and so wanted no pretenders
to rise up in the future to challenge her authority. Not even Kaya's children.
And as an outsider that made perfect sense. Her men could have
defected to Zeynep or any other Kaya family member had they thought

there was some advantage to be had there. Elizabeth, by killing the
whole family, prevented a war. Very sensible.'
'But she killed Gabriel too,' Taner said as yet again she descended
into her grief. If he were honest, Siileyman had to admit that his colleague
was of little use in the current interrogation. From the searing misery
at the death of the monk she had now slipped into a quiet, horrified
hopelessness. In the interrogation she hardly spoke. She regarded their
prisoner simply with a cold, implacable hatred. But then she wasn't
alone in that. Even at nearly midnight those who had loved Gabriel
Saatci still ringed the station, waiting to catch a glimpse of or maybe
even mount an attack on the woman responsible for the death of their
saint as well as, in some cases, their own relatives too. Siileyman knew
that the situation was volatile. He also knew that he had to remain calm.
Others around him may very well lose their heads, but that was not an
option for him. He had to remain in control.
'Inspector,' he said, 'I have two priorities here.'
Edibe Taner looked up from her drink and said, 'Oh?'
Siileyman offered her a cigarette, which she took, and then lit one
up for himself. 'To trace exactly how Yusuf Kay a escaped from prison
-who helped him, who died, et cetera - plus the exact circumstances
of his death. And secondly we must try to get this Wormwood Route
out of her. We know that heroin and other drugs passed through here
and that part of the operation involved packaging the drugs with bundles
-or whatever one calls such things - of wormwood flowers.'
'Do you think that Elizabeth Smith knows all the details of the
Wormwood Route?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'That was clearly her intention and she must
have got something out of Yusuf before he died. But then we don't know
the exact circumstances of that yet, do we?'
'No.' She sighed. 'Inspector, who was it who told you about Elizabeth
Smith and her men out at Dara?'
Although he had intended to tell her for some time, he now realised
that he still hadn't. 'Liitfii Giine§, a Kurd,' he said.
She frowned.
'What?'

:
'Oh, his family are poor. They, like a lot of people, have by turns
been given employment and hospitality and then bullied by the Kayas,'
she said. 'There is no love lost there. Yet Liitfu has - or had - quite a
surprising best friend.'
'Oh?'
'Yes,' she said. 'He and Elizabeth Smith's right-hand man, Ibrahim
Keser, were friends since their school days. Like brothers, they were.'

£etin Ikmen knew that he would never be able to sleep. Even without
the noisy ladies' henna party in one of the rooms at the bottom of the
hotel.
'A lady, she getting married,' the hotel owner had explained to ikmen
in his fractured, slightly guttural Turkish. §anhurfa was far too 'east'
for ikmen. Most people communicated amongst themselves in a variety
of languages and dialects, none of which he could speak. Not that that
was what was exercising his mind as he lay on his bed now, awake and
motionless save for the lifting of his hand up to his mouth as he smoked
cigarette after endless cigarette.
He had not spent long at the hospital. Just enough time to formally
identify his dead son. Bekir had looked as if he were sleeping. He'd
been shot in the back, basically in the lungs which, as ikmen knew only
too well, made a hell of a mess. Blood poured out of the mouths of
such people. But the hospital, to their credit, had cleaned him up and
apparently Mehmet Suleyman had done his best to make sure that the
body was not further damaged when it was taken to the mortuary. But
it was still dead and it had still been his son. Whatever Bekir might
have done he would always be that. First thing in the morning he would
fly back to istanbul with the body and then they would put him in the
ground. There were no questions about how or why he had died. The
jandarmes and the Mardin policemen who had shot Bekir, isak Mardin
and some man called ibrahim Keser had had legitimate cause. The three
men had just executed a defenceless monk. Just the thought of it made
ikmen want to cry, even though he knew that he wouldn't be able to.
It was as if his tear ducts had run out of moisture.
Fatma had of course been relieved that the boy would be buried


soon. Not that any of that meant much to ikmen. But it was important
for his wife, whose voice when he had spoken to her on the phone
earlier had been as cold as winter. She didn't so much blame him for
what had happened as feel nothing for him. Whether this was temporary
or not he couldn't know. But he had an unpleasant feeling that
nothing would ever be quite the same again. The happy and united
ikmen family had somehow produced a killer from its midst and the
reverberations were going to take years, if not decades, to subside.
Because even if the drugs and the drink were put to one side, Bekir
ikmen had not been like other people. Even as a child he had not wanted
to conform to the norms that governed what was a very liberal household.
There'd always been a kind of itch inside that boy, a something
that agitated and threw off balance even his sometimes sincere attempts
to fit in and make himself agreeable. All the children had had moments
of adolescent angst and awkwardness but with Bekir it was as if something
extra had entered his soul somewhere along the line, something
that had ultimately killed it.

'It was Huseyin Altun, the beggar king or whatever you call him, who
got Yusuf a car,' the American woman said. It was well past midnight
now and she was looking shadowed, pale and exhausted. But that was
not Suleyman's problem.
'He stole it?'
She shrugged. 'Yusuf dropped isak Mardin off somewhere outside
the city to hole up and then drove to Birecik. Hours and hours and
bloody hours.'
'While Huseyin Altun was being murdered by Bekir ikmen?'
'Yes.' She shrugged again. 'I guess. I don't know when he killed him
exactly.'
'Who was involved in the plot within Kartal Prison?' Siileyman
asked. He already had a list of names but he wanted it to be absolutely
comprehensive.
'The two guards.' She shook her head as if to try to get it to work
properly now she was so tired. 'He bribed some prisoner to pick a fight
with him.'

The simple Ara Berkoz.
'The governor?'
'No, but there were other guards too.'
'Names?'
'I don't know.' She looked up and yet again shook her head. 'Honestly.
Look, I'm bushed. Can we rest?'
'No.' He leaned across the table and said, 'Tell me what happened
when Yusuf got to Birecik. Did he get any more help along the way?'
She looked as if she might be close to tears. But she didn't cry. 'Not
that I know of. I think he may have stopped briefly in Gaziantep
she said. 'I was waiting for him at Bulbul Kaplan's house.'
'Why did you agree to meet there?'
'It was all part of Yusuf's plan,' she said. 'To hole up at Bulbul's.
No one knew, or rather the police couldn't make any connection between
him and her. She was just this woman, you know? Not related to him.
It was very finely calculated.'
'And he knew that you were going to be there?'
'I'd called him, yes,' she said. 'He was happy about it.'
'Yusuf Kaya had a phone?'
'Hiiseyin Altun gave it to him. It was registered in the name of a
foreigner, a Syrian. Once Yusuf was at the Kaplan house we, Bulbul
and I, got rid of it.'
'So', Suleyman said, 'you had Yusuf Kaya at his aunt's house with
the intention of getting information from him that he had killed, put his
own life at risk and spent a lot of money to protect. Did you think he
was just going to tell you because you were his wife? Did you think
you might seduce--'
'Oh, I had sex with him shortly after he arrived,' she said coldly. 'He
expected that.'
'And?'
'And I knew that wouldn't work. I'm not a fool. I just did it to relax
him, get him off his guard.'
'And so?'
She sighed. 'Inspector, what can I say? You're a man, you know how
men are when they've just had sex.'


He did not respond and for a few seconds no one spoke. Then the
American said, 'We tortured him.'
'You and ...'
'Bulbul. She threatened to put out his eyes. We . . .' She looked up
and blurted it out seemingly as quickly as she could. She was clearly
not one of those people who took pleasure in such things. It had been
a purely fiscal expedient. 'We tied him to the bed and then it was stuff
like burning him with cigarettes, cutting. I held a gun to his head at one
point. I tried to pull a tooth, but. . .'
'But he didn't talk?'
'No. It was only when Bulbul Kaplan had a knife at his eye that...
He told me something, Inspector. It was detailed and it all made sense.'
'How did he die?' Edibe Taner asked.
Only then did Elizabeth Smith give vent to what was, what had to
be, a terrifying ruthlessness. 'We cut his face off,' she said calmly.
Suleyman felt his heart jump inside his chest.
'It had all been planned,' the American said. 'Several of my guys
went in and out of Iraq at that time. We got a US army uniform. We
put him in it. Threw him in the river.'
'Thinking no doubt that both ourselves and the US authorities would
be fooled into thinking that the body was that of an American serviceman,'
Suleyman said. 'Miss Smith . . .'
'We were supposed to be long gone when you came to the house that
day,' she said, referring to the first visit Suleyman and Taner had made
to the house in Dara.
'Long gone where?'
'I had people ready to run the operation from this end when we'd
gone,' Elizabeth Smith said. 'We'd slip over the border into Syria and
stay there until it was safe to return. In Turkey or not we'd still be
making money. The Kayas were going to die that night.'
'Get rid of any possible competition.'
'They knew. Even though she didn't know much herself, Zeynep
knew about the existence of the Route. I couldn't have my guys
changing sides. I, or rather Ibrahim, had persuaded them to change
once and so I feared they would do it again. No one can be trusted,

can they?' Then suddenly she looked up and said, 'So who told you
where we were?'
'How did you, or Ibrahim Keser, get your husband's men to change
sides, as you put it? And why?'
'Ibrahim hated Yusuf,' she said. 'He always had. Ibrahim told me
about the Wormwood Route quite independently of Yusuf. Of course I
knew already, but Ibrahim didn't know that.'
'Why did he do that?' Siileyman asked.
'Because I slept with him,' she said. 'I fancied him and I slept with him
and he told me everything. He was much better in bed than Yusuf. We
decided to double-cross him together. Ibrahim had the confidence of the
other guys and, of course, money talks, as I am sure you know, Inspector.'
Siileyman sighed. 'Because you desired Ibrahim Keser ...' He shook
his head. 'Miss Smith, the only way in which any judge will even
consider leniency is if you tell me everything you know about the
Wormwood Route.'
In that cold room in the middle of the night the murderess and torturer
laughed. 'And what kind of leniency might that be?' she said. 'My very
own mattress complete with bedbugs just for me? Inspector, no judge
is going to hand down anything less than life. Who told you about me?'
'Miss Smith,' Siileyman said, 'your lover Mr Keser had other friends.'
'What do you mean?' she said. 'You mean that Ibrahim told someone
else, someone outside, about the Route?'
'I don't know. Miss Smith, did Yusuf Kaya, to your knowledge, tell
you the truth about the Wormwood Route?'
She didn't answer.
'Miss Smith . . .'
'Tell us or you'll be sorry.' It had been said very quietly but that was
what made Edibe Taner's words all the more threatening.
'There's nothing you can do to me ...'
'You killed a saint. A saint!' Edibe Taner said. 'You don't think you're
going to get away with that, do you?'
Siileyman reached across and put his hand on his colleague's arm.
She was shivering with rage.
'Inspector Taner . . .'

'I get the feeling you two aren't working from the same script any
more,' the American said. 'You want the Wormwood Route but all she
wants is revenge. That won't work.' She leaned back in her chair and
crossed her arms over her chest.
'I don't care what you think!' Taner said. 'I don't care!'
Her grief was getting in the way. Suleyman had to get her out of
there, and quickly. But he had to find out what he was up against first,
because the Wormwood Route was important. The Wormwood Route,
if all the hype about it was true, was very important indeed.
. 'Miss Smith,' he said, 'are you going to provide us with details about
the Wormwood Route?'
Her answer was immediate. 'No.'
Edibe Taner was nearly shaking herself on to the floor by this time.
Suleyman took hold of her arm and pulled her to her feet.
'Why is that, Miss Smith?' he said. 'What use can that information
be to you in prison?'
'Same use as it was to Yusuf,' she replied with a smile. 'People knew
that he and only he knew it and they left him alone. Also, a lot of people
were willing to help him get out.'
'Miss Smith, if Ibrahim Keser told his friend . . .'
'Friend? What friend?' She was frantic now. 'Tell me his name and
I'll...'
'You'll what?' Suleyman said. 'Give me the Wormwood Route?'
There was a moment of silence and then she said, 'I'll get out.'
Aware that Taner was about to explode or collapse, Suleyman knocked
on the door to attract the attention of the constable on guard outside.
As soon as the man opened up, he pushed the shaking Taner through
the door, and then he turned back to Elizabeth Smith.
'If you plan to escape . . .'
'Oh, I will escape,' she said. 'You won't be able to even think about
holding on to me. Solitary, putting me in some godforsaken hole in the
middle of nowhere ...' She laughed.
'But if those who decide these things put you in a prison with Suriani
inmates you will find that your escape plans will fail,' Suleyman said.
'You killed their saint.'

'You mean they'll try to kill me?'
'What do you think, Miss Smith? Between the Surianis and any influence that friend of your lover might have in prison, you'll be at risk.
There are a lot of Kurdish people everywhere.'
Her face froze. Had she suddenly made the connection between her
lover and one of his friends who was a Kurd? Had she even known of
the existence of Lutfii Giine§?
He gathered the papers and files on the table together and made for
the door once again. He rapped once on the metal grille and then turned
back towards the woman. 'I would urge you most strongly to rethink
your position. You can be in danger or you can be out of danger.'
'Or I can be out,' she said, and then she pushed her features into a
broad smile. 'Because you and I both know, Inspector Siileyman, that
where billions of dollars are involved there is no such thing as an honest
person. I love this land purely and truly. But when billions of dollars
came into view, to ensure that I would never have to leave it, that I
could in fact control it and that all I had to do to get that was to kill
. . .' She sighed. 'Saints, sinners, foreigners, whatever, it all don't mean
diddly squat.'

There were quite a few absences from Gabriel Saatci's funeral. Men
once resident at the house in Dara and, in some cases, their families too
had just disappeared. Of course there were rumours. Because these men
were known to have gone in and out of Iraq and Syria on their various
errands and missions, those countries seemed to be likely destinations.
There were also places not on easy terms with Turkey where one could
easily fall off the radar. Elizabeth Smith wouldn't say one way or the
other. That she had been leaving the country in some way when she was
captured, however, was certain. But then, after the killing of the Kaya
family, how could she have stayed? Now the house in Dara, the centre
of the Wormwood operation, was silent and empty. But for how long,
Suleyman wondered as he looked at the long line of mourners standing
in the streets waiting for Gabriel Saatci's funeral cortege to make its
way back from Mar Behnam church to St Sobo's monastery. It was
nearly two weeks now since the monk had been killed and in the meantime
Suleyman had been back to Istanbul to attend Bekir ikmen's funeral.
Apart from the fact that he still had work to finish up in Mardin, he
had promised Edibe Taner that he would attend Brother Gabriel's funeral.
Dressed in a black suit and tie, he bowed his head as the coffin passed
in front of him and the woman at his side began to weep. He knew her
and so, in the absence of any kind of visible handkerchief, he offered
her his. Lucine Rezian, Edibe Taner's Armenian aunt from Gaziantep,
thanked him.
'My son Rafik usually takes care of me when we leave our home,'
she said. 'But he couldn't come today and my brother-in-law Seckin is
too busy with his daughter to be bothered with me. Not that I am
complaining. Edibc is a soul in torment.'

He had seen his Mardin colleague earlier. Veiled and dressed in black,
she could barely walk, even with the support of her father on one side
and Constable Selahattin on the other. Everyone looked at her and spoke
behind their hands about her. Everyone, after all, did know.
'She has lost the love of her life,' Lucine continued. 'The light has
gone out in her world. Her soul is in exile and there is no way back. I
know.'
When he had first met this woman he had found her talk about times
past fascinating. He had in fact been rather aggravated by Edibe Taner's
apparent desire to lend her words no credence and to keep him away
from her. She'd described the old woman as 'mad' which hadn't seemed
fair then and didn't now. But there was a hopelessness about her, a
sorrow, that was disturbing.
'Exile of the soul?'
The old woman nodded. 'When one is detached from something so
loved, just the thought of it can bring the urge to kill oneself,' she said.
And then, reading the graveness on his face, she continued, 'It can be
a person, a place, even a time in one's life. Sometimes, as in your case,
it is a time you do not even remember.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'You are an Ottoman,' she said. 'Edibe told me. She heard it from
someone she works with who had been in Istanbul. She's very thorough.
Remember when I told you about the Cobweb World? The Cobweb
World is where exiles go. It is where I am. Where else would an Armenian
be? Modern Armenia has nothing to do with me. It's an awful place. I
don't belong there. As an Ottoman you don't belong in modern Istanbul.
You don't even want to be there, not deep down in your soul.'
He watched the end of the cortege pass before him and then offered
his arm to Lucine Rezian as they joined the rest of the mourners following
on behind the coffin.
'So where do I want to be?' he asked.
'In your palace, riding out with the Sultan, doing things that
Ottomans do.'
Edibe Taner had been right after all. This woman was clearly foolish.
He didn't want to do any of those things. Did he?

'Now you are poor like the rest of us and you have accepted that like
a good Muslim,' she said. 'But in the dark of the night you think about
what might have been had history been different. You don't even know
that you're doing it.'
'Yes, but.. .'
'Why do you think that people refer to you as an Ottoman?' she
asked. 'Because they do. I know that because just the look of you tells
me that is what happens.'
She was right. A lot of people did refer to him as an Ottoman. Some
people resented him because of it.
'But you cannot go back to the past any more than I can. So you do
what you can. You keep your standards, you talk to the old members of your family, you live with ennui, you live in the Cobweb World.'
Siileyman thought about someone else possibly in the Cobweb World
too. An Armenian without a name who had chosen, according to Elizabeth
Smith, to take money to fulfil what he saw as his destiny. Murat Lole
was still at large somewhere.
'Madam, do you know anything about the Lole family?' he asked.
'The family of the architect Serkis Lole?' She smiled. 'All gone. Years
ago.'
'Gone? Gone where?'
She looked away from him. 'Who knows?' she said. 'Out of the
country, I think.'
'So there couldn't be any family members here or say in Van or anywhere like that?'
She regarded him levelly for a moment and then she said a very firm
and final, 'No.'
In spite of his reluctance to engage in any more stories of Armenians
and why so many of them had emigrated from eastern Turkey, he was
wary of her last answer and said, 'Madam ...' But at that moment they
were passed by Constable Selahattin, Edibe, and Seckin Taner making
their way to the top of the procession to walk alongside the priest of Mar
Behnam, Musa Saatci and Brother Seraphim. The dead man's father was
grey with grief, crying bitterly with every step. As she passed, Edibe Taner
looked through her thin black veil into Siileyman's eyes. The self-inflicted

rents and scratches on her face aside, her eyes were so full of pain that
the look of her was almost too much to bear. Behind him the many
Christian women in the crowd began to ululate.
'Arabs!' Lucine said with a shrug. 'They are Christians and yet they
are Arabs too. They live in the Cobweb World. Islam came and it moved
the Arabs to a different place. These Syrians got left behind. My niece
will go there too.'
Whether she meant to the Cobweb World or into Christianity he didn't
know. But Lucine explained. 'To the Cobweb World,' she said, nodding
gravely as she did so. 'There is nothing for her, not now that Gabriel
Saatci is dead.'
'But she would never have married Brother Gabriel. She is a Muslim,
he was a Christian and he was a monk.'
'Of course not. Edibe worshipped from afar. But that was enough,'
the old woman said. 'Now he has gone, however, now he is no longer
in the world, her life has no meaning. She will enter the Cobweb World
with the rest of us. Her life will be one of compromise, regret and
sorrow.'
But wouldn't Edibe Taner one day recover? People did, after all,
weather the storms of bereavement and somehow come through them.
He had visited the ikmen family when he had returned briefly to Istanbul.
Grief there was in degrees, from not much more than an awareness of
it amongst Cetin's younger children, those who had known Bekir only
briefly, right up to the black despair of Fatma ikmen. His friend, as
usual, was getting on as he always did. But then Cetin, for all his deeply
unfashionable traits like agnosticism and smoking, was a modern man.
The fact that his mother had been a witch notwithstanding, Cetin lived
in the now because with so many children to support and think about
he just had to. The Cobweb World, as far as Siileyman could perceive
it, was where the lonely and disjointed and only they could afford to
go. And he saw himself with them. As he walked in procession towards
St Sobo's monastery and the last resting place of Gabriel Saatci the
saint, it became clear. He sprang from a past that could hardly be imagined
any longer. Old people blithely called his father a prince and
gave him respect because of that, but the reality was that he was an elderly

man with little money who was a prince of nowhere. Like Siileyman
himself. Had Mehmet Stileyman lived the life of his ancestors he would
have had a harem and had lots of sons who would probably now be adults.
In his head he was an honourable man of some standing but he wasn't
royal and other men were coming up in the police force behind him now,
younger, fitter, more in tune with a city that wanted to be modern - something
he just was not. He was a dinosaur. And yes, just as Lucine Rezian
had told him, he did think about what might have been in the dark, dark
watches of the night. He was there with the rest of them: the Armenian
woman, the dead saint, the Master of Sharmeran and the hordes of ululating
women behind him. In the Cobweb World.

Because Ay§e Farsakoglu knew the girl anyway there was no problem
about Sophia's gaining access to the police station.
'She's with me,' she said to the officer on the front desk, who had
been just about to shoo the dirty girl and her filthy bundle away when
Ay§e came into the building.
'I want to see Inspector ikmen,' Sophia said as Ay§e ushered her
through the reception area and into the station. The filthy bundle in her
arms was making small snuffling and squawking noises. Given Sophia's
radically different shape, Ay§e assumed it had to be her new baby.
'Where have you been, Sophia?' she asked as she led the girl up the
stairs towards her superior's office. 'Inspector ikmen and I have been
worried about you.'
The girl looked down at the bundle and said, 'I have baby.'
Ay§e both did and did not want to see the dead man's baby, the child
of a murderer. Her boss Cetin ikmen had been so marked by what had
happened. He was going through the motions of his daily life because
that was ikmen, that was what he was. But the death of a child, even,
a troublesome, even an 'evil' child, leaves whoever suffers it irreversibly
changed, ikmen had aged and he was, Ay§e had noticed, just occasionally
drinking brandy again.
'Did you have a doctor?' Ay§e asked as she led the girl down one of
the long green-and-white-painted corridors on the top floor of the
building.

'I go to hospital,' Sophia said simply. Probably one of the social
security hospitals, where one didn't pay but one did wait, sometimes
until it was far and away too late.
When Ay§e reached ikmen's office door, she knocked on the glass
before calling out, 'Sir, someone to see you.'
A very smoke-dried voice from within said, 'Who?'
'Sophia, sir.'
She waited for him to come and answer the door, which he did with
alacrity. Stinking of cigarettes and with eyes red from weeping and lack
of sleep, Cetin ikmen was not a pretty sight. As soon as he saw the girl
he looked down at the bundle in her arms and said, 'Is that. . .'
'I call him Asian,' the girl said. 'For his father.'
ikmen looked across at Ay§e and said, 'Does she . ..'
'I know your son is dead, Inspector ikmen,' Sophia said. Her eyes
were quite dry and she showed no emotion. 'I come to show baby.'
He ushered her into his office and Ay§e Farsakoglu, even without a sign
from her boss, left. She had no place in whatever conversation was to pass
between them. She went back to Siileyman's office where she and izzet
Melik were following up on possible sightings of the nurse Murat Lole.

'I will see the rest of the year out and then I will retire,' Edibe Taner
said to Mehmet Siileyman.
The man from Istanbul took a sip from the glass full of sweet red
wine Brother Seraphim had given him and said, 'Why? Inspector, I know
that Brother Gabriel's death has upset you, but I would urge you not to
act too hastily. You're a really good officer. It's been . ..'
She put a hand on his arm and smiled. 'I have been honoured to work
with you, Inspector Siileyman,' she said. 'I would not have survived the
interrogation of Elizabeth Smith had you not been there. I might have
killed her. But. . . Gabriel's death is only part of the story.'
'Part of the story?'
They were standing outside the huge main entrance to the monastery,
smoking. In front of them the vineyards and olive groves belonging to
St Sobo's disappeared into the misty distance that was the border with
Syria.

'Did you notice Liitfii Giines., the Kurd, back there in the monastery
garden?' Taner said.
'I noticed he was there,' Suleyman replied.
'Talking to clans once powerless in the face of the Kayas,' she said.
'He gave us, or rather you, Elizabeth Smith.'
'Yes.'
'His friend Ibrahim Keser was sleeping with the American and he
passed the information to you so that he could destroy her plans.'
'You really believe Keser told Giine§ about the Wormwood Route?'
'I believe it's possible,' she said. 'Liitfii is an ambitious man. He
has a big family. Liitfii Giine§ was not one of those who would have
profited from the Wormwood Route had the Kayas or even the American
controlled it.'
'You think that he spoke to us behind Ibrahim Keser's back?' Suleyman
said. 'That he really did in effect use us?'
'Possibly. I think that Giine§ would eventually have killed Keser, as
I believe Elizabeth Smith would have done in the end.'
Suleyman, though horrified, knew it could easily be true.
'All the surviving men who worked for Elizabeth Smith would seem
to be abroad,' he said.
'With little or no money, not to mention direction,' Taner said. 'New
masters will, I believe, piece together the elements of the Wormwood
Route. Liitfu Giines, the Kurd talks to the clan leaders at Gabriel Saatci's
funeral and maybe he even talks to men he once knew who now reside
abroad, on his mobile telephone.'
'You really do think he told us about Miss Smith so he could ultimately
displace her?'
'Why not?' she said. 'Here in Mardin we are on the route westwards
from Afghanistan, a country bulging with heroin that is now almost
completely out of control. Miss Smith was right: billions of dollars are
at stake here. Not, thankfully, that we will have to endure her "empire"
here in the city. Someone else will control and organise our lives now.
The new owner of the Route.'
'Mardin will need someone to fight that,' Suleyman said.
'Yes, it will.' She sighed. 'Just not me.'

'Why not?'
She looked up at him and smiled. 'Because I'm tired,' she said.
'Because my heart is broken and because my poor father must teach
someone to beat copper and speak to the Sharmeran before he dies.'
He didn't know how to respond to that and so he just stayed quiet. The reality or otherwise of the snake goddess was not something he felt
able to discuss with her or any other Mardin native.
'I used to have a brother,' Taner said as she squinted into the distant
vistas of the great Mesopotamian Ocean. 'Like poor Captain Erdur he
was in the Jandarma. He died. Now there is only me, and so although
our Sharmeran requires a master by tradition she must now settle for a
mistress.' She looked again at Siileyman and said, 'I want to be who I
am. I will not run away and hide under a false name like Hasan Karabulut.
I will not kill to be who I am like Murat Lole. I belong to the Sharmeran
and I want to be with her. It is my destiny.'
It was also lonely, old and ephemeral. The Cobweb World.
'Elizabeth Smith thinks that she will be able to use her knowledge
of the Wormwood Route to buy her way out of prison,' Suleyman
said.
'If she does even know it, Liitfii Giines. or someone else will have
taken it over by then. The Wormwood Route is just the first, I think, of
such "super routes",' Edibe Taner said. 'I think ultimately they will proliferate.
Making those around them rich, of course. In the end they will be
like leaking buckets: as soon as one hole in one route is discovered, so
another one will arise to take its place. That is my prediction.'
'But the Wormwood Route was foolproof.'
'Nothing in the end can be perfect,' she said. 'Only Allah. The
Wormwood Route is mythical and exciting because it is new and because
Yusuf Kaya was totally intoxicated by what he had made. But nothing
is for ever. It will have its day and people other than ourselves will
profit from it.'
He frowned.
'Even saints die,' she said. 'Even if our love for them does not.'
She made to go back into the garden where the wake was taking
place, but Suleyman took hold of her wrists and held her back.

'Edibe,' he said, 'you must not give up on the notion of finding love
somewhere else some day. You are a very impressive person.'
This was only the second time he'd ever used her first name and he
had blurted what he had said because he was neither comfortable nor
competent with strong emotion. She appreciated that, even if her reply
was not what he had wanted to hear - just because it was so unutterably
sad.
'That's very kind of you, Mehmet,' she said, 'but my heart died along
with Gabriel and I will not be seeking to try to revive it. I am already
in the Cobweb World. Let the drug men peddle their poison. My life
belongs to my Sharmeran now.'
He let her hands go then and she began to walk back through the
monastery gates.
'I will look out for Liitfii Giine§ and his associates in the future,'
Siileyman said just before she disappeared. 'I will not forget. I may
belong to the Cobweb World, as your aunt Lucine has told me, but I've
realised that I do not live there, Edibe, not yet. I will keep you as safe
as I can from the poison, Inspector. I promise.'
'You're a good man,' he heard her say from inside the gates. 'The
Sharmeran loves you. I know she does.'

The baby was clearly undersized for his age. He was also bundled up
in a really disgusting succession of rags. But he was healthy and when
Ikmen picked him up he smiled up into his face with such joy that the
tired policeman felt himself begin to laugh.
'I really, really appreciate you bringing him to see me,' ikmen said
as he sat down behind his desk and held young Asian on his lap. Sophia
had just told him that it was her intention to return, with the baby, to
Bulgaria.
'I have mother there,' she said. 'Now I no do drugs, I can go to her.'
Like a lot of young eastern European girls, Sophia's flight from her
own country had not resulted in her becoming either wealthy or famous.
Since her arrival in Istanbul she'd become a junkie, a prostitute, a thief
and the girlfriend of a murderer. At least she had little Asian, however,
a child she seemed genuinely fond of.

'Do you have money?' ikmen began.
'I have train ticket,' Sophia said. 'Some lire for food also.'
ikmen sighed. He didn't know what kind of environment Sophia was
going back to. In all likelihood it was far and away inferior to the kind
of life little Asian would have with the ikmen family in istanbul. Bulgaria
was still a very impoverished country with huge social problems and
very low levels of health care. But Asian was half Bulgarian at least,
his only surviving parent was Bulgarian and she loved him. He was her
baby.
'Sophia, I don't know whether I will see you again, but. . .'
'Oh, I come back sometime,' she said. 'For sure.'
'I'd like to give you some money,' ikmen said, 'for the baby. I ...
Just let me know where you are and ... Look, you can always ask me for money, you know?'
She looked at him levelly, suspicious he could tell, but then she said,
'I know.'
'There's something else too.'
'Something?'
He handed the baby back to her and then put his hand in his pocket
and took out his wallet. He had taken out Fatma's housekeeping money
earlier that day, and now he handed it over. The girl's eyes grew large
at the sight of it.
'My wife,' ikmen said. 'I don't know whether you know where I live
or not, Sophia, but I must urge you to keep who you are and what you
are doing to yourself until you leave istanbul. I don't want my wife to
know about you until after you have gone.'
The girl looked confused. 'You . . .'
'Sophia, if my wife found out that you were leaving the country with
the baby she would try to take him away from you,' ikmen said. 'Our
son . . .'
'Asian died.'
'Yes, indeed.' ikmen wiped a nascent tear from his eye with the back
of his hand. 'Your baby is our grandson, the only connection left with
our son,' he said. 'But he is your child, Sophia, and if you want to take
him back to your country you must be free to do that.'

'I contact with you all the time!' Sophia said as she stuffed what was
to her a huge amount of money into her pockets.
'That would be nice,' ikmen said. 'That would be very nice.'
Later, when the girl had gone and he had had a chance to think about
what had happened, he wondered whether she had just come to him for
cash. He wondered if he would ever see her or his grandson again. The
thought that maybe he wouldn't made him feel sick. But then how much
worse would it be if he told Fatma and then had to deal with her worry
and grief over the baby? Things had changed so much already and she
was barely talking to him now. For selfish reasons as well as Fatma's
sanity, he couldn't put her or himself through any more traumatic scenarios.
His son and many other people's sons and daughters had died since
Yusuf Kaya escaped from Kartal Prison. A lucrative drug route into the
country had been uncovered if not, as yet, plugged. Had that been worth
what had happened in Istanbul, Birecik and Mardin? He really didn't
know, and as he took his latest bottle of brandy out of his desk drawer
and gulped long and hard from its neck, he had no idea what, if anything,
was the point of any human act at all.
In fact he would have drunk the whole bottle had it not been for the
phone call that came then. He was, he knew, and had been since Bekir's
death, descending into the alcoholism that had characterised his forties.
So he answered the phone slowly and without enthusiasm.
'ikmen.'
'Cetin!' said the clearly excited voice of Mehmet Siileyman.
'Yes.'
'Cetin, one of Elizabeth Smith's guards has come across the Iraqi
border and given himself up. He was terrified out there. Couldn't wait
to get home even though he knew he'd be punished.'
'I'm not surprised. Iraq . ..'
'Yes - and Cetin, listen to this,' Suleyman said. 'This man is going
to tell us what he knows about the Wormwood Route. We have another
piece of the puzzle. And with izzet Melik and Ay§e Farsakoglu looking
into possible sightings of Murat Lole .. .'
ikmen put his brandy bottle down on his desk and said, 'There might
just be some hope, do you think?'

'I think that's more than a possibility,' Siileyman said triumphantly.
'£etin, what was done was not done in vain. It wasn't.'
'No.'
pounds tin Danen looked at his brandy bottle, picked it up and put it into
his desk drawer, which he shut. Then, as Siileyman began to tell him
more details about the man from Iraq, just very slowly, he began to
smile.



Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the help I received
from my fellow travellers, both known and unknown, back in March
2007. This is a novel that relies upon myths and folklore and for these
I have to thank the people of the east themselves; shopkeepers and
officials, priests and singers, artists and those who tell the stories of the
past. Te§ekkurederim.

I

The Turkish Alphabet is very similar to its English counterpart with the
following exceptions:

The letters q, w and x do not appear.
Some letters behave differently in Turkish compared with English:
C, cNot the c in cat and tractor, but the j in jam and Taj
or the g in gentle and courageous.
G, gAlways the hard g in great or slug, never the soft g
of general and outrage.
J, jAs the French pronounce the j in bonjour and the g
in gendarme.

The following additional letters appear:
C 9The ch in chunk or choke.
G, g'Yumu§ak ge' is used to lengthen the vowel that it
follows. It is not usually voiced (except as a vague
y sound). For instance, it is used in the name Ay§e
Farsakoglu, which is pronounced Far-sak-erlu, and
in ogle (noon, midday), pronounced oy-lay (see below
for how to pronounce 6).
§, §The sh in ship and shovel.

1,1Without a dot, the sound of the a in probable.
I, iWith a dot, the i in thin or tinny.
6, 6Like the ur sound in further.
U, iiLike the u in the French to.


659,204,738,246Full pronunciation guide

A,aUsually short, the a in hah! or the u in but, never the
medium or long a in nasty and hateful.
B,bAs in English.
C,cNot the c in cat and tractor, but the j in jam and Taj
or the g in gentle and courageous.
C,5The ch in chunk or choke.
D,dAs in English.
E,eAlways short, the e in venerable, never the e in Bede
(and never silent).
F,fAs in English.
G,gAlways the hard g in great or slug, never the soft g
of general and outrage.
G, g'Yumu§ak ge' is used to lengthen the vowel that it
follows. It is not usually voiced (except as a vague
y sound). For instance, it is used in the name Ay§e
Farsakoglu, which is pronounced Far-sak-erlu, and
in ogle (noon, midday), pronounced oy-lay (see below
for how to pronounce 6).
H, hAs in English (and never silent).
I,
1
i, i
J,
j
K ,k
L,
1
M, m N,
,n
0 ,o
o,
6
P ,P, r
s, s
§,
Without a dot, the sound of the a in probable.
With a dot, the i in thin or tinny.
As the French pronounce the j in bonjour and the g
in gendarme.
As in English (and never silent).
As in English.
As in English.
As in English.
Always short, the o in hot and bothered.
Like the ur sound in further.
As in English.
As in English.
As in English.
The sh in ship and shovel.

308



T, tAs in English.
U, uAlways medium-length, the u in push and pull, never
the u in but.
U, iiLike the u in the French to.
V, vUsually as in English, but sometimes almost a w
sound in words such as tavuk (hen).
Y, yAs in English. Follows vowels to make diphthongs:
ay is the y sound in fly; ey is the ay sound in day;
oy is the oy sound in toy; uy is almost the same as
the French oui.
Z, zAs in English.