‘Sir, let us not yell out names in a public place, shall we?’ İkmen said as he pulled the sleeve of Maurice Loya’s coat towards him. He lowered his voice. ‘Your brother, as I know you know, has confessed to the murder of a woman.’ ‘Yes, he …’

  ‘I will need to speak to you about the night your brother claims he killed this person,’ İkmen said. ‘But now is neither the place nor the time. What are you doing here, Mr Loya?’

  ‘I was going to catch a ferry …’

  It was perfectly possible, although İkmen doubted whether it was true. There was a faint mocking expression behind the smooth and confident face of this man. İkmen was getting the feeling that Mr Loya had the idea he was having something over on the policeman. Quite why he should want to do such a thing, İkmen couldn’t imagine. But that he did appear to be doing it was obvious to him.

  ‘Mr Loya—’

  ‘Sir! Sir!’

  İkmen looked around at Ayşe Farsakoğlu. Pointing excitedly at the water below the jetty, she said, ‘It’s Ismet, sir! He’s got something!’

  Quite which Ismet she meant, İkmen didn’t know. But, after excusing himself to Maurice Loya, he went over to his sergeant and was just about to ask her what she meant when he saw one of the ismets holding something over his head in the water. To İkmen it looked very much like a knife.

  ‘Things are better now. Settled. I feel settled.’

  There was nothing except the sound of the engine revving as the accelerator was pressed down gently. This was as it should be. This felt good. It had also provided relexation after considerable anxiety.

  ‘Normality has been resumed. Nothing is wrong. I have done nothing wrong. Life is as it should be.’

  ‘THE COOL PRETTY DEAD THING HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE WORLD. ‘

  Later on, much later, on, the back of the old garage, the bit that hung like a house at the end of the world over the edge of one of Istanbul’s seven hills, shut its doors and the sound of the engines revving ceased. Shortly after that the front of the garage opened and then shut very quickly for what it was hoped was going to be some time. People were about, it was dangerous. Someone could possibly have seen the car drive in, or, after that, this visit to the garage now. A quick getaway was essential.

  Sometimes, if one looked very quickly across one of these back-street scenes, one could almost imagine that it was 1970 again. 1970, before death came to stay. That was an altogether happy and attractive notion.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Rossoneri means red-black,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘It is one of the names the AC Milan fans give to themselves. They also call themselves The Devils, too.’

  It was Sunday morning and Melik and his boss Mehmet Süleyman were driving along Istiklal Street watching as even more people than usual went in to and came out of the two Catholic churches on that thoroughfare. Red- and black-shirted Italians, plain red-shirted Englishmen.

  ‘Both sides praying for victory,’ Süleyman said with a shake of his head. ‘You know, İzzet, my wife told me that Liverpool is a very religious city.’

  ‘Is that so? Well, it’s not like Milan, then. In Milan I think they worship only at the altars of Versace and Ferrari.’

  İzzet, who originally came from the southern city of Izmir, had been taught Italian by one of the Italian-speaking Jews who still inhabited that city. The man in question, a Mr Levi, had also taught İzzet a considerable amount about Italian life and culture. Football, prayer, fashion and cars.

  ‘What about Fiat?’ Süleyman asked as they drew level with and then parked in front of the Church of St Mary Draperis.

  ‘As a company? Fiat is for poor people,’ İzzet said.

  ‘And yet this Mr Emin you spoke to yesterday …’

  ‘Mr Emin had a thing about the 1972 Fiat 124. Some people become fixated on ordinary cars. He had a Fiat 124 when he was young and so is nostalgic about them. Not that the 124 is exactly ordinary. It was very advanced for its day, but… whether the Fiat had anything to do with the dumping of the Kamondo Lady, we don’t know. But I’ve issued a statement to the press as you instructed, Inspector.’

  ‘Good.’ Süleyman got out of the car just as a large wave of red and black shirts disappeared into the church. ‘We have very little besides that at the moment; just some unknown DNA. Both that of the woman and her - well, let us call him her assailant, is unknown to us. So the car, well…’

  ‘I’m not sure what we’re doing going back down to Voyvoda Street now, Inspector,’ İzzet said as he closed and then locked up his car door.

  ‘Because it never hurts to revisit a crime scene,’ Süleyman said as he lit up a cigarette. ‘I know the men were all over the Karakoy area and up here in Beyoglu just after the woman was discovered, but that first sweep very rarely catches everyone. Some people are out when we first come along, some people take a few days to think about and perhaps interpret what they have seen at the scene of a crime. Sometimes things only make sense when one thinks about them calmly after an event.’.

  ‘Mmm.’ After enabling the car alarm, İzzet joined his superior as they began to walk down Istiklal towards the Tunel funicular railway which takes people up and down the steep Karakoy Hill. Built in the nineteenth century to transport the wealthy European merchants who traded in the area past the less savoury parts of the city, Tunel is the oldest underground railway in the world. Not that İzzet Melik and Mehmet Süleyman were headed for the railway today. They wanted to speak to people, which meant that they had to hit the streets.

  ‘You don’t think that we’re going to just get swamped by these football fans, do you?’ İzzet said as he watched a pair of Italian men throw a bottle of grappa between them like a basketball.

  ‘I hope not,’ Süleyman said.

  Suddenly, and with monstrous loudness, two waves of men, one group wearing red and the other wearing red and black shirts, streamed out of the Tunel terminus at the bottom of Istiklal Street, singing. And although neither side was overtly threatening, most of these Liverpool and AC Milan fans were drunk.

  ‘I think that maybe you spoke too soon, Inspector,’ İzzet Melik said.

  The knife the divers had found in the Golden Horn the previous afternoon was now at the forensic institute. Both Edmondo and Maurice Loya had identified it as one of the weapons from their home, a Toledo steel dagger, and Edmondo had confirmed it was the weapon with which he claimed he had killed Emine Aksu. His brother Maurice had not been in the house on the night Edmondo said that he had killed the woman. He had been out to dinner with a client in Nisantasi. In fact, no one at all had seen anything odd happening in or around the Loya house that night. No one had seen anyone push a body in a handcart, admittedly wrapped in a large tarpaulin, towards the Golden Horn and then drop it in. For a small man like Edmondo the effort involved in such an enterprise would seem to be considerable. Such an operation alone would surely have caused him some distress and some amount of physical pain.

  ‘I’ve yet to hear of anyone who really thinks that Edmondo Loya killed that woman,’ Balthazar Cohen said as he looked beyond his garden and down the hill leading to the shores of the Golden Horn. His son Berekiah was at the bottom of the garden bending down to smell some blooming spring flowers. ‘What about people out in boats that night?’

  İkmen shifted himself awkwardly in the uncomfortable cane chair Estelle Cohen had given him and said, ‘No one saw or heard anything untoward. And with no body, there is no way in which I can either confirm or deny Edmondo’s story. When the dagger comes back from forensic, we will know more.’

  ‘If the woman’s blood is on it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Balthazar Cohen, still nodding his head gently as he watched his crippled son move slowly and carefully amongst the flower beds, said, ‘And if there are no traces of her blood or DNA on the knife … ?’

  ‘Then I only have Edmondo’s confession,’ İkmen said. ‘And thankfully, the days when just a confession was good enough are long past.’

  ‘Because you believe that Edmondo Loya is innocent.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ İkmen said. ‘What puzzles me is how he can be, as he was, initially so convinced of his own innocence and then, just one day later, turn himself in as a murderer. The conversation he had with you for, instance. He only just admitted to going to Sultanahmet in the sixties. I mean, has someone got to him or… ?’

  ‘You mean Maurice?’ Balthazar smiled grimly. ‘That is possible. Maurice was always the more forceful of the two. But I think that Maurice would only lean on his brother to give himself up if Edmondo were actually guilty. I mean they carp and rage at each other all the time, but they are genuinely devoted to each other, too. After all, just from a selfish point of view, why would Maurice pressure Edmondo to do something that will bring him grief also? People in general do not like murderers, or their families, and Balat folk are probably less forgiving than most. If he isn’t already, Maurice may well be shunned, at least for a time. This rumour that it was Maurice who told the world about his brother’s so-called crime is nonsense!’

  ‘So if Edmondo is lying …’

  ‘I can’t think why he would,’ Balthazar said. ‘He’s a quiet and, yes, admittedly, socially awkward man who has probably never had sex in his life. But—’

  ‘But maybe this is his moment,’ İkmen said. ‘What age is he now?’

  Balthazar shrugged. ‘Fifty-eight, nine …’

  ‘So maybe he looks at his life—’

  ‘Edmondo has done a lot of academic stuff,’ Balthazar said as he shuffled a little painfully in his wheelchair. ‘He’s researched, written things. That is what he always wanted to do.’ But then he caught what was to him a significant look in İkmen’s eyes and said, ‘But maybe he hasn’t lived very much, is that what you think, Inspector?’

  ‘You said yourself he’s probably never had sex,’ İkmen said. ‘I know it’s strange and ultimately destructive, but maybe Edmondo wants the world to believe he is a sexual being of some, any sort, before it’s too late.’

  ‘Yes, but murder? To involve murder in such a story?’

  İkmen spread his arms wide and said, ‘A woman he knew was missing, the opportunity presented itself.’

  ‘Yes, but this Emine Aksu could just turn up …’

  ‘True. But maybe that is a gamble Edmondo is willing to take. You were on the force for years, Balthazar, you know that some people just confess.’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Admittedly, most of those who do so, do so habitually,’ İkmen said. ‘But maybe, as I said before, Edmondo feels the weight of years piling up on him. Maybe he wants to be viewed as a “man” before he dies.’

  ‘He’s not old …’

  ‘No, but he isn’t young, either,’ İkmen said, ‘and at the moment I can’t think of any other reason why he might confess to something he hasn’t done.’

  ‘Unless he did do it,’ Balthazar looked long and hard into İkmen’s eyes. ‘I never knew this Emine Aksu. I’d left Edmondo and Maurice and all the rest of them back in Balat years before he met her. It’s only recently I’ve been in touch with him and his brother again. I spoke to him the other day, as I told you, and he was fine; seemingly without a care. But I don’t know accurately what he’s like these days, not really.’

  ‘Friends?’

  ‘Acquaintances,’ Balthazar corrected. ‘Edmondo knows a few people a bit. Although I do remember that years and years ago he did spend some time with that old friend of Dr Sarkissian, the one who is the custodian of that church

  ‘The church in the Fish Market. Garbis. I know him,’ İkmen said. ‘You don’t recall anyone called Abdulrahman, I suppose? An older man? Edmondo reckons he’s now dead.’

  ‘No … No, that name isn’t familiar at all.’

  İkmen dug a hand into his jacket pocket, took out his cigarettes and, after offering one to Balthazar, he lit up both their smokes. As he did so, Balthazar’s son Berekiah limped painfully up the garden and back into the house. Hulya, Berekiah’s wife, was working, as usual. As he usually did at times like this, İkmen felt very sorry for his perpetually tired daughter.

  ‘To go back to Balat and what people may or may not feel about Edmondo,’ Balthazar said, ‘Estelle was pulled aside and pumped for information yesterday.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Some women. Esther Sinop and that mad old writer woman, Juanita Kordovi. They, or rather the writer, pulled Estelle into that shoe shop that used to be Madrid’s Haberdashery. Ali something, now he’s a friend or acquaintance on some level of Edmondo’s, owns the place, runs it with his young nephew. The two old bitches were asking my Estelle question after question while that Ali looked on. They think that because she’s a policeman’s wife she’ll know something.’

  ‘What did Estelle do?’

  ‘Well, she told them nothing,’ Balthazar said. ‘She knows nothing! Everyone knows that Edmondo gave himself up to you; she knows that, but she knows nothing more about it. She just pushed her way out of there.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Bloody Balat! I’d forgotten what it was like when we came back to live here,’ Balthazar said gloomily. ‘When I was a kid, everyone wanted to know your business. My father didn’t move our family over to Karakoy just to be nearer to the bars when my mother died - although of course his drinking was a big part of that. He moved us to get away from the gossip over here. Balat people are always trying to find out what’s going on in your life!’

  ‘With some success?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Oh, they can tell you who is sleeping with whom and if and when the Levi family ate a leg of pork!’ Balthazar said. ‘So your suspicion about Edmondo could be true from that point of view. If he left his house with a handcart in the evening, someone would have seen him. But on the other hand, big things get missed here in the neighbourhood of the trivial.’

  İkmen frowned.

  ‘Of course I’m only talking about old Jewish Balat, which is a very small place now,’ Balthazar said. ‘But the new incomers from the East seem very similar to my old people. Some ten-year-old was apparently married off to some old man on Vodina Street last year. Nobody knew, you lot the least of all, for months! The child, it’s said, was locked away for the pleasure of this dirty old bastard …’

  ‘I heard about it,’ İkmen said sadly. ‘I know one of the officers involved in that operation. The child was kept in some sub-basement wasn’t she? It was terrible.’

  ‘Yes, and nobody knew,’ Balthazar said. ‘Either that or they turned a blind eye. A lot of people had those sorts of cellars years ago. I still do not to this day know whether that was the case with the rabbi’s daughter back in the early fifties. Someone apart from him must have known.’

  ‘The rabbi’s daughter?’

  ‘Rabbi Behr. He locked his daughter up in his emergency cellar.’ ‘Emergency cellar?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what you’d really call such a place. That’s my name for it. But anyway, during the Second World War there were a lot of shortages. Although we were not ourselves at war, there was rationing.’

  ‘Yes, my father told me about it,’ İkmen said.

  ‘OK. Well, what he may not have told you is that it was at that time that the minorities in this country were squeezed by the Government for tax. Ourselves and the Christians, had it tough.’

  İkmen lowered his head. Although neutral during the Second World War of 1939-45, Turkey did suffer shortages and those members of minorities perceived to have considerable funds were taxed heavily by the then cash-strapped administration. It was not a time of which the majority of Turks, including İkmen, were proud.

  ‘Some people built cellars under their cellars in which to hide precious stuff like sugar and tea,’ Balthazar said. ‘People still find old rancid sugar bags in these secret places to this day around here. Some people even hid themselves in there just in case the Turks suddenly decided to side with the Nazis. After all, a lot of people knew what was going on with the Jews in Germany, didn’t they?

  Turkish diplomats were rescuing as many Jewish children as they could get out of Europe and bringing them back here. But who knew what would happen? Not Rabbi Behr, for sure. When the war started he had a sixteen-year-old daughter. He had a cellar dug inside his cellar, a secret place just for her.’ He looked up, frowning. ‘The rabbi’s relatives only found her when the old man died in the early fifties. Screaming and hammering on the roof of her prison. Hungry and thirsty.’

  ‘She’d been there all that time?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Since 1942,’ Balthazar replied. ‘She was a pretty young girl and he feared that if we were invaded by the Nazis they would rape her, then kill her. When the war ended the world was in such turmoil, even here, that he was too nervous to let her out. When the girl did finally come out, she fell totally silent. She stayed that way until she killed herself. That was sometime back in the sixties.’

  ‘That’s extraordinary,’ İkmen said. ‘I—’

  ‘The point I’m making, Inspector, is that this neighbourhood is old and nosy, but it’s also a place riddled with a thousand nooks, crannies, cisterns, cellars and bolt holes,’ Balthazar said. ‘God Almighty, Inspector, this is one of those districts where people still actively search for Byzantine remains! We Jews are newcomers compared to the Greeks! Who knows? Maybe Edmondo had some secret way of reaching the Golden Horn you don’t know about.’

  ‘Well, so far the room he said he killed the woman in would appear to be entirely clean,’ İkmen said. ‘Forensic can find no blood traces of any kind. Edmondo says he killed Emine on a rug which he burnt after he disposed of the body. But there’s no trace of that either. The only blood belonging to Mrs Aksu we have found is in her own home, the kitchen and the bathroom.’

  ‘Then maybe her husband killed her and not Edmondo.’