‘Mr Loya, I don’t know when we might be finished,’ İkmen said. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Yes, but what are you looking for… ?’

  ‘If I knew that,’ İkmen said as he finally gave in to his cigarette urge and lit up without asking, ‘my life would be a lot easier.’

  ‘My brother has admitted to a crime and, presumably, given you some details about it,’ Maurice said as he paced nervously across the hall. ‘It must be enough for you to hold on to him! If he’d told you nothing you would have dismissed him as a crank and thrown him out on his ear!’ When İkmen failed to respond he looked down the hall towards the staircase that led underneath the house. ‘And why down there? What are they doing down there?’

  He began to walk determinedly towards the basement staircase.

  After first looking meaningfully at Ayşe, İkmen said, ‘Mr Loya, I am fully aware of the fact that you have a considerable cellar area underneath this property.’

  Maurice Loya had reached the top of the staircase. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Sir, are you sure that you know the exact extent of this area?’

  Maurice Loya, rather than descend the staircase, stopped. From down below the sound of hard, stone wall being hit with something reached his ears.

  ‘Are your men—’

  ‘Mr Loya, the warrant I gave you to look at allows my men to test your walls for cavities,’ İkmen said. ‘You mean—’

  ‘Mr Loya, do you know of, or have you ever heard rumours of, other, deeper chambers underneath this property?’

  ‘Deeper, “other” chambers?’ Maurice Loya cried. ‘Are you mad? There’s a cellar. What more do you want? Secret passageways? This is not, Inspector, some sort of haunted house in an American theme park!’

  ‘So you are quite happy for our men to test the walls down there, then, Mr Loya?’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu asked.

  For a moment Maurice Loya looked at her blankly, not understanding. Then suddenly, with a burst of energy that looked as if it should have been beyond him, Maurice Loya bounded down the stairs and into the basement without another word.

  Going through lists of missing persons was a very tiring business. Of course, now that such things were recorded on computer, it was far less onerous than it had been, İzzet Melik, however, was being treated to how things had been done in the ‘old-fashioned way’ with his brief to look at records of missing women between the years 1979 and 1981. Records of such cases still unsolved were housed in a very deep, dark and dusty room way, way down in the forgotten depths of police headquarters, İzzet had little doubt that he was the first person to enter this particular room in at least the last five years. Just the dust on its own was a clue to that apparent fact. Every time he picked up a new cardboard file, great cloaks of the stuff would rise up into the air and settle across his shoulders like a shroud.

  Dead. He looked at a small, faded passport photograph of a Swedish girl - missing, last seen in Beyazit district in 1979 - and knew that she was so certainly dead he could almost see her corpse. Kids like that - from rich families, well fed, pretty - they didn’t just disappear. OK, they might, whilst in thrall to some ideal like that of ‘getting back to older cultures’ or ‘free love on the road’, go missing for a bit, but when the dirt and the smell of patchouli oil and the sheer lack of understanding that men exhibited to them on the road kicked in they would go home, bathe, get jobs in shops and offices, and marry. When they didn’t go home it generally meant that someone else was preventing them from doing so. İzzet, like most western Turks of his generation, had grown up seeing the hippies cross and recross his country. He knew these girls and the boys they had either followed or pulled in their wake towards the mystic East. Some of them now of course, the ones who had stayed and somehow survived, were getting on. Middle-aged junkies who looked thirty years older. But not this Swedish girl. This one had gone and, so far, just for 1979, he had a stack of at least ten others who had also ‘gone’ too.

  ‘Sir, I am going “to ask my men to make a hole in what I’m sure you agree is a hollow wall. I have to do this. Your brother has confessed to the crime of murder. But we have found no body as yet…’

  ‘But you were diving,’ Maurice said, ‘in the Horn.’

  Everyone else in the room stayed still and silent except for İkmen who now walked towards a visibly shaking Maurice.

  ‘Mr Loya,’ he said, ‘we have some problems with your brother’s account of his part in this “murder”. I have to explore every possibility, which includes every centimetre of this house before I commit Edmondo for trial.’ He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘Maurice, we are very, very far from the truth at the moment. I must get beyond that wall and—’

  ‘But what is there has nothing to do with Edmondo!’ Maurice cried, tears now springing from his eyes. ‘It has nothing to do with me! It was our father!’

  İkmen suddenly felt completely at a loss. ‘Your father? Your father what?’

  Maurice Loya bent double under the weight of something no one else in the room understood, and screamed in what appeared to be agony.

  ‘Maurice?’ İkmen put a hand out to comfort the man who pulled away sharply from it like a burnt finger. ‘Mr Loya?’

  Maurice Loya put his head in his hands, İkmen was just about to give the order for Yildiz and the others to knock the wall down anyway when he lifted his head and said, ‘Don’t judge me, or Edmondo, by what’s in there. We were babies. We - I’ve never thought that you would - that any of us were ever in real danger but…’

  İkmen understood - or thought that he did. ‘Mr Loya, if your father built somewhere to hide goods or even your family during the Second World War, then I do understand. I know about this phenomenon. Turkey was neutral and—’

  Maurice Loya was laughing. In the deep dankness of that cellar it echoed very strangely. ‘A hidey hole?’ he said. ‘You think we have one of those hidey holes other Jews had around here?’

  ‘Yes, well

  ‘Oh, it’s rather more than that, I can tell you!’ Maurice Loya said. ‘Oh yes, rather more than that, Inspector!’

  For a few moments İkmen just watched Maurice Loya, giving him time if needed, to perhaps expound on his somewhat hysterical utterances. But when nothing but a sort of gentle undercurrent of laughter ensued from the man, İkmen just turned to his officers and said, ‘Break the wall down. Now.’

  Just before pickaxe hit wall, Maurice Loya screamed out, ‘No!’

  Signor Rossi and Signor Ferrari (no relation to the car, as he would keep saying in broken English) had failed to sober up from their drinking exploits of the night before. They had been staying in the Hotel Daphnis which was also in Fener, but on Sadrazam Ali Pasa Street rather than Sancaktar Street, and had got lost in the early hours of the morning. Amid much hilarity, which was unintelligible to the rest of Fener, the two Italians had stumbled about the quarter for quite a few noisy hours looking for their hotel. It was only when it became apparent to them that they were never going to find it during the hours of night time that snuggling down amid a load of old garages became a viable possibility. And it was only when a young man called Gazi Sinop - grandson of Esther - saw two drunken Italians in someone’s open garage, sitting in a 1972 Fiat 124, that the police got involved with the two AC Milan supporters’ lives. Gazi, who had several convictions for petty theft and was therefore no great lover of the police, went and got the nearest thing he could handle to an officer of the law: Berekiah, son of that old policeman Balthazar Cohen. It had been Berekiah, once he’d seen the car and got some sense out of the two Italians, who had called Mehmet Süleyman.

  ‘You know, sir,’ Mr Rossi said in English to Süleyman through a hail of grappa fumes, ‘one of my first car, it is Fiat 124.’

  ‘Is not like having Ferrari or Alfa Romeo,’ Mr Ferrari added, also in broken English, swaying as he spoke. ‘But Fiat 124, this is historical, like memory, er…’

  ‘It is nostalgic for you,’ Süleyman said in English with a smile and then, turning to Gazi Sinop who had, some moments before, returned to the scene, he reverted back to Turkish. ‘The men didn’t actually drive the car, did they?’

  ‘No, Inspector,’ Gazi said as he observed the outdated green car now out in front of its dilapidated garage. ‘They were totally out of it, both of them. It’s why I went to get Berekiah Cohen. I knew the Italians weren’t actually doing any harm, but I didn’t want someone else to call the police and get them arrested. I like AC Milan.’

  Mr Rossi, on hearing the word ‘Milan’, raised his arms into the air and shouted ‘Milano!’

  Süleyman, who had already had a deeply suspicious Ardiç on the phone, ‘just checking’ that he wasn’t ‘upsetting’ the Italians in any way, was very grateful for Gazi Sinop’s low-key actions.

  One of the uniformed officers Süleyman had brought along with him encouraged both Italians to sit down on a nearby wall at this point.

  ‘But then Berekiah told me about the Fiat you’re looking for and I recognised it, so he called you,’ Gazi continued. ‘It’s something to do with that body over on the Kamondo Steps …’

  ‘Gazi, do you have any idea as to who might own these garages?’ Süleyman interrupted. He didn’t want to get involved in any sort of conversation about the Kamondo Lady, but he did want to find out what he could and then get Mr Rossi and Mr Ferrari back to their hotel. Still drunk, they were reasonably happy. Sober and hung-over, they might prove more difficult.

  But Gazi, in answer to his question, just shrugged. ‘No. They’re old. I could ask my grandmother, if you like.’

  ‘If you think your grandmother might know.’

  ‘She may do.’

  Balthazar Cohen who, during the last part of Süleyman’s conversation with Gazi, had been wheeled towards the policemen by his son, cut in. ‘This boy’s grandmother’, he said to Süleyman, ‘is Esther Sinop. She knows everyone and everything and is on personal terms with both God and the Devil.’

  ‘Balthazar.’ Mehmet Süleyman bent down in order to kiss his friend on both cheeks.

  ‘Well, go on, then! Go and get the lady Esther for us!’ Balthazar said to the boy once Mehmet Süleyman had straightened himself up once again. Gazi Sinop headed off in the direction of the Ahrida Synagogue and his grandmother.

  Once Gazi had gone, Süleyman greeted Berekiah and then offered both men cigarettes. ‘I know I’ve asked Berekiah this before,’ he said to Balthazar, ‘but do you have any idea about who might own these garages?’

  ‘None,’ Balthazar replied. ‘But then we were away from Balat and Fener for decades, so what do I know? This part of the district was always the “posh” bit when I was a boy. Tradespeople, doctors and chemists had places up here by the school. Down there,’ he tipped his head down towards the small, teeming streets of Balat, ‘where we were, was where the scum lived, the nobodies, the unemployed, the drinkers …’

  ‘Yes, but Dad,’ Berekiah interrupted what was becoming yet another descent into his morbid past by his father, ‘Mehmet isn’t asking about you, he’s asking—’

  ‘I know what Mehmet is asking me about!’ Balthazar roared. Several of the uniformed officers and both of the Italians looked over at the incensed man in the wheelchair with concern. ‘I’m not a fool!’ Balthazar continued. ‘I know he doesn’t want to hear about my disgusting childhood! Who does?’

  Ever since he had lost his legs in the earthquake of 1999, Balthazar Cohen’s bitterness about his lost childhood had been increasing. Addicted to the gossip of others as he had been all of his life, this did not, however, sustain him for weeks at a time. Too often there were great lakes and seas of time unaccounted for, time during which he could brood on his early life with his brutal, alcoholic father. This time however, his bitter anger blew itself out quickly and after a pause he said quietly, ‘No, Mehmet I do not know who these garages belong to. Sorry.’

  ‘OK.’ Mehmet Süleyman smiled. Maybe the garages didn’t belong to anyone any more. Maybe the person who owned the Fiat 124 and the person who owned the garages were not one and the same.

  After all, in a city of about ten million people, space was at a premium and people put their families, their possessions and their cars wherever they could. But if someone did know, it would give him somewhere to start. After all, no Fiat 124 BC was registered to anyone in Istanbul and so tracking the car’s owner down from that direction was going to be difficult. Forensic were on their way to investigate the vehicle and dust for prints, but then most of those would belong to Mr Rossi and Mr Ferrari. The two Italians had, by their own admission, had a lot of fun playing with the controls, if not driving, a car they felt very nostalgic about. In spite of the fact that the garage had been unlocked, that the key had been in the ignition, and that they were drunk, Mr Rossi and Mr Ferrari had managed to resist the temptation to drive the car.

  Shortly after Balthazar Cohen disconsolately settled down into his wheelchair once again, Süleyman saw İzzet Melik’s Mazda coming up the hill towards the scene. The usual crowd that always gathered at possible crime scenes - old, covered women, dirty children and resentful-looking men - parted to let the car, and the small motorbike that put-putted in its wake through. In fact, it was the bike, driven by Gazi Sinop with his terrified wild-haired grandmother on the back, that got to Süleyman before his deputy who was busy parking his car.

  ‘Esther!’ Balthazar Cohen cried as he spread his arms wide to welcome the red-faced old woman.

  Too arthritic to dismount the tiny bike of her own volition, Esther Sinop allowed her grandson to carry her off and then place her gently on to the dust-covered road. ‘May God help me,’ she said as she dusted down her cornflower-patterned dress. ‘May God forgive you, Gazi, for nearly giving your old grandmother a heart attack!’

  ‘Esther!’

  ‘Mr Cohen,’ she said as she looked across at Balthazar and then slowly smiled. ‘And your lovely son!’ Then, turning to Süleyman, she said, quite unbidden, ‘Such a shame about the other Cohen boy.’ She lowered her voice. ‘In a mental hospital…’

  ‘Yes.’ Mehmet Süleyman said it tightly. Berekiah’s elder brother

  Yusuf had indeed been in a psychiatric institution for some years. Süleyman knew that it wasn’t something that either Balthazar or Berekiah had any desire to discuss. ‘Mrs Sinop, these garages here …’

  İzzet Melik had just drawn level with Süleyman and the old woman when Esther Sinop.said, ‘These?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked at the garages, and at the Italians lounging drunkenly outside them, with a critical eye. ‘Oh, these belong to the haberdasher, Mr Madrid.’

  Still smarting from what he had heard her say about his eldest son, Balthazar Cohen attempted to correct what he had only just recently learned to be true. ‘But Esther,’ he said, ‘Mr Madrid is long gone; he went in the fifties.’

  ‘Oh, well, his descendants, then.’

  ‘Who are… ?

  ‘In Israel,’ Esther said lightly.

  ‘So this Mr Madrid’, Süleyman said, ‘clearly has nothing to do with these garages now.’

  ‘No. Long dead, God protect him. But as for his family?’ Esther Sinop shrugged. ‘Madrid’s is owned by one of your people now, young man.’

  Süleyman frowned.

  ‘A Muslim,’ Esther Sinop said.

  ‘Sells shoes,’ Balthazar Cohen put in. And then he added rather sadly, ‘Cheap ones.’

  It was only once the dust had settled and İkmen was actually in the small chamber that led off from the Loyas’ cellar that Maurice managed to finish his sentence.

  ‘… there’s a door into this room from the garden. We never use it, but there is a key. Somewhere.’

  İkmen looked very small and lonely amid the many streaming dust particles that danced around both him and every other solid object in that dark, dank little chamber. Apart from the door to the garden, at which Constable Yildiz was now looking, there were a few shelves on the walls containing what looked like bottles, a blackened sink over by the door, and a table, large and dark and old in the middle of the room.

  - İkmen gave the shelves a cursory glance while Maurice Loya put his head in his hands. Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who had now joined her superior in the chamber, walked over to the table.

  ‘You may confiscate it if you wish,’ Maurice said through his fingers. ‘I know it is illegal…’

  There was a silence while Danen moved in closer to the shelves. Ayşe bent down towards the table and flicked through some surprisingly undusty magazines that were on top of it.

  ‘My father was a dentist,’ Maurice continued through his fingers. ‘He could easily get hold of it. It - it was an insurance, if you like, against - well, you know, what was happening in Europe at that time. We should have got rid of it years ago, but how does one do that?’

  ‘Mr Loya, at the risk of speaking out of turn, I don’t think that your father was probably alive when this was put down here,’ Ayşe said as she held a slightly faded if quite obviously lurid magazine aloft.

  Maurice Loya took his hands away from his face and looked up. The magazine was called Huge Breasts. He gasped.

  ‘Published in 2004,’ Ayşe said. ‘I imagine your father—’

  ‘Mmm, I think, Sergeant, that you will find that magazine is as much a surprise to Mr Loya as it is to us,’ İkmen said. And then turning back to the shelves behind him, he went on, ‘No, Mr Loya is, I think, referring to the large cache, though admittedly aged, of opium which he has here.’

  Ayşe put Huge Breasts back down on the table. ‘Opium?’

  Maurice Loya, who had now moved forward in order to look at the magazine as well as other similar publications underneath it, said, ‘I told you. Father got hold of it during the Second World War. It’s not something I’m proud of. It reeks of lack of trust. It wasn’t a patriotic thing to do.’

  ‘Mr Loya, in light, as you said yourself, of what was happening in Europe, it is understandable,’ İkmen said. ‘I presume from the quantities here that your father intended to use it to commit suicide.’