‘Now the trade is controlled by Mafias,’ Süleyman said with a sigh. ‘Russians, Chechens, our own …’

  ‘And is, as a consequence, a business,’ İkmen continued. ‘Nothing to do with enlightenment or even just plain honest fun.’

  They both sat in silence for a short while. At the pristine self-service counter, a very smartly dressed young assistant sold cappuccino and cake to a respectable middle-aged couple from Berlin as well as a cup of tea to a very scrubbed-looking backpacker from Israel. Times had changed since the days of the hash-smoked walls of the Pudding Shop of yesteryear.

  Süleyman cleared his throat. ‘So why did you ask to meet me here specifically, Çetin?’ he asked as he pulled one hand through his thick, slightly greying black hair.

  İkmen dug one thin, yellowed hand into the pocket of his jacket and took out a photograph of a woman. He put it on the table in front of Süleyman and said, ‘This is Emine Aksu, wife of the magazine owner Ahmet Aksu.’

  The other man looked down at the picture and raised his eyebrows. ‘Attractive.’

  ‘She’s fifty-five years old, childless, and she’s a missing person,’ İkmen said. ‘Been gone from their home in Haskoy for - according to her husband, whom I saw this morning - two weeks and one day.’

  Süleyman frowned. ‘He’s only just now reported it?’

  İkmen, in a rather more lowered tone than was usual for him, told Süleyman about the Aksu’s ‘open’ relationship and then said, ‘Ahmet Aksu met Emine here in the Pudding Shop back in the sixties. Given their espousal of free love plus the faint whiff of cannabis smoke I picked up in their house in Haskoy, I don’t think that either of them has ever really left since. Take away Mr Aksu’s suit and his wife’s designer clothes and I think that you’ll find pure hippy underneath. I know it’s supposed to be fashionable now, but even their home is decorated in the Buddhist style - or so he told me. I mean Buddhism was almost the state religion of the hippies …’

  ‘I thought that a lot of them became Hindus …’

  ‘Well, in addition to Hinduism,’ İkmen said. ‘But that is by the by. Look, Mehmet, I don’t have to tell you that I am my mother’s son, do I?’

  Süleyman smiled. Everybody knew that Çetin İkmen was the son of Ayşe İkmen, the famous witch of Usküdar. Originally from Albania, Ayşe had been an odd choice of wife for Çetin’s academic father Timur, and indeed for some years she had been very out of place in the Asian suburb of Usküdar. But as her experiences of second sight as well as her other demonstrations of occult knowledge grew, so did her fame and standing in the local community. Not that any of this lasted for any great length of time. Çetin was only ten when his mother died, but she left him with her considerable gift of insight. He used it more often than even he would sometimes admit to himself in his work.

  ‘I have a distinct feeling of foreboding where Mrs Emine Aksu is concerned,’ İkmen continued. ‘It is a feeling that Mr Aksu shares.’

  ‘Well, as you said yourself, Çetin, he is a hippy at heart and such people do tend to believe in such things.’

  İkmen knew that Süleyman was not implying that he didn’t himself believe in ‘such things’, but was just simply making an observation on Ahmet Aksu. What Mehmet Süleyman believed or did not believe about the world unseen was still very open to question.

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘What Mr Aksu also believes, or rather what he observed in his wife the last time he saw her, could be, he thinks, something to do with her old hippy past. He said that when she left their home just over two weeks ago, there was a girlish quality about her. After I quizzed him further, he told me that his wife had intimated that she might be going to meet someone from her distant past. The Aksus apparently knew - amongst others - a lot of drug dealers and other assorted criminal types back in their old hippy days. Now, this makes Ahmet Aksu distinctly nervous. He claims to remember very few names and when he did dredge one up it was with great reluctance. I suspect the Aksus have moved on socially even more than their polished outward appearances would suggest.’ He pulled a slightly sour face. ‘What rich kids do or did for fun, eh?’

  Süleyman put his cigarette out and then almost immediately lit another. ‘Are Mr and Mrs Aksu both from wealthy families?’ he asked.

  ‘Nouveaux riches,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘Compared to yourself, I mean, my dear Mehmet.’

  ‘I see.’ The handsome, arrogant face hardly moved. But then İkmen knew it was just a game his friend played with him at times like this. To look blank and unmoved was an Ottoman prerogative and Mehmet Süleyman was most decidedly an Ottoman. Although the Sultanate of Turkey had been abolished by Ataturk back in 1924, prior to that what was then the Ottoman Empire had been ruled by the monarch, supported by an assortment of relatives, ministers and significant families. One of those connected to the royal house by marriage was the family that became known by the surname Süleyman. Mehmet, the son of a man older people in their home neighbourhood still called ‘Prince’ Muhammed Süleyman, was one of a very noble, if now impoverished, breed. Those with money, at least in the eyes of some of the old families, could only be nouveaux riches with all the connections to lack of taste and coarseness that such a term included.

  ‘In the late sixties many of our own youngsters, particularly those with money and education, discovered the hippies,’ İkmen said. ‘I remember it distinctly. Looking in here and seeing a few pale Turkish faces amongst a sea of red and brown Europeans. They were nervous at first - it was all so alien - but once they got going on the hash, read a few pages of On the Road and discovered sex, inhibitions soon came crashing down.’

  ‘I’m sure they did,’ Süleyman replied. ‘And so you think that this Mrs Emine Aksu may really have met someone from that time, do you, Çetin?’

  . ‘I think that it is one possibility,’ İkmen said. ‘Looking at her past acquaintances from that period is certainly a place to make a start in the search for Mrs Aksu.’ Then he leaned across the table and smiled at his friend. ‘How do you fancy a trip back to the 1960s, Mehmet?’

  A quiet life wasn’t something that Mr Ali Tevfik had thought anything much about until he reached the age of thirty. Up until that time he had spent most of his waking hours hanging out in the cafes and bars of Sultanahmet in the winter and then doing much the same thing at the seaside resorts on the southern Mediterranean coast in the summer time. Ali, to the eternal shame of his diplomat father, devoted his time entirely to parties, women, drink and drugs. In the forefront of the nightclub scene in places like Antalya, it was only when one of his young female conquests commented upon his ‘advanced’ age that Ali began to question what he was doing. Up until that moment being thirty had meant very little to him. Suddenly being told that he was ‘old’, however, set him thinking and within a year he had enrolled on a business studies course in London and made his father very happy. Now he nominally ran one of the most successful car hire firms in the country, had been married for twenty-five years and had two daughters both of whom were at university in the US. Mr Ali Tevfik enjoyed reading, pottering in his lovely garden which led down to the Bosphorus, and, occasionally, a little relaxed game of golf with other semi-retired friends. In short, he enjoyed a life of very deliberate quietness. It was not a style of being that prepared him in any way for the appearance of a rather scruffy policeman with news from his distant, disreputable past.

  ‘I understand’, Çetin İkmen said as he sat down in the garden chair his host had gestured him towards, ‘that you know Mr Ahmet Aksu and his wife, Emine.’

  ‘I know of them,’ Ali Tevfik replied as he sat down opposite the policeman. The Bosphorus was very blue and calm on what was a very fine evening and the view of it which his seat afforded him made him smile. ‘Ahmet Aksu owns Fabulous Homes, that lifestyle magazine.’

  ‘He does indeed.’ İkmen smiled. ‘However, Mr Tevfik, when I said that you know the Aksus, what I should have said is that you knew the couple, years ago.’

  Ali Tevfik frowned.

  ‘Back in the late sixties and early seventies, according to Mr Aksu, you and he were part of a group that met in the Pudding Shop in Sultanahmet,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Like a lot of young Turks at the time you were fascinated by all of the European hippies who descended on the city during that period.’ He moved his hands through the air as if casting a spell. ‘Mysterious travellers on their way to seek enlightenment.’

  ‘Well, er…’ Mr Tevfik looked down at the floor in a way that made İkmen feel that he was embarrassed by this conversation.

  ‘But then that wasn’t always the case, was it?’ İkmen said. ‘Many of them just wanted to get high, didn’t they? I arrested a few of those back then, in the Pudding Shop. Maybe Mr Aksu, his wife Emine Oz, as she was then, and you were even present when that happened. I mean, you must have seen a few - what did the hippies call drug raids?’

  ‘Busts,’ Ali Tevfik said as he looked up with a sigh. ‘We called them busts. What on earth is all this about, Inspector? I haven’t done anything wrong. Why are you asking Ahmet Aksu about my past?’

  İkmen told him about Emine Aksu and the fact that she was now officially a missing person.

  ‘Back then, in the sixties, Emine was wild,’ Ali Tevfik said. ‘Before she even met Ahmet there was this Dutch boy, and, well…’

  ‘And there were a lot of drugs,’ İkmen said. ‘According to Mr Aksu your particular preference, for both taking and dealing, was LSD. Having an “acid trip”—’

  ‘He had no right to bring that up! That was a very long time ago!’ Ali Tevfik’s eyes blazed. ‘We all did it back then! Everyone took, even the whiter than white dealt on occasion! You can’t arrest me for something I did when I was twenty!’

  ‘Nor would I want to, sir,’ İkmen said. ‘You are now a very respectable man whose company contributes considerably to the economy of this country.’ He looked up at the large nineteenth-century Ottoman villa behind them and then continued, ‘And to your own wealth, of course, too.’

  ‘Then

  ‘Mr Tevfik, I know from Mr Aksu that it wasn’t just a Dutch boy upon whom Emine Oz bestowed her favours back in the sixties. You were also, shall we say, intimate with the lady. Is that not so?’

  Ali Tevfik lowered his very dark brown eyes. ‘Yes. Although not for very long. Ahmet came along and… well, back in those days most of us preferred the Western girls anyway. Emine was a lot of fun, but she was too Turkish …’

  ‘Too Turkish? What do you mean?’ İkmen said.

  ‘Well, materialistic, I suppose you would say,’ Ali Tevfik replied. ‘Inspector, back then the Westerners - and some of us, too - were all against materialism; it was the fashion. The fact that you had to have wealthy parents to do what we did, didn’t occur to us. So going to India to “find yourself” or getting high in order to look inside your own head were the things that obsessed our minds. Oh, and getting laid was important too, but… our “ordinary” countrymen were fixated only on making money.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ İkmen said a trifle testily. ‘Because they were, if you recall, poor. Most of us were.’

  Turkey in the late sixties and seventies had, as Mr Ali Tevfik knew only too well, been another country. There had been no tourist industry to speak of back in those days and most people, though not deprived of the necessities of life, had enjoyed few luxuries. Western Europe, and particularly the US, had been viewed as places of almost impossible comfort and were either envied or emulated accordingly. People like Çetin İkmen had scraped a living - just.

  Mr Ali Tevfik waved a hand in front of his face as if pushing thoughts of the ‘poor’ away from him. ‘Yes but Emine came from a wealthy family and so she didn’t really need anything. Unlike the Western girls, she was always on about the latest new dress, about her hair, her handbags, make-up, the shoes that seemed to change every day. She did drugs because it was fashionable to do drugs, not because she thought she might learn something from the experience. She was a spoilt little rich kid.’ And then he smiled. ‘But then you probably think we were all spoilt little rich kids, don’t you, Inspector?’

  İkmen did but he didn’t pass any comment on it. ‘Mr Tevflk,’ he said, ‘my only concern is for Mrs Aksu who has been missing from her home now for fifteen days.’

  ‘Missing? You mean she’s gone off or something?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘Mrs Aksu is, as she was when she was young, a free spirit. Her husband is accustomed to her frequent absences from their home. However, this absence has persisted and he is worried, which is why he contacted the police.’

  ‘So why are you asking me about it?’ Ali Tevfik said. ‘Emine and Ahmet are not people that I know now.’

  İkmen looked out at the perfect lawn which stretched down to the great broadness of the Bosphorus at the end of the garden and said, ‘Mr Tevfik, Mrs Aksu is still, according to her husband, a very sexually adventurous woman. Mr and Mrs Aksu possess an understanding about such things and, in general, experience no problems in this regard. However, apparently when Mrs Aksu left home this last time to go about her “adventures”, her husband felt uneasy. In addition, Mrs Aksu gave her husband the impression she was not going off to meet a new lover but someone she had been with before, someone from her past.’ ‘And you think that I—’

  ‘Your name was just one of several that Mr Aksu gave us,’ İkmen said. ‘As you will appreciate, sir, we have to follow all and any leads we are given.’

  ‘Inspector, I have been very happily married for twenty-five years now,’ Ali Tevfik said gravely. ‘I am of course aware of Ahmet and his magazine and, in fact, my company has in the past advertised our chauffeur service in it. I’ve seen both Ahmet and Emine at a couple of business functions over the years and I have spoken to both of them. But I haven’t had an affair with Emine, if that is what you think.’

  ‘No spark left over from the old days …’

  ‘Not a bit of it!’ he looked around first to make sure that no one else was in the garden before he leaned forward towards İkmen and said, ‘I last saw Ahmet and Emine two years ago. There was a dinner organised by the Touring and Automobile Association at the Pera Palas Hotel. I was there with my wife. I had a few very pleasant words with Ahmet and, after the dinner, a lot of the guests went into the bar for drinks. It was there that I spoke to Emine. Ahmet had gone off to speak to some other media types and my wife was talking to a friend so we were alone. Emine, after what can only have been at most five minutes, propositioned me. She always was a mischief maker. She came on to me.’ .

  ‘Did she.’

  ‘Yes!’ he whispered. ‘She said that if I wanted to come up to the room she and Ahmet had taken for the night she’d - well, she’d have sex with me. For the sake, she said, of old times …’

  ‘And did you?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Well, of course I didn’t!’ Ali Tevfik replied. ‘I love my wife.’

  ‘And yet Emine Aksu is a very attractive woman,’ İkmen said. ‘And you have, by your own admission, slept with her before.’

  ‘Back in the sixties, yes,’ he said as he again looked around to ensure that no one else was about to join them in the garden. ‘But I left all of that behind years ago. Emine Aksu is still, I will freely admit, a very attractive woman, but she isn’t any more for me now than she was back in 1968.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’

  ‘Well, because of her abiding materialism,‘Ali Tevfik said. ‘I mean, I know I like money and I love to have nice things, but…’ he lowered his voice again. ‘Between you and me, at one point she did suggest that we go outside, round the back of the hotel and “do it” out there. In the old days we both rather liked that sort of thing. And, well, I admit I was tempted, I—’

  ‘You went outside with her.’

  ‘Yes! Please, please don’t let this go any further…’

  But İkmen neither confirmed nor denied whether he would comply or not.

  ‘I kissed her, I admit,’ Ali Tevfik said. ‘But then when it came to, well, sex and… there was a bit of a performance about how we might be able to protect her Versace skirt during the course of the proceedings and then when she took her shoes off so that she wouldn’t accidentally scuff them against the wall behind her…’

  ‘Your ardour cooled.’

  ‘Yes.’ He put his head down again, seemingly in shame. ‘I told her what I thought, she swore at me, and I went back to the bar. I haven’t seen Emine Aksu since.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Positive. But I have heard a few rumours,’ Ali Tevfik said. ‘Oh?’ İkmen replied. ‘And what might they be, sir?’

  According to her husband the only clue that Mrs Emine Aksu had given him about her destination on the day that she apparently disappeared, was that she was headed towards those old neighbourhoods on the southern side of the Golden Horn. Balat, Fener and Ayvansaray - Mehmet Süleyman knew them all for various reasons. Fener was where one of the many daughters of his colleague Çetin İkmen lived. In a big old house up by the Greek boys school, Hulya İkmen lived with her small son Timur as well as her mother and father-in-law and her husband, Berekiah. Not that Hulya, who was only just nineteen, was in her house very often. Eighteen months previously Berekiah had been badly injured in the terrorist attack on the Neve Salom Synagogue in Beyoglu which had resulted in the partial paralysis of both of his arms. Until that time Hulya and her in-laws, the Cohens, had lived opposite the synagogue. After the bomb, however, the Muslim daughter-in-law and her Muslim son had moved with her Jewish husband and his family to Fener. There they all lived while Hulya worked punishing hours in a variety of jobs in order to keep everyone. Prior to the violent events of November 2003, Berekiah Cohen had worked as a jeweller in the Grand Bazaar. Understanding as his old employer had been, no one could really use a jeweller with no strength or movement in his hands.