They followed Handan up the stairs and into Ali Paksoy’s apartment. They found her standing in the kitchen. It was a small, basic, intensely old-fashioned room. There was no refrigerator, just one of those old wooden cabinets covered with thin mesh to keep the flies out. Inside, İkmen knew, there would be either tiles or a slab of marble on which milk and butter would be placed in order to keep them cool. Even his own cheap kitchen was better than this.

  Handan, looking around, still shaking her head, said, ‘My brother has altered so little since our father died.’

  ‘May I go into the other rooms, Mrs Sangul?’ Ayşe asked.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

  İkmen started to speak. ‘Mrs Sangul—’

  ‘They said that Edmondo Loya killed that woman,’ she said as she looked down at the old, scarred table in the middle of the room. ‘But then you let him go. Why was that, Inspector?’

  ‘Lack of evidence,’ İkmen replied. ‘I cannot hold someone on no evidence, even if that person confesses.’

  She walked once around the table, touching its surface as she went. ‘Do you think that Edmondo and my brother, or just my brother on his own…’

  ‘Mrs Sangul, until I can speak to your brother, I won’t know what he may or may not have done,’ İkmen said. ‘Mr Loya, too, doesn’t seem to be in the area at the moment.’

  ‘You think they may be together?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘Do they go out together much, do you know?’

  ‘Edmondo is often out and about, everyone knows that,’ she said. ‘But my brother doesn’t often leave the shop. When he’s alone he sometimes doesn’t answer the door because he wants to stay on his own. I offer to cook for him, but he rarely comes over for a meal. I do his washing.’

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu came in from one of the other two rooms and said, ‘He’s not here, sir.’

  A great roar of voices burst out of the kebab shop at the end of the street where a huge group of men were watching the football on the television.

  ‘Not even a minute, by my calculation,’ Krikor Sarkissian said as he looked down at his extremely sophisticated watch. ‘Less than a minute!’

  İzzet Melik sat down in his seat again and let his arms rest by his sides. Milan had scored! In, Dr Sarkissian was quite correct, less than one minute, Paolo Maldini had scored for AC Milan!

  ‘He’s thirty-six, you know!’ İzzet said excitedly. ‘Paolo Maldini, he’s thirty-six!’

  Natasha, frowning, said, ‘That’s not very old.’

  ‘That’s ancient for a footballer,’ her cousin called across at her.

  ‘Yes, I know, but…’

  Krikor Sarkissian nudged İzzet Melik on the arm. ‘Natasha is just bitter that the Italians are winning,’ he said. ‘But then they have come out fighting, haven’t they?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘A fabulous goal.’

  It had been. The entire Italian side of the stadium had risen to its feet in the wake of it. Whether in jubilation or despair, everyone had reacted in some way. The Liverpool supporters had booed and whistled their disapproval.

  As play began after the celebrations, Natasha Sarkissian rose to her feet and shouted, in English, ‘Liverpool! Come on, you Reds!’

  ‘Sir, there’s nobody in and I think I just heard someone score in the football,’ Constable Yildiz said as he ran breathlessly up to Süleyman.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to knock on the front door?’ A scandalised Süleyman said. He’d only left the boy a few moments earlier.

  ‘Yes, sir, but there’s clearly no one in and—’

  ‘Constable, he could be walking out of the front door right now! I don’t care what’s happening in the bloody football, get back round there and stay by that front door until I tell you to stop!’

  Yildiz put his head down and began to walk very slowly down the small alleyway that led to the back of the Loyas’ property.

  ‘Quicker than that!’ a disgruntled Süleyman shouted at him.

  Once the young man had gone, Süleyman looked up at the thick walls that surrounded what İkmen had told him was a considerable garden. At the very back of the plot there was a thick, wooden gate which was apparently locked from the other side. Like so many of these old Fener ‘palaces’, the Loyas’ great pile was in effect a small fortress, built to withstand both time and possible invasion.

  Something else that İkmen had told him, of course, was that the chamber his officers had found underneath the basement, the one containing all those old bottles of opium, had a door which led out into the garden. According to İkmen it was a very small door and was hidden behind a dilapidated wooden garage, now no longer occupied by any sort of vehicle. There were no other out-houses or workshops and so if Edmondo Loya was on the property he was either in the house, the garden or the shed. Whether or not voices from outside could be heard from the chamber under the basement he didn’t know.

  For the second time since he’d been there he called out, ‘Mr Loya, it’s Inspector Süleyman from the police, can I talk to you, please?’

  Again there was no response. Süleyman looked down at his watch. He’d give him another two minutes, then he’d go and get Yildiz. He looked up at the great dark wall to his left and tried to feel confident about scaling it. Maybe the young constable would be better suited to that task? Poor Yildiz. He had so wanted to see the football match. Süleyman himself had heard a roar from the streets round about that signified something a few minutes before. Not a half-deflated thing like the roars that sometimes accompanied missed opportunities, this roar had been wild and full-throated. Someone had obviously scored. For his own sake, if nothing else, he hoped it was Liverpool. Zelfa would be impossible if the Italians won this game.

  Ali Paksoy wasn’t in the basement either, which left only one place that he could be.

  ‘He used to play down here when he was a child,’ Handan Sangul said as she unlocked the door to the Byzantine chapel underneath the shoe shop.

  ‘And you?’ İkmen asked. ‘Did you used to play down here too, Mrs Sangul?’

  She looked to the side of the now open door for the torch her brother always had there, ready for use in the chapel, and found that it was gone. Leaning in to the darkness below, she called out, ‘Ali?’

  But no one replied. She turned to İkmen and said, ‘The torch my brother uses down there has gone.’

  İkmen looked at Ayşe, who raised an eyebrow before opening her handbag and taking out a small black cylinder.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Sangul,’ İkmen said. ‘Sergeant Farsakoğlu and I both have torches. If you don’t mind us going in front of you …’

  Handan stepped quickly out of their way. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said and then, shivering slightly, added, ‘Horrible place!’

  ‘You don’t like it?’ İkmen lit up the stairs beneath his feet before training the beam from his torch on the massive vaulted ceiling above.

  Ayşe, now at the bottom of the rough stone staircase, lit the steps for Handan as she descended. ‘My brother liked to play here,’ she said when she reached the bottom. ‘But it was always too dirty for me. Father didn’t encourage either of us to have friends when we were little and so Ali used to play down here on his own. He should’ve had a brother, poor Ali.’

  İkmen, who was in the chapel for the first time, took a few minutes to have a good look around. Like Süleyman, he tested the walls with his knuckles and the ground below with his feet. Everything sounded very solid. Ayşe was once again fixated on the fresco above the troughlike structure. Handan Sangul came over to join her.

  ‘I think that maybe it was that picture that made me so dislike this place initially,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not very good,’ Ayşe replied.

  ‘Whether it is or isn’t, it’s still a representation of a person, and in Islam we’re taught to abhor such things aren’t we?’ Handan said.

  İkmen, who had now come over to join the women, frowned. ‘I think it’s quite good, actually,’ he said as he shone his torch directly on to the preternaturally rounded head. ‘The exaggerated stylisation is typically Byzantine; look at the frescos in the Aya Sofya or the Kariye. Has the Ministry of Culture seen this?’

  ‘No, sir,‘Ayse said. ‘Apparently not. Inspector Süleyman informed Mr Paksoy it was his duty to contact them.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He then turned to Handan Sangul and said, ‘Well, your brother isn’t here, is he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I take it there’s no alternative entrance to or exits from this place?’ ‘Not that I know of,’ Handan replied.

  ‘Oh, well, then, it would seem that your brother really is out, Mrs Sangul,’ İkmen said and, ushering her in front of him with his torch, he added, ‘Let’s go.’

  She moved forward towards the stairs and the light from the basement door above. İkmen followed. Only Ayşe Farsakoğlu didn’t move from her seemingly fixed position beside the fresco. It was only when İkmen was halfway up the staircase that he realised that she wasn’t following him. He turned. ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Sir,’ she said, as she shone her torch into the deep niche underneath the picture, ‘this is the place.’

  ‘The place you felt something?’

  ‘Yes. It looks a bit different now.’

  He shone his torch down towards her face and noted the strain that he saw there. This wasn’t just a silly notion she was having here, this was something that could just be real.

  He turned to Handan Sangul again and said, ‘That niche, or whatever it is beneath that fresco, do you know what it is?’

  Handan pulled a face. ‘Another reason why I never would go down there.’

  İkmen frowned.

  ‘It’s a well, Inspector,’ she said. ‘There’s a wooden lid, it must still be there, underneath a lot of dirt and stones. You can, if I remember rightly, move the lid from either up here or down in the well.’

  ‘That’s why it looks different, I can see wood underneath the stones this time! Mr Paksoy didn’t tell Inspector Süleyman anything about a well,’ Ayşe said. ‘He said he thought this thing might be a baptismal font.’

  ‘Take it from me, it’s a well,’ Handan said. ‘I’ve seen it. It’s absolutely terrifying.’

  Getting over the wall into the Loyas’ garden had proved easier than Süleyman had imagined. He was actually rather fitter than he had thought - either that or Hikmet Yildiz was very strong. The boost the young man had given him to get him on top of the wall had been considerable, but he’d still had to get down into the garden under his own steam. This he had managed with some ease, if not aplomb. Now standing on the small patch of grass in front of the great door at the back of the garden, he looked at the padlock that held it shut with alarm. It was not only new, but was huge and complicated and there was no handy key swinging from a rusty nail in the wall to be seen anywhere. He could of course shoot the thing off, but then he didn’t actually have a warrant that allowed him to do so. He wasn’t the only one who knew it.

  ‘Sir, we’re not supposed to be here, are we?’ the now invisible Yildiz said from beyond the great wooden door.

  ‘I need to speak to Mr Loya about how his fingerprints came to be on Ali Paksoy’s car,’ Süleyman said. ‘I feel this is a matter of urgency. Also, in view of his recent experiences, I do have concerns for his safety.’

  ‘You think he might’ve topped himself, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ According to İkmen, Edmondo Loya had been very, very depressed upon his release from police custody. Even when he was placed into a squad car to carry him home, he was still protesting his guilt. Whatever Edmondo Loya may or may not have done to or with Emine Aksu was not strictly Süleyman’s concern. But whichever way one looked at it, Edmondo Loya was clearly, guilty or no, not a ‘normal’ everyday sort of individual. He was far too troubled for that.

  ‘I’ll just go and see if the back door is open,’ Süleyman said as he made his way over to a solid red door just to the left of the derelict garage. But as it happened, he didn’t need to go over to see that it was open. Although not swinging free exactly, the door was open enough to allow him to see the refrigerator as well as several other units in the Loyas’ kitchen.

  ‘It’s open,’ he called to Yildiz over the wall. ‘If you go around to the front door, I’ll let you in.’

  ‘Sir.’

  He remembered the main body of the house. The dark halls, the extravagant displays of Toledo steel. It was odd to Süleyman that after five centuries of living in Turkey the Loyas still surrounded themselves with memories of a country which they not only didn’t know, but which also had actively rejected them. Even the speaking of Ladino, the Hebrew-Spanish elision still spoken by so many of the Istanbul Jews, was, when he thought about it, somewhat strange. His friend Balthazar Cohen had once told him that the speaking of Ladino was as much about not being understood by outsiders as it was about preserving identity. But even so, this overtly Spanish house was really quite creepy.

  He opened the door to Yildiz just as someone, given the wild whoops coming from the coffee house in the next street as well as from the Loyas’ neighbours, scored a goal over in the Olimpiyat Stadium.

  Chapter 17

  İzzet Melik looked down at Natasha Sarkissian and smiled. ‘We scored again,’ he said.

  Thirty-nine minutes into the first half, a cross from Andriy Shevchenko found Hernan Crespo, who put a resounding second goal into the back of the net for AC Milan.

  ‘I’m sorry to say so, Natasha,’ Süleyman Arslan the geneticist said, ‘but Liverpool are playing appallingly.’

  ‘I know,’ she said miserably. ‘I know!’

  İzzet, now most definitely on a roll of joy said, ‘But Milano - Milano are just playing like a dream!’

  ‘Steady,’ Abdullah Ceylan the lawyer said. ‘Not like this is one of our teams here.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘You’re very keen on Milan, aren’t you, İzzet?’ Krikor said. ‘Knowledgeable. Have you been interested in Italian football for very long?’

  Play started again and so İzzet looked away from the doctor while he answered him. ‘There’s always been quite an Italian community in my home city, izmir.’

  Italians all over the stadium lit large and very bright flares.

  ‘Oh, Izmir, yes,’ Krikor said.

  ‘My parents had a friend, a Jewish man, whose ancestors had come from Italy. He gave Italian lessons. My father paid for my brother and myself to go to him. I loved the language.’

  A tense hum filled the stadium now as the Liverpool fans started to get themselves back together again for their team. Some of them began singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. Natasha Sarkissian, with an acid glance towards İzzet, began to join in.

  ‘You’ve been to Italy?’ Krikor continued.

  ‘Venice,’ İzzet said. ‘But only once, unfortunately.’

  ‘You liked it?’

  ‘I loved it,’ İzzet replied. ‘Everything about it. The place, the food, the people … Of course, they dress so well it does make you feel a little bit scruffy, but I don’t mind. You know D— Krikor, I think that I could just wander from city to city in Italy and be perfectly happy only to look.’

  For an outwardly rough man like İzzet to express almost spiritual feelings like this was quite surprising and Krikor inwardly applauded him for it. But then something happened on the pitch that made absolutely everyone in that stadium rise to their feet.

  It was pitch-black down in the well. Deep, too. When one or two of the stones that had been scattered over the top of the wooden lid fell into it, several long seconds passed before a faint ‘plop’ was heard as they hit the water below. But İkmen and Ayşe Farsakoğlu hadn’t had to scrape much detritus off the lid in order to find it. Unlike the first time she’d seen it, Ayşe could now tell that the bottom of the niche was made of wood. Someone had obviously moved some little stones and soot on to the lid to make it appear undisturbed. But because they, in her opinion, had to apparently do this from below, the plan had failed.

  All three of them leaned over the lip of the niche, staring into the utter absence of light.

  ‘I can see why it might have frightened you, Mrs Sangul,’ İkmen said.

  ‘So let’s close it up, then,’ Handan said as she pushed herself away from the thing. ‘Go and look for my brother.’

  İkmen was about to follow her, when he saw the expression on Ayşe’s face. ‘Sergeant?’ He bent back down again in order to speak to her.

  ‘Sir, this is the place!’ she whispered earnestly. ‘The place I, you know, I had the feeling about’

  ‘Ayse, it’s a well. We can investigate it further later. But now we need to find Mr Paksoy.’

  ‘Sir, there’s a ladder going down the side of the shaft,’ Ayşe said as she pointed her torch towards the left side of the old brick-built tube.

  ‘For maintenance, yes.’

  ‘Sir,‘Ayse moved still closer to him and said, ‘someone has moved the lid of this well since I came here with Inspector Süleyman. There was no way you could have seen that wooden lid when I first looked at it. And Paksoy lied about what it was. It’s a well, and he knew it was a well.’

  ‘So what do you suggest that we do about it?’ İkmen said. ‘When we came in here, Mrs Sangul said that the torch her brother usually keeps by the door to the chapel was missing,’ Ayşe said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And with the dust and soot disturbed on the lid of the well

  ‘You think he might be down there somewhere, don’t you?’ İkmen said. ‘Ayse, it’s a well, it goes down into water and that’s it.’

  Still looking down into the hideous darkness, Ayşe said, ‘We think that’s it, but what if it isn’t? What if there’s a shaft off from the main body of the well, what if, yes, what if he is down there? I think the lid of the well was closed from below. Sir, Mr Paksoy was, we know now, having some sort of fling at the very least with Mrs Aksu. We need to talk to him! Whether he’s down there or not we need to speak to him. I am prepared to go down myself, sir.’ She looked deep into his eyes. ‘You know how I feel about this!’