‘Ah, Inspector İskender,’ İkmen said. Looking up now was beginning to make him feel dizzy and so he lowered his gaze almost immediately. ‘We’re all fine down here. Are the fire service men here yet?’

  ‘Just arrived.’

  ‘Good.’ He looked across at Ali Paksoy. ‘Mr Paksoy, in a moment I’m going to ask one of the fire officers to come and look at this ladder.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because if they’re going to bring Mrs Aksu up the ladder, the fire officers need to know it’s not going to collapse underneath them. I’m basing this on the assumption that Mrs Aksu, from what I have observed, will not be able to get out by herself. I imagine her body must be quite weak. This ladder will have to hold the officer, Mrs Aksu and myself all at the same time.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘When Mrs Aksu has been taken away, I will remain behind with you,’ İkmen said. ‘You’re not going to be alone in this, Mr Paksoy.’

  ‘Don’t treat me as if I’m some sort of child, some sort of lunatic!’

  Obviously the empathic approach was not one that was going to work here. Maybe Ali Paksoy had had some sort of therapy for something in the past. From the sound of it, he hadn’t been very open to that approach. But whatever had happened, didn’t seem to have worked.

  ‘And you’re not having her, anyway!’ the shoe seller continued angrily. ‘At no point did I say that you could have her!’

  Mehmet Süleyman slipped the knotted rope over Edmondo Loya’s limp head and threw it to the floor. Constable Hikmet Yildiz, across the other side of that dark, poisoned little room, was telephoning for an ambulance. The small man propped up in Süleyman’s arms blinked his bloodshot and swollen eyes slowly. The purple rope burns around his throat hurt and his still-constricted airway felt as if it would never work properly again.

  ‘The constable over there is calling for an ambulance to take you to hospital,’ Süleyman said. ‘I’m going to leave an officer with you until the doctors have finished their work and then we’re going to talk.’

  Edmondo Loya made a few growling attempts at speech and then gave up. Weakly, he pointed at the envelope on the table. ‘Your suicide note?’

  Edmondo moved his head to indicate his assent. ‘Should I read it now or do you want me to open it when I come and see you?’

  He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. But then Süleyman imagined that it probably didn’t now. When a person reaches the point where he’s prepared to take his own life, little outside of that does matter. Poor Edmondo Loya. He had failed in so much during the course of his life: with women, with engaging with ‘real’ life, and now even this attempt to kill himself had failed. God alone knew how long he’d been hanging there slowly and inexpertly traversing towards an agonising death.

  ‘Ambulance is on its way, sir,’ Constable Yildiz said as he hunkered down beside Süleyman and his little, limp charge. ‘Know why he tried to do it?’

  ‘No,’ Süleyman said. ‘He can’t speak yet and …’ He looked down into those poor damaged eyes and then shook his head. Putting off finding out what was going on here wasn’t really an option. ‘Edmondo, once the ambulance arrives I’m going to have to read that note in case it contains evidence pertaining to your confession.’

  Finally discovering something that approximated to a voice, Edmondo Loya rasped, ‘It does.’

  ‘I see.’ Süleyman looked over at the table and then back at the man in his arms once again. ‘Your confession was a lie, wasn’t it?’

  He paused for a moment before he whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is something you explain in your note.’

  He indicated that it was, or rather he, inside, felt and hoped that it did. It had, after all, been written in haste and at a time when his brain had been literally boiling in his head. But then, when were suicide notes ever written under anything approaching calm circumstances? However worthless a person feels his or her life to be, death is never a thing that it easily embraced.

  The chief fire officer was a man called Ismail Kanh and, from the look of him, he’d been in the service for a very long time.

  ‘It’s as old as Byzantium,’ he growled through his cigarette at Metin İskender. ‘Not literally, you understand, but that ladder is dangerously corroded. I don’t want to send anyone down there using that.’

  They were far away from the well, over by the door that led back up into the basement of the shop.

  - ‘ Do you think we should get Inspector İkmen out of there?’ İskender asked.

  ‘Definitely.’ With his large fire helmet obscuring half of his face and his enormous moustache the other, ismail Kanh could have been any sort of age, from thirty to three hundred. ‘The well itself seems sound enough,’ he continued. ‘Once your man is out I’ll send one of my lads down on a rope. Do we know if the woman’s badly hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know that she’s hurt, exactly,’ İskender said. ‘She was a missing person and the opinion seems to be that she’s been held prisoner down there, in that narrow shaft, for some weeks.’

  ‘So she’s unused to moving?’

  ‘She must be weak and I imagine dehydrated, too.’

  What could be seen of Kanli’s face, frowned. ‘The man with the woman down there has a knife, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘As far as we know the shaft the two of them are in leads nowhere. It’s a sort of maintenance platform - either that, or an overflow for the well.’

  ‘So he’s cornered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With a knife.’

  ‘Indeed,’ İskender said. ‘And, of course, there’s no way in that environment of safely taking a shot at him. I’ll be honest with you, we cannot disable this man, nor can we be sure that he will not attack either that woman or whoever comes down on your rope. At the moment the woman is chained to a wall. But our man is trying to get the offender to release her.’

  Ismail Kanh nodded, thinking gravely through what was a very short list of options.

  The sound of feet running on packed earth followed by a scream of ‘Ali!’ roused everyone from whatever thoughts or reveries they were having. In spite of Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s insistence that she stay away, Handan Sangul was once again calling to her brother down the well.

  ‘Handan!’ Ali Paksoy looked at İkmen and said, ‘I ask again what my sister is doing in a place like this!’

  His hands were now so tightly fixed to the metal ladder, İkmen had serious doubts as to whether he could ever move again. That and his realisation that Ali Paksoy did not seem to be responsive to empathy brought about a change in his approach. ‘Listen, Paksoy,’ he said, ‘if you want your sister to go, you’d better start co-operating. You can’t escape. But you do have one choice here. That is for me to get your sister to go and we do this thing safely, and like human beings, or she stays and I tell her what I think happened here. Unchain Mrs Asku now, please!’

  He didn’t know for sure, but he imagined that sex of a type decent women like Handan Sangul would never even dream of had to be involved somewhere. If Emine Aksu were to be believed necrophilia had been involved.

  ‘I have a very lurid imagination,’ İkmen added.

  The small rodent-like eyes darted from Emine Aksu’s face to İkmen’s and then back again.

  ‘What she said, about loving the dead, it isn’t true.’

  ‘It is!’ she countered. And then, as if suddenly and in spite of still being held at knife point nothing mattered any more, she said, ‘Nothing more than a skeleton, it was! But he—’

  ‘All right! All right!’ Ali Paksoy’s large face shook with both rage and misery. He looked across at İkmen again and said, ‘Get my sister out of here!’

  ‘Unchain Mrs Aksu from the wall and I will think about it,’ İkmen countered. After a few seconds, the sound of a metallic lock being turned was clearly heard by Çetin İkmen.

  The first Liverpool goal came in the fifty-fourth minute. Steven Gerrard headed it hard and fast into the corner of the net. Natasha Sarkissian rose to her feet and cheered with the rest of the Liverpool fans, but when she sat down again she was quiet. This seemed to represent, or so İzzet Melik felt, a new calm, if not downright smug, confidence. But then, ever since the start of the second half, Liverpool had been playing with far more confidence and elan. And when, just two minutes after Gerrard’s triumph, Vladimir Smica put the Liverpudlians just one goal behind the Italians, even İzzet’s faith in the Milanese began to waver.

  ‘I told you,’ Natasha said as she sat down from yet another bout of cheering, ‘never underestimate the people of Liverpool.’

  ‘That Smica is an Eastern European of some sort,’ İzzet retorted. ‘Not from Liverpool at all.’

  ‘Oh, and all the Turkish teams have only Turkish, players, do they?’ Natasha shook her head playfully. ‘When I meant Liverpool people, I meant everyone; all the supporters in the city and the team itself. Cities have vibes, you know. Like Istanbul has an ancient, melancholy air. Liverpool’s vibe by contrast is very lively and argumentative and tough.’

  ‘You think that Istanbul is melancholy?’ İzzet said.

  ‘To me it is, yes,’ Natasha replied. Then, as she turned away to watch the match, she added, ‘But maybe that’s because I’m Armenian. Most things are melancholy to us.’

  Except, apparently, for the city of Liverpool, İzzet wondered if that last comment of hers was meant to be a sort of veiled criticism of Turkey. Maybe it was her way of referring, albeit obliquely, to the alleged massacre of over a million Armenians by the Ottomans during the First World War. He personally had never believed in that story but maybe she, like a lot of the Armenian Diaspora, did. Istanbul wasn’t melancholy! Vast, fast, dirty and totally absorbing, yes - or rather that was most certainly how he saw it. What was now becoming miserable, however, was AC Milan’s football. Liverpool continued to dominate the match from then on until, apparently in an act of sheer desperation, Gennaro Gattuso deliberately swept Steven Gerrard’s feet away from him inside the penalty area. To an almost breathless silence inside the stadium, the referee awarded a penalty to Liverpool. As Xabi Alonso walked forward to place the ball on the spot, Natasha covered her eyes with her hands.

  Stating the obvious, Süleyman Arslan said, ‘If he gets this that’ll equalise for Liverpool. Amazing! An hour ago, half an hour ago, who would have thought it!’

  Chapter 19

  That İkmen still wasn’t out of the well when fire officer Ismail Kanh was lowered into it was typical of the policeman. He had promised Ali Paksoy he would stay with him the whole time and he was determined to do just that. Even knife-wielding lunatics were due the odd break or two along the way.

  ‘I understand this lady’s got no injuries,’ Ismail said as he drew level with İkmen’s back.

  ‘Not that I can see. She’s unchained now,’ the policeman replied. And then he said to Emine Aksu, ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m hungry and thirsty and my hands hurt where I’ve been chained up.’

  ‘But you haven’t actually been injured, bones broken or… ?’ ‘No.’

  ‘So that nutter just sort of brought you down here and kept you, did he?’ the fireman said with some anger in his voice. ‘God, some—’

  ‘Officer,’ İkmen, his back locked so tight that he couldn’t have turned to look at the fireman if he’d wanted, watched Ali Paksoy’s features darken. The small skinning knife was still very close to Emine Aksu’s jugular vein. ‘Can we just get the lady out, please?’

  ‘Certainly, although in order to do that, you’ll have to get out of my way, Inspector.’

  He was only partially blocking the shaft, but it was enough to impede any rescue attempt.

  ‘Best thing would be for you to go down,’ the fireman said. ‘That way I’ll have a clear passage up once I’ve got a hold of the lady.’

  ‘Right.’ He’d been holding on to the same rung of the ladder for a long time. Even moving down one step was going to be hard. As he did it, oh so slowly, he felt his arms, legs and even his head shake with terror. ‘I’m sorry I…’

  ‘Go at your own pace, Inspector. No hurry.’

  ‘Sir, just be careful!’ he heard Ayşe’s urgent voice call to him from above. Not that her urgency was surprising. Every time he breathed hard a bit more fell off the ladder and into the dark water below.

  After what seemed like hours, Emine Aksu’s crazy shoes and the even more crazy sight of Ali Paksoy’s face were replaced by deeper darkness and yet more small red Byzantine bricks. Above his head, Ismail Kanli, the fireman suspended by a thick rope from the mouth of the well, swung himself over towards the maintenance shaft.

  ‘I’m going to lift the lady out of here now.’ İkmen heard him say.

  Then Ali Paksoy said, ‘I don’t think that you are! Just because you’re wearing a uniform—’

  There was a terrible scream. Masculine, more of a bellow, really, İkmen, still tense and stiff on his rotting ladder, felt a terrible sense of foreboding. Against all of his instincts he looked up. The fireman, though at the shaft, with his arms actually in it, was shaking his head from which liquid appeared to be pouring. It dripped down on to İkmen who knew immediately from its smell that it was blood.

  ‘Ali Paksoy!’ he shouted. ‘If you don’t stop this I will have your sister lowered into this well! I’ll have her stand on this rotting ladder with me!’

  Even if he hadn’t known that Ali Paksoy was sensitive about his religious sister, İkmen would have used family to get to his man anyway. After all, what Turkish male would want his elderly mother or saintly sister to see him in an animalistic and compromised position? Whatever else might go by the wayside, family, even in modern Istanbul, was sacred.

  ‘Officer,’ İkmen called to the man up above him, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘Just a cut,’ the fireman replied through tightly clenched teeth. ‘I’ve got the lady.’

  As if to underline this, İkmen heard a deep, female grunt. He then saw those peculiar shoes, stuck haphazardly on what he now noticed were swollen feet, curl themselves as far as they could around the fireman’s calves. There was another grunt as the officer took her weight, and then he called up above, ‘Get me out of this hell hole, will you! I’ve been fucking stabbed!’

  Both firemen and police officers pulled on that rope like maniacs. Once at the top he heard the fireman say, ‘The bastard went for my face!’

  İkmen, blood-spattered and cold to the core, was now the only one left inside the well with Ali Paksoy.

  Rather than climb straight up the ladder to get out of the well, İkmen only pulled himself up a couple of rungs. Level again with the shaft, he looked in silence at Ali Paksoy.

  Metin İskender, who had spoken a few words to Emine Aksu, mainly to confirm her identity, now came to join Ayşe at the mouth of the well.

  ‘Fire Officer Kanh’s wound is only superficial. But to stab anyone in the face!’ he shook his head in disbelief. ‘He’s going to go to the hospital along with Mrs Aksu.’ He looked behind him as a group of fire officers lifted Emine Aksu up off the floor.

  ‘I wish the inspector would come up now,’ Ayşe said as she looked down into the well at the still silent figure of Çetin İkmen. ‘That ladder isn’t secure.’

  ‘Someone needs to get that man out of the shaft,’ İskender replied. ‘He certainly wouldn’t let you do it. You know better than any of us what your boss is like.’

  What he said was true, if couched somewhat arrogantly, but that was just Metin İskender’s character, İkmen was, for better or worse, getting the job done.

  One of the younger fire officers joined them at the top of the well and said, ‘Officer Kanli has told a group of us to stay to assist you, sir. As you know, he doesn’t trust that ladder and so we’ll be on hand with our ropes and harnesses for your man down there and that “person” who stabbed our brother.’

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu and Metin İskender exchanged a look. Firemen, like police officers, were very protective of their own. This young man and probably all of his fellows, too, could very possibly be bent on a little revenge should the opportunity present itself.

  ‘In fact,’ the young officer continued, ‘what I’d like to do is throw a rope down for Inspector -‘

  ‘Ikmen.’

  ‘Ikmen. He can tie it around himself. Extra insurance, sort of thing.’ He picked a coil of rope up from the chapel floor and made a large loop at one end.

  ‘Good idea,’ Metin İskender said. He called down to İkmen, ‘Inspector! Fire officers are going to throw down a rope for you!’ İkmen looked up.

  ‘Put it over your head and shoulders so it rests around your waist, sir!’ the young fireman said as he began to lower the rope into the well. ‘Extra insurance because of that ladder.’

  ‘OK.’

  While he was waiting for the rope to reach him, İkmen looked into the shaft at Ali Paksoy and said, ‘The fire chief, the one you stabbed, doesn’t trust this ladder.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ the shoe seller muttered. ‘It’s always served me.’

  ‘Hasn’t it just!’ İkmen grabbed hold of the rope and slipped it over his head and shoulders. ‘How many women have you brought down here, Ali?’

  ‘That isn’t any of your business! That’s a private matter!’

  ‘I beg to differ.’ Now that he had the security of the rope around his body and also now that he was alone with the shoe seller, İkmen felt more confident about taking a punitive stance. He couldn’t after all pull such a large man physically out of the shaft, but maybe he could, with luck, persuade or even terrorise him to come out of his own volition. ‘You can’t stay down here for ever, Ali,’ he said. ‘You can’t escape, and the longer this all goes on, the dimmer the view the judge will take of you at your trial.’