‘Ah, but he will,’ Balthazar said with a confident nod. ‘My daughter-in-law’s father is the best police officer in the world.’

  Süleyman smiled. Çetin İkmen was indeed a legend amongst Turkish police officers, although whether his fame had yet spread across the world was less certain. But then Balthazar Cohen, as well as being related by marriage to the inspector, had always been one of his greatest fans. İkmen had, after all, covered for Balthazar - whose sexual adventures back then often took some time - on more than one occasion when they were both young officers together.

  ‘Well, Balthazar, that is true,’ Süleyman said as he rose to go and make his way out to the living room. From the polite coughing that was coming from the hall, he deduced that Estelle had finished preparing the food. ‘But your wife has cooked and I must go to eat…’

  ‘Mmm.’

  He bent down in order to kiss his friend on the cheeks once again. As he pulled away, however, Balthazar said, ‘The idea of hippies, even Turkish hippies, around here is intriguing. Let me see if I can speak to a few people. Get me away from these four walls.’

  Süleyman gave Balthazar a doubtful look. To his knowledge his friend never went out anywhere these days, however local.

  ‘I have a wheelchair and Estelle to push me if I want. She won’t mind,’ Balthazar said in answer to his friend’s unspoken question.

  ‘Yes, but you never—’

  ‘Then perhaps it is time that I did get out,’ Balthazar said firmly. ‘I could go and see Mose Levi and the Loya brothers. I could go and see if those clothing businesses are still going. There was Mr Madrid the haberdasher he…’

  Süleyman left him to his reverie and went to get some food. Later, rather apologetically, he spoke to Estelle about Balthazar and his newfound desire to go out. He thought she might be angry that now, suddenly, he wanted her to get that great big wheelchair they had brought out from under the stairs and to push him around like a nurse. But Estelle said she didn’t mind. ‘Maybe going out will help to alleviate his misery,’ she said as she kissed Mehmet goodbye at the door. ‘Maybe it will also bring some reality back into his life. Mr Madrid the haberdasher died way back in the fifties. I think his shop was taken over by a couple from Bursa. The man, I think, made and mended shoes.’

  Sleep did not come easily to Çetin İkmen that night. Putting aside the fact that his wife Fatma kept on throwing the sheets off their bed because she was so hot, İkmen was disturbed. Maybe it was remembering the sixties and early seventies that was unsettling him. But, despite his brief and very innocent dalliance with the English flower child, Alison, during that period, it had been a good time. And even that hadn’t been bad, in retrospect. At the time it had been exhilarating. No, the sixties and early seventies had been good for İkmen. He’d been young and fit, as had Fatma, and they had been new parents. Passion had been frequent and energetic. Now he placed one hand on his gently snoring wife’s back and remembered. Before the real hard-core political violence took hold in the mid to late seventies, his life, though lacking materially, had been really very good. It was the remembrance of the sixties and seventies that was indeed unsettling him, but not for any personal reasons. What he was feeling was to do with Emine Aksu, or rather the impression that he was getting of her from her friends and relatives.

  Although he’d never tried it himself, İkmen didn’t have anything against the concept of free love. He was not a religious man, and so he could not object to free love on the grounds of faith. And if all concerned were happy with the situation, where was the harm? There was none -at least that was the case provided human emotions were not involved. The previous afternoon, İkmen had spoken to two men who had loved Emine Aksu in the past; Ali Tevfik, the car hire boss - who had heard rumours that his old love had maybe found someone ‘special’ - and a man called Nesim Arseven, who had turned out to be old and drunk and very graphic in his speech. Apparently, during the height of her involvement with hippy culture, Emine Aksu had been passed from man to man just as the Western girls had been at that time. It seemed odd to İkmen that at a time when women were supposed to be gaining more freedom from men, they were still allowing themselves to be used by them simply for sex. The men were still in control even if they were stoned out of their minds.

  İkmen sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. Now that Fatma was finally asleep, he knew that it was unlikely to wake her. She was - and had been for a number of years - going through her change and was frequently dogged by night sweats. For hours she would shuffle uncomfortably about in their bed, unable to get cool and therefore rest. Then eventually, usually in the early hours of the morning, she would finally drop off, snoring and utterly exhausted. Having seen her go through pregnancy and childbirth nine times during the course of their married life, İkmen felt that the lot of women was not something that was easy. Their lives were, as far as he could tell, dominated by their biology. But then with regard to the girls who gave themselves to the hippy men, maybe that was the point. Maybe their promiscuity was connected to their biological imperative to reproduce - at any cost and with just about anyone. But then again, perhaps it all happened simply because they were all stoned off the planet. İkmen puffed heavily on his cigarette and, vaguely wondering what cannabis might be like and whether it really was as relaxing as people said it was, he let his mind drift on.

  Emine Aksu and her husband were an attractive and well-off couple. As far as İkmen could see, they had everything they could possibly want - with the exception of children. But perhaps that was by choice rather than biological misfortune. After all, if one spent much of one’s life in pursuit of pleasure - and in the case of Emine, at least, some mischief too - there was going to be little room for any children on the scene. Youngsters, as he knew only too well, were not good for either the looks or the energy levels. Not that he regretted having any of his children, however difficult they might be or have been. He loved them all, which was why his mind now turned away from Emine Aksu and on to the subject of his daughter Hulya. He knew how hard she was working and it worried him. Her mother-in-law Estelle did her bit, going out cleaning and occasionally helping at her brother’s shop in the Egyptian Bazaar. But Estelle was getting on in years and couldn’t work like a youngster any more. That was down to Hulya who was, to her father’s way of thinking, looking decidedly drawn these days. How he hated those people who had rendered his son-in-law unemployable! And yet he was also acutely aware of how useless and without point his hate actually was. Nothing was going to change what had happened to Berekiah. There was no time machine that one could get into, go back in to put things right. No such thing existed in reality. But then it occurred to İkmen that this was an incorrect assumption on his part. People like the Aksus revisited their misspent youths all the time. They did as they pleased, played around and exhibited, to İkmen, much that was in common with spoilt children. Even their clothes, Emine Aksu’s at least, were frivolous. In many ways they had never grown up. Whether they realised it or not they were stuck, probably for ever now, in the sixties and seventies. At least Ahmet Aksu was. Emine, as İkmen had felt almost from the start, was way beyond such idle musings now.

  Moving her was so easy. There was so little left that in a way what had happened, albeit by reflex more than anything else, had been for the best. Not that her condition, or the condition of any actual body living or dead, made any real difference. She was just awkward; angular and difficult. She had been so very sexy for so very, very long.

  ‘What a wonderful model of car this was! So stylish. What innovation! ‘

  A 1972 Fiat 124 BC coupe.

  ‘I’M WONDERING WHERE TO PUT HER. ‘

  ‘I think that the car should take her wherever is appropriate. Let it decide.’

  ‘THAT’S VERY BUDDHIST. ‘

  ‘What?’

  ‘GOING ALONG WITH EVENTS, ALLOWING FATE TO MANIPULATE WITHOUT RESISTANCE. ‘

  ‘Kismet.’

  ‘PLEASE DON’T BRING ISLAM INTO THIS. IT IS BOTH SACRILEGIOUS AND INAPPROPRIATE. ‘

  ‘As you wish. ‘A pause. ‘Then there’s that very naughty idea that was put forward. Very wicked. Very appropriate, though.’ ‘EVIL. ‘

  ‘At night the place should be deserted. Such an appropriate place, I think. Cool, like here?’

  ‘VERY COOL. ‘

  But loading her into the back of the car was not as easy as it might seem. When her head hit the handle of the outside of the back left-hand door it came off and hit the ground with a dull thud. Luckily it was quickly and easily replaced at the top of her spine with a spot of glue.

  Chapter 3

  In most people’s lives there are three, maybe four, events which stand out as truly remarkable. For people in some professions, however, events of this type are likely to occur with more regularity just because of the nature of the job concerned. Police officers fall often into this category and Çetin İkmen more than most.

  After getting in close to what was really only a skeleton, İkmen stood back in order to look at what had to be one of the oddest crime scenes the Istanbul police force had ever attended. On Voyvoda Street, which was in the old banking quarter of Galata, there was a very attractive but strange legacy from the district’s financial past. Donated to the city by the Jewish banking family Kamondo, the staircase known as the Kamondo Steps represented a strange fusion between utility and art. Unashamedly art deco in design, the short stairway ran up from Voyvoda Street to Kart Cinar Street in two symmetrical curving arcs. In the middle of what some would call an ‘exhibit’ rather than a staircase, was a large, vaguely tulip-bulb-shaped flower bed. Under normal circumstances the residents of Galata were accustomed to seeing a small and, frankly, sickly looking bush inside this feature. But not now. Not at five o’clock in the morning with İkmen and other police officers rubbing their tired eyes in disbelief at the sight of the thing.

  ‘Well, as a method of corpse disposal it is most original,’ İkmen said as he lit up a cigarette and then inhaled deeply.

  Süleyman, who, together with his sergeant İzzet Melik, was also in attendance, said, ‘This is less corpse disposal and more display, if you ask my opinion.’

  It was bizarre. A skeleton, covered in places by what looked like a selection of rags, was sitting up in the flower bed, its legs splayed out to either side of its torso, grinning. From the rather large amount of dry brown hair that still clung to its scalp it would seem that the skeleton was that of a woman.

  ‘Not Mrs Emine Aksu though,’ İzzet Melik said through a lot of cigarette smoke and even more luxuriant moustache.

  ‘No.’ İkmen leaned in towards the skeleton and said, ‘No, this is old. Or rather, I assume that it is. Dr Sarkissian will be able to tell us more about it when he gets here.’

  Arto Sarkissian, the police pathologist, had been called by İkmen as soon as he had arrived at the site. An ethnic Armenian, Dr Sarkissian was İkmen’s oldest and closest friend. He was also an expert in his field as well as being a very diligent and caring professional. Not everyone, as İkmen knew from the reactions he’d got from the two young constables who had found the skeleton, could easily cope with such epic levels of oddness as this. Since police had arrived in some numbers just over half an hour before, he had seen a few people cringe in terror while others burst out laughing - but not in a happy way. Shock, as İkmen knew only too well, could be a very strange creature indeed.

  ‘Of course,’ Süleyman said as he put his head on one side so that he could better see the grinning skeletal face, ‘this “person” has not, necessarily, been killed unlawfully.’

  ‘True.’ İkmen nodded. ‘Although I think that the chances of this person having met a natural end are slim. This body has been placed in a very public and attention-grabbing way. Why do such a thing if the body concerned is not either one’s handiwork or a statement of some sort?’

  ‘Maybe whoever put it here dug it up from one of the cemeteries,’ Süleyman said. ‘Perhaps an act of spite against a deceased rival or, as we think in this case, her family.’

  ‘Whether he killed her or not, whoever put her here needs to be caught,’ İzzet Melik said. ‘Digging up the dead and messing around with them is a seriously disturbed thing to do.’

  ‘We’ll need to check out all the cemeteries in the greater Istanbul area,’ İkmen put in wearily. ‘Laborious work, but there’s no way round it.’

  ‘I can make a start on that,’ İzzet Melik said with just a brief glance over at his boss.

  ‘If Inspector Süleyman feels that is appropriate …’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Süleyman said. ‘Get back to the station and start listing cemeteries and ringing around İzzet.’

  ‘When Sergeant Farsakoğlu gets in at seven I will instruct her to assist you,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Sir.’

  İzzet Melik left with a smile on his face, - buoyed up, Süleyman thought, by the prospect of working with İkmen’s very attractive female sergeant, Ayşe Farsakoğlu. Many years previously Süleyman had had a brief affair with Ayşe, but that was now in the past and he was now happily married. Not so Ayşe Farsakoğlu, however, who, Süleyman knew, would not relish the thought of time spent in company with a middle-aged macho man like İzzet. Not that Sergeant Melik’s heart wasn’t in the right place; he was just rather old fashioned in his attitudes towards women - not something of which a woman like Ayşe could approve. If she knew how crazy he was about her, would it change her attitude towards him? Süleyman felt that, sadly, it probably wouldn’t.

  ‘So,’ İkmen said to Süleyman once İzzet Melik had gone, ‘we’ve one missing ex-hippy woman, a barely clothed and seemingly ancient skeleton, and the English and Italian football lunatics haven’t even started to arrive in the city yet!’

  Süleyman smiled. Liverpool football club were playing AC Milan in the final of the UEFA Champions League at the Ataturk Olimpiyat Stadium, which was just outside Istanbul, on the following Wednesday, 25 May. It was now Friday 20 May and the first ‘football lunatics’, as İkmen termed them, were not due to arrive in Istanbul until Saturday at the earliest.

  ‘I don’t see why the arrival of a horde of football fans should disrupt what we are doing,’ Süleyman replied. İkmen gave his friend a deeply cynical look.

  ‘I’ve heard that the department has the policing for the event under control,’ the younger man continued. ‘I’ve no reason to doubt—’

  ‘Several thousand young English and Italian fans roaming the streets, fuelled by oceans of beer, do not easily follow instructions or entreaties to get out of the way when one is in a hurry,’ İkmen said. ‘Mark my words, Mehmet, before this thing is over and done with you and I will have altercations with football lunatics.’

  Still smiling to himself, Süleyman said, ‘Yes, Çetin. If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’ He then folded his arms angrily across his narrow chest.

  İkmen was that rarity amongst Turkish men; a man who hated football. In spite of having had a father and, currently, a son who were both fanatical Galatasaray Football Club supporters, not to mention friends who supported a variety of clubs, İkmen was unmoved. Not a sportsman himself, unless heavy smoking could be regarded as a sport of some sort, İkmen couldn’t see the point of such activity and hated the passion and violence that supporting football teams so often brought. Even one as urbane as Mehmet Süleyman had his club, which was also Galatasaray. In fact, most people that İkmen knew supported what was arguably the city’s most famous team. The exception to this rule was the breathless and very overweight man hurrying towards them now.

  ‘Good God,’ Dr Arto Sarkissian said as he hastened up the steps towards the grinning skeleton, ‘who on earth put you in there?’

  Arto, who predictably received no reply from the dead body in front of him, supported Besiktas Football Club. But then, as İkmen’s football-mad son Bulent was heard to say to his ‘uncle’ Arto some weeks before, somebody had to.

  There had been a time when none of the Cohen brothers, Balthazar, Jak or Leon, had been able to walk through the streets of Balat without talking to at least three different groups of friends. As youngsters the boys had been pitied by many of their neighbours because of their poverty. Their mother died young giving birth to a fourth brother who did not survive. This left the three boys in the care of their brutal alcoholic father whose habit kept his sons hungry, ragged and frequently dirty. But two of them had come out comparatively unscathed. Balthazar went into the police force while Jak headed for England and a very successful career in the London nightclub scene. Only Leon, who now lived out in one of the shabbier tower blocks just to the east of Ataturk Airport, had followed their father’s example and become hopelessly addicted to drink.

  ‘There! You see there?’ Balthazar said as he waved a long, thin hand towards a group of men outside a grocer’s shop on a street corner. ‘Those men there! Listen to their speech. Just listen to it!’

  Estelle who was trying to be patient as she pushed her complaining husband around in his wheelchair, sighed. Balthazar was light, but the chair was heavy and Balat was, like most of the city, characterised by many hills, slopes and broken pavements. But in spite of this she did as her husband asked and listened, or tried to listen, to what the group of men were saying. Not that she had much success in this venture.

  ‘Kurdish!’ her husband said by way of explanation. ‘They are speaking Kurdish. Outside Eskenazi the grocer’s, these men are speaking Kurdish!’

  Now their rather guttural tones made sense. ‘Ah, well,’ Estelle said, ‘that explains it.’

  Her husband turned stiffly around in his chair to face her. ‘And that doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘That they’re speaking Kurdish? No. They are Kurds. Why shouldn’t they? We speak Ladino.’