River of The Dead by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page A

İkmen made a mental note to drop by the fortune-teller’s colourful studio in Balat before he returned home the following evening.
    During Ottoman times, before the Republican era, Gaziantep was known just as Aintab. Then in 1921, when what is now the Turkish Republic was fighting for its existence against the forces of France, Great Britain and Greece as well as the Sultan’s royalist soldiers, Aintab was Turkicised to Antep and given an honorific title. In recognition of the heroic resistance put up by Antep’s citizens to the French army in 1921, Atatürk, the Republic’s founder and first president, said that from then on the city was to be known as Gazi or ‘warrior hero’ Antep. Since that time Gaziantep had been a largely Turkish city, but remnants from its more cosmopolitan past remained, as Mehmet Süleyman was discovering. The house that Inspector Taner and her cousin took him to for his meal that night was a case in point. It was located in the old Sahinbey quarter of the city, an area which had a distinctly Arabian feel to it, underlining in effect the comparative closeness of Gaziantep to Syria. Once through the low doorway that led directly from the dark, narrow street into the courtyard of what looked like a great mansion, one could very easily not be in Turkey at all. In fact, Süleyman thought as he watched a pretty marble fountain bubble away gently in the middle of the chequered courtyard, places just like this existed in Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman or any other Arab city one would care to name. The pungent smell of spices that permeated the building added to the general sense of exoticism.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Taner said as she directed Süleyman towards a dining table, already set with cutlery and napkins, in one corner of the courtyard. Above it and slightly overhanging into the space below was the upper storey of the house, which was accessed by a broad marble staircase from the ground level. Up there Süleyman could see ornate doorways and delicate fanlight windows of tremendous beauty.
    ‘What a wonderful place,’ he said, genuinely impressed.
    ‘Please sit down,’ his hostess replied. She did not respond to his delight in his surroundings, nor did she tell him what the place was.
    Her cousin left them and walked towards a doorway just underneath the staircase, saying something in a language Süleyman didn’t understand.
    As they sat down, Inspector Taner spoke. ‘As you know, Yusuf Kaya was picked up on security cameras in a patisserie called the Nightingale,’ she said. ‘Not that that is important now. What is, however, is that Kaya has friends, of sorts, in Gaziantep.’
    ‘Do you know who they are?’
    She took a piece of paper out of her handbag and pushed it across the table. It was a map of the centre of Gaziantep.
    ‘There is a house, here, just off Güzelce Lane.’ She pointed to what was, to Süleyman, a fathomless spot on the map. ‘It is a brothel.’
    ‘You think that Kaya might be hiding out in a brothel?’
    ‘A friend of his runs the place,’ she said. ‘A woman called Anastasia. Kaya put her on her back when she was little more than a child.’
    ‘That was in Mardin?’
    ‘Yes.’ Ardıç had said that Mardin wanted Kaya as much as or perhaps even more than the police in İstanbul. And if he had been turning the city’s girls to prostitution . . . ‘Do you like lahmacun?’ Taner beckoned an old black-clad woman carrying two steaming plates over to the table.
    ‘Er, yes . . .’
    Lahmacun is a type of thin bread topped, usually, with rather spicy meat and vegetables. Because it generally involves cheese too it is often referred to as Turkish pizza. In the east, as a rather wary Süleyman knew all too well, lahmacun could be very heavily spiced indeed. As the elderly lady put the plate down in front of him he viewed the pile of slices with some caution.
    ‘Together with the local police I’m going to be raiding the brothel tomorrow