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

morning,’ Taner said as without so much as a flicker she folded a great wedge of lahmacun into her mouth. ‘We’ve been watching the place since yesterday, but we don’t know whether Kaya is in there or not. However, one thing is for sure: to raid at night when the place is full of customers will only give him any cover he might need to escape. We’ll get in there while they’re all asleep.’ She smiled grimly. ‘It will be very strange for me to meet Anastasia again. I haven’t seen her for over twenty years.’
    ‘No?’ He would have liked to quiz Taner more closely on the matter, but as soon as he’d put the lahmacun into his mouth the whole of his alimentary canal had caught fire. The chillies were lethal!
    ‘Anastasia and myself are of an age,’ the inspector replied. ‘I am a Muslim, she a Suriani Christian, but we went to school together. She was very pretty, but a nice girl too, you know.’ She smiled more openly this time. ‘Not many girls are both pretty and nice, Inspector. As a man you may not be aware of that.’ Her face dropped and became altogether more grim. ‘Yusuf Kaya, who as you know is fifty this year, is a few years older than Anastasia and myself. When she was fifteen he raped her. He wanted her badly, but she didn’t like him and so he took her by force. Of course her family didn’t want her back.’
    The old woman returned, this time carrying a bottle of something clear. She hovered, seemingly nervously, until Taner turned to look at her with a very casual eye.
    ‘Rakı?’ Taner asked Süleyman.
    He’d finally managed to get through the first slice of lahmacun and was starting on his second. He was, he felt, getting used to it now, maybe because his mouth had been numbed by the pepper.
    ‘Yes. Thank you,’ he said.
    The old woman didn’t even look at him as she poured some of the clear, viscous liquid into his glass. Then she filled Taner’s glass and left. There was no sign, or didn’t appear to be any sign, of Rafik.
    ‘Yusuf Kaya set up a brothel on the edge of a small village down on what we call the Ocean,’ Taner said as she topped up both their rakı glasses with water. Then, seeing his confusion, she added, ‘It’s what outsiders call the Mesopotamian plain.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Even at seventeen he was enterprising. He had Anastasia because he wanted her and then he let other men have her for money. The Kayas are a very bad clan, Inspector Süleyman. But they have power, you know?’
    He’d heard. The clans of Mardin, like the clans associated with some other cities in the east, were notorious for the power they wielded over their members and often over non-relatives around them too. Between the clans and the various terrorists it was difficult to know who was the most dangerous.
    ‘But, Inspector,’ Süleyman said, ‘you describe this woman, now, as Kaya’s friend. Surely if he ruined her life . . .’
    Edibe Taner shrugged. ‘What can one say?’ she said. ‘Some women are like that. Some women adore their abusers. Psychologically it can be a way for an abused woman to come to terms with what has happened to her. If she loves her abuser then what has happened cannot be abuse. Yusuf Kaya is a married man but Anastasia Akyuz is still, it is said, in love with him. What is also said is that her daughter, also living in the brothel, is his daughter too.’
    ‘So Kaya is very likely to be with them.’
    ‘He was seen just yesterday here in Gaziantep. It’s possible.’ She took a swig from her rakı glass and then looked up at the darkening sky above and sighed. ‘Inspector, I have spent most of my professional life fighting these clans. They’re clever. I can’t guarantee what, if anything, will happen tomorrow. But if you want to come along with me, provided you are content to let the Gaziantep police take the lead, you may do so.’
    Was that stuff about letting the Gaziantep police take the lead some sort of code for ‘we know how arrogant you