Belshazzar's Daughter by Barbara Nadel

black, spidery script and frowned.
    ‘What kind of writing is that?’
    ikmen held the page very close to his face. The effort of trying to decipher the characters caused him to screw his face up and squint.
    ‘Cyrillic,’ he said after a pause. He rubbed his unshaven chin with his hand. “I think so anyway.’
    ‘Cyrillic?’
    ikmen twisted his head around and looked hard into
    Suleyman’s face. Whatever the state was teaching young people in schools and colleges obviously did not extend to providing them with enough pointless trivia.
    ‘Cyrillic script,’ he expounded with great patience, ‘is that used by people belonging to the Slavic ethnic group.
    Russians, Poles, Bulgarians …’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Logical really. Neighbours seemed to think he was a Russian emigre, didn’t they?’ He stared down at the strange characters. ‘By the way, Suleyman, what happened at the Museum?’
    ‘Nothing. Saw nothing, heard nothing.’
    ‘Like my Mr Cornelius. Did you contact the hospital?’
    He took his eyes away from the address book and looked into his cigarette packet. His face whitened. He looked up sharply. ‘Oh no, I’m out of cigarettes!’
    It was a violent, but at the same time plaintive outburst.
    A cry for help. Suleyman chose to ignore it. A small revenge for the closure of the window.
    ‘Miss Delmonte is still too traumatised to be interviewed, sir. You can take it up with her doctor if you
    like, but …’
    ikmen wasn’t listening. A real crisis had occurred. The worst. He threw the empty cigarette packet down on
    the floor and put his head in his hands. The sort of tantrum Suleyman had feared earlier threatened, ikmen was overtired and something like this, a lack of cigarettes, was all that was needed to set him off. The young man knew that he had to be very careful.
    “I can’t function like this!’ ikmen raised his head again and snapped out an order. ‘Go and ask Cohen for some cigarettes.’
    Suleyman clambered his way towards the door. No progress could be made while ikmen was craving nicotine.
    ‘Oh, and while you’re at it, ask that lot if any of them can read Cyrillic script. It’s unlikely, half of them have trouble with Turkish, but you may as well ask.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    Suleyman left, pulling the door shut behind him as he went, ikmen looked down at the little address book again.
    If the Department was, as he had always suspected, full of half-educated morons, it didn’t really matter. He knew a man who could decipher strange and exotic alphabets of almost any sort with no problem. The cigarette crisis, however, was quite another matter. If that one wasn’t resolved in the very near future there was going to be a tantrum of catastrophic proportions. He had been without nicotine for more than five minutes, ikmen’s Law clearly stated that the maximum time between each cigarette should be no greater than three minutes, barring sleep and death. His fingers twitched nervously, aching for something carcinogenic to hang on to.
    Ikmen’s telephone rang. He scrabbled wildly amid the confusion of heaped upon his desk as he attempted to locate it. Pens, paper, ash and dust flew everywhere. He narrowly missed tipping an ashtray into his own lap. Then with a creak, a groan and a loud slap as cardboard hit linoleum, a great pile of files avalanched to the floor and revealed, at last, the offending article, ikmen picked up the receiver and scowled. The fingers of his left hand ached.
    He hoped that Suleyman wouldn’t be long. He spoke into the phone.
    ‘ikmen.’ What now? he thought gloomily.
    The tumultuous silence at the other end of the line left ikmen in no doubt as to the identity of his caller. Only one person ever really made him sweat for an answer.
    He groaned. ‘Hello, Fatma.’
    Her voice was deep, soft and tired rather than angry.
    ‘Just one question, Cetin. How do you expect me to feed us all on two hundred lira?’
    ikmen shut his eyes for a second and ground his teeth