Dance with Death by Barbara Nadel Page A

herself, took a cigarette from İkmen’s packet and lit up.
    ‘Aysu Alkaya was a very beautiful young woman of nineteen and the delight of her father Haldun’s eyes. He was very indulgent and, for a peasant – Haldun has a few grape vines, a couple of goats, you know the score – really quite liberal. So much so that when a boy he knew his only child had eyes for made it known that he was interested in her, Haldun made himself ready for a wedding.’
    ‘So what went wrong?’ İkmen asked.
    ‘Poverty, basically,’ Menşure said with a sigh. ‘Aysu and her father were poor. The boy, Kemalettin Senar, came from a much wealthier family, but he was very young . . . Anyway, somehow Aysu then caught the eye of one of our local dignitaries, Ziya Kahraman. He was a widower, he was seventy years old, and he spent months bothering Haldun Alkaya for Aysu’s hand in marriage.’ Catching the slightly raised eyebrows of her cousin, she said, ‘You know it happens, Çetin. Even in İstanbul it still sometimes happens. But anyway, Haldun resisted. Despite his poverty he wanted what was best for Aysu. There were arguments, raised voices in the street. But then, suddenly, for no reason that anyone has ever been able to really fathom, Haldun gave in and Aysu married Ziya Kahraman.’
    İkmen put his cigarette out and then immediately lit another. ‘A seventy-year-old man with a girl of nineteen. Ugh! That’s like my Hulya marrying my father!’
    Menşure put a hand up as if to push that thought away. ‘So Aysu went to live with Ziya and his maiden daughter, Nazlı, who must have been about fifty at the time.’
    ‘Allah!’
    ‘And of course partly because Ziya Kahraman was old he was traditional too. Aysu was rarely allowed to leave the house where, it was said, she was basically Nazlı’s servant. Things would change, of course, if and when Aysu became pregnant’ – İkmen pulled a disgusted face – ‘but as far as we know, she hadn’t become pregnant by the time she disappeared.’
    ‘So what about the disappearance?’
    Menşure shrugged. ‘One night she was in the Kahraman house, the next morning she was gone. There was a rumour that when he wasn’t actually sleeping with her, if you know what I mean, Ziya made Aysu sleep in his cellar – locked her in. There were lots of rumours. But anyway, somehow the girl got out and she had never been seen again until this week. At the time the jandarma and the police in Nevşehir questioned everyone. They were most enthusiastic, shall we say, in their questioning of poor Kemalettin. Half the village, including Aysu’s husband, were convinced that he had somehow abducted her. For years the Kahramans and their supporters regularly accused the boy and his family of this, that or the other crime against Ziya and his missing wife.’
    ‘So now that a body has been found, what does this mean?’ İkmen asked. ‘I mean, do you know how the girl died, Menşure?’
    ‘No.’ She put her cigarette out in the ashtray and then sipped her tea. ‘But I do know that the police in Nevşehir think that she was murdered.’
    ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘I know, or rather I am acquainted with a certain Captain Salman who is an instructor up at the new police riding school. He’s from İstanbul . . .’
    ‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen said, ‘I know him.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And so . . .’
    ‘And so Captain Salman told me to tell you that the Nevşehir police think that Aysu Alkaya was murdered. No one else in the village knows. They will very soon, but Captain Salman felt that, if you were going to try and help out, you needed to know the facts now.’
    ‘I never said I was going to help out, Menşure. I came here – well, you know why I came here. But I can’t actually do anything here and I’ve a very stressful job waiting for me back in İstanbul.’
    ‘Yes, I appreciate that, but this village will fracture once the truth is known, Çetin,’ Menşure said. ‘Fingers will