River of The Dead by Barbara Nadel Page A

It had been Midhat who had tried to persuade the autocratic and paranoid Sultan Abdul Hamid to grant his people a modern constitution back in the 1870s. He had paid for his social concern with his life. Strangely, next to Midhat’s portrait was one of the sultan concerned, his dark skin and hooded eyes making him look as if he could almost be related to the Zeytounian ladies.
    Instinctively – for this long dead sultan, for all his faults, was one of Süleyman’s forebears – the policeman put his hand up towards the portrait.
    The old woman said, ‘You have a connection to the Cobweb World. I know it and I can see it too.’ He turned to look at her and saw that she was smiling. ‘The Cobweb World is Ottoman, it is Armenian, Syrian, Jewish. Ancient, even beyond the Byzantine times. It has always been,’ she said. ‘You will find the Cobweb World everywhere if you go to Mardin.’
    He wanted to know how she apparently knew about his possible trip to Mardin; how she knew or claimed to know that he was from an Ottoman family, for that matter. But he just went on staring at the portrait of Sultan Abdul Hamid. During the latter half of his reign some of his opponents had ‘accused’ him of having Armenian blood. ‘This Cobweb World of which you speak . . .’
    ‘Is what remains of things gone by. Meaningful things,’ she said gently. ‘In other places things die, but here . . . Belief means that some corpses retain some life. Then again, some things never die in the first place. Some faiths are alive and—’
    She was cut off by a furious female voice coming from the ornate doorway. Turning slowly and reluctantly from the portrait in front of him, Süleyman saw the angry figure of Inspector Taner berating the old woman roundly. What language she was speaking he didn’t know, but the effect it had on the old woman was instant and she moved away quickly without another word. Taner, breathing heavily, looked across at Süleyman and smiled. ‘I apologise for that,’ she said. ‘She speaks out of turn. Madly.’
    ‘She was actually quite interesting,’ Süleyman said. ‘And this building—’
    ‘It’s very late,’ the policewoman cut in, rudely, he thought. ‘The stupid old woman has let our food get cold. Rafik will take you back to your hotel now. We have to start early in the morning.’ She held her arm out towards him in a gesture that he felt would brook no argument. ‘Come. Let’s go.’
    ‘This is a marvellous place. It—’
    Taner moved forward and took Süleyman physically by the arm. ‘It’s an old, dead house,’ she said matter-of-factly; ‘it has no interest or meaning for someone like you. Dinner is over. Come.’
    She pulled him roughly out into the cool, southern night.

Chapter 4
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    Secretly, İkmen had expected more. Scientific procedures were so sophisticated now that near miracles were, or seemed to be, almost daily occurrences. He passed the photographs in his hands over to the pathologist and sighed.
    ‘Useless,’ he said. ‘They tell us nothing.’
    Dr Arto Sarkissian adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose and squinted. ‘Çetin, to be fair,’ he said, ‘these men are wearing stockings over their faces. The enhancement shows that very clearly. We couldn’t see that before. All we had was some security film of men dressed as cleaners and nurses.’
    ‘Now we have men dressed as cleaners and nurses with stockings over their faces,’ İkmen responded caustically. ‘Hardly useful.’
    ‘Hardly possible, in the real world, for photographic enhancement to peer through the distorting effect of ladies’ hosiery,’ Arto said, himself peering sternly over the top of his glasses at the policeman. ‘I think that the laboratory has done extremely well.’
    İkmen grunted. Arto Sarkissian and Çetin İkmen had been friends since childhood. Their fathers had been friends also and the two boys, together with İkmen’s brother Halıl and Arto’s brother