River of The Dead by Barbara Nadel Page B

Krikor, had spent almost every waking moment together when not at their respective schools. Although financially far and away above İkmen with his huge, riotous band of children, the pathologist retained a closeness to his old friend that was entirely free of competition or artifice of any sort.
    ‘I suppose now I’ve got to start looking for ladies’ stockings in dustbins and on landfill sites,’ İkmen said gloomily.
    ‘At least you know now that you have to look for stockings,’ Arto replied. ‘The men who freed Yusuf Kaya may even have discarded their masks amongst the clinical waste at the Cerrahpaşa. There are many avenues you can go down in pursuit of DNA samples, Çetin.’
    ‘Mmm.’ İkmen lit a cigarette and sighed. The doctor had come to the policeman’s office in order to discuss the post-mortems he had performed on the police officers and the prison guard who had died during Yusuf Kaya’s escape. That he’d walked into an examination of stills from the Cerrahpaşa security camera film footage was purely accidental.
    ‘I thought that stockings were a thing of the past these days,’ İkmen said, still miserably. ‘I thought those wishing to hide their faces these days wore scarves or novelty George W. Bush masks.’
    Arto laughed. ‘Maybe Yusuf Kaya’s team are just old-fashioned boys,’ he said. Then, pointing at the photograph in his hand, he added, ‘But maybe not. You know that the weapons used to kill the men I examined were not knives.’
    ‘Not knives?’ İkmen frowned.
    Arto waddled heavily over towards his friend and put the photograph on his desk. He was a short, very stout man just on the brink of actual obesity.
    ‘What the enhancement shows very nicely here is an absence of knives,’ he said, pointing at the photograph. ‘See here. Something glints, but as to what that thing is . . .’
    Çetin peered downwards and then said, ‘Yes, but the glinting is . . . Admittedly I can’t actually see anything . . .’
    ‘That’s because the weapons they used were glass,’ Arto said.
    ‘Glass?’
    ‘Admittedly large and very sharp shards of toughened glass, but glass nevertheless,’ Arto said.
    His friend looked up and asked what even he knew was a pointless question. ‘Are you sure?’
    Arto Sarkissian was always sure; that was why he was so good at his job. ‘Wounds to all three bodies contain glass particles. Also, the shapes of the incisions are so irregular they can’t have been produced by a conventional blade. These stills, which show an apparent absence of actual weaponry, only serve to confirm my findings.’
    ‘Yes, but . . . Glass?’
    Arto stumbled back to his chair and sat down again. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Glass is very effective as a weapon, and if a piece of glass is found on a cleaner or a nurse it is unlikely to be confiscated even by a police officer.’
    ‘Well . . .’
    ‘They could be in the process of disposing of a dangerous shard found on a ward or in a corridor. Glass can turn up anywhere. In the right context, like that of a cleaner, being found in possession of glass can be viewed as a good thing.’
    He was right. It could be looked upon as entirely innocent. But far from giving the policeman a sense of progress in the Kaya case, the new information only served to unsettle him still further. Frowning again, he said, ‘The more I learn about Kaya’s escape the more I am convinced it was planned down to the last second. Glass! They might have considered different weapons for weeks . . . months!’
    ‘And yet planning at such an exact level implies, to me at least, complicity from the only person who could possibly engineer Kaya’s escape from the beginning: the prison governor. Or am I being simple-minded?’
    Çetin İkmen nodded his head. ‘I can see your point,’ he said. ‘And yet so far I can find no evidence for that. The governor made a decision based upon what the prison doctor and then the guards told him about