Copyright © 2016 Barbara Nadel

The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published in Great Britain as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2016

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 1381 5

Cover photographs © James Hughes/Millennium Images UK and Nightman1965/Shutterstock

Cover design by CraigFraserdesign.com

Author photograph © Angus Muir

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About the Book

In Istanbul – the golden city on the Bosphorus – ancient myths and modern evils are at work …

On a buzzing street in the fashionable district of Beyoglu, a young man drops dead. Ümit Kavas’s death was natural but the autopsy betrays a shocking truth: his last meal was human flesh.

Under desperate pressure from their superiors, Inspector Cetin Ikmen and his colleague Mehmet Süleyman begin their most obscure investigation yet. How did Ümit Kavas, apparently a good, liberal man, come to partake in the greatest taboo of all? Did he act alone? And who was his victim?

Soon they find themselves embroiled in a dark web of underground worlds: of Turkey’s old secular elite; a community of squatters; and a new gastronomy scene breaking every boundary. But where does the truth lie?

About the Author

Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel used to work in mental health services. Born in the East End of London, she now writes full time and has been a visitor to Turkey for over twenty years. She received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for her novel DEADLY WEB, and the Swedish Flintax Prize for historical crime fiction for her first Francis Hancock novel, LAST RITES.

To find out more, follow Barbara on Twitter @BarbaraNadel

By Barbara Nadel

The Inspector İkmen Series:

Belshazzar’s Daughter

A Chemical Prison

Arabesk

Deep Waters

Harem

Petrified

Deadly Web

Dance with Death

A Passion for Killing

Pretty Dead Things

River of the Dead

Death by Design

A Noble Killing

Dead of Night

Deadline

Body Count

Land of the Blind

On the Bone

The Hancock Series:

Last Rights

After the Mourning

Ashes to Ashes

Sure and Certain Death

The Hakim and Arnold Series:

A Private Business

An Act of Kindness

Poisoned Ground

Enough Rope

Praise for Barbara Nadel’s novels:

‘Inspector Çetin İkmen is one of detective fiction’s most likeable investigators, despite his grumpy and unsociable character. Or perhaps because of it – we seem to like our detectives a little grouchy: think of him as the Morse of Istanbul’ Daily Telegraph

‘Intelligent and captivating’ The Sunday Times

‘Fascinating … Inter-gang drug war and racial prejudice are only two of the ingredients stirred into the incendiary mix’ Good Book Guide

‘Impeccable mystery plotting, exotic and atmospheric’ Guardian

To Alex and Lia

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without help from the following people:

Earl Starkey and his wonderful assistant Gonca Özküçük who introduced me to the spectacular Zenne Segah. Leigh Turner CMG, Consul General for Trade and Investment for Turkey, Central Asia and the South Caucasus, who gave me tea and ‘the tour’. For perspective on the ‘Syrian situation’, Revd Canon Ian Sherwood, OBE, and, as ever, to my friend and fellow traveller Pat Yale. Plus I’ve also watched a lot of television cookery shows!

Cast List

Police:

Inspector Cetin İkmen – middle aged İstanbul detective

Inspector Mehmet Süleyman – İstanbul detective and İkmen’s protégé

Commissioner Hürrem Teker – İkmen and Süleyman’s boss

Sergeant Kerim Gürsel – İkmen’s sergeant

Sergeant Ömer Mungun – Süleyman’s sergeant

Arto Sarkissian – Armenian police pathologist

Constable Halide Can – police officer

Others:

Fatma İkmen – Cetin’s wife

Kemal İkmen – one of Fatma and Cetin’s sons

Gonca Şekeroğlu – Süleyman’s mistress

Sinem Gürsel – Kerim Gürsel’s wife

Peri Mungun – Ömer Mungun’s sister, a nurse

Boris Myskow – American celebrity chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

Chef Tandoğan – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

Bülent Onay – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

Aysel Gurcanli – chef at the Imperial Oriental Hotel

Tayyar Zarides, also known as Cyrus – a Greek pork butcher

Imam Özgür Ayan – a cleric

Burak Ayan – the imam’s son

Mustafa Ayan – the imam’s son

Radwan – a Syrian refugee

Azzam – a Syrian refugee

Uğur İnan – originator of the Art House squat

İsmet İnan – Uğur’s son

Birgül İnan – İsmet’s wife

Ziya Yetkin – a biker

Zenne Gül – a male belly dancer

Meltem Baser – Gül’s friend

Ahu Kasap – Gül’s friend

Pembe Hanım – Gül’s friend

Celal Vural – a waiter

Selma Vural – Celal’s wife

Aylin Hanım – Imam Ayan’s neighbour

Ramazan – Aylin’s son

General Abdullah Kavaş – murder victim’s father

Belgin Kavaş – murder victim’s mother

Major General Deniz Baydar – retired soldier

Defne Baydar – the Major General’s wife

Father Bacchus Katsaros – Greek Orthodox priest

Cüneyt Civan – Internet trader

Mimi – prostitute

Could guilt kill? Scientifically that had to be bullshit. But dying as a result of guilt, well, that could be possible, couldn’t it? The stress of carrying guilt could put pressure on the central nervous system, which could in turn affect the heart. Long-term stress could result in damage to the heart muscle. And heart disease was in the family.

He felt hot, then cold, then hot again. His chest hurt. Indigestion, his body rejecting food it hadn’t been designed to eat. Or had it? Of course it hadn’t. He’d known it was wrong. But at the same time, he’d been curious. And it had looked good. Now he knew what Hagop meant when he talked about ‘crackling’, although he doubted whether his Armenian friend had ever had it like he had.

He felt sick. It wasn’t good to be out on İstiklal Caddesi on a Saturday night when he felt so rough. Istanbul’s principal party street was buzzing with noise, food smells, tobacco smoke and a cross-section of humanity that made his head swim at the best of times. Now everyone looked frightening and disapproving. He felt they knew, and his chest tightened again. But how could they know? Sweat poured down his face. Years ago, when his family had taken holidays, he’d got food poisoning in Sicily. He’d thought he was about to die. But then he’d also had the shits. He gagged. Maybe it was coming out of the other end? He’d have to get to a side street or a shop doorway. He wasn’t far from the church of St Antoine. If he could stagger through the gates and on to the steps, he could sink down on the ground and maybe start to feel a bit better. But as he began to walk towards the church, he felt the world turn upside down and he hit the road with his shoulder.

He saw people come. He heard them ask him if he was OK. But then he entered a blackness that he had, and hadn’t, been expecting.

Chapter 1

‘Does this have to be done now?’

Fatma İkmen looked up at her husband. Surrounded by tins, she was sitting on the floor in front of the food cupboard. She was uncomfortable and angry.

He answered his own question. ‘I see it does.’

He lit a cigarette.

‘Out!’

Cetin İkmen loved his wife. They’d been together for over forty years and he had never regretted a day of it. But there were limits.

‘No.’ He sat down at the kitchen table.

Fatma’s plump face turned red. ‘Nobody smokes indoors now,’ she said. ‘Only in brothels and drug dens.’

‘Is that so?’ He drank the tea she’d made for him before she started cleaning out the food cupboard. ‘Can’t say I really notice cigarettes when I’m raiding a bonzai factory in a godforsaken suburb full of hopeless addicts.’

Synthetic cannabinoid, or bonzai, had been popular in Turkey for almost five years. Cheaper than cannabis or heroin, it was highly addictive and deadly. And although Inspector Cetin İkmen’s task in the Istanbul police force was to apprehend murderers rather than drug dealers, sometimes his quarry was one and the same.

‘Anyway, all that’s nothing,’ Fatma said as she wafted his smoke out of her face. ‘Are you going to help me sort out these tins?’

‘I’m going to work in a minute.’ He smoked.

‘Ah, what am I to do! It’s all over the television,’ she said. ‘Anatolia Gold.’ She looked at the tins and shook her head. ‘How could they?’

İkmen rolled his eyes. Product giant Anatolia Gold had owned up to selling tinned products that contained traces of pork. Actually they’d been found out by government scientists, who had checked their white beans after people had complained that they tasted odd. They’d found the beans contained pork products, and in a Muslim country, that was headline news. All over Turkey, women just like Fatma İkmen were clearing out their food cupboards and wondering how much pork they’d already unwittingly eaten. Most of them feared for their souls and the souls of their loved ones. Expressly forbidden in the Koran, consumption of pork was considered a sin in Islam. Eating this unclean animal, either by accident or design, was a very serious infringement of Islamic law.

‘Are you not just a little worried that you might’ve eaten pork?’ Fatma said.

‘No.’

She shook her head again. ‘I will never understand you, Cetin.’

He smiled. ‘Well you haven’t done badly after forty years of marriage,’ he said. ‘Putting up with an atheist. But then I’ve not always found you easy to live with either. Now, I think, is one of those times.’

She scowled.

‘Fatma, you’re one of the most genuinely pious people I have ever met,’ Cetin said. ‘You are the real thing, and that is rare these days. These women covering themselves in black …’

‘That’s not Islam. That’s an Arabian custom.’

‘I know that, and so do you, but sadly, certain young women who wear far too much eye make-up do not,’ he said. He leaned down towards her. ‘You’re not going to eternal damnation, Fatma.’

‘How do you know? You don’t believe in anything.’

He shrugged. ‘Because it doesn’t make sense. If your God is as kind and loving as you always say he is, why would he condemn good people? Now if you’re talking about the God of the jihadis …’

‘Ah, don’t even think about them! It’s madness!’

‘Maybe.’ He stood up. Put his cigarette out and then lit another. ‘It looks like it to me, but not to everyone, and also you can’t arrest someone for talking out of their backside, can you? Or rather you shouldn’t.’

Fatma stopped looking at tins. She frowned. ‘I think maybe you should, sometimes,’ she said. ‘All I see is hatred spreading.’

‘Some people don’t mind that.’

She looked up at him. ‘Well they should.’

He bent down to kiss her. ‘I agree.’

The youngest of the İkmens’ eight adult children, Kemal, had just told his mother he was gay. His father had known for some time. Fatma had not been happy, but she had accepted what, deep down in her soul, she had known was coming anyway. Now all she had to do was reconcile her son’s sexuality with her faith. She seemed to be making a start by condemning religious fanatics.

‘If it were up to me, I would lock them all up,’ she said. Then she went back to her tins.

Her husband smiled, said, ‘Yes,’ and left.

‘Human flesh? Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely,’ the doctor said. ‘And what is more, it has been cooked and was accompanied by an apple and plum sauce. Makes one wonder how that combination was arrived at. Was the apple included because it is claimed by some that human flesh is similar to pork?’

‘God knows.’

‘But I’m afraid, Commissioner, that someone died to provide Mr Ümit Kavaş with his last meal,’ Dr Arto Sarkissian said. ‘Which means that his body is now a crime scene.’

Commissioner Hürrem Teker ran her fingers through her thick dyed hair. The pathologist was right. Kavaş’s body, although he had died of natural causes, couldn’t be released to his family.

‘The general will not be pleased,’ she said.

‘General Kavaş can be as displeased as he likes,’ the doctor said. ‘I can’t release the body.’

‘No.’

It was easy for Sarkissian to say. As an Armenian Christian, he couldn’t understand the frantic need Muslim families had to bury the bodies of their loved ones. Christians didn’t believe a soul was in torment until its body was in the ground. Not that Hürrem Teker thought that General Kavaş believed in such things for a second. He had been a shaven-headed committed secularist, a follower of Atatürk, in his youth. He probably still was. But since he’d served a term in prison for alleged involvement in a plot against the Islamically rooted AK government, his public stance had altered. Now he prayed. Now he was on the phone every five minutes demanding the return of his son’s body.

The Armenian said, ‘The meat was rare. But that didn’t contribute in any significant way to Ümit Kavaş’s death. Though only thirty-five, he had advanced coronary artery disease.’

‘Like his father. He had a heart bypass years ago.’

Hürrem was from a military family. Her father had known General Kavaş.

‘Pity the son didn’t,’ the doctor said. ‘What are you going to do, madam?’

She leaned back on the side of a sink.

‘Well we can’t start yelling about cannibals. The more lurid media outlets will have the public hiding under their beds. It will be a zombie apocalypse, a left-wing plot, an attack on family values. Every testosterone-fuelled kid will be out on the street with a gun.’

‘That’s why I called you directly.’

‘Which I appreciate,’ she said. ‘It’s not easy. The area where Kavaş was found is jammed with restaurants and bars.’

‘I doubt that what Mr Kavaş ate had been served commercially,’ he said. ‘If anyone is trying to pass human flesh off as animal meat, then it can only be as pork. And as far as I know, there’s only one pork butcher left in this city.’

‘An Armenian?’

‘No, a Rum.’

Rums, or Istanbul Greeks, were rare in the city now. Even rarer was one who butchered pigs.

‘Tayyar Zarides,’ the doctor said. ‘To his friends he uses his Greek name, Cyrus.’

‘Are you this man’s friend, Dr Sarkissian?’

He smiled. Accustomed to the idea that all Turks thought that all non-Muslims knew each other, it still mildly amused him. ‘My brother is a fan of pork,’ he said. ‘Mr Zarides’s product is very good. He rears at a small farm in Thrace, and I am told his butchery skills are second to none. So why he would want to taint his product with human flesh …’

‘He probably doesn’t,’ she said. ‘But we must start somewhere. I imagine you’ve heard about this Anatolia Gold scandal?’

‘Pork fat in the beans. Yes.’

‘Tensions are running high. One of their factories in Kayseri has already been attacked.’

‘Exactly. If you go into Tayyar Zarides’s place under these circumstances …’

‘Oh, I won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll send your friend Cetin.’

Arto Sarkissian frowned. His childhood friend Cetin İkmen was one of the best-known policemen in the city. Scrupulously honest and fair, Istanbul’s quirkiest cop had been helping to make the city a safer place to live for decades. Everyone from street sweepers to millionaires knew him. Love him or loathe him, İkmen was very visible. Surely if Teker wanted to keep a lid on this thing, using İkmen wasn’t going to help her?

‘I can’t help thinking that’s not entirely a good idea …’

‘No?’ she said. ‘Because he’s a known face? He is. But he’s also known as an out-and-proud atheist. Not many of those about in public life any more. But İkmen remains. And when people see him in a pork butcher’s, they won’t think, “Oh there go the police persecuting minorities”. They’ll think, “If İkmen’s with Mr Zarides then they’re probably friends”. They might not like it, but I think they’ll accept it. At least I hope so.’

‘Oh. I see.’

She had a point.

‘We’ll need a team to investigate this situation,’ she said. ‘And I can’t think of anyone better for that job than İkmen. Can you?’

People went missing in Istanbul all the time. Children and teenagers ran away from home, tourists got lost or fell in love and then tumbled off the radar, and elderly demented people wandered. Few were never found. But occasionally a body would turn up. In the waters of the Bosphorus, behind some dustbins in a quiet, pious suburb, dumped on the metro tracks. And it was then that a select few officers would be assigned to what was possibly a murder. But they usually had some visual clues or formal ID to go on.

Cetin İkmen was still frankly reeling from the case Commissioner Teker had presented to him. Apart from the contents of a cadaver’s stomach, there was no physical evidence that his victim had ever lived. His sergeant, Kerim Gürsel, was checking missing persons records, and the only other officers who were going to be assigned to this very low-key investigation were out. There was, however, always Arto. And as happened so often, the doctor was way ahead of him. İkmen’s phone rang.

‘I can get you into Tayyar Zarides’s place with no problem at all,’ Arto said in answer to İkmen’s question about the pork butcher. ‘Although as I said to the commissioner, I don’t think it’s an entirely good idea at the present time.’

İkmen laughed. ‘You think.’

‘What I’ve done is ordered some further DNA tests on the meat,’ Arto said. ‘With a city full of unnamed and unaccounted-for Syrian refugees, it could be useful to know the ethnicity of the victim if we can.’

‘I wonder if the diner knew what he was eating,’ İkmen said. ‘I don’t know much about General Kavaş and his family, but I don’t picture them on the outré side of the tracks. Especially not now.’

‘Mmm. But remember that lurid stories circulated about them for a couple of years.’

‘When he was public enemy number whatever it was,’ İkmen said. ‘But he was exonerated last year, Arto. And according to Teker, who knows him, he and the rest of the family have been keeping their heads below the parapet ever since.’

‘Maybe Ümit was tired of being a good boy.’

‘Bit of an extreme way to break out, wouldn’t you say?’

‘We live in extreme times,’ the doctor said. ‘Why do otherwise perfectly civilised young men go to Syria to fight for something they barely understand? Why are they persecuting completely benign groups like the Yezidis? And beheading? In 2014?’

The rise of ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, was as worrying as it had been rapid. Born out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, it had hacked its way across Iraq and Syria and was now at the Syrian border with Turkey. Young Muslims had gone to join ISIS from all over the world, hoping to build a modern caliphate out of countries artificially created by the old imperialist powers of the twentieth century.

‘I think we have to destroy ISIS completely,’ İkmen said. ‘They’re people who have been brainwashed. I’ve seen them in districts like Çarşamba.’ Çarşamba was home to many of the ultra-religious. ‘I’ve listened to them. As a liberal, I have to defend their right to talk absolute nonsense, but I can’t condone what they do. I don’t want my children to have to live around them. There is no circumstance under which it is right to kill innocent non-combatants.’ He shook his head. ‘Anyway, Teker tells me that she’s going to see General Kavaş to try to get him off your back.’

‘He wants his son’s body.’

‘Of course. She is going to tell him about the, you know, the eating …’

‘Is that a good idea, do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘As long as General Kavaş and his wife keep it to themselves. Ümit was their only child. Tragic for them, but maybe, from our point of view, it will make it easier for the story to be contained.’

‘The commissioner is very keen to keep this low-key,’ Arto said.

‘And with good reason. Imagine what some of the tabloids would do with a story like this. It would go, what is it? Viral, online. Teker knows it has the potential to spawn all sorts of conspiracy theories and mad quasi-religious violence. She wants it solved yesterday.’

‘I pity you, my friend.’

İkmen smiled. ‘Luckily I won’t be alone,’ he said.

‘Well, you have Sergeant Gürsel …’

‘And my dear friend Mehmet Süleyman, and Sergeant Mungun,’ İkmen said. ‘The best.’

What stuck in the craw almost more than the crime itself was the man’s own attitude to what he’d done.

‘She was a whore,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault you people don’t do your job with such women any more.’

Inspector Mehmet Süleyman bundled the man, Musa Şahin, into the custody van and slammed the door. One of the constables standing guard outside the Şahins’ apartment frowned.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Süleyman said. ‘He killed his wife.’

‘He admitted it,’ the constable said.

‘Which makes it OK?’ Süleyman walked over to the boy, who coloured. ‘He phoned us because he’s proud of himself,’ he continued. ‘Now, after years of beating the poor woman, he can congratulate himself on becoming man enough to stab her in the stomach.’

He walked back to the custody van and banged on the door to let the driver know he should go.

Süleyman’s sergeant, Ömer Mungun, shook his head. ‘What are we supposed to do with this, sir?’

‘Charge him, wait for forensics to deliver their results, just in case he’s covering for one of his sons, and then let him have his day in court,’ Süleyman said. ‘It’s obviously what he wants.’

They’d been called out to a crime scene that was apparently a formality. Fifty-year-old Musa Şahin, a resident of Ayvansaray, had phoned the police to say he’d killed his wife of thirty years, Melda. When they’d arrived, they’d found Şahin in a state of what appeared to be righteous rage and the body of a woman in her forties. She’d been stabbed in the stomach, but a preliminary examination had revealed that she had also sustained heavy bruising over what could be a long period of time. Şahin had admitted he’d beaten her. Apparently she habitually looked at other men.

‘We saw a lot of this in Mardin,’ Ömer Mungun said. ‘I didn’t think I’d see it here. Don’t know why.’

‘Nor I,’ Süleyman said. ‘Sadly.’

Mardin, a wonderful ancient honey-coloured town, had always been a melting pot of races and creeds from all over the region. However, it was also the wild east, where men were men and women frequently lived in fear. Now on the very edge of the new ISIS caliphate, it was a place Mungun still felt connected to because his ageing parents lived there. In recent months he had asked them to move to Istanbul, but they had refused. They had said that many of the horrors that happened around Mardin happened in Istanbul too. And if this case was anything to go by, they were right.

They began to walk back to Süleyman’s car. The inspector’s phone had buzzed a couple of times when they were in the Şahin apartment. Now he looked at who might have contacted him.

‘Commissioner Teker wants to see both of us as soon as we get back to the station,’ he said. ‘I wonder what we’ve done wrong, Ömer.’

Life had never been easy for Mehmet Süleyman. As a member of the former Ottoman royal family, he’d grown up in the 1970s under a rampantly secular administration that had openly derided people like him. Tall, handsome and clever, he had quickly made a name for himself in the police, and under the tutelage of Cetin İkmen had found a way to largely erase the handicap of his background. And then the world, as it will, had turned. Now under the religiously inspired AK government, the Ottoman Empire was back in favour, but Süleyman was still uncomfortable. Neo-Ottomanism, with its emphasis on religion and ‘right’ behaviour, was not something a man given to many vices could approve of. In the last year he had been criticised for his romantic involvement with a gypsy artist who he continued to see. But then if Teker had called both himself and Ömer into her presence, it was unlikely to be about that. Nevertheless, as he got into his car and fired up the engine, he couldn’t help feeling a little anxious about what might await them.