Copyright © 2023 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.

First published in Great Britain in 2023

by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

First published as an Ebook in Great Britain in 2023

by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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.

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 9376 3

Cover image © Tim Daniels/Arcangel Images.

Cover design by Becky Glibbery.

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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 RIGHTS.

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 House of Four

Incorruptible

A Knife to the Heart

Blood Business

Forfeit

Bride Price

Double Illusion

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:

‘Complex and beguiling: a Turkish delight’ Mick Herron

‘İkmen is one of modern crime fiction’s true heroes, complex yet likeable, and the city he inhabits - Istanbul - is just as fascinating’ The Times

‘Barbara Nadel’s distinctive Istanbul-set Inspector İkmen thrillers combine brightly coloured scene setting with deliciously tortuous plots - the resourceful İkmen is always struggling with intractable cases’ Guardian

‘Inspector Çetin İkmen is one of detective fiction’s most likeable investigators, despite his grumpy and unsociable character . . . think of him as the Morse of Istanbul’ Daily Telegraph

‘Intelligent and captivating’ The Sunday Times

‘Impeccable mystery plotting, exotic and atmospheric’ Guardian

‘The delight of Nadel’s books is the sense of being taken beneath the surface of an ancient city. . .We look into the alleyways and curious dark quarters of Istanbul, full of complex characters and louche atmosphere’ Independent

‘Nadel’s evocation of the shady underbelly of modern Turkey is one of the perennial joys of crime fiction’ Mail on Sunday

‘Gripping and unusual detective story, vivid and poignant’ Literary Review

About the Book

A BRUTAL MURDER IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS in Barbara Nadel’s twenty-fifth İkmen mystery. . .

When Ates Bocuk, son of a feared Istanbul gang leader, is arrested for the brutal murder of his Roma lover, feelings of vengeance are ignited among rival Turkish gangs and the Roma community.

Forensic evidence is stacked against him, but Ates refuses to speak, and Inspector Suleyman suspects that there is more to the case than meets the eye. Then Cetin Ikmen discovers that Ates is psychotic and believes that everyone in his life is an imposter, which suggests that Ates might in fact be a victim of a far more sinister game . . .

As violence erupts, Suleyman and his team work tirelessly to expose a shocking tale of corruption, power and betrayal - but not before more blood is shed on these dark and dangerous streets.

To Alex, Lia, Senan, Malcolm, my mum
and all my wonderful friends.

I am lucky to have so much.

Cast List

Çetin İkmen – retired İstanbul detective

Inspector Mehmet Süleyman – İstanbul detective

Inspector Kerim Gürsel – İstanbul detective

Sergeant Ömer Mungun – Süleyman’s deputy

Sergeant Eylul Yavaş – Gürsel’s deputy

Çiçek İkmen – Çetin’s daughter

Sedat Bey – Çiçek’s boyfriend

Gonca Süleyman – Mehmet’s wife

Nur Süleyman – Mehmet’s mother

Samsun Bajraktar – Çetin’s cousin

Rambo Şekeroğlu senior – Gonca’s brother

Rambo Şekeroğlu junior – Gonca’s son

Didim Şekeroğlu – Gonca’s sister

Şeftali Şekeroğlu – Gonca’s cousin

Sinem Gürsel – Kerim’s wife

Melda Gürsel – Kerim’s daughter

Peri Mungun – Ömer’s sister

Yeşili Mungun – Ömer’s wife

Dr Arto Sarkissian – police pathologist

Dr Emir Doksanaltı – police psychiatrist

Dr İlker Koca – police psychiatrist

Dr Sebnam Altan – police medic

Sergeant Fatıh Asmalı – custody officer

Constable Altay – custody officer

Officer Kenan Sağlam – technical officer

Technical Officer Türgüt Zana – IT specialist

İsmail Toksoy – retired OKK Special Forces marksman

Sergeant Hikmet Yıldız – scene-of-crime officer

Superintendent Cihat Şen – incident commander

Commissioner Selahattin Ozer – commissioner of police

Kemal Gurkan – public prosecutor

Eyüp Çelik – lawyer

Havva Sarı – lawyer

Bishop Juan-Maria Montoya – Catholic Bishop of İstanbul

Juan, Tomas and Lola Cortes – Spanish Romany flamenco dancers

Şevket Sesler – Romany crime lord

Selami Sesler – Şevket’s son, a thug

Munir Can – Sesler’s henchman

Filiz and Ayda – lap dancers at Sesler’s club

Ceviz Elibol – Romany lap dancer and victim

Hüseyin Elibol – Ceviz’s father

Beren Elibol – Ceviz’s sister

Esat Böcek – religious crime lord

Ateş Böcek – Esat’s son

İlhan Böcek – Esat’s son

Neşe Böcek – Esat’s mother

Feride – Ateş’s psychiatrist

Hakki Bürkev – Böcek family guard

Kasım – tenant of the Böcek family

Murad Ayhan – gangster

Irmak Ayhan – Murad’s wife

Aylın Ayhan – Murad’s daughter

Yıldırım Ayhan – Murad’s son

Dr Gibrail Sezer – Murad’s doctor

Serdar İpek – Ayhan’s thug

Esma Nebatı – Aylın’s best friend

Faruk Nebatı – Esma’s father

Numan Bey – pickle-juice seller

Madam Edith – drag queen

Belisarius Doukas – coffee shop owner

Rahul Bey – haberdasher

Mete Bülbül – victim

Aaron Kamhi – academic

Bayza Akyılmaz – quilt maker

Sibel – Romany madam

Kurdish Madonna, Nikki and Fındık – prostitutes

Pronunciation Guide

There are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet:

A, a – usually short as in ‘hah!’

B, b – as pronounced in English

C, c – not like the c in ‘cat’ but like the ‘j’ in ‘jar’, or ‘Taj’

Ç, ç – ‘ch’ as in ‘chunk’

D, d – as pronounced in English

E, e – always short as in ‘venerable’

F, f – as pronounced in English

G, g – always hard as in ‘slug’

Ğ, ğ – ‘yumuşak ge’ is used to lengthen the vowel that it follows. It is not usually voiced. As in the name ‘Farsakoğlu’, pronounced ‘Far-sak-orlu’

H, h – as pronounced in English, never silent

I, ı – without a dot, the sound of the ‘a’ in ‘probable’

İ i – with a dot, as the ‘i’ in ‘thin’

J, j – as the French pronounce the ‘j’ in ‘bonjour’

K, k – as pronounced in English, never silent

L, l – as pronounced in English

M, m – as pronounced in English

N, n – as pronounced in English

O, o – always short as in ‘hot’

Ö, ö – like the ‘ur’ sound in ‘further’

P, p – as pronounced in English

R, r – as pronounced in English

S, s – as pronounced in English

Ş, ş – like the ‘sh’ in ‘ship’

T, t – as pronounced in English

U, u – always medium length, as in ‘push’

Ü, ü – as the French pronounced the ‘u’ in ‘tu’

V, v – as pronounced in English but sometimes with a slight ‘w’ sound

Y, y – as pronounced in English

Z, z – as pronounced in English

Later, when he attempted to describe what had confronted him when he had arrived at the Şehzade Rafık Palace, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman found himself referencing two famous artists.

‘The suspect, armed with a sword, pinwheeled between two cohorts of uniformed men, his face twisted and bloodied like a figure from a painting by Goya,’ he said. ‘Embedded in a background of shiny cars, sculpted gardens and a palace resembling a wedding cake, it was also pure Salvador Dalí.’

What it had been too was a nightmare . . .

Chapter 1

There weren’t many İstanbul palaces Mehmet Süleyman didn’t know. The scion of an Ottoman family related to the sultans, he was one of those who, prior to the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, would have lived in a palace. But the Şehzade Rafık, located just off the high-end shopping street of Baghdat Caddesi, wasn’t familiar to him.

As he approached it, through huge electric gates via a manicured garden just lightly dusted with snow, he snapped on a pair of plastic gloves and asked the uniformed officer walking beside him, ‘What do we know?’

‘First report came in at 19.55,’ said the officer, a Sergeant Taşdemir. ‘Fifth-floor apartment in the Deniz building.’ He pointed to his left. ‘Complaint basically about noise from the palace, screaming.’

Although extensive, the palace was hemmed in on three sides by expensive apartment blocks. This meant that a large number of homes overlooked the old building.

‘And then?’

‘Then less than five minutes later, we had multiple calls,’ Taşdemir said. ‘A man was running about outside the palace attacking cars. He was covered in blood . . .’

Two marble staircases led up to the palace entrance, separated by a marble platform. Süleyman could see that a man holding a sword, his shirt and trousers soaked in what looked like blood, was running between two groups of police officers who had him effectively trapped between them.

‘Has he attacked any of our men?’

‘No, sir,’ Taşdemir said. ‘He just runs. He’s covered in blood, as you can see, but whether it’s his or not . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve got officers guarding all the entrances into the palace, but I wanted to wait for you before I ordered them inside.’

‘Quite right.’ Süleyman looked down at his sergeant, a dark young man called Ömer Mungun. ‘I’ll attempt to talk to this man first. You, Ömer Bey, go with Sergeant Taşdemir and prepare to enter the premises with his officers if I can’t get anywhere with our agitated friend.’

And the man was agitated. Much of the time he screamed, bending over double as if in pain; then every so often he would look at one of the police officers, point his sword at him and say, ‘You!’

But he didn’t follow these momentary recognitions with any sort of action. He would pin someone down with his gaze and then, as if a spell had been broken, he’d quickly look away and scream again.

Before Sergeant Taşdemir left with Ömer Mungun, Süleyman asked him whether he knew the man’s name.

Taşdemir frowned. ‘Not definitively,’ he said. ‘But the owner of the palace is Ateş Böcek.’

Süleyman felt his face pale.

‘And yes,’ Taşdemir confirmed, ‘I do mean the son of Esat Böcek.’

‘İkmen!’

Why the woman felt the need to wave her arms in the air when she was both unusually tall and dressed up for a Spanish fiesta, ex-inspector of police Çetin İkmen didn’t know. One could probably see Gonca Süleyman from space. Not that he was particularly focused on his friend Mehmet’s wife. He was rather more concerned about how he was going to continue walking, because it hurt.

It had been his daughter Çiçek’s idea, the walking thing. They’d arranged to meet Mehmet, Gonca and the latter’s Spanish guests at 8.30 outside the Church of Saint-Antoine on İstiklal Caddesi. The biggest Catholic church in İstanbul, Saint-Antoine was famous for holding a multilingual Mass every 24 December to usher in Christmas in the Western church. Orthodox Christians, like Çetin’s oldest friend, the Armenian pathologist Arto Sarkissian, celebrated on 6 January. And while Çetin, Çiçek, Gonca and Mehmet were nominally Muslims, they had agreed to take these Spaniards to Mass because they didn’t know the city, and Çetin and Gonca, at least, rather enjoyed the theatricality of Christmas Eve Mass.

However, Mehmet, it seemed, was not with them.

Gasping for breath, İkmen dragged himself over to Gonca and said, ‘Where’s the boy?’

Çetin and Mehmet had worked together in the İstanbul City Police Force for decades. At the beginning of his career, Mehmet Süleyman had been İkmen’s deputy, and although he was now in his mid fifties, İkmen still referred to him as ‘the boy’, especially when speaking to Gonca. Like İkmen, Gonca was over a decade older than her husband – she was also a woman with a sharp sense of humour.

‘Working,’ she said. Then, looking at İkmen properly, she added, ‘You look like shit.’

İkmen pulled his daughter towards him. ‘Blame her.’

Çiçek İkmen was an attractive woman in her forties. It was never easy for her to make conversation with Gonca. The striking Roma woman had effectively stolen her boyfriend and gone on to marry him. But Çiçek smiled and said, ‘Dad’s doctor says he needs to get fit.’

Gonca grinned at İkmen. ‘Since when did you listen to your doctor?’

‘Since he told him that if he doesn’t get some exercise he will end up housebound,’ Çiçek said.

İkmen muttered, ‘Bastard.’

‘And so,’ Çiçek continued, ‘we have just walked from Sultanahmet and across the Galata Bridge. We did ride the Tünel to get up here to İstiklal . . .’

‘Thank God!’

‘. . . and now here we are.’ Çiçek looked up at the New Year lights strung across İstiklal Caddesi, twinkling red, ice blue and white, and added, ‘So beautiful.’

Then, suddenly realising that the three people Gonca had been with were huddling at the entrance to the church, waiting for something to happen, Çetin and Çiçek went over to introduce themselves. It was snowing again, and the two men and one woman looked up into the dark sky with dread.

The Böcek family had been associated with organised crime in İstanbul since the late 1970s. This was when Ateş Böcek’s grandfather, Nedim, had come with his family from the eastern city of Antakya and settled in İstanbul’s Üsküdar district on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

Family legend had it that Nedim Böcek had been a famous wrestler back in Antakya who had come to the big city to seek his fortune. The reality was that he occasionally rented his ‘muscle’ out to a couple of the İstanbul godfathers, but basically lived off his wife’s earnings. Renowned for the skills of its falcıs, or fortune-tellers, Antakya imbued these – mainly women – with a mystical quality second only to the Roma. Neşe, Nedim’s wife, was one such Antakya falcı, and it was she who funded the property speculations of her eldest son, Esat. Neşe had always been, and remained, the power behind the Böcek family’s brutal throne on the Asian side of the Bosphorus.

Mehmet Süleyman approached Neşe’s grandson with his hands held out to his sides. Ateş was, he had learned, just twenty-one. And like a child, he giggled when he saw the older man make this peculiar gesture.

‘I’m unarmed and want only to talk to you,’ Süleyman said as he reached the top step of the left-hand staircase.

Ateş Böcek, if this ragged, blood-soaked entity was he, laughed again for a few seconds and then became still. Looking past the four officers who stood between him and Süleyman, he said, ‘I know who you are. I see you.’

‘Are you hurt?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Hurt?’

‘Yes, you have a lot of blood on your clothing and your face.’

Ateş looked down at himself. He wobbled a little, and Süleyman wondered whether he was drunk or under the influence of drugs. The sword in his hand, a traditional Turkish weapon called a yataghan, clattered to the ground, quickly followed by the young man’s unconscious body.

Gonca pointed to the younger of the two men and said, ‘He is Señor Tomas.’

The Spaniard, unsure about what to do, bowed slightly when İkmen bowed to him.

‘The young lady is Señora Lola, and this . . .’ she took the arm of the elderly man standing between Lola and Tomas, ‘this is Señor Juan. He is the most famous Roma in Spain!’

And, İkmen mused to himself, he was once your lover. But he didn’t say anything. Just before she’d seduced Mehmet Süleyman and then been his on-and-off mistress for the next twenty years, Gonca had taken a Spanish Roma lover called Juan. And while Çetin İkmen had never known him, he recognised that this old man was one and the same person. Juan Cortes had, it was said, bewitched her with his flamenco singing, his dancing and his sexual technique for one hot, crazy month back in the dying days of the twentieth century. Juan had clearly continued to attract beautiful, young women, judging by his nubile wife.

Gonca pushed Çiçek towards the small group and said, ‘Well? Do it then . . .’

Çiçek İkmen, an ex-Turkish Airlines flight attendant, could speak Spanish. It was in reality the only reason she had agreed to come to the church. It was cold and dark and she really hadn’t wanted to see Mehmet so soon after his marriage. She had loved him, but he had always been unfaithful to her, mainly with Gonca, something she still found hard to forgive. But she’d come along anyway, as a favour to her father.

Addressing the younger man she said, ‘Good evening. My name is Çiçek.’

Tomas was small and slim, with a dazzling smile. He said, ‘You are the friend who speaks Spanish!’

‘Yes.’ She smiled back.

The older man introduced himself and the woman. ‘I am Juan, and this is my wife, Lola.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’

İkmen, watching this exchange, wondered whether Çiçek would find out any more about these people. Gonca had told him that they had come to perform flamenco as part of a huge entertainment designed to celebrate the birthday of local Roma godfather Şevket Sesler on 26 December. A bully, a crook and possibly even a murderer, Sesler ‘ran’ the Roma section of the nearby district of Tarlabaşı. Gonca, though an artist by profession, made sure that he left her and her family alone by regularly reading his cards. Her policeman husband was aware of this connection, even though İkmen knew he didn’t like it. Sesler was a fact of life for İstanbul’s Roma, and keeping him happy whilst distancing oneself from his activities was a dangerous balancing act.

One of the priests from the church opened the huge front doors, and Gonca and her party, together with a large group of other worshippers, piled inside.

The palace’s great central staircase was a mirror image of the one leading up to the main entrance. Two great curving marble structures rose to the first floor and what looked from the ground like a vast door-encrusted landing. Ateş Böcek, or whoever the man was, was now receiving treatment from a doctor who had been called after his collapse. Bloody footprints descending the right-hand staircase seemed to suggest that he had been upstairs at some point. And because there were no ascending footprints on either staircase, it would appear that he had hurt either himself or someone else, or found someone in distress on the first floor.

Süleyman and Ömer Mungun slipped plastic covers over their shoes and walked up the left-hand staircase. When they arrived at the landing, it was easy to see from which of the many doors arranged around the four sides the man downstairs had come. Straight in front of them, it was the second door to the right, and it was open. The two men approached. There was a large pool of blood at the threshold, and the air smelt sharp and metallic.

Ömer looked at his boss and said, ‘There’s a lot . . .’ His voice trailed away.

The room was unlit and so it was impossible to see what lay beyond the blood pool. Süleyman took his phone out of his pocket and switched on the torch function. He shone it inside, and both men regarded what they thought at first might be a storage room of some sort, maybe for bedding. Because bedding, it seemed, was flung around everywhere. Sheets and duvet covers were on the floor, stacked up against cupboards and even on the huge bed in the middle of the room.

It was Ömer who noticed something else, although later on he wouldn’t be able to say exactly what. Maybe it was a movement. As the beam from Süleyman’s torch began to travel away from the bed, the younger man said, ‘Sir! Back a bit!’

Süleyman obliged, and it was then, amid the white sheets, the satin, the lace and the overwhelming, dripping blood, that Ömer Mungun managed to make out a hand.

Saint-Antoine’s high, vaulted interior was awash with light, and not just from its considerable number of electric lamps. Candles burned everywhere, in wall niches, at the base of statues and in the hands of choristers and worshippers. Çetin İkmen stood in front of the statue of St Anthony and wondered whether the saint, known for his ability to help people find lost things, could help him recover his fitness. He knew it was his own fault. Fifty years of heavy smoking, drinking and ignoring the benefits of a good diet had finally rendered him the type of person doctors bothered. And Dr Eyüboğlu was a constant thorn in his side. According to him, İkmen had to give up drinking and smoking immediately and follow the diet sheet he had thrust into his hands. Now Çiçek, who did most of the cooking in the İkmen apartment, was presenting him, and his horrified cousin Samsun, with ‘low-carbohydrate’ meals. This meant no rice, pasta or potatoes, which were his favourite things. Not that weight was his issue, at least not a surfeit of it. İkmen had always been, and remained, underweight. No, this was all about getting healthier, and he hated it. He’d already cut down to a mere twenty cigarettes a day; what more did the damn doctor want?

‘Çetin Bey.’ A hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked around to see his friend Bishop Montoya at his elbow.

‘Your Excellency.’

The two men embraced. Bishop Juan-Maria Montoya was the Catholic Bishop of Turkey and a friend of both İkmen and Süleyman. He had assisted them considerably during the course of İkmen’s last criminal case before he retired. Mexican by birth, he was a tall, slim and striking man in his sixties. He was also, İkmen knew, very knowledgeable, with a wide range of interests. Oddly, given where they were, he was not wearing his ecclesiastical robes.

‘Like you, I am a congregant this evening,’ he said, as though he had read İkmen’s mind. ‘Father da Mosto will say Mass tonight. But what are you doing here? I suppose a moment of religious enlightenment . . .’

İkmen laughed. ‘I fear not.’

‘My door is always open, Çetin Bey.’

‘I know, and I appreciate it,’ İkmen said. ‘No, I’m here with Mehmet Bey’s wife, who is entertaining some friends from Spain. She thought it would be nice to bring them to Mass. Çiçek has come to act as translator, as they speak no Turkish.’

The bishop spotted Çiçek with Gonca and the Spanish Roma. He waved, and she smiled and waved back.

‘I didn’t know that Çiçek Hanım could speak Spanish,’ he said.

‘Oh yes.’

‘And Gonca Hanım’s guests, I take it they are Roma?’

‘They are.’ İkmen nodded.

‘Well, why don’t you all come to my apartment after Mass for a glass or two of the excellent mezcal my brother sent me for Christmas,’ the bishop said. ‘Spaniards and Mexicans have many Christmas customs in common, and I have a piñata waiting up there too.’

‘A piñata?’

‘It’s a custom of Christmas Eve. All the children of the household must hit a papier-mâché model in the shape of a donkey or a star or something, until it bursts open and sweets fall out on the floor. I should love to share my piñata with you and your daughter and friends.’ He smiled. ‘It will also save me from the sin of gluttony.’

Normally Mehmet Süleyman would take a dim view of fellow police officers who were unable to control either their emotions or their physical responses to stressful situations. But in the case of what was found on the bed in the Şehzade Rafık Palace, he made an exception. When Ömer Mungun had put the light on in that room, he had almost thrown up himself. Ömer had, plus the two uniformed officers who had followed them in. To his credit, the sergeant had quickly regained his composure, but he was still shaking. Süleyman could see his hands trembling as one of the uniforms brought him some tea in a paper cup.

Nobody had been left with that ghastly mess. Just one uniform stationed outside the open door. All the other officers were in the garden, waiting. Süleyman himself had put the call through to police pathologist Dr Arto Sarkissian. Due to increasing nervousness amid İstanbul’s burgeoning traffic nightmare, the doctor had a driver when he was on duty these days. A vaguely unhinged man in his forties, the driver, Devlet, tended to handle the pathologist’s huge black Mercedes like a Formula 1 car. They would not, Süleyman thought, be very long. In the meantime, he had to try to concentrate on anything other than what was in that room. He also had to focus on not being sick.

Mezcal was an interesting drink. Pale yellow in colour, it was served neat save for some orange and lime slices arranged on a large plate and, the bishop told him, sprinkled with salt and chilli. Dr Eyüboğlu would no doubt have something to say about this combination, but İkmen found he didn’t care. It was quickly making him feel more optimistic about life.

‘The Aztecs believed that mezcal was an elixir of the gods,’ the bishop said as he refilled İkmen’s glass. ‘It’s made from the agave plant, of which we have millions in my country. But the Aztecs were very against drunkenness and so the form in which it is served today is one that was synthesised by the Spanish conquistadors. Europeans will always drink.’ He smiled. ‘Gonca Hanım tells me that Mehmet Bey was meant to be with you tonight.’

‘He’s working,’ İkmen said. ‘The nature of the job is uncertainty.’ He shrugged.

The bishop put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You know the older Spanish man is famous in Mexico?’

‘I knew he was famous in Spain,’ İkmen said.

‘Ah, flamenco is very big in Mexico too. Juan Cortes has played sell-out concerts in Mexico City.’ The bishop lowered his voice. ‘It is said that some years ago, he performed for Joaquín Guzmán, known as El Chapo, at his mansion in Sinaloa. Apparently it was on the occasion of Guzmán’s birthday.’

İkmen had heard the name. ‘You mean the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel?’

‘The same.’ The bishop shook his head. ‘The most destructive narco syndicate in Mexico. When El Chapo was arrested in 2014, he was supplying more cocaine into the USA than anybody else. Can you imagine the quantities?’

This was a story İkmen knew. When El Chapo had finally been arrested, there had been some in the Turkish police who had comforted themselves that such things couldn’t happen in their country. But İkmen knew they were wrong. There were currently three big crime families, all heavily involved in drugs, in İstanbul. And Juan Cortes, his wife and the boy Gonca had told him was Cortes’s son were going to play for one of them on his birthday.

‘Well, you just never know, do you?’ Dr Arto Sarkissian said as he entered that awful, reeking, blood-soaked bedroom. ‘One moment you’re drinking a very fine Merlot and the next you’re transported back to nineteenth-century London.’

Süleyman, who was using his necktie as a makeshift face covering, said, ‘Meaning?’

‘I mean, Inspector,’ said the pathologist, ‘that this scene reminds me of a photograph of one of Jack the Ripper’s victims. He absolutely terrorised London in the 1880s, but was never caught. His last victim was a prostitute called Mary Jane Kelly. He cut her to shreds.’

‘At the risk of sounding ignorant, where will you start?’

He looked at his watch. ‘My assistant, Dr Mardin, is on her way. We will decide together how best to approach this.’

‘Then I will leave you with it,’ Süleyman said.

As he descended the stairs and made his way back to the front entrance, the inspector yet again found himself marvelling at the way in which Dr Sarkissian always approached his work with such calm professionalism. If asked how he could do his job day after day, year after year, he always joked that ‘someone has to do it’. But that wasn’t of course the whole truth of the matter. He was always very respectful of those who came into his hands, and although he wasn’t responsible for apprehending those who had killed them, he was passionate about doing everything he could to obtain justice for them. Süleyman knew he paid a price for his diligence. Whereas his friend Çetin İkmen had always smoked his way around his feelings, Arto Sarkissian ate his way out, and Süleyman was horrified to see how much weight he had put on since they had last met.

The blood-soaked man was still lying across the entrance to the palace, but now he was awake and cuffed. Ömer Mungun was talking to him, but from the blank expression on the man’s face, it appeared that the sergeant wasn’t having much success. The doctor who had attended him stood to one side.

As Süleyman approached, Ömer stood up and walked over to meet him.

‘And?’ Süleyman asked.

‘He can’t or won’t talk,’ Ömer said. ‘But I’ve been looking Ateş Böcek up online and this man, it seems, is him. Not that there’s a lot about him, mainly pictures with his daddy and grandma.’

Süleyman sighed. Ateş Böcek’s father Esat ran the biggest crime family on the Asian side of the city. Assisted by his formidable mother, Neşe, he controlled the supply of drugs, female flesh and slum property from Üsküdar to Gebze. Ateş was his elder son and therefore his heir. But Süleyman, for whom the crime families of İstanbul were of particular interest, knew there were dark, if infrequent, rumours about the boy. He was, it was said, hot tempered and at times out of control. But then that was a fairly standard description of most spoilt children of crime lords.

Dr Mardin, a short woman in her forties, arrived, and after greeting her, Süleyman instructed one of the uniformed men to take her up to Dr Sarkissian.

Then he turned to Ömer, ‘Where’s the yataghan?’

‘Bagged up,’ the sergeant said. ‘Scene of crime are on their way.’ He looked back at the man who could be Ateş Böcek and added, ‘What do we do with him now, sir?’

‘I’ll arrest him on suspicion of having unlawfully killed a person or persons unknown,’ Süleyman said. ‘I think it’s going to take Sarkissian and Mardin a long time to work out just who it is on that bed upstairs. When forensics arrive, we’ll have to get Böcek transported to headquarters.’ He scrolled through his phone. ‘I’ll need an initial psychiatric consult on this one.’

Unlike Gonca and her people, Juan Cortes and his family were travelling Roma. They were based for much of the time in the southern Spanish city of Seville, but spent nine months of the year elsewhere in Spain and abroad. While they flew to engagements outside Europe, within the continent they used an elderly campervan.

When Gonca had told her husband that these performers she was providing with shelter as a favour to Roma godfather Şevket Sesler were going to sleep in their garden, he had been horrified.

‘We have four empty bedrooms,’ he’d told her. ‘Why do they want to sleep in the garden? It’s winter!’

Although he had been married to Gonca for only a matter of weeks, Mehmet Süleyman had been her on-and-off lover for twenty years. In that time he had learned much about the Roma population of İstanbul, but he was very aware that he knew only what they wanted him to. The exact nature of the relationship between Gonca and Sesler was a case in point. He knew she read the gangster’s cards, but what else she might do for him, he didn’t know – apart from the fact that it was most definitely not sexual. It had taken Gonca Şekeroğlu a long time to capture the exclusive affections of a man who was not only younger than her but also one of the handsomest men in the city. In addition, he was a scion of an old Ottoman family and so had class as well as good looks and fine manners.

She’d said, ‘They’re Roma, my pampered prince, they are tough. We must respect their need for freedom. They will live alongside us, that is their choice.’

He hadn’t understood, but that was OK. As she helped them light their fire and brought water for their kettle, Gonca smiled. Doing these things reminded her of her childhood in the old Roma quarter of Sulukule – now long since demolished. Back when the community had been all together in their five-hundred-year-old home, everyone had helped everyone else and she had frequently lit fires and carried water for visiting Roma.

Before they had bade farewell to İkmen and Çiçek outside Saint-Antoine, she had asked the latter to tell Lola Cortes to come and get her if she needed her, no matter what the time. The pretty eighteen-year-old was pregnant, and Gonca, the mother of twelve children herself, was very experienced in the art of childbirth. Lola had kissed her hand in thanks. Her husband and his son by a previous marriage had turned away. Roma men always left that sort of thing to women.

Once her guests had settled in for what remained of the night, Gonca went into the house and up to her bedroom. As she showered prior to getting into bed, she thought about how old Juan Cortes had become since last she saw him, when they had been lovers. He’d been ugly even then, but what had attracted her had been his artistry, the way he held himself as he danced, the songs he sang, which wrenched the heart even if one could not understand the words. Flamenco was the most passionate magic and, in spite of his age, Juan still had it.

In bed, though, her mind began to turn towards her husband. She’d missed him at the church and afterwards in the bishop’s apartment, but she’d resisted the urge to call him. Policing was his life, and although she feared for him all the time, she would never seek to stop him doing it. In lieu of his body, she hugged one of his pillows and waited for the sound of the front door opening.