The Istanbul Puzzle

‘Our birth rates aren’t low, like the rest of Europe.’ He raised an eyebrow, gave me a toothy grin.

‘People are still moving here?’

‘More than ever. From Turkey and this whole region. Everyone deserves a future.’

Who could argue with that? I went back to staring at the cars streaming past. People were changing lanes as if they were on a racetrack.

‘And you’re not sweeping aside the past,’ I said.

‘No, not at all. You Westerners think you are the best at conserving things, but you forget we saved Hagia Sophia, the greatest building in the world. Tell me, which 1300-year-old building is still in use in England?’ He looked smug.

‘I think the Greeks were already a beaten empire by the time they lost this city,’ I said.

‘It is true, Mr Ryan. And it was foretold. That was the Greeks’ fate. And they were fortunate too. Mehmed’s tolerance, the freedom he allowed different races and religions, was something your European kings and inquisitors could have learned from.’

He pointed at a skyscraper the size of the Empire State Building. It was lit up in electric blue and had a giant Islamic crescent on top.

‘Look, this is the future. Islam and capitalism married at last. Faith and money intertwined. What our people can do will surprise you all.’

‘I just want to find out what happened to my colleague.’

The motorway became elevated again. We were bowling along high up over a muddle of buildings. Then the road swung to the left. The lights of the city were spread out in front of us, as if a sack of diamonds had spilled over dark velvet.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked, as we powered through the traffic, sounding our horn at anyone who strayed into our path.

‘The morgue at the New International Hospital,’ was the inspector’s reply.

I thought about telling him to postpone the identification, that I was too tired. I’d have preferred to speak to Fitzgerald before I did it, find out what the process was in Turkey, if there was anything I had to make sure to do. But maybe it was better to get it over with.

We turned off the motorway onto a dual carriageway running between pencil-thin office buildings, fifteen, maybe twenty storeys high. There wasn’t as much traffic now. Soon I lost all sense of direction. We were driving through a warren of narrow streets with old buildings crowding in on each side.

‘The Galata area,’ said the inspector, motioning at the hodgepodge of old and new around us.

I’d seen pictures of the Galata Tower poking its head up above the tiled roofs of old Istanbul. Venetian traders had built the stone tower on the top of a hill to the north of the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s natural horn-shaped harbour.

We pulled up with a squeal in front of what looked like an office block. I saw a green cross sign. I wasn’t looking forward to what was going to happen next. But I held on to a paper-thin hope that the body wouldn’t be Alek’s.

I followed the inspector through an oddly empty reception area into a marble-floored lift. We’d left his colleagues in the car. They’d smiled at me like factory workers who’d been given a day off.

The hospital looked new. There wasn’t a scuff mark on a wall or a scratch on any of the shiny floors.

For a second I wondered if we were too late to visit the morgue. Then I remembered who I was with.

A moon-faced attendant in a loose virgin-blue uniform was waiting for us, clutching a clipboard, when the doors to the basement slid open. He mumbled something in Turkish. We followed him. Our shoes squeaked on the floor. He led us to a low room encased in white tiles. The smell of powerful disinfectant filled the air. He pulled a shiny metal morgue tray from a wall. Every noise was amplified. All eyes were on me. Things were moving too fast.

There was a covered body on a tray in front of me. I’d expected a long wait, documents to be signed.

‘Mr Ryan, are you ready?’ The inspector sounded uninterested, as if he’d done this many times before.

I desperately wanted to leave. There was something pressing into my chest.

I nodded.

He said something to the attendant in Turkish, who motioned for me to adjust the white cotton face mask he’d given me, hold it tight to my mouth, as he was doing.

I’d been talking to Alek only a few days ago. How could the white-swathed figure on this tray be him? No, it was impossible. This shape didn’t even look like him.

The attendant pulled back the stiff white sheet just far enough to expose the face. Bile rose inside me.

The face I was looking at was pale, plastic, like a mannequin’s, a waxy effigy of Alek. A bloody bruise disfigured his forehead. His lips were dry, closed tight, as if they’d been glued together.

I stared, unblinking. I was watching what was happening, but from far away.

I’d learned in the past few years to disdain pity, to look ahead, to act strong, to not think too much. I needed every one of those lessons now.

Alek’s skin had a blue tinge. There were wisps of vapour emanating from under the sheet.

And his body seemed strangely disconnected from his head, as if his neck had been elongated. A shudder ran through me. He looked different, so still. He’d always been so full of life.

I took a step forward, put my hand out. I wanted to touch him, to say goodbye.

The attendant waved me back briskly.

‘Mr Ryan, can you confirm that this is your colleague, Mr Alek Zegliwski?’ said the inspector.

‘Yes.’ I looked away. This was not how I wanted to remember him.

‘As your colleague was Greek, Mr Ryan, our investigation of his death must follow certain procedures.’ He paused.

‘He was Polish,’ I said, cutting in fast.

‘His mother was Greek, Mr Ryan. He had emphasised that fact himself to a number of people here in Istanbul.’ He spat out the word Greek.

I took a deep breath. All Alek had ever told me about his mother was that she was dead. Had she been Greek?

The attendant pulled the sheet over Alek’s head. Then, with a resounding clunk, he slid the tray back into its drawer. Neighbouring trays rattled. Something caught my eye high up; a tiny security camera staring down at us.

‘Come, we will talk,’ said the inspector.

He led me to a smaller room up the hall. The type of room where grieving relatives could be comforted. I sat on a hard plastic chair. There was a line of five of them down the wall opposite the door. Everything was white. The inspector stood facing me. He was hunched over, as if he was thinking hard, and his arms were folded. Tiredness pulled at me. My body had finally decided to react to everything I’d been through.

‘Aren’t Turkey and Greece friends these days?’ I said.

‘Of course we are, but you must understand there are a lot of crazy Greeks who claim Hagia Sophia, and this whole city, for themselves. They say it all belongs to them.’ He sounded affronted at the idea.

‘What does any of that have to do with what happened to Alek?’ I said.

In answer I got silence. All I could hear were the rumblings from the air conditioning. I waited, imagining Alek lying cold in that drawer. The inspector stared at me, as if he was expecting me to answer my own question.

‘I came here to find out what happened to my friend. And I still don’t know,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘And I’ve no idea why you think being Greek would have any impact on Alek’s murder.’

The inspector held up his hands.

‘I will explain why. The last Greek emperor of this city, Constantine the 11th, disappeared in Hagia Sophia the day the city was captured.’ He paused. His tone was firm as he continued.

‘Some Greeks say the last emperor made a pact with the devil that afternoon. That his body was taken below Hagia Sophia and that he will come back, and retake this city when the time is right. So you must understand, Mr Ryan, a Greek being murdered in Hagia Sophia is a big deal.’

‘I don’t believe in legends and I don’t think Alek did either.’ I gave him the kind of smile I reserved for younger children. ‘Our Institute was commissioned by UNESCO to do a simple task here; to verify how the mosaics in Hagia Sophia are being preserved and altered over the years. That’s what Alek was working on. It’s not a big project.’ The air in the room was getting stuffy, thick.

‘There isn’t even a UNESCO representative overseeing us. We’re just recording things, monitoring changes. None of this stuff could have anything to do with what happened to Alek.’

The smell of hospital disinfectant was getting stronger too.

‘UNESCO is monitoring Hagia Sophia?’ he said.

‘We’re taking pictures, inspector.’ Frustrated, I held up my hands. ‘Thousands of tourists do it every day.’ I had to move the conversation on. ‘Can you at least tell me where Alek was found?’

He looked at me as if he was debating whether to say anything more or not. Then he continued. ‘Your colleague was found outside Hagia Sophia early yesterday morning.’ He studied my face. ‘His head was near his body. For that we can be grateful.’

‘He was beheaded?’ I said it slowly.

‘Yes.’ He said, matter-of-factly.

My stomach flipped. I thought about what Alek must have gone through. I held my hand to my chest. The pressure had got stronger.

And the room seemed suddenly smaller, as if its walls had moved in.

He said something I didn’t understand. The words were in English, but I couldn’t make them out.

The fact that Alek had died was bad enough. That he’d been butchered like an animal was too much. This was why they hadn’t pulled the sheet down. I’d been right about his body looking odd. This was sick.

I walked towards the wall, leaned my forehead against it. A wave of revulsion rolled through me. The white tiles were shiny, slick.

How could any human do such a thing?

‘I don’t believe this,’ I whispered. Then I remembered something.

There’d been a story in one of the Sunday newspapers about a decapitation. No details. Just a one paragraph story. Had it been about Alek?

It had all seemed so distant when I’d been reading it. I must have read lots of stories like it. Of atrocities, horrible deaths. There were so many that few registered any more. I swallowed hard.

‘Did what happened to Alek get into the newspapers?’ I turned to face the inspector. He was standing by the table.

‘The media here hunts for such stories these days.’ His tone was hard. ‘There may have been a small item in a Turkish newspaper yesterday. I promise you, we did not give out his name.’

I closed my eyes. Would the media in England find out what had happened to Alek? Would people be tweeting about it soon, speculating about the details? I could only guess what theories would come up, how it would all spin out.

‘Does this sort of thing happen often in Turkey?’

‘This is the first case of beheading in three years. We are not Iraq.’

‘So why did this happen to Alek?’

He shrugged, looked me up and down. ‘Are you planning to speak to the press?’ he said.

‘No.’

His face was a hard mask. ‘Good. We’ll be finished with your colleague’s body in a week or so. There’ll be an autopsy, of course.’ I closed my eyes. ‘You can make arrangements for his body after the results are in. We will hand over all his personal belongings then. ’ His tone softened. He was playing the understanding official again.

Where will you be staying, Mr Ryan?’

‘The Conrad-Ritz. Where Alek is… I mean was staying.’ Alek had told me about the place. I’d called it from Heathrow.

‘My driver will take you there.’

I nodded.

‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘We value human life in Turkey, Mr Ryan, unlike in some places. We take a crime like this seriously. As you will see.’

He took a shiny black leather notebook out of his pocket and began writing in it. I wanted to leave, to be on my own, to think.

‘Are we finished?’ I said.

‘Just a few more questions.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Can you tell me exactly what Mr Zegliwski was monitoring in Hagia Sophia, Mr Ryan?’

I wanted to snap at him. I was too tired for this.

‘The tesserae, inspector. The tiny cubes that make up the mosaics. In Hagia Sophia a lot of them were preserved by the plaster Ottoman workmen covered them with, to conform to Islamic prescriptions against figurative art.’ I spoke slowly. ‘Gradually those mosaics have been exposed. Now we have a chance to record them digitally using the latest techniques, in case they’re damaged in the future. It will help us understand how they’ve changed over time by comparing the images with drawings made over the centuries, which we are also digitizing.’

He made a note in his book.

‘Do you think any of this could be a reason for someone to kill your colleague?’ He stared at me, his hand poised to write.

‘Inspector, the layers of gold that form the sandwich that make up many of the tesserae in Hagia Sophia are thicker and more valuable than those anywhere else in the world. Perhaps he disturbed someone robbing some gold tesserae.’ It was a theory I’d come up with on the plane. Alek had joked about how valuable the larger mosaics were, even broken up.

He took another note. Then he said, ‘Did Mr Zegliwski send anything to you or to your Institute after coming here?’

What was he implying? That we’d been stealing, illegally exporting artefacts, not just photographing them?

‘No, he sent us nothing but digital images. There’s no law against that.’

He closed his notebook. Then, as an afterthought, he said, ‘Do you know about the Orthodox Christian archives, the ones that are missing, Mr Ryan?’

I wiped my forehead. A slick of cold sweat covered it. Alek lay dead a few feet away, beheaded for God’s sake, and this man wanted to know about archives!

‘I don’t,’ I replied. ‘Are we finished?’

‘You didn’t know they were lost when Hagia Sophia was taken over?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re here to record mosaics inspector, nothing else.’

‘Indeed, but any item discovered in the archives would have immense value. They included a letter from Mohammad, peace be upon him, so it is claimed. You can imagine the interest there would be in that. They say it was addressed to Emperor Heraclius, the Byzantine Emperor at the time. He visited Jerusalem when the Prophet was in Arabia awaiting his return to Mecca. Such a letter would have a major impact if it was found. It might even be considered important in England, no?’

‘Our project has nothing to do with lost archives or lost letters.’

Why was he quizzing me about this stuff? Did the Turkish authorities really think our project was more than it seemed?

On the way up in the lift, the inspector smiled at me. It was the smile of a reptile as it sunned itself, while waiting for its prey to come within reach. He patted my shoulder as I climbed into the police car.

‘Take care. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you in our beautiful city.’

I doubted very much that he gave a damn about what happened to me.

Chapter 9

In Whitehall, in central London, not far from Downing Street, Sergeant Henry P Mowlam was looking out the window. The office he was in had a spectacular view over the London Eye. It was rotating, imperceptibly, against a backdrop of blue sky and the puffiest clouds he’d seen all year. His own office didn’t have a view like this.

‘Sergeant Mowlam,’ said a voice.

He turned. The meeting had been organised by the Ministry of Defence. The conference room, with its dark panelled walls, held over twenty people. Just his luck to get called the second he’d got a proper look out the window.

‘Yes, sir.’

The brigadier general who was leading the meeting from the top of the shiny oak conference table looked around the room, as if wondering who had replied.

Sergeant Mowlam coughed. ‘How can I help?’ he said.

‘I was saying, Sergeant Mowlam, that we have some new chatter that’s just come in. Can you give us the latest on it?’

‘We’ve been picking up email and Twitter feeds this morning, sir. We discount most of this sort of stuff, but these messages are between the organisers of the demonstration planned for Friday. They are about supplies. Shall I read them out?’

The general nodded.

Chapter 10

The driver sped through the still-busy streets. I was in the back again. Inspector Erdinc had stayed in the hospital. His other colleague had disappeared. My forehead was pounding as if I had a migraine.

A lot of things had been stirred up in me in the last few hours. There were so many links to the past in this city. So much was different here.

My fists were clenched as we sped onto a wide, low bridge. It had black chest-high iron railings on each side. Below, eel-black water slid past. On the far side of the bridge the shadow of a hill loomed, crowned with the spot-lit outlines of Topkapi Palace, the palace of the Ottoman Sultans, and the dome of Hagia Sophia. The dome was glowing with yellow light, and with its four minarets it looked like an oil painting come to life. Above, stars shone weakly through a haze. We were crossing the Golden Horn.

I asked the driver how soon we would get to the hotel. He didn’t answer. I had only one word of Turkish – Merhaba, hello – so I decided to shut up.

He stared at me in his rear-view mirror. Then he touched one of those blue and white circular evil-eye charms they hang everywhere in Turkey. When we stopped at the traffic lights on the far side of the bridge he spoke.

‘Your friend, he played a dangerous game, no?’

His eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror.

I looked over my shoulder. There was a car with blacked-out windows behind us.

‘It shouldn’t have been dangerous,’ I said.

He tutted, as if he didn’t believe me. The lights changed. We sped on, cutting across two lanes in a way that would have spelled disaster in London.

He turned the radio on. A wild song filled the car, part Arab lament, part Latin dance beat. Then he turned the radio down, as if he’d remembered he shouldn’t be playing music while on official business.

Then we were rumbling up a cobbled street and after another tight turn, with the minarets and dome of Hagia Sophia looming over us, we stopped in front of a parchment- yellow building. It was an Ottoman era, five-tier, wedding-cake of an edifice. It dominated one whole side of a narrow and steep side street.

Alek had picked the hotel, he’d said, because it was in the oldest part of Istanbul, near the summit of the hill Hagia Sophia was on. That was where the original Greek colony had been founded by someone called Byzas hundreds of years before Alexander the Great’s family even owned a single olive tree.

The site had been chosen for reasons any child would understand. It was easily defendable. It had water on three sides; the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn.

Not far from the hotel were the remnants of the old Roman Hippodrome, a stadium Ben Hur might have raced in.

The Roman imperial legacy here was only part of the history of the place though. Within strolling distance of the hotel was the palace and harem of the Ottoman sultans, rulers of an empire which at one time stretched from Egypt almost to Vienna.

I stepped out of the car. Old stone walls and sun-bleached Ottoman-era buildings lined the street. The hotel brooded above me. It felt strange, unsettling, to be following in Alek’s footsteps, seeing things he’d seen only a few days before.

I stood for a moment watching the police car pull away. I could smell jasmine on the warm air, hear laughter, voices. I touched the yellow plaster of the hotel wall as I climbed the stairs from the street.

As soon as I entered the building I was hit by a blast of air conditioning. The smiling lady behind the glass-topped ultra-modern reception desk had the blondest hair I’d seen in a long time. She was friendly, and very sympathetic, after I gave her my name and told her I was a colleague of Alek’s.

‘We are all so sorry about what happened. We heard from the police that Mr Zegliwski had an accident. It’s terrible. He was so nice. What happened to him? Do you know?’

‘Yes.’ I didn’t feel like telling her though, so I added. ‘And thanks. I appreciate your concern.’

She smiled, then held a finger in the air, as if she was trying to remember something. After a moment, she said, ‘There’s something here for Mr Zegliwski.’

She turned, scanned the pigeon holes that filled the wall behind her until she found what she was looking for – a large brown envelope. She held it out in front of her triumphantly, to show me what was written on it. Mr Zegliwski.

I took the envelope. As I walked to the lift I squeezed it gently. It felt like there were a few sheets of paper in it, and something else at the bottom.

A man in a puffy black jacket stared at me from an oversized leather sofa at the far end of the reception area. He gave me the creeps. I imagined his corpulent boss entertaining some underage hooker or three upstairs.

As I waited for the lift to reach the fifth floor, I slid my finger under the flap of the envelope and looked inside. A silver key-ring, with one of those USB memory sticks attached, lay in the bottom of the envelope. I pulled it out, looked at it, then put it in my pocket. The only other thing in the envelope were some photos.

I almost dropped them on the white marble floor of the hallway as I juggled my room card and bag. It wasn’t until I was inside that I got a chance to look at the photos properly.

One of them was of a woman with long black hair and a winning smile. Alek had clearly been busy. Something tightened in my chest. Did she know what had happened to him? My shoulders hunched, as the weight of his death bore down on me. There was one thing I was going to promise myself, and Alek. Whatever happened, I would find out who had done this.

I steadied myself, looked at the photos again.

Two didn’t fit with the rest. One was of a crumbling floor mosaic. Debris lay scattered around it. The other was of the inside of a brick-lined tunnel. It had an arched ceiling, sloping downwards. A yellow marble plaque hung on the wall near the top of the tunnel. I could just about make out what was carved on it; scales with a sword lying across its pans.

I put the photos on the round table near the window. I couldn’t make sense of them now. And I didn’t want to think about them. I looked around. The room was a pastiche of late Ottoman style, decorated in reds and golds. Every piece of furniture was covered in a thick layer of varnish.

After a quick shower I turned off the bedside light and lay staring at the shadows, my mind drifting. A faint aroma came to me. The smell of roses. It reminded me of Irene. It would have been good to be able to call her now, to talk all this through with her.

When I met Irene she’d been studying medicine. She hadn’t been interested in me initially, but I found out she used to drink in the university bar before getting her train home. A week later we had our first date. A walk in Hyde Park. She was a great listener.

We got married three months after I graduated. One of her friends used to tease us about how perfect our lives were, how lucky we’d both been to be doing so well so soon after graduating.

And then she’d volunteered to go to Afghanistan with the Territorial Army. They needed doctors. Three of them had volunteered from her hospital. That had been reassuring. I’d imagined stupidly, so stupidly, that that meant there would be safety in numbers. That the odds were against all three of them being killed. Their tour started two years and three months ago.

And she was the one who didn’t make it back. A roadside bomb, an IED – an Improvised Explosive Device – killed her two weeks into the mission.

And for a long time I felt powerless and angry, all at the same time. Irene had been about all that was good about England. All she’d ever wanted to do was help people. It wasn’t right that she’d died. Not for one second.