INSPECTOR ÇETIN İKMEN cast his gaze slowly around the bloodied, shredded room before him and then, turning to his equally shocked female sergeant said, “What a mess.”
“The whole house is the same, sir,” Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoğlu replied. “Bullet holes everywhere.”
“Do we know who she was?” İkmen said as he tipped his head in the direction of a blood-soaked body lying face downwards in front of him, its arms outstretched to each side clutching what looked like small lengths of rope.
“Not yet,” Ayşe said. “Apart from this house the rest of the street has been empty for some months. This part of Haskoy is in the process of being redeveloped.”
İkmen, looked down at the young woman with a cynical eye. As well as working as a police officer in Istanbul for over thirty years, he had lived in the city all his life. He’d seen a lot of metropolitan districts “redevelop” – not always for the better. Haskoy, a somewhat distant and rickety suburb on the northern shore of the Golden Horn was just the latest in a long line of “newly discovered” districts. Once home to a sizeable Jewish as well as a gypsy population, the little wooden houses of Haskoy had a certain shabby romance to them. Just not this particular one – not anymore.
“Well, whoever the victim was, she was only part of the assailants’ target,” İkmen said as he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes.
“What do you mean by that, sir?” Ayşe replied with a frown.
“Well, it’s obvious,” İkmen said. “Whoever did this was shooting the house as much as the occupant.” Then after lighting up a cigar ette he moved past the officer on guard at the front door of the property and went outside.
Over the course of the next few hours, many Istanbul police officials came and went from the house on the corner of Harab Cesme Sokak. Photographers, forensics and ballistics experts, ordinary officers and of course the police pathologist Dr Arto Sarkissian. The latter, who was a contemporary and old friend of Çetin İkmen, didn’t take long to pronounce life extinct.
“What a thing to do to an old woman, eh?” he said when he came out to join İkmen in the street. “I’ve counted twelve bullet wounds so far and I’m sure I’ll find more when I get her over to the lab. Insanity!”
“The whole house is shot to pieces,” İkmen said as he looked across at the great wall that surrounded the once busy old synagogue opposite. “She’s old, our victim. I wonder if she used to be a congregant over there.”
“At the synagogue? Maybe,” Arto shrugged. “The few Jews that remain around here do tend to be old. But whatever she may have been, one thing is for sure, this murder will not do the redevelopment around here much good. Especially if you add in our victim’s slithery comrades and the possibility that they in turn may have more family somewhere nearby.”
İkmen turned his dry thin face towards the rather more robust visage of his plump Armenian friend and said, “Slithery comrades?”
“The old woman was not the only living creature to die in that orgy of bullets.” Arto paused to swallow rather nervously before he said, “She kept, indeed it would appear she was on friendly terms with, snakes.”
“Snakes!”
“Two – so far,” the doctor replied. “One in each hand. From the way that she fell it would seem that she was holding them up and out to both sides of her body when she was shot. I know that you hate them, but …”
“Snakes! What kind of snakes?” İkmen asked as sweat began to visibly appear on his face.
“I don’t know. I’m not a zoologist,” the doctor replied. “Small, indeterminate serpents, now deceased.”
“Happily.”
“Depends upon your point of view,” Arto continued. “Our victim, it would seem, was quite at ease handling them.”
“That or she was preparing to throw them at her assailant,” İkmen said.
“Either way she had the snakes for some reason and had to be comfortable with that,” Arto replied. “I’ve told all of our people to be careful in case other slithery friends make unexpected appearances.”
İkmen looked down instinctively at his own feet and then, anxiously, scanned the street to his left and right. Harab Cesme Sokak was a steep road that, as well as incorporating an elderly synagogue, also boasted a long row of wooden Ottoman houses amongst its treasures. What had been the last inhabited example of this type of property was İkmen’s murder scene. It was also, he now knew, a possible source of snakes. Just the thought of snakes made him shudder. It was a phobia he had developed a long time ago. It was not one he had any interest in addressing now. He and snakes just did not meet – ever.
“Sir!”
A young man in a well-ironed blue uniform snapped to attention in front of İkmen.
“Constable Yıldız?”
“Sir, I’ve just been talking to the owner of the grocer’s shop at the top of the hill.”
Just as probably buying sweets as cigarettes, İkmen thought. Although not in reality that young, Hikmet Yıldız, with his baby face and his perfect shirts so obviously ironed by his sweet little headscarfed mother, was one of those boys who was taking a very long time to grow up.
“Yes? And?”
“Kemal Bey, the grocer, he says that all of this block of houses here has been bought by a foreigner,” the young man said.
“Does he.”
“Yes. Apparently, sir, all the occupants except the dead lady moved out when this new owner took possession about six months ago. I told him nothing, but of course like the whole district he has been watching us come and go here for hours. Kemal Bey of his own volition told me the dead lady’s name. It was Ofis Hanım. Unusual name, isn’t it?” he said as he looked at the Armenian for some possible explanation.
But Arto Sarkissian just shrugged. “It means nothing to me, constable,” he said. “Did Kemal Bey tell you anything else about the lady?”
“Only that she almost never went out. Kemal Bey’s son was in the habit of delivering groceries to Ofis Hanım’s home once a week. But they never conversed. All Kemal Bey said was that a third party, another woman of the district, told him that Ofis Hanım did not, unlike her neighbours, have any intention of moving.”
“I don’t suppose that Kemal Bey said anything about snakes, did he?” İkmen asked.
The young officer frowned. “Snakes? No. Why?”
İkmen looked across first at Arto Sarkissian before he said, “Because constable, it would seem that Ofis Hanım had a particular liking for snakes. I do hope that your boots are securely laced.”
Constable Yıldız, wide-eyed with horror looked down at his mercifully snake-free feet and said, “Allah!”
The following day brought further information about Ofis Hanım, although not as yet any actual suspect for her murder. In view of the fact that so many bullets had been found both in the old woman and in the fabric of the house, İkmen was surprised to learn that the weapon involved had been nothing more lethal or sophisticated than an ordinary shotgun.
“I would have thought that if whoever did this did so with the intention of wrecking the place, he would have saved himself a lot of effort and used a sub-machine gun,” İkmen said to Ayşe Farsakoğlu as he looked down at the ballistics report on his desk.
“Depends what he was firing at, sir,” the young woman replied.
“In spite of the fact that most of the residents of Haskoy are now obsessed by visions of murderous serpents, we have still only recovered the bodies of two snakes – neither of which was in the least bit dangerous.”
“Non-venomous Whip Snakes,” Ayşe said.
“Our assailant killed them and Ofis Hanım. Shot up the house maybe imagining more snakes …”
“It’s possible. I mean we, or rather I, had never heard of non-venomous Cypriot Whip Snakes until Forensics got back to us. Perhaps the killer thought that they were poisonous.”
“Mmm.” İkmen offered Ayşe a cigarette before lighting up himself and then said, “But to go to that house armed with a shotgun … Ofis Hanım was a small, frail old lady. If somebody wanted to kill her all he needed to do was push her over.”
“Assuming our assailant was a man,” Ayşe said as she puffed delicately on the rough Maltepe cigarette her superior had just given her.
“Indeed.”
“Yes.”
“But male or female, the fact remains that someone killed Ofis Hanım and her snakes and wrecked her house,” İkmen said. “Why?”
“Maybe Mr Lukash, the owner of that side of Harab Cesme Sokak will be able to tell us,” Ayşe replied. “He and his wife are coming in at three.”
“Maybe he will,” İkmen replied. “And in the absence of any other motive, Mr Lukash’s property empire or rather Ofis Hanım’s effect upon it does put our Ukrainian friend in the frame. All of the other old residents moved away very quickly when he came into possession of that street.”
“Redevelopment,” Ayşe said sadly, “is not without its casualties.”
“No.” İkmen sighed. “And some of it is very good, but … If only gangsters were not involved …”
“We don’t know that Mr Lukash is a gangster, sir. I know a lot of people here equate people like him from the former Soviet Union with gang activity, but the two don’t always go together. Besides his wife is Turkish, from here in the city.”
“Mmm,” İkmen looked down at his desk gloomily. “I expect she’s covered with gold chains and plastic surgery scars. They like their women like that.”
“Who do?”
He looked up into a face that was taut with anger.
“Who likes their women ‘like that’?” Ayşe reiterated. “Gangsters? Eastern Europeans? Or are gangsters always Eastern Europeans or …”
“Ayşe, don’t be angry …”
“What, at you behaving just like the lowest, most prejudiced moron in the coffee house? Sir, you are better than that!’ she said passionately. “You, of all people, know that you cannot judge anyone just on face value! You taught me that! You drummed that into my head from my very first day!”
İkmen rubbed a tired hand over his thin, middle-aged features. Ayşe was right of course. He was fifty-seven years old, he’d been in the police force for over thirty of those and he was both a father nine times over and a grandfather too. He’d seen a lot – enough to know that there was no “type” more able to commit murder than any other. Just because a man wore big chunky rings and a leather coat didn’t make him a villain. Not necessarily.
“I apologise,” he said, shaking his head miserably as he did so. “It’s just that I’ve seen so much ‘redevelopment’ in my lifetime – so much of it to the detriment of this city and its people – in my opinion. You know what I mean, Ayşe. Great roads pushed relentlessly into once comfortable and tight-knit old communities, great big apartment buildings constructed on the foundations of once elegant Ottoman houses …”
“Not all of those developments have been done by Eastern Europeans,” Ayşe said. “In fact I think that very few properties have actually passed into foreign hands. And besides, sir, not everything that has been redeveloped has been bad. I mean some of the neighbourhoods that have undergone extensive redevelopment are actually better now than they were before. People who live there have a far superior quality of life.”
“I know,” İkmen nodded. “But the fact that everyone except Ofis Hanım moved out as soon as Mr Lukash bought those houses doesn’t sit well with me. That area was poor. Where did all those poor people go?”
“We can find out,” Ayşe said.
“Then that is what we must do,” İkmen replied. “Find them. Talk to them.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked up and smiled. “You know one place that has improved a lot in recent years?” he said. “Gulhane Park.”
Ayşe knew the green and very pleasant park to the western side of the Topkapı Palace well. It was a nice relaxed place where she and her friends would sometimes go to walk about and eat ice-cream on sunny weekend afternoons.
“When I was young it was called Lunar Park,” İkmen continued. “There was a sort of a fair there with cheap attractions; freak shows, grisly things. It was all swept away a long time ago.”
“For the better by the sound of it,” Ayşe said.
“Certainly for the better,” İkmen replied firmly. “Most certainly.”
Mrs Lukash had, it turned out, not disappointed. Or rather her appearance had not. She had been just as İkmen imagined she would – all bleached blonde hair and false breasts. Her almost totally silent Ukrainian husband had however been quite another matter. Old and world weary-looking, the most significant thing he’d said in his very halting Turkish was that he did not and had never owned Ofis Hanım’s house. Unlike the other houses that Lukash had bought from the previous owner, a local man called Ali Koray, Ofis Hanım had owned her house and had not wanted to sell. İkmen took good note of this fact and, once the Lukashs had gone, instructed Ayşe to look into the Ukrainian’s affairs. Ofis Hanım’s house, he felt, had to have been a considerable thorn in the side of a man who was in the process, he said, of developing an elegant and valuable row of refitted houses.
Now, however, he was in the cramped and messy Haskoy office of Mr Ali Koray. On the basis that the landlord might have known Ofis Hanım and wishing to find out rather more about his dealings with Mr Lukash, İkmen now sat before a very battered desk behind which sat a short, thin man of about fifty.
“So you don’t know where your old tenants went to after Mr Lukash bought your property?” İkmen asked as he lit up a cigarette.
“No, not really.” Mr Koray shrugged in what appeared to be a very offhand manner. “I’ve seen one or two about. In local shops and … But no. I sold to Lukash, I will be honest with you, because I was sick of the whole landlord business. All the tenants ever did was complain! It was like living in a headache!”
“Mr Lukash gave you a good price?”
“Yes. He’s redeveloping the houses. They look nice. I could never have afforded to do such a thing.”
“Did the tenants know that their houses were going to be re developed for sale?” İkmen said.
Mr Koray shrugged again. It seemed to be some sort of habit. “I told them, yes. But I don’t know whether they left or Lukash made them leave or what. Some were upset. But I needed the money and they, the tenants, they knew they’d have to go sometime.”
“Yes,” İkmen attempted a smile but then gave up. He’d met uncaring landlords before. It didn’t get any easier. “I imagine Mr Lukash can’t have been happy that he couldn’t buy all the houses in the row.”
“I don’t know …”
“Ofis Hanım …”
“Oh, that shooting? Terrible business! Just awful!” Mr Koray shook his head violently at the thought of it.
“Did you know her?” İkmen asked.
Once again, Koray gave a shrug. “Not really.”
“Strange that you owned all of the houses in the row except that belonging to Ofis Hanım. Mr Lukash’s wife told us that her understanding was that you had inherited the row from your father. You have to know the area and its people well.”
There was a pause, then Ali Koray smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Mmm.” He looked up at İkmen with his great wrinkle-wreathed eyes and said, “Look, inspector, the old woman, Ofis, she was, well, she was my father’s mistress. A long time ago. He gave her that house and …”
“I see.”
“But since he died, back in 1988, my family and I, well we have left Ofis Hanım alone. My mother still lives. It is, was embarrassing.”
“You or your family didn’t try to buy the property back from Ofis Hanım.”
“No.” He shrugged. “What would have been the point?”
“To make more money from Mr Lukash.”
He smiled. “I made plenty of money from Mr Lukash.” He then looked, with what İkmen felt could not possibly be genuine pride, around his very small and shabby office. “I am content.”
That evening, instead of going straight home to the İkmen family apartment in Sultanahmet, the inspector went to a bar in the nearby district of Cankurtaran. In the lee of one of the walls of the great Topkapı Palace the little bar where he met up with his friend Dr Arto Sarkissian was very basic, very local and almost empty. Just the way both İkmen and the doctor liked it.
Sitting at a rough table outside the bar, İkmen drank his beer with pleasure as he watched the sun begin to set behind a group of young children playing in the street. If he ignored the endless stream of traffic passing along Ishakpasa Caddesi, cutting through to the main coastal road, Kennedy Caddesi, he could almost imagine that he was back in the 1970s. The little unnamed bar they were sitting in front of certainly looked as if it came from that era, as did the innocent game of chase that the children were playing. Not a games console or item of designer clothing to be seen. Not that going back to the 1970s, even were that possible, was without its drawbacks.
“I’d far rather go back to the 1950s myself,” Arto said as he drank his cola straight from the bottle. “There was so much political unrest in the 1970s. The 1950s were a lot, I suppose, simpler.”
“Yes.” İkmen who could also all too vividly recall the battles that had raged between the various left- and right-wing political factions in the 1970s, hadn’t forgotten that either. He’d had to try to control some of it when he was a young constable. “But the trouble with the 1950s Arto, is that they were so primitive.”
“Primitive?”
“Yes!” İkmen lit up a cigarette. “Some parts of the city were so poor it was almost as if they were monochrome. Everyone wore the same dull clothes, in winter you choked on the fog from everyone’s fires. In the summer the sewers stank.”
“Oh, yes well …”
“And on top of that we had to endure abominations just up the road here!”
Arto Sarkissian frowned.
“Lunar Park,” İkmen said. “I was telling my sergeant about it earlier today. I said that since it became Gulhane Park it has improved enormously. One piece of good redevelopment if you ask me.”
The doctor sat back in his chair and smiled. “Oh, I liked Lunar Park,” he said. “It was quirky.”
İkmen scowled. “Oh, yes,” he said, “full of deformed dwarves, women with beards, cheap boring little side-shows …”
“And of course snakes,” his friend said as he watched İkmen’s reaction to this out of the corner of his eye.
The policeman reddened. “Well …”
“Even now, even when I told you about the dead snakes we found in the hands of the old woman in Haskoy, it got to you didn’t it?”
İkmen let his head drop a little. “Yes.”
“Çetin, the Lunar Park snake pit was just a hole filled with non-poisonous snakes. It was a silly attraction long since …”
“It was a horrible, writhing mass of ghastly serpents with a girl in the middle of it!”
“Who you tried to ‘rescue’, yes,” Arto said.
“I thought they were going to kill her. I put my hand down to her and they all slithered up my arm!” İkmen shuddered.
“While everyone else laughed because the girl was meant to be there. The Slave of the Snakes was part of the attraction.”
“I was eleven, my mother had been dead for just six months and I couldn’t look at death any more. I just couldn’t!”
Arto Sarkissian, noting the tears that had welled up in his friend’s eyes reached across the table and took one of his hands. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He hadn’t been in Lunar Park with Çetin when the Snake Pit incident occurred. Çetin’s brother Halil had told him about it and, at the time, they had both had a good laugh at the strange antics of the younger boy. Until the early 1960s there had indeed been what amounted to a freak show in the shadow of the Topkapı Palace. One of the “attractions” had been a pit, lined with red silk, wherein lay a rather voluptuous woman who allowed herself to be writhed over by many non-venomous snakes. In the habit sometimes of writhing in time to the movements of her snakes, the so-called Slave of the Snakes looked to the eleven-year-old Çetin İkmen as if she was being attacked. By reaching down to her he had only been trying to save her. But the effect that it had was to make the woman and the man who owned the pit angry, cause the mainly gruff male spectators to laugh and give the snakes someone new and exciting to slither on to. It had also left Çetin with an almost hysterical fear of snakes.
Çetin looked up at Arto and smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I overreact where ‘they’, our legless, eyelid-less friends are concerned. And this Haskoy investigation …”
“What have you discovered so far?”
İkmen told him about Mr and Mrs Lukash as well as Mr Koray and his admission with regard to Ofis Hanım and his father.
“She was Mr Koray senior’s mistress according to the son,” he said.
“And he gave her that house?”
“Yes.”
Arto Sarkissian shook his head slowly. “That must have been a blow to Ali and his mother.”
“Yes, although they had the other eight houses in that row, which he sold to Mr Lukash. He said he got a good price and seemed content.”
“Yes, but the fact that your father set up his mistress in your own district has to hurt. Many years have passed but I don’t think that one could easily accept such a scenario. Do you?”
But before İkmen could reply, his mobile phone began to ring. It was Constable Yıldız from the crime scene at Haskoy. He had, he said, found someone trying to break into Ofis Hanım’s house.
In common with most people, he imagined, Çetin İkmen looked down on the thief when Constable Yıldız presented her to him.
“She won’t tell me her name,” Yıldız said as he tipped his head towards the tiny, ancient woman at his side.
İkmen looked steadily down into a pair of very dark, but very clear, eyes. “Where did you find her constable?”
“In the bedroom,” Yıldız replied. “Going through drawers.”
“Were you?” İkmen asked the woman.
She turned her head defiantly to one side.
Suddenly angered by her stubbornness, Yıldız said to the old woman, “Do you know who is talking to you? This is Inspector Çetin İkmen Bey. He is the most famous police officer in this city. He can solve any crime. Any! You should not attempt to conceal anything from him, he …”
“Yes, thank you constable,” İkmen interrupted with a smile. “Your words are appreciated but …” His voice fizzled out as his attention was caught by something that glittered at the old woman’s neck. Yes, he was famous, if not rich to go with it, but he didn’t always have exactly the right qualifications for every aspect of his job.
Briefly he looked at Arto Sarkissian and smiled. Then turning back to the old woman he said, “Madam I can see from the cross around your neck that you are a Christian lady. My friend here, Dr Sarkissian, is a Christian too. If you would like to speak to him …”
“An Armenian?” the old woman growled, swatting the notion away with one hand as she did so. “Why would I want to speak to an Armenian?”
“Well …”
She moved towards İkmen, withered hands on her thin, black-clad hips. “I am Greek,” she said. “I lived here for all of my life until that bastard Koray sold us to the Russian Mafia!”
“Mr Lukash is Ukrainian …”
“Russian, Ukrainian – what is the difference?” she said. “Koray sold us to him, he threw us out. Now I live in one stinking room in Balat. It’s so damp it’s like living in a hammam!”
“So why didn’t you report Mr Lukash to the police?” İkmen asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“And have his men come and beat me to death?” the old woman said. “Famous you may be, Çetin Bey, but realistic you are obviously not!”
İkmen suppressed a smile. “Ah, but madam we are going off the point are we not?” he said. “You are, according to my constable here, a thief.”
“Yes,” the old woman said simply, “I am.”
“What were you …”
“Arrest me and I’ll tell you everything,” she said. She then held her arms out in front of her as if offering them for handcuffing. “Go on then, take me away!”
***
Her name, İkmen discovered was Irini Angelos. She was eighty years old and came from one of the Istanbul Greek families, the majority of whom had moved to Greece many years before. Irini had stayed, she said, because, having seen pictures of Athens, she found that it was not to her taste. “Too provincial,” she declared in that haughty Istanbul Greek way of hers. It made İkmen smile. The old city Greeks had always been like that.
Irini Angelos was, of course, entitled to a lawyer, but she declined the offer on the basis that what she had to say would, in time, prove that she was only a minor villain in the story of Ofis Hanım and her little house in Haskoy. However, she did finally agree that perhaps if the “fat Armenian”, as she dubbed Arto Sarkissian, would like to sit in on her interview that might be for the best. Another witness to her story, she said, would be quite a good idea. Even now late in the evening, police headquarters beyond the door of the interview room was still heaving with officers and those petitioning their ears and services. In spite of this, İkmen, Yıldız and Arto Sarkissian listened to the old woman’s story with wrapt attention.
“When I heard that an elderly woman had been murdered in Haskoy I feared that it was Ofis,” she said. “But at first I didn’t go to Haskoy because for a little while I didn’t really want to know the truth. It is not always good to be right.”
“You had reason to believe that Ofis Hanım was in danger?” İkmen asked.
“As soon as Murad Koray died she was in danger. She had been his mistress, he gave her that house.”
“But Mr Koray died a long time ago, didn’t he? That’s what his son told me.”
“Yes. But while I still lived in Haskoy to keep my eyes on things, that evil witch Emine, that is Murad Koray’s wife, and her son wouldn’t make a move. I knew that once Ali Koray sold our houses to that gangster, there was going to be trouble. I left, I had no choice!”
“But then,” İkmen said, “if, as I imagine you are saying Irini Angelos, that Ofis Hanım was your friend, why didn’t you go and live with her when Mr Lukash evicted you?”
The old woman sighed impatiently. “Because that would have exposed her secret!” she said. “And then we would both have died.”
İkmen lit a cigarette and then said, “What secret?”
“About the house of serpents,” Irini replied simply.
“The house of serpents?” İkmen looked across at Arto Sarkissian who just shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, God, I suppose I’m going to have to go right back to the beginning aren’t I?” Irini said, amid even more apparent irritation.
“Yes, I think so,” İkmen replied. “In fact, Irini Angelos, I think that going back to the beginning of whatever tale you are telling is essential.”
She asked for and was given a cigarette and a drink of water before she began.
“When I was thirty years old my husband died leaving me alone with three small children,” she began. “It was the mid-1950s and most of my family, my brothers and sisters, had gone to live in Greece. So I was on my own, without money and no experience of life. I went to see my landlord, Murad Koray, who was not sym pathetic in any way. I told him I would somehow get a job, but he told me that if my rent money wasn’t on time as usual my children and I would have to go. I began to cry. I was not as tough then as I am now. But luckily for me my tears were not in vain. Overhearing our conversation from another room was Murad’s mistress, a woman called Pembe. Murad loved her with all of his soul but once I had gone she upbraided him about his treatment of me and she suggested how I might be helped.”
“How was that?” İkmen asked.
The old woman smiled. “Back in the 1950s, as well as having his houses in Haskoy, Murad Koray had an attraction in Lunar Park. Remember that? It is said that Murad’s mother was a gypsy which was why he was involved with the fair. Anyway Murad owned something you may or may not remember, the Snake Pit.”
Every bone, sinew and gram of flesh on İkmen’s body shuddered. “Oh, yes I …”
“You’ve gone a little pale,” the old woman said as she squinted to look into İkmen’s face. “You don’t like snakes?”
İkmen first looked at Arto Sarkissian, who put a hand on his shoulder and then said, “You could say that, yes.”
Irini stubbed out her cigarette before she continued. “I too was never that keen. But Pembe, now she was a different matter. She liked snakes, she lay in that pit in Lunar Park with the snakes quite happily. The only problem that she had was that sometimes she needed a break. She would, she said, feel uncomfortable and stiff from time to time down there in the pit. But Murad was a devil for money and wouldn’t let her go while there were people to come and see the attraction, which was most of the time back in those days before television.” She leaned forward smiling. “Pembe suggested I pay my rent by taking over from her for a couple of hours every day.”
His eyes wide now, İkmen said, “And did you consent to this, this …”
“What choice did I have?” Irini said. “I had children, I needed a roof over my head. And when poor old besotted Murad acceded to Pembe’s suggestion I took my chance. Of course I was thin then as I am now and so I didn’t look anywhere near as good amongst the snakes as Pembe did. The Slave of the Snakes they called her.”
“Yes, I remember,” İkmen said gloomily, or so the old woman felt. “But both of you at your different times were the Slave of the Snakes, surely?”
“Yes, except that I was only a poor imitation,” the old woman said. “Pembe was the real slave of the snakes, she was their true love.”
“Allah, but what a terrible way to have to make a living!”
Irini Angelos laughed. “Oh, you get used to it. You can get used to anything if you really want to – or have to. And besides, it did have its good side that awful job of mine. Pembe and I became great friends. She was so kind and beautiful and fun.”
Even though he didn’t often revisit that awful scarring encounter with snakes in Lunar Park, İkmen did know that the woman he had tried to rescue from the pit had been of a luscious and full-bodied type. It must have been Pembe. The real Slave of the Snakes.
“I called her Ofis, which means snake in Greek,” Irini said.
Arto Sarkissian said, “Oh, but we all said what an unusual name that was! She wasn’t Greek …”
“No, she was a Turk,” Irini said. “She was my very best friend. She never had children of her own but she treated my three as perfect pets. Nothing was too good for my children when Ofis was around. And she had money! Murad was besotted with her and gave her everything her heart desired.”
“Including a house,” İkmen said.
“Absolutely.” She held one finger aloft. “But there were conditions on that that I will come to later. So Ofis and I worked at the park until eventually, as I am sure you know, it closed. Neither one of us was very young by then, but … I did other things; cleaning people’s houses, some work in shops. Murad continued to support Ofis, wouldn’t let her work without him. And in spite of opposition from his wife and his son he wanted to set her up in a house near to his own. But there were problems.”
“Like what?”
“Like the neighbours who knew her and what she was and who dubbed her a whore. Like the wife and son who did not want Murad to give what they felt was their property to Ofis.”
“But he gave it to her anyway,” İkmen said.
“Only on condition that it revert back to his family on Ofis’ death,” Irini said. “Ofis, bless her eyes, wanted to leave that house to my children. But she acceded to Murad’s request. Not that the trouble stopped there.”
İkmen frowned.
“Murad’s wife as well as many of our neighbours resolved to persecute Ofis once she arrived in our street. I am not a fool and I have always and will always hear everything. If they could not prevent Ofis from living amongst them, they would frighten and cajole her so much that eventually she would have to leave or go insane. People, often those you live most closely to, can be vile,” she said with what İkmen felt was a lifetime of experience just like this behind her voice.
“So,” she continued, “it was then that I came up with the idea of the House of Snakes. The show at Lunar Park was over and I knew that Murad was going to have to find somewhere for the snakes. Ofis wanted to keep them which horrified Murad. But I told him to let her do it. I also told him to tell the world that she, Ofis Hanım the lover of snakes, had a whole houseful of the things, both venomous and non-venomous.” She smiled.
“To keep people away,” İkmen said.
“A place where snakes are loose on every surface is a place most people do not want to be,” Irini said. “Even a sultan may be dissuaded in this way.”
“The Mansion of Snakes!’ Arto Sarkissian cried. “Of course!”
“You know,” the old woman said, and then nodding her head towards İkmen she continued, “Tell him.”
The doctor looked at İkmen and said, “In Bebek there is a mansion called the Mansion of the Snakes. It was built in the eighteenth century and belonged to one Mustafa Efendi. But the sultan of the day, Mahmud II was so taken with it that he told a friend of Mustafa Efendi, Said Efendi that he just had to have it. Knowing how much Mustafa Efendi loved his home and yet at the same time realizing that he could hardly deny anything to his sultan, Said Efendi made up a story to save his friend’s home. He told the sultan that Mustafa Efendi was a great lover of snakes and that his wonderful home was full of them. The sultan changed his mind about the mansion immediately.”
İkmen smiling said, “Allah! That’s clever. I like that. So Irini Angelos you took this story and you used it to protect your friend.”
“Ofis moved in and nobody came near,” Irini said. “Murad would visit but people would assume that the snakes were put away when he was in residence. No other person would go inside. Not Murad’s wife, his son or even me. I kept the pretence alive in order to protect her.”
“So the house wasn’t full of snakes?” İkmen said.
“Only the non-venomous ones from the pit and then later some small Cypriot snakes. The world apart from Murad, Ofis and myself thought differently however. Ofis, the snake woman, was left alone, which was just how she liked it. But then Murad died and Ali inherited everything. I knew he hated Ofis, she was like a needle in his pride, an insult to his mother. But he was still afraid to go anywhere near her and she was too poor and old by that time to move. I feared for her.”
“Why didn’t she move in with you?” İkmen asked. “If you felt that she was vulnerable?”
“Why should she?” Irini said. “The house was hers for the duration of her life and besides she liked living with her serpents. Unlike me she was truly a snake woman in every sense. And although her life was not exactly what it had been when Murad was still alive, it wasn’t that bad until Ali Koray’s debts began to overwhelm him. He gambles you see. Badly. He sold my house and the others with it to the foreigner just to pay off his debts.”
İkmen, who had instructed Ayşe Farsakoğlu to look into Ali Koray’s affairs said, “Go on.”
“I moved. We all moved, we had to. But Ofis stayed and I became worried for her. Not because of the foreigner you understand. I mean he had been rough with us, the rest of the tenants, but then we knew that he would. He is a gangster. No, I worried about Ofis because of Ali Koray.”
“Why was that?”
“Ali Koray, it was said, got into debt again very quickly after he sold his property. He is a lazy man who does nothing except sit in his father’s office, drink tea and play cards,” she said. “He doesn’t work and so with no work and no property left to sell, what can he do? I’ll tell you what I think,” she said, “I think that he remembered Ofis’ house and that it reverted back to him on her death. I’d lay money myself that he didn’t mention that to you when you spoke to him.”
“You think that Ali Koray killed Ofis Hanım?”
“Yes,” she replied simply, “I do. I know the foreigner wanted to buy it originally but Ofis wouldn’t sell. Ali Koray, however, needed to sell or do something.”
“Can you prove it?” İkmen asked.
The old woman flung her withered hands to either side of her body. “Listen to what I say and see what you think,” she said. “Whoever killed Ofis shot her house to pieces as you know. Whoever killed Ofis was making sure he killed all of her snakes along with her. He shot the house just to make sure that nothing was left alive in that place. There were no more than her two little snakes she’d had for years, but he wouldn’t have known that. Now to my knowledge the foreigner didn’t know anything about the snakes. But Ali Koray did and he was very afraid of them. Now Ofis’ house is his and I think that if you ask the foreigner whether Ali Koray has approached him about it, you will find that he has indeed done so.”
İkmen sat back in his chair and considered what had just been said to him. To say that Irini Angelos’ story was strange was an understatement. But then Lunar Park and its inhabitants had been nothing if not strange as he well knew. There was a lot that puzzled about her story – like why Ofis Hanım preferred, actually preferred to live with snakes. There was also the problem of what Irini had been doing at Ofis’ house when Constable Yıldız apprehended her.
“Irini Angelos,” he said as he lit another Maltepe cigarette, “we still haven’t established exactly why you were at Ofis Hanım’s house this evening, have we?”
“No.”
“So, you told me that you are a thief …”
“Yes,” she said, “in part that is true.” Then she reached into the pocket of her long black coat and took out a brightly coloured piece of paper. “I stole this,” she said as she laid it on the table in front of İkmen.
He leaned forward in order to look at what turned out to be a small poster. It showed a painting of a very voluptuous woman covered in thin, writhing snakes. Above the image was written “The Slave of the Snakes – the wonder and glory of Lunar Park”. Pointing down to what to him was indeed a familiar image of a woman he said, “This is Ofis?”
“Yes,” the old woman replied. “Lovely wasn’t she? You know that years ago Ofis asked me if there was anything I would like from her should she die before me. I said I would like one of these old posters. A young boy who came to the park week in and week out, a poor thing with a hare lip, painted it and Murad had it copied. He made a very good likeness of Ofis.”
“So if that is the case you’re not stealing anything at all,” İkmen said.
“I have no proof Ofis said that I could have anything,” Irini replied. “And so …”
“And so that wasn’t the whole reason why you went to that house this evening was it, Irini Angelos?”
For a moment she looked as if she might be about to dissemble but then she shrugged again and said, “No, it wasn’t. I wanted to tell you about Ali Koray too.”
“So why didn’t you just come down to the station and ask to see the inspector like everyone else?” Arto Sarkissian asked.
The answer when it came made both the Armenian and the policeman smile.
“Because I don’t like the wait,” Irini said with a considerable amount of tetchiness in her voice. “People wait for hours to see people like Çetin Bey. I’m far too old and tired to do that. Getting arrested really does cut out a lot of needless time-wasting.”
The following day saw Ayşe Farsakoğlu confirm that Ali Koray did indeed have gambling debts. He had also, according to Mrs Lukash, approached her husband the previous evening about a possible sale of Ofis Hanım’s house. And although Ali Koray denied ever having so much as set foot in Ofis Hanım’s house, his shoes told another far more sinister story.
“Condemned by snake as opposed to human blood,” İkmen said when he went to see Irini Angelos at her small room in Balat a few days later. “It was all over his shoes.”
“Ah well, you see the snakes always looked after Ofis,” Irini said as she placed a small glass of tea in front of her guest. “She was their goddess.”
İkmen smiled. “You know,” he said, “that when we found Ofis Hanım she had one snake in each hand.”
The old woman nodded her head. “Like the snake goddess of Knossos in Crete,” she said. “It is a statue showing a voluptuous bare breasted woman holding a writhing snake in each hand.”
“Oh, yes,” İkmen said, “I think I may have seen a picture of that somewhere.”
“It is a great treasure,” Irini said. “And yet I imagine you probably don’t like it very much do you, Inspector?”
“You mean because of the snakes?” İkmen said. “You know, Irini Angelos, there is a reason for my phobia about snakes.”
“There is always a reason for everything,” the old woman replied.
He then told her about his childhood encounter with snakes – and with their goddess Ofis Hanım. When he had finished his story Irini said, laughing, “Oh dear, you poor little boy! You know that people were always putting their hands into the pit, but not to save the Slave as you did! They generally had a far more sexual motive. Oh, you poor dear child!”
She put her thin arms around his neck and for just a few moments she held him as he imagined she would have done her own children many years before. In fact, he felt very sad that poor Irini had now seemingly been deserted by her children. For her to end her days in a damp little room in a rough part of Balat seemed both very harsh and very sad. She was so vulnerable. He openly expressed his fears to her. Again she laughed.
“Oh, you don’t want to worry about me, Inspector,” she said. “I have accepted my fate. But I also have a little help now too.”
Seeing the twinkle in her dark old eyes, İkmen said, “What’s that Irini Angelos?”
“I’ve just simply followed Ofis’ example,” she said. “If you look behind you on top of the bookcase you will see.”
İkmen was suddenly gripped by a terrible cold feeling. This was coupled with a genuine belief that turning around to see what might be on top of the bookcase was going to be a very bad idea. But he was a man and a police officer and so he couldn’t just not do something so simple and seemingly safe as turn his head around. And so he did it quickly, sweating as he moved.
“Oh. Ah.”
There were two little snakes on top of the bookcase. They had shiny skins and bright, inquisitive eyes. They were also loose.
“Non-venomous Cypriot Whip snakes, just the same as Ofis had,” Irini said with a smile. “Everybody in the neighbourhood knows I have them and no one ever comes near or by. They are my new children. One is called Ofis and one Çetin, in honour of you and what you did for my old friend, Inspector.”
“Oh, er, well,” İkmen swallowed hard and then wet his bone-dry lips with his tongue. “It is I suppose quite an honour to be er, named alongside one who is a Snake Goddess …”
“Ofis” and “Çetin” looked at him with a lot of sinuous approval.
“They like you,” Irini said still smiling at the odd sight of her little pets and a man they were unconsciously tormenting. “You should make your peace with snakes you know Inspector. You, I feel, have a natural affinity with them.”
“Yes, well, affinity, er … I suppose that even snakes have their likes and dislikes, don’t they?” he said.
“Absolutely,” the old woman replied. “Would you like another glass of tea, Inspector?”
“Not just at the moment,” İkmen said, as he tried without success to wrest his gaze from the strange eyeless stare of the serpent named especially for and after him. “I’m fine now. Absolutely … fine.”