Robert got up from the sofa and staggered into the kitchen. His legs felt weak and he was still seeing stars - the fallout from heightened blood-pressure. He poured some thick, dark coffee from the percolator into a cup and leant against the side of the fridge to drink. His icy veins responded well to the hot liquid, and as he drank, he started to feel at least some life returning to his body.

He watched her through the open kitchen door. She was pointing down into the street and laughing. Some passer-by had seen her. She liked to shock. A favourite diversion was to walk the streets in a dress slashed almost to the waist, parading yards of breast before the general public. He would have needed to carry a submachine-gun to protect her against the jeers, the leers and the groping that went on every time that particular demon entered her soul. He hated that incarnation. The whore.

But Robert had other business with Natalia apart from her sexuality. She was so cocksure! Did she really think that he had forgotten? Did she honestly believe that even her brand of sex could wrench his mind away from the events of the previous evening? Now he had to talk to her. Now they were alone. The perfect opportunity.

He went back into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. Natalia came in from the balcony and stood, statuesque, hands on slim hips, smiling at him.

'Do you enjoy that fucking, Robert?' It was arrogant.

Not a question at all. She knew he'd enjoyed it. He always did.

But for the first time he ignored her haughty inquiry. His voice even but cold, he went straight to the heart of the matter. 'What was going on last night, Natalia?'

Her face clouded slightly and she moved forward as if making to leave the room. She made no attempt to answer and, as she sashayed past, she looked at him like he was nothing, her face devoid of any tenderness. She made it quite obvious that one such as Robert did not deserve a reply. Robert felt a sudden angry heat take him. He loved this woman. He'd just given his all to her, for Christ's sake, and she couldn't even give him a straight answer to a straight question! He looked at her big, livid breasts jiggling arrogantly in front of his face and his temper and his passion flared. As she passed him he grabbed her wrist, hard.

She cried out in pain and a look of fury whipped across her face like a slap. 'You hurt me!'

But this time she wasn't going to get away! Not like in Balat. He ignored her claim to pain and tightened his grip.

He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. 'I'm asking you about the game you and your family were playing last night.'

He looked into her face. 'The one the police interrupted.'

For a second it was just as if she had been turned to stone.

Not a muscle moved on her, not so much as a twitch. There was no warning as she brought her free hand back as if to strike him. But he was too quick for her and caught it in mid-air. Amid her angry screams of protest he pulled her roughly down next to him on the couch.

'All that clumsy shit from your uncles about you being at work on Monday. It must have been really galling for you when the police turned up. The fucking Murder Squad!'

His voice rose, ugly and rasping. He flinched from it. His vehemence, his violence was alarming. But he couldn't stop now. 'What did they want Natalia? You?'

She squirmed. 'Robert!'

'What happened, Natalia? You and one of your boyfriends decide to get a few extra kicks with some poor half-dead old pensioner! What did you do? Rip off his money? Well!'

She screamed and tried to kick him, but he pushed her flying leg roughly aside with his foot. The bitch wasn't going to hurt him! The slag, the whore, the bloody istanbul bike!

The words in his mind excited him.

His anger was making him hard again. He swung a leg across her lap and ground his genitals against her writhing pubis. The rough cloth of his trousers grazed her naked body and made her cry out. This wasn't what was supposed to happen! A man on her? No, wrong, it was wrong!

He pinned her arms against the wall behind and kissed her roughly on the mouth. He was going to take her! For the first time ever, he was going to take her! His head swam with excitement - the anticipation of rape.

'I bloody saw you, Natalia! I lied for you, you whore!'

She screamed again, her eyes filled with tears and what looked like terror. Robert felt powerful. He bit her hard on the shoulder as his aching erection battered against her, bruising her flesh. He took one hand away from her and unzipped his fly. His penis felt hot and angry in his trembling hand. He pushed it hard up against her, loving the feel of her shaking flesh against his. He was going to fuck her! Oh yes, he was!

'Don't play with me, Natalia!' He shook her hard by the wrists. 'Tell me the truth!' He pulled her legs apart and prepared to enter her body.

Her eyes went hard for a second, almost sexual, but then she was crying, deep and plaintive sobs, like a child's. She dropped her head on to her chest and her face screwed up into a crumple of lines and soft folds. She said a few words in a language Robert didn't understand and then she moved her pelvis towards him. Surrendering.

The heat within him had not gone, but as he looked at her Robert knew that he couldn't take her. Not willingly passive. Not broken. That wasn't what he'd wanted. Robert released his grip upon her arms very slightly and pulled his pelvis away from her body. He felt a slight softening in his penis. 'Well?'

It ripped from her throat, a torn, bleeding thing. 'You do see me in Balat! It was me!'

The relief washed over him like a hot shower and he felt his whole body relax and go limp. He hadn't been seeing things, he hadn't! Thank God! He released her hands and pushed himself away from her lap. She put her face in her hands and gave way to what looked like grief. Copious tears ran between her fingers and splashed down on to her thighs.

Robert's breathing eased. He felt like he'd just woken up.

But if she had been in Balat ... He felt sick. What had he woken up to? He raked his fingers through his damp, thick hair and waited for her to stop crying.

Chapter 8.

'Ikmen!'

He turned and saw the Commissioner's familiar angry face sticking out from behind his door. He smiled and sauntered casually over to him, a long-dead cigarette end hanging from his lip.

'I've just been talking to the Israeli Consul about the Meyer case.' Ardic/s tone was accusatory rather than informative.

'That must have been pleasant for you, sir.' It wasn't downright impertinence, but almost.

The Commissioner, puce to the ears, ushered ikmen into his office. He sat down at his desk and relit a thick cigar sitting in his ashtray. Then he twirled his moustache nervously. 'It was hideously embarrassing! I had to make up excuses for you.'

ikmen sat down and flicked the end of his cigarette on to the floor. Ardic didn't deserve good manners, he was too stupid. 'I should have thought the Consul would have been pleased that I was out working on a case in which he has so much interest.'

'It's not the point!' Ardic roared. 'You're supposed to be in charge of this case! It's you everybody wants to see: the Israelis, those bastards from the press-'

'I'm sure you handled it, sir.'

The Commissioner took off his glasses and threw them petulantly on to his desk. 'Look, ikmen, like it or not, you have a certain - I won't say fame, but notoriety. I didn't want you on this case as it is, but while you are on it, you should play by the rules!' He flung his hand out in the direction of the corridor. 'I've given you men to do the job with! You've a sergeant sits about on his arse all day looking like some sort of male model! You are based here, ikmen, and you should be here. Get them to do the work! You're the fucking boss, or supposed to be.'

ikmen lit a cigarette and turned a hard eye on his superior.

If Ardic was going to go straight in with heavy boots on, then so was he! He'd had enough of this fat, strutting little desk rider! What did he know about the job? 'Now look here, sir, it's the way I work. You know that! Second-hand reports from pimply constables may be good enough for people like Yalgin, but I earn my money! A case in point' - he stood up and started pacing, lionlike, in front of the Commissioner's desk - 'yesterday evening I interviewed an acquaintance of the murdered man. Now what the woman in question had to say was, on the face of it, of scant importance. If I had not been possessed of a little knowledge about her country and its history, her conversation would not have meant much to me. Also, how she answered me, what her mood was like, what her body did were' - he struggled for the right word - 'interesting. If I hadn't been there I would have experienced none of this! Her ambience, if you like, alerted me to something, I still don't know what it is, but what I have learnt from other sources today has only proved to underscore my unease about this woman!'

'What things?" Ardic emphasised the last word with a coating of pure contempt.

'Meyer was involved in some sort of purge against the bourgeoisie back in his own country, Russia. He killed people. The subsequent guilt tortured him all his life.

Guilt or fear, I don't know which. Now this woman I met last night claimed that in Russia she was his lover and that she and Meyer, at some point, left the country together.'

'So?'

'Meyer murdered people like her! May even have killed people in front of her! And if she did know anything about that, it could well mean that she had considerable power over him. She, or if not her, then someone else obviously had to have had some influence in order to persuade Meyer to leave Russia. Nice little Jewish Bolsheviks like him had the world at their feet. It was people like this Maria Gulcu who had to leave the country then, not Meyer.

Even given the guilt attendant upon his act, he would have to have been absolutely mad to leave. I mean, guilt is one thing, but to jeopardise your new, powerful life in the Jew-favouring Soviet Republic is quite another. It makes no sense historically. It was 1918! The beginning of the new dawn! The slaves will always turn and when they do-'

'Oh, for the love of Allah, ikmen, will you shut up about this nonsense before I really lose my temper!'

ikmen passed a shaking hand across his forehead and sat down.

Ardig pointed an accusatory finger towards him. 'Now listen, ikmen, from what your little girly-boy sergeant tells me you've got something of a lead with this Smits character.'

'As yet we've no proof that he-'

'If this Smits is or was a Nazi sympathiser, I want to know about it and so does the Consul. And if he was, I want him in here giving a fucking account of himself!'

'Well, yes, I agree, sir. But I will need time in order to see what Smits does from now on and-'

The Commissioner screamed, 'With one dead Jew lying under a fucking two-metre swastika, time is not what we have, ikmen! We all know about your famous intuition, but forget it. Throw your confounded biographies into the waste bin and put some real pressure on this Smits man before anything like this happens again. I do not want this city crawling with Mossad agents. What I do want, however, is to please the Israeli Consul who, unless you've been in an alternate reality for the last few days, you will know is a very important man!'

ikmen looked down at the floor in silence. Knowing that Ardig was under intense pressure to secure an arrest, any arrest, as soon as possible was of little comfort to him.

Ardig took a deep breath and calmed himself, ikmen was, at least temporarily, brought to heel. 'Now,' he said, 'the press don't know the more revolting details of this case and that is to your credit, but they still want to see you. The man was a Jew and there's a lot of panic about Moslem fundamentalism in this country at the moment. So I want you to see representatives from the press tomorrow and reassure them. Make certain that the bastards don't go crawling around Balat. Tell them we're preparing to make an arrest, pursuing fertile lines of inquiry-'

'Lie.'

Ardig flared once again. 'Yes, lie! What do you want our wealthy Jews in Yenikdy and Bebek to do? Pack up all their money and fuck off to Israel?'

ikmen regarded him steadily. 'And the poor ones in Balat?

They know, remember.'

'Ah, but they're not telling, are they, ikmen?'

'No, sir, they're too afraid. Closed communities are like that, sir. Vulnerable.'

Ardig growled. Little people with little money were not exactly his thing.

Ikmen got up out of his chair and made towards the door.

He didn't want to be in the same place as this man for any longer.

'If that's all, sir?'

Ardig put his cigar back in his mouth and leant back in his chair. 'Only one thing.'

Ikmen turned. 'Yes?'

'I had your sergeant with me when I was talking to the Consul. Even if he is a rather effeminate young man, he's articulate.' He dropped his eyes. 'I wouldn't give him too much autonomy if I were you, Ikmen. I think he might just be able to handle it.' He sniggered, childishly.

Ikmen's face whitened and he marched smartly out of the office, slamming the door behind him. Ardic's laughter followed him all the way down the corridor and halfway up the stairs.

'So, you and the Consul are best friends now, is that right, Mehmet?' Cohen lit up a cigarette and smiled.

Suleyman scowled. 'Hah, hah, very funny.'

'Well, you must admit that it's a bit of a plus point for you.' Cohen perched himself on the edge of Suleyman's desk and crossed his legs. 'Could be the start of your rapid rise through the ranks.'

'I don't think so.'

Cohen laughed. 'Oh, excuse me! Bright, articulate and good-looking? If I were you I'd push and scratch my way to the top and let no bastard stand in my way. I mean, just think what sort of effect the sight of a handsome inspector under thirty would have upon the females around here.'

'Oh, give it a rest, will you!'

But Cohen was in his stride now. 'Power excites women.'

His face dissolved into a leer. 'I knew this girl once, had a thing about power and guns-'

'I thought you were married,' cut in Suleyman, sourly.

'So?' Cohen leant down across the desk and put his face close to Suleyman's. 'Doesn't mean I can't have a little bit of variety once in a while. They like the uniform too.'

Suleyman snorted. Cohen was so shallow it was almost a talent.

'You always looked good in the uniform, Mehmet.' He winked lasciviously. 'You're not telling me you used to iron your whole kit every day just for the benefit of the public!'

Suleyman nervously fingered his tie. Cohen put him on edge. He always had done, ever since they were constables together. Cohen was so ... direct!

He changed the subject. 'What happened with Mrs Blatsky anyway?'

'Not a lot. I didn't do much really, she spoke just enough Turkish. The Old Man did most of the talking. She was ancient and had a bit of a beard coming.'

Suleyman removed his jacket. 'I don't suppose you listened, did you?'

'I did, as a matter of fact,' replied Cohen archly. 'She said Meyer had killed some people back in Russia.'

Suleyman replied in kind. 'Well, we know that!'

Cohen leant across the desk again and waved his finger in Suleyman's face. He looked like a young child telling his best friend a naughty secret. 'Ah, but did you know that he was a fully paid-up commie when he did it?'

'No!'

'Oh, yes. Went about killing the rich for the glory of Marx, he did. And what is more, someone who is still alive now knew all about it too!'

Suleyman frowned. 'What, someone back in Russia, or-'

'No, here,' said Cohen. 'In the city.'

Suleyman suddenly felt his blood curdle in his veins. He knew a prime candidate for that role and so did ikmen.