'Because you have nothing.' She was smirking again now, cool and triumphant. 'And because you know it.'

He spread his arms in a simple shrug. 'As you wish. But I will be back, madam, just as I will return to see Mr Smits again. And that, I assure you, will be very soon.'

She didn't respond except to wave one hand in the direction of the granddaughter whom she, in Russian, instructed to see the gentlemen out.

ikmen stood up and joined his colleague, facing the exit.

lAu revoir, Mrs Gulcu,' he said and then, turning to the cripple, 'Mr Gulcu.'

'Goodbye, Inspector ikmen,' she replied and for just a moment the tone of her voice quite caught him off his guard. Her words had been so final somehow. For one terrible pulse in time, ikmen looked at the awful gap that could so easily open up in the investigation should she go. And yet she should have gone a long time ago, this monstrous cadaver. That fine mind trapped in an awful body of paper and wax - hell.

'Well, goodbye then,' he said and quickly grabbing Suleyman by the elbow, he led him across the room towards the door.

Natalia Gulcu, like a voluptuous statue of Venus, held it open for them and followed the two policemen down the stairs. Nothing in her face save a vague bloom of red on her cheeks gave any clue as to her mood. She reminded ikmen of those wax statues of the Virgin Mary in the old Italian church of St Anthony of Padua. And, as if on cue, a church bell from somewhere quite close, possibly even that very church, started ringing.

As the three of them descended the stairs their language reverted to Turkish. Behind ikmen, Natalia Gulcu spoke to the back of his head. 'So I suppose we can expect a visit from the immigration people sometime soon?' she said.

'Oh yes. Just a formality in your case, I should imagine,'

ikmen replied brightly. Then turning to look at her, he said, 'That's all you really care about in all this, isn't it?'

She shrugged, her large breasts rising with her shoulders.

"I know nothing about any of the other stuff.'

ikmen turned and continued after Suleyman. However, when they reached the front door of the house, Ikmen turned and looked into her sulky, passionless face once again. 'I find myself wondering what your boyfriend makes of all this business, Miss Gulcu. After all, he was in Balat at the time of the murder, wasn't he?'

This time she reddened up completely. 'That man is nothing to me and I know nothing of why he was in Balat!'

'I find that hard to believe.'

Her usually passive face broke into a mass of lined confusion. 'What?'

'In view of the fact,' ikmen said, 'that you gave him information to be used to deflect attention away from himself.'

'What?'

He smiled. 'Mr Smits and your grandmother? How on earth do you think we came by that information unless somebody told us?'

She put her hands on her hips as if squaring up to him for a fight. 'Well, you didn't hear it via me!'

'Very well, Miss Gulcu, but if you don't shut this door very quickly I may very well lead you to tell me something you may later regret.'

Natalia Gulcu's face blackened. Then, without another word, she slammed the door behind them with such force that small pieces of paint flew from the lintel and on to ikmen's jacket.

Chapter 17.

He sat in a side aisle facing a huge circular candelabra.

A few candles were burning, but not many. Two he had started himself for no particular reason. The rest had been lit by the few faithful who had wandered in during the course of the morning. He'd known them all of course, but only by sight. And they knew him - oh they knew him all right! They'd all looked at him, that way. He sniffed unpleasantly to himself.

He didn't often come to church; never had. Mama had said that it was inappropriate considering they were all of mixed blood. Nicholas smirked. Of course Mama would!

Although the blood was only an excuse, he knew that.

Neither she, in fact nor any of the others, for that matter, had ever had a place in any house of God.

Nicholas shook his head sadly. The lies! It made him wonder whether anybody anywhere ever really knew the truth about anything. But mainly he wondered whether his mother did. He wondered who she was. He thought about it often, he always had done. He touched the small cut beneath his eye delicately with his fingers. It was quite bad considering. The old woman had used a lot of force.

She'd been protecting herself and her fragile cobweb world; of course she'd used power.

He looked at the candles again and tried to think. Doing what was right and doing what was for the best were often very different things. In spite of everything, he didn't want to hurt them. In a group they were terrible, himself included.

But were they just terrible because they perpetuated her?

Without her what would they be? Serge, he knew, would be better if he allowed himself to be taken to hospital.

But then even if she died that was unlikely. Serge was hers completely, like the others. And Anya? He didn't even dare think about it. Not for the first time he felt himself wishing that they would all die. At least that way there would be an end and nobody would ever know. She would have failed.

Another old worshipper passed him and nodded gravely in his direction. Nicholas ignored him. He got no peace from being inside a church, no spiritual uplift. It made him sad because he'd always missed out on this aspect of existence.

She had always been goddess to them all. God, the real one, didn't dare interfere. He just let her manipulate - or so it seemed. Let her distort nature for her own ends, write things, say things, change and manipulate as she went along.

All the real evidence had gone, including his own father, the man he wished he had known better, questioned maybe. In the last few months he'd started to evolve this fantasy that she'd killed his father, her lover. In a way he hoped that she had so that he could hate her more.

The great double doors at the end of the narthex creaked open and a small priest in flowing black robes entered.

Nicholas looked up. The man was familiar to him, but as usual he didn't know his name. As he recalled there were two priests attached to the church: a young one, tall and dark with fierce, fanatical eyes and this one, the little old one with the long white beard. Although he'd never spoken to him, Nicholas rather liked this elderly cleric; he had a kind, cheerful face, like a geriatric infant. Nicholas sat and watched as he made his way towards the ikon of the Virgin and Child opposite. As he bustled forward, the old priest hummed a little tune. His voice was rich and dark as roasted coffee.

Nicholas looked down at the floor, but out of the corner of his eye he could still see the priest. He watched him cross himself in front of the sacred image and then get down on his knees and touch the ground with his forehead. An act of devotion and surrender. Odd that such a simple act aroused jealousy in Nicholas's mind, but it did. The priest was part of something that was good. All the worshippers who came to the church got something out of it: comfort, strength. It seemed that way to Nicholas anyway. Black and white. The church was life, love, safety; outside of that was the dark, the place he came from and to which he would soon have to return. He felt phoney and ashamed.

The priest sat up on his haunches and, smiling, regarded the dark Byzantine picture before him. The sad-eyed woman and her thin, hook-nosed infant were his friends. He spoke softly to them, not in prayer, but conversationally, as to a living person on the street. Because the old man's voice was so low, Nicholas couldn't catch any actual words, but the scene was enough.

He had a sudden, almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch this man who was speaking so casually to God.

He stood up and opened his arms. They trembled as he held them aloft and he felt that if the priest would only turn and look at him he would see his pain and he would come to him. He longed for the feel of the old man's arms about his body; his mouth moved to make the first, dry syllables of his confession. His heart soared. Oh, that was!

it! The priest would listen, the priest would make it alright. 'Father, help me!'

But the priest didn't hear him because he never actualy uttered the words he so wanted to say. Alone, silent am unworthy, he sat down behind the candles once again]

and looked at the world of the Divine through a veil of fire.

ikmen put his book down with an ill-tempered thud. 'Well, get into the car then, before somebody sees you!' he hissed out of the window.

Suleyman reached across the back of his seat and opened the door for a truly filthy-looking individual who slid into the rear of the old Mercedes.

'So, what's happening then, Ferhat?' said ikmen as he minutely examined his own hands on the steering wheel.

'Not a lot,' the man in the back replied. 'He goes to the school, back to his home, back to the school again.

Might as well be a eunuch for all the excitement there is in his life.'

'Not been near Karadeniz Sokak then?'

'Not even close.'

Suleyman put his hand up to his face and wrinkled his nose. 'You know you really do smell bad, Ferhat!'

ikmen laughed. 'Ferhat just likes getting into character, don't you?' He viewed the unshaven, dishevelled heap in his rear-view mirror. 'Bit of an actor!'

Ferhat sniffed. 'I get the job done.'

'So,' ikmen continued, 'nothing odd or strange ...'

'Oh, he talks to himself quite a bit. But then he's always on his own so I suppose you could say that he is the only company he has.'

'No friends then? No idle chatter with colleagues on the way to the bus stop?'

'No.'

'It's all a bit sad really, isn't it, sir?' said Suleyman. 'I mean being on his own in a foreign country and-'

'Well,' cut in ikmen, 'keep on him, Ferhat. You know what to do if anything happens.'

'OK.'

As quickly as he had slid in, Ferhat slid out again and disappeared into the hot, bothered early afternoon crowds.

To Suleyman's great relief, the smell also went with him.

ikmen took out a handkerchief and mopped his sweat sodden brow.

Suleyman, watching him, said, 'I wish it would rain.'

'You're full of pointless observations today, aren't you, Suleyman!' snapped his superior. 'First that pitying homily regarding Cornelius and now praying for the bastard rain!'

Stung, Suleyman retaliated immediately. 'Well, I'm sorry, sir, but I am just a little upset about Mr Smits almost dying on me! I mean-'

'You just have to get used to it I'm afraid, Suleyman!'

ikmen put his handkerchief back in his pocket and turned the key in the ignition of the car. 'Anyway, he didn't die, did he?' He took the brake off and the car started rolling forwards.

'No, but ...'

'Well, there you are then!' As the car moved past the ornate front entrance of the Londra Language School, ikmen stole a quick glance at the building - a slight sneer marring his features. 'In any event, we have far more pressing problems than Mr Smits's health right now. Every bit of evidence we have so far is purely circumstantial. Even that letter from Cornelius is useless - no prints.'

'We could always try and trace the typewriter that he used.'

'Oh, yes,' ikmen agreed, 'we could do that but even if the machine could be traced to his place of work, how could we prove that he of all the people there had used it?

Any decent lawyer could argue that that was circumstantial too! No, unless someone who witnessed something comes forward or we get hold of some real forensic evidence soon, I don't honestly know what we're going to do. While Mrs Gulcu and Mr Smits persist in attempting to take all their secrets to their respective graves, I don't see how we can move any further forward.'

As the car skirted the northern side of the Grand Bazaar, both men silently scanned the teeming streets - a habit, in both their cases, born of some hard time as beat constables amongst the pick-pockets, con-men and other assorted thieves who colourfully characterised this area.

'Do you really think that Mrs Gulcu is related to this Demidova woman, sir?' Although his question was serious and he did have his mind upon it, Suleyman's eyes were following what was happening on the street too. In this part of town there were a lot of familiar faces.

'Not now that I've read a bit more,' ikmen said. 'Anna Demidova was, as Maria Gulcu said, quite without relatives.

Although ...'

'Although?'

'Although there is, rather oddly, another connection between the murder of the last Tsar and that of Leonid Meyer.'

'Oh?'

ikmen took his hand off the steering wheel and searched his pockets for cigarettes. 'Both the Tsar and his family's bodies and that of Meyer were disfigured with sulphuric acid.'

Suleyman rolled down his window, preparatory to another onslaught of smoke. 'Bit tenuous, isn't it, sir?'

ikmen lit up and exhaled contentedly. 'Meyer was a Bolshevik, he'd been involved in killing.'

'That is only really hearsay though, isn't it? And anyway there is no proof that he was involved in that killing. As you've said before, his name was not recorded or-'

'Unless he changed his name ...' ikmen put his head down for just a split second in an attitude Suleyman felt was one of defeat. 'No, you're right, how could he? All the people involved in that died years ago, all the books confirm it. We've got absolutely nothing beyond a few I can't say coincidences - synchronicities. Stupid, useless, baseless synchronicities.'

Suleyman looked once again at the thick throng of variegated humanity beyond the car window and sighed.

'Have we really exhausted all other possibilities? His other associates, neighbours ...'

ikmen turned briefly to look at him and then fixed his eyes back upon the road again. 'Whoever went into that apartment did so when nobody else was about. Only the Englishman, Cornelius, was seen and he'd only just come from work and was not carrying anything according to our one witness at the scene, much less a large canister of sulphuric acid. And besides, if he had done it why would he have admitted to being there so easily? No, his appearance on the scene is the one thing in this whole Byzantine maze that I feel is truly coincidental. Through his association, maybe, with Natalia Gulcu he found himself involved in something that I don't suppose he understands either.'

Suleyman rested his head against the band of his seat-belt.

What with the heat, plus the endless questions that were beginning to hurt both their minds, he felt tired and lethargic. 'Like the meaning of the swastika?'

'Oh, yes,' ikmen replied, 'like the meaning of the swastika.'

They spent the rest of the journey back to the station in silence, both of them knowing that, the way things stood at the present time, there was nothing to be achieved by talking.