He wouldn't have happened - the dynasty would have just died when it was supposed to. Perhaps there really were proper times for things. Maybe by keeping the Romanovs alive Grandmama had committed some kind of sin. That Uncle Nicky was his father had sounded odd, but whether > that was wrong or not was beyond him.

Another man was running towards the one who continued to shout at him. This looked peculiar because surely if the . second man wanted the first to stop shouting all he had to do was say so. Turks were different like that, he'd watched them. They weren't a logical people, which explained why he didn't like them very much. Russians were better, Grandmama had always said so. He felt a little sad when he thought about Russia. He'd always wanted to go 'home', but now it was too late.

Somebody on the end of a ladder was coming towards, him but he remained calm. He wouldn't reach him and even if he did it wouldn't matter. He had his own plans.

He looked down at the ground again. It was a very long way and he had no doubt that it would hurt. The family would never have credited him with such perception, but he'd always known that he possessed that quality. He could reason and think like the rest of them. Perhaps at a different rate and along, to them, different lines, but he had always been able to do it. Duty, that was what it had been about.

And he fully understood duty - that was very important.

Grandmama had often said that people had criticised the Tsar for being too rigid in his sense of duty to the dynasty, he'd died because of it. So it had to be a good thing, didn't it?

But then not even that mattered any more. His feet felt boiling hot and even without looking he knew that his shoes were burning. He hurt all over. Strangely, though, he wasn't hot. The feeling was one of being stabbed many times. Not that that sensation would last for long. He was out in the open, the smoke couldn't possibly overcome him as it had done Uncle Serge. But that wasn't important now.

The important thing was to get off the roof away from the flames. If that could be done then at least he could retain some dignity. The others hadn't, which meant that it was now up to him. Was it the right thing to do? He thought he'd done the right thing before ...

Best to do it before too much thought got in the way!

Misha spread his arms out wide and closed his eyes. Until he hit the ground it would be quite pleasurable, like flying.

He let his knees go limp and toppled forwards.

ikmen thought his lungs would burst as he lurched forward and grabbed Suleyman with both hands and pulled him backwards.

The most sickening sound that either of them had ever heard followed as the living body of the man smashed into the pavement before them and expired. It was a damp, dark, purple noise like the sound a fishmonger makes when he slaps squid down on his wooden chopping board. For a moment both men stayed absolutely still, ikmen's ear pressed hard against Suleyman's back rejoiced in the sound of his strong, heavy breathing. Whatever horror lay on the ground before them, at least he was alive and for that ikmen thanked the God in which he did not believe. There was no other being he could thank, certainly not himself. It had been too close for that.

ikmen pulled himself out from underneath Suleyman's body and looked around. Two firemen were running towards them, their faces darkened by what looked like terror.

Suleyman sank backwards on to the ground and ikmen bent across him. Suleyman was covered with blood. He lay on his back trembling, looking at his gore-stained hands, trying not to touch them to his body.

ikmen took him gently by the shoulders and tried to pull him into a sitting position. The blood was unpleasant to the touch as it was still warm, but ikmen had to try. Suleyman was starting to cry and if he stayed on his back he'd choke on his own tears. But it wasn't easy. Suleyman didn't want to move. He turned his head to one side and pressed his shoulders hard into the ground in order to keep his body where it was. ikmen looked down towards Suleyman's feet and saw why. The body of the man had landed on its stomach, which had burst on impact. Blood and offal were spattered in pools all around, although it was Suleyman himself who had taken the brunt of the mess It had splashed and slopped up at him; the blood into his face and eyes, more unpleasant and happily unidentifiable things clung like bloody leeches to his legs and feet. The face of the dead man was familiar to ikmen and not for the first time he felt sorry for the boy. What his place had been in the peculiar drama that had surrounded the Gulcus, ikmen realised he would probably never know. In fact everything that had passed since the death of Leonid Meyer was suddenly feeling very alien to him. The Gulcus house was burning, there was still no sign of Cornelius and now this boy, this dead boy.

'Are you all right?'

ikmen looked round and saw the two firemen bending over Suleyman's weeping body. He knew he should have answered the firefighters, it was always important to ascertain who was injured and who was not. But he couldn't speak. That Suleyman was alive was enough for the moment because he knew that it could all have been so different, ikmen touched his sergeant's face and felt his mouth move beneath his hand. It was a miracle.

A pair of strong arms pulled him away from Suleyman and set him unsteadily on his feet, ikmen became aware of the crowd again. The noise of their crying and screaming filtered through the temporary stop his mind had put inside his ears. They'd come to see a drama and had found themselves inside a horror. They were seeing just the edge of the blackness that had tortured his soul since the beginning of the Meyer affair: the past crashing bloodily into the present.

The second of the two firemen lifted Suleyman to his feet and led him away from the scene in front of ikmen.

Behind them the house burnt on in spite of the hoses pouring thousands of litres of water at its white-hot heart.

All sorts of substances were playing their part: wood, gas, oil, the complicated biochemistry of the human body.

Around the back of the largest fire tender an ambulance was waiting. At its open back door, beside the paramedics, was a very shaken Constable Cohen. The paramedics took Suleyman from the arms of the fireman and loaded him silently into the vehicle. He didn't look at Cohen, or even appear to be aware that he existed. Shock. At least if Suleyman was in shock it meant that he would be blank and therefore without anguish for a few hours, ikmen thought grimly.

As for himself? Even though ikmen knew that he should go to hospital himself and let a doctor just check him out, he had already decided that he wouldn't. When the fire was out there would be time enough for that. That he was just as helpless as all the other spectators was not sufficient excuse.

He'd found the Gulcus, he couldn't leave them now.

ikmen disengaged himself from his fireman escort and walked across to Cohen. He opened his mouth to speak, but only found one word. 'What ... ?'

Cohen clasped one hand across his eyes and sighed. He replied in kind. 'What?'

ikmen breathed rapidly and shallowly as if panicking.

'What ... what ... were you doing here?'

Cohen looked at ikmen somewhat askance. He didn't tend to trust people in shock. 'We came to find you, sir. And to look for this Englishman who might have done for-'

'But I told Suleyman to take the day off! I told him because I ...' His head hurt and he put his hand up to it gently. He must have banged it on the ground when he fell, not that he could remember.

Cohen took him by the arm and led him away from the ambulance. He too knew ikmen should go to hospital, but he also knew that the Old Man would resist if forced. 'Hasn't anyone told you yet then, sir?'

'Told me what?' There was smoke everywhere and it made him cough, but he lit a cigarette anyway.

Cohen sat him down on a bollard. 'Your wife went into labour this morning.'

'Oh.' It was a very flat and uninterested response from a man just about to become a father. But then both of them were in the middle of a scene that looked like something from Dante's Inferno. The smoke was so thick that even the faces of some of the spectators were smudged and smutted with soot. There was also a smell of burning meat on the air now. Cohen knew what that was, but he didn't point it out to ikmen. ikmen sighed. 'Fatma will kill me.'

'Well, I can drive you there now, sir, if-'

'Where's Avci?'

'Oh, er, I don't know.' Cohen looked about him but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

'Well, look for him, will you, Cohen?' It was a panicky request, ikmen needed to know that everyone was safe now.

It was important.

'All right, yes, um ...'

'Tell him to go to my apartment and inquire after my wife.'

'You don't want to go yourself?'

ikmen scowled. 'Just do it.'

With some reluctance Cohen left his boss and went to look for Avci. Considering the gruesomeness of the occasion he fully expected to find him hiding somewhere.

The ambulance carrying Suleyman sped off down the narrow street and was almost immediately replaced by another, empty vehicle. There were three paramedics attached to this one and they all looked very grim. One of their number, a short, stocky, Armenian-looking man, opened the back of the ambulance and took out a folded blue bag. ikmen looked inside the vehicle and noticed that none of the patient stretchers had either pillows or mattresses. The Armenian unfolded the thick blue body bag. This wasn't transport for the living.

ikmen stared straight ahead of him at the back of one of the fire tenders. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that at last the men of the fire brigade were getting the flames under control. Strange really that wood should give them so many problems. If ikmen hadn't known better he might have said that the building actually wanted to burn.

He laughed grimly to himself. Prophecy was one thing, but ascribing intelligence to fire? Sometimes he felt like the old fool Fatma always said he was. All he could do now was live in hope that at least some of them had survived the inferno not that there was much chance of that. And with them had gone all the answers to those questions he had come to ask.

Questions about Cornelius and the letter he had typed to the police, questions about who the Gulcus were and why they had killed Leonid Meyer, because now he knew that they had. They had killed him for that old crime, the one in Ekaterinburg all those lifetimes ago, the one the premise for which lay between those two old photographs that had belonged to Smits - the ones that rested in his pocket now.

He knew all that. But what he had really wanted to know was now irrevocably lost. Who was Maria Gulcu really, because despite everything he still wouldn't believe those photographs. He just couldn't. And why had she waited seventy-four years before taking her revenge?

The realisation that he would now never know suddenly made him want to cry.

'Are you Inspector ikmen?'

He looked up and saw a tall thin man of about his own age wearing a fireman's uniform. He was covered with soot and filth and looked exhausted.

ikmen knew how he felt. It had been hours since they had put the fire out, even the crowd had dispersed now, but he was still there. 'Yes, I'm ikmen. What is it?'

The fireman took his helmet off and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. 'One of your men told me I should let you know when we start bringing the bodies out.'

So here it was. ikmen sighed and lit yet another cigarette.

'Yes, thanks. How many bodies have you found?' Maria Gulcu's last 'Goodbye' flashed into his mind. That had sounded very final. Had she known?

The fireman took a small cigar from his tunic pocket and joined ikmen in a smoke. 'Three so far. Do you have any idea as to how many persons might have been in the house?'

ikmen looked at faces in his mind and counted. Maria]

Gulcu (perhaps she had been beautiful once with those hypnotic blue eyes?), Nicholas, Sergei, crippled Sergei, Natalia and ... poor old Robert Cornelius. Had he been there? Where else could he have been? ikmen took a stab at it.

'Five, I think,' he said. Then he remembered. 'Oh no, six. There was a servant boy too. But I think that was the one who jumped from the roof.'

The fireman smiled. 'Ah yes. The one that nearly killed your colleague. That was you who dragged him back, wasn't it?'

'Yes.' ikmen turned away. He had no desire to discuss that matter any further. If people wanted to ascribe heroics he wanted none of it. The last thing he felt was courageous.

The fireman must have understood and he left, ikmen got to his feet and followed him towards what was left of the Gulcu house. There wasn't much. All the upper storeys had crashed through into the basement. The only thing that remained standing was the great black front door and its frame. It swung to and fro on its hinges, creaking in the dry, hot breeze blowing in from the waters of the Golden Horn. Behind it lay heaps of smoking rubble. What had once been window-frames, joists and brackets stuck up and away from the blackened mess like agonised limbs.

The fireman who had just spoken to him cleared a small pile of rubble away from something that looked like a carbonised tree. A thing struck by lightning, ikmen's stomach lurched and he turned away. Too tired for bodies like that.

'Sir?'

Cohen was standing right in front of him and he hadn't even noticed. He'd looked straight through the man as if he were a window. But then Cohen always had been shallow.

Ikmen giggled stupidly at his own joke. 'What is it, Cohen?'

'Avci just radioed in.' He smiled. It wasn't easy because ikmen looked like he was going out of his mind. 'Your wife is fine, sir, and you have a son, who is also fine.'

'Oh.'

Cohen carried on smiling through ikmen's vagueness.

There was little else he could do. 'And Dr Sarkissian's at the morgue now, getting ready for the bodies to arrive.'

Babies and bodies, ikmen looked into Cohen's large, sensual eyes. 'They've found three bodies, four if you include the jumper.'

'Yes, I know. It started on the top floor, you know, the fire.' Out of the corner of his eye Cohen could see things that looked like wooden statues being loaded on to stretchers. He cleared his throat and changed the subject.

'Commissioner Ardic would like to see you when you return to the station, sir.'

'What a pity I don't want to see him.'

It was his usual cynical style, which relieved Cohen somewhat, but without his customary light touch. Cohen sighed. He'd never really understood this case. 'What now then, sir?'

ikmen chanced one glance towards the firemen and then looked quickly back at Cohen. Even his ugly face was preferable to what they were digging out of the rubble.

'Sit here and try to make some sense of it all for a bit. Then see Ardic, I suppose. Wrap this thing up.'

'What, you mean the whole Balat thing?'

'Yes, I think so, Cohen.' He pointed behind him towards the remains of the house. 'One day I'll explain all that to you, as far as I understand it myself. The curtain's fallen on this one.' He lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Pity it fell before the denouement.'

Chapter 26.

Fatma looked down at the baby in her arms and brushed his tiny face with her finger. He opened his mouth and screwed his eyes up tight. 'Now then, don't scream,' she said, 'you'll wake that horrible daddy.'

But it was only a joke. Fatma knew that it would take a lot more than a crying baby to wake her husband at the moment.

She was glad that most of the other children had gone out, however. It was the clouds that had sent them whooping down into the street, the promise of rain. Fatma welcomed it too. She looked out of the window at the darkening sky and felt a tremendous relief course through her body. The city hadn't seen so much as a spot of rain for nearly two months. If only it had come a day earlier perhaps all those poor people wouldn't have died in that terrible house-fire.

And maybe then Cetin would have got some answers to those questions that had been torturing him. He had finally got to bed at about midnight, after nearly forty-eight hours without sleep. He'd barely looked at his new son, he'd been so tired.

Fatma hoped and prayed that his case was closed now. If it was he could take some annual leave. He had enough owing.

But then with Cetin she never really knew. Where other people would just give up and move on to other things, Cetin would continue until he was satisfied, which was frequently a very tall order indeed. His desire to root out the truth at all costs was not one of those qualities that endeared him to her. His mother had always wanted to know things too. The Albanian witch had spent her short life dabbling in things best left undisturbed.

It was so quiet in the apartment without the children, but Fatma liked it. Cetin and Timur were asleep, the younger man in his bed, the older one snoring gently in his chair opposite her. Cicek was somewhere around, but she was being very quiet too. Ever since the baby had been born she'd been thoughtful. Fatma wondered whether perhaps the arrival of a new life had made her stop and consider her own existence. Birth could do that to a person. She remembered how she herself had been affected the first time she'd witnessed a human birth. Fatma smiled at the memory.

She had been disgusted. That her lovely Aunt Mihri could be party to something that messy and undignified had shocked her. The eleven-year-old Fatma had resolved on the spot never to do 'that' herself. Nine children down the line she had a somewhat different view.

The front-door buzzer rang and luckily woke Timiir from his light slumber. Fatma had not relished the thought of trying to open the door with her arms full of, at the moment, quiet and contented baby. The old man rose stiffly to his feet and wandered slowly past her, chucking the baby lightly under the chin as he went. Timur could drive Fatma mad, especially when he was in wild, irreligious mode, but she couldn't fault him when it came to doing things for her when*

the babies were tiny. He would fetch, carry, sort out the other children - sometimes he would even cook. Only plain spaghetti and courgette, but it was a meal. Fatma sometimes wondered how often he had served that food up to Cetin and) Halil after their mother died.

She heard the sound of the front door opening followed by several deep male voices. Then Arto Sarkissian walked into her living room followed by her own husband's handsome partner. She was surprised to see Suleyman as Cetin had told her that he was in hospital.

Arto bent low and looked carefully at the baby. 'Perfect.'

Fatma smiled.

Timur came back into the room and offered both men seats.