Free Petrified by Barbara Nadel

overwhelming curiosity about how the ‘lower orders’ conducted themselves during sex. Perhaps that was why, in the past, he had felt the need, briefly, to take a mistress.
    ‘You know that Rostov is here, don’t you?’ he said as he looked quickly at the booth into which the Russian had disappeared.
    ‘Yes. He’s buying jewellery.’
    ‘For whom?’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. To sell. Maybe for his men. He gave Vladimir a gold and diamond ring. He’s very generous to his men – sometimes.’
    ‘But not his women?’
    Masha shrugged, glanced at the booth and then said, ‘So? Tonight?’
    Suleyman took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up. ‘Only if the information is good.’
    ‘It is!’
    Her face, pleading, looked desperate. Someone had obviously promised her a lot of money to set him up like this.
    ‘Where and when?’
    ‘Tonight, after eleven o’clock. I work at a pavyon on Camekan Sokak. All Russian konsomatris,’ she smiled. ‘Turkish punters, you see, they like that.’
    Unbeknown to Masha, Suleyman knew the area around Camekan Sokak intimately. After his separation from his first wife, Zuleika, he’d spent several years renting a room in the district known as Karaköy from his old colleague Balthazar Cohen. Pavyons, like the one Masha worked in, and gazinos, places dedicated to the twin vices of drinking and leering, were what the district was famous for – that and the rather more honest brothels or genelev. Men went to gazinos and pavyons in order, they hoped, to have sex, but they were required to pay a lot of money for drinks offered to them by the konsomatris or ‘hostesses’ first. Russian bosses, like Rostov, were known to be very active in the pavyon business. In Suleyman’s opinion these places were more insidious and corrupt than regular brothels.
    ‘How will I find this place?’
    He knew better than to ask the name of the establishment – places like this didn’t have names.
    ‘It’s in the basement of a Turkish genelev.’ She wrinkled up her nose as she said the word ‘Turkish’. Like a lot of Russian girls she felt herself to be far superior to the often quite naïve Anatolian girls the state-run and legal Turkish brothels employed. ‘The doorman has long blond hair and there’s a string of red and green lights around the door. You can’t miss it.’
    ‘So what do I do?’
    Masha smiled. ‘Leave that to me,’ she said lasciviously. ‘I’ll take care of you.’
    ‘I just want the information.’
    ‘Yes, and you’ll get it,’ she said. ‘We will get Rostov. Trust me.’
    And then she walked away. Suleyman looked back towards the booth where Rostov was, presumably, still involved in buying, and then walked over to it. It was empty. Somewhere during the course of his conversation with Masha, Rostov had slipped away. All of this was so obviously a set-up and yet he had to see it through just in case something useful could be gleaned from it. That or sex with Masha . . .
    Suleyman shuddered. No. No, that couldn’t and wouldn’t happen. He’d have to share this with either İkmen or Metin İskender – he’d have to get support, another pair of eyes to watch what he and those around him at the pavyon did. Now, suddenly, set-up or no set-up, here was a chance possibly to call Rostov’s bluff. Using himself as bait there was just a chance that he could get close enough to the operation to work out what, over and above Masha’s ‘stories’, was really going on. What did Rostov want of him or want him to do? The only problem was that his boss, Commissioner Ardiç, was unlikely to sanction such a dangerous move. Suleyman was already in far further than the commissioner knew about or would approve. Using informants like Masha was notoriously risky, which was why İkmen and İskender and only they could know. The three of them had, after all, committed themselves to making sure that no one ever became powerful enough to take over where Zhivkov had