Free Petrified by Barbara Nadel Page B

We’re all guilty of it from time to time, but we shouldn’t do it.’ And then moving forward a little to see Akdeniz more easily he said, ‘What is he doing?’
    The monk narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
    They both watched as the artist, sweating heavily in the intense midday heat, strung what appeared to be a huge canvas across the entire width of the garden.
    Ayşe Farsakoǧlu took the ferry back to the city from Sarıyer. It fitted the sort of day she’d had: slow and fruitless.
    The local constabulary had been friendly and welcoming, and had quizzed her at some length about the ‘excitement’ she must experience working in the city. But with regard to information on the missing Akdeniz children they hadn’t been any help. As usual the district was quiet and ordered, and everyone obeyed the law from behind their very tasteful front doors.
    ‘This is a fishing village,’ one of the younger constables, called Said, had remarked. ‘People concentrate only on the catch. İnşallah it will always be so.’
    ‘We also have the rich folks,’ an older colleague put in, adding darkly, ‘some of whom are foreigners these days.’
    Ayşe had asked what sort of foreigners the district tended to attract.
    ‘Oh, those with a lot of money,’ the older man, Rifat, had said, ‘mostly from up there.’ He tilted his head northwards, which Ayşe interpreted as from somewhere in the old Soviet Union.
    ‘But they don’t cause any trouble?’ Ayşe had said.
    ‘Not as yet,’ Rifat had replied, ‘and it’s not up to me to worry myself about where they might have got their money from. You need a lot to buy one of the old yalıs these days, but then that’s their affair. Provided they don’t start having their gang wars here or parading their Natashas in our streets . . .’
    It was ridiculous to think that the wealthier mobsters wouldn’t reach a place like Sarıyer. As soon as they made enough cash they left places such as Beyazıt and Beyoǧlu in favour of one or other of the villages. And although they still conducted their business in the city, with their swarms of prostitutes – the Natashas – and their various drug and human traffic cartels, they didn’t seem keen to sully their own hearths. Hence the police in Sarıyer, Yeniköy and other smart Bosphorus villages had little trouble with them. Ayşe had, however, taken a list of these people’s names from the local cops to show to İkmen. It was probably a waste of time like the rest of her trip. There was no reason to think, as yet, that the children had been taken by mobsters. They always demanded money, and so far no one had contacted the artist, much less asked him for money. But it had been a very pleasant day in spite of her lack of success. Wandering around very attractive fish restaurants asking about whether Melih Akdeniz was known there had been hot but enjoyable work. Everyone she asked knew of him, but no one knew him personally. Not that Akdeniz had ever said he and his family ate in Sarıyer often. All he’d actually said was that his children liked fish, and that they had planned to go out to Sarıyer on that particular occasion.
    ‘Hello, Ayşe.’
    She looked up into a pair of large, dark eyes.
    ‘Hulya. What are you doing here?’
    Hulya İkmen, seventeen and sweetly pretty in her thin summer dress, sat down beside her.
    ‘We’ve just been to visit Berekiah’s aunt at Rumeli Kavaǧi,’ she said as she brushed a great swathe of black hair out of her eyes.
    Ayşe had decided to sit outside in order to smoke. What Hulya was doing out in the warm but strong wind she couldn’t imagine. One could just as easily admire the view from inside the ferry, far away from the wind and occasional splashes of spray.
    ‘Berekiah’s just coming. He wants a cigarette,’ the girl said in reply to Ayşe’s inner musings.
    ‘Oh.’
    Berekiah Cohen was a nice young man. The son of Ayşe’s old colleague Balthazar Cohen, he worked for one of