Free River of The Dead by Barbara Nadel

in Mardin and married this farmer from there. They don’t speak to her, but I know Yusuf has used her place in the past. He’ll use anyone.’ She cast her eyes downwards. ‘Her name is Bulbul, that’s all I know. She lives on a farm outside Birecik with her husband. He’s a lot older than her, I think.’
    ‘Where is Birecik?’
    ‘South of here,’ Edibe Taner said. ‘It’s on the Euphrates.’ She smiled at the woman and said, ‘Thank you, Anastasia. You did the right thing.’
    Furious now, Anastasia Akyuz turned away with tears in her eyes.
    Inspector Taner flicked her head at Süleyman, indicating that they should go. But before she left she put one of her hands on Anastasia’s shoulder and said, ‘And next time, if there is a next time, Yusuf seeks the warmth of your bed for the night, be kind to yourself, Anastasia, and say no.’ She let go of the woman and took Süleyman by the arm.
    ‘Where are we going?’ Süleyman said, looking down at Taner’s strong hand on his bicep.
    ‘To headquarters here and then on to Birecik,’ she answered casually. ‘No point being here if Kaya is elsewhere.’
    ‘Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!’ Fatma İkmen put her fingers to her lips and waved her other hand as if in warning. ‘Bekir is still asleep!’
    ‘Mum, it’s eleven o’clock,’ her son Bülent replied. ‘Even I’m up!’
    When he had returned from performing his military service the previous year, Bülent, who was now in his early twenties, had gone to live with his sister Çiçek in an apartment near Atatürk Airport. Like his sister, Bülent worked as cabin crew for Turkish Airlines and, again like Çiçek, he flew all over the world on a regular basis. Unlike his sister, Bülent didn’t really remember his brother Bekir. He did not therefore share her apparent joy at seeing him again. In fact, Bülent found the older man not a little patronising and his mother’s attitude towards him irritating in the extreme. Fatma was behaving as if Bekir was a baby.
    ‘So what tasty little treat have you been cooking up for him today?’ Bülent said as he entered the kitchen, which smelt strongly of cooked sugar and butter.
    ‘Bekir was always a great one for baklava,’ Fatma said as she turned the heat up on the samovar in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Tea?’
    ‘Yes, thank you. You’re making baklava?’ Bülent said, astounded. ‘Mum, you can buy that stuff from the patisserie down the road. Did you make the pastry and—’
    ‘Yes, yes, yes! What is wrong with that?’ his mother interrupted angrily. ‘Do I have to ask you what I may or may not do in my own kitchen?’
    ‘No, of course not,’ her son said. ‘But Mum, I know that if you make baklava from scratch, as in you make the pastry too, it’s really hard and time-consuming, and—’
    ‘My mother did it without complaint,’ Fatma said, pouring tea from the samovar pot into a small tulip glass for Bülent.
    Baklava, which consists of nuts, a lot of sugar and layer upon layer of very thin buttery filo pastry, is not an easy dessert to make. All but the most enthusiastic cooks did as Bülent had suggested and bought the stuff ready made from a pastry shop. Fatma İkmen did indeed like to cook, but even she had, to Bülent’s knowledge at least, always drawn the line at baklava.
    ‘So where have you been this week, my son?’ Fatma said as she ushered Bülent, a tall and still very thin young man, into a chair by the kitchen table.
    ‘Holland,’ he said, slipping a hand into his denim jacket and taking out a packet of cigarettes. ‘We were meant to be just shuttling there and back but on Tuesday the plane developed some sort of engine trouble and we had to lay over for the night.’
    ‘Oh?’ Fatma sat down across the table from her son and watched him light up a cigarette. Just like his father. She didn’t approve, but she accepted that smoking was something that most of her children did. ‘In Amsterdam?’
    ‘Yes.’ There was another smell