Petrified by Barbara Nadel

his voice revert to rough tones, talking too loudly and swearing with gusto came easily to him. Not that Suleyman was trying to be like that himself. He didn’t need to. If Masha knew who and what he was then so did a lot of other people in this place. As the target of whatever game the whore and her master were playing with him, he needed only to play along until the end – wherever that might lead him. The trick was to try to outwit Rostov, which was why Metin İskender had turned up at this ghastly place of expensive, desperate flesh and barely drinkable alcohol. It wasn’t as if anyone but Metin really knew what Mehmet was doing. İkmen was too involved in his own case and Suleyman’s deputy, Çöktin, didn’t need to know the finer details. Like this . . .
    Suleyman looked about him – at men buying cheap champagne at two hundred dollars a bottle for women who looked like inflatable sex dolls. Their faces bloated with drugs and alcohol, the women whispered both their areas of sexual expertise and their prices into the ears of the men who never, ever smiled. Later, the men would go to the back of the premises with their choice or choices for the night and relieve themselves into various orifices. To his horror, just the thought of it made him feel aroused. He was determined that nothing like this was going to happen to him. Metin İskender had come along specifically to prevent any harm coming to him. Metin, as Mehmet knew that he would, had insisted upon it.
    ‘You can’t go to a place like that on your own,’ he’d said when Mehmet had told him about his encounter with Masha in the İç Bedesten, ‘especially without Ardiç’s knowledge. These types could murder you and have your body burned to dust by morning. No one will talk – it will be as if you’d never been in the place. At the very least this tart, if she says you’ve had sex with her, could compromise what you’re trying to achieve here. I know it’s her word against yours, but even a hint of sexual impropriety would destroy what you’ve done.’ It was all true . . .
    The ‘tart’ pushed her way through the greasy, beaded curtains that led, Suleyman imagined, to unmentionable rooms at the back of this terrible place and walked towards him, smiling.
    ‘Come to the bar and have a drink with me,’ she said as she slipped one of her arms through his. ‘I like champagne, what about you?’
    ‘Does it matter what I like?’ he said as he forced something resembling a smile on to his features.
    ‘No,’ she laughed, and then barked something at the blond barman who brought her a bottle sporting a label covered in Cyrillic characters.
    Russian champagne – even the thought of it made Suleyman’s stomach turn. If it was anything like the stuff he’d had before it was probably a mixture of low-grade Georgian grapes and glycol. Masha led him to a nicotine- and ethanol-scented booth in the corner of the room and placed the bottle, together with two large glasses, down on the table. A small young man whose face was almost as hard as his heavily gelled hair watched Masha and her ‘mark’ sit down with interest. It was a revelation just how seedy Metin İskender could look in this context.
    Masha poured ‘champagne’ for them both and immediately started sipping from her glass. It was said that stuff like this could make a person go blind, which was why Suleyman contented himself with just looking at his glass. Even the bubbles looked greasy and unnatural. He looked away from the glass and into Masha’s greedy, sexual face. He had to get out of here and soon.
    ‘So,’ he began, in a low voice, ‘this information you have for me.’
    Masha looked around nervously. ‘You don’t think I’m going to give it to you here?’
    ‘Well, you suggested that I come to this place.’
    ‘Yes,’ she drew closer to him, placing one of her hands firmly on his thigh, ‘to meet.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘We can only talk in my room,’ she said as