River of The Dead by Barbara Nadel Page B

was that he was exhausted. After a night of very little sleep, he’d been up since the crack of dawn and now here he was powering on into the back of beyond where the only lights that could be seen came from tanks on their way out east to fight the Kurdish separatists, the PKK. Someone – an informer, the local Jandarma had reckoned, Taner told him – had been beheaded by one or other group of terrorists in a village near to Mardin. It was not, after all, just the PKK who operated in this area. There was also Hezbollah and possibly al-Qaeda too, Taner expounded breezily, as well as some other little splinter groups – Marxists, religious fundamentalists, ultra-nationalists. That she seemed to be happy going back to what to Süleyman appeared to be a hotbed of violence was odd. But then Edibe Taner was not your run of the mill policewoman.
    Through half-closed, bloodshot eyes he looked at her. She was a very attractive woman and yet, strangely for him, he felt nothing for her. Mehmet Süleyman was and always had been in love with his wife. But that he had a weakness for other women he was the first to admit. It was partly because he himself was attractive and women came on to him. But he could also make the running himself, as he knew only too well. Inspector Taner had the look of a woman who would make any feelings she might have for a person well and truly apparent. But maybe that was just an illusion. Maybe the fact was that, however professional and liberated she appeared, she was still an eastern woman with all the modesty and restraint that went with such a background. But then again, perhaps in view of the fact that she had shown absolutely no romantic interest in him he was just choosing to think that that was so. It was possible she was indeed a very liberated woman who simply did not fancy him.
    ‘You’d still like to stay at St Sobo’s?’ she said suddenly, in that harsh staccato way of hers.
    The monastery where Dr Sarkissian’s friend lived was, so Taner had told him, about ten minutes by car from the centre of Mardin. In the scheme of the geography of the city it was no further away from police headquarters than the hotel Taner had had in mind for him. That Taner herself obviously wanted him to stay at one of the new hotels in town was evident – she was nothing if not a woman imbued with civic pride – but that was not really his problem. Brother Seraphim and a degree of peace and quiet had the feel of something far more attractive to Süleyman.
    ‘Yes, I would,’ he replied into the darkness of the road ahead.
    ‘I don’t blame you,’ Taner said with a sigh. ‘The monks are interesting and, like you, educated. In the hotel you’d be bombarded with Syrians who’ve come over the border for the Easter services at our churches and monasteries.’
    He turned to look at her. ‘Easter? Is it Easter?’
    ‘Next weekend, yes,’ she said. And then she yawned. ‘We’ll all be on duty then – cops, Jandarma, military.’
    ‘In the churches.’
    ‘Protecting the Christians, yes,’ she said. ‘We wish them happy Easter as they go in to worship while we wait outside with tanks and guns just in case any lunatic or band of lunatics might have ideas about killing them. But then I believe you protect the churches in İstanbul, don’t you?’
    There was a measure of security in all places of worship in the city, but rarely were tanks employed as part of the process.
    ‘Yes . . .’
    Far, far away in the distance, unless he was very much mistaken, a glimmer of light was just beginning to be discernible. He didn’t have any idea about how long they had been on the road, whether he had in fact slept for a short time or not, but he felt that dawn had to be happening some time soon. That could be the beginning of it.
    ‘We’re about an hour away now,’ Taner said as she lit yet another cigarette. She’d chain-smoked ever since they’d left Birecik. ‘When we reach Mardin we’ll get some