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seemingly needless deaths like that of young Cem Ataman still shocked him.
    ‘I’ll contact the family and make the necessary arrangements,’ he said, and then, as if putting Cem Ataman himself to one side, he moved the boy’s notes to the edge of his desk. ‘So what time did you eventually leave the party?’ he asked, changing the subject to something far more pleasant.
    ‘At about midnight,’ Süleyman replied. ‘I think everyone, including Hulya and Berekiah, had had enough by then.’
    Arto nodded. ‘Yes. Weddings are tiring. Mine was. I would have stayed longer yesterday, but my wife doesn’t thrive well in the heat. I think Çetin understood.’
    ‘I’m sure he did.’
    It was a safe assumption. Friends since childhood, the Turk Çetin İkmen and the Armenian Arto Sarkissian barely needed to speak now in order to know what the other was thinking. That Arto had been there to support his old friend at his daughter’s wedding had, both he and Süleyman knew, been enough.
    ‘I couldn’t help seeing you talking to my brother,’ the Armenian began.
    ‘Yes,’ Süleyman cut in quickly, ‘but not about . . .’
    ‘I realise that Krikor won’t have your results yet,’ Arto said, alluding to the second HIV test Süleyman had recently undergone at the hands of his addiction specialist brother.
    ‘No.’ Süleyman reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and lit up. ‘Çetin told me that Jak Cohen has bought the young couple a house,’ he said, reverting to the lighter side of the İkmen/Cohen wedding once again.
    Arto shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘Yes. Amazing. In Fener and needing some work, I understand, which is why they’ll be living with Mr and Mrs Cohen for a while. But to give them a house! I don’t know what Jak Cohen does over in England but he must be very good at it.’
    ‘I think he works in the entertainment business in some capacity,’ Süleyman confided. ‘His brother isn’t exactly forthcoming on the subject, which I suppose could lead one to all sorts of rather unsavoury conclusions.’
    The Armenian laughed. ‘By which I take it you mean sex “work”.’
    ‘Maybe. But then if he runs strip or dancing clubs, so what? Such places are legal in Britain and so any money he earns from these pursuits would be “honest”.’
    ‘Nothing to disturb Çetin’s sleep then,’ Arto said.
    ‘We all know that Balthazar and his brothers can be a little morally selective, to say the least,’ Süleyman replied, ‘but I don’t believe that they’re bad people, and I’ve lived with them so I should know.’
    ‘Then all we can and should do is be happy for the young people.’
    ‘Yes,’ Süleyman agreed, ‘that is all we should do.’
    Hamdı Alan had been a police constable for only three years. Based at the small and really quite picturesque station on the waterfront at Anadolu Kavaḡı, he didn’t get to experience much beyond the odd disagreement between drunken fishermen. Luckily Hamdı, whose main preoccupation in life was to find a nice Muslim girl, marry her and have children, liked it like that. No trouble meant more time sitting quietly in the sunshine, reflecting, or not, upon the meaning of life. However, this new situation – he didn’t know what to call it yet – had already rattled his customary peace and thrown him rapidly into a world he neither knew nor wanted to know.
    The body had been discovered by an elderly woman who’d been up at Yoros grazing her small family of goats. Not so much shocked by the blood, most of which had soaked into the ground, as by the girl’s nakedness, she’d thrown her coat across the body in order to preserve the modesty of the deceased. Constable Fuat Ayla, who had offered, reluctantly, to accompany Hamdı up to the site, had pulled the coat away and then turned the body on to its back as soon as he arrived.
    ‘Obvious what happened,’ Ayla said as he stared down at the butchered body at his feet.