Clueless

By Barbara Nadel

In the world of my crime series set in İstanbul, Inspector Çetin İkmen and his family and colleagues have their adventures about eighteen months before publication of the hard-back editions of each book. This means that my research has to take place well in advance of my fingers even touching my computer keyboard. The research for my latest book, ‘Pretty Dead Things’ was actually done in May 2005. Unbeknown to me at the time, May was to be a very ‘big’ month in İstanbul…

I trundled into my usual pension in the centre of the city on Saturday 21st May 2005 to find my friends who run the place gripped with excitement. Fixated as I was on finding weird and fabulous cellars in which to ‘kill’ innocent victims, I had only been very vaguely aware of the large numbers of Italians and Liverpudlians I’d encountered at the airport. My friend Adem could hardly believe it. ‘Barbara,’ he said as patiently as any football obsessed Turk can manage, ‘AC Milan and Liverpool are playing in the EUFA Champions League final here in İstanbul on Wednesday! Soon the city will be full of fans. It’s very exciting!’

For Adem it probably was, but as for myself, all I could think was ‘Oh, crap it’s going to be really difficult getting around.’ And I wasn’t wrong. Over the next three days the already huge population of İstanbul swelled to include vast numbers of people waving flags and carrying beer cans. At the centre of what is called the new (as in 19th century) part of the city where many bars, restaurants and clubs are situated, the streets and pavements were packed. Taksim Square at the very centre of this district was full of Scousers in relaxed, sunbathing mode. The local police were there, as they were around and about the churches that seemed to attract so very many fans, but they didn’t intervene at any point. In fact even when some of the fans did get quite boisterous (hanging from café awnings by just a single arm was a popular pastime that I witnessed several times), the local cops left well alone and, just like the characters in ‘Pretty Dead Things’, saved their energy for any instances of real ‘bother’.

Many of the fans I spoke to were surprised. They had expected the Turkish police to be much more punitive than that. One of the Liverpudlians I chatted with said, ‘They’re all decent lads as far as I can see.’ He then went on to tell me how surprised he was that İstanbul had so many churches. ‘I thought they were all Muslim over here,’ he said. The majority of the population is Muslim, but Christians of almost every denomination you can name as well as Jews are catered for as well. Christians and Jews do live in the city alongside their Muslim neighbours.

So between all the beer drinking and sunbathing the fans also got a glimpse of the city that, all who spoke to me, found both surprising and very welcoming. They hadn’t known much about Turkey before they came over for the match but they all felt they’d found somewhere far more friendly and laid back than they had imagined. As for me, I found some very creepy cellars indeed. I even found one, underneath a friends carpet shop, that had once been a Byzantine chapel complete with ghostly looking frescos. I did also watch the football match the following Wednesday. My friends and I gathered around a small television set and shouted for Liverpool until our throats ached. I am generally clueless about football, but even I enjoyed that match and was totally jazzed when Liverpool won.

We all went out into the street afterwards, partying into the night with the fans, the local police officers and a group of passing Australians. There was so little trouble that it seemed to me to be just the perfect time for a really grisly crime to occur. And so it was at that moment that the idea of setting the denouement of ‘Pretty Dead Things’ against the background of this football match came to me. Then, as now, I know very little about football but I do know a good opportunity for slaughter when I see one!