Deadly Web by Barbara Nadel

both of these sites there are foreign words.’
    İkmen walked over to the machines and leaned down to look at their screens.
    ‘Are they up now, these words?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Çöktin pointed with one hand at each screen. ‘See here and here.’
    İkmen frowned as he read, smoking in a deep and focused fashion. After a few moments he said, ‘I can see what you mean, Çöktin. They seem to be the same. Here, this word “madi” appears on both machines. Some of the others . . . I don’t know what any of them mean. Can’t even guess at the language.’
    ‘No. But on Cem’s machine you have these words being used by someone who calls him or herself “Communion”, while on Gülay’s Theodora site the user is called “Nika”. I don’t know whether Nika and Communion are the same person.’
    ‘Does anyone ever reply to these people in this language you have discovered, Çöktin?’
    ‘No, that’s what’s so odd, sir. Nika and Communion exclusively use these words. No one else ever asks what they mean and yet they all seem to be able to understand and reply to them.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve not, as far as I know, found anything sinister on any of these sites apart from the fact that Nika was the last person Gülay Arat communicated with by computer before she died.’
    ‘What did Nika say?’
    Çöktin did what to İkmen was some arcane things with the computer before he read out, ‘Nika – “I guess you must really be looking forward to becoming a haş gagi.”; Gülay as “Empress I”, which is her newsgroup name – “Yes, I can’t wait to tell you all about it.”’
    ‘When did this Nika communicate with the girl?’
    ‘The day before she died.’
    ‘Doesn’t sound like she knew she was about to die, does it?’
    ‘No, sir,’ Çöktin replied, ‘sounds far more, to me, as if she’s going to go off and do something enjoyable, then come back and tell this Nika all about it. Perhaps it was the sex? Maybe she was looking forward to it?’ He frowned. ‘If only we knew what a haş gagi was or is.’
    İkmen shrugged and then moved across to Süleyman’s desk and sat down.
    ‘Can’t you trace this Nika through the Internet?’ he said. ‘I mean, if you know that Gülay called herself Empress I, which I assume must be Irene, then you can surely contact Nika.’
    ‘No, I can’t, sir.’
    ‘You’ve identified Gülay.’
    ‘Only because I have her machine.’ Çöktin leaned back in his chair, yawned and then lit a cigarette. ‘People hide their identities – not necessarily for sinister reasons.’
    ‘How do they do that?’
    When nothing but silence greeted his question, İkmen looked up. Çöktin’s pained expression told him everything he needed to know.
    ‘I wouldn’t even begin to understand, would I, Çöktin?’
    ‘No, sir,’ Çöktin murmured, but then he cleared his throat and added, ‘And neither would many people, including Inspector Süleyman, if that’s any consolation.’
    İkmen smiled. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to learn about computers, the subject was just simply beyond him. Even reading and writing e-mail was a trial – Ayşe had been obliged to show him numerous times before he got the gist of it. And if something out of the ordinary happened he was helpless. People talked about what they did on their machines all the time, but to İkmen it all just sounded like so much gibberish.
    ‘So if this Nika has hidden his or her identity, what about all of the other people involved in this group?’
    ‘They all use these pseudonyms.’
    ‘Don’t they ever meet?’
    ‘What, in the flesh?’ Çöktin smiled. ‘I doubt it, sir. Newsgroups aren’t like chat rooms. People don’t generally go on to them to look for a date. Newsgroups are about sharing information and exchanging ideas. Some of the debates can get quite heated and people usually want to protect their identity just so that they can express themselves without fear of ridicule or