A Passion for Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  If he were honest, Süleyman didn’t even really have a coherent theory about his suspicions. That Mürsel always seemed to know where the peeper had been and why he had done whatever he had done was consistent with his role as a member of the secret services. But then if he was that close, why was he consistently failing to catch the peeper? People were continuing to die because of Mürsel’s incompetence, or worse. If only he could speak to someone about these things! But İkmen had his phone switched off and İzzet in faraway Hakkari was dealing with his own problems. Thus far, to his knowledge, the investigation at the Perihan Hanım institute in Van had come to nothing.

  Süleyman thought about these and other things until his father-in-law returned at six. After sharing tea with him, he went back upstairs and began to dress. When his wife eventually arrived with their son at just before seven she was surprised to see her husband standing in front of his wardrobe mirror staring at his own image with still, blank eyes. He looked very smart and, as ever, very handsome.

  ‘You look’, she said to him with half a laugh in her voice, ‘as if you’re going on a date.’

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  Çetin İkmen was not amused. Having started his investigation into the consular women of Peri at the house of Peter Melly, he was dismayed when, having moved on to the Monroes’ place, he discovered that the Englishman had lied to him.

  ‘Matilda is staying with Mark and myself,’ Kim Monroe said when İkmen mentioned that he had already visited her neighbours but had been unsuccessful in tracking Mrs Melly down. ‘She’s left Peter.’

  ‘Mr Melly told me his wife was out shopping,’ İkmen said as he replaced the tea glass the Canadian had given him on to its saucer.

  ‘For a new husband, maybe,’ Kim said. ‘That business with the Lawrence carpet and the money was just the last straw.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ İkmen asked.

  Kim Monroe sat down opposite İkmen and, unusually in his experience for a Canadian, lit a cigarette. They were outside on one of those big Peri patios overlooking the Monroes’ pool and the forest beyond the village. A manicured, rather disturbing idyll to İkmen’s way of thinking, and one which this woman was about to expound upon.

  ‘You’re an intelligent man, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to ask whether or not you can see through all this.’ She swept a hand across the view in front of them. ‘Apart from the trees nothing here is real. Everybody has heaps of money, some of which they spend in the village store, which carries goods from Harrods in London and Macys in New York. Everyone lives in a fabulous house with servants, they have fabulous holidays, and anyone who is anyone collects either carpets, villas, jewellery or all three. I’m not knocking it, but it does encourage a kind of atmosphere of invincibility. Anything is possible, money is no object. Some people inevitably end up getting into trouble.’

  ‘Like Mr Melly?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ve noticed that Peter’s house is stuffed with carpets. It’s his thing.’

  ‘But not Mrs Melly’s?’

  ‘No.’ Kim Monroe looked down at the floor.

  ‘So what was her “thing”, as you put it, Mrs Monroe?’ İkmen asked.

  She put her cigarette out before looking up into his eyes and saying, ‘This is only hearsay, you understand . . .’

  ‘But?’

  She sighed. ‘But it’s said that Matilda took lovers. Local men.’

  ‘I see.’ İkmen cleared his throat. ‘And your evidence for this contention is?’

  ‘I saw her once, about a year ago in Bebek.’

  ‘With a Turkish man?’

  ‘In a restaurant, yes,’ Kim said. ‘They were cosy . . .’

  ‘Kissing or . . . ?’

  ‘Just cosy.’ She smiled. ‘On its own it would have been nothing, but then more recently, late last year, Doris Klaassen saw her, she thinks, coming out of an apartment up in Teşvikiye.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘So at that time she was supposed to be helping out at a British Consulate kids’ party,’ Kim replied. ‘As well as the British women, Doris and I had volunteered to help out too. At the last minute Matilda cancelled. She said that her maid, who lives over in Sarıyer, was sick and she wanted to go and see if there was anything she could do. So I went off to the consulate and I met Doris there. Doris had driven via Teşvikiye because she wanted to drop in to Marks and Spencer first. She was just going back to her car after visiting the store when she saw Matilda, a little flushed, she said, but unusually for her dressed to kill. Doris had to look twice to know it was her.’

  ‘But Mrs Klaassen didn’t actually see a man with Mrs Melly?’

  ‘No.’

  Women, both local and foreign, were inclined to dress up when they went shopping up in Teşvikiye/Nişantaşı. It was that sort of area. It was also the place, on Atiye Sokak, where until very recently Yaşar Uzun the carpet dealer had lived. Yaşar Uzun’s stylish place, way beyond his means as a carpet dealer, not five minutes away from Marks and Spencer’s . . . Was it possible that Matilda Melly had had her own and quite separate ‘arrangement’ with the man who had been doing rather dubious business with her husband? After all, if Nikolai Stoev was to be believed, someone had to have been the woman for whom Uzun had bought the house on the Bulgarian coast. However, with hearsay, one had to be careful, but İkmen felt that a visit to both Doris Klaassen and the kapıcı of Uzun’s building would not be a waste of his time. But then his mobile phone began to ring and so he was forced to turn his thoughts to other things.

  They didn’t stay for long in the bar of the Pera Palas Hotel. For although its somewhat faded early twentieth-century glamour certainly appealed, and always had done, to Süleyman, Mürsel was clearly uncomfortable.

  ‘I think that maybe Haydar’s death is having a more profound effect upon me than I had imagined,’ the spy said after he had paid the silent waiter for their drinks and then retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘There’s far too much chatter here. Too much music.’ He looked with some distaste through to a salon that gave off from the bar where a lone pianist played ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ on a really quite battered baby grand. ‘Do you fancy going on somewhere else? Somewhere quieter?’

  ‘If you like.’ Süleyman smiled. And in truth, despite his misgivings about going anywhere with Mürsel on his own, quite how he was going to have broached the subject of the peeper with the spy in the Pera Palas bar had given him pause for thought.

  Once outside the famous pale green hotel, Mürsel turned to Süleyman and said, ‘You know I have the keys to the Saray Hamam?’

  Süleyman frowned. It had been outside the well-known gay haunt called the Saray Hamam in the old red light district of Karaköy that he had first encountered Mürsel Bey. He’d been following up on leads given to him by some of the earliest peeper victims. They had all at some time or another used the Saray, in order to meet or just look at other men. It had been Süleyman’s contention at that time that the peeper was possibly following his victims home from the hamam.

  ‘Why do you have keys?’ he asked. ‘Surely the hamam is open for business now? It isn’t late.’

  ‘No, but it’s closed at the moment,’ Mürsel said. ‘The owner, a charming man from Adana, a friend, is currently on vacation. Ibiza, I believe.’

  ‘He’s given you the keys?’

  ‘Yes.’ The spy smiled. ‘How does a nice quiet bath sound to you, Mehmet?’

  He heard his heart begin to pound, but he said, ‘Great.’ And so after first walking up on to İstiklal Caddesi the two men strolled down into the tiny dark streets of old Karaköy.

  Two things had happened. First, Ayşe Farsakoğlu told him about the results of her inquiries about Yaşar Uzun’s purchases in Bulgaria. ‘The Bulgarian Consulate officials were completely in accord with what Nikolai Stoev told us about Yaşar Uzun’s property in that country. So, in light of the Ergin lover theory we talked about, I asked them to check and see wheth
er anyone called Handan Ergin had somehow managed to get out of this country to Bulgaria. She hadn’t, of course, although what you might be interested in, sir, is the fact that a fifty-two-year-old English woman called Matilda Melly flew to Sofia on Wednesday, 7 April. There is no record of her re-entering Turkey.’

  İkmen, who was now inside the Monroes’ house and well away from Kim, said, ‘But that’s impossible. Matilda Melly is still here in the city.’

  ‘All I can do is repeat what the Bulgarians told me,’ Ayşe said. ‘A British woman called Matilda Melly flew to Sofia on Wednesday, 7 April. Where she went after that isn’t known. But it would appear that she is still in the country. Would you like me to ask the Bulgarian authorities to look for her, sir?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Accepting the possibility that there could have indeed been two middle-aged English women in this city with the same name, this maybe raises the spectre of impersonation or identity theft too. In the past, Bulgaria had something of a reputation for this sort of thing. We must alert the British Consulate too. You’re at the station?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I . . .’

  ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can,’ İkmen said. ‘Mrs Melly has been proving interesting from this end of things too. But I’ll speak to you about that later.’

  ‘Sir, there’s something else, too,’ Ayşe said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A telephone call from London. The man who claimed he was the grandson of Lawrence of Arabia’s servant is apparently genuine. He’s called Lee Roberts and seems very anxious to come out here and see the carpet as soon as he can get a flight.’

  ‘Is he.’

  ‘Officers at Scotland Yard are e-mailing copies of his documents to you and I’ve told them to give Mr Roberts our contact details.’

  İkmen sighed.

  ‘Did I do the right thing, sir?’

  İkmen rubbed the side of his head with his hand. ‘Yes, yes, of course you did, Ayşe,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired and although I want to clear this carpet thing up as soon as I can, the thought of another person to look after and talk to does not fill me with joy. I’m sure that Mr Roberts will be charming, but he is a foreigner, he almost certainly won’t speak Turkish, and—’

  ‘And I’ll look after him for you,’ Ayşe said. ‘I need to practise my English. And anyway, sir, if he is who he says he is, he won’t be with us for very long, will he?’

  ‘No.’

  İkmen heard a noise behind him which proved to be the front door of the Monroes’ house opening. He turned to look in that direction and saw a short, lumpish middle-aged western woman. For a moment they both just stared at each other, until İkmen murmured into his phone, ‘I’ll call you later, Ayşe.’

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman said in what İkmen recognised as British-accented English.

  ‘My name is Inspector İkmen, of the İstanbul police. And you are?’

  ‘Matilda Melly,’ the woman said now with a sudden and surprisingly beautiful smile. ‘You interviewed my husband . . .’

  ‘In connection with the murder of Yaşar Uzun, yes,’ İkmen said. This was the first time he’d met Melly’s wife and it was proving interesting. Her clothes and general demeanour were indeed dull and plain and, on the surface, she appeared so homely as to seem almost invisible. But as Kim Monroe had suggested, there was something else underneath that was entirely at odds with her plain exterior. It came to the fore in her smile, which made her something different, something beyond beautiful. Although whether that meant that Matilda Melly was or had been having affairs with anyone was quite another matter.

  ‘Mrs Melly, I’ve just been to your house where your husband told me you were out shopping.’

  ‘Did he?’ She moved further into the living room and then said, ‘Well, he was lying.’

  ‘I gather from Mrs Monroe—’

  ‘I’ve left Peter,’ she interrupted baldly. ‘I’m going to stay with Kim and Mark until the consulate get my passport organised. That’s where I’ve just been, to the consulate.’

  Frowning, İkmen said, ‘What do you mean, “get your passport organised”?’

  In light of what Ayşe had told him about a Matilda Melly travelling to Bulgaria on the seventh of the month this was, İkmen felt, about to prove interesting.

  ‘I’ve lost my passport,’ Matilda Melly said.

  ‘When?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Peter and I had a row early this morning. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that I decided I’d had enough. I went upstairs to pack my things and it was then that I discovered I couldn’t find my passport. As soon as I got here I phoned the consulate, who asked me to come in immediately. I’ve been there all day.’

  ‘So when did you last see your passport, Mrs Melly?’

  She looked behind him to where Kim Monroe was now standing in the patio doorway. ‘What?’

  ‘When did you last see your passport?’ İkmen reiterated.

  Matilda Melly pulled her chin backwards and suddenly looked very, very plain once again. ‘Why? I’ve told my consulate. What is it to you?’

  ‘There is a very lively trade in stolen European Union passports through this city, Mrs Melly. As a police officer I am bound to investigate any such passport that appears to be missing.’

  ‘It hasn’t been stolen,’ Matilda Melly said now with one of her smiles again.

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  ‘No. I’ve misplaced it. I hadn’t seen it for weeks. I’m careless, it—’

  ‘Mrs Melly, a person as yet unknown entered Sofia in Bulgaria on a British passport in the name of Matilda Melly on the seventh of this month. The age given on the passport was the same as your own and this person has, since arriving in Bulgaria, apparently disappeared.’

  ‘What?’ She sat down on one of the Monroes’ sofas where she was quickly joined by her friend Kim.

  ‘Mrs Melly,’ İkmen said, ‘I have a lot of questions I must ask you. I think it might be better if you accompany me to the station.’

  Instantly, and in a high-pitched girlish way, she began to cry.

  Mehmet Süleyman tucked the top of the really very small peştamal around the edge of his underpants and then looked at himself in the full-length mirror at the far end of the men’s changing room. Apart from the colourful checked cloth around his hips he looked very white. He was also, he noticed now for the first time, going just slightly grey across his chest. But this was not the time for either vanity or self-doubt. Mürsel was waiting for him in the hararet where, he had told him earlier, he would give the tired policeman one of his very efficient, as he had put it, massages. What this actually meant, Süleyman tried not to speculate upon. It was, in common with the mystery of who exactly was operating the boiler that provided the steam for the reportedly closed hamam, something that was as yet concealed from him. After slipping a pair of enormous takunya clogs on his feet he made his way unsteadily towards first the soğukluk, the cooling down room and then into the hot and steamy hararet.

  A hamam or Turkish bath generally had four main areas: the camekan or reception area where tired bathers could lie down, drink tea and smoke cigarettes, the changing rooms, the soğukluk or cool room, and, at the centre of the building, the red-hot hararet. The hararet was nearly always covered with marble and was frequently a domed area with light filtering down through the thick steam from small star-shaped windows. At the centre of the hararet was a great marble slab known as the göbektaşı or navel stone. It was here that massages were given by trained masseurs to tired and aching customers. Not that a trained masseur was in the Saray Hamam on this particular evening. It was just Mürsel, dressed in the same short peştamal as Mehmet Süleyman, sitting on the slab, staring into the thickening steam around his ankles.

  ‘Ah, my customer,’ he said as he watched the policeman clack his way shakily towards him. Takunya clogs were one of those inventions that defy logic in that they were completely insufficient to their purpose. One fal
se move on a pair of takunya in a wet and slippery hamam and one could only too easily fall over and break an arm or crack one’s head.

  The göbektaşı was hot and so Süleyman sat down with care. The boiler must have been started hours before.

  ‘I used to give Haydar a massage from time to time,’ Mürsel said with a sad smile on his face. ‘Sometimes we were far from what you would call civilisation.’

  ‘Did you and Haydar . . . Have you worked abroad?’ Süleyman watched Mürsel watch a large drip of sweat run down the entire length of his face.

  Neither the smile nor the look of hungry sexuality moved. ‘That isn’t your business,’ he said. And then with a rapidity that was truly breathtaking he darted forward and crushed his lips against Süleyman’s mouth. It became a long, and terrifying open-mouthed kiss. If he were honest, Süleyman’s terror was not about the fact that Mürsel was a man; Süleyman knew, if with considerable guilt, that he experienced sexual feelings for other men from time to time. No, it was the all-encompassing viper-like nature of his ‘lover’, the way that Mürsel almost seemed to eat him while pinning his hands with enormous force down on to the hot stone below. When he had finished the spy said, ‘I assume I am not being presumptuous, am I, Mehmet? I mean, why come here if you didn’t want . . .’ He left the issue of what Süleyman might or might not want open to the hot, steamy air.