A Passion for Killing

by Barbara Nadel

‘Mr Melly, if I were to search your house . . .’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t find sixty grand, that’s for sure!’ Peter Melly cried. ‘Christ, I wish you would! I’m totally skint!’

  ‘Skint?’

  ‘Penniless. Without money,’ the Englishman said. ‘Search the house if you must, but . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid that I will have to do so,’ İkmen replied.

  Peter Melly put his hand in his jacket pocket and took out a bunch of keys. ‘Here you are,’ he said as he threw them across the great scarred table at İkmen. ‘Knock yourself out.’

  Before he took the keys, İkmen said, ‘Mr Melly, wouldn’t you like to be present at the search?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, can I get Mrs Melly to come over? I understand she is staying with Mr and Mrs Monroe.’

  ‘That’s up to her,’ Peter Melly responded curtly. ‘She is, she says, flying home to England tomorrow. I don’t know whether she’ll still be interested in our home.’

  İkmen did not reply. The look of pain on Peter Melly’s face was distracting. Whatever Melly and his wife may not have had in terms of a relationship was, he felt, far outweighed by the sheer habit and comfort – albeit probably unconscious – of their being together. That applied in even the worst of marriages and it hurt.

  For a while İkmen tried to persuade the Englishman to return to his home for the search. But he wouldn’t. He was, he freely admitted, not interested. None of his own carpets even approached the Lawrence Kerman in his eyes and now that Matilda had gone he was bereft. He had ignored her for years, but now that he was truly sorry it was obviously too late. And so İkmen left and went back to the station to gather up his search team. Ayşe Farsakoğlu was the first officer he saw.

  ‘Sir!’ she said as she watched him slowly and wearily cross the station car park.

  He took his cigarette out of his mouth and walked over to her. ‘Ayşe.’

  ‘Sir, we’ve had a telephone call from Scotland Yard. Mr Roberts, the owner, we think, of the Lawrence carpet, is getting into Atatürk Airport tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Are the officers in London satisfied that this Mr Roberts is who he purports to be?’

  ‘Yes, sir, they seem to be,’ Ayşe said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, sir, but I’ve offered to meet Mr Roberts at the airport.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘What is one more or less greedy carpet-fancier to me?’

  It wasn’t like him to be bitter. But she could see that he was depressed. Whatever had passed between İkmen and Mr Melly had obviously far from cheered the policeman.

  ‘I’ve told Mr Melly that we’re going to search his property,’ İkmen said as he walked with Ayşe back towards the station. ‘He’s no interest in being there and so we will briefly detour to the house of the Canadian couple the Monroes to see if Mrs Melly would like to attend. I have the keys.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And then he stopped suddenly and, looking up into the cheerful light blue sky, he said, ‘You know your Mr Roberts, Ayşe? You know what depresses me about his visit?’

  She frowned. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The lack of proportion inherent in it,’ İkmen said. And then seeing that she didn’t really understand he continued, ‘I can easily discover who owns a contentious and valuable carpet but I cannot seem to get any closer to whoever has taken Yaşar Uzun’s life. I’ve no doubt that the carpet dealer was a lying gigolo, but he didn’t deserve to die and I am as far, it seems, from his killer as I was at the beginning of this investigation.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I—’

  ‘Oh, it’s no one’s fault!’ İkmen cried. ‘It’s just . . . You know, Ayşe, when I first saw that Kerman rug all covered in filth in the back of Uzun’s Jeep, I was captivated. I looked at that dully glowing Tree of Life motif and I was hooked. When I was locking it away in my office I found myself wondering how often I would go and take sly, slightly guilty peeks at it in the days to come. But do you know I haven’t done that once.’

  ‘We have been busy.’

  ‘We’re always busy! But if I want or need to find time for something, I will find it,’ he said. ‘But with that rug, I didn’t. I put it away, I left it alone, I moved on. And do you know why?’ He smiled. ‘Because it isn’t important.’

  ‘A lot of people would beg to differ,’ Ayşe put in darkly.

  ‘I know,’ İkmen replied. ‘I know. But compared to a human life . . .’

  ‘Oh, compared to a human life it is nothing,’ Ayşe said. ‘That is self-evident.’

  He put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘You’re my kind of person, Ayşe. You’ll probably never be rich, but . . . Oh, come on, let us get some young, energetic types together and go and search Mr Melly’s house. It will yield absolutely nothing, but . . .’

  She was, she said, packing to go away on a short holiday.

  ‘It’s all been so horrible and I’m so tired,’ Emine Soylu said as she led Süleyman into her elaborate but strangely impersonal living room. ‘Please sit down, Inspector.’

  He went to where she had indicated and, being careful not to knock his injured arm or shoulder as he did so, he sat down. Now that he was here, he was nervous. Although how he might have felt had he been obliged to tell her the whole story of her husband’s demise, he didn’t know. Statements taken by İzzet Melik now from several members of staff at the Perihan Hanım Institute in Van left little room for doubt with regard to the fact that Cabbar Soylu had ordered Deniz Koç’s death. A male nurse was actively being sought in connection with the crime. However, with regard to who had killed Cabbar Soylu the picture was complicated by the fact that Nuri Koç’s name was never going to be allowed to come out into the public domain. The offender was dead and the official line was that he had been a particularly disturbed vagrant. This was the story that Süleyman dutifully told Emine Koç now.

  ‘You shot him yourself?’ she asked as she looked at his injured right arm a little doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We fought, which is where this injury has come from, but then I managed to get hold of my gun and that was, well, that was the end . . .’

  ‘You did a good thing,’ she responded forcefully. ‘Such people do not deserve to live!’

  He wondered whether, had she known the truth, she would have felt the same. But then he didn’t know whether she had loved her brother Nuri or not. He had, in his own way, loved her.

  ‘This is good news,’ Emine Koç said as she lit up a cigarette and then leaned back in her chair. ‘Now perhaps Rahmi will stop chasing shadows.’

  ‘Your son looks for reasons, revenge . . .’

  ‘Cabbar’s son, as he never tires of telling me these days, looks for vengeance, yes,’ she replied. ‘It is almost as if my marriage never existed, as if I am nothing.’

  She stared straight ahead of her, the intensity making her face look both very old and very young and vulnerable at the same time.

  ‘And yet you are financially secure?’ He still baulked at moving on into the subject of her real son even though he knew he had to get to Deniz eventually.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Rahmi of course has money, but this house is mine, I have other means provided by my husband too. He was a good husband.’

  Süleyman smiled, but out of nervousness rather than joy. Emine Soylu had loved her husband. He had provided well for her and, Süleyman felt, in his own brutal way had cared for her too. But things were going on right at that moment in Van and Hakkari which meant that not telling Emine what her husband had done was not a viable option.

  He leaned forward in his over-stuffed seat. ‘Mrs Soylu,’ he said gravely, ‘there is no easy way to tell you this . . .’

  ‘What?’ Sitting forwards again, her eyes were awash and glowing with fear. ‘What do you have to tell me? What?’

  ‘Mrs Soylu, we have reason, strong reason, to believe that your late husband Cabbar Soylu was responsible for the death of your son, Deniz Koç in 2003 . . .’<
br />
  ‘What?’

  ‘Mrs Soylu, your son Deniz was living at the Perihan Hanım Institute in Van . . .’

  ‘Yes. Yes, but Deniz died. They think that he may have taken his own life. They do, people like Deniz, he . . .’

  ‘Mrs Soylu, I am very sorry,’ Süleyman said, ‘but I would not be telling you this unless we had enough evidence to at least begin an investigation. My sergeant is currently in Hakkari, helping the authorities there pursue the man your husband instructed to kill Deniz for him.’

  ‘But why would Cabbar do that?’ Emine Soylu said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Mrs Soylu,’ Süleyman said gently, ‘your husband, I am told, wanted to move to Western Europe, set up business there in some capacity.’

  ‘He talked of it, yes.’

  ‘And what was your opinion about that, Mrs Soylu?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was, well . . . I like Paris very much, you know, Inspector. Rome is a little, well,’ she forced a laugh, ‘Italian for my taste, but . . . Cabbar was very keen. I . . . What can I say . . .’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t go, didn’t you, Mrs Soylu?’

  She just looked at him through her big, wide eyes, which had only now just started to get wet from her tears.

  ‘You couldn’t be that far away from Deniz, could you? Here in İstanbul was OK because at least you were in the same country but in France or Italy or, worse still, in Britain or Ireland . . .’

  ‘I only saw him twice a year as it was,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t, I wouldn’t desert him! It was wrong! I told Cabbar, I . . .’

  The realisation crashed across her face like a wave. She threw herself down on to the seat beside her and cried. ‘I killed him!’ she screamed. ‘My poor son, I killed you! Allah! Allah!’

  It was to Süleyman a very primitive display of grief as one might indeed see around grave sites in the east. Even her voice had coarsened. Would she soon, he wondered, start tearing at her face as the working classes were wont to do even in the city? Selfishly he hoped not. He always found that so hard to stomach. He looked around that over-stuffed room for something other than the screaming woman upon which to focus. There were hideous lamps, hideous family photographs treated to look like bad oil paintings, ghastly rugs, unpleasant coffee tables . . . Everywhere he looked there was evidence of gangster ‘taste’ in full and lurid flight. And then suddenly there, too, was Cabbar’s son, Rahmi Soylu, his young face a mixture of irritation, ‘manliness’ and a little bit of concern.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said as he approached the settee upon which his stepmother was slumped. ‘What have you said to her?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve had to give your mother some bad news,’ Süleyman replied. And then looking down at Emine Soylu he said, ‘Mrs Soylu, do you want me to tell Rahmi? Do you . . .’

  But she just wept – screamed and wept. Rahmi Soylu looked down at her with ill-disguised contempt and said, ‘Someone tell me what this is about.’

  Süleyman took a deep breath. ‘We have discovered that your stepmother’s son Deniz was murdered.’

  The young man shrugged and said, ‘But he killed himself, didn’t he? He was mad.’

  ‘Mr Soylu, I am afraid our suspicions have been roused to the degree that we are now seeking to exhume the body of Mr Koç . . .’

  The crying stopped abruptly and immediately. Both men turned to look at a wild and livid Emine Soylu. ‘Exhumed? Dug up?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Soylu, I’m afraid that if we want to try and confirm what has been alleged . . .’

  ‘Dug from the ground!’ She sat or rather reared up on the settee.

  ‘Mrs Soylu . . .’

  ‘But his soul will be in torment! You!’ She pointed one long, red-tipped finger at Rahmi. ‘This evil, this outrage, is because of your father!’

  ‘My father?’ His face contorted with sudden and frightening rage. Süleyman made ready to put himself between them. ‘What’s my father got to do with your dead lunatic? Look at yourself, you could only carry weak, deformed things – you could never carry a child of my father’s. Don’t blame my father for . . .’

  ‘Your father killed my son!’ Emine Koç screamed into his face. ‘He had him murdered!’ And then in spite of all of Süleyman’s good intentions she launched herself at Rahmi, kicking, screaming and clawing with all of her strength. It took considerable force from a weakened Süleyman as well as from the young victim himself to pull her off. When eventually a very shaken Rahmi Soylu was freed, the policeman bundled him out of the room with a promise to tell him the full story on his own after he had finished speaking to his stepmother.

  When he went back into the sitting room, he saw Emine Soylu wiping her bloodied nails calmly on a tissue.

  ‘Mrs Soylu . . .’

  ‘Would you think me evil if I told you that part of me actually enjoyed giving that young man a beating?’ she said a little breathlessly. ‘He’s grown so arrogant in recent years! I told Cabbar. “You give your son too much!” I said. But he wouldn’t listen. He spoiled him. I did too.’ She looked down at the floor. ‘But it was Deniz I always wanted. He was my own flesh and blood.’

  Süleyman sat down again. ‘I am so sorry to have to bring you such bad news, Mrs Soylu,’ he said. ‘I cannot imagine what you must be feeling.’

  ‘With not even a husband or another, real child to comfort me,’ she said. But then she looked up and suddenly smiled. ‘I’ve been here before. I know how old I look in spite of all my operations. Horror does that to you. I know that Cabbar’s friends always thought that I was older than him. But I am younger – a lot younger. Inspector, do you know how old I was when my Deniz was born?’

  ‘No.’ A horrible cold feeling stretched across his back as he remembered what Mürsel had said about Nuri Koç’s sister, Emine. She had, he’d told Süleyman, been ‘accommodating’.

  ‘I was twelve years old,’ Emine Soylu said simply. ‘Raped by boys old enough to go and do their military service. That’s horror.’

  Raped. Just a child. Raped, left not by one man but by a group. What she had been doing out, alone, with boys in a conservative town like Hakkari, Süleyman couldn’t imagine. But she told him and then he knew.

  ‘I was with my older brother Nuri at the time,’ she said. ‘The boys were his friends. There were four. He was going into the service with them. He knew what they’d done. He called me a whore at the time. Bastard! Men are like that where we come from. They take women by force and then they brand them sluts! Later on I let my brother believe that I had forgiven him. A while ago my brother Nuri was reported as a missing person. I was glad. I hope he’s dead. I never have and never will forgive him.’

  Kim Monroe and Matilda Melly had, apparently, argued that morning and the Englishwoman had since taken herself off to somewhere in the city prior to her flight back to the UK.

  ‘Matilda was pissed that I told you I thought she might be having affairs,’ Kim said as she followed İkmen into the Mellys’ large, white sitting room.

  ‘Start in the kitchen,’ İkmen said to the two young constables who had accompanied himself, Ayşe Farsakoğlu and Kim Monroe into the property. He then turned to the Canadian and said, ‘Thank you for agreeing to witness our search, Mrs Monroe. I feel a lot more comfortable about being in the home of a diplomat now. Did you explain to Mrs Melly that you were only telling me what you believed to be the truth?’

  ‘I tried,’ Kim Monroe replied. ‘But she wasn’t listening by then.’

  ‘Did she say what she might do when she gets home to England?’

  ‘She said people who really love her are there. Her mom and dad, I guess. Inspector, shouldn’t Matilda be around to follow up on her stolen passport situation?’

  İkmen, who was now looking over at Ayşe Farsakoğlu as she looked through various carpet-stuffed cupboards, said, ‘The British have issued her with a temporary replacement and she has given them a satisfactory statement. They are working with the Bulgarians and our own immigration people. As long as
she provides a genuine address in England she can do as she pleases. She’s done nothing wrong.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you, Mrs Monroe, have a house identical to this one, do you not?’

  ‘Ours is a little bigger, I think,’ Kim said, ‘but, yeah, the layout is the same.’

  ‘So tell me,’ İkmen said, ‘which of the four bedrooms upstairs is the main bedroom?’

  ‘The one at the front, over the street door,’ she said.

  ‘I will begin there,’ İkmen said. And then he turned to Ayşe. ‘I’m going up . . .’

  ‘To the Mellys’ bedroom, yes, sir,’ Ayşe said. ‘I know my English isn’t perfect, but I do understand . . .’

  ‘I apologise.’ He began to climb the stairs that were in the corner of the great white sitting room.

  ‘Oh, Inspector,’ Kim Monroe said just before he breathlessly reached the top stair.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t forget that Matilda’s room is at the back overlooking the garden.’

  There was a pause before İkmen said, ‘What?’

  ‘Matilda’s bedroom,’ the Canadian said, ‘it’s at the back opposite Peter’s room. Just so you can know which is where and what . . .’

  ‘Mrs Monroe,’ İkmen butted in forcefully, ‘am I right in deducing from this that Mr and Mrs Melly didn’t actually sleep together?’

  ‘No, they haven’t done for years, Matilda told me. She’s got her own computer system and all her stuff in the back room,’ Kim said and then, noticing for the first time that Ayşe Farsakoğlu and İkmen were looking at her in a strange way, she shook her head. ‘What? What have I said?’

  ‘Sergeant Farsakoğlu,’ İkmen said gravely, ‘will you supervise my search of Mrs Melly’s room please? If her computer is still here, I’m going to switch it on.’ He then turned to Kim Monroe and said, ‘I had been led to believe that the Mellys still slept together. Both their alibis for the night of Yaşar Uzun’s death rest, in part, upon that notion.’

  Kim Monroe bit her lips tensely.

  Chapter 15

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