by Jane Bastin
Bea elongated the inspector and flicked her hair behind her ear.
“Firstly, you have no right to observe an investigation especially one as sensitive as this. Our Prime Minister has been assassinated, high ranking civil servants found dead. There is a lot of pressure to find the perpetrators. We do not do crime tourism here in Istanbul, I’m afraid.”
Sergeant Mehmet leaned forward, tapped Sinan on the shoulder and asked him to pull over quickly.
“What?”
Sinan spat the word out. Bea jumped. Sergeant Mehmet continued to clench Sinan’s shoulder.
“Over there sir. Look.”
Turning back, Sinan saw in a shop doorway a middle-aged man, balding, overdressed for the meyhane district with shirt, tie and jacket. He was resting his head on the shoulder of a woman. Sighing heavily, Sinan changed gear and pressed his foot gently on the accelerator.
“Stop sir. That is the permanent secretary to the Defence Minister. I recognise him from when he came in to discuss the murders yesterday afternoon.”
Sinan wound his window down. A car rushed past spraying the couple in the doorway with a generous amount of water from a pothole. Stepping out of the dark, Sinan could see that it was indeed the permanent secretary who had come to talk about the investigation and to insist that no detail should be made public. Sinan understood the veiled reference to the prostitute in the Prime Minister’s room. He had not until this evening fully understood that this threat extended to the fate of the two high ranking civil servants. The tattoos on their genitals raised suspicions. The meyhane, Barbaros, bore the same calligraphy as the name engraved on the murdered men’s genitals. It was a place where men came to vent their desires: alcohol, food, music that clenched their hearts and… sex. The transvestites with their scarlet hair, skin-tight clothes and stiletto-heeled legs ebbed into the den. Sinan and Sergeant Mehmet had watched as men reached out for their affection. And now, in a shop doorway, plastic bags and kebab wrappers blowing around their ankles, the permanent secretary was embracing one.
“Sir, we need you to come down to the station.”
Without any warning, Sinan called across the road. The permanent secretary looked up, startled. Waving his police badge out of the window, the transvestite grabbed her bag, kicked off her stilettos and raced down the road. Flushed with passion, the permanent secretary kicked at the doorway, swore beneath his breath before tucking his shirt into his trousers and reasserting his importance.
“Sir, sorry to ruin your evening.” The permanent secretary acknowledged Bea, climbed into the car and ignored Sinan’s protestations.
“But, we are working on the Prime Minister’s murder and the Flower Passage murders and we have some evidence to suggest that they might be linked to the Barbaros meyhane. I could not afford to leave you in potential danger.”
The permanent secretary said nothing.
Chapter Six
I stand in the advancing light,
My hands hungry, the world beautiful
Auntie Fatma’s restaurant was almost empty. The rush of lunchtime eaters had passed. A couple of university students, oblivious to the bowls of stew in front of them, stared at each other. An older man, in a heavy felt coat and tartan scarf was gulping down soup as he flicked over the pages of a newspaper. Sinan sat by the window watching the fishermen shout at dive-bombing seagulls. Hungry like him, he thought as he waited for Fatma to bring his bowl of rice, chickpeas in tomato sauce, yoghurt and pickled cabbage and gherkins. He had been waiting for this for at least the past two hours and Sergeant Mehmet had been told, in no uncertain terms, that he would attend the crime scene once his stomach was full.
The chickpeas dissolved with a slight crunch in his mouth and the buttery rice made Sinan feel that this had been exactly the right decision. Fatma’s yoghurt made from the milk of her goats that she kept in her mother’s village brought his own village streaming into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut when he thought of his mother’s concerns about what was happening and felt the gnaw of guilt that he hadn’t yet been to see her. Family… he mused as he dipped a hunk of bread into the chickpea sauce. His was as muddled as anyone’s - may be the reason he had not had the courage to form his own. Look what had happened with Ani. Sinan dabbed the corners of his mouth with a paper serviette and thought suddenly of Bea. She looked uncannily like Ani and yet was so different. Irritating, certainly, but there was something that intrigued him. Imagine thinking that you can accompany a police officer to a crime scene? Sinan stifled a laugh by coughing. The elderly man looked over the top of his newspaper before roughly shaking it.
“Dessert?”
Sinan looked up at Fatma’s fat face, reddened by the steam from the kitchen. He looked quickly at his watch. They would be waiting. Sergeant Mehmet would be concerned that the evidence could be impaired. Yasemin Hanim may have got there already with her forensics team. The Chief Inspector would be furious if he knew. But Sinan had already seen the cold milk pudding, kazandibi and he knew that Fatma only made it once or twice a year.
Fatma dropped a dollop of mastika ice cream on top of the kazandibi and Sinan swooned at the prospect of the taste in his mouth. Time for reflection, he convinced himself. Police officers should be given more time to reflect. Emotion affected rational thinking and the two became entwined. The dichotomous nature of human existence, Sinan mused as he swirled the soft cream in his mouth. He thought over the morning and the night before. The speed with which events occurred needed to be slowed and picked through. Ginge Allyson, not what she appeared to be at all. A woman driven by an emotional attachment to identity; rational thought swept aside. Her grandfather had been forced to leave after the oppressive taxation of non-Muslims was introduced in the 1950s and an earlier forced removal flitted through Sinan’s mind. The swap of populations begun on 30th January 1923 had emotionally strangled an entire generation. Sinan knew the date well. His grandmother had been a young child when her family had been forced in the dead of night onto a boat leaving Crete for Ayvalik in Turkey. When he was a small child, probably very similarly to Ginge, his grandmother would tell him stories of how her mother had wept the entire journey. She would tell of the swathes of land they owned, the most beautiful olive trees in the world and the clearest of night skies to be found anywhere on earth. She told of how their house was a pasha’s house and one envied by all on the island. But years later, like Ginge, Sinan visited Crete only to find a small cottage by a brook. Beautiful but not fit for the family of a pasha. Images of the dust of Cretan earth sprinkled over his grandmother’s shroud as the family buried her on the mountain flashed across his mind and for the briefest of moments, he was lost.
Sergeant Mehmet stood at the entrance to the alleyway, his face worn. The pleasure of Fatma’s meal long since dissipated in Sinan’s mind. The darkness of the alleyway, crowded by buildings on either side, and the pungent smell of rotting vegetation made his stomach heave. Officers were standing guard over the body. Yasemin Hanim had either been and gone or not yet arrived.
“So, Sergeant Mehmet, when was the body found and by whom?”
Sinan leant against the damp wall, pulling back when he felt it seep through his jacket.
“A woman named Marianne, an Armenian woman who owns the old Padishah Cinema down the road near the Italian church, found the body, sir. “
“And what was she doing here, Sergeant?”
Sergeant Mehmet stuck his pencil behind his ear and flicked through his notebook. Sinan waited. A flock of seagulls had gathered on the surrounding roofs, probably drawn away from the fishermen by the smell of fresh blood.
“She was taking a shortcut from her boyfriend’s flat over in Pangalti. She said that she often used the shortcut but stopped after the second murder.”
“So why did she use it now, then? “Sinan asked.
“She said that she was running late. She had a new film to prepare and her assistant had phoned in ill so she thought she would take the chance.”
Sinan snorted and looked u
p at the seagulls who were growing in number.
“When was this and what did she see?”
Sergeant Mehmet turned a page in his notebook, drew his thumb along the paper.
“She was walking hurriedly, she says,” – Sergeant Mehmet looked closer at his handwriting, confused – “and she saw what she thought was a shop mannequin. She says that it struck her as odd that a shop mannequin should have been discarded in the alleyway as there are heavy penalties for fly-tipping. She said that her cousin was fined last month for leaving a pile of cardboard boxes in an alleyway near the Mevlana Centre.”
“Please continue, Sergeant, it’ll be dark by the time this finishes.” Sergeant Mehmet looked up at Sinan before lowering his eyes.
“She saw the body at about 11:30 am. She went closer to the body, saw that it was not a shop—”
“Mannequin…yes, I get the drift,” Sinan snapped and immediately regretted it. Sergeant Mehmet was one of the best he had.
“She ran over to the Flower Passage and a Mr Emin, a waiter at the Rose Café, came over to check. He was just getting tables ready for the lunchtime crowd. Once he affirmed that the body was indeed a human body, he called the Police. The call was recorded at 12:15.”
“Forty-five minutes to affirm that the body was human? Excessive?”
“I think she was in a state of shock. It all took some time, apparently.”
“Okay, okay. Have you looked into her background?”
“Yes, sir. No known offences. Married three times, all happily she said. She even offered to take me out…”
Sergeant Mehmet stopped when he looked up to see that Sinan did not get the joke.
“She inherited the cinema from her father ten years ago and has run it ever since. Small arty films. Lives on the Asian side in Uskudar but spends about three days of the week with her boyfriend in Pangalti. He’s an electrician but according to her, barely works.”
“Okay, the waiter?”
“Mustafa Emin, aged 22. Moved to Istanbul to study architecture at Istanbul University from Konya. Never been in trouble. From a very conservative family, father’s an imam.”
“Victim? Similarities with the previous two?”
Sergeant Mehmet licked the end of his pencil, flicked a page over in his notebook and underlined something.
“Isa Mahmut. Same etching on his testicles, ‘Barbaros’. Minor civil servant in Ankara at the Ministry of Mines.”
“Naked?”
Sinan walked over to the crime scene. He could see Yasemin Hanim’s strident walk at the other end of the alleyway. The body had been pushed against the wall almost like a staged sculpture. Clothes removed but none scattered around. Sinan looked closer, the etching on his testicle was more hurried than the others; the final ‘s’ in ‘Barbaros’ was unclear. The same killer within two weeks. Now braver, more audacious, killing in broad daylight. How had he met his killer? The other two had been killed at night. Had he just been discovered in the morning? Had the killer kept him captive? The sharp stiletto tip-tap of Yasemin Hanim’s shoes grew louder. Sinan quickly looked around the body but found nothing of immediate interest.
“Inspector, we should stop meeting like this.”
Yasemin Hanim’s authoritative tone did not sit well with Sinan.
“I’ll read your report when it’s ready and I hope that it is quicker than the last one.”
Sinan bit back and watched as she pretended that she had not heard him. Barking orders at her group, she began to pick through the evidence. She was late and he felt an irritation rise which he reasoned may have been indigestion but nevertheless, he was restless. He paced up and down the alleyway, craning his neck at different angles to determine how the victim might have arrived and at which point he might have been attacked. Sergeant Mehmet and his officers were huddled in a far corner, smoking cigarettes and chatting. The victim, like the others did not look as though he had fought back. Had he been taken by surprise? Sinan mulled over the thought. This was one of those very rare occasions when he thought it might be useful to smoke. The camaraderie of the officers, the sharing of cigarettes.
Sinan rubbed his hand over a small hole in the side of the wall. The wall was pocked with them. In some of the higher holes, pigeons and seagulls were roosting. Nothing in this, he thought. Perhaps, time to set about reviewing the strategy before Inspector Haris imposed his own. Sinan’s eye twitched and then he felt it. The silkiness of the nylon cover skimmed his fingers. It was lodged deep in the crevice. Taking out a long, thin penknife from his top pocket, he inserted it carefully, twisting it to get purchase and eased it out. The same cigarette packet. Sinan thought back to the room at the Pera Palas Hotel and the Prime Minister’s cigarettes. Sinan had little if any religious belief but a fondness for the theory of randomness. Random, apparently unlinked coincidences were the staple of his investigative strength. He compared investigations to sub-atomic particles. The rules governing their behaviour were like nothing found elsewhere. They are fuzzy, uncertain. Sinan insisted to his officers that you can never say exactly where they are and you only know where they are by looking at them. And the very act of looking at them alters their behaviour. Sinan’s officers often emerged from his meetings confused as to whether they were part of an investigation or a theoretical physics experiment. But this worked for Sinan. Looking, looking and looking again before slowing down and observing the randomness of links that gradually emerge. The cigarette packet may be a tie in the thread or may not. Handling it carefully with nylon gloves, he tipped it into a plastic bag he had grabbed from the forensics team and handed it to them asking for the report to be sent directly to him and no one else.
The office felt airless when he got back. Sinan sat ensconced in his room within the larger office, surrounded by large panes of glass that seemed to magnify the heat. Sweat poured from his forehead as he tried to pull the leads together into a document for presentation at the next strategy meeting. The email from Inspector Haris entitled ‘New Strategy’ sat in his email inbox. He thought twice about deleting it.
“Sir, the civil servant was named Isa Mahmut. Aged 43, married with three children. Not sure why he was in Istanbul. His wife says that he told her he had an important meeting with some people from the mining industry and left on the first plane at dawn the day before he was murdered. We have tracked his movements. Arrived at Sabiha Gokcen airport at 6 am, caught a taxi to the Marmara hotel, booked a room and left at 7:30. No news or sightings since then.”
Sinan sunk his head in his hands. But Sinan’s despair was not directed at Sergeant Mehmet, rather the lanky figure of Inspector Haris standing directly behind him.
“Sinan, I trust you have read the new strategy. The Chief Inspector wants me to keep you in the loop and I trust you will co-operate with the changes. Sergeant Mehmet, anything for me there? “
“Nothing, sir. Just came to ask Inspector Sinan if he would like a glass of tea.”
Inspector Haris paused, stared at the papers in Sergeant Mehmet’s hands and looked back at Sinan who appeared fixated by a spot on his computer screen. With a loud sigh, Inspector Haris clicked his heels and left, leaving the door wide open.
“I apologise for my rudeness sir, but I do not like that man and do not want to work for him. I was posted to his team a few years ago to work on a fraud case and we ended up losing the case due to his ineptitude and inability to listen to anyone other than himself.”
Sinan looked up from his screen and patted Sergeant Mehmet’s hand.
“Don’t worry. You’re working for me.”
“But aren’t we now all working for Inspector Haris?”
“Eh, that’s what the Chief Inspector might think but we’ll carry on as normal. Good idea, don’t you think?”
Sinan raised his hands theatrically in the air and Sergeant Mehmet placed the sheaf of papers on Sinan’s desk.
“Not too hard to break the encrypted code used on Mindr, the website for gay men, you know,” Sergeant Mehmet said quietly.<
br />
“So what did you find?” Sinan leant back in his chair, hands held high behind his head.
“Interesting conversations with a range of people, though tricky to identify them as they use pseudonyms, of course.”
“Of course.” Sinan leant further back.
“But, Isa Mahmut arranged to meet someone at the back of the Suleymaniye Mosque at 10 a.m. Not sure where he was in between. It seems to be a popular meeting spot for these types.”
Sinan smiled and patted Sergeant Mehmet on the back. He knew that his conservative religious values made this element of police work difficult.
“Good work, Sergeant Mehmet. I think I might take a wander out to Suleymaniye Mosque.”
Sinan pushed his chair back, rubbed the sweat clear of his forehead and moved out but Sergeant Mehmet stood motionless.
“Sir, one more thing.”
“Yes.”
“I noticed the name of one of the guests at the Pera Palas as someone who had been in contact with Isa Mahmut just before he arranged to meet the unnamed person.”
Sinan stopped, irritated by Sergeant Mehmet’s staged explanation.
“Inspector Haris will not jump in on us. Don’t worry. Who?”
“Rick McFarlane. The American.”
Sinan savoured the thought. As if in slow motion, he returned mentally to the hotel and his brief meeting with the American. Retired from the US diplomatic corps. He had been based in Istanbul about twenty years ago. Had loved it. The fuzziness and uncertainty of the information jolted back. ‘Fifties, fit looking, grey and distinguished’ might be his description on Mindr, he thought. A stereotypical Texan, almost always seen with his Stetson hat. His goatee beard and bushy moustache made him look like an older hippy. Sinan’s mind’s eye swam across his memories. Like sub-atomic particles, things only exist when you observe them and, by the very act of observation, they change their behaviour, he reminded himself. But the ironed shirts, the crisp pleat in his trousers reminded Sinan of his military background. And that notebook. He thought back to the meal in the grand dining room and the mouth-watering quince dessert. Immediately distracted, he pushed thoughts of food away and reflected on how irritated Bea had been by McFarlane’s note-taking.
