An Oriental Murder

by Jane Bastin

  Sinan’s phone buzzed and instinctively he answered it. Immediately, he realised his mistake as Inspector Haris echoed in his ear. Holding the phone at arm’s length, Sinan grinned at Sergeant Mehmet. After a few seconds, he returned the phone to his ear and agreed with everything. He did not have any idea what exactly had been said but he could hazard a good guess, he told Sergeant Mehmet, whose stomach turned at the prospect of the 1:30 meeting.

  “Go back to the station, Mehmet. I’ll stay here and follow up with Sylvia. “

  “The meeting, sir?”

  “Yes, we’ll see. “

  Sinan sat in the ornate dining room, scrolling through his notes when a waiter appeared with a bowl of menemen – eggs cooked lightly with peppers and tomatoes and a hunk of bread cooked in the hotel’s wood oven. He had begun to suspect his own motives for wanting to stay at the hotel. He tried to convince himself that the investigation was best served by being present in the hotel but deep down, he knew that the food was the main draw. Pushing aside his notes, he rested a forkful of the spicy egg mixture on his tongue and closed his eyes. His taste buds leapt and keeping his eyes closed to intensify the experience, he guided his hand carefully to place another forkful in his mouth.

  “Sinan.”

  Bea’s voice. The American nasal twang broke his reverie. There was no one else in the room. The manager had prepared the table solely for him. Bea pulled a chair out and sat down, and dunked a piece of bread in the menemen. Sinan’s eyes narrowed but she was unaware.

  “So, you think she’s telling the truth?”

  Sinan pulled the bowl away.

  “Would you like me to order you some menemen?”

  “No, no, I’m not that hungry. But it is delicious. I can just have a bit of yours.”

  Sinan pursed his mouth at the presumption.

  “Of course. So what did she have to tell you?”

  “That she knows no Russians for a start. But that – now wait for this – unbelievable…”

  Sinan hated hyperbole. Understated, subtle and restrained was what he valued in witnesses and people in general. Bea’s confidence began to irritate.

  “Ahmet, that horrible man, was the one who she thinks tortured her husband to death in Diyarbakir prison. April 1981 he died and June 1981, she’s married to Ahmet. Apparently, he wouldn’t leave her alone, kept coming to the house, showered her with gifts and eventually threatened that if she didn’t marry him she would never get her freedom back. Well, a fat lot of good that did her! Freedom! You call that freedom? That’s what I would call modern day slavery.”

  Bea leant back, glints of sunlight catching the red in her hair and Sinan thought of Ani. Soft footsteps made by someone with small feet, probably flat leather soles, female, preceded by firm, heavy steps. Ahmet appeared at the entrance to the restaurant with his wife, Sylvia, a few steps behind.

  “Sir, we are not interrupting you, I hope. We can return later if it is more convenient?”

  Sinan said nothing and watched as Ahmet pulled up a chair for himself and gestured to his wife to pull one from the other table. He held his hand out and Sylvia duly rose to get him a glass of water.

  “Delicious the menemen in this hotel. First class.” Kissing his hands in praise, Ahmet licked his lips and looked almost lupine. The skin on his nose had a sheen of sweat that gave the tip a darker quality almost like a snout. His teeth, stained and worn by tea and tobacco, were still sharp. But his eyes were what made Bea uncomfortable. Pupils like the tip of a biro, small and black almost lost in the blackness of the iris, stared directly at her.

  “You see, while I was talking to an agent about my book which Bea here had very kindly set up for me, I understand that you had a conversation with my wife and we would like to set a few things straight. You see, she gets things muddled sometimes, don’t you, darling?”

  As if on cue, Sylvia appeared with a glass of water, placed it in her husband’s outstretched hand and nodded in agreement.

  “Do you want to tell them what you told me earlier?”

  Ahmet’s lupine features hardened. Sylvia flinched.

  “Darling.”

  Ahmet’s voice carried no tenderness, Bea told Sinan later as she railed against him.

  “Yes, well, I suppose I should have told you that I… that I… that I… that I…”

  Ahmet lifted a spare knife from the table and stroked the blade.

  “I shall tell you what she told me. You see the problem is that my wife has a delicate, shall we say, sensitive condition that she would not like anyone to find out about, would you, darling?”

  Sylvia said nothing but looked beyond to the window.

  “You see my wife has a history of mental ill health and has been prone to self-harm for a number of years. I have tried everything in my power, as you can imagine any devoted husband would, to cure her of this affliction but it seems to give her some sort of release.”

  Sinan continued to eat his menemen.

  “Yes, but you have burned her arms with your lit cigarette. What kind of a human being does that?”

  Bea’s face reddened and her body shook. Ahmet smiled, baring his yellow teeth.

  “Now, unfortunately this is the sort of thing that women… I mean people, do with this sort of affliction. They project their own actions onto the actions of others to relieve themselves of any other responsibility.”

  “Are you saying that Sylvia burns herself? How preposterous.” Bea spurted the words out without thinking.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Is that true, Sylvia?” Bea turned away from Ahmet and lowered her head to meet Sylvia’s gaze.

  “Yes, every word Ahmet says is, of course, true.” Sylvia’s voice, automaton like, echoed across the restaurant. Sinan stopped chewing, his mouth full.

  “Ahmet bey, there is an odd coincidence in that the ink used to tattoo the murdered bodies of the civil servants is the same – rare I might add – ink that your wife uses. Is there any way that either you or your wife might have passed on some of this ink to anyone else?”

  Ahmet narrowed his eyes. Unused to being challenged, his voice rose in volume.

  “No, of course not. Only my wife purchases this ink at the Egyptian spice bazaar and the link that you are inferring is, quite frankly, offensive. I have worked my entire life to protect this country. I would never jeopardise the security of Turkey for what… a bunch of homosexuals who cannot keep their penises in their pants?”

  Sinan bit the side of his cheek and winced. Bea stroked Sylvia’s shoulders.

  “And anyone can buy this stuff at almost any hour of the day or night. Therefore, the insinuation that we might have been involved in murder is, at the very least, offensive and at worst, slanderous.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Because living,

  I mean,

  weighs heavier.

  Bea linked her arm with Sinan’s, slipping her fingers carefully between his on the restaurant table. The steam from the menemen had gone and the one constant in Sinan’s life, his appetite, had also gone. Could she be implicated in the murders? Sinan shook his head, instinctively shaking his thoughts. It sounded preposterous. Without thinking, he snaked his fingers around Bea’s and she moved closer. But then, he had encountered more preposterous things. Coincidences that would baffle fiction writers occurred more regularly than not. Sinan’s view of a rational universe where cause and effect were interconnected was challenged frequently. But why? Cause? Effect was known, but cause? He had asked Sergeant Mehmet to instruct Figen hanim and the financial investigation team over at Kadikoy to dig into Sylvia’s accounts back to her first husband. Sinan stood up suddenly knocking Bea’s arm out of the way.

  “Sorry, sorry.” Running his fingers through his hair, Sinan looked down at Bea in her chair.

  He had no idea, she thought quickly. So completely unaware of the effect he had on her. Steeling herself for rejection, she pulled on his hand to hoist herself up. She had become used to his vacant look. As a wr
iter she had had few experiences of the worlds that she created. Murder, theft, violence, commonplace in the world of her imagination but the reality was… different. An exhilaration she had not felt for years swept through her. Even the brief marriages that punctuated her life were no match for this.

  “Sinan, stay for tea. Your lunch was late and you didn’t get to finish it. You must be hungry. Look, the congress has broken for afternoon tea. Very British; just the way Agatha Christie would have liked it.”

  Sinan blinked, unaware of where he was. Thoughts of cause and effect rushed through his mind; the spectre of Haris; the possibility of losing each of the threads. He knew he was close but close to what? He could not yet quantify and… the sight of an enormous platter of cakes with an assortment of baklava and revani stopped him short.

  “Tea would be good,” he replied to Bea and she slipped her arm beneath his and guided him to another table.

  Sinan closed his eyes and savoured the syrup, flakes of wafer thin pastry and the walnuts of the baklava. His mother’s baklava was famous across their stretch of the mountain and this was the closest he had come to her perfection. Even Bea’s hand winding its way into his lap did not faze him. Thoughts of Inspector Haris and the investigations slipped beneath a haze of sugar.

  “Inspector, how nice to see you. You must come to our next session. It’s about postmodern expressions of vengeance.”

  Sinan nodded politely, chewing slowly on his baklava, an unusually soft pistachio baklava. Roger McDuff, grey hair, gelled flat. Short grey moustache and pink cheeks like a freshly washed baby. Despite the hot weather, Roger wore a black jacket, white shirt and tie. The tie… Sinan looked closer, Bea nudged him in the ribs. The tie was decorated with bright orange pharaohs.

  “Nice tie. I was just trying to make out what the pattern was.”

  Roger lifted it and smiled.

  “Ah yes, my pharaoh tie. I have one for every day of the week you know. All seasons, rain or shine. At the university I was rather famous for my ties.”

  Bea placed another small piece of baklava onto Sinan’s plate. Walnut rich, Sinan felt the pastry melt in his mouth and closed his eyes again. Roger McDuff talked about his love of Ancient Egypt and his plans to write a crime novel about Queen Nefertiti. His voice soothed.

  “Ooh that looks too bad.” Sinan opened his eyes. Bea’s finger was touching Roger’s arm.

  “Damn mosquito bite. They really should do something about them. It’s really not good enough.”

  Roger McDuff snuffled into his moustache but Sinan fixed on the tattoo just above the bite.

  “Nice tattoo.”

  Roger pulled his sleeve down quickly, patting it against his arm as blood wept through.

  “That looks like a fresh tattoo. Get it done here, Roger?” Bea asked while pouring tea for Sinan.

  The pinkness in Roger’s cheeks peaked. Sinan watched intently as his fingers fumbled with his tie, pulling it tighter so that the loose skin above his collar looked as though it were about to burst.

  “Urm, yes. Matter of fact, yes. Been thinking of having one done for a long time but you know how it is… you get to the grand old age of sixty five and you think, well, if I don’t do it now I never will and well, you know, freshly retired from the admissions office at Salisbury University and I thought well, why not…”

  Bea touched his arm and he winced.

  “Still painful?”

  “A little but the mosquito blighter has had a feast on it.”

  Roger pulled himself a little higher and took the cup that Bea offered Sinan.

  “A small parlour not far from the centre, I think.”

  “Whereabouts?” Sinan asked casually, waving away Bea’s remonstrations over the cup of tea that Roger had taken.

  “Well, I can give you their card if you like. Thinking of having one done?”

  Roger lifted his sleeve this time with a strong sense of pride. Sinan caught some of the flakes of pastry at the back of his throat. The coincidences. Again.

  Sinan and Bea sat in the manager’s office. The hum of the congress drifted through the corridors. The buzz of his phone intermittently cutting through as he pushed it deeper into his pocket.

  “The same letters?”

  Bea’s voice broke through. He looked at her as though he had only just realized that she had been sitting there all the time.

  “Yes. Almost identical. But of course, we can’t be absolutely certain until we get a full analysis but from that brief view, they look pretty similar. Do you think Roger’s gay?”

  Bea smiled suddenly. “Of course. It’s obvious to everyone but you.”

  “The tattoo, the shape, the colour, it’s almost like a branding. The civil servants, like the branding of themselves as gay? A badge for others in the same club to recognize? The meyhane, Barbaros, certainly a meeting place for gay men. My thoughts are running like a spool of cotton here and yet there’s no hard and fast evidence for any of it.”

  Bea leant forward and just as Sinan turned to face her, she kissed him. Her lips pressed firmly against his. Her tongue pushed between and Sinan responded, unthinking, unknowing. Breaking free, Bea wiped her mouth.

  “Come to my room. No one will come looking for either of us for a good hour and I think that might suffice… well, for the time being at least.”

  Bea pouted her lips suggestively. Licking her tongue along her bottom lip, she extended her hand. The phone’s buzz broke through and Sinan reached into his pocket.

  “Can’t that wait? You’ve ignored it for long enough. One more hour won’t harm.”

  Sinan flicked open the phone. An email from Sergeant Mehmet with an attachment from Figen hanim at the financial investigation squad.

  Sylvia Holmstrom has regular payments of 1000 euros paid into her account per month by her mother, Bibi Holmstrom based in Nordstrom, Sweden. Her first husband’s accounts show a regular wage of $600 paid monthly and no other sign of payment from the Soviet government. Her assets are a small flat in Ankara left to her first husband by his mother which she rents out for 450 Turkish lira monthly and another flat in Ankara that she lives in that is technically owned by her husband… Rick McFarlane, thought to be ex-CIA operative, received $2 million in a bank account that he has in his daughter’s name based on the island of Grand Cayman. There are potential links to the Russian secret service but as yet no certifiable evidence but the investigation is ongoing. I shall send the full report through to Inspector Haris and the Chief once all evidence has been collated.

  Sinan scrolled through the message, his eye twitching. Bea’s hand wavered in mid-air. She knew she had lost him. She had been so close. The other husbands had been so much easier to snare. No other distractions. But, Sinan… His single-minded attention to detail meant that all else was put on standby. Bea flattened the cotton shirt that fluttered above her midriff.

  “Rick McFarlane? Where is he?”

  “No idea.” Bea pouted like a sulky child.

  Opening the door, Sinan heard his Texan drawl and stepped into the reception just as Rick McFarlane jumped into a taxi outside the main doorway.

  “Do you know where he’s off to?”

  The manager sniffed the air as though Sinan reminded him of some unpleasantness.

  “Topkapi Palace, I believe, Inspector. Our guests relish the opportunity to enjoy…”

  Sinan moved away from the reception counter. Pulling Bea to the main doorway, he kissed the top of her ear and whispered a promise that he would try to return that evening.

  Topkapi Palace thronged with people. Sellers of ice-creams, postcards, glass balls with snow falling over the Bosphorus, and stray dogs, panting for water, moved among the band of mainly foreign tourists at the ticket kiosk. Sinan left his car by the roadside and with no visible police sign, an official from the palace sped towards him. Sinan flashed his identify badge and asked him to take him through the side entrance.

  Rick McFarlane was without his distinctive stetson. Sinan stood behind
the ticket doorway and watched as he made his way through. An elderly English woman had berated him for standing too close and he had apologetically stepped back. He did not appear to be hiding anything, but why was he alone? Why was his wife not with him? Immaculately dressed, his white shorts with the rod-like crease in the middle, a black T-shirt publicising a music group’s tour and immoveable grey hair, he strode through the palace entrance as though he had been here many times before. Which he may well have, thought Sinan as he watched from a distance. The gay dating website? Was that why he was here? He was perhaps a little too dismissive of his presence on the site.

  Sinan followed once Rick turned the corner. He made his way through corridors and courtyards filled with tourists, apologizing every time he bumped into them. His tall body and flailing limbs were a cumbersome obstacle. Sinan, however, was able to assume anonymity among the crowd. After a myriad of courtrooms lined with gold relief and blue Iznik tiles, Rick turned into the Courtyard of the Sultan’s Mother, a few steps from the concubines’ court. Sinan pulled back against the doorway. Rick adopted the pose of interested tourist admiring the gold overlay at the top of the far wall. Sinan overheard the broken English of a tour guide as he ushered them through into the room.

  “Here is where the girls who served the sultan would live. Mainly girls from the Caucuses, Christian girls. Muslim girls no allowed to have sex.”

  The group laughed at the guide’s well-rehearsed joke. Rick, however, barely registered their presence. Something had caught his attention.

  “Sometimes over three hundred girls here for the Sultan’s pleasure. But it was hard work.”

  Another burst of laughter.

  “Here is the teachers’ room. You see the sultan wanted the girls to have an education. They were guarded by the eunuchs who were fierce. If they didn’t like a concubine, they would tie her in a sack and throw her into the Bosphorus. Just like that.”

  The guide motioned the tying of a sack and the group peered beyond to the gentle waves of the Bosphorus lapping at the palace walls. Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, the guide waved it at a young girl in the group.