Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  Arthur recalled the streets of Karaköy that John had come to know well. Back in the 1960s, when he’d been working for a tiny English school in Beyoğlu, he’d explored the area around the Galata Tower extensively. It had actually been outside the Tower that he’d first met Betül. She’d been drinking coffee at a tiny café where a small group of self-identified bohemians met. As classic romantic fiction would have had it, their eyes met and the rest was history. It still hurt Arthur that he’d had so little time with her. They’d married in 1965, John had been born, in England, in 1966, and then in 1967 Betül had died. No preamble, no terrible illness; she’d simply dropped dead in the bathroom. Her heart, according to her doctor, had just stopped. Afterwards, Arthur had never wanted to go back to Turkey, although John had been on several occasions and had always been fascinated by his mother’s country. So much so that he’d decided to live there and write a book about it.

  Arthur looked at his diary to remind himself of the name of the person who was going to meet him at the airport. Inspector Mehmet Süleyman. He knew that surname. Even though it was over forty years ago now, he remembered the day Betül had pointed to a large empty piece of land in the now chic suburb of Nişantaşı and said, ‘Oh, Arthur, that is where the house of the sad Princess Gözde Süleyman used to be. All her life she mourned the death of her fiancée, then when she died, her house burnt down. It’s one of the saddest love stories in the whole of Turkish history.’

  A Bulgarian gypsy was featuring large in Ömer Mungan’s life, even though he didn’t know his name. Not only had old Deniz Ribeiro told him about a gypsy – local gossip had it that he was Bulgarian – hanging about outside the Neve Şalom synagogue, but apparently Şukru Şerkeroğlu had some sort of business deal going on with a Bulgarian gypsy called Marko.

  A lot of kids, some gypsies and some not, dived pockets and bags in and around İstiklal Caddesi. They rarely worked alone and were usually organised by adult gang masters. It had been going on for years. Very rarely were any of the adults arrested, and the kids who were nabbed red-handed never snitched on their handlers; it was more than their miserable lives were worth. Ömer thought how strange it was that parts of İstanbul had grown so rich while other parts remained back in the nineteenth century. He looked at a group of young boys hanging about around the entrance to Tünel and wondered whether one of them was the elusive Hamid, son of Şeftali, the birthmarked prostitute. He moved in close to them and tried to listen to what they said, but they weren’t talkative types, and when they did utter one or two words, he couldn’t understand what they meant. Ömer moved away again, but not far.

  Inspector İkmen’s Tarlabaşı informant had told him that Şukru Şekeroğlu could very well have spirited the boy Hamid out of the quarter and given him into the care of his Bulgarian friend. But even if that had happened, it didn’t bring them any closer to the kid or to a Bulgarian man whose description, according to Ribeiro, was so ‘typical’. All they knew, again through Süleyman’s informant, was that a particularly favoured beat for Bulgarian gypsy pickpockets was outside Tünel funicular railway station at the bottom end of İstiklal Caddesi.

  The Bulgarians and the Turks had had a difficult relationship over the centuries they had been involved with each other. Ömer had seen a TV programme about it once, by some eminent professor. The Bulgarians had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire until 1878, but when the country had become part of the Warsaw Pact bloc after World War II, relations between the two countries had all but ceased. In more recent years, a lot of Bulgarians had migrated to Turkey, particularly İstanbul, where they had a reputation as hardened criminals. This of course was a generalisation, but a lot of İstanbullus stood by it, and Ömer Mungan, as a new resident, was in no position to argue with them.

  He looked at the children again and wondered what they were thinking. Unlike the pocket-divers of the past, these kids were fairly clean and tidy; only their eyes, Ömer thought, were in any way suspect. The way they looked everywhere all the time, checking their world out for opportunities in the shape of tourists, the vulnerable and the unwary. They hung around in groups of three at the most. More often than not, however, they were in pairs. Only one kid stood on his own, and he was the only one who didn’t look shifty. Maybe he wasn’t with the others. But if that were the case, why had he been standing alone outside Tünel for over an hour? Beyond the music shop opposite the station, there wasn’t much to interest a kid of eleven or twelve.

  Whoever ran these kids almost certainly wouldn’t put in an appearance. And when the boys finally finished their shift, there’d be little point in trying to follow them, because they’d all split up. Or rather that was what Inspector Süleyman had told him they would do. It was all quite sophisticated. Back in Mardin, the pocket-diving kids just went home to their parents and got arrested there.

  Although he tried not to, in case the kid noticed him, Ömer found himself focusing on the boy who was on his own. From his vantage point at a café just inside the Parisian-style Tünel Pasaj, he watched him through one of the wrought-iron gates that closed the tiny alleyway off at night. Although some of the other kids spoke and sometimes shouted unintelligible things to each other from time to time, the lone boy remained silent and even, possibly, a little wary of the others. Occasionally shifting from foot to foot, he didn’t, as far as Ömer could tell, even try to take a tourist’s watch or a cripple’s wallet. The others were successful, on and off, but, as per his instructions from Süleyman, Ömer just watched and waited either for a man to turn up to move the kids on, which was unlikely; or to follow at least one of them if and when they did move on.

  He drank his coffee and carried on watching.

  ‘I think Hande might have been taunting me, but I can’t be sure,’ Faruk Genç said.

  İkmen looked across his desk at him. Genç was pathetic and the inspector was sorry for him, but he was also angry. ‘Mr Genç,’ he said, ‘if your wife told you that she, together with General Ablak, killed your mistress, then you should have told me immediately.’

  ‘But she was angry! Which I can understand. She was trying to make me suffer!’

  ‘So if you didn’t believe her, why are you here now?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He put his head in his hands and then raised it again. His eyes were black underneath and bloodshot. ‘Hande never went anywhere. I can’t believe she could have found out about Leyla and me, and anyway, how would she have made contact with General Ablak?’

  İkmen sighed. ‘Secrets are dangerous creatures, Mr Genç,’ he said. ‘We keep them at our peril. Just because your wife was housebound doesn’t mean that she had no contact with the outside world. If you want to know whether Hande Hanım and General Ablak jointly or separately killed Leyla Ablak, then you have to look at who might have been jealous of your affair with her. Maybe someone you work with, a friend, maybe a—’

  ‘But I told no one! We were always so careful! We met in the middle of the night!’

  ‘And yet the killer, whoever he or she was, knew you were at the spa that night, and so, by extension, others might have known it too. Do you know how likely it is that Leyla Hanım was killed by a wandering psychopath who just fancied the idea of murdering her? Almost zero. She was executed by someone who either knew her or knew of her and who had a reason to want her dead.’

  ‘Yes, but Hande—’

  ‘Mr Genç,’ İkmen said, ‘your wife is dead and so is General Ablak. Unless further evidence comes to light linking them to Leyla Ablak’s death, I will have to continue my investigation as if you never came here today. Both of them remain suspects even though they are deceased. But if you want to find out the truth about your lover’s death, you are going to have to help me.’

  ‘By doing what?’

  ‘By thinking seriously about who might have known about your affair.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I—’

  ‘Ah, but I don’t think you have really told me, Mr Genç,’ İkmen said. ‘I want to know
about all your little secrets, your every slightest suspicion, your darkest fears. Think, Mr Genç: who might have taken a fancy to you in the last year? Female or male, I really don’t care. You’re a good-looking man with a good job; somebody must have had the hots for you at some point. And Mrs Ablak was a fine woman, wasn’t she? I can’t believe that others weren’t jealous of her. I’ve met a couple, although I don’t think either of them can be seriously considered because neither was in İstanbul when Leyla Ablak died. And don’t think that you can discount the family, either.’

  ‘Whose family?’

  ‘All of them,’ İkmen said. ‘Your own, Hande’s, the Ablaks. Although they do not know it, Leyla’s own family are not off the hook. That old Ottoman rubbish doesn’t impress me one bit. I trust that this time, Mr Genç, I can rely on your full co-operation.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘Because let me tell you, Mr Genç, you are not off the hook either. I am not impressed by what I imagine you thought was your loyalty to your dying wife. If she was a killer, dying or not, you should have brought her to me. Justice is not selective; it doesn’t care if you have a slight cold, a broken leg or terminal cancer. It expects, quite rightly, to have you in the end.’

  Mr Arthur Regan was a man in his late seventies who didn’t need to know the full horror of his son’s death. But he insisted.

  ‘You can tell me all of it,’ he said to Mehmet Süleyman once the driver had wrestled the police vehicle they were travelling in out of the airport.

  ‘Mr Regan …’ But then he’d need to know because he’d have to identify the body, and there was a limit to what could be done to make John Regan look anything other than butchered. ‘Your son was stabbed repeatedly,’ Süleyman said. ‘I am afraid, sir, that his body is very badly damaged.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  There was no way that he could go into detail, though, and Süleyman knew it. When he’d first met Arthur Regan, the older man’s eyes had been red and wet from crying. John had been his only child and Süleyman couldn’t even begin to imagine what that felt like. Even the thought of his own son, Yusuf, dying brought tears to Süleyman’s eyes. To outlive a child was a parent’s worst nightmare.

  ‘You know that my son was gay, Inspector,’ Arthur Regan said.

  ‘No, sir, I did not.’

  ‘It isn’t a judgement,’ he said. ‘Just a fact. Do you have any idea who might have … killed him?’

  It was almost impossible for him to say the words.

  ‘We have, um, some routes to look at,’ Süleyman replied. He had never been as fluent in English as İkmen was, not even when he had been married to an Irish woman.

  ‘Leads?’

  ‘Yes.’

  As usual, the airport had been packed. Süleyman had had to stand with all the hotel drivers and the travel reps, holding up a board saying ‘Mr Arthur Regan’ – it hadn’t been his finest hour.

  ‘Your son, Mr Regan, he was writing a book?’

  They passed the vast collection of hotels and conference facilities that had grown up around the airport in the last decade and headed into another knot of traffic which consisted mainly of yellow taxis. Some of them had the Turkcell bug’s antenna on their roofs, an advertising step way too far for Süleyman.

  ‘Yes. My son has written many books over the years. He is … he was an historian. His speciality was Victorian London. He taught at Cambridge, you know, until he decided he wanted to become a romantic novelist.’

  ‘But here he was writing a history of Sultan Abdülhamid II, I think.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he was writing a novel. It was to be about Abdülhamid but it was about his personal life. There’s a legend about how he was involved with a Belgian woman who bore him a daughter. It’s said that he eventually killed the girl because she seduced his eldest son.’

  Mehmet Süleyman had a vague recollection of the story, but he’d never known whether it had any basis in fact.

  ‘John was always fascinated by that tale.’

  ‘An unusual fascination for an Englishman,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Oh, he’s always been interested in Turkey and Turkish history,’ Arthur Regan said. ‘Although she died when he was a tiny child, his mother is behind most of it. She was Turkish. And I must say that I also encouraged his interest. It’s … it was part of his heritage. Coming here to live and write his book was the fulfilment of a dream he’d had for years. There wasn’t anyone in his life, if you know what I mean. Hadn’t been for years. So his work and his interests became his life. Do you think, Inspector, that my son was killed by someone he knew?’

  ‘That is what we must determine. There is no evidence of a forced entry into the apartment and so he may have known his killer. We have to look closely at his contacts in the city.’

  The traffic began to move. Their driver gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Arthur Regan looked down at his own hands before he spoke again. ‘When my son was younger, he did sometimes pick men up to sleep with. I don’t know whether he was doing that here.’

  ‘Our pathologist found no sign of recent sexual activity,’ Süleyman said. ‘But of course, Mr Regan, we will investigate all possibilities.’

  They spent the rest of the journey into the city in silence. Arthur Regan looked out of the car window while Süleyman wondered how, when and where he’d met his Turkish wife. John Regan had been forty-six years old when he died, so Arthur and his wife must have first met back in the 1960s. Süleyman just recalled that decade himself, although he’d been a child at the time. Back then, the only foreigners who came to İstanbul were English teachers and hippies en route to India. He wondered which group Arthur Regan had belonged to. But he didn’t ask him anything about it. It didn’t seem appropriate. In less than an hour Mr Regan would have to identify the body of his mutilated son.

  The lone boy eventually stole something from a man’s back pocket and then almost immediately walked away from Tünel and made his way down the hill towards Karaköy on Galipdede Caddesi. Ömer Mungan took the decision to follow him. If the kid was alone, he had a chance of being able to track him to the adults that ran him. He walked past the Dervish tekke on the left-hand side and down between the musical instrument and CD shops. The road was steep and cobbled but Ömer was used to that. Every street in Mardin was cobbled, and so steep that domestic rubbish had to be collected by donkey.

  The boy loped along, a hand in the pocket where he’d put what he’d stolen. From time to time he looked in shop windows, and Ömer found himself wondering what, had he just been working for himself, he might have purchased with his newly acquired wealth. But he only looked. Eventually he turned off Galipdede into a small street that Ömer felt probably led to somewhere near the Galata Tower. He knew that had he known the city better, finding a different route whereby he could pick the boy up later on would have been preferable. But he didn’t know the city well and so he walked, admittedly some metres behind him, into a street that was almost silent. The boy couldn’t help but hear his footsteps.

  He didn’t turn around completely and look straight at Ömer. It was more of a slight turn of the head accompanied by a quick glance with one eye. But it was enough. Ömer saw his body tense, and although he knew without doubt what the boy was about to do, he didn’t increase his own pace. The boy began to run. For a moment Ömer wondered what he should do, then he ran too. The fact that he had no clear idea about what he might do if he caught the kid did not assist his pace, which, in comparison to the boy’s, was risible.

  And then things got even worse for Ömer. As if suddenly powered by a jet engine, the kid increased his pace and flew across the pavements and roads of old Galata like a gazelle.

  Chapter 10

  John Regan had only really had one friend in İstanbul, a female publicist called Sırma Alper from Cihangir. It was she who had told the police that one of the things John liked to do was have coffee and a snack at the Ada bookshop on İstiklal Caddesi. This had
led Ayşe Farsakoğlu to an assistant at the shop called Derviş Güler.

  ‘Yeah, the British guy was cool,’ Derviş said. He was the sort of fashionable, hip, funky, bearded man who made Ayşe Farsakoğlu feel old. ‘Liked to read all the historical stuff.’

  ‘Did he meet anyone in particular when he came to the shop?’ Ayşe asked.

  ‘Not that I saw. I don’t think his Turkish was very good.’

  ‘But you spoke to him.’

  ‘Yeah, I can speak English.’

  ‘You remember we were asking questions about another of your customers back in January? A man called Levent Devrim?’

  ‘Oh yeah, a guy police officer came.’

  Mehmet Süleyman.

  ‘You don’t remember whether Dr Regan, the Englishman, had any contact with Devrim, do you?’

  Derviş thought for a moment, then said, ‘Don’t think so. The scruffy dude was into a lot of New Age stuff. The British guy was much more fact-based, you know.’