Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  He drank his latte and turned back to the main story of the day, the murder of the old man out in what looked like one of those wooden yalıs in Ortaköy. He’d always liked those old Ottoman villas, even if he would forever associate them with Betül’s ghastly family. They’d lived in a vast one back in the nineteenth century, or so they’d never tired of telling him when he had met them. Peering at the photograph on the front page, of a covered stretcher being carried from the ornate wooden house and into the street, he read that the victim had died an hour or two before midnight. His murderer, the report said, had been brutal and without mercy for such an elderly and esteemed member of the community. It was only then that Arthur found out exactly who the victim was. When he did, he picked up his mobile phone and called the police immediately.

  ‘Hello, Gonca.’

  She was pottering about in the small yard outside her studio, tending the few straggly flowers she grew in old olive oil drums. When she heard his voice, she looked up at him through a curtain of iron-grey hair. He hadn’t seen her for years and she’d aged, but she was still amazingly beautiful.

  ‘Mehmet Bey,’ she smiled. ‘What brings you to Balat? And don’t say that you were just passing, because I know that will be a lie.’

  In spite of the serious nature of his mission, he laughed. She had always made him laugh; that had been a large part of her appeal.

  He looked towards the hill that swept down to the Golden Horn below and said, ‘I need to ask you something.’

  She stood up straight, one hand still massaging the side where she’d been shot by a deranged kid almost three years before. That was when their affair had ended, and he hadn’t seen her since. ‘Do you want to come in?’ she asked.

  ‘If it’s not a problem.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  She led him into the large room at the side of her house that was her studio. With the exception of new works in progress, it was just as he remembered it, a chaos of paint, fabrics, floor cushions and ashtrays. Gonca made her living, very successfully, as a popular and collectable collage artist. Her work was exhibited and appreciated not only in Turkey but in Europe and America too. Her family, including her father, might try to fool themselves that they were independent operators in their own right, but everyone knew that, really, Gonca paid for everything.

  ‘Would you like tea or something stronger?’ she asked him as he lowered himself on to one of her larger cushions.

  ‘Oh, tea. Thank you.’ He switched his phone off. This was not going to be an easy conversation and he didn’t want it to be disturbed.

  She called through into the house and he saw a heavily pregnant girl briefly look around the doorpost and nod.

  In spite of her injuries, Gonca was still as lithe as ever, and she sat down on a cushion opposite Süleyman in one smooth movement. ‘How have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Your … parents?’

  ‘My father is old now, but …’ His voice trailed away. How did he even start to tell her that his father was senile, his mother still the same annoying snob? ‘And you?’

  ‘Oh, work is good and we have high hopes for a good Hıdırellez. A lot of people come from abroad now.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  The girl came in and gave them both tea. He recognised her, although he couldn’t have repeated her name to save his own life. She looked at him resentfully; she obviously recognised him, and for a moment, Süleyman felt his face colour. When they had been together, Gonca had never protected her enormous tribe of twelve children from walking in on their lovemaking. Süleyman shuddered, his feelings a mixture of embarrassment and old erotic desire. No one before or since had ever made him feel the way that Gonca had done.

  Gonca told the girl to go and then said, ‘So what can I do for you, my friend?’

  There was no virtue in not getting straight to the point. He said, ‘Gonca, do you know where Şukru has gone?’

  ‘My Şukru?’

  ‘Your brother, yes.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t. Why?’

  He leaned forward. ‘I’m assuming that you know your brother, in apparently trying to protect a boy called Hamid, withheld some information from us regarding a murder in Tarlabaşı.’

  ‘We look after our own, Mehmet Bey,’ she smiled.

  ‘Yes, I know, but with what we think could be a serial killer in the city, we need to keep a tight rein on all our witnesses, and that includes Şukru. It’s important.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘And with Hıdırellez coming up next month, I am somewhat confused as to why your brother has left the city.’

  ‘You suspect him of something?’

  ‘No. Not necessarily. But …’ Nervous now, he took a cigarette out of his pocket, put it in his mouth and searched in vain for his lighter.

  ‘Oh, let me.’ She leaned over and lit his cigarette with a small gold lighter. As she bent forward, he could see almost all of her breasts as they tumbled against the sweetheart neckline at the top of her dress. They were just as big and smooth as he remembered and he felt himself react to them immediately. Hopefully she was unaware of his discomfort, both psychological and now physical.

  ‘We need to have access to your brother,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘You think he knows something he isn’t telling?’

  ‘Well, er …’

  ‘If our people are involved, then he may do,’ she said. He could feel her eyes on him and so he moved one of his legs slightly to impede her view. ‘The man with the camera was not one of our own. So what do you want me to do for you, Mehmet Bey?’

  ‘When you speak to Şukru,’ because he knew that she could and would, ‘tell him to come back to the city – or at least talk to me,’ he said. ‘As I’m sure you know, Gonca Hanım, another person has been murdered …’

  ‘On the twenty-first, the day of endings and beginnings,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Then he remembered what İkmen had said about the tarot card. ‘Oh, you mean the World.’

  ‘That and more,’ she said. ‘Numbers have magical properties, Mehmet Bey, and twenty-one, the pairing of the singular with the plural, is a very powerful one. It has much destructive energy.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It’s difficult for one and many to co-exist,’ she said. ‘The many will bring down the one, or vice versa. Also twenty-one is divisible by three seven times, the ultimate magic number, some believe.’

  ‘With respect, that is—’

  ‘Rubbish?’ She smiled. ‘You know that the Christian Messiah, Jesus, was twenty-one years old when he was first presented at the Temple in Jerusalem? His mother, the Virgin Mary, lived for just twenty-one years after his death. He appeared twenty-one times to people all over Palestine after he was taken down from the Cross. Twenty-one is magic.’

  ‘Yes, well, that is Christianity.’

  ‘Ah, but not just Christianity,’ she said. ‘There are civilisations much older than Christianity that revere the number twenty-one. The ancient Mayans in South America, for instance. Now this year, 2012, is very special to them because of that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The twenty-first of December this year is significant to them.’

  ‘Oh, surely you don’t believe in that end-of-the-world rubbish …’

  ‘How do we know? How do we know what it is and whether it’s true?’ she said. ‘You may scoff at so-called primitives, but as a primitive myself, I know that sometimes we are more in touch with reality than you might like to think.’

  He shook his head. ‘So why didn’t your brother tell me all this? I asked him about the number twenty-one and he just blanked me.’

  She smiled. ‘Ah, poor Şukru,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult for him with you. How can he talk to a man who fucked his sister?’

  The directness of her speech, which was something he had always loved about her, now made him blush.

  She saw it and laughed. ‘Oh, Mehmet Bey,’ she said. �
��It’s true, why not say it?’

  He looked down at the floor, bypassing that part of his body that was still relentlessly aroused.

  ‘So is there a woman in your life now?’ she asked.

  For a moment he wondered whether he should tell her a lie. But then he knew she’d see through it, so he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘That sergeant of İkmen’s.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘She always had a thing for you, Mehmet Bey. But then you’re a very easy man to have a thing about.’

  It was then that he noticed that she was undoing the buttons down the front of her dress. He had about half a second to stop her. But he knew he didn’t want to do that. He’d even daydreamed on his way to Balat about something like this happening. As he sat, mute with desire and anticipation, she threw her dress off and advanced, naked, towards him. Her fingers found his erection quickly, as they had always done, and soon he was inside her. The way she felt was the way she’d always felt. He closed his eyes and let her move on top of him.

  Chapter 14

  Halfway between Gonca’s house and the Atatürk Bridge, Süleyman switched his phone back on. He still felt excited after his passionate lovemaking with the gypsy and he knew that he would be going back for more. Unlike with Ayşe, sex with Gonca was joyous and as focused on her own pleasure as it was on his. And he liked to give her pleasure. When she tore into his back with her nails as he made her climax, he felt like the powerful man he’d always been with her. This wasn’t, however, something that would please İkmen, who, Süleyman knew to the very bottom of his soul, would know what he had done as soon as he saw him. And how was he going to explain the scratch marks on his back to Ayşe?

  He only had one message on his phone. It was in English.

  ‘Ah, Inspector Süleyman,’ Arthur Regan said. ‘Thought I should tell you something. I noticed in Hürriyet this morning that there has been another murder, and if I’m not mistaken, the victim was an old prince. If this is the case, then that is two members of the former royal family to be killed this year. Or rather, possibly, three. My late wife, Betül, was related too, you see, and so I’m wondering whether this could be some sort of pattern. Get back to me and I’ll tell you all about it.’

  Although Çetin İkmen knew that Mehmet Süleyman hadn’t just brought Arthur Regan into the station to distract attention away from his own guilty countenance, he couldn’t help but be angry. The sex he’d had with Gonca was stamped on every pore of his skin, and İkmen’s heart bled for Ayşe Farsakoğlu. He concentrated on the Englishman.

  ‘My wife, Betül Şafak, was a direct descendant, through her father, of Sultan Abdülaziz,’ he said. ‘I know this because when I went to ask him for her hand in marriage, he banged on about it for about an hour. I was shown a family tree the size of this office …’

  A relaxed Mehmet Süleyman said, ‘I can imagine that. Where advancement to the sultanate was by eldest male and not father to son, we have had a lot of sultans who have each had their own harem, and from that very many children. The Osmanoğlu family is vast.’

  İkmen wanted to say, Then why do you behave as if you’re so special? But he didn’t. Instead he said, ‘So did Betül’s father approve?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Arthur said. ‘We married against his wishes and went to live in the UK in spite of him.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘None of Betül’s family ever wanted anything to do with John. As far as I am aware, they still live in the same apartment in Şişli.’

  ‘We will check that out,’ İkmen said. ‘Did your son know where they lived, Mr Regan?’

  ‘Oh yes, but I know he wasn’t keen to meet them because of the way they had treated his mother and myself,’ he said. ‘Not one of them came to Betül’s funeral or ever asked after John. And you know, I discovered that they were very minor members of the Osmanoğlu family. All the members who had any real power were exiled by Atatürk in the 1920s.’

  That was true. Betül Şafak’s family, just like the Süleyman family, were very small fish in the great Osmanoğlu pond.

  ‘But John knew what his family were?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arthur said. ‘Not that he cared.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, Mr Regan?’ İkmen asked.

  He thought for a moment and then he said, ‘Well I suppose I can’t be positive. But I think it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Even though his book was to be about the Osmanoğlu family?’

  ‘It was a romance,’ Arthur said. ‘They wouldn’t have approved. He knew that. He came to İstanbul to be in the atmosphere, to explore the palaces where Abdülhamid and his Belgian mistress Flora lived. He was immersing himself in his mother’s heritage, writing a book he’d gone on about for years and taking a break from the academic work he’d done all his life. I didn’t think about the royal connection at all until I read the newspaper report about the murder of that old prince in Ortaköy. The victim before John, the woman, was the prince’s great-niece, and I had to put this connection to you as a possibility.’

  ‘You did the right thing, Mr Regan,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘There is a fourth victim,’ Arthur Regan began. ‘Is he …’

  ‘We do not believe that that person is connected to the Osmanoğlu family, although we will of course check that out now, Mr Regan,’ İkmen said. As far as anyone had been able to ascertain, Levent Devrim’s family had been enriched by their connections with the military republican elite of Kemal Atatürk.

  ‘I hope I’m wrong, but …’

  Arthur Regan gave İkmen his in-laws’ contact details and then left. As he shut the door behind the Englishman, Süleyman said, ‘Odd that no member of the Şafak family came forward when Dr Regan’s death was reported.’

  İkmen, looking down at his desk, said, ‘You heard him: they don’t and didn’t communicate.’ Then he looked up and tried to catch his colleague’s eye. ‘Don’t even try to deny that you had sex with the gypsy. I can see it on every jubilant centimetre of your skin. I feared it.’

  Süleyman walked back to the chair opposite İkmen’s and sat down.

  ‘So does Gonca know where her brother has gone?’ the older man asked.

  ‘She says not.’

  ‘And you believed her?’

  ‘Not necessarily. She said she’d put us in contact.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Süleyman’s face had that look that often followed on from good sex – a cross between contentment and smugness. But suddenly his expression turned into something angry and he said, ‘Well it’s more than you would have got out of her, Çetin! She wouldn’t have told you anything!’

  ‘You think?’ He shook his head. ‘I had hoped, Mehmet, that maybe you had grown up a little in recent years and that, just possibly, a sexually voracious gypsy woman might be something you could resist, but clearly not.’

  Süleyman leaned forward in his chair so that he could lower his voice. ‘She seduced me!’ he hissed.

  ‘Oh, and that makes it all right, does it?’ İkmen said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Potentially you have compromised this investigation, to say nothing of what this might mean for your relationship with my sergeant. She gave up happiness with İzzet Melik for what appears to me to be misery with you!’

  So he’d finally said it. When Süleyman’s sergeant İzzet Melik had called off his engagement to Ayşe Farsakoğlu because she couldn’t get over Süleyman, İkmen had said nothing. Even when İzzet had transferred back to his native Izmir he had held his tongue. But not any longer. This time his colleague had gone too far.

  Süleyman said nothing.

  After a pause, İkmen said, ‘I will take Sergeant Farsakoğlu with me out to Şişli to see these Şafak people now. You opened the first case, Levent Devrim; can you go and see his family today? Check out his connections?’

  Süleyman took his phone out of his pocket and said, tightly, ‘I’ll call them.’

  ‘Good,’ İkmen said. He put his jacket on and had begun to move towards his office doo
r when he stopped. ‘I don’t want to fall out with you over this, Mehmet.’

  His friend looked up at him and smiled. ‘Nor I with you.’

  ‘You’ve had your fun this time, but it can’t happen with Gonca again. If you compromise this investigation in any way and a murderer walks free …’

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. But he looked down at the phone in his hands as he did so. ‘I promise.’

  The inspector had filled her in on the details about the Şafak family, but Ayşe Farsakoğlu couldn’t get it out of her head that he was also concealing something from her. She couldn’t imagine what it could be. They were both, after all, going about their business to the same end. Now here they were in the smart district of Şişli, the preferred area of those from wealthy minorities like Armenians and Jews and the home of the original İstanbul mansion apartment. Ayşe dismissed her feelings and watched İkmen press a buzzer in the entrance hall of a dark, particularly smart early-twentieth-century example.

  Eventually a disembodied voice said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Abdurrahman Şafak?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is Inspector İkmen and Sergeant Farsakoğlu from the police,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Go to the lift on your right. We’re on the second floor, apartment four.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  İkmen had spoken to this Mr Şafak prior to leaving the station. Apparently he’d been agreeable to their visit, even if, now, his voice sounded somewhat hollow.

  They got into one of those tiny metal lifts that, for Ayşe, characterised both these old apartment blocks in Şişli and her own building in Gümüşuyu. Travelling in them, especially with others, could make one feel claustrophobic and, with a stranger, even a little nervous at times. Neither of them said anything as the lift ascended, which, again, Ayşe felt was odd for İkmen. Usually on the way to an interview he couldn’t stop talking. When the lift stopped, they got out to find a small, thin, suited man in his sixties waiting for them. His skin was grey and his eyes were overbright and alarmingly hollow. He was very obviously unwell.