Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

‘Oh, Baba!’ She began to cry.

  He stroked her hand. ‘Ah, you live in the Turks’ world; you can talk to the television people and they will listen to you,’ he said. ‘Gonca, get that for me. It has your brother and our old Sulukule on it, and I want to see them both again before I die.’

  The house where Selçuk Devrim lived was small but very beautiful. By Bebek standards it was modest, being only two-storeyed, in a back street next to a derelict church. It possessed a tiny back garden and Ömer Mungan had to park his car on the street directly in front of the door. But both he and Ayşe Farsakoğlu were impressed. Of late Ottoman vintage, the house was made of honey-coloured wood, and every door and window frame was decorated with the most delicate metal filigree.

  As Ayşe got out of the car, Ömer said to her, ‘How would you like to live here, Ayşe Hanım?’

  Ayşe shook her head. ‘Only in my dreams,’ she said.

  He smiled. Colleagues had told him that his boss Inspector Süleyman’s parents lived in what had to be a very expensive house in nearby Arnavutköy. Had things gone well between them, Ayşe Farsakoğlu could have lived in a house like the Devrims’. But the word was that he was still with his gypsy, with the sergeant well and truly out in the cold.

  He said to her, ‘You know, these Bosphorus villages are so pretty, they almost make me like İstanbul.’

  Ayşe smiled. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.

  They walked up to the front door together and Ömer rang the bell. It took quite a long time for anyone to come and answer it, and for a moment Ayşe wondered whether the Devrims were in. But then the sound of unlocking bolts was heard and both officers breathed more easily.

  The door opened to reveal a woman of about forty. Slim, blonde and attractive, there was something familiar about her that made Ayşe Farsakoğlu frown. Looking at Ömer Mungan only, the woman said, ‘You must be Sergeant Mungan.’

  And then Ayşe knew who she was.

  ‘Yes,’ he said as he took her hand and shook it.

  ‘I’m Hatice Devrim, Selçuk’s wife.’ She turned to look at Ayşe Farsakoğlu, and as their eyes met, Hatice Devrim’s face turned white.

  Chapter 22

  Suzan felt her heart pound. She was panicking. Suddenly the money she’d got for them wasn’t enough. Paying for her mother’s surgery with no aftercare was pointless. And the aftercare cost yet more. Suzan’s father had been furious on the phone. He’d called her ‘thick’ and ‘cheap’ and had completely ignored her few protestations that her conscience, inasmuch as it was troubled at all, was like that because of him and her mother. But he didn’t listen. All he did was tell her to get hold of some more money before she came home. But how was she supposed to do that?

  The money she’d been given had been a one-off that had come with threats. If she ever told anyone about what she’d done for it, she knew she would be killed. Similarly if she attempted blackmail, it would end badly for her. Abdurrahman Efendi, that mean, cruel creature who had taken her honour from her and then just put her away in a box, had been killed and, just for leaving a door open, she’d been given more money than she had ever dreamed of. She hadn’t killed the old man, and in truth, she didn’t know who had. All she knew was that a woman who had been the old man’s friend had given her money to leave the front door to the apartment unlocked the day that Abdurrahman Efendi was found dead. Had she ever said that someone wanted to come in and kill the old man? No, but she had said that when Suzan came home, the prince would give her no more trouble. Who had she been? And why had she wanted him dead?

  Suzan didn’t read that well, and so the Efendi’s diary, where he might have written down the woman’s name, was a mystery to her. She didn’t know who she was or where she lived, and she hadn’t seen her since the woman had given her the money. So she couldn’t blackmail her. She couldn’t steal from the apartment either. The cousin’s people had already taken an inventory. All she could do was what she’d done before, when Efendi had found all those new clothes with the labels still on them in her bag and then made her do sex with him as a punishment. Now he was dead, she wouldn’t have to do that this time. But she would still have to go shoplifting.

  While Selçuk Devrim showed Ömer Mungan the boxes that contained his brother Levent’s effects, Ayşe Farsakoğlu joined his wife in the kitchen. Hatice Devrim, still white-faced from her earlier encounter with the policewoman, was making coffee.

  ‘I thought your surname was Öz,’ Ayşe said as she watched the woman fill a large cafetière with water.

  ‘It is.’ She put the lid on the coffee pot and tried not to look at Ayşe’s face.

  ‘But you’re married to …’

  ‘I kept my surname.’ She looked up. ‘I was a nurse when I married Selçuk, we often do. All right?’

  She was quite aggressive and Ayşe could understand why, but she ignored it.

  ‘I appreciate that a person can have multiple roles, Miss Öz,’ she said. ‘But do you live here, or with your parents in Fatih? And does your husband know about—’

  ‘No!’ She walked over to the kitchen door and shut it. She was a statuesque woman with large, slanting emerald-green eyes. Ayşe, uncharitably, assumed their colour had to be due to green contact lenses.

  ‘I met you as Professor Cem Atay’s mistress at your parents’ house in Fatih,’ Ayşe said. ‘You told me you spent the night that Leyla Ablak died with Professor Atay. Now I find that you are in fact married to Mr Selçuk Devrim. So, through your husband and Professor Atay’s brother-in-law, Faruk Genç, you are, loosely, connected to two of the murder victims we are investigating.’

  ‘You mean the woman that Professor Atay’s brother-in-law was having an affair with? I didn’t know her!’ She sat down at her kitchen table and lit a cigarette. ‘Of course I knew Selçuk’s brother, but …’

  ‘Tell me about your affair with Professor Atay,’ Ayşe said as she sat down opposite the woman, who was now looking actively resentful.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve just told you why,’ Ayşe said. ‘You exist on the fringes of two murders. And you concealed your true marital state from me. You can tell me why, when I interviewed you before, you gave me the impression you lived with your parents, or we can go to police headquarters together.’

  Hatice Öz sat in silence for a moment, then pushed the plunger down on the cafetière. ‘Let me pour the coffee and I’ll tell you,’ she said.

  She gave the men their drinks first and then served Ayşe and herself.

  ‘Selçuk works away for at least half the year, on and off,’ she said once she’d sat down again and begun to drink her coffee. ‘He works in telecommunications, in Russia. When Levent died he was away and I think I saw another officer, at police headquarters. A tall, rather elegant man …’

  Süleyman.

  ‘There was nothing I could do. Selçuk dealt with it when he came back,’ she continued. ‘When my husband is away, I spend a lot of time at my parents’ house. I don’t like being alone here.’

  ‘Does your husband know that?’ Ayşe asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know about …’

  ‘Cem and I met at Boğaziçi University,’ she said. ‘Many years ago.’

  Although Ayşe hadn’t yet met the professor in the flesh, she knew what he looked like from his TV programmes. He was considerably older than Hatice Öz.

  ‘You were his student?’

  ‘Yes. I studied Ottoman history,’ she said. ‘He was my tutor. Things …’ She looked down at her hands. ‘Things happened. We fell in love.’

  ‘And still are?’

  She looked up. ‘Yes.’

  Ayşe sipped her coffee. ‘If that is the case, why are you with Mr Devrim?’

  ‘Cem, Professor Atay, was married when we met. He didn’t love her.’ Her rush to declare that her lover hadn’t cared for his wife when the affair had begun struck Ayşe as typical of the things ‘other’ women told those around them and themselves.
She’d done it herself when she’d helped Mehmet Süleyman commit adultery.

  ‘If I remember correctly, though,’ Ayşe said, ‘I believe that Professor Atay is single now, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why …’

  ‘I care about Selçuk,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Cem wouldn’t want to be married again, not after last time.’

  As a single man with a married mistress, Professor Atay was both having his cake and eating it. But Ayşe asked anyway. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she disappeared,’ Hatice Öz said. ‘I’d been married to Selçuk for almost two years. I hadn’t heard from Cem for a long time. When I left university we ended our affair, and although I never forgot him, I moved on and married Selçuk. Then one day Cem called me and told me that his wife, Merve, had disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘It was in the papers,’ she said. ‘The police … you looked for her, but she has never been found.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Ten years ago.’

  Ayşe didn’t remember it. But then she’d been working for Çetin İkmen for over ten years, so a simple missing person case would not have come her way unless there was some reason to suspect murder. Clearly in this case no one had believed that Mrs Merve Atay had been killed. But with a patently adulterous husband in the woman’s life, Ayşe wondered why that question had apparently never been asked.

  ‘Cem was very upset about it.’

  ‘Even though he didn’t love his wife?’ Ayşe countered. If Cem Atay had really not loved Merve he would have divorced her and married Hatice. There had to be a reason why he had stayed with her until she disappeared. Ayşe suspected it was probably because Merve on some level tolerated his ‘messing around’ with his students and with the media types he must have met since he had become a television academic.

  ‘Her disappearance has scarred his life,’ Hatice said. ‘When he called me to tell me about Merve that first time, I just dropped everything and went to him.’

  ‘Did your husband know?’

  ‘Of course not! He was abroad, Azerbaijan. Poor Cem was devastated. He’d gone to bed one night, and when he woke up in the morning his wife had gone.’

  ‘And so you picked up where you’d left off.’

  ‘I comforted Cem.’

  ‘And then …’

  She turned her face away. ‘Cem Atay is a remarkable man, Sergeant. Whatever you may think about me, us, you have to understand that.’

  Ayşe, who knew all about ‘remarkable’ men, raised an eyebrow. Being cynical about Mehmet Süleyman since his latest defection to his gypsy was getting easier every day. Maybe, she thought, İkmen was right about how she should just concentrate on her career.

  ‘What we have suits us both,’ Hatice Öz said. ‘I care for Selçuk and I would never want to hurt him; he’s had enough trouble in his life one way or another. But I love Cem and the excitement of his world and I couldn’t give it up again. When I was a student, my life was full of interest and incident. But since then …’ She shrugged. ‘Some people would say that I haven’t grown up.’

  Ayşe looked at her. She was rather childlike. Not to look at, but in her enthusiastic reactions to things and to people, like her lover, Cem Atay.

  ‘Does anyone know about your affair?’ Ayşe said.

  ‘We’re very discreet.’

  ‘You’ve not answered my question,’ Ayşe said.

  Hatice Öz looked at her. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  Ayşe thought for a few moments. ‘Not maybe your brother-in-law, Levent …’

  ‘Levent?’

  ‘Yes, Levent who died in Tarlabaşı. Levent Devrim.’

  ‘I hardly knew him,’ she said. ‘Selçuk wouldn’t let me near that terrible flat he had. He came here once, just after we got married, but … While he was alive, after my in-laws died, Selçuk paid him an allowance, but we never went to see him.’

  ‘And the allowance …’

  ‘Oh, that was up to my husband,’ she said. ‘But he got no opposition from me. Ask him! The poor man was mad and he had a heart condition; who wouldn’t want to help him?’

  She hadn’t been expecting him. When he’d arrived, she had just finished on the phone to the production company who had made the documentary that her brother had been in. They hadn’t been helpful and she’d been furious, but she’d put that aside to make love to him. Now he was fucking her and all she could think about was how hot he felt inside her. Just the thought of him made her grind her hips still harder against his. In spite of Şukru, in spite of everything, when Mehmet Süleyman wanted her, Gonca gave herself to him without a thought. Only afterwards, as he lay half asleep beside her, did her thoughts go back to Şukru once again.

  The TV production company who had made the Ottoman minorities documentary had been called Hittite, as in the ancient Anatolian civilisation. The man she’d finally managed to speak to there had been arrogant and terse, and when she’d told him who she was, he’d become even worse.

  ‘Oh that was years ago,’ he’d told her. ‘If we have got it, it’ll only be on old videotape.’

  ‘But they’ve played bits of it on the news,’ she’d said.

  He’d gone away to apparently find out about that, but when he’d returned, he’d just said, ‘That was a clip from an old videotape.’

  ‘Oh, so can I have a copy?’

  ‘Of videotape? What will you play it on?’ he’d said. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t the whole programme; it was just a tape of clips that we had.’

  ‘Where can I get a copy if you don’t have one?’ she’d asked.

  He’d said he didn’t know, and so she’d told him to fuck off, put the phone down and then cursed him and his wretched company. Afterwards she’d thought that maybe she should have been a bit nicer, because perhaps he would, given time, have agreed to give her the clip. But then she could record that off the television herself. No. What her father wanted was the whole programme. Not just for Şukru, but for all the shots of Sulukule that were in it too.

  She looked over at Mehmet Süleyman. He’d be on his way soon, back to his work and the life that he had without her. There had been no news about the DNA test, and as soon as he’d told her that, she’d taken him to her bedroom. Now he was catching some rest after his exertions and it made Gonca smile. But only for a moment. Recalling her conversation with her father, she wondered whether she should tell Süleyman about the old man’s suspicions regarding Şukru. After all, if the body that the police had found burning in Aksaray was Şukru, then whoever had done that had to be punished. Not that her father would want the police to do it. But if the police could find the bastard for them, the community could think of a way to deal with him. Anyway, Gonca had a question for her lover.

  She tapped Süleyman on the shoulder.

  ‘What?’ He raised his head. His hair was, Gonca noticed, uncharacteristically awry.

  She rolled over and put an arm on his naked side. ‘I went to see my father,’ she said. ‘He thinks Şukru was blackmailing someone.’

  ‘Blackmailing who?’ He lit two cigarettes and gave her one. She put an ashtray on the bed between them.

  ‘He doesn’t know. But he has a theory.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Baba thinks that Şukru saw whoever killed that crazy man in Tarlabaşı back in January. Before he left to go to Edirne, Şukru told him that he was going to move the family out to a Bosphorus village when Hıdırellez was over. That takes money.’

  ‘Do you think that he may just have been boasting?’ Süleyman asked.

  Gonca stroked his face. ‘Gypsy men don’t boast unless they can follow through, darling,’ she said. ‘We are not like you. We don’t boast about our big penises unless we can show them.’

  ‘I’ve never—’ he began.

  ‘You have to prove nothing,’ she said. ‘But Mehmet, what if my Şukru went to see someone to blackmail him that day when he returned to İstanbul?’
r />   ‘But who? Does your father have any idea?’

  ‘No. My father doesn’t leave the house. What does he know?’ She puffed on her cigarette. ‘Şukru was in Ortaköy with the Edirne gypsies when he called me just before Hıdırellez,’ she said. ‘And his body was found in Aksaray.’

  ‘Hıdırellez is the sixth of May, and Şukru’s body – if it is Şukru’s body – was found on the twenty-first,’ Süleyman said. ‘Dr Sarkissian is of the opinion that the Aksaray man was killed some days before he was cremated.’

  ‘But if Şukru disappeared on Hıdırellez, which he did,’ she said, ‘then whoever had him must have kept him prisoner.’ She frowned. ‘But who could keep a man like Şukru as a prisoner? He wouldn’t allow it. And why Aksaray?’

  ‘There were no security cameras where the body was found,’ Süleyman said.

  She changed the subject. ‘Mehmet,’ she said, ‘many years ago my brother took part in a documentary about Sulukule. My father wants a copy, so I spoke to the production company who made it to try and find one. But they didn’t have one. They were offhand with me and I lost my temper with them.’

  ‘Gonca …’

  ‘I know! I know I should be a better woman! But look, Mehmet, do you remember that documentary?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘It was made when all the trouble first started with the council threatening to demolish Sulukule,’ she said. ‘I didn’t really pay attention at the time, and the piece they showed on the news programmes just shows Şukru being a loudmouth. But I want it, for my father. Will you ask people you know about it? If I knew who the director was …’

  ‘So ask the production company,’ he said.

  She said nothing and lowered her eyes.

  ‘You really abused them, didn’t you, Gonca?’ He shook his head. ‘I will ask everyone I think might know.’

  Çetin İkmen motioned for Ayşe Farsakoğlu to sit down in front of his desk while he finished his telephone call. Once the call had ended, he wrote some notes on one of the scrap pieces of paper that littered his desk and then he said, ‘Ayşe?’

  She told him what she’d found out at Selçuk Devrim’s house and how his wife had turned out to be someone she had met before. ‘Hatice Öz provided an alibi for her lover Professor Atay for the night that Leyla Ablak was murdered,’ she said. ‘In addition, because Miss Öz is Levent Devrim’s sister-in-law, that creates a link between those two crimes.’