‘Did Miss Öz know Leyla Ablak?’ İkmen asked.
‘She says not, sir.’
‘What about the spa, any connection there?’
‘Again she says not, but I have yet to check that out.’
‘OK.’
‘What she did tell me was that Professor Atay was at the centre of a missing person case some years ago,’ Ayşe said. ‘His wife, Merve Atay, apparently walked out of their house in Arnavutköy in 2002 and never returned. I don’t remember it myself.’
‘Nor I,’ İkmen said. ‘But I’ll look it up. The woman’s still missing, you say?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mmm.’ He shook his head. ‘Professor Atay has been helpful to us with regard to sharing his knowledge of the vast Osmanoğlu family. I don’t know whether the Mayan connection really has any validity, but …’ He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Have you ever watched his television programmes?’
‘I saw one he did about Süleyman the Lawgiver,’ she said. ‘That was good, if a bit depressing. I mean, he really explored the whole notion of the Ottoman Empire going into decline from then on.’
‘It did,’ İkmen said.
‘At the end of the narrative it sort of went into the inevitability of Kemalism and the Republic,’ she said. ‘But that has to be over ten years ago now, before all this re-evaluation of the Ottoman period came into vogue. I think Professor Atay has made a lot of documentaries since then.’
‘Oh yes.’ İkmen put his hand in his desk drawer and pulled out a large sheaf of paper. ‘Told me he’s just written a book about the relationship and rivalry between the Ottoman and the Spanish Empires. Hence some fascinating trips to South America and his interest in the Mayans. That will I believe become a documentary at some point too. But then the professor is a very personable man with a rather lovely speaking voice.’ He smiled again. ‘Sexy academics. Very in demand. Have you seen that British physicist? Professor something or other from Manchester University? My daughters make very strange noises when he comes on the television. I don’t think they understand a word he says. I know I don’t.’ He frowned. ‘I presume that Levent Devrim’s brother doesn’t know that his wife is having an affair with … Did you say that Hatice Öz had been a student of Professor Atay?’
‘Years ago, yes,’ she said. ‘And no, according to his wife, Selçuk Devrim does not know.’
İkmen put the sheaf of paper he’d taken out of his drawer on his desk. ‘The Osmanoğlu family trees given to me by Professor Atay,’ he said. ‘I’ve read and read them. They’re just names …’ He looked up. ‘If Selçuk Devrim doesn’t know about his wife’s affair, that doesn’t mean that other people are as clueless as he is – if he is clueless. And if other people know and maybe take advantage of that knowledge in some way … But how does any of this relate to the death of either Levent Devrim or Leyla Ablak?’
‘It doesn’t,’ Ayşe said. ‘At least it doesn’t given what we know about these people at the moment. Hatice Öz hardly knew her brother-in-law Levent. The money his brother gave him every month was clearly not stretching the couple financially and she seemed to have actually had a sneaking affection for the man. Whether Professor Atay knew Leyla Ablak from the spa is open to question, but he has an alibi for the night she died …’
‘From Hatice Öz.’
‘And what would have been his motive for killing Leyla anyway?’
‘Because she was having an affair with his brother-in-law, Faruk Genç, the husband of his dying sister?’
‘And yet you said that Professor Atay exhibited some understanding of Faruk Genç’s situation.’
He shrugged. ‘Yes. But you’ve raised an interesting connection, Ayşe,’ he said, ‘and it does mean that the professor’s alibi for Leyla Ablak’s death may be unsafe. Not because he has a mistress – we knew that – but because he concealed, as did she, her connection to a previous crime. Why do that? We could have cleared them both with little trouble had we known the truth. But they didn’t tell us the truth.’ He rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot. ‘I’ll look into his missing wife; we have to have historical data on that, especially if the woman is still officially alive.’
They sat in silence for a few moments as they both absorbed what had just been discussed. Then İkmen said, ‘When you came in, I was on the phone to the father of victim number three.’
‘John Regan.’
‘Arthur Regan had been to see the maid, Suzan, at Abdurrahman Efendi’s apartment in Şişli. Not at my request, I should say.’
Ayşe knew that İkmen was having the little maid watched, although she couldn’t really understand why. It came down, as far as she knew, to a feeling İkmen had about how the young girl had cried too much when the old man had died. One of his hunches, apparently, but it was also backed up by her own and Arthur Regan’s observation that the old man had treated the girl badly. If that was the case, why was she so cut up about his death?
‘Did Mr Regan find anything out?’ Ayşe asked.
‘Only that Suzan intends to go back to her home village at the end of the week,’ he said. ‘Oh, and she has very little faith in our ever finding her master’s killer.’
‘That’s not unusual, sir,’ Ayşe said. ‘The public—’
‘Understand neither our problems nor our methods,’ he said. ‘But you know, the girl was very calm with Mr Regan. And how she can stay in that apartment, given that she is choking with sobs every time I see her, I don’t know. She says she knows nobody in the city …’
‘Then that explains it,’ Ayşe said.
‘Yes, but we could have moved her into a hostel,’ İkmen said. ‘I asked Inspector Süleyman if he’d offered her alternative accommodation, and he said that he had but she turned it down.’
‘Do you think she wants to maybe take something from the apartment before she goes?’ Ayşe asked.
‘I believe an inventory has been produced; it would be stupid of her. But maybe,’ he added. ‘She’s a little country girl; she may be that … what do you call it, unworldly?’
She smiled. ‘You’ll find out. You’re having her watched.’
‘Yes, I am, Ayşe,’ he said. ‘At the moment I’m having a lot of people watched. In that sense, if in no other, I do feel Ottoman.’ Then, realising that she didn’t know what he meant, he added, ‘In the latter stages of the Empire, from the nineteenth century, successive sultans continually increased their spy network until, under Abdülhamid II, it was reckoned that half the country was spying on the other half.’
‘Oh.’
He shook his head. ‘And the sort of people, I am told, who want to rebuild Tarlabaşı want people like that to rule over us again. I despair.’
Hatice got as far away from Selçuk as she could to make her phone call. She went to the spare bedroom overlooking the now darkened back garden. But it wasn’t far enough.
‘Don’t call him.’
She pressed the end call button on her phone and turned around to confront her husband. ‘Who?’
‘You know,’ Selçuk Devrim said. ‘Don’t make me have to say his hated name, Hatice.’
‘Whose hated name? I don’t know what you mean.’ But she felt her face go red as she spoke, and she knew that he knew with every centimetre of her flesh. But how?
‘Cem Atay,’ he said. ‘That was who the policewoman was talking to you about in the kitchen, wasn’t it? Cem Atay. Your lover.’
‘No!’
‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘I left the young man in the living room with Levent’s effects and came to get more coffee. But I heard what you were talking about and so I just listened outside until I couldn’t take it any more.’
She looked into his eyes and saw that they were wet.
‘I was so touched to hear that you don’t want to hurt me,’ he said bitterly.
She moved towards him. ‘Selçuk …’
He retreated from her. ‘Don’t come near me! While you were just screwing your hot, famous old tutor I could jus
t about cope with it. But when I had to stand there and listen to you talk about how you loved him …’
She realised the import of what he’d just said. ‘You knew? Before today?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘But …’
‘How?’ He shook his head. ‘Well even if I could have persuaded myself to ignore the stolen phone calls that you habitually made, even if I could forgive your lack of interest in our sex life, when I was told, it all became a bit unavoidable for me.’
‘Told! Who told you?’
‘Who do you think?’ he said.
She sat down on the spare bed and with a shaking hand put her phone into the pocket of her jeans.
He leaned towards her and said, ‘Levent. My brother.’
Chapter 23
Suzan was sweating. She had to keep focused. What she took had to be small enough for her to carry and able to be resold easily. She looked around the shining metallic halls dotted with chandeliers that made up the Vakko department store and made her decision. She’d have to take jewellery. Anything else would be too bulky and wouldn’t make her enough money. Good jewellery on the other hand was something she could give to her father to sell. There were always men who wanted to buy gold and diamonds for their wives or their daughters or their mistresses.
The problem that Suzan had was that the really expensive items were displayed in large glass cases that couldn’t be opened from in front of the counter. It meant that if she was to have any chance of stealing anything, she had to ask the shop assistant to get the items out of the cases for her to look at. Only then could she try to take something. And as well as shop assistants and security guards, there were cameras everywhere. Suzan looked at herself in a small mirror over by the costume jewellery earrings. She wasn’t the only woman in the store who was wearing a headscarf, but she was the only one who was not wearing make-up and whose clothes had been darned. Even women who looked as if they too could be domestic servants were smarter than her. And people were looking at her. She was about to give up and go back to the apartment empty-handed when something caught her eye.
A woman, probably somewhere in late middle age, all powdered face and fake blonde hair, had just bought something from the jewellery counter and had put it in her handbag. So casual was she about a purchase that Suzan couldn’t imagine would have cost her anything less than a thousand lira that she didn’t even bother to zip up her handbag after she’d put the jewellery box inside it. Suzan could see the little box even from where she stood, which was five or six metres away. To say that it was too easy was overstating the case, but it was easy enough that for a moment Suzan wondered whether the woman was some sort of security operative tasked with flushing out shoplifters. But there was only one day left before she had to leave the city and go home, and this was probably her last chance to make her father proud of her. She just had to do it.
She walked towards the counter just as the woman began to talk to another middle-aged lady who had come up beside her, distracting her completely. Suzan couldn’t help but feel that her luck was in. Passing slowly in front of the woman’s handbag, she looked over at some strings of multicoloured pearls on a tall, slim display stand. At the same time, her hand slid into the bag and, without disturbing anything but the jewellery box, she began to draw it out towards her own tattered handbag.
When she first felt the weight of something heavy on her arm, she did think that maybe the tension involved in bag-diving had caused her to wrench an already stiffened shoulder. But then she saw that a man had come alongside her, and when he said, ‘Can I see what you’ve just put in your handbag, please, miss?’ Suzan felt her heart sink through Vakko’s highly polished marble floor.
Çetin İkmen knocked on Mehmet Süleyman’s office door. When the younger man said, ‘Come,’ he let himself in. Both men had tired very quickly of being in the investigative operation room and had retreated back to their respective offices. As he entered, İkmen said, ‘I’ve got news.’
‘Oh?’
The older man carried a sheaf of papers underneath one arm and Süleyman thought this was what he had come to show him. He held out his hand. ‘Let me see,’ he said.
But İkmen shook his head. ‘Not these. No. I’ve just heard from Dr Sarkissian about the DNA test on the burning man of Aksaray.’
‘Ah.’ Süleyman nodded. ‘And?’
‘It is indeed Şukru Şekeroğlu,’ İkmen said.
‘Oh.’ Süleyman looked down, probably, İkmen thought, wondering how he was going to tell the man’s sister.
‘And there’s something else,’ İkmen said. ‘The doctor found large quantities of a benzodiazepine tranquilliser in the body.’
‘Enough to kill him?’
‘He’s not sure,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s not entirely sure that it can kill. The body, as you saw, is very badly degraded. But Dr Sarkissian is of the opinion that the actual cause of death was strangulation. My guess is that he was somehow disabled by the tranquilliser first and then murdered.’
‘Unless he was already taking benzodiazepine, although I find that notion bizarre to say the least.’
‘Because he was such a confident man? Mehmet, if our super-smooth Professor Atay has dabbled in diazepam, then anyone can.’
‘I don’t know whether confident is the right word,’ Süleyman said. ‘Şukru was afraid of no one and nothing. But whether he possessed actual confidence I don’t know. He was a wrestler until he put his back out, then a dancing bear man until dancing bears became illegal. Then I think he lost his way.’
‘Do you want me to tell the family?’ İkmen asked.
‘No,’ Süleyman said. ‘Gonca knows anyway. Via the cards, the coffee grounds …’
‘Ah, ancient wisdom,’ İkmen said. ‘It worked for Mother and it’s worked for me, as you know. But then I’m not alone in believing that ancient systems can be useful.’
‘And yet you don’t believe in homeopathy?’
İkmen shook his head. ‘That’s a relatively modern construct,’ he said. ‘No, I’m talking about things like herbalism, which is the precursor to modern medicine.’
‘But you’re also talking about what some would call magic.’
‘Yes, because we don’t yet understand how our brains work,’ İkmen said. ‘When we do, maybe things like precognition won’t seem magical to us any more. But don’t take my word for it, Mehmet. Greater minds than mine believe that you can’t discount the beliefs and technologies of the ancients. Professor Atay is of the opinion that many of the South American civilisations he studied for his latest book, including the Maya, possessed knowledge the rest of us have discounted to our cost. Have you ever watched any of Professor Atay’s television programmes?’
‘No.’
‘I thought you’d find that sort of thing interesting.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘If I want relics of the Ottoman Empire, all I have to do is go home. But the subject of television reminds me: Gonca’s brother was in a documentary about Sulukule about ten years ago. Her father would like a copy of it. She called the production company but they weren’t very helpful and she lost her temper …’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘If we could find out who directed it, or if anyone remembers it …’
İkmen shook his head. ‘Those sorts of social justice shows tend to be on in the middle of the night,’ he said. ‘I don’t recall it at all. Why don’t you phone up the production company and ask them; they should talk to you.’
‘True.’
İkmen frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by his telephone.
The girl shook. When she looked at the bag they’d put on the table in front of her, her bag, she cried.
Where Mehmet Süleyman looked at her with contempt in his eyes, Çetin İkmen viewed her with kindness. He even smiled. ‘Well, Suzan,’ he said, ‘I can understand the diamond earrings. I’ve got that you tried to steal them from a Mrs Günel. It’s the five thousand lira that puzzles me. Where did you get it and why
were you carrying it about with you in your handbag?’
Suzan didn’t say anything.
İkmen reached across to Süleyman, who gave him a large transparent evidence bag full of banknotes. ‘And all nice crisp new notes too,’ İkmen said. ‘Tell me, Suzan, had you just been to the bank?’
She began crying again and Süleyman rolled his eyes in frustration.
‘Now, now, Inspector,’ İkmen said to him, ‘the young lady is upset. We must exercise patience.’
‘She’s a thief,’ Süleyman said. ‘Why should we? She tried to steal those earrings. We know that. The money’s probably stolen too. She deserves no special treatment.’
‘Even though she’s just lost her beloved master?’ İkmen said. ‘Oh, Inspector, I think you’re being a little harsh.’
Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who had seen the good cop/bad cop routine many times before and employed by many different officers, watched the girl as she sobbed. She noticed that every time Süleyman spoke, Suzan tensed.
‘I don’t see what you hope to achieve here, Inspector,’ Süleyman said to İkmen. ‘We can get where she purloined this money out of her very easily.’ He turned to Suzan. ‘I was kind to you when Abdurrahman Efendi died, but not any more! Tell us where you got the money!’
İkmen shook his head impatiently, then said softly, ‘Suzan, tell me, do you have a bank account?’
She looked up, and for a moment Ayşe Farsakoğlu thought the girl was about to speak, but then she just burst into tears again.
Apparently exasperated, Süleyman threw his hands in the air and stood up. ‘I’m sick of this!’ he said. ‘Do what you like, Inspector İkmen, I need some fresh air and a cigarette before I can even think about continuing with this thief!’ And attracting the attention of the constable outside the interview room door, he left.
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