Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Well, I have called Gonca,’ he said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was prepared. She cried, of course, but she quickly calmed herself and she’s with her father now.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Then I called that film company, Hittite, to ask for a copy of the documentary Şukru appeared in some years ago. I don’t know what kind of difficulty Gonca had with them, but they agreed to make a DVD for me and get it over here tomorrow.’

  İkmen smiled. ‘Ah, the power of authority,’ he said.

  ‘And what of Suzan Arslan? And her money?’

  ‘What of them?’ İkmen said. ‘She worked for Abdurrahman Şafak for eighteen months; there is no way she could have managed to save five thousand lira out of her wages in that time. By her own admission she was sending money home to the back of beyond via Western Union every week and the old man made her buy her own food!’ He shook his head. ‘And yet she insists that the money constitutes her savings.’

  ‘The notes are new and sequential; we can check them with the banks.’

  ‘Ultimately. But I want her to tell me first,’ İkmen said. ‘That girl knows something she shouldn’t and I think it’s about her master’s death.’

  ‘You don’t think she killed him, do you?’

  ‘No. But I think she may know who did.’ Then he said, ‘I need more cigarettes.’

  Süleyman took his packet out of his pocket and put it on his desk.

  İkmen rose to his feet. ‘All this ridiculous al fresco nonsense …’

  ‘Passive smoking, Çetin,’ Süleyman said. ‘It’s a worry.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘Well, clearly. But you know what a chain-smoker my ex wife Zelfa was? Well, she doesn’t smoke in her house any more and certainly not around our son under any circumstances. The world’s changing.’

  But İkmen wasn’t really listening. Looking over Süleyman’s shoulder, he saw what the younger man had been looking at before he came in. He said to him, ‘Checking your family tree – again?’

  Süleyman stood up. ‘Ah, you’ve caught me – again. Yes, those genealogies Professor Atay gave you proved just too intriguing.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t think you were interested in your Ottoman past,’ İkmen said acidly. ‘I thought it bored you.’

  Süleyman smiled. ‘That’s what we tell people, yes. But if you are, albeit indirectly, related to a family like the Osmanoğlu, then you are almost compelled to give in to a certain level of curiosity. And especially now …’

  ‘Because you’re related to Leyla Ablak?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ve also discovered too that …’ He shuffled the large sheets of paper in front of him. ‘Just a minute …’

  But then his phone rang and he answered it. ‘Süleyman.’

  Çetin İkmen, a cigarette already between his lips, watched as his colleague, in response to what he was being told on the phone, allowed his usually very proper mouth to drop open like a fish’s.

  Selçuk Devrim sat on the floor of his hall with a blanket around his shoulders. His face, his hands and his clothes were all smeared in his wife’s blood. Above him, leaning against the wall, was the man who had called the police, Professor Cem Atay. When Süleyman and Dr Sarkissian first saw the professor, he had been crying. Now, however, he was quiet and the doctor had gone to attend to the body of the woman who had been his lover.

  Süleyman looked down at the husband, who just gazed ahead without blinking. He was clearly in shock and a medic was on the way to attend to him. The inspector turned his attention to Cem Atay.

  ‘Sir, I will have to interview you formally later …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But can you tell me, in brief, what happened when you arrived at this house?’

  He shook his head, then said, ‘I arrived, parked outside and then Selçuk Bey opened the door looking like … covered in blood.’ He shook his head again. ‘He said “Help me” and at first I thought he was hurt, so I asked him if he was OK and then he showed me … her …’

  ‘Mrs Devrim.’

  ‘He took me into the kitchen and he showed her to me.’ His eyes filled with tears. He looked up at Süleyman. ‘We were all meeting to discuss something. Hatice, Selçuk Bey and me.’

  ‘To discuss what?’ Süleyman asked.

  He put his head down and lowered his voice. ‘Hatice, Mrs Devrim, and myself, we had been having an affair for some years. Selçuk knew.’ He glanced at the man on the floor.

  ‘For how long?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘How long had Mr Devrim known about your affair with his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some time. But Hatice and I didn’t know he knew until recently.’

  A small man carrying a large black bag appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Inspector Süleyman?’

  Süleyman excused himself to Professor Atay and approached the man, who put his hand out for Süleyman to shake. But the latter had plastic gloves on and so he just said, ‘You are?’

  ‘Dr Emre. I’m told there’s someone here in need of medical attention.’

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman indicated the man on the floor. The doctor put his bag down and got on to his haunches to talk to Selçuk Devrim. Süleyman meanwhile escorted Cem Atay into the Devrims’ living room.

  ‘How did you find out that Mr Devrim knew about your affair?’ he asked.

  ‘May I sit down?’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Süleyman said. ‘You must be feeling …’

  ‘Yes,’ the older man said. When they were both seated on yellow leather lounging chairs, the professor said, ‘Hatice told me that a couple of your officers came to this house, about Selçuk Bey’s brother who was murdered …’

  ‘Levent Devrim, yes. That was my Sergeant Mungan and a Sergeant Farsakoğlu.’

  ‘Yes, it was the woman …’

  ‘Farsakoğlu.’

  ‘Whatever her name was, she was talking to Hatice and she knew that she’d met her before because I had given the police Hatice’s contact details after the Ablak woman was found dead at my brother-in-law Faruk’s spa in Sultanahmet. Well, Selçuk overheard their conversation and confronted Hatice about it after the police had gone. Apparently he said that hearing her tell someone else about it upset him enormously.’

  ‘Did he say anything else to her?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ the professor said. ‘But from that moment, things got bad. Selçuk didn’t want a divorce and he wanted our affair to stop.’

  ‘And you weren’t …’

  ‘Hatice and I were in love,’ he said. ‘It was nightmarish. Hatice didn’t want to hurt either of us. She asked us both to come and meet with her today so that we could maybe sort out what we were going to do like adults. I didn’t for a moment believe that she’d do something like this …’

  ‘You think Mrs Devrim killed herself?’

  ‘Well I can’t believe that her husband would have killed her, and he was the only other person here when I arrived.’

  ‘Mr Devrim definitely arrived before you?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Inspector Süleyman, may I have a moment, please?’ The voice that came from the doorway belonged to Arto Sarkissian.

  Once again Süleyman excused himself to the professor and went to join the doctor in the kitchen. The body of Hatice Devrim, sitting on its chair, existed between them like a sin.

  Süleyman looked at it and said, ‘Doctor?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you that she didn’t kill herself,’ the Armenian said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because the pressure on the weapon that killed her was the same at the end of the cut as it was at the beginning. Had she slit her own throat she would have lost purchase after she started to bleed out. Look at this.’ He took Süleyman behind the body and pointed to the back of the neck. ‘The cut starts almost behind the left ear and carries on until it reaches the lobe of the right ear. That’s massive. Whoever kill
ed her was standing behind her; he or she was right-handed and I imagine that he probably held the victim to the chair with his left hand just prior to cutting. That’s how I would have done it.’

  ‘But he or she would have to have been strong.’

  ‘Oh undoubtedly, yes.’

  ‘Do we have a weapon, Doctor?’

  ‘As a matter of fact we do,’ he said. He took Süleyman to the kitchen sink. A sheet of blue plastic had been laid over the draining board. On it was a small knife with an ornate mother-of-pearl handle.

  ‘If I were to make a guess, I’d say Ottoman,’ Arto Sarkissian said.

  Süleyman frowned. ‘And I’d concur.’ He looked up into the doctor’s wide face. ‘I think I might even know what it is.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My father has one,’ he said. ‘It belonged to his aunt Gözde. She lived in Nişantaşı, in a terrible old mansion that eventually burnt down. She was a princess.’

  ‘And she had a knife like this?’

  ‘They all had knives like that,’ Süleyman said. ‘All the princesses.’

  Arto, smiling in spite of his colleague’s solemnity, said, ‘Odd thing for a lady of quality to carry, wasn’t it?’

  Süleyman sighed. ‘It was so that they could kill their husbands if they stepped out of line,’ he said. ‘The sultan himself would present the knives to the princesses when they got married. They were a constant reminder to their consorts about what royal blood really meant. For this to be used on a woman is bizarre to say the least; well, it is to me.’

  ‘Ah, but not many people have your background …’

  ‘True. Well either our killer knows exactly what this knife means, or he or she just grabbed something suitable for the job. But it’s an odd thing to just grab …’

  ‘The husband was first on the scene, wasn’t he?’ the doctor asked.

  Süleyman looked through the kitchen door to where Selçuk Devrim sat on the hall floor being attended by Dr Emre. He said, ‘Yes. And he was a cuckold.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Courtesy of the other man, Professor Cem Atay,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Who arrived afterwards?’

  ‘So he says.’ Süleyman lowered his voice. ‘You know, Doctor, it was Hatice Devrim, or Öz as she preferred to refer to herself back then, who provided an alibi for Professor Atay for the night when the spa murder victim, Leyla Ablak, was killed. Leyla Ablak, you may or may not recall, was the lover of Faruk Genç, Professor Atay’s brother-in-law.’

  ‘Yes, his sister’s husband.’

  ‘His dying sister’s husband, yes,’ he said.

  ‘What are you thinking, Inspector?’ the doctor asked.

  Süleyman paused for a moment and then said, ‘I’m thinking that Selçuk Devrim had a very obvious reason to kill his wife. I’m also thinking that under certain circumstances so did Professor Atay.’

  Arto Sarkissian frowned. ‘Depends whether Mrs Devrim’s alibi was sound, and if it wasn’t, whether she was using that fact to her advantage,’ he said. ‘No doubt in the fullness of time we will see.’

  Chapter 25

  The girl had to crack in the end. İkmen knew she wouldn’t sleep in that cell and so he stayed close at hand. At ten o’clock a neighbour’s boy arrived with the bread his wife had got for him and the chicken she had cooked for him. He was, as ever, grateful but he only really picked at the food. With instructions to the custody officers to call him if the girl so much as sneezed, he sequestered himself out in the car park so that he could smoke. Looking out over a city that boasted far more light than had been seen in the whole country when he’d been a child, İkmen wondered how he’d manage to survive in an increasingly expensive megacity on a pension. Of course if necessary he could sell his Sultanahmet apartment to some rich media type who would no doubt give him a laughable amount of money for it. But if he didn’t live there, then where could he live? And anyway, he didn’t want to live anywhere else.

  It didn’t help that he knew Mehmet Süleyman was up too. Or more to the point, it didn’t help that he knew why his colleague was still up. Another murder had occurred and he’d been interrogating Professor Cem Atay, who had been found at the house of the brother of Levent Devrim, their first twenty-first of the month victim. Apparently the professor had discovered Selçuk Devrim with the body of the latter’s wife, Hatice, who had had her throat cut. And it wasn’t even close to the twenty-first of any month.

  İkmen knew little more than just the bald details of the events that had taken place in Bebek. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Süleyman or Arto Sarkissian, who had also attended the scene. But then the girl Suzan was still preoccupying him. Had it really been just her excessive mourning for her master that had alerted him to the idea that she might have done something wrong? Or had he picked up something else from her? And was his position on that even tenable? He’d given the banks the serial numbers of the notes the girl had had on her and was waiting to hear from them. What if they had come from the old man’s own account? What if he had given her the money for some reason? But if that was the case, why hadn’t the girl just told him? Unless she’d taken money from him in exchange for something shameful, like sex. This was not the first time Çetin İkmen had asked himself these questions, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

  Although he was quite happy being alone with his thoughts, he wasn’t able to stay that way for very long. Although he could ignore the odd nicotine-starved constable, he couldn’t cut his deputy, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who walked towards him from her car.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, ‘so I thought I might as well come back and find out what was going on here.’

  She didn’t have anything much to go to her apartment for now that her brother had moved out and since all romantic contact with Mehmet Süleyman had ceased. But then İkmen had held out hopes for a long time that she would devote most of her time, if not her life, to her job. She was a good officer, and if he could, he wanted to make sure that she at least expressed an interest in taking over from him when he retired. Retired. Just the sound of the word depressed him.

  ‘Ayşe,’ he said, ‘I am always glad of your company.’

  ‘Suzan needs to weigh up whether she’s more afraid of us or of whoever I’m pretty sure is threatening her,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  She lit a cigarette. ‘Do you know anything about the death of Mrs Devrim?’ she asked.

  ‘I know that Inspector Süleyman is interviewing Professor Atay right now,’ İkmen said.

  ‘He was her lover. Did he kill her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to speak to the inspector or to Dr Sarkissian about it. For all I know the woman killed herself.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  And then the sound of a furious alcoholic who had just been brought in to dry out in the cells ripped into the night and silenced them both.

  In spite of the screams from the drunk in the next cell, Suzan could hear the custody officers talking and sometimes laughing. Mainly young men, they all had homes to go to at the end of their shifts and families to take care of them. Why should they worry too much about whoever they had in their cells?

  Suzan thought about her father and how he and her sick mother had to be feeling. The police had called them to confirm Suzan’s story about her mother’s illness and to try to discover what they knew about the five thousand lira. But beyond the existence of the money she hadn’t told them anything, and they had never asked. They’d told the police nothing because they knew nothing.

  Her mother was in pain all the time now. Her father and her brothers had told her that Suzan had been arrested. Her cancer was bad and that was why she would need aftercare and why those earrings would have been such a good idea if Suzan hadn’t got caught. Being locked in a police cell was not something she had anticipated, although she had to admit, if only to herself, that where she was now was appropriate, even if she hadn’t sought out the evil that
she had done. Everything that had led her to this place was vile and wrong and even though she’d done it primarily to make money for her mother, it had been an act of vengeance too. Not that any of that mattered now.

  Now her priority had to be to get that money to her parents, and if that meant dying herself, then that was how it was going to have to be. The threats that had been attached to the money could only, after all, be put into practice outside the confines of a police station or a prison, and she was going to go to one of those for certain. But if she did come clean, would the police give the money to her parents? They hadn’t said and she didn’t know. And if she didn’t test it out, she never would know.

  As soon as the drunk in the next cell had quietened down, she walked over to her cell door and stood for a moment in front of it, breathing hard. It was a big step. Her life had been threatened. But it was the middle of the night, her mother was in pain; what choice did she have? Suzan banged on the door with the heel of her hand and yelled, ‘Hey! You out there! I want to speak to Inspector Çetin İkmen! Now!’

  Süleyman held up the small knife, which was enclosed in a plastic evidence bag, for the professor to see. ‘I don’t suppose I have to tell you what this is, do I?’ he asked.

  Cem Atay nodded his head gravely. ‘I imagine we both know what it is, Inspector Süleyman.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but if you would just tell me …’

  ‘It’s an Ottoman knife, nineteenth century, given to an Imperial princess by her father, the sultan. I can’t tell you which one; these artefacts were somewhat similar in character across the Ottoman centuries. I am sure, being an Osmanoğlu yourself, you are well aware of that fact!’

  ‘Well this knife was used to kill Mrs Devrim,’ Süleyman said. ‘Professor, in your capacity as an Ottoman historian, and as, by your own admission, Mrs Devrim’s lover, do you know whether she or her husband possessed such an item?’

  He said nothing and so Süleyman said, ‘Do you perhaps own such an item yourself? I understand you are a collector of artefacts both Ottoman and—’

  ‘I don’t own such a thing myself, Inspector,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know if either Hatice or Selçuk owned one. But I think it more likely that it was Hatice’s.’