Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well because, albeit distantly, through her mother, Hatice was related to the Osmanoğlu family.’

  ‘Hatice Öz?’

  ‘Her mother is a Şafak,’ he said. ‘A cousin, I understand, of the old man who was recently murdered in Şişli.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Have you told Hatice’s parents? About her death?’

  ‘My sergeant has been to see them, yes.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Inspector, the extended Osmanoğlu family is so vast it is almost impossible to trace every last relative. Over the years I have compiled family trees …’

  ‘Yes.’ Either the professor had forgotten about the copies he had given to Çetin İkmen or he had chosen not to allude to them. ‘Professor, what are your feelings about the fact that Hatice Devrim was killed with this knife?’

  ‘I’m horrified.’ He looked drawn and exhausted and there was the familiar dullness of shock in his eyes. ‘For something so personal to be used …’ He shook his head. ‘Hatice wasn’t open about her background, Inspector. In spite of the fact that the Ottoman world is currently under some reappraisal, she didn’t like what it represented and neither did her husband.’

  ‘Did Selçuk Devrim know about his wife’s ancestry?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the professor answered. ‘Hatice never told me very much about him. All I can tell you, all that Hatice told me, is that Selçuk came from a military family. All very Atatürkist …’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So if he did kill her with that knife, I doubt very much whether he would have fully appreciated the affront that represented.’

  ‘To her family.’

  ‘Of course! Those knives were given to the princesses by the sultan as a way of keeping their husbands in line. A princess could kill a damat, a royal son-in-law, if she so wished, if he cheated on or displeased her.’

  Had Selçuk Devrim come home, apparently at his wife’s request, to talk, and then killed her with a family heirloom? If the professor was right and Hatice Devrim kept her background quiet, then how had her husband lighted apparently so easily upon that object? Whatever he had or hadn’t done, he was now in hospital in a state of fugue from which, so far, he had not emerged, and so asking him wasn’t as yet an option. Material for forensic analysis had been taken from both Selçuk and the professor, and so in time, other elements might come to light pointing towards one or other of the men. What was indisputable was that Selçuk Devrim had been covered in his wife’s blood and Professor Atay had not. Selçuk Devrim’s mobile phone had been broken somehow, while the academic’s had remained intact. But then Süleyman also had to take into account what Arto Sarkissian had told him about the murder. The killer had cut Hatice Devrim’s throat from behind, which meant that he wouldn’t have come into contact with her blood except, possibly, as it sprayed over his hand. The woman’s husband, on finding her, could have attempted to revive her by applying CPR or just hugging her body to his. Until Devrim could be spoken to, there was no way of knowing.

  ‘Professor, what were you doing prior to your arrival at the Devrim house in Bebek?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘I was at home,’ he said.

  ‘Can anyone verify that?’

  ‘No. I live alone.’

  ‘Did Mrs Devrim call you from her home in the same way that she summoned her husband?’

  ‘No,’ he said. He leaned forward on the table between them. ‘Inspector, Hatice was at my house this morning. This sudden knowledge she’d come upon that her husband had known about her infidelity for some time was a shock to her. She’d always wanted to protect him against that knowledge.’

  ‘She loved him?’

  ‘As one might love a brother, yes, but any more than that …’ He shrugged. ‘Hatice wanted to tell Selçuk, in my presence, that their relationship was over. She asked me to meet her and Selçuk at their home in Bebek at six. I was a few minutes late because of the traffic.’

  ‘When did she ask you to do this?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘And yet from looking at Mrs Devrim’s mobile phone records, we can see that she didn’t call her husband today until just gone four thirty this afternoon.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know how to explain that,’ he said. ‘She asked me to meet her at her house at six. She said she’d make sure Selçuk got home in time. Maybe she couldn’t get through to him until four thirty?’

  ‘Maybe. So what did you do when Mrs Devrim’s visit to your house in Arnavutköy came to an end? Did you take her home?’

  ‘Yes. I drove her to Bebek at about one.’

  ‘You didn’t stay with her?’

  ‘No, I had some book proofs to read. I’ve a new book coming out in the autumn; I mentioned it to Inspector İkmen.’

  ‘This is about the Ottoman Empire’s rivalry with the Spanish Empire.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Yes, of course, your very interesting theories regarding the Mayan Long Count calendar that so fascinated the brother-in-law of your lover Mrs Devrim,’ said Süleyman. ‘Professor Atay, did you know Levent Devrim?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mmm. Just as you didn’t know Leyla Ablak, your brother-in-law Faruk Genç’s lover.’

  ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘What are you driving at, Inspector?’

  ‘I am driving, sir, at the fact that you appear to be indirectly connected to two of our victims and directly connected to a third.’

  ‘No. I didn’t know Levent Devrim or Leyla Ablak myself, and surely, if you look at just the date connections that exist, so I understand, across many of the other deaths that this city has sadly experienced in the last few months, you will see that Hatice’s murder doesn’t fit that pattern.’

  ‘If we take it as read that some sort of Mayan conspiracy lunatic is amongst us, yes,’ he said. ‘But Professor, that is your theory, which may or may not reflect reality. The fact remains that Mrs Hatice Devrim, your lover, a member of the Osmanoğlu extended family by your own testimony, is dead, and so at the moment we have no choice but to add her name to our list of victims of a possible serial killer.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘You see, if she called her husband at four thirty and he arrived in Bebek in his car, according to a witness, at six, then someone could have killed her between that phone call and Selçuk Devrim’s arrival.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked down at his notes again. ‘So if you went home after you took Mrs Devrim to Bebek at one, what time did you leave Arnavutköy to get to the Devrim house at six?’

  Atay thought for a few moments. ‘I was late. It must have been about ten to six. I became engrossed.’

  ‘In spite of the seriousness of the meeting you were going to?’

  ‘I’m an academic; we—’

  ‘I see. And can you please tell me, sir, what was to be the outcome of this meeting between Mrs Devrim, her husband and yourself?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, was Mrs Devrim going to ask her husband for a divorce?’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ he said. ‘That was why she wanted me to be there.’

  ‘For support, or was she afraid of her husband?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘For support, of course. As to whether she was afraid?’ he sighed. ‘I don’t know, Inspector. Hatice never said she feared him. But maybe she didn’t always tell me everything.’

  ‘And when that marriage was over, were you going to marry Mrs Devrim?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘İnşallah.’

  ‘I didn’t know what he was doing at first,’ Suzan said. The light in the interview room was inadequate and gave her slim face a yellowing tinge. ‘I knew what animals did because my parents keep sheep and goats. No one had ever spoken to me properly about anything like that; I just saw it,’ she continued. ‘But I do have brothers and they’d told me some things I didn’t know if I believed, whether I’d wanted to hear them or not.’

  ‘About sex?’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu asked.

&nb
sp; ‘Yes.’ She looked down and then quickly looked up again. ‘He just did it to me, the old man.’

  ‘Abdurrahman Şafak.’

  ‘How could I stop him? He’d caught me with clothes I’d taken from Vakko and he was my employer; he could get rid of me if he wanted to.’

  ‘Do you shoplift often, Suzan?’ İkmen asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No. Only that once.’

  ‘So why did you do it on that occasion?’ Ayşe asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Just two pretty dresses and a little bolero. The rich shop could afford it. I looked down at myself and the holes in my clothes, and knowing I had no choice but to spend all my money on food and on my family, I wanted something for myself. I wanted to look, if not pretty, then normal for this city. People stare down their noses when you look like me.’

  ‘How did Abdurrahman Efendi know you’d shoplifted?’

  ‘He found the clothes in my bag,’ Suzan said. ‘He asked me where I’d got them. He accused me of taking a lover who was paying for sex with me. I couldn’t have him thinking that, I just couldn’t!’

  ‘And so you told him.’

  ‘The truth! I know it was stupid, but it just came out. I couldn’t have him thinking I’d been with men. What if he’d told my family?’

  ‘What if he’d told your family you were a thief?’ İkmen asked.

  The girl put her head down.

  ‘Not that I think in light of later events your father would have bothered too much about that,’ İkmen said.

  ‘My father … My mother is …’

  ‘Ill, I know. How many times did the old man make you have sex with him, Suzan?’ İkmen asked her.

  ‘He made me do things to him a lot,’ she said. ‘But he only put it in me once.’

  ‘You had intercourse one time?’

  ‘Yes. But it made me pregnant,’ Suzan said.

  The room went silent then, until she spoke again. ‘I didn’t know what was going on at first. I thought I was just getting fat, but then he noticed it too and he asked me about my monthlies and I told him I wasn’t having any. He got really angry then. One day this woman came and she took me to a clinic. They took the baby away.’

  ‘Who was this woman?’ Ayşe asked. ‘Had you seen her before?’

  ‘Yes. She came to see Efendi sometimes. At first she was very nice.’

  ‘When you had the abortion?’

  ‘Yes. She was very sympathetic. She said I should call her “Abla” and she came two times after I had my operation to make sure that I was all right.’

  ‘Do you know who paid for the surgery you had?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Efendi,’ she said. ‘That’s why he was so angry with me. He kept saying “I’m dying. So why am I spending money on other people? It should all be for me.” The woman, Abla—’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Blonde and pretty,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she said that if I ever told anyone about leaving the door unlocked, she’d kill me. She didn’t look like that sort of person at all. But I believed her.’

  ‘Suzan,’ İkmen said, ‘we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Please go back to what happened after the abortion. When that was all over with, when did you see the woman you called Abla again?’

  ‘She came maybe once or twice to see Efendi. She was a lot younger than him, but when they were together they talked very intensely.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I went in to serve them tea or something they always went quiet. Anyway I wasn’t interested. My mum became ill at that time and so that was all I could think about.’

  ‘Did you tell your employer that your mother was ill?’

  ‘Yes, he said I could go home if I wanted to but he might have to replace me if I did that. But I couldn’t because I needed to send money home. I was worried, though, and then that woman, Abla, saw me crying in the kitchen. She asked me about my mum and I told her that I just wanted to go home to see her. I said she had cancer and needed an operation.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I didn’t see her for a while,’ she said. ‘Not until the end of April. She came, as she did from time to time, and they had tea. But he was sicker now and so he went to sleep after he had his tea and she left him and came into the kitchen. She asked me about Mum and I told her that she was still sick and she still needed an operation. She asked me why Mum wasn’t having the operation and I said it was because Dad couldn’t afford it. Then she asked me how much the operation would cost and I told her.’

  ‘Five thousand lira?’ It seemed such a small amount of money, but then İkmen imagined it was probably to be performed at a country hospital in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Then? Nothing. She went back to Efendi. It was a few days later that she offered me the money.’

  ‘What exactly did she offer you the money for, Suzan?’ Ayşe asked.

  ‘To leave the front door unlocked when I left to go for my afternoon off the following Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘The twenty-first of May?’

  ‘If that was the date, yes.’

  ‘Did she say why she wanted you to leave the front door unlocked on that day?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘No.’ She lowered her head as if she were ashamed. ‘But she did say that when I got back, Efendi would give me no more trouble.’

  ‘Did you think that she meant he’d be dead?’

  Suzan thought for a few moments. ‘I thought I didn’t, but I think now maybe I did.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  She began to cry. ‘Because when I came in and found him, I felt nothing for him. I even called him bad names and laughed at his poor old body. What kind of person am I?’

  She wept and wept and İkmen and Ayşe Farsakoğlu just let her do it. She’d held this guilt, as well as the fears she had for her mother, inside her ever since the old man had been murdered.

  When she finally got her tears under control, İkmen said, ‘Did Abla give you the money before or after you left the door unlocked, Suzan?’

  ‘Before. She came on the Friday before he … he died,’ she said.

  ‘His diary for that day was blank,’ İkmen said.

  ‘She just arrived. Which was just as well.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because by that time, I knew that Efendi was meeting the Englishman on the Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Arthur Regan.’

  ‘Yes. It threw me into a panic. Should I leave the door open for the Englishman or wait for him to leave? I didn’t know!’

  ‘What did Abla say about that?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘She told me I’d have to pretend I was going out for my afternoon off and hide somewhere instead. Then when the Englishman left, I could go too, and leave the front door unlocked. I could have the money there and then as long as I did what she told me and then never told anyone what I’d done or who I’d done it for. If I did tell, she said she’d kill me.’

  ‘Did you believe her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she was one of them.’

  ‘One of whom?’

  ‘Like Efendi,’ she said. ‘You know, the sort who can order other people around as if they have some right from Allah.’

  İkmen looked across at Ayşe, who said, ‘Relative?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He turned back to the girl again. ‘So, Suzan,’ he said, ‘what did you do next?’

  ‘I called my dad when I was able, when Efendi was asleep, and I told him to book Mum into the hospital.’

  ‘Why didn’t you send him the money then?’

  ‘Because he said he didn’t need it then. He’d only have to pay after Mum had had her treatment. Dad doesn’t like having a lot of money in the house; he isn’t used to it.’

  İkmen said, ‘So the plan was for you to send your father the money, what, via Western Union?’
/>   ‘Yes.’

  ‘When the hospital asked for it?’

  ‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘She is booked in for tomorrow. I want to be with her.’

  Çetin İkmen felt for the girl, but it was clear that she’d had at least some notion of what had been about to happen to her employer when he was murdered. And the money the woman had given her had been earned, if that was even the right word, in almost the worst way imaginable.

  ‘I can’t let you go, Suzan,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh no!’ She began to cry again.

  ‘By your own admission, you had some idea about what was going to happen to Abdurrahman Efendi, and because it is illegal to benefit financially from crime, that money isn’t yours. However, if you tell me everything you know, I will see what I can do to try and help your mother get to hospital.’

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu looked at him and wondered what he meant.

  ‘It’s all I can do,’ İkmen said. ‘Now, Suzan, you must tell me everything you can remember about the day that Abdurrahman Efendi died. Where did you hide when he thought you’d gone out?’

  Suzan sniffed. ‘In the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner is kept by the front door,’ she said.

  ‘And how long were you in there before the Englishman arrived?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ages!’

  ‘What happened when he arrived?’

  ‘They argued,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it was about because they spoke in English. But he didn’t stay long, the Englishman, and I know that Efendi was still alive when he left because my master let him out. The foreigner didn’t kill him.’

  ‘So you then left the apartment with the door unlocked,’ İkmen said. ‘Did you notice anything unusual about the apartment before you left?’

  Crying again now, she shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She looked agonised. ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Did you see anyone as you left the apartment to go … where did you go?’

  ‘To the local shops.’

  ‘To the shops. Did you see anyone lurking outside the apartments in the street or maybe in the hallway or by the lift?’

  Suzan Arslan made a supreme effort to stop crying, which was only partially successful, and then she said, ‘No.’