Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I see. Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ She paused, and through her tears her brow wrinkled. ‘But if you don’t think it’s mad, I did feel as if someone was watching me as I left the apartment. I don’t know why.’

  Chapter 26

  The old man wept, as did all the other people in that dark, smoke-filled room. Only Gonca’s eyes were dry, and that was because she’d known of her brother’s death for a long time.

  At intervals people came in from the community to pay their respects. They brought food, drink and cigarettes for the family, who they hugged to their chests and wished long lives. Şukru had been a man of power in Tarlabaşı.

  Şukru’s wife, Bulbul, sat opposite Gonca with her dead husband’s nine children clustered around her. He’d never been faithful to her for a moment but still she mourned him as her lover, the father of her children and her breadwinner. But she was a woman whose beauty and temper had disintegrated many years ago, and this had left her bitter. When there was a lull in the visits from neighbours she looked at Gonca. ‘What is the policeman you open your legs to going to do about my Şukru’s death?’

  The old man waved a hand, hoping that he could calm the situation and silence his daughter-in-law, but Bulbul persisted. ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s doing everything he can,’ Gonca said, not rising to the bait that only a few years before would have had her out of her seat and at the woman’s throat.

  ‘Even though my Şukru is just a gypsy to him?’

  ‘Mehmet Bey isn’t like that,’ Gonca said. ‘He—’

  ‘Oh, I suppose he isn’t, no,’ Bulbul said. ‘If he fucks you.’

  ‘Enough!’

  The old man, aware that his daughter was preparing to get her claws out, eyed both women sternly. ‘We gather here to mourn my son, not to turn on each other like savages!’

  And although the two women still shot glances like daggers at each other from time to time, the room eventually returned to its previous dark, smoking soft-sob-racked state.

  Eventually other neighbours arrived, including the boy Hamid, son of the prostitute Şeftali. He carried a tray of halva which he said his mother had made and which he offered respectfully to the family of Şukru Bey. Şukru’s father took it with grace and patted the boy on the head. But Gonca saw Bulbul figuratively hiss. She’d known about her husband and his birthmarked mistress, and the sight of her son clearly made her want to do or say something that she nevertheless wouldn’t.

  Gonca knew something of the part Hamid had played in the affair between her brother and his mistress, how tense it had made him feel, and she felt sorry for him. So when he came to respectfully kiss her hand, she took him in her arms and gave him a hug. His small body clung to hers for some moments before he began to move away. Before he left her, he said, ‘Gonca Hanım, do you think my monster killed Şukru Bey?’

  ‘Your monster?’ And then she remembered. ‘Oh, the man or creature or whatever it was that you saw the night Levent Bey was killed?’

  ‘That boy just makes up lies!’ Bulbul snapped. Some of her children, too, looked at the boy as if they wanted to bite him. ‘Like his mother!’

  Again the old man waved a hand to try and calm the situation.

  Gonca was intrigued by what the child had said. ‘Hamid, why do you think your monster might have killed Şukru Bey?’

  ‘Because when the monster saw Şukru Bey that night, he growled at him.’

  ‘But I thought,’ Gonca said, ‘that the monster had gone by the time my brother arrived.’

  ‘Oh no,’ the boy said, ‘I only told the police that because Şukru Bey told me to.’

  It was after three a.m. by the time İkmen had finished with Suzan Arslan and taken a description of the woman who may have killed Abdurrahman Şafak. Not only did he consider the hour too late for him to go home to bed, he also felt too agitated to sleep. The money the girl had been found with presented him with a moral dilemma. Although it had to be said that the five thousand lira had been obtained via illegal means, could it also be said that Suzan Arslan, if she kept the money, was benefiting from the proceeds of crime? Strictly that had to be true, but although Suzan had been cruelly pleased when she’d come home and found her elderly employer dead, she had not killed him herself and had never, as far as İkmen could tell, been told explicitly that he was going to be murdered.

  Sitting outside the little all-night restaurant on Ordu Caddesi, İkmen lit yet another in a long line of cigarettes and took a swig from his beer glass.

  ‘Early-morning drinking. Oh dear.’

  He looked up and saw Mehmet Süleyman standing over him with a cigarette between his lips. İkmen stood and embraced him.

  ‘I trust you will join me in sin?’ the older man asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Süleyman called one of the waiters, a lad they both knew very well from other late-night eating and drinking sessions. ‘Hüsnü! One more Efes over here, please. Oh, and some pide too, cheese and egg.’

  The boy turned quickly. ‘Right away, Mehmet Bey!’

  Süleyman sat down. ‘So what have you been up to, Çetin?’ he asked.

  İkmen told him about Suzan Arslan and the problem of the five thousand lira.

  ‘Well you can’t let her have that money,’ Süleyman said as he took the glass of beer from the boy. ‘That’s benefiting from if not the proceeds of crime, then an innocent person’s death.’

  ‘According to the girl, the old man raped her, made her pregnant,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Still didn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘No.’ He looked across the road at the baroque exterior of the Laleli mosque, lit by harsh street lamps and even harsher light from the neon that flashed on and off even above businesses that were closed for the night. He found that his moral compass was, as ever, a movable object. ‘But without that money, her mother, who is entirely innocent, will almost certainly die.’

  Süleyman put a hand on İkmen’s shoulder. ‘It isn’t your problem,’ he said. ‘We implement the law. That’s it. We do not provide social relief.’ He changed the subject. ‘So no idea what this mysterious woman’s real name is?’

  ‘No,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ve a description I’ll pass on to our artist …’ He shrugged. ‘What about you? I understand the wife of our first victim’s brother died earlier today.’

  ‘Yes.’ He relayed the story, including his recent interview with Professor Cem Atay.

  İkmen nodded his head. ‘You’re right, the professor does seem to be involved in several of our victims’ lives, not to mention our own. But with regard to Hatice Devrim in particular, what would be his motive?’

  ‘He wouldn’t be the first man to want to get out of a relationship with a woman who has become too clingy,’ Süleyman said. ‘Such women can be a liability, and let’s face it, Çetin, someone like Cem Atay can have any woman he wants.’

  ‘Because he’s on TV.’

  ‘Because he’s a celebrity academic and he’s well off and handsome,’ Süleyman said. ‘On the other hand, Mrs Devrim, like every victim so far with the exception of Levent Devrim, is someone Professor Atay, in part, relies upon for his living.’

  ‘She’s an Osmanoğlu?’

  ‘A distant one, yes. I’m quite amazed Atay has never turned up at my parents’ house, to be honest. He made it clear in his interview that he knows exactly who I am. What’s wrong with us?’

  İkmen smiled.

  ‘But seriously, why destroy the main thing that defines your life? And why all the Mayan stuff? It can hold up, as a theory, but it doesn’t … if you see what I mean …’ He bit into his pide and then closed his eyes for a moment. After a whole day of no food, the cheese and the egg mixed with the soft, fresh bread was blissful. ‘Oh, Çetin, you should try this.’

  İkmen wrinkled his nose and lit a cigarette. ‘No thank you, Mehmet, I’ll stick to what I know. If I start making contact with healthy things, who knows where it will end? Anyway, what about Hatice Devrim’s husband? He was at the scen
e …’

  ‘Under sedation at the Taksim Hospital. He went into shock, there was nothing I could do with him,’ Süleyman said. ‘As I told you, Atay’s story is that he found Selçuk Devrim with his wife’s body when he arrived. Selçuk was covered in blood, I observed that myself. However, the knife that Dr Sarkissian identified as the murder weapon was oddly free of fingerprints.’

  ‘Implying that it was not a crime committed spontaneously.’

  ‘Given the circumstances, a crime of passion could be expected, but that detail mitigates against it.’

  ‘Mmm, so it would seem.’ İkmen watched a dustcart lumber down Ordu Caddesi. ‘Did the professor mention his Mayans at all?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Süleyman said. ‘He was at pains to make it clear to me that Hatice Devrim’s death, in spite of her background, did not conform to the pattern so far established for Osmanoğlu slayings.’

  ‘Oh. I suppose he would,’ İkmen said.

  ‘What do you mean? If he’d done it? Killed her?’

  ‘Whether he had or not,’ İkmen said. ‘You won’t get an academic to accept that anything outside of their own pet theory has any validity. But we should keep him in mind. I should, I will keep an eye …’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Süleyman said. ‘Not that we haven’t got enough to do …’ He took his mobile phone out of his pocket and waved his fingers across its technologically advanced screen until his text messages came into view. ‘Gonca wants to speak in the morning,’ he said. ‘Can’t speak now because she’s at her father’s house, but it’s important, blah, blah, blah …’

  ‘I take it she told her father about her brother.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Something else to do.’

  İkmen drank his beer, draining his glass. ‘What happens if and when Selçuk Devrim wakes up from shock or fugue or whatever state he is in?’

  ‘Ömer is at the Taksim,’ Süleyman said. ‘His sister works as a nurse at the German Hospital opposite. He volunteered.’

  ‘He’s a good lad,’ İkmen said. ‘Fortunate for you that yet again you attract talent from the east. But I do think he may be a little homesick.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes. I’d put some praise his way if I were you, Mehmet, from time to time. It would be a shame to lose him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman smiled. His first sergeant had been from the east, a Kurd called Isak Çöktin, who he remembered with affection.

  ‘So what now, my friend?’ İkmen asked as he looked at his empty beer glass and lit a cigarette. ‘Do we order more beer and see the forty-eight hours round, or do we attempt to go home and catch an hour’s sleep?’

  Süleyman shook his head. ‘I think we both know the answer to that, Çetin,’ he said. He called the waiter over again. ‘Hüsnü! Two more Efes over here when you’re ready.’

  Suzan didn’t sleep. But when the custody officer came in with tea and bread she did manage to eat and drink. Inspector İkmen had told her that now she had admitted to the offence of being an, albeit unwitting, accessory to murder as well as withholding information from the police, and had been formally arrested, what would happen to her next was out of his hands. She had asked to see a lawyer and İkmen had said that he would arrange that for her. But nobody had come. She had thought that lawyers, particularly criminal lawyers, worked at night as well as in the day, but maybe she was wrong about that.

  Shortly after breakfast, though, she did have a visitor.

  ‘Suzan, a gentleman called Murad Hasanzade is going to meet with you soon,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu told her.

  ‘Is he my lawyer?’ Suzan asked.

  ‘Mr Hasanzade is a lawyer, yes,’ the policewoman said. She sat down next to Suzan on the side of her tiny cell bed with its scratchy grey blankets.

  ‘Have you managed to eat something?’ Ayşe asked. She had a newspaper in her hands which she seemed to be half reading, so it wasn’t easy for Suzan to really talk to her.

  ‘I had some bread and tea,’ she said. ‘Sergeant Farsakoğlu, what is going to happen to me? Will I be able to go home soon?’

  She knew she’d been arrested, which probably meant prison, but she hadn’t deliberately hurt anyone, so perhaps it would only be for a few weeks. She didn’t know how it worked. None of her family had ever been to prison. She said, ‘Will you wait with me until the lawyer comes?’

  ‘I can,’ Sergeant Farsakoğlu said. ‘But Suzan, you will have to speak to him on your own. That’s how it is. He’ll tell me to go away.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The policewoman unfolded her newspaper so that the front cover was showing.

  ‘You mustn’t be scared, Suzan, Mr Hasanzade is coming to help you. And you must tell him everything, just like you told us.’

  Although Suzan was looking right at the image on the front of the paper, it didn’t register immediately. To begin with she just thought it was a nice photo. Only when she really began to study it did she realise who it might be.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu must have seen the look of shock on her face because she said, ‘Suzan, are you all right?’

  Chapter 27

  He didn’t bother to call Gonca before nine. Even when she wasn’t at her father’s place, surrounded by her extended family and exhausted by grief, she rarely rose before ten. But when Süleyman did call, her phone was off and so he left a message on her voicemail. Ömer Mungan hadn’t yet contacted him to say whether Selçuk Devrim was ready to talk or not, and so he busied himself with paperwork until a knock at his office door got him to his feet. A constable gave him a small package labelled ‘Hittite’. This was the film that he had ordered for Gonca, of her brother. Once alone in his office, Süleyman opened it. He’d just slipped the disc into his laptop when his phone rang. He picked it up.

  ‘Mehmet,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Çetin.’

  As far as he was aware, his colleague was either on his way to or had arrived at the Great Palace Hotel’s Wellness Spa. He had decided very early on that morning that he wanted to quiz the manager, Faruk Genç, about his brother-in-law, Cem Atay.

  ‘Mehmet, dear boy, I’m at the spa now but I’ve just had a call from Ayşe about Suzan Arslan.’

  ‘Abdurrahman Efendi’s servant.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It seems she has finally identified the woman who gave her the five thousand lira.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘From a picture on the front of today’s edition of Cumhuriyet.’

  Süleyman couldn’t get the disc to play for some reason that he couldn’t fathom, so he ejected it. ‘Of?’

  ‘Hatice Devrim,’ İkmen said.

  Süleyman felt a jolt through his chest. ‘Hatice Devrim is “Abla”.’

  ‘It would seem so, yes,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Abdurrahman Şafak was her mother’s cousin,’ Süleyman said, ‘according to Professor Atay.’

  ‘Whose somewhat florid profile on the Boğaziçi University’s website I’m just about to check out with Faruk Genç,’ İkmen said.

  ‘OK. Although I still don’t really get what motive the professor would have for killing either his mistress or any of our twenty-first of the month victims,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Neither do I. But in the absence of anything else at the moment …’

  ‘Maybe Hatice Devrim killed them all,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Maybe she did.’

  ‘Maybe whoever killed her knew.’

  ‘Possibly. Is her husband ready to be questioned yet?’

  ‘Not that I know …’ He was interrupted by the sound of another incoming call. ‘Just a minute.’ He moved the phone so that he could see its screen. ‘That’s Ömer now. Have to go.’

  İkmen said, ‘I’ll speak to you later.’ Then he cut the call.

  ‘Ömer?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Sir,’ the young man replied. ‘Mr Devrim is awake and he says that he wants to confess to his wife’s murder.’

  ‘My late wife’s mother comes originally from Adana, her father was a
railway worker from Afyon,’ Faruk Genç said. ‘I don’t know when they came to the city, but it was before Cem was born.’

  ‘Cem Atay is the eldest sibling?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Yes. There was Cem, my wife Hande and then the youngest, Nilüfer. The parents were typically working class. The father worked at Sirkeci Station, the mother cleaned rich people’s houses until her darling son became famous. Hande and Nilüfer were clever too and they both finished high school, but Cem was always the star of the show.’

  ‘He studied at the university where he now teaches?’

  ‘Yes. He just lectured for years, attracting little or no attention from anyone, until some female film director consulted him on something to do with the Ottomans for a documentary she was making. Then suddenly he was in it, the documentary.’ He leaned across his desk conspiratorially. ‘He has a way with women, if you know what I mean.’

  İkmen did. He said, ‘When was this, and can you remember what the documentary was about?’

  Faruk Genç sighed. ‘It has to be over ten years ago,’ he said. ‘I don’t know exactly when. But the documentary was about Süleyman the Lawgiver. Not Cem’s strongest suit, if I remember rightly, but his enthusiastic accounts of Süleyman’s various military campaigns, as well as his colourful personal life, made him a TV star. Have you not seen any of his programmes, Inspector?’

  ‘I’m afraid the TV just tends to be on in my apartment; we rarely actually watch anything,’ İkmen said. ‘Although I did read your brother-in-law’s excellent book about the end of the Empire.’ He paused, marshalling his thoughts. ‘He had a wife, I understand …’

  ‘Yes, Merve. She disappeared around the same time that Cem became famous.’

  İkmen had read a summary of Merve Atay’s file, and although her husband had been a suspect early on in the investigation into her disappearance, no evidence had ever been discovered that might have led the police to believe he could have murdered her.

  ‘In fact,’ Faruk Genç continued, ‘it was his involvement with that film that got him through all that, I think. He loved Merve, even though he probably cheated on her right from the start of their marriage, not that I can take the moral high ground there.’ He lowered his head for a moment and then looked up again. ‘There have always been girls and women around Cem.’