Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘And I’ve broken my phone!’ Gonca said.

  ‘I’ll get you another one,’ Erdem said.

  ‘Well someone needs to clear my sofa,’ the old man said. ‘How can I lie down now and not get glass in my backside!’

  Two of Gonca’s sisters, tutting with irritation as they did so, took the covers off their father’s sofa and brushed what remained of the mobile phone on to the floor. Calmer and chastened now, Gonca allowed her son to lead her to the chair next to her father’s pile of cushions by the fire and she sat down. After a moment she took the old man’s hand in hers. ‘I’m so sorry, Baba.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a harsh time,’ the old man said. He squeezed her hand back. ‘Tomorrow I bury my son and you bury your brother.’

  ‘When I saw Mehmet, he said he’d come and bring halva and pay his respects,’ his daughter said.

  ‘He’s paid his respects already.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘You want the support of the man you love,’ the old man said. ‘But Gonca, you know maybe he is catching whoever killed Şukru now. You want him to do that, don’t you?’

  ‘More than anything!’

  ‘Well then, give him a chance. I no longer object to this love you have that I don’t understand. It has endured over the years for reasons I …’ He shrugged. ‘Şukru and I, we wanted to kill him and we would have done. But that’s in the past. Now I accept this man, but you must be realistic about him.’

  Erdem, who had been listening to what his grandfather had been saying, said, ‘He has his life and you have yours. They’re different. Unless you want to become a policeman’s wife …’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well then you must accept that he will not always be available to you.’

  ‘Why are we talking about that policeman again?’

  They turned to look at the furious face of Şukru’s widow, Bulbul Şekeroğlu. ‘Tonight is about my husband,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow we will bury him and my children will be fatherless.’ She pointed at Gonca and spat. ‘Everyone always takes care to make sure that she is all right! The world itself revolves around her!’

  Erdem stood up and placed himself between his aunt and his mother. ‘Auntie Bulbul,’ he said. ‘We are all upset, including my mother. She meant no—’

  ‘The man is younger than you are!’ Bulbul screeched. ‘She’s a whore and a witch and she—’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Bulbul Hanım,’ the old man said. ‘We are all grieving and we should not say things that make each other hurt more than we do. You will be cared for and so will your children, because this family does not reject its own.’

  For a moment, Bulbul looked as if she might start shouting at Gonca again. She’d never liked her, had always been jealous of her success both as an artist and with men. But instead she burst into tears, and when Erdem took her into his arms she let him hug her while her own youngest children clustered around her legs.

  The old man looked at Gonca.‘We will have no more division in this family, do you hear me?’

  When he used that tone, it made her feel like a child again. ‘Yes, Baba.’

  ‘Because you know the old Kurdish whore, Sugar, who came here today to pay her respects, she told me that they have taken down the fences around the latest group of old buildings that are due to be demolished and the wrecking balls have moved into place. We will need to be strong now and fight this together, as a community. If we don’t, we will be forced to leave the city, and I for one will die.’

  İkmen had heard such sentiments before; they usually came out of the mouths of elderly people with either an Ottoman or a military background. Although very much at odds in terms of politics and beliefs, the old Atatürkist military elites and the Ottomans had a lot in common.

  ‘Nobody is still here who was here when we bought this house in the 1960s,’ Nur Süleyman said.

  İkmen knew the story well. His friend and colleague Mehmet had been born in a terrible, half-ruined palace on the Bosphorus, which the family had hung on to until the place finally collapsed. Then they’d moved to Arnavutköy, disappearing into what they must have felt then was something very much akin to Trotsky’s ‘dustbin of history’.

  ‘Now everyone is nouveau riche,’ Nur continued. She called over to her husband’s cousin for support. ‘Is that not so, Sezen?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sezen İpek said. ‘All the Bosphorus villages are full of either terrible footballers, men with silly haircuts or girls who flout their parents’ wishes by wearing headscarves.’

  He hadn’t expected to see Sezen İpek, but then she was Muhammed Efendi’s cousin and so her presence could have been predicted. The old man himself, a bib at his throat to catch drips from both his tea glass and his mouth, said, ‘My stomach hurts. Call Dr Savva.’

  Nur Süleyman’s distress and impatience with her husband were evident from the pain in her eyes, coupled with the way she shook her head when he spoke to İkmen. ‘Of course Mehmet knows no one here. We don’t know anyone! There is a man who has been here for I think a decade who lives over the other side of the church, but …’ He saw her look at Sezen İpek and then away. ‘We don’t speak to him or about him.’

  ‘Oh?’ It could only be Professor Atay. There was no one else on the other side of the church. ‘The historian? Professor Atay?’ İkmen asked.

  Again the two woman looked at each other, but neither of them said anything.

  Muhammed Süleyman Efendi said, ‘Dr Savva and his kaolin and morphine solution will put me right. It always works for my grandfather and he’s a very old man.’

  Nur Süleyman looked at İkmen. ‘Do you have an interest in … in the man …’

  ‘Inspector İkmen, I am sorry, but I’m afraid that we don’t discuss the person who lives on the other side of the church,’ Sezen İpek said.

  If it were possible for Nur Süleyman to look cowed or even ashamed, she did so now. İkmen turned his attention to Sezen Hanım. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is that so? Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask one of you to talk to me about him.’

  ‘And why would that be?’ Sezen stood up, her hands clasped in front of her chest in what İkmen felt was a very dramatic pose.

  ‘Because the man in the house on the other side of the church was the last person to see Mehmet Bey before he apparently evaporated,’ İkmen said. ‘I only have that man’s word for the fact that Mehmet Bey isn’t still in his house, so I need to know as much about him as I can.’

  ‘Professor Atay is a public figure,’ Sezen said. ‘I’m sure you can find out anything of interest about him on the Internet.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve met him, several times.’

  ‘Well then you know him.’

  ‘A little,’ İkmen said. ‘What I don’t know, Sezen Hanım, is why you and Nur Hanım seem to have an issue with him.’

  ‘It’s not up for discussion,’ Sezen said.

  ‘Well it should be,’ İkmen said. ‘With respect. After all, if this family has some sort of feud with Professor Atay, and Mehmet Bey is missing …’

  Not that he knew of any such feud, which surely Süleyman would have told him about.

  ‘Ladies, you know from sad personal experience that there is someone in this city who kills people like you. Now I’m not saying that Professor Atay—’

  ‘The Atay man and little Leyla İpek.’

  The voice was old and cracked but its words were unmistakable. İkmen went over to Muhammed Süleyman Efendi with the man’s wife and cousin at his heels.

  ‘Efendi …’

  ‘Made her pregnant.’

  For a moment the room fell silent, and then Nur Süleyman said, ‘My husband, he isn’t well …’

  İkmen just looked at her, watching her shrink before his eyes. Then he turned to the old man again. ‘Go on, Efendi.’

  The old man frowned. ‘You know, I really could do with kaolin and morphine …’ He touched his stomach. Çetin İkmen sighed.

  ‘My cousin doesn’t know what he’s say
ing,’ Sezen İpek said. ‘Ignore him.’

  And then something that might have been anger or hatred or even just rebelliousness came into the old man’s eyes.

  ‘Efendi …’

  ‘Sezen had to sort Leyla out. But it was my brother Beyazıt who beat the dirty pig. Beat him with the whip our father used on his horses.’

  ‘He beat Professor Atay? Your brother Beyazıt Efendi?’ İkmen said.

  Now hunkered down beside the old man, he saw the light of recognition switch off in his eyes, and he felt his heart sink a second time. Muhammed Süleyman Efendi said, ‘Pardon, monsieur, pardon.’ He’d clearly disappeared back into a past that no one else could understand.

  Sezen İpek said, ‘We all had to learn French.’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Your ancestors spoke it at court. I don’t care. Now look, ladies, is what Muhammed Efendi said true or not? Did Leyla Ablak, your daughter—’

  His phone rang; he took it out of his pocket and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then he put it to his ear.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Ömer.’

  İkmen moved towards the back of the Süleymans’ dark, heavily furnished living room.

  ‘Sir, I can see a light in the basement of Professor Atay’s house,’ Ömer Mungan said.

  ‘Have you just noticed it now because it’s getting dark?’

  ‘No, I saw it come on. Just now. I mean, I suppose it could be one of those that switches on automatically …’

  ‘Or maybe it isn’t,’ İkmen said. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll be with you.’

  ‘Might be as well to bring the guys in the car, sir,’ Ömer said.

  ‘OK.’ He cut the connection and looked at the women again. He was about to give them a last chance, but Sezen İpek pre-empted him.

  ‘It’s all true,’ she said.

  ‘Sezen!’

  She put a hand on Nur Süleyman’s arm to silence her. ‘No, my dear, this is your son who could be at stake here.’ She looked up at İkmen. ‘Professor Atay, Cem Atay, made my daughter Leyla pregnant when they were students at Boğaziçi University together. She had an abortion and he, as Muhammed Efendi says, was beaten by my cousin Beyazıt Efendi. That man ruined my daughter. That man was the whole reason she married first a foreigner and then an awful Atatürkist traitor.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘And she could never have children.’

  İkmen put a cigarette into his mouth, then stepped forward and took her hands in his. ‘Thank you, Hanım,’ he said.

  Then he lit his cigarette and left the house.

  There was no consciousness now. Mehmet Süleyman was vulnerable. Unconscious, he couldn’t defend himself, and so he could be shot or stabbed or suffocated at will.

  Was he dreaming? There were no physical signs beyond shallow breathing, and so there was no way of knowing what his experience might or might not have been. When he was hefted up on to shoulders that were not really up to the job, he did make a small noise, and for a minute or more the man who carried him stood as still as a tree, his ears trying to close themselves against the sound of his own breathing.

  The street in front of the professor’s house was rowdy with evening drinkers. To Ayşe it looked as if some of the more fashionable corners of Beyoğlu were on a group excursion that was doubling as a competition in who could pose the most effectively. She found it tiresome and the young people on display made her feel old, but that didn’t matter. Ömer had just called to say that there was a light at the back of the house, and only a minute later three of the uniformed guys had positioned themselves near her, across the road from the property. Having them around, as opposed to plain-clothed detectives, wasn’t ideal, and they were clearly making some of the more nervous media and digital types anxious, because quite a few had moved away when the cops arrived. But then in a way that was a good thing. Thronging streets and dangerous situations rarely mixed well.

  Ayşe’s phone rang again. It was İkmen. ‘Ayşe, this light in the basement. Can you see it from the front of the building yet?’

  She squinted at the place where the wooden house seemed to join the cracked pavement, where she’d looked the first time he’d asked some minutes before. ‘No.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s it for now.’ He rang off.

  Ayşe took a sip from her long glass of lemonade and grenadine and lit a cigarette. An ageing media type three tables away had been looking at her almost non-stop for half an hour and she wondered when he was going to make his move. If ever. She hoped it was never. She looked at the professor’s dark and silent house. Was Mehmet Süleyman in there? Oddly, at first, she wondered why her musings were just thoughts, devoid of any emotional content. The man she had loved for years and years was missing and yet she could still drink her drink, think her thoughts and throw the occasional unpleasant glare at her unwelcome admirer. What was happening?

  And then a feeling of such terrible loss overwhelmed her that Ayşe almost cried out. Her heart raced, her head swam and for just a moment she wondered whether she was actually going to faint. Was she still so much in love that not even what she had thought was a very firm state of denial had managed to keep the demons of passion out of her head?

  She drank a little shakily from her glass and then smoked her cigarette and lit another one. Her admirer attempted a smile and she looked away. Not only was she shaken by what had just happened, she was resentful of it too. How had she come to invest Süleyman with so much power? How had she given herself so completely to him that even when he was with another woman he could still exert total control over her emotions? She looked at the front of that house and she experienced a bitterness that she could barely contain. Then there was resolve. She’d go for İkmen’s job and become the best police officer she could be, and to hell with Mehmet Süleyman!

  Her phone rang. She picked it up. İkmen said, ‘If and when I tell you, break the front door down. Get the guys to move people away from the house now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She beckoned one of the uniformed officers over to her table. ‘What—’

  ‘Just do it!’ İkmen whispered.

  Çetin İkmen put his phone in his pocket and watched as a figure came out into the professor’s garden and opened up the boot of the car.

  Ömer whispered, ‘He must have been in there all the time.’

  Atay – İkmen could see that it was him by the light coming out of the cellar – went inside again, and for a while, a long while, the police officers thought that maybe he wasn’t going to re-emerge. Eventually, panting and grunting, he came out backwards on to the sparse brown and green grass, dragging something that was clearly giving him problems.

  Ömer looked at İkmen, who took out the gun he almost never drew. The younger man followed suit.

  ‘What now?’ he whispered.

  As İkmen looked into the garden again, the professor stopped to rest. Once he was on the move again, the inspector spoke. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chapter 32

  The academic smiled. Then he frowned. ‘What an extraordinary way to enter a person’s property,’ he said to the two men who’d just pushed open the gate from the church and let themselves in. One, he knew, was Inspector Çetin İkmen.

  ‘We tried to call you and we knocked at your door,’ İkmen said. ‘But there was no reply.’

  ‘Well my phone has been switched to silent and I’ve only just got home.’

  He looked pale by the thin light from the cellar door, and exhausted too. But then Cem Atay was not a young man. He and Leyla İpek, as she had been then, had been students together back in the 1970s.

  ‘Ah, but you haven’t, have you, Professor?’ İkmen said.

  ‘How do you know what I’ve been doing?’ Atay looked and sounded offended. But then he could be as offended as he liked. He was entitled to do that.

  ‘We know because we’ve been watching this house,’ İkmen said. ‘You haven’t just got home, and I need to search these premises on the basis that this is the last place my colleague Inspector S
üleyman was seen, by you.’

  ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I had tea with the inspector, we talked and then he left. Anyway, if you want to search my house you’ll have to get a warrant.’

  Ömer Mungan, who had been silent up until that point, said, ‘Let’s see in that sack, then.’

  The professor looked down at his burden and then up again. ‘I said, you’ll need a warrant.’

  ‘But if I have reason to believe that you could have illegal drugs in that bag …’

  ‘Don’t be absurd!’

  ‘Which I do,’ İkmen said.

  All three men looked at each other. Çetin İkmen didn’t usually make things up to get his way, but both he and Ömer Mungan wanted very badly to see what the professor had in his heavy sack.

  ‘It won’t take a moment,’ İkmen said. ‘Just let Sergeant Mungan—’

  ‘No. No, you’ve no right,’ the academic said. ‘I’ve never been convicted of drug offences in my life; you have no reason to search me or my property. Go and get a warrant. Go away.’

  He was standing his ground, which İkmen had expected. He said, ‘Sir, for all I know my colleague Inspector Süleyman may never have left this house after his appointment with you this afternoon …’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘I need to verify that.’

  ‘Then get a warrant. Go away, get a warrant and then come back and I will gladly show you my home.’

  He was trying to get them to leave. But if they went, they would be giving him time to do who knew what both inside the house and with the sack that Ömer Mungan was gradually moving closer to.

  ‘And I mean all of you,’ the professor said. ‘If you think I’ll tolerate people staking out my home …’

  ‘Who we leave on the public highway is up to us,’ İkmen said. ‘The grounds of the church are not your property …’

  ‘You have no reason to watch me! You’ve no reason to follow me!’

  ‘Follow you? Who said anything about following you?’ İkmen said. Ömer was almost in a position where he might be able to see inside the sack. ‘Are you planning to go somewhere, Professor?’

  ‘Well, clearly, because I am preparing my car.’