A Noble Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  Latkes! He hadn’t had those for years. Just the smell of them frying on the stove made him think about İzmir. A little bit of home.

  When Izabella came back, she was carrying a huge plate of great oily shredded potato cakes. ‘So where is the beautiful Inspector Süleyman tonight?’ she said as she placed the platter and a fork on İzzet’s lap.

  ‘Oh, he’s er . . . he’s at home,’ İzzet said.

  ‘With his wife or Gonca the gypsy?’ the old woman asked as she settled herself down with a much smaller plate of latkes. Then, seeing the look of shock on his face, she said, ‘Ah, everyone knows, İzzet Bey! This is Balat, not some polite Bosphorus village. The great gypsy queen pleasures the Turkish prince. We all know this and I, for one, don’t judge.’

  But İzzet was still shocked. Even the gorgeous, glutinous pepperiness of the latkes couldn’t distract him from what she’d just said. ‘The inspector doesn’t want anyone to know! He needs to keep it a secret because if his wife finds out she may stop him from seeing his child,’ he blurted. He’d never, in a non-professional capacity, gossiped so much about another person who was not related to him. But then, in spite of their differences, he did care about Süleyman.

  ‘But people do know, İzzet Bey,’ Izabella said. ‘The gypsy loves him and so her face glows and she speaks of him often. What can I say? Are you enjoying your latkes? Are they good?’

  ‘Yes, very good,’ he said. ‘Some of the best I’ve ever had.’

  ‘Good.’ They both ate in silence for about a minute before she looked up at his still rather blanched face and said, ‘So what did you come to see me about, İzzet Bey? I’m old, I’m fat and I’m as bald as a grease-wrestler’s chest underneath this wig; what on earth do you want with me?’

  İzzet had had no actual plans to see Izabella Madrid when he’d left the station half an hour earlier. He’d thought very little about her since his last visit to her flat. But for some reason that he only half understood, he needed to know more about the boy genius Murat Emin. It wasn’t just because, of all Hamid İdiz’s pupils, it was only Murad and Ali Reza Zafir who had been subjected, albeit in a very mild way, to his lust. None of the other pupils they had interviewed had expressed any unduly strong feelings about their old teacher. In addition, no motives, as yet, had come to light amongst the other youngsters. Eventually he said, ‘I want to know about Murad Emin. I know he’s a very good musician, but I want to know what he’s like. Understand?’

  ‘You’ve been to the Emin apartment,’ the old woman said. ‘You’ve seen how they live.’

  ‘You know I have.’

  She shrugged. ‘How would you deal with that? I don’t mean all the Communist utopian stuff the father spouts; there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean the fact that the mother is on the game, both parents are junkies . . .’

  ‘Both?’ He’d imagined that the mother was, but the father too?

  ‘Yes. Emin senior could get a job if he wanted; he’s an educated man,’ she said. ‘But he’s on drugs all the time! He steals to get money, which he then spends on heroin, in the same way that his wife sucks the cock of the world to get money for her gear. Their kids have no smart shoes, no computers, no holidays. Murad loves his parents, and is also very loyal to his little sister, but I know he doesn’t respect them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We talk, or we used to.’

  İzzet put a large lump of latke in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully before he said, ‘You used to talk?’

  ‘Before he went to Hamid Bey for lessons,’ she said. ‘Chatting all the time in those days. But now?’ She shrugged. ‘He’s still clever, lovely little Murad, don’t get me wrong, but there is a hardness about him too.’

  ‘A hardness?’

  ‘As I said to you with regard to your beautiful superior, I do not judge, nor do I moralise,’ she said. ‘But Murad I think these days judges people by . . .’ She paused, deep in thought for a moment. ‘I think that, like a lot of boys who come from migrant families, Murad has taken on a rather strict moral code.’

  Both İzzet and Mehmet Süleyman had observed this in Murad Emin. What İzzet was a little surprised about was that the usually straight-talking Miss Madrid was being suddenly so coy about it. But then she was from a minority, albeit one that he knew rather better than she would have guessed, but a minority nevertheless that might find the notion of religious fanaticism or radicalisation difficult to express.

  İzzet said it for her. ‘I wondered when I was at the Emin flat what Murad’s allusions to Islam might mean.’

  He looked at her with meaning in his eyes, but she turned away from him quickly. ‘Well, he wouldn’t have learnt anything like that from Hamid Bey,’ she said. ‘Religion, it wasn’t his—’

  ‘I fear that Murad may be getting his religion from unsavoury sources,’ İzzet said. ‘I know you probably don’t know anything about that . . .’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But tell me, does he refer to little religious sayings or blessings or things that allude to judgemental—’

  ‘He has talked about his gift coming from Allah,’ she said. ‘We’ve had the fact that he wants to be the greatest Muslim pianist and composer. Wants to do it for Allah.’ She sighed and looked across at him. ‘Murad always used to hug me when he left at the end of his lessons. Now he doesn’t. I’ll be honest, at first I thought that maybe Hamid had made him homosexual. But it wasn’t that.’

  ‘What was it?’ İzzet asked.

  She looked suddenly much older as her face folded into a crushed shape. ‘He couldn’t touch an infidel,’ she said. ‘Still can’t. He told me he still respected me, but he couldn’t touch me any more.’ She put her plate down and then rubbed her arms with her hands as if she was cold. ‘Made me feel dirty.’

  İzzet’s face flushed. He wasn’t a religious man, but he hated the idea of Islam being twisted and abused to make good people feel bad.

  ‘Murad is a tough boy,’ Izabella continued. ‘He’s come through a lot in his short life. I also think that at heart he is a good boy, but . . . I used to be able to read him to some extent, but not now, not now.’

  She had no idea about who the boy socialised with or where. She knew he worked at the Tulip, but that was all she did know. When he finally got up to leave, İzzet asked her, ‘Do you think that Murad might have been capable of killing Hamid İdiz? The new Murad, I mean, not the lad that you first discovered?’

  She helped him put his jacket back on, then said, ‘I don’t know. I like to think not, but . . .’ She walked around to face him and smiled. ‘So you liked the latkes, then?’

  ‘There were many Jews in İzmir when I was growing up,’ İzzet said. ‘One of them was my Italian teacher.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Another was my mother’s father.’ He smiled.

  ‘What? A great big Turkish macho man like you?’ She looked very closely at him, then said, ‘Mmm. I can see it, just.’

  ‘We all have our secrets, Miss Madrid,’ he said as he opened her front door and stepped outside. ‘Mine is very small and rather nice, because it means that I can appreciate latkes.’

  ‘Let us hope that whatever young Murad holds inside himself is equally benign,’ she said. ‘If nothing else, I know he cares about this Turco–Caucasian music competition. He won’t jeopardise that, I do not think, for anything. Don’t worry, Sergeant Melik, I will watch the boy, I will care for him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh, and about your boss,’ she said.

  İzzet frowned.

  ‘It will all be well for him in the end, with Gonca.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that, powerful as she is, her people won’t tolerate this love she has for Süleyman.’ Izabella Madrid smiled. ‘Her father still lives, and the day will come when he will put a stop to it. The gypsies favour their own; we all do. We are all human.’

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Cahit Seyhan went to w
ork early that morning leaving his wife asleep on the floor of his sister’s living room. Saadet woke as soon as her son and her nephew came into the room and put the television on. This was nothing unusual, and so she did as she usually did and left as quickly as she could to go to the bathroom. As soon as she locked the door behind her, she heard her sister-in-law Feray snort with frustration back in the hall. She always hated Saadet getting into the shower before her. As if she couldn’t bear to wash after such a dirty person. But Saadet ignored her.

  Once washed and dressed, it was time for someone to go down to the baker’s on Macar Kardeşler Street and buy bread for the day. None of the men would do it and Nesrin, Feray’s daughter, was far too lazy to even get out of bed. Feray herself was now in the bathroom, and so Saadet put her coat and her headscarf on and let herself out of the apartment. Of all the chores she’d had to do since arriving in Fatih, going to get the bread was her favourite. It gave her, albeit briefly, the feeling that she was still an ordinary housewife, with her own apartment and family, and not what she really was, a grieving mother and unwelcome guest in her sister-in-law’s home.

  She walked out of the apartment building into bright sunlight. All around her, other women in various degrees of covering passed by clutching bread, and sometimes bags of tomatoes, cheese and olives too. The usual breakfast ritual. The baker, a small toothless man in his sixties, handed Saadet her order of three loaves and she in return wordlessly proffered the correct amount of money in payment. It was as she left the baker’s shop that everything suddenly became strange and frightening. A man she had never seen before bundled her into an old Fiat car, and yet another strange man drove her away.

  ‘You’re not eating your breakfast,’ Hikmet Yıldız said as he watched his brother İsmail stare into space over his untouched bread, butter and tomato. ‘If Mother was here, she’d make you eat it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your breakfast,’ Hikmet reiterated. ‘Eat it!’

  ‘Oh.’ İsmail looked down at his plate for a second or so, and then began staring into space again.

  ‘Allah!’ Hikmet had taken the trouble to prepare breakfast that morning because İsmail had got in so late the night before. He’d gone to the mosque for sunset adhan and then apparently moved on somewhere else afterwards. Hikmet neither knew nor cared where. ‘I have to go to work now,’ he said as he put his police cap on his head and then bent down to put his boots on. ‘I’ll be back at about six.’

  As he walked across the kitchen, adjusting his gun holster as he went, İsmail said suddenly, ‘Don’t go.’

  Hikmet turned and looked at his brother with an expression of exasperation on his face. ‘İsmail . . .’ But then he saw that his brother had tears in his eyes, and so he sat down beside him at the table and said, ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Oh, Hikmet,’ İsmail said in a terrified voice that was only just above a whisper, ‘I’ve done something, I’ve agreed to do something so terrible!’

  Çetin İkmen pointed at the mobile phone Saadet Seyhan had taken out of her handbag and said, ‘Please make that call, Mrs Seyhan. I do not want your family to worry about you.’

  He’d had her taken off the street and brought to the station so that he could question her, but he did not want her family to know what she was really doing. With a distinct tremor in her voice, Saadet told her nephew that she’d decided to do all her shopping early and in one hit. There was some argument about the bread and how they’d all been waiting for it, but that was, apparently, quickly defused.

  ‘I will not detain you for very long,’ İkmen said once the call was over. ‘But Mrs Seyhan, there is a matter I have to discuss with you, and in the absence of your husband.’

  Saadet Seyhan’s face turned white. İkmen wondered whether she had guessed what he was about to say. So he said it quickly, watching as her eyes if not her voice told him it was true.

  ‘I don’t want or need to know who Gözde’s father was,’ İkmen said. ‘I am not judging you, Mrs Seyhan. All I want to do is find out who killed your daughter.’

  She didn’t speak. She just sat opposite him, her headscarf pulled down low over her eyes, which leaked silent water. Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who was sitting beside İkmen, said, ‘Mrs Seyhan, we need to know whether your husband was aware that he was not Gözde’s father. We understand you might not know this, but . . .’

  ‘Cahit does not know of my shame,’ Saadet said in a voice that was just a little above a whisper. İkmen looked at Ayşe and raised an eyebrow. He had thought that Saadet might try to deny the DNA evidence, but clearly she was either beyond that point, or just wanted the relief that came with telling a long-held and burdensome secret. ‘If he knew, I would be dead.’

  ‘As well as your daughter?’

  Saadet looked up from underneath her headscarf, her eyes glittering with both tears and hatred. ‘If you think I’m going to say that my husband killed Gözde, then you are very much mistaken!’

  ‘If he did, you should tell me,’ İkmen said calmly. ‘If you loved your daughter, then you should want justice for her.’

  ‘I have just lost my son . . .’ She broke down, crying into a handkerchief she took from her pocket.

  İkmen looked at Ayşe again, anxious. He didn’t want to offend this woman, to push her too far. That way would lead, he felt, only to silence on her part.

  ‘Mrs Seyhan,’ he said, ‘I accept that you are heavily burdened. Your son Kenan has died, you are obliged to live with your husband’s relatives . . .’ He took a deep breath and continued. ‘We know that Gözde was exchanging texts and photographs with a boy. We know that! We have your daughter’s phone. Your son Lokman tried to conceal it from us, but we have it. Mrs Seyhan, your daughter was having some kind of relationship with this boy. I believe it was entirely devoid of actual sex, but—’

  ‘Gözde was a good girl!’

  ‘Yes! Yes, I believe that she was,’ İkmen said. ‘Which is why her death is so tragic. Mrs Seyhan, we need to find who killed your daughter and stop him from doing anything like this again. Any feelings that you may have about the rightness of punishing girls for having perfectly natural feelings towards boys you have to put from your mind! You yourself—’

  ‘I know what I did!’ Saadet said, not crying any more now, her face twisted into an expression of deep shame. ‘I know what I did.’

  ‘We have no intention of informing your husband or anyone else about Gözde’s paternity,’ İkmen said. ‘That is something for you and you alone. But I must impress upon you the absolute necessity of telling us anything you believe might lead us to her killer, even if that person is—’

  ‘You are convinced that Cahit and Lokman killed Gözde, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You have it fixed in your mind that they cannot possibly be innocent!’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘I do! I have this fixation because I cannot find anyone outside of your family who might have had a motive.’

  ‘What about this boy you say . . .’

  ‘The boy is, admittedly, missing. But we are looking for him.’

  ‘Well, he could have killed Gözde! He could have ruined her and then—’

  ‘Mrs Seyhan, Gözde was a virgin when she died,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu cut in. ‘As you said yourself, she was a good girl. She did not deserve to die.’

  Saadet Seyhan looked down at her hands as she descended into silence.

  ‘If you know anything . . .’

  ‘I know nothing!’ She looked up sharply and then reiterated, ‘Nothing!’

  ‘But if you did . . .’ İkmen’s words tailed off, cut short by the furious, almost violent expression on Saadet Seyhan’s face.

  ‘I have lost a son,’ she said softly but with barely suppressed rage. ‘I have lost a daughter and a home, and now you come for my other son and my husband?’

  She stood up, scraping the chair furiously against the concrete floor as she did so. ‘I want to go,’ she said. ‘You have to let me!’

  ‘Yes
, but . . .’

  ‘I know nothing. Nothing!’ she said. She walked over to the door of the interview room and then turned to look at İkmen. ‘Let me out.’

  ‘Mrs Seyhan, if your family employed a third party to kill your daughter . . .’

  ‘Let me out!’ she screamed. ‘I have lost everything! I cannot lose anything more!’

  There was a slight catch in her throat as she appeared to realise what she had said, but İkmen, now up on his feet, laid it out for her just in case she had not fully understood.

  ‘I know you cannot bear to lose anything or anyone else,’ he said as he began to unlock the door for her. ‘But spare a thought for how Gözde felt when her skin was melting off her bones, when her hair was on fire, when she could no longer breathe because her lungs had collapsed.’

  She just looked at him, shaking, and then she shot through the door as if fired from a cannon.

  ‘I will catch whoever did this!’ İkmen called out after the rapidly retreating woman, ‘And I won’t care who it might be!’

  When he went back into the interview room, he looked across at Ayşe, who said, ‘She isn’t going to crack, is she?’

  İkmen sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘and who can blame her. However . . .’ He walked over to the table and sat down once again. ‘She was unfaithful to her husband many years ago and there must have been a reason for that. Lokman is another matter, but if Cahit is the man I think he is, then maybe given time she may reassess what she thinks about him.’

  ‘You mean, if Cahit did order Gözde’s death . . .’

  ‘Given time and some thought, she might just break,’ İkmen said.

  ‘You’re still convinced that the Seyhans did it, are you, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ İkmen said. ‘I still don’t know how, or whose hand actually poured the petrol over the poor girl’s head, but people knew about Gözde and Osman Yavuz. The American couple, the Fords. And if they knew, so did others.’

  ‘If only we could find Yavuz!’ Ayşe said with a tired sigh.