A Noble Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘If only indeed,’ İkmen reiterated. Then a thought came into his mind that caused him to frown. What if the Seyhans had also killed Osman Yavuz?

  A visit to a very respectable address in the pretty Bosphorus village of Yeniköy had been followed by a brief foray into the lower depths of the broken-down district of Tarlabaşi. Both closeted gay or bisexual men and those who persecuted them lived at every level of society. The boy they had just been to talk to had known Hamid İdiz, although he claimed never to have indulged with him in the al fresco sex that the piano teacher had loved so much. Hamid had been, so the boy said, far too ‘out’ and obvious for a lot of people.

  ‘Some guys feared he called too much attention to, well, us,’ the boy had told Süleyman and İzzet Melik. He’d spoken in a soft voice so as not to wake his elderly mother.

  Süleyman had asked the boy whether he thought that maybe one or more of these disapproving men could have killed Hamid in order to silence his clearly very free and easy mouth. But the boy said he didn’t think that was the case. ‘Hamid Bey was way over the top a lot of the time,’ he said. ‘But he would never deliberately have put anyone apart from himself in harm’s way. He was a kind man for all his wild behaviour.’

  When Süleyman and İzzet got back in the former’s car, the sergeant said, ‘Sir, about all these homosexuals and people who hate them . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Süleyman fired up the engine and began to drive off. Their next port of call was a flat in Hasköy.

  ‘Well, none of them are going to own up to doing him in, are they?’

  ‘No. It’s what they can tell us, possibly, about others. Frightened people say things, even about their nearest and dearest sometimes. And both the closeted men and the thugs are frightened of us.’

  ‘I’m still not content that we’ve explored every angle with İdiz’s pupils,’ İzzet said.

  ‘You mean Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir?’

  ‘Tayfun Ergin was at their place of work, the nargile salon, the Tulip,’ İzzet said. ‘Ergin provides protection.’

  ‘For many, many nargile salons in the city,’ Süleyman said. ‘What’s that got to do with the boys?’

  Süleyman turned the car left on to the teeming Tarlabaşı Boulevard, where, as usual, every other car was sounding its horn. He pulled a face. Another wretched traffic jam! He should have taken a chance and tried threading his way through the back streets of Tarlabaşı.

  İzzet said, ‘Ergin may have nothing at all to do with the boys. He was probably just collecting his protection money from the owner of the Tulip. But word is he’s moving into other areas of business, and I just felt uneasy that he was around those kids.’

  ‘That’s your paternal instinct coming out.’ The car in front very briefly stopped dead, and Süleyman, incensed, threw his hands in the air and said, ‘What?’

  ‘Sir, I think that Murad Emin has been radicalised,’ İzzet said. ‘All that religious stuff, and apparently he won’t let Miss Madrid touch him any more, because she’s an infidel, so he tells her.’

  Now that the car in front had started moving again, Süleyman had his hands back on the steering wheel. ‘You’ve seen Izabella Madrid?’

  ‘You said that I could watch the boys . . .’

  Sighing, Süleyman moved the car forward by centimetres. ‘I don’t know what this fixation is that you have with these boys,’ he said tetchily.

  İzzet, for his part, wanted to say that he couldn’t understand why Süleyman was so set against even considering the possibility that one or other of the boys, probably Murad Emin, had killed Hamid İdiz. Was it because he didn’t like working in Balat, where his mistress lived? He had to squash down a sudden urge to tell Süleyman that everyone knew about Gonca and that he might as well own up to her, at least with his colleagues. But he found that he just couldn’t do it. Whether it was because he feared the volcanic response any allusion to Süleyman’s private life usually engendered, or whether he just felt bad being the bearer of such unwelcome news, he didn’t know. But he said nothing.

  ‘If Murad Emin is being radicalised, then you need to pass that on to counterterrorism,’ Süleyman said.

  Appalled at his superior’s rapid escalation of a perceived threat from a teenager, İzzet said, ‘Sir, I don’t think he’s planning to bomb the Topkapı Palace. He’s still involved in his music, still keen to win this Turco–Caucasian music festival.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying that in view of the fact that Murad Emin is seemingly being radicalised in some way, I don’t think we can discount him as a suspect in the Hamid İdiz case,’ İzzet said. ‘The fundamentalists hate queers. Some of these queer-bashers we’ve seen today . . .’

  ‘Exactly,’ Süleyman said. ‘Some of their past profiles include luring homosexuals via sexual temptation into places where they can hurt or kill them. We know these men are capable. Murad Emin is a young kid and an unknown quantity. As I say, hand him over to counterterrorism. Maybe there’s a computer in his bedroom on to which he’s downloaded jihadist material.’

  İzzet did not answer. His eyes fixed on the slow-moving boot of the car in front, he wondered why Süleyman was so adamant about Murad Emin. He also recalled that Murad did not possess a computer, because his parents spent all their money on heroin. Living with them was enough to turn any young man’s thoughts to other, albeit even more destructive ways of living.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  İkmen had never met Constable Yıldız’s brother İsmail before. He knew that he was a rather religious young man, but he hadn’t known that he was unemployed.

  ‘My brother hasn’t worked for a long time, Çetin Bey,’ Hikmet Yıldız said to İkmen. ‘But he is a good person, always looking for a job.’

  ‘I would never have even listened to such a suggestion if I hadn’t been desperate for work,’ İsmail Yıldız said. ‘Honestly!’

  He was scared. Scared of being in the station, scared of being in the presence of one of his brother’s superiors. It wasn’t surprising. The people he usually associated with had little contact with the police, and often, little time for them too.

  ‘Mr Yıldız,’ İkmen said with a smile, ‘what suggestion do you mean? Did someone . . .’

  ‘Last night my brother met with a man who he had been told had some work for him,’ Hikmet said.

  ‘Who told him, er, you?’ İkmen said as he switched his attention between the two brothers.

  ‘A grocer called Rafik Bey,’ Hikmet said.

  ‘He won’t get into trouble, will he? I don’t want him to get into any—’

  ‘İsmail!’ Hikmet turned to his brother and said, ‘If this story is to be told, then it must all be told. Rafik, by knowingly putting you on to this man . . .’

  ‘Cem.’

  ‘. . . this Cem, has broken the law,’ Hikmet said. ‘Do you understand?’

  İsmail Yıldız put his head down as if he were a scolded child. When Hikmet was satisfied he would say no more, he continued.

  ‘Çetin Bey,’ he said, ‘last night, after sunset adhan, this Cem took my brother to a coffee house near the Gül Mosque and made him a business proposition.’

  İkmen looked at İsmail Yıldız, who was now so nervous he was shaking. ‘I didn’t do it!’ he said. ‘I only told him that I would because I thought he might kill me! People like that do!’

  ‘This Cem works as some kind of broker for someone else he would not name,’ Hikmet continued. ‘What he does, so he says, is to match people up.’

  ‘Match people up?’

  Hikmet, in spite of himself, began to smile. This could be, it had to be, the breakthrough that İkmen had been looking for! ‘If you have a daughter who is disgracing herself with a boy, or a wife who is being unfaithful, then Cem, or rather the people he recruits, can help you,’ he said. ‘Sir, this Cem matches up what he calls “nice, pious, poor men” with families who want rid of a woman who is disgracing them. If the assailant is
seen, there is no direct connection back to the family, no forensics – these men have clean records – and very little risk. All the families need is money.’

  İkmen felt every hair on his head stand up and a long, rapid shiver went down his back. Could this be how Gözde Seyhan had been murdered? Could it possibly have dropped into his lap, just like that? He said, ‘Let me get this straight: this man recruits basically good but poor men, with no criminal history, to kill girls and women for money?’

  ‘Some money, yes,’ Hikmet said. ‘But not a lot. He sells the idea on the basis of religious duty. He knows that there are a lot of people in Fatih who come from villages where honour killing has been accepted for years. He also knows that a lot of the men are poor, desperate and angry.’

  ‘I would never have done it,’ İsmail reiterated. ‘I only said I would!’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned. Hikmet was disappointed; he had imagined that the inspector would have been much more pleased about this than he seemed. ‘Didn’t this man know that you had a brother in the police force?’ İkmen asked.

  İsmail shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘Does Rafik Bey the grocer know what Constable Yıldız does for a living?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘Yes, he does, sir,’ Hikmet said. ‘I sometimes go into his shop to buy cigarettes. He knows I am İsmail’s brother.’

  İkmen rubbed his chin, then said, ‘Because it occurs to me that recruiting the brother of a police officer to do such a job is, or could be, rather stupid.’

  ‘Ah, well, I, er . . .’ İsmail Yıldız looked sheepish.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘When I asked Rafik Bey about possibly finding me some work,’ he said, ‘I did say that I would do anything. I would! Just not . . . Well, I was angry that day.’ He looked over at his brother. ‘Hikmet’s lack of faith is painful for me sometimes. I feel as if he mocks me and I also imagine that it is worse because he is working and I am not. I have felt for a while that if I worked, I might be able to bring him back to Allah once again, that he would see me as a person and listen to me.’

  ‘I would—’

  İkmen cut his constable short with a wave of his hand. ‘And you told this Rafik Bey all this, did you, İsmail?’

  Again the head was down and the expression was one of embarrassment. ‘Well, yes, I, yes . . .’

  At last İkmen smiled. ‘Well then maybe,’ he said, ‘if you are at odds with your brother and his world, whoever these people are may well believe that you would do this terrible thing. You don’t know whether they had a potential victim in their sights, do you?’

  ‘Cem said they might do,’ İsmail replied. ‘He said he’d let me know.’

  ‘Well, keep in touch with him.’

  ‘He said he’d call me.’

  ‘Then you must wait for his call.’

  ‘Sir, you don’t intend to use İsmail in some way, do you?’ Hikmet asked. ‘I mean, he is my brother.’

  ‘Who is in need of work,’ İkmen said. ‘I have work for him, Constable Yıldız.’

  ‘Yes, but it might be . . .’

  ‘Dangerous? Yes, it might,’ İkmen said. ‘But then maybe he should have thought about the prospect of danger when he went to meet this unknown Cem character.’ He looked sternly now at İsmail. ‘You know that if you do this, you may well be condemned by some who call themselves religious, don’t you?’

  ‘He does know that, yes,’ Hikmet said. ‘We talked about it, and İsmail . . . He doesn’t hold with honour killing, not really.’

  ‘No!’

  İkmen looked at the two young men. Both had come to İstanbul as infants from some back-of-beyond village in the east. Their parents had taken well to city life until the earthquake of 1999 had sent them scuttling back to the countryside. Quite what the boys had picked up about traditional country ways and traditions İkmen didn’t know, but he was pretty sure at least that İsmail had a somewhat ambiguous attitude towards honour killing. Clearly it did horrify him, otherwise he would never have told Hikmet about Cem and his business proposal. İkmen, though, was concerned that if İsmail acted as an undercover agent for the police, those he mixed with in Fatih would reject him. But he had explained that. Now, for the moment, he had just one other thing to ask İsmail: ‘Do you know of a man called Tayfun Ergin?’

  ‘The gangster?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think he might be behind the man called Cem who gave you this job?’

  İsmail thought for a moment, going back over his long and very tiring conversation with Cem, then he said, ‘I don’t know. He didn’t mention him. He didn’t mention anyone by name. I just don’t know.’

  She had known that this would happen. Her nephew, Aykan Akol, was a troublemaker. He liked nothing more than watching a scene he had precipitated unfold before his eyes. He’d told Cahit that Saadet had not come back with the bread but had gone off shopping on her own instead. The fat pig had had to wait for his breakfast. Now her husband was whipping her with his belt and roaring accusations at her, while the hated nephew stood behind the door, sniggering.

  ‘What man did you go off to see, you whore?’ Cahit roared as he laid into her bare back with his belt.

  ‘No one! Cahit, I swear . . . !’

  ‘Why should I believe you? Eh? Why?’

  ‘Because I’m telling you the truth!’ she said as she tried to protect her face from his belt and his fists. Once she’d left the police station, she’d made sure that she’d done some shopping in order to lend credence to her story. Had anyone seen her get into that car? No one she knew had been on the street when she went down to the baker’s. But maybe someone had been watching her from across the road, from up in an apartment, from almost anywhere.

  ‘Slut!’ Cahit pulled his fist back and smashed it into her mouth. She heard the crack before she felt any pain. She put two fingers into her mouth and pulled out a broken, bloodied tooth. The sight of it, the blood, the tooth or both, made her want to scream. It had a different effect upon her husband. He was panting with the effort of it all, and looked satisfied, as if the blooding of his wife had sated his rage, if only temporarily.

  ‘Slut,’ he reiterated. Now no longer hysterical, he added in a calm voice, ‘You will never leave this apartment again. Understand?’

  Oh, she understood all right! He was locking her away, just as he had tried to lock Gözde away, just as his own mother had been incarcerated back in the village. She had been a legend. People had said of her that she was so good, she never so much as saw the light of day. Poor woman. As Saadet watched her husband nurse the fist he had broken her tooth with, she had an overwhelming urge to tell him about her daughter. She hadn’t thought about that, hadn’t allowed herself to remember it, for years. But now that İkmen had reminded her, she suddenly could not get Gözde’s real father’s face out of her mind. A soldier from İstanbul, just passing through the village, a conscript at least five years her junior. But he’d been so polite, so kind, helping her to carry water from the well. He’d been good-looking, too. He, the man whose name she hadn’t even known, had passed on those fine features to her pretty daughter. Her pretty dead daughter, born of the gentle lovemaking Saadet had experienced only once with her soldier. Oh, she wanted to tell Cahit so much! She wanted to hurt him so badly! But all she actually said as she bowed her head in his direction was ‘Yes, Cahit.’

  He left the room without further comment, locking the door behind him just to make his point. So now she was confined. Locked in an airless apartment with a husband, a sister-in-law and a nephew she hated and who hated her. Her niece she didn’t hate; she was just fat and lazy and useless. Only Lokman, her one remaining son, had a place in her heart. But would he help her? Would he let her out in defiance of his own father? It was unlikely and utterly unthinkable should she decide to tell him the truth about his sister’s real father. Her son could, she knew, even kill her. But then if she did get out of the Akols’ apartment, sh
e didn’t have anywhere to go.

  Saadet sat down on the floor, took a handkerchief out of her sleeve and held it up to her mouth. A front tooth! Her bully of a husband had knocked out a front tooth! But then who but she would ever see it? No one. She wasn’t going out again; it didn’t matter. Locked away, she would cook and clean and do what her sister-in-law told her. Cahit would beat her, and occasionally he would force himself on her. Saadet, overwhelmed, began to cry. She couldn’t live like that, she just couldn’t, not after Gözde, not after Kenan.

  Only that policeman, only İkmen, could help her now. But she’d passed up the chance he’d given her only hours before to tell him everything and make a new life for herself. She’d not been ready, she’d been too afraid. And now that time had passed and Cahit had made her his prisoner. The only way she could make things right was to somehow leave the apartment. But how she was going to do that, Saadet just didn’t know.

  He slipped into the Rainbow Internet Café almost without her noticing. The skinny loner boy the police had been so interested in. He sat down at a computer beside a bunch of trannies, who were so caught up in giggling at something on their machine, they didn’t even see him. But the woman with the blood-red nails and the flamboyant dress sense did. She took out the card one of the inspectors had given her and went into the alleyway behind the café to make the call. Fifteen minutes later, Osman Yavuz was being led away into a police car amid the screams and squeaks of the gang of transsexuals.

  ‘I didn’t kill Gözde!’ the boy said as İkmen and İskender looked at him across the table with still, fathomless eyes. Osman was and always had been completely unnerved by policemen. ‘I loved her!’

  ‘Then why did you cut and run when you found out she was dead?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Because I knew you’d think it was me!’ Osman Yavuz was not a very impressive boy. Skinny and spotty, he was also pale and very, very nervous. And he smelt bad, giving the distinct impression that he hadn’t washed for some time.

  ‘Why would we think it was you?’ İskender asked. ‘What makes you imagine that we’d think you were so important?’