A Noble Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Rafik the grocer didn’t know what you would want this person to do?’

  ‘No! No,’ he said. ‘I told him I had a new business. I said it was a little outside the law. He said he was OK with that. Only me and that . . . man knew.’

  ‘How did you know that İsmail Yıldız wouldn’t just come to us?’

  ‘He did!’

  ‘But why did you think he wouldn’t?’

  Cem Koç thought about this for a few moments. ‘I don’t know. I just felt that he was genuine. He was so bitter at his brother, the police officer. He wanted to prove himself, to be a man somehow.’

  ‘İsmail Yıldız is not under-age,’ Ayşe observed.

  Cem Koç shrugged. ‘But he was willing to take the risk anyway. He said so. What could I do? He was there, and he was willing.’

  ‘Where did you get the two thousand lire to pay Mr Yıldız with?’ Ayşe asked.

  ‘A moneylender,’ he replied. ‘I was trying to be clever, trying to cover my tracks. I borrowed the money and then when the Şafaks paid me . . .’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Six thousand lire, like the man in the nargile salon had told me,’ he said. ‘I reckoned that was the going rate.’

  ‘For a bespoke honour killing?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Do you know, Mr Koç, whether this type of “trade” is something that many people do?’

  He looked up. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How would I? I met one man in a nargile salon who told me about one killing. I just went by that.’

  ‘How did you meet the Şafaks?’ Ayşe asked. ‘How did the subject of Sabiha’s death arise?’

  ‘Her father and I go to the same coffee house,’ he said. ‘We talk. He said that his son had told him that his daughter was bad. He was distressed. I told him I might be able to help.’

  ‘For a price.’

  ‘Yes. But he was happy with that, he . . .’

  ‘And are you now ashamed of what you did?’ Ayşe asked. On some level Cem Koç had to approve of honour killings, otherwise nothing on earth could have made him procure someone to perform one.

  ‘I don’t think that bad girls should dishonour their families,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but do you think that—’

  ‘I think that their families should do it really,’ he said. ‘But everyone is so afraid of being caught. You, the police, you’re so much better these days, aren’t you?’

  Ayşe felt sick. She had revised her opinion of Cem Koç during the course of this interrogation. He was just sorry that he had got caught. He didn’t have a scrap of feeling for Sabiha Şafak. To hell with what his financial needs might be!

  ‘Do you know the name of the man you got this idea from in the nargile salon in Tophane?’ she said coldly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was the name of the salon?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  Ayşe sighed. ‘Well then, Mr Koç,’ she said, ‘do you think you might recognise this man if you saw him again?’

  ‘I might do,’ Cem Koç replied.

  ‘Well, let us see if we can get a description from you, shall we?’ Ayşe said. ‘Let’s start with that.’

  Chapter 33

  * * *

  It was almost midnight by the time İkmen and Süleyman were ready to interview Cahit Seyhan. He was brought from his cell to the interview room in a state of bleary-eyed exhaustion. The officers, by contrast, though both had now gone for what seemed like an eternity without sleep, were buoyed up by some information that was hopefully going to make their interrogation of Seyhan a whole lot easier.

  ‘Right, Mr Seyhan,’ İkmen said as he sat down opposite the man. ‘One last time, did you pay to have your daughter Gözde murdered? We know you are not as well off as you were . . .’

  ‘I did not kill Gözde,’ Cahit Seyhan said emphatically. ‘No.’

  ‘Right.’

  Süleyman sat down next to İkmen and opened up a cardboard file.

  ‘So, Mr Seyhan,’ İkmen continued, ‘can you please tell me why both your wife and a man called Cem Koç who you met in the Tulip nargile salon in Tophane say that you did?’

  Cahit Seyhan growled and then threw a limp, dismissive arm into the air. ‘My wife is a liar!’ he said. ‘I want to have more children with her and the bitch denies me!’

  ‘Yes, there is also a rape charge,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘She wants to have me put away so she can run around with men!’

  Both İkmen and Süleyman ignored this.

  ‘I don’t know any man called Koç!’ Cahit Seyhan said.

  ‘Well you told him all about the arrangement you had come to with what you described as “some under-age boys”,’ İkmen said. ‘Koç has identified you.’

  ‘I was—’

  ‘Murad Emin, who is a waiter at the Tulip, is under-age,’ İkmen said. ‘Murad Emin, Mr Seyhan, who your wife identified as the person you yourself pointed out to her as being Gözde’s killer! Was it your idea, or did it come from the boy?’

  ‘We know that people, particularly in the countryside, sometimes employ under-age boys to perform honour killings because their age will preclude them from long prison sentences,’ Süleyman said. ‘Whose idea was it? Yours?’

  ‘I don’t know this Koç man! I don’t know him!’

  ‘How did he know you, then?’ İkmen said. ‘He described you and then we got him to look at hundreds of photographs, and he picked you out!’

  Cahit Seyhan looked around the room as if trying to find some sort of way out. İkmen lit a cigarette and the room began to take on a vague and diffuse greyness.

  Süleyman, who also lit up, now said, ‘If you tell us everything and name everyone involved, we can make sure that your cooperation is noted.’

  ‘What, do some sort of deal?’ Seyhan looked suddenly eager and even a little hopeful.

  ‘No,’ İkmen said as patiently as his growing anger would allow. ‘We don’t do deals. We’d make sure that your cooperation was noted. That’s all.’

  Cahit Seyhan looked down at the desk for a long time before he spoke. He had been betrayed by his wife and his son. Why Lokman had turned against him, he couldn’t imagine! They surely had to have a duty to him above anyone else. Now more than at any other time he regretted coming to the city. Had they stayed in the village, Gözde would have remained pure, Kenan would have married and Lokman and Saadet would never have had the courage to betray him. But they were no longer in the village; they were in a place that he didn’t understand, an evil place that was going to destroy him.

  ‘I liked the music at the Tulip,’ he said at last. ‘The piano.’

  ‘You conversed with Murad Emin because of the piano,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I spoke to both the boys,’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘They offered to help me out. With Gözde.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Ali Reza took the money,’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘He planned it, but Murad did it. He wanted to. He said it was his duty. Ali Reza I think was only in it for the money. I find that really unsettling. To kill only for money. That cannot be right. How does one clear one’s conscience when money is involved?’

  He stared down at the desk with an expression of frozen hopelessness on his face. İkmen looked over at Süleyman and let his next lungful of smoke out on a sigh. He was shattered, relieved that Seyhan had finally confessed but also totally baffled by the man. Süleyman, for his part, could think only about the two boys.

  ‘Leopold and Loeb were a couple of very talented, very intellectual boys who lived in Chicago in the 1920s,’ İkmen said. It was morning now, and Murad Emin had, at İkmen’s request, been transferred back to police headquarters. ‘In 1924, they killed a fourteen-year-old boy called Bobby Franks. They did it both for the thrill of the thing and also to see if they could get away with it. They didn’t, mainly because neither of them could keep their mouths shut. They wanted the world to know how clever, how daring and how wild and crazy they’d been. They go
t put away for life. But then that’s how young people are, isn’t it, Murad? Young people just have to open their mouths.’

  Murad Emin, pale from lack of sleep, remained silent and unmoving.

  ‘We would not have paid you half the attention that we have had you not alluded so vehemently to your own piety,’ Süleyman said. He was very well aware that it was İzzet Melik and not him who had pursued Murad Emin with such vigour. But he put that embarrassing thought to one side. ‘And now that Mr Seyhan, Gözde’s father, has confessed to procuring her death via you and Ali Reza Zafir, there is really no point in maintaining this ridiculous silence now.’

  ‘Mr Seyhan has confessed, Mrs Seyhan has identified you and when the forensic material comes back from the laboratory you will have run out of places to hide,’ İkmen said. ‘Now you tell us everything.’ He looked briefly over at Süleyman and then went back to the boy once again. ‘Tell us everything about the murder, about your part in it and about Ali Reza.’

  The boy looked up with wide, terrified eyes.

  ‘Tell us everything about Ali Reza,’ İkmen said. ‘Everything.’

  Murad Emin began to visibly shake. The psychologist Hatice, who had been standing over in the corner of the interview room, went outside and came back in with a blanket and a drink. She put the blanket around the boy’s shoulders and placed the drink down in front of him.

  ‘Drink some tea,’ she said. ‘I know that this is very hard, Murad.’

  He looked at her through eyes streaming with tears.

  ‘But you must trust us,’ Hatice said. ‘We are all here not just because we know what you did, but because we know what you didn’t do. You didn’t kill Hamid İdiz, did you, Murad?’

  He reached forward with a hand that shook so much, Hatice had to bring the tea glass up to his lips for him. İkmen and Süleyman looked on as the psychologist made the boy drink and then wiped his face with her handkerchief. ‘Murad. Please.’

  At first his voice was not much more than a whisper. ‘No.’

  ‘No, you won’t tell us anything, or no—’

  ‘No, I didn’t kill Hamid Bey,’ Murad said.

  ‘Do you know who did?’ İkmen asked.

  Hatice, now squatting down beside the boy, put her arms around his shoulders, which, for a very pious boy, did not seem to trouble him. He nodded his head.

  ‘Was it Ali Reza Zafir?’

  The unmoving silence that followed made Çetin İkmen think for a moment that maybe there was another, unknown killer out there somewhere, another crazy kid they had yet to apprehend. But then the boy said, ‘Yes.’ He sighed, and it was as if an invisible membrane had burst, allowing a free flow of words and deeds and horrors. ‘He wanted to see what it was like. I’d told him how horrible the girl’s death was. How when I’d set her on fire she’d turned and looked at me through the flames, her face melting down into a scream!’

  He put his head in his hands and began to sob, huge, wet, dammed-up tears. He’d been carrying that around, unable to express it. He had tried to tell his friend about it, but he’d just laughed.

  ‘I couldn’t bear the thought of her face! But . . . Leopold and Loeb, he was obsessed with them.’ He shook. ‘He said it could be our business,’ he whispered once he’d recovered himself sufficiently. ‘He could make a lot of money and do what he wanted and I could do the work of the righteous! We could be together!’ He looked up at İkmen and Süleyman and said, ‘But I couldn’t do it, not again. I told him, but he just laughed!’

  ‘And so he killed Hamid İdiz?’

  ‘He said that he could do it better than me,’ Murad said. ‘He said no one would ever suspect him!’

  ‘He was right,’ Süleyman said. ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘Tell us how he killed Hamid Bey,’ İkmen asked.

  ‘He thought I wouldn’t care because of how Hamid Bey was. My love for Ali Reza was different. Pure. We didn’t . . .’ Murad took a sip from his tea glass before continuing. ‘Hamid Bey was attracted to both of us, we knew that,’ he said. ‘But he never hurt us or did anything to us. Ali Reza went to visit him. He dressed up. Made himself look older and available. Make-up and . . . He told me that Hamid Bey was very excited. He . . . he went to the bed and he . . . Ali Reza cut his throat from behind.’

  ‘Ali Reza told you that?’

  ‘He did.’

  İkmen lit a cigarette while he watched the psychologist attempt to comfort the boy. He was glad that she was doing it and not him. In spite of Murad’s youth and his lack of privilege, it was still hard to summon up any sympathy for this boy. He’d set a living girl on fire for the sake of a twisted idea of morality, a pathetic obsession and, he supposed, some money.

  ‘How much money did you make for burning the girl?’ he asked.

  ‘Ali Reza gave me a thousand lire.’

  İkmen looked at Süleyman and raised his eyebrows. ‘So a nice five-thousand-lire profit for Ali Reza.’

  ‘The money wasn’t important.’

  İkmen pulled a cynical face. ‘No.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’ Süleyman asked.

  With an almost disinterested simplicity Murad said, ‘My parents took it. They take everything.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I went home afterwards and they went through my pockets,’ the boy said. ‘They do that when they’re desperate for the gear.’

  ‘Didn’t they ask you where you’d come by such a large amount of money?’ Süleyman asked.

  The boy looked at him pityingly, and in truth, Süleyman himself had been instantly ashamed of his naive question. ‘They’re junkies,’ Murad said. ‘They don’t care.’

  Only now did Çetin İkmen’s pity for Murad manifest itself. Where else but to an avenging God could such a boy turn? ‘Your clothes must have smelt of petrol when you left the apartment in Beşiktaş,’ he said. ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Ali Reza has an aunt in an apartment in Teşvikiye,’ he said. ‘She was away on holiday. He gave me a key. I ran there and changed my clothes.’

  ‘He left a new set for you in the aunt’s apartment?’

  ‘Yes. He went to pick my old clothes up later. He told me he burnt them. Ali Reza plans well.’ There was some admiration there, still.

  ‘Murad, how did a boy like you with so much talent and such a bright future become involved with jihadist philosophy?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘When your parents are junkies,’ he said, ‘you need something to believe in. You need your religion to help you make it through.’

  ‘Religion, yes, but . . .’

  ‘When you see your mother letting men bugger her for money, you want to blow up the universe!’ His face was purple with rage. ‘You ask me how I came to be involved in jihadi things? I went out and I found them! I found the men who sell the DVDs, the pictures, who run the websites! I wanted to be like them! Not like the way I am, the . . .’

  ‘What? The way you are what?’ İkmen asked.

  Murad turned his head to one side and said, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Gay?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You love Ali Reza,’ İkmen said. ‘Even though he laughs at you, even though he betrays you. It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

  Murad Emin turned back to look at him again, his anger obviously all burnt out, and said very simply, ‘Yes. Yes, it is true.’

  ‘You loved him before all the jihadi stuff, didn’t you?’ İkmen said.

  Murad began to cry. ‘I had to do something to make up for it!’ he said. ‘Such a terrible sin! Even thinking about it!’

  ‘And so you lit a human blaze . . .’

  ‘A noble blaze, yes,’ the boy said. ‘Yes, I did. I thought it would make up for it all.’

  Only then did İkmen really feel any true sympathy for the boy.

  ‘When you refer to something, meaning to be clever and cocky, it’s just as well if no one else is listening,’ Çetin İkmen said to Ali Reza Zafir.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ali R
eza said. He was so different from Murad Emin, so much more confrontational.

  ‘We knew that you were hiding something,’ İkmen continued, ‘because you had to have hit your mother for a reason, which could only be connected to a desire to get away. You were dressed for the street, you had your passport and clothes in your bag.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill her,’ Ali Reza said in a matter-of-fact way. He added impatiently, ‘I hit her too hard. It was an accident.’

  ‘Was it?’ Süleyman, across the other side of the desk, shook his head. ‘Tell me, Ali Reza, when did you develop an ambition to be a hit man?’

  The boy looked at him as if he was something disgusting and filthy. ‘Don’t be stupid!’ he said. ‘Some ridiculous peasant wanted a girl killed for no good reason; I did that using another stupid peasant and I got paid money for it. There was a market!’

  ‘And what do you know about markets?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘A lot more than my father!’ the boy snapped spitefully. ‘Public service? Art?’ He pulled a face. ‘Yes, I like the piano. I’d like to be a concert pianist, but only because it pays well. Top musicians can live like footballers. But this was easier.’

  ‘Which you found out when you killed Hamid İdiz?’

  But still the boy wouldn’t give that information up. He sat back in his chair again and smiled.

  İkmen shrugged. ‘We’ll tie up the forensic evidence,’ he said. ‘You might as well tell me the truth now and save us all a lot of time later.’

  Ali Reza didn’t move.

  ‘Oh well,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ll just have to tell you how you’ve been stupid and then you can make up your own mind. Firstly you did protest rather too much about how your friend Murad might well be a dangerous fanatic when Inspector Süleyman and Sergeant Melik went to see you at your apartment just before you killed your mother.’ İkmen waved an arm in the air casually. ‘But that’s a detail. Your main mistake was to mention two names that meant absolutely nothing to anyone when you were about to be transported over to Üsküdar.’ He walked over to the boy and bent down to look into his face. ‘Leopold and Loeb. I knew of them, even if no one else did. A crime now widely accepted to have had homoerotic overtones.’