Twice he had tried to call the place he knew Zelfa and the baby were staying and twice someone had just picked up the phone and then put it down again. Süleyman was not, therefore, in the mood for any objections from this overweight bureaucrat.
‘We know that the girl Gülay Arat was involved in the Goth scene,’ he told Commissioner Ardıç as he paced agitatedly around his superior’s desk.
‘But that was some time ago, wasn’t it?’
‘About six months.’
Ardıç wiped a large amount of sweat from his brow and lit a vast, black cigar. A few years older than İkmen, he was a good example of what can happen to large men when they are confined to their desks. He moved his stomach from his knees and on to the lip of a drawer. ‘So if she’d left the “Goth scene”, as you put it, why should we be concerning ourselves with it now?’ he said.
‘She still listened to the music right up until her death,’ Süleyman countered.
Ardıç yawned. ‘And this computer evidence you say Çöktin has?’
‘Newsgroups, yes.’
‘Are they odd or Gothic in any way?’
‘Some are odd, some are Gothic.’ Süleyman sat down opposite his superior and sighed. ‘The last person to communicate with her in this fashion used some words in a language we can’t as yet identify. It seems that Cem Ataman was in contact with either the same person or someone else who also knows these words.’
‘You think the boy’s suicide and the girl’s murder are connected?’
‘I don’t know,’ Süleyman said as he took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit up. ‘Cem was a lonely, morbid boy – no one seems to know that much about his life. As far as we can tell, he wasn’t actually a Goth, although he was certainly interested in diabolism, and he did cut himself, which is what a lot of those kids do. And, as I’ve said, he was involved in a newsgroup that has a connection, through this odd patois, to one that Gülay Arat used. Çöktin is looking into it.’
‘He’s very good with computers, isn’t he?’ Ardıç said.
‘Yes. Although this newsgroup phenomenon is presenting him with some problems. I’ve authorised him to get some outside help.’
‘What do you mean?’
Knowing that the use of the word ‘hacker’ would precipitate an explosion of unwanted questions, Süleyman said, ‘A consultant with wide experience of Internet communication, sir.’
‘I see.’ Ardıç frowned. ‘You know the Ataman boy’s parents have requested the release of his body for burial?’
‘I have explained to them—’
‘Yes, I know, but I must admit that I can’t see why you need to hold on to it now, Süleyman. The doctor has, I believe, gleaned everything he’s going to glean from it. You may by all means retain the child’s computer and other effects, but I feel the body must now go.’ He coughed.
‘I see. And my request to re-interview Sırma Karaca and gain access to Gülay Arat’s other friends?’
Ardıç looked down at his desk, his eyes hooded and heavy. ‘You can do that,’ he said, ‘provided you try not to upset too many people. I am told that these weird children who go to Atlas Pasaj are generally from the privileged classes. You will have to be,’ he looked up pointedly at his inferior, ‘gentle with them.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Notwithstanding the computer evidence, I’m still not entirely convinced that these two deaths are connected,’ Ardıç said on a sigh. ‘Young people do sometimes kill themselves and murders do happen.’
‘The girl had also been sexually assaulted,’ Süleyman said, ‘in what Dr Sarkissian believes is a most bizarre fashion. And considering the dark interests of these children—’
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ He was getting tetchy now. Ardıç did when things were difficult like this. As İkmen so often said, Ardıç didn’t respond well to crime that was not straightforward. Bar brawls, vendettas and the occasional death of a prostitute were things that he related to. Anything subtle or complex was entirely beyond both his capabilities and his patience.
‘Look, Süleyman,’ he said, ‘by all means question these children, but take care. The Arat girl could have easily consented to the sex act Sarkissian detailed in his report. Her father, we know, runs a string of very dubious establishments where all sorts of things – drugs, porn, you name it – are rumoured to take place. Maybe she and some friends were re-enacting some awful porn movie . . .’
‘During the course of which one of them stabbed her through the heart?’ Süleyman shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’
‘Well, don’t rule it out,’ Ardıç said harshly. ‘There’s some unbelievably weird stuff on tape and video CD these days. People will do just about anything. Some of it, it is said, for Hüseyin Arat.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Süleyman said as he tried to banish the thought that Ardıç might have watched some of this material from his mind.
Süleyman left his boss’s office soon afterwards. He’d got what he’d gone for – permission to interview Gülay’s friends. He didn’t need anything else. Except some sort of proof, in the real world, that he was doing the right thing. Gülay and Cem’s deaths could, as Ardıç had said, be completely unconnected. The Goth scene and even the messages from Nika and Communion could be totally meaningless in the context of the children’s deaths. After all, neither Nika nor Communion had said anything untoward to the young people – as far as the police could tell.
He was sitting in his office when the call came in from İkmen about Max Esterhazy. Where on earth could he be? And whose blood was spattered, as İkmen had put it, across his study? That Max had had a picture of the Goat of Mendes on his desk did, however, galvanise him. Like the connection between Nika, Communion and the two dead children, it might mean nothing, but the word ‘Mendes’ had cropped up in three different areas now – as a piece of graffiti on a church wall, as an almost mythical computer hacker and now in one of Max’s textbooks, something he’d been looking up for İkmen.
Süleyman picked up his phone and called the Çöktins’ apartment.
‘I don’t know how, from the amount of blood involved, a serious incident of some sort could take place in Mr Esterhazy’s apartment without your noticing something,’ İskender said, as he looked down coldly at Turgut Can. ‘Miss Ayla, so she claims, telephoned you from the study just after she returned from her shopping trip. Just after, I imagine, you saw Mr Esterhazy leave.’
‘She did.’ The boy shrugged. ‘Maybe Max Bey came back.’
‘But if that were the case then you would have seen or heard him return, wouldn’t you?’ İskender replied.
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
Turgut smiled. ‘Well, I wasn’t in his study . . .’
‘No? So where were you, Mr Can?’
Turgut looked down at his hands, a vaguely sheepish expression haunting his face. ‘In with Ülkü.’
‘What do you mean?’ İskender sat down at Max Esterhazy’s long kitchen table and lit a cigarette.
‘In her room.’
‘Were you having sex with her?’
Turgut suddenly looked shocked. ‘No!’
‘Then what were you doing in her bedroom?’
‘We were . . .’ He glanced down again, that smile returning to his lips. ‘I love Ülkü, Inspector,’ he said, ‘we were . . . she’s a good girl, Ülkü, you know.’
‘But?’ It was so cynically asked that it even shocked İskender’s sergeant, who was, after all, accustomed to his ways.
‘She gives me some relief, if you know what I mean,’ Turgut turned away, ‘with her hand . . .’
‘So, as soon as Mr Esterhazy was out of the way, you and your girlfriend went to her bedroom where she masturbated you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you think that Mr Esterhazy, especially in view of his antipathy towards you, would have heard something had he returned to the apartment? I mean, you and your girlfriend must have made some noise.’
<
br /> ‘Well . . .’
İskender turned to Alpaslan Karataş and said, ‘Go and get Miss Ayla for me.’
‘Yes, sir.’
İskender regarded Turgut Can sternly. ‘And how long did that take you? The masturbation?’ he said. ‘You’re a young and, obviously, lustful man.’
Turgut’s face paled. ‘What do you mean?’
The policeman smiled unpleasantly. ‘I mean, Mr Can, that when a girl starts pulling at a young man’s cock it doesn’t usually take him that long to get rid of his frustrations.’
Although outwardly suave, İskender did at times, like this, slip into the rough tones and patois of his youth. ‘You entered this apartment at just after five, Miss Ayla called us at six forty-five – you must have spent an hour at the very least in her room. What were you doing?’
‘I told you—’
‘No, you told me part of it, Mr Can.’ He looked up as the girl and Karataş entered the room. ‘Ah, Miss Ayla . . .’
‘Sir.’ Her eyes cast down, Ülkü Ayla sat next to Turgut Can, her hands folded in her lap.
‘I was just asking Mr Can here what you and he were doing while Mr Esterhazy’s study was being decorated with blood,’ İskender said.
Ülkü looked at Turgut, her face reddening as she turned.
‘He says you were in your bedroom.’
‘Yes.’ It was more of a whisper than anything else.
‘What were you doing there, in your bedroom?’
‘We—’
‘Ülkü did it again,’ Turgut put in.
‘What?’
‘She wanted to . . .’ He looked across at the girl and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ülkü, I have to tell him.’
She started to cry.
‘We finished and . . . Ülkü went to the bathroom and then when she came back we sort of . . . Ülkü gave me a blow job. I didn’t ask her to,’ he added quickly. ‘She wanted it.’
‘No!’
‘I’ve never had one of them before,’ Turgut continued, ‘and so I thought I’d better make it last.’ He smirked. ‘You know how it is . . .’
İskender ignored him. ‘Is this true?’ he said to the girl. ‘Did you first masturbate this man and then take him into your mouth?’
Ülkü, speechless, just shook her head as if she didn’t understand.
‘Well?’
‘Y-yes, but—’
‘So the two of you played with each other for an hour, did you?’ İskender said contemptuously. ‘You neither heard nor saw anything untoward during the course of that time?’
‘No.’
İskender turned to Alpaslan Karataş and smiled. ‘Must have been a good session, mustn’t it, Sergeant?’
The younger man grinned nervously. ‘Yes, sir.’
İskender raised his eyebrows. ‘An hour?’
‘I heard something fall when I was in the bathroom – I think it came from the study.’ It came out in a rush, as if she had to get it out before something happened to stop her.
‘And what time was this, Miss Ayla?’
‘I don’t know . . . maybe half-past five . . .’
‘Did you go and check to see whether everything was all right?’
Ülkü looked down again. ‘No.’
‘Why not, Miss Ayla?’
İskender could see that Turgut Can’s face was tense.
‘Because then Turgut called me to . . . he’d been upset, I was worried for him. He wanted me to do that thing with his . . .’
‘To give him oral sex.’
‘Yes.’
‘No! It was her.’
İskender looked from the girl to the boy and frowned.
‘It was her!’ Turgut spat. ‘She wanted it! She came out of the bathroom and went down on me! Sucking like a whore! Like that pervert Max Bey taught her!’
‘No!’ Ülkü looked across at İskender and said, ‘Max Bey isn’t like that, Inspector. He is like a father to me. He’s never made me do anything bad.’
‘So you never had oral sex with Mr Esterhazy?’ İskender asked.
‘No.’
‘Did you have any other kind of sex with him?’
‘No!’
‘Yes, you did!’ Turgut sneered. ‘All that spooky stuff he did was all about sex! Those books of his are full of it! People fucking with each other and with animals!’
‘It was his study!’ She looked İskender pleadingly in the eyes. ‘Magic. He never touched me! You have to believe it!’
‘She’s lying!’
İskender sniffed. This young man, the girl’s so-called betrothed, made him want to hit him. ‘And yet knowing, as you assert, that Miss Ayla was having sex with Mr Esterhazy, you carried on seeing her?’ he said. ‘Further, you required her to service you too?’
‘Yes.’
‘I find that very hard to believe,’ İskender said, ‘unless, of course, you had some other motive in mind. If, for instance, you were using her to gain access to Mr Esterhazy or his property for some reason. There are lots of valuable things in this apartment.’
Turgut flushed. ‘No! Ülkü sucked me! She’s crazy for—’
‘Sex? This – what did you call her – “good girl”? Your story, Mr Can, doesn’t make sense,’ İskender said as he moved his gaze from Turgut to Ülkü and back again. ‘This afternoon when Miss Ayla heard something fall in the study, she, the housemaid, a girl devoted to her kind and generous employer, completely ignored it and offered to give you, Mr Can, a blow job instead.’
‘If she says—’
‘No, Mr Can,’ İskender leaned forward and looked deep into Turgut Can’s eyes, ‘that is not exactly how it happened and you know it. Now let’s have the truth, shall we, from both of you?’
Now that his father was dead, there was only Kasım and his elderly mother. Occupying three decaying rooms just around the corner from Çöktin’s family apartment, Kasım’s place was dominated by computers, screens, boxes of disks and electrical wires. His mother, who had long since given up hope of her son ever making anything of himself, readily let them in. And although she turned her face away from the stranger who had come into her home, she kissed İsak on both cheeks before shouting ‘Kasım!’ through a thin, plywood door and then retiring back to her own room.
İsak Çöktin didn’t wait for a reply.
‘I thought we’d said everything we needed to say at the church,’ Kasım said as he regarded the sudden appearance of his cousin with contempt.
‘Things have changed,’ İsak said as he held the door open for a tall, grave-looking man in a stylish dark suit.
‘Who’s that?’
‘This is my boss, Kasım, Inspector Süleyman,’ İsak said. ‘He needs to speak to you.’
Kasım pushed himself away from his keyboard and started to roll his chair back towards the window. His eyes were red from long sessions staring at the screen, and now they were also filled with fear.
Süleyman first looked around the small, paper-strewn room and then picked up a recordable CD from the pile beside Kasım’s computer. ‘I know all about this,’ he said as he held it aloft. ‘İsak has told me.’
Kasım looked across at his cousin, an expression of pure hatred on his face.
‘But that’s not why I’m here,’ Süleyman continued. ‘Subtitling films into your own language is your affair.’
‘I can’t believe—’
‘Kasım, I had to tell him! I was in danger of getting lost in my own lies!’ İsak sat down on his cousin’s meagre bed and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Someone has disappeared, he may be dead.’
‘A friend of mine,’ Süleyman cut in, ‘a very decent man – a foreigner.’
‘There could be a connection between this man and Mendes, Kasım,’ İsak explained. ‘We need to contact him. You must tell us who your contact is.’
‘I – I can’t,’ Kasım stammered.
‘You must!’
Now that he’d told Süleyman about the little ‘business’ he and Kasım ran, subti
tling films into Kurdish and then offering the results to known subscribers in the far eastern provinces, there was no going back. Of course, he hadn’t had to. But a man had disappeared whilst apparently researching into the Goat of Mendes, which was, it was said, a Satanic image and so, suddenly, his way forward had become horribly clear. Explain to someone nominally sympathetic, like Süleyman, what the differences between Satanists and his people were and hope that he would understand. Süleyman, who, he knew, had always suspected what he and his family really were, now knew for certain. What Süleyman hadn’t known was that he was also active within the illegal pirate community too. But then Mendes had instructed Kasım and himself to hide themselves well. Mendes was, after all, the very best. But if he were also involved in blood, possibly death, then that was a sacrifice İsak had to make – if he wanted to continue to live in peace with himself.
‘If you don’t co-operate, I will arrest you and charge you with offences likely to endanger national security,’ Süleyman said coldly. And then turning to his deputy he added, ‘And that will include you, Sergeant Çöktin.’
İsak lowered his head. ‘Sir.’ His boss was, he hoped, bluffing at this time, but retribution of some kind would come in the end. It had to. He as a serving officer had knowingly broken the law. Not even İkmen, let alone Süleyman, would or could just let that go.
Süleyman took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit up. He then offered the packet to Kasım, who, with a shaky hand, took one gratefully.
‘I can understand why you might be reluctant to give us the name of the person who knows this Mendes,’ Süleyman said a little more gently now. ‘I suspect, as I know İsak does, that he or she is one of your fellows.’ He leaned forward and peered, in a concentrated fashion, into Kasım’s eyes. ‘I have nothing against the Yezidi, Kasım; I’m not going to use what I know to harm your people. I just need to get a connection to this hacker. I need to find out why my friend’s apartment is soaked in blood and why he has disappeared.’
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