Kasım looked from Süleyman’s face to that of his cousin who said, ‘Kasım! Please!’
‘Mendes protects us! If anyone knew that it was me—’
‘They won’t,’ Süleyman cut in sharply.
‘I don’t believe you!’
Süleyman grabbed the young man’s collar firmly in his fist. ‘Now you listen to me, Kasım Çöktin,’ he said through angry, gritted teeth. ‘You know nothing about me or any of the methods open to me. When I tell you I can guarantee that the fact your friend put us in contact with this Mendes is something no one outside of this situation will ever know, then you will believe me.’
‘The inspector is a man of honour,’ a slightly tremulous İsak added.
‘Tell me and I will protect this person and you.’
‘And if I won’t?’
Süleyman let go of his collar and sank back down on Kasım’s spongy mattress. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘I think that your career in the film industry may be in jeopardy.’
Kasım threw his cigarette butt down on to his bare floorboards and ground it out with his foot.
CHAPTER 9
‘I started seeing Ülkü early last year.’
They’d moved Turgut Can from Max Esterhazy’s apartment to the station. Ülkü Ayla they had sent to stay with a woman she knew from her native village. But not before she had talked at some length. About how Max had, on a trip to the eastern district of Mardin, effectively bought her from her impoverished mother, about how she’d come to İstanbul to be his maid and how he’d started to teach her English and sometimes he’d talked a little about his magical work too. But not very often. That was, Max had always said, something Ülkü had to make her own mind up about in the fullness of time. Turgut Can was something she, so Max had also said, had a choice about too.
İkmen and İskender regarded the young man in front of them with stony countenances.
‘How did you meet?’ the older man asked. Village kids like Turgut weren’t exactly confident around girls, especially traditional ones like Ülkü.
‘I’m a waiter,’ the boy replied, ‘at a small lokanta in Sirkeci. Ülkü would often pass by on her way to the Mısır Çarşısı – Max Bey always needed things from there. One day when it was very hot, she fainted. I picked her up and gave her a glass of water. Ülkü came from a village only four kilometres from mine.’
‘So you started seeing each other?’
‘Not immediately.’ Turgut looked down at the floor. ‘I left it a few weeks before I went back.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t want Ülkü to think I was forward.’
‘This from the man who made the girl suck his cock!’ İskender said acidly.
İkmen ignored this comment. ‘You were attracted to Ülkü?’
Turgut shrugged.
‘So was there something else?’ İkmen said. ‘Something to do with Mr Esterhazy?’
‘Ülkü told me he was a magician. I was interested.’
‘Why?’
Turgut blushed. ‘Well, I, er . . . look, I don’t do that weird stuff myself. The truth is that he, Max Bey, he had some girls in his apartment. Posh girls . . .’
‘Max’s students,’ İkmen said. ‘So you wheedled your way into Miss Ayla’s affections so you could leer at Mr Esterhazy’s wealthy students.’
‘No!’ Turgut looked offended, almost hurt, ‘No, I . . . look, that first time, the way he was talking to the girls, it seemed to me inappropriate and familiar.’
‘What do you mean “inappropriate”? Was he touching them?’
‘No, but all that stuff in his books. He has to be a pervert! Weird and unnatural!’
‘But you can’t have seen his books on that first occasion at his apartment, can you?’ İkmen said. ‘That you’ve seen them subsequently would seem to imply that you’ve taken a look since.’ He turned briefly to İskender. ‘Max would never let anyone except very old friends look at his books.’ Turning back at the boy he continued, ‘You went where you shouldn’t, didn’t you, Turgut?’
Turgut hung his head.
‘You didn’t go back for Ülkü,’ İkmen said. ‘You went back to try and get to know some of Max’s students.’
‘No! No, I like Ülkü. I want to marry her . . .’ He looked down again and sighed.
‘No luck with the students then?’ İkmen said. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised, Turgut. You’re a good-looking boy, but you are from the country and Max’s students do tend to be wealthy.’
‘I—’
‘So instead you got some of your kicks from Mr Esterhazy’s no doubt fascinating books and from fantasising about his students while the timid Miss Ayla pulled on your cock,’ İskender said brutally. ‘Mr Esterhazy did nothing—’
‘No, I . . . Max Bey was inappropriate with those girls.’
‘How?’ İkmen asked. ‘What did he do to them?’
Turgut cleared his throat. ‘Well, he spoke and laughed with them in a familiar way.’
‘Max is British,’ İkmen said. ‘His students are educated Turkish girls and boys. In both those societies, men and women have easy, platonic relationships.’
‘Yes, but what about those books?’
‘Max’s life as a magician and as a teacher are mutually exclusive,’ İkmen said. ‘And, besides, if you thought that he was in fact seducing good Turkish girls, including your Ülkü, why didn’t you come to us?’
Turgut looked down at the floor. ‘I . . .’
‘Well?’ İskender said. ‘Why didn’t you come to us, Mr Can? Was it in fact because nothing inappropriate, beyond your own lust, was indeed occurring? Or were you perhaps planning to blackmail Mr Esterhazy at some point?’
‘No!’
‘So did you, in fact, ever see Mr Esterhazy touching or having sex with Miss Ayla?’
Turgut looked down again, ‘Well, not . . .’
‘No you didn’t, did you?’ İkmen said. ‘You didn’t like Max because he didn’t like you, did he? What happened, Mr Can? Did he catch you trying to seduce one of his students or were you perhaps breathing heavily over one of his books?’
Turgut Can put his head in his hands and began to cry.
‘Ülkü has told us how kind Max Bey has always been to her,’ İkmen continued. ‘But she says, although she can’t understand why, that he doesn’t trust you.’
‘No!’
‘Oh, yes. She disagrees, of course. She loves you. She’s a simple girl, unaware of the fact, as I am, that Max’s students and the fascinating pictures in his books were what you really went there for. Getting her to call you when he went out must have provided you with ample opportunity to view his literature.’
‘But I didn’t—’
‘Maybe not on this occasion, no,’ İkmen smiled. ‘This time you just got down to business with Ülkü – if indeed that is what happened.’
Turgut Can looked up, sweating heavily. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What Inspector İkmen means,’ İskender explained, ‘is that we know from the kapıcı that Mr Esterhazy did, as you yourself suggested at the beginning of this process, re-enter the building. Fifteen minutes after you arrived.’
The boy’s face drained of colour.
‘He’d forgotten something,’ İkmen said, ‘and so he—’
‘But that’s not possible!’ Turgut cried. ‘I would have—’
‘Yes, I agree. I think you would have probably heard him return,’ İkmen said. ‘Unless you were too busy with Ülkü. Maybe Max caught you forcing her down on you.’
‘No!’
‘We only have your word that you found the blood,’ İskender said. ‘Who is to say you didn’t put it there?’
‘But Ülkü—’
‘Ülkü loves you, Mr Can,’ İkmen said. ‘She wants to marry you and believes that you want to marry her. She can’t see that to you she’s only something to shove yourself into. She likes Max, but I think she likes you more. I think she’d always do what you told her.’
Turg
ut Can, agitated, jumped to his feet. ‘Yes, but what about the body?’ he said. ‘There’s no body!’
‘Not as yet,’ İkmen said. ‘But we’ve got men at the scene searching the air conditioning vents, the rubbish chute and the other apartments.’
‘Yes, but I would have had to—’
‘If you killed Mr Esterhazy fifteen or twenty minutes after you arrived at the apartment, you must have given yourself enough time to dispose of the body before you raised the alarm.’
‘But how?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Can,’ İkmen said. ‘Perhaps you cut Mr Esterhazy up. There was a vast amount of blood.’
‘But I didn’t!’
‘Then you won’t mind giving us your clothes for analysis, will you?’ İkmen said.
After Turgut Can left, the two officers sat in silence for a while. It was İskender who spoke first.
‘You don’t really think that that kid killed him, do you?’
‘We don’t know that Max is even dead,’ İkmen said. ‘But we have to rule Can and his girlfriend out. The boy’s about as muddled and confused as you can get.’
İskender lit a cigarette. ‘So do you think that Esterhazy is dead?’
‘We won’t know until the blood analysis comes back from the lab.’
‘And even then we only have his blood group with which to compare it.’
İkmen smiled and then lit up a cigarette of his own. ‘Max doesn’t hold with doctors,’ he said. ‘There was always some potion or other that he used to cure himself of whatever. I must admit that I have no gut feelings on this, Metin. I can’t imagine that Max has allowed himself to be attacked, but then if he hasn’t . . .’
‘He was, we think, in that apartment,’ İskender said.
‘And so if he isn’t dead then why is he missing?’ İkmen said on a sigh. ‘We’ll have to contact all the hospitals and doctors’ practices.’
‘And what about the blood?’ İskender continued.
‘Yes.’ İkmen bit his lip nervously. ‘If it isn’t Max’s, whose is it and how did it get there?’
Unbidden, the thought did briefly enter his head that maybe Max himself had ‘put it there’. But if he had, then where was its previous owner and who was that person? Max, so he always said, so İkmen always believed, worked his magic alone. So accessing his world was going to be difficult. Unless, of course, the young girl, the maid, might be prevailed upon to recall something.
The man, who was in reality little more than a boy, turned to Çöktin and said, ‘You know that if you get me into trouble my family will kill you?’
Dressed from head to foot in white, Hüsnü was a cross between a nerdish cyber-junkie and a late seventies gigolo. Like most of these full-time on-line types, he was independently wealthy – as evidenced by his amazing apartment in Cihangir – a Kurd, and a stranger to sleep. Indeed, in spite or maybe because of İsak Çöktin’s status as a police officer, Hüsnü had been keen to impress the efficacy of amphetamines on his guests.
‘If I sleep, I might miss something,’ he’d said when he first ushered that Yezidi Kasım and his policeman cousin into his vast living area. He’d enjoyed the sight of the policeman’s face as he attempted to take in the pure scale and power of his digital empire.
There were, Çöktin thought, probably six computers in that room, as well as a scanner, one television that never went off and another one that was silently playing a Video CD of the film Hamam. What was missing, as far as he could tell, was any sort of printer.
Hüsnü sat down at one of his machines and typed something into the keyboard.
‘If you want to contact Mendes you’ll have to be patient,’ he said.
‘Why? Does he go out a lot?’
Hüsnü laughed. ‘He, if indeed Mendes is a man, never goes out,’ he said with a good degree of arrogance in his voice. ‘The dedicated hacker never leaves his post.’
‘So why the wait?’
He turned to face İsak and said, ‘Because, dear, of the way in which I have to contact him.’
‘Which is?’
‘Well, I’m not going to send him an e-mail, am I?’ He laughed again. ‘Mendes is a hacker, he breaks the law. If you recall, Sergeant, it was Mendes whom Kasım and yourself set up your little foreign language film company through. I helped, of course, but . . .’ He looked hard at the screen and then grunted. ‘No, I contact Mendes through an anonymous message site. I will leave him a message and he will, at some point, get back to me.’
İsak, who was now looking over Hüsnü’s shoulder at what appeared to him to be a jumble of code on the screen, said, ‘Well, why can’t I just use the site myself?’
‘Because Mendes doesn’t know you. Because I’ll have to establish whether he wants to have any contact with you.’
‘You’ve never actually met or spoken to him?’
‘Of course not!’ Hüsnü turned to face İsak and said, ‘Your cousin is such an amateur, Kasım!’
‘Yes, I know.’
Stung, İsak nevertheless could do little but agree with them. Compared to this kid he was an absolute technological cretin – little better, in fact, than İkmen.
‘I’ll leave a message for Mendes to get back to me and then I’ll have to call you,’ Hüsnü said. ‘Think about what you want to ask him before you come back here,’ he looked at İsak’s still bemused face again and added, ‘because you will have to make contact from here. Mendes will trust me to control what goes on at this end.’
‘Right.’
‘He will also, if he wants to, pull out of the communication at any time.’ He smiled. ‘Depends largely on whether he’s having any fun with it. Oh, and all communication, as far as you’re concerned, will have to be in English. You do speak English?’
It was the way it was said, in that mocking tone the kid did so well, rather than the actual words he used that annoyed İsak. ‘Of course I do!’ he snapped.
‘Well, write your questions out for me and I’ll encrypt them for you.’ He then turned back to his machine and began typing once again.
Not only in English but also rendered into number language, encrypted. Mendes obviously took very few chances. Not for the first time, İsak wondered how his boss, Süleyman, was going to respond to all this cyber-subterfuge. Kasım had felt that bringing him into Hüsnü’s lair – for want of a better word – would probably prove counterproductive, but İsak was no longer certain. Maybe if Süleyman could see this bizarre set-up for himself he might be more understanding. As it was, he was going to have to go back outside to where Süleyman was waiting in his car and attempt to explain it all to him. The unspecified delay in gaining access to Mendes wasn’t going to please him.
‘So if I leave it with you . . .’
‘I’ll contact you as soon as I hear anything.’
İsak reached into his pocket for one of his cards. ‘You’ll need my number . . .’
‘Oh, please, no paper!’ Hüsnü pushed the Yezidi’s hand away from him, and then picked up his mobile phone. ‘What’s your number?’
As İsak spoke he keyed it into the phone, which he then placed down beside the keyboard.
İsak and Kasım made ready to leave. Just before they reached the door, Hüsnü turned and said, ‘Remember me in your prayers, guys.’
‘What?’
‘You know, Satan?’ Hüsnü said glibly. ‘The Evil One? The one you guys worship?’
Infuriated, İsak made as if to go back into the room. ‘It isn’t like that! You know nothing!’
‘İsak!’ Kasım, his hand firmly on his cousin’s shoulder, hissed into his ear. ‘Leave it!’
‘But—’
‘Leave it!’
And then they left, Kasım pulling İsak after him to the sound of Hüsnü’s keyboard and his eerily youthful laughter.
Just before dawn, Ülkü got out of bed and went to the window. The police car was still there, in the street, its lights out, only the glow from the officers’ cigarettes indicating any sign of
life. While it remained there, she couldn’t leave.
Her feet bare, she padded her way down the hall towards the front door of the apartment and peered through the spy hole. There was no one there and so maybe she could just slip out and down the fire escape. But then, if she did that, what of Turgut?
What had happened at Max Bey’s apartment had been a shock. She’d been so pleased when she’d come back to find him gone, because it meant that she could see Turgut in peace. Not that she looked forward to all that sex business, but as a future wife she had to do that for Turgut. There had been a few moments, a minute maybe at the most, when Turgut had first arrived and she had been in the bedroom while he had been in the hall collecting his cigarettes. Not surely enough time for Turgut to hurt Max Bey? But the police still had Turgut and so maybe they had found out about that – dragged or beaten it out of him.
Ülkü began to cry. Why had Turgut told the police all those lies about her and Max Bey? She had said nothing about him not being with her the whole time. And why had he said that she had offered to do that sucking thing with him? He’d begged her to do it! And now, alone with the police, what else was Turgut saying? What other lies was he making up and why was he doing it? Could it be that he was guilty of hurting Max Bey himself in some way? He had always been very interested in the Englishman’s books, his students, and whatever he said and did. He always asked her about them, sometimes every day. Why was that?
Maybe she should tell the police the whole truth herself. But then Turgut would never marry her. No. Things were bad enough anyway. Until Max Bey returned, if he returned, she couldn’t even go back to the apartment. Leyla had offered her a bed only for the night – tomorrow, when Leyla’s husband returned, she’d have to go. She was homeless. Every option she explored was closed to her. Until she married Turgut she couldn’t be with him, and going back to her mother was unthinkable. With so many other children to care for, her mother couldn’t possibly feed her.
Slowly, Ülkü walked back into the living room where Leyla had made up her bed. Vaguely aware of a car pulling up outside some moments later, she lay silent and awake until the dawn call to prayer coincided with a sharp knock on the front door.
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