Arabesk

by Barbara Nadel

  'Maybe your sister has injuries of which she was previously unaware,' Ìkmen said calmly, 'or perhaps Dr Halman is administering a sedative.'

  'In order to keep her quiet while you interrogate me?' Latife said with a smile. ‘I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that all the points you have put to me so far are speculative.'

  'So you know law as well as English, do you, Miss Emin?' Ìkmen said. 'You're a clever lady. I wonder what other skills you possess.’

  She turned away, looking out through the glass and into the garden.

  'Having spoken to your gardener, Resat,’ Suleyman said, 'we are aware that a bottle of the same poison that was used to kill Mrs Urfa is on the premises.'

  'Yes, in the greenhouse,' she replied smoothly. 'Do you want to see it?'

  'Not yet'

  'I believe you labelled it for him.'

  'Yes, Re§at can neither read nor write.'

  'But you like writing for him, don't you?’ Ìkmen said as he lit up another cigarette. 'You like to label things properly and show Resat that you can do that’

  Latife Emin pushed one hand up into the thickness of her hair and then looked down at her watch. 'You do know,' she said, 'that if this business goes any further your so-called witness will be given a very hard time. Our lawyer can easily confound sane people, but with an idiot—'

  'Oh, Mr Temiz is quite sane, I can assure you,' Ìkmen replied and then frowning he said, 'And besides, why should Mr Öz wish to confound Mr Temiz if, as I believe you are implying, he is not telling the truth? An "idiot", confounded or not, will become very quickly overawed and disorientated by the judicial process anyway. And if Mr Temiz has not been telling us the truth then it will come out at that stage.'

  'Although it is, I must confess,' Suleyman said, to Ìkmen rather than Latife, 'much better if the real facts are known prior to trial.'

  'Oh, yes,' his colleague replied, 'it allows the defence to really think about what mitigating circumstances might have been at work and, of course, to prepare the accused for all eventualities.'

  Latife Emin laughed, quite a pleasant, trilling sound, devoid, unlike her sister's laugh, of any thickened smoker's cough.

  'Oh, good try, gentlemen,' she said, 'but I know that if you had any conclusive forensic evidence I would be at the police station now instead of sitting here comfortably in my own home.' She rose to her feet. 'So, if you will excuse me . . .'

  Suleyman looked across at Ìkmen, his face registering some panic. But Ìkmen, unmoving, seemed perfectly calm.

  'You can of course go, madam,' he said, 'although if you are innocent, as you say, I am sure you won't mind getting dressed and coming with us to see Mr Temiz down at the station.' He smiled. 'Just to clear things up, you know. I mean in light of the fact that Mr Temiz was convinced that your sister was the assailant until he saw how she walked and considering that the two of you do look so very alike . ..'

  'You may wear your shoes to travel, but we'd like you to take them off when we arrive,' Suleyman added. 'You do understand, don't you?’

  She looked at both men in turn, and for quite some considerable time before answering. 'I’ll get ready then,’ she said decisively. 'Let's get this cleared up as quickly as possible, shall we?'

  As she left the room Suleyman shot Ìkmen a nervous glance.

  ‘I think I'll go and help Doctor Halman take Tansu Hanim to her room now,' the older man said, to Suleyman's ears, somewhat cryptically.

  * * *

  Tepe, who was now a little more relaxed than he had been during his silent vigil with C5kotin and the Emin brothers, offered to drive his superiors, the doctor and Tansu's sister back to the station. He liked driving Suleyman's car, when pushed it really did go. Not of course that he would be racing the BMW on this occasion. Çöktin, for his part, drove alone in Tepe's car. One didn't have to be a genius to work out that he was unhappy about the events of the evening so far. But then it had all, for him, got rather too personal - especially when the singer and her brother called, somewhat desperately, upon his loyalty as Kurd. As Tepe pulled away and down the drive, he saw two pale faces at one of the downstairs windows. The brothers.

  Once on the road, Latife Emin, who was seated between Suleyman and Dr Halman in the back of the car, turned to the psychiatrist and said, 'Will my sister be all right?'

  'Yes. She's had a nasty shock, but I've given her something to help her sleep which will also bring her blood pressure down.'

  'She has high blood pressure?' There was genuine concern, if not panic, in her voice now.

  The doctor shrugged. 'It often accompanies stress. I doubt if it is a permanent condition.'

  As the car passed though the picturesque districts of Ìstinye and Emirgan, both wealthy areas characterised, now that the sun had set, by fashionably dressed people going out to either eat or just enjoy the cooler night air, silence entered the BMW. And although Suleyman did, from time to time, look out at the colourful scenes which flashed by his window, he also occasionally stole a glance at Latife Emin's face which, with the exception of her continually darting eyes, was quite calm. But then, he thought, why should it not be so? She had been correct back at the house. All of the evidence against her, unless Cengiz Temiz identified her was circumstantial. And besides, he couldn't imagine what her motive for killing Ruya Urfa might have been, especially in light of Ìkmen's belief that Latife probably knew about Erol's religion. OK, Latife had on one occasion, as far as they knew, got closer to Ruya than most people, but whether she found out then that the Urfas were Yezidis was unknown. And anyway, if Latife were as clever as Ìkmen seemed to trunk, then she would not have killed Ruya in order to free Erol for her sister. She would have known that he would never marry Tansu. So if Latife had killed Ruya, there would have to be some other motive, wouldn't there?

  Heading south underneath the great supporting struts of the Fatih Bridge, the car was making rapid but safe progress towards its destination. Glancing up at the mirror Ìkmen, who was seated beside Tepe, looked at the reflection of Latife Emin's pale face with interest. Not a flicker. Her nerve, he had to confess, was quite remarkable. He wondered how long it would last, especially when she was confronted with Cengiz Temiz. After all, the man had nearly collapsed when he saw Tansu -a fact which, surely, Latife knew.

  Half an hour later, after the car pulled into the station car park, Ìkmen got his answer.

  Quite when istanbulis developed the overwhelming anxiety so many of them exhibit when brought into contact with the police or the army is difficult to say. The troubled times of the 1970s when politics became both dangerous and polarised, or in the more settled eighties when the country, though quiet, lived under the yoke of martial law? Perhaps although Ìkmen felt personally that this phenomenon went back far further, back to the days when every man and woman lived in fear of what he or she might inadvertently say, back to the time of the despotic Sultan Abdul Hamid.

  Had Abdul Hamid never reigned, it is difficult now to say just when the republic would have come about. Perhaps it would have still come into being in 1923, but living under a despotic regime for so long had certainly added impetus, the nation had been aching for change. Abdul Hamid, it is said, possessed more spies, who pandered to his paranoid fears, than any other modern monarch. There were thousands of them and he read every one of their reports. On a daily basis.

  Latife Emin got out of the car quite calmly and willingly. She even, without assistance, walked purposefully over to the back entrance.

  'You will be required to remove your shoes and then walk up and down in front of Mr Temiz,' Ìkmen said as he placed the large carrier bag he had just taken from the car boot in front of her. 'And, of course, you will have to wear this,' he added.

  But it was the smell that finally did it.

  When Suleyman opened the door onto that long, cell-lined corridor illuminated by the weak yellow light of night-time incarceration, a hot waft of reeking air escaped into the night. The scent of miserable unwashed bodies. Or p
erhaps it was the actual sight of the long blonde coat inside the bag. Latife Emin placed both her hands on the door posts and braced herself rigid inside the entrance. From the back she looked like a figure, so it occurred to Ìkmen, of Christ crucified.

  She said just one word, 'No.'

  'Having come this far, we must go on,' Ìkmen said as he placed one hand gently on her shoulder. 'Mr Temiz has already been prepared for your visit.'

  'No!'

  'Miss Emin . . .'

  'And if he identifies me?'

  Ìkmen looked at Suleyman and then back at what appeared, in the shadows, to be the deep blackness of her eyes.

  'Then we will have to ask you some more questions, madam.'

  Her face contorted in a way that, had Ìkmen been a less well-informed individual, he could easily have mistaken for the mask of a female devil.

  Gentiy, but with some insistence, Dr Halman took hold of Latife Emin around the waist in an attempt to steer her into the building. 'Come along’ she said, 'this needs to be—'

  'No! No, I can't!'

  'But then why did you—'

  'I'll tell you, all right?' she cried as great, misery-fattened tears streaked down her face. 'Just take me somewhere civilised and I'll tell you anything you want to know! And here’ she kicked the bag containing the coat violently away from her, 'take that thing away from me! Take it now.'

  Chapter 17

  Unusually, Inspector Ìkmen asked that Interview Room 3 be thoroughly cleaned before he and Inspector Suleyman took the small, platinum-blonde woman into it. Quite why, the two young constables charged with this task didn't know. But then Ìkmen could be very odd at times, and even though they knew that officially he was not supposed to be at work, the constables did as he instructed, albeit slowly. It was not, they knew, a good idea to do otherwise.

  Once Latife Emin had settled herself into her chair she spoke her name and age clearly for the purposes of the tape. She was, she claimed, fifty-two; which provoked a small flurry of speculation on Ìkmen's part as to the real age of her older sister, Tansu.

  Suleyman, sitting directly opposite Latife, began the interrogation immediately. 'When did you first meet Ruya Urfa, Miss Emin?'

  'A year ago, maybe a little more,' she replied. 'She was pregnant at the time. Sweet girl.'

  'Did you talk to her?'

  'Yes. My sister was pointedly ignoring her. I felt sorry for her.'

  'What did you talk about?' Ìkmen asked as he removed his jacket in the face of the growing heat within that room. 'Can the sister of Erol's lover and his wife have anything to talk about?'

  Latife smiled. 'We talked about education actually,' she said. 'Ruya was worried in case she let bom Erol and her unborn child down.'

  'Why? Why should she let them down?'

  'She was illiterate.'

  Suleyman looked knowingly at Ìkmen and then said, 'Did you meet her again?'

  Latife Emin shrugged. 'She said that she wanted to learn to read and write and I said that I'd help her. It was her idea to keep our lessons a secret from Erol. She wanted to surprise him. He was rarely at home with her and so sometimes we would meet at her apartment and sometimes in a park or pastane.'

  'You liked her?' Ìkmen bit his lip and then frowned.

  She replied very simply, 'Yes.'

  'And so when,' Suleyman said as he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and then lit one, 'did your liking of Ruya Urfa turn into something more malignant?'

  'Never. I always liked her, she was sweet'

  'And so . . .'

  'It was only when I'd put the extra pieces together to confirm what I had suspected some time before that I decided to, er . . .' She looked down at the floor before composing herself once again. 'I knew that Ruya would be alone on the night of the football game. I suggested we use that time to improve her skills and she agreed. I had access to Re§at's cyanide which I drizzled onto a block of almond halva, knowing that the sweet would disguise the smell.' She looked straight into Ìkmen's eyes as she spoke. 'She struggled for what seemed like hours even though it can only have been a few moments. I didn't intend for her to suffer.'

  It had all been recited so coldly, almost like an exercise in linear thinking, that for a moment Ìkmen found himself quite lost within the horror of it all. If she had not spoken again almost immediately, neither of the men would have uttered a word for some time.

  'When it was over I left,' she said. 'I picked up what remained of the halva, I took off my shoes so I wouldn't make any noise on the stairs and I started to go.'

  'But?'

  'But just as I was opening the door I remembered Ruya's pen. Anyone who knew Ruya would know that she would never use such a thing and so I went back into the kitchen to get it. If I hadn't heard the idiot man behind me when I was halfway back, I would have got it. But he gave me a fright and so I just ran.'

  'Leaving the pen and Cengiz inside the apartment.'

  'With Merih, yes.'

  'So you must have left the front door open in order for Cengiz to . . .'

  'Yes. I thought I had time and that no one was about.' She shrugged. 'I did intend to remain undetected if I could. Fate, maybe.'

  'So how,' Suleyman, ever the stickler for detail, asked, 'did you get from your sister's house to Ìstiklal Caddesi without being seen?'

  Latife Emin sighed. 'If you walk out around the back of the house and then make your way through the trees on the left-hand side, no one is going to spot you easily, especially if you wear black and cover your head. The reason I wore the particular, coat of Tansu's I did was firstly because it was long and so it covered my feet and secondly because it has a black lining which I made the most of, together with a dark scarf, when I was amongst the trees. I would never normally wear such a thing. As I know you know, our security cameras contain no tape and besides, no one in our household would even think of looking for a person on foot. My siblings barely cross rooms without their cars.'

  'But then you are a country girl at heart, are you not, Miss Emin?' Ìkmen asked wryly.

  'Yes,' she smiled. ‘I like the garden and the greenhouse. I'm happy to walk from the house to the road to get a taxi into the city.'

  'Even with bare feet?' Ìkmen enquired, wincing at the thought

  'Yes,' she smiled. 'When I was young, Inspector, shoes were a rarity.'

  Her smile, seemingly frozen across the mask of her face, for a moment held both men entranced. Whether this hold was benign or malignant or a little of both, neither man would have been able to say. All they knew was that for this small space in time they had shared with Latife Emin the magnetism of her personality, and however warped that might be, it had held them both in far greater thrall than her sister could have hoped to exert in ten lifetimes.

  'So,' Ìkmen said slowly when he did finally rouse himself from his reverie, 'we know you killed Mrs Urfa, but I still don't think I understand why.'

  'No,' Suleyman agreed. 'You have yet to tell us that, haven't you, Miss Emin?'

  'Yes.'

  Ìkmen shrugged. 'And so?' 'It's complicated.'

  'I feel you are rather a complicated person all round,' Ìkmen said. 'Perhaps you're not unlike the late Marilyn Monroe in that respect, Miss Emin.'

  She smiled. 'Like me, Marilyn had talents that went unrecognised, yes.' Then looking down at the floor once again, she murmured, 'We could have learned so much, Marilyn and me. Poor women.'

  In an effort to catch her eye and so keep to the subject in hand, Suleyman bent his head towards Latife's, 'Miss Emin?'

  'Ah.' The sight of his eyes so close to hers brought Latife to herself once again. She looked up and then leaned back into her chair. 'Ruya. Yes.' She wiped away some sweat that had gathered above her eyebrows and continued, 'In order to understand why I did.. . this, you have to know how it is with my sister. Tansu, though very generous, doesn't take kindly to people doing things she doesn't approve of. Because she thinks it is a good idea, she and I share the same hairdresser, the same co
uturier and the same plastic surgeon. If one of my brothers wants a car, he can have one provided it is one of which Tansu approves. If any of us forms a relationship of any sort, it is subject to the approval of Tansu and if she doesn't like that person then that person goes.'

  Suleyman, his face a picture of disbelief, frowned. 'But why?'

  'Because she has control of all the money,' Latife said simply. 'All she has ever wanted to do is make us all happy but, Allah forgive her, she has to do it in ways that she likes and understands. She is, in this, like a man, a father, you know. If one doesn't conform then one is thrown out into the world with nothing. And we were all born to such poverty

  'But if your sister denied you something that you really wanted,' Ìkmen said, 'then surely killing Ruya Urfa was no punishment for that Tansu hated the girl.'

  'Yes. Like I said, you have to understand my sister and my family in order to understand why this happened. You also have to know just how clever I am. I do hope that you gentlemen have a lot of time to spare.'

  'My parents were living in Adana, the biggest village in Turkey, when we were born. My father worked packing fruit. We were very poor - poor Kurds. But then just after Yilmaz was born, when I was twelve, my father died and we became still poorer.

  'At the time and in fact for some few years previously, my sister Tansu who was then sixteen had been having singing lessons from an old Armenian woman who lived down by the Ulu Cami. My sister's talent had, so my mother always said, been apparent almost from birth. It is said that before I was born, an asik who came to our quarter in order to play and sing the songs of the people heard my sister's voice and predicted a great future for her. So the singing lessons were of great importance even when we were destitute after my father's death. The singing had to go on.

  'In order to support this, my mother started working in the fields. It took her two hours to walk to her work and then two hours to come home again. Galip, who was about eight left school in order to shine shoes. I left school too. Suddenly my classes in mathematics, Turkish, history and all the other subjects I had come to love stopped while I stayed at home raising my brother Yilmaz. But still the singing lessons continued. At the end of every week Mother, Galip and Tansu herself, who was now singing occasionally in dubious gazinos, would put all their money into a cup and take out what was needed for various costs. The money for Mrs Nisanyan, the singing teacher, would always come out first.