Death by Design

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘The Armenians own the land!’ Alpozen said. ‘Ask them!’

  ‘If by that you mean the Yacoubian family then, as you well know, Mr Alpozen, they are in America.’ Süleyman began to feel his face getting hot with anger.

  ‘They are legally—’

  ‘On paper they are still the legal owners of the land,’ Süleyman cut in, ‘but you, sir, are the landlord of the building this Ahmet Ülker has been using. The Yacoubian family are irrelevant now.’

  ‘Oh, I’m dying, what do I care! Leave me in peace! What can you do to me that my illness has not, eh? What are you going to do? Put me in prison?’

  A middle-aged woman had shown Süleyman and Melik into Alpozen’s house. Well-dressed and gravely polite, her name was Betül and she was the old man’s daughter. In fact Betül was his only child and would one day inherit everything that belonged to him. This, as Süleyman then explained to Mr Alpozen, could include any offences relating to his property as well as any benefits. Betül Alpozen would, on the death of her father, take over responsibility for the Tarlabaşı property and all its attendant difficulties. When he heard this, the old man cried. Eventually he stopped weeping and when the morphine allowed him to speak, he demanded that the police officers provide protection for his daughter. He then gave them an address in the eastern city of Diyarbakır. Mr Ülker, apparently, was very rarely in İstanbul.

  All of this information was passed on to Ardıç who then gave the address in Diyarbakır to the local police. Mehmet Süleyman hadn’t yet managed to speak to İkmen. Strangely, his mobile was switched off and no one was answering his landline. This was very odd given that the İkmen apartment was always occupied by someone, even if it was only Fatma İkmen on her own. This lack of communication made Süleyman feel vaguely unsettled.

  ‘You do as you please,’ Fatma İkmen said as she looked at the telephone that had just rung for the third time in quick succession. To her way of thinking there was no reason not to answer it. As far as she was concerned, this conversation with her husband was over.

  ‘Working in the east can be dangerous,’ Çetin İkmen repeated yet again. ‘I’m going to be liaising with army units directly in contact with terrorist organisations. I—’

  ‘Our son died in the east. I know how dangerous it can be,’ his wife cut in bitterly.

  ‘Fatma, the PKK did not kill our son.’

  ‘No, that was you, wasn’t it?’ Fatma said. And then as the telephone began to ring yet again, she got up and began to move towards it. ‘I’m getting that.’

  ‘No!’ Çetin put himself between his wife and the phone and said, ‘You have to know just how dangerous this is! You won’t be able to contact me except through Ardıç and I have no idea how long I’m going to be away. I have no doubt you can cope on your own—’

  ‘I’ve managed all these years with you being little more than a guest in this house,’ Fatma said.

  Her words hurt him. In a way the silence she had maintained with him in the months since Bekir had died had been easier than this. But he had had to tell her he was seriously considering going away for an indefinite length of time, even if what he told her was only the cover story – the only story she was permitted to hear.

  ‘You can say no, I—’

  ‘And why would I do that?’ The phone finally stopped ringing and İkmen felt the tightness its insistence had produced in his head abate. ‘You killed our son,’ Fatma continued. ‘I can’t forgive you for that. Do what you will. You are nothing to me.’

  ‘Fatma, our son was a gangster and a murderer.’ The phone began ringing again and this time İkmen, enraged, picked it up and flung it against the wall. It fell to the floor in a tinkle of broken plastic and twisted metal.

  ‘Oh, very good!’ his wife said and stiffly adjusted her head-scarf. ‘Very grown-up! But then what do I expect from a man who would sacrifice his own son for his career?’

  İkmen put his hands behind his back lest he lash out at her and only then did he walk towards her. ‘I will say this once more and once more only. Bekir was a gangster, a drug addict and a murderer. He killed an unarmed man, a defenceless Christian monk, and he almost killed Mehmet Süleyman. If the Jandarma from Birecik hadn’t come along when they did, Mehmet would have died.’

  ‘Bekir died!’ She began to cry as she always did eventually when she thought about her lost child. ‘You ordered his death.’

  ‘I did not,’ İkmen said. ‘I did not do that, Fatma! As I have told you a hundred times, I asked Mehmet Süleyman to try and protect Bekir. But he couldn’t. The boy was lost. He was bent upon murder and when the Jandarma came upon him and shot him they did the only thing they could do under the circumstances. He was about to kill a police officer, they had no choice!’

  She knew that. Intellectually she had always known it. But the intellect has very little to do with feelings and the hate she had for her husband, even if based on no actual fact, persisted.

  ‘Go to the east and do your duty,’ she said after a pause. ‘I don’t care.’

  She started to move out of the living room. Appalled and distraught, Çetin İkmen felt tears stinging the insides of his eyes. ‘Fatma, we . . . we loved each other. I . . . I still love you . . .’

  She looked at him with a coldness that was almost pity and then she said, ‘Then you had better kill your love because it will never be reciprocated. You are a murderer and an unbeliever and it is a sin to live with either. This will always be your home, Çetin, your father bought this apartment for you. You still have children to feed and clothe and who love you. But I remain your wife in name only and if you choose to divorce me . . .’ she very pointedly took off her wedding ring and put it down on the table beside the television, ‘I will not oppose it. Our children are almost grown. I can take Kemal with me and go and live with one of my sisters.’

  ‘Fatma!’ His voice broke on the word but she didn’t respond. She walked out of the room into the kitchen. Çetin İkmen sat down on the sofa, put his head in his hands and gave in to weeping.

  It wasn’t until the following morning that Mehmet Süleyman heard anything more about Ahmet Ülker’s connection to the city of Diyarbakır.

  ‘His mother lives there in an old house near the bazaar with a spinster sister,’ İzzet Melik said as he looked down at the notes he had taken from the assistant to the chief of police in Diyarbakır. ‘The old woman’s a Kurd but her late husband, Ülker’s father, was a Turk.’

  ‘Does Ahmet Ülker own the house?’

  ‘Apparently he does, although he hasn’t been seen in Diyarbakır for years,’ İzzet replied. ‘The old woman pays the rent on the factory in Tarlabaşı on his behalf. The police in Diyarbakır say that she doesn’t know why he’s involved with that. Ahmet, apparently, travels.’

  ‘Travels.’

  ‘Yes, to Europe, to America, to China even. When she has to, the old woman sends things poste restante for him all over the world.’

  ‘How quaint,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Talks to him periodically on his mobile phone,’ İzzet continued. ‘Diyarbakır say that Ahmet Ülker has no record of involvement or even interest in terrorist activity. He finished high school, apparently. Hard worker. Started his working life in the Hasanpaşa Han in a jewellery shop, and moved to İstanbul in nineteen ninety-two.’

  ‘Where we do not have an address for him.’

  ‘Maybe he sleeps over the factory, or rather maybe that’s what he did do,’ İzzet said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Süleyman was still troubled by his inability to get in touch with Çetin İkmen the previous evening and was about to ask İzzet if he had seen him when suddenly İkmen was at his office door.

  ‘Oh, Çetin, I—’

  ‘I’m just off to see Ardıç,’ İkmen said.

  Süleyman left his desk and walked over to his older friend and colleague. İzzet Melik, sensing that they probably needed a moment alone, looked down at the work in front of him in a very pointed manner.

  ‘I t
ried to call you last night.’ Süleyman took hold of İkmen’s elbow and looked into his face with concern.

  İkmen smiled. ‘Oh, it was out of order last night,’ he said. ‘We didn’t realise until this morning.’

  ‘I tried to phone your mobile . . .’

  ‘Charging. I was charging it last night.’ He didn’t like lying to anyone, especially not to his family and friends, but if he was going to take this assignment in London he would have to get used to doing just that.

  ‘I see.’

  Süleyman didn’t believe him, İkmen could see that clearly.

  ‘Well, I’d best be heading towards Ardıç’s office,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘Don’t want to keep him waiting, do I?’

  ‘No.’ Just as İkmen began to move off, Süleyman said, ‘Çetin, is anything wrong?’

  ‘Wrong?’ He shrugged. ‘No. Should there be?’

  ‘Well . . .’ It would have been more to the point to ask whether anything was right. Since Bekir’s death, nothing much apparently had been. ‘Çetin, I’ve been concerned . . .’

  ‘My life is as good as it can be,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m not unwell.’

  ‘No, but I – I know you are tired,’ Süleyman said. He didn’t dare to even breathe the name of İkmen’s dead son, especially not in front of İzzet Melik. İkmen, like most Turkish males, was uncomfortable about talk of personal things except with those closest to him.

  ‘Well then you’ll be happy to know that I’ll be going away for a while soon,’ İkmen said. ‘A change of scene being as good as a holiday sometimes. I’m just going to tell Ardıç now. I’ve been offered the chance to work out of town for a while. I’ve made the decision to take the opportunity.’

  ‘Oh.’ Süleyman was genuinely surprised.

  ‘Where are you going, sir?’ İzzet Melik asked.

  ‘Away,’ İkmen said. ‘Out of the city.’ And then on yet another smile, he left.

  Süleyman looked at İzzet Melik and sighed.

  ‘Out of town?’ İzzet said gloomily. ‘That to me smacks of a posting to the east. Why else wouldn’t the inspector say the name of where he was going? Out there with all the heat and the violence and the sheer remoteness of it all.’

  ‘Quite,’ Süleyman said as he walked back to his desk, a frown now cutting deeply across his forehead. ‘My thoughts exactly, İzzet.’

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  In the week that İkmen was given to wind up his affairs in İstanbul he made sure that he was generally too busy to talk very much. Ayşe Farsakoğlu had already been moved over to work with a team investigating a series of alleged child abductions. She knew that İkmen was going away for a while, and she was concerned about her future. She liked working with İkmen. She had never in fact enjoyed working with anyone else. But İkmen kept Ayşe and Süleyman and indeed all of his colleagues at arm’s length now. He told himself that it simply made good professional sense, which it did, but it also allowed him not to feel – and he most certainly didn’t want that. Feeling made him cry when he considered the fact that his wife apparently no longer loved him, feeling made him long for the touch of his children before he had even left İstanbul. And so, hard as they tried to engage him in conversation, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, Mehmet Süleyman and İzzet Melik could get nothing more than platitudes out of him. The only exception was İkmen’s oldest friend, Arto Sarkissian. The day before İkmen was due to leave, the Armenian turned up at his office. It was lunchtime, it was quiet and İkmen was drinking tea and smoking a cigarette when his friend, without even knocking on the door, let himself in.

  ‘Arto.’ It was said with some warmth but without the usual expression of joy the Armenian’s appearance generally elicited.

  ‘So you go tomorrow,’ Arto said and lowered himself into the chair in front of İkmen’s desk.

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen looked down at his desk, pretending to read documents he had no concern with and which did not interest him.

  ‘To the east, you say,’ Arto continued. ‘Is that the south or the north-east?’

  He watched İkmen closely, knowing with certainty that his friend was not attending to what was on his desk in any way. He’d told him the previous day that he was going east, but he hadn’t specified a location.

  ‘Um, I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘Not yet.’ He looked up and smiled. ‘They haven’t told me.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Ardıç.’

  ‘Oh, so Ardıç—’

  ‘Look, Arto, I can’t tell you where exactly I’m going. I’ve told you this,’ İkmen said. ‘I can’t tell you where I’m going, I can’t tell you know long I’m going for. I can’t even tell Fatma.’

  ‘Have you sorted things out with Fatma?’

  İkmen’s face flushed immediately. ‘Sorted things—’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ Arto said a little impatiently now. He and Çetin had never had secrets, they had always talked about everything. Except that when Bekir had been killed, Çetin had kept everyone out, including Arto. He knew that Fatma blamed Çetin for their son’s death. Fatma had told her best friend, Estelle Cohen, who in turn had expressed her anxiety about the İkmen marriage to Arto’s wife, Maryam. ‘I just hope that wherever you are going you’re not going just because you want to run away from the situation here.’

  İkmen looked up at his friend with steady, lying eyes. ‘No.’ This was something he was going to have to get used to doing now.

  ‘Because, Çetin,’ Arto said, ‘it is my belief that there are few things in life that cannot be sorted out in the end. You and I know this. There are ways and ways. Sometimes I identify a killer or a rapist for you using just one strand of hair I’ve picked up from underneath a dead body, sometimes you find a killer all on your own, using your experience, your skill or the magical insight you inherited from your mother. We solve things, Çetin. We always have.’

  ‘Have we?’

  ‘Çetin, I know you’re not allowed to tell anyone where you are going. I mean, for all I know you could be leaving the country.’

  Did he know? Or was he simply fishing for whatever he could find? He, like everyone else, with the notable exception of Fatma, was worried. They all knew now that he was going ‘to the east’ and they all feared he would die staring down the barrel of a terrorist’s gun. What they didn’t know, or rather what he thought they didn’t know, was that he was more likely to die in an airless container on a ship crossing the English Channel. Just the thought of it made him shudder, something that Arto noticed immediately.

  ‘Çetin?’

  ‘Arto, I am leaving to go somewhere and I will return when I do. As to whether I’m running away from anything that is no more your business than the fact that your own marriage has been a front for years is mine.’

  Childless and prey to numerous health problems, Maryam Sarkissian had been Arto’s wife in no more than name for years. It was something the two men had spoken of only once, many years before when Arto had broken down during a conversation they had had in a bar. Nothing had been said since – until now. Çetin’s words, spoken almost casually, hurt. Arto looked down at the floor and said, ‘Çetin—’

  ‘Arto, I am going for my own reasons and whenever I return, things will be as they have always been,’ İkmen said. He could see his friend was hurt, there was no getting away from it, and deep inside he felt guilty for having inflicted such pain. But he also knew that it had been necessary. Arto, and only Arto, could so easily have wheedled everything about the London mission out of him, mainly because İkmen so longed to tell him.

  After a short silence, the Armenian stood up to leave.

  ‘Well, Çetin, whatever is happening, you know I wish you well,’ he said. ‘You know I . . .’ He bit down on his bottom lip as if trying to hold back tears. It proved too much for İkmen who stood up, walked over to his friend and took him in his arms and kissed both his cheeks.

  ‘You know that I will miss you,’ Çetin said. ‘You know I only say what I do be
cause I fear I may tell you, and only you, what I mustn’t. I’m sorry.’

  The two of them stood in the middle of İkmen’s office, in each other’s arms, for a good five minutes before the Armenian finally left without another word.

  When dawn broke over the great city of İstanbul the following morning, Çetin İkmen was already up and dressed. He didn’t say goodbye to any family members still sleeping in the apartment. He didn’t even look into what had once been his bedroom, where Fatma now slept alone. He didn’t want even the slightest hairline fracture in his already shaky resolve. Then, in line with the instructions Ardıç had given him, he stepped out of his apartment, carrying nothing, not even his wallet, and walked away from Sultanahmet down the hill towards Sirkeci railway station. Halfway down he turned off on to Ebussuut Street where, just before reaching the main post office, he rang the bell of an anonymous doorway beside a small electrical shop. After a short pause he was ushered up the stairs behind the doorway and into the flat above by a man of about thirty. Neither he nor the older woman with him said who they were or what they were doing and İkmen didn’t ask.

  ‘As you know,’ the man said as he pointed İkmen in the direction of a group of chairs in the middle of the stark, blank living room, ‘undercover work depends in part upon keeping your fake life story as close to that of your real life as possible.’ He handed İkmen a Turkish passport. ‘Your name is Çetin Ertegrul – your wife’s maiden name.’

  ‘Yes.’ That had indeed been Fatma’s name before she married him. Maybe, soon, it would be her name again. İkmen opened the passport and saw that it had no photograph.

  ‘You’re fifty-five years old, a widower, and you live in Laleli with your thirty-five-year-old daughter Çiçek and her husband Abdullah. My colleague here is going to change your appearance somewhat and then we’re going to take your passport photo.’