Death by Design

by Barbara Nadel

  Ahmet Ülker’s heart raced. Derek Harrison must have told that silly old man John Richards about the Gentlemen. Probably trying to impress him. He knew Williams had been interrogating Richards. Stupid Derek! It must have come from him because only he had known. Dane Chitty himself had advised Ahmet to ‘off’ Derek as soon as the Mark Lane event was over. He knew he was gobby. But then Derek’s death hadn’t been a big deal for Ahmet, not once he realised he’d known about Maxine and Ali Reza Hajizadeh and not mentioned it to him. As soon as the English police had told him about how the Turkish police had found the UK passports in İstanbul, he knew he was on shaky ground. He’d taken all the risks! Glamoured by the trips the Gentlemen had arranged to their factories in China and Cambodia, Ahmet had happily allied himself with them. Right up until Williams had talked about the passports, everything had been all right. The Gentlemen had disposed of Maxine’s body, he’d helped the police catch Nourazar and rescue the mayor. He would do time because his plan had failed and of course his business was now in ruins. But if he so much as whispered about the Gentlemen, it could be much, much worse.

  Like most gangs, the Gentlemen of Honour had their own mythologies. One of the stories that went around about them concerned how they dealt with traitors. Chitty and Shkrelli, it was said, held the miscreant’s head in a fire until he expired. It wasn’t a myth. Ahmet Ülker had seen them do it with his own eyes. Just the thought of it made him sweat. Even in prison he wouldn’t be safe if he talked. But Ahmet was not about to do that. He wasn’t about to tell anyone how he had ingratiated himself with the Gentlemen when they tried to take him over by offering them the mayor. He’d been a bit desperate. Even he had considered his own plan ill thought out. Nourazar had been far too greedy and volatile, Ali Reza stupid and theatrical. If only the Afghan boy had set the bomb. A kid like that would just have blown himself up without taking some random fucking train with him!

  Ahmet was, he felt, going to go to prison forever. He imagined Dane Chitty and Enver Shkrelli rubbing their hands with glee and he felt sick. How, indeed, could he have been so stupid?

  Chapter 33

  * * *

  Abdurrahman Iqbal arrived at Heathrow airport where he found his old employer, Captain Rodney Jackson, waiting for him. The years had not been particularly kind to Jackson; he was confined to a wheelchair, pushed on this occasion by his daughter, Rosemary. But as Abdurrahman went to greet him, a tiny, thin stick of a man shuffling painfully towards the waiting crowds at arrivals, it was all too apparent whose life had been the hardest.

  ‘Abdurrahman, my dear man!’ the captain said as he held a gnarled hand out to his old driver.

  ‘Captain!’ Abdurrahman took the captain’s hand like a drowning man clutching the side of a lifeboat. ‘Oh, Captain!’ He began to cry.

  ‘Good God, Abdurrahman, what has happened to you?’ Jackson asked.

  But the old man was crying so much he couldn’t answer. Jackson put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Well, let’s get you home. Then we can talk. The chap at the consulate in İstanbul told me you’d had some adventures.’ He turned to his daughter. ‘You ready, Rosie?’

  Rosemary Dean, a disappointed woman in her mid-fifties, took the brake off her father’s wheelchair, put a smile on her face and said to Abdurrahman, ‘Come on then.’

  She’d felt this meeting was ill-advised, but the appearance of this old man did seem to make her father happy. He’d actually smiled for the first time in years when he’d been told that Abdurrahman was coming. And anyway, even if it did all go wrong and the old man wanted to stay on, he couldn’t. Abdurrahman, in spite of his desire to live in England forever, had only been given a tourist visa.

  As Abdurrahman arrived, Fasika the Ethiopian, who had helped to save Çetin İkmen’s life and whose name the dead Ayşe Kudu had committed to memory so she might help him later, was being put on to a plane back to Addis Ababa. Still sore from the beating he had taken in Ahmet Ülker’s terrible factory, he was going home with no money, bad memories and a complete lack of hope.

  As soon as İkmen cleared immigration and customs at Atatürk airport, İstanbul, he found himself surrounded by the press.

  ‘How does it feel to be a hero, Inspector?’

  ‘What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?’

  ‘What was it like working with the Metropolitan Police?’

  ‘Do you prefer tea or coffee when you first get up in the morning?’

  Tea or coffee? What kind of question was that? But then Haluk Üner had told him that at least three-quarters of the questions the media would pose would be either pathetic or trivial.

  With the aid of two of his uniformed colleagues, he pushed through the gaggle of newshounds and looked to see whether any members of his family had turned up to meet him. At first, with flashbulbs going off in his eyes and microphones thrust towards his mouth, he couldn’t see anything. Allah, but the press were a terrible fate for someone who was supposed to be a hero! But then he felt a tug on the sleeve of his jacket and, looking down at the hand that tugged, he saw that it belonged to his son, Bülent.

  ‘Dad!’

  He took hold of the slim, brown hand and hung on tightly. ‘Bülent!’

  The two uniformed officers at İkmen’s side pushed the press pack hard and then shoved their man out towards what looked like another vast pack of vultures on the other side of the arrivals area. Except that it wasn’t.

  ‘Dad!’ It wasn’t one voice, it was many. Six young people flung themselves towards him.

  İkmen felt the tears fill his eyes as, still clinging to Bülent’s hand, he flung himself into the arms of Çiçek, Gül, Hulya, Orhan, Kemal and Berekiah.

  Cameras flashed and people shouted. But neither İkmen nor his children cared. All crying and laughing at the same time, they just clung to each other as relief at having their father safe home once again washed over them. It was several minutes before a more calm and measured voice intervened.

  ‘Çetin?’

  He looked up into the smiling eyes of Mehmet Süleyman. ‘Oh . . .’

  ‘Welcome home, my friend.’

  Once he had managed to extricate himself from his children, İkmen and Süleyman embraced.

  ‘I’ve brought another couple of people to see you,’ Süleyman said. ‘Very keen they were to be here.’

  As if on cue, the children moved to one side and İkmen saw two figures at the far end of the arrivals hall. One was his oldest and greatest friend, Arto Sarkissian, the other was his wife, Fatma. Both of them were smiling and Fatma, to Çetin İkmen’s delight, had her arms open to him in welcome. She was also, he saw as he fell into her embrace, wearing her wedding ring once again.