Still struggling, Ekrem sneered, ‘Bastard.’
‘Is that really the best you can do?’ İkmen said. He sighed with weariness. ‘Look, Ekrem, I want to do a deal so just stop struggling and let’s all get down to business.’
Ekrem Müren eyed İkmen suspiciously. He’d felt Süleyman and İskender’s hands upon his neck before – he’d had other more pleasant dealings with lesser policemen – but he’d never had personal experience of İkmen. As he slowly allowed his body to relax as much as it could, he thought about this man’s reputation as a person of total incorruptibility and how oddly that sat beside the notion of a deal. But then not all of those around İkmen were straight, as Ekrem knew from personal experience, and so perhaps the stories about honest İkmen were just, well, lies.
He looked behind to where Roditi was still standing, though not touching him any more, then swung his head round to stare at İkmen.
‘How much do you want?’ he said. ‘I can have any amount here in an hour.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ İkmen said and then, turning to Yıldız, he added, ‘That’s very quick, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So how much do you want then? While we talk my sister’s down there with them!’ Anger made him rise to his feet, and immediately the hard hand of Constable Roditi made him sit down again. Hot and stuffy, Interview Room 2 only served to heighten the heat that had filled his mind as soon as he’d heard about Alev.
İkmen pretended to study his fingernails for a few moments until Ekrem appeared to be settled. Then he looked up and smiled. ‘I don’t want your money,’ he said simply. ‘It’s of no use to me.’
For a moment, Ekrem looked flummoxed, eyes darting in all directions. He was truly confused. ‘Well, what—’
‘If you want Alev to come home at some point tonight with her face and her honour intact then I need to know who it is you work for,’ İkmen said, stubbing his cigarette out on the floor. He lit up another.
‘I work for my father.’
‘Yes, I know that!’ İkmen waved a dismissive hand in front of Ekrem’s face. ‘But who does he have connections with, Ekrem? He’s good, your father – in the traditional way – prostitution, drugs, extortion . . .’ He leaned forward across the table so that his face was almost touching Ekrem’s. ‘But he isn’t very imaginative, is he? I mean, it’s all tired old whores giving blow jobs, that’s his level, isn’t it? He doesn’t work with elegant young women wearing the dresses of princesses, does he? Or at least he didn’t.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘Hassan Şeker didn’t kill himself because of the protection money he had to give to you,’ İkmen said. ‘He could afford it. He didn’t finish himself because he’d killed Hatice İpek either, because he hadn’t. He left her when he finished his work and went home. But he knew who did kill her and so, I think, do you.’
Ekrem turned sideways in his chair and looked at the wall. ‘That girl has nothing to do with me.’
‘Hassan Şeker died and implicated himself because he wanted to protect his family from someone who must have really frightened him.’
Ekrem shook his head, not realising how white his face had suddenly become.
’We know that you and your brother collected money from Hassan Şeker,’ İkmen said.
‘That’s a lie!’
‘I also discovered, from your sister actually,’ İkmen continued, ‘that your father’s mother lives next door to the property of a Mrs Oncü, the lady who owns the entrance to the cistern where we found Hatice İpek’s body. Care to explain?’
A moment of silence passed, time during which Ekrem Müren appeared to think.
‘You’re in a bit of a corner here, aren’t you, Ekrem?’ İkmen said.
‘But none of that proves anything!’ Ekrem blurted. ‘We didn’t kill that girl!’
‘So you and your brother won’t mind providing me with some samples for forensic analysis.’
Ekrem nodded. ‘We can do that.’
‘Good. And the friends you were working for?’
‘You’ve got nothing on us, İkmen,’ the gangster sneered, ‘nor will you get it.’
İkmen’s tired face suddenly reddened. ‘I haven’t got time for this,’ he said and then quickly turned towards Yıldız. ‘Give me your gun.’
‘Sir?’
‘Give it to me! A child lies dead. I’ve promised her mother I’ll find who did it and I’m fucking exhausted!’
With some reluctance, Hikmet Yıldız put his hand into the holster at his side and withdrew his pistol. İkmen snatched if from him and pointed it at Müren.
‘Hold him in that chair, Roditi,’ İkmen said to the other, now rattled officer.
‘Inspector . . .’
‘That is an order, Roditi!’
The officer pinned Ekrem Müren’s arms behind his back. Ekrem’s eyes widened in alarm as İkmen took the safety catch off and moved forward.
‘If you don’t tell me who you’re working for and what involvement those people had with the death of Hatice İpek, I’m going to kill you,’ İkmen said quietly and shoved the weapon up against Ekrem’s temple.
‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing to tell.’
‘Wrong! Try again!’
Yıldız and Roditi exchanged alarmed glances. Much as they liked and respected İkmen, this had gone too far. The inspector, obviously sorely in need of sleep and nourishment, wasn’t himself. İkmen didn’t hurt people, he didn’t even carry a gun of his own.
‘How are you going to explain it if you kill me?’ Ekrem, who had now lost his earlier cocky demeanour, trembled.
İkmen moved his face close in to his prey. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ he said. ‘My wife is hundreds of kilometres away, there’s nothing to eat at my apartment, my superiors tell me they don’t like me any more and I see no reason why I shouldn’t take all of that out on you. Now tell me who’s behind your recent interest in fancy-dress prostitution!’
‘I can’t!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because . . .’ Ekrem slid his eyes over towards the barrel of the gun. ‘Because they and my father . . . No . . .’
‘You have two choices, Müren,’ İkmen said, his voice thick with tension. ‘Either you keep quiet and die at my hands or you tell me and I give you the protection that you need.’
In spite of the seriousness of his situation, Ekrem laughed. ‘Oh, you stupid fucking—’
‘İkmen!’
Ardıç’s voice ripped across the room as the door flew open.
‘I’d like you to come out in the corridor now please, Inspector,’ he said as his furious eyes took in what appeared to be a scene of old style, now supposedly outlawed, intimidation.
‘But sir—’
‘Now!’ Ardıç turned on his heel and left.
İkmen, the gun still in his hand, his head lowered, followed him.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ Ardıç hissed, thrusting his large face at İkmen’s.
‘He was just about to tell me—’
‘Is that weapon disabled?’ Having just noticed that the gun was still in İkmen’s hand, Ardıç’s face whitened in alarm.
‘Of course it is,’ İkmen said wearily. ‘What do you think I am?’
‘I think,’ his boss said with some acidity, ‘that you’re a fucking mess! When did you last sleep, İkmen? Or eat? Or wash?’
‘I finished that report for you. I’ve been busy.’
‘Busy? You’re not even supposed to be on duty!’ Ardıç looked at him with distaste. ‘You look like a drunk! You’re a fucking disgrace!’
İkmen straightened his back. ‘Müren was just about to tell me who he’s working for, the person I believe was responsible for Hatice İpek’s—’
‘Not that again!’ Ardıç took hold of the front of İkmen’s shirt and pulled him forward. ‘I’ve told you to leave that alone! It’s a non-case. And before you start telling
me that you promised the girl’s mother you would find her attackers, may I remind you that the girl, who was anyway less than perfect, died of natural causes!’
‘Yes, I know,’ İkmen said, his mouth now just centimetres from Ardıç’s hot, sweating face, ‘but she was raped and cut. And besides, sir, I’ve discovered what I think might be a conspiracy, an organisation around girls like Hatice, girls supplied to act like odalisques for rich, select people. I think Müren might recently have become involved.’
Ardıç, his face now more concerned than angry, loosened his grip on İkmen’s shirt. ‘Where did you come by this information?’ he asked.
‘From several sources.’
‘What sources?’ Ardıç looked at İkmen severely. Officers were frequently reluctant to name their informants, even to their superiors. İkmen had always been one of the worst culprits. ‘Well?’
‘One of my informants,’ İkmen said, ‘was a man known as Rat.’
Ardıç rolled his eyes.
‘Also two very well-bred and respectable elderly ladies, one of whom is now dead. Muazzez Heper, she died yesterday under the wheels of a hit and run driver.’
‘Which you believe, I assume, is connected to this . . .’ he paused to find the right words, ‘bizarre Arabian Nights fantasy these misfits have fed you?’
‘Sir, this organisation, the Harem, they call it, is—’
‘Oh, spare me! The Harem?’ Ardıç threw his arms in the air and laughed. ‘This is nonsense, İkmen! Discrete items of information that you have decided to slot into some weird conspiracy theory.’
‘Rat told me that families are now involved with this organisation. The Mürens were connected to Hassan Şeker who could have been instrumental in getting Hatice involved in it. In his suicide note he said that he killed her but we know that he didn’t, he was definitely at home. He must have been protecting his family from someone, maybe the Müren boys. Or maybe someone they have dealings with, someone more powerful and sophisticated than Ali and his brood. Sir, Muazzez Heper made the dress Hatice was wearing when she died. She made it in the early sixties when she herself was involved with the Harem.’
‘But you say she is now dead? Is that right?’
İkmen lowered his head, much of his energy spent. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And does the sister who remains know the Müren family?’
‘She says not, sir, but she is in contact with another woman who—’
‘And Rat?’
‘I haven’t seen Rat for a while. He moves around.’
‘I see.’ Ardıç sighed and then held his hand out towards İkmen. ‘Give me the gun, İkmen.’
He handed it over automatically and without a word.
‘Now go home,’ the commissioner said quietly, ‘and stay there, as I orginally instructed you, for a week.’
İkmen looked up, his eyes shiny with tears of exhaustion. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘No,’ Ardıç replied as he weighed the pistol agitatedly in his hand. ‘I believe that you believe it, but I don’t. You’ve been fed a fantasy, a silly film script.’
‘Have I?’
‘Yes. Now go home, İkmen. Come back to us when you’re feeling better.’
Ardıç moved as if to go back into the interview room where Müren and the two junior officers were still sitting, no doubt in the kind of silence that allows people to hear what is going on beyond closed doors.
Before he got there, however, İkmen spoke. ‘What are you going to do with Ekrem Müren now, sir?’
‘He is my concern, not yours.’ Ardıç pointed an accusatory finger at İkmen. ‘Go home!’
‘You’re going to let him go, aren’t you?’
‘Go home!’
İkmen turned and made his way falteringly down the corridor towards the stairs. It hurt that Ardıç didn’t believe him but then it had hurt when the commissioner had taken him off the Sivas case. This, he believed, was informed by ‘others’, Ankara people, who had ordered Ardıç to remove him: a sort of high-level conspiracy . . . Allah, but weren’t they just appearing everywhere all of a sudden! The Harem, the intimation of Mafia involvement in Hikmet Sivas’s past, and maybe his present too, Ardıç’s rapid flight to the capital . . .
Perhaps, İkmen thought, I really am going insane. Maybe exposure to so much of an ‘exotic’ nature in such rapid succession coupled with a lifestyle just waiting to catch up with me has finally taken its toll!
He felt the blood drain from his face as his body responded to this fear. But then he straightened up and walked on with more purpose. The fact was that these things he’d spoken to Ardıç about had happened. Hatice had died in the costume of an Ottoman odalisque, Hassan Şeker had killed himself and Muazzez Heper had been run down at what, if Yümniye and Rat were correct, seemed a very convenient time. Somebody didn’t want this affair to come to light. Maybe even Ardıç himself . . . It had, after all, been Ardıç who had effectively closed the case on Hatice İpek. Maybe Ardıç had himself visited this Harem. İkmen shuddered as he tried to turn his mind away from the image.
Although the assumption that Belkis İskender was exclusively wedded to her career was not far shy of the truth, she did give some of her time to her husband who had always excited both her passion and her sympathy. After all, although considerably shorter than her and not nearly so astute, Metin was a good-looking man who enjoyed literature and cultivated company. She could talk to him about her work which he appeared to understand. The same could not be said for her attitude to his employment which Belkis didn’t want to know about or understand. Authority and artistry didn’t gel and so most of the time Belkis chose to ignore the fact that her husband was a policeman.
This evening, however, was different. Metin had come off duty much earlier than Belkis was accustomed to and in a bad mood. No, not a bad mood, upset. This was why they were now in the Malta Kiosk in Yıldız Park, as opposed to some stylish city centre restaurant which was Belkis’s usual preference.
‘I could have solved it, you know,’ he said as he pushed his aubergine salad disinterestedly around his plate with his fork. ‘Given time. İkmen and I were making progress. But first they get rid of him and then I go.’ He waved his arms in the air in agitation. ‘I was on television, at the beginning. Fame for a moment. Now this.’
‘I think you should consider doing something else, darling,’ his wife replied, draining the last of the champagne into her glass. ‘You know I would support any project you decided to undertake.’
He smiled weakly. ‘I know.’
‘I always hoped that after that terrible business in Edirnekapı you’d give it up,’ she said, alluding to the difficult time her husband had had after his abortive and bloody altercation with an eastern European drug dealer.
‘But you know I can’t,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to do this and succeed, Belkis.’
She reached across the table and touched his arm. ‘Why?’
‘Because much as you might like to dress me up in designer suits and thrill to my enjoyment of books, I am still that kid from Umraniye,’ he said. ‘I joined the police to get out of there, which I did. I educated myself, married a beautiful, successful woman, but I still need to prove myself in their eyes,’ he said, alluding to the impoverished family he still visited weekly.
‘But you could do that in another career. You know all the people I work with.’
‘But policing is a man’s job!’ he said as he broke free from her grasp and then turned to look down the wooded hill towards the distant Bosphorus. ‘My father and brothers would never understand book publishing. If I joined your company they would view me as even more of a lap dog than they do now!’
‘Metin, darling, you must let go of the past.’ Belkis rested her head in her hands and sighed. ‘You’re a sensitive person. You could exorcise so much if you had time and space and could just sit down and write. You don’t have to join my company. I know you have a book in you, I would support—’
‘Oh, Belkis, leave it, please!’ he said. They’d been here before – so many times.
Belkis put her hands in her lap and cast her eyes down sadly. As far as she was concerned the only thing to be done with Metin’s desperate childhood in Umraniye was to write about it and then forget it. He was a success already. In spite of growing up without the benefit of running water in a district where rubbish dumps smouldered constantly and exploded occasionally, he had educated himself, climbed the ladder of success very quickly and looked good enough to eat. Why he still wanted to prove himself to people who were illiterate, filthy and frequently criminal, she couldn’t think. But then she couldn’t even imagine what went on inside her husband’s head.
Metin let his eyes rest on the path that ran along the top of the wooded hill to the restaurant. Couples and a few families were approaching, puffing and sweating their way to their evening meals in the graceful setting of the Malta Kiosk. Well-dressed, clean people who knew, as he did, that the gorgeously Italianate building he was sitting in front of had once been used to imprison poor Murad V, the Sultan who had drunk much and reigned little. Nobody in Umraniye would know that. Nobody in Umraniye had nice clothes, unless they had stolen them. He still remembered sorting through the smoking rubbish piles for winter shoes. He would never forget. Because you didn’t. Things came back, all the time, just like the man whose thick blond hair shone so brightly in the setting sun as he materialised onto the path in front of Metin İskender. Allah, no! And for a moment the world became silent and fixed – a spell only broken by Belkis as she thrust her face into his and shouted, ‘Metin! Metin, what is it? Darling!’
Chapter 19
* * *
Mehmet Süleyman should have known better. One never just turned up at Çetin İkmen’s apartment and expected to leave after half an hour. What had begun as a mid-morning social call, to thank İkmen for the gift he had given to baby Yusuf İzzeddin, became a lengthy conversation.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Süleyman said as he finished his second glass of tea and then lit a cigarette, ‘is how, given that this Harem exists, we’ve never heard about it before.’
Harem Page 23
