by Rik Stone
Mehmet pulled Ahmet across the pit while lowering him from the rope block. He undid the restraints, pulled the body onto the floor and pushed and tugged at the dead weight until getting him into a sitting position on the Zephyr’s passenger seat.
A new worry: he still had use for the workshop, but had Barkev compromised his position? He looked at his clothes. They were a mess. He was in no state to get rid of the car and go back to Yenikapi on foot, not in broad daylight, not without being stopped. He’d always intended getting rid of the car when it was dark: dumping it on a busy street in Sirkeci, near to where he’d killed Yagmur. Right now he should leave on the moped, clean up and revisit the unit later. But was it safe to come back? He paced the floor and tried to relive Barkev’s interruption. The more he thought about it the surer he was that Barkev hadn’t had time to see anything. He’d stick to the plan.
He opened the door wide enough to get the moped out, checked up and down the boulevard, locked the unit and went back to the rented room.
Chapter 36
Mehmet got to the lodgings without having drawn unwanted attention. He drove up the lane and took care to negotiate the scatterings of rubble piled everywhere. The dilapidated doss house stood in the middle of a terrace, or should have. The debris he drove around was what was left of six or seven houses that had given way to a now-historical earthquake.
Privacy walls had collapsed inward and clothing on washing lines in yards was hung out for all to see. A small group of children rummaged through the stacked bricks, for what, who could guess, but they took no notice of Mehmet and that was all that mattered.
In the lodgings’ backyard was a wash house acting as a laundry and bathroom. He secured the moped, went in, bolted the door and placed a hand against a large water buttress. Still warm. He filled the tin bath and wallowed in the water, soaking the stains of death from his body. But lifting a hand to his face, crusted mud came away… However, it wasn’t mud. It was dried blood. Again, he wondered if Barkev had noticed, and again he dismissed the notion because Barkev had merely lost his nerve and ran off.
His clothes were bloodied and his room door couldn’t be locked, so he wouldn’t be able to leave them at the lodgings when he eventually went out. If the landlord rummaged around and found them, he’d make a report to the police. And the description he could give of Mehmet wouldn’t sound like that of Zeki. Scraping the leather jacket clean was easy, but the other stuff was useless. He had a brown paper bag he’d been given when buying food on a previous day, so, sneaking up to his room, he folded the Armani trousers and silk shirt and stuffed them into the bag. If he took them with him, he could leave the clothes at the unit. He’d abandon Ahmet’s car tonight and tomorrow he’d go to the bazaar for a new outfit.
Later, he left the lodgings wearing a white shirt, the leather jacket and casual trousers, and made his way to Kumkapi. Twilight was still rearing its head when he left, so he drove slowly through alleys and small roads to kill off the daylight. The last thing he wanted was sitting with Ahmet’s corpse next to him for too long.
By the time he neared the terraced units, the sun had set. Whether he was sleepy or just plain stupid was unclear, but he was almost upon his unit before he noticed the three blue and whites parked next to it. Barkev was with an officer who furiously jotted notes as Barkev spoke.
Mehmet reacted too quickly, jammed the brakes on, screeched the tyres and brought the moped to an abrupt halt. Barkev looked up, his eyes grew wide and he grabbed the policeman’s arm, frantically pointed Mehmet out to him. The young officer pulled free of the grip, shoved Barkev to one side and withdrew his gun. He fired, but proved to be as poor a shot as Mehmet. The bullets flew wildly off target. Seemingly aware of his limitations, he quickly returned the gun to its holster and disappeared into the unit.
Mehmet aimed his hand threateningly at Barkev and pulled an imaginary trigger before winding the accelerator fully open, spinning the moped a half circle and heading up the road he’d come from. The police cars had been pointing the wrong way, or the right way depending on the point of view. They would have to make U-turns and that would give him an extra minute or so to widen the distance.
Tyres screamed. Sirens blared. At least one of the police cars was now in hot pursuit. The moped’s throttle was open to maximum, but it wasn’t the fastest machine on the planet. The gap was already closing. Mehmet needed a plan B. The streets off the main drag were narrow and the alleys narrower. Lots of people about; would the police keep to a sensible speed? If they did, the gap wouldn’t close too quickly – and that was plan B.
After winding through alleys for some minutes, Mehmet came out onto Ataturk Boulevard. A free run would quicken his journey: he would cross the bridge and then use the backstreets to Galata. And when he got to the other side of the Golden Horn, losing the tail would be easy. But that idea was short lived. Those following must have had similar thoughts and radioed ahead. Police cars straddled the road and lights on roofs threw red and blue beams in every direction.
He wouldn’t have thought it possible to blow smoke from the tyres of a moped, but that’s what he did when skidding through ninety degrees and leaving the main street. He cut across a junction onto a smaller thoroughfare and almost knocked a man over when he stepped from the bustling sidewalk. He pressed on, screaming the life out of the little machine as he did. He twisted his head to see if he was distancing the pursuit vehicle, but it had gained ground and was manoeuvring the narrow street as if there was no one around.
He turned sharply into an alley. Unfortunately, it was still wide enough for the police car to follow and all the time it closed the gap. If they caught him, execution would be his only avenue to freedom. He’d killed a policeman, a captain no less; by the time Ahmet’s colleagues had finished with him, death would come as a gentle release. The car came within a metre of hitting the bike up the rear. An unmade footpath came into view on his left. He made an abrupt last-minute turn, spraying a dust cloud into the air. The car behind screeched to a halt, a bang, maybe a slamming door, maybe the car had hit the post at the path’s entrance. Whatever it was, only seconds seemed to pass before gunfire belted out an unattractive tune.
Mehmet turned his head and saw at least two muzzles flashing. Two guns equalled two policemen, so he’d been lucky one of them hadn’t leant out of the window and shot at him during the chase. Bullets ricocheted nearby and something chipped his leg. No time to stop and check. He sped off as fast as that little moped would go. He didn’t know the backstreets there, so was thankful for his good fortune when time and again he happened upon more dirt footpaths. The sounds of a multitude of sirens became a distant drone.
He came to a footbridge, eased the throttle, drove over slowly and saw that the fence on the other side had been breached. Evening had darkened to night and he’d switched off the lights long ago, so he thought the chances of someone having seen him get there were slim. He stood the moped up against an unbroken part of the fence and slithered down the short but steep bank. Balancing on the curve, he could see under the bridge. Much broader than he’d thought when crossing, it appeared to be a storm drain, and it was dried out: somewhere to sleep.
Back up top, he edged his way into the gulley, wheeling the moped along from the bridge, and laid it against the bank where tufts of long grass grew. It was dark, but Mehmet could see it was well enough hidden had it been daylight. He went up top to make sure he hadn’t left any tell-tale signs, and then went under the bridge and tried to get comfortable. It wasn’t easy, but after eight years in Synopi he’d had worse. A murdered policeman and a car chase that almost caught the killer – this would be too big for the police to give up on. They’d keep at it until they’d caught their man, or until the chances of success had disappeared altogether. Mehmet was glad he’d eaten before going to the unit because he figured he’d have to hang out under the bridge for the next twenty-four hours at least.
Chapter 37
Back in his room, Mehmet stared reproa
chfully at himself in a small, cracked mirror that hung on a nail in the wall. Mistakes, mistakes, mistakes! One after another. Either they had to come to an end or he would. And he couldn’t believe he had it in mind to cross the Ataturk Bridge. Hadn’t he listened to anything Yuri had taught him?
At least he’d had the sense to stay under the footbridge for near thirty-six hours. But he should never have been in that position in the first place. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered Barkev or not seen the blood on his clothing.
Still, it was done. He had to stop with the self-pity, get a grip, put the mistakes behind him and learn. He relaxed his shoulders and smiled. A catalogue of errors, true, but he had got away with it and he’d taken another enemy down in the process.
He went to the outhouse and had another bath, which meant he’d bathed more times in a couple of weeks than in all his years at Synopi. A large copper buttress sat on an equally large gas ring. Hot to the touch, he drained water into the bath and used it to tantalise the chipping from his leg: the one he’d thought might be a police bullet, the piece that turned out to be gravel.
As he soaked in the water, he considered the foreseeable future. He thought he’d hang around Yenikapi, go no further than a shop or restaurant and let the police furore die away, which it would; he knew that from his experiences with the Little Dogs.
Hmm, restaurant. His mouth watered thinking of food and thoughts of fish tugged at his empty stomach as he considered how long it had been since he’d eaten.
*
Roots cried out in pain as Mehmet dragged a fine-tooth comb through his new thickness of beard. It had been a couple of weeks since deciding to lie low and with the beard and the clothes he wore, he now looked like the working fisherman he was pretending to be. His feet were still dark from being barefoot in the prison courtyard at Synopi, so the open-toed sandals looked natural enough. He wore a blue and white, checked shirt hanging out over scruffy, baggy trousers that were drawn in by ties at the ankles. A fisherman’s flat cap was rolled up and tucked into the front of his waistband and covered the Welrod pistol. While he had kept clean over the weeks, he tried to look as if he’d done a day’s work.
But, the time had come. After taking a blue-green bus to Sirkeci, he walked along the quayside. The flame to ignite daylight wasn’t yet lit and the early hour weighed heavily, made him sluggish. He shook the notion, picked up his pace, pressed on past the Galata floating bridge, came to a junction next to the Ataturk Bridge and eventually reached the alley where he’d kidnapped Ahmet: The Belly Dancers nightclub, the club Tunc Osman managed. He would kill Tolga first, but wanted to know Tunc’s movements so he’d be ready for a quick follow-up.
Clearly, Tunc either travelled into work or he lived on the premises. Mehmet believed it was more likely he came from an outlying district as the area seemed business rather than domestic. And he was right; just before 8.30 a.m., a silver-blue metallic Fleetwood Cadillac turned into the alley.
The man Mehmet believed was Tunc Osman stepped from the limo, nodded to the driver and watched the car pull away. No money changed hands. The driver had touched the peak of a chauffeur’s cap dutifully before leaving. Seemed unlikely he’d have his own driver, so Tunc must have had an account with a car hire company. That logic was helped along by the fact that the car had a small transfer on the bottom of the driver’s door – black print against a white banner: Tour Turkey.
Mehmet hung around at the end of the alley, but Tunc didn’t seem in any hurry to go into the club, so he closed in on him to get a better look. Around fifty, he had a full head of black hair – as black as jet – that didn’t look right. He was big, a giant in fact, at least two metres tall. He’d have been taller if he’d had a neck. An ex-bodyguard, he may once have been in good shape, but not anymore. His face was bloated and he had a body to match. Strange features too: a permanent squint that kept blinking over pea-sized eyes.
He looked straight through Mehmet, sighed, took a set of keys from his jacket and used two of them to unlock the door to the club before disappearing inside. Mehmet returned to the end of the alley and waited for Tunc’s next move.
A long day, it was midnight by the time the limo pulled back into the alley. The car waited five minutes, Tunc came out, climbed into the back seat and they drove off.
The next day, Tunc arrived 8.30 a.m. and left at about one in the morning. Mehmet had only spent two days in vigil, true, but it was pattern enough. He had other things to do. He opted to keep an eye on the place from mid-evening instead of wasting whole days.
At ten the following morning, he went to a taxi rank on Sirkeci quayside. One of the drivers was leaning against his yellow Fiat, watching boats as they were pushed off or tied up to the jetty.
“You wear your heart on your sleeve, my friend, and it tells me it belongs on the water. Maybe you chose the wrong job,” Mehmet said.
The driver smiled. “What, it’s that obvious? But what can you do? I have a family to support and taxiing is where the money is.” He grinned pleasantly.
Mehmet chatted sympathetically about working on the waterway. Plain luck, but when you find a topic close to a man’s heart, he’ll gossip as if he’s known you forever.
“Changing the subject,” he said, before he forgot the point of the conversation. “Have you heard of a car-hire firm called Tour Turkey? I saw a Fleetwood Cadillac yesterday and the driver looked like an old friend of mine.”
“Yes, I know it. A small concern working out of Bakir Street off Tersane Road in Galata. They only run two or three cars … I think.”
“Tersane Road? Yes, I know it. Maybe I’ll look him up,” Mehmet said. Grateful for the information, he returned to talking about boats, let the driver spill his heart for a few minutes and then left.
Next stop, Tolga Osman. Mehmet wanted to see where he lived and how he spent his days. He took his time, strolled to the club in Demirtas and thought about the longer-term plan as he went. It would make things hard, trying to set them both up for a kill together, so he decided to hit one and make a quick follow-up before the second was even aware of the loss of his brother. To do that, he had to be confident of their movements.
The Saladin Retreat was between the Galata and Ataturk bridges and the area was very different from the place where Tunc had his club. This district was urbanised, apartments everywhere, and several floors of them were above the club. Mehmet suspected Tolga would be living here, but to find out in which apartment meant going into the club as a customer.
*
It was seven in the evening, early enough for the bar to be empty of customers. There were, however, a number of hostesses sitting around chatting. Mehmet was clearly the first customer of the day but the girls didn’t exactly rush him. Other than when he walked in they hadn’t even looked his way, but that would be because he was dressed like a poor fisherman; or he hoped that was the reason. A waiter gave one of the girls a tug and she trailed her feet as she sauntered over.
“Would you like some company and to maybe buy me a drink, or do you want to be alone?” she asked, trying to sound seductive but being dismissive at the same time.
Mehmet thought she was willing him to say, “I want to be alone.”
“If the drink isn’t expensive then yes, I’ll buy you a drink and have a talk. But remember, I’m a simple working man, so ordering something too costly would be pointless. If that’s okay, you can come and sit over here.”
He directed her to the nearest cubicle and she followed him in. Before sitting, she clicked her fingers and pointed to the booth. Every movement oozed sexual promise and Mehmet’s loins warmed to the thought of it.
At first keeping her distance, she sidled closer, smiled and said, “I thought you were going to smell of fish.”
Hardly a come-on, but her odour, her proximity, the pit of his stomach moved from warm to hot. “I told you I’m a working man, not a smelly one,” he answered, trying to keep it casual.
“Okay, but the fishermen I’ve me
t usually are.”
Mehmet grinned; she smiled and then snuggled in close. As always in these situations, Nina came to mind, but his needs had got the better of him. The girl wrapped her arms around one of his and rested her face on his shoulder. She sighed as she leaned her breast hard into his elbow. The barman came over with a couple of beers, set them down and left before payment was made. Mehmet watched the froth run slowly from the glasses and settle on the table.
“How’d he know not to bring champagne?” he asked playfully, spreading his free hand to highlight his clothes.
She giggled.
“I noticed a few apartments above the club when I came in. I bet the people who live there aren’t too happy when it’s party night down here?” he said.
“Every night here is party night,” she answered, “but it doesn’t affect the people upstairs. If they’re not down here working then they’re up there working.”
This time it was him who laughed. “Oh, I see. With all those apartments there must be a lot of work going on.”
The girl looked down innocently and then stared cow-eyed at him. She was beautiful in her own way, if not a bit hard-faced. Blonde, blue-eyed, pretty, a bit too much makeup, but stacked like a film star. Her pink blouse had four buttons undone and had been pulled outward. Most of the white bra she wore was on show – and there was plenty to show. A tattoo high on her left breast was of a bright red heart with greenery draped over it. Mehmet had never seen a girl with a tattoo.
“Is it my breasts that hypnotise you or the tattoo?” she laughed, expanding her chest towards him.
“Both really, or should I say all three?” he said, smiling, looking back to her face. Her perfume was sweet, sexy and intoxicating. He let his index finger draw circles around the tattoo, leaned in and rested his lips gently on hers. “Anyway, you were telling me about the rooms upstairs – they can’t all be used by the girls, can they?”
