by Rik Stone
She took a sip of beer. “No, the manager uses the whole of the top floor. I can show you a room below his if you’re feeling warm towards me.”
Mehmet needed no further encouragement. “Let’s go.”
She slithered from the booth first and stood with her back to him. He watched the rear contours of her black pencil skirt wriggle as she straightened the clothing. He tried playing it cool when following upstairs, but all he wanted to do was put his hands on her butt and push to hurry her along.
The room she took him to was on the second floor from the top and one of a multitude in the corridor. She told Mehmet there was a bathroom at the end of the hall and that she wanted him to go clean up before they begun. He was too wanting for the request to put him off. Later, when the deed was done, she pulled on a flimsy housecoat and went along the hallway to clean up – or whatever it is women do after such an event.
Mehmet had been lying on the bed basking in thoughts of what had happened between them when she came back in. The musings had him realising that it had been such a long time since he’d slept with those village girls when making the crossing to Istanbul with Oz that this girl had just made a lot of money for a very short time. But she seemed in no hurry to get rid of him now, probably because it was still early.
The room was tiny. Big enough for business and maybe comfortable enough for one person to spend the night, but that was it. The girl hung the housecoat on the back of the door and took fresh underclothes from a small chest of drawers at the bottom of the bed. A pang of sympathy speared him as he watched her. A pretty girl with a figure that was all but perfect. He found it hard to believe flesh came so cheaply.
“Blue eyes and blond hair says you’re not Turkish,” he said.
“That’s right, I’m German.”
“Wow, I’ve been with a German girl. How did you end up over here?”
She laughed and began dressing quickly; suddenly she was in a hurry. “I used to work in Hamburg. They needed girls here and I speak Turkish, so here I am.”
The evening was aging and she had a living to make. Mehmet had to drop the small talk and get to what he needed before she told him he should leave.
“Is it the only way to get up here, coming through the club?”
“Why, do you want to see me when I’m not working?”
He grinned. “Who knows. What do you think?”
“I’m not sure. You are a good-looking man and gentle – for a fisherman.” She laughed. “Maybe if you ask for me next time you come to the club. And yes, there is a door at the back of the building. It has an intercom.” She smiled seductively.
He nodded. “Can I buy you a drink downstairs?” he asked; he still didn’t know what Tolga looked like.
She hesitated. “Better not. You saw the man who sent me to you; he manages the girls and he wouldn’t like it if I was making friends.”
Mehmet dressed and the girl walked him back to the bar. The place was busy. She squeezed his arm and left him for a group of men who’d come in.
*
Three nights later and Mehmet went to see the German girl. Her name was Dagmar and tonight would be the third in a row he’d seen her. The previous two, they’d gone straight to her room, but his sexual appetite was now sated. The task suddenly became pressing.
“I’m not going upstairs tonight, Dagmar,” he told her. “Too tired.”
She smiled, looked disappointed and shuffled across the bench seating.
“Whoa, where’re you going? I thought it would be nice to spend a little time and just chat.”
“I told you already,” she said, suddenly short of patience, “the man will be watching me.”
Of course Mehmet knew the rejection had nothing to do with ‘the man’, if there even was one. The fact was she could earn more elsewhere. Telling him he was good-looking and gentle had only been a hook to get a regular customer. Tonight he’d come in later and there were plenty of other buyers scattered around the room. But he wasn’t finished with her yet.
“What if I bought us a bottle of champagne?” he asked, as if desperate for her company.
The change in attitude was dramatic. In a flash she was by his side. Mehmet small-talked and each time someone came into view from the door leading upstairs he brought them up in conversation. They had almost worked their way through a second bottle of what tasted and looked like corn-coloured cola and now her attention was on a group of men chatting and laughing with some of the other hostesses. Dagmar became fidgety. A man came into the bar from the internal doorway.
She drained her glass. “That’s Tolga, the manager,” she said, nodding towards him. “I’d better make myself scarce.”
The barman handed Tolga a drink as soon as he got to the bar. He stood tall, sipping the drink while surveying his empire. Mehmet smiled ironically. Sex with Dagmar had been nice, but unnecessary. Tolga was his brother’s ‘almost’ double. Not as big, but not a whole lot smaller. His head was bald, not shaven, naturally bald, which explained Tunc’s unnatural crop of black hair: a wig. Like Tunc, Tolga’s eyes were small and too close together, but he was missing the squint.
“Ah, the big man, and he lives upstairs, you say?” Mehmet asked.
Dagmar looked cornered now, business was calling. “Yes,” she answered quickly, “spends most of the day up there. Him and that thickset man at the other end of the bar.”
Mehmet looked at the smaller man; okay, smaller, but still a real heavyweight. His head was shaven, but a dark shadow betrayed the hair wanting to push through.
Mehmet feigned a gulp and Dagmar grinned. “He’s always upstairs with Tolga … always.”
Dagmar tried working along from Mehmet, but he leaned across and poured her the last half-glass of champagne. But she wasn’t about to let that stop her. She picked it up and drank it in a gulp then shuffled from the booth. “Sorry, time for work, like I said, the boss.”
A man in a suit stood with an elbow on the bar, looking suave – or trying to. He straightened, fixed his tie as he beamed at her – cool. Dagmar stood up and raised her eyebrows to Mehmet before moving off to join her new trick. Mehmet’s smile broke into a wide grin as he watched the life renew in Dagmar’s face when getting together with the man. But he had what he wanted. He knew the brothers’ movements and what they looked like. He was ready.
Chapter 38
Mehmet left a few days between seeing Dagmar and putting his plan into action. He didn’t think for one minute that she would suspect him of the assault he was about to make on Tolga – in fact, she probably wouldn’t even remember him – but he had made enough mistakes and wanted to cover all the angles.
Another evening came and he was in the alleyway leading to the back of the club. The darkness was all consuming. He came to an unexpected corner, nearly walked into a wall, stopped, waited for his eyes to adjust and saw a dim glow – a block of nameplates, mostly girls’ names. Each name had a button next to it. He squinted, let a finger help him read his way up from the bottom and came to Osman’s tag at the top – where else? He pressed the button on the intercom. It didn’t buzz or ring; the noise shrilling under the weight of his finger lay somewhere between the two. He waited.
Eventually, the box gave out static and a voice rattled in the amplifier.
“Speak.” It was a man and although Mehmet felt sure the system had distorted his tone into a higher pitch, there was something deep and coarse about it.
Mehmet cleared his throat. “Good evening. My name is Captain Iskander. I’m a homicide detective working out of Sirkeci and I need to speak with Tolga Osman.”
“What about?” the man asked, the tone of his voice held no interest. Only two words, but Mehmet detected a lilt, an accent that wasn’t from any part of Turkey he knew of.
“The matter is delicate. Either let me in now or Mister Osman can come down to the police station tomorrow morning. It’s up to you. But be quick about it. I’m in a hurry.”
There was a beat of silence.
The inflection was clearer now – European. A buzzer hummed a crackled base note and the door clicked. Mehmet pushed it open, went in and found the stairs. He would need to take extra care. The so-called problem with the lift didn’t exist: he could hear thrumming within its confines. These people were being extra careful. Already they didn’t trust him and were using the stairs to put him at a disadvantage, give themselves the high ground.
The Welrod was in the back of his waistband, the Browning tucked in at the side. Uncomfortable, they stuck in his ribs and against his spine. His hands trembled and he realised fear had become prevalent. The stairway had fifty, maybe sixty steel steps and there was a large diamond grid at each floor level. The grids went around in a half circle and then the steps began again. The well was dimly lit, the painted walls, dirty brown. Mehmet believed the poor lighting would be a benefit if something was to go wrong. But he couldn’t think like that; things weren’t about to go wrong. Already disadvantaged, he took the steps slowly and kept his breathing steady, relaxed.
The stairs were steel and while it was a warm evening outside, a chill swirled in the stairwell, tightening his stance. At each floor level a musty smell was overcome by the odour of perfumed boudoirs spilling from the corridors. He got within five or six steps from the top when a man came into view: Tolga’s thickset friend.
“Captain Iskander?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you Mister Osman?”
“No, he’s inside. But I look after his interests. You say you’re Iskander, but you look a lot younger than the Iskander I know of. Let me see your ID.” Mehmet thought he sounded French, possibly German.
“Yes, of course.”
The protector had stood with his hands behind him, but now he brought them around front to reveal a handgun clenched in a large fist.
Mehmet forced a smile. “Not taking any chances, are you?”
He made no reply. During the days before coming here, Mehmet had taken Ahmet’s ID and doctored it. He got a photo of himself at a passport booth in Sirkeci railway station, cut it to size and stuck it over Ahmet’s picture before soaking the whole thing in water. Letting it dry, he scuffed it up and rubbed it in dust. The details on the warrant card had become indecipherable, the photograph wasn’t much better.
Casually, Mehmet took Ahmet’s ID from his inside pocket and held it up. The bodyguard’s brow furrowed as he squinted to inspect it.
“Why is this in such a mess?” he asked, aiming the pistol at Mehmet.
Mehmet lifted his free hand, calming. “Take it easy,” he said. “I’ve had enough trouble for one week. You can see it’s been wet. I fell in the muddy end of the Golden Horn during a chase. I’m waiting for a new card.”
The bodyguard sniggered and lowered the pistol.
“Iskander was on that case when General Volkan was killed, and if my memory serves me well, that man would be a lot older than you.”
“Yes, that’s because the man you’re talking about is my papa,” he answered.
“Oh,” he said, nodding, and eased his finger away from the trigger guard before holstering the gun. “Police a family thing, is it?”
“It would seem so,” Mehmet said and smiled.
Taking his focus from Mehmet, the man turned for the door. Mehmet seized the opportunity. He’d already had his jacket open to put the ID away, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to pull out the Welrod and point. He fired off several shots. Two slugs thudded into flesh – a third went off somewhere else. A bullet had hit high in the target’s upper arm. The other buried itself somewhere in the side of his ribs. Neither had struck anywhere near where Mehmet had aimed. The victim spun around looking bewildered, but then his eyes filled with anger. Trying to lift his pistol, his arm jerked spasmodically. The gun clattered on the grid as he dropped it and lunged at Mehmet. Instead of dodging the attack, Mehmet raced in close, squeezed off another shot, burying a bullet in the side of his head.
No groaning, no sound, the protector’s body twisted away and plummeted over the handrail, down into the open stairwell, colliding with every balustrade on the way and then coming to a halt with a dull thud on the concrete below. Looking over the banister, Mehmet winced. No room for debate; a corpse was staring back up at him. His neck had broken and his position was one of comic tragedy: the face looking skyward, the body belly down.
Mehmet turned to face the gloom beyond the slightly open door. Was Tolga aware of what had happened? Was he now waiting for Mehmet’s next move? Whatever was going on beyond that door, silence was in command on this side of it.
He crept up to the side of the doorframe, held his back to the wall and pushed at the door with his foot. As it swung open, a tirade of bullets shattered the panel. Mehmet wasn’t much of a shot, but he knew the sounds of weapons, and the shooter had an Uzi.
Nervousness had him considering running. He had time to leave. He could probably have got out before anyone had the nerve to come through the door after him, but … he didn’t. Instead, he flattened out on his belly and shoved the door fully open with his hand. Another burst of gunfire. This time the muzzle flashes lit up the space as shards of wood splintered and the door burst open the wrong way through the frame.
Do or die. Mehmet got to his knees, threw himself into the passageway and fired into the darkness until the clip had emptied. Someone groaned. No return of fire. If the shooter’s gun wasn’t jammed, he’d been hit and was in retreat. Before the enemy could regroup, Mehmet removed the pistol grip and pushed another six into the clip then crawled further into the passage.
Two doors, one on either side of the passageway, and they were both slightly ajar. He rolled across to the wall and tried to work out which one had been taken. The floor was covered in lino, the passage dark. Even covered in blood, Mehmet wouldn’t have been able to see it. He dropped, rested his cheek against the floor and stared along the covering. Tiny beads of light reflected on newly formed droplets: blood. It trailed off to the right.
Mehmet was pleased to have worked out which room was in use, but then a burst of gunfire revealed the same information. Plasterboard walls ripped and light-shards pierced gouges that had opened above his head; an old building like that shouldn’t have had plasterboard walls. No time to get back to the entrance and escape. He took what he saw as his only option and rolled towards the room where the shooter was. Mehmet thought it might come as a surprise to the enemy. It sure as hell came as one to him.
With both hands gripping the pistol butt, Mehmet put the brakes on his roll and pointed to where he guessed the shooter would be. It was Tolga. He stood alone in the centre of the room holding the Uzi in trembling hands and aiming at where Mehmet’s chest would have been had he been standing up. It seemed a lifetime passed in a single second, Mehmet looking directly into his eyes, him staring blankly back in surprise. Blood had soaked through Tolga’s shirt sleeve, explaining the trembling hands.
With a hand working the rotary bolt, Mehmet squeezed off three shots while directing the weapon at Tolga’s centre mass. And it seemed he was a better shot when pointing a weapon rather than aiming along the sights. The impact of the bullets whumped into Tolga’s chest and threw him back. He came to a halt as he hit the wall and slid to the floor. The Uzi was a metre in front of where he landed and he sat staring at it, appearing more dazed than mortally wounded.
Mehmet stood over him and pointed the Welrod at Tolga’s forehead. He couldn’t believe it. Tolga gave him a beaming smile, a nod. Was he challenging him? “Go on then, you fuck, finish what you came to do.” A challenge, yes, but the words had bubbled hopelessly from his lips.
“What, you’re not interested in why?”
“Okay, surprise me.” He struggled to keep his head upright as he weakened, but his strength of will was plain to see.
“I must admit, you’re a cool one. Something I could never say about that brother of yours,” he lied. �
�He squealed like a stuck pig when I killed him.”
The smile choked on Tolga’s face and he tried to muster enough strength to make an attack; he managed to lift up a little, but then fell back impotently.
“And Marlon?” he asked through a wheeze.
“What, the Frenchman who answered the door just now? Don’t worry; he’s just got himself into a bit of a twist. Anyway, getting back to why… Twenty years ago you killed my papa, and my life has been totally screwed because of it.”
“Who was your father?”
“Levent Pasha,” he said and regretted it when a self-satisfied leer came to Tolga’s face.
“And you talk to me about stuck pigs.”
Mehmet shook his head and pressed the muzzle to Tolga’s chest. His piggy eyes had hooded and his mouth dribbled like a child. He looked pathetic and Mehmet hesitated. What was happening to him? This man was a monster, no doubt, but Mehmet could only wonder if he was becoming like him?
Suddenly, Tolga whipped his arm up with impossible speed, his gigantic hand wrapped around Mehmet’s wrist and he squeezed until Mehmet thought his bones would be crushed. But somehow he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Tolga’s shoulder and the grip relaxed.
Mehmet stood back and kicked Tolga’s leg – no response but he was still breathing. Mehmet edged around to his side, pushed him over with a foot and rolled him onto his face. The self-doubt was gone. In fact, it was with a glow of satisfaction when he fired a slug into the base of Tolga’s brain. Mehmet laid Ahmet’s Browning HP next to the body, tucked Tolga’s Uzi into his jacket and left.
At the bottom of the stairs, he turned Marlon’s head face down and shot him in the back of the skull. From what he’d seen so far the investigators hadn’t been too bright, but there was no way they wouldn’t tie these killings to the death of Ahmet and Yagmur. For sure, now people would start worrying about what Zeki was up to.
Outside in the alley, he bumped into a couple and tucked his head in so they couldn’t see his face. She giggled and he remembered her from the club. They were about to go into the building. He walked fast to the end of the alley and then broke into an all-out run.
