‘See how he shapes up when he can’t get his fix,’ İkmen suggested.
‘Yes, well, I may be wrong,’ Süleyman said. ‘I accept that. But you know what happened to Ömer when he tackled that woman. Her fingers nearly caught one of his eyes, and that bite on his neck is no joke. I’ve ordered psychiatric appraisals on both of them, but I think she’s the one who actually committed the acts of violence.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘No. Ali Erbil isn’t big on explanations. He just wants to confess with no questions asked.’
İkmen lit a cigarette.
‘Sadly for him, the relatives of these victims won’t be satisfied with a confession,’ Süleyman continued. ‘When someone you love dies, you need to know why.’
‘Even when you don’t love them,’ İkmen said. ‘If I don’t find out why the Rudolfoğlu siblings died, even if I know who killed them, I will consider my investigation a failure. Not that it looks as if I’m going to come up with a perpetrator any time soon.’
Turgut Zana wasn’t the most exciting person to spend time with, but at least he was familiar. And he had promised to take her to Balyan Patisserie in Kadıköy and buy her the most heavenly ice cream dessert in the world. Ever since she’d arrived in İstanbul, Barçın Demirtaş had been devoted to Balyan’s signature confection, Kup Kurmanji. Made from caramel sauce, Chantilly cream, nuts and, of course, ice cream, it was something that would always make her happy and never let her down.
There was no way she was going to ride her bike over the Bosphorus Bridge to get to Kadıköy, so she’d decided to leave it in police headquarters car park. She was bending down checking that it was secure when she heard a familiar voice.
‘Constable Demirtaş, is that your bike?’
She turned and looked up. It wasn’t easy not to appear shocked. His face was covered in deep iodine-soaked scratches, and a huge lint pad on his neck stuck out over his shirt collar.
‘Yes, Sergeant Mungun,’ she said. ‘I thought you were in hospital.’ She stood up.
‘They patched me up, gave me a few shots and then I was free to go,’ he said.
‘Not to work?’ she said. ‘Surely?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I know the boss has left. I came by to pick up my laptop. I thought I’d be coming back here after the operation in Tarlabaşı this morning, but of course I didn’t, and I need it.’
‘Success this morning,’ she said. ‘Except for your, er, your . . .’
He shook his head. ‘You know it was a woman?’
‘Yes, Inspector Süleyman told me.’
‘I’m on antibiotics, and I’ve had a tetanus shot, a rabies shot and an HIV test.’
‘You must be exhausted,’ she said. ‘How did you get here? You didn’t drive, did you?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘You know, or maybe you don’t, that people often get Inspector Süleyman wrong. He really looks after people who work for him. He sent one of his friends to get me.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
‘Yes. I’ll have to grab my computer and go or I’ll hold her up. I like your bike.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Although I’m leaving it here tonight. I’m meeting a friend in Kadıköy.’
‘And you don’t want to have to battle across the bridge.’
‘Who does?’
‘Ömer! Come on!’
The voice was deep and husky.
He looked across the car park and waved at a tall, curvaceous woman leaning on the boot of a very old Mercedes.
‘One minute, Gonca Hanım,’ he called back. ‘Sorry!’ He turned back to Barçın. ‘I have to go.’
‘Of course.’
He ran towards the building Barçın had just left. When he’d gone, she took a moment to look at the woman she knew was Mehmet Süleyman’s mistress. So this was Gonca the gypsy. Not exactly beautiful and not exactly young, she nevertheless had a distinct glamour about her that was emphasised by her vivid eye make-up and dramatic clothes. A tightly fitted black lace jacket above a long black fishtailed skirt gave her a gothic look. Hardly ‘massive’, as Turgut had described her, though she did have a very large, half-exposed bust, and the bun she’d created with her hair was so big it could have been a hat. Significantly, she was sensual. Even when she picked dirt from underneath her long bright red nails, she did it in such a way that it looked like a sex act.
Barçın wondered how this woman would feel if she knew that her lover had been staring at another woman’s breasts. She’d seen him.
Father Anatoli knew that one was supposed to sip rather than gulp the sacred water from the St Katherine ayazma. But it had been so hot all day long, and he had been out and about since dawn. Just because his congregation was tiny didn’t mean that his responsibilities were small. He had two significant buildings to look after – the shrine and the church. And the latter was vast. Built for many thousands of Byzantine Greeks, it now played host to a congregation of barely a hundred, and that included, in the winter, Syrian refugees just trying to get in out of the cold. Lately, some Kurds had come to Moda with tales of trouble brewing again in the east. He’d let them sleep in the church. Father Anatoli remembered the 1990s, when the so-called ‘white Toros’ murders had plagued the Kurdish population in places like Diyarbakır and Mardin. White Toros cars, it was said, had roamed the streets of Kurdish towns, their occupants kidnapping and then killing local people. The Kurds said the murders were orchestrated by the government of the time, but no one really knew. The crimes were still unsolved.
Not for the first time, Father Anatoli prayed for the souls of the Rudolfoğlu siblings. None were omitted. He also, though it pained him to do so, prayed for the souls of the parents of those children. He had never known any of them, so who was he to judge things they had done so many years ago? All he had to go on were stories told to him by those who were far from perfect themselves. He just hoped that eventually the police would give up on the case and forget about it. Those who had done wrong would be punished by God and their own consciences in the fullness of time. To bring such horror into the light after so many years was, he felt, the work of the Devil. It would only bring with it more pain and distress than he knew he could bear. But then he was a weak man and he recognised it.
It was that bloody Çetin İkmen’s fault! Meddling with things he shouldn’t. Sami cursed himself for giving the policeman information. He was at least partly to blame. İkmen hadn’t exactly twisted his arm, had he? Why had he done it?
Rüya was sleeping now, poor little thing. He’d probably traumatised her for life. She’d almost certainly leave, and then his heart and the act would lie dormant again for who knew how many decades. He’d be dementing by the time he managed to recruit anyone else, and if word ever got out, that would be impossible.
He fixed the sword back on the wall and sat in front of his open window. Down on the street, people were enjoying the warm evening, blissfully unaware of the havoc that was being wreaked by forces unleashed by the overly bold and unwary. Things had started to go wrong just after the elections. The country had begun to drift in directions that suggested bad entities were on the move. Then the Rudolfoğlus had been murdered and suddenly it was as if their father was back again, ably assisted by his evil adjutant Dimitri Bey, sending his Turkish troops to die in the deserts of Arabia and dancing with the Devil in the basement of his palace. It was said that he could make grass die just by looking at it, that he had sex with prepubescent children and that his daughter was a witch.
Sami hadn’t told İkmen everything. Maybe he shouldn’t have told him anything if this was going to happen.
Rüya walked in from the bedroom and sat beside him. Sami Nasi didn’t know whether to reach over and take her hand. He couldn’t look at her.
‘Rüya . . .’
‘These things happen,’ she said. ‘I knew the risks. You’ve never hidden them from me.’
She was twenty-seven years old, and yet how much more mature was she than he? Now
he looked at her, at the sweetness of her face and the enormous bruise on her neck. Only at the last minute had he realised that if he didn’t flatten the blade of his great-grandfather’s sword, he would take her head. She’d got away with a black, swollen bruise the size of a fist, but she was still alive.
‘I could have killed you,’ he said. He put a hand up to her face. She kissed it.
‘But you didn’t,’ she said. ‘Sami, darling, if I had wanted to have a life of security, I would have married my cousin Necmettin and stayed in my village. But then I met you and fell in love, and this whole new world of risk, magic and glamour opened up. As I said, these things happen.’
‘Yes, but—’
She put a finger on his lips, then kissed him. ‘Tomorrow we’ll do the trick again,’ she said. ‘And it will be fine.’
He was glad that she was so confident. He wasn’t. But then Rüya just thought that what had happened had been an accident. Sami wasn’t going to tell her any different. He didn’t want to do the trick again until he could put things right.
Realisation had come to Ali Erbil late. Even with his confession, the police weren’t going to let Elif go. She’d assaulted one of their own. They didn’t take kindly to that. Also, that Inspector Süleyman hadn’t believed him. He’d kept on asking him for details he couldn’t remember. He’d invented some things completely. But then it had all ended up in a sort of fog.
Before the incident in Yeniköy, he’d been able to convince himself that what they were doing was some sort of anarchical statement. He knew that if the oppressed didn’t rise up against their corrupt masters and take ruthless action, nothing would ever change. And Elif was the most oppressed person he had ever met. He had known that poor, illiterate and abused people existed, but he’d never encountered one before. She’d told him terrible stories in their early days together. About being so hungry her belly swelled; about having sex with one old man after another; about the miscarriages she’d had in the street like a feral cat. But what he hadn’t really understood, until Yeniköy, was the extent of her rage.
Both those men had been armed. All Elif had was a shard of glass. But she’d gone at the older man in a frenzy so intense it had temporarily paralysed the other character. She’d wounded them both so badly that she’d had to do very little to finish them off. But she’d done more than a little. He’d watched her, mesmerised by her need to spill more, more and then yet more blood. When she’d finished, her victims had been barely recognisable and she’d been red all over.
She’d thought she could leave looking like that! He’d had to almost rip her clothes off her back. Eventually he’d got her to change by talking about those things she wanted to talk about. Fame and glamour. She wanted to be someone. She wanted to be what he had been when he’d been at home with his parents: a person who had things. He’d tried to explain to her that things meant nothing, that diamonds didn’t make you happy and that the only way to true happiness was freedom. But she’d had so little in her life, she couldn’t understand.
He’d let her do what she wanted, pandered to her, and this was where they had ended up. Where he’d known they always would. He could try and convince himself that what they’d done was anarchy, but it wasn’t. It was envy, spite and a bloodlust he couldn’t understand. Elif was insane. He’d fallen for a madwoman.
He’d have to tell the truth. If he did, maybe she’d get treatment. But that would mean locking her away forever. Unless he too went mad. He began to kick his cell door. Just gently at first, and then more and more violently as his anxiety increased. Some bastard in the custody detail yelled, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ But he carried on. Eventually he heard a key being inserted in his door and he backed away. A cop almost frothing at the mouth with fury rushed in and grabbed him by the throat.
‘You never heard of bedtime, posh boy?’ he said.
Ali swallowed. ‘I need to speak to Inspector Süleyman.’
His phone had rung, for once, after they’d finished making love. Usually when he was required in the middle of the night, it rang just as he’d entered her or when she was going down on him. Then she’d bitch and moan, quite rightly, as they disengaged and he got dressed. It put Mehmet Süleyman in a bad mood. But this time was different. Full of the afterglow that followed good sex, he strode into the interview room prepared to listen.
Ali Erbil had a cut above his right eye that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen him. Süleyman sat. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘It’s the middle of the night. What do you want to say to me?’
‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ Ali said.
‘Didn’t you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was Elif. She’s crazy. I’ve tried to protect her. I love her, but . . . Look, I know you won’t believe me . . .’
‘On the contrary, Mr Erbil, I have absolutely no problem believing that Elif Büyük is a murderer. You saw what she did to my sergeant. What I have been struggling with is why. I know you took the blame for her because you love her. That I do understand.’
‘Before I tell you anything, you must promise me that you’ll get Elif some help,’ he said.
Ali Erbil was sweating. Süleyman didn’t know when he’d last had a fix, but it had to be many hours ago. Was he going to try and cut a deal in exchange for heroin?
‘I have already ordered psychiatric reports on both of you,’ Süleyman said.
‘On me?’
‘You are, by your own admission, addicted to heroin. That’s a psychiatric issue. It means I can’t rely upon what you say to me.’
‘But I’m telling you the truth now!’ Ali said.
‘You said you were telling me the truth when you signed your confession.’
‘Yes, but that was . . .’
He was sweating hard now, and his face was grey. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m not asking for a fix, all right? I feel like my guts are fucking dissolving and my head’s in a shit-storm, but—’
‘Just tell me,’ Süleyman said.
He wasn’t usually this calm, but he still had the vision in his mind of Gonca kneeling down in front of him, breathless and naked.
‘I met Elif in Tarlabaşı,’ Ali said. ‘She was working for this fat Syriani, selling bonzai. She was addicted to it. She also sold herself. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever met. I said I’d take care of her. I said I’d make her somebody.’
He’d got her off bonzai by getting her into heroin. An expensive proposition that, once Ali had left home, the two of them had funded mainly by shoplifting and pickpocketing. They’d lived on the street, occasionally breaking into derelict properties and sleeping in them for one or two nights, until they’d found somewhere more permanent, or so they thought, back in March.
‘It was a cellar,’ Ali said. ‘Some great old house. No one disturbed us – at first. We could dream. Elif’s were about being on television and having a kitchen studded with diamonds. I just wanted to burn the world.’ He swallowed. ‘Then it ended.’
‘What did?’
‘We thought the place was empty, but then I heard noises. Someone else was there.’
‘In the cellar? Who?’
‘It was a man. I saw him once, but I don’t think he saw me. I didn’t like it. We’d become unsafe again and I told Elif that we had to go. She was destroyed.’
‘In what way?’
‘She wanted to hurt someone, something,’ he said. ‘I truly think that if we’d been able to stay there, she would have got over her obsession about being somebody. I think she would have settled down. She was content with me. But then it was as if she was on a mission or something. Yet another thing taken away from her. It was too much.’
‘Couldn’t you and this other man have shared the basement?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know who he was. He looked old and as if he was some kind of landlord. He wasn’t one of us.’
‘When was this?’ Süleyman asked.
‘When we left? Two weeks ago, maybe a bit less.’
&nbs
p; ‘And where was this house?’
‘Over on the Asian side,’ Ali said. ‘In Moda.’
Chapter 15
Were she to die, then we could return to how we were . . .
Had the brothers killed Fatima and then killed themselves? Dr Sarkissian had ruled out suicide, but had he been right to do so?
That communication had gone from Kemal to Yücel in 1963. Clearly if they had killed Fatima they had waited a long time to do so. Barçın didn’t find a reply. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one; some letters might have been lost. Kanat particularly had lived in filth and chaos, and a lot of the pages that had been found in his apartment were too badly defaced to read.
She’d spoken about this job to Turgut, after he’d railed for a good hour about how the security situation was deteriorating in the east. His father had been arrested for something and held for two days at his local police station before being released without charge. Turgut had declared that he was going back to Diyarbakır as soon as he could. What he’d do there, he hadn’t said. But Barçın had noticed how he kept on talking about ‘us’, and what ‘we’ must do to rectify the situation. He was far more Kurdish than she was and he knew it. He’d said, ‘Of course you’ll stay here,’ as if he’d had a bad smell under his nose. It had made her feel like an outcast. She’d changed the subject to the Rudolfoğlus.
Going into the complexities of the relationships between the siblings and their parents had taken almost an hour. Turgut, as was his way, had listened in silence.
She’d said, ‘It’s as if an avenging angel came down and did away with them.’
Surprisingly for him, Turgut had said, ‘Maybe that is what happened.’
Barçın had been staggered. Turgut didn’t believe in anything supernatural.
Then he’d said, ‘You have referenced several people who knew about the animosity between these siblings. The house may have been hidden by undergrowth but it was and still is there. People know. They know about the father who courted the Devil, about the daughter who was abused by that father . . .’
‘We don’t know he actually had sex with her.’
The House of Four Page 15
