A Noble Killing (30 page)

Just before they headed off towards Sultanahmet, Ayşe Farsakoğlu came over to the car and said to İkmen, ‘Sabiha’s family are apparently returning to the apartment.’

‘Well I’m off, hopefully to meet Cem,’ he said. ‘Play along with them until I’ve secured him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He drove off in the direction of the Royal Tombs in Sultanahmet.

Ali Reza Zafir had no idea about where Murad Emin liked to go when he wasn’t either at his piano lessons or at work. İzzet Melik had been obliged to tell the owner of the Tulip nargile salon who and what he really was when he and his colleague had found those extremist DVDs. Now, with Süleyman, he returned to the salon, but the boy wasn’t there and no one had any sort of idea where he might be.

As they left the Tulip, İzzet said, ‘I think he’s probably still in Balat.’

He hadn’t gone back to his parents’ apartment. A constable had been left there with Mr and Mrs Emin, and he said that Murad had most definitely not been seen.

Süleyman was still not happy about going back to Balat yet again, but he said, ‘You may be right. We should check it out.’

‘With junkies for parents, the kid can’t have that much money, even though he does work,’ İzzet said. ‘And Balat is a very good place to hide out. Lots of nooks, crannies and ruins.’

They got into Süleyman’s car and headed for the Atatürk Bridge. As Süleyman pulled out into the horn-hooting traffic, he said, ‘You know, İzzet, I’m not sure that I understand the relationship between Ali Reza and Murad Emin.’

‘Relationship?’

‘I don’t mean that they’re lovers or anything like that,’ Süleyman said. ‘I think they are or were friends, very good friends. But there’s something else too. A feeling of . . . indebtedness?’

İzzet frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not really certain,’ Süleyman said. ‘Maybe it has something to do with their piano-playing. When we first met Ali Reza he said he wanted to be a concert pianist. But from what I can gather, it is Murad who has the musical genius.’

‘You think Ali Reza might be jealous?’

‘It has to be possible,’ Süleyman replied. ‘And yet surely if he was
that
jealous, he would have informed on Murad’s interest in terrorism when he first found out about it. Clearly he didn’t do that, even though he claims that it bothered him. The boys have to be rivals in this upcoming Turco–Caucasian music festival. Why not get Murad out of the way?’

‘He’ll be out of the way now,’ İzzet replied.

‘Yes, but why not off him sooner?’ Süleyman asked. ‘It’s not like Ali Reza is some sort of street kid who will attract reprisals. He could have got rid of Murad at any time. Why didn’t he?’

Cem was the invisible man. As the boy back in Çarşamba had told him, İkmen saw that he was indeed about thirty-five, medium height, medium build, not particularly dark and not particularly fair either. He wore dull, rather rumpled clothing, typical of a manual labourer from the country. He had a small, nascent moustache and a flat cap that sat as if dropped directly down from heaven on the top of his head. İsmail Yıldız, in his loose cream shirt and baggy
şalvar
trousers, looked positively exotic in comparison.

While İkmen and Hikmet Yıldız watched, the two men greeted each other and İsmail ordered tea. Neither man smoked or did much beyond say a very few words to each other until their drinks had arrived. İkmen put his radio to his ear in order to hear their conversation. İsmail Yıldız had worn a wire to record his every encounter since he’d left the girl Sabiha’s apartment. The two men chatted about this and that, the weather and the pollution in the city, until İkmen heard İsmail say, ‘So, brother, you have called me here to talk about the job and also, I hope, to pay me. The job was satisfactory?’

There was a pause, a slight smirk even, then a very light and youthful voice said, ‘The job was done well.’

‘The girl . . .’

‘The girl is where her parents wanted her to be,’ Cem said. ‘Did you have any . . . problems?’

‘With the girl?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

There was a pause. İkmen had not discussed in detail what İsmail was supposed to say to Cem about how he had killed Sabiha. In the silence between the men, he winced.

‘What’s the matter?’ Hikmet Yıldız asked him.

‘I should have briefed your brother more comprehensively about how he would kill the girl,’ İkmen said. ‘I . . .’

‘No problem getting in,’ İsmail said. ‘Luckily she had her back to me and so I just grabbed her from behind.’

‘Dangerous to pour the accelerant over her at such close quarters.’

‘I pushed her to the floor,’ İsmail continued. ‘She knocked her head as she fell, which stunned her, and as she lay there I poured it on to her and then lit a match. It was all over in seconds.’

İkmen, hidden in the darkness of the night amongst the royal gravestones, made another painful face.

‘What do you mean, she died immediately?’ Cem asked, clearly shocked.

‘Well, no. No, she didn’t
die
immediately,’ İsmail said. ‘There was writhing around and some screaming and . . .’

‘You seem very cool for a man who has just taken the life of another,’ Cem said.

‘Ah! He is not convinced, I don’t think,’ İkmen said to Hikmet Yıldız. ‘This could be a problem.’

‘My brother is very imaginative,’ Hikmet said by way of at least some level of comfort for İkmen. Although even Hikmet was worried now. If Cem just upped and walked away, they would not have nearly so strong a case against him as either an outright confession or the exchange of money could demonstrate.

‘I took the life of a bad woman,’ İsmail said with some rather unexpected confidence. ‘How would you expect me to feel? This is pious work. I am elated.’

‘Well, yes, of course!’ This time it was Cem who was clearly wrong-footed.

‘Good boy,’ İkmen murmured. ‘Good, İsmail.’

‘Of course you are,’ Cem repeated.

‘Such necessary work is an honour and a pleasure.’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause while Cem drank his tea and İsmail Yıldız looked straight ahead with a small smile on his face.

‘So, um,’ Cem said eventually. ‘If more such opportunities were to come along . . .’

‘I would be delighted to oblige,’ İsmail said. He lowered his voice a little and added, ‘But, as we agreed, a man must eat, and . . .’

‘Of course.’

Sometimes, İkmen felt, it wasn’t easy being a Turk. Unless one was talking about the desperate, hand-to-mouth criminal fraternity, common courtesy precluded any rapid route to discussion of money. Even the city’s most hardened gangsters winced away from it. Negotiations were always lengthy and frequently, at least to start with, oblique.

‘I may well contact you again, when another opportunity arises,’ Cem said.

‘Is that likely?’

Cem smiled. ‘I have, shall we say, a few people to see.’

They both went back to drinking their tea and quiet contemplation. Much as İkmen knew that İsmail could not hurry this meeting, he moved his feet agitatedly. He looked at Hikmet Yıldız, who was watching his brother intently. Cem was a completely unknown quantity; he could refuse to pay İsmail, he could attack him, he could even be armed. Gun-toting was not unknown even in very populous areas like Sultanahmet.

İsmail Yıldız smiled. ‘Well, Cem Bey,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that I really have to go now. My brother will return home soon and I want to be there for him. I don’t want him asking any questions.’

‘No.’

Cem did not move to take anything from either his jacket pocket or his trousers. Did he even have any money to give to İsmail? İkmen began to feel his heart pound.

İsmail, still smiling, said, ‘And so, Cem Bey?’

‘And so . . .’

‘Cem Bey,’ İsmail persisted. ‘As I said before, a man must live . . .’

Had İkmen been closer to the men, he would have seen a twinkle in Cem’s eye as he said, ‘Ah, so you don’t do what you do just for the sake of a place in Paradise?’

İsmail looked down at the ground. ‘Were I a rich man, that would be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘But you sought out a poor man with no job. I am pious and observant, as you know, but . . .’

‘It’s OK,’ Cem said with a small chuckle in his voice. ‘You are of course quite right, and I have to thank you very sincerely on behalf of the girl’s family for a job well done.’

He put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out what looked like a very heavily stuffed envelope.

‘Right, that’s it!’ İkmen said. Hikmet Yıldız beside him used his radio to call the constables still in the car on Divan Yolu. Then he drew his pistol and followed his superior up into the tea garden and nargile salon above. Cem looked confused as İkmen approached him. He barely noticed Hikmet Yıldız come in behind him. In vain he tried to take back the packet, but İsmail had now passed it over to İkmen.

‘Hello, Cem,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘Police. We’ve been dying to meet you.’

Inspector İkmen was out, apparently. Not off duty and at home, but out.

‘He must be working somewhere,’ Lokman Seyhan said to his mother Saadet as he sat down beside her. They were in the waiting room at the front of the station together with all the other people who wanted to see this or that officer or just simply talk to the police.

‘Do they know when he will be getting back?’

‘No.’

Saadet took one of her son’s hands in hers and said, ‘You should go back to the apartment. If your father finds both of us gone . . .’

‘I don’t want to go back to him if he killed my sister,’ Lokman said. Then he sighed. ‘I don’t want to marry Nesrin.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘To him?’ Lokman said. ‘He’d made up his mind. You know how he is!’

Saadet lowered her head. Yes, she knew how Cahit was when he made up his mind about something. Poor Lokman, the only thing she could not forgive
him
for was his treatment of his brother Kenan. That had been cruel and heartless; that had been just like his father. But she said nothing. A man sitting next to Lokman lay down on the bench and immediately began to snore.

‘If Father did arrange for Gözde to be killed . . .’

‘I swear to you that he did!’ Saadet said, looking around her all the time in case anyone might be listening.

‘Mother, you had better be very sure of your facts . . .’

‘I saw the killer with my own eyes,’ Saadet said.

Lokman sat back in his seat as if deflated and said, ‘How?’

‘We passed him when we left the apartment on our way over to Fatih, on the day of Gözde’s death,’ she said. ‘Your father pointed him out to me. He made sure that I knew, that I felt pain, that I felt responsible for bringing such a bad girl into this world.’

It had taken Lokman Seyhan some time and thought to decide what, if anything, he believed about his mother’s story. All afternoon and half the evening he had considered it, raking the facts she had told him over and over in his mind. To be truthful, he hadn’t believed her when he unlocked her room, let her out and helped her to get past his sleeping, snoring cousin, Nesrin. But he’d heard his father rape his mother the night before and he knew he couldn’t let her go through that all over again. Cahit had taken his cousin Aykan to a brothel, and Lokman knew that although his father would be what he described as ‘sorted out’ there, he’d still want his wife when he got home. A whore was just for a hand job or a blow, depending on how much money you had, but a wife was for intercourse and babies, and Lokman knew that his father wanted to have more children. He had after all, as Cahit Seyhan put it himself, ‘lost’ two of his children, who now needed to be replaced. Since they had left Fatih, Saadet had told Lokman a lot more about his father and Gözde and how she had died. He was now sure that his mother was right. But he was still anxious about what the police might say and do. He was angry too, and not just at his father.

‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ he asked his mother as the door of the station opened and shut. It was not Çetin İkmen, but some man who just went up to the front desk and wept. ‘Why didn’t you try and save Gözde? You could have told me or Kenan or—’

‘Oh, and you would have believed me?’ Saadet said.

‘Kenan would . . . he did,’ Lokman said. ‘Remember his suicide note?’

‘Yes.’ Of course she did. But Kenan had only guessed, that, or he’d worked it out for himself. He hadn’t
known
, inasmuch as she had never told him. She had been too frightened of Cahit to speak to anyone, even the son, whom she knew would believe her and who would have helped her to spirit Gözde away. What a coward she had been! Afraid of a beating, afraid of giving up her own life for her young daughter. ‘I am not a good person. I am weak,’ she said at length. ‘I cannot bring Gözde back, or Kenan, but I must try to put some of it right now.’

Lokman looked at her without the great affection he had once felt for her but with a new respect nevertheless. ‘I’m staying with you,’ he said. ‘We’ll get through this together. We don’t have anyone else.’

Süleyman had already decided to pay a visit to Murad Emin’s piano teacher, Izabella Madrid, when he and İzzet Melik came across Gonca the gypsy. She was walking past the Church of St Mary of the Mongols and she had her youngest boy, Rambo, who was about twelve, with her. She did not look happy, and was shouting at the boy in the Roma language she used when she was alone with her family and friends. He, in turn, swore at her in Turkish and then, before anyone could stop him, ran over to Süleyman and said, ‘Shoot her with your gun! Go on! Shoot the old witch!’

Rambo had always been a handful, but now that he was on the edge of puberty, he was taking on some of the characteristics of a monster.

Süleyman, hideously embarrassed, especially in front of İzzet Melik, said, ‘Now, Rambo, that is no way to speak about your mother.’