A Noble Killing (34 page)

‘And the girl?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Sergeant Farsakoğlu has had her taken to a refuge in İzmir,’ İkmen said. ‘Whether she’ll stay there . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Constable Yıldız’s brother is going to have to endure a lot of questioning.’

‘You don’t doubt that he was telling the truth, do you, Çetin?’

‘Not at all,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s a genuinely good religious man. He was shocked that religion should be used in the service of such barbarity.’

‘Where on earth did Koç get such an idea from?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Well, that we don’t know yet,’ İkmen said. ‘Cahit Seyhan, the father of Gözde, our burning girl of Beşiktaş, is doing what so many seem to do and refuses to speak.’

İkmen had had Cahit Seyhan picked up just after Saadet Seyhan had given her statement to the police. The next step was to question Murad Emin, but that had to be done by staff at the Juvenile Police Directorate. It would either be another study in silence, or a very interesting and probably disturbing experience.

As they passed in front of a massive hoarding showing an advertisement for a new home-grown TV police series, İkmen said, ‘Sometimes even I just occasionally hanker for the methods of the past.’

‘You mean . . .’

‘Cahit Seyhan is the sort of man who beats and rapes others in order to establish his dominance. That’s how he operates, how his mind works. Perhaps a beating . . .’ But then he laughed. ‘Did I really say that? I must be exhausted.’

Dr Zafir had never met Mr Emin before.

‘Our sons know each other,’ the doctor said to the thin, grey man who sat with him in the waiting room at the entrance to the police station. ‘I’m here because I don’t know where to go.’

‘No.’

Dr Zafir didn’t want to say ‘because my wife has died’ or been killed or murdered or however one expressed such a thing, because he really didn’t want to think about that. And so he ploughed on with ‘They share a love of the piano.’

Mr Emin looked up and smiled. He’d lost a front tooth, somehow, the previous day and so he looked even more dishevelled and desperate than usual.

‘My son described your son as a genius.’

‘Oh, he’s that all right!’ Mr Emin said, and then his face darkened. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s good for boys to have shared interests. I . . . I have a friend, you know, we started school together, college, university, medical school . . .’

‘You’re a doctor?’

‘Yes.’ He almost dismissed it. Then suddenly the anxiety rolled in again, as it did, on a vast, heart-thumping breaker. ‘Our boys are in so much trouble! So much trouble!’

Mr Emin had no idea what Dr Zafir’s son might have done, only that he had been arrested. ‘They say Murad has broken some law to do with terrorism,’ he said. Then he shrugged. ‘Pictures and film of al-Qaeda and such-like. A lot of fuss. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it.’ He leaned forward in his chair and took a soggy roll-up out of his pocket. He put it in his mouth and lit up. ‘Same for your boy, is it?’

‘My son killed his mother.’ It came out stark and emotionless, just like that. Then all of a sudden, and quite unbidden Dr Zafir began to cry.

Mr Emin watched him. Part of his mind couldn’t bring itself to believe what the other man had just said. That a boy known to Murad would actually kill his mother! How had that happened, he wondered and to someone as rich and exalted as a doctor? But then education didn’t mean as much in the modern world as it had, as Mr Emin knew to his cost. Anyone could fall from grace at any time, anyone could slip off the radar. He looked at Dr Zafir and wondered whether he might be persuaded to part with some heroin for a small consideration.

The boy walked into the room. From behind the two-way mirror that allowed İkmen and Süleyman to see what was about to happen, it was dimly lit and vaguely eerie. The psychologist, a woman, introduced herself as Hatice. She and Murad Emin sat down in soft chairs that had been placed opposite each other. Over in the corner sat a constable, and next to him was a television and DVD player. Hatice asked the boy how he had slept and whether he’d managed to eat anything. Murad replied in the affirmative to both of those questions. She talked about nutrition and the importance of eating the right food, and Murad said that as well as a physical necessity it was also a spiritual duty for a Muslim to look after his body.

‘I’ve never smoked or drunk alcohol,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘But he quite happily worked in a nargile salon,’ İkmen said to Süleyman. He whispered, even though none of the people in the next room could possibly hear either of them.

‘Mum and Dad have always been on the gear,’ Murad said.

‘Heroin.’

‘Yes. I don’t want that life.’

‘What kind of life do you want, Murad?’

‘A clean, good life, dedicated to my religion.’

Hatice smiled. ‘That sounds very nice. There’s nothing wrong with a life of abstinence, prayer and contemplation.’

İkmen rolled his eyes up at this and Süleyman sighed. The chairs they’d been given to sit on were small and hard and he was very uncomfortable.

‘But why the DVDs?’ Hatice asked. ‘The DVDs of violent acts committed in the name of religion by people whose only function is to distort and then kill for their own pleasure.’

‘Al-Qaeda are heroes,’ Murad said. ‘They’re right. Americans and other infidels kill Muslims, they take their lands, they drink and dance and commit abominations, their women are uncovered and they’re whores.’

‘What, all non-Muslim women?’

‘Yes!’

‘Look at his eyes,’ Süleyman said to İkmen. ‘They’re shining. It’s as if he’s having some sort of ecstatic experience!’

He was right. Murad Emin’s eyes were bright with fervour, and now he was also smiling. ‘Yes, they’re all whores.’

‘So what about Muslim women who choose not to cover themselves?’ Hatice said. ‘Women like me.’

She was modestly but fashionably dressed and her head was not covered.

‘You? Well you seem OK, I think,’ Murad said.

‘Oh, so not all uncovered women . . .’

‘Even if women are covered and they meet men, they are still whores,’ Murad said. ‘And that’s it really, that’s the thing about women: you can’t always know just from looking at them whether they are real whores or not. My mum never covers herself, even though I wish that she would, but she isn’t a whore.’

Süleyman looked at İkmen and said, ‘He’s changed his tune. Yesterday, when he was holding a gun at old Miss Madrid’s head, his father was on the gear and his mother was on the streets. Do you think he’s trying to come across as crazy?’

‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s been accused of being the person that Cahit Seyhan employed to kill his daughter Gözde. Saadet Seyhan is absolutely certain he is the one.’

‘Murad,’ Hatice said, ‘can you tell me how you feel about women?’

The boy frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, do you like women? Do you have fancies for girls that maybe you’d like to talk to or go out with or—’

‘No! Mixing of the sexes is a sin!’

‘Who says so?’

He didn’t speak at all for a moment, then he said, ‘It’s my religion. It’s wrong. I don’t want to talk about it.’

Hatice smiled. ‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘Now what about men? Do you have male friends, Murad?’

He looked down at his hands, and İkmen thought that his face coloured just a little. ‘Not really.’

‘What, not at school? Not at the nargile salon? Your piano lessons?’

‘I don’t go to a proper piano school any more,’ he said. ‘Hamid Bey died and now I go to Miss Madrid.

‘Ah, Miss—’

‘I don’t want to talk about her, she’s a Jew,’ Murad said in a way that was not panicky at all, just straightforward.

Hatice smiled again and said, ‘I don’t suppose you do.’ Then she said, ‘But you do know a boy called Ali Reza, don’t you, Murad?’

He raised his chin a little as if trying to shut his own mouth from the inside, then with a tiny affirmative he admitted that he did.

‘Because he knows you,’ she said.

‘He tells lies about me!’ Murad said.

‘Like what?’

‘Well, like . . .’ He was red again, red and hot and flustered.

‘Does Ali Reza call you a homosexual?’ Hatice said.

The boy got up in an apparent fury, only to be told to sit down by the constable, who was now up on his feet in front of Hatice.

‘No one calls me homosexual!’ Murad shouted. ‘Homosexuality is a sin, I’d never do it!’

‘Well, let’s see what your friend Ali Reza has to say about that, shall we?’ Hatice said as she went over to the television and put a DVD into the player. ‘I had some time with him earlier today. Like this session, it was recorded.’

İkmen looked at Süleyman, who said, ‘I thought we were supposed to be observing both the boys’ sessions?’

İkmen shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘This is the Juvenile Directorate. It’s a mystery.’

Murad Emin sat down. The DVD, after a splutter, began to play.

‘Murad hates women because he wants to fuck men,’ Ali Reza Zafir said. He was sprawled in the chair that Murad Emin was sitting in now, looking casual, cocky, almost relaxed. ‘He doesn’t want anyone to know. He hides behind his religion. He’s guilty.’

‘That’s not true!’ Murad Emin wailed at the screen. ‘He’s lying!’

But Hatice silenced him. ‘Watch and we’ll talk later,’ she said. ‘This is what I want you to hear, Murad.’

There was a pause, and then the image of Ali Reza Zafir on the screen said, ‘I wouldn’t put it past Murad to hurt or even kill a woman.’

‘And yet it was you,’ the screen psychologist said to him, ‘who killed your own mother.’

‘That was an accident.’

‘You hit her over the head with a very heavy chopping board. What kind of accident was that?’

There was a pause. Ali Reza Zafir looked up at the camera in the corner of the room in a very deliberate fashion and said, ‘Murad killed our piano teacher you know. Hamid Bey.’

‘No. No! No! No!’

The psychologist switched the DVD player off and looked at a stricken Murad Emin.

‘Did you kill Hamid İdiz, your piano teacher?’ she asked.

‘No!’ the boy was almost in tears now. ‘No, I didn’t!’

‘Murad, I have to remind you,’ she said, ‘that we have taken a DNA sample from you, and if that matches DNA found at the scene . . .’

‘I did not kill Hamid Bey!’ Murad wailed. ‘Do whatever you like! I did not kill him, I would not kill him.’

‘Why not? You very freely stated in front of police officers that Hamid İdiz’s homosexuality offended you, that he sometimes masturbated in your presence . . .’

‘I . . . I didn’t kill him,’ the boy said. He paused, then asked her, ‘What else did Ali Reza say?’

‘What about?’

‘He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Me.’

‘That was all Ali Reza said about you,’ Hatice said. She looked down at a piece of paper on her lap. ‘Now we must address the most serious allegation against you, Murad.’

İkmen looked at Süleyman and took a deep breath. They were getting, hopefully, to Gözde Seyhan.

‘An allegation has been made that you, under the direction of the girl’s father, killed Gözde Seyhan,’ Hatice said. ‘You poured petrol over her and set her alight at her home in Beşiktaş. You did this, it is alleged, for money.’

The boy said nothing.

‘The allegation has been made by someone who the police at headquarters deem to be reliable,’ Hatice said.

‘An old woman,’ Murad said. ‘She shouted at me. I’d never seen her before.’

‘The dead girl’s mother.’

‘Yes.’

Hatice leaned forward. ‘Murad,’ she said, ‘we also have forensic evidence from the scene of Gözde Seyhan’s murder that does not, as yet, relate to anyone known to us. Principally there was a petrol can at the scene that yielded some samples, hair . . .’

‘They won’t match me!’ He said it in a very childish and petulant way. But then he was only fifteen.

‘We will see,’ Hatice said. She looked at her notes again and asked, ‘Murad, who or what are Leopold and Loeb?’

The boy didn’t answer, but Çetin İkmen, behind the two-way glass, visibly paled. ‘Leopold and Loeb?’ he asked Mehmet Süleyman. ‘Why is she asking him about Leopold and Loeb?’

Süleyman shrugged. ‘I imagine it’s because when the boys were being transferred . . .’

‘Your friend Ali Reza referred to Leopold and Loeb when you were waiting to be transported here from police headquarters,’ Hatice said. ‘Can you tell me what that means, Murad?’

‘Can Ali Reza?’

‘I’m asking you,’ she said.’

For the first time in the interview, Murad Emin looked completely away from her and then shut his eyes.

Behind the glass, Süleyman said to İkmen, ‘What are Leopold and Loeb? I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t know much,’ İkmen said. ‘But I do know that Leopold and Loeb were famous murderers back in the early part of the twentieth century. There were, some reckoned, homoerotic overtones to the crime.’

‘Where did it happen?’

‘In America. Alfred Hitchcock made a film about them,’ İkmen said.

‘So what . . .’

‘If my memory serves me correctly,’ İkmen said, ‘Leopold and Loeb were very young when they killed. They were young and they killed entirely without any motive beyond the desire to commit the perfect crime.’

‘Which of course they didn’t achieve.’

‘No,’ İkmen said. ‘But if I’m right, what let them down was their insatiable desire to talk about what they’d done. In effect they gave themselves and each other away.’

It was becoming very clear to Ayşe Farsakoğlu that Cem Koç was not in fact a religious man. He lived in Fatih, his family were good Muslims and he did, in general, abstain from loose behaviour and alcohol. But he was no saint. He was also not, to Ayşe’s way of thinking, a real sinner either. His crime was his relative poverty and the fact that he could apparently close his mind to the terrible agonies the girl Sabiha would have gone through had she really been set on fire. But neither of the girl’s parents had, as yet, admitted to seeking her death. That made things difficult, but not, as Ayşe knew, impossible.