‘Will we have a policeman with us at the house we’re going to?’ Engelushjia asked. ‘To make sure that my father and Aryan’s family don’t harm us?’
Tepe smiled. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘we won’t let any harm come to either of you. I give you my word. You’re very brave people.’
The girl, in her youthful enthusiasm, reached up and impulsively hugged his neck. ‘Thank you.’
Ayşe Farsakoǧlu opened the apartment door and then slammed it behind her.
It was dark by the time Çetin İkmen finally managed to get down to the cells to see Angeliki Vlora. It was bone-chillingly cold down there; the duty officer was not the sort who believed that prisoners should experience anything approaching comfort. But İkmen was of a different order and so he took a couple of blankets and an extra packet of cigarettes along with him.
‘Come to gloat, witch’s child?’ the old woman said as she surveyed his figure in the doorway of her cell.
‘No. I came to give you these actually.’ İkmen threw the blankets onto her bed and placed the cigarettes in her hands. ‘And to tell you that you were right.’
She looked at him questioningly.
‘About my mother,’ he continued. ‘As you suggested, I spoke to my uncle and to Emina Ndrek also. And it seems my mother was murdered by her brother, but probably not in the way you imagine.’
‘No?’ She patted the small cot that served as her bed and motioned for him to sit down. ‘Tell me.’
İkmen sat down. He lit a cigarette and then one for the old woman. ‘My mother gave her life willingly to Salih Ndrek,’ he said, ‘in exchange for the lives of myself and my brother.’
‘The witch was with child.’
‘Yes, we think so,’ İkmen responded calmly, ‘although as I know you will appreciate, with my mother one could never be sure. She told such audacious lies.’ He smiled at his memory of her. ‘But then I’ve been thinking that if my mother’s actions put an end to the blood between the Bajraktar and the Ndrek, as indeed they did, then perhaps her sacrifice was worthwhile.’
‘The Bajraktar have other
fis
they are in blood with back home.’
‘Yes, but not here, Angeliki, not in my city. Not in a place where that madness can harm my children.’
‘
Gjakmaria
is a noble obligation.’
‘
Gjakmaria
,’ İkmen said, ‘is an insult to humanity. One thing I have learnt in all this is that Ghegs are bright and tough and instinctively magical people. I respect you, Angeliki, I respect your resistance and your adherence to what is truly your own. But, like the rest of us, you can’t just kill with impunity. No one will ever take you seriously or display any sympathy for you while you engage in this madness.’
Angeliki first spat on the floor and then said, ‘You live in your world, Turk, and I’ll live in mine. Ghegs don’t need the Ottoman’s permission to breathe any more.’
İkmen shrugged. ‘No, you don’t. But when you do finally leave custody, I will be watching you, Angeliki.’
‘In case I go after that coward that was my son?’ She laughed. ‘I expect you’ve put him somewhere safe now, İkmen.’
‘Yes,’ İkmen said with a smile, ‘I have. He’s a good man. He makes me believe that Albanians have a real future in the world. But Aryan is not the only reason why I will be watching you, Angeliki.’
‘Oh.’ It was said without apparent interest; the old woman seemed more interested in her cigarette.
‘No. I will also be watching you because I cannot find it within myself to forgive you.’
Angeliki frowned. ‘Forgive me? For what?’
‘I don’t suppose you have any idea how arduously I have had to prepare to tell my brother Halil how his mother died.’
She looked at him blankly.
‘No, I thought not,’ İkmen said with a sigh. ‘I have searched my soul and, lain awake at night. He found Mother, covered in blood, dead. Not a thing you’d forget, is it? But my brother has. The psychiatrist who has helped me to prepare for this says that Halil is in what she calls denial. In other words, his mind was so damaged by what he saw that he has blanked it out in order to protect himself. He was happy enough like that. And if I had never met you,’ he said, raising his voice slightly, ‘he and I would have stayed happy. But now that I know, I can’t keep the truth just to myself. Even taking into account the risk to my brother that telling him the truth involves, I can’t keep it from him. That would be disrespectful to him and anyway, what if he should learn about it from another source – like some malicious old woman?’
‘I did what I had to to protect my boys!’
‘Oh yes, I know that,’ İkmen said, ‘and I have rationalised it to myself in just those terms, but I still can’t forgive you.’ He stubbed out his cigarette on the floor and rose to his feet. ‘Must be the Albanian blood in my veins,’ he added bitterly.
‘Bastard!’
‘So if you are ever free again behave yourself, won’t you, Angeliki?’ He bent down to whisper in her ear. ‘Because the witch’s child will be watching you and if you so much as steal a strawberry . . .’ he clapped his hands hard right in front of her ear.
‘Ah!’
‘You will be back here as quickly as that.’
And then he knocked hard on the door to attract the guard’s attention.
In the few seconds it took for the door to be unlocked, Angeliki Vlora said, ‘So what was so special about the blood of the children of a Turk that Ayşe Bajraktar should give up her life?’
İkmen smiled. ‘I think it’s something called love, Angeliki,’ he said as the door opened. ‘It’s something that doesn’t depend upon blood or belong to any particular
fis
. Just love.’
Chapter 26
Mehmet Suleyman stood in front of Commissioner Ardiç’s desk, his eyes trained upon the now rapidly melting snow on his superior’s windowsill. Birds, mainly pigeons, were fighting over crumbs that only Ardiç could have put there, probably when he’d arrived that morning. Strange that so explosive a person could be sentimental about something as trivial as pigeons.
‘İkmen tells me,’ the older man said, closing what looked like an English newspaper, ‘that the British press seem to have forgotten about us.’ He shrugged. ‘There is an election impending, I believe.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Mmm.’ Ardiç inspected the tip of his cigar. ‘Difficult times.’
Suleyman, his eyes still focused on the world outside, did not respond. British politics were as much a mystery to him as he suspected they were to Ardiç and besides, he just wanted to get whatever was going to happen over with and then get back to Zelfa – and his baby, of course. Unborn and unknown, the foetus was his baby and he already loved it – just thinking about it almost made him smile.
‘And I am told,’ Ardiç continued, ‘that the British Ambassador in Ankara is meeting the Minister of Justice about our silent prisoner.’ He sighed. ‘Our respective heads of state enjoy very good relations, I believe.’
Suleyman looked down at Ardiç. ‘Sir?’
‘Who knows what will happen,’ Ardiç said. ‘Only Allah, who in His mercy has seen fit to silence Miss Evren. That we, as mere servants of Allah, cannot see beyond the embarrassment both our nations are experiencing over this is a failing within us as humans.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If we accept that it was indeed written that Miss Evren should survive to bring us all this trouble, we must also conclude that her saviour must have a purpose too. After all, you were in a difficult situation, your weapon was only discharged the once . . . Anyway, the Turkish police force has a reputation for supporting its better officers.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’d like you to finish your holiday, Suleyman,’ Ardiç said roughly, ‘and return to duty tomorrow.’
Suleyman smiled.
‘In future all hostage situations should be referred to me personally.’ Ardiç held a match to the end of his cigar and puffed. ‘There is no place in the Turkish police force for personalities.’ Catching the incredulous look in Suleyman’s eyes, he added, ‘And don’t even start to speak to me about İkmen!’
‘But—’
‘İkmen is a side issue, Suleyman! I don’t want to talk about him. I like him,’ he shrugged, ‘but I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Right, well, you’d better go now. Make the most of your last day on leave.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’ He was just about to salute and depart when Ardiç spoke again.
‘Oh, and please extend my regards to ex-Constable Cohen. I take it you are still living with his family?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Suleyman was not a little surprised at this. Ardiç rarely, addressed that amorphous lump known as ‘the men’ by name. But then he suspected that Ardiç knew rather more about a lot of things than he admitted to.
‘A pity his son has decided against a career in the police,’ Ardiç went on.
‘Berekiah, Mr Cohen’s son, feels that his talents are more suited to the world of art.’
‘Yes.’ He gave Suleyman one of his infrequent smiles. ‘One rarely dies or goes mad applying gold leaf or whatever to old pictures. And in view of the boy’s brother . . .’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, give them my regards anyway,’ Ardiç concluded and then signalled with a wave of his hand that the interview was over.
Still smiling, Suleyman left Ardiç’s office and ran towards his own. And when he opened the door, there was Zelfa waiting for him. After first placing a hand on her precious stomach he kissed her, then whispered his good news in her ear.
That evening, Halil İkmen made one of his rare visits to his brother’s riotous apartment in Sultan Ahmet. He and his cousin Samsun Bajraktar had been invited to a meal by Fatma, though Halil knew that Çetin must have been the prime mover behind this. After all, none of that business his brother had raked up about their mother had yet been resolved. As he prepared for his evening out, Halil found that he was more than a little nervous. Whatever Çetin had to tell him, if indeed he had anything, Halil wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to know. Not remembering an event, if that event is bad, is very comforting.
Nothing was said until after the meal was done. ‘Imam Bayıldı’, the aubergine dish cooked to Fatma’s unique and slightly sweet recipe, was served with great ceremony to the İkmen males and five of Çetin’s vast tribe of children. Small talk, mainly initiated by that gossipy old fruit Samsun, dominated the table and though trivial and sometimes even spiteful, the conversation was amusing and undemanding.
When the meal had finished, Halil followed Çetin and Samsun into the living room. Taking with them tea, brandy and cigarettes, the men effectively cut themselves off from the rest of the household, who either busied themselves in other rooms or went out for the rest of the evening. And so it was that over the next half-hour Çetin İkmen, the cat Marlboro asleep on his lap, smoked and drank his way through the series of events that had led to the death of Ayşe İkmen.
They all cried. Çetin as part of a continuing reaction to a tragedy he had now known about for some days, Samsun as much for her father as her aunt, and Halil with horror and also with a rushing sensation as the darkness that had engulfed his mind suddenly cleared.
‘I must have always known it,’ he said, the palms of his hands over his eyes. ‘I must have seen . . .’
‘Yes, you did,’ his brother answered, catless now, crouching down beside Halil’s chair, holding his shoulder tightly. ‘But you put it away. You buried it.’
‘I . . .’
‘You protected me, Halil,’ Çetin said. ‘Your first instinct was to look after your little brother. I genuinely knew nothing. I’ve searched my mind and I know it. And you did that,’ he squeezed Halil’s arm, ‘a very brave thing for a thirteen-year-old to do.’
And then the tears came again and Çetin’s arm went round his brother’s neck, rocking and comforting his pain.
‘But what was my father thinking?’ Samsun cried, her once clean skirt now covered with ash from her flailing cigarette. ‘
Gjakmaria
, yes, but for my father to actually . . .’
‘Samsun, he did what he did because of who he is.’
‘Yes, but he has killed a man, Çetin.’ She was crying again too now, great deep manly sobs. ‘He killed İsmail Ndrek. My father took part in
gjakmaria
. You should arrest him, you—’
‘What for?’ Çetin asked, his arms still circling his brother’s neck. ‘Emina Ndrek is not interested in pressing charges. However the blood between ourselves and the Ndreks started, it’s over now. They made a deal, as I told you.’
‘Yes, but as a policeman—’
‘But as a member of the Bajraktar family, Samsun,’ he said, ‘I must move on. Emina Ndrek said that I should look upon what she told me not as a policeman but as a member of this family, our family. And as such, Uncle Ahmet walks free. It’s that or stir up something that, once started, we may not be able to control.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well,’ İkmen said, ‘if younger members of our own and the Ndrek family hear this story, what do you think they will make of it? Those of a more volatile nature might take it into their heads to start it all up again.’ He frowned. ‘Things like this need to be left to die, Samsun.’
‘Then why did you tell us?’ Samsun indicated the still weeping Halil with her head. ‘Look at him, he’s destroyed!’
‘No he isn’t!’ Çetin snapped back. ‘My father bred tough children! Don’t even say that, Samsun!’
‘But—’
‘I told you and I told Halil because you deserved to know the truth! We were all young children then – you lost your aunt and we our mother. The truth is important in a person’s life. We know now that our mother sacrificed everything for us and we should thank and revere her for that.’
‘But Father never knew, did he?’ Halil said as he emerged from his brother’s embrace, his face drawn and wet with tears.
‘No, he didn’t,’ his brother answered with a sigh, ‘but then that was how she wanted it to be, Halil.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He looked down at the floor and tried to compose himself, but he couldn’t. ‘But she must have known that we would find her!’