Deep Waters (8 page)

‘But—’

‘No!’ she screamed and flew out of the kitchen and down the stairs. Engelushjia looked back just once to see, through her tears, the blurred vision of her mother panting heavily in the hallway. But the sight didn’t stop her. From the house she ran into the street. It was only when the cold winter air had filtered into her brain for a few minutes that she realised she didn’t have a clue what she should do now.

‘So you think that the family of the victim will go after this other clan,’ Ayşe Farsakoǧlu said rather more baldly than İkmen had intended.

‘I think it’s a real possibility,’ he answered. ‘Albanian blood feuds are notorious both for their brutality and the inevitability of the process. They all adhere to a set of rules known collectively as the Kunan of Lek Dukagjini. This states that blood on one side must result in the letting of blood on the other. If Rifat Berisha was killed by the Vlora family, we can expect their blood to flow very soon.’

‘Does your informant think that Berisha’s death was definitely the work of this other lot, sir?’ Orhan Tepe asked.

The three uniformed officers turned towards him as he spoke. His question went to the heart of what İkmen was proposing they do. Staking out both the Berisha place and an address on Tahtakale Caddesi was not going to be cheap with regard to man hours and so there had to be at least reasonable suspicion regarding this other family.

‘Forensics are not yet in on Rifat’s body,’ İkmen said and lit up a cigarette. ‘And with no witnesses, as yet, there is no way we can even think about arresting anyone.’ He paused briefly in order to cough. ‘However, my informant does know that the feud between the Berishas and the Vloras is longstanding and serious. Whether the Vloras killed Rifat or not, the Berishas will probably think they did. That is enough, in my mind, to warrant us doing what we are doing today.’

‘So what do you want us to actually do then, sir?’ a young officer called Hikmet Yıldız asked.

‘I want you to watch the properties, observe the comings and goings around them and note and report anything unusual or suspicious. By that I mean things like known faces turning up at either address or movements of people in or out of the buildings.’

‘And if things get rough?’ Tepe asked. ‘For instance if we observe a Berisha attacking a Vlora or—’

‘You contact me before you do anything,’ İkmen said gravely. ‘It’s important that they remain ignorant of our presence and suspicions.’

‘But what if they actually try to kill each other?’ an older constable called Roditi inquired.

‘Well, as officers of the law, you will have to prevent that,’ İkmen said, ‘but I would prefer it if you try not to arrest protagonists at the scene. We don’t officially have anything on the Vloras and the last thing I want to do is compromise my informant. Now, do any of you speak Albanian?’

The three ‘uniforms’ plus Tepe looked sheepishly at each other. Then they all looked blankly at İkmen.

‘I take it that’s a “no” then,’ he said as he moved behind his desk and sat down.

‘We do know that the Berishas speak Turkish though, don’t we, sir?’ a frowning Tepe observed.

‘Yes. As do the Vloras, but it would be helpful if we could understand what they are saying when they speak to each other. Unfortunately, we don’t have any Albanians on the force or they would be here now instead of you poor souls, so we’ll just have to make the best of what we do have. İnşallah we will gain something useful from our efforts. Any more questions?’

For a few moments the occupants of İkmen’s office looked at each other questioningly before, finally, Tepe said, ‘No, sir, I think we’re all clear.’

Various heads nodded in agreement.

‘Good. Off you go then,’ İkmen said with a wave of what some considered an imperious hand.

They started to leave, with the exception of Tepe who approached İkmen’s desk.

‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘Is anything going to happen about that surgery Rifat Berisha had?’

İkmen put his cigarette out, lit another, and then looked up gravely at his junior officer. ‘That fascinates you, doesn’t it, Orhan?’

‘Only inasmuch as I find the idea of selling your bodily organs repellent,’ Tepe said as he, too, lit a cigarette.

İkmen sighed. ‘I am planning to formally interview the Berishas in the near future,’ he said, ‘and I will raise the subject with them. It is always possible, you know, that he might have had his kidney removed legitimately. Even if he didn’t, getting hold of the buggers who organise these deals is notoriously difficult. Not to mention the doctors who perform the operations.’

‘They’re usually based abroad, aren’t they, sir?’

‘Usually,’ İkmen said, ‘but we never know what life may throw at us, do we? And in this case, my dear Orhan, our surgeon might be home-grown.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, on your way then,’ İkmen said in dismissal. ‘Can’t let the uniforms out on important business unescorted, can we?’

Catching just the edge of a twinkle in his boss’s eye, Orhan Tepe smiled as he said, ‘No, sir.’

His friend was, Balthazar Cohen thought as he watched Mehmet Suleyman stride purposefully into the living room, growing even more handsome with age. Tall, dark and grave, Mehmet was turning into one of those middle-aged heroes Balthazar remembered being so popular in films in the 1960s. Not of course that he would tell Mehmet this.

‘You were very late last night,’ he said as a visible leer crossed his features. Strange the way Mehmet was always late home when old Dr Babur Halman was out of town.

‘I had some work to do,’ the younger man replied.

‘Oh, well, I hope you felt relieved afterwards.’

‘Cohen!’

Even though the handsome eyes blazed in line with the sharpness of his voice, Cohen knew it was only a warning. They were old friends, they’d been here before.

Cohen lit a cigarette and watched with some amusement the rather laborious process Suleyman employed in order to get his tie just right. Finally, tiring of his friend’s fastidiousness, he said, ‘Berekiah’s going in to see the old man today.’

‘Yes, I know, I’m taking him. Remember?’

‘I hope he manages to persuade him to join up.’

Suleyman frowned. ‘I don’t think that İkmen’s in the business of making the force appear sweeter than it really is, you know, Cohen.’

‘My son needs a job, Mehmet,’ Cohen said as he raised his dark-rimmed eyes to his friend’s face. ‘He can’t work for Lazar for ever. I mean, if he were running the gold shop himself that would be one thing. But to be just an assistant and at his age – that’s a job for a child and he’s a man. He needs a man’s job now.’

‘Well, it’s for Berekiah to decide,’ Suleyman said with a sigh. ‘İnşallah he will make the right decision.’

‘Mmm.’

The telephone, which now that he was housebound sat permanently at Cohen’s side, trilled into life. He picked it up with what Suleyman observed to be a very shaky hand.

‘Yes?’ he said into the instrument and then, looking up at his friend, ‘Yes. He’s still here . . . Yes . . . One moment.’ He placed his other shaking hand over the mouthpiece and said to Suleyman, ‘I think it’s your father.’

‘My father? But—’

‘Just take the call, Mehmet,’ Cohen said and handed the phone to him. ‘Whoever it is, he wants you.’

With a shrug, Suleyman took the instrument from Cohen and walked towards the window.

‘Hello?’ he said cautiously. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Mehmet, it’s me,’ a familiar elderly voice replied. ‘My son, you must listen, we need to talk.’

‘I think we did that some time ago, didn’t we?’

‘Child, I need to see you before all this stupidity means we never see each other again!’ There was a desperation in his father’s voice that made Mehmet pay attention. ‘I have been speaking to your brother,’ his father continued, ‘and I think that the three of us really do need to meet. I can reserve a table at Rejan’s. Talk to Murad and pick an evening that suits you both. He can let me know.’

His father’s tone was beginning to worry Mehmet now. He wondered why his father had suddenly chosen to move out from under his wife’s harsh gaze and contact him again. ‘Father, you and Mother are quite well, aren’t you?’ he asked as his heart began to pound inside his chest.

‘There is nothing wrong with either your mother or myself,’ his father replied. ‘I just want an end to all of this bitterness in our family.’

‘And Mother?’

‘Your mother makes her own decisions, as you well know,’ the old man said with a sigh. Mehmet could all too easily picture his thin, world-weary face.

‘I know,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I will speak to Murad.’

‘You will come?’

‘If my brother comes, so will I.’

A faint sigh from the other end of the line signalled to Mehmet that his father was very relieved at this, albeit qualified, acceptance from his son.

‘You know I’ve never felt any resentment towards you personally, don’t you, Father?’ Mehmet began. ‘I—’

‘We will discuss all things when we meet, my son,’ his father interrupted. ‘A man should eat with his sons and . . . Call your brother soon, won’t you?’

‘You have my word that I will,’ Mehmet said, responding formally to what sounded almost like tears in his father’s voice.

‘Thank you, my son. We will speak again soon.’

‘Yes, we shall,’ Mehmet said with genuine gentleness for the old man in his voice. ‘Goodbye, Father.’

‘Goodbye, Mehmet.’

Had Berekiah Cohen not walked in resplendent in his older brother’s suit just at that moment it is uncertain how long Mehmet Suleyman would have spent staring out of the window in the wake of that telephone call. But Berekiah wanted a man who had some dress sense to judge his ensemble. And the only man in the apartment who qualified was Mehmet.

For just a second, the aristocratic Turk frowned. ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘grey suit with grey shoes is,’ he smiled suddenly and dazzlingly, ‘very smart indeed, Berekiah, if a little too stylish for a police station. Not that I have ever allowed myself to be dictated to by the lowest common denominator.’

Estelle Cohen, who had been watching her son’s entrance from just inside the kitchen door, moved forward rapidly to take his face between her hands. ‘Didn’t I tell you you looked just beautiful?’ she said and kissed a slightly resistant Berekiah on the cheek. ‘Nobody understands good dressing like Mehmet and if he says you’re smart, well . . .’

‘Mum, please, don’t fuss.’

‘As long as the Inspector likes him, that’s all that really matters,’ Balthazar said sternly. ‘You be polite, respectful and show real interest, Berekiah. The Inspector is a great man and don’t you forget it.’

‘No, Father.’

Fearing that his friend might now be on the edge of one of his frequent eulogies about İkmen or his own days on the beat, Suleyman brought proceedings smartly to a close.

‘Well,’ he said, turning towards Berekiah, ‘we’d better go.’

‘Right.’ Going first to his mother and then across to his father, Berekiah kissed them both before making his way towards the door.

‘You will look after him, won’t you, Mehmet?’ Estelle asked with the kind of strained concern in her eyes Suleyman knew sprang from the fact that the Cohen’s eldest son Yusuf now lived in an institution. His mind broken by months of fighting and anxiety in the eastern provinces, Yusuf would probably never come home again now, which left Berekiah to carry all of his parents’ hopes, ambitions and fears.

Suleyman smiled. ‘He’ll be fine, Estelle,’ he said soothingly, ‘and you know that Çetin Bey won’t force him to commit to something he’s unsure about.’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, will you let those boys go now, woman!’ a frustrated voice called from its static position at the other side of the room. ‘They have men’s business to attend to!’

Smiling once more into Estelle’s anxious eyes, Suleyman squeezed one of her hands and then left. Had he looked back a moment later, he would have seen the hardness in her face as she looked down at her husband. But it was not until he and Berekiah reached the front door that they heard her start.

‘Don’t you ever tell me what is and is not my business!’ she yelled.

‘I—’

‘You have absolutely no right to tell me anything, Balthazar!’

Suleyman looked at Berekiah, who shrugged before saying, wryly, ‘Families.’

‘Indeed,’ the Turkish aristocrat replied and then held the door open for his young friend ‘Let’s go.’

The apartment block İkmen’s informant had named as housing the Vlora family did not, in Tepe’s judgement, look like the sort of place either he or his temporary partner on this observation, Hikmet Yıldız, would feel comfortable living in. Of probably early twentieth-century vintage, it boasted a cheap clothing shop on the ground floor with even cheaper apartments above. Drab, by the look of it even in the summer, the place had a couple of boarded-up windows on the second floor, and a pile of litter and filth had gathered by the front entrance. Tepe could not help feeling that the building’s kapıcı, if such a place had one, deserved to be beaten for such slackness.

Since the two officers had been observing the property, from early that morning, they had seen numerous people come and go: headscarfed women carrying empty baskets, on their way to shop in either the Mısır Çarşısı or amongst the local street traders; short, bundled up men wearing flat caps and smoking, heading for their various places of employment; and of course children, lots of them, running into and out of the building, laughing and shrieking as they went. The only constant in this shifting scene was the small group of middle-aged men who squatted companionably beside the steps up into the building. There were three of them and they had been where they were now when Tepe and Yıldız had arrived. Two of the men were small and dusky, while the third was of a rather different order, being tall and blond. Typically, the men spent their time talking, laughing and smoking. The officers didn’t know whether or not they were Vlora men but they were almost certainly Albanian. A brief pass by Tepe across that side of the street had quickly established the lack of Turkish, Greek or any other recognisable language between them.