‘Would you like some tea, Inspector?’
İkmen looked up and saw the pale face of Ayşe Farsakoǧlu gaze quizzically over at him from outside his office.
‘Yes, please. Large,’ he said and then turned back to the computer screen which was currently showing him that he had a very long way to go with his report. İkmen sighed. He’d made a lot of discoveries during his short time in and around Hikmet Sivas’s home, but of the man himself he’d learned little.
His mobile telephone started to ring. İkmen picked it up and grunted into the mouthpiece.
‘It’s Cohen,’ a smoke-scarred voice said. ‘I thought I’d better ring because I know you knew the lady . . .’
‘What lady? What are you talking about, Cohen?’ He was really too tired to listen to Cohen’s gossip right now. İkmen sympathised with the ex-constable’s situation; if he had been crippled by the earthquake he’d probably live his life through gossip too, but now was not a good time.
‘The seamstress,’ Cohen said. ‘Muazzez Heper. Knocked down and killed by a car in the underpass at Cankurtaran railway station.’
İkmen felt the hairs rise on the back of his head. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Avcı told me,’ Cohen said, referring to one of his old colleagues in uniform. ‘Happened at about midday. Whoever did it just drove away. She was alone, Miss Muazzez. A man who was leaving the station at the time caught sight of a white car, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Muazzez and Yümniye Heper made my Esther’s wedding dress.’
‘You’re sure it was Muazzez and not Yümniye?’ İkmen asked. What would a blind woman be doing alone in a district so far from her home?
‘Oh, yes,’ Cohen said, ‘definitely. Tragic.’
Yes, and chilling, İkmen thought. The last time he’d seen Muazzez Heper she’d been mouthing furiously at her sister after he’d shown them both that awful, beautiful dress. Just before he saw that odd woman with the red hair again, staring at him from outside the gate.
‘But life goes on,’ Cohen said with a sigh, ‘especially for my son and your daughter.’
İkmen, whose mind hadn’t caught up with this rapid change of subject, just grunted.
‘Yes,’ Cohen continued breezily, ‘they’ve been seeing quite a lot of each other lately. You and I will have to watch the situation closely.’
‘What do you mean?’ It sounded very much, to İkmen, as if someone had intended to kill Muazzez Heper. But who and why? Surely not just because of that dress?
‘Well, in case they want to be together,’ Cohen said.
İkmen, who had now managed to catch up with the conversation, frowned. He knew that Hulya liked Berekiah, but what of it?
‘I can’t see anything wrong with that,’ he said. ‘Berekiah is a very nice boy.’
‘A very nice Jewish boy, yes,’ Cohen replied somewhat tartly. ‘Your Hulya is a Muslim.’
‘Oh, Cohen, don’t tell me you’ve suddenly become religious! I can’t think of one of your mistresses who was Jewish.’
‘Yes, but my wife is! Estelle is! And she’s the mother of my children. Five hundred years my family have been here and not once have we married out! It’s important to me, Inspector, to Estelle, to my brothers!’
Ayşe Farsakoǧlu entered İkmen’s office bearing a steaming glass of tea which she placed in front of him on his desk. He looked up and smiled wearily at her.
‘Well, Cohen,’ he said, ‘let’s see what develops, shall we? At the moment they just like each other.’
‘Yes, but what if my boy comes to you, asks you for Hulya?’
‘Well, Cohen . . .’ İkmen began.
Ayşe Farsakoǧlu turned to go while İkmen still, vaguely, watched her.
‘It’s important that we talk about this, Inspector,’ Cohen said.
‘I’ve got to go, Cohen,’ İkmen said, smacking the end button as quickly as he could with his finger. ‘Sergeant Farsakoǧlu!’
She turned. ‘Yes, sir?’
İkmen stood up and walked round the side of his desk towards her. ‘You’ve got blood on the back of your shirt,’ he said. ‘Have you been involved in something?’
She turned her head and her back away from him. ‘No.’
‘Well then, have you had an accident?’
The uneasy look that had settled onto her face gave İkmen a very bad feeling. ‘Ayşe?’
‘I fell at home,’ she said, ‘against the stove. In the kitchen.’
İkmen moved to look at the large bloodstain but she shifted away again.
‘When did this happen?’ he asked.
‘Oh, last night . . .’ It was obvious she had just picked this out of the air.
‘Quite a sharp-edged stove you must have,’ he said. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘No.’
‘Well, I think you should.’ Gently but firmly he took hold of her elbow and attempted to move her around so that he could look at the stain once again.
‘Sir!’
But he was stronger than her and managed to move her so that he could see the stain easily. Not only was it very large but the blood was obviously fresh. İkmen frowned. ‘Has anyone else commented on this?’
‘No, sir.’ And then gently she began to cry. ‘People don’t get involved . . .’
‘Get involved with what?’ İkmen asked. ‘Somebody hurting you?’
‘No!’
‘Ayşe, is somebody, a man—’
‘Mind your own business!’ she screamed. ‘This has nothing to do with you!’
But İkmen had seen enough of domestic violence and its results during the course of his career to know the signs. He briefly loosened his grip on her elbow and moved forward to shut his office door. Then he stood behind her and took a deep breath. The stain was actually darker in some places than others, a horizontal pattern ran across it, presumably in line with the wounds.
‘Well, if you won’t go to a doctor, you’d better let me see. Take your shirt off,’ he said.
Her tear-stained face whipped round in shock. ‘No!’
‘That’s an order!’ İkmen barked. ‘Lose your job or take your shirt off, it’s up to you. I won’t move round to look at your chest, I just want to see your back.’
‘No!’
‘Do it!’ He placed a warning hand on her collar and applied just a little light pressure. ‘Please.’
Her sobs came even harder. With every button she undid, her distress and humiliation grew. And by the time she had slipped the shirt off her shoulders, she was bent almost double, shielding her chest with her hands.
İkmen looked at the stripes and gouges on her back and felt sick. He’d come across men who liked to do this sort of thing before, men he had wanted to beat senseless. But that would make him just like them and so he had always stayed his hand – he was famous for it. Now, however, the urge was very strong. He clasped his hands tightly behind his back.
‘Did Orhan Tepe do this to you?’ he asked quietly.
She turned and looked at him, saying nothing, but he knew.
‘Oh, Ayşe,’ he said sadly. ‘You silly girl.’
Orhan Tepe, like İkmen’s half-written report, wasn’t going anywhere. Both he and it would wait. And besides, İkmen thought, he could hardly confront Tepe in front of his wife. Maybe he whipped her too? Who was to know? Old Ottoman mores died hard, İkmen knew that. So many lives were ‘walled’. Smart-suited government ministers could fulminate all they wanted about the evils of wife-beating and how it had no place in a modern society, but some men would always do it; men in even the most ‘advanced’ cultures did it. He just hoped that Ayşe Farsakoǧlu would do as she had said and keep away from Tepe in the future. Give him back all the expensive baubles he had somehow acquired for her, forgo the meals in smart restaurants and go back to what she was before, a sad young woman in love with Süleyman who only had eyes for his newborn son. A real Ottoman patriarch at last, to Zelfa Halman Süleyman’s dismay and incomprehension, or so it seemed.
What a mess.
İkmen looked up from the tip of his glowing cigarette and into the liquid eyes of Yümniye Heper.
‘Tell me everything,’ he said. ‘I’m helpless without the truth.’
The elderly woman seemed crushed. What a terrible day this had been for her. Not only had she lost the only relative she still possessed, she had also lost her soulmate, the reason for her existence. Yümniye and Muazzez – the names were as one, they were always spoken in the same breath, like a never changing phrase or formulaic spell. Neither worked on its own. Even this wakefulness in the darkness of the hot miserable night was an abomination – because she was alone.
Yümniye Heper dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and leaned back into the large brown chair that had once been her father the General’s favourite seat.
‘By nineteen sixty Father’s illness had taken a terrible toll on our finances,’ she said sadly. ‘The landlord was threatening to evict us. I was paralysed with fear. But Muazzez was made of sterner stuff than myself and she continued to pursue her life as she always had.’ She sighed. ‘It seemed like a miracle when she came home after being away all of that strange night, clutching enough money to buy this house.’
‘How did she get this money?’ İkmen asked. ‘What happened?’
Yümniye smiled sadly. ‘Sex is what happened, Çetin,’ she said. ‘She met a man at the cinema. To this day I still don’t know who he was – is. But he paid Muazzez that money to have sex with another man, a foreigner.’
‘Did she know the foreigner?’
‘No. But then she said very little about it. I mean I know that you know the General raised us to be independent, liberal-minded women, but Muazzez was ashamed. To be used by men like that . . . They wanted her to dress like an Ottoman princess. In that gown, the very one you brought to show us. The one that girl died in. I knew I’d seen it before. I know I’m vague now, but . . . Muazzez made it. At first, after the meeting at the cinema, she believed that the commission was just for the dress, but then the man said that he wanted Muazzez to wear it and . . . do things. Afterwards there was no sex ever again. Muazzez was only asked to make dresses for other girls. And so we made several gowns every year from then on, for other girls to wear while they pleasured men. Given the amount of money my sister was paid, the men had to be wealthy, and again foreign, I think. Muazzez always arranged for their delivery. We were very well paid for them.’ She paused briefly to sip her tea. ‘Muazzez was chosen to go with that man because Father was an Ottoman general. The man knew of us, the high-born Heper sisters who liked to dress like boys.’
‘Everybody knew you,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘You were always the finest seamstresses in İstanbul.’
‘Yes.’ She looked over at the portrait of a stern-looking military man wearing a fez, which hung over the empty fireplace. ‘They wanted real Ottoman girls for their harem – that’s the term this man and his customers used. Muazzez was perfect. Later, any girl would do, provided she wore the right clothes. Things changed recently, don’t know how, but Muazzez became frightened. She went to meet her man this morning, he’d called her.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘No. Never.’ She looked from the portrait back to İkmen. ‘Muazzez made sure I was always kept away from this business. She loved me . . .’
‘Yes.’ İkmen leaned forward, frowning. ‘So this harem, Miss Yümniye—’
‘I don’t know where this activity took place, Çetin,’ she said as she wiped the tears once again from her eyes. ‘I asked Muazzez once, at the beginning, but she said only that she was taken to the place blindfolded. She had no idea herself. The only detail she ever offered was that it was reached through a wood or park of some sort. She did this thing only once, in a room full of silk, crystal and gold.’
‘Like a palace.’
‘Well, yes, where else would one take an Ottoman princess?’
İkmen looked down at the floor and shook his head. ‘And yet it could be anywhere, couldn’t it, Miss Yümniye? It could be a secret room in the vastness of Topkapı or it could be a mock-up at the back of some ghastly gecekondu.’
‘Given the money she was paid, I would think the former more likely,’ Yümniye said. ‘It was a great deal of money, Çetin.’
‘For a Turk, yes, but not necessarily for a foreigner. This place was very cheap to Europeans in those days.’
‘I don’t know if he was European,’ Yümniye replied. ‘Muazzez only alluded to his foreignness.’
‘But this harem persists to this day.’
‘Yes. With new girls and new dresses. Although as I said before, Muazzez wasn’t as comfortable with it as she had been. And when you told us that that poor girl had died wearing one of our dresses . . . I wanted to tell you, but Muazzez was adamant. It was far too dangerous, she said. This harem thing was big.’
‘Big?’ İkmen put his cigarette out in the ashtray and lit another. ‘What do you mean?’
Yümniye shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Çetin. I’m using Muazzez’s words. All I do know is that although both of us were aware that what we were doing, making the dresses, was wrong, Muazzez only became scared this year. She was, as you know, always very brave and anyway she and I were both grateful to that man she met outside the Alkazar cinema all those years ago. He gave us this house, a decent living and he almost single-handedly enabled the General to have some dignity in his final years. I always wanted to meet him.’
‘You don’t think he killed your sister then?’ İkmen asked.
Miss Yümniye looked shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so. I mean, why would he after all this time?’
‘Maybe he or one of his people saw me come to this house. I’m a well-known officer, Miss Yümniye.’
‘Yes, you are,’ she said. ‘You’ve done very well, Çetin. But how would Muazzez’s man know you came here to ask about the harem? You had that dress in a bag and anyway he knew Muazzez would never have told you anything. Even after we knew the girl had died in that dress, Muazzez was still adamant. We argued about it. She said that it was utterly impossible for her man and his customers to have killed that girl. I asked her how she knew but she said that she just did and not to ask. Others, she said, must have done it.’