Hotel Bosphorus (25 page)

“How do you know they didn't want to?”

“If they had, they would have done so.”

“As far as I know, their request was denied.”

To be certain what I meant, he asked again.

“You mean they wanted to be involved and their request was denied? That's very interesting; are you sure?”

“Why is it interesting?”

He scratched his ear, deep in thought. “If the police in the country of a murder victim want to be involved in an investigation that is being carried out in the country where the murder took place, that request is generally not denied. Especially between countries such as Turkey and Germany which have such strong judicial ties… I wonder why they said no?” The last sentence seemed to be addressed to himself.

Selim laughed.

“My dear friends, there's no need to think too long about it. If you knew the slightest thing about Turks, you would know that it was not at all surprising.”

“How do you mean?” said Jean. He was still scratching his ear.

Selim pursed his lips. “Haven't you heard of something called national sovereignty?” he asked. He pointed to me. “You know what national sovereignty means to us.”

“Say it in a way that I can understand too,” pleaded Jean.

“Turkish police would never accept the aid of foreign police to solve a murder that took place within their area of jurisdiction. They won't accept help from outside even if it means the murder remains unsolved. No one is allowed to interfere with the internal workings of the Turkish state. And in the case of police work, even the government can't interfere.”

I rolled my eyes. “That's all well and good, but the police say there's no evidence,” I said. “That means there were no fingerprints, no witness statements, no blood traces and not even a button or a strand of hair was left at the murder scene. Most importantly, nobody had a motive for killing him. So tell me, how are they to get to the bottom of such a murder? Would German police find evidence the Turkish police couldn't?”

“Why not?” said Jean, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why not?” I exclaimed. “You talk as if you don't know how inept the German police are. Don't you remember the attempted bank robbery when two girls were taken hostage? The police killed one of the hostages instead of the robbers.”

“You're right. They're hopeless at hostage situations. But the German police are good at solving murders. And of course there's the question of technology; quite simply, the Germans have better equipment.”

“Well, that's a great example of prejudice,” I said. “Solving a murder has nothing to do with technology. Murders are solved with the mind.” I continued talking, my voice rising like that of a primary-school teacher.

“The skill of a country's police at catching suspects is not proportionate to its national per capita income. The same goes for health. Everyone thinks that because Turkey is poor, the health service must be bad. But when it comes to diagnosis, Turkish doctors are far better than German doctors.”

“Fine, but you're citing an example where Germans perform really badly. It's no secret that the health service is falling apart in Germany. And yes, the doctors are particularly bad at diagnosis. But unravelling a murder is something else. Even…” Jean scratched his ear while
he thought, and then said, “I don't remember the exact figures, but statistically the proportion of murders solved by German police is very high.”

“Whatever,” I said, “I'm not really interested in this good cop/bad cop debate. Why does this murder interest you?”

He fixed his gaze pensively on a point above my head and said, “I've been trying to nail Müller for two years.”

I was startled. Who would have thought that I would learn the secret about Müller in this ordinary little Thai restaurant?

“Why?” I asked, trying to maintain my composure. The waiter brought us a huge plate of rice and Jean waited for him to move away.

“I don't know if you remember,” he said. “At the end of the eighties, there was a series of child murders that rocked Western Europe. Actually, child massacre would be more accurate. Twelve bodies of children between the ages of four and nine were found one after the other. The abducted children were first raped and then killed…”

“Stop,” I almost screamed. I closed my mouth and ran to the bathroom. For the first time since childhood my intestines had lost all control.

“This…” I thought, with my head in the toilet bowl, “This is all because of what happened to Petra's son Peter…” I'd wanted to throw up then when I'd first heard about it but couldn't.

I had long since digested the cheese I'd eaten at breakfast, and nothing else had entered my stomach apart from the coffee I'd drunk at the hospital with my mother and two glasses of sparkling wine. At that moment, as I held my head inside the toilet bowl and felt my knees, which I tended so carefully with expensive
lotions, bear down on the tiled bathroom floor of this cheap restaurant, I was glad I hadn't eaten much.

Once I was finished, I closed the toilet lid and sat on it. I stayed there like that for perhaps five minutes while I prepared myself to face the outside world. I rose and saw my face in the mirror above the washbasin. I looked frightful, as if I'd been crying, but at least my make-up hadn't run. I dampened a paper towel under the tap and wiped my cheeks. As I came out of the door, over which there was a picture of a child sitting on a potty, I came face to face with Selim, who was leaning against a cigarette vending machine and waiting for me. He studied my face anxiously.

“What happened?”

“It was something I ate at lunch, I think,” I said, lowering my head, not because I was lying, but because the way he was looking at me had made me feel uncomfortable. I walked briskly back to the table and sat down heavily on the chair that Selim politely pulled out for me. The number seventy-nine fish that I'd ordered with such relish was on the table in front of me. I pushed the plate as far away from me as possible.

“I can't eat this,” I said to Selim apologetically. “Would you order me some jasmine tea?”

“Are you all right?” asked Jean.

Trying to smile, I said, “I've been working very hard recently.” It wasn't a lie. “You were telling us why you were after Müller.”

“Let's forget about those nasty subjects. Why don't we talk about Turkish politics?” suggested Selim, as he stopped my hand from reaching out for the cigarette packet. “Perhaps it's better not to smoke just now,” he said tenderly.

I didn't need a mirror to guess the awful expression on my face. Selim immediately retracted.

“OK, smoke if you want to. I was just thinking of you.”

Jean was clearly not too happy to be witnessing a power struggle between two people in the process of flirting with each other. He was keener than I was to return to the matter of Müller. He watched Selim light my cigarette and carried on talking.

“The police failed to find out what happened to the abducted children. Within seven months, twelve children were abducted, one after the other. The bodies were found some time after the abductions. The police followed up a few leads but nothing came of them.”

“Where did the children come from? I mean, which country did this happen in?” I asked, fearing the answer I would get.

“The first child was abducted in West Germany and the body was found in a wooded area between Brussels and Bruges. The second child was from Belgium, and children were also abducted in Holland and France. Their bodies were found two or three weeks later. They were found in different places, sometimes by a motorway, sometimes in a wood… Everything was too professional to have been carried out by a simple pervert. It was a long time before they discovered any clues about the abductions or where the children had been taken. There was a witness statement giving a description of a suspect for one abduction case, but it bore no resemblance to the suspect in the next case. It was obviously a paedophile ring, rather than a single pervert.”

“You said before that a few clues were found.”

“Yes, a tip-off led police to the house where the children were taken.” He popped some strange pink vegetable that was lying on his plate into his mouth and continued speaking. “So they found the house, but it contained no clues that could lead them any further. In fact…”

“Yeah?” I said.

“It was established that the children were used for making porn movies. The basement was found to be kitted out as a studio.”

“Fingerprints, blood traces?…”

“No, the place had been thoroughly cleaned before the police got there. That was surprising of course, because one had to ask why didn't they just burn the place down. But it was not the only strange thing about this case, which was the most complex and intractable case I've ever known.”

“What happened two years ago?” I asked.

“What do you mean, two years ago? Hah, yes, because I said I'd been after Müller for two years… The police were tipped off about some child porn which they'd then seized from a video shop selling sex films in Paris. These films are generally made in the Far East or Russia, but one of the films caught their attention.”

I interrupted him.

“Are the police still looking for the murderers of those twelve children?”

“Well, the file isn't closed of course. But the reason this film drew attention was its technological features and high-quality backdrops; it had nothing to do with what happened all those years ago when those children were undoubtedly used for pornographic films.”

I screwed up my face with revulsion.

“Yes, you're right,” said Jean. Selim was sitting in silence.

“It's detestable, but that's how it is. The film techniques used in child porn are generally very crude. That sort of film is usually made by a single pervert using amateur camera equipment. But this film had been made with superior lighting and equipment. That's what drew the attention of the police.”

“Shall we close this subject?” said Selim.

“Just a minute,” I said. “Can't you explain without going into so much detail?”

“I don't exactly enjoy talking about this filth,” said Jean.

“What happened in the end? I mean, how did you get on to Müller?”

“When it was proved that the child in the film found at the porn shop in Clichy was Wim, a child abducted from a children's home in Rotterdam who, like the other kids, was then killed, the porn seller was interrogated about how he came by the film. I'm cutting this short because you asked me to. Anyway, it finally emerged that Müller was in that gang and was the person who had actually made the films. That came to light when another paedophile admitted under interrogation that he'd been used to help with the child abductions. He'd hoped to get a reduced sentence by telling what he knew about the ring. That man referred to Müller by name in a statement he made shortly before he was killed.”

“Before he was killed?”

“His body was found in the prison shower before he could make a statement in court.”

“Was that gang really so powerful?” I asked. My stomach had begun to churn again.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think it was a very big operation.”

“So, do you think it was that gang that murdered Müller?”

“Definitely, to stop him making a statement.”

“But the way the murder was carried out… Isn't that a bit strange?”

I was curious to see how much more he could come up with.

“Wasn't the murder carried out with a hair-dryer?” he said.

I nodded.

“Yes, well. What killer would carry out a murder like that? It looked very amateurish, except that no clues were left behind, so in that respect it could have been a professional job. However, if the gang had hired a killer, he would have…”

“Would have used a gun,” I said, completing his sentence. He suddenly stopped and pondered what I had said. “I think it's all very dirty and very complex,” he said with distaste.

“Are you the lawyer for one of the children's families?”

“Hah, well, that's an important point. The gang selected the children carefully; they didn't leave anything to chance. Of the twelve children, five were orphans living in children's homes. The others were from children of deprived families or refugees, families that had neither the financial means nor the social standing to deal with this.”

“In that case, who engaged you?” I asked.

“I'm representing a Cameroonian family that was granted asylum in Belgium. A friend of mine who knows that I specialize in crimes against children suggested
that the family should speak to me. Once I'd studied the case a bit, I took it on without payment. But in ten years, we've got nowhere. Just when there's some hope of resolving it…” He sighed with irritation. “Well, as you see…”

“You mentioned a child abducted from West Germany,” I said, keeping my face hidden behind my beer glass. “The first child to be abducted, did he also come from a children's home?”

It was as if events were repeating themselves. Why didn't he ask the reason for my interest in this particular child?

He put his head in his hands. “No. The child was being brought up by his elderly grandmother. His mother and father were living in Seoul. The mother was German and the father was Korean. They were the only ones out of all the families of these abducted children who could have done something about the situation, yet this couple showed little interest in the child or what followed. Nevertheless, I understand they employed a detective to get to the bottom of it all. But of course nothing came of it. The child was six or seven when he was killed.”