Ikmen 16 - Body Count (14 page)

‘But she was angry! Which I can understand. She was trying to make me suffer!’

‘So if you didn’t believe her, why are you here now?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He put his head in his hands and then raised it again. His eyes were black underneath and bloodshot. ‘Hande never went anywhere. I can’t believe she could have found out about Leyla and me, and anyway, how would she have made contact with General Ablak?’

İ
kmen sighed. ‘Secrets are dangerous creatures, Mr Genç,’ he said. ‘We keep them at our peril. Just because your wife was housebound doesn’t mean that she had no contact with the outside world. If you want to know whether Hande Han
ı
m and General Ablak jointly or separately killed Leyla Ablak, then you have to look at who might have been jealous of your affair with her. Maybe someone you work with, a friend, maybe a—’

‘But I told no one! We were always so careful! We met in the middle of the night!’

‘And yet the killer, whoever he or she was, knew you were at the spa that night, and so, by extension, others might have known it too. Do you know how likely it is that Leyla Han
ı
m was killed by a wandering psychopath who just fancied the idea of murdering her? Almost zero. She was executed by someone who either knew her or knew of her and who had a reason to want her dead.’

‘Yes, but Hande—’

‘Mr Genç,’
İ
kmen said, ‘your wife is dead and so is General Ablak. Unless further evidence comes to light linking them to Leyla Ablak’s death, I will have to continue my investigation as if you never came here today. Both of them remain suspects even though they are deceased. But if you want to find out the truth about your lover’s death, you are going to have to help me.’

‘By doing what?’

‘By thinking seriously about who might have known about your affair.’

‘I’ve told you, I—’

‘Ah, but I don’t think you have really told me, Mr Genç,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I want to know about
all
your little secrets, your every slightest suspicion, your darkest fears. Think, Mr Genç: who might have taken a fancy to you in the last year? Female or male, I really don’t care. You’re a good-looking man with a good job; somebody must have had the hots for you at some point. And Mrs Ablak was a fine woman, wasn’t she? I can’t believe that others weren’t jealous of her. I’ve met a couple, although I don’t think either of them can be seriously considered because neither was in
İ
stanbul when Leyla Ablak died. And don’t think that you can discount the family, either.’

‘Whose family?’

‘All of them,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Your own, Hande’s, the Ablaks. Although they do not know it, Leyla’s own family are not off the hook. That old Ottoman rubbish doesn’t impress me one bit. I trust that this time, Mr Genç, I can rely on your full co-operation.’

‘Yes, Inspector.’

‘Because let me tell you, Mr Genç, you are not off the hook either. I am not impressed by what I imagine you thought was your loyalty to your dying wife. If she was a killer, dying or not, you should have brought her to me. Justice is not selective; it doesn’t care if you have a slight cold, a broken leg or terminal cancer. It expects, quite rightly, to have you in the end.’

Mr Arthur Regan was a man in his late seventies who didn’t need to know the full horror of his son’s death. But he insisted.

‘You can tell me all of it,’ he said to Mehmet Süleyman once the driver had wrestled the police vehicle they were travelling in out of the airport.

‘Mr Regan …’ But then he’d need to know because he’d have to identify the body, and there was a limit to what could be done to make John Regan look anything other than butchered. ‘Your son was stabbed repeatedly,’ Süleyman said. ‘I am afraid, sir, that his body is very badly damaged.’

‘Oh. I see.’

There was no way that he could go into detail, though, and Süleyman knew it. When he’d first met Arthur Regan, the older man’s eyes had been red and wet from crying. John had been his only child and Süleyman couldn’t even begin to imagine what that felt like. Even the thought of his own son, Yusuf, dying brought tears to Süleyman’s eyes. To outlive a child was a parent’s worst nightmare.

‘You know that my son was gay, Inspector,’ Arthur Regan said.

‘No, sir, I did not.’

‘It isn’t a judgement,’ he said. ‘Just a fact. Do you have any idea who might have … killed him?’

It was almost impossible for him to say the words.

‘We have, um, some routes to look at,’ Süleyman replied. He had never been as fluent in English as
İ
kmen was, not even when he had been married to an Irish woman.

‘Leads?’

‘Yes.’

As usual, the airport had been packed. Süleyman had had to stand with all the hotel drivers and the travel reps, holding up a board saying ‘Mr Arthur Regan’ – it hadn’t been his finest hour.

‘Your son, Mr Regan, he was writing a book?’

They passed the vast collection of hotels and conference facilities that had grown up around the airport in the last decade and headed into another knot of traffic which consisted mainly of yellow taxis. Some of them had the Turkcell bug’s antenna on their roofs, an advertising step way too far for Süleyman.

‘Yes. My son has written many books over the years. He is … he was an historian. His speciality was Victorian London. He taught at Cambridge, you know, until he decided he wanted to become a romantic novelist.’

‘But here he was writing a history of Sultan Abdülhamid II, I think.’

The old man shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘he was writing a novel. It was to be about Abdülhamid but it was about his personal life. There’s a legend about how he was involved with a Belgian woman who bore him a daughter. It’s said that he eventually killed the girl because she seduced his eldest son.’

Mehmet Süleyman had a vague recollection of the story, but he’d never known whether it had any basis in fact.

‘John was always fascinated by that tale.’

‘An unusual fascination for an Englishman,’ Süleyman said.

‘Oh, he’s always been interested in Turkey and Turkish history,’ Arthur Regan said. ‘Although she died when he was a tiny child, his mother is behind most of it. She was Turkish. And I must say that I also encouraged his interest. It’s … it was part of his heritage. Coming here to live and write his book was the fulfilment of a dream he’d had for years. There wasn’t anyone in his life, if you know what I mean. Hadn’t been for years. So his work and his interests became his life. Do you think, Inspector, that my son was killed by someone he knew?’

‘That is what we must determine. There is no evidence of a forced entry into the apartment and so he may have known his killer. We have to look closely at his contacts in the city.’

The traffic began to move. Their driver gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Arthur Regan looked down at his own hands before he spoke again. ‘When my son was younger, he did sometimes pick men up to sleep with. I don’t know whether he was doing that here.’

‘Our pathologist found no sign of recent sexual activity,’ Süleyman said. ‘But of course, Mr Regan, we will investigate all possibilities.’

They spent the rest of the journey into the city in silence. Arthur Regan looked out of the car window while Süleyman wondered how, when and where he’d met his Turkish wife. John Regan had been forty-six years old when he died, so Arthur and his wife must have first met back in the 1960s. Süleyman just recalled that decade himself, although he’d been a child at the time. Back then, the only foreigners who came to
İ
stanbul were English teachers and hippies en route to India. He wondered which group Arthur Regan had belonged to. But he didn’t ask him anything about it. It didn’t seem appropriate. In less than an hour Mr Regan would have to identify the body of his mutilated son.

The lone boy eventually stole something from a man’s back pocket and then almost immediately walked away from Tünel and made his way down the hill towards Karaköy on Galipdede Caddesi. Ömer Mungan took the decision to follow him. If the kid was alone, he had a chance of being able to track him to the adults that ran him. He walked past the Dervish tekke on the left-hand side and down between the musical instrument and CD shops. The road was steep and cobbled but Ömer was used to that. Every street in Mardin was cobbled, and so steep that domestic rubbish had to be collected by donkey.

The boy loped along, a hand in the pocket where he’d put what he’d stolen. From time to time he looked in shop windows, and Ömer found himself wondering what, had he just been working for himself, he might have purchased with his newly acquired wealth. But he only looked. Eventually he turned off Galipdede into a small street that Ömer felt probably led to somewhere near the Galata Tower. He knew that had he known the city better, finding a different route whereby he could pick the boy up later on would have been preferable. But he didn’t know the city well and so he walked, admittedly some metres behind him, into a street that was almost silent. The boy couldn’t help but hear his footsteps.

He didn’t turn around completely and look straight at Ömer. It was more of a slight turn of the head accompanied by a quick glance with one eye. But it was enough. Ömer saw his body tense, and although he knew without doubt what the boy was about to do, he didn’t increase his own pace. The boy began to run. For a moment Ömer wondered what he should do, then he ran too. The fact that he had no clear idea about what he might do if he caught the kid did not assist his pace, which, in comparison to the boy’s, was risible.

And then things got even worse for Ömer. As if suddenly powered by a jet engine, the kid increased his pace and flew across the pavements and roads of old Galata like a gazelle.

John Regan had only really had one friend in
İ
stanbul, a female publicist called S
ı
rma Alper from Cihangir. It was she who had told the police that one of the things John liked to do was have coffee and a snack at the Ada bookshop on
İ
stiklal Caddesi. This had led Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu to an assistant at the shop called Dervi
ş
Güler.

‘Yeah, the British guy was cool,’ Dervi
ş
said. He was the sort of fashionable, hip, funky, bearded man who made Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu feel old. ‘Liked to read all the historical stuff.’

‘Did he meet anyone in particular when he came to the shop?’ Ay
ş
e asked.

‘Not that I saw. I don’t think his Turkish was very good.’

‘But you spoke to him.’

‘Yeah, I can speak English.’

‘You remember we were asking questions about another of your customers back in January? A man called Levent Devrim?’

‘Oh yeah, a guy police officer came.’

Mehmet Süleyman.

‘You don’t remember whether Dr Regan, the Englishman, had any contact with Devrim, do you?’

Dervi
ş
thought for a moment, then said, ‘Don’t think so. The scruffy dude was into a lot of New Age stuff. The British guy was much more fact-based, you know.’

Discovering possible connections between multiple homicide victims was a dark art that didn’t always deliver the desired, or indeed any, result. John Regan and Levent Devrim had enjoyed going to the same bookshop but they hadn’t been friends. Leyla Ablak and Levent Devrim had been interested in alternative health and New Age philosophies but they hadn’t apparently known each other. The only thing they all really had in common was that, so far, no one actually knew why they had been murdered.

Ay
ş
e walked out of the Ada, on to
İ
stiklal and almost into Mehmet Süleyman’s arms.

‘Oh, sir, I …’ she stuttered. ‘I …’

He ignored her discomfort. ‘So were Levent Devrim and Dr Regan friends, or is that a ridiculous question?’ he asked.

‘It’s a ridiculous question, sir,’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I asked Dr Sarkissian whether John Regan had any illicit drugs in his system, but like Leyla Ablak, he didn’t. Only Mr Devrim was stoned and slightly drunk, and he, it seems, smoked and drank alone.’

They began to walk down
İ
stiklal in the direction of Taksim Square. Ay
ş
e was going back to her car, which was parked in a side street.

After a moment she said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Oh, John Regan’s father has rented an apartment on Zambak Sokak; I’m going to take him to see where his son died.’

‘That must have been tough for him yesterday, the state of the body and …’

‘He bore it well,’ Süleyman said. ‘He says he wants to stay on here in the city for as long as he can. Wants to be here when we “catch him”.’

‘That puts the pressure on, doesn’t it?’

‘It’s his choice,’ Süleyman said. ‘It’s up to us to fulfil his expectations.’

Ay
ş
e smiled. He was being very proper and ‘on message’ with the new image of a friendly, results-orientated Turkish police force that was plugged by the organisation at every opportunity these days. ‘How corporate of you,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘We get corporate, as you say, or we perish,’ he said.

She saw the street where she’d parked her car coming up on her right. ‘The car’s just here,’ she said. And then she moved slightly closer to him. ‘Will I see you tonight?’

He gave her that look he sometimes could that was so cold it almost burnt her eyes out. Ay
ş
e felt herself shrink beneath it.

‘It depends how work goes,’ he said. Then he added, ‘I expect it’s the same for you.’

‘Er, yes …’

But she knew it wasn’t. And so did he.

Hamid was back in Tarlaba
ş
ı
in his mother’s tiny flat with
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu, who was murderous. Unfortunately for Hamid, his mother was out.

‘How did the police know it was you?’ yelled
Ş
ukru as he smacked the boy around the head. ‘What did you do to call attention to yourself?’