Ikmen 16 - Body Count (32 page)

Gonca frowned.

‘He may have thought that he could hide things from me, but he couldn’t,’ the old man said. ‘Your brother was in trouble.’

‘Was it to do with the man who died? Levent Devrim? The boy Hamid? Did
Ş
ukru kill that crazy man?’

‘No, no, no, no, no. Why would your brother kill a thing like that, a mad innocent?’

‘Then …’

‘I think he knew who did, though,’ he said. ‘He wanted the boy Hamid – whose filthy mother he sleeps with and thinks I do not know – out of the way, and for what reason? Because the boy saw a “monster”? I think that the boy, although he didn’t know it, saw a person, and that your brother knew who that person was.’

‘So if Levent Devrim was an innocent who did not threaten
Ş
ukru in any way and he knew who killed him, why didn’t he tell the police?’

‘Maybe to spite you …’

‘Oh, Baba!’ She stood up, exasperated.

‘I know you open your legs to Prince Süleyman again,’ he said.

‘But I didn’t until he came to me,’ she said. She lit a cigarette and paced her father’s small bedroom. ‘When Levent Devrim died, I hadn’t seen Mehmet for years.’

‘Then I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe
Ş
ukru decided that blackmailing the murderer was a more profitable way forward. As you say, Gonca, where would your brother have got enough money to move to a Bosphorus village, eh?’

She sat down. ‘For all of you to move to such a village would take a huge amount of money.’

‘Well, then maybe whoever
Ş
ukru had in his sights had a very great deal of money,’ her father said. ‘There are such people in the world. They are usually not Roma.’

She paused for a moment, and then she said, ‘Baba, what are we going to do?’

‘About your brother?’ He shook his head. ‘Whatever he was doing was dangerous and he has paid the price. We can do nothing for him. The police?’ He shrugged. ‘All they care about are the deaths of princes.’ He leaned forward in his chair and took one of her hands and laid it on his knee. ‘The thing I want, and all I can have now, is the image of my child. You know this piece of film of
Ş
ukru that they run on the news programmes, asking for help? Back home I had a copy of that, but when we moved I lost it. I should like to have that again, so that I can see my child alive on the television.’

‘Oh, Baba!’ She began to cry.

He stroked her hand. ‘Ah, you live in the Turks’ world; you can talk to the television people and they will listen to you,’ he said. ‘Gonca, get that for me. It has your brother and our old Sulukule on it, and I want to see them both again before I die.’

The house where Selçuk Devrim lived was small but very beautiful. By Bebek standards it was modest, being only two-storeyed, in a back street next to a derelict church. It possessed a tiny back garden and Ömer Mungan had to park his car on the street directly in front of the door. But both he and Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu were impressed. Of late Ottoman vintage, the house was made of honey-coloured wood, and every door and window frame was decorated with the most delicate metal filigree.

As Ay
ş
e got out of the car, Ömer said to her, ‘How would you like to live here, Ay
ş
e Han
ı
m?’

Ay
ş
e shook her head. ‘Only in my dreams,’ she said.

He smiled. Colleagues had told him that his boss Inspector Süleyman’s parents lived in what had to be a very expensive house in nearby Arnavutköy. Had things gone well between them, Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu could have lived in a house like the Devrims’. But the word was that he was still with his gypsy, with the sergeant well and truly out in the cold.

He said to her, ‘You know, these Bosphorus villages are so pretty, they almost make me like
İ
stanbul.’

Ay
ş
e smiled. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said.

They walked up to the front door together and Ömer rang the bell. It took quite a long time for anyone to come and answer it, and for a moment Ay
ş
e wondered whether the Devrims were in. But then the sound of unlocking bolts was heard and both officers breathed more easily.

The door opened to reveal a woman of about forty. Slim, blonde and attractive, there was something familiar about her that made Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu frown. Looking at Ömer Mungan only, the woman said, ‘You must be Sergeant Mungan.’

And then Ay
ş
e knew who she was.

‘Yes,’ he said as he took her hand and shook it.

‘I’m Hatice Devrim, Selçuk’s wife.’ She turned to look at Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, and as their eyes met, Hatice Devrim’s face turned white.

Suzan felt her heart pound. She was panicking. Suddenly the money she’d got for them wasn’t enough. Paying for her mother’s surgery with no aftercare was pointless. And the aftercare cost yet more. Suzan’s father had been furious on the phone. He’d called her ‘thick’ and ‘cheap’ and had completely ignored her few protestations that her conscience, inasmuch as it was troubled at all, was like that because of him and her mother. But he didn’t listen. All he did was tell her to get hold of some more money before she came home. But how was she supposed to do that?

The money she’d been given had been a one-off that had come with threats. If she ever told anyone about what she’d done for it, she knew she would be killed. Similarly if she attempted blackmail, it would end badly for her. Abdurrahman Efendi, that mean, cruel creature who had taken her honour from her and then just put her away in a box, had been killed and, just for leaving a door open, she’d been given more money than she had ever dreamed of. She hadn’t killed the old man, and in truth, she didn’t know who had. All she knew was that a woman who had been the old man’s friend had given her money to leave the front door to the apartment unlocked the day that Abdurrahman Efendi was found dead. Had she ever said that someone wanted to come in and kill the old man? No, but she had said that when Suzan came home, the prince would give her no more trouble. Who had she been? And why had she wanted him dead?

Suzan didn’t read that well, and so the Efendi’s diary, where he might have written down the woman’s name, was a mystery to her. She didn’t know who she was or where she lived, and she hadn’t seen her since the woman had given her the money. So she couldn’t blackmail her. She couldn’t steal from the apartment either. The cousin’s people had already taken an inventory. All she could do was what she’d done before, when Efendi had found all those new clothes with the labels still on them in her bag and then made her do sex with him as a punishment. Now he was dead, she wouldn’t have to do that this time. But she would still have to go shoplifting.

While Selçuk Devrim showed Ömer Mungan the boxes that contained his brother Levent’s effects, Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu joined his wife in the kitchen. Hatice Devrim, still white-faced from her earlier encounter with the policewoman, was making coffee.

‘I thought your surname was Öz,’ Ay
ş
e said as she watched the woman fill a large cafetière with water.

‘It is.’ She put the lid on the coffee pot and tried not to look at Ay
ş
e’s face.

‘But you’re married to …’

‘I kept my surname.’ She looked up. ‘I was a nurse when I married Selçuk, we often do. All right?’

She was quite aggressive and Ay
ş
e could understand why, but she ignored it.

‘I appreciate that a person can have multiple roles, Miss Öz,’ she said. ‘But do you live here, or with your parents in Fatih? And does your husband know about—’

‘No!’ She walked over to the kitchen door and shut it. She was a statuesque woman with large, slanting emerald-green eyes. Ay
ş
e, uncharitably, assumed their colour had to be due to green contact lenses.

‘I met you as Professor Cem Atay’s mistress at your parents’ house in Fatih,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘You told me you spent the night that Leyla Ablak died with Professor Atay. Now I find that you are in fact married to Mr Selçuk Devrim. So, through your husband and Professor Atay’s brother-in-law, Faruk Genç, you are, loosely, connected to two of the murder victims we are investigating.’

‘You mean the woman that Professor Atay’s brother-in-law was having an affair with? I didn’t know her!’ She sat down at her kitchen table and lit a cigarette. ‘Of course I knew Selçuk’s brother, but …’

‘Tell me about your affair with Professor Atay,’ Ay
ş
e said as she sat down opposite the woman, who was now looking actively resentful.

‘Why?’

‘I’ve just told you why,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘You exist on the fringes of two murders. And you concealed your true marital state from me. You can tell me why, when I interviewed you before, you gave me the impression you lived with your parents, or we can go to police headquarters together.’

Hatice Öz sat in silence for a moment, then pushed the plunger down on the cafetière. ‘Let me pour the coffee and I’ll tell you,’ she said.

She gave the men their drinks first and then served Ay
ş
e and herself.

‘Selçuk works away for at least half the year, on and off,’ she said once she’d sat down again and begun to drink her coffee. ‘He works in telecommunications, in Russia. When Levent died he was away and I think I saw another officer, at police headquarters. A tall, rather elegant man …’

Süleyman.

‘There was nothing I could do. Selçuk dealt with it when he came back,’ she continued. ‘When my husband is away, I spend a lot of time at my parents’ house. I don’t like being alone here.’

‘Does your husband know that?’ Ay
ş
e asked.

‘Of course.’

‘But he doesn’t know about …’

‘Cem and I met at Bo
ğ
aziçi University,’ she said. ‘Many years ago.’

Although Ay
ş
e hadn’t yet met the professor in the flesh, she knew what he looked like from his TV programmes. He was considerably older than Hatice Öz.

‘You were his student?’

‘Yes. I studied Ottoman history,’ she said. ‘He was my tutor. Things …’ She looked down at her hands. ‘Things happened. We fell in love.’

‘And still are?’

She looked up. ‘Yes.’

Ay
ş
e sipped her coffee. ‘If that is the case, why are you with Mr Devrim?’

‘Cem, Professor Atay, was married when we met. He didn’t love her.’ Her rush to declare that her lover hadn’t cared for his wife when the affair had begun struck Ay
ş
e as typical of the things ‘other’ women told those around them and themselves. She’d done it herself when she’d helped Mehmet Süleyman commit adultery.

‘If I remember correctly, though,’ Ay
ş
e said, ‘I believe that Professor Atay is single now, isn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why …’

‘I care about Selçuk,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Cem wouldn’t want to be married again, not after last time.’

As a single man with a married mistress, Professor Atay was both having his cake and eating it. But Ay
ş
e asked anyway. ‘Why not?’

‘Because she disappeared,’ Hatice Öz said. ‘I’d been married to Selçuk for almost two years. I hadn’t heard from Cem for a long time. When I left university we ended our affair, and although I never forgot him, I moved on and married Selçuk. Then one day Cem called me and told me that his wife, Merve, had disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘It was in the papers,’ she said. ‘The police … you looked for her, but she has never been found.’

‘When was this?’

‘Ten years ago.’

Ay
ş
e didn’t remember it. But then she’d been working for Çetin
İ
kmen for over ten years, so a simple missing person case would not have come her way unless there was some reason to suspect murder. Clearly in this case no one had believed that Mrs Merve Atay had been killed. But with a patently adulterous husband in the woman’s life, Ay
ş
e wondered why that question had apparently never been asked.

‘Cem was very upset about it.’

‘Even though he didn’t love his wife?’ Ay
ş
e countered. If Cem Atay had really not loved Merve he would have divorced her and married Hatice. There had to be a reason why he had stayed with her until she disappeared. Ay
ş
e suspected it was probably because Merve on some level tolerated his ‘messing around’ with his students and with the media types he must have met since he had become a television academic.

‘Her disappearance has scarred his life,’ Hatice said. ‘When he called me to tell me about Merve that first time, I just dropped everything and went to him.’

‘Did your husband know?’

‘Of course not! He was abroad, Azerbaijan. Poor Cem was devastated. He’d gone to bed one night, and when he woke up in the morning his wife had gone.’

‘And so you picked up where you’d left off.’

‘I comforted Cem.’

‘And then …’

She turned her face away. ‘Cem Atay is a remarkable man, Sergeant. Whatever you may think about me, us, you have to understand that.’

Ay
ş
e, who knew all about ‘remarkable’ men, raised an eyebrow. Being cynical about Mehmet Süleyman since his latest defection to his gypsy was getting easier every day. Maybe, she thought,
İ
kmen was right about how she should just concentrate on her career.

‘What we have suits us both,’ Hatice Öz said. ‘I care for Selçuk and I would never want to hurt him; he’s had enough trouble in his life one way or another. But I love Cem and the excitement of his world and I couldn’t give it up again. When I was a student, my life was full of interest and incident. But since then …’ She shrugged. ‘Some people would say that I haven’t grown up.’

Ay
ş
e looked at her. She
was
rather childlike. Not to look at, but in her enthusiastic reactions to things and to people, like her lover, Cem Atay.