Ikmen 16 - Body Count (44 page)

The old man looked at Gonca.‘We will have no more division in this family, do you hear me?’

When he used that tone, it made her feel like a child again. ‘Yes, Baba.’

‘Because you know the old Kurdish whore, Sugar, who came here today to pay her respects, she told me that they have taken down the fences around the latest group of old buildings that are due to be demolished and the wrecking balls have moved into place. We will need to be strong now and fight this together, as a community. If we don’t, we will be forced to leave the city, and I for one will die.’

İ
kmen had heard such sentiments before; they usually came out of the mouths of elderly people with either an Ottoman or a military background. Although very much at odds in terms of politics and beliefs, the old Atatürkist military elites and the Ottomans had a lot in common.

‘Nobody is still here who was here when we bought this house in the 1960s,’ Nur Süleyman said.

İ
kmen knew the story well. His friend and colleague Mehmet had been born in a terrible, half-ruined palace on the Bosphorus, which the family had hung on to until the place finally collapsed. Then they’d moved to Arnavutköy, disappearing into what they must have felt then was something very much akin to Trotsky’s ‘dustbin of history’.

‘Now everyone is nouveau riche,’ Nur continued. She called over to her husband’s cousin for support. ‘Is that not so, Sezen?’

‘Oh yes,’ Sezen
İ
pek said. ‘All the Bosphorus villages are full of either terrible footballers, men with silly haircuts or girls who flout their parents’ wishes by wearing headscarves.’

He hadn’t expected to see Sezen
İ
pek, but then she was Muhammed Efendi’s cousin and so her presence could have been predicted. The old man himself, a bib at his throat to catch drips from both his tea glass and his mouth, said, ‘My stomach hurts. Call Dr Savva.’

Nur Süleyman’s distress and impatience with her husband were evident from the pain in her eyes, coupled with the way she shook her head when he spoke to
İ
kmen. ‘Of course Mehmet knows no one here. We don’t know anyone! There is a man who has been here for I think a decade who lives over the other side of the church, but …’ He saw her look at Sezen
İ
pek and then away. ‘We don’t speak to him or about him.’

‘Oh?’ It could only be Professor Atay. There was no one else on the other side of the church. ‘The historian? Professor Atay?’
İ
kmen asked.

Again the two woman looked at each other, but neither of them said anything.

Muhammed Süleyman Efendi said, ‘Dr Savva and his kaolin and morphine solution will put me right. It always works for my grandfather and he’s a very old man.’

Nur Süleyman looked at
İ
kmen. ‘Do you have an interest in … in the man …’

‘Inspector
İ
kmen, I am sorry, but I’m afraid that we don’t discuss the person who lives on the other side of the church,’ Sezen
İ
pek said.

If it were possible for Nur Süleyman to look cowed or even ashamed, she did so now.
İ
kmen turned his attention to Sezen Han
ı
m. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Is that so? Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask one of you to talk to me about him.’

‘And why would that be?’ Sezen stood up, her hands clasped in front of her chest in what
İ
kmen felt was a very dramatic pose.

‘Because the man in the house on the other side of the church was the last person to see Mehmet Bey before he apparently evaporated,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I only have that man’s word for the fact that Mehmet Bey isn’t still in his house, so I need to know as much about him as I can.’

‘Professor Atay is a public figure,’ Sezen said. ‘I’m sure you can find out anything of interest about him on the Internet.’

‘Oh, I’ve met him, several times.’

‘Well then you know him.’

‘A little,’
İ
kmen said. ‘What I don’t know, Sezen Han
ı
m, is why you and Nur Han
ı
m seem to have an issue with him.’

‘It’s not up for discussion,’ Sezen said.

‘Well it should be,’
İ
kmen said. ‘With respect. After all, if this family has some sort of feud with Professor Atay, and Mehmet Bey is missing …’

Not that he knew of any such feud, which surely Süleyman would have told him about.

‘Ladies, you know from sad personal experience that there is someone in this city who kills people like you. Now I’m not saying that Professor Atay—’

‘The Atay man and little Leyla
İ
pek.’

The voice was old and cracked but its words were unmistakable.
İ
kmen went over to Muhammed Süleyman Efendi with the man’s wife and cousin at his heels.

‘Efendi …’

‘Made her pregnant.’

For a moment the room fell silent, and then Nur Süleyman said, ‘My husband, he isn’t well …’

İ
kmen just looked at her, watching her shrink before his eyes. Then he turned to the old man again. ‘Go on, Efendi.’

The old man frowned. ‘You know, I really could do with kaolin and morphine …’ He touched his stomach. Çetin
İ
kmen sighed.

‘My cousin doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ Sezen
İ
pek said. ‘Ignore him.’

And then something that might have been anger or hatred or even just rebelliousness came into the old man’s eyes.

‘Efendi …’

‘Sezen had to sort Leyla out. But it was my brother Beyaz
ı
t who beat the dirty pig. Beat him with the whip our father used on his horses.’

‘He beat Professor Atay? Your brother Beyaz
ı
t Efendi?’
İ
kmen said.

Now hunkered down beside the old man, he saw the light of recognition switch off in his eyes, and he felt his heart sink a second time. Muhammed Süleyman Efendi said, ‘Pardon, monsieur, pardon.’ He’d clearly disappeared back into a past that no one else could understand.

Sezen
İ
pek said, ‘We all had to learn French.’

‘Yes,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Your ancestors spoke it at court. I don’t care. Now look, ladies, is what Muhammed Efendi said true or not? Did Leyla Ablak, your daughter—’

His phone rang; he took it out of his pocket and said, ‘Sorry.’ Then he put it to his ear.

‘Sir.’

‘Ömer.’

İ
kmen moved towards the back of the Süleymans’ dark, heavily furnished living room.

‘Sir, I can see a light in the basement of Professor Atay’s house,’ Ömer Mungan said.

‘Have you just noticed it now because it’s getting dark?’

‘No, I saw it come on. Just now. I mean, I suppose it could be one of those that switches on automatically …’

‘Or maybe it isn’t,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll be with you.’

‘Might be as well to bring the guys in the car, sir,’ Ömer said.

‘OK.’ He cut the connection and looked at the women again. He was about to give them a last chance, but Sezen
İ
pek pre-empted him.

‘It’s all true,’ she said.

‘Sezen!’

She put a hand on Nur Süleyman’s arm to silence her. ‘No, my dear, this is your son who could be at stake here.’ She looked up at
İ
kmen. ‘Professor Atay, Cem Atay, made my daughter Leyla pregnant when they were students at Bo
ğ
aziçi University together. She had an abortion and he, as Muhammed Efendi says, was beaten by my cousin Beyaz
ı
t Efendi. That man ruined my daughter. That man was the whole reason she married first a foreigner and then an awful Atatürkist traitor.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘And she could never have children.’

İ
kmen put a cigarette into his mouth, then stepped forward and took her hands in his. ‘Thank you, Han
ı
m,’ he said.

Then he lit his cigarette and left the house.

There was no consciousness now. Mehmet Süleyman was vulnerable. Unconscious, he couldn’t defend himself, and so he could be shot or stabbed or suffocated at will.

Was he dreaming? There were no physical signs beyond shallow breathing, and so there was no way of knowing what his experience might or might not have been. When he was hefted up on to shoulders that were not really up to the job, he did make a small noise, and for a minute or more the man who carried him stood as still as a tree, his ears trying to close themselves against the sound of his own breathing.

The street in front of the professor’s house was rowdy with evening drinkers. To Ay
ş
e it looked as if some of the more fashionable corners of Beyo
ğ
lu were on a group excursion that was doubling as a competition in who could pose the most effectively. She found it tiresome and the young people on display made her feel old, but that didn’t matter. Ömer had just called to say that there was a light at the back of the house, and only a minute later three of the uniformed guys had positioned themselves near her, across the road from the property. Having them around, as opposed to plain-clothed detectives, wasn’t ideal, and they were clearly making some of the more nervous media and digital types anxious, because quite a few had moved away when the cops arrived. But then in a way that was a good thing. Thronging streets and dangerous situations rarely mixed well.

Ay
ş
e’s phone rang again. It was
İ
kmen. ‘Ay
ş
e, this light in the basement. Can you see it from the front of the building yet?’

She squinted at the place where the wooden house seemed to join the cracked pavement, where she’d looked the first time he’d asked some minutes before. ‘No.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s it for now.’ He rang off.

Ay
ş
e took a sip from her long glass of lemonade and grenadine and lit a cigarette. An ageing media type three tables away had been looking at her almost non-stop for half an hour and she wondered when he was going to make his move. If ever. She hoped it was never. She looked at the professor’s dark and silent house. Was Mehmet Süleyman in there? Oddly, at first, she wondered why her musings were just thoughts, devoid of any emotional content. The man she had loved for years and years was missing and yet she could still drink her drink, think her thoughts and throw the occasional unpleasant glare at her unwelcome admirer. What was happening?

And then a feeling of such terrible loss overwhelmed her that Ay
ş
e almost cried out. Her heart raced, her head swam and for just a moment she wondered whether she was actually going to faint. Was she still so much in love that not even what she had thought was a very firm state of denial had managed to keep the demons of passion out of her head?

She drank a little shakily from her glass and then smoked her cigarette and lit another one. Her admirer attempted a smile and she looked away. Not only was she shaken by what had just happened, she was resentful of it too. How had she come to invest Süleyman with so much power? How had she given herself so completely to him that even when he was with another woman he could still exert total control over her emotions? She looked at the front of that house and she experienced a bitterness that she could barely contain. Then there was resolve. She’d go for
İ
kmen’s job and become the best police officer she could be, and to hell with Mehmet Süleyman!

Her phone rang. She picked it up.
İ
kmen said, ‘If and when I tell you, break the front door down. Get the guys to move people away from the house now.’

‘Yes, sir.’ She beckoned one of the uniformed officers over to her table. ‘What—’

‘Just do it!’
İ
kmen whispered.

Çetin
İ
kmen put his phone in his pocket and watched as a figure came out into the professor’s garden and opened up the boot of the car.

Ömer whispered, ‘He must have been in there all the time.’

Atay –
İ
kmen could see that it was him by the light coming out of the cellar – went inside again, and for a while, a long while, the police officers thought that maybe he wasn’t going to re-emerge. Eventually, panting and grunting, he came out backwards on to the sparse brown and green grass, dragging something that was clearly giving him problems.

Ömer looked at
İ
kmen, who took out the gun he almost never drew. The younger man followed suit.

‘What now?’ he whispered.

As
İ
kmen looked into the garden again, the professor stopped to rest. Once he was on the move again, the inspector spoke. ‘Let’s go.’

The academic smiled. Then he frowned. ‘What an extraordinary way to enter a person’s property,’ he said to the two men who’d just pushed open the gate from the church and let themselves in. One, he knew, was Inspector Çetin
İ
kmen.

‘We tried to call you and we knocked at your door,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But there was no reply.’

‘Well my phone has been switched to silent and I’ve only just got home.’

He looked pale by the thin light from the cellar door, and exhausted too. But then Cem Atay was not a young man. He and Leyla
İ
pek, as she had been then, had been students together back in the 1970s.

‘Ah, but you haven’t, have you, Professor?’
İ
kmen said.

‘How do you know what I’ve been doing?’ Atay looked and sounded offended. But then he could be as offended as he liked. He was entitled to do that.

‘We know because we’ve been watching this house,’
İ
kmen said. ‘You haven’t just got home, and I need to search these premises on the basis that this is the last place my colleague Inspector Süleyman was seen, by you.’

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I had tea with the inspector, we talked and then he left. Anyway, if you want to search my house you’ll have to get a warrant.’

Ömer Mungan, who had been silent up until that point, said, ‘Let’s see in that sack, then.’