A Noble Killing (31 page)

‘She treats me like a kid!’ the boy said, and imitated his mother’s voice: ‘Oh come home now, Rambo, it’s dark!’

‘You shouldn’t play in the derelict houses up here!’ Gonca said as she made herself look at her boy and not at her lover. ‘Junkies take drugs in them! They’re full of needles! What do you want, eh, Rambo? You want to get AIDS?’

The boy rounded on her furiously. ‘I won’t get AIDS!’ he shouted at her. ‘But you will! You fuck everything, you do!’

Aware that they were losing what could be valuable time in the midst of this ‘domestic’, İzzet Melik put a hand on Süleyman’s arm. ‘Sir . . .’

‘Rambo!’

‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘You’re no better than that boy’s mum who sells her snatch for gear.’

‘I don’t sell myself!’ Gonca said as she finally looked at Süleyman and felt her heart jump inside her chest. Then she said to her son, ‘What woman? What do you mean?’

Rambo looked at Süleyman and İzzet Melik and said, ‘The woman whose boy goes to the old Jewish woman who teaches piano.’ He prodded Süleyman’s chest with his finger. ‘She knows you.’

It had to be Izabella Madrid, the woman they were on their way to see. ‘How do you know that, Rambo?’ Süleyman asked.

‘What’s it worth?’ the boy answered arrogantly.

Before Süleyman could answer, İzzet Melik pushed himself forward and took the boy by the scruff of his neck. ‘A fucking good smack if you don’t tell us!’ he said.

Furious that her son should be manhandled by anyone except her, Gonca flew at İzzet and tried to prise his hands off Rambo, but without success. ‘Don’t you—’

‘How do you know Miss Madrid?’ İzzet persisted. ‘Come on, you little sod, tell me!’

It wasn’t often that Mehmet Süleyman felt ineffectual, but this was one of those rare occasions. He just stood while İzzet shook the boy and Gonca tried unsuccessfully to get Rambo released.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t know the Jewish lady or the boy! I hear things, that’s all. See them about,’ Rambo said. He was trying to keep a defiant expression on his face but he was in reality really quite scared of someone as bulky, rude and seemingly without limits as İzzet. ‘The boy was hiding out in the derelict houses. The old woman come past and I told her he was in there.’

‘When?’

‘I dunno, couple of hours ago.’

İzzet began to loosen his hold on the boy and said, ‘So did she go in to look for him? Did she?’

Süleyman was looking over İzzet and Rambo’s heads at Gonca, who had now given up trying to rescue her son and was gazing back at the man she loved with tears in her eyes. To meet him unexpectedly like this was killing her. And yet she knew that it would not be the last time that something like this was going to happen. İstanbul, all twelve million people of it, was still at heart a collection of villages.

At last Rambo spoke again. ‘Yes, she looked for him and she found him.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I see them go off back down in the direction of the old synagogue. She had her arm around him. The silly boy was crying.’

İzzet let Rambo go and looked across at Süleyman. ‘That doesn’t sound very much like the Murad Emin that we know,’ he said. ‘We’d best get down to Miss Madrid’s, sir.’

The girl Sabiha’s parents denied everything. They were, they said – or rather the father said for both of them – horrified that their daughter had apparently perished in a house fire. So far they hadn’t actually seen either their apparently ruined apartment or their dead daughter, but they had been devastated by the scene outside their block. Did they know a man called Cem? No, they didn’t. They knew no one by the name of İsmail Yıldız either.

Cem, whose surname was apparently Koç, said very little. He was clear on the fact that he didn’t want a lawyer, but that was all.

‘You were recorded handing a sum of money comprising two thousand Turkish lire to a man called Ibrahim Yıldız in the Royal Tombs nargile salon earlier this evening,’ İkmen said. ‘What was that for?’

Cem Koç turned away and stared at the smudgy grey wall of the interview room.

İkmen looked at Ayşe Farsakoğlu and lit up a cigarette. Cem wrinkled his nose in very obvious disgust.

‘The law, for the moment, permits me to smoke, and so I shall,’ İkmen said. ‘If you don’t like that, Mr Koç, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.’

Resolutely silent, Cem Koç continued to stare at the wall.

‘Mr Yıldız is claiming that you employed him to kill a young woman called Sabiha Şafak,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said. ‘This was at the request of her parents, who, Mr Yıldız claims, wished to dispose of Sabiha because she had besmirched their honour. There was a young man involved, it was alleged.’

Still nothing. İkmen frowned. On tape at least, Cem Koç had admitted no liability for the procurement of İsmail Yıldız’s services as a paid assassin. It had been alluded to, but no direct reference had been made to murder, and the girl had not been named. There was the money, and the fact that the key to the Şafaks’ apartment had been left ready for İsmail to let himself in. But there was also a lot of the brother of a policeman’s word against that of Mr Koç. In his head, İkmen could hear Ardıç’s fury. He could also imagine how difficult life could now become for İsmail Yıldız, who did, after all, have to go back to live in Fatih near this man Koç and, no doubt, Koç’s friends too.

‘Mr Koç,’ İkmen continued, ‘does the name Tayfun Ergin mean anything to you?’

If he could give Koç an ‘out’, allowing him to name and shame his boss – if indeed that was the case – that might help.

Not a flicker.

‘We think,’ İkmen said, ‘that some people in this city are using honour killing as a way of making money. Can you imagine such a dreadful thing? Making money out of the misfortune of having a daughter or a wife who has dishonoured her family? How cynical! How opportunistic!’

He felt rather than saw Ayşe look at him. She knew precisely what he was doing. Spiritual cop, secular cop. She slipped very easily into the role. ‘And what of the girls?’ she said. ‘Sabiha Şafak, then over in Beşiktaş, Gözde Seyhan burnt like a Roman candle. We’re also looking at some poor girls who have died mysteriously even further back than that.’

They both saw that Cem Koç was about to speak. He stopped himself, then did let himself utter. ‘I know your name,’ he said to İkmen, ‘even if you don’t look the way you do on the television. You’re not concerned with honour! You are a man without God or tradition!’

‘Oh, and you are?’ İkmen asked. ‘A man who gives two thousand lire to another man in a nargile salon for, it would seem, no apparent reason? What’s that about?’

‘I’ve not done anything.’

‘Anything what?’ İkmen said. ‘Anything illegal, immoral, what?’

‘I . . .’ And then as if suddenly realising he was talking when he should be silent, Cem Koç shut up. He folded his arms across his chest, looked back at the wall and closed his mouth tight shut.

Izabella Madrid’s apartment was dark and silent when they got there. There was no television set banging away in the background and there certainly wasn’t anyone at the piano. İzzet Melik looked at Süleyman, whose face was as troubled as the sergeant’s mind.

‘You’re worried.’

‘I’m not comfortable,’ Süleyman said.

The baker who owned the shop downstairs had told them that he’d seen Miss Madrid come home with one of her students a couple of hours before. They’d gone into the apartment, and according to the baker, they had not left since.

‘What choice do we have?’ Süleyman said. He withdrew his gun from the holster underneath his jacket and with his free hand hammered his fist on the door. ‘Miss Madrid! Miss Madrid, it’s the police. Open up!’

Only silence washed back at him from inside the house. He looked down into the street below and was relieved to see that Gonca had finally done what she’d been told and gone home. She’d seen the look of panic in Süleyman’s eyes when Rambo had told him about Izabella Madrid and Murad Emin. The boy, she deduced, had to be a problem at the very least, possibly violent and dangerous. She had flown after her lover and his deputy and in the face of Süleyman’s entreaties had begged him not to go, pleading with him to send İzzet Melik on his own. The man from İzmir had rolled his eyes in despair at that point. Also at that point, Süleyman had rounded on her. Telling İzzet to go on ahead and wait for him outside the Ahrida Synagogue, he had looked her hard in the face and said, ‘I used you. Your insane behaviour forces me to finally tell you the truth. It was just sex, Gonca. You’re good, I’ll grant you. But you’re also old and I’m glad you finished it. Now I can find a woman of my own age.’

Then he’d walked away from her. At first she’d raced down the hill after him, hurling abuse. But once they had got near to the synagogue, her steps had slowed and she had just stopped and stared at him. Now, mercifully, she had gone.

‘Miss Madrid!’ İzzet yelled. ‘Open up!’

Still nothing happened. After a few moments, Süleyman told İzzet Melik to stand on the other side of the door, then he counted them both down to zero. They kicked in the door and stood back behind the walls on either side to look within. While Süleyman covered him with his pistol, İzzet took his torch out and shone it into the dark little apartment. From the front door they could see right through to Miss Madrid’s small living room. Straight as a ramrod she could be seen sitting up on a tall wooden dining chair. Her face was pale but not nearly as pallid as that of Murad Emin, who sat by her side. He was shaking and he had a gun up to her head.

‘Do you have any idea when Inspector İkmen will be able to talk to me?’ Saadet Seyhan asked the officer on the front desk. İkmen had apparently re-entered the station at some point, but now he was busy.

‘No.’ The officer didn’t even look up at her. Some newspaper or other was far more interesting.

‘Sir!’

‘I’ve told you!’

‘Please!’

Now he did look up and pointed to the back of the room where Lokman was reclining half asleep on the bench. ‘Go back to your son!’

‘Sir, I have urgent information for Çetin Bey!’ Saadet said. ‘Please! Please!’

‘Inspector İkmen is a very busy man,’ the officer said. ‘He’ll see you when he can and not before. Sit down or I’ll have both you and your son thrown out!’

As time had gone on, Saadet had become more and more desperate. She wanted to see İkmen, to get it over with, to have Cahit in custody before he fetched up at the station demanding that she and Lokman go home with him. İkmen had definitely returned from somewhere; she’d heard one of the other officers at the desk say so. But ever since then he’d been ‘busy’. It was pitch black outside now and she knew that Cahit had to be back from the brothel by this time. She feared what he was thinking, what he was imagining she and Lokman might be up to. More than anything she wanted to protect her last remaining child, even if he was Cahit’s son.

Before she left the desk she said, ‘I have urgent information for the inspector. About a case he wishes to solve. I can help him!’

‘Can you?’ The officer put his paper down and looked at her, for the first time, with just a small smile on his face.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I can! It’s about—’

‘You know we have a man who comes in here every day with “urgent” information for Inspector İkmen,’ the officer said. ‘It’s always about either Communists, aliens or the ghost of some Byzantine emperor.’

Saadet began to feel herself shrink. But she said, ‘I am not mad.’

‘That’s what he says,’ the officer said, and then he roared at her, ‘Sit down and wait your turn!’

Lokman, who had been asleep until then, looked around him with glazed, shocked eyes.

‘It’s my own stupid fault,’ the old woman said as she looked at the two policemen at the end of her hall. ‘I should have got rid of that gun years ago.’ She shrugged. ‘It was my father’s, he was very fond of it. I kept it on the piano. Just in case.’

‘Just in case?’

‘Just in case someone should try to rob me,’ Izabella Madrid said. She looked over at Murad Emin, whose sweaty hand now held that gun, and added, ‘You know my father fought in the War of Independence, with Atatürk. Fought the Greeks, the British, the French. That weapon came through all that with him. I reckoned that if it could protect him, it could protect me. But the world turns and things change and what do you know, now I’m going to be killed by it.’

She seemed very calm. But then as Süleyman had frequently observed, quite a few elderly people were calm when faced with their own mortality. ‘Is it loaded?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I always made sure of that.’

‘Murad, son,’ İzzet Melik said, ‘we just want to talk.’

‘No you don’t,’ the boy said. ‘You want to arrest me.’

‘What for?’ Süleyman asked. ‘Why would we want to arrest you?’

Murad Emin didn’t answer.

‘If it’s about the DVDs we found at the Tulip, then we do need to talk,’ Süleyman said. He didn’t mention that he thought that Murad could have killed his old piano teacher, Hamid İdiz. He didn’t want to alarm the boy, not in this position. ‘Watching that stuff isn’t good for you, Murad. The people who do those things are sick.’

‘No they’re not, they’re good Muslims!’ the boy said. ‘If the infidels will not change their ways, then they have to be killed.’

‘No they don’t,’ Süleyman said.

‘What do you know?’

‘I know that the Koran is a sacred and noble text that exhorts Muslims to care for others, to refrain from killing and to be understanding of and kind to unbelievers, whoever they are,’ he said.

The boy did not reply. So many kids like this, radicalised by shrill clerics, evil videos and toxic pamphlets, hadn’t even read the Koran. They just took in the bile of others to plug the gaps in their own sad, lonely or unfulfilled lives. Murad Emin, a musical genius, did not entirely fit that profile. But he was still angry, unstable and armed.