Deadline
Authors: Barbara Nadel
BARBARA NADEL
Copyright © 2013 Barbara Nadel
The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2013
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 0 7553 8891 2
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
By Barbara Nadel and available from Headline
The Inspector
İ
kmen
series:
Belshazzar’s Daughter
A Chemical Prison
Arabesk
Deep Waters
Harem
Petrified
Deadly Web
Dance with Death
A Passion for Killing
Pretty Dead Things
River of the Dead
Death by Design
A Noble Killing
Dead of Night
Deadline
The Hancock series:
Last Rights
After the Mourning
Ashes to Ashes
Sure and Certain Death
This book is dedicated to my wonderful ‘other family’ in Turkey. You’re brilliant and I love you.
Police
Inspector Çetin
İ
kmen
– middle-aged
İ
stanbul police detective
Inspector Mehmet Süleyman
–
İ
kmen’s protégé
Sergeant Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu
–
İ
kmen’s sergeant
Sergeant
İ
zzet Melik
– Süleyman’s sergeant
Commissioner Ardiç
–
İ
kmen and Süleyman’s superior
Dr Arto Sarkissian
– police pathologist
Commander
İ
pek
– Special Forces
Bowstrings Theatre Group
Alp
İ
lhan/
İ
zzedin Effendi
– founder of theatre group
Ceyda Ümit/Nuray Hanımefendi
– Alp’s girlfriend
Söner Erkan/Yusuf Effendi
– theatre group member
Kenan Oz/Avram Bey
– theatre group member
Metin Martini/Dr Enzo Garibaldi
– theatre group member
Esma/Sarah
– theatre group member
Deniz/Sofia Hanım
– theatre group member
Other Characters
Lale Aktar
– crime writer
Dr Krikor Sarkissian
– Arto’s brother, an addiction specialist
Caroun Sarkissian
– Krikor’s wife
Burak Fisekçi
– Krikor’s assistant
Hovsep Pars
– an elderly Armenian
Samsun Bajraktar
–
İ
kmen’s cousin
Ersu Nadir
– maître d’hôtel at the Pera Palas
Saffet Güler
– concierge at the Pera Palas
Ali Farsako
ğ
lu
– Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu’s brother
Nar Sözen
– a transsexual
David Bonomo
– official at the office of the Chief Rabbi
Nurettin Akdeniz
– ex-convict
Muhammed Ersoy
– inmate of Silivri Prison,
İ
stanbul
Kemal Aslanlı
– Muhammed Ersoy’s cousin
Nicos Bey
– theatre group member
In spite of the pain, Çetin
İ
kmen found his surroundings fascinating. Lying on a narrow, metal beam, he had one arm and one leg one side, one arm and one leg the other. Underneath him and illuminated from below, somehow, was a dome. Studded with star-shaped holes and jewelled with exquisite stained glass, it looked like the sort of dome one sometimes saw in a hamam.
However, lack of steam and/or the smell of soap, shampoo and cologne seemed to suggest that he wasn’t hanging over the roof of a Turkish bath. In fact he wasn’t actually outside in the open air at all. He was inside a building, a vast one, and his ribs and his lungs hurt as he tried to hold his position on the beam without crashing through the dome below. It wasn’t easy.
In spite
of a certain woolliness about the brain, a single thought did keep on presenting itself to him and that was the one about what would happen if there was an earthquake. The city of
İ
stanbul was certainly due another large quake, everyone, including geologists, said so. The last really big one had happened back in 1999.
İ
kmen tried to recall, without at first any success, what today’s date was. The year 2010 was in there, but when in 2010?
He looked
at the dome, lit from below, underneath him and tried to breathe as normally as he could, but without much success. His chest was being crushed by the beam; slowly but surely he felt it killing him. If a quake came, it could be a mercy, in a way.
How had he come to be in such a position? He was in mortal danger and, as far as he could tell, he was entirely alone in, if he strained his neck from side to side to look around, some sort of big, luxurious palace. What was someone like him doing in such a place? And then he remembered. Oh, yes, it was 12 December. It was his birthday. Nothing good ever really came of those, in
İ
kmen’s experience. And true to form, someone had just tried to kill him.
Thirteen Days Before
‘You
know I can’t stomach that sort of thing, why do you insist on putting me through it?’ Çetin
İ
kmen asked his friend Arto Sarkissian.
The light was fading quickly over the Bosphorus and the two men were the last customers remaining outside on the
İ
stanbul Modern Café terrace. But then
İ
kmen, at least, nearly always took his food and drink al fresco these days. Since 2009 it had been illegal to smoke in enclosed public spaces anywhere in Turkey. It was a law that, even as a serving police inspector, he hated.
His friend, a small, round Armenian, like
İ
kmen of a ‘certain age’, smiled. ‘It’s all for charity,’ he said. ‘Think of it as a duty, if that helps.’
‘Yes, but it’s “fun” too, isn’t it?’
İ
kmen growled. He put his cigarette out in the ashtray in front of him and lit up another.
‘You make
it sound like abdominal surgery,’ Arto said. ‘Fun is supposed to be a good thing.’
‘Huh!’
One of the waiters appeared and automatically gave Arto the bill for their coffee and glasses of wine.
İ
kmen wasn’t surprised that he didn’t so much as give him a second look. His suit was crumpled and he reeked of tobacco. He was an old-fashioned Turk, an anachronism amid a race of people who were rapidly, at least in
İ
stanbul, becoming very glossy. Even Arto, his oldest and dearest friend, had a sort of groomed patina. But then he was a doctor, albeit a pathologist, and so maybe he was taking something to make himself look that way. Some wonder drug.
‘I don’t like organised fun,’
İ
kmen continued. ‘It makes me anxious.’
‘It’s supposed to relax you,’ Arto said. Then looking at him narrowly, he said, ‘Would it help if I said it would be good if we had a representative from the police department at the event?’
‘Mehmet Süleyman’s going, he can do that.’
Arto looked at the bill and then placed a 50 Turkish lire note down on the table to cover it. The waiter, who had been hovering, whipped it away immediately.
‘I know for a fact that Fatma is going to stay with her aunt in Bursa that week,’ the Armenian said. ‘She goes away that week every year.’
‘For which
I am always grateful. My wife is a very understanding woman.’
‘You’ll be alone, you can’t cook . . .’
‘I’ll be alone as I always am!’
İ
kmen said. ‘I like it like that, you—’
‘You invite Krikor and myself to some dreary bar in Sultanahmet – if you remember,’ Arto interjected. ‘If it crosses your mind to invite your own brother it’s a miracle and I’m not sure that any of your more recent friends even know when your birthday is. As far as they’re concerned you age in one long, unregarded and continuous stream of time.’
‘Which is how I like it.’
‘It isn’t normal.’
‘Whoever said that normal equals good?’
‘You should at least allow your children to celebrate your birthday,’ Arto said. ‘They’re your children! They love you. I’m sure they’d like to, at the very least, take you out for a meal.’ Then he looked at the skinny, smoking figure across the table from him and added, ‘Not that eating is really what you do.’
İ
kmen smiled. They’d spent a happy day together until the subject of Arto’s brother Krikor’s latest fundraising event had arisen. Ambling around the
İ
stanbul Modern gallery had been exhilarating for
İ
kmen. Not that he understood what all the pictures, photographs and installations were really about. But in a country that in recent years had been ruled by a government with Islamic roots, an avowed secularist like
İ
kmen felt cheered by the sight of artworks depicting things like sex, sexuality and dissent.
‘If
Krikor’s project is to provide facilities to immigrant as well as Turkish addicts then it needs more money,’ Arto said.
‘Five thousand Turkish lire each, at least,’
İ
kmen said. ‘That’s what this “fun” of yours will cost.’ Then he shook his head.
Arto leaned across the table. Out on the Bosphorus the sound of a single ferry foghorn signalled that the night was destined to be one of dampness, mist and coughs. ‘I said I’d pay for you and I will!’ Arto snapped. ‘It is my birthday and Christmas present to you!’