Deadline (10 page)

There was a moment of absolute stillness, punctuated only by some muffled weeping. It was ultimately broken by the leader of the terrorists or whoever they were who said, ‘Your game just finished. Well, it did for most of you.’ Then he put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. ‘In a minute my associates here will take most of you back through to the ballroom. But these people are to stay in here.’ He looked down at the paper and read, ‘Dr Arto Sarkissian, Dr Krikor Sarkissian, Inspector Çetin
İ
kmen, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman, Mrs Lale Aktar and Mr Hovsep Pars.’

İ
kmen, instantly alarmed for the elderly and terminally ill Armenian, couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘Mr Pars is—’

‘Mr Pars is going to play the same game as you,’ the leader cut in. ‘Or rather, he’ll watch you do it.’

‘Game?’
İ
kmen looked across the saloon at the small, ailing man and felt his heartbeat rise.

‘You six, although more accurately and realistically
İ
kmen and Süleyman, are going to solve a mystery for us,’ the leader said. ‘Unless of course one of you six perpetrated the
crime yourselves.’ Whether or not he was smiling underneath that balaclava helmet,
İ
kmen couldn’t see, but he could tell that he was gleeful by the tone of his voice.

‘What mystery?’

‘The mystery of who killed the young prince,’ the man said. ‘Get it right and you all get out of here alive. Get it wrong and everybody dies. The game for you is far from over.’

Çetin
İ
kmen suddenly felt cold and his body started to shake. He looked at Süleyman whose face was so white it was almost blue. From the other guests came muted crying, little whimpers of fear and soft appeals to Allah to help them.

‘Take them through.’ The leader directed his team to get all but the policemen, the novelist, the doctors and Hovsep Pars back into the ballroom. As he left, one man said to
İ
kmen, ‘You’d better get this right!’

Only when they’d all gone did Çetin
İ
kmen feel able to speak again. He said, ‘But there is no young prince, is there? There’s a dead boy, an actor. I don’t know who he really is.’

‘Well, you’d better find out, hadn’t you?’ the leader said. Then he told his men to clear up the mobile telephones and cameras.

Nar Sözen had tried her best
to keep up with that bloody policewoman but her fucking shoes just hadn’t let her. Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu had always been one of those cops who was generally sympathetic to people like Nar and so she, as well as all the other girls, had wanted to know what she’d been doing sniffing around doorways in Taksim. If Nar and her sisters were going to be subjected to some sort of police crackdown or if the law was looking for someone in particular then Nar wanted to know about it. And Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu was generally a safe bet when it came to dropping hints.

The ‘fucking shoes’ put Nar at well over two metres tall and so she stuck out like a beach ball in a snowdrift. Not that it mattered on
İ
stiklal Street. Where
İ
stanbul’s alternative society met was not a place that Nar or any transgendered person had to be too worried about. Most of the late-night revellers on the street were either students who didn’t give a damn who anyone was provided they could do their thing, liberal Turks and tourists. Only when Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu peeled off the main road did Nar feel a twinge of fear. But she followed her anyway.

When she got on to Me
ş
rutiyet Street, Nar spotted Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu making for one of the flanks of the old Pera Palas Hotel. People had to smoke outside these days and so Nar had seen people lurking down the side of the hotel bar
on several occasions. She wondered if Ay
ş
e was meeting someone there or whether she was going to enter the hotel via the bar for some reason. As Nar got closer she waved an arm and shouted, ‘Hey!’ But Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu didn’t respond. She seemed to be fixated on one window. Breathlessly Nar jogged towards her and said, ‘Sergeant, what do you want with the girls?’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu turned and, even by the dim light from a street lamp, Nar could see that her face was unusually pale.

‘What—’

The policewoman clamped a hand over Nar’s mouth and said, ‘Sssh!’

Nar tried to talk but Farsako
ğ
lu just pushed her hand still harder against her mouth. ‘I think there may be something wrong,’ the policewoman whispered. Nar’s eyes widened and she mumbled against Farsako
ğ
lu’s hand. ‘Not with you, Nar!’ she continued. ‘No, in the hotel. Look.’

She pulled Nar closer to the window she had just been looking through. Nar saw the ornate and comfortable bar of the Pera Palas Hotel and at first she could see nothing wrong with it – apart from the fact that it appeared to be empty. Aware that Nar was not seeing what she had seen, Farsako
ğ
lu said to her, ‘Over on the left, in front of the pillar.’

And then Nar
saw the figure of a person, possibly a man – she wasn’t sure because she never wore the glasses that she needed – on the floor, covered in what could be blood. Slowly Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu let go of her mouth and then she said, ‘Did you see?’

‘Was it a dead . . .’

‘It could be,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘Then again, there is a murder mystery evening taking place in the hotel tonight.’ She looked back through the window once more then and added, ‘But it looks so real to me. He, the dead man, looks really dead.’

Nar said nothing. She’d seen a few dead bodies in her time and she’d seen even more people who were dead drunk or dead drugged.

‘I think I’ll go in,’ Ay
ş
e said.

‘Alone? Aren’t you going to call for support or whatever it is the police do?’

Ay
ş
e knew that strictly that was exactly what she should do.
Strictly
she could just march up to the front door of the hotel, present her ID and demand entrance. But if the ‘body’ was just part of the murder mystery evening, doing that or, worse, stomping in with a load of lairy constables was not a prospect that she relished. The humiliation just didn’t bear thinking about. And Mehmet Süleyman was in there. But then that cut both ways. If he was in the hotel and a murder or murders had been committed then he could be in danger at this very moment.

‘Inspector
İ
kmen
and Inspector Süleyman are in there,’ Ay
ş
e said, ‘at a party. I’ve tried to call both of them, but their phones just go to voicemail.’

Nar knew them both. Süleyman had arrested her once for soliciting and
İ
kmen was the cousin of that weird old girl called Samsun who lived over in Beyazıt. ‘Do you want me to come with you, Sergeant?’ she asked.

Ay
ş
e looked up at her. Nar was a great deal bigger than she was and was also well known for being very handy in a fist fight. She had one conviction for assault to prove it. Officially she was a criminal but having Nar along wasn’t a bad idea. ‘OK,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘But we will have to go in through the back of the building, if we can, because if something dangerous is going on we can’t take the risk of going through the front door.’ She began to move to where she knew the entrance to the kitchen was, Nar’s skyscraper stilettos clacking on the paving stones behind her. The sound of them made Ay
ş
e stop and then turn round. ‘You’ll have to take those off, Nar,’ she said. ‘Sorry. But if we have to move quickly for any reason . . .’

Nar gave her a very unamused look but she did take the shoes off. Her feet, Ay
ş
e noticed, were enormous. Nar herself, on the other hand, was now a lot less intimidating than she had been. ‘Happy now?’ she said as she stood
in her stockings, her fingers wrapped around her stilettos.

‘So this is how it’s going to go—’

‘Excuse me,’
İ
kmen raised a hand in the air and then smiled. ‘We don’t know what your name is. If we don’t know how to address you, how can we attract your attention if we have any questions?’

The man behind the balaclava helmet knew that he was being played with and he didn’t like it.
İ
kmen could see the anger in his eyes.

‘There won’t be any questions,’ he said. ‘You’ll do as you’re told or we’ll kill you.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all nice and clear then. Thank you.’
İ
kmen subsided into what to the outside world looked like a satisfied silence. Inside he was quite another creature. Inside, his mind was screaming to know what exactly was happening and why. But now he’d managed to regain his outward composure he had to hang on to it. Whatever they were facing, at least one cool head would be needed and so it might as well be his.

‘You can interview any of the guests or the actors or the hotel staff who are in that ballroom now,’ the masked leader said. ‘And you, Inspectors
İ
kmen and Süleyman, may also interview the doctors Sarkissian, Mrs Aktar and Mr Pars. Someone in this hotel killed that boy and whoever did
it didn’t just do it for a laugh or for effect. You have to uncover the motive behind the killing as well as the culprit. Then, and only then, will we let you go.’

‘By
you
, you mean . . .’

‘All of you. Decide who you want to interview and we will bring that person to you. This isn’t just your show, Çetin Bey. You have a team with Inspector Süleyman, Mrs Aktar, Mr Pars and the two doctors. You must whip your team into shape. Or not.’ A muffled laugh came from the mask. ‘Because you know what? You have a time limit.’

‘A time limit?’

‘You must solve the case before the sun comes up, which tomorrow will be at seven twenty a.m.’

‘And if we haven’t done it by that time, you’ll kill us and everyone else?’

‘We will.’

‘Why?’ Even
İ
kmen himself didn’t know where that had come from. It was a fair question but they were all in mortal danger from what seemed to be a bunch of terrorists. Not exactly people one questioned closely.

Those eyes looked angry again. ‘Why?’

‘Yes,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Why are you making us do this? Why has he,’ he pointed to the man standing behind the leader of the group, ‘got a camera on his helmet? And also, how did you
know that a real murder was going to happen here tonight?’

The man said nothing and so
İ
kmen, emboldened, continued. ‘You could have killed the young prince yourselves. In fact, at the moment, I can’t think of anyone more likely to have done that.’ He saw Süleyman looking across at him with fear on his face, but he went on anyway. ‘And besides, if we do solve this crime or whatever you care to call it, what are you going to do with the perpetrator? Are you going to hand him over to the police? Kill him, or her, yourselves? Just walk out of here as if nothing had happened?’

İ
kmen was angry. People had been killed for reasons he couldn’t even begin to understand, Krikor’s event had been ruined and now they were all on some sort of insane time limit. He wanted to say,
Solve the damn case yourselves
, but he didn’t, even though he surmised that these people had to know who the murderer was. Because if they didn’t know, how could they assess whether or not
İ
kmen and his fellows were right or wrong? They couldn’t.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to answer my questions or not?’

The leader stood up. As he walked across the Kubbeli Saloon towards
İ
kmen, Süleyman put a protective arm across his colleague. But contrary to expectation
the man didn’t hit or even touch Çetin
İ
kmen, he just leaned across his submachine gun at him and said, ‘You do your job, I’ll do mine and we’ll all get along well. Now tell me, Çetin Bey, have you ever read any novels by the late great British author, Agatha Christie?’

Ersu Bey
just couldn’t get Stevie Wonder tunes out of his head. Over and over and over again – an endless Stevie Wonder loop that he had even, he was ashamed to admit to himself, started to dance to, albeit rather painfully. But then that had been purely practical. Locked in the fridge he had to keep warm somehow.

The night shift had looked like a bunch of reprobates. But then a lot of young people did look a bit thuggish, especially if they had piercings and tattoos, or so Ersu Bey thought. Not that all of the night staff had been young or unfamiliar to him. He’d seen some of them before even though he didn’t know who they were. A very attractive woman probably in her late thirties was the standout person for him. She had a rather boyish figure which he found particularly appealing. He wondered whether she was married.

Ersu Bey had been divorced seven years ago. He and his wife had never had any children and so it had been a relatively straightforward affair. She’d tired of what she always
called his ‘fussy ways’. But folding napkins so that they made perfect triangles or organising the washing machine in proper sensibly stacked loads were important functions. His wife’s divorce papers had described him as ‘obsessive compulsive’, which had made him sound like some sort of lunatic. But that hadn’t been him, that had been her. How he’d managed to live with a woman who thought it was OK to do no housework and spend all her time when she wasn’t at work drinking alcohol with her friends he didn’t know. Not now. His ex-wife, Tania, had been Russian and because she was Russian not even his lawyer had bothered to question her drinking and carousing. They weren’t Muslims, they could do that and, besides, everyone knew that Russians liked a drink. Ersu Bey had known that well before he’d married her. But Tania, like the unknown woman who had come in with the night shift, had possessed the type of tight, boyish figure that he’d always liked. He’d married her before she’d been able to speak more than two words of Turkish, just because he’d found her so alluring. After she left him she’d taken up with some gangster who worked out of a down-at-heel nargile salon in Tophane.