Deadline (14 page)

‘Do you know who Burak Bey liaised with in the hotel?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘No,’ Ceyda said. ‘I imagine it must have been the general manager or someone like that. We saw the concierge once when we came to rehearse last month and we met the maître d’hôtel only when we arrived today. But I can’t remember his name. I think he went hours ago, though.’

Discovering what
really happened to people when they were held captive was not something that the brothers Sarkissian had ever really given a great deal of thought to. They were both doctors and so they knew, to some extent, how stress could affect a biological system like the human body, but now they found themselves in the midst of this phenomenon. There was rather less crying than either of them had expected, but there were more people who needed to go to the toilet – badly.

Rather than try to deal with a ballroom that looked and smelt like the Augean Stables, the gunmen accompanied the two doctors and those they were ministering to downstairs to the toilets. Some people were sick, others had diarrhoea while others just felt cold and shivery, and a couple of the men complained of chest pains. One particularly elderly man had to be helped to the toilets by both of them and it was at this point that Arto took the opportunity to seek his brother’s counsel.

‘Krikor!’ he hissed as they
pulled the man into the cubicle and sat him down on the toilet.

‘What?’

‘If someone had been stabbed in the throat, severing the carotid artery, they’d bleed a lot.’

‘Like a sheep at bayram, yes.’

‘But on a bed with a thick mattress, would the blood pool on the floor?’

Krikor told the old man that they’d be outside the cubicle if he needed them. Arto came out and they shut the door behind them. In front of them was a man with a Kalashnikov. With his eyes, Arto Sarkissian begged his brother for an answer. But Krikor couldn’t reply because the armed man was just too close to them. They all waited in silence until the old man had managed to relieve himself to his own satisfaction and only then could the two Armenians go back in.

‘Well?’

‘If the mattress is covered with some sort of waterproof protector and if the bedclothes are thin, it’s possible,’ Krikor said. ‘If not . . .’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Arto whispered. ‘Thank you.’

That Ay
ş
e was somewhat prone to stomach upsets was something that
İ
zzet was going to have to get accustomed to
once they were married. Very often when they went out to eat she would have to stop because she felt unwell and either had to go to the lavatory or go home. He imagined it was probably some sort of nervous complaint. It had certainly got a lot worse since they’d started preparing for their wedding. As Ali Farsako
ğ
lu had said, it was most likely pre-nuptial nerves.

İ
zzet had drunk more rakı than he should have done and so he’d stayed rather longer in the shower than he usually did. He didn’t want to wake up just as he was about to go to bed but he didn’t want to be horribly hung over in the morning either. So he’d had a nice long, hot shower. Now he was out he dried himself, put his pyjamas on and then lit up a cigarette. He was actually in bed by the time he switched his phone back on again.

He only had one text, from his son in
İ
zmir, and a voice message from a number that he didn’t recognise. For a moment he thought he might just delete the voice message as it was probably a wrong number. But then he thought better of it. He found himself listening to Ay
ş
e’s voice. She sounded in control of herself but only just and so he did what she’d requested and he phoned her back.

But there was no reply.

‘The maître d’? He’s called
Ersu Bey,’ Burak Fisekçi told Çetin
İ
kmen. ‘But he’s gone. Went off after the meal. I think I may have even seen him go when I was on my way to the toilet, just before all this hell broke loose.’

Krikor Sarkissian’s assistant came from one of those Armenian families who had converted to Islam several generations before. But they still rarely married out and Burak’s mother, as well as his father, had been a converted Armenian too. In spite of his ungainly appearance, Çetin
İ
kmen had always wondered whether it was lack of eligible Muslim Armenian ladies in
İ
stanbul that was the reason behind Burak’s single status.

‘You helped to develop this murder mystery play with the actors, I understand,’
İ
kmen said.

Light shining through the patterned ceiling domes of the Kubbeli Saloon dappled Burak Fisekçi’s sallow face with tiny spots of bluish light. It made his large features appear unpleasantly mottled.

‘Yes,’ Burak replied. ‘Although not to any great extent. I made suggestions but I was not privy to the proposed climax of the mystery.’

‘Do you remember what they were? The details you were involved with?’

‘Not really.’ He smiled. ‘About trivial things. Early plot points. How the actors should comport themselves in period
costume. I studied history at university . . .’

‘Yes.’ Çetin
İ
kmen had known Burak Fisekçi for over ten years, ever since he’d come to work for Krikor Sarkissian. A well-educated man, he had a degree in history from Bo
ğ
aziçi University.

‘Ceyda and the other youngsters did most of the work. They’re very clever,’ he said. ‘They kept a lot of things close to their chests.’

İ
kmen looked down at his notes. ‘Mmm.’

Krikor Sarkissian had told
İ
kmen where Burak lived and it was in the same apartment block as Ceyda Ümit.

‘Did you deliberately set out to get your neighbours’ daughter and her theatrical troupe this job, Mr Fisekçi?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘No. Not really. But once Dr Sarkissian had decided that he wanted some sort of entertainment, I did remember what Cengiz Ümit, Ceyda’s father, had told me about her little company. Of course Dr Sarkissian had the final say.’

‘But you introduced the Bowstrings to him?’

‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘Why not indeed.’
İ
kmen smiled. ‘Burak Bey, do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Söner Erkan?’

‘None at all.’

‘He could, I understand, be a somewhat
challenging young man.’

‘As you say, Çetin Bey, he was young. It is in the nature of young men to be challenging and problematic.’

‘But not all young men.’
İ
kmen smiled again. ‘I didn’t know you when you were the same age as Mr Erkan but I did first meet you when you were in your twenties, Burak Bey. You were far from challenging. In fact I remember being struck by just how mature your attitude was for such a young person.’

‘I think Söner Erkan maybe suffered from a lack of parental control, or rather guidance,’ Burak said.

This mirrored what Ceyda, Alp and others had told
İ
kmen. ‘Rich boy playing at life and messing it up,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ve come across a few of those in my time.’ He looked across the room at old Hovsep Pars who nodded his head. ‘They can be dangerous.’

‘Not in this case, though.’

İ
kmen narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t know about that, Burak Bey,’ he said. ‘Söner Erkan was murdered for a reason. Maybe he threatened someone who killed him in an act of self-defence. Maybe he was blackmailing someone or had committed an act of cruelty or violence against an individual who took revenge upon him. Not all victims are blameless innocents. Far from it.’

‘Allah!’

The man dropped
to the floor, hitting his head on the hard, cold tiles. As he fell he made a sound like a goat grunting.

Nar, who had delivered the blow to his head with a copper-bottomed saucepan, bent down to look into his eyes and said, ‘Have I killed him?’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, mobile phone in one hand, took the man’s wrist in her other hand. ‘No,’ she said. Then she lifted one of his eyelids and looked at his eye. ‘But he’s out for now.’

‘What are we going to do with him?’

The phone Ay
ş
e had borrowed from Nar had just started vibrating when the man had suddenly walked back into the kitchen. None of them had heard him coming. Ay
ş
e, the phone almost at her ear, had looked straight into his eyes, while Ersu Bey had just stood as if frozen to the spot. Luckily Nar, whom the masked man hadn’t seen, managed to get behind him and smash him on the head with a saucepan. Ersu Bey picked up the man’s Kalashnikov rifle and with ex-military efficiency checked it over to see whether it was locked. Ay
ş
e looked at the phone again which had now stopped vibrating. She brought up the missed calls directory and said, ‘That was
İ
zzet. I’ll have to call him back.’

‘Yes, but what are we going to do with
him
?’ Nar repeated, pointing
at the man on the floor. ‘He’s one of
them
and so I think it’s safe to assume that if he doesn’t go back to wherever he’s supposed to be, they’ll come down here and look for him. What are we going to do?’

‘We could put him in the fridge,’ Ersu Bey said.

‘Yes, but they’ll still come down here looking for him,’ Nar said. She put her hands up to her head in frustration. ‘What was I thinking!’

‘You were thinking he’d seen us and he had a gun,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘You did the right thing.’

‘But now we have a problem!’

Ay
ş
e just wanted to call
İ
zzet back but Nar was right, the man she’d knocked out was a problem. They couldn’t just leave him in the middle of the kitchen floor. Even if no one came looking for him, eventually he would come round. ‘All right, let’s put him in the fridge,’ she said. ‘No one will be able to hear him in there.’

Ersu put his arms underneath the man’s armpits and began to drag him towards the corridor where the fridges and freezers were. About halfway across the floor, the man began to make groggy, groaning noises. At one point he lifted his head, although his eyes were closed.

When Ersu reached the fridge they had all been in together earlier he called out for someone to open the door. Nar obliged
while Ay
ş
e, frowning now, followed Ersu Bey into the fridge. With one last mighty tug, Ersu Bey pulled the man to the back of the fridge and then flopped him down on the floor. Wiping his sweating brow with his hand he said, ‘That wasn’t easy.’

‘No.’

Ersu laid Ay
ş
e and Nar’s coats over the man then stepped over his body and walked out of the fridge to join Nar in the corridor. He was getting used to her now – sort of. It was at the very least reassuring that she still had all the power and aggression of a man. It made Ersu feel a little less isolated.

‘Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu,’ Nar said. The policewoman was still in the fridge, still staring at the body. She looked rooted to the spot. The body groaned again. ‘Ay
ş
e Hanım!’

Ay
ş
e turned. She narrowed her eyes. ‘How tall are you, Nar?’ she asked.

‘Tall?’ She shrugged. ‘One hundred and ninety-three centimetres when I was measured to do my military service. Why?’

Ay
ş
e looked back at the man on the floor again and said, ‘He must be at least a hundred and ninety. Nar . . .’

Realisation came quickly. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, no,’ the transsexual said.

Ay
ş
e smiled at her. ‘You’d be—’

‘Oh, please
don’t tell me it’s my patriotic duty!’ Nar said.

Ersu Bey, confused, said, ‘What’s going on?’

‘What’s going on? I want Nar to put this man’s clothes on and find out what’s happening in this hotel,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘Stuck down here we don’t stand a chance of finding anything out.’

‘So call your Sergeant Melik back then!’ Nar said. ‘Get your colleagues in here and—’

‘The more my colleagues know about this situation before they come in here, the better,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘The more intelligence we can give them prior to any action they may take, the more likely it is that we all get out of here alive. Nar, you are the only person here who can fit into this man’s clothes.’

‘But we don’t know his name or—’

‘Hüseyin Hikmet.’ Ersu Bey held up an ATM card that he’d found in the pocket of the unconscious man’s trousers.

‘If that’s his card,’ Nar said. She took a deep breath, exhaled and then stood in silence for a moment. Hüseyin Hikmet, or whoever he was, made more grunting noises.

‘It will be a risk but I know you can handle a gun,’ Ay
ş
e said as she put a hand on Nar’s shoulder. ‘And I know you’re not stupid.’

Nar looked down at Ay
ş
e and shook her head. ‘Ay
ş
e Hanım,’ she said, ‘I’ve got breasts. What
can I say? I’ve got breasts that cost me a lot of money and I’m wearing false eyelashes and make-up.’

‘Your make-up can be removed,’ Ay
ş
e said. She glanced quickly across at Ersu Bey who was looking down at the floor in a very pointed fashion. His ears, if not his face, were red with embarrassment.

‘But what about my nails!’ Nar held her hands up. Her nails were long, bright blue and dusted with glitter. ‘What am I supposed to do about these? Rip them off?’

Ay
ş
e could see that the nails were a problem. Even cut right down they would still be blue and glittery. For a moment she felt she’d lost the argument. But then Ersu Bey unexpectedly made a suggestion.

‘We use acetone to remove blemishes from our china,’ he said. ‘There’s at least one bottle of it underneath the sinks. Isn’t acetone what is used to take off nail varnish?’

Time was moving on and even if Inspectors
İ
kmen and Süleyman came to a conclusion about who the murderer might be soon, they could still be wrong. There were a lot of ‘red herrings’ – that was what the famous British crime writers called false leads. And
İ
kmen and Süleyman only had one shot at the puzzle. After that they were out of ammunition.