Deadline (17 page)

He’d only really known one of them, the woman, who had been an ardent
spokesperson in favour of prison reform and the decriminalisation of addiction. She, like Krikor, had been passionate in her belief that prison was not the right place for people with problems of substance abuse. He was sorry that she was dead. He was also sorry that the men he didn’t know, but had wanted to get to know, men with money who had been invited by Burak, were dead too. Now he would never know them and he felt responsible for their deaths. He walked back into the Kubbeli Saloon with the highball glass which he gave to Hovsep Pars.

‘Here.’

The old man smiled. ‘Thank you.’

The gunman looked at them both with disgust. Krikor took a tissue out of his pocket and began to wipe blood from the soles of his shoes.

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu paced the kitchen floor like a caged cat. It was coming up to the half hour mark and she wanted to know what, if anything, Nar had discovered. She was also anxious to know whether Nar’s disguise had worked.

‘It doesn’t make the time pass any quicker, you know,’ Ersu Bey said. He was sitting on a bain-marie, smoking a cigarette, using a saucer as an ashtray. He felt awful abusing hotel crockery in this way but he needed a smoke.

‘What doesn’t?’

‘Walking up and
down.’

Ay
ş
e stopped. ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But I have to do something.’

‘Then conserve your energy,’ Ersu Bey said. ‘It’s what you have to do when you go into the armed forces. Your friend knows. He, she or whatever it is was in the army.’

He was the type of man Ay
ş
e didn’t like. A preening, macho idiot, the sort people called a ‘maganda’, an intolerant man of the street. She’d thought that
İ
zzet was one of those until she’d got to know him better.

Footsteps on the stairs outside the kitchen made both of them dive for the floor and Ersu Bey put his cigarette out.

‘I’ve made contact,’ a familiar voice said. As quickly as they’d hit the floor, Ay
ş
e and Ersu Bey stood up. When Nar took her balaclava helmet off, her hair looked an absolute fright. Bleached to the point of no return, it stuck out at all angles from her head and looked not unlike a small bale of hay.

‘With whom?’ Ay
ş
e asked.

‘Çetin
İ
kmen,’ Nar said. ‘Him and Mehmet Süleyman and a doctor, a fat man.’

‘Dr Sarkissian.’ She put a hand up to her chest. Well, at least they were still alive. She smiled.

‘They don’t know who the
gunmen are,’ Nar continued. ‘No idea. But they’re making them play a sort of murder game.’

Ay
ş
e frowned.

‘A young boy has been killed and
İ
kmen and Süleyman have to work out who did it.’

‘Well, didn’t these gunmen—’

‘No. But if
İ
kmen and Süleyman don’t manage to solve the mystery, or if they get the identity of the killer wrong, the gunmen have said they’ll kill everyone in the hotel.’

Ay
ş
e put her arms around her own shoulders because now she felt cold.

‘I’d better get back,’ Nar said. ‘I told them I was going to the toilet. What are you going to say to Sergeant Melik?’

‘Do you know how long they’ve got to solve this crime?’ Ay
ş
e asked as she twirled Nar’s phone over and over in her hands.

‘Until sunrise which’ll be seven twenty,
İ
kmen says.’

Ersu Bey frowned. ‘But the morning shift will come on before that, at six,’ he said. ‘I was due to come on then myself.’

Nar shrugged. ‘I’ll go back, see what else I can find out.’

‘You don’t have to go back, you know,’ Ay
ş
e said, ‘I can call and—’

‘No.’ Nar shook
her head. ‘I’m inside now. I might not like it, but I’m inside and I’ve got a weapon which I know how to use.’ She put her balaclava helmet back on.

The leader said that
the young lady wanted to see
İ
kmen alone. That wasn’t possible but
İ
kmen did manage to arrange for Ceyda Ümit to talk to him with just one masked guard in attendance. They talked out by the lift.

The girl spoke with her eyes fixed on the floor at her feet. ‘I slept with Söner Erkan,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want anyone to know. I especially don’t want Alp to know.’

‘Because you love him?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘Yes.’

‘So why, if you love Alp, did you sleep with Söner?’

‘Because he made me.’

‘He made you?’

Now she looked up, into
İ
kmen’s eyes. ‘Söner was bad with money,’ she said, ‘but he always managed to buy what he wanted – one way or another.’

‘And how did he buy you, Ceyda?’

‘He said that if I didn’t sleep with him he’d get his parents to withdraw their funding from Bowstrings.’

‘And you didn’t tell him to
do it and be damned?’
İ
kmen asked.

She looked down at the floor again. ‘I know you’ll think I’m a stupid, wicked girl, Inspector . . .’

‘I think nothing of the sort.’

‘In the theatre is where Alp wants to be,’ she said. ‘Professionally. It means a lot to him. He doesn’t come from a rich family and he sees acting and directing as a way out.’

‘So you had sex with Söner to keep Alp’s dreams alive?’

‘Yes.’ She pulled a face and wrinkled her nose. ‘It was disgusting! He was a good-looking boy but he was like some sort of slobbering animal!’

İ
kmen put a hand on her shoulder.

‘But I swear I didn’t kill him,’ Ceyda said.

‘Weren’t you afraid that he might ask you to go to bed with him again? Maybe threaten to tell Alp if you didn’t?’

‘Yes, of course. But that still doesn’t mean that I killed him,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, Inspector, but just the thought of Alp finding out . . .’ She began to cry. ‘Once it was over I just put it out of my mind. It was the only way that I could live with it!’

İ
kmen took her gently in his arms and let her cry against his chest.

Commissioner Ardıç looked across
at the front of the Pera Palas Hotel from the doorway of something that advertised itself as a pub. With the exception of a lack of door staff either inside or outside the hotel, the Pera Palas looked very normal.

Ardıç puffed on his cigar and turned to
İ
zzet Melik. ‘No idea about affiliation?’

‘Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu said not,’
İ
zzet replied. ‘They just want the murder of some boy “solved”. Apart from that there haven’t been any demands. They’re masked and so there’s no way to find out who they are from their appearance. It’s some sort of game.’

‘Mmm.’ Ardıç rubbed his chin. He had one police and one special operations military team at his disposal. His dilemma was how to deploy them and when. As well as Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu inside the hotel kitchens, there was also apparently a civilian who had infiltrated the masked hostage-takers. In addition there was a hotel employee who, at any minute, should be coming out through the back entrance to the hotel.

Both
İ
zzet and Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu had decided that it would be best if Ersu Nadir left the building and assisted the police directly. He knew the hotel and its layout well and could advise Ardıç and the military team. The back door into the kitchen remained unlocked, providing Ersu Bey with a means of escape and Ay
ş
e with a possible route out if things went wrong. When Nar went back upstairs, she left
the door from the kitchen into the hotel’s Agatha Restaurant open. This gave Ay
ş
e access to the rest of the hotel which, to
İ
zzet’s horror, she intended to exploit. Ardıç, however, was pleased about this. If a trained police officer could get behind a civilian who apparently had a gun then maybe between them they could unravel the mystery of the team of masked assailants. He had no idea, and
İ
zzet didn’t tell him, just who and what the civilian was.

A uniformed officer in a stab vest ran from behind the right-hand side of the hotel with his arm round another figure which was limping slightly as it ran. As they got closer,
İ
zzet and Ardıç could see that it was a man in a dark, tailcoat suit, aged fifty or so. He looked pale and drained and Ardıç immediately took him through into the pub, whose owners had put the premises at the disposal of the police and Special Forces teams.

Ardıç sat down at one of the tables and motioned for Ersu to take a seat opposite him.
İ
zzet Melik went to the bar where the somewhat bleary-eyed owner was dispensing coffee and tea. In order not to alert anyone glancing out of the windows of the Pera Palas, the pub was in darkness and the heavily armed officers moved quietly and spoke in low tones.

Ardıç fixed his eyes on Ersu Nadir. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

Ersu Bey began where he became locked in the fridge and explained
how he had been rescued by Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu and a transsexual.

‘She, he is called Nar,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea why, er, she was with Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu and I’ve no idea why Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu was in the hotel herself.’

İ
zzet Melik put a cup of coffee down in front of the maître d’. He knew, or thought that he knew, why Ay
ş
e had been at the Pera Palas Hotel. It made his face fall into a scowl which did not go unnoticed by Ersu Nadir.

‘Is everything all right, Sergeant?’ he asked.

Ardıç, who was still recovering from the news that the civilian on the inside of the hotel was a very tall transsexual, said, ‘Oh, don’t mind Melik, Ersu Bey, he always looks like that. So now let me get this right. Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu is unarmed while this, this . . .’

‘Nar. She has the Kalashnikov we took from the man she smashed over the head.’

‘What did this man the transsexual hit look like?’ Ardıç asked.

‘Tall, in his thirties, I’d say,’ Ersu said. ‘We found an ATM card on him but no actual identity card.’

‘What name was on the ATM card?’

‘Hüseyin Hikmet,’ he said. ‘Once we’d taken his clothes off, we wrapped him up in some coats and left him in the fridge. He was groaning by that time and we couldn’t . . .’

‘I understand.’ Ardıç smiled. Then he looked at
İ
zzet Melik. ‘Look up the
name Hüseyin Hikmet, tall, thirties,’ he said. ‘The name isn’t familiar to me and it could well be bogus but let’s run it.’

‘Yes, sir.’
İ
zzet walked over to the tables that had been given over to three laptop computer systems.

‘Now you need to come and speak to Commander
İ
pek,’ Ardıç said to Ersu Bey. ‘He’s in charge of the military. He’ll want to hear everything you know about the layout and security arrangements for the hotel.’

Ersu Bey stood up. Then he said, ‘Oh, and there’s something else you should know too.’

‘Oh?’ Ardıç said.

‘The gunmen have told your Inspector
İ
kmen that he has until sunrise, seven twenty, this morning to solve the murder. But if these terrorists intend to get out of the hotel without being detected then they’ll have to leave before six a.m. because that’s when the morning shift arrives.’

In all probability emboldened by the notion that one person with a gun, plus Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, was in the hotel,
İ
kmen told the leader that he and the other people in the investigative group needed some time on their own. ‘I know you can’t leave us,’ he said. ‘I know you won’t. But if you can move back so that you’re not sitting on our laps, that would be helpful. We need to talk about what we’ve discovered so far.’

‘We’re not stopping
you, Inspector.’

‘I want some privacy.’
İ
kmen stared into the eyes which were blue and cold and appeared to have nothing behind them. ‘I’m assuming that you want us to solve this crime to save you the bother of having to kill so many of us.’

The leader did not reply.

‘Or maybe not,’
İ
kmen said. ‘All I’m asking is that while we talk, you and your people stay at the margins of the room to give us room to breathe.’

‘The Kubbeli Saloon has a very high ceiling . . .’

‘I’m talking in psychological terms!’
İ
kmen said, exasperated now as well as very tired. ‘I am not, as you may have gathered, a marble and chandelier type of person. I generally do my thinking and have my discussions in rooms that you could fit into this one about ten times over.’ To calm his nerves he lit a cigarette. The hard blue eyes blinked in disgust. ‘Now I’m going to pull some chairs round that table there, all right?’
İ
kmen pointed to the large table in the middle of the room that in more normal times held plates and cake stands loaded with tiny sandwiches and delicious pastries.

The leader shrugged.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’
İ
kmen said.

Like the kitchens, the Agatha Restaurant was in the basement. As Ay
ş
e moved through it she noticed that there was a window
in one wall that allowed diners with a particular interest in food and food preparation to see what was happening in the kitchen. She found it a bit weird. Ay
ş
e moved quickly through the Agatha and out on to the stairwell. In the middle of the well was the shaft for the old wooden lift – the first and oldest elevator in the city. Just one floor above her were the rooms in which Süleyman and the others were being held. She could hear a low hum of voices above her head. But down in the basement was where the toilets were too and so any ascent of the staircase would have to be attempted with care. At any moment someone could walk down the stairs and see her.

With Nar on the inside, Ay
ş
e simply wanted to observe. Ersu Bey was out of the hotel now and giving as much information as he could to Ardıç. But if she could augment this with her own, more up-to-date observations, then all the better. And she did want to see Süleyman if she could.