Deadline (24 page)

But he couldn’t say that. He
just said, ‘Um.’

Lale Aktar frowned and said again, ‘What do you want to know, Inspector
İ
kmen?’

He opened his mouth to just say it when he, and everyone else, was distracted by the sound of a gunshot. It seemed to have come from the direction of the bar.

The technician took his headphones off and threw them on to the table in front of him, his face contorted in an expression of pain. Commissioner Ardıç, concerned, said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

The technician shook his head. ‘There was a crack,’ he said. He put the headphones back on but all he could make out was silence. He took the headphones off again.

‘Well?’

Over behind the bar, six Special Forces men were arming themselves prior to their infiltration mission. For a moment they stopped and listened to what was being said.

‘It could have been a gunshot or maybe the mic has been knocked out,’ the technician said. He shook his head impatiently. ‘I don’t know.’

‘They could’ve killed our man.’

‘Possibly.’

Commander
İ
pek told
his men to step up and get ready to go. Then he said to Ardıç, ‘If they did discover our man and kill him, we need to get in there now.’

Ardıç nodded. ‘Agreed.’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, who had been listening with increasing anxiety to what had just happened, came forward and said to Ardıç, ‘Sir, we mustn’t just go in and put the hostages at risk!’

Behind her,
İ
zzet Melik looked at her with a mixture of pain and loathing on his face.

Commander
İ
pek answered her. ‘We will stick to the plan, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘My men will enter via the kitchens and assess the situation before any major assault is made upon the building. But if the Pera Palas day shift is due to come on at six, we have only just over an hour to free those hostages. Remember, this is a game these people are playing. We have to be cleverer at that game than they are – if we can.’ Then he looked over at his six hand-picked men who were now ready and he said, ‘All right now, go.’

They dragged the body
into the Kubbeli Saloon and laid it down in front of Çetin
İ
kmen, Mehmet Süleyman and the others. Inside the ballroom other guests, who didn’t know what was going on but were frightened by the sound of gunfire, sobbed and screamed. The body wasn’t wearing its balaclava helmet any more and so
İ
kmen could see its face. It was clearly a man, as opposed to a transgendered person, which was, in a way, a relief. But why had the gunmen killed one of their own?

Lale Aktar put her hands on
İ
kmen’s arm and hid her head behind his shoulder.

Süleyman said, ‘What’s this?’

The leader pointed his gun at the body and said, ‘This is one of yours.’

‘I don’t know him!’ Süleyman said.

‘He came to try and rescue you,’ the leader said. The cameraman beside him leaned close into the dead man’s face. ‘But then you had to know that.’

‘We didn’t,’
İ
kmen said.

Lale Aktar began to
cry.
İ
kmen tried to push down his fear. If this man had indeed come to rescue them, then where was the transsexual and how much longer could she keep her identity a secret from these people? In addition, how many more rescuers were in the hotel and did this mean that the place was about to be stormed? He looked at Süleyman, who was sweating. They both knew how sieges went. Negotiation with terrorists was not, usually, what the Turkish authorities did.

‘I don’t care what you say,’ the leader said. ‘Your time is up.’

‘What do you mean?’
İ
kmen said.

‘You have ten minutes to tell me who you think killed the young prince and why,’ the leader said.

Krikor Sarkissian, who had come forward to check for a pulse in the dead man’s neck, said, ‘But you told us we have until sunrise!’

The leader shrugged. ‘That was then,’ he said. ‘Now we are apparently under attack from outside. You have ten minutes. That’s it.’

Then leaving just the man with the camera plus one other to cover them all, he walked through to the ballroom. He shut the door behind him.

Commander
İ
pek’s six men ran silently through the hotel kitchens and then set off up the stairs and into the main body of the building.

They had
all been allocated to different positions on the ground and first floors of the hotel. These could, according to the building’s floor plans and the information they had been given by the maître d’ and Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu, give them either visual, aural or strategic access to the masked gunmen and their hostages. Two of the men positioned themselves in the reception area – one behind the concierge’s desk, the other in the Patisserie de Pera. Two more made their way up to the first floor, while the final pair hunkered down beside the old wooden lift. This latter pair could see into the Kubbeli Saloon where they both quickly identified two gunmen and six civilians. The door between the Kubbeli Saloon and the ballroom was closed. Officers outside the hotel reported that the gunmen had closed all the gaps in the ballroom curtains some minutes ago.

‘We have to make a decision,’ Süleyman said to Çetin
İ
kmen. ‘Who do you think killed Söner Erkan?’

İ
kmen looked at the two remaining masked men in the Kubbeli Saloon. Could he, Süleyman and the two doctors overpower them? He kept his eye on them and said, ‘We don’t know what will happen to whoever we name.’

‘Everyone will die if we don’t name anyone,’ Arto Sarkissian said.

‘That’s
what we
think
.’

‘Çetin, it’s utilitarianism at its most basic,’ Krikor Sarkissian said. ‘The sacrifice of one for the greater good of the many.’

İ
kmen looked at him with horror. ‘You can’t believe in that, Krikor! Surely!’

‘Of course I don’t!’ Krikor Sarkissian said. ‘But what else do you suggest, Çetin? The rescue plan from the outside has clearly run into trouble . . .’

‘We should have a secret ballot.’ They’d all thought that Hovsep Pars had gone to sleep again. ‘Well, why not?’ the old man continued. ‘Can any of you think of a better idea? Inspector
İ
kmen, tell me, do you or Inspector Süleyman have a suspect in mind?’

İ
kmen wanted to say something about not having been able to ‘complete my investigations’, but that was never going to happen anyway. He had hoped that somehow the situation would have been brought under control by this time but that hadn’t happened either and, he had to assume, it never would. So who, realistically, was in the frame?

Anyone who was on the fourth floor at the time of the murder, which meant all of the actors, plus Burak Fisekçi, David Bonomo and Lale Aktar. The hotel concierge and the Ni
ş
anta
ş
ı car dealer had effectively provided alibis for each other. None of his fellow actors had liked Söner Erkan, but had they disliked him enough
to kill him? David Bonomo was a quiet family man who worked for the Chief Rabbi and, as far as
İ
kmen could tell, had no connection with Söner Erkan. Burak Fisekçi knew him via his neighbour Ceyda Ümit and through working with him on the murder mystery project. Was it possible he had come to hate the boy enough in that time to want to kill him? And what of Lale Aktar? She’d found the boy’s body – apparently.

Of course the missing link in all of this was the connection between whoever had killed the boy and the gunmen. That had to exist. Without that, coming to any sort of reasonable conclusion was impossible.

Cetin
İ
kmen looked into the camera on the gunman’s helmet and said, ‘This task is completely impossible and you know it.’

And then he remembered the conversation he’d been trying to have with Lale Aktar when the supposed infiltrator had been shot. He still needed to have that conversation and now he felt he could do that without the embarrassment he had experienced earlier. If they were all going to die anyway, there was no place for prudishness.

He turned to Lale Aktar and he said, ‘Mrs Aktar, are you having a period or are you not?’

All the men around him gasped at the baldness of his words. Lale Aktar herself looked appalled. Turkish men didn’t talk
about such things, at least not in public. It wasn’t done.

There was a moment of horrified silence. And then Krikor Sarkissian looked at the novelist, frowned, and said, ‘But Lale, my dear, you had a hysterectomy last year.’

Commissioner Ardıç looked at his watch and said, ‘If these people are serious about their intentions then
İ
kmen and Süleyman have just over five minutes to come up with the name of the murderer of this Söner Erkan.’

The men already positioned inside the Pera Palas had relayed what they had heard and observed to Commander
İ
pek who, along with his remaining troops, was preparing himself for a firefight inside the hotel. The management of the Pera Palas had been informed, and although naturally fearful for the integrity of their beautiful historic building, they knew that lives had to be put in front of crystal chandeliers and marble flooring.

‘All that is irrelevant now,’
İ
pek said. ‘We’re going in.’

‘But what if it’s just some sort of huge bluff?’

Ardıç and
İ
pek turned and looked at Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu. Her face was grey and she looked, suddenly, like the middle-aged woman she actually was. But then Ardıç, at least,
knew that facing the prospect of losing a person one is in love with can make time take flight.

‘We can’t take that risk, Sergeant,’ he said to her. Then he looked at
İ
pek. ‘We must commit our men to your care, Commander, and to the will of Allah.’

Commander
İ
pek bowed his head. ‘Of course,’ he said. And then without another word, he and his men left the bar and ran across the road towards the Pera Palas Hotel.

Ardıç, observing that Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu was alone in the centre of the room, went over to
İ
zzet Melik and whispered, ‘Be with her.’

‘Sir?’

Ardıç took him to one side. ‘I know there are effectively three of you in this relationship you have with Farsako
ğ
lu,’ he said.

Melik was shocked both by the fact that Ardıç knew and that he was speaking about such a personal thing.

‘So that is how it is,’ Ardıç continued. ‘Your fiancée is not sleeping with Süleyman.’

‘Sir, she—’

‘She is a woman of honour, trust me on this,’ Ardıç said. ‘But Süleyman may be about to die. You love her. You should be with her.’

They both looked across at Ay
ş
e, who was crying. Nar was lumbering over with her arms outstretched.

Ardıç said, ‘Sergeant Melik, would you really have your fiancée
comforted by a person who has multiple convictions for soliciting?’

İ
zzet Melik watched Nar put her arms around Ay
ş
e and hug her. But, frozen by indecision, he just couldn’t move.

‘Where are we going?’
İ
kmen asked.

The leader had rejoined the man with the camera and the other masked man and they were herding the policemen, the doctors, Lale Aktar and Hovsep Pars up the main hotel staircase.

The novelist, her face still red with fury over what Krikor Sarkissian had said, was continuing to refute his allegation. ‘I did not have a hysterectomy!’ she said as Krikor took her arm and led her forwards.

‘Lale, my dear,’ he said, ‘your husband is one of my best friends. He showed me the X-ray that your surgeon took after the operation. He wanted to know my opinion of what had been done, as a doctor and a friend. The surgery appeared to me to have been performed well. Faruk was relieved.’

‘I did not have any hysterectomy! I didn’t!’

Krikor Sarkissian caught Çetin
İ
kmen’s eye. Lale Aktar saw it and said, ‘And anyway, this is all about nothing. Whether I went to my room to get a sanitary towel or not—’

‘But if you didn’t go to get a sanitary towel then why did you go to your
room when you did?’
İ
kmen asked. ‘Was it to kill Söner Erkan?’

‘No!’

He turned away from her and repeated his question to the leader. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To room four hundred and eleven,’ the leader said.

And then
İ
kmen smiled. ‘Oh, but of course,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? A room resonant with drama.’ Then he stared hard into the leader’s eyes. ‘What are you getting out of this? Where’s the money in this?’

He received no reply.
İ
kmen looked at Süleyman who, years of experience told him, was preparing himself to take these men on. In view of the gravity of their situation as well as the strange fact that only three of their captors were accompanying them upstairs, this wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. Unless of course the help that he knew existed outside the hotel was on its way. If it was, stalling these people rather than attacking them had to be the best idea. But how were they to know which course of action to take? If they did attack their captors, the other masked individuals down in the ballroom would no doubt be alerted somehow. Then what would they do? Would they kill all the hostages in the ballroom? If only he knew why all of this was happening, he might be able to take an informed view. But he couldn’t. All he did know now was that there was a strong possibility that
Lale Aktar was working with these people for some reason. And then suddenly a reason came to him. Putting two and two together and maybe making five, it was just possible that Hovsep Pars wasn’t such a crazy old man after all.

Ceyda Ümit
was cold. They’d blindfolded her, made her take off all her clothes except her underwear, and then tied her legs together with what felt like wire. Her hands were attached, behind her back, to those of the person next to her, which was Burak Fisekçi. Although accustomed to being seen in her underwear by her fellow performers in Bowstrings, she wasn’t used to being seen almost naked by strangers. Through trembling lips she said to Fisekçi, ‘Do you think that they’re going to kill us, Burak Bey?’