Deadline (31 page)

‘He never wanted me, you know,’ Lale Aktar said calmly. ‘It was always Refika.’ She actually looked hurt.

Süleyman said, ‘Are you telling us that you wanted
your father to have sex with you?’

She looked up at him sharply. ‘No! Of course not! That’s disgusting! But she always got all the attention because she was pretty. I was buck-toothed and fat and nobody ever wanted me. Do you know what it’s like to live in a small village knowing that no one will ever want to marry you, knowing that you will never be touched?’ She shook her head. ‘He wanted her so badly, it made me sick! He deserved everything he got!’

‘But Refika didn’t,’
İ
kmen said. ‘She was innocent.’

Lale Aktar ignored him. ‘And then when I did marry, it was to an old man like a eunuch.’

‘Your choice. And he turned you into a literary superstar and a very beautiful woman,’ Süleyman said.

She smiled at him.

İ
kmen, still thinking about Lale Aktar’s father, said, ‘So your books do not so much point out the iniquities of patriarchal village life as allow you to take revenge upon men who found you repulsive. Am I right?’

Lale Aktar didn’t answer. Less calm and more animated now, she used her eyes to flirt with both
İ
kmen and Süleyman.
İ
kmen recognised this technique from his childhood. Girls in the Cappadocian village where his father’s sister had lived with her husband had behaved
like that. Çetin and his brother Halil, as city boys, had been prime targets for their shy attentions when they had gone to Cappadocia for their holidays. But that had been back in the 1960s.

‘So why Ersoy?’
İ
kmen said. Both he and Süleyman directly flouted the law on smoking in enclosed public spaces and lit cigarettes. Neither of them had slept for over twenty-four hours, it was smoke or die. ‘If you wanted to have an affair, you could have had almost any man you wanted.’

‘I wanted him,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because he wanted me.’

‘Mr Ersoy knows how to manipulate people,’
İ
kmen said.

‘He didn’t manipulate me.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘No.’

İ
kmen put the paperwork concerning Lale Aktar’s father to one side and picked up the transcript of Muhammed Ersoy’s first interview conducted by himself, Ardıç and Süleyman. ‘Would you like me to read what Mr Ersoy said about you or do you want to read it for yourself?’ he asked her.

She smiled. ‘It’s going to be negative,’ she said, ‘because you made it up yourselves. Why would I want to read it?’

‘He said you were, and I
quote, “greedy” and you “deserved everything you got”,’
İ
kmen said. ‘He never loved you. He used you.’

‘He made love to me.’

‘He fucked you,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Plain and simple.’ She shrugged.

‘If you had ever taken the time to actually explore Mr Ersoy’s background you would know that he has only ever loved one person in his entire life,’
İ
kmen said. ‘And that is himself. Even the “great love” of his life, Avram Avedykian, was only ever just one of his romantic adventures. He wasn’t faithful to him, he made him an accessory in the murder of his brother and then he killed him.’

‘I know what he did.’

They both just stared at her.

‘He’s the most beautiful man in the world and he wanted me,’ she said. ‘He paid a lot of money, to guards, to other prisoners, to get time to be alone with me.’

‘In order to satisfy his own sexual needs.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t want any of the other women who visited the prison. Not Aysel Ökte. He wanted me.’

İ
kmen ignored the reference to the prison reformer who had always been the physical epitome of the frigid spinster at home with her parents. He
said, ‘But tell me, Mrs Aktar, was sex with a killer, however exotic that might be, worth the deaths of eleven people plus the wounding of twenty-five more, not to mention the trauma suffered by everyone involved? This is apart from the physical damage to the Pera Palas Hotel, of course, which is not inconsiderable. Is your validation of yourself as a woman “worthy” of a very handsome and charming man worth all that?’

She didn’t even hesitate. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’

Çetin
İ
kmen breathed in deeply. ‘Well, then I pity you, Mrs Aktar,’ he said. ‘Truly. You had a husband, albeit not a perfect one, a fantastic career, money, fame and beauty, and you threw it all away on a psychopath. I don’t think even now you realise how evil he is.’

‘Oh, I know he’s evil,’ she said. ‘But then what am I? You know Burak Fisekçi had to get Söner Erkan somewhere private so that he could kill him. When I was given Agatha Christie’s room that was just so
right
. For me. I love Agatha Christie – although all that rubbish about her ghost wandering about is just, well, rubbish. But Söner, Burak discovered, wasn’t a fan and so he needed another reason to come to my room.’

‘You tempted him.’

‘I flattered him,’ she said. ‘I knew from Burak what he was and what he liked and I offered it to him. When he came to our table to do his Ottoman prince
act, I made sure he knew that I was interested in him.’

‘How?’

‘I put my hand on his crotch under the table. I think my leg may have brushed against yours as I leaned over towards him, Inspector Süleyman. Later I told him to come to my room. He was young and wanted a fuck. It was so easy. The first time Burak stabbed him I was lying on top of him on the bed. Then he struggled and I had to hold him down while Burak finished the job. I sat on his chest with my feet either side of his shoulders. As he died I lay down in his hot blood, I felt it against my face and my breasts. It made Burak angry. He was such an ugly troll! He stabbed the boy after he died just out of spite.’

‘That was how you got blood on your shoes,’ Süleyman said. ‘When you sat on Söner Erkan’s chest.’

‘I imagine so, yes,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t bother me at all.’

‘The blood on your shoes?’

‘No, the fact that Burak killed that silly boy. Burak was a little nervous afterwards but I felt nothing. Just like I felt nothing when I told one of Nurettin’s men about the spy who had come into our midst, the one he killed. Maybe I was a bit excited but that was only because I was doing it for my lover.’

‘Ersoy.’

‘You can say what you like about Muhammed but
he and I are actually very similar,’ she said with a smile. ‘Good fucking works both ways, Inspector, and what we had was good fucking. I’d sell my soul to the Devil for that.’

‘Which is exactly what you did,’
İ
kmen said.

The man who had been the leader of Muhammed Ersoy’s gunmen, Nurettin Akdeniz, died that night. As Arto Sarkissian had suspected, his spleen had been ruptured and, in spite of surgical intervention, he did not survive. Çetin
İ
kmen heard about his death just before he was finally due to go home. And so in spite of the fact that his wife Fatma was waiting for him with food, drink and a warm bed, he had a young constable drive him back to Silivri.

Nurettin Akdeniz had been popular with his fellow prisoners when he’d been in Silivri. Convicted of the murder of a love rival twelve years before, he’d been a hard but bright man, who had commanded a lot of respect. His death was not going to be well received.

Çetin
İ
kmen walked into Muhammed Ersoy’s cell and sat down on the criminal’s bed. A guard stood nervously at the door, watching as
İ
kmen, his head pounding with tiredness, his chest aching, shook Ersoy awake. For one apparently deeply asleep he woke easily and completely. He even smiled.

İ
kmen came straight to the point. ‘I thought you should know that Nurettin Akdeniz has died,’ he said.

‘Has he?’ Ersoy knitted his brows for a moment and
then said, ‘Ah, well. Kind of you to let me know.’

‘I thought you might want to review your personal security measures in light of Mr Akdeniz’s death,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Why?’

‘Because he was popular here. Because some people might want to take revenge on you for his death.’

He shrugged. ‘You people killed Nurettin, not me.’ He sat up in bed and stretched his arms. ‘What time is it?’

‘I have no idea,’
İ
kmen replied. ‘But what I do know, Mr Ersoy, is that your life here in Silivri will not be as comfortable as it once was from now on.’

Ersoy laughed. ‘You mean you’re going to give me more than one full life sentence? Chain me to the floor?’ He leaned forward and sneered into
İ
kmen’s face. ‘I’ve got a lot of money.’

‘No, your cousin Kemal has,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Kemal, me, it’s all the same . . .’

İ
kmen shifted a little on the bed and said, ‘Your money was channelled to you from your cousin via Mr Yiannis Istefanopoulos’s company, Fener Maritime Sigorta. Your cousin, an innocent man, will continue to put funds into that business on your behalf but they will not come to you.’

‘What?’

‘Mr Istefanopoulos is currently in custody for his
part in your little murder mystery event,’
İ
kmen said. ‘If nothing else, he apparently colluded in the murder of Haluk Mert, and when he was apprehended he had just put down a loaded Kalashnikov rifle. I don’t know, as yet, who will take over from Mr Istefanopoulos as head of Fener Maritime Sigorta, but whoever does, they will not be passing any money on to you.’

‘You think?’

‘I
know
,’
İ
kmen said.

Muhammed Ersoy looked at him, laughed, but then stopped abruptly and his face fell. It was as if he had remembered something unpleasant all of a sudden, something that had just ruined his night. But then he regained his composure and said, ‘Oh, well, I really should sleep now and so should you, Inspector.’

Three Months Later

Ersu Bey checked and then double-checked every shining piece of cutlery on every exquisitely
dressed table in the ballroom with a fanatic’s eye. Although he was himself a guest at the event that was going to be held at the Pera Palas that evening, he was also the maître d’ of
İ
stanbul’s most famous hotel. Perfection mattered.

Everyone who had survived the horrors of 12 December was coming, as well as the hotel directorate and the craftsmen and builders responsible for repairing the damage that Muhammed Ersoy’s gunmen had done to the building. It was going to be a celebration as well as, for many, a laying of ghosts.

The hotel itself had lost a member of staff in the person of the day concierge. He had colluded with the gunmen and, far from being 10,000 lire better off, was now having an apparently very tough time in Silivri Prison. Only the man who had delivered the golden
samovar to the concierge was still unaccounted for. He had come from Yeniköy where Muhammed Ersoy’s palace was located and where the then owner of the samovar Mr Yiannis Istefanopoulos had lived. But nobody knew who he was – or rather, nobody would say who he was. He had come out of the December drizzle with a golden samovar in his hands, left it for Mr Burak Fisekçi and then vanished.

Ersu Bey went down into the kitchens and asked his staff to line up so that he could inspect them – like soldiers. Military habits died hard. Men like him had always been and always would be there to make sure that things ran smoothly – even if, these days, he did occasionally have the odd alcoholic drink with a woman who was actually a man.

The guests could have absolutely anything they wanted from the bar and so Nar Sözen had champagne. Dressed from head to foot in light gold silk, she found that champagne really complemented her outfit. It was odd and not altogether comfortable being back in the Pera Palas, even if she did sometimes see Ersu Bey from time to time. But then Nar was not alone in feeling apprehensive. All the guests were drinking but conversation was muted and, so far, the sound of laughter was rare. Across the other side of the bar, she saw Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu standing on her own, nursing a glass of
red wine. Nar strutted over to her in her latest pair of fake Jimmy Choos.

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu smiled. ‘Hello, Nar.’

‘Sergeant.’ Nar snapped a military salute and just for a moment she looked like Semih Sözen, the man she had once been. She moved in closer. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ She smiled.

She wasn’t. She was supposed to be a married woman now and, rumour had it, there was another sadness in Ay
ş
e’s life too. Nar, unconstrained by society’s usual niceties – namely tact – had to ask. ‘Is it true about
İ
kmen?’ she said. ‘Is he—’

‘Nar, whatever you may have heard about Inspector
İ
kmen will be confirmed or denied by him,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘I’m not saying a word.’

‘Oh.’

The sergeant looked pale but when Inspector Süleyman came into the bar, Nar noticed that she coloured up just a little. Could it be that the rumours about the two of them were true? Had Sergeant Melik really stopped his marriage to Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu because she was still in love with Süleyman? Ah, well, if that was true, it had to be for the best, Nar thought.

Outside the bar, in the warm early spring air, Çetin
İ
kmen stood with Krikor and Arto Sarkissian. Since the events of 12 December, Krikor had started smoking again – after an almost ten-year hiatus. He wasn’t happy about it but
İ
kmen at least was grateful for the company.

Arto, who most definitely didn’t approve, said to
İ
kmen, ‘How’s the blood pressure?’

‘Back to normal,’
İ
kmen said.

‘I do hope that you’re not lying to me, Çetin,’ Arto said.

‘Oh, do give it a rest, Arto!’ his brother said. ‘Çetin told you he’s OK, so he’s OK. Leave him alone!’

When Hovsep Pars had died three days after
the Pera Palas incident, Krikor had taken his passing harder than anyone else. With no relatives left to mourn for him, the old man’s funeral had been a small affair; it had been attended by the Sarkissians, a few disparate members of the Armenian community, Çetin
İ
kmen and Mehmet Süleyman. Krikor felt that it had been a sorry end to a life that had had far more than its fair share of tragedy. And then, on top of that, Krikor had discovered that his clinic was the sole beneficiary of Hovsep’s will. Such generosity had first reduced Krikor to tears and then into a breakdown. In spite of a short holiday with Caroun to Morocco, he was still far from feeling like himself. Now he just snapped, whenever, wherever.