Ikmen 16 - Body Count
Read Ikmen 16 - Body Count Online
Authors: Barbara Nadel
Copyright © 2014 Barbara Nadel
The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published in Great Britain as an Ebook by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP in 2014
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 0 7553 8895 0
Cover photographs © Peeter Viisimaa (streetscape) and Roy Bishop/Arcangel images (figure)
Cover design by Craig Fraser
Author photograph © Angus Muir
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Table of Contents
Any bloody death will lead Inspectors Çetin
İ
kmen and Mehmet Süleyman out onto the dark streets of Istanbul. On 21 January, a half-decapitated corpse in the poor multicultural district of Tarlaba
ş
ı
poses a particularly frustrating and gruesome mystery. But as the months pass and the violence increases, it turns into a hunt for that rare phenomenon in the golden city on the Bosphorus: a serial killer.
Desperate to uncover the killer’s twisted logic as the body count rises,
İ
kmen and Süleyman find only more questions. How are the victims connected? What is the significance of the number 21? And how many Istanbullus must die before they find the answers?
Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel used to work in mental health services. Born in the East End of London, she now writes full time and has been a visitor to Turkey for over twenty years. She received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for her novel DEADLY WEB, and the Swedish Flintax Prize for historical crime fiction for her first Francis Hancock novel, LAST RITES.
To find out more, follow Barbara on Twitter @
BarbaraNadel
The Inspector
İ
kmen Series:
Belshazzar’s Daughter
A Chemical Prison
Arabesk
Deep Waters
Harem
Petrified
Deadly Web
Dance with Death
A Passion for Killing
Pretty Dead Things
River of the Dead
Death by Design
A Noble Killing
Dead of Night
Deadline
Body Count
The Hancock Series:
Last Rights
After the Mourning
Ashes to Ashes
Sure and Certain Death
The Hakim and Arnold Series:
A Private Business
An Act of Kindness
‘Inspector Çetin
İ
kmen is one of detective fiction's most likeable investigators, despite his grumpy and unsociable character. Or perhaps because of it – we seem to like our detectives a little grouchy: think of him as the Morse of Istanbul’
Daily Telegraph
‘Intelligent and captivating’
The Sunday Times
‘Fascinating … Inter-gang drug war and racial prejudice are only two of the ingredients stirred into the incendiary mix’
Good Book Guide
‘Impeccable mystery plotting, exotic and atmospheric’
Guardian
To Elsie and Lütfü who took me to Mexico. And to the Maya, without whom this book would not have been written.
The Police
Inspector Çetin
İ
kmen
– middle-aged
İ
stanbul detective
Inspector Mehmet Süleyman
–
İ
stanbul detective and
İ
kmen’s protégé
Commissioner Ard
ı
ç
–
İ
kmen and Süleyman’s boss
Sergeant Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu
–
İ
kmen’s sergeant
Sergeant Ömer Mungan
– Süleyman’s sergeant
Dr Arto Sarkissian
– police pathologist
Other Characters
Fatma
İ
kmen
– Çetin’s wife
Nur Süleyman
– Mehmet’s wife
Muhammed Süleyman
– Mehmet’s father
Peri Mungan
– Ömer Mungan’s sister
Gonca
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu
– a gypsy and Süleyman’s ex-mistress
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu
– Gonca’s brother
Had
ı
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu
– Gonca and
Ş
ukru’s father
Tansu ‘Sugar’ Bar
ı
ş
ı
k
– an aging prostitute
Selçuk Devrim
– a telecoms engineer
Hatice Devrim
– Selçuk’s wife
Faruk Genç
– a health spa manager
Hande Genç
– Faruk’s wife
Professor Cem Atay
– Hande’s brother
Leyla Ablak
– a wealthy socialite
General Osman Ablak
– Leyla’s husband
Sezen
İ
pek
– Leyla’s mother
Rafik Efendi
– Sezen’s Uncle
Abdurrahman
Ş
afak
– an elderly aristocrat
Suzan Arslan
– Abdurrahman’s maid
John Regan
– a British academic
Arthur Regan
– John’s father
Hamid
– a gypsy boy
Ş
eftali
– Hamid’s mother
When
Ş
ukru saw him, the kid was poking a stick in the man’s wound. It made the body’s head move almost as if it were still alive. For a few moments
Ş
ukru just watched, mesmerised by the child’s apparent lack of either fear or empathy for the dead man. Ever since
İ
stanbul’s Roma gypsies had been evicted from their traditional quarter of Sulukule three years before, life had been tough and it was the kids who had suffered the most. This kid, like
Ş
ukru, was Roma.
Ş
ukru knew him – he knew the whole family. His mother, once madam of a good-sized brothel back in the old quarter, now sometimes sold her body to poor immigrants on Taksim Square. The mother had little pride and so she beat the child, taking it out on the son, who in his turn poked a corpse with a stick.
The child – he was twelve at the most; no one including the kid himself knew his age for sure – didn’t see the middle-aged man approach. It was still dark and the ground was covered in a thick wadding of newly fallen snow – powdery, pure white and silent. As
Ş
ukru moved closer, he saw that the child was shaking. Was he cold, or frightened, or both? The government were moving the Roma on from this district, Tarlaba
ş
ı
, now too. Houses were being demolished to make way for ‘better’ homes for people who were not Roma and everyone was scared all the time. Just as they had been back in Sulukule. As a child with no father and a whore for a mother, this kid was shunned and
Ş
ukru felt sorry for him. The boy poked the man’s wound again, but this time with his finger.
Ş
ukru cleared his throat. The kid, alarmed, looked up at
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu, one-time grease wrestler, one-time king of the gypsy dancing-bear men. Trembling still harder now, he raised a hand in greeting. ‘
Ş
ukru Bey!’
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu tried not to show on his face how much he pitied the boy. He put his phone to his ear and waited for an answer.