Read Ikmen 16 - Body Count Online

Authors: Barbara Nadel

Ikmen 16 - Body Count

BOOK: Ikmen 16 - Body Count
6.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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

HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
338 Euston Road
London
NW1 3BH

www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About the Book

About the Author

By Barbara Nadel

Praise

Dedication

Cast List

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Acknowledgements

About the Book

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?

About the Author

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

By Barbara Nadel

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

Praise for Barbara Nadel’s novels:

‘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.

Cast List

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.

BOOK: Ikmen 16 - Body Count
6.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Miracles and Dreams by Mary Manners
Dust To Dust by Tami Hoag
In the Absence of You by Sunniva Dee
All-Night Party by R.L. Stine
The Charming Way by Grayson, Kristine
The Golem of Paris by Jonathan Kellerman, Jesse Kellerman