Ikmen 16 - Body Count (12 page)

Now, alone with a body that would never tell him its secrets, and her family, who despised him, Faruk wondered how he was going to be able to get through her funeral.

‘May Allah give you patience.’

The unexpected voice made Faruk jump. But it was only Cem, Hande’s brother. When Faruk had called his mother-in-law to tell her that Hande was dead, Cem had driven her and Hande’s spinster sister, Nilüfer, over to the apartment. Faruk attempted a smile. Unlike the women, Cem wasn’t his enemy. Maybe it was because he was a man and therefore understood infidelity. More men than women did it. Or maybe it was just because he was a rational academic who did not believe in religion – his appeal for Allah to give Faruk patience was a standard response spoken to the bereaved – or in monogamy and other outmoded or oppressive forms of human relationship.

‘Hande’s pain is at an end,’ Cem said.

Cem Atay was a lot older than his sisters. In his mid fifties, he was an historian who had fronted several popular television series about Anatolian civilisations and the Ottoman Empire. These days he was single, but Faruk didn’t doubt for a moment that he had lovers.

‘Yes.’ Faruk’s answer was tardy and he was barely conscious of giving it. Now that Hande’s mother and sister were washing her body, the funeral was only hours away. In line with Muslim custom, they would want to have her buried before sundown if possible. As women, they wouldn’t go to the graveside, as Faruk would be expected to. They also wouldn’t have to respond to the discharge, which was when the imam asked all those present whether the deceased had been a good person and, more crucially, whether those still living forgave the dead person for his or her past misdemeanours. Just thinking about it made Faruk sweat. He wasn’t a religious man, but there was something about lying to Allah that did not sit well with him. But then what else could he do? Could he actually say that he didn’t forgive his wife for taking to her grave what might be her involvement in a murder?

Cem, seeing his pain, tightened his grip on his shoulders and said, ‘You won’t get over Hande’s death, Faruk, but you will get used to it. Trust me on this. When my father died, I was just as shell-shocked as you are.’

Arto Sarkissian washed up as best he could in a tiny bathroom at the back of the apartment and then went to join Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu and the group of senior police officers, which now also included the commissioner, Ard
ı
ç, in the kitchen. When he walked in, they all looked at him expectantly.

‘Well, Dr Regan didn’t die a natural death …’

‘I think that even we could see that, Doctor,’ Ard
ı
ç growled. Overweight, tired and distinctly grey around the cheeks, Ard
ı
ç was due to retire just after
İ
kmen. Like the inspector, he didn’t really want to, but that was not because he loved his job so much as that he feared the man who would replace him. The rumour mill had it that the man his superiors had in mind was of a very pious nature. And although Ard
ı
ç was not averse to religion, he found that when it entered public life, its influence sometimes led to favouritism along sectarian lines. This sat badly with Ardic and his personal philosophy regarding his department. His own religion was and always had been a private matter.

‘To give him credit, the Englishman fought,’ Arto said. ‘That’s why there’s blood in the living room and in the hall. I’d say that the attacker came in through the front door.’

‘He let him in?’
İ
kmen asked. The kap
ı
c
ı
had said that when he tried to deliver Regan’s water, the door had been locked.

‘That will be for Forensics to decide,’ the doctor said. ‘But it’s very possible.’

‘So he could have known him?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Çetin, did the kap
ı
c
ı
see anyone come to visit Dr Regan last night?’ Süleyman asked.

İ
kmen shook his head. ‘He was out. Drinking.’

‘Until when?’ Ay
ş
e said.

‘He doesn’t remember.’

‘Time of death?’ Ard
ı
ç asked the doctor.

‘Anywhere between about ten last night and two o’clock this morning.’

‘Cause?’

‘Ah well, that’s where you’re going to have to be a little bit patient with me,’ the doctor said. ‘The victim has sustained so many wounds, administered I would say by a very sharp, long-bladed knife …’

‘A machete?’

‘Not really, but something like that. However, that was only at the beginning. Later on I think he used a smaller knife. I’ll tell you why in a moment. Basically he has multiple wounds and it’s going to take me some time to work out exactly which one, if any of them, was responsible for his death.’

Süleyman looked confused. ‘If any?’

‘He could have died from simple blood loss,’ the doctor said. ‘However, what I can tell you is that if my observations are correct, whoever attacked him tried, and failed, to cut his heart out.’

There was a stunned silence. Then Çetin
İ
kmen said, ‘Cut his heart out? Are you sure?’

‘His chest cavity has been cut open, probably with the large knife, his ribs broken and separated and the vessels around the heart hacked at and in some cases severed,’ the Armenian said.

‘But the heart is still in the chest?’

‘Such as it is, yes. Where it’s been cut about, there isn’t actually that much of it left.’

Süleyman said, ‘If the murderer wanted to cut out Dr Regan’s heart, why did he stop?’

‘He could have been interrupted,’
İ
kmen said. ‘By a noise that made him fear he was about to be discovered, or maybe even by a person entering the apartment. We’ve got officers going door to door—’

‘Or,’ the doctor interrupted, ‘what I think is the most likely reason.’

Ard
ı
ç frowned. ‘Which is?’

‘Well, from a medico-butchery point of view, I’d say that our murderer had very little knowledge of anatomy. For some reason he wanted this man’s heart, but when it came to the reality of obtaining the organ, he was up to neither the job nor the sight of what was revealed when he opened up the chest. I think he just stopped because he couldn’t go any further.’

‘Mmm.’ Ard
ı
ç nodded his head up and down. ‘Doctor, I recall you said something similar about the Tarlaba
ş
ı
semi-decapitation.’

‘Yes, that was a possibility in that case too.’

‘So we could be looking at the same offender in both this case and the Tarlaba
ş
ı
murder?’

‘Possibly, yes.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Very different victims, however,’ Süleyman said. ‘A crazy, drug-addled fantasist in Tarlaba
ş
ı
, a foreign writer with a doctorate here.’

‘Yes, although the Tarlaba
ş
ı
man was well educated, as I recall,’ Ard
ı
ç said. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice had a much harder tone. ‘But whether one person is doing these things, or twelve, the fact remains that they’re happening and they shouldn’t be.’ He looked across at
İ
kmen. ‘Movement on General Ablak’s wife?’

İ
kmen shrugged. ‘We’ve ruled out the lover. The husband?’ He shrugged again. ‘I’ve been back to see the lover’s wife a few times, but she’s terminally ill and so I’ve had to tread carefully.’

‘Well then maybe now it’s time to tread heavily,’ Ard
ı
ç said. ‘You say the woman is terminally ill, but that wouldn’t stop her arranging the death of her rival even if she didn’t do it herself. Put your boots on,
İ
kmen, go back to her and squeeze her – hard.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And in the meantime, Doctor, I assume you’ve arranged transport for the body to your laboratory …’

‘Once I have permission from Forensics and the photographer, yes.’

‘And then I suppose I’ll have the delightful task of telling the British Consul that one of his nationals has been murdered,’ Ard
ı
ç said. ‘I hate it when we lose a foreigner.’

The old man, who gave his name as Deniz Ribeiro, was one of the very few Jews still resident in Karaköy. He was also, apparently, one of the most observant. ‘There’s not much I miss around here,’ he told Ömer Mungan. ‘And so when I tell you that there was a gypsy hanging about around the synagogue, I expect you to believe me. For weeks, on and off, same man or similar, hanging around. Until Selim Bey – he owns the bakkal on
İ
lk Belediye Caddesi – told me that the place was infested with Bulgarian gypsies, I thought it was some jihadi type. But then I heard him speak into his mobile phone. I can speak Arabic and five other languages, but I didn’t know that one.’

‘If you thought the man might be plotting something against the synagogue, why didn’t you call us?’ Ömer asked.

The old man didn’t answer. But Ömer knew that the subtext to his silence was his probable belief that because the synagogue was a place of worship for Jews, the police didn’t care. Ömer said, ‘So this gypsy, what do you think he was doing hanging around the synagogue?’

‘Nothing. Looking at the buildings opposite.’

One of which was where John Regan had lived.

‘How long did he do this for?’ Ömer asked.

Deniz Ribeiro shrugged. ‘A couple of weeks. But on and off, not every day.’

‘Did you tell anyone about this, Mr Ribeiro?’

He laughed. ‘For what it was worth, I told Hasan Bey – he’s the kap
ı
c
ı
of the building opposite the synagogue entrance.’

‘What did he say?’

‘What does he ever say! “Leave it to me! I’ll take care of it!” He does nothing, takes care of nothing. Two of his tenants were robbed in their own apartments last year and what did he do? Nothing. He’s a drunk, but who else is there to tell, eh?’

Hasan Bey had said nothing to
İ
kmen about any lurking gypsies, as far as Ömer knew. But that didn’t mean that Deniz Ribeiro was making it up. Hasan Bey was a drunk, which was precisely why he’d been out of the building when John Regan had died. But then apparently so had all of the other tenants, apart from the old Syrian lady who lived in the basement.

‘Did you see the gypsy outside the synagogue yesterday evening?’

‘For a bit, yes,’ Deniz Ribeiro said. ‘But when I looked out of my window at about eight, he’d gone.’ Ribeiro lived next door to the synagogue, which gave him a very good view of John Regan’s building.

‘Did you see anyone go into Hasan Bey’s building?’ Ömer asked.

‘What, you mean the murderer? Is it true that the Englishman’s head was chopped off? You know, like that man in Tarlaba
ş
ı
?’

‘Can we please stick to the facts, Mr Ribeiro? Did you see anyone going into the building?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I saw people leave. That drunk who goes out with Hasan Bey sometimes, who lives on the ground floor. He wobbled out at about seven. The couple who live next door to the Englishman went out much earlier, at about five. The Syrian woman in the basement never goes anywhere. Apart from the Englishman’s place and Hasan Bey’s apartment, the rest of the building is empty this time of year.’

Much of the building was used for short-term holiday lets for people visiting the city for a week or two in the summer.

‘So the gypsy was outside the synagogue when the other tenants left?’

‘I suppose so, yes. Although Hasan Bey went out later, but then he always does. You can set your clock by his addiction to the rak
ı
bottle.’

‘Can you describe this gypsy to me, Mr Ribeiro?’

‘I can, although he’s so typical you’ll think I’m making it up.’

‘Try me,’ Ömer said.

‘Well, medium height, dark, hawkish sort of features, scar on his left cheek, leather jacket, mobile phone stuck to the side of his face all the time. A gypsy on the make? Yes, like a fucking cartoon character, I swear to God!’

Marko was good to him, but he did make him work. Every day he was taken all over the city, everywhere that tourists went, and every day he had to make at least a thousand lira. If he didn’t, then Marko would tell
Ş
ukru Bey, who would tell his mum that he wasn’t pulling his weight.
Ş
ukru Bey had got him out of Tarlaba
ş
ı
and so his mum was now in his debt. He had to keep on being good both for his own sake and for his mum. But then Hamid was a brilliant pocket-diver. He’d got used to snatching bags, but that wasn’t quite so easy. Even so, provided there were enough tourists around and the other boys didn’t beat him to it, he always met his target.

But Hamid was homesick. Going back to the apartment in Fener with Marko and the other kids wasn’t much fun. Marko spoke some Turkish but none of the boys did. This, as well as the fact that the Bulgarians were Christians and he was a Muslim, excluded Hamid from their play. He missed his mother and his sister, even though they’d irritated him. And all for what? Because he’d seen a monster standing over the body of mad old Levent Bey. But then it wasn’t just because of that, and
Ş
ukru Bey, if no one else, knew it too. Just thinking about
Ş
ukru Bey made Hamid shudder, and so he stopped doing it. He was doing well now, and that was all that mattered. Marko seemed to be unusually happy this morning, so clearly no one, including Hamid, was doing too badly.

‘A biography of Sultan Abdülhamid II could be contentious,’ Çetin
İ
kmen said as he leaned back into his office chair. ‘But would a person kill somebody for writing it?’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, whose grasp of English was not nearly so good as
İ
kmen’s, put one of the bloodstained pieces of paper from John Regan’s apartment down on her desk and said, ‘I don’t know, sir. Maybe. People get offended by all sorts of things, don’t they?’

İ
kmen shook his head. ‘Don’t they indeed. Hah! I get offended by people who moan continually about smoking, but somehow nobody cares what I think. The wonderful world of selective offence.’