Ikmen 16 - Body Count (21 page)

‘It was a romance,’ Arthur said. ‘They wouldn’t have approved. He knew that. He came to
İ
stanbul to be in the atmosphere, to explore the palaces where Abdülhamid and his Belgian mistress Flora lived. He was immersing himself in his mother’s heritage, writing a book he’d gone on about for years and taking a break from the academic work he’d done all his life. I didn’t think about the royal connection at all until I read the newspaper report about the murder of that old prince in Ortaköy. The victim before John, the woman, was the prince’s great-niece, and I had to put this connection to you as a possibility.’

‘You did the right thing, Mr Regan,’ Süleyman said.

‘There is a fourth victim,’ Arthur Regan began. ‘Is he …’

‘We do not believe that that person is connected to the Osmano
ğ
lu family, although we will of course check that out now, Mr Regan,’
İ
kmen said. As far as anyone had been able to ascertain, Levent Devrim’s family had been enriched by their connections with the military republican elite of Kemal Atatürk.

‘I hope I’m wrong, but …’

Arthur Regan gave
İ
kmen his in-laws’ contact details and then left. As he shut the door behind the Englishman, Süleyman said, ‘Odd that no member of the
Ş
afak family came forward when Dr Regan’s death was reported.’

İ
kmen, looking down at his desk, said, ‘You heard him: they don’t and didn’t communicate.’ Then he looked up and tried to catch his colleague’s eye. ‘Don’t even try to deny that you had sex with the gypsy. I can see it on every jubilant centimetre of your skin. I feared it.’

Süleyman walked back to the chair opposite
İ
kmen’s and sat down.

‘So does Gonca know where her brother has gone?’ the older man asked.

‘She says not.’

‘And you believed her?’

‘Not necessarily. She said she’d put us in contact.’

‘Mmm.’

Süleyman’s face had that look that often followed on from good sex – a cross between contentment and smugness. But suddenly his expression turned into something angry and he said, ‘Well it’s more than you would have got out of her, Çetin! She wouldn’t have told you anything!’

‘You think?’ He shook his head. ‘I had hoped, Mehmet, that maybe you had grown up a little in recent years and that, just possibly, a sexually voracious gypsy woman might be something you could resist, but clearly not.’

Süleyman leaned forward in his chair so that he could lower his voice. ‘She seduced me!’ he hissed.

‘Oh, and that makes it all right, does it?’
İ
kmen said.

‘No.’

‘Potentially you have compromised this investigation, to say nothing of what this might mean for your relationship with my sergeant. She gave up happiness with
İ
zzet Melik for what appears to me to be misery with you!’

So he’d finally said it. When Süleyman’s sergeant
İ
zzet Melik had called off his engagement to Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu because she couldn’t get over Süleyman,
İ
kmen had said nothing. Even when
İ
zzet had transferred back to his native Izmir he had held his tongue. But not any longer. This time his colleague had gone too far.

Süleyman said nothing.

After a pause,
İ
kmen said, ‘I will take Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu with me out to
Ş
i
ş
li to see these
Ş
afak people now. You opened the first case, Levent Devrim; can you go and see his family today? Check out his connections?’

Süleyman took his phone out of his pocket and said, tightly, ‘I’ll call them.’

‘Good,’
İ
kmen said. He put his jacket on and had begun to move towards his office door when he stopped. ‘I don’t want to fall out with you over this, Mehmet.’

His friend looked up at him and smiled. ‘Nor I with you.’

‘You’ve had your fun this time, but it can’t happen with Gonca again. If you compromise this investigation in any way and a murderer walks free …’

‘I won’t,’ he said. But he looked down at the phone in his hands as he did so. ‘I promise.’

The inspector had filled her in on the details about the
Ş
afak family, but Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu couldn’t get it out of her head that he was also concealing something from her. She couldn’t imagine what it could be. They were both, after all, going about their business to the same end. Now here they were in the smart district of
Ş
i
ş
li, the preferred area of those from wealthy minorities like Armenians and Jews and the home of the original
İ
stanbul mansion apartment. Ay
ş
e dismissed her feelings and watched
İ
kmen press a buzzer in the entrance hall of a dark, particularly smart early-twentieth-century example.

Eventually a disembodied voice said, ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Abdurrahman
Ş
afak?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is Inspector
İ
kmen and Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu from the police,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Oh, right,’ he said. ‘Go to the lift on your right. We’re on the second floor, apartment four.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

İ
kmen had spoken to this Mr
Ş
afak prior to leaving the station. Apparently he’d been agreeable to their visit, even if, now, his voice sounded somewhat hollow.

They got into one of those tiny metal lifts that, for Ay
ş
e, characterised both these old apartment blocks in
Ş
i
ş
li and her own building in Gümü
ş
uyu. Travelling in them, especially with others, could make one feel claustrophobic and, with a stranger, even a little nervous at times. Neither of them said anything as the lift ascended, which, again, Ay
ş
e felt was odd for
İ
kmen. Usually on the way to an interview he couldn’t stop talking. When the lift stopped, they got out to find a small, thin, suited man in his sixties waiting for them. His skin was grey and his eyes were overbright and alarmingly hollow. He was very obviously unwell.

İ
kmen extended a hand towards him. ‘Abdurrahman Bey?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled, tilted his head and then led them both into a very large, art-nouveau-style apartment that, Ay
ş
e noticed, smelt of cigarettes and spices. He showed them to two large armchairs either side of a photograph-heavy occasional table and then sat down himself on a long sofa opposite. Very briefly Ay
ş
e looked at the photographs and then at the man, who said, ‘Tea?’

Like her superior, Ay
ş
e agreed that tea would be a very good idea. Abdurrahman Bey called a tiny servant girl to his side and told her to make tea for all them, adding that she should bring a tray of lokum with it. When the girl, who was not much more than a child, had left, he looked at
İ
kmen and said, ‘So. John Regan.’

‘Who was the son of your sister, Betül,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Indeed.’

‘Did you know that he had come to the city to research a book – a romance – based upon the life of one of your ancestors?’
İ
kmen asked.

Abdurrahman
Ş
afak took a cigarette from a wooden box beside him on the sofa and lit up. He neither offered his guests a cigarette or gave them permission to smoke. ‘The first I knew about his presence in the city was when he turned up dead,’ he said.

‘And yet you neither contacted the police or, I believe, spoke to Dr Regan’s English father.’

‘And why should I?’ He shrugged. ‘I met the man who became my sister’s husband once; I never met their son.’

‘And yet you are related.’

He shrugged again.

Ay
ş
e watched
İ
kmen, who, she could deduce, was becoming impatient with this man. In common, so it was said, with Mehmet Süleyman’s mother, he was playing his role as a higher-order being to the hilt. The little servant girl came back in with their tea glasses and a small silver plate covered with traditional rose-flavoured lokum, then left with a bow to her master. Ay
ş
e looked at the tea the child had so carefully put beside her and wondered whether she was happy.

Abdurrahman
Ş
afak smoked. He said, ‘So this book that Dr Regan was writing …’

‘A romance set at the court of Sultan Abdülhamid II,’
İ
kmen said. ‘The subject of the piece is the relationship that existed between the sultan and a Belgian glove-seller called Flora—’

‘Preposterous,’ Abdurrahman
Ş
afak said.

‘Preposterous, sir?’

‘Never happened,’ he said.

‘And yet,’
İ
kmen said, ‘the story is something I remember hearing as a child, and it features in the only in-depth biography of the sultan by—’

‘I do not care where the notion comes from; it’s a myth,’ the other man said. ‘Now, Inspector
İ
kmen, do you actually have any questions you want to ask me, or are we simply going to argue about one of my ancestors?’

Ay
ş
e saw
İ
kmen perform one of those changes of mood designed to wrong-foot whoever he was talking to. ‘Where were you on the night of the twenty-first of March 2012?’ he said.

Abdurrahman
Ş
afak’s normally ashen cheeks flared red. ‘Are you suggesting …’

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I’m asking where you were the night your nephew died.’

For a moment he didn’t answer. When he did, his voice trembled. ‘I was here,’ he said. ‘Ask the maid.’

‘I will do,’
İ
kmen said, and he paused and then smiled. ‘Can you call the maid in, please, sir?’

Abdurrahman
Ş
afak cleared his throat and called out, ‘Girl! Come in here, please.’

Ay
ş
e looked at
İ
kmen, who didn’t betray anything even though both knew what the other was thinking.
He doesn’t even know the kid’s name!

Impatient, the man reiterated, ‘Girl!’

From a far-distant corner of the apartment Ay
ş
e heard a tiny voice say, ‘I am coming, sir. I’m sorry.’

‘Well make it quick!’ He banged his hand down on the sofa beside him and then leaned towards
İ
kmen and said, ‘I don’t mind people writing what they will about my family provided it is factual. I have helped film-makers, authors, theatre directors …’

‘But you wouldn’t have helped your own nephew,’
İ
kmen said.

‘No, I would not, sir,’ he said. ‘Because that story about Abdülhamid and the glove-seller is a lie. A sultan would never have had relations with a woman who was not a Muslim.’

The little maid came into the room and stood by her master, who said to her, ‘Now, girl, these police officers want to know where I was on the night of the twenty-first of March – that is, last month. Can you tell them where I was, please?’

She only looked at her master when she answered, and Ay
ş
e noticed that she trembled as she spoke. ‘You were here, sir,’ she said. ‘You are always here.’

‘There you have it,’ Abdurrahman
Ş
afak said. Then he smiled, and Ay
ş
e felt her skin crawl.

When they left, it was the little maid who saw them out. At the door, partly out of curiosity and partly out of revenge upon her careless master, Ay
ş
e asked the girl her name.

In a small voice she said, ‘It’s Suzan, madam.’

‘
Ş
ukru?’

There was a moment before he answered her as he put her voice and her face together in one place in his head.

‘What do you want?’ Gonca’s brother asked her. Ever since she’d had that affair with Süleyman years before, there had been little love lost between them. She’d given her Mehmet up for
Ş
ukru, her father and her tribe. This time, however, things were going to be different.

‘Where are you?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘The police have been asking,’ she said. ‘They want to know why with H
ı
d
ı
rellez almost upon us you are elsewhere. There’s money to be made. What are you doing?’

‘They don’t care about my money or H
ı
d
ı
rellez. What are you talking about?’

‘
Ş
ukru, like it or not, the police don’t believe you have nothing more to say about the death of that madman,’ she said.

She heard him click his tongue in irritation. ‘I told them everything I know.’

‘Eventually,’ she said. ‘You kept the boy secret.’

‘To protect him! Kids like him get kicked around by them.’

‘I know why you did it,
Ş
ukru, but …’

‘But what?’

‘But now you have disappeared, they are suspicious,’ she said.

For a moment he didn’t say anything, then he growled, ‘Did they come to see you?’

She considered lying to him but thought better of it. Her daughter had seen her with Süleyman. She’d put her head around the studio door and, for a second, watched them make love. Other eyes had seen the policeman leave her place.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They sent Süleyman.’

‘Hah!’

‘And yes, I did tell him that I would make contact with you somehow,’ she said. ‘Because until a solution is found to these deaths, then everyone who has come into contact with any of the victims will be under suspicion.’

‘You think I killed a man whose life was cannabis and numbers? Who loved an old Kurdish whore?’

‘No, of course not, but you have to prove to them that you know nothing.’

‘The police?’

‘You must be here,’ she said.

‘So that your boyfriend can beat me up and—’

‘No!’

They both knew that whatever the police might want with him, she would not willingly allow them to hurt him, even though he’d made her howl in pain when he had insisted that she leave Mehmet Süleyman.