Ikmen 16 - Body Count (24 page)

He hadn’t seen the man who had once been his reluctant brother-in-law for over forty years. As he remembered him, Abdurrahman had been a good-looking, vigorous man who spoke flawless English and enjoyed tennis, swimming and horse-riding. But the shrunken creature that met him at the door of the
Ş
afak apartment, which hadn’t itself changed a bit in four decades, was a very frail copy of the man that Arthur remembered.

‘You look well,’ Abdurrahman said as he offered Arthur the very same seat his father had offered him when he had come to
Ş
i
ş
li to ask for Betül’s hand in marriage.

Stumped as to what he could possibly say in return, Arthur just smiled.

Abdurrahman said, ‘I have cancer and so I look appalling.’ He smiled, and Arthur noticed that his lips were yellow. ‘I know it and you know it. It’s made me even more cruel than I was before, too, which is something maybe you don’t know. Would you like tea?’

Arthur muttered a ‘yes’ and wondered what the hell he was doing in that mausoleum of an apartment again. Betül had run away from it with a glad heart and he hadn’t given the place or anyone he’d met in it any thought until John’s murder. But then his brother-in-law had tracked him down.
İ
stanbul, for the natives, could be a very small village indeed.

After an awkward silence, a girl not much more than a child brought tea and lokum in vessels made from precious metals. Arthur worked hard at not looking impressed. Last time he’d been in that place he’d done quite the opposite. He’d been sneered at by the whole family, including Abdurrahman.

‘So this book your son was working on,’ Abdurrahman said. ‘Did you bring me a copy?’

Arthur took fifty pages of A4 out of a carrier bag and put them on the table in front of his host.

Abdurrahman looked up at him. ‘Is that all?’

‘He had only been writing for just over a month,’ Arthur said. ‘There’s a lot of research material, but—’

‘Lies written by liars.’ Abdurrahman picked the manuscript up and glanced at it, then put it back down on the table again.

On one level Arthur wanted to scream at him, challenge him about calling his son a liar, but he didn’t. What was a sick man like this going to do about it? When he did speak, it was gently, even if the message he delivered was barbed. ‘Your opinion is noted by me, Abdurrahman. But I’m irrelevant.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that the publisher who expressed an interest in my son’s book when he sent them a synopsis is far more relevant than either of us.’

For a moment Abdurrahman didn’t seem to understand.

Arthur clarified. ‘John had a UK publisher,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to talk to them about whether they want to give the project to another writer. Personally I’d like to see my son’s work finished.’

He watched, without any compassion, as Abdurrahman’s breath shortened. ‘I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘It brings dishonour to my family.’

‘By telling the truth about a particularly notorious relative of yours who had a child with a non-Muslim woman? What about all the Turks Abdülhamid killed because he feared they were plotting against him? Not worried about those?’

‘He had a … he was not a well man …’ Arthur knew that Abdülhamid II was widely acknowledged to have been suffering from extreme paranoia for much of his life, but that didn’t excuse his actions in the eyes of those who came after him.

But there was something else that John’s book alleged about Abdülhamid. It was contained in just a few lines at the end of his synopsis, but they were lines Arthur knew would upset his brother-in-law, and they were the reason he had come.

‘My son was keen to prove that Abdülhamid fathered a child on Flora Cordier,’ he said. ‘And although I haven’t been through all his research material yet, I think that John came up with some evidence to prove his thesis.’ He could see that the other man was speechless with fury, but he carried on regardless. ‘The tragic climax to the book is where Abdülhamid had Flora’s daughter tied into a sack and thrown into the Bosphorus. Taught her a lesson for seducing his son, didn’t he?’ It felt so good, so refreshingly spiteful to say it!

Abdurrahman shook. ‘Your son had no evidence for any of that!’

Arthur shrugged. ‘Even if he didn’t, what does it matter?’ he said. ‘Abdurrahman, the book is a romance, a fiction.’

‘It is defamatory!’

‘Is it? So was that why you had my son killed?’ He said it without thought, not even knowing whether he believed it on any level himself.

Abdurrahman made a noise in his throat.

‘Because I don’t believe you didn’t know that John was in town,’ Arthur continued. Now that he had started the cruelty, he had to finish. ‘You soon tracked me down via your contacts here, there and everywhere. And anyway, who else would have killed him, eh? My son was the best of men, he was …’ He broke down and sobbed, while Abdurrahman watched him.

When Arthur’s tears finally subsided enough for conversation to be possible, Abdurrahman said, ‘I didn’t kill your son. I didn’t know he was here. Ask the maid, she will tell you how often I leave this place. It is never.’

Arthur shook his head as he wiped his eyes.

‘Only since the police came do I know of this terrible book,’ Abdurrahman said. ‘But even if I had known, what would I have been able to do about it?’

‘You? Nothing. But you could have paid someone.’

Abdurrahman waved a hand in front of his face. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘I didn’t kill your son! I invite you to come here and be honest about this book your son was writing, and you—’

‘Yes, I came here to confront you and humiliate you,’ Arthur said. ‘Frightening you is a bonus.’

‘You don’t frighten me!’

‘And you didn’t frighten me when I came to this apartment the first time,’ Arthur said. ‘Standing next to your father, trying to look both regal and hard at the same time! I wasn’t frightened then and I’m not frightened now. Betül chose me, remember. Whatever you do or say, however many lies you tell, you can’t change that.’ He looked down at the tea the little maid had brought him and said, ‘I don’t fancy this tea any more.’

Abdurrahman glared at him through yellowing eyes.

Arthur rose to his feet. ‘You can keep that manuscript,’ he said. ‘I’ve got copies, John’s publisher has copies, everyone has copies.’

The Turk continued to stare at him.

‘I only came to piss you off and I’ve done that now and so I’m going,’ Arthur said. ‘Just a pity your father isn’t still alive so I could have pissed him off too.’ He began to walk towards the door, then stopped and turned. ‘You know, I could have forgiven you lot much, but when none of you came when she died, I knew I’d never get over my hatred for you.’

Watching as he went, Abdurrahman was seized by a coughing fit. Once he’d managed to recover, he shouted out, ‘Publish that book anywhere in the world and I will kill you!’

But Arthur just kept on walking. As he reached the front door, his eyes briefly met those of Abdurrahman’s little maid, who with a shaking hand let him out. He muttered his thanks to her and left.

Çetin
İ
kmen didn’t usually make house calls on demand, but on this occasion, for Sezen
İ
pek, he made an exception. Driving along the coast road out to Ortaköy, he saw a group of brightly dressed gypsies practising their H
ı
d
ı
rellez songs and dances, and he fancied he saw a bear amongst their number. But he must have been mistaken. Bears hadn’t danced in
İ
stanbul since the late 1990s, when people like
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu had been finally forced to give up tormenting the poor creatures for money.
İ
kmen had approved. As a child he’d always found the sight of the dancing bears almost unsupportably sad. But he also knew that the demise of the bears had in turn heralded the later crackdown on traditional gypsy lifestyles in places like Sulukule. And that he couldn’t condone. Gypsies settled for hundreds of years in communities that worked were now scattered all over the city in groups that he knew found life at times almost impossible. One of the excuses given for the breaking up of the gypsy clans had been to reduce crime. Many of the old families had made their living from alcohol and prostitution and the government had wanted to curtail those practices. But closing the brothels and trying to move the clans out of the city to ‘nice’ new tower blocks had largely failed. Unable to make a living outside the city, the gypsies had moved back in to neighbourhoods like Tarlaba
ş
ı
, where they had either gone back to their old ways of making money or had found new and often even less savoury methods of putting food in their children’s mouths. And sore though he was at Gonca
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu for bewitching his Mehmet yet again,
İ
kmen hoped that the gypsies had a good H
ı
d
ı
rellez and made lots of money for the summer to come.

He pulled up outside Sezen
İ
pek’s listing wooden house and found her waiting in her doorway for him. When he got close, he could see that she had been crying. But then her phone call had been hysterical.

When Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu had interviewed her, a process that had been interrupted by one of her neighbours, Elif Ceylan, it had become very apparent that Sezen Han
ı
m had things to hide. Elif had said she’d seen a man in the garden earlier in the evening, and Sezen had tried to silence her. But Elif had just carried on anyway, revealing to boot that old Rafik Efendi had been homosexual and rather fond of the visits young men made to his home when his niece was away. Later Sezen Han
ı
m had confessed all to her relative, Mehmet Süleyman. In addition to having a liking for men, Raf
ı
k Efendi had also been a predatory and sometimes violent paedophile. But
İ
kmen didn’t want to talk to her about that until he knew exactly why she was so keen to speak to him now.

She ushered him into her salon. The first time he’d been there it had been full of her relatives and she had behaved like some sort of thwarted empress. Now it was just her, and she was frightened. She offered him a seat and he sat down.

‘You told me on the phone that you’re being threatened, Mrs
İ
pek,’
İ
kmen said. She’d asked for Süleyman but he hadn’t been available.

‘Yes.’ She shook her head and then ran a hand through her hair. ‘Blackmailed.’

She handed him a piece of paper on which were stuck words and letters cut from newspapers. He took a moment to read what he recognised as pretty standard extortion fare. When he’d finished, he looked up at her and said, ‘If it’s any consolation, Sezen Han
ı
m, murder victims’ families are sometimes targeted by mischief-makers. And this is a very amateurish attempt …’

‘No, no, no, no, no!’ Her other hand flew up to her head as she massaged her temples. ‘No, Inspector, what this person alleges … it’s true,’ she said.

‘About Rafik Efendi. Yes,’ he said. ‘I know. Inspector Süleyman told me.’

‘If it had all been lies then I would just have thrown it away,’ she said. She picked up another piece of paper from the chair beside her and handed it to him. ‘And this.’

İ
kmen began to read the second letter.

‘That one has dates, places, including this house, and there is a suggestion that the blackmailer and my uncle were not alone.’

İ
kmen read a catalogue of buggery and other sex acts carried out on the old man’s bed as well as in other parts of the house. The letter didn’t just go on to ask for a large sum of money; it also accused Sezen of knowing all about her uncle’s proclivities – which was entirely true.

He said, as a statement of fact, ‘You knew what your uncle did and in his later years you helped him do it.’

She sat in silence for a moment and then she said, ‘I never brought him children.’

He looked down at the letters again. ‘It’s alleged that Rafik Efendi abused this man, whoever he is, when he was a child.’

She looked away and said, ‘I don’t know about that. I told you I never brought him children.’

He said nothing.

‘I don’t have the kind of money this man is asking for and I don’t want my family’s name blackened,’ she said. ‘What am I to do, Inspector?’

What indeed. If she had no money, then she couldn’t possibly give the blackmailer the 500,000 Turkish lira that he demanded. As
İ
kmen knew, a proportion of blackmail plots didn’t ever actually come to anything. But where such an obviously jealously guarded reputation was concerned, there was far more at stake than just money. Well, there was for her.
İ
kmen silently wondered whether the blackmailer knew that most of Sezen’s Han
ı
m’s family were already aware of what the old man had been.

‘You probably think I’m a terrible woman for not handing my uncle over to the police for his crimes, but what could I do?’ she said. ‘When I was young, my family was despised. If my uncle’s proclivities had become known in the 1970s, who knows where we would have ended up. In jail?’ She shook her head. ‘And now? Now the people and the government are learning to love us again. How can I disappoint them? How can I ruin their dreams?’

And your own
,
İ
kmen thought.

She wrung her hands. ‘Leyla told me I should have gone to the police years ago!’

‘Your daughter was right,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Some things, Sezen Han
ı
m, are just wrong, and what your uncle did was one of them.’

Her face flushed. ‘You think I’m a terrible person, don’t you? Well you live my life. Come from where I came from, suffer the ignominy of your daughter first ruining herself and then marrying a traitor. I don’t know how much more I can stand!’

İ
kmen had a limit for absorption of self-pity and he’d reached it, but he controlled himself. ‘We don’t know whether General Ablak, your son-in-law, was a traitor or not,’ he said. ‘But by your own admission, Sezen Han
ı
m, your uncle was a predatory paedophile who you knew about – for years.’