Ikmen 16 - Body Count (28 page)

At the end of the entrance hall was the lounge where her employer spent most of his time. Abdurrahman rarely went to bed at night any more. He claimed that sitting up was more comfortable for him these days. As she drew closer, Suzan found herself cringing at every sound that her feet made, every creak of the apartment’s walls. She expected to hear his voice at any moment and her ears ached with an anticipation she could barely endure. And then she was in the lounge and he was there.

Suzan looked at Abdurrahman Efendi for some time and with a sense of detachment she didn’t know she had. It – he – was ghastly. What had been done to him was almost beyond belief, and just on the level of pity for a fellow creature, she should have felt some sympathy for him. But she didn’t. She regarded his drained, vampire-ravaged-looking body as one might view a piece of meat. Because he’d always shown such contempt for her, because he’d used her, shamed her, she couldn’t find it in herself to feel anything but contempt for him. And now that he was dead, she could do that with impunity.

And so in the half-hour before she called the police, Suzan mocked Abdurrahman Efendi, called him rude names and told him that nothing in her whole life had made her so happy as his death.

Çetin
İ
kmen watched the news with Gonca the gypsy on her ancient television set. In spite of the fact that a body had been found in Aksaray, TRT was still appealing for help in finding
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu. They showed a tiny piece of film of him taken back in Sulukule some years before.

Gonca put one cigarette out and then immediately lit another. Both she and
İ
kmen were chain-smoking, but neither of them cared. ‘I’ve felt
Ş
ukru to be dead almost from the start,’ she said. ‘My cards have been … indistinct.’

‘We don’t know the body
is
Ş
ukru,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Because it’s too badly burned?’

‘Yes. There’s no ID on the body we found up at Aksaray. The only connection to your brother is the height, and that is why I’m here now.’

Ş
ukru’s scowling face disappeared from the screen. Gonca shook her head. ‘He was such a life force.’

‘He may still be a life force,’
İ
kmen said.

She looked him in the eyes and said, ‘Don’t try to make me feel better,
İ
kmen. I know what I know.’

He shrugged. He’d known Gonca ever since he was a young constable, and he was well aware of what he could and couldn’t say to her. He knew he couldn’t kid her.

‘So you need some of my hair, do you?’ she said. She walked over to the TV and switched it off.

‘Dr Sarkissian would be very grateful,’
İ
kmen said. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of small plastic bags. ‘He’s trusting me to transport it to him, but I expect I can manage that. You’ve got the hard job.’

‘You want a hair pulled from my head?’

‘Complete with follicle, yes,’ he said. ‘You have to pull it out.’

She put a hand up to her head and gripped her hair. ‘If it’s for
Ş
ukru …’

‘Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!’

He tried to stop her pulling out a great lump, but it was too late. Without a murmur she tugged out a hank of hair and put it into
İ
kmen’s hands. While he looked down at it in a rather horrified way, she said, ‘Is that enough for him? It comes out easily now that I am old.’

She sat down again while
İ
kmen bagged up far more strands of hair than even Arto Sarkissian could possibly need. ‘This is, er, it’s …’ He sealed the bag. ‘So what’s this about being old? You’re not old.’

For the first time since he’d entered her house, Gonca laughed. She usually laughed a lot. ‘I remember you when you were young, and now you’re retiring,’ she said. ‘We’re both old,
İ
kmen, although it doesn’t matter so much for you because you’re a man. Men can look like shit and women will still love them.’

He put the hair-filled bag into his pocket. ‘Ah come on now, Gonca,’ he said. ‘You don’t have any trouble attracting men. You never have had and now …’ But his voice faded out. He both did and didn’t want to talk to her about Mehmet Süleyman.

‘Is there any reason why Mehmet Bey didn’t come to ask me for my hair tonight?’ she asked.

‘Beyond his rather squeamish desire not to hurt you, no,’
İ
kmen said.

‘So you came instead.’

‘You and I are not … involved,’
İ
kmen said. ‘We never have been and so, much as I like you, Gonca, I am a disinterested outsider in your life.’

She sat down on the cushion beside his and put an arm across his shoulder. ‘Maybe my life would have been better if we had been involved,’ she said.

He looked into her eyes and shook his head. ‘Oh no, Gonca. What would you do with me, eh? You don’t do ugly men, do you?’

‘You’re not—’

‘I’m short, I’m skinny, I’m ugly, and really only Fatma has ever had the courage to love me, which makes her a remarkable woman.’

Gonca curled her fingers around his neck. ‘But had I had a good man, a reliable man …’

He gently disengaged her fingers. ‘But you never have and you never will,’ he said. ‘Gonca, you do beautiful, crazy men who let you down. Your first husband …’

‘Enver.’ She smiled. ‘He could make love all night long and then get up, chop wood and … well …’ She looked down at her lap. Her first marriage, just like her second and all her other relationships with men, had ended badly.

‘Enver liked a drink,’
İ
kmen said, ‘to put it mildly. And you know that although Mehmet Süleyman doesn’t like a drink more than he should, or run about all over the city on amphetamines like, er, your second husband …’

‘Demir.’

‘Like Demir did … still, that boy has a weakness and you and I both know what it is.’

Her face fell. ‘Women.’ She took her arm off his shoulder and laid both hands in her lap.

‘I don’t want you to get hurt and I don’t want him to get hurt either,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I care about both of you.’

She looked up at him and he saw that her eyes were wet.

‘Gonca Han
ı
m, even if you married Mehmet Süleyman, you couldn’t have the life of a normal policeman’s wife with him. How would that work? What would you do? Read all the other police wives’ cards and then hand out the rak
ı
?’

‘There’s been no talk of marriage,’ she said.

‘And yet you love him,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Against everything your family said to you last time you two were together, you have got back with him and you’ve – both of you – broken my sergeant’s heart in the process.’

She looked into his eyes. ‘I had to have him,’ she said.

‘I know,’
İ
kmen replied. ‘And don’t think that I’m advocating on behalf of my sergeant, because I’m not. That was a desperate, unhappy relationship, and I know he is and always has been besotted with you. But think about where this relationship is going. Think about the future and ask yourself honestly whether the life of a—’

‘You don’t want me to carry on seeing him, do you, Çetin Bey?’ she cut in.

İ
kmen had to think about what she’d said for a moment before he answered, because much as he did like them both and want what was best for the pair of them, he realised he had another agenda too. And he was honest about it. ‘You’ll end up destroying each other, you know it and I know it,’ he said. ‘A long time ago I said to you that proximity to princes was dangerous, and that still holds. Mehmet Süleyman Efendi may be a prince without a country, but those who support the return of such people are being listened to and regarded, and that’s quite apart from his family themselves, who I think would oppose any sort of permanent union between you with every force at their disposal.’

She didn’t attempt to contradict or argue with him. But she looked sad when he left her, even though she kissed him on the cheek, as she usually did, with affection. Tough love was a bastard.

Ömer Mungan took the call. Süleyman, deep in both paperwork and thought, hardly noticed. All he could think about was Gonca, and what Çetin
İ
kmen had gone to tell her. He’d seen the Aksaray body, and although he hadn’t been able to recognise it, he felt that it was
Ş
ukru, and not just because of the height. Like the gypsy’s sister, Süleyman knew that
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu had always been involved in things that were either only just inside the law or completely outside it.

‘Sir?’

He looked up into Ömer’s slanted brown eyes.

‘A call from
Ş
i
ş
li, sir,’ Ömer said. ‘The maid of a man called Abdurrahman
Ş
afak has found him dead. She thinks he’s been stabbed.’

Süleyman looked at his watch. It was still well and truly 21 May, in spite of the fact that it felt as if he’d been working for over twenty-four hours.

‘So we have a second death?’

Ömer shrugged. ‘Who knew we’d get to be so lucky?’ Slowly but surely he was developing a slick, sick city sense of humour as well as a rather harder shell than he’d had in Mardin. But then Süleyman knew that the young man’s introduction to
İ
stanbul had been more bloody and shocking than any other time he could remember.

He stood up and put his jacket on. ‘Abdurrahman
Ş
afak,’ he said. ‘That sounds familiar.’

Ömer was way ahead of him. ‘He is or was the uncle of the Englishman John Regan.’ Süleyman clicked his fingers. ‘Of course. Well done, Ömer, that’s good.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Süleyman drove to
Ş
i
ş
li, where they found Abdurrahman
Ş
afak’s apartment building ringed by uniforms. Up on the second floor, where the old man had lived, they heard the familiar sound of Arto Sarkissian’s voice, and as they entered the apartment, he walked towards them.

‘Doctor.’

‘Inspector.’ He smiled at Ömer. ‘Sergeant.’ He took off bloodstained gloves and placed them in a rubbish disposal bag. ‘This declaring life extinct job is becoming tedious.’

‘Twice in one day.’

‘Yes, it’s bordering on the excessive. But life, whether I like it or not,
is
extinct in the case of Abdurrahman
Ş
afak Efendi, and again we have been able to do nothing to prevent it.’

Süleyman lowered his gaze. What the doctor had said was not a criticism of him; rather a more generalised expression of the frustration they all felt. But Süleyman felt bad anyway.

Arto Sarkissian, aware that he had caused some distress, cleared his throat. ‘Well, cause of death I have yet to determine, but if I tell you that the victim is lacking a heart, I’m sure you’ll get the picture. Time of death, again I will have to do some more tests, because the man’s apartment was heated like a sauna.’

Süleyman shook his head.

‘However, you do have, if not a witness, the man’s maid. She found the body, and of course, as you can imagine, she is not exactly jumping for joy. She’s in the kitchen.’

‘Thank you, Doctor, I’ll speak to her,’ Süleyman said. He turned to Ömer. ‘Take a couple of uniformed officers and see what, if anything, the neighbours witnessed.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Süleyman walked past the doctor and into an apartment that reminded him all too vividly of his parents’ house in Arnavutköy. Although the Bosphorus village where his family lived had recently become chic in the extreme, the Süleyman family home was like the shabby abode of some sort of imperial Ottoman hoarder. This apartment was the same. Every centimetre of wall was covered with portrait photographs of men in fezzes and women looking extremely uncomfortable in tight European dresses of Victorian vintage. Any occasional tables not covered in silver cigarette boxes and ornamental nargiles were used to prop up piles of books about Ottoman regimental insignia and accounts of the reign of every sultan who had ever lived, all topped off with endless maps of the city that were eighty years out of date.

He walked past the butchered corpse – a dead man without a heart was sadly something he had become accustomed to – and went into the kitchen. He saw the uniformed female officer first. A very overweight woman, she was in stark contrast to the tiny, almost anorexic-looking girl who sat at the kitchen table with her head down, weeping. He asked the officer the girl’s name and then sat down beside her.

‘Suzan,’ he said, ‘my name is Inspector Süleyman. I’m afraid I need to ask you some questions about what has happened here. I know it will be distressing, but there really isn’t anything else I can do.’

She just sobbed.

The overweight officer said, ‘She hasn’t said a word beyond her name, sir.’

‘OK.’ He looked at the girl again. ‘Suzan,’ he said, ‘do you want to see a doctor? Would you rather talk to a doctor? We can arrange that. You’ve experienced a terrible thing, you—’

‘They took his heart,’ she whispered between her trembling frightened fingers.

‘They?’

‘Someone.’ Her entire body shook as she raised her head from the table.

‘Did you see anyone, Suzan?’

Now that her head was up, she looked at him with frightened if slightly curious eyes. ‘He is dead, isn’t he, Abdurrahman Efendi?’

‘I’m afraid he is, yes,’ Süleyman said. And then he smiled. He knew that because he was good-looking, he appealed to almost everyone he interviewed in virtually every type of scenario.

Suzan duly looked at him, through her tears, with wonder. She said, ‘What am I going to do?’

Where maids went when their masters died he really did not know; besides, that was not his concern. ‘Suzan, I need you to tell me how and when you found Abdurrahman Efendi.’

For a moment she looked at him as if she hadn’t understood. He was just about to reiterate his question when she said, ‘I was due back at six.’

‘And were you on time?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Oh, I’m always on time, sir,’ she said. ‘Especially when I’ve had the afternoon off.’