Ikmen 16 - Body Count (30 page)

And yet Suzan had cried for the old man. A lot. Was she just putting that on because she thought she had to? Or had the old man in fact possessed a softer side to his nature that she had come to appreciate in some way?

‘It was a monster!’ the boy reiterated.

His mother,
Ş
eftali the prostitute, looked up at Süleyman and said, ‘That’s all he knows, now leave him alone!’

But to Süleyman it was all just so much superstition. That these people believed in such, to him, patent nonsense was infuriating. He said, ‘Han
ı
m, there are no monsters. There’s no such thing. There are just people and things that evolve in people’s minds to look like the supernatural.’ He looked at the boy again. ‘Hamid, I need to know exactly what you saw on the morning of the twenty-first of January and what, if any, involvement
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu had in what you saw.’

‘He told me to run away,’ the boy said.

Late the previous evening Süleyman had been to see Gonca, who had told him that
Ş
ukru could not have been collecting wood on the morning of Levent Devrim’s death. She’d had no idea what he’d been doing, but it hadn’t been that.

‘
Ş
ukru Bey is missing,’ Süleyman said now to Hamid.

‘Yeah, I saw it on the TV.’

‘So he isn’t here to tell you what to say.’

The boy looked around at his mother and Süleyman felt his heart sink. Was she now going to control what he said?

But it was
Ş
eftali who spoke next. ‘
Ş
ukru spent the night with me,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘The night that Levent Devrim died,’ she said. She tipped her head at her son. ‘He went out. He always went out when
Ş
ukru visited.’

Süleyman looked at the boy. ‘Where did you go, Hamid?’ he asked. ‘It was snowing.’ Then he looked at
Ş
eftali again. ‘Why did you let him leave in the snow? What were you thinking?’

But it was the boy who answered. ‘When
Ş
ukru Bey visits, I always go to the old houses where people say the Armenians used to live.’

Süleyman thought he knew where the boy meant, but he asked, ‘Where the demolition has just started?’

‘Where I found Levent Bey, yes.’

‘How soon after leaving your mother’s apartment did you find Levent Bey’s body?’

He shrugged. ‘Some hours.’

‘Some hours.’

‘Two or three. It was cold. I made a fire in the house with the Elvis Presley picture on the wall. I was tired. I went to sleep.’

Süleyman knew where the boy meant; it was three derelict piles down from what remained of the house where Levent Devrim’s body had been found.

‘What woke you up?’ Süleyman asked.

‘I don’t know. Nothing I remember,’ the boy said.

‘So what made you move from your fire?’

‘It’d gone out and I needed a piss. Where Levent Bey … where he was, that house has a bit more shelter than the others and the wind was blowing. I didn’t want to get piss all over my clothes.’

‘So then you saw your monster and you saw Levent Bey,’ Süleyman said.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘Until
Ş
ukru Bey came? No,’ he said.

‘
Ş
ukru Bey arrived after your monster had gone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How long after?’

‘I dunno. Five minutes. I was looking to see whether Levent Bey was still alive …’

‘Poking him with a stick,’ Süleyman said. He turned to the boy’s mother. ‘And what about
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu?’ he asked her.

‘What about him?’

‘When, in relation to your son’s departure, did he leave your apartment? Was it one hour later? Two? More?’

Although she was a prostitute by trade,
Ş
eftali still experienced what looked to Süleyman like a level of shame. She lowered her eyes. ‘It was probably an hour,’ she said.

‘Only that?’

‘He usually stayed longer,’ she said. ‘But he said he had to meet someone.’

‘In the early hours of the morning?’

She shrugged.

‘Did he say who?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

He understood this and he believed her.
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu was a powerful force amongst Tarlaba
ş
ı
’s gypsies. Süleyman himself knew only too well that Gonca’s brother could have power over life and death in the quarter.

Süleyman steepled his fingers underneath his chin. ‘So
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu went out after Hamid. Assuming that the boy found Levent Bey two hours after he left the apartment, then
Ş
ukru was out and about at the same time that the murder was being committed.’ He looked at
Ş
eftali. ‘You know that
Ş
ukru told us that he was collecting wood that morning?’

‘He wasn’t.’

‘I know, but why didn’t you tell us that he was with you and then at some meeting?’

Ş
eftali shook her head. ‘He is
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu,’ she said.

‘And he told you not to tell us?’

‘He didn’t have to.’ She looked up at him. ‘You’re the police.’

This time he shook his head in frustration. With the city authorities in open conflict with the gypsies, it was, of course, the police who took the blame and paid the price.

‘
Ş
ukru looked out for my son when that sergeant of yours came scratching around about his pocket-diving – supposedly. I knew that someone had blabbed about my Hamid finding Levent Bey’s body and
Ş
ukru got him out of Tarlaba
ş
ı
for me.’

‘Yes, to Beyo
ğ
lu to work stealing tourists’ cash for a Bulgarian called Marko,’ said Süleyman. He looked at the boy. ‘Tell me about it, Hamid.’

But the boy turned away from him and looked at the wall. Even with
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu possibly dead, he still wouldn’t say anything. It was amazing that Süleyman had got as much out of
Ş
eftali as he had, and it was significant. Because if
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu had gone to meet someone in the early hours of the morning when Levent Devrim had died, that meant that he could have been involved in his death. Maybe
Ş
ukru had met Levent and then left him to go on his way, but what if he hadn’t? What if he’d either killed Devrim himself – which was unlikely given the description the boy had supplied of the probable killer – or assisted Hamid’s ‘monster’ in some way?

Süleyman asked the boy one more time, ‘Hamid, did you really see a monster with Levent Devrim’s body?’

‘Yes.’

‘It definitely wasn’t
Ş
ukru Bey?’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘
Ş
ukru Bey came later, I swear it.’

They all met up at midnight in a bar that
İ
kmen knew well. Because it was in the back streets of Sultanahmet, it was a little squalid, in Süleyman’s opinion, while Arto Sarkissian just found it odd.

‘I thought that Fatih council wanted to close down all the bars in Sultanahmet,’ he said as he drank deeply from his glass of gin and tonic.

‘They want to,’
İ
kmen said, ‘but as we both know, Arto, the human spirit has a way of surviving religion, just as it can often get through war.’

The waiter brought him his second brandy of the evening, while Süleyman sipped at a glass of red wine. When the waiter had gone,
İ
kmen said, ‘So what have we learned today?’

‘Not a lot,’ Arto said. ‘My DNA results will take a few days, if not a week, to come back from the lab, although I can tell you that I now know that Abdurrahman
Ş
afak – mercifully for him – died of a cardiac arrest prior to the removal of his heart. When I got to him I estimate he’d been dead for about two hours – the heat in that place notwithstanding.’

‘Mmm. But it’s spiteful, isn’t it?’
İ
kmen said.

‘What is?’

‘I feel spite in these crimes. Contrary to what Professor Atay and his academic colleagues have told us about the Mayans, and the notion that our offender may well be emulating their methods of execution in line with some sort of disordered belief in the imminent end of the world, I feel very strongly that our victims have been selected for reasons we don’t yet fully understand.’

‘Beyond the fact that, with the exception of Levent Devrim, they were all members of my extended family,’ Süleyman said.

İ
kmen frowned. ‘I think so,’ he said. One of the barmen put some quirky music on the DVD player. It was ‘This Charming Man’ by the 1980s British band The Smiths. For a moment it caught
İ
kmen unawares and he said, ‘Morrissey? How odd. Like it, but … Anyway, yes, for example all of our victims, in one way or another, have transgressed in some way.’

‘Who has not?’

‘I know what you mean, Arto,’
İ
kmen said, ‘but I sense a moral judgement at play here.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well think about it like this: Levent Devrim was an eccentric who didn’t work, who smoked cannabis and who sponged off first his father and then his brother. Not a bad person, but lazy and possibly indulged. Then we have Leyla Ablak, a spoilt adulteress; John Regan, homosexual – apparently harmless, but homosexual nonetheless and so repellent to some religious people and those of an intolerant nature. Rafik Efendi was, as we now know, a monstrous paedophile, and even poor dying Abdurrahman
Ş
afak was an unpleasant man who had disowned his own sister and was unkind to his maid. With the exception of Dr Regan, I would not have liked to have been friends with any of them.’

‘What about our burning man in Aksaray?’ Süleyman asked.

‘I have found signs of decay on him, underneath the carbonisation,’ Arto Sarkissian said. ‘This tells me that he died some time before he was cremated.’

‘So someone kept his body somewhere?’ Süleyman said.

‘Must’ve done.’

‘But until we know who he is, we can’t make any sort of judgement about him,’
İ
kmen said. ‘However, if we look at all our twenty-first of the month victims, then …’

‘You think they weren’t so much killed because of the end of the world but rather that whoever murdered them did so for his own reasons of dislike, outrage or hatred,’ Arto said. ‘So why can’t we find him, Çetin? Someone so full of spite that he can steel himself to cut out another person’s heart is a most unique individual.’

‘I agree. And the fact that he or she is such an unusual person is exactly the reason why we can’t catch them,’
İ
kmen said. He turned to Süleyman. ‘Mehmet, you remember we discussed the possibility of our offender hiding out in his victims’ properties before he struck?’

‘Yes. I think it’s a little—’

‘It’s a theory, only,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But what I don’t think is a theory so much as a fact is that our offender is hiding in plain sight. He or she enters these people’s lives, enters their properties, is seen by others, up to and beyond gypsy children who may or may not be deluded, and then moves along, again in full view, as if nothing has happened.’

Arto sipped his gin. ‘Wasn’t there something about a gypsy lurking outside John Regan’s apartment in Karaköy?’ he said.

‘Yes, a very obvious one,’
İ
kmen said. ‘I mean, ask yourself, who wouldn’t suspect a heavily set foreign Roma man in a leather jacket? Even if we found that man, it’s my contention that his hands would be clean. Now he may or may not have been asked or paid to be in that place at that time …’

‘Then surely if we found that man …’

‘Our patrols in Karaköy have reported a strange lack of gypsy activity in the area ever since Dr Regan died,’
İ
kmen said. ‘And remember, the only person we know who has any connection with foreign gypsies is himself missing.’

‘
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu.’

‘Yes.’

The barman switched the CD player off and put the television on. Some nonsense about a reality TV star was followed by a shot of
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu’s face and a plea for information.
İ
kmen looked at it. ‘He’s under our noses.’ He turned back to his colleagues. ‘And what’s more, he’s getting help with this.’

‘From whom?’

‘I don’t know,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But all these victims had people in their lives who disapproved of what they were doing, disliked who they were or knew things about them that made them anxious or uncomfortable. Of course because of who I am, a man of a secular bent, I have to be careful not to ascribe some sort of fanatically religious motive to these crimes against homosexuals, adulteresses and drug fiends. And I must remember that some of the religious people like the Osmano
ğ
lus these days. Why kill them if you want them to rule you? But then it’s more personal than that.’

‘So how do we, or you, move forward with this?’ Arto said.

‘We find the common denominator,’
İ
kmen said. ‘All our victims are known to one person or a group of people. We have to find out who that one person or group might be. And although whoever it is is right underneath our noses, he is also not someone we are going to be able to easily connect to these people, and that is because he is clever. Above everything else we are dealing with a cunning and brilliant mind, and that is why we are going to re-evaluate every piece of evidence we have collected on these five murders so far.’

Süleyman shook his head. ‘That’s a vast task, especially if one includes electronic data.’

‘Absolutely,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Which is why Ard
ı
ç is going to pull uniforms off the streets, thin out Organised Crime Investigation for a bit and give our postgrads in Security Services some mental stimulation.’