Ikmen 16 - Body Count (42 page)

‘Everybody loved Hatice,’ Atay said, ‘because she was such a loving person herself. She’d do anything to help people, and the lengths she would go to to save someone’s feelings were quite extraordinary.’

‘Oh?’ A thought crept into Süleyman’s brain. It was something to do with a notion he’d just developed that Levent Devrim had possibly known about Hatice and Atay’s affair. But he couldn’t put it into words for some reason. His eyes began to close.

He heard the professor say, ‘Are you all right, Inspector?’

He mumbled something that might have been
No, not really.
But he didn’t know.

‘Inspector?’

He felt something. A slight pain in his shoulders maybe? And then there was nothing.

It started off being all about Jews. An elderly Turkish Jewish academic who they both recognised, told the story of how his people had escaped from Spain and Portugal to the Ottoman Empire in 1492 at the invitation of Sultan Beyaz
ı
t II. It was a familiar tale of Sephardic Jewish survival, known to most Turks. The academic wandered around synagogues in places like Balat, Karaköy and Ortaköy talking to people. Next there was a bit on the Greeks and then the documentary moved to Sulukule, the old gypsy quarter as it had been before the demolition. And there was
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu, a cigarette in one hand and a halter attached to the muzzle of a dancing bear in the other.

‘Whoa!’ Ömer Mungan said. ‘Wasn’t bear dancing outlawed decades ago?’ Officially the practice had ceased in 1988, but unofficially it had carried on well into the twenty-first century.

‘It was their livelihood,’ Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu said. Watching
Ş
ukru on the laptop screen brought old Sulukule flooding back to her. Ömer of course didn’t remember it. Whatever the ethics of things like bear dancing and drinking dens, when the gypsies had been allowed to ply their traditional trades they had been happy. They’d had some pride, too, which was written all over
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu’s thin, arrogant face. Looking at him made Ay
ş
e smile in spite of herself. She’d never had anything against the
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu family; in fact she’d always had a sneaking regard for them as lovable rogues. It was only Gonca that she took issue with, and that was only because she loved the man that Ay
ş
e loved. That men like
Ş
ukru had been reduced to recruiting kids for pickpocketing rings run by foreigners was tragic.

A voice behind the pictures on the screen said, ‘This is
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu, gypsy, bear man and ex-professional grease wrestler.’ And then a figure came into shot, and it was one that, though younger in the film, was still instantly recognisable. ‘
Ş
ukru, tell us about Sulukule,’ Professor Cem Atay asked. ‘How long have your people lived here?’

Ay
ş
e looked at Ömer. They both heard
Ş
ukru say, ‘A thousand years.’

‘You were in this city before the Turks?’ the professor said.

‘We’ve always been here,’ the gypsy replied. ‘Our blood runs in these waterways, along the walls of these houses the Turks want to demolish.’

The camera panned – a shot of the houses, cafés and drinking dens of Sulukule.

Ay
ş
e said, ‘Did we know that Professor Atay knew
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu?’

‘I don’t know that we ever asked,’ Ömer said. ‘But just because he’s interviewing him …’

‘Professor Atay was Hatice Devrim’s lover. She was connected to Levent Devrim, our first victim, by marriage, and to our fourth victim, Abdurrahman
Ş
afak – who she may have killed – by blood. He was in turn related to our third victim, John Regan.’

They looked at each other while the younger professor on the screen said, ‘The Roma or gypsy community of
İ
stanbul are one of the most fascinating and mysterious minorities we have. In Ottoman times their women were welcomed into harems, including the Imperial harem, as purveyors of perfumes and aphrodisiacs and as fortune-tellers par excellence.’

‘But what about Leyla Ablak?’ Ömer said. ‘He didn’t know her.’

‘She was his brother-in-law’s mistress,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘Remember?’

Frowning, she paused the documentary and said, ‘We should tell Inspector Süleyman. Where is he?’

‘Oh, he’s with Professor Atay,’ Ömer said.

He felt a vibration against his leg, and it occurred to him that it was probably his phone, which was on silent, but it was very far away. He felt heavy and a little sick and he had to lean on the professor, who he knew was dangerous even if he couldn’t care about that now, in order to get inside the house and walk down the stairs.

Down the stairs to where? Why inside the house?

He didn’t know. All he wanted to do was lie down.

He heard a voice say, ‘I expect you just need a rest. How did you get here, Inspector? I didn’t see your car.’

He heard himself say, ‘No.’ But he couldn’t say any more. He’d left the car at home …

‘Where is your car? Did you leave it at Arnavutköy police station?’

But he just said, ‘Home.’

‘Home?’ The word echoed through his brain as if his head was inside a kettle. ‘Where is home?’ And then it was as if he was under water, in a full kettle, fighting for his breath. He fell backwards on to something that was softer than a floor, and then he didn’t know anything else.

Professor Atay wasn’t at the university. Apparently someone had phoned from the police earlier and the professor’s secretary had told him that the academic was at home in Arnavutköy. Again Ömer Mungan called Süleyman’s mobile, but to no avail. But then sometimes he did turn it to silent when he was interviewing someone.

‘We’ll have to call Professor Atay,’ Ömer said, looking up the professor’s home phone number on Süleyman’s computer.

But Ay
ş
e put her hand on his. ‘Do you think we should?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, if we call him and he is implicated in some way …’

‘If he’s dangerous, we need to warn the inspector,’ Ömer said.

‘Yes, but we can’t warn him through the professor, and what if—’

‘Atay won’t know that we’ve seen this film,’ Ömer said. ‘What he does know is that we have our suspicions about him with regard to Hatice Devrim, and of course Inspector
İ
kmen did question him about Leyla Ablak. But what else he may have deduced …’ He shrugged. ‘Ay
ş
e Han
ı
m, we have to call or go to Arnavutköy. Even allowing for terrible traffic, the Inspector should have been back by now. He would have phoned me anyway.’

The office phone began to ring.

‘Maybe that’s him,’ Ay
ş
e said.

Ömer picked it up. ‘Hello, Inspector Süleyman’s office.’

The voice, when it came, was old and female and tetchy, and Ömer Mungan recognised it. ‘Where is my son?’ Mrs Nur Süleyman asked.

‘Ah, Mrs Süleyman.’

Ömer looked at Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, who rolled her eyes. He’d been told she knew the inspector’s mother and didn’t like her. Now he knew it.

‘Do you know why my son’s car is parked outside my house?’ the old woman continued. ‘We haven’t seen him and yet it sits there.’

‘Well, Mrs Süleyman, could it be that the inspector has maybe gone shopping, or perhaps he’s visiting a friend.’

‘For hours at a stretch?’ she snorted disgustedly. ‘He comes here to visit us, whoever you are. His father saw the car draw up hours ago. I asked the girl to put on the tea and then – nothing. Now we have a guest and I don’t know what to do. Do I wait for him or don’t I? Where is he?’

‘I will find him, Mrs Süleyman,’ Ömer said.

‘You’d better,’ she said. ‘We have a guest, a princess, and his father, having seen his car, is now expecting him for tea. His father is a prince. He isn’t accustomed to people letting him down.’ She rang off.

Ömer looked at the telephone receiver and then replaced it on its cradle. ‘She seems to think that the inspector’s father was expecting him for tea,’ he said.

Ay
ş
e shook her head. ‘Ömer, the inspector’s father has dementia.’

‘Oh.’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No. Still, his mother says that his car is outside their house.’

‘Which is in Arnavutköy.’

‘Of course! Maybe he left it there when he went to the professor’s? This is mad, we need to find out if he’s still there.’

He dialled the number on Süleyman’s screen and waited for an answer. It took some time to come, but when it did, that smooth, rather soothing voice that Atay had cultivated over the years almost made Ömer smile.

‘Professor Atay,’ he said, ‘it’s Sergeant Mungan from the police, Inspector Süleyman’s deputy. I’ve been trying to get hold of the inspector but I don’t seem to be able to do so. I know that he was planning to see you this afternoon. Is he still with you?’

‘No, Sergeant, he isn’t,’ the professor said.

‘When did he leave?’

‘Oh, it must be about an hour and a half ago,’ he said.

‘Do you know where he was going, sir? Did he say?’

‘No, he didn’t. I presume you’ve tried his mobile phone.’

‘It’s switched to silent,’ Ömer said.

‘He must be driving, then.’

‘Yes, that is a possibility. Thank you,’ Ömer said.

‘Sorry I can’t be more helpful,’ the professor said. ‘I do hope that everything is all right.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Ömer said and put the phone down.

‘He’s not there,’ Ay
ş
e said.

‘No. Left an hour and a half ago.’

‘So where is he now?’

Ömer shrugged. ‘Do we carry on ringing his mobile? What do we do?’

Ay
ş
e shook her head and looked back at the frozen image of
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu and Professor Cem Atay on the laptop screen. ‘I’ve a bad feeling,’ she said.

‘Should we call Ard
ı
ç?’ Ömer asked.

‘No,’ Ay
ş
e said. ‘But we should call my boss.’

‘Isn’t he at home?’

‘Yes. But if we don’t call him and this does turn out to be something bad, he will kill us both. Mehmet Bey is like the younger brother Inspector
İ
kmen never had. He loves him.’

Gonca looked grotesque. With that hideous mask on her face, she was leaping around naked except for a cloak that wasn’t hers. At her feet the boy Hamid laughed and Mehmet heard him say that soon they’d all have to leave here too. Whatever it meant, which he couldn’t fathom, was frightening and made him feel as if he should be doing something. But he didn’t know what. For some reason he couldn’t locate his body, and so for the moment he was just a free-floating mind, which was useless. And when he did feel again, and had some notion of his physicality, something pierced the skin on his arm. Mehmet Süleyman briefly roused from his nightmare and screamed.

Whenever Çetin
İ
kmen was particularly worried about something, he broke rules. He walked into Süleyman’s office with a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth and nobody dared tell him to put it out.

Throwing himself down in Süleyman’s chair, he turned to Ay
ş
e and Ömer and said, ‘Tell me everything you know.’

They told him, they showed him
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu and Professor Atay on film, and then he said, ‘Have you called his apartment?’

‘No. But he would have told us if he was going home,’ Ömer said.

Since the previous December, Süleyman had rented a small apartment in Cihangir.
İ
kmen brought the number up on his phone and called it. ‘I don’t know, maybe he’s had a nervous breakdown,’ he said. ‘Nothing would surprise me.’ He put his cigarette out in an old saucer that Ömer had hastily found for him and then lit up another. He got no response from Süleyman’s home phone and so he cut the connection.

He looked at the two sergeants again. ‘So what do we think?’

‘About?’

‘About what may have happened to Inspector Süleyman,’ he said. ‘What are our theories or fantasies about that?’

‘Well, he’s missing,’ Ömer said.

‘Yes, and why is that?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘Er …’

‘We don’t know,’ he continued. ‘Do we? No. His car is at his parents’ house, he can’t be reached on his mobile and the last person he was known to be with, we think, is Professor Cem Atay.’

‘Yes.’

‘So,’
İ
kmen said, ‘with my straightforward, entirely practical face on, it seems logical to me that we go and talk to Professor Atay.’ Before either of the others could speak, he raised a hand to silence them. ‘Minus a warrant, I would suggest at this stage. But let’s get in there if we can and see what we can find.’

‘Sir, the inspector had his suspicions about Atay,’ Ömer said.

‘As do I,’
İ
kmen answered. ‘But we do not, as yet, have any actual physical evidence to connect this man to any crime in this city or anywhere else. Cem Atay has a high profile; we must be careful.’

They all looked at each other. Even potential high-profile arrests could be problematic. They were normally the preserve of those who worked in state security and counter-terrorism; ordinary cops didn’t like them.

‘I’ll go and speak to Ard
ı
ç,’
İ
kmen said, ‘and then we’ll pick up a clutch of uniforms and get over to Arnavutköy.’

Visiting her cousin Muhammed was always a trial. He had started to dement a few years ago; sometimes he would talk as if he were still at home in his father’s house, while other times it was just nonsense. But he was generally calm and quiet about it, which was in stark contrast to the real problem that existed in the Süleyman household: Muhammed’s wife, Nur. Sezen
İ
pek had never liked her. Right from the start she had come across as a common social climber and she hadn’t changed in the fifty-plus years since Sezen had first met her. She was cruel, too. When Leyla had had her bit of trouble when she was a student, Nur Süleyman had whispered whatever details she came across into ears that she shouldn’t have. Now suddenly Nur was in trouble, and Sezen felt a small glow of something like pleasure. A routine social visit had turned into a drama because the favoured, handsome Süleyman son, Mehmet Bey, appeared to be missing.