Ikmen 16 - Body Count (9 page)

She said, ‘For a start, you can take him off me. Get him away from here so I can work. I don’t need coppers on my doorstep; it puts people off.’

Ş
ukru considered this for a while, and found that it actually wasn’t such a bad idea.

Mehmet Süleyman watched Çetin
İ
kmen open up the envelope and then read the letter inside.

‘What does it say?’

İ
kmen, seated at his office desk, perused the document for a few moments before he answered. Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu was out at lunch and so the two men were alone. ‘Well, he asserts his innocence with regard to the accusation of treason that was levelled at him, and he also says that he didn’t kill his wife either,’ he said. He put the note that General Ablak had written down on his desk. ‘One either believes that a man about to commit suicide cannot lie, or one does not. You know I telephoned him; it must have been just before he died.’

General Ablak’s body had been found in his office the previous evening by his son. Clearly suicide. The only note he’d left had been for Çetin
İ
kmen.
İ
kmen handed the document to Mehmet Süleyman.

After reading through it once, Süleyman said, ‘He liked you.’

İ
kmen shrugged. ‘He hardly knew me.’

‘So the treason charge, do you think that’s related to his death?’

‘How would we know?’
İ
kmen said. ‘All that, er, that political stuff is not what we do.’

Both men became quiet until
İ
kmen said, ‘I need to go out for several cigarettes. Do you want to come?’ He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair.

‘Yes.’

Since smoking in public places had been banned back in 2008,
İ
kmen and Süleyman had been obliged to go outside every time they wanted a nicotine hit.
İ
kmen particularly found it hard. Once outside and lit up, he said to Süleyman, ‘In answer to your question about General Ablak, we’ve all heard his name bandied about in relation to the Ergenekon investigation …’

Süleyman looked over his shoulder and then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Whether he was involved or not, I can understand why he took his own life if he was under suspicion,’
İ
kmen said.

‘You don’t think he killed himself because he murdered his wife?’

‘No, I don’t. If you murder someone, you might just get away with it. But if someone thinks you’re involved in treason …’ He shook his head.

The governmental investigation into the so-called Ergenekon plot to undermine both democracy and the rule of law appeared to be endless. But did such a plot even exist? It was an issue so contentious that people like
İ
kmen spoke about it only in whispers. Even army officers who had once been chiefs of staff had been arrested, and several of them had committed suicide already. Whether such suicides were tacit admissions of guilt was a moot point.
İ
kmen, as an avowed secularist, was deeply conflicted on the subject.

He sucked hard on a rather unsatisfying Marlboro Light. Trying to cut down was not really working for him. ‘Leyla Ablak’s killer wasn’t her husband, and nor do I think it was her lover, either.’

‘No?’

‘No, he admitted to that affair far too quickly,’
İ
kmen said.

Süleyman let smoke drift slowly out of his mouth. ‘Hiding in plain sight …’

‘Oh, I admit it is a valid and sometimes successful technique, my dear Mehmet, but I don’t think that it is so in Mr Genç’s case. By the way, can you tell me anything about Mrs Ablak’s family? I believe you are related …’

Süleyman sighed. ‘You saw my mother at Sezen Han
ı
m’s house in Ortaköy; she told me.’ He shook his head. ‘Leyla and I are distant cousins. Through my father and Leyla’s mother we are both related to the Imperial family, as I am sure you are bored with being told. I am bored with knowing it. To my knowledge I last saw Leyla
İ
pek in the 1970s, when I was really more interested in model trains than in girls. I’m told she was pretty.’

İ
kmen smiled. Nur Han
ı
m, Süleyman’s mother, had apparently telephoned their boss, Commissioner Ard
ı
ç, to see whether he could reassign her son to the Leyla Ablak case. He had replied, most emphatically, that he couldn’t.

‘Sezen Han
ı
m didn’t approve of General Ablak,’
İ
kmen said.

‘No, he was a “nasty” republican, a destroyer of the Empire and therefore beyond the pale.’ Süleyman shook his head. ‘You can’t please old Ottomans, Çetin. They don’t like the secularists, and they mistrust the present government because they are far too common and Islamic for their taste. Mind you, money always changes things. Ablak’s dirty Kemalist money was good enough for my family.’ He glanced down at
İ
kmen, who looked back at him with a question on his face. Süleyman, who knew him very well, knew exactly what it was. ‘But no, I can’t imagine even my most insane relatives killing anyone.’

‘I didn’t think so,’
İ
kmen said. Although Süleyman had no doubt that Sezen
İ
pek and her family would be minutely considered by him. ‘No, my mind is on the lover’s wife.’

‘Faruk Genç’s?’

‘Yes. I felt that his dying wife, although freely admitting her own pragmatism about her husband’s affair, was rather
too
pragmatic. There was no passion there, where I think most people would have expected it. There was some barely suppressed malice, too. I must say I am also drawn towards the world that Leyla Ablak was apparently so attracted to,’
İ
kmen said. ‘The “alternative” health scene.’

Süleyman frowned. ‘Oh?’

‘Yes, aromatherapy, chakras, homeopathy – she did a lot of that.’

‘Really. I didn’t know.’

‘Ah, the appeal of the weird,’
İ
kmen said as he lit one cigarette from another.

‘Well that’s very interesting, Çetin.’

İ
kmen laughed. ‘What, pseudo-science? The outer limits of human credulity? I mean, I know I say this as the son of a woman who was a witch …’

‘Yes, but you believed in your mother, didn’t you?’

‘My mother clearly had something, even if I can’t really say what that was.’

‘It’s interesting because my victim, Levent Devrim, was into alternative therapies too,’ Süleyman said. ‘Apparently he read copiously on all sorts of “weird” topics – aliens, stone circles, the Mayan 2012 prophecies – at his favourite bookshop, the Ada on
İ
stiklal.’

‘Can’t imagine your cousin consorting with the great unwashed at the Ada,’
İ
kmen said.

‘Maybe not, and maybe the fact that Devrim and Leyla were both into these therapies doesn’t mean anything,’ Süleyman said. ‘But I tell you, Çetin, I am struggling to find a motive for Levent Devrim’s death. As far as I can tell he was a quiet eccentric obsessed with numbers. Although what numbers meant to him, and why, I have no idea. The calculations we found scrawled all over his apartment were meaningless. Then today Ömer was told by Levent Devrim’s old paramour Sugar Bar
ı
ş
ı
k that
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu didn’t in fact find his body. A gypsy kid found it. But of course the child, Hamid, was nowhere to be found.’

‘Did Ömer speak to
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu?’
İ
kmen knew the gypsy brother of Süleyman’s great love, as well as the rest of the
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu family, rather well, and had always been aware of the fact that back in his native Sulukule,
Ş
ukru had been a local celebrity for decades. He wondered how he was dealing with the comedown that Tarlaba
ş
ı
had to be for him.

‘No,’ Süleyman said. ‘We’re going after the boy Hamid on the pretext that he picked Sugar Bar
ı
ş
ı
k’s pocket. Once we get hold of him, we can also question
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu again. In the meantime, I’m going to have
Ş
ukru watched.’

İ
kmen raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, I know Tarlaba
ş
ı
is a tough place to stake out, but I’ve got a few old Sulukule contacts over there, and I’ve got the budget for it.’

‘Sulukule contacts who will tell you the truth about
Ş
ukru
Ş
ekero
ğ
lu?’

‘Ah, well that could be moot,’ Süleyman said.

‘Friends or enemies?’

‘Oh, enemies.’

‘Then you’ll have to be careful.’

‘Of course. But what can I do? A strange face in that quarter would be headline news in all the coffee houses and brothels within minutes. One of the many things that really puzzles me about this case is how the murderer managed to get in and out without being noticed.’

‘Unless he was local.’

‘Unless he was local, which is a terrible thought, because if that’s the case then I’ll never catch him.’

‘Unless he upsets one of the local drug dealers, or his neighbours.’

Süleyman lit another cigarette. ‘Absolutely. But I don’t think he is local.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Tarlaba
ş
ı
is agitated. Since Devrim’s murder, people are afraid. Admittedly half of them think it’s a conspiracy on the part of the government to get them to move out of the area more quickly and with less bother …’

‘Well …’

‘While of course some more “progressive” types outside the quarter believe it was an inside job to frighten away the developers.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that,’
İ
kmen said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think Levent Devrim was murdered by someone and I think we have too many conspiracies in this country.’

İ
kmen smiled. ‘Poor Mehmet.’

‘At least with Leyla Ablak there is, or could be, a cogent motive,’ Süleyman said.

İ
kmen looked up into the foggy February air and coughed. Then he said, ‘Yes, possibly. Her late husband hinted at jealousies amongst his wife’s friends. Don’t you think it’s amazing how so often it is highly privileged women who harbour truly vicious feelings about each other?’

‘They have little else to think about,’ Süleyman said.

‘The only people my wife is jealous of are folk who have central heating.’

Süleyman didn’t answer. Apparently, once he had retired,
İ
kmen was going to have central heating fitted in his apartment. Why he hadn’t had it put in before was a bit of a mystery.

‘So I must make the acquaintance of the Kemer Golf and Country Club,’
İ
kmen said. He lit another cigarette, then looked up at Süleyman. ‘What do you think they’ll make of me, Mehmet?’

With his frayed trouser turn-ups and very unfashionable haircut, not to mention the general grey ashiness of his demeanour, there was very little about
İ
kmen that Süleyman thought the good people at the Kemer Golf and Country Club could allow themselves to like. But then, he thought, that was really their problem.

Hande Genç watched and listened in silence as her husband grovelled around her like a penitent.

‘Hande,’ he said, ‘do you want me to leave the television on or do you want to read?’

The news had already started and it was full of depressing stories. Did he imagine they were upsetting her? She said, ‘Leave the TV. I’m dying and you’ve been unfaithful to me; how much worse can things get?’

He didn’t say anything. She saw him very obviously busy himself making room on her night stand. She wanted to hurt him but she knew she didn’t have the strength to do that physically. That didn’t matter. Instead, she said, ‘I told the police a lie.’

His face drained of blood. ‘What about?’

‘I knew you were having an affair with Leyla Ablak.’

‘No you didn’t. How could you?’

‘Younger women with old husbands can’t resist boasting about any toy boys they might pick up,’ she said.

On the TV, the news from Syria was bloody and grave, as usual.

Faruk Genç put the book Hande had been reading underneath the tray that contained all her medications. ‘You didn’t know Mrs Ablak,’ he said.

‘
I
didn’t, no,’ she said. And watched his face as he went through a mental list of people who visited her who might have known Leyla Ablak.

In the end he said, ‘Who do you mean?’

But she just shrugged. He moved towards her, his hands outstretched, ‘Hande, who do you—’

‘Don’t you touch me, you son of a pig!’ She cringed away from him. She looked elsewhere, her eyes eventually coming to rest on the television screen. On it she saw a face she recognised.

‘Hande—’ her husband began.

‘Shut up!’ she snapped. Then she pointed at the television. ‘Look.’

The picture of General Osman Ablak was no longer on the screen, but the newscaster was obviously talking about him. ‘… veteran of the war in Cyprus, currently under investigation in connection with his role in the 1980
coup d’état
and subsequent alleged actions prejudicial to the democratic process. General Ablak was found dead at his home in
İ
stanbul last night. A police spokesman said that the death was not suspicious.’

Hande looked at her husband and said, ‘That means he probably killed himself.’

Still looking at the TV screen, Faruk Genç said, ‘They didn’t say that and you don’t know it. He was old.’

‘So then the shock of finding out that his wife was slagging around stopped his heart,’ she said. ‘Either way, you and your lover killed him.’

‘No we didn’t. He was involved in Ergenekon.’ Even though he had once loved her, and she was dying, he couldn’t look at her without feeling true loathing. How had she known about Leyla? Why wouldn’t she tell him? Was it just a lie with which to taunt him?