A Passion for Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘The Forensic Institute tell me that the body was entirely clean when it arrived at their laboratories. What was it that happened last time, sergeant? With the rent boy?’

  İzzet considered his answer carefully. None of the weird things that had happened with Nizam Tapan’s body, apart from his ‘cleanliness’, could, after all, actually be proved.

  ‘It would seem that the body went somewhere else before it arrived at the Institute,’ he said. ‘Persons unknown having gathered the evidence from the corpse then passed that information on to the Forensic Institute – or not. Nothing can really be proven in all of this, of course.’

  ‘No.’ Dr Sarkissian twirled a ballpoint pen between his fingers. Behind him on the wall, a stern portrait of Atatürk looked down impassively. ‘And this time, of course, I know that the body did indeed go straight to the Institute because you accompanied it, didn’t you, sergeant?’

  ‘Yes, doctor. But I didn’t go inside.’

  ‘The body was at the Institute for an unusually long time,’ the doctor said as he leaned down on his desk, his large brow furrowed in thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But unlike Nizam Tapan’s, Cabbar Soylu’s corpse didn’t go on any sort of excursion before it arrived at the Institute.’

  ‘No, doctor.’

  ‘And yet it, too, was clean!’ He stood up and rubbed his bald pate angrily with his hands. ‘Which is utterly impossible. Everybody picks up dirt and fibres on their clothes, even in expensive hotel suites. The Institute scientists only ever take samples, they never clean bodies of all evidence! Bodies have to go through my hands first before they can be cleaned.’ He sat down again and looked İzzet Melik square in the eyes. ‘I don’t know why, sergeant, but I think that either the Institute did not for some reason examine Soylu or someone at the Institute is lying. And,’ he sighed wearily, ‘even though it pains me to say so, I have a bad feeling that Inspector Süleyman knows this is happening and why.’

  İzzet Melik said nothing. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t agree with the doctor.

  An owner of a successful carpet shop could conceivably afford an apartment in the up-market northern suburb of Nişantaşı, but not a mere salesman. Otherwise known as Teşvikiye, the district was characterised by designer shops, beauty parlours and luxury car showrooms. Apartments were at a premium and generally inhabited by wealthy business people, lawyers and doctors. Looking up at the clean, smart apartment building on Atiye Sokak which runs across the junction of the super cool Teşvikiye Caddesi with Maçka Caddesi, Çetin İkmen couldn’t help wondering how the salesman Yaşar Uzun managed to exist in such a place. Fiscal matters aside, quite how the young man from, apparently, some dirt village just outside Antalya, managed to cut it amongst the educated and ostentatiously monied folk of Nişantaşı, İkmen couldn’t imagine. Even the beggars were fatter and better clad in this part of town.

  He entered Yaşar Uzun’s building via an efficiently silent revolving door. A man who could, from the looks of him, have been something relatively impressive in middle management came out of a small office to his left and asked İkmen what he wanted. Amazingly, this smart young man – probably only in his forties – was the kapıcı of the building, a post generally occupied by poor village men or rather crusty elderly gents with bowed and aching backs. But then this was Nişantaşı . . .

  The kapıcı, though unimpressed by İkmen’s police credentials, was nevertheless as helpful as the more traditional incarnation of his profession was wont to be.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know anything, actually, about Mr Uzun,’ he said. ‘It’s not my place to interfere in the affairs of my ladies and gentlemen.’

  İkmen rolled his eyes. Any kapıcı worth his wages knew everything about everyone in his building – their occupations, their children, their habits, lovers, plastic surgery status and pets. Nothing was sacred. One just didn’t display one’s knowledge openly, particularly not to a common person, such as a man who worked for the police.

  ‘I’m here Mr, er . . .’

  ‘Ahmet Osman.’

  ‘Mr Osman, at the request of Mr Uzun’s employer. Mr Uzun has not reported for work for the last three days. His employer is understandably concerned.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Osman replied. ‘A Raşit Bey, from the Kapalı Çarşı. He came here yesterday.’ He sniffed with some distaste at the memory of a person from such a vulgar part of town. ‘I think he wanted me to open up Yaşar Bey’s apartment so that he could look for him, but of course I refused. What my ladies and gentlemen do is their business . . .’

  ‘Yes, well, you’ll have to open up Yaşar Bey’s apartment to me, Mr Osman,’ İkmen said. ‘Mind you, if he has been lying dead in there for three days, I’m not what you’d call exactly eager to find out.’

  The kapıcı shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s probable,’ he said. ‘If something has happened to him, then it hasn’t happened here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because his car isn’t in the garage,’ Osman said.

  İkmen frowned.

  ‘Yaşar Bey went out to work on Monday in his car as usual. It’s one of those American things, quite distinctive. Yaşar Bey is devoted to it. What is it now?’ He pursed his thin lips and frowned. ‘Oh, yes! it’s a –’ he smiled – ‘Jeep! Yes, it’s a Jeep. Yellow. It’s marvellous, everyone looks at it, quite a fashionable thing, by all accounts. Not, of course, that I told his employer that the Jeep wasn’t in the garage. I mean that is Yaşar Bey’s private business. I tell you because you are a police officer . . .’

  ‘So Yaşar Bey went to work on Monday and—’

  ‘And he never returned here,’ the kapıcı said.

  ‘As far as you know,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Well of course.’

  İkmen sighed. ‘Get the key to Mr Uzun’s apartment, will you, Mr Osman.’

  ‘He isn’t here.’

  ‘I need to be absolutely certain about that,’ İkmen said. ‘Get the key and take me up to his apartment please.’

  Amid a small but obvious amount of muttering, Ahmet Osman retrieved the key to Yaşar Uzun’s apartment and took İkmen up the five floors to the very stylish, if spare, dwelling. As soon as the kapıcı opened the door it was obvious to İkmen that Uzun hadn’t died in his apartment. It smelled of several things including stale cigarette smoke and some sort of pungent male cologne, but there wasn’t even that vague sweetness on the air that usually heralds the presence of a fresh human corpse.

  ‘How long has Mr Uzun lived here?’ İkmen asked as he moved from one featureless room to the next.

  ‘Six months, give or take the odd day.’

  İkmen wondered where Uzun had lived when he first came to İstanbul. He also wondered why, unlike most of the carpet dealers he had come across over the years, the man from Antalya didn’t have any rugs or kilims of his own. After all, even in an apartment of the most severe minimalism, oriental rugs were one of the few things that were always allowed. Carpets were, as his teenage daughter Gül had told him only the previous week, one of the few things from the ‘old days’ that were ‘funky’. And Gül read every style and fashion magazine in the Turkish language.

  ‘Did Mr Uzun go to his usual place of business on Monday?’ İkmen asked as he picked up a small black box containing what looked like a man’s silver bracelet.

  ‘As far as I know,’ the kapıcı replied. ‘He left at the same time he always does.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Yaşar Uzun was probably with a girlfriend, or even off with a new and more exciting employer – people did sometimes just quit their jobs without explanation. But İkmen was not easy just leaving things like this and so he took his mobile from his pocket and called the station.

  Mürsel was so casual about everything. Turned away into the corner of his office, his head down over his mobile phone, Mehmet Süleyman spoke to the man he called ‘the spy’ in a tone just above a whisper.

  ‘It may be easy for you to lie about e
verything but it is not natural to me!’ he hissed. ‘I’m having to deceive people I know as friends! And I don’t even know why I’m doing it!’

  ‘I told you, Mehmet,’ the voice at the other end of the line said evenly, ‘there is a very dangerous man out there somewhere whom we need to apprehend.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but in the normal way . . .’

  ‘This man, my dear Mehmet, cannot be captured in the normal way as you well know,’ Mürsel replied. ‘He is a patriot, a . . .’

  ‘A spy like you!’

  ‘A patriot,’ the smooth voice corrected, ‘gone astray. Now . . .’

  ‘I cannot do it!’ Süleyman shakily took a drag from his cigarette and then let out the smoke on a jerky sigh.

  ‘Yes you can.’ Mürsel’s voice was calm but menacing. Just as it had been that first time he had revealed his true nature and profession to the policeman – the time when he had told him that not to cooperate with himself and the other ‘spies’ would result in his untimely demise. ‘You have no choice. You have to pretend to continue because people must believe that the police, and they alone, are involved in the peeper investigation. Don’t worry, as I’ve told you before, you won’t have to actually apprehend our man. You won’t be able to. We’ll do that.’

  ‘But people can’t understand why Cabbar Soylu is a peeper victim. I don’t understand it myself!’

  ‘Take it from me . . .’

  ‘The peeper kills young homosexual men, as far as I and everyone else is concerned,’ Süleyman said. ‘Cabbar Soylu is a straight, thuggish . . .’

  ‘Our man has moved on,’ Mürsel said with what Süleyman felt was annoying simplicity. ‘Now he targets other groups. Soylu is a peeper victim, trust me.’

  Süleyman shook his head at this.

  ‘Look, we could meet, you and I, it would be lovely. Or talk to Ardıç, he knows what’s going on,’ Mürsel continued. ‘He’s been most cooperative.’

  Süleyman’s boss the commissioner was the only other police officer with knowledge about the true nature of the peeper affair, and the sole person the inspector could talk to. Not that that was easy; Ardıç was an explosive and difficult individual at the best of times and this peeper thing had done nothing to improve his mood.

  ‘I don’t like the fact that people like Çetin İkmen and even my own sergeant, Melik, think that my judgement on the Soylu case is eccentric to say the least!’ Süleyman said forcefully.

  ‘Well, I can’t help that,’ Mürsel responded smoothly. ‘My job is to find and apprehend our friend. Yours is simply to pretend to do so whilst remaining very poised and attractive. I know which one I would prefer to be doing.’

  Süleyman wanted to say something about how Mürsel should perhaps stop drooling over him at every opportunity, but just at that moment his office telephone rang. Without even so much as a ‘goodbye’ he cut off the call to Mürsel and answered his landline.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  The Forest of Belgrad lies to the north-east of the city of İstanbul and is a great source of oxygen for the carbon monoxide-choked metropolis. So named because of the Serbs, from Belgrade, who were once entrusted to guard it by Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, the Forest of Belgrad is now a favourite haunt of cyclists, runners and walkers. One of the latter, a middle-aged official at the Canadian Consulate called John Mclennen, was fond of taking his Irish wolfhound, Dara, with him on his various jaunts. On this occasion, because he had stayed the previous night with a friend in the village of Peri, which is just north of the forest’s most familiar areas, Mclennen and the dog set out into uncharted territory along the road that leads from the village towards, eventually, the Bosphorus village of Sarıyer.

  The area was characterised by deep, green gorges to each side of the road and, particularly in the very early morning, an all-pervading cool, misty calm. Peri was a ‘diplomatic’ village where numerous consular and NATO employees had their residences and so security was good. Crime or even general unpleasantness was rare and so John Mclennen had no fear as he walked out of the village at five o’clock on that gentle spring morning. He and Dara walked along the road at a steady pace, enjoying the lack of traffic and the sweet, early air. Because the dog was on his lead, John could look around, confident that Dara wouldn’t run off while he was distracted. And so John looked. Up into the lightening blue spring sky, at the trees that lined the road beside him and into the dark and mysterious gorges that plunged so far down to the edge of the road.

  Nothing beyond a vague and natural curiosity made him decide to dive off into one of the gorges to his right. He could, he later told police, just as easily have decided to go to the left. But he went right into the darkness of many thickly growing fir trees and, by his own admission, enjoyed the slightly dangerous feel of sliding down an almost vertical slope. By this time Dara was off his lead and was into the trees a good minute before his master. Once in the gorge, John first called the dog and then looked around. A couple of the trees seemed to have sustained some minor damage to their trunks, but he didn’t think anything of it at the time. The forest was officially a protected area, but people sometimes tried to cut trees down illegally for firewood. In this case, it appeared that they had been interrupted before the trees were irreparably damaged. But John did not dwell upon the trees for very long. As seconds passed into minutes and Dara did not respond to his call, he became increasingly impatient with the dog and went still deeper into the trees in order to try and find him.

  Now as he scanned about him for signs of his dog, John noticed that the ground at his feet was marked by a set of tyre tracks. He hadn’t seen them at the top of the gorge, but they were very obvious lower down. It was all a bit of a mystery until he finally found Dara and the overturned vehicle that the dog appeared to be guarding for some reason. Whining and pacing up and down in front of what John recognised to be a Jeep, the dog wanted his master to see something that was behind the vehicle. And so John, knowing dogs and their behaviour as he did, went knowing that Dara was probably leading him towards the erstwhile occupant of the vehicle. He wasn’t wrong, although sadly the poor guy was very obviously no longer alive. John took his mobile out of his pocket and called 155.

  ‘Yaşar is much better at doing those carpet shows than I am,’ Raşit Bey said as he sucked on the mouthpiece of the nargile his grandson had just brought him. ‘He has charm, he’s attractive and he’s so good with the foreigners who are, after all, the bulk of our customers these days. Yaşar speaks English very well, German and French well enough. His knowledge of carpets is very good, especially about Nomadic trappings – camel and salt bags, baby slings. Those are all becoming rare, I can tell you. Not that we exactly specialise in such items. We’re much more “Ottoman” in what we stock.’

  ‘You didn’t attend this carpet show yourself, Raşit Bey?’ İkmen asked.

  Raşit Ulusan’s shop was not the biggest or brightest in the Kapalı Çarşı, in fact its window display looked decidedly dusty. But then that, İkmen soon came to appreciate, was part of both the shop’s charm and Raşit Bey’s retail strategy. Situated in the Zincirli Han, which is at the north-eastern corner of the great bazaar, Ulusan Carpets faced stiff competition from the far more prominent Sisko Osman shop, which was well known for its immensely prestigious international clientele. Realising, many years before, that there was never any way that he could compete with a shop that sold to US and other presidents, Raşit made a conscious decision to appeal to a rather different type of market. Specialising in buying largely from the old Turkish and sometimes also Arabian elites, Raşit’s customers tended to be those who favoured faded glory; nouveaux riches Turks wishing to impress their friends and rather romantic foreigners, many of whom lived in Turkey as part of the expatriate community. Dusty ‘Ottoman’-style windows appealed to such people very much, in Raşit’s experience. To some the dust was almost an adventure in itself.

  ‘No,’ Raşit Bey tipped his head back to signal his denial. ‘It�
�s a long way out of town and my English, though not bad, is not as good as Yaşar’s. Back in the old days of course, we rarely went to the home of a buyer – unless that person was extremely prominent. But now so many people want everything done for them on their doorsteps. I dislike it. And besides, I’m getting old now. Some of those shows can go on for hours. I need my bed.’ He leaned forward towards İkmen. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nargile, Çetin Bey? I can get Adnan to bring you one, it really isn’t any trouble.’

  İkmen put one hand over his heart and said, ‘You are very kind, Raşit Bey, but thank you, no. I will stick with my cigarettes if that is OK with you.’

  ‘But of course.’ The old man sighed.

  It was just gone nine-thirty in the morning, but because it was officially İkmen’s day off, he had only been up for half an hour. Four cigarettes one after the other was one thing, but a nargile so soon after rising was beyond even him. He was only in this shop because he had been unable to get to speak to Raşit Bey the previous evening. Though failing to pinpoint precisely why – he was, after all, a grown man – İkmen was concerned about Yaşar Uzun.

  İkmen took a moment to take a sip from the tulip glass of dark, sweet tea his host had given him when he arrived. Then clearing his throat he said, ‘So tell me about these carpet shows, Raşit Bey. Does whoever is doing them take the carpets to the venue in a truck or . . . what happens?’

  ‘The boys, that is, Adnan my grandson, Hüseyin, who has worked for our family for years, and Yaşar, load up the truck we use for all our carpet transport and Hüseyin usually drives it to wherever they need to be. For a show that we know will attract a lot of enthusiastic collectors we can take upwards of fifty pieces.’

  ‘Pieces?’

  ‘Carpets, kilims – and, recently, some antique embroidery – that can be very popular. The boys will unload the truck when they get to the venue and then Yaşar will give his presentation about the history and different types and grades of carpet and then hopefully sell some to the people at the show.’ Raşit Bey leaned in towards İkmen once again and added, ‘We see ourselves very much as educators in this field, Çetin Bey. Not like most of the other scoundrels who purport to sell good carpets these days.’