A Passion for Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘I don’t expect you to believe everything about this, Inspector,’ Peter Melly said as he put his coffee cup back down on the little occasional table Doris Klaassen had provided for him. ‘I’m not sure that I really truly believe it myself in the cold light of day.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ İkmen said, his fingers steepled reflectively underneath his chin.

  The Englishman sighed. ‘It seems like I’ve been dealing with Yaşar Uzun for ever,’ he said. ‘But in reality I suppose it has to be at the most eight months. I adore carpets and I love history.’ He stopped in order to take a deep breath after which he said, ‘He, Yaşar, had a Lawrence carpet for me.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘A Lawrence carpet?’

  The Englishman and the Dutchman exchanged a look before the former turned back to İkmen once again and said, ‘I suppose I should have guessed it wouldn’t mean anything to you; as a Turk, I mean, I . . .’

  ‘Well, you are right in that regard, Mr Melly,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ve heard of kilims, just today of “village carpets”, but of Lawrence carpets, I am afraid I am totally ignorant.’

  Peter Melly lit a cigarette. İkmen noticed it was a very smart Black Sobranie. ‘Lawrence, as in T. E. Lawrence, was a British military hero of the First World War,’ the Englishman said. ‘He, er, he fought with the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and 1918. We, um, we regard him as a hero . . .’

  ‘Lawrence of Arabia, yes,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘I have seen the movie. Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. Yes, he was a heroic figure for you.’ He looked pointedly across at the Englishman. ‘The Ottoman Empire was by then a dying and corrupt administration. Some years later, as I am sure you are aware, Mr Melly, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed everything.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘So Lawrence of the Arabs . . .’

  ‘Ah, yes, well,’ Melly continued, ‘Lawrence collected oriental carpets. It is well documented and, of course, to own one of his carpets would be quite a coup. Expensive, but a coup all the same.’ He leaned forward, his face a taut mask of excitement. ‘Yaşar Uzun had such a thing. I have seen it, held it. I was in negotiation to buy it.’

  ‘Were you.’

  ‘I had to have it!’ Peter Melly said and then, through gritted teeth, he added, ‘Had to!’

  Although by no means a carpet aficionado, İkmen, like everyone else, was well aware of the trade in ‘famous’ carpets. The fact that some celebrity or historical icon had owned a particular carpet could increase its value considerably. A picture of a carpet supposedly once owned by the nineteenth-century English explorer Charles Doughty had appeared in the newspapers only a few months before. This fragment, which is all that it really was, had been valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. But then that carpet had been verified by experts as a genuine item.

  ‘How do you know that this Lawrence carpet really is a Lawrence carpet?’ İkmen asked.

  After first looking up at Doris, who duly went off to the kitchen to get more drinks, Peter Melly said, ‘It’s quite a tale. Do you have some time?’

  Until Arto Sarkissian had finished his autopsy on Yaşar Uzun, İkmen theoretically had all the time in the world. But then even if he hadn’t he was now intrigued. Lawrence of Arabia was a troubling and indeed incomprehensible figure for him. That a man should go away from his country and become as one with another, seemingly more primitive people, was deeply strange. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have some time.’

  And so after Doris Klaassen had finished replenishing everyone’s drinks, the Englishman began.

  ‘Lawrence’s speciality was blowing up trains,’ he said. ‘The Turks, er, Ottomans, built the Hejaz railway through Arabia originally to transport pilgrims to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. But when war broke out, of course, they used it to carry troops. I don’t know exactly when Lawrence came into possession of the little Lavar Kerman prayer rug Yaşar Uzun was selling to me, but I know that he was an enthusiastic collector and that his Arab irregulars routinely looted Turkish transport trains. It’s basically how our government, the British, paid these men. But anyway, the man to whom Lawrence eventually gave the Kerman was a young enlisted chap, a Brit, who was his batman in Cairo . . .’

  ‘Batman?’ İkmen frowned.

  ‘Sort of like a servant,’ Melly explained. ‘Privates, non-commissioned men, can, or rather could, act as servants to officers. Cleaning their kit, pressing their uniforms, doing their housework, basically. This young man, Private Victor Roberts, was Lawrence’s batman. He gave Roberts the Kerman as a way of expressing his thanks for the young lad’s efforts. According to Roberts, Lawrence told him the rug had been taken from a Turkish transport train just outside a place called Ma’an which is, these days, in southern Jordan. Lawrence and his men blew the train up and then looted whatever they could find which included this rug. It’s still stained with blood Lawrence claimed had belonged to a young dead man, a Turk, of what he described as “unusual beauty”.’

  ‘I think I’ve heard it said that Lawrence was homosexual?’ Wim said.

  Melly shrugged. ‘It’s very possible. No one really knows. But anyway, Lawrence gave the rug to Roberts who carried it with him all the way to Constantinople.’

  ‘İstanbul.’

  ‘Constantinople as it was then, Inspector,’ the Englishman said to the Turk who shrugged his assent. İstanbul indisputably had indeed been Constantinople – up until as late as 1930. ‘We, the British, as I’m sure you know, occupied the city after the First World War until your man Atatürk took it back in 1923.’

  ‘Our War of Independence.’ İkmen smiled. A lot of foreigners still failed to appreciate that, at that time, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and all the rest of the Turkish nationalists were literally fighting for the existence of their country.

  ‘Yes, well, exactly. It must have been a very confused and confusing time for all concerned. Vis-à-vis the carpet, however, what happened next I don’t know for certain, but it would seem that Roberts gave the Kerman away to someone in İstanbul.’

  ‘Which was how Mr Uzun eventually came into possession of it, I assume,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Not exactly,’ the Englishman replied. ‘Yaşar is from Antalya on the Med coast. He came into possession of it there. He says he got it from some old chap in an ancient back-street antique shop in the old town. The story goes that the Kerman came into Antalya on a cruise ship sometime back in the 1980s. A member of the crew, a Turkish chap, told the tale I’ve just told you and sold it to the antique dealer who squirrelled it away for years. Somewhere along the line, or so Yaşar said, the Kerman had gained the reputation for bringing ill fortune. Maybe the bloodstains on it helped to build that reputation. Load of rot, of course.’

  And yet İkmen knew how powerful the designation of something as ‘unlucky’ could be across so many levels of Turkish society. In spite of whoever had owned the carpet and whatever it might have been worth, İkmen could imagine that an elderly back-street antique dealer would be wary lest such a thing attract the attention of the Evil Eye and bring misfortune in its wake.

  ‘And you have proof that this Kerman carpet did indeed belong to Lawrence?’ İkmen asked as he lit up another of his cheap Maltepe cigarettes. ‘I mean, the reports of a man on a cruise ship can hardly be regarded as reliable.’

  ‘Yaşar found a photograph of the carpet on the Internet,’ Peter Melly replied. ‘It’s of Lawrence and Roberts with the Kerman in Cairo. When I saw it the rug came in a wooden chest, which I think Roberts, or someone, must have put it in later. But the photograph, which I have also seen in books, was taken by the American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who followed Lawrence during the latter part of his career in the desert. I’ve a copy of the picture myself if you want to see it. It shows the carpet clearly and in its entirety.’

  ‘You have nothing to prove to me in that regard, Mr Melly,’ İkmen said. ‘Whether this carpet is genuine or not is of no interest to me. What I do have some interest in, however, is your relationsh
ip with Mr Uzun. Had you paid for this Kerman – is that its name?’

  ‘Yes. From the city of Kerman or rather the nearby town of Lavar – hence Lavar Kerman – in southern Iran,’ Melly said as if by rote. ‘Yes, I had, or rather in part.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’d paid him half and I was to get the other half. Money like that doesn’t grow on trees.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about?’ İkmen asked as he flicked a long sausage of ash from his cigarette into his ashtray.

  Peter Melly lowered his head as if ashamed of what he was to say next. He took a deep breath. ‘A hundred and twenty thousand. Pounds. I raised it on the house I own back home.’

  The Klaassens, who obviously hadn’t known about how much their friend was willing to pay for this carpet, exchanged shocked looks.

  ‘That was the first payment,’ Melly continued.

  ‘The first payment!’ İkmen, his cigarette now shaking between his fingers, nearly fell off his chair. ‘What . . .’

  ‘We agreed, Yaşar and myself, on an overall price of a quarter of a million pounds,’ Melly said quickly.

  ‘A quarter of a . . .’

  ‘Inspector, this is Lawrence’s valuable Lavar Kerman carpet we’re talking about here!’ Peter Melly leaned forward in order to make his point more forcefully. ‘Not only that, it’s a fabulous piece! I’ve got carpets from all over the world but I’ve never seen or experienced anything like this before. The central motif is a glittering weeping Tree of Life, quite unique, almost alive . . . I had to have it!’

  Or, İkmen thought, if Raşit Bey and his magic theory was to be believed, maybe the Kerman had to have Peter Melly.

  ‘So what you are telling me then, Mr Melly, is that you do not yet have the Lawrence carpet in your possession.’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly deflated he put his head down again, on to his chest. ‘No, Yaşar still has it. The deal was that I only got it once full payment had been made.’

  ‘And that will not happen now, will it?’ İkmen said.

  ‘I’ve almost raised the other one hundred and thirty . . . I’ll gladly pay Yaşar’s family for it,’ the Englishman replied.

  İkmen sighed. ‘Well then, I had better find the Lawrence carpet so that they can take possession of it, hadn’t I, Mr Melly?’

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  ‘The bullet that killed him came, so ballistics tell me, from a Beretta 92 pistol. You will, Çetin, be familiar with this weapon because . . .’

  ‘I have one myself,’ İkmen said. ‘The department obliges me to carry one.’

  ‘Even though you so very often conveniently leave yours locked inside your office drawer.’ Arto Sarkissian smiled. ‘Yaşar Uzun was killed by a weapon that is a standard issue police department piece.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that he was shot by any of our officers,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean that he wasn’t either,’ the Armenian replied. ‘Ballistics are going to want to check everyone’s gun.’ Then holding his hands aloft he said, ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I know.’

  They were in the doctor’s office which, mercifully and unlike his laboratory, had windows. Not that the sight of the grim, litter-strewn car park outside, now darkening under the evening sky, was anything one might actually want to look at. But just having visible access to the outside world gave İkmen some little comfort in what was otherwise a place of confinement, reeking of bodily fluids and death. How his friend managed to work and remain cheerful in such a place had always been a mystery to him.

  ‘I hate guns,’ İkmen said as he lit up a cigarette and then gulped down what remained of the rather nasty coffee Dr Sarkissian’s assistant had made for him.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I hate the way they make some people feel powerful. So often a gun is just a smokescreen used to cover an inadequacy a sick individual feels he has to make up for in some way.’ And then changing the subject rapidly, he said, ‘Mehmet Süleyman’s peeper victim, Soylu, he was stabbed, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’ The Armenian took off his spectacles, rubbed his eyes and then put his glasses back on again. ‘I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about that, Çetin.’

  ‘Why?’

  The doctor told him about ‘clean’ corpses, both Soylu’s and that of the rent boy, the peeper’s first actual fatality.

  ‘This is all new to me,’ İkmen said in response to this barrage of worrying information from the doctor. ‘Who, if not the Forensic Institute, is cleaning these bodies up, do you think?’

  ‘Nizam Tapan the rent boy was taken to some laboratory outside the city before he was given over to the Institute, or so Sergeant Melik asserts.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘Does he.’

  ‘In Soylu’s case, the body went straight to the Institute but was not, I understand, seen by the usual team until he’d already been in the building for some time. Dr Arslan, who heads up the team these days, said the corpse was clean of almost all environmental evidence by the time it got to him. It certainly was when it came to me.’

  ‘Any idea why?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Not a clue.’ There was a pause before he spoke to İkmen again. This wasn’t easy. ‘But I fear that Mehmet Süleyman does.’

  For a moment the Armenian’s words just hung in the air like a bad smell. İkmen barely, or so it seemed, breathed.

  ‘Both Sergeant Melik and my assistant Dr Mardin certainly brought the Nizam Tapan case to his attention last November,’ Arto Sarkissian continued. ‘He said that he would do something about it and then – nothing; the case was dropped. Now this. I don’t even know why Cabbar Soylu has been designated a peeper victim anyway, no one does. Except Inspector Süleyman.’

  Outside, the sunset call to prayer began its sinuous wash across the many, many mosques of İstanbul. İkmen imagined his wife as he knew she would be, praying. How nice it must be, he thought, to have such ironclad certainty in your life!

  ‘Mehmet Süleyman is not corrupt,’ İkmen said softly at length.

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘And yet, Arto, I assume this conversation has to involve you asking me to challenge him about the events you have described.’

  ‘Don’t you think this is serious, Çetin?’ the Armenian asked.

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen looked up into his friend’s face, frowning. ‘And I don’t doubt that what you, Dr Mardin and Melik say is true. But Mehmet Süleyman? I can’t believe him capable of wrongdoing . . .’

  ‘I don’t believe that he is willingly concealing evidence either,’ Arto replied. ‘But what has happened is nevertheless wrong and I, at least, need some clarification. I’ve tried to talk to him myself, but to no avail. So, Çetin, yes, I do need you to talk to him about this. You are his friend, he loves and respects you, and I don’t want to have to take this up to Ardıç, I really don’t.’

  ‘No.’ Quite what the explosive commissioner of police, Ardıç would do about such a situation, İkmen didn’t know. Old and disillusioned as he was, Ardıç still had the reputation for being a vicious and unpredictable adversary. İkmen shook his head as if to dislodge the image of a fat, enraged Ardıç from his mind and said, ‘But to get back to my body, Arto. Is there anything else I need to know?’

  ‘Yes. Your carpet dealer was shot after he had brought his vehicle to a halt. He was in his car when he was shot. From short range and, I think, he turned away from his assailant. So the murderer was outside and shot into the car as Uzun twisted his body away.’

  ‘So he pulled over for some reason.’

  ‘Yes, but then once he was dead, he and the vehicle were pushed down into the forest below. Then the tracks were, as we’ve seen, erased.’

  ‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned.

  ‘Apart from that,’ Arto said, ‘Yaşar Uzun was in good health. He smoked cigarettes and, sometime recently, cannabis, too. But he wasn’t what I’d call a user of cannabis. I think he was just a man who enjoyed the occasional �
� what do they call it – joint?’

  ‘Yes. So no grim diseases or heroin abuse or anything like that?’

  ‘No. You know, Çetin, that Inspector İskender thinks this might have been a Mafia hit.’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen sighed. ‘But then we all know that their influence stretches into most corners of society, carpet trading being only one of the more obvious arenas. All I have to do is to work out which particular mob is responsible. Could it be the delightful Edip family of Edirnekapı, or maybe what remains of my local gangsters, the Müren family? But then again maybe . . .’ He rubbed his tired face with his rough, leaf-dry hands. ‘Arto, do you know much about the English soldier called Lawrence of Arabia?’

  His friend knew as much as İkmen, basically what he had gleaned from the famous 1960s film. But he didn’t know anything more and certainly the whole carpet thing was a total mystery to him – except in one regard.

  ‘I do know that provenance is important,’ the Armenian said. ‘For instance a carpet that can be proven to have belonged to a significant member of the old imperial family could fetch a very high price. Even those enormous carpets that can be difficult to sell because of their size can fetch big prices if they belonged to, say, a sultan or maybe a prominent grand vizier.’

  ‘Yes, but Arto, a quarter of a million sterling!’ İkmen said as he shook his head at the vastness of the amount. ‘Sterling!’

  ‘To an Englishman it is probably worth that,’ the Armenian replied. ‘My brother recently paid over a hundred thousand dollars for a genuine nineteenth-century palace carpet that was proven to have belonged to the Ottoman architects, the Balian family. They built Dolmabahçe palace and so most Turks know of them, but to us they are especially significant as the most important Armenian architects in history. My brother was happy to pay what he did in order to secure what he feels is part of our heritage. This Englishman, Melly, obviously has similar feelings.’