‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned. ‘What do you think this Mürsel character might be up to?’
Süleyman pushed his fingers up into his hair. ‘I don’t know. But I don’t feel that he is, for whatever reason . . .’ And then he shook his head and said, ‘No, that’s not true. If I am honest, as I always am with you, I fear that Mürsel is actually assisting this peeper.’
‘But surely his spymasters or whatever one calls such people would be aware of that?’ İkmen said. ‘These are people who, if I’m not mistaken, are psychologically evaluated on an almost permanent basis, are they not?’
‘So we’re led to believe, yes. Look, Çetin, I know this is all completely crazy and I don’t have any evidence for it, but I have this terrible feeling . . .’ His normally handsome face was almost ghostly in the thin, eerie light from the candles.
‘I, as you know, always trust such intuitions myself,’ İkmen said. He let his eyes wander across the just discernible pictures of saints and angels that adorned every wall of the church and then he said, ‘What are you going to do? If this Mürsel is trained in the art of espionage, it’s unlikely you will catch him out.’
‘I know.’ He sighed. ‘There is one way, by getting closer to him, that might work.’
‘What do you mean?’
In spite of the overtly religious nature of his surroundings, Süleyman saw in his mind a replay of the occasion upon which Mürsel had attempted to paw him. The look of the spy’s greedy, drooling mouth had made him shudder. But he didn’t share Mürsel’s passion for him with İkmen. He knew that the older man would consider the course of action he was contemplating to be far too dangerous. It was. But it was something else too, something that made the ends of Suleyman’s fingers fizz with what could be excitement. He said, ‘I don’t really know, it’s just an idea. I need to think about it.’
‘You know that you should go to Ardıç.’ İkmen held up a hand in order to silence his friend’s protest. ‘Yes, he is involved, but from what you have told me he doesn’t know what you suspect about this Mürsel.’
‘But can I trust him?’ Süleyman asked and then qualified what he had said, ‘Sometimes I do think that maybe he shares some of my suspicions about Mürsel, but then again that could just be a bluff of some sort. Not meaning that Ardıç is corrupt, you understand. Just that this higher agency takes precedence over him and even his superiors. National security, you know?’
‘Mmm. Yes, it would take some confidence to approach such a subject. Well, it certainly puts my case of the dead carpet dealer in the shade,’ İkmen said with a small, weary smile.
‘Yaşar Uzun.’
‘Yes.’ İkmen rubbed his almost scarlet eyes with his fingers and said, ‘His, it would seem, is a long story. Oh, by the way, I saw your father at Raşit Bey’s shop this morning.’
‘Yes,’ Süleyman shook his head and sighed. ‘Poor Father. He called me. He gave Raşit Bey an absolutely enormous court carpet to value the day you started looking for Yaşar Uzun. Father is in the same financial situation he is always in, but he had great hopes about this piece, which is very beautiful. Sadly for Father, Raşit Bey says that the carpet will not realise as much as could be hoped because of its size. It’s lovely, but far too big for a modern house or even an ordinary old one. It came from a palace. But Father is unhappy and thinks that Raşit Bey is being overly pessimistic about its value. I am inclined to think that Raşit Bey is probably in reality overvaluing the carpet to save my father’s feelings. But what can one do?’
And then in spite of the fact that Süleyman had opened their discussion with such dangerous and frightening ideas and information, the two men now turned to rather more trivial matters. A lot of it was about carpets and most specifically about the Lawrence carpet itself. İkmen had developed quite a fascination with this item. Süleyman didn’t know a great deal about T. E. Lawrence, but he had seen Lawrence of Arabia on several occasions. It was not, he admitted, easy viewing for him.
‘Those Ottomans who fought in the desert were my ancestors,’ he said.
‘And mine,’ İkmen added. ‘At least two of my grandfather’s brothers fought in the Great War.’
‘Yes, but with respect, Çetin,’ Süleyman said, ‘I expect your ancestors were of the peasants with no boots variety.’
İkmen smiled. ‘They were poor Mehmets* who fought for their sultan, yes.’
‘Whereas mine sat about in places like Damascus drinking champagne and listening to Offenbach.’ Süleyman shook his head yet again. ‘You know they used to actually talk in terms of the men being replaceable entities? Thousands would die and they’d just send back to Anatolia for more! The Arabs, and that Lawrence person, humiliated us!’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘The film wasn’t.’
They looked at each other but neither of them said anything. There was a scene in the film where T. E. Lawrence, played by Peter O’Toole, is sexually propositioned by the Turkish governor of the Arab town of Deraa. It was not easy viewing for anyone, but especially not for patriotic Turks. It also, for Süleyman, brought to mind the image of the very sexual Mürsel yet again.
Süleyman finally left İkmen at just before six in the morning. He needed to go home and wash and prepare for a day of autopsy reports, press releases and, hopefully, some information from İzzet Melik in Hakkari. He wondered whether he had yet discovered who had made that mysterious phone call to his office from the Hakkari jandarma station.
İkmen opened up the main door out into the Balık Pazar and then embraced his friend before he walked through it.
‘Be careful, Mehmet,’ he said. ‘Those people, the ones we spoke of earlier, they are not like us. They have no restraints . . .’
Süleyman stepped out into the fish market which was now coming alive in a whirl of red snappers, mussels, lobsters, squid tubes, shouting men in flat caps and hordes of very loud, hungry cats.
İkmen closed the ‘Church in the Cupboard’ off from the rest of the world again, took his mobile phone out of his pocket and, with a very grave expression on his face, he made a very important call.
Chapter 9
* * *
That a lot of police work so often involves nothing more than the relentless pursuit of paperwork trails has become something of a cliché. It doesn’t, however, make it any less true.
After first organising tea and some spare packets of cigarettes for her superior, Ayşe Farsakoğlu settled down to tell İkmen what she had discovered.
‘First,’ she said as she took a light from İkmen’s shakily proffered lighter, ‘I had a call from England just before you arrived, sir. Scotland Yard say that they have identified a Roberts in the north district of London whose grandfather, he says, was the servant of T. E. Lawrence. They will send someone round to interview this man.’
‘That’s good.’ İkmen rubbed what he knew was a ghastly visage with a nicotine-reeking hand. If only he’d accepted Garbis Bey’s offer of breakfast . . .
‘Now with regard to Mr Yaşar Uzun . . .’
İkmen’s phone began to ring. He visibly froze. Ayşe flicked her long black hair behind her ears and bent over his desk in order to pick it up. But before she did so, she said, ‘Fatma Hanım has called several times already to speak to you, sir.’
İkmen puffed on his cigarette and then said, ‘Call me a coward if you must, Ayşe, but I cannot speak to my wife just at the moment.’
Ayşe took the call which was from Fatma İkmen. She told her that her husband was indeed at work but out at the present moment. She lied well and without apparent embarrassment which, İkmen felt, could be seen as either an advantage or a disadvantage in one’s inferior.
‘All right,’ Ayşe said as she retrieved a sheaf of papers from her desk and then sat down in front of İkmen again. ‘Mr Uzun had only one bank account as far as I can tell. It’s with the Yapı Kredi in Beyoğlu and on 1 October last year he deposited sixty thousand pounds sterling in cash into that account. That is on exactl
y the same day that Mr Melly from the British Consulate claims he gave one hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling to Uzun as a deposit on the Lawrence carpet.’
‘Has Mr Melly given us the receipt Yaşar Uzun gave to him yet?’
‘We have a faxed copy of a receipt for one hundred and twenty thousand pounds signed by Uzun, but it doesn’t say what the money is in respect of. Although apparently his UK bank, HSBC, as requested, took down the serial numbers of the sterling notes issued. He must have been nervous about the transaction.’ She pushed a piece of paper with the Yapı Kredi Bank logo at its head over the desk towards him. ‘But as you can see there is a shortfall of exactly a half.’
‘Yes. Maybe Mr Uzun, buoyed up by his immense good fortune, decided to go on a spending spree.’
‘There is some truth in that, sir,’ she said. ‘For instance, he moved into his Nişantaşı apartment within days of that deposit and he may well have paid for his beloved Jeep with cash. I have yet to follow that up. Mr Uzun also possessed some nice clothes, a few of them Italian, and some reasonable furniture. But nothing spectacular. However, so his landlord has told me, in spite of all that money, his rent was three months in arrears.’
‘Which means that much of the missing sixty thousand pounds is still unaccounted for,’ İkmen said. ‘I wonder why that is? Gambling, maybe? He smoked a bit of cannabis. But we know he didn’t have a cocaine habit or . . .’
‘Well, sir, there is this,’ Ayşe said as she reached back to her own desk to retrieve a leather-bound book. ‘This is an appointment diary which belonged to Mr Uzun.’ She placed it on İkmen’s desk and opened it up at 3 March. ‘Here in his handwriting you will see a name, Nikolai, an İstanbul telephone number, and a time – three o’clock.’
İkmen peered down at the diary through the film of water that covered his raw, exhausted eyes.
‘That number belongs to Nikolai Stoev,’ she said.
İkmen looked up and then let out a long and impressive breath. ‘So our carpet man had dealings with the Bulgarian Mafia.’
‘On some basis it would seem so, yes, sir,’ Ayşe said.
‘Which means, I suppose,’ İkmen said, ‘that I will have to go over to Laleli and see Mr Stoev and, no doubt, several of his retarded, broken-nosed henchmen too. I wonder how many uniforms I can get to take with me?’
‘Oh, that reminds me, sir,’ Ayşe said, ‘your Beretta is ready for collection at the ballistics lab.’
‘Oh, so I’m innocent of Mr Uzun’s murder, am I?’ İkmen said wearily. ‘How wonderful. You know, Ayşe, I know that we have to go through this exercise in order to rule out officers with this weapon, but when half the bad men have Berettas too . . .’
His telephone rang again.
‘If that is my wife, I am still out,’ İkmen said.
Ayşe picked up the receiver, stated her name and then for what seemed like a very long time stared fixedly down at İkmen’s desk. At the end of the conversation she put the handset down on to its cradle and said, ‘Change of plan, I think, sir, with regard to Nikolai Stoev.’ She took her jacket from the back of her chair and put it on. ‘Constables Yıldız and Roditi and Inspector İskender are waiting for us downstairs.’
Then in answer to her superior’s blank expression she added, ‘I’ll explain as we go, sir.’
Metin İskender was wearing the expression of slightly mocking disbelief that he usually employed when interviewing a suspect. İkmen had thought that with one of their ‘own’ Metin might exhibit a little more warmth. But that was not to be so. The interview room at the ornate little Tourism police station on Yerebatan Caddesi was almost homely compared to what they had back at headquarters, but Metin was obviously not letting that affect his interrogation of Sergeant Abdullah Ergin. He was going for the jugular.
‘Your Beretta 92 was used to kill the carpet dealer Yaşar Uzun,’ he said baldly. ‘Ballistics have confirmed this beyond question. I want you to tell me about it.’
Abdullah Ergin, who only ten minutes previously had been helping a group of Japanese tourists locate the underground cistern, was still in shock. His face was white and, as he raised his cigarette up to his lips, his fingers visibly shook.
‘Where were you and what were you doing on the evening of Monday, 5 April?’
‘I was, er, I finished my shift at six . . .’
‘And then what?’
İkmen didn’t really like the intensive interrogation style that Metin employed. He felt that, as well as sometimes getting to the truth, it could also on occasion lead suspects to say things they had not meant to say out of panic. He tried to catch Metin’s eye in order to indicate that he should tone it down a bit, but to no avail.
‘Sergeant Ergin, I am asking you a question,’ Metin İskender said menacingly. ‘Answer me!’
‘Well, I, um, I went home to my apartment on Professor Kazim İsmail Gürkan Caddesi and I had my dinner, my wife . . .’
‘What did your wife cook for your dinner, sergeant?’
Ergin looked up with a shocked expression on his face. ‘I don’t know!’ he said. ‘How can I remember that?’
‘I know you only work with tourists, sergeant, but even you must know that details like the constituents of a meal are used by us to test a suspect’s alibi.’ It was said with such arrogance that, had İkmen not known that he was using a tried and trusted interrogation technique, he would have been inclined to pull Metin up on it.
‘Look,’ Ergin said, ‘Handan cooked me a meal of some sort and then I went out.’
‘Where?’
‘To my brother’s apartment in Kumkapı.’
‘What for?’
Now Abdullah Ergin lost his temper. ‘Because I love my brother! Because we like to visit one another from time to time!’
Unaffected by this outburst, İskender said, ‘How long were you at your brother’s apartment?’
There was a pause during which İkmen found himself looking quizzically into Ergin’s eyes. ‘Sergeant?’
‘I stayed all night,’ Ergin said and then put his head down on to his chest.
‘Why? You have a wife and child. Kumkapı is not far from where you live . . .’
‘Handan and I, we had an argument,’ Ergin said. ‘She provoked me!’ He looked at İkmen. ‘About that wanting to learn English business again that I told you about, Çetin Bey. All the time I was trying to eat she went on and on and on about it. I went to my brother’s to get some peace! It is not the first time I have stayed all night at his apartment. Handan tests me sometimes . . .’
İkmen leaned across to İskender and said, ‘Sergeant Ergin’s wife is the missing Handan Ergin . . .’
‘Yes, I know,’ his colleague said dismissively. Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who was also in the room, raised an eyebrow at her boss. Metin İskender was way, way too abrasive for her taste.
‘So, to recap,’ İskender continued. ‘You went home when your shift finished at six, you ate your dinner – whilst rowing with your wife – and then you went to your brother’s apartment where you stayed all night.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you change your clothes when you got home from work?’
‘Of course! Nobody should wear his uniform when he is off duty.’
‘Did you take your gun home?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you take it with you to your brother’s apartment?’
‘No!’ Ergin shook his head. ‘Why would I do such a thing? I left it in the top drawer of the bureau in my bedroom where I always leave it.’
‘Was the weapon locked inside the drawer?’ İkmen asked.
‘Yes. I’ve a family, of course I lock such a thing away!’
‘Presumably you were on duty the next morning?’ İskender said.
‘Yes.’
‘So you went home, changed into your uniform, and took your gun out of the drawer?’
‘Where it had been all night undisturbed,’ Ergin said.
‘Except that it hadn’t and could
not have been,’ İskender replied. ‘Your Beretta 92 was fired on the night of 5 April and it killed the carpet dealer Yaşar Uzun. It has only your own fingerprints on it. Your wife is missing and so far as I can tell we only have the word of your own brother that you were in Kumkapı on that occasion.’
‘Well, my neighbours may have seen me leave . . .’
‘Yes, we will speak to them,’ İskender interrupted. ‘Although that will prove little beyond the fact that you left your apartment building. You could have had your gun with you for all your neighbours would know.’ He then looked across at İkmen and said, ‘Do we have any lead at all on the wife?’
‘No,’ İkmen responded. ‘Not as yet.’
İskender turned to Ergin and said, ‘The next step, sergeant, is for our officers to search your locker here at the station and your apartment.’
‘But I didn’t do it!’ Ergin said, a look of real confusion on his face.
‘Didn’t do what?’ İskender said as he rose smartly from his seat. ‘Kill the carpet dealer? Kill your wife? Or both?’
‘I don’t know anyone called Yaşar Uzun!’ Abdullah Ergin cried. ‘You say he worked in the Kapalı Çarşı, but I don’t know every carpet dealer in there. I’m a Tourism officer, not a pimp for the carpet men or the leather men or—’
‘All right! All right!’ İkmen held up his hand to silence him and then turned to Metin İskender. ‘Can I speak to you for a moment outside?’
They called Roditi in to sit with Ayşe Farsakoğlu and Abdullah Ergin while they went outside into the corridor and lit up cigarettes immediately.
‘Allah, but it’s so clean in this place, I feel almost shamed into not smoking,’ İkmen said as he looked around at the really very tastefully painted corridor. ‘Ashtray?’
Metin İskender eventually found one on a windowsill. ‘What’s on your mind, Inspector?’ he said as he held the ceramic bowl underneath his own and İkmen’s cigarettes.
A Passion for Killing Page 13