A Passion for Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘But the point, Çetin Bey,’ Mr Aksoy the lawyer said in Turkish, ‘is that Mrs Melly could not possibly have killed the carpet dealer because her husband saw her asleep in her bed on the night of the killing.’

  ‘Provided he is telling the truth, that is so,’ İkmen replied in English. ‘But is he, Mr Aksoy? Or is Mr Melly saying what he is saying because he wishes to protect his wife?’

  ‘But she has left him . . .’

  ‘Or maybe he is protecting himself,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe Mr Melly killed Yaşar Uzun.’

  ‘Oh, I do not think that is possible,’ Aksoy said in English. ‘Unless you have any forensic evidence that might point towards Mr Melly as the murderer.’

  ‘No,’ İkmen replied. ‘No I don’t.’ He looked at Matilda Melly and then said, ‘In fact, I actually know that Mr Melly did not kill Yaşar Uzun.’

  The Englishwoman smiled. ‘How?’

  ‘Because I know who did kill him,’ İkmen said. ‘It was you, Mrs Melly.’

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Mehmet Süleyman had left Mr Roberts with Ayşe Farsakoğlu in order to go out into the corridor to speak on his mobile to his father. Without telling the old man any details about Mr Roberts, he had quizzed Muhammed Süleyman Efendi first about relatives in general who had lived in Nişantaşı and then more pointedly about his aunt the Princess Gözde. Received wisdom in the family was that she had lost her fiancé in the Great War. Totally reclusive and permanently veiled, the Princess Gözde, whose mansion had been situated on Teşvikiye Caddesi, had died at the end of the 1950s. She seemed to fit the description that Lee Roberts had given him of Victor’s ‘princess’ very well.

  ‘Your grandfather inherited all of her effects,’ Muhammed Süleyman told his son. ‘Including that carpet Raşit Bey is being so very obtuse about.’

  ‘So did you inherit any other effects from the Princess Gözde’s house, Father?’ Mehmet said in what he hoped was not too loud a voice. Mr Roberts was, after all, only just a corridor and one door’s thickness away from him.

  ‘Who can say?’ the old man replied. ‘When your grandfather died all of his remaining possessions were divided up equally between your Uncle Beyazıt, your Aunt Esma and myself. There wasn’t that much. My father sold many things in his lifetime.’

  Mehmet thought briefly about this similarity between his father and his grandfather, but then Muhammed said, ‘Why do you want to know?’

  Thinking as quickly as he could, he said, ‘Well, I don’t have a great deal to do until İzzet contacts me and we see what he has discovered in the east about one of our cases. It’s a long story. But while I haven’t had too much to do I have been thinking about your carpet and you know how we talked of its provenance? And also about how maybe if people knew Princess Gözde’s story they might be more interested in it and . . .’

  ‘Oh, well, then you will need to speak to your Aunt Esma about that,’ Muhammed Süleyman said. ‘She was the only one who ever visited the Princess Gözde on a regular basis. They got on for some reason. Go and see her. She’d be delighted to see you.’

  After a few standard niceties, Mehmet ended the call. He leaned against the corridor wall and thought. Aunt Esma. He hadn’t seen her for over a year – not, in fact, since the Feast of the Sacrifice. For once the entire family had been together to savour the sheep that his religious and strong-stomached Uncle Beyazıt had slaughtered in honour of the prophet İbrahim’s near sacrifice of his son. The Feast of the Sacrifice was a very important Muslim festival. Not that one could have deduced this from Aunt Esma. She, as usual, had been far more interested in talking about her health than in joining in the general festivities. Tall, thin and the epitome of the unmarried and unmarriageable woman so many wealthy families used to number in their ranks, Esma lived in a tiny damp apartment down by the Golden Horn in Fener. After a few moments during which he attempted to gather his thoughts, Süleyman went back into his office.

  ‘I apologise, Mr Roberts,’ he said as he sat down behind his desk once again. ‘It was necessary for me to check some facts. Now, if I am correct, I take it you would like us to try to find what remains of the family of this Princess Gözde.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lee Roberts replied. ‘Whether they know it or not, the carpet will have some meaning for them. I mean, I understand that no one, not even my grandfather, could be certain that the blood on the carpet was that of the princess’s fiancé. But that she believed it to be so makes it important and valid.’

  Süleyman frowned. The way this man was speaking was very familiar. ‘Mr Roberts,’ he said, ‘what do you do for a living?’

  Lee Roberts laughed. ‘Oh, God, was I talking psycho-babble? I’m a clinical psychologist.’

  ‘Ah.’ Süleyman smiled. ‘My wife is a psychiatrist.’

  ‘So you understood the psycho—’

  ‘Somewhat. But Mr Roberts, we must proceed. How long do you stay in İstanbul?’

  ‘A week.’

  ‘I see.’ Süleyman offered Lee Roberts a cigarette, which he declined, and then lit one up for himself. ‘Mr Roberts, I will try to find out what I can. There is a lady I have just found out about who may be able to help. If you give me your contact details here in İstanbul I will keep you informed.’

  The Englishman took the printout of his hotel details out of his pocket and then wrote his own mobile telephone number on the bottom. When he’d finished he said, ‘Inspector, could I please see the carpet now? I’ve only this old photograph of it which Victor said was taken in the garden of the mansion in Nişantaşı.’ He put the photograph down on to Süleyman’s desk. ‘But I’ve never seen it in the flesh, as it were.’

  Süleyman leaned forward the better to see the faded sepia print in front of him. It showed what looked to him very like the carpet that was currently locked up in İkmen’s office. It was laid out on some dry and scrub-like grass, and behind the carpet a large, dark building of vaguely gothic design could be seen.

  ‘Mr Roberts,’ he said once he had finished studying the photograph, ‘can I take a scan of this picture?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Good.’ He stood up, and looking across at Ayşe Farsakoğlu, he said, ‘If you would please go with the sergeant here, she will show you the carpet. Inspector İkmen has also, I believe, the remains of the box the carpet was once kept in.’

  ‘Why would I kill Yaşar Uzun?’ Matilda Melly said as she watched both İkmen and İskender light up yet more cigarettes. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he betrayed you,’ İkmen said. ‘He was having affairs with . . .’

  ‘He was always having affairs with other women!’ Matilda said. ‘Bloody hell, he was a carpet dealer! It’s what they do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some would say that, yes,’ İkmen replied. ‘But not all carpet dealers are the same and I believe few would agree to buy a property in a foreign country to share with one of his conquests. You must have been very hurt when you discovered that the romantic house he had bought in Balchik was not all that he owned in Bulgaria. He didn’t tell you about the apartment in Sofia, did he, Mrs Melly?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Mr Melly has told me that you always wanted to live by the sea. Yaşar Uzun and you, once you had both defrauded your husband, were going to go and live in Balchik, by the sea, where Queen Marie of Romania had once lived with her young Turkish lover. But then you discovered the existence of the Sofia apartment and you asked him about it. He denied it even existed which led you to the conclusion that he must have bought it for a purpose he didn’t want you to know about. A romantic purpose . . .’

  She laughed. ‘This is nonsense,’ she said. ‘Utterly. I don’t know anything about any house in Bulgaria, let alone a flat.’

  ‘Your computer would seem to disagree with you,’ İkmen said. ‘There is plenty of information you have accessed about Balchik on there. I think you have a very romantic nature, Mrs Melly.�
�

  ‘Also, the other Mrs Melly is of another opinion,’ Metin İskender said.

  ‘The person who stole Mrs Melly’s passport?’ the lawyer Mr Aksoy said.

  İkmen smiled. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘she didn’t steal it. Mrs Melly gave it to her.’ He turned to the Englishwoman and asked, ‘It’s right you gave your British passport to Handan Ergin, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ Her face was red now. Underneath all that make-up a rash was showing through. ‘How do you . . .’

  ‘Mrs Ergin told us all about it,’ İkmen said. ‘How you gave her the passport. How she made herself up to look old. Interesting details. She had some time to think clearly on the plane back from Sofia.’

  ‘You mean she had time to make things up!’ the Englishwoman said. ‘It’s rubbish!’

  ‘Maybe, although why she should want to make such a story up, I cannot imagine,’ İkmen said. ‘You are both in a lot of trouble irrespective of who might have done what. Mrs Ergin says that you used her husband’s gun to kill Yaşar Uzun.’

  A moment of stunned silence passed. Metin İskender leaned his chair back against the wall and swung his feet loosely beneath him.

  ‘Mrs Ergin says that she gave you her husband’s gun because she wanted to implicate him in a crime. As you know he stifled her, he also beat her too. She wanted to get rid of him. For your part,’ İkmen said, ‘I think that you had fallen out of love with the carpet dealer some time before. Your discovery of his separate apartment plans was just an excuse for what was done. So much of your recent existence would seem to me, Mrs Melly, an excuse. However . . .’ He leaned on the table, took a drag from his cigarette, and then blew smoke in Matilda Melly’s direction. ‘Because,’ he continued, ‘although Yaşar Uzun had bought the little house on the Bulgarian coast for you both to share, you had not intended to live in it with him. You’d found a far better young Turkish lover than Yaşar to share that house with. You had found, Mrs Melly, the love of your life.’

  Matilda Melly licked her lips before saying, ‘This is what she says, is it? Handan Ergin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you believe her?’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘I know that you killed Mr Uzun, Mrs Melly, beyond that . . .’

  ‘I didn’t kill him! She did!’ She blurted. She then put a hand over her mouth and looked, terrified, at her lawyer. Mr Aksoy just simply shrugged. ‘No . . . Yes . . . I . . . She wanted her husband implicated in something in order to get rid of him and I looked after the baby while she did it. But I didn’t kill Yaşar! Why would I? He was an inoffensive chap deep down, he helped me get money from Peter. We shared it out sixty thousand to him, sixty thousand to me. He bought the house in which we were both going to live . . .’

  ‘And yet you let her kill him by your own admission, Mrs Melly.’

  ‘No I didn’t! She went out that night to do something – I didn’t know what! I said I’d look after the baby. She told me later about Yaşar. I was appalled.’

  ‘I am confused,’ Mr Aksoy said. ‘Why would Mrs Ergin kill a carpet dealer she did not know?’

  Matilda Melly looked at İkmen, shrugged her shoulders helplessly, and said, ‘You think you know everything about everything. Tell him.’

  ‘With the reservation that I do not believe Mrs Ergin killed the carpet dealer, I think that all of this happened because, Mr Aksoy, your client fell in love with Handan Ergin.’

  The lawyer looked across at Matilda Melly with an expression of utter incredulity on his face.

  ‘Now according to Mrs Ergin,’ İkmen said, ‘this love affair went only in one direction. You loved her, Mrs Melly, but while she was tired of her autocratic husband, she was not intending to replace him with you.’

  Matilda Melly’s face became a deep blood-red.

  ‘She freely admits that she gave you the gun with which to kill Yaşar Uzun. She wanted to implicate her husband and get rid of him. But you shot Yaşar to get him out of the way, didn’t you? You shot him so that once Abdullah Ergin was safely in prison, you could go and live with his wife in a lovely romantic place in Bulgaria.’

  ‘I didn’t shoot Yaşar. Peter saw me in my bed . . .’

  ‘Oh, please!’ İkmen said as he shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Please! Mrs Melly, you and I both know that Mr Melly wants to change his original story in order that he may come out of this affair with something – namely you. The poor man has lost everything! Money, his carpet, and you have suddenly decided, or so it seems to me, that you are a lesbian . . .’

  ‘Peter saw me in my bed. He is prepared to . . .’

  ‘Mrs Melly, you have already admitted that you or Mrs Ergin killed Uzun,’ İkmen said. ‘Handan Ergin, like you, cannot drive. The journey from her home on Professor Kazim İsmail Gürkan Caddesi to Peri is a long one – the nosey neighbour I took you to see would have recognised her. For Mrs Ergin to go and wait for some unspecified time amongst the trees and then come back again would be ridiculous. Better that you go. You, after all, knew Mr Uzun – he did not know Mrs Ergin. He would not have stopped his car for her, not at night anyway. And yet he stopped his car for someone, who then went on to shoot him. It is my belief you had arranged to meet him on his way out of the village. You can, after all, walk to the murder site from your home. I think it quite possible that Yaşar Uzun chose to leave the Klaassens’ house when he did in order to make the rendezvous with you, Mrs Melly.’

  ‘Oh, and then I just shot him, cleared up and then went calmly back to my bed.’

  ‘Made up, as we have seen, people find it hard to recognise you,’ İkmen replied. ‘But then in Peri who is going to be about at night? You went home, got into your lonely bed and your husband knew nothing about it.’ He paused. ‘Or rather that is what Handan Ergin has told us.’

  ‘Mrs Ergin has told us much,’ İskender interjected.

  ‘Oh, and you believe her, do you? Because she’s a Turk, I suppose!’

  ‘Mrs Melly, Mrs Ergin has condemned herself out of her own mouth,’ İkmen said. ‘She wanted to get rid of her husband and she didn’t care that Yaşar Uzun’s death was the vehicle for that process. After going to Bulgaria she did indeed intend to meet you in London. But she was never going to stay with you, Mrs Melly.’

  Matilda Melly laughed, but without much mirth. ‘No, but you are wrong, you see. She is in love with me. I . . .’

  ‘Mrs Melly, let me ask you something,’ İkmen said. ‘Please tell me if your relationship with Mrs Ergin was ever physical?’

  Aksoy the lawyer looked shocked and even mopped his tall, outraged brow with a handkerchief. He’d heard a lot of things in his long years of practice at law, but lesbians! Turkish lesbians! His client, Mrs Melly, had said nothing to him about such ‘unnatural’ practices!

  Seconds passed into minutes as Matilda Melly, her eyes now fixed stonily on İkmen’s face, said nothing. At length the policeman said, ‘As I thought. No, Mrs Melly. No, your relationship was never physical . . .’

  ‘She wasn’t ready, I didn’t want to . . . Our love was pure, without men, it was . . .’

  ‘She used you, Mrs Melly,’ İkmen said. ‘She knew you loved her. And then, although you had started to cool towards him by that time, when Yaşar Uzun bought that extra apartment in Sofia she used your hurt pride to propel you towards murder. That at least is my opinion. After you fell for her, carrying on teaching her was hard and so you left Mrs Monroe’s little school. But you continued to see Handan in secret – maybe to soothe the bruises that her husband gave her. Then he stopped her going to English classes and Mrs Ergin’s mind became enraged.’

  ‘I didn’t do it! Handan didn’t do it! Why . . .’

  ‘You just said that she did, Mrs Melly. What are you doing? You are confused, I think . . .’

  ‘I . . .’ Matilda Melly began to cry.

  ‘And what, exactly, did you mean, Mrs Melly, when you talked just now about “clearing up” after Yaşar Uzun’s death? He was shot, his car came off the road, what was there to c
lear?’

  ‘Well, nothing, it’s just a figure of speech,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it myself and so I can only conjecture what someone might have done after the event. Clearing up is . . . well, anyone would . . . clear up . . .’

  ‘No,’ İkmen said, ‘not everyone. Most people would be anxious to get away from the scene of the crime, Mrs Melly. Everything in your house will be examined by our forensics experts, especially brooms and other sweeping implements. Clearing up is important to me too.’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ Matilda Melly said through her tears. ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘Well, then, if you didn’t, you had better start telling me the truth now,’ İkmen said. ‘Because believe me, Mrs Melly, Mrs Ergin has told us everything on her side with only the possible exception of her shoe size. Either you or she did it! Which one of you is it to be?’

  İzzet Melik returned from Hakkari later on that afternoon carrying a whole sheaf of papers and information related to the life and death of Deniz Koç. Of course until the young man’s exhumed body had been properly examined, whether or not he had actually been murdered was still not certain. But the fact that a male nurse who had been largely responsible for his care, and who had disappeared shortly after İzzet Melik had arrived, was still unaccounted for was deeply suspicious. After making sure that his aunt Esma was happy to receive him later that evening, Süleyman arranged for a young constable to take him to the domestic terminal of Atatürk Airport to collect his sergeant. Süleyman was very pleased to see him. The small sigh of satisfaction that İzzet emitted when they both entered Süleyman’s office seemed to suggest that he too was glad to be ‘home’.

  ‘So is there any sort of connection between this missing nurse and Cabbar Soylu?’ Süleyman said as they both sat down and immediately lit cigarettes.

  ‘Not beyond the fact that apparently Soylu always talked to this particular nurse whenever he and his wife visited, no,’ İzzet replied. ‘Not everyone in the east is related, you know.’