On the Bone

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On the Bone Page 29

by Barbara Nadel


  İkmen shrugged. ‘Going to join ISIS, so who knows what he was thinking? Too involved in the cause to care about his brother? You have to be part of that to understand in any way, I think.’

  Süleyman sat down on the wall surrounding the car compound. ‘But we’ve only got Bülent’s word.’

  ‘As yet,’ İkmen said. ‘But Aysel Gurcanli positively and freely identified economist Cihan Özlü, so we know the rough composition of the group that came to Myskow’s dinners.’

  ‘No, I mean that no one else – Deniz Bey, Ziya, Uğur İnan, none of the other “killers” – has admitted anything.’

  ‘But Bülent did.’

  ‘You gave him no choice.’

  ‘I did,’ İkmen said. ‘He could have released Aysel Gurcanli and said nothing. He chose to confess. Or rather, he broke down when I told him that Halide Can was a police officer. From then on, I believe he felt he had nothing to lose by owning up to everything. We could both see the body of the chef he’d murdered on the desk, and I blew his “helicopter to the airport” fantasy away as soon as I entered that room. Hostage films featuring offenders obtaining transport to airports should, in my opinion, be banned.’

  Süleyman smiled. Then he said, ‘Why would anyone want to cook with urine? Why would people eat such things?’

  ‘In both instances I think it must be because they can,’ İkmen said. ‘Why climb Everest when you can sit on your arse and watch someone else do it on TV? Answer? Because it exists and because human beings need to both achieve and transgress. Ban cannabis and people will make bonzai; limit cigarette smoking and they will fetishise food and die of obesity. My kids go out for meals and pay colossal amounts of money for two tomatoes whipped into a foam by some celebrity. I’d want a full main course and a drink for the same price. Gourmet food is as much a vice as alcohol and drugs.’

  ‘But we all have to eat.’

  ‘Yes, but not like that,’ İkmen said.

  İkmen’s phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and answered. It was Commissioner Teker.

  ‘Is it true that you’re waiting for Myskow’s lawyer from the States?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  There was a moment of silence and then she said, ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘Mr Newman is on his way here from the airport,’ İkmen said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Myskow called him from London,’ İkmen said. ‘He took a night flight.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I see. Let me know when he arrives.’

  ‘Of course.’

  İkmen ended the call. ‘I sometimes think,’ he said, ‘that she believes I’m an idiot.’

  Süleyman laughed. ‘Oh, that is far from the truth and you know it! Teker just likes to have her finger on every pulse, and that includes yours.’

  İkmen smiled. He was right. Commissioner Teker was very liberal in what she allowed her officers to do on their own recognisance. Just as long as she knew all the details, all the time.

  Meltem and Ahu walked slowly out into the sunshine and the waiting arms of Zenne Gül. None of them said a word until they got away from police headquarters and out of Fatih district altogether. Back in Beyoğlu, Gül settled the girls into a comfortable corner of the beautiful little garden at the back of the Café Lumière – one of their favourite places. Once enlivened by coffee and omelettes, they began to talk.

  ‘They wanted to know what I was doing on all these dates and at various times,’ Meltem said.

  ‘Yes, but you keep a diary, so all you had to do was look it up. It was terrible for me,’ Ahu said. ‘I never know what I’m doing.’

  ‘But they let you go,’ Gül said.

  ‘Us, yes,’ Meltem said. ‘And Birgül and the baby. But I think everyone else is still there.’ She leaned across the table towards Gül. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘They questioned me,’ he said. He wondered how much he should tell them about his work on behalf of the police, and then decided that to say nothing was probably the best option.

  ‘They must have been satisfied …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ahu shook her head. ‘Do you really think Uğur Bey killed himself?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Deniz Bey was with him when it happened,’ Meltem said.

  ‘He gives me the creeps!’

  Meltem looked at Ahu. ‘Deniz Bey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Always there, listening. What’s an old soldier like him doing around us?’ Ahu said.

  ‘Politics …’

  Ahu shrugged. ‘He looks at girls in a bad way,’ she said.

  They all paused to drink coffee, and Gül lit a cigarette.

  ‘The body in the garden was a woman, wasn’t it?’ Meltem said.

  ‘I think so.’

  Gül knew that it was. He also knew that the body of the woman wasn’t all that the police had found. Inspector Süleyman had not told him much, but he had confided that other remains had been discovered in the garden, and that maybe a link existed between these finds and the cannibalism they’d been investigating.

  How could that happen in his garden? Gül, in spite of the summer sunshine, felt chilled. Could Uğur Bey have killed himself because he had eaten human flesh? He’d been almost insane with anger at Gül when he’d come to speak to him about Süleyman. Could he really have done that? Could Bülent? Ziya? Deniz Bey?

  ‘If we can’t go back to the squat, where can we go?’ he heard Ahu say.

  That was a good question.

  ‘I’m not going home,’ Meltem said.

  ‘We should find a place together,’ Ahu said.

  ‘What? All three of us?’

  Gül laughed. ‘No, you girls stand a much better chance without me.’

  ‘Maybe, but …’

  ‘I’ve places I can go,’ he said.

  If worst came to the worst, he could sleep behind the bar at the club for a few days. But Gül knew people. Pembe Hanım, because of her affair with Sergeant Gürsel, wasn’t an option, but there was always Madame Edith. An elderly drag queen and Edith Piaf impersonator, Madame lived in a rat-scented dive in Tarlabaşı. On one side lived a prostitute who specialised in S&M, and on the other a whole crowd of dying bonzai addicts. But Edith was kind and she’d give him a home in a heartbeat.

  What was more worrying at this stage was what was going to happen to the squat movement if it was tainted by something as horrifying as murder. Would all the Art House residents lose their credibility, and would this find in the garden mean that every other squat in the city would be investigated by the police?

  ‘You took the boy Burak Ayan to the Syrian border.’

  ‘No.’

  Ziya Yetkin was scared, big and butch as he was. Ömer Mungun could see nothing but fear on his face.

  ‘That’s what Bülent Onay told us,’ Ömer said.

  ‘No he didn’t. He wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’ Ömer said. ‘Tell us what you did?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t tell? Think that much of him, do you?’

  Ziya shook his head. It was obvious he’d become lost in the exchange and now fell silent.

  Ömer sat back in his chair. ‘You’re a man who uses the road,’ he said. ‘So you know as well as I do that we have traffic cameras these days.’

  Although he’d requested footage from Gaziantep, he didn’t know whether he’d actually get it. But a photograph of Yetkin’s motorbike at Taksim on the right day at a plausible time had been located – and he, or whoever was driving, did have a passenger.

  ‘I’ve got pictures of your bike.’

  ‘Not me riding it.’

  ‘You have a passenger,’ Ömer said.

  ‘That wasn’t me riding the bike.’

  ‘Then who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know!’ Ömer folded his arms across his chest. ‘I can’t believe that. It’s your bike, right?’<
br />
  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’d know if you lent it to anyone.’

  Ziya said nothing.

  ‘And if it had been stolen, you would have reported it. Valuable machine like that.’

  He shrugged.

  Ömer shook his head. ‘Bülent has confessed,’ he said.

  ‘No he hasn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to say “confessed to what”?’

  Ziya looked at the floor. Then he said, ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘Maybe not. But according to Bülent, you helped to conceal a murder.’

  Again Ziya said nothing.

  Ömer leaned forward across the table. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you instigated any of this. I think that was someone else. And although you may have concealed a crime, that’s not as serious as instigating it. Judges like an offender who comes forward with information of his own volition.’

  Süleyman, standing at the back of the interview room, nodded his agreement when Ziya looked up at him.

  Chapter 32

  ‘What’s he like?’ Cetin İkmen asked.

  ‘He looks every inch the successful New York attorney,’ Commissioner Teker said. ‘Told me he’s not leaving here without his client.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, “We’ll see.” What else could I say?’

  İkmen smoked. ‘Bülent Onay saw him kill Halide Can with the lid of the freezer,’ he said. ‘Which is consistent with the injuries on the body and that sample we now know is Can’s blood.’

  Arto Sarkissian had pushed the forensic team to match Halide Can’s DNA record to the blood sample from the freezer, and they’d done it.

  ‘But it’s still Onay’s word against Myskow’s. Both their prints are on the lid of the freezer. Maybe Onay killed Can when he saw her just about to discover human flesh in the freezer,’ Teker said. ‘Myskow will blame him.’

  ‘Mustafa Ayan’s remains were moved to the squat and buried after Can was murdered.’

  ‘With her body.’

  ‘Probably, yes. They were buried with it. By that time, both bodies had to be hidden wherever they could be and as far away from the hotel as possible.’

  ‘Myskow is going to find it hard to deny that the boy’s remains were in his freezer. There is no sense to Can’s death unless she found something she shouldn’t. Myskow is guilty of something.’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘What about the spooks?’

  ‘Not heard a word,’ she said. ‘We won’t until just before Myskow’s involvement is about to become public.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I assume that Cihan Özlü plus other prominent citizens will be protected. After all, they only ate—’

  ‘Human flesh,’ İkmen said. ‘Don’t you think they’d like to know about that?’

  ‘We only have Bülent Onay’s word for it,’ Teker said. ‘I was going to say “boar”, actually. No crime has been committed by them.’

  ‘Except one of deception,’ İkmen said. ‘Nice, clean-living, pious men …’

  She smiled. ‘How many people do you want me to imprison for hypocrisy, Cetin Bey? Do we have enough prisons? Myskow gave private parties. No one needs to know who attended, even if he is convicted of Can’s murder.’

  ‘Don’t they?’

  ‘No.’

  İkmen put his cigarette out and stared at the wall.

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes, while Kerim Gürsel stared at them from across the room.

  ‘I will tell you everything,’ Major General Baydar said. ‘Provided my request is fulfilled.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Mehmet Süleyman said.

  ‘Not even to arrive at the truth?’

  ‘Not even for that. I don’t know who you think I am, Major General Baydar. For that matter, I don’t know who you think you are that you can ask me to allow you to kill yourself.’

  ‘I can’t go back to prison,’ he said. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Even if you’ve committed a crime?’

  ‘Have I? What?’

  Süleyman said, ‘You were allegedly instrumental, with others, in the murder of a young boy. You then either assisted in or instigated the disposal of the body. Tell me that’s not true.’

  He looked away. ‘You all just want me back in prison,’ he said.

  ‘No. That’s absurd. Don’t contradict yourself! If you have nothing to hide, why did you offer to tell me everything in exchange for me letting you kill yourself?’

  The old man looked momentarily confused, and then he said, ‘It was a bad day when this country abolished capital punishment.’

  ‘In order that you could take the facts about your involvement in this case to your grave?’ Süleyman shook his head. ‘I have thought many things about our military over the years, Deniz Bey, but I have never, until this moment, imagined they were craven.’

  Baydar, infuriated, sprang from his chair.

  Boris Myskow had his US passport in his hand.

  İkmen looked at it. ‘You won’t need that, Mr Myskow.’

  ‘He will.’

  The other voice belonged to a large man with unnaturally brown hair. To İkmen, Ralph Newman rather resembled the late President Ronald Reagan, which was unfortunate, as he’d never liked him.

  ‘Mr Newman.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sorry, but waving a US passport about like some sort of magic talisman will not work, and it will irritate me. Please ask your client to put it away.’

  But he didn’t. İkmen thought, Oh God, he wants to have a stand-off.

  Then he saw Myskow put the document away.

  The attorney shook his head slightly, disappointed in his client.

  ‘Right. I want you to tell me what happened the night Constable Can died, Mr Myskow,’ İkmen said.

  ‘I …’

  ‘My client was serving his guests,’ Newman said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Your client, who served human flesh …’

  ‘Prove it.’ Newman leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable. ‘Mr Myskow served wild boar to some dignitaries who shouldn’t have been eating pig. So what? Mr Myskow is himself Jewish; he understands about the pork ban. Muslims and Jews have that in common, right?’

  ‘Observant Jews and—’

  ‘Right, observant,’ Newman said. ‘My understanding is that these dignitaries should be observant. In fact, if they were found not to be observant, that wouldn’t be good for them or you, Inspector.’

  ‘What such people do is not my affair,’ İkmen said. ‘My only concerns are who killed my officer and who may have killed a young boy called Mustafa Ayan.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ He looked at Myskow, who shrugged.

  ‘Oh, he was nobody,’ İkmen said. ‘Just a young misguided boy we think may have provided dinner for some people, including your dignitaries.’

  ‘They’re not mine,’ Newman said.

  İkmen looked at Boris Myskow. ‘Did you eat the meat Bülent Onay asked you to take care of for him?’ he said.

  Newman answered for him. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m aware of the fact that you didn’t eat it, Mr Newman,’ İkmen said. ‘I want to know whether your client did.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t he?’ İkmen sat back in his chair, mirroring Newman’s stance. ‘I’d like Mr Myskow to tell me,’ he said. ‘And as a non-observant Muslim, I’d like to ask Mr Myskow, a non-observant Jew, whether he’s eaten wild boar.’

  ‘Of course he has.’

  ‘Has he?’ İkmen looked into Myskow’s eyes, which shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not sure I’d like people to know I eat pork, if indeed I do.’

  ‘You just said you’re not observant.’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘But pork is a taboo in this society. Just like it is in Jewish society. Tell me, Mr Myskow, do you taste the pork products you cook for people?’

  ‘Of course he does!’

  ‘Do you?�
� İkmen said.

  Boris Myskow looked away.

  Mehmet Süleyman straightened his jacket. The old soldier hadn’t been able to do much more than grab his lapels before Kerim Gürsel had pulled him away. No one had been hurt, although part of Süleyman had wanted to beat Deniz Baydar. The old military elites had no time for the sons of the Ottomans like Mehmet Süleyman, and they both knew it.

  Süleyman cleared his throat. Then he said, ‘To clarify, Major General Baydar, I was not being disrespectful to the military class per se. I have nothing but admiration for our armed forces. What I was questioning was your refusal to tell me the truth without conditions. That, I trust you will agree, was craven.’

  ‘So why didn’t you lie?’ the old man said. ‘You’re a policeman! You all lie, don’t you? Lie! Tell me you will allow me to die and then put me in a cell with a watcher making sure I don’t kill myself! Tie my wrists together, blindfold …’

  He stopped. Had he been a non-military man, he would probably have cried. But instead he took a breath and said, ‘You will not understand.’

  ‘I will not understand what, Deniz Bey?’

  ‘The world before your family took this country and made it weak,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think anyone can accuse Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver of weakness …’

  ‘When he sat his troops outside the gates of Vienna in 1529 and was too afraid to attack?’ Deniz Baydar said. ‘The bones of our ancestors were crying out for real men to protect the earth they were buried in.’

  ‘An attack on Vienna at that point was inadvisable …’

  Everyone knew that the failed Siege of Vienna had marked a turning point in Ottoman imperial power. After that, the empire had gone into decline.

  ‘Our ancestors drank the blood and ate the flesh of their enemies,’ the old man said. ‘That was why they were strong. It’s only when you have no religious or moral strictures to hold you back that you can truly conquer. We lost that. We became weak and superstitious, bound by rules that limit us. Look at us now! We call ourselves Turks? Hah!’

  ‘So if we drank blood and ate flesh …’

  ‘If we freed ourselves from these constraints, we could be great, yes,’ he said. He leaned across the table. ‘I was put in prison for opposing a weakness that only Atatürk has been brave enough to stand up to. And to see his work destroyed …’

 

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