by Jane Bastin
“Work?” Sinan raised his left eyebrow.
“Contract work.” Teoman winked and Sergeant Mehmet’s cheeks flushed crimson.
“Stop talking in riddles. What does that mean?”
“People the Americans want disposing of in Turkey… well, I am only too ready to help out our Yankee neighbours.”
Sinan sat in the manager’s office at the Pera Palas Hotel. Teoman Mutlu’s alibis for the times of the last two Flower Passage murders and critically the Prime Minister and Gaye’s murders were watertight. His sister attended the American hospital twice weekly for dialysis and he happened to have been there every time the other murders had been committed. Sinan knew there had to be a link. Copycat murders? Although dubious about Onur bey’s remonstrations about American land grabbing in Thrace with the Albanian mafia, he could not dismiss it completely. Anything, he reasoned was possible. Too many threads wound in and out and back through gaping holes. He needed just one solid tipping point which was why he had arrived for dinner with Bea, Ginge Allyson and Kylie Thwaite.
Agatha’s voice carried across the dining hall. Holding centre stage, regaling the delegates with tales of her success, Agatha swept her arms theatrically in the air. Bea, Sinan, Ginge and Kylie sat in a far corner but they were still in earshot and every time Agatha mentioned her daughter’s name with a disparaging remark, Bea simply shrugged her shoulders and drank another gulp of wine. Sinan’s intention when he left the police station was to question the two Yorkshire ladies but he knew that he was really drawn by the food. Three waiters delivered two silver trays laden with mezzes and Sinan perused them with the eye of a professional eater.
“Wild olives from the southern Aegean. Aubergine mashed in yoghurt. Shrimps in hot butter. Octopus in olive oil and lemon. Wild herbs from the westerly point of the Aegean. Anchovies from the Black Sea. Artichoke hearts in olive oil and lemon and—”
“Salad!” Bea cut in and the Yorkshire girls laughed.
“Delicious, all of it. As are you, Inspector Sinan!” Kylie nudged Ginge and they watched, delighted as Sinan blushed.
Bea squeezed his hand and smiled.
“So, Inspector Sinan, how’s the case going? Caught any murderers yet?”
Ginge smirked.
“Well, that would be telling. But you should tell me more about your grandfather and why you did not find any treasures in the British Consul’s garden.”
The table fell silent. Bea cut into her artichoke slowly and deliberately stopping to check that she had not spilled any olive oil on the silk red dress chosen especially for Sinan’s arrival.
“Well, me grandda were a great man, full of stories, and I were sure the treasure were there.”
Sinan tasted the wine proffered by a stooped waiter and nodded.
“I didn’t think we were doing nowt wrong.”
“Really? Creeping around, pretending to be attending a church service, smuggling a spade into the grounds and furtively digging a great big hole?” Bea placed a forkful of yoghurt in her mouth and looked at Sinan.
This was not working the way he wanted with Bea at his side.
“Rick McFarlane?” Sinan changed the subject.
“Yes? What of him?” Bea replied, her voice warmer now that she was part of Sinan’s focus.
“What do you know of him?”
Ginge and Kylie lost interest and began to tease each other with octopus tentacles pierced on the end of their forks.
“Why’s he here? He was a diplomat, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but he now writes crime novels set in Texas. Not bad, you should read some of them. A bit raunchy though.”
Bea placed her hand on Sinan’s thigh and smiled.
“Can you introduce me to him?” Sinan asked, patiently. “Who is that next to him?”
Sinan looked between Kylie and Ginge. Rick McFarlane in a Hawaiian shirt sat next to a young woman.
Bea slipped her hand into Sinan’s palm as she drew him across the room. Rick McFarlane folded his serviette carefully into four pieces, placed it beneath his plate and turned to face Sinan.
“A real life detective. Well, how very nice to meet you, sir.”
Rick McFarlane’s hand was cold to the touch. His wife flashed white teeth.
“Teoman Mutlu, know him?”
Sinan slowed down his thinking processes. In real time, small twitches, the slight pulsing of nerves were difficult to perceive but when time was slowed, they told of things hidden. The skin beneath Rick’s chin tightened. A dewdrop of sweat formed in the crevice by his right nostril. His right eyelid quivered.
“Not sure, I do, sir. Should I?”
“He mentioned you by name and I wondered if we might talk a little more?”
Rick McFarlane removed his wife’s hand from his lap and stood up.
“Better to talk somewhere a little more private, don’t you think, Inspector?”
Chapter Eight
Awake.
Where are you?
At home.
Rick McFarlane’s stetson seemed to precede him into the manager’s office. It brushed the sides of the doorway and for a terrifying instant, the manager’s face froze in anticipation of it getting stuck. Rick swung around in the room looking for a chair. Married to a woman at least thirty years his junior evidently demanded both money and vanity. Not one hair was out of place. Sinan caught the whiff of hairspray as Rick leant forward to wipe a spot of dust from his shorts.
“Sir, may I call you Rick?”
“Why, of course you can, son, I mean Inspector.”
Rick pulled two fingers along the sharp crease at the front of his shorts.
“We have arrested a man called Teoman Mutlu as part of our ongoing investigation into three murders of high-ranking civil servants in an alleyway opposite the Flower Passage. I’m not sure if you know about this but Teoman Mutlu has mentioned that he worked for you in your capacity as Military Attaché at the US Embassy in Ankara and Consul General in Istanbul for a number of years.”
Sinan saw the tip of Rick’s tongue snake in and out of his lips.
“Would you mind telling me in what capacity this gentleman worked for you?”
Silence. Sinan met Rick McFarlane’s stare. The distant chatter of the dining hall grew suddenly louder as the door swung open. With a look of abject confusion, the manager beckoned to Sinan.
“What?” Sinan asked.
“There is an Inspector Haris on the phone at reception. He was very insistent on talking to you.”
“Tell him I’ll call him back. Do not interrupt again. Understood?”
Rick McFarlane had placed one leg casually across the other and in that instant Sinan knew that he had had time to compose a narrative.
“Inspector. I do have a very faint recollection of a man named Teoman Mutlu. But you must understand that in the world of international diplomacy,” he paused, waiting to see if Sinan realised the patronising tone of his remark, “I meet or met a great many people of all walks of life. I think he might have worked for the Istanbul Police at the time… yes… now I remember it a little more clearly… senior moments, you know… Well, I suppose you wouldn’t yet know, would you?”
Sinan felt a knot of tiredness throb in his forehead. He could see Bea through the crack of the doorway. From a distance, she had the look of Ani and for a moment he let himself believe that it was her.
“Well, we did some counter surveillance work with them and that’s where Teoman Mutlu would know me from.”
Sinan switched back into Rick McFarlane’s drone.
“Sir, we found your name on an unencrypted part of a social media site called Mindr used by one of the murdered civil servants to meet other men. Would you know anything about this?”
Sinan watched as Rick McFarlane leant back and scratched the side of his earlobe.
“No idea, Inspector. Mindr? What in helldog-tooth’s name is that?”
“A site where men proposition and meet other like-minded men.”
“If you’re insinuating what I thinks you are, mister, then I thinks you’d better think twice. You sees that lady in there.”
Sinan knew where his taut finger was pointing. He could see his wife clad in skin-tight mini skirt and breast enhancing bodice. Cindy, the former nanny now second wife and stepmother.
“Well, you think I’d be interested in a fella when I can have myself some of that? Are you crazy?”
Rick McFarlane pushed his chair violently back and strode out of the office muttering ‘crazy’ over and over.
Bea seized her opportunity. Sinan had stretched his legs out, placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Tiptoeing in, she placed her hands over his eyes. Turning suddenly, his face met hers and before he could do or say anything, she leant forward to kiss him. Sinan’s eyes sprang wide as he saw, standing behind Bea, the skeletal figure of Inspector Haris.
“Inspector Sinan. I will see you tomorrow first thing in my office.”
Sergeant Mehmet railed against Sinan quietly to Ruhi, his secretary. He had to take the wrath of Inspector Haris with his globules of phlegm flying everywhere. He had to take the recitation of the code of practice. And he had to take the responsibility of tracking Sinan to make sure that he turned up to a meeting with Haris otherwise ‘formal capability procedures would begin’. Sergeant Mehmet was not timid but avoided confrontation at all costs. An odd choice of profession many of his family claimed. They knew of his abidance of rules but knew also how he ran from the room at the first sound of raised voices.
Sinan knew that it was only a matter of time before Haris took complete charge. At the moment, he was a few steps ahead. He felt the burden of unfinished and unresolved cases and knew, in the pit of his stomach, that all of the murders were linked but… the cigarette packet, the timing, the proximity, the links to government and power. Crimes of pure passion would not have required all three to have worked in government, would they? The coincidence would be too great. Sinan’s thoughts jumped from possibility to more outlandish possibility until he felt his head hurt.
Gaye Kan had lived at this address for the past three years and yet it was as though she had never existed. Sinan wandered through the room she had rented from Madame Popov. A box room, filled with teddy bears and pink ribbons, it looked more like the room of a child than a prostitute. Madame Popov, a large Russian dressed in an even larger kaftan, made kissing sounds to a parrot that dive-bombed Sinan’s head. Young women wandered around the house semi-naked, giggling like schoolgirls waiting for their next lesson.
“Another girl stay here now. Gaye, oh Gaye.”
Madame Popov sighed with as much melodrama as she could muster. Tears fell and she lifted the corner of her kaftan to wipe her eyes clear.
“Her things?” Sinan continued, moving teddy bears trying to make a shape in his mind of the young woman. A card, perched behind a particularly large teddy bear, was addressed to Gaye.
“Who is Fevzi?” Sinan asked, flicking the card over to see where it might have been made.
“Fevzi? Not sure but Ela will know. ELA!”
Ela, a thin waif of a girl dressed only in underwear, appeared at the doorway. Large, watery brown eyes made her look even more vulnerable.
“Fevzi is a waiter at one of the Flower Passage bars. He told Gaye that he was in love with her. He bought all these teddy bears. She loved the first one and then he kept buying them. Silly fool”
“What was she like, Gaye?”
Ela folded her arms and bit her bottom lip. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she coughed to clear her throat.
“Wonderful. Kind. A really good person.”
“How did she end up here? Was she from Istanbul?”
Sinan already knew parts of the answers.
“No, she told me once that she could never go back to where she came from. That her family would kill her. I thought she was exaggerating but then one day, about two months ago, she received a letter and she was never the same again.”
“In what way?”
Sinan toyed with the long velvet ribbon on one of the large teddy bears.
“She knew that her brothers and father knew where she was and she said that she no longer felt safe.”
“Why didn’t she move on? “
“Where to?” Ela stared at Sinan and he coughed to clear his embarrassment.
“Or contact the police?”
Ela and Madame Popov both laughed, baring their teeth.
“Are you crazy?” Ela asked, once she realised that Sinan had not understood.
“The police helped her brothers and father find her.”
“Whereabouts in Turkey is she from?”
Sinan already knew the answer and he watched as Ela regaled him with tales of the horrors of Hakkari in the east of Turkey near the border of Iran.
“And most of them can’t even speak Turkish, did you know that? So backward. I’m studying law at Istanbul Technical University. Imagine if I couldn’t speak Turkish, have you ever heard such rubbish?”
Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of Constantinople was still visible in the mosque opposite Madame Popov’s brothel. Flicking his sleeve up to read his watch, Sinan thought about Gaye and what had brought her to this place and this life. The mosque and college of Fatih had been built on the old burial grounds of Byzantine Emperors. The old Church of the Holy Apostles had not been erased but rather converted to serve the needs of the new Muslim population. Gaye’s old life had been supplanted by a new existence but had the old caught up with her? Was the murder of the Prime Minister simply collateral damage for the real target – Gaye? The light caught the shimmer of the gold of the crescent moon on the top of the dome and Sinan stood in the middle of the street, his mind slowing, focusing on each instance observed, heard, smelt, tasted and felt. Memory is prone to malfunction, he remembered Ani’s words when he began to doubt her. Two memories of the same event – one for the here and now, and one for the rest of your life. The reliability of memory, the blurred lines between perception and actuality. Or perhaps there was no actuality simply perception. Sinan felt his blood sugar fall. He moved quickly out of the way of a speeding car and walked straight into a small café. Men who looked as though they still inhabited the steppes of the Anatolian highlands in flat caps and wide-legged trousers twizzling prayer beads between their fingers nodded in acknowledgement. Dropping three sugar cubes into a glass of tea brought swiftly by a young boy, Sinan watched as each crystal dissolved and merged with the hot tea. Was that what happened to the young girls who arrive washed up by the inhumanity of so called culture? Like flotsam and jetsam, the girls landed and made what they could of their lives. Ahmet, he thought suddenly. Ahmet at the authors’ congress. He came from Hakkari.
Chapter Nine
And now
as red female hair blows across my face,
as something stirs on the ground,
as the trees whisper in the dark.
Agatha Schiller had a purple feather in her hat which both amused and guided Sinan to her table. Bea had insisted on him joining them for dinner. Although Sergeant Mehmet had rung him numerous times throughout the day insisting that Inspector Haris needed to speak to him urgently, he felt the pull of tonight’s menu at the Pera Palas Hotel instead. ‘An Ottoman feast worthy of the famous Architect Sinan’, Bea’s email promised. Two birds with one stone, he thought, as he surveyed the table. Ahmet from Hakkari with his timid wife, Sylvia, and dishes of aubergines in different guises: yoghurt, tomato and olive oil.
“Sit still, woman. You are embarrassing me.”
Sinan felt Bea’s hand curl into a fist and press against his thigh.
“Ahmet bey, how are you finding the conference?” Agatha appeared oblivious to Ahmet’s temper.
“Fine, Agatha. Very well, in fact. I think the spirit of the great Agatha…” Ahmet’s face fell. Dabbing the corners of his mouth with a serviette, he turned to Agatha.
“I am so sorry. I did not mean to offend you. Of course, you too
are one of the greatest.”
Bea dropped her fork as her mother placed her ring-encrusted fingers over Ahmet’s hand and squeezed it.
“Please don’t be so silly. How could I possibly compare to such a great woman?”
Bea nudged Sinan as he placed a sliver of aubergine in his mouth, savouring the smoky flavour. The waiter had insisted that it had been cooked in a wood oven.
“You are indeed a great woman, Agatha.”
Raising his voice on her name, he clinked his wine glass against the bottle in the middle of the table.
“A toast, everyone, to this giant of the crime fiction world.”
Agatha laughed coquettishly and Bea spluttered a mouthful of wine all over the table. Sylvia, his wife, neither laughed nor raised her glass. She ate as though she had not eaten for days.
The second course arrived. An enormous platter carried ceremoniously by two waiters. Encased in salt, a large fish was placed in the centre of the table. Bea stretched her hand out but Sinan pulled it back just as one of the waiters tapped a chisel into it. The salt cracked open and the fish was parcelled out along with a salad of wild herbs and flat bread. For a few minutes, Sinan lost himself in the sensuality of the flavours. The sharp, salty tang of the Mediterranean sizzled from the fish on his tongue. Bea barely touched her fish, forking through some of the wild herbs. Foibles that emerge as a child become cemented by the time you are a fully-fledged adult, Sinan thought, as he watched Ahmet talk with his mouth full of food. He looked away. The flavours of the food so redolent now began to churn in his stomach.
“So Ahmet bey, you are from Hakkari, I hear.” Sinan looked away as he spoke.
“You have heard correctly although I have not lived there for over thirty years, Inspector.”
“What brought you to Istanbul, then?” Bea cut in, her voice grating a little on Sinan.
“Well, it wasn’t Istanbul to start with. No, no, I was based in Ankara. You see, terror has cloaked my people in a waking nightmare for the past fifty years. I needed to do my bit.”