Ikmen 16 - Body Count

by Barbara Nadel

  She looked at the destruction and she smoked. Once the ball had stopped swinging, a group of workmen with wheelbarrows came to start removing the rubble. One of them, a man probably in his fifties, showed his appreciation of her cleavage with a smile and a widening of his eyes. But she wasn’t in the mood.

  ‘In your dreams, you destructive bastard!’ she yelled at him, and then she threw her cigarette butt into the street and disappeared inside.

  Fatma had been as fine as she could be with the five thousand lira he’d sent from their savings to some family they didn’t know in Anatolia. He’d given Suzan Arslan’s family the money in memory of Ayşe Farsakoğlu because he knew she’d liked the girl and he couldn’t bear the thought of her mother dying without a fight. Because that was how Ayşe had died, without a murmur, and he knew how unlike her that was and it weighed upon him. The aborted retirement had been another thing, however.

  She’d said, or rather screamed, ‘So when are you going to retire, then? At seventy? Eighty? When you die?’

  He’d said what he believed, which was, ‘I don’t know.’ Then he’d assured her that his carrying on in the police in no way affected their planned purchase of central heating. It was at that point that Fatma had thrown a vase at him.

  Now this was supposed to be his day off, but he’d come into the station to get some peace and be somewhere away from those eyes that bored into his guilty soul like instruments of torture. He’d thought that, in a way, his wife would have been glad not to have him under her feet all day long. But he also knew that what had happened to Ayşe and to Süleyman had unnerved her. She didn’t want him to die.

  ‘İkmen.’

  He hadn’t heard anyone come in. He looked up and saw Ardıç. ‘Hello, sir.’

  With some difficulty Ardıç lowered himself into the chair on the other side of İkmen’s desk. ‘About retirement …’ he began.

  İkmen held up a hand. ‘My mind’s made up, sir,’ he said. ‘My postponement has been agreed.’

  ‘Not yours!’ he said. ‘You’ll go on for ever. You think I didn’t know that? No, mine.’

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I spoke to you about it some months ago.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ İkmen remembered. ‘You’re going to be replaced by some religious—’

  ‘My successor will start in October. A three-month handover period. Allah, she’ll need it!’

  He waited for some sort of reaction. But then he remembered that İkmen was still not himself after Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s death. He wouldn’t be for a while. He said, ‘What I’m trying to tell you, İkmen, is that your new commissioner is not going to be a man of high religious sentiment after all but a fifty-year-old lady from Gaziantep called Hürrem Teker.’

  ‘A woman. That’s good.’ İkmen smiled. ‘We need more women.’ He suddenly looked alarmed. ‘But she’s not …’

  ‘Religious? No. They call her “the Stormtrooper” in Antep,’ Ardıç said. ‘As tough as leather. Single. Real career woman.’

  İkmen knew the type, or thought he did. He had a cousin who was out of that old republican, heavily secular tradition. He rather liked them.

  But then Ardıç said, ‘Good to look at, too.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh don’t look so surprised, İkmen,’ Ardıç said. ‘It isn’t just the little covered girls, the models and the pneumatic TV stars who can be beautiful. Your new commissioner is a stunning woman, although what she’ll make of that little boy Süleyman has from Mardin I do not know.’

  ‘Ömer Mungan? He’s a good officer, sir. He started slowly. I think the city was a bit of a shock to him at first …’

  ‘Yes, they all worship odd things down there, don’t they?’ he said. ‘The devil and snakes. Antep being just west of Mardin, Commissioner Teker will know all about it.’

  ‘Doubtless.’ İkmen had suspected for some time that Ömer Mungan probably did adhere to some unusual and probably incomprehensible religion – so many in Mardin and its environs seemed to. But then he paused for a moment to really look at the fat man in front of him. In one way or another he’d known him for over forty years. ‘I’ll miss you, Commissioner Ardıç,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been a fair man. That’s rare.’

  Ardıç wasn’t often either flustered or embarrassed, but this was one of those rare occasions. ‘You’ll manage,’ he said. ‘A handsome woman to look at. You’ll have your work cut out keeping her away from Süleyman!’

  İkmen ignored his superior’s attempt at levity. ‘You have often protected me, against your better judgement, and I know that you’ve sometimes been punished for it. I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart, Ersin Ardıç Bey.’

  No one ever used Ardıç’s first name. İkmen wondered as he saw the fat man’s face redden with embarrassment whether he’d realised anyone even knew it.

  ‘Ah well, İkmen, that is very generous of you.’

  ‘It is my pleasure, sir.’

  The commissioner began the long process of standing up. İkmen always wanted to help him, but he never had and he never would. Ardıç for all his fat, had dignity. ‘So, er, now that we have Professor Atay in custody, we are, er, business as usual, I imagine, İkmen.’

  ‘I do hope so, sir,’ İkmen said.

  Ardıç eventually managed to achieve verticality. ‘So, well,’ he said, ‘my retirement, just between us at the moment.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Ardıç assumed a very stern expression. ‘No such luxury for you, İkmen.’

  ‘No, sir,’ İkmen said. And then, just before the commissioner left his office, he added, ‘Thanks be to Allah.’

  Ardıç turned, smiled, and then burst out laughing.

  Acknowledgements

  Two books really helped during my research into the Maya and all things 2012. They were The Maya by Michael D. Coe (8th Edition), which really goes into depth about all aspects of Mayan life, including the Long Count calendar. Another excellent guide was The Everything Guide to 2012 by Mark Heley. This achieved the amazing feat of making the Long Count calendar comprehensible to me.