‘Coffee!’ Ergin barked at the oleaginous owner. For someone known by the name ‘The Smoker’, he had a very light, unscarred voice. But then Tayfun Ergin didn’t smoke. He was known as The Smoker because he had started his life of crime collecting protection money from nargile salons for an old gangster called ‘Lame’ Rafik. When the old man died, Tayfun and his gang of thugs took over, and he had been bleeding nargile salons as well as bars across the city for the past ten years. Quite what he was doing in Fatih, where nargile salons were few and poor and bars unheard of, Hikmet couldn’t imagine. But it soon became clear that not everyone wanted the gangster in their midst.
Just after the owner had served Ergin and his men, one of the religious types got up and walked over to his table. Prayer beads still in hand, he said, ‘Mr Ergin, your interest is noted, but your interference is unwanted. You should go.’
Ergin, who in spite of everything was a good-looking man, flashed the religious one a dazzling smile. ‘Sir, I am both a businessman who enables and a true believer. I seek only to help.’
The owner, now white-faced with apparent terror, attempted to pull the religious man away. ‘Brother . . .’
‘No! No!’ the man with the beads cried. ‘He must know we do not—’
‘Ssh! Ssh!’ The owner, thinking that Hikmet couldn’t see him, nodded his head in the policeman’s direction, warning of his presence. But Hikmet could see out of the corner of his eye what was happening. He also saw Ergin and his boys smirking as the religious man sat down amid his own agitated fellows. What had the gangster done to upset them? What was he doing in Fatih anyway? And what on earth was all that about ‘interference’ and ‘interest’? Was Ergin moving into Fatih? Why?
The religious types left first, followed a few minutes later by an obviously amused Ergin and his entourage. Although Hikmet doubted very much whether the coffee house owner would tell him anything of any use, he did ask him, ‘What was all that about?’ just before he left.
‘Oh, I don’t have the slightest idea, Constable,’ the creepy one said with a smile. ‘I just don’t want any trouble in my place.’
Which was true, but there was more to it than that, and both the coffee shop owner and Hikmet knew it. As he left the building, Hikmet Yıldız decided to bring Tayfun Ergin to Çetin İkmen’s attention again. The inspector had been after him for years, and if Ergin was up to something new, he would certainly want to know about it.
Chapter 12
* * *
‘The toxicology and the DNA will take time,’ Dr Arto Sarkissian said to İkmen. ‘But taking into account the box we found in Mr Seyhan’s pocket together with the alcohol he drank, I would say that he died from an overdose of diazepam mixed with rakı.’
The doctor had just managed to catch İkmen before he began his interview with Kenan Seyhan’s parents and his brother Lokman. Cahit, the father, had already identified his son’s body. Now they all had to deal with what Kenan had written in that suicide note.
‘I still think it’s very odd to commit suicide in a bar,’ İkmen said as he drew level with the door to the interview room.
The doctor shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The Kaktus isn’t the sort of place where people stare or pry into what you’re doing. He could down his pills without attracting attention. Also, the kind of middle-class liberal types who frequent places like that are unlikely to rob you. And he wanted that note found.’
‘True.’
‘He was lucky he wasn’t sick,’ Arto said as he made his way past the policeman and down the corridor, ‘but then I don’t think he’d eaten for quite some time.’
İkmen pushed the door of the interview room open and sat down at the table in the middle of the room beside his sergeant, Ayşe Farsakoğlu. On the other side were the three white faces of Cahit, Saadet and Lokman Seyhan. İkmen expressed sympathy for their loss before he came to the note.
‘There are four statements,’ he said. ‘As far as we can tell from your son’s other personal effects, the handwriting is his own.’
‘What does it say?’ Cahit asked. He looked tense as well as upset and the skin around his eyes was red. ‘Tell us.’
İkmen looked down at the photocopy of Kenan Seyhan’s suicide note and said, ‘The first statement reads: My lover Hamid İdiz is dead and so I no longer wish to live.’
No one moved or spoke. Ayşe Farsakoğlu wondered whether the fact that Kenan Seyhan had been homosexual was the reason why those women she’d heard talking in Fatih had alluded to ‘immoral behaviour’ in the family.
Lokman Seyhan spoke first. ‘My brother was queer.’
‘Which would now put into context some of those things you said when you fought him,’ İkmen said. ‘Hamid İdiz had just been found murdered—’
‘I was glad of that!’ Cahit Seyhan cried. ‘I was glad!’
‘You knew . . .’
‘That pervert seduced my son!’
‘They were lovers,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu countered. Inspector Süleyman, whose case Hamid İdiz was, had been made aware of Kenan Seyhan’s death and the events surrounding it. It was his opinion that Seyhan was most probably İdiz’s unnamed secret lover.
Cahit Seyhan looked at Ayşe with fury in his eyes while his wife, now unable to hold on to her composure any longer, broke down and cried.
‘The nature of your son’s death as well as the contents of his note leave very little doubt that he took his own life,’ İkmen continued.
Saadet murmured, ‘Allah!’
‘So why are we here,’ Lokman said, ‘if he killed himself? We’ve identified his body. Why . . .’
‘I fear my father killed Hamid,’ İkmen said as he continued reading from the photocopy. He followed on with the last two sentences Kenan Seyhan had written: ‘My family killed my sister Gözde,’ he said, ‘Everyone I care about is dead.’
The room seemed to chill.
‘You are here,’ İkmen said, ‘because in his final testament your son and your brother named you as the murderers of his sister.’
‘He was insane!’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘He tried to kill me! He put his hands around my throat.’ He shoved his wife in the ribs with his elbow. ‘You were there. Speak up!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ Saadet’s words came hiccuping through her sobs. ‘I was there.’
‘And why did he try to kill you, Mr Seyhan?’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu asked.
‘Well, because he knew that I disapproved of him, and . . . he’d lost his mind, he . . .’
‘He turned a gun on me,’ Lokman said. ‘Your officers saw it. You questioned us yourself!’
‘For what it was worth,’ İkmen said. ‘Maybe the fight was about your sister, Hamid İdiz or both. I know that you drew a knife on your brother, Mr Seyhan. I know that you drew your weapon first.’
‘I . . .’
‘In my experience,’ İkmen said, ‘those about to take their own lives rarely lie. Why would they? They are about to cease. All lies and delusions fall away. There is just the person and death.’
‘But he was mad!’ Cahit Seyhan reared up out of his seat and banged his fist on the table.
Ayşe Farsakoğlu said, ‘Sit down!’
There was a moment when he might not have obeyed the command of a woman, but after a few seconds he did, more calmly, regain his seat.
‘Your son was not under psychiatric care and so I can’t assume that he was insane. I have no evidence for that,’ İkmen said. ‘What I do know, Mr Seyhan, is that Gözde was exchanging text messages with a boy who lived on your street.’
There was a profound silence. Nobody in that room even seemed to breathe. Ayşe Farsakoğlu felt an eerie shiver run down her spine. And then, suddenly . . .
‘You have no evidence that we killed anyone!’ Lokman Seyhan thundered. ‘You’ve been at our old apartment for days! If you’d found any evidence . . .’
‘Yet.’ İkmen held up a warning finger. ‘No evidence specifically against your family has come to light – yet. But we h
aven’t finished our investigation. And now we have your brother and his note . . .’
The room fell silent again. It stayed that way for several minutes. Then İkmen said, ‘And now that you know, you may leave.’
‘Because you’ve nothing—’
‘Because I am not prepared to charge you until I have found what I need to back up Kenan’s testimony,’ İkmen said. ‘When I get you to court, Mr Seyhan, you are not going home. I don’t care how clever your lawyer might be. Your son has told me you burned a girl to death, and I take that seriously.’
Lokman Seyhan’s face whitened. ‘You believe that?’
İkmen didn’t answer. He just looked at him. Later, when the Seyhans had gone on their way, Ayşe Farsakoğlu asked, ‘Sir, do you really believe that they killed that girl?’
‘Poor Kenan only confirmed what I have believed all along,’ İkmen said. He lit a cigarette and yawned. ‘I don’t know how they did it, but somehow they made it happen.’
‘But sir, they all have alibis!’
He smiled. ‘They do, yes,’ he said. ‘Ayşe, I am not saying that the Seyhans necessarily did the deed themselves. But it was done at their behest.’
‘How do you know?’ Ayşe said.
‘I don’t,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘My intuition.’
Everyone knew that İkmen had apparently inherited his intuition, or his ‘magic’ as some liked to call it, from his mother. She had been a witch. A lot of people, including Ayşe Farsakoğlu, still believed in such things. ‘Ah.’
‘And I’ll be honest, I want to prove Kenan Seyhan right,’ İkmen said. ‘I think it unlikely that his father killed Hamid İdiz, but I do think that he made Kenan’s life a misery, and I think that he somehow killed poor Gözde.’
Nowhere in Hamid İdiz’s effects could Süleyman find any reference to how or where he had met his ‘precious baby’, Kenan Seyhan. They were an unlikely pair, the educated music teacher and the working-class waiter. When shown a photograph of Kenan, Hamid İdiz’s kapıcı did eventually own up to some recognition. He had been coming to visit Hamid Bey apparently for about a year.
‘For pianoforte lessons, I imagined,’ the kapıcı said primly. ‘But he wasn’t the young man I saw come the morning when Hamid Bey died. That definitely wasn’t him.’
Hamid İdiz, much as he had loved Kenan Seyhan, also had a reputation for cruising, which his journal bore out. This ranged from quick fumbles in the back streets of Beyoğlu right up to taking pick-ups back to his apartment for full sex. Hamid Bey had been a reckless man who could have been attacked by any one of his unknown lovers at any time.
What was clear, however, as Süleyman questioned Hamid İdiz’s twenty young pupils, was that all the girls and the little boys had loved him. Aware and suspicious of all and any difference, the older boys had either tolerated him, like Ali Reza Zafir, or seethed with disgust, like Murad Emin. To Süleyman, none of the kids seemed that relevant, although İzzet Melik disagreed.
‘There’s something not right about that boy,’ he said to Süleyman as they both watched Murad Emin and his father leave the station. ‘He’s certainly not getting those prudish attitudes of his from his parents. And then he brought Islam into it. I wonder who he is getting that from?’
‘School, peer group . . .’ Süleyman didn’t want to discuss it. Murad Emin was an uptight kid from a liberal family. Not unusual. Maybe that was his way of rebelling. He wouldn’t be the first, and besides, he lived in Balat, a very conservative area. There was obviously pressure for him to conform to his friends’ and their families’ religious and social mores. İzzet understood all of this even if he didn’t agree with it.
What Süleyman didn’t tell his deputy was the real reason why he wanted to put some distance between himself and Murad Emin. The boy’s mother, the prostitute, knew. Although she hadn’t mentioned Gonca by name, she’d said, ‘Your wife know, does she?’ Know what? He hadn’t dared ask her. She had known he was married. How? She could just have been guessing. However, the likelihood was that she did at least know of Gonca and she knew that she was with a police officer called Süleyman. Both women lived in Balat. The Emin woman could have seen him going into Gonca’s house and not coming out again until the morning. That happened regularly. But why had she mentioned it? People, particularly poor people, were usually frightened of the police. Mrs Emin had been drunk when he saw her, but even under the influence of drink, surely she would have seen the potential for danger in what she said?
Unless it was a calculated gamble. Like the sort of mental equation a blackmailer might do.
And that was the crux of the matter. His wife knew about his past affairs, but she didn’t know about Gonca and how deeply he was involved with her. He didn’t want her to. He knew that if she found out, Zelfa, his wife, and his well-connected father-in-law, Dr Halman, would make sure he had as little contact with his son Yusuf as possible. He could hear them in his head now: ‘Going with a gypsy! A dirty gypsy!’
He told İzzet Melik that the Emin boy was irrelevant. He never wanted to go back to that squalid little apartment again.
İkmen went back to the Seyhans’ burnt-out apartment later that evening. It was still taped off in case the investigators needed to come back and either take more samples or view the site again. By chance, the landlord was gazing mournfully at his off-limits property when İkmen arrived.
‘If you’re looking to rent it, I suggest you ask the police,’ the landlord said as he tipped his head towards the blackened door of the apartment. ‘Who knows when they’ll be finished with it!’
İkmen showed the man his police identification and said he was sorry for the inconvenience.
‘You can understand, I am sure, Çetin Bey,’ the landlord said, ‘that I need to clean the place up. The Seyhans need to take their belongings and I need to get the apartment in order.’
‘Mr and Mrs Seyhan have been staying with relatives.’
‘I know.’ The landlord offered İkmen a cigarette, which he took, and then lit up a smoke for himself. ‘So no rent from them and no rent from new tenants. I am out of pocket, I can tell you!’
Some of the people who lived on the floors above passed up the staircase. One of them İkmen recognised as the red-headed American who had reported the fire.
‘Are the Seyhans not coming back?’ İkmen asked.
The landlord shrugged. ‘They say they can’t afford this place any more.’
‘Did you offer them other properties?’
‘Sure! And not just in Beşiktaş,’ he continued. ‘I have places in Üsküdar and in Tarlabaşı, much cheaper than here, but they wouldn’t have any of it.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘Said they couldn’t afford it,’ he said. ‘Although why . . .’ He shrugged again. ‘The father and the sons worked. I mean, I have heard that one of the sons has now died and I am very sorry for that. To lose one child is bad . . . such tragedy! But I offered the family other apartments before that, just after the fire. I’m a good landlord, Çetin Bey, I look after my people.’
‘I’m sure.’ İkmen smiled. Such protestations probably meant that the landlord had some pretty rough property on his books, but that didn’t change the fact that the Seyhans had turned down an apartment of their own in favour of sleeping on the floor at Cahit Seyhan’s sister’s place in Fatih. Of course, there could be an element of taking comfort with relatives after a tragic event, or even of finding an excuse to escape from this landlord. But it was the Seyhans’ avowed penury that really interested İkmen. At the time of the fire, all three Seyhan men had been working. With mobile phones, televisions and what İkmen had recognised as some nice equipment in the kitchen, the family had not been hard up before the fire. So what, if anything, had changed in that short space of time?
It was then that İkmen’s mind turned to the other families he had come across who had claimed penury in the wake of a daughter’s death. Three families, in fact, all of whom had been investigated by the pol
ice because they had been suspected of a crime of honour. All three had apparently hit hard times, and in one case, he had actually seen the victim’s mother begging in the streets of Sultanahmet. And yet none of these families had been convicted of anything. Unlike Gözde Seyhan, the other girls had not been burnt. One had been stabbed in the street, another poisoned, maybe by her own hand, at home, while the third had been shot whilst pegging out her mother’s washing in the back yard of their apartment building. The only apparent connection between these families and the Seyhans, besides all having deceased daughters, was their sudden lack of money. If İkmen remembered correctly, one of the families, a smart bunch from the middle-class suburb of Levent, had actually moved to one of the tattier streets in Fener after their daughter died. And yet the father hadn’t lost his rather good job in the Garanti Bank.
After a few more pleasantries with the landlord, if no actual date for when he could reclaim his property, İkmen left. As he drove home, yawning, he contemplated what, he now knew, was going to be a very busy day come the morning. Places to go, people to see . . .
A Noble Killing Page 10