A Noble Killing

by Barbara Nadel

‘We’re police officers, İsmail,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘You leave the details about how we’re going to run this operation to us. All you need to remember is to take the petrol you will buy this morning to the apartment at eight o’clock tonight, set the fire, run away and then wait for Cem to contact you. As soon as he calls you, you call us.’

  ‘But what if he double-crosses me?’ İsmail asked. ‘What if he gets me to do the job and then just disappears with all the money?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that will happen,’ İkmen said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’ll want to use you to kill again,’ İkmen said. ‘You know we all complain about the escalating violence in this great big dirty city of ours, but finding someone who is prepared to kill in cold blood, even for money, is still rare. Also, you have no criminal record. He’ll want to hang on to you, possibly employ you again. By this act you will become a valuable commodity.’

  Although he smiled, İkmen felt suddenly troubled. What, he wondered, had Cem seen in İsmail Yıldız that made him think that he could kill? Maybe it was nothing apart from lack of a criminal record and his financial need. But then maybe it wasn’t.

  Cahit had gone out and taken his awful sister Feray and her daughter Nesrin with him. She’d heard him talk about shopping, and the two women had giggled excitedly. Her husband was going to buy them things, things he’d never even thought to buy for her. He was doing it to hurt her, Saadet knew that. Once Cahit and the women had gone, her jailers consisted of her nephew Aykan and her son Lokman. It was the latter who unlocked the door and brought her a breakfast of bread, cheese and olives at just after nine. He put it down on the floor in front of her in a way that was both contemptuous and embarrassed. He didn’t seem to notice her broken, bloodied mouth. Or if he did, he didn’t say anything about it.

  ‘It’s your—’

  ‘Lokman, my soul, please close the door behind you and sit with me,’ Saadet said. She sat down on the floor and gestured for him to join her.

  But he remained where he was and said, ‘I have to get back to cousin Aykan.’

  Saadet wanted to say all sorts of cruel things about how the computer-addicted Aykan was unlikely to even know that her son had left the room. But she didn’t. Instead she said, ‘I don’t know what your father has told you about me . . .’

  ‘He said you went out whoring yesterday,’ Lokman said. ‘He said that you must be punished now.’ There was still embarrassment on his face, but there was also a small smile now for his mother. It was clearly fighting to overcome the contempt that his father had tried to instil within him.

  ‘Lokman,’ Saadet said sternly. ‘You know me. You know your own mother wouldn’t whore.’

  She could see that he knew that. His eyes glistened. ‘But then where did you go yesterday? Where did you go?’

  ‘I went shopping.’

  ‘You were hours! No one, no neighbours, saw you, and you were hours!’

  ‘Lokman, I am a covered woman who is unaccustomed to this district,’ Saadet said. ‘Why would anybody notice me? I went shopping! I admit I was out far too long, but I needed to walk and to think. Son, I have lost all my children except for you. Allah has seen fit to take Gözde and Kenan from me.’

  For a moment his face seemed to harden. He had never liked Kenan, even when they were children. But he had loved his sister, and now the mention of her name caused him to suddenly soften. He sat down on the floor in front of his mother and pushed her plate towards her. ‘Eat.’

  Saadet ignored the plate. ‘Lokman, I need to know something and I need to know it now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you try to hide your sister’s mobile telephone from the police?’ she asked. ‘It troubles me, makes me wonder if you had some hand in Gözde’s death. Or rather in covering it up.’

  He gazed over at her with straight, damp eyes. He looked for a moment as if he were about to choke, but then he cleared his throat and said, ‘Gözde was seeing a boy from up the road. I knew about it. They cared for each other.’

  Saadet felt her heart jump. What it meant if Lokman knew, she couldn’t imagine. ‘Did you tell your father?’

  ‘No! No! I didn’t tell anyone! I took the phone so that no one, not even the police, would ever know, ever besmirch my sister’s name!’ Lokman said. ‘Kenan knew because Gözde told him herself; she didn’t trust me enough. Kenan would have told no one. Afterwards, he believed that me and Father had ordered Gözde’s murder!’

  ‘Yes, I know. We all ended up in the police station, didn’t we.’

  ‘How could he do that?’ Lokman said. ‘How could he . . .’

  ‘He could do it, Lokman, because your father did kill your sister,’ Saadet said baldly. ‘Kenan knew.’

  Lokman frowned and then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not right, Mother. Father was here with you and Auntie Feray, Nesrin and Aykan when it happened. He couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘Your father arranged it,’ Saadet said. ‘I didn’t know until we arrived here that day and I could do nothing about it! I didn’t believe it at first. Even when we went back to our burnt-out apartment, I didn’t believe it. But then the fire officers said that they’d found a body and I knew. I cried in your arms, remember, Lokman? Your father told me that he paid someone . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Saadet said. ‘Do you think if I knew that I’d be sitting here now? If I knew who killed my daughter I’d be fighting to get past you to get out of here. I don’t know his name. I would know his face, though. I need to get out to tell the police.’

  ‘Tell the police about my father?’ He looked shocked and horrified.

  ‘Your father killed Gözde!’ Saadet said. ‘He paid every kuruş we have so that it could be done! Why do you think we are so broke? Why do we not even try to go back to our apartment?’ She lowered her voice just in case her fat lump of a nephew might somehow hear her. ‘Your father has ruined everything, Lokman! He must be brought to justice! Think about it!’

  Stunned, Lokman looked down at his own hands as they lay limply in his lap. Still he said nothing.

  Saadet, desperate, leaned forward and tried to look into his face. ‘Last night, Lokman,’ she said, her throat drying against the words that she had to spit out now, ‘your father raped me. I am so sorry to have to tell you this, my son.’

  Not so much as a tiny flicker crossed his features. Whether he was shocked or not, she just couldn’t tell.

  ‘I need to get out of here and tell the truth,’ she said. It was her final attempt to reach him, which could, she knew, also be her last chance. ‘You have to help me, Lokman,’ she added. ‘If you do not, I will die in here. If not by your father’s hand, then by my own.’

  He looked up at her then with what to Saadet was an unknowable expression on his face.

  Sleeping in his car had not been an option. When he left Gonca’s house in the early hours of the morning, Mehmet Süleyman drove out to the beautiful village of Yeniköy, where he parked up beside the Bosphorus. There he sat, sleepless and eventually red-eyed, until the sun came up and he went to get a takeaway coffee from a small local büfe. Tired, depressed and still bewildered at his lover’s behaviour, he eventually managed to wake up enough to drive to the station, where he found that İzzet Melik was already waiting for him.

  ‘Sir,’ the sergeant said as soon as Süleyman entered his office, ‘sir, I was at the Tulip nargile salon last night, on my own time, and I got into conversation with the owner. We got on well and . . .’ He stopped and stared at his superior with a frown on his face. It was very rare that Süleyman looked anything less than immaculate, but this morning he was positively shabby.

  Süleyman lit a cigarette, which he then waved at his inferior. ‘Carry on,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to shout at you for going on about Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir. I’m not going to shout at you about anything.’

  İzzet was relieved. Although he hardly dare a
dmit it to himself, he had been worried in case his boss railed at him. They had not, after all, parted on anything like good terms the previous evening. Süleyman had been furious that İzzet had had the temerity to so much as breathe a word about his gypsy lover. Now he appeared subdued. It made İzzet wonder about what might have happened in the intervening twelve hours. Had Süleyman thought about what had been said and come to the conclusion that he had put İzzet and all his colleagues in a difficult position? Or had he maybe spoken to her, the gypsy, about it? Had they, she and he, argued about it, maybe? Had the gypsy’s family finally taken a hand in their business as Izabella Madrid had suggested? Süleyman did after all look more miserable than İzzet had ever seen him look before.

  ‘Sir, we have absolutely no reason, as far as I can tell, to think about any of Hamid İdiz’s other students. In terms of his murder, I mean. But these boys . . . or rather Murad Emin . . . I went, as I told you, to see his old piano teacher, Miss Madrid, again, and she is worried about him. Murad has changed in the last year, and not for the better.’ Seeing that Süleyman was about to speak, possibly to raise some sort of objection, he went on, ‘I know that Mr İdiz could still have been murdered by someone he just picked up somewhere. But sir, there is something wrong about this boy. Also, at the Tulip nargile salon, the boys play about on computers. They may just play games, Google women’s breasts. The owner of the place seems to think that what they do is quite innocuous, but I don’t know.’

  Süleyman leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. ‘You say you have an easy relaitionship with the owner?’

  ‘He offered me the use of his computers any time I wished,’ İzzet said. ‘I approached him in the guise of a wrestling coach; you know that is what my brother does. The owner of the Tulip is a great enthusiast. Offered to let me look up stuff about all the old Ottoman wrestlers on the net. It sounded fascinating.’

  ‘And did you take him up on this offer?’ Süleyman said.

  ‘No. I felt it was too soon, and also I need to know what I’m looking for before I do that. But I will do it when, with your permission, sir, I go to the Tulip for a lunchtime smoke.’

  ‘Of course.’ Süleyman sighed. ‘With my blessing, İzzet. Did either of the boys, Murad or Ali Reza, see you at the Tulip?’

  ‘Murad did,’ İzzet replied.‘But he didn’t acknowledge me in any way. I don’t know whether he recognised me or not. But if he did, I don’t think he said anything about it to his boss.’

  Süleyman frowned, ‘Mmm. Yes. All right, İzzet, get over there at lunchtime.’

  He didn’t say anything more. İzzet did think about maybe tackling him on what appeared to be a change of heart with regard to Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir, but then thought better of it. He had paperwork to catch up on, as well as, later, a bit of research prior to his visit to the Tulip. After all, if he was going to try and find out what the boys were looking at on the computers, he needed to know how best to do that. A visit to a friend of his in the computer support team was therefore a necessity. He sat down at his desk and switched on his own system in a silence that was very intense. What on earth could have happened to Süleyman?

  For his part, Mehmet Süleyman sat and smoked and inwardly berated himself for a fool. İzzet had always had a point with those two boys, Ali Reza and Murad. They were the only pupils of Hamid İdiz who had reported either seeing him masturbate or hearing about it. Ali Reza had not, apparently, been too disturbed by it, but Murad had. The boy had been upset and, in addition, had expressed some views that would point towards an antipathy towards homosexual people. And yet because of that one remark from the boy’s mother as they were leaving, that might or might not have referred to Gonca, Süleyman had chosen to ignore Murad. He had chosen to do that! Paranoid beyond belief that his wife would somehow find out about the gypsy, he had avoided anyone he thought might know about her for months. Even İkmen, he now realised, was from time to time kept at arm’s length. And then, as it had transpired, everyone apparently had known anyway! İzzet Melik had many faults, but lying was not one of them, and so Süleyman knew that it had to be true.

  He glanced across at his sergeant as he worked away diligently at his reports, and just the look of him made Süleyman feel ashamed. Murad Emin could well have killed Hamid İdiz, and both he and, most importantly, İzzet knew it. Thanks be to Allah for İzzet, the clear-sighted, noble, honest man! Süleyman wondered how he could possibly have allowed himself to let his own needs override his sense of justice. Murderers had to be caught, for the sake of everyone in the city, even the country. If in doing that his wife became aware of his infidelity with the gypsy, then so be it. Even the loss of his son, that dear, adored child, was not worth the danger that a killer on the loose represented. A killer could, after all, attack almost anyone once that first murder had been committed, even Mehmet Süleyman’s own beloved child.

  The Antep Apartments were in a small street not far from the Sultan Selim Mosque. A shabby 1960s concrete block that was typical of that part of the Çarşamba district, it had one large front entrance and a small back exit that was accessed by a concrete yard. At the back of that was a low wall, and beyond that a patch of waste ground where lots of little boys kicked plastic footballs about. In common with most areas where migrants from the countryside had settled, the streets teemed with people and life was lived very much out in the open. Women, though veiled, sat on their doorsteps, watching their children play and laugh and squabble amid the dust of the street. Men stood in small flat-cap-wearing groups on street corners, smoking, eating börek and discussing football.

  ‘This is not, İkmen, the sort of place where one passes unnoticed,’ said Commissioner Ardıç, Çetin İkmen’s boss, as he viewed with some distaste the domestic scene that was unfolding around their car. ‘These types . . .’ he waved a swollen, dismissive hand in the general direction of the street, ‘know their own, and they do not generally take kindly to outsiders.’

  Like İkmen, Ardıç was a city man born and bred, and like a lot of city people he did not have a great deal of time for unreconstructed migrants from the countryside. He routinely referred to the quarters where they lived as ‘ghettos’, and he viewed their often very separate lives as products of entirely their own making. That İstanbullus did not sometimes readily accept them was to Ardıç unthinkable. İstanbullus could not, apparently, do any wrong.

  ‘We can’t just arrest this family,’ İkmen said. ‘If we do, this Cem character will just disappear.’

  ‘So what is your plan?’ A small child, a girl in a cut-down adult dress with dirty hair and a sore on her lip, was looking at the men in the car with open curiosity. Ardıç, who viewed the urchin with disgust, tapped his driver on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you do something about that child? Shoo it away or something!’

  But İkmen very quickly put his hand on the driver’s shoulder too, holding him into his seat. ‘Actually, sir,’ he said, ‘we should maybe go now. I don’t want to call further attention to us. I just wanted you to see where this operation is going to take place.’

  ‘Oh, very well, if you say so.’ Ardıç shrugged. The car began to move slowly away from the kerb and towards the end of the road. ‘So this plan that you have . . .’

  ‘According to Constable Yıldız’s brother, the family will leave the apartment at seven o’clock tonight,’ İkmen said. ‘A team of plain-clothes officers will follow them and keep them under surveillance at all times. Sergeant Farsakoğlu has already made contact with the kapıcı of the building and is at this moment in his apartment, where I will join her at six o’clock this evening.’

  Ardıç frowned. ‘She’s a striking woman, Farsakoğlu. How did she get in there without attracting attention?’

  İkmen smiled. ‘It is really quite amazing what a set of dreary old clothes, no make-up and a very unfashionably tied headscarf can do,’ he said. It was true. The timid lady visitor to the apartment building’s caretaker had been almost unrecognisable as Ayşe. ‘We canno
t just occupy that building once the girl’s parents have gone, because we have to think about this Cem and where he might be. Maybe he will be watching to see that İsmail Yıldız does what he will hopefully be paid to do.’

  ‘Clearly we have to apprehend this character,’ Ardıç said. ‘Honour killing for money! Whatever next? But then that is your rural type, isn’t it, that—’

  ‘The aim of the operation is to secure the safe passage of the girl out of the apartment, to apprehend this Cem person and, ultimately, to take the girl’s family into custody,’ İkmen interrupted. He knew that their driver was a ‘rural type’, and was anxious not to let Ardıç offend his sensibilities. Try as the commissioner might to treat everyone equally and with some respect, İkmen knew that he just did not either understand or trust those migrants from the countryside who had not integrated into city life. The driver, he felt, fell into that category.

  ‘You’ve contacted the fire department?’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘They will expect a call from the kapıcı once the fire has been set and İsmail Yıldız has left the building.’

  ‘How are you going to manage that?’ Ardıç asked.

  İkmen smiled. ‘Oh, our colleagues at the fire department have told us how to create a very small, very noxious blaze, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Contained, I trust.’

  ‘Of course. Sir, this is largely acting.’

  ‘Mmm.’ The commissioner eyed him narrowly. ‘You’re rather good at that, İkmen. But that said, your face is somewhat familiar to the public due to your various media appearances.’ İkmen had, from time to time, been on television to give out statements on behalf of the İstanbul police. He had also, more recently, appeared on several news programmes in the wake of his very successful undercover operation in London, where he had almost single-handedly saved the life of the British capital’s mayor.

  With a sigh, İkmen flicked his own moustache and said, ‘This will go, and with a suit that is actually ironed . . .’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Ardıç said without a hint of irony in his voice. İkmen in smart clothes without his moustache was unrecognisable. ‘Just make sure that the vast horde of plain-clothes officers I have allowed you to use in order to support this operation know who you are.’