A Noble Killing

by Barbara Nadel

  There was a pause, a slight smirk even, then a very light and youthful voice said, ‘The job was done well.’

  ‘The girl . . .’

  ‘The girl is where her parents wanted her to be,’ Cem said. ‘Did you have any . . . problems?’

  ‘With the girl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause. İkmen had not discussed in detail what İsmail was supposed to say to Cem about how he had killed Sabiha. In the silence between the men, he winced.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Hikmet Yıldız asked him.

  ‘I should have briefed your brother more comprehensively about how he would kill the girl,’ İkmen said. ‘I . . .’

  ‘No problem getting in,’ İsmail said. ‘Luckily she had her back to me and so I just grabbed her from behind.’

  ‘Dangerous to pour the accelerant over her at such close quarters.’

  ‘I pushed her to the floor,’ İsmail continued. ‘She knocked her head as she fell, which stunned her, and as she lay there I poured it on to her and then lit a match. It was all over in seconds.’

  İkmen, hidden in the darkness of the night amongst the royal gravestones, made another painful face.

  ‘What do you mean, she died immediately?’ Cem asked, clearly shocked.

  ‘Well, no. No, she didn’t die immediately,’ İsmail said. ‘There was writhing around and some screaming and . . .’

  ‘You seem very cool for a man who has just taken the life of another,’ Cem said.

  ‘Ah! He is not convinced, I don’t think,’ İkmen said to Hikmet Yıldız. ‘This could be a problem.’

  ‘My brother is very imaginative,’ Hikmet said by way of at least some level of comfort for İkmen. Although even Hikmet was worried now. If Cem just upped and walked away, they would not have nearly so strong a case against him as either an outright confession or the exchange of money could demonstrate.

  ‘I took the life of a bad woman,’ İsmail said with some rather unexpected confidence. ‘How would you expect me to feel? This is pious work. I am elated.’

  ‘Well, yes, of course!’ This time it was Cem who was clearly wrong-footed.

  ‘Good boy,’ İkmen murmured. ‘Good, İsmail.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Cem repeated.

  ‘Such necessary work is an honour and a pleasure.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a pause while Cem drank his tea and İsmail Yıldız looked straight ahead with a small smile on his face.

  ‘So, um,’ Cem said eventually. ‘If more such opportunities were to come along . . .’

  ‘I would be delighted to oblige,’ İsmail said. He lowered his voice a little and added, ‘But, as we agreed, a man must eat, and . . .’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sometimes, İkmen felt, it wasn’t easy being a Turk. Unless one was talking about the desperate, hand-to-mouth criminal fraternity, common courtesy precluded any rapid route to discussion of money. Even the city’s most hardened gangsters winced away from it. Negotiations were always lengthy and frequently, at least to start with, oblique.

  ‘I may well contact you again, when another opportunity arises,’ Cem said.

  ‘Is that likely?’

  Cem smiled. ‘I have, shall we say, a few people to see.’

  They both went back to drinking their tea and quiet contemplation. Much as İkmen knew that İsmail could not hurry this meeting, he moved his feet agitatedly. He looked at Hikmet Yıldız, who was watching his brother intently. Cem was a completely unknown quantity; he could refuse to pay İsmail, he could attack him, he could even be armed. Gun-toting was not unknown even in very populous areas like Sultanahmet.

  İsmail Yıldız smiled. ‘Well, Cem Bey,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that I really have to go now. My brother will return home soon and I want to be there for him. I don’t want him asking any questions.’

  ‘No.’

  Cem did not move to take anything from either his jacket pocket or his trousers. Did he even have any money to give to İsmail? İkmen began to feel his heart pound.

  İsmail, still smiling, said, ‘And so, Cem Bey?’

  ‘And so . . .’

  ‘Cem Bey,’ İsmail persisted. ‘As I said before, a man must live . . .’

  Had İkmen been closer to the men, he would have seen a twinkle in Cem’s eye as he said, ‘Ah, so you don’t do what you do just for the sake of a place in Paradise?’

  İsmail looked down at the ground. ‘Were I a rich man, that would be my pleasure,’ he said. ‘But you sought out a poor man with no job. I am pious and observant, as you know, but . . .’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Cem said with a small chuckle in his voice. ‘You are of course quite right, and I have to thank you very sincerely on behalf of the girl’s family for a job well done.’

  He put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out what looked like a very heavily stuffed envelope.

  ‘Right, that’s it!’ İkmen said. Hikmet Yıldız beside him used his radio to call the constables still in the car on Divan Yolu. Then he drew his pistol and followed his superior up into the tea garden and nargile salon above. Cem looked confused as İkmen approached him. He barely noticed Hikmet Yıldız come in behind him. In vain he tried to take back the packet, but İsmail had now passed it over to İkmen.

  ‘Hello, Cem,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘Police. We’ve been dying to meet you.’

  Inspector İkmen was out, apparently. Not off duty and at home, but out.

  ‘He must be working somewhere,’ Lokman Seyhan said to his mother Saadet as he sat down beside her. They were in the waiting room at the front of the station together with all the other people who wanted to see this or that officer or just simply talk to the police.

  ‘Do they know when he will be getting back?’

  ‘No.’

  Saadet took one of her son’s hands in hers and said, ‘You should go back to the apartment. If your father finds both of us gone . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to him if he killed my sister,’ Lokman said. Then he sighed. ‘I don’t want to marry Nesrin.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘To him?’ Lokman said. ‘He’d made up his mind. You know how he is!’

  Saadet lowered her head. Yes, she knew how Cahit was when he made up his mind about something. Poor Lokman, the only thing she could not forgive him for was his treatment of his brother Kenan. That had been cruel and heartless; that had been just like his father. But she said nothing. A man sitting next to Lokman lay down on the bench and immediately began to snore.

  ‘If Father did arrange for Gözde to be killed . . .’

  ‘I swear to you that he did!’ Saadet said, looking around her all the time in case anyone might be listening.

  ‘Mother, you had better be very sure of your facts . . .’

  ‘I saw the killer with my own eyes,’ Saadet said.

  Lokman sat back in his seat as if deflated and said, ‘How?’

  ‘We passed him when we left the apartment on our way over to Fatih, on the day of Gözde’s death,’ she said. ‘Your father pointed him out to me. He made sure that I knew, that I felt pain, that I felt responsible for bringing such a bad girl into this world.’

  It had taken Lokman Seyhan some time and thought to decide what, if anything, he believed about his mother’s story. All afternoon and half the evening he had considered it, raking the facts she had told him over and over in his mind. To be truthful, he hadn’t believed her when he unlocked her room, let her out and helped her to get past his sleeping, snoring cousin, Nesrin. But he’d heard his father rape his mother the night before and he knew he couldn’t let her go through that all over again. Cahit had taken his cousin Aykan to a brothel, and Lokman knew that although his father would be what he described as ‘sorted out’ there, he’d still want his wife when he got home. A whore was just for a hand job or a blow, depending on how much money you had, but a wife was for intercourse and babies, and Lokman knew that his father wanted
to have more children. He had after all, as Cahit Seyhan put it himself, ‘lost’ two of his children, who now needed to be replaced. Since they had left Fatih, Saadet had told Lokman a lot more about his father and Gözde and how she had died. He was now sure that his mother was right. But he was still anxious about what the police might say and do. He was angry too, and not just at his father.

  ‘Why didn’t you do anything?’ he asked his mother as the door of the station opened and shut. It was not Çetin İkmen, but some man who just went up to the front desk and wept. ‘Why didn’t you try and save Gözde? You could have told me or Kenan or—’

  ‘Oh, and you would have believed me?’ Saadet said.

  ‘Kenan would . . . he did,’ Lokman said. ‘Remember his suicide note?’

  ‘Yes.’ Of course she did. But Kenan had only guessed, that, or he’d worked it out for himself. He hadn’t known, inasmuch as she had never told him. She had been too frightened of Cahit to speak to anyone, even the son, whom she knew would believe her and who would have helped her to spirit Gözde away. What a coward she had been! Afraid of a beating, afraid of giving up her own life for her young daughter. ‘I am not a good person. I am weak,’ she said at length. ‘I cannot bring Gözde back, or Kenan, but I must try to put some of it right now.’

  Lokman looked at her without the great affection he had once felt for her but with a new respect nevertheless. ‘I’m staying with you,’ he said. ‘We’ll get through this together. We don’t have anyone else.’

  Süleyman had already decided to pay a visit to Murad Emin’s piano teacher, Izabella Madrid, when he and İzzet Melik came across Gonca the gypsy. She was walking past the Church of St Mary of the Mongols and she had her youngest boy, Rambo, who was about twelve, with her. She did not look happy, and was shouting at the boy in the Roma language she used when she was alone with her family and friends. He, in turn, swore at her in Turkish and then, before anyone could stop him, ran over to Süleyman and said, ‘Shoot her with your gun! Go on! Shoot the old witch!’

  Rambo had always been a handful, but now that he was on the edge of puberty, he was taking on some of the characteristics of a monster.

  Süleyman, hideously embarrassed, especially in front of İzzet Melik, said, ‘Now, Rambo, that is no way to speak about your mother.’

  ‘She treats me like a kid!’ the boy said, and imitated his mother’s voice: ‘Oh come home now, Rambo, it’s dark!’

  ‘You shouldn’t play in the derelict houses up here!’ Gonca said as she made herself look at her boy and not at her lover. ‘Junkies take drugs in them! They’re full of needles! What do you want, eh, Rambo? You want to get AIDS?’

  The boy rounded on her furiously. ‘I won’t get AIDS!’ he shouted at her. ‘But you will! You fuck everything, you do!’

  Aware that they were losing what could be valuable time in the midst of this ‘domestic’, İzzet Melik put a hand on Süleyman’s arm. ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Rambo!’

  ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘You’re no better than that boy’s mum who sells her snatch for gear.’

  ‘I don’t sell myself!’ Gonca said as she finally looked at Süleyman and felt her heart jump inside her chest. Then she said to her son, ‘What woman? What do you mean?’

  Rambo looked at Süleyman and İzzet Melik and said, ‘The woman whose boy goes to the old Jewish woman who teaches piano.’ He prodded Süleyman’s chest with his finger. ‘She knows you.’

  It had to be Izabella Madrid, the woman they were on their way to see. ‘How do you know that, Rambo?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘What’s it worth?’ the boy answered arrogantly.

  Before Süleyman could answer, İzzet Melik pushed himself forward and took the boy by the scruff of his neck. ‘A fucking good smack if you don’t tell us!’ he said.

  Furious that her son should be manhandled by anyone except her, Gonca flew at İzzet and tried to prise his hands off Rambo, but without success. ‘Don’t you—’

  ‘How do you know Miss Madrid?’ İzzet persisted. ‘Come on, you little sod, tell me!’

  It wasn’t often that Mehmet Süleyman felt ineffectual, but this was one of those rare occasions. He just stood while İzzet shook the boy and Gonca tried unsuccessfully to get Rambo released.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t know the Jewish lady or the boy! I hear things, that’s all. See them about,’ Rambo said. He was trying to keep a defiant expression on his face but he was in reality really quite scared of someone as bulky, rude and seemingly without limits as İzzet. ‘The boy was hiding out in the derelict houses. The old woman come past and I told her he was in there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I dunno, couple of hours ago.’

  İzzet began to loosen his hold on the boy and said, ‘So did she go in to look for him? Did she?’

  Süleyman was looking over İzzet and Rambo’s heads at Gonca, who had now given up trying to rescue her son and was gazing back at the man she loved with tears in her eyes. To meet him unexpectedly like this was killing her. And yet she knew that it would not be the last time that something like this was going to happen. İstanbul, all twelve million people of it, was still at heart a collection of villages.

  At last Rambo spoke again. ‘Yes, she looked for him and she found him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I see them go off back down in the direction of the old synagogue. She had her arm around him. The silly boy was crying.’

  İzzet let Rambo go and looked across at Süleyman. ‘That doesn’t sound very much like the Murad Emin that we know,’ he said. ‘We’d best get down to Miss Madrid’s, sir.’

  Chapter 29

  * * *

  The girl Sabiha’s parents denied everything. They were, they said – or rather the father said for both of them – horrified that their daughter had apparently perished in a house fire. So far they hadn’t actually seen either their apparently ruined apartment or their dead daughter, but they had been devastated by the scene outside their block. Did they know a man called Cem? No, they didn’t. They knew no one by the name of İsmail Yıldız either.

  Cem, whose surname was apparently Koç, said very little. He was clear on the fact that he didn’t want a lawyer, but that was all.

  ‘You were recorded handing a sum of money comprising two thousand Turkish lire to a man called Ibrahim Yıldız in the Royal Tombs nargile salon earlier this evening,’ İkmen said. ‘What was that for?’

  Cem Koç turned away and stared at the smudgy grey wall of the interview room.

  İkmen looked at Ayşe Farsakoğlu and lit up a cigarette. Cem wrinkled his nose in very obvious disgust.

  ‘The law, for the moment, permits me to smoke, and so I shall,’ İkmen said. ‘If you don’t like that, Mr Koç, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  Resolutely silent, Cem Koç continued to stare at the wall.

  ‘Mr Yıldız is claiming that you employed him to kill a young woman called Sabiha Şafak,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said. ‘This was at the request of her parents, who, Mr Yıldız claims, wished to dispose of Sabiha because she had besmirched their honour. There was a young man involved, it was alleged.’

  Still nothing. İkmen frowned. On tape at least, Cem Koç had admitted no liability for the procurement of İsmail Yıldız’s services as a paid assassin. It had been alluded to, but no direct reference had been made to murder, and the girl had not been named. There was the money, and the fact that the key to the Şafaks’ apartment had been left ready for İsmail to let himself in. But there was also a lot of the brother of a policeman’s word against that of Mr Koç. In his head, İkmen could hear Ardıç’s fury. He could also imagine how difficult life could now become for İsmail Yıldız, who did, after all, have to go back to live in Fatih near this man Koç and, no doubt, Koç’s friends too.

  ‘Mr Koç,’ İkmen continued, ‘does the name Tayfun Ergin mean anything to you?’

  If he could give Koç an ‘out’, allowi
ng him to name and shame his boss – if indeed that was the case – that might help.

  Not a flicker.

  ‘We think,’ İkmen said, ‘that some people in this city are using honour killing as a way of making money. Can you imagine such a dreadful thing? Making money out of the misfortune of having a daughter or a wife who has dishonoured her family? How cynical! How opportunistic!’

  He felt rather than saw Ayşe look at him. She knew precisely what he was doing. Spiritual cop, secular cop. She slipped very easily into the role. ‘And what of the girls?’ she said. ‘Sabiha Şafak, then over in Beşiktaş, Gözde Seyhan burnt like a Roman candle. We’re also looking at some poor girls who have died mysteriously even further back than that.’

  They both saw that Cem Koç was about to speak. He stopped himself, then did let himself utter. ‘I know your name,’ he said to İkmen, ‘even if you don’t look the way you do on the television. You’re not concerned with honour! You are a man without God or tradition!’

  ‘Oh, and you are?’ İkmen asked. ‘A man who gives two thousand lire to another man in a nargile salon for, it would seem, no apparent reason? What’s that about?’

  ‘I’ve not done anything.’

  ‘Anything what?’ İkmen said. ‘Anything illegal, immoral, what?’

  ‘I . . .’ And then as if suddenly realising he was talking when he should be silent, Cem Koç shut up. He folded his arms across his chest, looked back at the wall and closed his mouth tight shut.

  Izabella Madrid’s apartment was dark and silent when they got there. There was no television set banging away in the background and there certainly wasn’t anyone at the piano. İzzet Melik looked at Süleyman, whose face was as troubled as the sergeant’s mind.