Some spirit was whispering my brother’s last words, which were stuck in my child’s mind like a rusty knife. Back then Büyükdere Avenue was still long, but it didn’t have much traffic; you could amble across it, from one side to the other.
“Take a good look at this avenue, Sadık,” my big brother had said to me; I was just starting elementary school. “It’s a border, a border that shows which class you belong to.”
The only kind of class I knew about was the one where I’d learned to read and write and do arithmetic. I didn’t understand what my brother was trying to say, not until much later, when I enrolled in the police academy.
The pain of those memories was always with me. Years later, I finally understood what my brother was trying to tell me, but it was too late; I felt classless.
The Bosphorus side of the avenue was full of luxurious apartment complexes, paved roads, fancy playgrounds, and glamorous shopping centers. The east side—Gültepe, Çeliktepe, and Sanayi Mahallesi—was a dump where the hopeless, the poor, laborers, immigrants from villages near and far, and Gypsies took refuge. It was a black hole.
I didn’t stay long in that apartment with my father, stepmother, and stepsister. Two years later I moved in with my aunt in Ankara. Ankara was heavy, it was stone; it weighed upon me.
The door opened. lhan Bey, a tall man in his fifties, with short hair and a bony, smiling face, walked in. He approached me with quick steps that hardly suited a man of his stature.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Sadık Bey,” he said as he shook my hand. “We’re so busy these days, and unfortunately I’ve got another meeting that I must attend in just a few minutes.”
I simply smiled in response. His hands were like ice, and I felt oddly unnerved; I’d never felt like that before.
He invited me to sit at the long conference table.
“What can I do for you?”
His tie was sticking out of his jacket; he tucked it back in. It was just the two of us sitting next to each other, but for some reason it felt like all the other chairs at the table were occupied too. My eyes wandered over the empty chairs and up to the cameras. lhan Bey was smiling. I kept waiting for him to look at the watch he was covering with his right hand, but he insisted on focusing his attention elsewhere.
“I wanted to talk to you about the body found on the twelfth floor four days ago.”
lhan Bey didn’t budge. He just kept looking at me, silently.
“You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did,” he replied. “Murat Bey and I worked together for years on the board of directors. I don’t know what to say. You never know when your time will come.” He was still wearing the same expression as he said these words.
“You probably have your suspicions about who killed him, don’t you?”
“Killed him?” he asked. He didn’t seem surprised by my question, though. He didn’t look angry or agitated either.
“That’s what we think, sir. And I did a background check on you.”
“You needn’t have gone to the trouble,” he said, smiling. “All you had to do was ask; I would have told you whatever you wanted to know.”
“It must be a tough job, being vice president of the firm.”
He finally raised his arm and looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, Sadık Bey, but I don’t have much time. Can you please get to the point?”
“I could’ve called you in to the station. In fact, I could take you in right now. So please don’t make a fuss if I take a few extra minutes of your time.”
“I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m happy to hear you out. But there is no way you are taking me anywhere. You can be sure of that.” The determined look in his eyes seemed to imply that he had friends in high places.
“You were born in Çeliktepe. You attended Robert High School and then …”
“I graduated from Bosphorus University. Did my doctorate in America. Worked with some of Turkey’s biggest business magnates. I know my own life story, Sadık Bey.”
I smiled.
“Do you know who you are?” he asked, his voice calm as could be. He continued: “I know who you are, Sadık Bey.”
“Really?” He was mocking me.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, all you need to know is that I’m a policeman and you’re a suspect!”
“So you say. But the truth of the matter is, I couldn’t care less about Murat Bey’s death, and you can’t pin a thing on me, Sadık Bey. Let’s be frank. If there’s something you have to say to me, just come out and say it. I’m wasting precious time here.”
There was plenty to say, but at that moment I felt it was still too early. I stood up. lhan Bey peered at me for a moment before rising to his feet as well.
“Thank you, lhan Bey,” I said, extending my hand.
“Is that it?” He seemed a bit unsettled.
“That’s it,” I said.
I shook his cold hand again, and he thanked me. He walked to the conference room door and opened it. As he started to walk out, I called after him.
“That makes five murders,” I said. “I’m not going to let you get away with a sixth.”
His hand was still on the door handle. He squared his shoulders and his face flashed red with anger. He looked arrogant. He closed the door and took two steps toward me.
“I knew your brother, Sadık Bey. He was a few years older than me, and he was my big brother too. When he pointed a gun at someone, he fired; but you—you’re just trying to corner me with a pistol of blanks. I really don’t know how it is that we didn’t meet when you were a kid. There was something your brother used to say: If you’re going to do something, do it with your body and your soul.”
I took a long look at his face.
I left the skyscraper through exit number four and walked toward a fountain flanked by ugly, stylized lion statues. I lit a cigarette. I could tell I was being followed; I could feel it.
My cell phone rang. It was Faruk. “Where are you, sir?” he asked. I told him to go on home. My hotel was nearby.
It was starting to get dark. I began walking, up the stairs and to the top of the hill. I remembered this place. We used to come here to fly kites or play ball sometimes. It was a soccer field of natural grass, but once we found a woman’s body here; the grass was yellow and her head had been smashed with a stone.
I made it up to Büyükdere Avenue; there was an iron rail that ran between two lanes to keep people from crossing.
I walked toward the bus stop, where a group of people were standing waiting. I killed some time glancing around at the towering buildings and skyscrapers. I had five bodies, five skyscrapers, and one suspect who really shouldn’t even be called a suspect. I didn’t have a shred of evidence; all I had was a hunch. I kept my eye on the bus stop across the street, the factory stop … Faruk had told me they call this place “Silicon Valley” now. I took the stairs leading down from behind the stop, and then walked through the underpass and along the dirty dimness of flickering fluorescent lights and the reverberating drone of traffic, before emerging on the other side and heading up another set of stairs. The old Neyir building had been turned into a courthouse, restored complete with black windows to give it a modern air. The pharmaceutical factory was still there across from the new courthouse, but with a few added stories and an annex in the rear. As I walked toward the factory stop, I was so sure of the footsteps silently trailing after me that I didn’t even turn around to make sure they were really there.
Faruk was blabbering about something he’d read in the paper. “Sadık Bey, they say that if all the toilets in the skyscrapers on this avenue were flushed at the same time, Istanbul’s entire sewage system would explode,” he told me, laughing.
“We’d really be up shit creek then, wouldn’t we?” I said.
“Somebody ought to test that theory,” Faruk replied, still laughing.
As I made my way toward Mövenpick Hotel in 4th Levent, I could still feel the pair of
eyes behind me. The road used to be lined with all kinds of factories, big and small, but now the corporations had taken over and it was one long series of buildings fronted by black glass, all postmodern, all tightly guarded by private security companies, all rigged with cameras in every corner.
About ten minutes later I reached the lot where the bus terminal used to be, before they tore it down. Somebody would want to erect a skyscraper here too; it was just a matter of time. I crossed the street at the Çeliktepe intersection. When I reached an iron curtain surrounding a new skyscraper still under construction, I turned around and looked behind me, hoping to see the eyes that were following me.
When I entered the hotel lobby, my head was spinning from all the noise and the strange melancholy I had picked up on the avenue. The woman at the reception desk greeted me with a smile and handed me the card key to my room.
I was planning to have a cup of coffee in the lobby and then head out to grab a bite to eat. But then I noticed that a man sitting by himself in the lobby was watching me. A blue halo of cigarette smoke encircled his head. When he saw me look at him, he put out his cigarette, stood up, and walked toward me. “Hello Sadık,” he said, with a confident smile on his face.
I gave him a quizzical expression. “Hello.”
The look on his face was eerily distant. He was a big guy—big-boned, that is, though with a bit of a paunch and chubby cheeks; he must have been in his mid-fifties. I couldn’t place him.
He continued to smile as he shook my hand.
“I could imagine you growing up to be just about anything but a police officer,” he said, still polite as could be.
Maintaining my air of formality, I responded to his words—which seemed more an expression of surprise than a compliment—with a slight smile.
“I didn’t expect you to remember me,” he said as he sat down. “My name’s Haldun, I was a friend of your brother’s.”
I tried to look him in the eye. There was something there, something hidden. But nothing about him reminded me of the man from thirty years ago, nothing but a subdued tone of compassion in his voice that made me think of my brother’s funeral.
I just stood there, frozen, while he continued to smile.
“Why don’t you have a seat?”
We sat across from one another. I felt sheepish and guilty, the way you feel when you run into someone, especially someone older than you, and you just can’t place them. Though my body may not have followed suit, I knew that my soul was crouching in some corner.
Haldun Abi and I left the hotel and walked toward the factory stop. He talked the whole time, as if he was desperate for conversation, but I don’t remember a thing he said.
We reached Kanyon, a high-class mall, and he said to me, “I can hardly take someone like you out just anywhere, now can I?”
He passed through security like a ghost, as if nobody even saw him. The security officer walked up to me. I showed him my police ID and he took a step back.
As we walked through the broad corridors of Kanyon, Haldun Abi asked me, “So, how are things in Ankara?” He said it like he needed a breather; tired of kicking the ball around by himself, he decided it was my turn now.
My response added up to less than a minute of trite clichés, and Haldun Abi reacted by giving me an odd expression. Actually, it wasn’t really so much odd as it was angry.
We sat down at a restaurant. I ordered for both of us. Haldun Abi lit a cigarette. I could read the annoyance in the dull look on his face.
“I’m waiting for you to ask,” he said all of a sudden.
“Ask what?”
“Why I came to find you after all these years.”
How could I? I remained silent.
“I talked with lhan. He said you went to see him this afternoon.” He sounded irritated. “That’s why I came to the hotel. I’m telling you this because, even though we haven’t seen each other for years, you’re important to us. No matter how old you are, we have to look out for you; you’re his little brother. You understand?” His questioning eyes were fixed squarely upon me.
I nodded. I could understand him trying to protect me, but protect me from what, I had no idea. If there was anyone who needed protecting, it was lhan, not me.
“With everything changing as quickly as it is, there are certain things we have to do to stay afloat. You’re a policeman, you have certain obligations to the state.”
I’d heard this kind of talk before, and I could sense where it was leading.
The waiter brought us our food. He looked tense for some reason. He left a huge plate of pasta with seafood and a glass of dark beer in front of Haldun Abi. I’d asked for mantı.
Haldun Abi put out his cigarette and started digging into his food. He paused and looked me straight in the face. “You’re going to end this investigation and go back to Ankara. If you try to mess with lhan, they’ll kill you,” he said.
Blood rushed to my head, and I knew that if I didn’t keep my composure, I was going to say the first words that came to mind, and that I would regret it later.
“You have no right to order me around like that, Haldun Abi. Especially when it comes to a matter like this. Take it any further and I’ll have to bring you in,” I replied.
He began to laugh. It seemed my words had put him in a good humor. He laid down his fork, which was still wrapped in spaghetti, and covered his mouth with a napkin. The color was back in his chubby cheeks.
“I know more about those guys who died in the skyscrapers than you do.”
“As much as you’ve heard on the news,” I said.
He picked up his glass and took a sip. He leaned back, relaxed, it seemed.
“I knew every one of them,” he said.
“You trying to get me to cough up some info about the investigation, Haldun Abi?” I asked.
“I don’t need to. Like I said, I know more than you do.”
“What do you know?”
“Every one of them was on the board of directors at the firm where he worked. These aren’t ordinary, unconnected murders. I’m going to tell you why, but first you have to tell me why you suspect lhan.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Yes, you can. If you don’t, then I can’t tell you who’s next.”
I looked at the plate of mantı in front of me. I felt bloated, though I’d only had a few spoonfuls. I motioned for the waiter. I asked him to take my plate and bring me a beer.
I turned and stared at Haldun Abi. “How can you help me?”
“If you tell me what you know, I’ll answer all your questions. Now let’s start with lhan,” he said.
I had a slight headache. I undressed and took a shower. When I got into bed, I couldn’t erase the image of Haldun Abi’s scornful smile from my mind. I picked up my phone from beneath the bedside lamp and called Faruk, waking him. I told him to come to the hotel for breakfast in the morning with all the files on the murders with him, and to pick up a copy of The Communist Manifesto—a legitimate one—on his way over.
* * *
Once we’d finished our dinner, we moved to the restaurant bar. I wanted to go back to the hotel, but Haldun Abi said that he hadn’t yet told me what it was he really wanted to say. I couldn’t possibly grasp the real reason he wanted me to go back to Ankara, he said, and he didn’t know what he had to do to make me understand.
“Just cut to the chase then,” I said, “and tell me.”
He began tapping out a rhythm on the glass of beer in front of him; he seemed to be mumbling a tune to himself. “Have you read The Communist Manifesto?” he asked.
“Back when I was in the police academy, yes,” I said with a smile.
“Good, then maybe you’ll recall how it starts: A specter is haunting Europe …” He began to laugh. Either he was shitting me or he was testing me. “Marx came up with this theory, shortly before his death, that the center of the world revolution had moved to the east, and everyone thought that meant Russia.” He looked at me silentl
y, with an earnest expression on his face, as if his words held some profound meaning. “These skyscrapers are built on the bodies of revolutionaries. These deaths aren’t murders, they’re revenge.” His face was red now, but it wasn’t from all the beer, it was because he was in pain; tears had welled up in his eyes and he was trying hard to keep them in.
“So is a leftist organization responsible for this? Or is someone bigger behind it?”
“No, no. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
I woke the next morning to the ringing of my hotel room phone. I felt like I’d been roused from a nightmare just in time.
“I’m in the lobby, Sadık Bey,” said Faruk.
A corner of the breakfast table was covered with files, and on top lay a copy of the Manifesto. I picked up the book and flipped past the prefaces. The book started just as Haldun Abi had said.
I went ahead and began eating my breakfast in silence. I could see from Faruk’s face that he had a million and one questions that he was dying to ask me.
“So what do you think about the murders?” I asked.
“There are so many questions I just can’t get my head around,” he replied. “You know the old cliché about how there’s no such thing as the perfect crime? Well, these five murders are perfect! For now, at least. The officer handling this case before you, he and I talked about it a lot. Every single person we tagged as a suspect proved where they were and what they were doing at the times of the murders. We couldn’t find any sort of connection between the murder victims and the suspects we took in. We weren’t able to turn up a shred of concrete evidence.”
“Was there any abstract evidence?”
Faruk was trying to understand what I was getting at, but I knew he wouldn’t be able to.
“I mean, did you encounter anything that seemed beyond reason?”
“Yeah, five bodies,” he said, chuckling.
My cell phone started ringing. I looked at the number and handed the phone to Faruk. “Will you take it? It’s the police department.”
Istanbul Noir Page 20