The woman Süleyman and Dr Sarkissian had found with her wrists slit in her bath had died, the pathologist reckoned, at the earliest at ten p.m. the previous evening. Well after Ayan had left the building. But had he gone back at some point? And if so, why? There was no evidence at all to suggest that Ayan had ever had designs on Ayşel Ocal. In fact, one resident had said that it was only Ayan who ever spoke to the man who sometimes came to visit Mrs Ocal. That was why they needed to find him.
Ömer looked down at the one picture he had of Ayan and found himself thinking that he looked like his father.
‘Ömer? Who’s that?’ Peri pointed at the photograph. They had met, as agreed, by the Greenpeace tent.
‘Someone we need to question,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘Just finished. I was on an early. You know, Ömer, nobody’s going to help you find anyone here.’
He frowned.
‘I mean, how many officers are lurking like death outside this park with their gas canisters and water cannon?’
‘I’m not here to arrest this man, only to talk to him,’ Ömer said.
‘Yes. Right.’
‘No, really!’ He took her arm and led her off the path and over to a more secluded area. He showed her the photograph again. ‘A woman was found murdered in her apartment this morning in Moda,’ he said. ‘This man is the kapıcı of her building. Three days ago he left to come and camp out here.’
‘Oh, so he can’t . . .’
‘We don’t think he killed her, not at the moment,’ Ömer said. ‘But the woman had a lover. Nobody in the building knew who he was or ever spoke to him. Except this kapıcı, Cafer Ayan. We need to find this boyfriend, as you can imagine, and this man Ayan is the only lead we have.’
‘So what are you doing?’ Peri said.
‘Just looking around. There’s three of us, including Inspector İkmen’s sergeant.’
‘Kerim Gürsel?’
‘He’ll be flattered you remembered his name. But Peri, he is married.’
She waved a dismissive hand. ‘I don’t need man trouble in my life, I’ve enough problems with a little brother.’
‘If I could I’d ID check every man here,’ Ömer said. ‘But given the situation and the mood . . .’
‘That would not go down well,’ she said.
‘So hence the stupid sneaking about after a man who has no friends, no family and whose only distinguishing characteristic is a limp.’
Peri crossed her arms over her chest and looked at her younger brother. He was clearly tired and looked crushed. She got the impression that his boss used him badly and hard much of the time. And although Süleyman had always been the soul of gallantry to her, she didn’t like him because she didn’t like it when Ömer looked like a whipped dog.
‘Well, you know what you need, don’t you, Ömer?’ she said.
‘What’s that? Divine intervention?’
‘Failing that.’
‘No.’
‘You need allies,’ she said. ‘You need people who can walk through these crowds looking for a man with a limp without sticking out like you do in your suit and tie and shiny shoes. Ömer, I have made friends here. Some of them are very colourful and flamboyant and some are not. But they all fit here and when I tell them that you need their eyes and ears to help you solve a murder I’m sure they’ll forgive you for being part of an establishment that wants to cut down innocent trees.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe.’
Then Ömer’s phone rang.
A junior researcher in a white coat, a kid by the look of him, brought tea for them both. When he’d gone Aylın Akyıldız closed her office door.
‘Ariadne and I worked together,’ she said. ‘But I never knew what she did in her leisure time.’
‘She never mentioned her work with the rubbish pickers of Gizlitepe or the name Ahmet Öden to you?’ İkmen said.
‘No. And believe me, I would have known if she had talked about Öden. My husband is an architect and he goes on about his buildings all the time.’
‘In what sense?’
‘He hates them,’ she said. ‘Says they’re unimaginative and poorly constructed. How does Öden come into the rubbish pickers of Gizlitepe? I thought he knocked their homes down to build some tower blocks.’
‘He did,’ İkmen said. ‘Which was why Dr Savva had issues with him.’
She frowned.
‘Dr Savva befriended the rubbish pickers and tried to get Öden, who had thrown them out of their homes, to rehouse them,’ İkmen said. ‘Because they were only ever tenants as opposed to owner occupiers, he didn’t strictly owe them anything. But they were and are homeless and Dr Savva felt sorry for them. She made representation to Öden on their behalf which he apparently took badly.’
Aylın Akyıldız drank some tea. ‘In what way?’
‘It is alleged that he threatened her. With what, I don’t know. That’s why I am speaking to her colleagues and friends,’ İkmen said.
She shook her head. ‘I wish I could help you, but I don’t know anything.’ She sighed. ‘And now they have taken Constantine Palaiologos to the museum . . .’
‘Oh?’
She looked very unhappy. Had Professor Bozdağ’s very apparent anger at what Savva and Akyıldız had been doing without him finally resulted in his taking over the entire project?
‘I knew I’d have to surrender him to the museum eventually, but my researches were not complete,’ she said. ‘What can you do? Ariadne should have shared her find with the museum, I know that. And anyway, there were other factors involved.’
‘What other factors?’
She looked as if she was struggling with something. Then she said, ‘Look, I know that maybe I should have told you, but for the last week I’ve been getting death threats.’
‘If you’ve been getting death threats you should definitely have told me,’ İkmen said. ‘What kind of death threats?’
‘Relating to the body,’ she said. ‘Palaiologos. Post and e-mails about how if I don’t stop working on the body I will be killed. Religious nonsense about how the body of an infidel king should be destroyed. What scared me the most was how they knew. As far as I know, it’s only myself, you and Professor Bozdağ’s team at the museum who know that the alleged emperor even exists.’
‘Unless Dr Savva told someone. Her lover? The father of her child? If we could locate him, then maybe we could find the baby. We’ve got uniformed officers interviewing men convicted of child abuse. I’ve even spoken to a woman who stole a baby from Yeşilköy thirty-five years ago. Nothing! Are you sure you never saw her with a man, Dr Akyıldız?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve wracked my brains but I can’t think of anyone,’ she said. ‘I knew so little about her.’
And yet her child had to have had a father. What also passed through İkmen’s mind was that maybe Professor Bozdağ or someone in his team had sent the death threats to get hold of the body for themselves. But they hadn’t needed to do that. As Dr Akyıldız had said, Ariadne should have shared the body with them when she’d first found it. They had a right to study those bones.
‘I’d like to see those e-mails and letters if you still have them,’ İkmen said.
‘I do. But our IT guy said that it was impossible to trace the e-mails.’
‘Well, let’s let our IT people have a look at them,’ İkmen said. ‘And with the letter maybe we can get some fingerprints or DNA.’
‘OK,’ she said.
He left with two word-processed letters and a stack of printed e-mails. They were standard religious fanatic fare, littered with words like ‘infidel’, ‘unbelievers’ and ‘unclean’. They could have come from almost any monomaniac. Or not. Although Dr Akyıldız had been wrong not to take these documents straight to the police, she had been right to be scared. Nobody at the museum would have spoken to anyone outside the institution about Palaiologos. If he was who Dr Savva thought he was, then he could be a jewel in their academic crown. And they all
cared about what they did.
What was particularly worrying was why Dr Akyıldız had only received death threats since Dr Savva’s death. Did that mean anything? One scenario that İkmen couldn’t shift from his mind was that Ariadne Savva had told her killer about her find to try and save her own and her baby’s lives. But that assumed that he or she would be interested in Palaiologos.
Maybe, if she had been murdered, it was so that her killer could gain access to the body. Maybe that had been his or her plan all along? But then why kill Savva when Akyıldız was the one who actually had Palaiologos in her possession?
Chapter 16
It was after midnight, and although the vast, ugly house was shut up for the night, a row of pink and green fairy lights around the front door merrily flashed on and off. Hürrem Teker pushed the doorbell again and tried to imagine what would be inside this house which looked like a frosted wedding cake. Vast gilded sofas sitting on expensively cheap-looking carpets and more leather than a herd of bulls, probably. At her side, she heard Mehmet Süleyman clear his throat.
There were five of them outside Ahmet Öden’s Bebek house: Teker, Süleyman, Ömer Mungun and two uniforms. A ridiculously overblown display of manpower for just one person. It seemed stupid that someone of her seniority was there at all. But Öden, whatever he had or hadn’t done, was powerful, and that, if nothing else, had to be taken into account and respected.
A young man, bleary eyed and wearing old-man style candy-striped pyjamas, opened the door.
Teker held up her ID. ‘Police,’ she said. ‘We want to speak to Mr Ahmet Öden.’
‘He’s in bed. What—’
‘Who are you?’ Teker asked.
‘I’m his brother.’
‘Get him up then, Mr Öden,’ Teker said. ‘Tell him we need to speak to him.’ She looked at the two uniforms. ‘You, round the back.’
‘What do you want to speak to him for?’
‘That’s between us and your brother. Now are you going to get him up or am I?’ Teker said.
The young man, who had to be Semih Öden by Teker’s reckoning, let the three of them into the house and took them through to a large, modern lounge. They all took their shoes off. Then the young man went to fetch his brother.
Teker, Süleyman and Ömer Mungun stood on a shocking-pink carpet the size of a swimming pool and tried to look anywhere that wasn’t lurid. Eventually Süleyman said, ‘I’m speechless,’ but then they all stayed silent until Ahmet Öden appeared.
Although clearly just roused, he looked alert and even groomed in his faux karate suit pyjamas. ‘What do you want?’
He addressed Teker and only her, as she had known he would.
‘We’d like to know where you were last night between nine p.m. and two a.m.,’ she said.
‘I was here,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Can anyone corroborate that?’
‘What, that I was here? I imagine so,’ he said. ‘My daughter was sick yesterday and so I stayed here at home all day and all night.’
‘I trust your daughter is better now.’
‘Yes. Much.’
‘However, she is a minor.’ Teker smiled. ‘Were any adults in the house last night? Your brother?’
Semih Öden had not returned with his brother.
‘No. But my daughter’s English nanny, Mary Cox, was here.’
‘Then we’ll need to speak to her,’ Teker said. ‘Is she here now?’
‘Yes. What’s this about?’ he said. ‘Why do you want to know where I was last night? What’s happened?’
‘Mr Öden, would you please go and wake Mary Cox,’ Teker said. She looked at Ömer Mungun. ‘Sergeant, would you please accompany Mr Öden.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Accompany me!’ Ahmet Öden’s face flushed. ‘What do I need him with me for?’ He moved towards Teker and pushed his face into hers. ‘What’s this about, Commissioner? Have you come to arrest me? What for? I am a law-abiding citizen whose sole focus is to improve this city. Not some hooligan sitting down on the grass in Gezi Park smoking drugs and drinking beer!’
Teker remained calm. She’d been expecting this. Either he was a good actor or he hadn’t seen the news.
‘A woman we believe has a connection to you has been found dead in an apartment in Moda,’ she said.
He stood, his mouth slightly open. Silent.
‘The woman’s name hasn’t as yet been released to the media,’ Teker said. ‘But she was called Mrs Ayşel Ocal.’
‘Known as “Gülizar” when she used to strip for a living,’ Süleyman said.
‘I believe so.’ Teker smiled. ‘Twenty-five years old, originally from Sulukule . . .’
‘How on earth would I know anyone like that!’ Öden said. ‘How?’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know, sir. But she had a lot of photographs of you on her computer and you weren’t just drinking coffee and making polite conversation, if you know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t actually, I—’
‘In one you were naked and in a state of arousal,’ Süleyman said. ‘Another, one of many, was what I believe is called a “selfie” of you and Mrs Ocal where you are both naked and you have a hand on—’
‘This is monstrous!’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Why would someone like me know some foul, indecent gypsy?’
‘I never said she was a gypsy,’ Süleyman said.
‘You said she came from Sulukule!’ he bellowed. ‘They were all dirty gypsies there!’
‘Gypsies, mainly, dirty—’
‘I don’t know this woman! The photographs are fakes! Composites! People can do such things on computers now,’ he said. ‘Show them to me!’
‘The computer is being examined by forensic investigators. They’re part of a crime scene. I can’t.’
‘Well, they have to be composites anyway!’ he said. ‘Have to be!’
‘Why? Why would Mrs Ocal make composite sex pictures of you?’ Teker said. ‘Unless of course you do know about this because she was trying to blackmail you. Gypsies can’t like people like you, Mr Öden, can they? Developers who destroy their homes.’
Suddenly deflated, he sat down on one of his many pink sofas and put his chin in his hands.
‘Quite honestly, if you were having an affair with this woman, I couldn’t give a damn,’ Teker said. ‘Even if you bought that Moda apartment for her, it’s none of my business.’
The kapıcı of the Moda building still hadn’t been found, and so far all that had come to light had been a large set of photographs of Öden, with Ayşel Ocal or alone, often asleep on her bed. He’d been to that apartment. He’d certainly had sex with her. That no one in the building had recognised him meant either that he always went to Moda in disguise or that no one in the block knew who he was.
‘The reason we’re here,’ Teker continued, ‘is to find out where you were between the hours of nine a.m. last night and two p.m. this morning. If you had an affair with her, I really don’t care. I want to know if you killed her.’
Yiannis Negroponte couldn’t sleep. A twenty-five-year-old woman had been found dead in her apartment at Moda. Although the police had not released her name to the media, he wondered whether it could be Gülizar the gypsy. And, although he had never borne her any ill will, he hoped that it was her. The police suspected foul play and so whether her lover Ahmet Öden had killed her or not was almost irrelevant. Somehow his connection to her would come up and then his reputation as an upright, moral man would be ruined. Then he’d leave them alone.
He read the news item in Cumhuriyet again. The woman had been found in a third-floor apartment in a block that overlooked the Sea of Marmara. That described Gülizar the gypsy’s accommodation exactly. Yiannis breathed raggedly. Did he dare to hope that it was her? Did he further dare to dream that Öden had killed her?
But if he had, he couldn’t think why. Unless it had been an accident. Although she was very obviously sexy, Gülizar was discreet and she was his only mis
tress, which implied that he had to be attached to her. But had she been attached to him?
He was good-looking and rich but other than that – if one needed any more than that – he was an odious bigot. As a gypsy, Gülizar must have been affected by developers like Öden, if not Öden himself. They bought sites in gypsy areas with impunity. Or so it seemed to Yiannis. Had she finally argued with him about it and he’d killed her in a fight?
He heard Anastasia cough upstairs and breathed shallowly so that he could hear her. If she suddenly gagged he might have to go up and make sure that she was all right. But she didn’t and he went back to his newspaper again. In the morning, when Hakkı came in, he’d ask him if he’d heard any more about the killing in Moda. He knew Çetin İkmen well and so the inspector might have told him something.
‘The last time I went in to see Kelime last night was eight o’clock,’ Mary said. ‘Mr Semih Öden had left to go back to his own apartment, and because Kelime was ill, it was decided that we would all have an early night.’
Although Mary spoke reasonable Turkish, Teker had decided to conduct her interview in English. It was the middle of the night and the woman was clearly scared – it made sense and would hopefully reduce misunderstanding.
‘When I went in this morning at seven, Mr Öden was lying on top of the bed I’d made up for him in Kelime’s room,’ Mary said.
‘Was he in his night clothes or dressed?’ Teker asked. ‘I ask because you said that he was on top of the bed and not inside.’
‘He was in his night clothes. But it was hot.’
‘Do you know whether Mr Öden left his daughter’s room at all during the night?’
Süleyman had asked the question. Mary turned her attention to him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I certainly didn’t hear anyone moving around in the night and I sleep in the room next door to Kelime. Not that I did sleep.’
‘And yet I noticed a bottle of sleeping pills on your nightstand, Miss Cox.’
She turned back to Teker.
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