A Passion for Killing Read online

  Copyright © 2007 Barbara Nadel

  The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2011

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978 0 7553 7892 0

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Praise for Barbara Nadel

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Cast of Characters

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Carpets

  T E Lawrence

  The Ottoman Empire in the First World War

  Footnotes

  About the Author

  Trained as an actress, Barbara Nadel used to work in mental health services. Born in the East End of London, she now writes full time and has been a regular visitor to Turkey for over twenty years. She received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger for her novel Deadly Web in 2005. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Francis Hancock series set during World War Two.

  Praise for Barbara Nadel:

  ‘Barbara Nadel is in that admirable school of British crime novelists who set their mysteries in cities not their own. It feels right’ Marcel Berlins, The Times

  ‘Nadel’s novels take in all of Istanbul – the mysterious, the beautiful. Her characters are vivid, creating a fascinating view of contemporary Turkey’ Scotland on Sunday

  ‘The delight of the Nadel book is the sense of being taken beneath the surface of an ancient city which most visitors see for a few days at most. We look into the alleyways and curious dark quartiers of Istanbul, full of complex characters and louche atmosphere’ Independent

  ‘This is an extraordinarily interesting first novel’ Evening Standard

  ‘Belshazzar’s Daughter, with its brilliantly realised Istanbul setting and innovative protagonist was a hard act to follow. But she pulls off the trick triumphantly’ The Times

  ‘One of the most intriguing detectives in contemporary crime fiction . . . The backdrop of Istanbul makes for a fantastic setting’ Mail On Sunday

  ‘Unusual and very well-written’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Intriguing, exotic . . . exciting, accomplished and original’ Literary Review

  To my favourite carpet dealers.

  Acknowledgements

  * * *

  This book was written with enormous assistance from Tribal Collections carpet dealership in Göreme, Turkey. Without the expert guidance and help provided by Ruth, Faruk and Hüseyin I would have been totally lost. The world of carpets is fascinating and fun but also intricate and complicated. So a big thank you to all those involved, which includes the many carpet buyers and aficionados that I talked to as well. Any errors that may be found within this book are nothing to do with any of my tutors – they are totally and utterly all my own!

  Glossary

  * * *

  Bakkal – grocery shop

  Balık Pazar – fish market

  Belediye – local council

  Bey – as in ‘Çetin Bey’, an Ottoman title denoting respect, still in use today following a man’s first name

  Çay ocağı – a small space in a public building, often under the stairs, from which tea is dispensed from a samovar by a usually very old functionary

  Efendi – an honorific Ottoman title denoting a person of high status. Always used when addressing a prince or princess

  Gulet – a wooden yacht

  Han – tradesman’s hall, inn. Sometimes called a caravanserai

  Jandarma – while the Turkish National Police Force are responsible for law and order in the urban districts, the Jandarma cover the rural areas. They are a paramilitary force under joint control of the military and the Interior Ministry

  Kapalı Çarşı – Grand Bazaar

  Kapıcı – Doorkeeper. Blocks of flats have kapıcılar, men who act as security, porters etc., for the apartment community

  Kilim – flat woven rug

  Mısır Çarşı – the Spice Bazaar

  MIT – Turkish Secret Service

  ‘Mehmet’ – affectionate generic name for the ‘average’ Turkish solider. Like the British ‘Tommy’

  Namaz – Muslim prayer, performed five times a day

  Nargile – a water or ‘hubble bubble’ pipe used for smoking tobacco

  Pide Salonu – a restaurant specialising in the slightly leavened style of bread known as pide. This may be eaten with a variety of toppings including eggs, vegetables, meat and cheese

  Rakı – aniseed-flavoured alcoholic spirit

  Sigara Börek – savoury pastry shaped like a cigarette

  Vizier – minister. The Grand Vizier was the Ottoman equivalent of a Prime Minister

  Zabıta – dedicated market police. The Zabıta check that weights and measures are correct

  Cast of Characters

  * * *

  Çetin İkmen – middle-aged İstanbul police inspector

  Mehmet Süleyman – İstanbul police inspector, İkmen’s protégé

  Commissioner Ardıç – İkmen and Süleyman’s boss

  Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoğlu – İkmen’s deputy

  Sergeant İzzet Melik – Süleyman’s deputy

  Metin İskender – young İstanbul police inspector

  Dr Arto Sarkissian – İstanbul police pathologist

  Abdullah Ergin – an İstanbul Tourism Police officer

  Fatma İkmen – Çetin İkmen’s wife

  Zelfa Süleyman – Mehmet Süleyman’s wife

  Muhammed Süleyman – Mehmet Süleyman’s father

  Raşit Bey – an elderly carpet dealer, a friend of Muhammed Süleyman

  Mürsel Bey – a spy

  Haydar – Mürsel’s sidekick

  Peter Melly – an official at the British Consulate and a carpet collector

  Matilda Melly – his wife

  Wilhelmus (Wim) Klaassen – an official at the Dutch Consulate

  Doris Klaassen – his wife

  Kim Monroe – wife of a Canadian consular official

  Nikolai Stoev – Bulgarian Mafia ‘Godfather’

  Emine Soylu – wife of murder victim Cabbar Soylu

  Prelude

  * * *

  By modern standards the carpet was immense. It must, the elderly carpet dealer reckoned as he passed his expert eye across the piece, measure at least three metres by nine metres.

 
‘They rarely make them like this any more, Muhammed Efendi,’ he said to his tall and equally elderly companion.

  ‘No,’ the other replied – a little sadly, the carpet dealer felt. ‘No, Raşit Bey, this carpet is from another time and place entirely.’

  And then both the carpet dealer, Raşit Bey, and his friend Muhammed Efendi looked back at the small, rather shabby wooden house that was the latter’s current abode.

  ‘Come, let us sit and take tea under the apple trees,’ Muhammed Efendi said as he guided his friend over to a table and chairs set underneath some trees to the left of his lawn which was now almost entirely covered by the rich, enormous carpet.

  Raşit Bey breathed deeply as he walked, looking around the verdant garden with great pleasure. ‘The springtime in İstanbul is hard to better, is it not, Muhammed Efendi?’

  ‘Impossible, in my humble opinion,’ Muhammed Efendi replied.

  They sat.

  ‘My son, Murad, will bring tea presently,’ Muhammed Efendi said as he offered Raşit Bey a cigarette from his silver and mother-of-pearl case.

  ‘Thank you, Muhammed Efendi,’ Raşit Bey said as he took what was a very cheap cigarette from what he knew was a very valuable box. But then that was so typical of a certain section of the old aristocracy. People like Muhammed Süleyman Efendi, or ‘prince’ Muhammed, lived gracious poverty-stricken existences in Bosphorus villages like this one – Arnavutköy – if they were lucky. If they were not, they lived up in the high rise, scrappy suburbs out near Atatürk Airport. Muhammed Süleyman, although never personally having done a day’s work in his life, was very fortunate in having two sons who worked very hard. The eldest, a hotel manager, as Raşit Bey understood, now approached the elderly men with a tray bearing tea glasses and an ashtray.

  ‘Ah, Murad,’ Muhammed Efendi said as he watched his son serve himself and his friend. ‘Thank you.’

  Murad, who was a pleasant-looking man in his forties, first bowed and then lit the cigarettes of both men before returning to the small house he shared with his parents and his own young daughter.

  Once his son was out of sight, Muhammed Efendi turned to his friend and said, ‘You know it isn’t right that Murad should still be alone at his age.’

  ‘Ah, but Muhammed Efendi, your poor son’s wife died in such terrible circumstances. Maybe he feels that looking after his daughter and being, as I know he is, such a good son to you and your wife is enough for him now.’

  Muhammed Efendi shook his head sadly. Murad’s wife had died in the great earthquake of 1999, leaving her husband to mourn bitterly and to bring up their daughter Edibe alone. He’d returned to his parents’ house in Arnavutköy almost immediately where, his father imagined, he would remain for ever unless things changed quite dramatically. But Murad was not the reason why Raşit Bey was in his garden now and so he turned his attention back to his friend and the business he wished to conduct with him.

  ‘So now, this carpet, Raşit Bey . . .’

  ‘Is a wonderful Ottoman Court Carpet, as I know you know, Muhammed Efendi.’ He leaned forward, stiffly, and took a corner of the great carpet between his fingers. The pile was thick, luscious and contained, as he knew that it would be, a high proportion of silk in the weave. ‘What, if I may be so bold, is its provenance?’

  ‘It belonged to one of my aunts,’ Muhammed Efendi said. ‘Do you remember the Princess Gözde? She lost her fiancé in the Great War when she was sixteen and spent the rest of her life in mourning. She was a recluse and so, even though she was my father’s sister, I saw her only infrequently.’

  ‘Did she live in one of those large wooden palaces up in Nişantaşı?’

  ‘Yes.’ Muhammed Efendi smiled. ‘By the end of the fifties most people had forgotten her existence. The house was in a state of disrepair, and she could afford neither gas nor electricity. When one night, just prior to her death in 1959, a thief broke in and saw her, he assumed she had to be a ghost and ran screaming from the building. Upon her demise, the house and all her effects were bequeathed to my father, her brother. This carpet graced the floor of the enormous entrance hall to that palace. I believe it was made at the end of the eighteenth century.’

  It was beautiful in that rich, ornate fashion that had so appealed to the wealthy Ottoman mind. Probably, Raşit Bey calculated, produced in Usak in the 1790s, it was a mass of thick tulips, roses, hyacinths and carnations. He was certain it was the product of the expert weavers from the Anatolian city of Usak. They had produced carpets for the Ottoman court from the 15th right up to the 20th century.

  ‘Fortunately,’ Muhammed Efendi continued, ‘my father had the good sense to empty out the Princess Gözde’s house immediately after her death. Like all of those old Nişantaşı mansions, it is no more.’ He sighed. ‘It burned to the ground in the early sixties and was replaced by some hideous block of flats. We used this carpet in my father’s old house for several years afterwards but when we came here, it was, of course, far too big for any of the rooms. Until today it was rolled up against the wall of the dining room.’

  ‘And now you would like to obtain an opinion on the piece?’ Raşit Bey knew that Muhammed Efendi was desperate to sell. Just simply observing the brand of cigarettes he was now smoking told him that. Muhammed Efendi usually had his cigarettes made for him and so if he was reduced to the dirt-cheap ‘Birinci’ brand, things had to be tight. But Raşit Bey knew better than to talk overtly of money, even though he recognised that the carpet was worth a considerable sum. Money talk to someone like Muhammed Efendi was most vulgar. The carpet dealer would have to proceed with caution.

  ‘I would like an opinion, yes,’ Muhammed Efendi said as he sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘But in your own time, Raşit Bey. Things like this cannot be rushed.’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  The sun was shining, the spring flowers were fully in bloom and the few birds that braved the cat-patrolled garden of the Süleymans, were singing. So even the scene that surrounded him said nothing to Raşit Bey about being rushed in any way. But the carpet dealer knew. He knew the fine manners and what they concealed, he knew that Muhammed Efendi was loath to take the assistance his sons very frequently offered to him. He knew the old prince would far rather sell things than either earn money, which at his age was probably out of the question anyway, or take it from others.

  ‘Give it some thought,’ Muhammed Efendi said as he put his cigarette out and then almost immediately lit up another.

  ‘Yes, I will.’ Raşit Bey could have told him what the carpet was worth and what he could pay him for it on the spot. But such haste would be seen in a very dim light. He would, he thought, leave the old prince alone for a few days before following up the matter with a polite telephone call.

  And so with the formal part of their business effectively concluded, the two men spoke of other things – Muhammed Efendi of his granddaughter who had just started primary school, and the carpet dealer of his shop and its many comings and goings. Generally trade was good and Raşit Bey was very happy about how well his grandson, Adnan, was progressing in his business.

  ‘If only I could say the same about Yaşar,’ Raşit Bey said, shaking his head sadly as he spoke.

  ‘Yaşar?’

  ‘The young man from the coast,’ Raşit Bey replied. ‘Used to work for my brother Cengiz in his carpet shop in Antalya. He’s been with me for just over a year now.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Muhammed Efendi frowned. ‘Didn’t he, at one time, used to have his own factory or something?’

  ‘No, not exactly.’ Raşit Bey finished the hated Birinci cigarette and then sipped his tea. ‘He just organised the sale of carpets the women in his village produced. Cengiz did business with him for several years before he offered him a job in his own shop. He did well for my brother, and he’s ambitious, so he eventually came on to me here in the city. He’s a bright man.’

  ‘So what is the problem, Raşit Bey?’

  He sighed. ‘Well, if I could find Yaşar, then maybe I
would be able to answer that question, Muhammed Efendi.’

  ‘He’s missing?’

  Raşit Bey shrugged. ‘If you include today, he hasn’t been to work for three days now – without a word of explanation.’

  ‘Have you visited his home?’ Muhammed Efendi asked.

  ‘Yes. But he isn’t there. The kapıcı of his building hasn’t seen him.’

  ‘What about his family? In Antalya, did you say?’

  ‘A village just outside. I have no contact details,’ Raşit Bey replied. He sighed. ‘To be completely candid with you, Muhammed Efendi, both myself and my brother know almost nothing about Yaşar Uzun beyond his English language and carpet-selling skills. He talks very little about his past and I, to be truthful, have little interest in it. All I know is that he is a charming and personable young man who makes me a considerable profit on what he sells. I’ll have to contact my brother.’

  Muhammed Efendi frowned. ‘Have you informed the police?’

  ‘No!’ Raşit Bey waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’m sure there’s a good explanation and I don’t want Yaşar to get into any trouble.’ Then, without thinking, he added, ‘We all know how the police can be, don’t we?’

  As soon as he’d said it, Raşit Bey realised he’d made a mistake.

  ‘I know how my youngest son Mehmet is, Raşit Bey,’ Muhammed Efendi said slowly and gravely. ‘He is a very good police officer.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but of course!’ Red to the ears, Raşit Bey said, ‘Muhammed Efendi, I apologise unreservedly. I had quite forgotten that Mehmet Bey works for the police department . . .’

  ‘He is an inspector,’ Muhammed Efendi said with obvious pride. ‘His mother doesn’t approve, of course, she thinks the job is beneath him, but . . . My Mehmet has solved murder cases, Raşit Bey. The boy has a brilliant mind and is most discreet too.’

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘A missing person is nothing to him,’ Muhammed Efendi said. ‘If you want me to, I can ask my son to look for this Yaşar for you. He will find him.’