A Passion for Killing Read online

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I am certain of it,’ Muhammed Efendi replied. ‘Leave it with me, Raşit Bey. I will speak to Mehmet and all will be well.’

  Raşit Bey leaned forward and took one of Muhammed Efendi’s hands in his. He then kissed it and raised it to his forehead as a sign of his humbleness and respect. Carpet dealers, even old ones, are rarely of this ilk. Muhammed Süleyman the prince knew that the man both needed and deserved him to deliver on his promise to speak as soon as he could to his son.

  The victim was known to him. Not perverted in any way, this man had a wife to whom he was faithful, and a child. Morally one couldn’t fault him – at least not where sex was concerned. No, this man was a fine example of proper Turkish manhood – serious, masculine, respectable. In his business dealings, however, and in one serious personal regard, there was something that did not entirely conform to the image of the perfect Turkish male. This man broke the fingers of his competitors, he routinely threatened the lives of his enemies’ women, and he killed people. More significantly, he had killed an entirely defenceless innocent. There was no excuse for such a thing in civilised society. This man was a gangster and so he had to go – at least that was the mindset the killer chose to adopt for this assignment. Unlike previous victims, this one was to be despatched during the hours of daylight. It was just easier and more convenient that way. One does, after all, have to consider the logistics of the thing every time a fresh kill comes into focus. No kill is, or can ever be, the same. The received wisdom on this was perfectly correct.

  The killer made his way to the İstanbul Hilton in the district of Harbiye and lost himself completely in the great crowds of package tourists, harried staff members and busy conference delegates who choked the entrance lobby and reception area. He made his way up to the ninth floor where the gangster was waiting to meet a person who was, the killer understood, a provider of drugs from Afghanistan. But whether that person did indeed turn up for their meeting or not can never now be known. Drug dealers do not tend, after all, to tell people about their cancelled or abortive meetings. No, the body of the gangster was eventually discovered by a member of the hotel staff the following morning when the rather fat guest who had only booked in for one night was found dead on his hotel room floor. And so as Muhammed Süleyman Efendi and his friend Raşit Bey talked of this and that in the pretty garden in Arnavutköy, the İstanbul police put the stabbed body of the gangster into a mortuary van destined for the Forensic Institute and further investigations.

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  Inspector Çetin İkmen liked to visit his friend and colleague Inspector Mehmet Süleyman when they were both present in the police station, İkmen, in spite of over thirty years on the force, had never managed to settle his mind to paperwork. Just the thought of it made him want to do something else – anything else. And so as soon as his sergeant, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, returned from lunch, İkmen left his chaotic desk and made his way down the long, grey corridor towards the clean and ordered office of his much younger friend. When he got there he found that the door was open and his friend was talking on the telephone. As soon as he saw İkmen, however, Inspector Süleyman ushered him in with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . I’ll do my best . . . Yes . . .’ He sounded weary, something that was clearly underwritten by his heavily drooping eyelids. He motioned for İkmen to sit, which the older man did with a small, arthritic grunt.

  ‘Yes . . . Yes, I know . . . Yes . . .’ He wrote something down on the back of a cigarette packet.

  Mehmet Süleyman, tired and middle-aged, nevertheless had the kind of spectacularly good looks that seem to defy both age and lifestyle. As he continued to murmur platitudes into the receiver he first offered İkmen a very rough Maltepe cigarette, which İkmen took with a smile, and then lit one up for himself.

  ‘Yes . . .’ He pinched the skin at the top of his nose between his eyes with his free hand and then shook his head in what looked like exasperation. İkmen smiled. Whoever his friend Mehmet was talking to was trying his patience, which was far from limitless at the best of times. Middle-aged he might be, but Mehmet had not yet reached the rather amused acceptance of most things that İkmen’s extra seventeen years had conferred upon him. But then, İkmen mused as he smoked on thoughtfully, being fifty-seven had to have some advantages.

  ‘Yes, all right . . . Goodbye.’ Mehmet Süleyman replaced the handset on to the receiver and sighed. ‘Well, today is certainly shaping up to be something really quite special,’ he said with a liberal smattering of irony in his voice.

  ‘Why’s that?’ İkmen asked. He knew there had been a flurry of activity around his friend’s office earlier in the day but he hadn’t really known what it was about. He and Ayşe tended to lock themselves away, much as it irked him, when they were preparing themselves to give evidence in court. That was still five days away but they needed their records of their investigations into what had been a very brutal killing to be in order and to hand, and in İkmen’s messy office that was quite a feat.

  ‘Do you know about the body found on the ninth floor of the Hilton this morning?’

  ‘I heard something about a body in a hotel somewhere,’ İkmen replied. ‘But you know how it is, Mehmet?’ He shrugged. ‘Court in five days’ time and we need to put this acid killer away for good. What he did to his wife was, well . . . My evidence needs to be first class and, as usual, my paperwork is in a state of chaos.’

  ‘You must thank Allah for sending you Ayşe,’ Mehmet Süleyman said as he ground his cigarette out in his ashtray.

  ‘She is, as you say, a marvel,’ İkmen replied. ‘She’s almost as efficient as you were when you did the job.’

  Mehmet Süleyman smiled. It was over ten years now since he had worked as İkmen’s sergeant, but he still remembered those days with enormous affection.

  ‘But this hotel murder . . .’ İkmen began.

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, he was discovered by a member of the hotel staff at 8 a.m. Stabbed, the victim is male, middle-aged and apparently he was known to the boys in vice. Unsubstantiated involvement with drugs; heroin and cocaine it is alleged.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘Name?’

  ‘Cabbar Soylu, forty-five, from Edirnekapı . . .’

  ‘I know Cabbar Soylu,’ İkmen said with some distaste evident in his voice. ‘Nasty fat Mafioso. Clever though. Vice are right, he’s never been caught actually doing anything that could lead him to our cells. But he’s known. He likes threatening the wives of those who are in opposition to him and his “soldiers” are not to be trifled with either. So why are you involved? I thought you were still working on the peeper investigation?’

  ‘I am,’ his friend replied. ‘Soylu’s killer is almost certainly the peeper.’

  İkmen frowned. The as yet unknown criminal known as the ‘peeper’ had been terrorising, and more latterly murdering, young homosexual men in İstanbul since the autumn of the previous year. There was a definite sexual element to these crimes, the assailant was known to masturbate in front of or over his victims, who thus far had all been young and attractive. Cabbar Soylu had been neither. ‘Hardly seems to fit what we know about the peeper so far,’ İkmen said doubtfully.

  Just briefly, Mehmet Süleyman averted his eyes. ‘On the face of it, no,’ he said. ‘But it’s the peeper, all right, and so that means more work for me.’

  What he didn’t and couldn’t tell İkmen was how he knew that this murder was probably the work of the peeper. Süleyman had been assigned to the peeper investigation from the very start and, at one point, he had come very close to getting a victim to provide him with a useful description of this man. The peeper always worked from behind the protection of a mask, but on this particular occasion the victim, a young man called Abdullah Aydın, had managed to remove it and see his face. It was at this point that another agency, in the shape of a very charming but sinister man Süleyman knew only as Mürsel, had effectively taken the reins of the inv
estigation from him. Mürsel, Süleyman’s boss Commissioner Ardıç had told him, worked for an organisation that concerned itself with national security. To Süleyman this could mean only one thing: MIT, the Turkish Secret Service. But this was, if not denied, not confirmed either, and no names of any specific agencies were ever actually used by anyone involved. But whoever they were, the man known as the peeper had at one time worked as one of their agents and was now dangerously out of control. In order to allay public fear, the police would continue to investigate the peeper’s crimes, but it was Mürsel and his people who pulled the strings and who would also eventually take charge of the offender’s ‘disposal’. It was Mürsel who had told Süleyman that Cabbar Soylu was almost certainly a peeper victim. Unhappily for Süleyman, no one apart from Ardıç and himself could know about any of this, and that included his good friend Çetin İkmen.

  ‘And now on top of this new murder I also have my father,’ Süleyman said as he attempted to ignore the doubt and slight suspicion he could see on İkmen’s thin face.

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘On the phone just now. He wants me to look for some carpet dealer for him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Süleyman sighed. ‘My father has this old friend called Raşit Bey. He runs one of the oldest carpet dealerships in the Kapalı Çarşı. Every so often my father offers him a kilim or a tapestry or a carpet, usually from my grandfather’s old house. You know how it is.’

  İkmen nodded. Whenever the old man couldn’t pay a large utility bill or needed to repair his ridiculously extravagant car, he generally sold something. It had to be, İkmen had always felt, a depressing way to live one’s life. Not for the first time, he was glad that the only thing he had ever possessed in abundance was children.

  ‘So Raşit Bey’, Süleyman continued, ‘was at Father’s house this morning, looking at probably the largest carpet my father still possesses and he mentioned that one of the people he employs has not turned up to work for the last three days. The kapıcı of this man’s building hasn’t seen him and Raşit Bey is worried.’

  ‘Your father wants you to find this man,’ İkmen said as a statement of fact.

  ‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘Isn’t life grand?’

  İkmen laughed.

  ‘But he is my father, and so what can I do?’ Süleyman said. ‘He expects me to deal with this personally, which I cannot do, but I cannot let him know that.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I will have to ask İzzet to go over to the man’s apartment and see what he can find. But I can’t really spare him.’

  ‘Where’s İzzet now?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘On his way over to Dr Sarkissian’s laboratory to observe the autopsy,’ Süleyman said.

  It was already almost half past two, which seemed rather late for the pathologist to begin his work. ‘It’s only just started?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked his friend straight in the eyes. ‘You know what scenes of crime are like in public places, how difficult it can become. And the hotel is effectively a place with public access.’

  Yes, İkmen did know that. What he also knew was that corpses found in public places usually meant that work at the scene of the crime was conducted under pressure from all sorts of people – the local council, public officials and in this case, he imagined, the management of the Hilton Hotel. ‘Public’ corpses were generally removed first and briefly to the Forensic Institute for the harvesting of samples and then on to the pathologist in haste rather than slowly. But then this was Mehmet’s investigation, not his, and so there were probably all sorts of pressures surrounding the incident that he didn’t know about or understand. However, he made a mental note to ask the pathologist, who was also his oldest friend, about his latest ‘subject’ when he could. As of that moment he couldn’t, try as he might, equate the homosexual killer known as the peeper with that rough thug Cabbar Soylu.

  ‘So why don’t I look into this carpet dealer thing for you?’ İkmen said finally with a smile.

  ‘I can’t ask you to do that!’ his friend replied. ‘You’ve got mountains of paperwork to go through and only five days in which to do it. No, that isn’t fair on you.’

  ‘What, taking me away from the thing I hate most about this job?’ İkmen laughed. ‘My dear Mehmet, I would pay you to deliver me from it.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Ayşe is so much better at paperwork than I am. She enjoys it.’

  ‘Çetin, you’re the one appearing in court, not Sergeant Farsakoğlu.’

  ‘I know,’ İkmen said. ‘But I trust Ayşe. She knows what we need and what we don’t. And besides, this carpet dealer thing will probably only take a few hours. You know what carpet men are like? He’s probably having a passionate liaison with some woman somewhere.’

  ‘He’s not been seen at his apartment.’

  ‘Well give me the address and I’ll start there anyway,’ İkmen said. ‘Leave your sergeant to do his duty at the mortuary. I’ll deal with this carpet man.’

  Süleyman shrugged. ‘As you wish, Çetin.’ And then he pushed the empty cigarette packet he’d written on earlier across the desk towards his friend. ‘His name is Yaşar Uzun and this is his address.’

  İkmen looked down at the writing on the packet and frowned.

  ‘Er, Sergeant Melik, would you mind coming in here for a moment please? I need to ask you something.’

  İzzet Melik hoped that he would now be leaving the pathology laboratory with its sickening smells and disturbingly familiar body parts sitting in kidney bowls, but that was obviously not to be the case. Dr Sarkissian the small, almost circular Armenian pathologist, wanted to speak to him about something in his office.

  ‘Doctor . . .’ Melik walked into the doctor’s office with heavy feet. Fortunately he didn’t spend his every working day watching autopsies, it was very bad for his digestion. As he sat down opposite the pathologist’s desk he stifled a rather sick-tasting belch.

  ‘Now, sergeant, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I have to ask you some questions about our victim, Cabbar Soylu, before you leave.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  İzzet Melik had a few questions of his own about what he had been told was the latest peeper victim. But he settled himself to answer Dr Sarkissian’s queries first, if he could.

  The Armenian sighed, his face assuming a grave aspect before he spoke. ‘Sergeant, I will be honest with you, as I will be with Inspector Süleyman, and tell you that I believe Mr Soylu’s corpse has been tampered with by someone.’

  This was not a situation that was totally alien to İzzet Melik. His stomach lurched and he calmed himself by stroking his very thick, black moustache before replying. ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Yes, and because it troubles me, I had a brief conversation with my colleague, Dr Mardin, who has some small experience in this area,’ the doctor said. ‘When I was away on vacation last autumn, you, sergeant, so Dr Mardin tells me, attempted to assist her in the investigations she was conducting on behalf of the police at that time. I understand from Dr Mardin that her fears have never been satisfactorily allayed.’

  İzzet Melik felt the Armenian’s myopic eyes, heavily magnified through his very strong spectacles, regard him critically. İzzet knew exactly what he was talking about and so he didn’t even attempt to contradict him.

  ‘You mean the corpse of that rent boy last November, don’t you, doctor?’

  ‘Nizam Tapan, yes.’

  ‘The one that was . . .’

  ‘The one that went missing for two hours between the crime scene and the laboratory. Yes, I do,’ Dr Sarkissian replied. ‘Nizam Tapan, according to Dr Mardin, was entirely “clean” when she got him. There was not a hair out of place and not a speck of dirt underneath any of his fingernails.’

  ‘Yes,’ İzzet said with a sigh, ‘I remember.’

  ‘Together with Dr Mardin you questioned Inspector Süleyman about it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ At first his boss had been as concerned as hims
elf. He’d made all sorts of noises about taking the information up to his boss, Commissioner Ardıç, and beyond if necessary. But then the whole thing had just died down. No more questions had been asked and the peeper had not, until that morning, struck again – or so it was thought.

  ‘Was the body of Cabbar Soylu clean, doctor?’ İzzet asked.

  ‘Yes, it was. There was not one fibre of forensic evidence on him,’ the doctor said. ‘The cause of his death was a single, very expertly placed stab wound to the heart. The assailant was left-handed, which is consistent with the profile of the offender we call the peeper. But beyond that . . . Mr Soylu was middle-aged, rather unattractive and, I understand, married with a child. Do you know why Inspector Süleyman is so convinced that this man is a victim of the peeper?’

  ‘No, doctor, I don’t,’ İzzet replied. ‘And to he honest with you . . .’ He paused just briefly before continuing. He didn’t, after all, want to speak behind Inspector Süleyman’s back. He liked him. But he was troubled, too, and needed to speak to someone. Dr Sarkissian was, he knew, a very old and trusted childhood friend of Inspector Çetin İkmen and everyone knew that İkmen was the most honest man in the police force. ‘I don’t know why Soylu has been designated a peeper victim. He doesn’t fit the profile we’re accustomed to.’

  ‘So when did Inspector Süleyman decide that the peeper had killed him?’

  İzzet sighed. ‘Well, he was at the scene very early, just after the uniformed officers who’d been called in by the hotel management. When I got there he was on his mobile phone and, when he finally got off, he told me that Cabbar Soylu was in all probability a victim of the peeper.’

  ‘Then I arrived . . .’

  ‘You pronounced life extinct, the body was measured and photographed and then the team from the Forensic Institute moved in.’

  ‘Or so it would seem,’ Dr Sarkissian said.

  İzzet Melik looked up into the doctor’s eyes with fear building in his chest.