Death by Design Page 3

  But then, after seventeen years without any contact or news of him, Bekir İkmen returned. His mother cried, and his brothers and sisters listened awestruck – and with some scepticism – to his stories about begging, fighting with gypsies and battling drug dealers and his own heroin addiction. Only Çetin had totally distrusted Bekir. And Çetin had been right. Bekir had come home in order to hide from his father’s colleagues, the police. Not only had he helped to spring a convicted murderer and drug dealer, Yusuf Kaya, from prison, Bekir had also been involved in large-scale dealing himself. Almost the last act Bekir İkmen performed on earth was to kill an entirely innocent man who opposed him. That was why the Jandarmes in the eastern town of Birecik, to where Bekir and his fellow criminals had been tracked by İkmen’s colleague Süleyman, had shot him. For some reason that Çetin İkmen could not fathom, his son Bekir had gone wrong. To Çetin’s recollection, he had never treated Bekir any differently from his other children – at least not until the drug taking and stealing began when he was a teenager. His wife Fatma disagreed.

  ‘You always treated him badly,’ she would say whenever the rein by which she held in her emotions snapped. ‘You hated him and he knew it!’

  Fatma blamed her husband entirely for what had happened and when she did not berate him, she was silent and broodingly resentful of his every breath. Their children, with the exception of the youngest Kemal who had been somewhat glamoured by his bad-boy older brother, supported their father’s point of view with regard to Bekir. But they could do nothing to move their mother who now, or so it seemed, hated their father with the same passion with which she had once loved him. Not even nearly getting blown to pieces in an illegal handbag factory in Tarlabaşı had, apparently, moved İkmen’s wife to even a little sympathy for him. She did not visit him in hospital and when he came home, it had not been Fatma but her daughter Gül who had attended to Çetin’s wounds and cooked special food for him. It was as if Fatma’s love for her husband had died along with their son.

  İkmen entered the station in dour mood and failed to acknowledge either of the two young constables who saluted him as he mounted the stairs up to his office. He knew that once he started working again he would become totally absorbed in his job and would be able to distract himself from his personal problems. But the walk up to his office was tiring and tedious and it made him painfully aware of how weak he still was from his injuries. He eventually arrived at his office door, aching and breathless. When he stepped inside, however, his sergeant, Ayşe Farsakoğlu, was not at her desk. Instead he found his superior, Commissioner Ardıç, in conference with a tall, blond, foreign man.

  ‘Ah, excuse me, please,’ he heard Ardıç say in English to the foreigner. Then struggling up from İkmen’s own chair, Ardıç waddled across the office towards him and said, ‘This is Inspector Riley from Scotland Yard in London. He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Talk to me?’

  Ardıç turned towards the Englishman, smiled, and then said to İkmen in Turkish, ‘About the Tarlabaşı handbag factory. There is a connection to London. This officer wants to talk to you about that.’

  ‘Ah.’ İkmen walked forward as the Englishman rose from his seat and extended his hand.

  ‘Inspector İkmen, I’m Patrick Riley,’ he said. There was an accent of some sort to his English which İkmen was later to discover came from Liverpool.

  İkmen took Riley’s outstretched hand and shook it. The Englishman smiled. He was, İkmen felt, probably about forty. Tall and thin, he wore a loose, rather cheap-looking suit and had the slightly rough voice of a smoker. The only really remarkable thing about him was his vast shock of white-blond hair which made his head look not unlike a particularly untidy hyacinth.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Inspector,’ İkmen replied.

  Ardıç grunted and sat down in Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s seat. ‘Your sergeant won’t be disturbing us and nor will anyone else,’ he said in Turkish as Ayşe’s seat groaned in protest beneath his vast backside. İkmen walked round to his own chair and sat down too. It felt a little strange to be back, but to be back with Ardıç sitting in his office and this foreigner somehow on the scene too . . .

  ‘Inspector İkmen,’ Riley said, ‘I’ve come all the way from London because we in the Met – that is the Metropolitan Police,’ he smiled, ‘we’re currently involved in an investigation in north London into similar operations to your recent find here in İstanbul, involving counterfeit goods.’

  ‘It is the mayor of London, is it not, Inspector Riley?’ Ardıç said in English. ‘He has a, what do you say, a fight against counterfeit things in London.’

  ‘Our new mayor is very keen to deal with the gangs who produce fake goods in London,’ Riley said to İkmen. ‘It’s run on slave labour—’

  ‘As everywhere,’ İkmen said. ‘What we found in Tarlabaşı was not unusual, Inspector.’

  ‘With the exception of the man who blew himself up,’ Riley said. ‘Not that that in itself is of interest to me.’

  İkmen took his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and offered them to Riley. The Englishman put out his hand to take one, but he looked surprised nonetheless. ‘We can?’

  ‘Soon it will not be possible to smoke in buildings,’ Ardıç said as he reflexively touched the full cigar case in his trouser pocket. ‘The government now, they don’t like it. But for now . . .’ He shrugged. ‘İkmen always smoke. Please, Inspector Riley, do what will make you happy.’

  With somewhat tentative fingers, Riley took hold of one of İkmen’s Maltepe cigarettes and then allowed the Turk to light it for him. The strength of the cigarette caught him unawares and made him cough. Neither of the Turks seemed to think this was unusual and İkmen just waited until the coughing had ceased before he said, ‘So what is of interest to you, Inspector?’

  After swallowing hard, Riley said, ‘A small fragment of a London Underground map was recovered from the scene of the explosion in the factory that you uncovered.’

  İkmen hadn’t been told this fact and it made him raise an eyebrow.

  ‘Why it was pinned to the wall of the factory in the district of Tar . . . er, Tarl . . .’

  ‘Tarlabaşı,’ İkmen put in.

  ‘Tarlabaşı, we don’t know and neither do you,’ Riley said. ‘But in the light of the bombings on the London Underground in two thousand and five, it bothers me and my colleagues. What were those people, who were basically running illegal migrants and dodgy handbags in İstanbul, doing with a London Underground map?’

  ‘Maybe they use the underground to distribute their products around London,’ İkmen said.

  Riley shrugged. ‘It’s unlikely. People don’t transport large quantities of things on the tube, Inspector.’ Riley leaned across İkmen’s desk, his face very serious. ‘Inspector İkmen, the man who blew himself up in Tarlabaşı did so with the words “Allahu Akbar” on his lips. Now I don’t know if you are a religious man or not . . .’

  Ardıç barely suppressed a snort of derision.

  ‘I am not a religious man, Inspector,’ İkmen said. ‘And I can completely understand that you would immediately connect that statement and the act that followed it with Islamic fundamentalism. I do myself. But the fact is, sir, we don’t know who the dead boy Tariq was or whether he was acting for an organisation or alone. According to our pathologist, he was a very sick boy. He had tuberculosis and was probably terminally ill. We are not in a position to say whether the boy was a fundamentalist or not. As far as we are concerned, he was part of an illegal counterfeit organisation that uses migrant workers who sometimes die in the hands of these people. We have some names, as I am sure the commissioner has told you . . .’

  ‘Ahmet Ülker was the one that really struck us in the Met,’ Riley said.

  This was a name that İkmen knew. Süleyman had told him about Ülker. He was apparently the current landlord of the Tarlabaşı factory. But it seemed Mr Ülker had some interests abroad as well.

  ‘An Ahmet Ülker owns and
runs a couple of handbag factories we’re watching in north London,’ Riley said. ‘He has dual Turkish/UK nationality on account of being married to a British woman. But he was born here in Turkey and we in the Met think it’s too much of a coincidence that one Mr Ahmet Ülker should be running knock-off factories in London and an entirely different character of the same name doing it here.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Ahmet Ülker, according to the electoral register, lives in a one-bedroom flat in Dalston. This is not one of the better parts of London and the street he lives on is frankly a bit rough. His wife, however, is registered to a mansion on The Bishops Avenue in East Finchley. This is one of the best addresses in the city where houses can cost millions. Now Mrs Ülker, or Maxine Lee as she was before she married, does not come from money,’ Riley said. ‘Her folk were gypsies from down in Kent. When Ülker met Maxine she was working as a lap dancer in a dirty little club in Hackney. There’s no way Maxine could have purchased that house in East Finchley. But we know that Ahmet is making a bundle out of his two factories in Hackney Wick. With nice little sidelines in legitimate production and retail as well as illegal people-trafficking and prostitution, he doesn’t have to worry about how he might pay his bills.’

  ‘But if you know so much about this man, why haven’t you arrested him?’ İkmen said.

  ‘We have, for some time, had intelligence to suggest that Ülker’s operation might be bigger and more far-reaching than we at first thought,’ Riley said. ‘What you have found here in İstanbul has confirmed that. In addition, we suspect he might have connections to larger organised crime gangs in the UK.’

  ‘But are you certain this is the same Ahmet Ülker?’

  ‘The business that Ülker’s wife Maxine “runs” in London is called Yacoubian Industries. An Armenian name, I am told, and one that has a connection to Ülker here in İstanbul.’

  ‘Yes.’ Süleyman had told İkmen the familiar story of how the land the Tarlabaşı factory was on was in reality still the property of the long-gone Yacoubian family. ‘Yes, that family still officially own the site of the Ülker operation here.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Riley cleared his throat. ‘Our Ülker and yours have to be one and the same. We need to know how far his empire stretches. I think it might be very large indeed. In order to be able to buy a house on The Bishops Avenue and give Maxine her yearly dose of plastic surgery over in Los Angeles, he has to either be a big player or in bed in some way with big players. We have some very large and powerful gangs in London. An alliance with one of the eastern European outfits or a British/Albanian hybrid like the Gentlemen of Honour gang could be very serious. Then there is the question about what type of people Ülker might be bringing into Britain. Your young bomber and that tube map are worrying our security services even though we can’t actually trace a solid link between Ülker and terrorism of any kind. Inspector İkmen, we need someone on the inside of Ülker’s operation. We need an illegal immigrant of Turkish origin who can understand Ülker in his native language when he speaks to his henchmen. That person also needs to be able to understand and speak English very well even though he will have to pretend that he doesn’t.’

  ‘The Metropolitan Police would like you to do this for them, İkmen,’ Commissioner Ardıç said. ‘You have much experience. You have been to London. Your English is the best of anyone.’

  ‘There is no pressure,’ Riley interjected. ‘This operation will not be easy, it could be dangerous and we have no idea about how long it might last. We know you are a family man and I understand you will need to consider them.’

  Shocked, İkmen didn’t say a word. His mind flew back over the decades to his only visit to the British capital back in the 1970s. It had been a grimy, dark place then, not unlike the İstanbul of the same period. Back then the London bobbies he had gone over to observe had usually finished their shifts drinking and smoking in pubs. Then, just like Turkey, Britain had been plagued by industrial unrest and political agitation. Now London, at least, was the shining heart of the global financial world and bobbies so he heard, were more likely to go to the gym than to the pub. But İkmen was no fool and he knew that this new, bright London had been bought at a very high price. He’d read about the miners’ strike in the 1980s, about how Margaret Thatcher had dismantled the country’s heavy industries. Now the British lived by their banks, their advertising agencies and businesses with odd names like hedge funds and futures – things he didn’t understand.

  After a few moments İkmen blurted, ‘I have a son in London. He’s a doctor. He recently got a job in Hounslow.’

  Inspector Riley sighed. ‘You won’t, I’m afraid, be able to see or even contact your son,’ he said. ‘None of your family can know where you are or what you are doing. Not even your colleagues here can know. Ülker has a long reach. He will know what has happened here in İstanbul. What we don’t want him to tumble is that a connection has been established between here and London. As far as we are aware he doesn’t know we in the Met are watching him. That said, we have no real idea where Ülker’s global influence begins or ends. That’s why we’re giving you time to think it through. It could be dangerous.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Officially you will be working in the east,’ Ardıç said in Turkish. ‘You will be working in counter-terrorism alongside our colleagues and the armed forces. Your family will not be able to contact you except through me. Obviously if there is an emergency I will be able to contact the Metropolitan Police who will contact you. If you do this you will have to lie to your family about where you are going and what you are doing. You will have to lie to everyone you know.’

  Just the thought of it saddened İkmen. To lie to everyone! And it wasn’t even as if it was a comfortable lie. Going east into the provinces where the separatist Kurdish PKK, where Hezbollah and even, some said, al Qaeda operated was no soft option. Those he loved would worry. Although whether that would include his wife Fatma he didn’t know.

  ‘Something else you ought to know too is that you will have to enter the UK illegally,’ Riley said. ‘We cannot risk your coming into Britain legally and then attempting to disappear amongst the ranks of the truly dispossessed. Those who traffic people are always on the lookout for police plants. They know that we are constantly trying to break up their operations. This requires authenticity, total immersion. Commissioner Ardıç tells me that you speak German and so the idea is that you travel to Germany and make contact with people traffickers in Berlin. The German police know some of the areas where potential illegal immigrants meet these people. They will keep you under surveillance as far as they can but they, and we, cannot guarantee how the traffickers might bring you into Britain. It could be in a packed container full of hundreds of frightened and desperate people, it could be in a very leaky boat across the English Channel from France. That part of the job alone is dangerous and that’s before you even start getting involved with Ülker and his people. Traffickers lose people all the time. I would be failing in my duty to you, Inspector İkmen, if I didn’t tell you that you might not even make it to Britain. Even under surveillance, you could die before you got close to our shores. Think about it. Think about it very carefully before you give me your answer.’

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  Mehmet Süleyman hadn’t managed to see very much of his friend Çetin İkmen on the latter’s first day back at work. In the morning İkmen had spent a lot of time with Ardıç and some man no one seemed to know anything about, and then in the afternoon Süleyman had accompanied his sergeant İzzet Melik over to Yeniköy and the house of Mr Alpozen. The owner of what had once been a car repair workshop in Tarlabaşı, now the smoking ruins of a fake goods factory he had sublet to Ahmet Ülker, old Alpozen hadn’t been very forthcoming about anything when İzzet had interviewed him the previous afternoon. So now Süleyman was going to try and impress upon him the seriousness of the situation. Normally the old man would have been brought into the station for question
ing, but he was dying and leaving his bed was well nigh impossible.

  ‘You have to know where Mr Ülker lives,’ Süleyman said as he watched the old man take a swig from his bottle of oral morphine and then lean back against his pillows once again. Attached to some sort of drip that a nurse came in from time to time to tend, Alpozen was clearly on his last legs. The cancer that was killing him had started in his pancreas and then spread just about everywhere. The bedroom he had chosen to die in smelt of must, mould and death.

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ the old man gasped. Then eyeing Süleyman with some hostility he said, ‘I told that hairy idiot you’ve brought along again to go away yesterday, now I’m telling you. Let a man die in peace.’

  İzzet, the ‘hairy idiot’, cleared his throat.

  ‘Mr Alpozen, a man died in the illegal factory Ahmet Ülker was running from your premises,’ Süleyman said. ‘Now I know that as the landlord of the building you are not directly responsible for that. You do however have an obligation to make sure that no illegal activity takes place on your premises.’