Ikmen 16 - Body Count Page 6

  ‘Maybe making your daughter look nice made him happy?’ İkmen said.

  ‘No! No, it didn’t make him happy, because she was unfaithful to him!’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know that she was being unfaithful.’

  ‘He did know!’ she said. ‘He did!’

  ‘And how do you know that, Sezen Hanım?’ İkmen said. ‘Was it because, in spite of your almost-but-not-quite denial earlier, you really did tell him?’

  She leaned towards him. ‘So what if I did?’

  ‘You may very well have put your daughter’s life in danger,’ İkmen said. ‘Did you think of that?’

  ‘I wanted him to hurt!’ she shouted.

  İkmen stood up and leaned down to shout right back at her. ‘Well you may have hurt him so much that he killed her! Or not!’ he added. ‘But whatever he did or didn’t do, you acted for reasons that make me want to be sick!’

  When they eventually left the İpek family’s yalı, İkmen said to Ayşe Farsakoğlu, ‘You know, Sezen Hanım is the sort of person who makes me even more grateful to Atatürk for bringing the Ottoman Empire to an end. What an absolute—’

  ‘Sir, I saw Inspector Süleyman’s mother,’ Ayşe said. ‘I suppose … maybe they’re related to the İpeks …’

  ‘Oh, probably!’ İkmen lit up a cigarette and got into his car. ‘They’re all related to each other; it’s like one big miserable club for overprivileged malcontents who choose to live in a psychic museum of their own creation.’

  Ayşe got in beside him. She couldn’t think about Mehmet Süleyman, not now. Last time they’d been together he’d made her cry. ‘So do you think her husband did know about Leyla’s affair with Faruk Genç?’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘I think if he did, he behaved rather stupidly when he didn’t tell us the truth,’ he said. ‘Knowing that we’d have to come and see the mother-in-law from hell.’

  ‘What’s he done this time?’ In spite of the disfiguring birthmark on her face, which was enormous, Şeftali the gypsy was a good-looking woman. About thirty-five, she was tall, slender and had the kind of curly red hair that an art historian would no doubt have described as ‘Titian’.

  Ömer Mungan had taken two constables with him to visit the three cramped rooms where the gypsy and her family lived just behind Tarlabaşı Bulvarı. Sugar’s tip-off about Hamid, whether it came to anything or not, had been too tempting to pass up.

  ‘We’ve had a complaint about pickpocketing,’ Ömer said.

  ‘What? Hamid?’ She shrugged. There was a heap of ragged clothes lurking in a bowl of water at her feet. Şeftali crouched down to agitate them. As she rolled her sleeves up, Ömer saw the track marks up her arms and at her wrists. She’d been using for a long time. ‘Who says he’s been pocket-dipping?’

  ‘Is he here?’

  He wasn’t. The two constables had already searched the place, such as it was. There was only one child present, a tiny girl standing in a corner looking at them with suspicious eyes.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ Şeftali said.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  She looked up at him. One of her eyes was completely surrounded by a dark bruise. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘You’re his mother.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘He should be in school.’

  Şeftali went back to her washing. ‘He’s Roma, why do you care?’

  ‘Because it’s the law.’

  ‘It used to be lawful for us to live in Sulukule.’ Şeftali stood up in one smooth movement. ‘But then suddenly it wasn’t lawful for us to be there any more and so we moved to this shithole. Now you’re knocking this down and soon it won’t be lawful for us to be here either. You Turks make it up as you go along! Don’t talk to me about what I can and can’t do with my kids. And anyway,’ she added, ‘what are you doing interesting yourself in some pocket diving? You’re one of them who’s been trying to find the killer of the old man with the camera. Still haven’t found him, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well then I suggest you stop going after my son and do that,’ she said. ‘You may think we’re all scum round here, but we don’t deserve to live in a place where people get their heads chopped off, do we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. So do something about it, then.’

  When he left, Ömer Mungan felt chastened by what Şeftali had said. The Roma did get a poor deal in the city, and what had he expected but hostility? Sugar Barışık’s information about the boy Hamid had only been hearsay.

  But what Ömer didn’t know as he and his constables left Şeftali’s tiny flat was that she was already on the phone to her son, telling him not to come home.

  There were days when fate – or whatever one believed in – was clearly against one. General Ablak put his telephone back in its cradle, slowly. The call he’d just received had not come as any sort of surprise. Leyla’s death, if not her infidelity, had been the biggest shock of the day. This, however, was not something that he could just ignore. He had Murad to consider, and the possible besmirching of his only son’s good name. That could not be allowed to happen. Murad’s mother had died thirty years before, and now that Leyla was dead too, there was only the boy, if a man of fifty-seven could be called a boy …

  The call had come from someone who didn’t identify himself, but then that was standard practice. All he’d said was ‘They’re coming for you,’ because that was all he had needed to say. Who they were was something that the general knew anyway. As to when they were coming, it could be any minute, or the next day; maybe even the following week, although that was doubtful. If they were coming, they were coming soon. The general walked over to his office door and locked it. His phone rang again, but this time he left it unanswered. When it stopped, he very calmly reviewed his options. If he went to court and was convicted – which he would be, because that was what happened in cases like his – then Murad would be dishonoured. His father would be a known traitor and his own career, not to mention his family, could suffer. Before that, though, there would be prison to contend with, and the general knew that for all his tough military training, he couldn’t deal with that. Better men than he had succumbed to prison violence, heart disease or just despair in those places. General Ablak, proud follower of Atatürk, believer in modernity and the beauty of rational thought, sat back down at his desk and worked through in his mind what might be left for him to do.

  His son had known what was going on right from the start and the general had said everything he had wanted to say to him. Murad knew that his father loved him. He believed and would continue to believe in his innocence. And now that there was no trophy wife left, there was no one else. A thought came to the general and he took a sheet of paper out of his desk drawer and picked up his Montblanc pen. It only took him five minutes to say everything he needed to say. He put the note into an envelope and addressed it, then laid it beside his telephone.

  The general took a few moments to remove his mobile phone, his keys and his loose change from his pockets. He arranged them all neatly on his desk. Then he put his hand into his desk drawer again, took out his old service revolver and shot himself through the head.

  ‘I thought the kid was just messing around,’ Şukru Şekeroğlu said to Şeftali the prostitute. They were both in the small yard at the back of his house with her son, Hamid. Even though he was nearly sixty years old, Şukru wouldn’t allow his aged father to see him with a woman like Şeftali. ‘I assumed he was shaking because he was cold. If I’d known he’d seen someone when he came across Levent Bey’s body, I would’ve had him speak to the police.’

  Şeftali held her son by his collar. ‘He didn’t see someone, he saw something,’ she said. ‘Like a … a … What was it?’ She shook the boy. ‘What?’

  ‘A monster,’ the boy mumbled.

  ‘A monster! Yes! It was a monster that he saw, and so of course he’s going to be too frightened to tell the police or you. I had to beat it out o
f him. Crying at night like a baby because he thought the monster might come for him. I couldn’t have it when I was trying to work.’ The boy squirmed to try and get away from her and Şeftali smacked him on the head. ‘And now today the police come round asking for him. They say they want him for pocket-dipping. But the copper who come was one of them working on Levent Bey’s murder. So they know he knows something.’

  ‘How do they know?’ Şukru asked.

  ‘I don’t know! Maybe he’s been telling people!’ She agitated the boy hard again.

  Şukru said, ‘You’re making assumptions.’

  ‘So what if I am? He can’t tell them he knows something after all this time; they’d beat him to death! You know how they are!’

  Şukru got down on one knee and looked into the boy’s face. ‘Hamid,’ he said, ‘did you really see who killed Levent Bey?’

  The boy looked at him for a moment with steady eyes, and then he said, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And was what you saw a monster? Really?’

  Şukru knew that some people in his community believed in all sorts of supernatural beings up to and including monsters. But he didn’t. He only believed in what he could see. ‘Hamid?’

  The boy broke his gaze and said, ‘There were feathers, like a bird.’

  Şukru felt cold. ‘Where?’

  ‘On its head, down its back.’

  ‘What else?’ Şukru asked. Suddenly he felt colder.

  The boy shrugged.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  Şukru said, ‘Well it must’ve had a face, this monster of yours. And what size was it? Was it big, small …?’

  ‘It was big … like, like tall big, but it never had a face,’ Hamid said.

  ‘It didn’t have a face?’

  ‘It was a monster, just like he said,’ Şeftali said. ‘You told my boy to leave Levent Bey’s body and run away before the police come, but now he’s in trouble because of it.’

  ‘I didn’t know that he had seen anyone, much less a “monster”,’ Şukru said. He stood up. ‘The kid told me nothing. How do you know he didn’t just make it all up, Şeftali Hanım? Eh?’

  ‘Because the police come for him!’

  ‘For picking pockets, which you and I both know he does,’ Şukru said.

  But Şeftali shook her head, her breath coming short and hard in the frigid February air. ‘No, no, Şukru Bey, they know something, I know they do!’

  ‘But if only you know …’

  ‘Well, and the boy and … I might have told Fındık about it … His crying at night and …’ She looked up into Şukru’s face. Şeftali’s best friend, Fındık, was a notorious drunk and gossip. Anyone in Tarlabaşı could know about the boy and his ‘monster’. That wasn’t good. Şukru suppressed an urge to hit her.

  Instead he shook his head and then shrugged. ‘So …’

  ‘So you’ll have to look after the boy until the police go away,’ Şeftali said. ‘You encouraged him to just get up and leave Levent Bey’s body before the police came.’

  ‘I didn’t know about his “monster”, did I?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘I can’t look after your son; I’ve got kids of my own and I don’t need the aggravation,’ Şukru said.

  ‘I’ll pay you. You know, in …’

  He curled his lip. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, so what do you suggest we do, then, Şukru Bey?’ Şeftali said, her hands on her hips. ‘You told the boy to hop it, and now—’

  ‘He hopped it without saying a word about what he might have seen!’ Şukru said. ‘I’d suggest you take him to the police yourself, Şeftali Hanım. Explain that the boy is having nightmares …’

  ‘And what do I say about you, Şukru Bey?’ she said. ‘Do I tell them that you knew that my boy found Levent Bey’s body before you did? That’s withholding information, isn’t it?’

  Şukru Şekeroğlu looked at her beautiful ruined face and wondered what he should do with Şeftali the prostitute. Although illiterate and uncultured, she was in many ways like his artist sister, Gonca. Lovely and yet sly, Şeftali always had her eye on the main chance, just like Gonca. And in common with his sister, she knew how to manipulate men. Much as he loved her body from time to time, he hated her for that sly mind. But he also knew that her silence was essential to him.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘How much to buy a small revision of history, then, Şeftali Hanım? I didn’t see the boy; he came and went before I arrived.’

  He watched her turn it over in her mind, and he resolved then and there that when all of this was over, he would first fuck her and then beat her until she couldn’t stand, as a punishment.

  She said, ‘For a start, you can take him off me. Get him away from here so I can work. I don’t need coppers on my doorstep; it puts people off.’

  Şukru considered this for a while, and found that it actually wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Chapter 6

  Mehmet Süleyman watched Çetin İkmen open up the envelope and then read the letter inside.

  ‘What does it say?’

  İkmen, seated at his office desk, perused the document for a few moments before he answered. Ayşe Farsakoğlu was out at lunch and so the two men were alone. ‘Well, he asserts his innocence with regard to the accusation of treason that was levelled at him, and he also says that he didn’t kill his wife either,’ he said. He put the note that General Ablak had written down on his desk. ‘One either believes that a man about to commit suicide cannot lie, or one does not. You know I telephoned him; it must have been just before he died.’

  General Ablak’s body had been found in his office the previous evening by his son. Clearly suicide. The only note he’d left had been for Çetin İkmen. İkmen handed the document to Mehmet Süleyman.

  After reading through it once, Süleyman said, ‘He liked you.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘He hardly knew me.’

  ‘So the treason charge, do you think that’s related to his death?’

  ‘How would we know?’ İkmen said. ‘All that, er, that political stuff is not what we do.’

  Both men became quiet until İkmen said, ‘I need to go out for several cigarettes. Do you want to come?’ He picked up his jacket from the back of his chair.

  ‘Yes.’

  Since smoking in public places had been banned back in 2008, İkmen and Süleyman had been obliged to go outside every time they wanted a nicotine hit. İkmen particularly found it hard. Once outside and lit up, he said to Süleyman, ‘In answer to your question about General Ablak, we’ve all heard his name bandied about in relation to the Ergenekon investigation …’

  Süleyman looked over his shoulder and then said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whether he was involved or not, I can understand why he took his own life if he was under suspicion,’ İkmen said.

  ‘You don’t think he killed himself because he murdered his wife?’

  ‘No, I don’t. If you murder someone, you might just get away with it. But if someone thinks you’re involved in treason …’ He shook his head.

  The governmental investigation into the so-called Ergenekon plot to undermine both democracy and the rule of law appeared to be endless. But did such a plot even exist? It was an issue so contentious that people like İkmen spoke about it only in whispers. Even army officers who had once been chiefs of staff had been arrested, and several of them had committed suicide already. Whether such suicides were tacit admissions of guilt was a moot point. İkmen, as an avowed secularist, was deeply conflicted on the subject.

  He sucked hard on a rather unsatisfying Marlboro Light. Trying to cut down was not really working for him. ‘Leyla Ablak’s killer wasn’t her husband, and nor do I think it was her lover, either.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, he admitted to that affair far too quickly,’ İkmen said.

  Süleyman let smoke drift slowly out of his mouth. ‘Hiding in plain sight …’

  ‘Oh, I admit it is a valid and sometimes
successful technique, my dear Mehmet, but I don’t think that it is so in Mr Genç’s case. By the way, can you tell me anything about Mrs Ablak’s family? I believe you are related …’

  Süleyman sighed. ‘You saw my mother at Sezen Hanım’s house in Ortaköy; she told me.’ He shook his head. ‘Leyla and I are distant cousins. Through my father and Leyla’s mother we are both related to the Imperial family, as I am sure you are bored with being told. I am bored with knowing it. To my knowledge I last saw Leyla İpek in the 1970s, when I was really more interested in model trains than in girls. I’m told she was pretty.’

  İkmen smiled. Nur Hanım, Süleyman’s mother, had apparently telephoned their boss, Commissioner Ardıç, to see whether he could reassign her son to the Leyla Ablak case. He had replied, most emphatically, that he couldn’t.

  ‘Sezen Hanım didn’t approve of General Ablak,’ İkmen said.

  ‘No, he was a “nasty” republican, a destroyer of the Empire and therefore beyond the pale.’ Süleyman shook his head. ‘You can’t please old Ottomans, Çetin. They don’t like the secularists, and they mistrust the present government because they are far too common and Islamic for their taste. Mind you, money always changes things. Ablak’s dirty Kemalist money was good enough for my family.’ He glanced down at İkmen, who looked back at him with a question on his face. Süleyman, who knew him very well, knew exactly what it was. ‘But no, I can’t imagine even my most insane relatives killing anyone.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ İkmen said. Although Süleyman had no doubt that Sezen İpek and her family would be minutely considered by him. ‘No, my mind is on the lover’s wife.’

  ‘Faruk Genç’s?’

  ‘Yes. I felt that his dying wife, although freely admitting her own pragmatism about her husband’s affair, was rather too pragmatic. There was no passion there, where I think most people would have expected it. There was some barely suppressed malice, too. I must say I am also drawn towards the world that Leyla Ablak was apparently so attracted to,’ İkmen said. ‘The “alternative” health scene.’