A Noble Killing (10 page)

Officers were sent out to every internet café in the Beşiktaş Ortaköy and central districts of the city. Each one clutched a copy of the photograph of Osman Yavuz that his grandmother had given to İkmen. Cool kids in hip-hop gear joined nerdy boys wearing thick glasses in poring over the photograph of the young man the officers said they needed to speak to urgently. But even as all of that was happening, İkmen brooded. Finding Osman Yavuz would not, he felt, bring them any closer to Gözde Seyhan’s killer. Although there was no evidence to directly connect anyone else to the scene of the fire, the investigators had been clear in their assertion that Gözde had not killed herself. That said, İkmen was not convinced of Yavuz’s guilt. He had been involved with the girl, although no photographs of her had been found in the box underneath his bed. Clearly he was implicated, on some level, in ‘sexting’. But when İkmen looked at Yavuz’s photograph – a thin, rather vague-looking boy – he couldn’t see murder in him. Perhaps one of his sexting friends had killed Gözde? Maybe the girl had threatened to expose Osman and all the rest of them, irrespective of the cost to herself? Then again, possibly Gözde and Osman had been in love, and when she was killed he just ran away in grief and fear that the police might think that he had been involved in her death. There was still, also, Gözde’s own family.

Ayşe Farsakoğlu walked into the office she shared with İkmen and said, ‘The Seyhan brothers are still down in the cells.’

Lokman and Kenan Seyhan had been arrested for brawling as well as carrying illegal weapons.

İkmen lit a cigarette. ‘Are they saying why they were fighting yet?’

‘Depends what you’re prepared to swallow.’ Ayşe sat down behind her desk. ‘But Kenan says the gun is his. An old service pistol, apparently. And his brother admits to carrying a knife. The story they’re both sticking to is that they had a dispute over money. Other mechanics at the garage say it was much more personal than that.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The insults traded included Kenan accusing Lokman of murder and Lokman casting aspersions upon his brother’s parentage.’

‘Unpleasant.’ İkmen rose from his seat and took his jacket off the back of his chair. ‘Perhaps I should have a few words with them before they are released.’

‘Maybe you should, sir.’

İkmen saw the Seyhan brothers together in an interview room. A burly constable ensured that the two men were just frightened enough to behave themselves.

‘Your colleagues at the Beşiktaş Garage have told us that the fight you had with your brother was about rather more than money,’ İkmen said to Lokman Seyhan.

Lokman looked first at his brother and then with a snarl said to İkmen, ‘Ex-colleagues. Orhan Bey sacked me!’

‘So why were you fighting?’

Both Lokman and Kenan looked down at the floor.

‘Was it over your sister?’ İkmen asked. ‘You, Kenan, accused your brother of murder. You were heard to say that Lokman might kill
again
, possibly with your mother as the victim. Did Lokman kill your sister Gözde?’

Kenan kept his head down and then murmured, ‘No.’

Lokman, İkmen noticed had begun to sweat heavily.

‘Then why did you call him a murderer?’ İkmen asked. ‘That’s a very serious accusation to make.’

‘I used it as . . . I was angry,’ Kenan said. He looked at his brother with utter contempt, and then added, ‘We have different lives.’

İkmen shrugged. ‘Most siblings do,’ he said. ‘My brother and I live very different lives. But I have never accused him of murder.’

The Seyhan brothers remained silent, their bodies cringing away from each other as they sat in front of the policeman.

‘So your brother Lokman did not, you are absolutely certain, Kenan, kill your sister Gözde?’

‘I just told you he didn’t!’

Both their faces were red, and Kenan as well as Lokman had started sweating.

İkmen smiled. ‘Well that’s good, then.’ He rose to his feet. ‘As you can imagine, gentlemen, I have to investigate all and any allegations pertaining to your sister’s death. You would want me to do that, wouldn’t you?’

‘
I
would,’ Kenan said.

Lokman looked up at İkmen and asked, ‘Can we go now?’

‘Your weapons have been confiscated and I am told that you have been processed,’ İkmen said. ‘I see no reason why you can’t leave us now.’

Both men got to their feet while İkmen instructed the constable to open the door and let them out. Just before they left the room, however, he said, ‘Oh, but please, for the moment do not leave the city without telling us, will you?’

Lokman’s face blanched. ‘Are we under suspicion?’

‘Why?’ his brother enquired. ‘Why do . . .’

‘Gentlemen!’ İkmen smiled again. ‘I say this merely because we may need to contact you should we apprehend your sister’s killer. It is better that you stay in contact with us in case that happens. I am sure you are as anxious for it to come to pass as I.’

Neither Lokman nor Kenan made any kind of reply. When they left the station, İkmen watched them exchange a few snarling if quiet words, and then go their separate ways.

The Zafir family lived in the fashionable village of Yeniköy. Dr Zafir, who came originally from Jordan, was a physician, his Turkish wife an engineer. It was Dr Zafir who answered the door when Mehmet Süleyman and İzzet Melik called. Once they had explained why they were calling, he very quickly took them through to the family’s luxurious living room, where sixteen-year-old Ali Reza Zafir was practising scales on a shiny grand piano. When he saw that his father was not alone, Ali Reza stopped playing and stood up.

‘What’s the matter?’ he said as he looked nervously over at his father. ‘Who are they?’

He was a good-looking boy. Slim and angular, he had large downward-slanted eyes that gave him a slightly sleepy and sensual look. His response to the arrival of two strange men was, Süleyman thought, very jumpy.

‘These gentlemen, Inspector Süleyman and Sergeant Melik, are from the police,’ Dr Zafir said. ‘They’ve come about . . . well, we all read about poor Hamid Bey’s tragic death in the papers this morning, and . . .’

‘I haven’t seen Hamid Bey since last week,’ the boy said as he walked over to his father and put his arms around him. ‘I always go on Fridays.’

‘Yes, we know,’ Süleyman said. ‘We also know that you were, like quite a few of Mr İdiz’s students, due to take part in the Turco–Caucasian Music Festival at the Aya İrini in four weeks’ time.’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘We managed to speak to the Armenian organiser this morning,’ Süleyman said. ‘Although it won’t be easy, he is going to speak to his Georgian counterpart and they will then make contact with other music teachers here to ensure that the Turkish pianists are not disadvantaged in any way. But that is not really what we have come to speak to you about, Ali Reza.’

‘So what?’

‘May we sit down?’ Süleyman asked.

Dr Zafir, suddenly embarrassed at his own tardiness, said, ‘Oh, gentlemen, I apologise. We all knew Hamid Bey and so it has been a shock. Please do sit down.’

Süleyman and İzzet Melik sat down on a large brocade sofa with very ornate gold-painted legs. Dr Zafir and his son sat down opposite on a similar piece of furniture.

‘I’ve spoken a little to your father already, Ali Reza,’ Süleyman said, ‘but now I have to speak to you about a rather delicate matter.’

‘What?’ The boy’s face had paled.

Süleyman was dreading having to say what he knew he must, but all of a sudden the boy’s father intervened.

‘Ali Reza,’ the doctor said, ‘Inspector Süleyman has just told me that apparently the police have reason to believe that Hamid Bey was a pervert.’

The boy looked at his father with genuine horror on his face. ‘A pervert?’

‘A homosexual,’ Dr Zafir continued. ‘A man who has unnatural—’

‘I knew that Hamid Bey was gay,’ the boy cut in. All of a sudden he looked a little brighter, as if somehow relieved.

‘You knew?’

‘Yes.’

Dr Zafir looked at his son with suddenly appalled eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I would have taken you away and—’

‘He was a good teacher,’ Ali Reza said. ‘I liked him. Anyway, he never did anything to me.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Dr Zafir,’ Süleyman cut in. This interview, which he had specifically asked the father to take part in so that the boy didn’t feel threatened, had turned into a domestic situation. ‘Homosexuality is not illegal in this country. Hamid Bey’s sexuality is not a problem for us. What is difficult is that evidence exists that he seemed to have a fancy, shall we say, for some of his under-age male pupils. What I need to know is whether Ali Reza was one of them.’

‘What? You mean like did he touch me or . . .’

‘Yes.’

The boy shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Never.’

It was emphatic.

‘Did he make suggestions of a sexual nature to you?’ Süleyman continued. ‘Did he leer at you?’

‘Oh, he leered,’ Ali Reza said simply.

‘What!’ Dr Zafir, who had been blissfully unaware of all this, was beside himself. ‘If I had known . . .’

‘You would have gone mad, like you are now, Father,’ Ali Reza said. ‘Hamid Bey never did any harm to me. But he was the best piano teacher in the city, and if I’d told you, you would have taken me away from him.’ He turned to Süleyman and Melik and said, ‘I want to be a concert pianist one day. Hamid Bey was going to help me to do that. But he never touched me, never made any indecent suggestions. Not to me.’

‘My son wants to be a pianist, but he’s also going to train as a doctor, aren’t you, Ali Reza?’ Dr Zafir cut in quickly. Then, to the officers, ‘My family has a history of service. It is essential to give as well as to receive in life.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did Hamid Bey make any such suggestions to anyone else?’ İzzet Melik enquired of the boy.

Ali Reza lowered his head a little. ‘Well, yes, one boy. Sort of.’

‘We are trying to track down a boy who is only referred to in the paperwork as Murad E,’ Süleyman said. ‘Unlike for you, Ali Reza, there don’t seem to be any records, financial or otherwise, for him. Was this the boy that . . .’

‘That’s the boy,’ Ali Reza said. ‘Murad something. I didn’t know him that well, but sometimes we talked after lessons. He was a good pianist but he was poor, you know. I think he came from Karaköy, somewhere like that, some tenement. Hamid Bey used to teach him for nothing.’

‘And what did Hamid Bey get in return for that?’ İzzet Melik asked.

‘Murad is good, like I say,’ Ali Reza said. ‘But . . .’ He lowered his head again. His father hugged him close.

Süleyman said, ‘But what?’

‘Hamid Bey leered at me, as I said.’ Ali Reza looked up with fearful eyes again. ‘But with Murad . . . He, Hamid Bey, would sometimes fiddle with himself, you know, when Murad was playing. He . . . he never did anything else and Murad said that he did it very discreetly. He wasn’t supposed to see.’

‘But he masturbated.’

‘In front of Murad, yes,’ the boy said. ‘That was what Murad told me.’

‘You shouldn’t spy on our neighbours,’ Hikmet Yıldız’s brother İsmail told him.

‘I’m not spying, I’m doing my job,’ Hikmet responded calmly.

‘Don’t give me that!’ İsmail waved a sharp, thin finger in front of Hikmet’s face. ‘I’m always here, remember? I see everything.’

‘And I’m a police officer and—’

‘People in this neighbourhood keep the law!’ İsmail said as he walked around their small, tatty kitchen in an agitated fashion. ‘People here are pious and good. Their lives,
my
life is ruled by the standards of religion. It is you who are out of step!’

‘No I’m not!’ Hikmet stood up, looming over his much shorter and thinner brother. ‘I pray, I keep Ramazan, I love Allah.’

‘Then why do you persecute those who also love Him?’

‘Because, my brother, not everyone keeps Allah’s laws even when they appear to do so,’ Hikmet said. ‘Some people hide behind religion.’

‘But these people, this family who you believe killed their own daughter . . .’

‘I don’t say that!’ Hikmet shouted. İsmail wasn’t a bad man, but he only believed what he wanted to, whether or not it was the truth. ‘Anyway, how do you know who I’m watching or what I’m doing?’

‘Because I know people! People tell me things! People tell me that you and some glamorous woman police officer were going around the market trying to make as if you don’t belong here! Everyone knows the police want to pin it on the Seyhans! They want to make what happened to that poor girl an honour killing!’

‘No we don’t!’

‘Yes you do!’

‘Inspector İkmen would never do such a thing!’ Hikmet said. ‘He is a man of principle!’

‘He is a man without—’

‘He is my boss!’ Now standing right over his brother, Hikmet said, ‘I don’t know whether the Seyhans killed their daughter or not and nor does anyone else! They are suspects, like a few other people we know about. Everyone who is involved with a murder victim is a suspect! They have to be!’

‘Why? The Seyhans are good people. You can discount them!’

They were going around in circles. Hikmet left the kitchen and went out to the back yard for a smoke.

‘Yes, that’s right!’ he heard İsmail say as he took out his cigarettes. ‘Pollute the body you were given!’

Hikmet wanted to say ‘Since when were you the great puritan?’ but he managed to restrain himself. İsmail hadn’t always been as religious as he had become since they’d come to live in Fatih. He used to be a drinker before he found religion. In a lot of ways, Hikmet agreed with his brother and with his neighbours: quiet, pious people didn’t usually commit crimes. But sometimes they did.

The woman in the Rainbow Internet Café recognised the picture of Osman Yavuz immediately.

‘He comes in at night,’ she said. She looked at her watch. ‘Around about now. Although not lately.’