Arabesk (16 page)

At forty-five, Cengiz Temiz was both more and less well-preserved than the average man of that age. Although grotesquely overweight his face was quite free from lines and wrinkles. But then the thick, open mouth rarely moved and his eyes which were small and markedly slanted gave no emotion back to the world beyond the occasional flashes of fear. When Çöktin returned with his water, Cengiz Temiz gave no indication that he was pleased or relieved by this. He simply, as he had done for nearly half an hour now, sat in a shroud of self-contained silence.

For Suleyman, however, things were different There was too much going on in his head, some of which had little to do with Cengiz Temiz. Mr Ertürk had, it seemed, been most scathing with regard to the treatment of his little sisters. How, he'd said to Ardiç, this ridiculous inspector could have been taken in by two silly girls who had hit upon the word cyanide because it was, probably, the only poison they knew, and then detained them under suspicion of murder, was beyond him. True, the gardener did use, amongst other poisons, cyanide to kill certain pests, but Resat hadn't reported any substances missing and besides, even if he had, there were other families he gardened for besides the Erturks.

All right, Ertürk had told Suleyman to 'hang on' to his sisters until his conference was over, but he had not expected them to be detained in a filthy cell! These were girls of quality! Born and bred in stylish Yeniköy! But Suleyman had treated them no better than common streetwalkers! That the pair were both manipulative and frighteningly obsessive had not been mentioned. So now Suleyman was in disgrace and that was without the report from Dr Halman that he knew was coming. Some days were like this. Some days suspending oneself from a high place looked attractive.

With a sigh, Suleyman started his questioning once again. 'Miss Arda has told us,' he said, yet again, 'that, knowing as you do that she cannot have children, you presented her with the Urfa baby in order to win her affections and to protect the child from an "evil demon". What I want to know, Mr Temiz, is whether this is correct.'

'My client has already told you that he doesn't know this woman’ Avedykian said, 'and so this line of questioning—'.

'Is necessary because of the testimony of Miss Arda. And as far as I am concerned, Mr Avedykian, your client has told me nothing as yet. It is you, if you recall, who has said that Mr Temiz has no knowledge of Miss Arda. What he thinks or knows I cannot tell’ Then turning to face Cengiz directly, he said, 'Both Mina and yourself are in a lot of trouble here, Cengiz. It is trouble that I feel you don't need to be in but only the truth can confirm that. Now—'

'Inspector Suleyman, I feel I must—'

'If I tell you, will my mum and dad have to know?'

Both the two policemen and the lawyer gazed, for different reasons, at what had now become a rather more animated interviewee.

Suleyman cleared his throat 'That does depend on what you have to tell us, Cengiz,' he said.

'You don't have to tell them anything,' Avedykian put in hurriedly, fearing, so Suleyman felt that his client was on the verge of galloping irrevocably away from him.

Cengiz Temiz, however, after only a brief glance at his lawyer, went his own way. 'It's about dirty things,' he said as he bent his head low in shame.

Suleyman, confused, looked at Çöktin, who said, 'Do you mean sex, Cengiz?'

'Yes.'

‘I really do think that I would like some time alone with my client before—'

'It's all right, Mr Avedykian,' Cengiz said and laid one pudgy hand on his lawyer's slim arm. 'It's naughty but it's not killing.'

Avedykian looked hard into what he could see of his client's eyes and then sighed. 'Well, Cengiz, if you must'

'So What about sex, Cengiz?' Suleyman asked as he lit a cigarette and then leaned forward towards the downcast Temiz. 'Have you done it or did you just want to do it or—'

'I have sex with Mina.' He turned his face round so that none of the other men in the room could see his eyes. 'Mum gives me money for cigarettes and food but I spend it on Mina.'

'She makes you feel good?'

'Yes. Dirty things do that. Good boys shouldn't and Mum will punish me if she knows, but. . .'He turned back to face them, his eyes wet with tears. 'You won't tell them that I'm dirty, will you, sir?'

Suleyman smiled. 'I won't tell anyone you're dirty, Cengiz. But you must tell me where Mrs Ruya and the baby come into all this. I know that you took the baby to give to Mina but I have to know how you did that You do understand, don't you?'

'Mmm.' Then, rapidly changing tack, Cengiz looked down at the floor, watched a spider bounce on its web underneath the table and laughed.

'Cengiz?'

He rolled his eyes up in the direction of the taller of the policemen and then wiped some wetness away from around his mouth. 'Eh?'

'Cengiz, Mina has told us that you rescued the baby Merih from a,' and here Suleyman once again had to clear his throat in order to enunciate what were, to him, ridiculous words, ‘a demon woman who—'

'Oh, no, no, no, no, no!' He was sideways on now, head down, mouth trembling with anxiety.

Sevan Avedykian placed a comforting arm around his client's shoulders and then said, 'I think you've gone as far as you can go now, Inspector.'

'I would disagree,' Suleyman replied haughtily.

'Besides, if Mr Temiz can tell Mina Arda about the demon then he can tell me. Cengiz?' 'No, no, no!'

Avedykian stood up. 'Inspector!'

'Look, Cengiz,' Suleyman said with more than a little pleading in his voice, 'if you tell me about the demon, I can help you. I ...' and then suddenly a thought struck him which had not occurred before. But it made perfect sense and so he went with it 'Look, I can and will, I promise, protect you from her. No harm will come to you or Mina or the baby.'

Cengiz looked up. 'Uh?'

'I give you my word!' Suleyman said with what he perceived as rather unnecessary drama in his voice.

'And the inspector is a gentleman,' Çöktin put in earnestly, 'so his word does mean a lot'

'You don't have to listen to this!' Avedykian said as he took hold of his client's sleeve and tried to pull him to his feet 'I think we should terminate this interview now, Inspector Suleyman. My client is distressed—'

'She had silver hair and a fluffy coat'

Once again, all eyes turned towards Cengiz whose face was now quite white, almost grey.

'Her face was all hissy like a snake,' and here he made an approximation with his own features. The result was, even to Suleyman's horror-accustomed eyes, really quite scary.

'Would you know the demon if you saw her again?' Çöktin asked.

Cengiz, whose face had now reverted to its usual expression, said,'Yes.'

'Are you sure?'

'Mr Temiz has told you so—'

'Will you please sit back down, Mr Avedykian!' Suleyman, suddenly quite out of patience with the lawyer, roared his request which was, surprisingly, complied with immediately.

'So if I put the demon in front of you in a fluffy—'

'White.'

'A fluffy white- coat, then . . .'

Çöktin leaned in towards Suleyman and whispered something in his ear.

'Right,' Suleyman said in response to this. 'Good. Perhaps the sergeant here can get us some photographs to look at in a moment Now, Cengiz—'

'Mrs Ruya was lying on the floor.' He was crying now, full on, choking sobs. 'She, she never, she never moved when I touched her. Merih was crying—'

'Where was Merih, Cengiz?'

'In her little bed. I love Merih, sir! I—'

'All right, all right Sssh. Now, calm down,' Suleyman smiled. 'You're doing very well, Cengiz. I'm really pleased with you.'

Sevan Avedykian silently passed a very white folded handkerchief to his client and then sat back quietly once again. Cengiz dabbed at his eyes as he attempted to get his sobs under control. He now looked like he had a bad case of hiccups. 'Sorry! Sorry!' he said through gulps of air.

'It's all right, you've no need to be sorry. You're being very, very good.'

'Am I?'

'Yes. Now I just need to know one more thing and then you can take a rest.'

Cengiz leaned forward as if waiting to catch the words physically from Suleyman's lips.

'And that is,' Suleyman said, 'how you got into Mrs Ruya's apartment Was the demon woman there when you went in? Did she let you in?
Did
you arrive with her for some reason? What, Cengiz? What?'

Orhan Tepe knocked once on Inspector Suleyman's door and then went straight in. Well, his news, though not earth-shattering, was required by Suleyman and besides it wasn't his particular custom to be subservient. This proud Ottoman prince might think himself somebody but to Tepe he was just as other men. If nothing else, seeing Suleyman in the act of procuring a prostitute, albeit in the line of duty, had proved that.

Although Suleyman's desk was occupied when Tepe entered the room, it was not by the inspector himself. With a loud bang as her fist hit wood, Zelfa Halman slammed a cardboard file shut before looking up sharply.

'Well?' she asked before she realised that she was quite out of context here.

'Oh, er, I was looking for the inspector’ Tepe said as he watched her hurriedly slip something underneath the cover of the file she had just closed.

'Well, he isn't here,' she said sharply.

'Yes.'

She stood up, smoothing her skirt down as she did so. She was, Tepe thought, a not unattractive woman for her age. Although quite why the inspector should be so taken with her when he could, surely, have almost any woman he wanted was a mystery. Perhaps it had something to do with her being a foreigner.

'Well,' she said as she moved round the desk towards Tepe, 'seeing as he isn't here then perhaps we should leave.'

'Yes.' But he didn't move. Quite why, he didn't really know. But then he always felt a little on edge in the presence of this woman. The word 'psychiatrist' loomed large and menacing in his head.

'Well, come on then, out!' she said as she literally shooed him ahead of her.

He moved quickly now. She was, for some reason, quite agitated and he didn't want to tangle with her in such a mood. To do so, Tepe felt, might invite all sorts of strange interpretations on her part. His grandfather had been, as his mother was accustomed to say in muted tones, 'taken somewhere' when he became, in the family parlance, 'rather vague'. Psychiatrists could do things like that. One didn't need to be exactly insane in order to attract their attentions. As he watched Dr Halman disappear down the corridor, Orhan Tepe let out a long sigh of relief. There were some who believed that mental confusion could be hereditary and—

'Inspector Suleyman is out, I take it?' The voice was familiar if unexpected.

'Oh, er, yes, sir. He is,' Tepe said as he looked down into the sharp eyes of Çetin Ìkmen.

'I saw you leaving his office,' Ìkmen said, 'in the furious wake of Dr Halman.'

'Yes.' And then feeling the need to change the subject he said, 'I wanted to see the inspector about something.'

'Oh?'

'Yes.' There was a strong feeling of curiosity emanating from Ìkmen that Tepe felt was not quite appropriate. 'I thought that you were sick, sir.'

Ìkmen smiled. 'like all of us, Tepe, I am slowly but inexorably dying. What was it you wanted to see Inspector Suleyman about?'

'Oh, it was just an identity card thing. Some man who needed checking up on.'

Almost without his noticing, Ìkmen took Tepe's elbow in his hand and led him down the corridor. 'Oh? What man?'

'Well. . .'

'I ask only because, as you say, it is just an identity card thing.' He laughed. 'I like to remain in touch, as you know. And if it's not important. . .'

Tepe shrugged. 'Just a friend of Erol Urfa's, as I understand it The inspector asked him for his card yesterday but he couldn't find it'

'So did he find it today when you went round?'

'No. He wasn't there.' He looked down at the floor which, just very slightly, moved, Ìkmen, he felt subtly increased the pressure on his elbow. But as soon as the faint tremor had ceased, the pressure eased.

Ìkmen smiled. 'So where had he gone, this man? Do you know?'

'No, no one knew, or would say. That's what I was coming to tell the inspector. I don't know what he might do about it I mean, it is rather minor in comparison to the investigation into Mrs Urfa's death.'

'Oh, indeed.' Ìkmen started moving a little faster. 'Not of course that we must forget details like this, Tepe. Men's lives can often be circumscribed within such trivia, in my experience. Things like identity cards, the words of songs, the syndromes people may suffer from . . .' And then suddenly he stopped and turned to face Tepe. 'By the way, the doctor who examined the Urfa baby, was it Akkale, do you know?'

'Yes.' Tepe frowned. 'Why?'

'Oh, no reason,' Ìkmen said as he reached out to knock on the door of the medical examination room. 'Just a detail for the organic computer,' he whispered as he tapped the side of his head with his finger.

'Oh.'

'Goodbye, Tepe,' Ìkmen said as the examination room door opened to reveal the dark figure of Dr Ìrfan Akkale.

It is better this way, Erol thought as he folded the last of Merih's little dresses into the bag. Were he to give Tansu time to argue she would become hurt and then he would do what he knew he shouldn't. Stay. Not that he wanted to go. To wake up every morning to the sound of one's name on a woman's lips, to then have one's sexual desires fulfilled without even having to say what they are to that woman - mat is seductive. And had he been a different man, there would have been nothing wrong with that But there was also honour to consider and Tansu, for all her wild rages and bizarre behaviour, deserved respect Besides, if he gave in now it would only make things worse later when, inevitably, he would leave the city for his village for a time or forever or for whatever may come to pass.

What is written cannot be unwritten.

As he passed the dining table, he looked at the book that lay on top of one of the place mats. The woman on the cover was very beautiful, she had short blonde hair and thick red lips. Had her eyes not been downcast, one hand held painfully up to her head, it would have been an image of some sexual power. But this woman appeared devastated, as if she had just looked upon the face of death. He made to slowly, as was his custom, spell out the words on the front cover but then found that he couldn't The letters were different, not greatly but enough to make him realise that this was a foreign book.