Baksheesh (32 page)

“Well,” I said, “I have a theory which I thought you might be able to verify. It's just a theory and, even if you say it's true, it will remain a theory.”

She pushed away her plate of gateau.

“You mean, you're saying you wouldn't go to the police?”

I nodded.

She ran her tongue over her teeth.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“Why wouldn't you go to the police?”

“Why should I?” I said. Not a very explicit answer, I know.

“In that case, what would happen if I confirmed what you're thinking?”

How do you explain your interest in solving a murder to someone who doesn't read detective stories? Would you be able to do it, dear reader? Still, it was worth trying.

“As you know, I sell crime fiction,” I said.

“In Kuledibi,” she said.

“Not only do I sell crime fiction, I read it too.”

“I've never read a detective story,” she said. “Our Ä°nci used to read a lot of them. Ever since she was a child.”

I cleared my throat. Better to get straight to the point.

“Ä°nci is your cousin,” I said, thinking I should have started by establishing that I'd obtained this piece of information from Ä°nci's former maid Hafize Hanım.

“My maternal aunt's daughter,” she said. In Turkish, there's a different term for every relative you can possibly think of, but “cousin” isn't often used. Turks prefer to say “my aunt's daughter”,

“my uncle's son” and so on.

“Your aunt's daughter,” I repeated.

“But she was like a sister to me. I loved her more than my own sister.”

“Until she was with Osman.”

“Until she took Osman away from me,” she said, narrowing her lovely eyes and looking at me. “She doesn't accept that she did it, does she? Denies it. I know. She says it's not her fault.”

“I haven't spoken to Ä°nci about this,” I said. This wasn't quite a lie because we hadn't spoken about it at length.

She looked at her pink varnished nails.

“In that case, how do you know she's my aunt's daughter?”

“I spoke to Ä°nci's maid,” I said.

“The famous maid,” said Habibe, shaking her head as if finally realizing the significance of previous observations. “Of course, that woman got to know everything that went on in our family. I said to Ä°nci, ‘Don't keep her on, she listens too much.' Whenever we sat out on the balcony, she'd be there cleaning the windows. If we moved into the kitchen, she'd be washing up. Wherever we were, she'd be hanging around.”

“Did you go to Ä°nci's apartment a lot?”

Habibe smiled wryly. “Didn't the maid tell you? I did at first, of course. When there still seemed some hope of getting Ä°nci sorted out.”

“Why did you insist on her leaving Osman?”

Habibe frowned, as if I'd asked a very strange question and looked at me through narrowed eyes.

“I loved Osman and I was pregnant by him. I wanted to make a life with him and have his children.” She leant her head on her hand. “Why else?” she said.

“So it wasn't because you were thinking of Ä°nci.”

“I was thinking of her, too, of course. She had a future ahead of her. She could have studied. I'd have paid for her education. There was no need for her to become a man's mistress at such a young age. She had such a lively mind, that girl.”

I lit a cigarette.

“Were you pregnant when you split up with Osman?”

She stared at the windows of the building opposite.

“What happened to the child?” I asked, with a slight break in my voice.

“It died in my belly,” she said. “I committed suicide by taking pills. They couldn't save the child.”

“You mean you tried to commit suicide? If you'd committed suicide, you wouldn't be here.” Was it really my duty to correct the Turkish of Turks? She ignored what I said and just looked at me absent-mindedly.

“Osman came to the hospital and…” she said, taking a deep breath, “Ä°nci was attracted by his money and Osman to her youth and beauty.”

“And in the end, you gave up trying to change Ä°nci and you stopped seeing her.”

“I had no choice. The family would have come down on me like a ton of bricks. Ä°nci had done what I'd been unable to do. She got Osman to buy an apartment in her name and was taking care of the whole family. Osman was like a golden goose. Ä°nci had everyone on her side – my mother, aunt, brothers, all of them. She'd go to them every month with fistfuls of money. She bought them all. They didn't even want to lay eyes on me. Even my own mother turned her back on me. So did Ä°nci's mother, who'd been like a mother to me when Ä°nci and I were growing up together.”

“But in the end you gave up on the whole business.”

“What else could I do? Give it a bit of time, I thought. People won't stick by her after what she's done. So I brought out a CD.”

“Eftalya,” I said.

“It didn't sell, and nobody wanted to make another CD with me. In the end, I decided to leave Istanbul. I couldn't bear it here any more, being in places Osman and I used to go to together.”

“One city, one person,” I said, with quiet empathy. My eyes had filled with tears. Habibe was indeed a real woman.

“You can never turn the clock back. If only none of this had happened. My life would have been completely different. We
were very poor. Poorer than you can ever imagine. But we always hoped we'd be saved somehow. We all went to school. Ä°nci even graduated from high school. I didn't because I had to leave early.”

“Yes, I've seen this in Turks,” I said. “Ambitious deprived youngsters who see education as their way out.”

“Not any more. Nowadays, all the poor kids want to be singers or footballers.”

“You ended up being a singer, actually.”

She made a sound that was something between a sob and laughter.

“Anyway, it's not necessary for everybody to study,” I said.

She asked me for a cigarette. Her own were finished.

“How did you know I'd been to Osman's office on the evening he died?” she asked.

“I didn't know. I was just guessing,” I said.

“There's plenty of time to think about things when I'm out in the mountains,” said Habibe.

“Are you talking about the guest house?”

She blinked to indicate “yes”.

“But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't going to be able to bear it,” she said, pointing to her heart. “It's as if someone bored a hole in here. I could no longer look at children, lovers, or even pregnant women. Just couldn't bear it. Everything became intolerable for me.”

“But why suddenly, after so many years? What happened?”

“What happened? What happened?” cried Habibe. A tear splashed onto the table, followed by more. “I phoned my mother, even though we hardly ever speak. My father left us when we were kids. He went off to Germany as a worker and never came back. At first he'd send money and stuff, but that stopped after a while. Then we heard he was living with another woman in Germany, even though he and my mother weren't even divorced.”

This story sounded a familiar one to me.

“My father and this woman had a daughter who wanted to look us up. She'd been to the Turkish Consulate in Germany and managed to get hold of my number from them.”

“And your father?”

“My father died,” Habibe said abruptly. “When I was talking to his daughter, she said she wanted to come to Turkey and get to know us. That was why I phoned my mother. I couldn't just let this girl turn up without warning anyone.”

“And?” I said.

“Well, I phoned my mother and that was when I learnt that Ä°nci was pregnant. I didn't sleep for a week.”

“Ä°nci was about to snatch the happiness that should have been yours.”

“It wasn't that. I didn't think, ‘Why should Ä°nci have something I don't have?' I just felt sad. So very sad!” Another tear landed on the table.

I'd learnt the knack of dealing with weeping women.

“Would you like a drink?” I said.

She nodded.

Autumn in Istanbul is barely noticeable. Spring is the same. We
Ä°stanbullu
have two seasons in our lives: winter and summer. But this year has been an exception. Autumn just went on and on. In fact, so did winter. It was endless. But at least, if the spring, too, goes on for a long time…

Fashions change whatever the weather, of course. I've been in no mood to make do with last year's clothes, so shopping for outfits in the latest colours and styles has been an absolute must. No time to lose! Workers' overalls, oriental dresses with high collars, ripped T-shirts…

But I'm so poor! Buying this splendid apartment has completely drained my bank account. I have to say, it seems strange to be taking out loans all over the place just to invest in a pair of shoes and a few clothes, especially at my age. What a predicament to be in, just for the sake of having a place to call my own.

You will, of course, understand that the splendid apartment in Papağan Street is now registered as my property. I've done my calculations and I'm starting to do it up. I've had to make some concessions, of course. But nothing was going to stop me installing a pedestal bath.

I don't actually have any money left to put in central heating, but Selim says he'll foot that one as a house-warming present. We'll see. Anyway, having lived in Berlin, I can handle lighting
a stove. I'm even quite an expert at it. Lighting a stove is a bit like riding a bike or swimming – once learnt, never forgotten.

Pelin didn't go back to her lover, but has spent the whole winter with me. It hasn't been as much fun as being with Fofo, my previous housemate. Still, I've got used to her being around. We were a bit squashed when Mother and her friend Frau Hellersdorf came to stay, because I never did get to Majorca. But we managed. Anyway, I'd rather be surrounded by people than go off on my own to stay with Mother.

I'm moving into my new home in May. Pelin claims she'll have found somewhere to live by then. I think she's having a relationship with the boy who lay on my sofa in his boots, but she tries to keep it a secret from me. She'll probably move into his place.

Lale complains a lot about her new job, but won't pack it in as long as she still remembers what it's like to be unemployed. However, once her days of unemployment become a distant memory, she'll probably quit. Lale has dreams of settling in a village, preferably not in an earthquake zone, and earning a living doing translation work. To me, that's no more likely than her previous idea of settling in Cuba. I haven't said that to her, of course.

In the meantime, something unbelievable has happened. Özlem has made up with her husband, despite having divorced him. She says they're happier now than they've ever been and won't remarry because marriage kills love. If you ask me, all types of love die eventually. Yet that doesn't stop us falling in love over and over again.

Speaking of which, last week I met the mystery person who bought the apartment above mine. He's a gorgeous, bearded guy. We went to choose tiles together for my kitchen. He's really knowledgeable about things like that. I shall definitely invite him to my house-warming party.

Kati Hirschel is a foreigner and the proud owner of the only crime bookshop in Istanbul. When the director of a film starring her old school friend is found murdered in his hotel room, Kati cannot resist the temptation to start her own maverick investigation. After all, her friend Petra is the police's principal suspect, and reading all those detective novels must have taught Kati something.

This suspenseful tale of murder features a heroine who is funny, feisty and undresses men in her mind more often than she would actually admit, even to herself. The men are too hot to handle, but is she too cool to resist? Sharp observation and wry, sexy humour expose Western prejudices about Turkey as well as Turkish stereotyping of Europeans.

 

Petros Markaris, author
of Che Committed Suicide
and
Zone Defence

 

£8.99/$14.95
Crime Paperback Original
ISBN 978-1908524-041
eBook
ISBN 978-1908524-058

BITTER LEMON PRESS

 

First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by
Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW

 

 

First published in Turkish as
Kelepir Ev
by Everest Yayinlari, Istanbul, 2003