Baksheesh (5 page)

Not that I would tell anyone. Oh no.

 

I set off for the shop looking very glum and not even smartly dressed. Pelin was nowhere to be seen again, which I wasn't really sorry about. By noon, a couple of customers had been in. One made some pretty good purchases. He was about to go on holiday and said he always read crime fiction when he was away “to clear his head”. Actually, he didn't give the impression of being someone whose head was ever very full, but naturally I kept my thoughts to myself. I'm not one to bicker with everyone who exchanges a few words with me, especially if they're customers.

The telephone rang three times, but none of them were those silent calls that, as I knew from experience, Turks make when a relationship ends. They call their former lovers and then hang up without saying anything, just to make sure they're not forgotten. Obviously, Selim thought he had no need to remind me of him. And he wasn't wrong.

I was passing the time sitting in my rocking chair and putting on make-up when the shop door opened noisily. My mascara brush almost poked my eye out.

It was the man from yesterday. The car-park man who had seized me by the throat.

“What do you want?” I yelled, springing to my feet. It was only afterwards I realized that in my haste I'd dropped my mascara brush and stepped on it.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” The guy was spitting the words out through his teeth.

“You're not on your own turf here, you brute! So watch what you say,” I shouted. My manic courage in such situations surprises even me. In fact, of course, it wasn't a situation that required real courage, because half the district, led by Recai the local tea-boy, had gathered outside the window to see what was going on and I knew they'd intervene if things got out of hand.

I considered shouting “Police!” again, just to get the man worried. However, this time there was a real possibility that the police would actually turn up and I disliked the police just as much as any car-park owner or property developer.

The man lunged towards me with one hand raised as if intending to seize me by the neck again. However, one thing was different this time. Allowing him to replay that suffocation scene in front of all those people would severely damage my standing as a local trader. I had to do something and – as you will appreciate – I had very little time to think. I made a rash decision.

And – well, there's no point prolonging this – I picked up a ceramic ashtray and hurled it at his head.

There was a nasty cracking noise. Like the sound of two stones hitting each other.

It was strange. Very strange.

The ashtray hit him just above his left ear and it started to bleed.

When I say bleeding, his ear, or rather his head, was bleeding really heavily, making a large, bright-red stain round the neck of his yellow T-shirt. Recai and his mates were inside instantly, looking in horror at me and the man, who looked as startled as
if he'd just seen a UFO, and at the blood dripping from the hand he'd raised to his head. I stood there without saying a word. What could I say – “Get well soon”?

Was it because of the blood-and-guts movies I'd seen? Had films like
Fight Club
,
The Matrix
and an overdose of James Bond had a bad effect on me? Or crime fiction? Had Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith led me to this? Perhaps it wouldn't have happened if, like normal women, I watched
Tea and Sympathy
and
Gone with the Wind
, read
A Farewell to Arms
, and had a penchant for cats, birds, insects and children. Why couldn't I have had a shop selling romantic fiction?

The man pulled himself together and walked out, hurling threats in all directions. Veysel Bey, the carpenter, ran to the kitchen to fetch me a glass of water. They sat me down, gave me a cigarette and lit it. The way they were patting me on the back suggested that my prestige had at least doubled.

Naturally, Recai was the first to let his curiosity get the better of him.

“What happened, Miss Kati?”

“Well, you saw what happened.”

“Did he want something from you?”

“Why don't you ask him, Recai?”

“We need to get back to work now, miss,” said Veysel Bey.

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you all so much.”

One by one they left.

Shortly afterwards, Gaffar Bey, from the snack bar, came back.

“Miss Kati, don't get me wrong, but I feel it's my duty to say this. After all, we've been neighbours for so many years and we do business with each other…”

Actually it was a one-way business. I paid him for the toasted sandwiches I bought from him but, in all those years, he had never once bought a book from me.

“Of course, Gaffar Bey,” I said.

“Those men are bullies. You know that too. Just make sure you don't leave the shop empty from now on. After all, it's your bread and butter. People say better they take your money than your life, but they also say money is the key to life. It's my duty to say this because I think of you as a daughter.”

“Thanks, Gaffar Bey,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

I'm not stupid and of course I'd been considering what I should do. After all, I was a mere mortal who went home at night. The streets would be deserted, the shop empty…

The shop would be empty, but there was all that insurance! Hee hee! Insurance against terrorist attacks, violent action, flooding, electricity outages, earthquakes, fire and a whole host of other things, whether I was in the shop or not. My insurance policy, which I renewed every year, no expense spared, was just there waiting.

 

On the way home, I planned a whole evening eating strawberry ice cream and dreaming about how I would use the insurance money. I was fed up with house-hunting, Turkish men and trying to sell a non-essential product that was neither the meat nor potatoes of life in a country suffocated by an economic crisis. Of course, I could always live in Berlin. But nothing could be worse than that!

Or could it?

Would my life really be worse in Berlin, where winters lasted eight months, snow fell in October, the streets were deserted and people looked glum, mean and discontented?

I was still contemplating this nonsense when someone pressed a finger unrelentingly on the doorbell.

It was Pelin. She looked a mess. Before entering my apartment, she asked if she could stay with me. From the look of her two large bags, she wasn't meaning for one night only. Naturally, I would never have turned her away, even if she'd asked to stay
for a hundred nights. There was still some humanity left in the world.

She didn't appear desperate to talk, so I told her what had happened to me, making sure she understood that things might have worked out differently if only she'd deigned to come in to work that day.

“So now I don't have a boyfriend or a job,” grumbled Pelin. How could she say that? My business, which I had set up and laboured over, was falling to bits, yet that was all she could say. Not a word of sympathy.

“If it makes you feel any better, I've just split up with Selim,” I said.

“You'll make it up.”

I pounced on her words. Did she really think Selim loved me that much?

“Why do you think that?”

“You broke up just recently, didn't you? It didn't last a week.”

“It's different this time,” I said, lowering my eyes.

“You said it was different last time. People don't split up unless a third party comes into the equation. If people just quarrel, they always make up.”

How wearisome it is when girls of that age philosophize about relationships. So irritating.

“Has Deniz got someone else in his life then?”

“The soloist who sings with his band. A girl called Nurten. He denies it of course. It's the usual male tactic – deny everything, even if you're found in bed together.”

“Maybe he denies it because there really is nothing between him and the girl.”

“I phoned her.”

“Oh my God! You did what?”

“I phoned her.”

“And?”

“It was gross.”

“How do you mean? What did you say to her?”

“I asked if she knew whether Deniz had a lover.”

“Awesome! And? What did she say?”

“She said that it's nothing serious, just sex!”

I put my hand on my chest. These modern ways were just too much, even for me.

“Yes, that was gross indeed,” I said.

“I told you.”

“What's going to happen now? What will you do?”

“I won't do anything. It's all over. It would help if I could stay with you, just while I look for somewhere to live. I have to get my belongings from Deniz's place and make a new life for myself,” she said, gathering her hair up on top of her head. “Now it seems I've got to look for a job too.”

“Would you like some strawberry ice cream?” I said.

The shop was still there. Safe and sound. I'd become so quickly caught up with the idea of getting insurance money, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Mentally, I was preparing to pack a suitcase that very afternoon for the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic or at least Antalya. Now, since I couldn't leave Istanbul, those plans were laid to rest and I had to start searching for a home and a lover again. I also needed to tell Kasım Bey that I'd given up on the apartment in Papağan Street and he should find some others for me. And maybe I'd find a way of making up with Selim. I also had to go and pay my back-dated refuse-collection tax. My poor delicate shoulders were sagging under life's load.

As I went into the kitchen to make some tea, I heard the door open. I thought Pelin must have finally woken up and come into work, because it was highly unlikely to be a customer. What Turk would actually weather a stock-market crisis by reading a book?

I peered out of the kitchen.

Impossible. It couldn't be.

It was Batuhan.

I couldn't conceal my astonishment.

“Hey!” was all that came out of my mouth.

“Why the surprise? Wasn't it obvious that I'd be knocking on your door first? Or didn't it occur to you that they'd give this job to me?”

I looked at him blankly. What on earth was he talking about?
I had no idea. Or was he talking about yesterday's incident? Had the murder squad started taking on personal assault cases? What was he on about?

“What job? Which door?” I asked sharply. I'd been looking for a reason to get cross anyway.

“You do realize you're the chief suspect in the Osman Karakaş murder case, don't you?”

“What? Is this some sort of candid-camera stunt? Anyway, who is Osman Karakaş?”

He laughed ruefully and said, “I only wish it were a stunt. Unfortunately not. You have to come down to the police station with me.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Batuhan,” I said.

“I'm serious. Osman Karakaş was killed yesterday evening. A number of people saw you fighting with him and his brothers say he had no enemies apart from you.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I repeated, as it dawned on me that Osman Karakaş must have been the car-park man.

“If you say ‘Don't be ridiculous' one more time, I'll have to charge you with insulting a police officer in the course of his duty. Hopefully, you know me well enough to realize that whatever happened between us previously will not prevent me from doing my duty.”

“Cuuuut! Cut! Cut!” I wanted to scream. Did this idiot really believe that anything had happened between us? The way he was talking, he deserved a much more derogatory term than “idiot” – but I won't be crude.

“Do you seriously think that I killed somebody? This is a joke, isn't it?”

“No, it's certainly no joke. Osman Karakaş was found dead this morning in his office at 3/6 Papağan Street. With a single bullet in his leg,” he said. “You, of course, know all this better than I do,” he added, with another rueful laugh.

I refrained from saying “Don't be ridiculous” yet again.

“Please sit down.”

“We have to go to the station for you to make a statement.”

“Very well. But sit down for a moment and then we'll go.”

He sat down.

Just then, the shop door opened. It was a customer.

“We're closed,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘we're closed'? You're most definitely open. I'm standing inside your shop this very moment.” It was a woman. If things continued like this, I felt in serious danger of becoming a misogynist as well as a misandrist, which I'd been for some time.

“We're not open for business because we're stocktaking. I do apologize and would be delighted if you could come back this afternoon.” How did I manage to utter so many words without losing my cool?

The woman left, slamming the door behind her.

I collapsed into my rocking chair and put my head in my hands.

“Let's start from the beginning. The man I quarrelled with yesterday has been killed. Correct? The man from the car-park mafia. Correct?”

He nodded in agreement.

“His brothers say I was his only enemy. Have I misunderstood anything so far?”

“No, you've understood correctly.”

I clenched my fists to stop myself throwing an ashtray at Batuhan's head.

“For God's sake, does it sound reasonable to you that a female bookseller would be the sole enemy of a car-park gang member?”

He stood up, took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offered me one.