Dead of Night (18 page)

Back in the fifties, most of the houses had still been inhabited. That was one of the reasons why the Johnson case had been
so shocking. Mary Johnson had been murdered by a ‘good’ neighbour while the local children played in their gardens, had their
piano lessons, went off to church. Hiram’s evil was of an ordinary type, but then that was how most evil was. Mundane.

Not that there had been anything mundane about what happened after all the nice normal (and evil) people moved out of Brush
Park. By the 1970s, the place was full of nigger drug-dealers cruising the streets in convertibles, shooting the windows out
of mansions that had once sheltered the great men who had built the motor industry. All the hillbillies, the spics, the wops,
the Muslims, the so-called mixed-race abominations were let loose by that bastard Mayor Young and infected every part of the
city. Bleating about being laid off from their jobs and having no money, they soon found cash for the drugs they all shoved
in their arms or into their lungs. Then all of Detroit became a marketplace, and one of the little traders in it had been
young Elvis Goins. A nothing, a nobody and a punk, but a punk who’d had a big mouth.

Grant T. Miller looked out into the street again, and this time it was completely empty.

‘Has Ardıç agreed to this?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Yes.’ İkmen sat in one of the plastic armchairs in the living area while Süleyman packed his suitcase on his bed. ‘If this
bullet is found and it can be proved to have come from the same gun that killed the young boy who died while exploring Brush
Park, then my statement that it was Grant Miller who fired the shot at us will be of importance. Ardıç said that the request
came straight from the Chief of Detroit PD.’

‘He fired at me too!’ Süleyman said.

‘Yes, I know, but would you want to spend any more time out here?’ İkmen asked.

‘No.’ Süleyman walked out of his bedroom and over to İkmen. ‘Çetin, I know that old man Goins . . .’

‘Lieutenant Diaz sent me that text message for a reason,’ İkmen said. ‘Like Ezekiel Goins, Diaz always believed that Grant
Miller killed Elvis. He never said so in as many words, but it was clear that he at the very least had suspicions.’

‘You can’t convict a man of an old crime with no evidence!’ Süleyman said.

‘But you can convict a man of a new crime with some evidence,’ İkmen responded. ‘Grant Miller may never serve time for the
killing of Elvis Goins, but he might well have to serve a sentence for the murder of the young black boy.’

‘If he did it.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I mean, I don’t know why he’d kill a boy for just messing around in an old house,’ Süleyman said.

‘The boy was black and the man is a racist,’ İkmen replied. ‘As you know, he fired on us just because he thought we might
be Hispanic. Albeit much better these days, this is Detroit, where racial tensions can still run high.’

Süleyman sighed. ‘But I don’t know why they need you to stay here,’ he said. ‘You could just give them a statement, couldn’t
you?’

‘I could,’ İkmen said. ‘But they prefer that I stay.’

Süleyman went back into his bedroom and continued packing. They’d known each other long enough to recognise when nothing more
needed to be said. Süleyman knew that İkmen was staying on in order to pursue the Elvis Goins mystery. Whether Detroit PD
had really pushed him to remain or whether İkmen had actually volunteered, he didn’t know. But Ardıç had approved it and so
it was happening. İkmen, for his part, was glad, although he did feel sad about not being able to go home to his family. Also,
being alone in a place that was so far from Turkey was not going to be easy. But as soon as Ezekiel Goins had approached him
that first time back on Antoine Cadillac, he’d known to the very centre of his bones that he had to try to help him. Whatever
his real ethnic background might be, it was one Turkish father appealing for help to another, and that was something İkmen
could not resist.

He looked down at his watch and saw that it was nearly nine o’clock. ‘I have to leave now,’ he said to Süleyman.

The younger man turned and walked out of his bedroom. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To Brush Park, with Officer Addison and the ballistics people,’ İkmen said. ‘We have to find that bullet.’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back. Might not be until the evening. You leave for the airport at . . .’

‘Five,’ Süleyman said.

‘Right.’

They stood and looked at each other for a moment. Letting Süleyman go like this was not easy for İkmen. He had always thought
that as well as going to the USA together, they’d go home together too. He opened his arms to take his friend in an embrace.
Süleyman walked forward, kissed him on both cheeks and then hugged him.

‘Going home alone will be dull,’ he said.

‘You slept most of the way over here,’ İkmen replied.

Süleyman broke away from his embrace. ‘Çetin, when you get home, please speak to someone about Bekir.’

İkmen, smarting a little at this interference in his private life, even by Süleyman, nevertheless smiled and then said, ‘I
must go. Travel safely.’

‘Inşallah,’ Süleyman replied.

İkmen left the suite and took the lift down to the lobby, where Rita Addison and Dr Weiss were waiting for him.

It had been a full twenty-four hours since the fire at Kyle Redmond’s wrecking yard had been put out. It had started, the
fire department reckoned, in Redmond’s office. It had spread to a couple of sheds and some cars waiting to be wrecked, but
had otherwise been quite localised. It was definitely a fire that had been set deliberately.

However, straightforward as the fire may have been, locating the owner of the business was proving rather more problematic.
Kyle Redmond was not at the house he apparently shared with a load of green budgerigars over in Mexicantown. He worked for
himself and alone, and so there were no other employees the police could contact. According to a neighbour, Redmond had an
ex-wife somewhere, as well as money troubles. This same neighbour seemed unsurprised that his wrecking business had ended
its life in flames.

‘I’m not saying that Kyle set the fire himself, but at the same time, I can’t see him crying over it either,’ the man said.

According to Detroit PD records, Kyle Redmond had no criminal
convictions and his business was legitimate, if far from solvent. In other words, he wasn’t ‘known’. Or rather, he wasn’t
known for criminal activity. The investigating officer, Lieutenant Devine, felt that there was something familiar about the
name Kyle Redmond, although he had no idea what that might be.

‘Trouble is,’ he told Sergeant Ferrari as they watched the forensics team continue their search of the site, ‘I’m so damn
old, I’ve met just about everyone.’

Donna Ferrari didn’t comment. Devine was coming up for retirement, and she knew that it was something he feared. He went on
about his age a lot, but in a nervous sort of way, as if he were both pleased and upset about his advancing years at the same
time.

‘If the man were here, I might be able to tell,’ Devine continued. ‘But there’s something buzzing at the back of my head.’
He put a strip of nicotine gum into his mouth and chewed. He’d given up smoking five years before; now he had to try to tackle
his addiction to the gum he’d used to quit cigarettes. Life, the lugubrious Devine thought, was a ‘valley of trouble’, just
as his grandma back in Georgia always used to say. Unlike him, old Grandma Bette had had the Lord to pull her through; he
just had a vague thought about going off to Canada to fish when he retired.

The jaws of the wrecking machine were closed. They’d been like that when the fire officers had arrived. Presumably Kyle Redmond
had shut the thing down either when he left as usual for the evening, or before he set the fire in his office. An investigator
climbed into the machinery and set about assessing its condition.

Donna Ferrari, looking on, frowned. ‘You know, if Redmond did set his own yard on fire, it’s weird to me that he didn’t torch
the crusher. Surely it’s the most valuable part of the set-up.’

‘Maybe he was going to do that but someone disturbed him,’ Devine replied. ‘Until we find him, how can we know?’

The crushing machine was started up. A low whine at first, followed by a clanking sound as the jaws of the automobile eater
slowly came
apart. Both Ferrari and Devine could see that there was something inside the mechanism, but they couldn’t tell what it was.
The investigator down on the ground beside the machine, however, could. He immediately called up to his colleague inside the
cab: ‘Switch the fucking thing off!’ He sounded, to Devine and to Ferrari, more than just a little agitated.

Ayşe Farsakoğlu had been told in no uncertain terms that anything to do with Ali Kuban, his ‘fans’ and/or his possible plans
were nothing to do with her. The relevant officers were fully aware of everything that was being posted on Kuban’s site and
would act accordingly.

It was Saturday afternoon, and in the normal course of events, Ayşe, if not at work, would be out and about in Beyoğlu meeting
her friends and shopping. Her brother had gone to see his new girlfriend, and so she was alone in the flat and theoretically
free to do as she wished. But she just couldn’t seem to rouse herself. What she’d seen in Ali Kuban’s file when she’d first
read it on his release from prison haunted her. All his victims had been so ashamed, and that particularly applied to the
gypsy girl Findık. He’d actually penetrated her three times, as well as forcing her into acts of oral sex and beating and
cutting her body. The hours she was held captive by him must have passed so slowly for poor Findık. He’d pulled her behind
a pile of wood planks that leaned up against the old city wall and then just brutalised her.

At some point, according to the girl’s statement, another man had put his head around the planks, but Kuban had told him to
mind his own business and the man had disappeared. Ayşe wondered whether Findik had had hopes of being rescued at that point;
she thought about how crushed she must have felt when she realised that no help was coming. By the time he abducted Findık,
Kuban was, by his own later admission, feeling invincible. He’d dispensed with the balaclava mask he’d worn when he’d raped
the other women. He’d been so
sure that the gypsy girl wouldn’t report the incident or try to identify him. But she did tell the police, and eventually
she did identify Kuban. Two years later, she killed herself, but not until she’d made sure that her attacker was in custody.
The whole story made Ayşe feel humbled, and also in awe of Fındık’s courage. Now, if either Kuban himself or one of his fans
was planning to replay Findik’s ordeal with another girl, that was just obscene.

The Commissioner, of course, had a point that any action should be performed by officers already involved in monitoring Kuban,
and İzzet Melik could well be correct in his assumption that it might all be just a hoax. But Ayşe wasn’t convinced. What
if the monitors decided that Kuban and his friends were not going to do anything? What if they just weren’t in the right place
at the right time?

She began to chew her fingernails. It was something she only ever did when she was extremely stressed. In spite of feeling
weary because of her anxiety, she knew she wouldn’t sleep. Thoughts about Kuban had kept her awake all the previous night.
How was she going to cope with the idea of Ali Kuban and/or others stalking girls and raping them during the course of the
night to come?

Not a sound or even so much as a flash of rotting-slipper-clad foot had been detected coming from Grant T. Miller’s house
since they’d arrived. The team searching for the bullet had now entered the front garden of the old Johnson house, while İkmen
and Addison continued to scan the broken pavement and the road in front of the building. The defunct street lamp to the left
of the property had already been climbed, and nothing had been found embedded in it.

‘I was thinking,’ İkmen said to Rita as he lifted up a loose paving stone, cleared some snow away from it and looked underneath.
‘Even if we find this bullet, you only have my word for it that Miller had the gun at all.’

Rita was aware of this. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Without the Beretta, and with no paperwork to attach it to Miller, he can get
his attorney
to argue that it has nothing to do with him.’ She sighed. ‘I know it’s too late now, but why didn’t you and your colleague
press charges against him when he fired on you?’

İkmen put the paving stone down, kicked away the body of a dead rat and then straightened up with some difficulty. ‘I think
because we are foreigners, we didn’t want to get involved.’

‘But you were already involved,’ she said. ‘If not your colleague. You came up here because of Zeke Goins, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. But Inspector Süleyman was not of the same mind. I brought him up here. He did not want to come. He is going home today
and would not have liked to have been detained any longer.’

‘Detroit not appeal?’

İkmen felt embarrassed. He didn’t want to cause offence. Also, he actually quite liked the city himself. ‘Inspector Süleyman
comes from a very . . . a part of İstanbul that is like Grosse Pointe,’ he said. ‘I am more a downtown man myself.’

She smiled. ‘Well, that you have in common with me, Inspector,’ she said. ‘You, me and Lieutenant Diaz.’

‘Have you got any closer to knowing who might have killed the lieutenant, and why?’ İkmen asked.

Rita shook her head. ‘Now that I’m involved with this, which is a kind of side issue to the lieutenant’s death, I’m not around
Lieutenant Shalhoub and the rest of his team all the time.’

‘Shalhoub is in charge of the investigation?’

‘Yes.’

İkmen had had little to do with the Christian Arab policeman since that first meeting back at the Cobo Center. But he remembered
him as a pleasant, if rather world-weary middle-aged officer, not unlike himself. Unlike Sergeant Donna Ferrari, whom he had
met for the first time on the same occasion, Shalhoub was not what İkmen would have called aggressively American or what Shalhoub
himself described as ‘ballsy’.