Dead of Night (26 page)

She didn’t appear to be lying; she was old and, to Officer Zevets, she seemed to be deaf. He looked around at the stained
carpet that barely covered the old woman’s floor, and at the tattered blinds up at her one window. What a place for a senior
citizen to end up! Both of his grandmothers lived such different lives from this lady! One was in a good care home out at
the Points, while the other, Grandma Monica, led what his father darkly described as a ‘helluva life’ down in Florida.

Zevets was about to leave the room when the old woman, Winnie McGrath, beckoned him back towards her.

‘You got something else to say, ma’am?’

Winnie kept on beckoning until Zevets was near enough to be able to see every coarse hair on her chin. ‘Come close,’ she whispered,
‘so they don’t hear!’

‘Ma’am?’ Her thin lips were painted a wild shade of vermilion and her breath smelt like dirty socks.

‘Like I said, I heard nothing and saw nothing,’ she said. ‘But I know that there’s evil in this city, Officer.’

Zevets felt his heart sink. The last thing he needed was a religious nut with an evil complex. As soon as she’d said it, the
old woman stood back from him as if she had to get out of the way while the shock settled.

‘Evil? What kind of evil, ma’am?’

This time she leaned forward to put her head close to his. Then she said, ‘Devils!’

‘Devils?’

She began to shake. Whatever delusion she was suffering from was nevertheless very real to her. ‘They come all hearts and
flowers first off,’ she said. Tears came into her eyes. ‘Then they took everything!’

Zevets frowned. ‘Took what?’

Exhausted by the emotions that were clearly taking their toll on her body, the old woman sat down on her bed and closed her
eyes. In spite of the fact that he was certain she was insane, Zevets persisted. ‘Mrs McGrath? Mrs McGrath, I don’t know what
you mean. Took what?’

As quickly as they had shut, her eyes snapped open again and she said, ‘They took my home, fool! They come in, gave me a handful
of dollar bills and they took my home!’

‘Now you just sit down there and I will get you a nice glass of tea,’ Marta Sosobowski said to Çetin İkmen.

She was a thin, small woman, probably in her early sixties. She was extremely well preserved. This she didn’t of course allude
to. But what she did go on and on about were her many foreign holidays with her sister Stella.

‘Me and Stella’ve been all over Europe and to Turkey twice,’ she said. ‘We liked that Grand Bazaar you have in İstanbul very
much. Stella bought a lot of purses there, but I went for the tea.’

When she’d left the vast living room with its fabulous riverside view to go and prepare the tea in her equally vast kitchen,
Devine turned to İkmen and whispered, ‘Marta Sosobowski is what we call an “iron butterfly”.’

Çetin İkmen looked confused.

‘A southern, generally white woman, all ice tea and home-cooked cakes and standing by her man on the surface, while underneath
there’s a heart so hard you could cut a diamond with it,’ Devine said. ‘Mrs Sosobowski is from Texas, which just makes it
all the worse.’

‘Why?’

‘Texans have an attitude, know what I mean?’ Devine said. ‘Because they come from the biggest state in the union, they always
have Old Glory up their asses.’

İkmen didn’t really know what he was talking about, but then Marta Sosobowski came back in again carrying very authentic-looking
tulip glasses full of tea and what looked like a plate of baklava.

‘I am always shopping for groceries in Greektown,’ she said. ‘Of course, I know you’re not Greek, Inspector İkmen, but I know
that Turks, just like Greeks, do love these sticky pastries.’

She put their drinks and the plate of baklava down on the coffee table in front of them. İkmen took a sip from his glass and
just about managed to avoid pulling a face. It was that disgusting powdered apple tea! So sweet it made your teeth hurt! Sold
mainly to tourists, it was something that was in no way to his taste. Mrs Sosobowski, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying
her glass immensely.

Ed Devine put his glass, untouched, down on the table and got straight to the point. ‘Marta,’ he said, ‘I know it’s still
not easy for you to talk about John, but with Gerry Diaz dead, I didn’t know who else to come to.’

Her eyes appeared to moisten. ‘That’s just fine,’ she said through a small smile. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘It’s a long time ago now, and I can’t tell you why we want to know about this or nothing, but . . .’ Devine swallowed hard. ‘Marta,
do you remember when John and Gerry hadn’t been partners for very long and they were called out to Grant T. Miller’s place
in Brush Park? Councillor Goins’ brother Zeke had attacked Miller because he thought he’d killed his son. It was back in 1978.’

For a moment she didn’t speak. She’d heard him all right, but she was, or appeared to be, considering what he had said very
carefully. Beautifully made up and also, İkmen reckoned, enhanced by some
plastic surgery, Marta Sosobowski was a pretty if rather expressionless woman. Eventually she said, ‘I do recall that time,
Lieutenant. Not always with affection.’

‘No.’ Devine chewed hard on his nicotine gum. ‘Wasn’t a good time for any of us. But that incident, when John and Gerry went
out to Grant T. and pulled Zeke Goins off of him, I wondered what you knew about that?’

She shrugged. ‘Why would I know anything? John never brought his work home.’

‘Just that that incident was famous,’ Devine said. ‘In the department.’

‘Was it?’

‘Yeah. Because after John and Gerry pulled Zeke Goins out of there, Grant T. dropped all charges against him.’ He smiled very
broadly at her unmoving face. ‘Not like old Grant to give a break to anyone, much less a guy he considered to be trash.’

‘I don’t know anything about it.’

Her tone had a finality about it that seemed to rule out any sort of argument; at least that was how it sounded to Çetin İkmen.
But Ed Devine, still through a smile, persisted. ‘Word at the time was that John and Gerry had done some persuading on Grant
T., although I never did believe it myself,’ he said. ‘Gerry maybe, but not John. Why would he?’

There was some movement in her face, but it was minimal and it made her look slightly cross. ‘I hope you aren’t implying anything
by that remark, Lieutenant.’

Devine shrugged. ‘Implying what?’

Her eyes peered up from under her false lashes with what İkmen could only describe as malevolence. ‘You know,’ she said. Two
words imbued with such menace, they made the Turk shudder.

‘John’s . . . associations?’ Devine said.

Marta Sosobowski said nothing.

‘Given John’s . . . associations, it has always seemed strange to
me that he didn’t encourage Miller to pin Goins’ butt to the wall,’ he continued. ‘Goins is what John would have called “mixed”,
a half—’

‘Maybe it was Gerry as persuaded him,’ she said.

‘John?’

‘Maybe.’ She kept on looking at him, now apparently completely oblivious of Çetin İkmen’s existence. ‘There is no way of knowing.’

‘Because Gerry is dead.’

‘And because John’s work was a mystery to me.’

‘But not his associations?’

Not once did her gaze falter, although it was clear to both Devine and İkmen that there was plenty going on behind the scenes.
Her right eye just very slightly squeezed partly shut. ‘Lieutenant Devine,’ she said, ‘the beliefs that John had . . .’

‘That you shared.’

She ignored him. ‘The beliefs that John had did not, as you know,
ever
affect his application of justice. If he thought that Mr Miller shouldn’t prosecute the Goins man, then that had to be for
a good reason. My husband was a good person.’

‘He was always cool with me, Marta,’ Devine said. ‘Personally I have no complaints. But I knew of John’s beliefs, which was
why I could never really square him letting Zeke Goins get off like that.’

‘Well maybe it was Gerry who persuaded him,’ she said. ‘He, after all, would have a . . . sympathy . . .’

‘As a Hispanic, or “spic”, as I think—’

‘We don’t use words like that in this house, Lieutenant,’ she cut in coolly. ‘Opposing views are one thing, bad manners are
quite another.’ She very quickly and suddenly stood up. ‘Now if there’s nothing more . . .’

She wanted them to go. İkmen, with some relief, put his glass back on the coffee table and rose to his feet. Devine, suddenly
apparently interested in his tea, drained his glass first and then stood up.

‘Thank you for your time, Marta,’ he said. ‘It’s appreciated.’

She led them out into the hall and opened the front door for them to leave. When she closed it again, she did so with some
force.

Once they’d got into the elevator to take them down to the ground floor, İkmen said, ‘Mrs Sosobowski was not pleased to see
us in the end, I think.’

‘Ah.’ Devine chewed his gum and shook his head. ‘John Sosobowski, rest his soul, was a man who believed himself to be racially
superior to other folks. Don’t get me wrong, he never targeted blacks or other non-whites unfairly, as far as I could ever
tell. He was always cool with me. But away from work, he hung with some dubious characters.’

‘Like Miller?’

‘Like him, but not him, if you know what I mean. At the time, back in ’78, nobody could work out why he’d been responsible
for in effect protecting a Melungeon. Zeke should have been done for attacking Miller.’

‘Maybe Lieutenant Diaz . . .’

‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Although he was very much the junior partner in those days. If John had said “Jump”, Gerry would have
asked him “How high?” And then there’s all the wealth and privilege.’

İkmen frowned.

‘You don’t get an apartment in a place like this on a police retirement pension,’ Devine said. ‘It’s said that years ago Marta’s
father was in the Black Legion. There are some who believe that those bastards never disbanded as history would have it. The
Legion included a lot of people with a lot of money. It’s been said they’d pay cash for those in some kind of authority to
do favours for them, know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Problem is, a favour for Ezekiel Goins don’t exactly fit what John Sosobowski was.’

İkmen said, ‘If you knew that Sosobowski was a racist, why didn’t you say something before we came here?’

The elevator doors opened.

Ed Devine smiled. ‘Because in this city,’ he said, ‘these days, no one talks about race unless they have to. We all want to
move on, Inspector, whatever colour we may be.’

Çetin İkmen’s wife Fatma had already been in to see Ardıç; now she was in Süleyman’s office, a large plastic bag full of vegetables
at her feet.

‘But Mehmet,’ she said to him, ‘if you were both shot at by this lunatic old man, why has my husband had to stay on in that
terrible place and not you?’

Fatma had not been at all happy about her husband going to America. She’d seen a lot of Hollywood movies over the years, and
as a consequence of this, she didn’t trust Americans. ‘Remember that movie
Con Air
?’
she asked her husband not long before he was about to leave. ‘Terrible convicts who have worn dead people’s severed heads
as hats flying around in planes! And then
Beverly Hills Cop
! All that swearing, and girls wearing virtually nothing . . .’

‘But those are just films,’ Çetin had replied, exasperated. ‘
Just
films!’

Mehmet Süleyman had known Fatma İkmen for years, and to some extent he knew how to handle her fears. ‘You know how Çetin Bey
always puts himself forward for any kind of duty in a very selfless manner . . .’

‘In Turkey, yes.’

‘And also abroad,’ Süleyman said. ‘Look how he volunteered to go to London.’

İkmen had indeed volunteered to work undercover in the British capital some months before. But Fatma knew that at least in
part, that had happened because they as a couple had not been getting on.
Disagreements over Bekir’s death had led her to tell Çetin to leave. But all that was now very firmly in the past and she
just wanted her husband back again. Fatma sighed.

‘The bullet that was fired at us has still not been discovered,’ Süleyman continued. ‘There are problems, Fatma Hanım. I cannot
go into those, but in summary, if the Detroit police do not have the evidence from Çetin Bey’s eyes, then they have nothing
against the man they suspect might have killed a young boy.’

‘But if you too were shot at by this man, why couldn’t you stay?’

Süleyman smiled. ‘Oh, Fatma Hanım,’ he said, ‘you know your husband better than anyone alive. As soon as we arrived, we were
confronted by a mystery. How could you possibly expect Çetin Bey to leave that alone?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Zeke Goins said to his brother.

It was freezing cold and the early hours of the morning in Brush Park, and the battered, rotting landscape looked like a black-and-white
photograph of some wrecked French village during World War I.

As promised, the old man had stopped yelling outside Miller’s place in the daytime, but he still turned up to lurk around
the Windmill, silently, at night. He knew that Miller didn’t sleep. It pleased him to think about him in his cold ruined house,
haunted by his own ghastly past. He hadn’t expected to see Sam coming out of Miller’s place.

‘What you doin’ goin’ in there?’ he asked as he pulled his brother away from Miller’s front gate and began to drag him down
the broken and pitted road.

‘My car’s this way!’ Sam hissed as he pulled his arm free from Zeke’s grasp. ‘Come on, I’ll take you back to Antoine Cadillac.’

But Zeke held on to him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re stayin’ here until you tell me what’s goin’ on!’

Sam stopped and shrugged. ‘It was business,’ he said.

‘You do business with . . .’

‘Not me, the city!’ Sam said. He took hold of Zeke’s shoulder and pulled him. ‘Come to the car, I’ll tell you then.’

When they got inside Sam’s Audi, he said, ‘You know Miller lives in that wreck by choice? He’s salted away millions of dollars
over the years.’