Deadline (23 page)

Krikor
Sarkissian shook his head impatiently. ‘You should get that attended to,’ he said. ‘You can’t go on like that. You’ve had it for years!’

David Bonomo ignored him. Krikor meant well but he didn’t know much, if anything, about his affliction. ‘I was completely oblivious to anything except my own discomfort,’ Bonomo said to Süleyman. ‘By the time I got out of the toilet the whole place was awash with masked men. I wasn’t even around when Mrs Aktar came down the stairs covered in blood.’ He looked over at her, but Lale Aktar was asleep. Whispering, he said, ‘She doesn’t look well.’

‘No.’ Süleyman looked at the novelist, slumped in a chair beside an equally unconscious Hovsep Pars. It was clear that writing novels about crime in no way prepared one for the real thing. Süleyman now felt a little bit ashamed of the fact that when the murder mystery evening had started he had been so anxious to beat her.

‘David, did you see or hear anyone else in the toilet when you were in there?’ Krikor Sarkissian asked.

David Bonomo thought. He was a spare, hawk-like man who always looked up when he was seriously considering something. ‘Mmm,’ he said. He looked down again. ‘I don’t remember having any company in there. But, as I said before, I was in something of a state.’

‘You
think that would prevent you from being aware of other people around you?’

David Bonomo looked up again. ‘Well . . .’

‘Forgive me if I’m wrong.’ Arto Sarkissian leaned forward in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. ‘But I would, probably in my ignorance, imagine that if one was suffering from gastric “issues”, shall we say, one would be acutely aware of, and nervous about, other people being in one’s immediate vicinity. One would want not just a cubicle but a whole toilet block to oneself – I imagine.’

David Bonomo nodded. ‘There is some truth in that, Arto,’ he said. ‘A lot of truth.’ He looked up at the ceiling again. ‘And actually, in spite of being in some pain, I was quite relaxed – in a way,’ he said.

‘Does that mean that you were probably alone, David?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Probably. I couldn’t swear to it. But that does seem likely.’

‘And you definitely did not see my assistant Burak?’ Krikor said.

‘No.’

Krikor Sarkissian looked at Mehmet Süleyman. They both knew what the other one was thinking. Eventually it was Krikor who broke the silence. ‘So,’ he said, ‘shall I go and speak to Burak?’

But then
Çetin
İ
kmen returned with the hotel concierge. The policeman looked at them all and said, ‘The man who Saffet Bey here came in to replace, the concierge known as Ali Yalçın, left no record of anyone delivering anything. My question, gentlemen, and lady, is did he just forget or was he working with whoever these people are?’

All they
could hear were people’s voices but they were muffled and diffuse. The officer inside the hotel hadn’t actually managed to engage the gunmen in anything like a conversation. They’d told him to go places and he’d gone, to do things and he’d done them. He had made contact with the novelist Lale Aktar and she had said that, somehow, she would let
İ
kmen know that Nar was out and he was in.

Ardıç and Commander
İ
pek sat beside the technician listening in to the officer’s microphone, both looking very subdued. But neither of them spoke. Everyone in the pub was quiet now. Even Nar had stopped trying to flirt because time was moving on and everyone knew that it was also running out.
İ
zzet Melik, recently returned from Yeniköy, was careful not to sit or stand anywhere near his fiancée. Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu was angry and upset and he didn’t know how any of this was making him feel about her.

Ardıç looked at the technician who shook his head. Ardıç sighed and then stood up. Everybody looked at him. He cleared his throat.

‘It is
our understanding that Inspectors
İ
kmen and Süleyman have until sunrise to find out who killed a young man in one of the hotel bedrooms,’ he said. ‘However, Ersu Bey, the hotel maître d’, has told us that if the gunmen want to get out of the Pera Palas unchallenged they will have to do that before six a.m. when the day shift arrive. Now we don’t think that anyone witnessed this killing, our officers have no access to forensic or outside help of any sort and if they don’t get it right they will be killed. It is now,’ he squinted down at his watch, ‘four thirty and so time is short. Unless
İ
kmen and Süleyman have access to information that can conclusively prove that a particular person has unequivocally killed that boy then whatever name they eventually give to their captors will be a gamble. I have the utmost faith in my officers but with all due respect to them, as things stand it cannot be anything but a gamble. Further, this “game” these people are playing may well mean that even if our officers do get it right, they might be killed anyway. At some point, we think, they will spring it on
İ
kmen and Süleyman that they will have to have their answer before six a.m. These are unknown and therefore unpredictable people and even though we may like to think that maybe they are not as heavily armed as they seem, we have to assume that they are lethal. I had a discussion with Commander
İ
pek earlier about how we might proceed if we got to this stage, effectively no further forward than we were before the Special Forces officer went in, and we decided then that we would have to prepare to storm the building.’

Everyone
looked grave.

İ
pek, standing as well now, said, ‘We have the building surrounded. Now we need to begin a slow process of infiltration. Provided the gunmen are still unaware of the fact that the kitchen door is open, we will proceed through that entrance. The aim is to strategically position a small group of six Special Forces officers in the Pera Palas in order to facilitate entry for the main force which will be deployed on my command. These officers will identify key operatives within the terrorist organisation and prepare to eliminate them once the operation begins. From Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu we have learned that the gunmen have been sighted in the kitchen. We have also learned that getting from the kitchen up the stairs and into the main public areas of the hotel without being seen is not easy. Floor plans of the hotel have been emailed to us by the managing director of the Pera Palas and we have the expertise of Ersu Bey to guide us. But this is all the information we have. Our man on the inside has been given uninterrupted guard duty in the ballroom away from what we imagine is the central command of a leader-type figure and his entourage, who have taken up positions in the Kubbeli Saloon with the police officers.’
İ
pek looked over at his own men and said, ‘I’m going to choose six of you – now.’

Çetin
İ
kmen looked
first at the sleeping figure of Hovsep Pars and then at Lale Aktar. Awake now, she smiled at him and he smiled back. Only then did he turn his attention to Burak Fisekçi. ‘Burak Bey,’ he said as the Armenian sat down opposite him, ‘we’re still trying to accurately place everyone in the hotel at the time of young Söner Erkan’s death. You said you were in the toilets downstairs.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you remember, Burak Bey, whether you were alone?’

‘Alone in the toilets?’ He looked away, averting his eyes from
İ
kmen. Then he said, ‘I can’t be certain but I think that someone was in one of the cubicles. But I don’t know who.’

If Burak Fisekçi was telling the truth then that was almost certainly David Bonomo. But then why wouldn’t Burak Fisekçi be telling the truth?

‘Burak Bey, can you tell me anything about the four people who were killed earlier on this evening?’
İ
kmen said. Then he looked down at his notebook and read their names. ‘Yiannis Istefanopoulos, Aysel Ökte . . .’

‘You’ve asked
me this before,’ Burak said. ‘And I told you then—’

‘Just think again,’
İ
kmen said. ‘All of our lives could depend upon it.’

‘Yes, I know, but I’ve—’

‘Please listen. Yiannis Istefanopoulos, Aysel Ökte, Ra
ş
it Demir . . .’

‘Huh!’ It was a sound that signified disgust, but it didn’t come from Burak Fisekçi. A now wakeful Hovsep Pars exclaimed, ‘That fool!’

İ
kmen turned to him and said, ‘Why is Ra
ş
it Demir a fool, Hovsep Bey?’

‘Because he talks to the Devil,’ Hovsep Pars said. ‘He goes into Silivri Prison and he attempts to reason with the unreasonable.’

Muhammed Ersoy. Again. Aysel Ökte had a connection with Silivri too. Did she, somehow, know its most famous prisoner? Was that the connection between these supposedly murdered people? Muhammed Ersoy? But it couldn’t be because if that was indeed the case, why hadn’t Hovsep Pars been shot too? As the uncle of Muhammed Ersoy’s murdered lover, he had the closest connection to the man he called the Devil of anyone in the hotel, as far as
İ
kmen could tell.

‘He calls himself a psychiatrist or some such,’ the old Armenian continued. ‘He goes into prisons and to understand people who are easy to understand. Then he writes academic papers about it.’

Of course, Ra
ş
it Demir
was a psychoanalyst.

‘What’s to understand?’ Hovsep Pars said. ‘Evil is evil. There is nothing to be gained by speaking to evil people. They should be shot or hanged, like they were in the old days.’

When Burak Fisekçi went back into the ballroom he made straight for Ceyda Ümit. Holding her boyfriend Alp’s hand, she let go of it when she saw Burak and she smiled.

‘Come and sit with us, Burak Bey,’ she said as she put a chair beside her own and patted the seat. She’d always liked Burak Bey. When his elderly mother, Siroun Hanım, had still been alive, she had sometimes come into the Ümits’ apartment and spent time with Ceyda’s grandmother Edibe. Sometimes Burak Bey would join them. Ceyda could still remember, as an infant, crawling around underneath the table while her grandmother, Siroun Hanım, Burak Bey and the old kapıcı of the building played bridge when her parents were both out with their friends every Thursday in the bars and restaurants of Çiçek Pasaj. Ceyda had never known life without Burak Bey and so to her he represented a stability she felt she really needed in such a perilous situation.

‘What are the police
doing?’ she asked anxiously as Burak sat down beside her.

‘Asking questions.’

‘They’ve been asking questions for hours,’ Alp said. Then he turned away, shaking his head impatiently. It was all getting to him. It was all getting to everyone. As the time when the policemen had to name their suspect grew closer, everyone in the ballroom became quieter, more tense and, in some cases, lacking in any sort of hope or faith.

Burak took one of Ceyda’s hands in his. ‘You have to trust,’ he said.

‘Trust what?’

‘Whatever you like,’ he said. ‘The police, Allah, your friends, even me if you like, Ceyda.’

‘And what good will uninformed, blind trust do for her?’ Alp was looking at Burak Bey again. Both his words and his demeanour were challenging and Ceyda felt embarrassed.

‘Alp!’

But Burak Bey just smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘Alp is anxious, as we all are,’ he said. ‘Tensions can run high.’

‘On the verge of death they tend to,’ Alp put in quickly. Burak Bey ignored him. ‘You will be all right, Ceyda,’ he said.

She knew he was just saying what she wanted to hear in exactly the same way he’d done when she’d been a child. But Ceyda appreciated it. Alp’s negativity didn’t really achieve anything, but it was a manifestation of how frightened he was. They had all been shocked by Söner’s death – that had been bad enough – but this!

Burak Bey was older and more
accustomed to life. He made Ceyda feel safe in a way that could only be bettered by her own father. But then Burak Bey had always been like a very attentive uncle to her.

In response to a warm smile from Lale Aktar,
İ
kmen went over and sat down next to her. The time had finally arrived when he could have that little chat he wanted to have with her. It wasn’t going to be easy. The leader and the man with the camera on his helmet were watching them and the subject he had to raise with Lale Aktar was delicate to say the least. But he sat down beside her and they exchanged a few pleasantries before he launched into what he knew was bringing a visible blush to his otherwise very pale cheeks.

‘Mrs Aktar,’ he said, ‘may I ask you about something?’

‘All our lives are in your hands, Inspector, you may ask me anything,’ she said.

‘Mmm. I’m glad you feel that way,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Because, madam, it is about an issue that pertains specifically to women . . .’

‘Oh, then I must be an expert!’ she smiled again.

‘Yes.
Indeed.’ He was finding this very hard. Even with Fatma he found talking about women’s things very difficult. With his daughters it had been well nigh impossible. He’d managed, once, to talk about, well,
sex
to Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu. But that had been in an extreme situation years ago when she’d put herself at risk from a sexually sadistic man. This wasn’t anywhere near as weird as that. In fact this wasn’t weird at all. It was quite natural.

Lale Aktar looked at him. ‘Inspector?’

İ
kmen knew that he just had to launch into it. He took a deep breath and then he said, ‘Well, madam, it’s about your, your menstrual . . . er, your period . . .’

Lale Aktar furrowed her brow.
İ
kmen saw the two masked men look at him very intently.

‘Yes, it’s . . .’

The masked man with the camera in his helmet turned away. Clearly even with his face covered he was embarrassed.
İ
kmen felt his own face burn.

‘What do you want to know about my period, Inspector?’ Lale Aktar said. She looked slightly amused – probably by his old-fashioned awkwardness.

Well
, Çetin
İ
kmen wanted to say,
I’d really like to know why it is that after going back to your room to get a clean sanitary towel when you found the body of Söner Erkan, you haven’t, seemingly, changed your sanitary protection since. Every time you’ve been to the lavatory you’ve left your handbag, which would logically contain things like sanitary towels, behind on a chair or a table. Also I didn’t actually discover any sanitary towels in your bathroom. I find it odd. Could you please explain it to me?