Death by Design (11 page)

‘Only Ali Reza.’

‘You showed me a photograph of him. And he sticks out somewhat,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s young, his Turkish accent isn’t that good and he slips into English which the others don’t. He’s trouble.’

‘Yes, we know,’ Ayşe said.

‘I think it may take some time to get in with these men to the extent that I can ask them about work,’ İkmen said. ‘They seem very closed off.’

‘Well, they’re illegal.’

‘Yes, which means it will take them some time to trust even innocuous old Çetin Ertegrul,’ İkmen said. ‘Ayşe, I don’t think that they are necessarily going to help me.’

Now on Stoke Newington High Street, Ayşe turned into a rather greasy and nondescript-looking doorway and said, ‘This is the İstanbul. They do the best
menemen
outside Turkey.’ She scanned the restaurant to see if there were any tables free where they could talk undisturbed and finding that there weren’t, she told İkmen what she needed to tell him on the doorstep. ‘We won’t need to bother about either Elgiz or Doğan soon. Ahmet Ülker will be needing some new security guards for his factories in a few days’ time. We need to move forward with this investigation now. Make sure that Mr Yigit knows what you do.’

‘It came up in conversation last night actually,’ İkmen said. ‘I told them all what I do. Not that I think it impressed Ali Reza. But they know.’

‘Good.’ Ayşe smiled. ‘Make sure you’re around Stoke Newington and the pansiyon a lot in the next few days. Yigit sees himself as a fixer and he and Ülker know each other. If Yigit likes you, it will help. But he will rip you off royally, so be prepared.’

Ali Reza Hajizadeh slipped into the driver’s seat and looked across at the woman in the passenger seat. The competing perfumes from her many and various cosmetics nearly made him cough. But he took one of her hands and put it on his crotch.

‘Your husband wants his cigarettes. They’re in the glove compartment,’ he said.

Maxine Ülker opened the glove compartment with one hand while she pulled on his penis with the other. Doing men in cars was something she was very familiar with although with Ali Reza there was an added element. With him, there was love too, at least on her side. That said, he was young and as soon as she went down on him it was all over in a second.

‘You’re a dirty bitch, Maxine,’ he said as he leaned back in the luxurious leather seat, panting.

Maxine fixed her lipstick and said, ‘It’s what you love about me, isn’t it?’

She handed him her husband’s cigarettes and lighter. He looked at her with the usual mixture of lust and loathing. With her long, sleek blonde hair and her big tits she was like an animated sex doll. But that, although it made him feel dirty and guilty, was what he liked about her. She’d been a whore when her husband met her and so she knew her way around what men liked in the sack. Ali Reza had no doubt that Maxine still did it with Ahmet all the time, but she did it with him too and that was the point. She’d fallen for him, which was exactly what he had wanted her to do. With Maxine besotted, Ali Reza knew that she would do whatever he asked of her, including spying on her own husband. And Ahmet Ülker needed watching. Although nominally a Muslim, he wasn’t a ‘soldier’ like he himself was. Ahmet was necessary for the moment, but in the long run he was expendable. Like Maxine. And because she was little more than a used tissue to him, that was OK. Had he loved her, a foreigner, an infidel and a whore, that would have been a sin. But he didn’t and so that was OK.

The Sılay brothers were not stupid. Uneducated and a bit rough and ready at times but they knew what was what and how to survive. They’d both known Ahmet Ülker back in Diyarbakır and so since coming to England they’d had help from him. But before he’d taken them on to guard his Hackney factories, the brothers had done their fair share of ducking and diving in order to make a crust. Zeki, the older of the two, had laboured for a building firm whose boss had not been too fussy about the law. He’d not been very fussy about paying his workers either and so Zeki had moved on to first waiting at table in a café and then cleaning in a massage parlour. Yaşar Sılay, Zeki’s brother, had taken a rather different course. Just as he had done back in Diyarbakır, he’d made his living dealing drugs, cannabis mainly. Yaşar wasn’t trustworthy and Ahmet Ülker had known it when he took him and his brother on as night security guards for his factories in Hackney. But Zeki had assured Ahmet that he would keep his brother in line and make sure that he didn’t deal drugs any more.

‘Because although you have the title security guard at my factories, what you really are is an early warning system,’ Ahmet had told Zeki when he took him and his brother on. ‘You watch out for the police, you watch for suspicious people hanging around, you make sure that none of my workers leaves my buildings under any circumstances. I need you and Yaşar to be completely trustworthy and completely straight. No drugs, do you understand? No drugs.’

Zeki had readily agreed. He hated cleaning up after what he considered to be the vile things that went on in the massage parlour. Persuading Yaşar to swap his casual drug dealing for something more regular and demanding had not been easy, but he had done it. Yaşar had stopped dealing. What he hadn’t stopped doing was smoking drugs himself. He didn’t do it at work. True to his brother’s promise to Ahmet Ülker, he did not jeopardise the operation of the factories by being off his face on the job. With goods coming in and going out sometimes all night long, not to mention quite a few problems with the people Ahmet got to work for him, he couldn’t afford to be drugged up. But on the journey to work, which the two brothers made from their flat on Clissold Road to the factories at Hackney Wick, he would have one small joint. This he always lit as he walked from the flat to the battered old Vauxhall Cavalier the two of them used to get to work. Zeki had told him again and again that that wasn’t a good idea, that neighbours might smell the weed and shop them to the police. But Yaşar said it would be all right. He was convinced that the neighbours neither knew nor cared what they did. It was therefore quite a shock to Yaşar when he came out of his flat and felt a heavy and unfamiliar hand upon his shoulder. Over by the car he could see his brother Zeki, his face a grey picture of terror, being frisked by two uniformed police officers. The officer who had his hand on Yaşar’s shoulder said to him, ‘Now what is that I can smell, sir? Not an ordinary Marlboro Light, is it?’

‘Tuberculosis isn’t an easy disease to catch,’ Arto Sarkissian said to Mehmet Süleyman. ‘We don’t see it that often these days although it is making something of a comeback now.’

‘Why is that?’

The Armenian shrugged. ‘Population movement is part of it. In countries like Afghanistan where health care is perfunctory to say the least, people are not vaccinated and therefore vulnerable. People flee from places like Afghanistan to make homes in other, safer countries and so the disease spreads further than it would under normal circumstances. I don’t blame those who flee for doing so but it does give us problems.’

They were standing outside what looked like a derelict house in the district of Cihangir, opposite the Taksim Hospital. The house, which local talk said was occupied by men generically described as ‘Indians’, was being searched by uniformed officers.

‘I may be wrong but I think it unlikely that the boy Tariq came into the country alone,’ Arto said. ‘He was sixteen at the most and from the look of his teeth, he’d probably lived in some remote place for most of his life. I doubt very much whether he could have negotiated his way to İstanbul all on his own. And if he was with others then there is a higher than usual chance that those people have tuberculosis too. We have to find them, and soon.’

They both looked up at the tall stone house, its once elegant internal spiral staircase visible through holes in its external walls. Already officers had found some evidence that people slept there: small amounts of food, ashes from wood fires, the occasional tattered bedroll. But so far no people had been found. The security guard at the hospital had told Süleyman that smoke came out of the old house on most evenings and the patients in the wards opposite sometimes saw lights, probably from torches, at the glassless windows.

Süleyman turned back to Arto Sarkissian. ‘Doctor, have you heard from Çetin?’

‘Oh, my friend is completely off the radar as far as I am concerned, Inspector,’ Sarkissian replied. ‘His destination, so I understand, is police business. Don’t you know where he is?’

‘No,’ Süleyman said. Without thinking he bit his lip.

‘It makes you anxious?’ the Armenian asked and then without waiting for a reply he said, ‘I’ve always been close to his son Bülent. I’ve met him a few times since Çetin left. The family are managing.’

Neither the doctor nor the policeman mentioned the difficulties they both knew Çetin and Fatma had been having. To talk of the personal life of a friend is not something polite Turkish men do. After a few moments Süleyman burst out with, ‘I just wish I knew he was safe!’

‘Sir! Sir!’ called one of the constables.

Süleyman looked towards the house again. There was a lot of activity around the small door underneath the main entrance. He walked over to the constable, Yıldız. ‘What is it?’

‘There’s a man in the basement, sir,’ another constable said. ‘Look.’ He pointed through the low door into the chamber where Süleyman saw a pair of bright eyes looking at him out of a very dark face.

‘Hello,’ said Süleyman. The man looked old and scared and very, very thin. ‘Do you—’

‘Don’t hit me! Please do not to hit me!’ the man said and threw his skinny arms up and across his face in panic. ‘I will tell you about the boy who blew himself up! I will tell you about Tariq!’ Oddly, he spoke in English.

Had he been able to go to the West End or the City it would have been easy for İkmen to amuse himself. In Stoke Newington it would have been possible for him to have a good time had he been able to use his English. There were bookshops, small art galleries, cafés full of interesting-looking people. Some of course were Turks and he could have spoken to them, but remembering what Ayşe had said about the smallness of the Turkish population in Stoke Newington, he didn’t really want to forge relationships. Çetin Ertegrul was an illegal Turkish migrant who wanted to work and send money home. The last thing he needed was for some new male friend to invite him back to his house and introduce him to his recently widowed sister. And so for two days after Ayşe had taken him to breakfast he drifted aimlessly around damp streets. He looked in shop windows that advertised Turkish foodstuffs, poked around in hardware shops that looked exactly like such places did back in İstanbul, and occasionally sat in Clissold Park, smoking and drinking Coca-Cola from cans. And although he knew that Ayşe and Terry were available to him, until he was somehow inside Ülker’s organisation there was really nothing to talk about. Apparently the Met were engineering a situation whereby Ülker would soon need one or more security guards. All he could do was wait.

When he returned to the Rize that evening he found Mr Yigit in halting conversation with a thin Englishman whose face was badly scarred on one side. He was probably around İkmen’s own age but much better dressed, although the hand with which he held a smoking cigarette was yellow and rather dirty-looking.

‘Oh, Mr Ertegrul,’ Yigit said as İkmen passed by his desk in the lobby. ‘Did you find any work? Did you have a good day?’

‘No, I didn’t find any work,’ İkmen said. ‘The day was OK.’

‘Ah.’ Mr Yigit turned towards the Englishman and said, ‘He looks for work.’

‘You all look for work, old son,’ the Englishman replied. ‘That’s what you lot do. How much of it do you think we have over here?’

The accent wasn’t broad but it was definitely London. What was also definite was the clear distaste this man had for İkmen’s ‘lot’.

‘But Mr Harrison,’ Mr Yigit said, ‘you must not to make the complaining. Turkish man, Mr Ülker, he give it a job to you.’

‘Don’t give me a load of pony about how I should be grateful to Ahmet Ülker!’ the Englishman said angrily. ‘He should be fucking grateful to me!’

‘Ah, but I mean nothing to it, Mr Harrison,’ the pansiyon owner said. ‘Only fact, he give job to you when really is difficult for you—’

‘What the fuck are you staring at, Abdul?’ The Englishman’s face was suddenly puce with anger. Startled, İkmen took a step backwards. ‘Uh . . .’

Yigit walked over to him and put an arm round his shoulders. ‘Oh, Mr Harrison,’ he said, ‘sorry, sorry. Mr Ertegrul, he speaks no English.’ Then he turned to İkmen and said, ‘Don’t stare at him, please, Mr Ertegrul. He is an ill-mannered bastard, like so many of them.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘Oh, pay it no mind. Pay it no mind.’ Yigit smiled. ‘He’s an annoying man but one that a person has to be polite to.’

‘Speak bloody English, will you, Yigit!’ the Englishman growled. ‘God help us!’

‘Sorry! Sorry!’

‘Harrison looked İkmen up and down with some distaste, ‘So what does he do, this new mate of yours? What is he? A waiter? Who among you lot isn’t? Or is he some bloody idiot who thinks he can lay bricks?’

‘Security guard,’ Yigit said to the Englishman. ‘Back in İstanbul Mr Ertegrul is security guard. Mr Harrison, I think maybe that—’

‘What, with no bloody English?’ Mr Harrison puffed on what was left of his cigarette and then put it out. ‘Five foot and a fag paper and without a word of English! What bleeding use would he be? Christ Almighty, Yigit, even them stupid druggie brothers could do their “good mornings” and their “please” and “thank yous”. This one looks like he’s fucking brain dead!’

‘Oh but—’

‘What’s going on?’ İkmen asked. ‘What’s he saying?’

Yigit pulled up his baggy pyjama bottoms and smiled again. ‘Mr Ertegrul, this man’s employer now has some vacancies for security guards.’