Deep Waters (10 page)

‘Sir . . .’

‘Oh, it’s not really your fault at all, Orhan,’ he said wearily. ‘It was me. I didn’t think through the implications . . .’ And then to himself he added, ‘Perhaps I should give this to Suleyman . . .’

‘But we do have that witness statement now, don’t we, sir?’ Tepe said, alarmed at the way İkmen seemed to be berating himself. ‘The old man who heard something heavy being thrown from a car?’

‘You mean Enver Alpe? Yes, not that he actually saw anything in the fog. So we can’t know that the heavy thing that was dumped out of that unseen car was without doubt the body of Rifat Berisha.’

‘But it is a start, sir,’ Tepe said, trying to be positive. ‘It puts a time, possibly, on the disposal of the body. People are thinking, they are coming forward.’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said on a sigh. ‘Though not to any great effect . . .’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ İkmen said, and the door opened to reveal a very smartly dressed young man.

‘Er, Inspector . . .’

‘Oh, there you are, Berekiah,’ İkmen said with a broad smile. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t take you to lunch myself.’

‘I do understand.’

‘Please sit down,’ he said, gesturing towards one of the chairs beside Tepe. ‘This is my sergeant, Orhan Tepe.’

Briefly standing, Tepe exchanged a small bow with the younger man and then both of them sat down.

‘Mr Cohen is the son of our old friend Balthazar Cohen,’ İkmen explained to Tepe before turning to Berekiah once again. ‘I should imagine that Inspector Suleyman took you somewhere a little more stylish than the places I would have chosen.’

Berekiah grinned. ‘We went to Pandeli’s.’

‘There! What did I tell you? But don’t get the idea that we dine like that every day, Berekiah.’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Dad always had a saying, “Working lunch means simit on a street corner”.’

‘Your father is a wise and perceptive man.’

Looking first at Tepe, Berekiah moved his head a bit closer towards İkmen. ‘I haven’t yet made up my mind, though,’ he began. ‘I don’t—’

‘Nobody would expect you to make such a decision quickly, Berekiah,’ İkmen said gravely. ‘Mr Lazar pays you generously and treats you well. And although you would have a secure position within the police, I’m not going to lie to you and tell you how marvellous it is out on the streets. Sometimes we have to see awful things, the stuff of nightmares. Sometimes we are in mortal danger, and we’re often either too cold or boiling hot. We’re not liked, drug dealers from all around the world laugh at us as they do at every other police force on the planet, but . . .’

‘My dad loved it.’ As the young man looked up, İkmen saw that his eyes had just a slight liquid quality to them.

‘Yes,’ İkmen said, his face now a little taut around the memory of the unfortunate Cohen. ‘Yes, he did.’

After a short pause, during which none of the men looked at each other, Berekiah said, ‘Well, thank you very much for your time, Inspector İkmen, but, er, I had best be going now.’

The young man rose to his feet and first shook hands with Tepe, then extended his hand to İkmen. The older man, however, stood up from his chair and took the young man firmly in his arms.

‘It has been my pleasure,’ he said as they embraced.

‘Thank you, Çetin Bey.’

İkmen went over to the door and held it open for his departing guest. As the young man left, İkmen added, ‘You know that if you or your family need anything, you only have to ask.’

‘Thank you,’ Berekiah said with a smile.

Tepe was aware of İkmen’s legendary generosity but, he wondered how in the world this poorly paid, incorruptible man with nine children could possibly be in any position to offer help to anyone. But then İkmen was of the old school – irreligious yet imbued with old Islamic notions of social welfare and generosity. Suleyman, in a rather superior Ottoman manner, was very like his old boss in this respect. As different as they were in status and background, İkmen and Suleyman were, Tepe was beginning to appreciate, really very alike. Once again he wondered if he would ever be able to occupy Suleyman’s place in İkmen’s scheme of things.

When he’d closed the door behind Berekiah Cohen, İkmen allowed himself some moments for deep thought and hard smoking before he spoke again. Although he had fully attended to his conversation with the young man, part of his brain had also been working along other, more work-based lines.

Eventually, looking up and smiling at Tepe, he said, ‘I think I’m going to release Engelushjia Berisha now. Take her back to her parents.’

‘Oh, but sir,’ Tepe began, ‘she—’

‘I’m sure that, despite his injuries, Yıldız will survive her attack, Orhan.’

‘She broke the skin, you know, sir,’ Tepe said, frowning. ‘He had to go and see the doctor.’

‘Who will have given him several quite painful injections by this time,’ İkmen said as he moved round to the front of his desk, ‘all of which elicits nothing but sympathy from me. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the main thing at issue for us is the unlawful death of Rifat Berisha. And if, in pursuit of the truth about that, certain other, less important offences are allowed to pass us by—’

‘Sir!’

İkmen’s face suddenly hardened. ‘Look, it’s like this,’ he said. ‘Those “in blood” don’t want us getting involved in their world. The Berishas want to kill the Vloras and vice versa. They won’t tell us anything unless we have something they want that we can give them first. I may be proved wrong, but Engelushjia’s freedom may well be that thing.’ Moving forward so that his face was almost touching Tepe’s, he went on, ‘I’m still not convinced that the Vloras killed Rifat anyway. But in order to find out who else might have done it, not to mention the circumstances of his recent surgery, we need to enter Rifat’s world. And in order to do that, we have to somehow gain his family’s confidence, which, given today’s events, will not be easy.’

‘No, sir, I—’

‘However,’ İkmen raised a hand to silence his deputy, ‘if we give them back their daughter we may yet have a chance.’ He retrieved his coat from the back of the door. ‘Come on,’ he said and moved smartly out into the corridor.

‘But what about the Vloras, sir?’ Tepe asked as he grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and hurried after İkmen.

‘Oh, I haven’t forgotten about them, Orhan,’ a retreating İkmen boomed back at him, ‘and in good time they will be dealt with, of that you can be sure.’

As soon as they had cleared the apartment of the Qerimi
fis
who lived below, Mehmet, Aryan and Mehti Vlora had split up. If the police were in the apartment, the ‘boys’ wanted to be elsewhere. Mehmet had briefly checked on their mother after the police had gone. But both she and the kokain she had secreted in the folds of her dress had been safe – Angeliki was nothing if not resourceful and, besides, the police hadn’t come about narcotics anyway. Either they were following Rifat Berisha’s sister or, more likely, as Angeliki had thought, they’d been tipped off to watch the Vlora apartment because of Rifat’s death. Mehmet, his hands thrust deep into his tattered pockets as he walked along the busy Divan Yolu, knew that he was not, unfortunately, to blame this time. And since Aryan had been with him for the whole evening during which it was said that Rifat Berisha had died, that left only Mehti. Dull though he was, Mehti would surely have mentioned such a momentous event in his life. The only thing that could possibly top that would be the discovery of their brother Dhori’s body. Everyone knew that Rahman Berisha had killed him – only a Berisha could be so cowardly as to conceal a body, thereby halting, until now, the progress of
gjakmaria
. But that was probably all by the way now, Mehmet thought as he passed in front of the grim façade of the Imperial Ottoman Tombs. Now the Berishas had, or thought they had, good reason to take out another Vlora man. He wondered how long it would be before Rifat’s shirt hung in one of the upper windows of his parents’ apartment.

As he weaved his way through the thick traffic choking Babıali Caddesi, Mehmet’s eyes were distracted by an attractive woman wearing a long, dark coat. Young and pretty, she was standing talking to a far larger and considerably older woman. But although his eyes were drawn by the sight of the girl, it was eventually the older woman that he actually stopped and looked at. And as recognition dawned, his anger increased, for as his mother had said, if anyone within the fellowship of ex-patriot Albanians was going to tell tales to the police, it would probably be this cousin of a policeman.

Mehmet realised it would be unwise to take issue publicly with the unnatural Samsun Bajraktar on this busy street, but walking straight past her without a word was asking rather too much of his now mounting temper. And so he opted for a more subtle, if still satisfyingly vengeful approach. He moved up behind the transsexual and whispered in her ear.

‘I know you’ve given information about us to your kinsman in the police,’ he hissed as his victim started to turn round to face him, ‘so you rest uneasily in your filthy bed, you unnatural fuck!’

Before Samsun Bajraktar could turn round to face him full on, Mehmet Vlora dived back into the crowds traversing Divan Yolu and was gone. It occurred to him later that it was just possible Samsun had not informed the police of anything. Perhaps they had, after all, been following Engelushjia Berisha. Either way, it didn’t much matter. Catamites like her deserved everything that was coming to them even if that did mean being in blood with the Bajraktar
fis
. Perhaps taking on a really powerful clan like them would be the making of the Vloras. After all, had not the Bajraktars seen off all their enemies many years ago with astonishing ferocity? Mehmet pulled his jacket tight round his thin frame and marched determinedly towards Sultan Ahmet Square.

Working with the Berishas in a way that they would understand was, İkmen knew, the key to success with these people. And so, strange as it felt to be doing this, he kept an unwilling Engelushjia between himself and Tepe as he spoke to the parents. To them she was, he imagined, a police hostage of sorts.

‘So tell me about Rifat,’ he asked the grey-faced couple before him. ‘What kind of young man was he?’

Rahman shrugged. ‘As usual.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He liked to enjoy himself.’ He looked up blankly. ‘You know?’

‘No,’ İkmen said wryly, ‘I don’t. That’s why I’m asking you.’

In return for this retort he got back silence. Briefly he looked across at a somewhat tense Tepe before he decided to take a different approach.

With what was usually a winning smile, he began, ‘OK, let’s get realistic about all this, shall we? I know that you are “in blood”, as you say, with the Vlora clan.’ He lifted a hand to silence Rahman Berisha whose mouth had suddenly filled with protest. ‘How we know this is not your concern, just as why and to what extent you are in blood with the Vloras is not mine. My only concern, sir, is to catch the person who killed your son. Now if that is a Vlora—’

‘Well, of course it is!’ Aliya burst out, only to be slapped hard across the face for her indiscretion by her husband.

Tepe, instantly on his feet, was only prevented from intervening by one of İkmen’s thin arms, which came out quickly to prevent his officer from doing something unwise.

‘Now,’ he said tersely, ‘I suggest we all calm down. Hitting—’

‘The woman spoke out of turn!’ Rahman Berisha fumed.

‘Look, Mr Berisha,’ İkmen snapped as he motioned Tepe to take his seat once again, ‘my job involves finding the truth about why people die unnaturally. Unless the Vloras did indeed kill your son, then I have no interest in them beyond establishing where they all were on the night of Rifat’s death. They may or may not have killed him but until I have proof that they did I must look at every aspect of your son’s life plus the forensic evidence as supplied by our laboratory.’ Raising his hands to count out the various points he was making, İkmen continued, ‘I need to know who his friends were, what his job was, whether there were any women in his life, what his health was like, what he liked to wear, eat, drink, do. Whoever killed your son nearly severed his head from his shoulders, Mr Berisha. This person is vicious and extremely dangerous. Now, are you going to help me catch him or am I going to have to avenge Rifat’s death all on my own?’

By the time İkmen, Tepe and the other officers İkmen had drafted in to catalogue and remove all of Rifat’s personal possessions finally left the Berishas’ apartment, night had fallen. As the two men stepped out into the street, they both placed cigarettes in their mouths, which Tepe, watching İkmen rub his ungloved hands briskly together, lit. It was, the younger man observed, going to be a bitter night, a notion İkmen interpreted as an expression of his desire to get home.

‘We’ll sort through Rifat’s stuff tomorrow,’ İkmen said. He switched his mobile telephone back on again. ‘You get on home now, Orhan.’

Tepe smiled. ‘Thank you, sir. Quite a result getting Mr Berisha to allow us access to his son’s possessions, wasn’t it? Do you think he knows about your being, sort of, partly Albanian?’

‘Who knows?’ İkmen said with a dismissive shrug. ‘I—’ A beeping sound from his mobile indicated that he had a new message. He pressed various buttons to retrieve it. ‘If you could just wait while I see what this is . . .’

‘Yes, of course,’ Tepe said as he watched İkmen put his ear to the telephone and listen.

It was quite a long message and from what Tepe could hear of it, it sounded like a woman. A rather shrill, if not hysterical woman. As the message progressed, İkmen’s face became grave. When it finally ended, he clicked the phone back to receive mode and sighed. The harsh light from the streetlamp across the road emphasised the depressions under his eyes and cheekbones.

‘That was my eldest daughter,’ he said after a pause. ‘Apparently she met my cousin Samsun Bajraktar when she was out shopping earlier today.’