Deep Waters (23 page)

‘Aryan thinks about things,’ she said as she ground her cigarette out in the sick bowl beside her bed. ‘It makes him much more cautious than the others. I mean, I’m not in the least bit surprised that you didn’t find any drugs on him.’

‘And Mehmet?’ İkmen asked. ‘What of him?’

‘Mehmet is a psychopath,’ Samsun replied venomously. ‘He’s violent, he’s manipulative, he deals . . . I really thought it had to be him when I was attacked. If I hadn’t seen that it was Mehti with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it. Mehti Vlora is nothing,’ she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Always has been.’

‘Mmm.’ With Mehti’s recent confession to another, far more serious crime in mind, İkmen asked, ‘Do you think it’s possible that Mehti might have mounted his attack to try and impress the rest of his family?’

Samsun shrugged. ‘Who knows? But if Mehmet asked him to do it then you can be certain that he wouldn’t dare not do it. As I said, Mehmet’s a psychopath.’

‘Of whom the others are afraid.’

‘Yes.’

Further discussion of the Vlora brothers was cut short at this point by the entrance of a tall, elderly man wearing a thick sheepskin coat over a pair of loose-legged şalvar trousers. But although clad in the garments of a peasant, it was obvious to even the most casual observer that these were very good peasant clothes – indeed they were rather like those items wealthy tourists might buy. His heavily lined face was still handsome, and the resemblance he bore to both Samsun and İkmen’s brother Halil was striking.

‘Hello, Father,’ Samsun said when she saw him.

‘May it pass quickly, Mustafa,’ the old man replied, using the standard phrase one uses to the sick.

‘Thank you.’

İkmen, rising to his feet, gently embraced the newcomer.

‘I trust your journey was a good one, Uncle Ahmet?’ he said as he led the old man over towards his own chair.

The old man raised one long, limp hand in a gesture of weariness. ‘The bus came, I got on it, I arrived,’ he answered and sat down heavily.

‘I’m so sorry to have given you this trouble, Father,’ Samsun said, lowering her long-lashed eyes in an expression that was genuinely sorrowful.

Ahmet Bajraktar sighed. ‘Though you choose to walk about like a painted odalisque, you are still my son,’ he said gently. ‘You are my blood.’

Not relishing another conversation involving Albanian blood, İkmen said that he would give Samsun and her father some time alone together. Later, he added, he would return to take his uncle back to his apartment. Even Fatma, who was far softer in her approach to the world since his distress the previous night, fully understood that the old man, however ‘Albanian’ he might be, could hardly be expected to stay at the apartment Samsun shared with the now strangely absent Abdurrahman. In fact, Fatma had even offered to prepare a corner of the living room for Ahmet’s use, an unprecedented piece of hospitality when it came to anyone called Bajraktar. Unfortunately, none of this would ease the pain İkmen knew Ahmet would feel when he broached the subject of his mother’s death with the old man.

As he stepped outside the warmth of the hospital and into the cruel dampness of the winter air, İkmen told himself that was something that would happen later. Right now, he had work to do. He was still waiting for forensics on Mehti’s clothes and on the old blood discovered in the apartment, but in the meantime there was Mehti to deal with. The man and his story warranted rather more ‘attention’ from him before he came up in front of a judge. Even with confessions, one had to be careful, and İkmen felt that this confession in particular called for caution. After all, if Mehmet Vlora really was a psychopath he’d have no problems either getting his brother to kill Rifat for him or committing the murder himself and making his weaker sibling take the blame for it.

Pausing only to light a cigarette, İkmen headed back towards the station.

Divan Yolu, though cold and morbid in the drizzly winter rain, was still one of the better places to beg. Even in winter, tourists came to the city and, as Engelushjia Berisha had discovered on quite a few occasions of late, a living of sorts could be obtained provided you kept away from the fat Anatolian peasants selling their knitting and the religious woman who beseeched passersby to have mercy upon her for the love of Allah. With her tight, shadowed features and thin, twelve-year-old’s body, people felt sorry for Engelushjia. That her brother had once owned a car worth hundreds of millions of lire was an irony that, though not lost upon Engelushjia, would happily remain unknown to the passing trade.

And so she sat, just beyond the step up to the cheap jewellery shop, feeling the almost ceaseless rumble of the trams as they headed towards Eminönü reverberating up her spine. On the mud-slicked ground in front of her lay a small open bag – the receptacle for donations from the generous. Since she’d started, just over an hour before, Engelushjia had received two million lire and a loaf of bread with a packet of olives. The money had come from tourists while the food, all of which she had eaten, had been donated wordlessly by a stern-looking Turkish housewife. It had, Engelushjia had to admit, made her feel, if not happier, at least a little warmer inside.

In truth, not much could actually make her happy at the present time. Rifat was dead and, even though her father said that the police now had Mehti Vlora in custody for his murder, she could find little comfort in that fact. For, even though her father had told the police that he had had no hand in the disappearance of Dhori Vlora, she knew they would still be watching him. And for what? For a stupid deception designed, she imagined, to convince their countrymen that the noble course of
gjakmaria
was being faithfully pursued. Dhori had disappeared, everyone assumed that Rahman was responsible, and he had not disabused them of that notion – until now. Allah alone knew where Dhori Vlora might be – or rather where his body might be rotting.

Engelushjia looked down at her bag with fury in her eyes. Stupid, stupid, stupid Father! And she probably would have remained looking downwards had someone not first waved a ten million lire note under her nose and then placed it in her bag.

Anxious to discover who could so casually part with such riches, she snapped her gaze upwards.

‘You!’

‘Yes,’ Aryan Vlora said as he bent down again towards her. ‘Me.’

‘What do
you
want?’ Engelushjia hissed, careful not to create the kind of scene that might put potential benefactors off.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Aryan replied.

Engelushjia’s hand flew to her bag to retrieve his note.

Seeing that she intended to give him his money back, Aryan said, ‘No, I don’t want it, Engelushjia, I—’

‘Take it!’ she snapped and pressed the money into his hand. ‘I don’t want it!’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ he said as he moved still closer towards her. ‘This note is to pay for your time. I need to speak to you.’

‘After your brother killed our Rifat?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘I don’t think so!’

‘But Mehti didn’t—’

‘That isn’t what the police are saying! They—’

With a speed that took Engelushjia by surprise, Aryan Vlora grabbed the top of her arm in a vice-like grip.

‘Aiyee!’

‘Now listen to me,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I don’t know how long the police are going to keep my brother Mehmet and my mother in their cells so I really don’t have time to play any stupid games!’

Her face contorted with pain, Engelushjia squeaked, ‘You’re hurting me!’

‘Yes, and I won’t stop hurting you until you come with me!’ Aryan pulled her to her feet. Then with a quick glance around to make sure that no passersby were particularly interested in what he was doing, he bent down to pick up the bag and then dragged Engelushjia in the direction of the Pudding Shop.

‘So what. does the coloured glass symbolise then, Mehti?’ İkmen asked.

‘Eh?’

‘Smashed coloured glass, from a bottle or some other decorative item – is it a message of some sort? Some kind of warning to other members of the victim’s
fis
?’

Mehti Vlora leaned back from the table and scowled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, looking at İkmen as if he was mad.

‘Oh, that’s a surprise.’

‘Yes,’ Tepe, sitting beside his boss, agreed. ‘It is.’

Frowning, Mehti Vlora examined both of the faces in front of him with deep suspicion.

‘So how did you get into Rifat’s car?’ İkmen said changing, as he had done so many times before, the course of the interview apparently on a whim.

‘I forced the lock on one of the back doors.’

‘Which back door?’ Tepe asked. ‘Left or right?’

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember now.’

İkmen smiled. ‘You know I own a Mercedes myself,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Not like Rifat’s. An old one.’

Mehti Vlora looked down at the floor, feigning boredom.

‘But old as it is,’ İkmen continued smoothly, ‘one thing that my car retains is its robustness. I always buy Mercedes because of that. It’s something that someone like myself who routinely goes into the most unsavoury parts of the city must take seriously. After all, I don’t want somebody to steal my car, do I? That would be most embarrassing.’

In spite of the fact that Mehti Vlora didn’t respond to any of this, Tepe carried on where his boss had left off.

‘However,’ he said, ‘unlike Inspector İkmen’s car, Rifat’s was alarmed.’

‘Not of course when
we
found it,’ İkmen put in.

‘No.’ Tepe smiled at Mehti. ‘But it did possess an alarm which would have sounded when you forced the door.’

‘It must have been switched off!’ Mehti shouted, now suddenly agitated.

‘Mmm, well,’ a markedly unruffled İkmen observed, ‘that may be so, but . . .’ he paused here to light a cigarette and then offer his packet to Tepe, who took one. Neither man. offered the packet to Mehti. ‘Try as they might,’ İkmen continued, ‘forensic cannot find any sign of forced entry on any of the car doors.’

Mehti Vlora jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over.

‘I slashed Rifat’s throat with a knife! I dumped his body down on Reşadiye Caddesi! I described his clothes – just right, you said! We were in blood and I’m glad that I alone finally avenged Dhori’s death!’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said in a voice whose calmness was in stark contrast to the Albanian’s outburst, ‘we know all that, Mehti. But now the time has come for you to tell us the details of your crime.’

‘I was angry! I wanted to taste his blood!’ He stared at İkmen. ‘Mad, you know!’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t remember too much when you’re like that, do you?’

‘No, but there’s usually a little more evidence that you’ve done it, though,’ İkmen said and rose swiftly to his feet. ‘Which is something you might like to think about after we’ve gone. Personally, I believe you’re full of shit, Mehti.’ He smiled. ‘Come along, Tepe.’

‘But . . .’ Mehti Vlora began.

‘We can talk again later,’ İkmen said, and called to the guard outside.

The door opened and the two policemen left.

Out in the corridor, İkmen leaned heavily against the cold cell wall and sighed.

‘Mehti Vlora has motive, seeming opportunity, he knows enough about Rifat’s movements that night to have been there . . .’

‘But either he didn’t get into Rifat’s car or Rifat let him in,’ Tepe reasoned. ‘Or someone else was involved.’

‘Someone he is unwilling to name.’

‘Perhaps because an admission regarding the use of an accomplice would damage his pride.’

İkmen closed his eyes against the pain that was building up in his head.

‘Inspector Suleyman told me that none of the Evren family can remember anything about a second car pulling up outside their property, confirming what Traffic have told us’ he said, opening his eyes. ‘İlhan Evren also confirmed Felicity’s story about Rifat’s trip to England.’

‘Oh?’

The two men started to walk towards the stairs. Several unseen prisoners banged on the metal doors of their cells, demanding their lawyers, food, their mothers or wives.

‘Yes,’ İkmen said, raising his voice against the cacophony. ‘And according to him, no money changed hands. Felicity gave Rifat the car as a present and everybody was happy, or so Evren thinks, until Rifat decided to try blackmail to make some money out of his organ donation. On the night of his death, he went to the Evren house to put this to the father and the old man threw him out.’

‘Do you think that Mr Evren could have killed him?’ Tepe asked, mounting the stairs ahead of his boss.

‘Well, it has to be possible,’ İkmen answered, flinging what was left of his cigarette onto the stairs. ‘But then logically if he had done so it would have been to his advantage to say that he saw a green Fiat outside. I mean, Inspector Suleyman was obviously following a line of inquiry which didn’t implicate him.’

‘Felicity Evren is a curious-looking woman, I have to say, sir.’

‘Yes,’ İkmen puffed, one flight up and already fighting for breath. ‘She’s a . . . a bit of a, er, fantasist, according to her father, but, um . . .’ He came to a halt on the stairs. Halfway up the second flight was his limit. Bracing his hands against his knees, he put his head down and puffed hard. Tepe, smiling at what in anyone else would give cause for alarm, knew that İkmen’s physical state was simply part of him rather than a life-threatening condition. At least that was how it was for the moment.

‘So she lies?’

‘I think it’s more changing facts that she doesn’t like.’

‘Lying.’ Tepe said firmly.

‘Well . . .’

On the move once again, İkmen heaved himself up the final half flight of stairs and then rested with his hand on his chest for a few moments.

When he had recovered his breath sufficiently to speak again, he said, ‘Inspector Suleyman was of the opinion that Mr Evren was some sort of gangster. He intends to make a few calls to London, where the family used to live, about him.’