Deep Waters (37 page)

‘She’s talking to Dermot,’ the old man replied as he too sat down, ‘so yes, it’s business.’

‘Dermot?’ Suleyman responded darkly. ‘Who is Dermot?’

Babur Halman heard the jealousy in Suleyman’s tone and smiled.

‘Dermot is an Irishman,’ he said gently. ‘Zelfa met him when she was at university. He’s a psychologist, or rather a parapsychologist, I should say. Dermot deals with ghosts and “manifestations” on a daily basis. I’ve often thought he should be one of Zelfa’s patients.’

Still not really satisfied, Suleyman said, ‘So why is she talking to this man now? I mean, do you know what it’s all about?’

‘No, I don’t, but if you ask Zelfa, I’m sure she’ll tell you.’ And with that he got up to offer his chair to his daughter who had just appeared, still clutching her portable telephone. ‘Mehmet’s come to see you, Zelfa,’ he said as he briefly touched his daughter’s face on his way past. ‘I’ll go and make tea for us all.’

Suleyman, his manners impeccable as always, had stood up as soon as Zelfa entered the room and he waited for her to take a seat before resuming his own. She seemed distracted, to say the least, but he nevertheless determinedly pushed forward with his own agenda. After all, he was the man and that was what men did.

‘I know you must still be tired,’ he said with a smile, ‘but we didn’t really get a chance to talk yesterday.’

‘No.’ She leaned over towards him and kissed his lips lightly. ‘I heard you’re on leave. I’m sorry.’

Though the kiss was reassuring, he couldn’t help noticing that her face seemed strained.

‘Darling, are you quite well?’ He took one of her cold hands in his. ‘I mean, I know yesterday must have been awful for you and I was not very . . . I was upset and frightened, mortified . . .’

Zelfa smiled and squeezed his fingers. ‘Ali Evren was far sicker than I thought,’ she said gravely. ‘I made a fatal error of judgement and I failed to consider possibilities that went beyond the derisory to explain his perceptions. I’ve just been speaking to an old friend about it.’

‘Dermot?’

‘Oh, Dad told you. Yes.’ She sighed. ‘Dermot’s a parapsychologist. He works with people who claim to see ghosts, experience poltergeist activity and think they can predict the future – stuff like that. Some people think his work is very valuable and cutting edge while others feel he’s just a nutter.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know what he is myself, except that he’s very knowledgeable. I contacted him about Felicity Evren.’

Suleyman took his cigarettes out of his pocket and offered the packet to Zelfa.

‘Why did you ask him about her? I thought we were talking about Ali?’ he said, puzzled.

Zelfa took a cigarette and waited for Suleyman to light both their smokes.

‘Because of her claim that she cannot see herself in mirrors. On the face of it, it seems ridiculous, a delusion.’

‘Yes.’

‘To the average man and woman, yes. But Dermot isn’t average and I knew that if anyone could shed some light on it, it would be him. After all, Felicity insisted she couldn’t see herself in mirrors even though her life was in the balance, Mehmet.’

‘Yes, but if Dermot is, by your own admission, just a little mad, I don’t see—’

‘It’s called negative autoscopy, apparently,’ she said, ignoring his objections. ‘Unlike positive autoscopy, which involves the creation of images in the subject’s field of vision, the negative variety involves the removal or blanking out of ordinary phenomena. Although there are many different explanations for this, basically images are created in line with a person’s needs – wish fulfilment, sexual desire, grief. Positive autoscopy therefore equals ghosts. The negative variety may also emanate from desire or wish fulfilment, but this time the urge involves the need for the removal of something unwanted.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Unprompted, Dermot cited the old vampire myth. Modern thinking on the subject revolves around the idea that vampires were actually people suffering from a condition called porphyria. This disease involves victims becoming light sensitive, the skin becomes discoloured and there is considerable mental confusion. It isn’t difficult to deduce from this that these so-called vampires didn’t see themselves in mirrors because, being unaccountably disfigured, they didn’t want to. In other words, negative autoscopy.’

Suleyman frowned. ‘So . . . do you, or does Dermot, think that Felicity has porphyria?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said with a dismissive wave of her cigarette. ‘At least, not as far as I know. No, Felicity has had gross physical defects from birth. No, what I’m saying is that the process is the same. She didn’t want to be ugly – who does? When İkmen questioned her, she was quite genuine when she described herself as a beautiful woman, because that was what she wanted to be, that was what I understand her father told her she was and if she couldn’t see herself she could be anything she damned well wanted to be!’

‘Well, yes, but isn’t this all a bit speculative?’

‘To her brother, of course, it all made perfect sense. He’d read about vampires, seen films, and he knew they couldn’t see themselves, so when Felicity said that she couldn’t see herself either, he made what was to him a logical deduction. It also fell in with his desires. His mother’s suicide bred in him a morbid fear of death and here was his sister, suddenly immortal. He wanted some of that. And so he emulated the morbid youth around him in the UK – goth kids with black hair, anorexic, obsessed with gravestones. His father was too busy with his businesses—’

The telephone at her side began to ring, interrupting her. She turned away to answer it. Suleyman was relieved that she had stopped talking to him for a while. He found it professionally and also personally disturbing to have her working so closely with people involved in ‘his’ crimes. Of course she had been involved before – Zelfa advised the police as part of her job. But this was the first time one of her patients had ever featured in a murder investigation. And, if nothing else, what she had just said threw into very sharp relief the fact that she and he had very different approaches to crime. For her, Felicity Evren and her now deceased family were a fascinating human source of speculative theory. For himself and for İkmen the main question revolved around whether Ali or his sister or their father had committed one or more of what was becoming quite a catalogue of murders. The boy had admitted that he had killed Rifat and even drunk his blood, and the woman appeared to be a possible for her father’s death. Hard evidence was what was needed, of course, and hopefully they would find it in the days to come. Zelfa and İkmen, he knew, had agreed to meet after İkmen had interviewed Felicity.

He was suddenly distracted from his thoughts by the look on Zelfa’s face. She had gone quite ashen. As she put down the telephone, Suleyman leaned forward and took hold of her shoulders.

‘What is it, Zelfa? What’s wrong?’

‘That was Latife Aksu,’ she said, ‘my gynaecologist. I had some tests done and, well, she wants to see me.’ She sighed. ‘I know what she’s going to say, of course, about the menopause.’

‘But Zelfa, you’ve been talking about that for a year to my knowledge.’

‘Yes, but I’ve never had it confirmed, have I, Mehmet!’ she cried. Abruptly she rose to her feet, raking her tangled hair with her fingers. ‘I know I’ve talked about it, driven you mad with it, but . . . but to have it confirmed – it’s like the end of my being a real woman, and just before my wedding . . .’

As her father entered the room carrying a copper tray with tea glasses on it, Zelfa put her head in her hands and burst into tears.

Both men moved quickly towards her.

Things were oddly quiet in the İkmens’ kitchen that morning. Çetin, who did at least usually have a hot drink with the rest of the family, had risen from his bed slightly later than normal. As a consequence, by the time he appeared, only Fatma was left in the apartment. And when he entered the kitchen, red-eyed and dishevelled, she stopped her maniacal cleaning of the oven and turned the heat up on the samovar. Ahmet had told her what she now knew Çetin knew before she’d gone to her sister’s. She felt desperately sorry for him, something she expressed by making him tea.

‘What time did Uncle Ahmet leave in the end?’ she asked as she took a clean tulip glass off the draining board and placed it on the table.

İkmen shrugged. ‘I don’t know. About midnight.’

‘Did he go back with that Emina woman?’

‘He took her home to Üsküdar and then he said he was going to go on to Samsun’s place.’ He smiled briefly. ‘As I understand it, Abdurrahman appeared at the hospital yesterday, full of excuses and protestations of undying love.’

Resisting the temptation to make some acid comment about that, Fatma simply said, ‘Oh.’

‘The story is that his mother in Bursa was taken ill very suddenly. Quite why that would necessitate his switching his mobile telephone off and not even leaving Samsun a note, I don’t know. Personally I think he’s hiding something from her. But according to Ahmet, it seemed to satisfy Samsun – after, of course, she’d slapped Abdurrahman around for a bit. Such wild, excessive behaviour . . .’

Fatma poured strong dark tea from the pot on top of the samovar into the glass and placed it in front of her husband. Then she brought him a clean ashtray and sat down opposite him.

‘So, what are you going to do about your brother, Çetin?’ she said as she watched him light up a cigarette and then take a sip of tea.

‘I’ve got to interview Felicity Evren this morning. Then I’m going to consult Zelfa Halman about her. After that I’ll probably speak to Zelfa about Halil.’

‘What about Arto?’ Fatma asked. ‘I mean, you started all this business with him, didn’t you? You asked him to look at his father’s records.’

‘I’ll speak to Zelfa first,’ İkmen said. ‘I mean, if I decide not to tell Halil the truth about Mother, it’s probably best that Arto doesn’t know either. You never know how people are going to react to things, do you? Arto and Krikor worshipped their father and if they knew that he was even unwittingly connected to what was a murder . . .’

‘But Vahan Sarkissian was just as much a pawn in what seems to me some hellish Albanian game as you, your father and indeed the police who came to the scene.’ Fatma was becoming agitated. ‘I would kill them all if I could, you know, Çetin!’

‘Fatma—’

‘Depriving children of their mother! Bringing misery to my hearth with their murders and their infidel magic and . . . Vampires! Evil, blood-addicted . . .’ Words failed her. She rose to her feet and took her disgust and anger out on the oven in a renewed onslaught of cleaning.

When she had recovered sufficiently to speak rationally, she raised her head from the oven door and asked, ‘Who was that on the telephone this morning?’

‘It was Mehmet. I asked him to call me. He was so upset yesterday, I wanted to know that he was all right.’

‘And was he?’

‘He’s not too happy, but he talked more about the meal he had with his father and brother last night.’ İkmen shook his head. ‘Just between ourselves, Fatma, his father is in financial difficulty again. Mehmet’s brother and his little girl are going to move back with his parents to help the old prince pay his bills.’

Fatma shrugged. ‘I don’t know why they didn’t go back when Murad’s wife died,’ she said a trifle sanctimoniously. ‘Most of us have to start out with our parents anyway.’

‘Yes. But for people like them it’s different. The old man is having to sell yet more of his inheritance. His house went years ago, then many of their heirlooms. Now he’s going to have to sell the jewellery that once belonged to his mother.’

‘Well, at least he has jewellery to sell,’ Fatma said and plunged her head back into the oven again.

‘He wants Mehmet and his brother to choose a few pieces they might like to hold on to. His wife is furious.’

‘Oh, is she?’ Fatma responded acidly. ‘If you ask me, Çetin, it’s a judgement on that woman, all this trouble. Always thinking of herself and her own position! She should have given more attention to her children. Jewels!’ she spat contemptuously. ‘She should try having to worry about where the next meal is coming from like the rest of us!’

In a tone that was surprisingly mild for him, İkmen said, ‘It’s practical considerations like that that are at the bottom of all this actually, Fatma. With the economy in chaos, no one is safe. The lire just keeps on going down and down.’

‘Well then, as I said before, Çetin, they are fortunate to have diamonds and emeralds to sell. As I’m sure even you have noticed, we haven’t had meat in this house for over a month – and that’s with the contributions from our older children.’

‘Yes, I know.’

Troubled by what seemed to be an uncharacteristic mildness bordering on hopelessness in her husband’s manner, Fatma wiped her hands on a cloth and walked over to him.

‘Not that I blame you at all,’ she said, placing her hands on his shoulders. ‘You’ve always worked so hard. All that money from the sale of your father’s house went to educate the children.’

‘I just want to get them all through now,’ he said. He took hold of one her hands and patted it. ‘It’s important. Like my father always said, education is the only light that exists in our human darkness, without it we are just animals.’

‘Çetin . . .’

‘I know you disagree,’ he said. ‘I know that you see religion as a guiding force for good too. But take the Albanians, and I include my mother in this, they live in absolute, illiterate ignorance. It’s not their fault, their country has been ruined by corruption. But knowing no better, they continually turn to the past to make sense of their lives. And however we might like to romanticise it, the past was dirty and brutal and stupid. We must move on, we must educate and enlighten. If nothing else, we must teach our children not to hate.’

Fatma kissed the top of her husband’s head before sitting down opposite him again. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘since the, you know, the movement in the, er . . .’