Deep Waters (39 page)

‘I must admit that when you first came to see me, your confidence was – unusual,’ İkmen observed.

She smiled. ‘And you, like most people here, were very kind,’ she said. ‘But unfortunately my disability, or whatever you wish to call it, had a disastrous effect upon my brother. I am twenty years older than David and so, particularly when he was very little, I took care of him. The only time Father was in was when he had business associates over for dinner or when he wanted to hide either an illegal immigrant or a large bag of something I still don’t want to think about in the garden. Mother was depressed and made twelve attempts on her life before she finally succeeded three years ago. David and I only had each other and we told each other everything. I think he must have been ten when I told him about this,’ she said, pointing to her face.

‘And what was David’s reaction?’

‘Oh, he understood completely,’ she said, her eyes now drifting into a glassy stare. ‘Mum, David and I had watched enough horror films together to know what it meant – Mum liked things like that. But it was our secret, David’s and mine. Though nothing much happened until my mother died. Until then it was all just a joke between us – Felicity the vampire, can’t see her face in mirrors, stays up all night – as of course people do who never go out, and I had kidney problems by then.’

‘What changed when your mother died?’

‘We had to go and see her – her body. David freaked.’

İkmen frowned. ‘Pardon?’

‘It frightened him, Inspector. Mum looked different, scary – dead bodies always do – things drop – I’m sure you know. He was terrified, couldn’t sleep. He thought that if he did sleep he might stop breathing. He didn’t want to die. He kept on and on saying how lucky I was that it wasn’t going to happen to me. Not that I told him I was immortal, but then I didn’t tell him I wasn’t either. I said that he could be like me if he wanted. It seemed quite harmless, the vampire thing. Lots of kids in Britain are into it. They only wear black, don’t eat very much, hang around graveyards. Usually they grow out of it.’

‘But your brother didn’t grow out of it, did he, Miss Evren?’

She looked down now, as if she was ashamed of what she had done, or perhaps in this case not done. ‘No,’ she said, ‘he didn’t. And then when my father wanted to get closer to his suppliers, to keep an eye on them, we moved here. Father said you lot were easier to bribe than the British police.’ She laughed, bitterly.

‘And was that so, Miss Evren?’ Çöktin asked. ‘Did your father bribe İstanbul policemen?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Certainly not you lot. Anyway, David, who Father now called Ali, his second name, stopped eating almost completely. The vampire thing still carried on, but here he was entirely alone, except for me. I humoured him, I admit, but he got worse – wouldn’t eat at all. Father sent him to that psychiatrist. I think she just thought it was a phase, you know. But then suddenly he killed Rifat and there was that blood drinking . . .’ She paused, mentally turning away from this image of such extreme disorder. ‘You know at home we say that when people get what has been coming to them for a long while, their birds come home to roost. When David killed Rifat, that is what happened to me.’

‘But in the Aya Sofya, Dr Halman asked you to tell your brother the truth about the mirror phenomenon and you said you really don’t see yourself. People facing death rarely lie.’

‘No. And I’ve explained about that, Inspector. I should never have told my brother. It caused all this and . . . He was going to kill me too, as you know.’

‘When he found that the sight of crosses did not turn you to dust.’ İkmen smiled. ‘I have seen the films too, I confess.’

‘Yes,’ she replied simply, ‘although what I don’t understand is why Dr Halman told David to take me to the museum. He tested me and, of course, I failed. I am mortal, of course I am. If I’d known that was what he wanted to do, I would never have gone with him. Dr Halman shouldn’t have done that. He was so full of hate, up there in the gallery. I had to keep on and on talking just to stay alive.’ She broke down again and this time İkmen said they should all take a break. He sent Çöktin out to get tea.

While they waited for the Kurd to return, İkmen observed Felicity Evren closely. Despite her tears, this interview had been very easy. She had described unspeakable events with great composure. True, the tranquillisers the doctor had given her would have helped. But, as İkmen knew, they were not yet at the heart of the matter, from Felicity’s point of view. The death of her father had not yet been addressed and also there was something else, something that Zelfa had intimated to him back at the museum, something he thought he may have observed himself . . .

He looked at the plump, satisfied face of her lawyer. Adnan Öz would, he knew, make much of Zelfa Halman’s seeming miscalculation of her patient’s state of mind. İkmen himself had, after all, heard Ali Evren cite the doctor as a prime mover in his disordered actions. Dr Halman had encouraged him to test his hypothesis and, fearful that his father would soon have him incarcerated, he had done just that. An attempt to speed up his ‘transformation’, İkmen imagined. Not that he was sure about any of this weird stuff. How a person could fail to see their own reflection in a mirror was beyond him anyway. It was fantasy, it had to be! Deep down Felicity Evren did have a true perception of herself, didn’t she? She seemed to have when she was talking just now. Or was the knowledge recent? Had something happened to make her see herself as she really was? He thought back to the room where İlhan Evren had died and bit his bottom lip.

When Çöktin returned with the tea, they resumed. İkmen went straight to the point.

‘About your father, Miss Evren,’ he said. ‘In the museum you appeared to know about his death. I would like you to tell us about this.’

And for the first time, she turned to her lawyer. He smiled at her and began to talk.

‘Miss Evren discovered the dead body of her father yesterday morning,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you report it to us?’ İkmen asked, addressing Felicity.

‘Miss Evren was traumatised. It is not every day that one finds the body of a close relative—’

‘And yet you were not so traumatised that it prevented you from going out with your brother.’

This time Felicity answered. ‘David was very agitated. Both he and I had argued with my father the previous evening.’

‘What about?’

‘Well, about what had happened with Rifat, of course!’ she cried. ‘My father was scared! You had been round and he wanted to find a way for us to get out of the situation we were in. He suggested to me that we use David’s instability to our advantage.’

‘Have him take the blame for the whole thing? Have him hospitalised?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you disagreed.’

‘Yes!’

‘Because you loved your brother?’

‘Yes.’

İkmen leaned across the table towards her. ‘And in what way exactly did you love young David, Miss Evren?’

‘Inspector İkmen,’ Adnan Öz interrupted. ‘Just what—’

İkmen held up a hand to silence the lawyer. ‘Yesterday, on the Aya Sofya gallery, you told your brother you had told your father about your part in your brother’s condition and that he had not liked what he had heard.’

‘I told him about the mirror, it was our secret, David’s and mine . . .’

‘Did you also tell your father that you had been sleeping with your brother? You were being pleasured by him when Rifat arrived, were you not?’

Adnan Öz rose from his seat. ‘Inspector İkmen!’

‘Well, were you, Miss Evren?’ İkmen continued. ‘Or did your brother’s comments that Rifat had “taken what was his”, that you had “cheated on him with the Albanian” refer to something else?’

Felicity’s eyes told him the truth. Unmoving, they filled with a slow but intense hatred that Çöktin for one found he had to look away from.

Öz, still agitated, bent down towards his client and said, ‘You do not have to answer this.’

‘You see, Miss Evren,’ İkmen said, resolutely facing her hatred, ‘I have this theory that however complicated or deluded a person’s reason for killing might appear to be, basically all murder stems from love or envy or fear. And although I accept that your brother was suffering from some type of complicated, deluded condition, I also believe that you and he shared a fantasy.’

‘Who else would have loved me? I ached to be loved!’ She began to cry. ‘I wanted men like Rifat . . .’

‘So you played little games. You were vampires. You were lovers. You were going to live for ever.’ İkmen looked at her sadly. ‘But he was growing up, Miss Evren, becoming a man. And like a man he did not want to share his lover.’

‘But I never thought he would ever feel that way about me! I thought we could just carry on as always . . . I am hideous . . .’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘you can see yourself in mirrors now, can’t you? Perhaps you’ve always been able to.’

She looked up at him, her misshapen nose dribbling.

‘I had to think for a while about why only one thing, apart from your father of course, was damaged in that office,’ İkmen said. ‘In the event both you, up on the gallery, and Dr Halman gave me my answer.’

‘My father made me look at it! He held me down in a chair until it came,’ Felicity Evren screamed. ‘I told him and he laughed and then he made me look at it! “How,” he said, “can you not see that? How could anyone love that?” And then I started to see . . .’

‘So up in the gallery when Dr Halman asked you to tell the truth about what you saw in the mirror, you were lying again, weren’t you? “I have no words to describe myself” – something like that was what you said,’ İkmen frowned, ‘but you were lying. You were, even in the face of death, perpetuating the game you just couldn’t let go of. Because it was only the game, nothing else, that held you to your brother, your lover.’

‘I . . .’

Adnan Öz cleared his throat. ‘Inspector İkmen,’ he said, ‘I should like to have some time alone with my client.’

But İkmen was so nearly there. He continued to bear down on her.

‘Your father wanted to put your brother in an institution and thereby remove sex from your life. You knew that no one else would love you. Rifat hadn’t – didn’t want to!’

Through her tears she cried, ‘I wanted Father to take responsibility for Rifat’s death! He disposed of him! He was finished with him! He never loved anybody he couldn’t buy!’

‘And so you killed him,’ İkmen said. ‘You smashed your own image from that mirror and then you killed your father!’

‘Inspector İkmen!’

‘You knew he had enemies. You knew how to remove forensic evidence from a scene – you told me so.’ He paused to take a large steadying breath and then said, ‘And you knew you could create a story that just might convince me that your father had murdered Rifat. After all, dead people do not speak, do they, Miss Evren? But you made two miscalculations.’

Felicity looked up at him, all her energies focused on the hatred in her eyes.

‘You didn’t think I would piece together the true nature of your relationship with your brother – perhaps you felt that my sympathy for a person like you would allow me to overlook it. Wrong. And secondly, I don’t think you had any idea just how insane your brother was.’

‘He tried to kill me.’ It was said with a calmness that seemed to suggest that even now she didn’t really understand it.

‘Yes, he did,’ İkmen said, ‘and now I am going to charge you, Miss Evren, for the murder of your father.’

Suddenly and without warning, everything closed down. Felicity Evren allowed the silence inside her to crash into the room. It still took the three men with her several minutes to work out just what had happened. And when it did become apparent, Adnan Öz was on his mobile to her doctor within seconds.

Mehmet and Mehti Vlora were allowed five minutes to see their mother before they were put into the transport designated to take them to Bayrampaşa prison.

‘I thought the Turks burnt that place to the ground last year,’ Angeliki said when her boys told her where they were going. ‘Prisoners were making bombs and other weapons, so I remember hearing.’

‘Well,’ Mehmet said as he stole a quick, sly glance at the guard over by the door, ‘I won’t be doing that, Mother. Mehti and I will be doing better things than that.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe we’ll keep pigeons.’

‘Like “real” Turks,’ his mother responded ironically. ‘How proud I shall be!’ Then turning to Mehti she said, ‘If Allah and the Turks are merciful, at least you will not be there for long.’

Mehti bowed his head. ‘No, Mother.’

‘That they ever even entertained the idea that you were capable of murder is beyond me,’ she added with a shrug, ‘You’re nothing, you always were.’

‘I did it to try and get you and Mehmet out of here. I—’

‘Oh, save your breath!’ She put one thin arm round Mehmet’s waist and squeezed him affectionately. ‘You did it to try and impress us. You, on the other hand,’ she said, looking up into Mehmet’s face, ‘you will serve a long sentence. Unless of course the one who was once your brother can be spoken to before your trial.’

He smiled. ‘And will our
fis
do that for us, Mother?’

‘I have no idea yet when I will be getting out of here,’ she said. She saw the guard eyeing the three of them. ‘But if I am released or I manage to get word out to other interested
fis
, you can be assured that it will be done, my son.’

‘It will be a final solution, won’t it, Mother?’ Mehmet said as he bent down to kiss her cold, wrinkled cheeks.

‘Oh, yes.’ She looked over his shoulder at Mehti, who seemed close to tears. ‘Not even Aryan is clever enough to evade the laws of Lek Dukagjini.’

There was a rattle of keys from outside the door. When it opened, the Vloras were greeted by the sight of a straightfaced Orhan Tepe surrounded by a squad of armed guards.