Harem (11 page)

‘Where did this come from?’ İkmen asked a shocked Lazar who had entered the room behind him.

‘The dress?’

‘Yes. Where did you get it? Who does it belong to? What—’

‘Çetin Bey!’ Lazar held up his hand to silence this man who appeared for some reason to be raving. ‘I don’t know what all this is about but from the look on your daughter’s face you have upset her considerably. The girl was doing no harm to the dress.’

‘She didn’t touch it, Çetin Bey,’ Berekiah said. ‘She was only looking.’

Hulya, who did indeed have a shocked expression on her face, smiled inside. Berekiah had, in a very minor way, deceived her father for her. What joy!

İkmen, his seeming fury now spent, slumped as he continued to look at the dress.

‘I’m sorry, Lazar,’ he said as he shook his head slowly from side to side, ‘it just came as a bit of a shock.’

‘What did?’

İkmen thrust a hand out towards the mannequin. ‘This,’ he said. ‘The design and even some of the details are almost exactly the same as a dress I recently saw on a dead woman – a victim.’

‘Ah, the İpek child . . .’

Not really knowing why he even attempted to keep his work confidential in this city of twelve million insatiable gossips, İkmen just shrugged his agreement and then placed a hand briefly on his daughter’s shoulder. Mention of Hatice had once again made her eyes moist.

‘Can you tell me anything about the dress?’ İkmen asked Lazar.

‘The design is Ottoman,’ the old man said as he moved up to the mannequin and took one of the delicate sleeves between his fingers. ‘This one is based on a nineteenth-century wedding gown worn, I should imagine, by a royal or noble lady of some description. We are making jewellery in the same style for a wealthy lady who wishes to look like an Ottoman princess at her wedding.’

‘Do you know where she purchased the gown?’

Lazar gave a slow, crafty smile. ‘Yes. As I expect you do also, Çetin Bey, coming as you do from Üsküdar.’

At first İkmen frowned. What had such a magnificent gown to do with the working-class district where he had been raised? People there were more likely to require cheap suits or overalls than magnificent gowns made of expensive fabric. But then as he continued to look into Lazar’s clever, amused little eyes, it came to him.

‘Are we talking about the Heper sisters?’ he asked.

Lazar smiled even more broadly. ‘The daughters of General Heper are indeed without equal,’ he said. ‘Miss Muazzez’s blindness does not seem to affect the quality of her stitching which still looks as if it has been performed by a machine. Those women are truly miraculous.’

‘And although I know they would never admit it, they are of course products of the old Ottoman ways themselves, aren’t they?’ İkmen sighed. ‘I should have thought of them before.’

‘But your head was full of golden coins and little princes and all sorts of other unfinished business.’ Lazar placed an arm round İkmen’s shoulders and steered him back towards his private room. ‘The Heper sisters are old and can therefore go nowhere, Çetin Bey. My exquisite coins, however . . .’

The two young people watched as the men left the workroom. Hulya wiped a hand across her face to remove any stray tears. Then she looked down at the floor.

‘I imagine,’ Berekiah said as he moved a little bit closer to her, ‘that Miss İpek was someone you knew.’

‘She was my best friend.’

He reached across and took just the end of her fingers in his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Hulya,’ he said. ‘Really.’

She smiled as the cacophonous sound of numerous police sirens made further conversation impossible.

Metin İskender was not the sort of officer who was easily impressed by celebrity. He had been promoted to inspector at a young age and although still only twenty-nine had dealt with quite a few rich and famous people in his time. Having a wife with a high-profile career in publishing also helped – Belkis İskender was the sort of woman who liked to entertain her clients, and her husband, at extremely smart restaurants. And so when he sat down with Hikmet Sivas and his brother Vedat, İskender behaved rather more ‘normally’ than the movie star might have expected.

‘Apart from yourself, did your wife have any other contacts in Turkey?’ he asked, fascinated by the look of horror on Hikmet’s face as he surveyed the dismal state of the interview room.

‘No.’

‘Did anyone apart from your brother know that you were visiting the Republic?’

‘Only our sister, Hale, and my son,’ Vedat said quickly. ‘Hikmet and Kaycee came for a private visit – to the family.’

Hikmet looked at his brother, his face pale with anxiety.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A visit to the family. Yes.’

In common with many victims of crime, Hikmet Sivas was currently behaving like one in a dream, answering questions in a stilted manner, looking distractedly around as if he had only just regained the power of sight. The physical symptoms of shock were present too: the way he shivered in the forty-five-degree heat and the bloodlessness of his face.

İskender adjusted his tie so that it sat more stylishly at his neck. A handsome man, he enjoyed exploding the myth that all police officers were by definition unkempt. Together with Mehmet Süleyman and, to a lesser extent, Orhan Tepe, he represented the more modern, professional face of the urban police force.

‘I understand from our previous discussion,’ he said, addressing Hikmet Sivas, ‘that you haven’t lived here in your own country for many years.’

‘No.’

‘My brother is an American now,’ Vedat said with rather more pride in his voice than İskender liked.

‘I see. However, I do have to ask you whether you have any enemies in this country, Mr Sivas. People who might wish to harm or manipulate you through your wife.’

‘No, he doesn’t.’

İskender gave Vedat Sivas a stern look. ‘I’d rather your brother answered the question,’ he said. He turned back to Hikmet. ‘Well?’

Hikmet, whose head was now down, his chin resting on the wattled skin of his chest, murmured, ‘No.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in America? Do you or your wife have any enemies there?’

For the first time during the course of the interview, Hikmet Sivas actually looked into the handsome, immobile eyes of Metin İskender. Here was a man, he felt, who approached his professional life with a complete lack of emotion. What he was doing now, opening an investigation into the kidnap of a beautiful young woman adored by her husband, was just an assignment like any other. He’d want to get Kaycee back in order to be seen to be doing his job well, but that was all. There was no empathy in those cold black eyes of his. They reminded Hikmet of some of the eyes he’d seen in the faces of studio starlets he’d worked with years ago – women who screwed well for parts in dire but lucrative movies.

In spite of himself, Hikmet forced a smile as he answered İskender’s question.

‘I may be old, Inspector,’ he said, ‘but I am still a Hollywood movie star. Put yourself up on a giant screen in front of millions of people and most of them will like you. But some won’t. Some will be envious, some will simply not like you, some will hate you. Some will even like you too much and stalk you.’

‘Has that ever happened to you or your wife?’

‘What? Being stalked?’ He shrugged. ‘Years ago there was a man who hung around my house, wanted to talk to me, wore the same clothes, said he loved me . . .’ He looked up in order to gauge whether or not this shocked the Turkish policeman. But the cold eyes gave nothing away. ‘He was taken to a state mental hospital. He’s still there, as far as I know.’

İskender leaned back in his chair and breathed deeply. Beyond the fact that Kaycee Sivas had been abducted in a part of the city where every second person was living beyond the boundaries of what was strictly legal, there was little to go on. Predictably, the young officer who had arrived just after the incident hadn’t been able to find any witnesses among the thronging, largely Russian-speaking crowd. Nobody had entered the leather shop that Sivas, who was now not so sure about this himself, had felt his wife had been taken to. And even if İskender did get a very profound feeling that he was not being told everything he needed to know by these men, he couldn’t prove it. He surveyed the Sivas brothers with a critical eye. His superior, however, exhibited nothing but star-struck awe when he entered the room. A large man with a high colour that only hinted at the floridness of his temper; he almost fell over his own feet as he nervously presented himself to Hikmet Sivas.

‘It is indeed an honour, if a sad, sad duty to serve you, sir,’ he said as he took the star’s hand in his and pumped it enthusiastically. ‘We are ready to receive your commands.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And please let me assure you that no effort will be spared to locate your wife and return her safely to you,’ and then looking across at İskender he said, ‘Is that not so, Inspector?’

İskender, now standing to attention, said, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘I appreciate your concern.’ Hikmet Sivas smiled.

‘Oh, it is an honour, sir, an honour! The men under my command will not rest until this dreadful stain upon the integrity of our city is put to rights.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It is nothing.’ He turned to İskender and said, ‘If you have finished I will take Mr Sivas and his brother up to my office.’

İskender briefly smiled his assent. Up to Ardıç’s office for a better class of tea and cigarettes no doubt. How different from the way these things were done with the common man. Fame and money, money and fame . . . As the star and his brother left the room, İskender retrieved his notes from the table and started to make his way out too.

But at the door he met the large bulk of his boss. Quickly, as if checking to see whether anyone was listening, Ardıç looked behind him before whispering to İskender, ‘Get on to headquarters in Ankara and tell them. This is international, they have to know. And then find her, Inspector, before Ankara can even think about applying pressure. Tear Beyazıt apart if you have to, but find her.’

By the time İkmen and Hulya got back to their apartment that evening, Bülent had already gone out. Although he was tired and slightly annoyed at himself for spending so much money on what was, admittedly, a very beautiful gold coin, İkmen decided that now was the time to talk to Hulya about Hatice. Armed with, in İkmen’s case, a bottle of Efes Pilsen beer and, in Hulya’s, a cola, the two of them went and sat together on the darkening balcony.

‘So you’re sure that Hatice didn’t mention anything about this dancing opportunity to you until the evening before she died?’ İkmen asked.

‘No, Dad, she didn’t.’ Hulya looked down into her glass, her face serious.

‘And when she did talk about it, she didn’t mention Hassan Şeker?’

‘No.’

‘So as far as you can tell, he didn’t have anything to do with this dancing thing.’

‘I don’t know.’ Hulya looked up, her eyes just slightly glassy. ‘But I don’t think that Hassan Bey would have done anything to hurt her. She really liked him. He wouldn’t have raped her.’

‘Ah . . .’ İkmen looked away.

‘What?’

‘Well, Hulya, we know Hatice had had sex with Hassan Bey before.’

‘You’re not saying that because she wasn’t a “good” girl before, she couldn’t have been raped, are you?’

İkmen took a swig from his bottle before replying. ‘No,
I’m
not. But that is what a lot of people will think.’

‘What, old men and religious people?’ Hulya curled her lip in a sneer. ‘I don’t care what they think!’

‘No, but . . .’ İkmen lit a cigarette, exhaling on a sigh. ‘Look, Hulya, there’s something else too.’

‘What?’

‘Although this man or men did undoubtedly hurt your friend and had sex with her, we now know that they didn’t actually kill her.’

Hulya frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

İkmen told his daughter what Arto Sarkissian had explained to him about the nature and probable cause of Hatice İpek’s death. As he spoke he watched her expression stiffen, seeming almost to age, as she took in the implications of what he was saying.

At the end of his exposition she said, ‘But surely, Dad, even if Hatice did die naturally, you’ll still have to find these awful men?’

‘Well, of course,’ İkmen responded. ‘But what I’m saying, Hulya, is that even if I do find them, it would seem that they cannot be tried for murder and to prove that an unmarried girl who was not a virgin was unwilling . . .’

‘They hurt her, Dad!’

‘Yes, darling, I know.’

‘Well then.’

‘Hulya, look.’ İkmen swallowed nervously. ‘I know this is difficult for you to understand, but some people do like pain, it—’

‘Men like pain, not women!’ Hulya snapped furiously. ‘Men beat their wives and force their women to have sex and the law protects them!’ She looked down at the floor. ‘Not you, I don’t mean you.’

‘All of those things that you talk about are against the law, Hulya,’ İkmen began, ‘but—’

‘Women have to be “good” women if they really want justice!’

‘No,’ İkmen cleared his throat, ‘but the opinions of those who call themselves moralists do have power. Once all the facts are known, some will feel little sympathy for Hatice. And although I will, as I promised, somehow find these men and bring them to justice, their punishment might not be as severe as I would have liked. If they didn’t kill her, if their lawyer convinces the judge that she consented to sex . . .’

They sat in silence for a while, thinking their own thoughts. Eventually Hulya spoke.

‘You know, Dad,’ she said quietly, ‘talking about this makes me wonder whether it is possible for men and women to be equal in this country when some people think that girls have to be good while men can do what they like.’

İkmen smiled sadly. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but not everyone thinks like that. I don’t. As you know, it was part of our Ghazi Mustafa Kemal’s mission to set women free to achieve their potential. But some people, even some women, believe that freedom can only be attained through submission to men and to—’