Harem (7 page)

Bülent was already out on the balcony when İkmen arrived. His sweet young face was tinged with gold as he turned his features up to the still fierce setting sun. His father sat down beside him and lit a cigarette.

‘Your mother’s helping your sister to come to some sort of peace with what has happened,’ he said as he exhaled smoke out across Divanyolu Caddesi with its teeming pavements and packed trams. ‘I’m glad it’s her. I couldn’t have done it.’

Bülent shrugged. ‘But you see death all the time,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t mean that I’m inured to it,’ İkmen responded. ‘Even when it happens to people I don’t know, I’m still shocked. But when it’s someone close . . .’ He sighed. ‘You don’t get over it, you just get used to it. There are times when I think about your grandfather and the pain is so intense it feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach.’

Bülent sipped some water from his bottle and then leaned back and closed his eyes. At eighteen he still wasn’t mature enough to be comfortable around emotions like the ones his father was expressing. And so the two of them sat in silence until İkmen’s mobile phone began to ring.

Hassan Şeker, dressed in an elegantly cut suit and emanating expensive cologne, looked totally incongruous as he sat behind the old stained table in Interview Room 2. The poor light from the one inadequate bulb overhead made his immaculate appearance seem even more bizarre. Orhan Tepe knew that Şeker was in a different league from him. He is in the same category as Mehmet Süleyman, Tepe thought sourly. Back in Ottoman times, when Süleyman’s family had been aristocrats, Şeker’s had been the culinary artists who served such people. Patronised and flattered by their exalted customers, many confectioners, jewellers and other artisans had as a result become admired and wealthy themselves. Despite the passing of time and the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923, such people retained their wealth and reputations.

Tepe looked across at the confectioner again and scowled. Very like Süleyman, in fact, he thought – handsome, loved by women and rich . . . in comparison to him. His scowl deepened – which was not lost upon Hassan Şeker.

‘Is something bothering you, officer?’ he asked, his head held high with imperious indignation.

Tepe slid his glance across to the young constable who stood guarding the door. People were not generally so confident and up front in this type of setting and the constable looked uncomfortable.

‘I was just hoping that Inspector İkmen gets here soon, sir,’ Tepe replied. ‘It would be good if we could get this over with.’

‘I can only agree with that,’ Şeker said and he looked Tepe up and down with very obvious disdain.

And then the room became silent again until there was a knock at the door. The constable opened it immediately and İkmen entered. Hassan Şeker rose to his feet.

‘Ah, Inspector,’ he said. ‘It will be a trouble, I know, but if you could just put this stupid man right with regard to the grave error he has committed, I would be grateful.’

İkmen looked at Tepe before, smiling at Şeker, he sat down.

‘If you mean that Sergeant Tepe has made a mistake in bringing you here, sir, then I must take issue with that.’ İkmen lit up a cigarette. ‘Had you answered his questions—’

‘He and his underlings just marched into my place of business asking insulting questions!’

‘Sir, we have reason to believe that you may have been having a relationship with a girl we found dead earlier today.’

‘Yes, yes.’ He ran one hand through his hair, his head bowed. ‘He told me about Hatice and I am very sorry. It is most distressing. But as to my having a relationship with her—’

‘Oh, I agree,’ İkmen said, ‘that I may have overstated your connection with Hatice. From the information we have received it would seem that it stopped at just sex. If indeed it got that far. But you were seen touching her breasts, and she appeared to be comfortable with that.’

Şeker raised his head a little, his eyes furious. ‘And who says this?’

‘Sir, you must know that I cannot—’

‘Oh, but of course, I told your men the whereabouts of Ahmet Sılay, didn’t I?’ He laughed without mirth. ‘And you believe the word of a politically dubious alcoholic. Such observations are pure fantasy, the product of a mind obsessed with celluloid.’

‘Mr Sılay apart, there is a witness who can substantiate this notion who is not given to strong drink.’

‘Who?’ Şeker’s voice as well as his eyes were challenging, imperious. ‘Well?’

‘Mr Şeker, I am not at liberty to—’

‘But if I am to counter this accusation then I have to know who I am up against! This is a lie! I am fully aware that some of the people who work for me do not necessarily like me.’

In the face of İkmen’s stoic silence, Şeker sat down. As he did so, a thought appeared to occur to him. It was perhaps prompted by the gravity that was etched on İkmen’s features. ‘Unless, of course, it was your daughter,’ he said. ‘In which case I may as well, I suppose, confess to this whether I did it or not.’

İkmen sighed. This was not a place he had wanted to go to with this interview. But when Tepe had telephoned him about Şeker, he had had to ask Hulya about her employer and Hatice.

‘Sir, telling the truth might help,’ İkmen said. ‘Touching a girl’s breast or having consenting relations with her is not a crime. We are not accusing you of harming her, we simply need to know who her contacts were. And because you must have been one of the last people to see her alive—’

‘When she finished her work she left with your daughter.’

‘And you didn’t see her again that night?’

‘No. I went home to my wife as I always do. I have never done anything with or to that girl. If some people mistake my natural friendliness for something else then that is their problem, not mine.’ And then he sank back into his chair as if temporarily deflated.

İkmen put his cigarette out and lit another. ‘Well, you may be right,’ he said. ‘It is possible some misunderstanding . . .’

‘Thank you!’

‘However, I stand by my officers’ actions. We were, sir, bound to follow up such an accusation.’

‘Well, of course.’ Şeker’s features had softened considerably now. Although not exactly smiling, he appeared more relaxed. It was at this point that İkmen pleasantly called a halt to the proceedings and allowed Hassan Şeker to go.

As soon as they heard the confectioner’s footsteps disappear down the corridor outside, Tepe turned to his superior and said, ‘Do you believe him, sir?’

‘No.’ İkmen frowned. ‘It’s his word against Ahmet Sılay’s and Hulya’s. I know that my daughter, at least, doesn’t lie. She’s seen that man with his hands all over Hatice. And besides, even if I didn’t know that I would still call Hassan Şeker a liar.’

‘Why?’

İkmen smiled. ‘Oh, just because, Tepe. Feelings that I have about people. Call it something supernatural, for want of a more appropriate term.’ He stood up and made ready to leave the room.

Confused, Tepe just reiterated, ‘Supernatural?’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said as he opened the door to the corridor, ‘as in precognition, that sort of thing. But please, don’t mention it to Commissioner Ardıç, he hates that.’ And then with a smile he left.

In spite of the difference in their height and the fact that Mehmet was handsomer than Murad, it was easy to see that the Süleyman brothers were closely related. The way they sat, slumped down against the wall of the hospital, their chins cupped in their long thin hands, made them resemble scolded children rather than middle-aged men.

Murad had been with Mehmet for just over an hour like this, occasionally talking but more often than not passing the hot, thick night by smoking and taking drinks from his can of cola. His sister-in-law Zelfa’s labour had been going on for most of the day, so unlike Murad’s experience of impending fatherhood. His late wife, Elena, a sorely missed victim of the monstrous 1999 earthquake, had given him a daughter within two hours. But she had been young; even now she would only have been twenty-eight. The thought of that, coupled with the closeness of the heat, made Murad feel slightly sick and so he distracted himself by looking at Mehmet. The younger man’s face was quite white.

Murad reached over and took one of his brother’s hands in his. ‘It isn’t exactly major surgery these days,’ he said with what he could muster of a smile. ‘And anyway, the doctor said he would give Zelfa another hour.’

‘Yes, but if she doesn’t have my son within an hour—’

‘Then they’ll perform a caesarean section,’ Murad replied, ‘as the doctor said. They do them every day, Mehmet. She will be fine. Inşallah.’

‘Mmm.’

They sat in silence for a while, watching as ambulances and cars came and went, taking part in the twenty-four-hour soap opera that is hospital life. Birth, death, sickness, joy, grief and anger – Mehmet had seen it all since he had come to this place that would herald a turning point in his life. Things would never be the same. They certainly hadn’t been for Murad since little Edibe’s birth. Mehmet looked at his older and wiser brother and smiled.

‘So what did Mother and Father say when you told them?’ he asked.

Murad smiled. ‘Father showed me the coin he has purchased for your son,’ he said, referring to the old Turkish custom of buying a gold coin for a new baby. ‘It’s one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. He told me it’s from the reign of Sultan Abdul Mecit.’

Mehmet closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘But he can’t afford something like that, not with you paying half of his costs on the house and—’

‘Mehmet, he has to, you know that,’ Murad replied simply. ‘Like going to only the best restaurants and having his suits tailored for him, it’s what he does. It’s how he was raised.’

Mehmet lifted his eyes up to heaven. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said sotto voce, ‘by the glittering waters of the Bosphorus, with precious carpets on every floor; with servants and nurses watching him walk his family of white Angora cats around the lush, green gardens.’

‘Something like that,’ Murad said and then both he and Mehmet laughed. Soon, very soon, they hoped, another little Süleyman would come into the world. Hopefully, with his practical Irish mother and hard-working father, Mehmet’s son would appreciate the kind, if anachronistic and unwise act his curious grandfather had performed on his behalf. Just an echo now of the princes his forebears had once been, Mehmet’s son would at least start his existence in old-fashioned regal style.

The upstairs family parlour was mercifully empty. Apart from a couple of young students in the corner, it was just them. So they wouldn’t be seen, which was good. Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoǧlu nevertheless looked about her with large, doleful eyes. These little
pideci
, though clean and cheap, were so boring. Not that she didn’t like
pide
, that thick, flat bread topped with cheese or meat or eggs or almost anything you could want. Like Italian pizza, to which it is often compared,
pide
is not easily disliked. No, it wasn’t the food or even the dull, whining tunes from the radio in the corner that were bothering Farsakoǧlu.

‘I shall be thirty in three weeks,’ she said to the man sitting opposite her.

Orhan Tepe looked up from his
pide
into a pair of eyes that shone with a heightened intensity. ‘Yes,’ he replied simply, ‘I know. We’re going out to eat in Tarabya.’

‘Where no one will know us,’ she said, her generous lips now tight around her words. ‘On my thirtieth birthday, I go out with my lover, not my husband – at my age! – and to a place where nobody knows us.’

‘Yes,’ he shrugged, ‘I’m married. It has to be that way for the moment.’

‘I want to go to the Four Seasons, Çatı or Rejans,’ she said, naming three of the city’s most expensive restaurants.

The little boy who was their waiter for the evening came over and took away Tepe’s empty Coca-Cola glass. He might also have been trying to listen in on their now rather fraught conversation, but if he was, neither of them noticed.

As the boy left, Tepe leaned towards his mistress and said, ‘You know I can’t afford to take you to places like those at this time. We have to go to places I can afford.’

‘Like this place!’ she said, her face now quite red with rising anger and genuine upset.

‘It’s just an ordinary
pideci
 . . .’

‘Yes, exactly!’ She stared deeply into his eyes. ‘And after here we will go over to your brother’s empty apartment where I’ll—’

‘Keep your voice down!’ He looked around nervously, but to his relief the students and the waiter had gone now.

‘I want more from my life, Orhan,’ she continued. ‘I deserve it. You deserve it. A proper, comfortable place for us to relax, nice clothes, good food, some certainty that we have a future together.’

‘Which I have told you we will have!’ Tepe, his voice still a whisper, snapped. ‘I’m working on it. I think about it every day. Eventually—’

‘Eventually, if you don’t do something soon, I may leave you to the timid caresses of your frigid wife and—’

‘Go and attempt to seduce Mehmet Süleyman again?’ He looked at her with both desire and disgust. Somehow the lingering obsession she still retained for her ex-lover Süleyman excited him. It always had. From the start he’d envied Süleyman, but the thought that he now had what the far more cultured and aristocratic officer no longer had made him feel superior. Ayşe Farsakoǧlu was both a beautiful woman and an uninhibited lover – Süleyman had to miss her. After all, what did he have now? A sharp-tongued old hag of a wife, monstrously fat in her pregnancy. Orhan smiled. Ayşe, however, did not.

‘The only time I think about Mehmet Süleyman,’ she said icily, ‘is when I consider all the smart places he could have taken me. Places you and I must go to, unless of course you want Aysel to find out.’

With the speed of a viper, he snatched her wrist across the table. ‘Don’t even think about blackmailing me!’

‘I’m not blackmailing you, I’m promising you I will do this!’ she replied, her face set hard and determined against the pain inflicted by his hands. ‘I want better than this, Orhan. I’m nearly thirty. I want us to have things. I want you! I want to be your wife. I’ll do anything I have to to make that happen!’