Ikmen 16 - Body Count (38 page)

‘What if he’d told your family you were a thief?’
İ
kmen asked.

The girl put her head down.

‘Not that I think in light of later events your father would have bothered too much about that,’
İ
kmen said.

‘My father … My mother is …’

‘Ill, I know. How many times did the old man make you have sex with him, Suzan?’
İ
kmen asked her.

‘He made me do things to him a lot,’ she said. ‘But he only put it in me once.’

‘You had intercourse one time?’

‘Yes. But it made me pregnant,’ Suzan said.

The room went silent then, until she spoke again. ‘I didn’t know what was going on at first. I thought I was just getting fat, but then he noticed it too and he asked me about my monthlies and I told him I wasn’t having any. He got really angry then. One day this woman came and she took me to a clinic. They took the baby away.’

‘Who was this woman?’ Ay
ş
e asked. ‘Had you seen her before?’

‘Yes. She came to see Efendi sometimes. At first she was very nice.’

‘When you had the abortion?’

‘Yes. She was very sympathetic. She said I should call her “Abla” and she came two times after I had my operation to make sure that I was all right.’

‘Do you know who paid for the surgery you had?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘Efendi,’ she said. ‘That’s why he was so angry with me. He kept saying “I’m dying. So why am I spending money on other people? It should all be for me.” The woman, Abla—’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Blonde and pretty,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she said that if I ever told anyone about leaving the door unlocked, she’d kill me. She didn’t look like that sort of person at all. But I believed her.’

‘Suzan,’
İ
kmen said, ‘we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Please go back to what happened after the abortion. When that was all over with, when did you see the woman you called Abla again?’

‘She came maybe once or twice to see Efendi. She was a lot younger than him, but when they were together they talked very intensely.’

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know. When I went in to serve them tea or something they always went quiet. Anyway I wasn’t interested. My mum became ill at that time and so that was all I could think about.’

‘Did you tell your employer that your mother was ill?’

‘Yes, he said I could go home if I wanted to but he might have to replace me if I did that. But I couldn’t because I needed to send money home. I was worried, though, and then that woman, Abla, saw me crying in the kitchen. She asked me about my mum and I told her that I just wanted to go home to see her. I said she had cancer and needed an operation.’

‘And then?’

‘And then I didn’t see her for a while,’ she said. ‘Not until the end of April. She came, as she did from time to time, and they had tea. But he was sicker now and so he went to sleep after he had his tea and she left him and came into the kitchen. She asked me about Mum and I told her that she was still sick and she still needed an operation. She asked me why Mum wasn’t having the operation and I said it was because Dad couldn’t afford it. Then she asked me how much the operation would cost and I told her.’

‘Five thousand lira?’ It seemed such a small amount of money, but then
İ
kmen imagined it was probably to be performed at a country hospital in the middle of nowhere.

‘Yes.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Then? Nothing. She went back to Efendi. It was a few days later that she offered me the money.’

‘What exactly did she offer you the money for, Suzan?’ Ay
ş
e asked.

‘To leave the front door unlocked when I left to go for my afternoon off the following Saturday,’ she said.

‘The twenty-first of May?’

‘If that was the date, yes.’

‘Did she say why she wanted you to leave the front door unlocked on that day?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘No.’ She lowered her head as if she were ashamed. ‘But she did say that when I got back, Efendi would give me no more trouble.’

‘Did you think that she meant he’d be dead?’

Suzan thought for a few moments. ‘I thought I didn’t, but I think now maybe I did.’

‘Why was that?’

She began to cry. ‘Because when I came in and found him, I felt nothing for him. I even called him bad names and laughed at his poor old body. What kind of person am I?’

She wept and wept and
İ
kmen and Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu just let her do it. She’d held this guilt, as well as the fears she had for her mother, inside her ever since the old man had been murdered.

When she finally got her tears under control,
İ
kmen said, ‘Did Abla give you the money before or after you left the door unlocked, Suzan?’

‘Before. She came on the Friday before he … he died,’ she said.

‘His diary for that day was blank,’
İ
kmen said.

‘She just arrived. Which was just as well.’

‘Why?’

‘Because by that time, I knew that Efendi was meeting the Englishman on the Saturday afternoon.’

‘Arthur Regan.’

‘Yes. It threw me into a panic. Should I leave the door open for the Englishman or wait for him to leave? I didn’t know!’

‘What did Abla say about that?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘She told me I’d have to pretend I was going out for my afternoon off and hide somewhere instead. Then when the Englishman left, I could go too, and leave the front door unlocked. I could have the money there and then as long as I did what she told me and then never told anyone what I’d done or who I’d done it for. If I did tell, she said she’d kill me.’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she was one of them.’

‘One of whom?’

‘Like Efendi,’ she said. ‘You know, the sort who can order other people around as if they have some right from Allah.’

İ
kmen looked across at Ay
ş
e, who said, ‘Relative?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He turned back to the girl again. ‘So, Suzan,’ he said, ‘what did you do next?’

‘I called my dad when I was able, when Efendi was asleep, and I told him to book Mum into the hospital.’

‘Why didn’t you send him the money then?’

‘Because he said he didn’t need it then. He’d only have to pay after Mum had had her treatment. Dad doesn’t like having a lot of money in the house; he isn’t used to it.’

İ
kmen said, ‘So the plan was for you to send your father the money, what, via Western Union?’

‘Yes.’

‘When the hospital asked for it?’

‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘She is booked in for tomorrow. I want to be with her.’

Çetin
İ
kmen felt for the girl, but it was clear that she’d had at least some notion of what had been about to happen to her employer when he was murdered. And the money the woman had given her had been earned, if that was even the right word, in almost the worst way imaginable.

‘I can’t let you go, Suzan,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh no!’ She began to cry again.

‘By your own admission, you had some idea about what was going to happen to Abdurrahman Efendi, and because it is illegal to benefit financially from crime, that money isn’t yours. However, if you tell me everything you know, I will see what I can do to try and help your mother get to hospital.’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu looked at him and wondered what he meant.

‘It’s all I can do,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Now, Suzan, you must tell me everything you can remember about the day that Abdurrahman Efendi died. Where did you hide when he thought you’d gone out?’

Suzan sniffed. ‘In the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner is kept by the front door,’ she said.

‘And how long were you in there before the Englishman arrived?’

‘I don’t know. Ages!’

‘What happened when he arrived?’

‘They argued,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it was about because they spoke in English. But he didn’t stay long, the Englishman, and I know that Efendi was still alive when he left because my master let him out. The foreigner didn’t kill him.’

‘So you then left the apartment with the door unlocked,’
İ
kmen said. ‘Did you notice anything unusual about the apartment before you left?’

Crying again now, she shook her head.

‘Are you sure?’

She looked agonised. ‘I don’t know!’

‘Did you see anyone as you left the apartment to go … where did you go?’

‘To the local shops.’

‘To the shops. Did you see anyone lurking outside the apartments in the street or maybe in the hallway or by the lift?’

Suzan Arslan made a supreme effort to stop crying, which was only partially successful, and then she said, ‘No.’

‘I see. Sure?’

‘Yes.’ She paused, and through her tears her brow wrinkled. ‘But if you don’t think it’s mad, I did feel as if someone was watching me as I left the apartment. I don’t know why.’

The old man wept, as did all the other people in that dark, smoke-filled room. Only Gonca’s eyes were dry, and that was because she’d known of her brother’s death for a long time.

At intervals people came in from the community to pay their respects. They brought food, drink and cigarettes for the family, who they hugged to their chests and wished long lives.
Ş
ukru had been a man of power in Tarlaba
ş
ı
.

Ş
ukru’s wife, Bulbul, sat opposite Gonca with her dead husband’s nine children clustered around her. He’d never been faithful to her for a moment but still she mourned him as her lover, the father of her children and her breadwinner. But she was a woman whose beauty and temper had disintegrated many years ago, and this had left her bitter. When there was a lull in the visits from neighbours she looked at Gonca. ‘What is the policeman you open your legs to going to do about my
Ş
ukru’s death?’

The old man waved a hand, hoping that he could calm the situation and silence his daughter-in-law, but Bulbul persisted. ‘Well?’

‘He’s doing everything he can,’ Gonca said, not rising to the bait that only a few years before would have had her out of her seat and at the woman’s throat.

‘Even though my
Ş
ukru is just a gypsy to him?’

‘Mehmet Bey isn’t like that,’ Gonca said. ‘He—’

‘Oh, I suppose he isn’t, no,’ Bulbul said. ‘If he fucks you.’

‘Enough!’

The old man, aware that his daughter was preparing to get her claws out, eyed both women sternly. ‘We gather here to mourn my son, not to turn on each other like savages!’

And although the two women still shot glances like daggers at each other from time to time, the room eventually returned to its previous dark, smoking soft-sob-racked state.

Eventually other neighbours arrived, including the boy Hamid, son of the prostitute
Ş
eftali. He carried a tray of halva which he said his mother had made and which he offered respectfully to the family of
Ş
ukru Bey.
Ş
ukru’s father took it with grace and patted the boy on the head. But Gonca saw Bulbul figuratively hiss. She’d known about her husband and his birthmarked mistress, and the sight of her son clearly made her want to do or say something that she nevertheless wouldn’t.

Gonca knew something of the part Hamid had played in the affair between her brother and his mistress, how tense it had made him feel, and she felt sorry for him. So when he came to respectfully kiss her hand, she took him in her arms and gave him a hug. His small body clung to hers for some moments before he began to move away. Before he left her, he said, ‘Gonca Han
ı
m, do you think my monster killed
Ş
ukru Bey?’

‘Your monster?’ And then she remembered. ‘Oh, the man or creature or whatever it was that you saw the night Levent Bey was killed?’

‘That boy just makes up lies!’ Bulbul snapped. Some of her children, too, looked at the boy as if they wanted to bite him. ‘Like his mother!’

Again the old man waved a hand to try and calm the situation.

Gonca was intrigued by what the child had said. ‘Hamid, why do you think your monster might have killed
Ş
ukru Bey?’

‘Because when the monster saw
Ş
ukru Bey that night, he growled at him.’

‘But I thought,’ Gonca said, ‘that the monster had gone by the time my brother arrived.’

‘Oh no,’ the boy said, ‘I only told the police that because
Ş
ukru Bey told me to.’

It was after three a.m. by the time
İ
kmen had finished with Suzan Arslan and taken a description of the woman who may have killed Abdurrahman
Ş
afak. Not only did he consider the hour too late for him to go home to bed, he also felt too agitated to sleep. The money the girl had been found with presented him with a moral dilemma. Although it had to be said that the five thousand lira had been obtained via illegal means, could it also be said that Suzan Arslan, if she kept the money, was benefiting from the proceeds of crime? Strictly that had to be true, but although Suzan had been cruelly pleased when she’d come home and found her elderly employer dead, she had not killed him herself and had never, as far as
İ
kmen could tell, been told explicitly that he was going to be murdered.

Sitting outside the little all-night restaurant on Ordu Caddesi,
İ
kmen lit yet another in a long line of cigarettes and took a swig from his beer glass.

‘Early-morning drinking. Oh dear.’

He looked up and saw Mehmet Süleyman standing over him with a cigarette between his lips.
İ
kmen stood and embraced him.

‘I trust you will join me in sin?’ the older man asked.

‘Of course.’ Süleyman called one of the waiters, a lad they both knew very well from other late-night eating and drinking sessions. ‘Hüsnü! One more Efes over here, please. Oh, and some pide too, cheese and egg.’