Ikmen 16 - Body Count (5 page)

There were echoes in Selçuk Devrim’s description of his brother of fatalistic, possibly Islamic thought. ‘Was your brother religious?’ Süleyman asked.

‘What, with Gemini and Sagittarius on his mind? I don’t think so. No, it was all sort of hippy cod-philosophy with him. Why do you think he left the nice comfortable home my parents provided for him and went to live in that shithole?’

‘Tarlaba
ş
ı
?’

‘Inspector, if you ever find a place more tightly packed with nutcases, thieves, charlatans, prostitutes and drug addicts, I’d like to know so that I can avoid it. I visited him there a few times. Once, when my father had just begged him to come home and Levent had abused him, I went there to give him a piece of my mind. When I turned up, though, he was off his head on I don’t know what, curled up in the arms of some ancient tart, and so I left. What was the point of talking to him in that state?’ He shook his head. ‘On the other hand …’ He looked up, and Süleyman noticed for the first time just how grey his face was. ‘Levent, to my knowledge, never hurt anyone. He was a gentle soul and I would have taken him into my home, much as my wife would have hated it, had he ever asked. He was my brother, and I loved him.’

‘Did no one ever think of getting him psychiatric help?’

‘Oh, we thought of it, but my mother wouldn’t have it,’ he said. ‘She had a bit of a thing about psychiatrists, mainly because her father had been put in an institution when she was a child. No, Inspector, Levent was “eccentric”, according to my parents, and only that.’

‘You can’t think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt your brother?’

Selçuk Devrim’s eyes glittered, then tears trickled down his cheeks. But he didn’t sob. ‘I don’t know who he mixed with in that awful place, who he took drugs from or with. All I saw was that old woman he was—’

Sugar. ‘We’ve spoken to the lady I think you refer to,’ Süleyman said. ‘She was very close to Levent, and in fact it was …’ he consulted his notes to find Sugar’s real name, ‘Miss Bar
ı
ş
ı
k who gave us the key to your brother’s flat. We found a sum of money underneath the bed in a tin box, just under three hundred lira. There was also a bank card …’

‘Yes, Akbank.’ He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘Our father used to put five hundred lira into his account every month.’

‘In spite of their row?’

‘He loved him, he was his son. One of the things I had to do when Father died was make sure that what little money he had left went to Levent. Then when that ran out, I paid it.’

‘So that was your money?’

‘Yes. As you probably know by now, Levent had a heart condition, which complicated matters still further. How could I leave him without money? What if he fell sick? It wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford it. I earn well. And in spite of the money I gave to Levent, my wife still managed to give up work last year. Money isn’t an issue.’

‘Did your brother know that you were funding him?’

‘He knew that Father had died. Allah alone knows where he thought the money was coming from.’

‘And yet your father bought him what I am told was, in its day, a very fine camera. And you both attended Galatasaray Lycée.’

Selçuk Devrim smiled. ‘Oh Inspector,’ he said, ‘what can I or any of us say about the impoverished former elites in this country, eh? My father bought expensive cameras and didn’t buy a house. He was a silly, silly old man who lived in the past.’

And then Süleyman knew exactly why Selçuk Devrim had seemed familiar.

That no one in Tarlaba
ş
ı
admitted to having seen anyone or anything unusual or suspicious either before or after Levent Devrim’s death was not wholly unexpected. Ömer Mungan knew that in general the police were not welcome in the district and people limited contact with them as far as they could. However, most locals admitted to at least some affection for Levent Devrim, which meant that they probably did care about whether his killer was caught or not. But nothing was forthcoming, and the heavy snowfall on the night of his death had covered any footprints that might once have existed. Forensic evidence was scant. A hair on Devrim’s shirt that was not his own had turned out to belong to Sugar Bar
ı
ş
ı
k.

As was his apparent custom, Devrim had been stoned when he died. He’d also had a small quantity of rak
ı
in his system. There had been no alcohol, or even any empty bottles in his flat, and Sugar Bar
ı
ş
ı
k had stated that she hadn’t given him any. She hadn’t seen him the night he’d died at all. Where had he got the rak
ı
from?

As Ömer walked the streets of Tarlaba
ş
ı
, he wondered how a man could have been almost decapitated and no one know about it. While he was still capable of doing so, Devrim must have howled in pain or fear – probably both. He hadn’t been
that
stoned. Dr Sarkissian had stated in his report that the victim had soiled himself before he died and so had been clearly very afraid. Ömer felt rather than saw hostile eyes on his back. The woman at his side, apparently oblivious to the eyes, said, ‘I don’t get it. Why are they knocking this place down again?’

Peri was Ömer’s older sister. She’d come to
İ
stanbul three years before to work as a nurse in the German Hospital in Taksim. Like her brother, she was multilingual in the languages of the far south-east, and they conversed, as they usually did when they were alone, in Aramaic, the tongue they had grown up speaking.

‘The government want to develop the area,’ Ömer said. ‘Knock down unviable buildings and replace them with family homes.’

‘Mmm.’ Peri frowned. ‘Nice homes for “nice” people.’

‘The current residents will be relocated.’

Peri looked at a very tall man dressed in a woman’s fur coat smoking a joint on a broken doorstep. ‘Like him? Where’s he going to find work away from the clubs of Beyo
ğ
lu?’ She shook her head. ‘When they moved the gypsies out of Sulukule to make way for “nice” families, they relocated them so far outside the city they couldn’t afford to commute, and so most of them came back into the city centre to live in squats. There’s nothing for anyone to do out on those new housing estates. No work.’

‘I know,’ Ömer said. ‘But what can you do?’

Peri pulled her coat tightly around her body and said nothing.

‘This murder hasn’t helped.’

‘You think?’ Peri shook her head. ‘Ömer, you have to get out of the habit of stating the obvious. This is
İ
stanbul; we know. We’re quick.’

He ignored her slight. ‘Nobody’s actually said anything, but there have been plenty of implications, particularly from the gypsies.’

‘That Mr Devrim may have been killed by shadowy agents of progress?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can see their point.’ She looked in the window of a tiny basement shop entirely filled with screwdrivers slung in at every conceivable angle. To Peri and her brother, Tarlaba
ş
ı
was very familiar territory. Very Mardin. ‘The people here are happy in what some may consider their poverty. If you’re a transsexual or a gypsy or a recent immigrant, you can live here unmolested by those who might think you immoral, and that’s worth something.’

‘Yeah, but don’t romanticise it too much. Drug dealers and gangsters live here too.’

‘True.’

‘Where you from?’

A small girl, her hair tied up in thick brown bunches, spoke to them in perfect Aramaic. Without even noticing, they’d found themselves in the vicinity of the Syriani church of St Mary the Virgin. And because it was Sunday and they had just been to church, all the Syrian Christian children looked especially, neat, clean and smart.

Peri smiled. ‘We’re from the city of Mardin,’ she said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Here.’ The girl sucked her thumb.

‘That’s nice.’

She pointed at Ömer. ‘Is he your husband?’

They both laughed. Angular and tall, Peri was almost the image of her brother.

‘She’s my sister,’ Ömer said.

‘I’m a Christian,’ said the child. ‘What are you?’

And it was then that Ömer and Peri became aware of the difference they knew their ID cards belied. Even in rackety, multicultural Tarlaba
ş
ı
, suddenly they felt very alien.

There were worse jobs than pandering to the health and beauty fancies of the rich. In the past, Esin Nadir had waited at tables and even worked in the hotel’s kitchens. Now all she was doing was placing hot stones on rich women’s backs and stomachs, repeating parrot-style what Faruk Bey had told her about chakras. There was nothing on chakras in the Koran; it was apparently some Hindu thing and so they couldn’t really exist. But while rich women paid a hundred dollars an hour to have them aligned, who was Esin to argue?

Another day at the Great Palace Hotel’s Wellness Spa dawned. Esin turned all the lights on and made sure there were plenty of towels and robes for the customers, and that the aromatherapy jars were topped up with essential oils. Faruk Bey the chief masseur and director of the spa, would be in soon, and he was a stickler for detail. She’d have to turn the steam on in the steam room, top up the magazines in the waiting area and make sure that the plunge pool was clean before he arrived.

Esin put the steam on and then went to the broom cupboard to pick up a mop and a net. The plunge pool, an ice-cold artificial pond used for closing the pores after they had been opened by either the sauna or the steam room, often needed skimming for flakes of dead skin and hair. The tiles around it also needed mopping frequently, even when the pool hadn’t been in use. Unmopped, they looked dull and could appear grubby. She opened the door to the pool room and smiled as the thin February sunlight haemorrhaged through the curved glass patio doors that made up three quarters of the wall space. At this time of year the pool was not terribly inviting, but in the height of summer there were few places better to be, and Esin had been known to get into the pool after work almost every day in July and August. She rested the mop against the door – she’d wash down the tiles once she’d finished everything else – and moved towards the pool with the net. Then she stopped.

Originally from the rough city-wall district of Edirnekap
ı
, Esin was no stranger to tragedy and violence, but when she saw that body floating in the pool surrounded by a cloud of its own blood, she couldn’t stop herself screaming.

Çetin
İ
kmen watched Arto Sarkissian, together with two of his orderlies, lift the woman’s naked body out of the pool and place it on a plastic sheet they had spread on the tiles. Standing in the open patio doors,
İ
kmen smoked while noting with a feeling of revulsion that the woman’s breasts did not fall down flat as they laid her on her back. Implants beneath the breast tissue showed themselves for what they were: oval bags with distinct edges. He wondered how old the almost waiflike figure in front of him might be, and decided that there was probably no way that he could know.

The pathologist hunkered down on his knees and put a gloved hand up to the woman’s throat. Before anything else could happen, he had to declare life extinct, which he now did. He then began a slow visual examination of the body while directing the police photographer to record every aspect of the subject in minute detail. After watching him for almost ten minutes,
İ
kmen said, ‘Any idea about age, Doctor?’

There was a pause before the Armenian said, ‘Forties or fifties, but well maintained, I’d say. A lot of work on the face, particularly around the chin.’

‘So well off?’

‘Or rich husband or boyfriend.’

Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu, who was standing beside
İ
kmen, said, ‘Doctor, the blood …’

Still looking down at the corpse, he said, ‘There’s a wound to the forehead. I think that’s the source. Or rather, it’s a possible source.’

Esin Nadir had completely bypassed her superiors at the Great Palace and called the police as soon as she’d seen the dead woman floating in the plunge pool. When Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu had briefly interviewed her, she’d said she knew the woman by sight but didn’t remember her name. All she knew was that she was a client rather than a member of staff.

Arto Sarkissian rose heavily to his feet and instructed his orderlies to turn the corpse over.

‘My rough guess, and it is rough, is that she’s probably been in the water at the most five hours,’ he said.

‘So she died today.’

‘In the early hours of this morning.’ The doctor lowered himself down again with a grunt and began looking closely at the woman’s back.

İ
kmen turned to his sergeant. ‘Who has keys to this place?’

She consulted her notebook. ‘The therapists, Esin Nadir—’

‘Who found the body.’

‘Faruk Genç, who is also the manager, Maryam Emino
ğ
lu, who runs fitness classes, a British aromatherapist and homeopath called Suzy Greenwood and the hotel security guard, Bülent E
ğ
e. Greenwood and Genç are already here.’

‘Good. We’ll need statements from all key-holders.’

‘Sir.’

İ
kmen looked back towards the pool. ‘So, Doctor, accident, suicide or—’

The Armenian held up a hand, which
İ
kmen knew of old was his cue to fall silent. Several minutes passed during which the inspector had another cigarette and Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu looked with some admiration at the hotel’s grounds. When she was a child, this part of old Sultanahmet had been the almost exclusive preserve of drug addicts and backpackers on what had remained of the old hippy route to Kathmandu. The Great Palace, if she recalled correctly, had been an old fleapit boarding house called the Hotel Stay. The spa had been a hamam which must have been derelict for twenty years before the owners of the Great Palace converted it. Now equipped not just with the spa, but a gourmet restaurant and Wi-Fi too, the place was one of the chicest venues in town. How long it would retain its good reputation when word got out about a dead body in the plunge pool, Ay
ş
e didn’t know. It probably depended on the circumstances of the death, whether it was accident, suicide or …