‘Do you know why not?’
She shrugged. She was a middle-aged, heavily lined woman whose exuberant dress hinted at a past possibly on the stage. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe he got fed up with all the queers.’
The young constable, who had already been into five other internet cafés asking about Osman Yavuz, looked around at the very unflamboyant and distinctly studious men around him and said, ‘Queers?’
‘Oh, they won’t come in while you’re here,’ the woman said breezily. ‘Why would they?’
She looked at him sternly, and not wishing to get involved in any sort of conversation about police brutality towards the gay community, the constable said, ‘So what did Osman Yavuz do when he did used to come in here?’
‘Well, he sat in front of a screen and went into zombie mode,’ the woman said. ‘What else do any of them do? I mean, the queers do at least chat each other up.’
‘Did he use the printer?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They all do that, too.’
‘Did you see what he printed?’
‘No, but I can guess.’
‘What?’
The woman sat back down behind her scruffy desk and lit up a cigarette. ‘Porn or bling,’ she said. ‘Or guns. He’s a young heterosexual man; what are any of you interested in?’
‘You know this?’
She cleared her throat. ‘I don’t
know
that that particular boy printed those sorts of pictures for certain. But I think I’m pretty safe in assuming that he did so. A lot of boys are obsessed with sex and power and all that. Boys are. And if they come from poor families, then it’s all so much worse.’
‘Why?’
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. ‘Why?’ she said mockingly. ‘You ask me why? Because their families tell them that bling and women are wrong, and of course that makes them want them. Basic psychology. Also the rich kids have them and so . . .’ She shrugged again. ‘It’s why I like the queers.’ She smiled. ‘Don’t tend to give a damn what the families think. They do their thing and to hell with society. Much healthier.’
The young constable, embarrassed, changed the subject. ‘So this man . . .’ he pointed to Yavuz’s picture once again, ‘was he always alone? Did you never see him with anyone else? A group of people, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘That one was a loner.’
The constable looked around the small room, crammed with computers and people sitting at them. ‘Did he use a particular machine, do you remember?’
‘No.’ She looked down at her blood-red nails. ‘You going to have to take some of my computers away, are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to speak to my superiors.’
‘Well if you do need to move anything, you’ll have to speak to my son,’ the woman said. ‘He might be too lazy to get down here very often, but it is his place and so I can’t let you have the machines without asking him.’
‘You’d better contact him then,’ the constable replied. ‘Whether the machines are taken away or not, we’ll need to come in here and maybe shut the place for a bit.’
It was nearly midnight by the time Mehmet Süleyman arrived at Kürkçuçeşme Alley in Balat. Almost opposite the old Ahrida Synagogue there was a small neighbourhood baker’s shop. Above that was, apparently, the policeman’s destination.
‘Has this woman lived here long?’ İzzet Melik asked as he followed his superior from the car and began to walk towards a very precarious-looking nineteenth-century wooden building.
‘I don’t know,’ Süleyman replied. ‘All we have is a name and an address.’
It had been just after he had returned to the station from the Zafirs’ place that the Armenian organiser of the Turco–Caucasian music festival had telephoned Süleyman. Looking through the paperwork he had received from the late Hamid İdiz, he had noticed that some of the Turkish teacher’s students were also listed under a second name, Izabella Madrid. As far as the Armenian knew, this lady was also a music teacher, and what was more, she taught amongst others a boy called Murad Emin. Could he possibly be the Murad E that Ali Reza Zafir had spoken of, the boy that Hamid İdiz had fantasised about? Luckily it hadn’t taken too long to track down Miss Izabella Madrid, teacher of pianoforte, to the rotting apartment above a baker’s shop in Balat.
The two policemen crossed the dusty road and walked around the side of the detached building until they came to a rickety staircase up to the first floor at the back. A fat, bespectacled woman of about seventy sat at the top of the stairs eating a pancake and reading a copy of
Hürriyet
. She sat with her legs wide open, which, unfortunately for the officers, gave them a very comprehensive view of her long blue bloomers. As the men began to ascend, the woman said, ‘What do you want?’
‘Police.’ Süleyman flashed his badge very quickly and then said, ‘We’re looking for a piano teacher. A lady.’
‘Think you’ve got some talent, do you?’ the woman said with a laugh. ‘Funny time to have lessons.’
‘It’s a bit of a funny time to be sitting outside reading the paper,’ Süleyman responded. ‘It’s not summer yet.’
‘I know.’ She folded up the newspaper and then rammed the last piece of the pancake into her mouth. ‘So what’s it to be then, boys? A nice bit of Chopin or some good old honky-tonk piano?’
She stood up with some difficulty.
‘You are Miss Izabella Madrid?’ Süleyman asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Pianoforte teacher, spinster and Jew. Anything else you need to know?’
‘Well . . .’
‘I hope you boys are going to do something about the death of my old friend Mr İdiz,’ Izabella said as her fat face suddenly clouded. ‘We can’t have musical people getting killed in their own homes. It’s a disgrace!’
The whole family was asleep by the time Kenan Seyhan returned to his cousin’s apartment in Fatih. He let himself in, but rather than making his way to the bedroom he now shared with his cousin and his brother, he tiptoed into the living room, where his parents were sleeping. His mother was underneath the window, her small, round body wrapped in a tattered grey blanket. Even from a distance she looked uncomfortable and cold. His father, by contrast, lay on a soft mattress covered by numerous clean, new blankets, snoring his head off. Kenan wiped away the tears that had soaked his face for hours now, and bent down until he was kneeling beside his sleeping father. The look of hatred in his eyes as he stared down at the slumbering man was like poison. Spitefully he flicked the side of his father’s face with one finger and then bent low to whisper in his ear. ‘Wake up, you son of a whore!’ he said. ‘Wake up so I can kill you!’
A second later, Cahit’s eyes flew open. Kenan slapped a hand over the older man’s open mouth and hissed, ‘I’m going to have to kill you before you kill again! You’re not taking anything else away from me!’ Then he put his hands around his father’s throat and squeezed as tightly as he could.
It was only luck that made Saadet wake suddenly from her slumbers just in time to save her husband’s life. As she pulled Kenan away from Cahit, she whispered, ‘Get out, son! Please! I’m so sorry! Leave now! Don’t ever come back!’
He left as quietly as he had come. The last view he had of his parents was of his mother’s tear-stained face looking up at him with tremendous tenderness, while his father, still choking on the carpet below, stared into his eyes with raw hatred.
‘It was me who discovered Murad Emin,’ the old woman said as she placed glasses of tea on the small table that stood between the chairs where Mehmet Süleyman and İzzet Melik were sitting. ‘That’s why Hamid Bey wanted to keep my name on the paperwork. He knew that I, not him, made that boy. Local, see.’
‘He lives in Balat?’
‘On Çilingir Street,’ she said. ‘He’s a brilliant boy. Went way beyond my talents very early on, and that was why I recommended him to Hamid Bey.’
‘Who taught him free of charge,’ Süleyman said.
‘The Emins are poor,’ Izabella Madrid said. ‘Hamid agreed to tutor him for nothing because he is so good.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you interested in Murad?’
‘Do you have an address on Çilingir Street?’ Süleyman asked.
The old woman scowled. ‘You gonna tell me why you want it?’
‘Are you going to obstruct the police in the course of their investigations?’ İzzet Melik put in harshly.
Izabella Madrid looked over at him with an expression of undisguised disgust on her features. ‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
Looking now at Süleyman, she tipped her head at İzzet Melik and said, ‘He your muscle, is he? Get him to do all your dirty work, do you?’
‘Madam . . .’
‘Oh, it’s quite all right, I understand,’ she said. ‘Good-looking man like you, nice manners and all the rest of it. You can’t go frightening people and all that. We all need great ugly gorillas in our lives from time to time.’
İzzet Melik’s face was now darkened with rage. He said, ‘Just tell us where—’
‘Number 19, Apartment C,’ Izabella Madrid said without even looking it up. ‘It’s above a barber’s shop.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But don’t expect the usual type of poor Anatolian migrant, because you’ll be disappointed,’ she added. ‘The Emin family may not have enough money to put proper food on their table, but they are very, very far from ignorant, as you will see.’
Miss Izabella Madrid was not, as Süleyman and İzzet Melik soon discovered, in any way wrong. Apartment C, 19 Çilingir Street housed some very unusual people indeed.
‘We’re all very upset about Hamid Bey,’ Mr Emin said as he led Süleyman and Melik from a dingy hallway and into a room that was light on furniture while being very heavy on people, music and alcohol. ‘That said,’ he continued, ‘I did meet this very nice Argentinian man earlier on today, and so we are actually in the middle of a tango evening.’
Süleyman looked into the room, where he saw an elderly man strumming a guitar to a heavy Latin beat. A young woman who looked like a prostitute drank straight from the neck of a bottle of
raki
, while a dreamy-looking middle-aged woman in clothes that were almost in rags danced with her body pressed up against that of a very beautiful young man. Three old-timers in flat caps adorned with red Communist star badges sat on the floor swaying to the music. The only anomaly in this very outré arrangement in conservative Balat was a white-faced boy who stood at the back of the room looking horrified.
‘I do think that Hamid Bey would probably have approved,’ Mr Emin said with a smile.
Chapter 11
What Çetin İkmen liked to call the ‘computer retards’ had descended upon the Rainbow Internet Café and were currently doing the policeman did not know what.
‘You know that Inspector Süleyman’s wife once told me that in her opinion, people heavily involved in the computer world are likely to be autistic,’ he said to his colleague Metin İskender as they stood outside the café in the strengthening morning sun. Inside, various thin, bespectacled men peered at the ranks of computers and the one large and very old printer at the back of the building.
‘I don’t know about that,’ İskender replied. ‘What I do know is that the Rainbow is well known as a haunt of gay men.’
‘The woman who works here recognised Osman Yavuz,’ İkmen said as he lit up a cigarette and then breathed out slowly. ‘Not that she’s seen him for a week, she reckons. Do you think the computer retards will be able to find out whether Yavuz printed any of his photographs here?’
‘I don’t know,’ İskender replied. ‘Maybe if the printer has some sort of distinguishing fault or something. You know, like typewriters used to in the old days.’
‘Um.’
‘But I think that it’s more likely that it’s pictures of men’s arses that originate from here, rather than anything else,’ İskender said. ‘This place teems with queers, especially at night.’
All around them the fashionable and lively district of Beyoğlu slowly began to emerge from the excesses of the previous evening and shook itself awake. The Rainbow Internet Café, which was situated in a small alleyway just north of the main thoroughfare, İstiklal Street, was in an area frequently traversed by transsexuals. When the policemen and their computer experts had arrived earlier that morning, several heavily made-up blonde ‘women’ had hissed appreciatively at them. The pavement where İkmen and İskender were standing smelt of stale beer, piss, cigarette ends and
rakı
. As İkmen looked around, he wondered vaguely whether his cousin, the transsexual Samsun, was hanging around in the vicinity. It often felt to him that the vast extended İkmen family seemed to be everywhere.
After a few moments İkmen’s mobile phone began to ring, and he took it out of his pocket and answered it. As he listened to what the caller said, Metin İskender saw his face suddenly pale. By the time he finished the call, İkmen was white.
‘I’m sorry, Metin, I have to go,’ he said to his colleague as he began to head towards the top of the alley and his car. ‘It seems we have another dead body to deal with.’
It had been a strange evening. As he lay alone in the bedroom next to the one he had shared with his wife, Mehmet Süleyman recalled every second.
‘Murad, I’m sure you must be mistaken,’ Mr Emin had said to his son as he ruffled his fingers affectionately through the boy’s hair. ‘Hamid Bey would never have done such a thing. You must have thought you saw and—’
‘Dad, he was a homosexual! A queer!’ Murad Emin cried. ‘I told you ages ago! You didn’t do anything!’
‘Just because old Hamid Bey was a fruit doesn’t mean he was a danger to you or anyone,’ his father said. ‘He took you on and was very generous to us. Anyway, even if he did have a bit of a fiddle, he didn’t do anything to you, did he? I mean that mad chap, Crazy Ali, always yelling outside the blacksmith’s shop, he wanks himself . . .’
‘Dad!’
Murad Emin was, Süleyman could plainly see, far less liberal than either of his parents. Originally from Gaziantep in the far south-east, Mr and Mrs Emin had come to İstanbul in search of a lifestyle that was more easy-going than that of their home. Unfortunately, and in spite of both being university-educated, they had arrived with no money and two small children to support. So Mr Emin, who described himself as ‘a committed socialist’, had taken the only work he could get at the time, which had been tour-guiding for a rather dubious chain of small, cheap hotels. Currently he was unemployed. His wife, the woman Süleyman had seen dancing the tango with a man who he later realised was her pimp, worked as an unlicensed street prostitute. Intellectual, atheistic and poor, the Emins did not fit into either the educated middle class or the impoverished religious working class. They were, he realised as he talked to the father and his son, unique. They were possibly on drugs as well. To him they were likeable, but as Miss Madrid had pointed out to Süleyman and Melik when she’d first told them about the Emins, they were very far away from the usual image of the Anatolian peasant.