The Tulip Nargile Salon turned out to be one of the more ornate smoking places in Tophane. Situated behind the Nusretiye Mosque, the collection of smart salons, rough shacks and outdoor gardens that made up the Tophane nargile quarter were of variable levels of comfort and opulence. The Tulip, with its dark wood-clad walls and its menu that included not just pipes and drinks but also food, was at the upper end of what was on offer. After a brief look inside, İzzet went in and sat down on a purple velvet sofa behind a shiny black grand piano. No one was playing, but that, he imagined, was where Murad Emin practised and possibly entertained the punters too from time to time. Other customers included two men who, like himself, were in their late forties and who sported long, drooping moustaches. They both puffed, with disappointed expressions on their faces, on pipes that İzzet recognised as being
tömbeki
, natural leaf tobacco. As strong as death and twice as lethal. When the waiter came up to ask İzzet what he wanted, he chose a much softer option.
‘Apple tobacco,’ he said, ‘and coffee, medium sweet.’
The three girls sitting over in the corner, giggling, were probably, he thought, smoking apple tobacco. The mustachioed middle-aged men would feel he was letting the side down. But İzzet didn’t care. Even though he looked as if he would like it, İzzet hated
tömbeki
. True, some of his attitudes and preferences did reflect those of a typical macho Turkish man, but a lot of them didn’t. A fanatical football fan he might be, but İzzet Melik was also a fluent Italian speaker with a passion for Venetian art and architecture.
When his pipe arrived, he took the mouthpiece out of its cellophane wrapping and slotted it into the end of the pipe. He sucked hard, then leaned back and allowed the spicy tobacco to drift into his lungs and around his tired body. It had been a very long day. The American woman, Jane Ford, had almost driven his boss to distraction. But then he could understand that. What had the stupid woman been doing, encouraging a simple village girl in a forbidden and ultimately doomed romantic adventure? And with a boy that İkmen said could very well have been a sexter! Not that Mrs Ford had known about that. But still, to interfere in such a way in a new and, to her, alien culture . . .
His coffee arrived and İzzet sipped it with a small, satisfied smile on his face. It wasn’t always so bad being single. He could please himself when he wasn’t at work, with no wife to demand his presence at dinner or children to insist he help them with their homework. It was dull but uncomplicated. And who, after all, needed complication? Rumour back at the station had it that Süleyman was once again seeing the gypsy woman he’d had an affair with some years before. Gonca the artist was older, but very striking. She was also sexually athletic and, it was said, as hot as a hearth for Süleyman. That thought did make İzzet jealous, but only because of the sex. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch, İzzet’s libido was perpetually unsatisfied, his lust for Ayşe Farsakoğlu totally unreciprocated. He wished he hadn’t entertained such thoughts as he felt the gloom of his separateness settle around him. But then, suddenly, something absolutely wonderful happened. The grand piano behind him began to emit sounds, music of sublime beauty.
In spite of the fact that he prayed assiduously, went to the local mosque whenever he could and behaved modestly at all times, İsmail Yıldız was not trusted by everyone in the streets around his home in Fatih. His brother was a police officer, so what did he expect? Not that his neighbours necessarily had anything to hide. They generally didn’t. But there had been a considerable amount of police activity in the area ever since the Seyhan family had come to live with their relatives the Akols on Macar Kardeşler Street. The Seyhans were still under suspicion of killing their daughter, but in spite of the fact that rumours were now circulating about one of their sons being homosexual, they appeared to be quiet, pious people. The locals liked that.
İsmail went to the grocery shop to get some food for himself and his brother. The owner of the shop was an old acquaintance who was a little bit more light-hearted than most. Rafik Bey had been one of the few local people who had actively welcomed İsmail and Hikmet Yıldız into the area after they moved from their earthquake-damaged flat. A couple of heavily veiled women came in and bought tinned goods, while İsmail riffled in the freezer for chicken pieces. Once he’d found two suitable joints, he went to the shelves to pick up rice, paprika and tarragon. The women left as soon as he arrived at the counter. Rafik Bey added up the cost of the shopping on an old pocket calculator and showed him the total. İsmail handed over a twenty-lire note and waited for his change. As the shopkeeper held the money out, he said to İsmail, ‘How are you?’
İsmail took the proffered notes and put them in his wallet. ‘In good health,’ he replied. ‘If Allah would see fit to grant me a job, I would be better . . .’
Rafik Bey shrugged. ‘But your brother is working. One must be thankful.’
‘Oh, I am grateful every day for Hikmet’s work,’ İsmail said. ‘I wish he wasn’t in that particular job, but . . . All I want is something simple. Waiting, factory work, anything. If I had work, then my brother would respect me, listen to me even! Maybe if I worked he would move away from the path of the unbeliever that he treads now. I would do anything to help to save his soul.’
‘Your brother doesn’t believe?’
İsmail hung his head. ‘He is almost an atheist.’
Rafik Bey gasped. ‘Oh, that is terrible. What a sin! You know if I needed help here I would think of you, but I don’t.’
‘It’s OK.’
İsmail put his shopping into a plastic bag. He was about to leave when Rafik Bey, who had watched him with a serious, slightly troubled expression on his face, called him back.
‘İsmail Bey!’
İsmail turned. ‘Yes?’
‘You did say
any
sort of work?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mmm.’ Rafik Bey frowned. ‘Listen, I can’t promise anything,’ he said, ‘but if you do mean anything, I can ask around.’
İsmail’s eyes lit up. ‘For a job?’
‘For some work, yes,’ Rafik Bey said. ‘It won’t be well paid, or glamorous. But I know people, good people. Not loved by the police, but . . .’
It could be something to do with the local mosque! Then again it could just as easily be something a little shady. Rafik Bey was a good man, who prayed and fasted and read his Holy Koran with love, but he did have the odd business interest that was only barely legal.
But İsmail Yıldız smiled. He was jobless. ‘I’d be interested whatever it is,’ he said. ‘Count me in.’
Rafik Bey took İsmail’s mobile phone number and said that he would keep in touch.
İkmen looked out of his office window and saw, to his surprise, that it was dark. Looking down at his watch, he discovered to his horror that it was half past eight.
‘Ayşe, you should go home,’ he said to Sergeant Farsakoğlu as she put down her telephone. ‘It’s late.’
That he was still working long after he should have gone home too was not something that either of them alluded to.
‘Police headquarters in Kars think that the family of Burhan Öz live or lived in a village ten kilometres outside the city,’ she said. ‘Öz is not an unusual name, so it might not be them. But they have records for a Burhan Öz, born 1954, in this village. Apparently his mother was convicted of theft from a local farm in 1967.’
‘Burham Öz must be in his early fifties now,’ İkmen said. ‘So the date would fit. Anything else?’
‘A sergeant and a constable from Kars are going out to the village tomorrow to see what they can find,’ Ayşe said. ‘I’ve told them what Öz has claimed and they’ll see if they can unearth any evidence for it.’
‘Good.’ İkmen leaned back in his battered leather chair and lit a cigarette. ‘Ayşe, are you aware of any rumours regarding Tayfun Ergin?’
She sat down on the edge of her desk and took her cigarettes out of her handbag. ‘The Smoker?’
‘The nice man who provides such good protection for bars and nargile salons, yes,’ İkmen said sweetly.
Ayşe lit a cigarette and then breathed out slowly. ‘No. Why?’
‘Constable Yıldız came to me earlier today, rather concerned that he had seen Ergin in one of his local coffee shops.’
‘In Fatih?’
‘Yes.’
‘Doesn’t seem like the sort of place he’d want to be,’ she said. ‘Tayfun likes his
rakı
.’
‘That’s what Yıldız thought,’ İkmen said. ‘But then he heard Tayfun in conversation with some of the locals. According to Yıldız, Tayfun was made less than welcome, but he got the impression that he may be involved in some sort of business venture up there.’
Ayşe frowned. ‘In Fatih? What?’
‘I don’t know,’ İkmen replied. ‘Maybe he’s moved into protecting religious artefact shops. Maybe he’s producing fake Zamzam water. The mind reels.’
‘But he isn’t our concern. Not at the moment.’
‘No, but Yıldız was right to pass the information on.’
‘Sure.’
‘We are in and around Fatih a lot now, so I would urge you to keep Tayfun in mind,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s a nasty bastard, and although I have no great affinity with the religious men and women of Fatih, I bear them no ill will. If Tayfun is putting the squeeze on the local imam, I want to know about it.’
‘Of course.’
Ayşe zipped up her handbag, said good night to İkmen and left. The inspector knew that he would have to make his own way home soon, but still he lingered. Even though his wife was a woman of great faith, he had a lot of problems with religion. An absolute atheist, he deplored the ‘superstition’ that led people of all faiths to despise other religions as well as irreligious people like him. Sometimes things done in the name of religion, like honour killings, made him want to scream at every person of faith that he knew.
Darwin!
he wanted to yell at them.
Evolution! Darwin! For the love of life, use your rational minds!
But he had never and would never do such a thing. Instead he worried about some imam he didn’t even know and what a moron like Tayfun Ergin might theoretically do to him.
İzzet Melik watched out of the corner of his eye as the pianist, young Murad Emin, took a bow. He had no idea of the titles of the classical pieces the boy had played, but they had all been beautiful and brilliantly executed. The Tulip had certainly filled up with customers since Murad had begun his recital.
İzzet called for another cup of coffee, and one of the boys came over to put more charcoal on his water pipe. He noticed another man, about his own age, sitting opposite, smoking
tömbeki.
‘Boy’s good,’ İzzet said as he tipped his head back towards the grand piano.
The other man grunted his agreement.
‘Been playing here long?’
The man shrugged. Then he narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Why?’
İzzet, aware that he had probably been coming over rather police officer-ish, said, ‘No reason.’
He didn’t want Murad to know he’d been asking questions about him. He wanted to keep a low profile just in case the boy recognised him. Apart from anything else, Süleyman didn’t want him to have anything more to do with the lad. Murad Emin was a closed book as far as he was concerned. İzzet disagreed with this, even if his reasons were somewhat vague. But then he saw Murad come out from behind the screen in front of the Tulip’s kitchen and frowned. Not at Murad, but at the person he was with. Now that, he felt, did not add up in terms of what they thought they knew so far.
Chapter 15
For once, he hadn’t been able to surrender to the sex. All he could think of was the Emin woman. It did not render him impotent, but it was a good thing that Gonca didn’t necessarily want full sex all the time. He’d given her the pleasure she demanded, but as for himself . . . Well, for the moment, that didn’t seem to matter too much. At least not to him.
‘Baby, I’m not pleasing you?’ Gonca said as she looked down at his unaroused body with deep disappointment.
‘No! No! No! It’s not . . .’
She began to move down his torso, kissing his chest, his stomach, his hip bones.
‘No!’
He knew where she’d been heading, but for once he didn’t want to feel the pleasure that her mouth could usually bring.
Gonca, confused, shrugged. What type of man wouldn’t want
that
?
‘I . . .’ He couldn’t explain it himself. He was still completely intoxicated by her, and in the past, he had always been able to lose most if not all of his anxieties in her thick, willing flesh. But not this time. Maybe his encounter with Mrs Emin, who apparently ‘knew’ something, was just too real. In spite of everything, he didn’t want to have his son denied to him. Zelfa and her father could do what they liked, but he couldn’t risk losing Yusuf.
But what did Mrs Emin really know? Without asking her, he could never be sure. The woman was a prostitute who drank and probably took drugs; her knowledge about him could consist of anything and nothing. She could very easily have mistaken him for someone else. Unless he asked her, he would never know. But he knew he couldn’t face that. He knew he never wanted to go into the Emins’ tawdry and, to him, frightening apartment ever again. As things stood, his wife knew he was going somewhere, but he’d been very careful never to give her any opportunity to find out where. He wanted it to stay that way.
‘Mehmet . . .’
He turned to look into her dark, painted, beautiful face and smiled. Such a fascinating, endlessly surprising woman she was. One day he would arrive to find her throwing horsehair at one of her now very collectable collages; the next she would be deep in philosophical conversation with a wandering sheikh from Iraq – her smoke-scarred voice drawling, like as not, in whatever language the cleric spoke. He lightly touched one of her breasts and she groaned.
‘Please!’ she said. ‘Please!’
Maybe it was the pleading tone in her voice. Gonca didn’t often beg for anything. But Mehmet began to feel different, less distracted, more involved. He moved his head down and licked her breasts slowly and sensuously. In less than a minute he was able to forget what had been in his head earlier, and he was also able to ignore his insistently ringing mobile phone.