The old woman turned and muttered something that sounded rough and countrified and was most certainly not Greek. A Kurdish dialect, maybe? As she went back into her apartment, so the door to the apartment he had been knocking on opened.
‘Mr Ford?’ he asked the tall, ginger-haired man who stood in the doorway. He spoke in English, which, he imagined, would be rather more comfortable for this man.
‘Yes?’
‘I am Inspector Süleyman of the İstanbul police.’ He extended a hand, which the other man shook. ‘You reported the fire down in the Seyhan apartment yesterday.’
‘Yes.’ Richard Ford, an American, was probably in his early forties, Süleyman’s own sort of age. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No.’ Süleyman smiled. ‘May I come in, sir?’
‘Oh, yes.’ For a moment the American looked a little flustered, but then he stepped aside to allow Süleyman in and said, ‘Please . . .’
Like the Seyhans’ apartment, Richard Ford’s was centred around a large square hall. In common with Turkish homes, it had a small mat behind the front door covered with pairs of discarded shoes. Süleyman duly slipped his own shoes off and then followed the American into a big, light living room. In front of one of the two large picture windows at the back of the room he saw a small woman sitting at a computer screen. She looked up, smiled and said, ‘Hi.’
‘My wife, Jane.’ Richard Ford gestured towards a large red sofa and said, ‘Please, take a seat.’ He looked over at his wife as Süleyman sat. ‘This man is from the police,’ he continued. ‘About the apartment downstairs.’
‘Oh, right.’ Jane Ford stood up. She was tiny. Short and thin, she wore camouflage combat trousers and a sleeveless red T-shirt. She was, Süleyman reckoned, about ten years younger than her husband.
‘Mr Ford,’ Süleyman began, ‘we do not yet know what started the fire down in Apartment A, but the fire investigators, as well as our own people, are trying to find out. Can you please tell me how and when you first noticed it?’
Richard Ford told the same story he had told to the fire chief. He’d been coming back to his apartment when he saw smoke curling out from underneath the Seyhan’s front door. He’d called the fire brigade. ‘I’d seen the two Seyhan boys go off to work when I looked out the window at about six thirty. I went out to get bread at around eight,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see the parents or the girl and so I didn’t know who might be in there.’
‘They have a very pretty daughter, don’t they?’ his wife said. Much darker than her husband, she had short black hair cut into a pixie style. She too, Süleyman thought, was pretty in her way. ‘Is she OK?’
After a not inconsiderable amount of coaxing, the fire chief had eventually managed to get the name of Gözde’s dentist from her family. With any luck he or she was now checking the girl’s records.
‘We heard the firemen found a body,’ Jane Ford continued. ‘Is that the daughter? Is it Gözde?’
Süleyman couldn’t tell them what he, at least officially, did not know. ‘The body is as yet unidentified,’ he said. ‘Mr Ford, Mrs Ford, do you know the Seyhan family? Do you converse or . . .’
‘We don’t really speak Turkish that well yet,’ Richard Ford said with a smile. ‘We’ve been here three years, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘The Seyhans came to the building maybe a year after us.
His wife nodded in agreement.
‘The
kapıcı
told me that they came from somewhere in the east. The mom and the daughter are both always covered.’
‘Oh, but we don’t have a problem with that,’ his wife put in quickly. ‘Everyone is entitled to dress how they want, right?’
Süleyman didn’t answer, but said instead, ‘Some women cover, others do not. The Seyhan family are rural people. Covering of women remains more common in those areas.’
‘They have to be fairly well off to be able to live here,’ Richard Ford said. ‘I know this isn’t the best part of town, but . . . I don’t know what the men do, but it must pay quite well.’
Lokman Seyhan worked in a garage, his brother in a restaurant; their father apparently drove a taxi that he shared with a friend. Süleyman looked at Mrs Ford. Something she had said had piqued his interest.
‘Mrs Ford, you clearly know the girl Gözde’s name. Were you friendly with her?’
Jane Ford smiled. ‘We exchanged pleasantries,’ she said. ‘On the stairs, sometimes when she was pegging clothes out in the back yard. She didn’t go out.’
‘Her family kept her in.’
She shrugged. ‘I guess.’
It was not unusual for the daughter of rural parents to be confined to her home. Back in her village, which in Gözde’s case was near the city of Kars, she would be more or less confined until her marriage. Girls who went out could possibly be up to no good. And in view of the fact that several people involved in the investigation believed that if the body did turn out to be that of Gözde Seyhan, she could possibly be the victim of an honour killing, that kind of background did make sense.
‘Mrs Ford do you know whether Gözde Seyhan had a boyfriend?’ Süleyman asked.
A moment of icy silence was followed by a shocked expression passing over Jane Ford’s face. ‘A boyfriend?’
‘Yes.’
Then she turned her head away and a little laugh came from her throat. She no longer looked Süleyman in the eye. ‘No! God, no! She was a good girl.’
Süleyman looked over at her husband, who was observing his wife closely.
‘She never went out,’ Jane Ford continued. ‘Never! How would she get a boyfriend! God, no, girls like that are pure. That is essential to them and their families, right?’
Yes, it was right, and Süleyman said so. What was not right, however, was Mrs Ford’s response to his questions about Gözde Seyhan. That wasn’t right at all, and he felt sure that Mrs Ford was lying. He turned back to her husband.
‘Did you see anyone leaving these apartments when you discovered the fire, Mr Ford?’
‘Er . . .’ Richard Ford looked away from his wife. ‘Um, no,’ he said. ‘People passing on the street – the guy who sells
simit
bread, the lady who takes in laundry at the end of the road.’
‘That is all?’
‘That’s all I remember,’ he said. ‘Say, Inspector, has the Seyhan girl been seen since the fire? Are they all OK or what?’
Süleyman cleared his throat. ‘Mr and Mrs Seyhan and their two sons are staying with family for the moment. Gözde Seyhan is officially a missing person.’
Jane Ford gasped. ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘So Gözde
was
in that fire!’
Süleyman, who was accustomed to members of the public making such leaps of logic, albeit understandable ones, said, ‘No. We don’t know anything of the kind, Mrs Ford. Miss Seyhan is a missing person. That is all.’
‘Oh.’ Her agitation deflated, or seemed to do so, immediately. ‘Oh, I see.’
But in spite of her decreased anxiety, her face looked sad, and flushed. Mr Ford and Süleyman spoke for a few more minutes and then the policeman got up to leave.
As he shook hands with Richard Ford, he asked, ‘So what brings you to İstanbul? Do you work here?’
‘Yes,’ Richard said with a smile. ‘I work at the university. I’m a biologist.’
‘Oh.’ He turned to look at the man’s wife. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, I’m just along for the ride,’ she said, ‘although I do run a website.’
‘A website?’
‘It’s for people, expats, new to İstanbul. It’s called Make the Most of İstanbul,’ she said. ‘It’s just advice about where to go, what to do. Real estate.’
‘Ah.’ It wasn’t the sort of thing that Süleyman or even his half-Irish wife Zelfa would be interested in. But then they were Turks.
‘I think new people find it useful,’ she said.
‘I am sure they do.’ Süleyman began to walk back towards the front door. Just before he reached the hall, he turned and asked. ‘Oh, one more thing: why live in Beşiktaş? I know that it is becoming more popular now, but this part is not so fashionable. There are many people from villages here still, I think.’
Jane Ford smiled again. ‘Oh yes,’ she said excitedly. ‘And that is why we love it! Village people are so authentic, don’t you think?’
The Yıldız family had fallen on hard times. Their apartment building on a road off Kennedy Street, the dual carriageway out of town to Atatürk airport, had developed some serious faults after the earthquake of 1999 and had eventually had to be demolished. Partly because of this and partly because they were tired of the city, Constable Hikmet Yıldız’s parents decided to return to their village in Anatolia. This left Hikmet and his brother İsmail, who moved further into the city, to a small apartment in Fatih district. İsmail had, in recent years, developed an interest in reconnecting with his Islamic faith, and so living in a religious district was very good for him, especially in view of the fact that he, unlike Hikmet, was unemployed. His neighbours sympathised and many of them told him when various positions became vacant and encouraged him to apply. But in the meantime, his brother was the sole breadwinner. He was also one of the few officers who lived near to where the Seyhan family were staying. And so Hikmet it was that İkmen chose to make contact with them. He was ushered into the small, crowded apartment by Aykan Akol, Cahit and Saadet Seyhan’s nephew. An overweight lump of a man who apparently worked as a security guard, Aykan waved an uninterested hand in the direction of his uncle and aunt and then left the room.
Constable Yıldız introduced himself, and then asked the couple if they had heard yet from their daughter. Cahit Seyhan responded with a curt ‘No.’
‘You have no idea where Gözde may have gone, assuming that she did in fact leave your apartment?’
‘No.’
It was highly unlikely that Gözde Seyhan had left the apartment to be replaced somehow by some other, unknown woman. But it was possible, and as yet, there had been no word from Gözde’s dentist.
Saadet Seyhan said, ‘My girl was a good girl. She didn’t go out on her own.’
Hikmet made a mental note of her use of the past tense and then asked, ‘Why didn’t Gözde come with you on the day of the fire? You came over here, didn’t you?’
There was a pause. Cahit and Saadet Seyhan were small people who, in spite of the increasing late spring heat, wore a lot of clothes. Saadet reminded Hikmet of his own mother, a woman who also always covered her head and wore voluminous
Salvar
trousers, which she topped with large dresses and many, many cardigans.
‘My son is betrothed to his cousin Nesrin,’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘We came to visit my sister, her mother, to discuss our children’s future. There was no need for the girl to accompany us.’
So Gözde would have been left alone to do housework or washing or to watch the television. Nothing unusual in that for a girl from a village background. Nothing that Hikmet’s brother İsmail would find in the least bit out of place. But for Hikmet himself there were mixed feelings. Girls destined for marriage were quite rightly supposed to be pure and cloistered, and that was all very good. But he had been in the city for most of his life and he knew a lot of girls who were not like that at all. İkmen’s deputy, Sergeant Farsakoğlu, was a case in point. She was in her thirties and single, and she had a career. What was more, he liked her and several other women just like her that he knew. In fact Hikmet, who was no stranger to the occasional romantic dalliance, was no longer sure whether he wanted eventually to marry a virgin from his village, even if that was what his parents wanted. İsmail would of course go along with what was expected. He had found peace and security in his faith and felt that he wanted to pursue a traditional course when he came to marriage. That was fine – for him.
‘As you know,’ Hikmet continued, ‘the body of a woman has been found in your daughter’s bedroom. Were there any women that Gözde was friendly with who may have visited her?’
‘No.’ Again Cahit Seyhan answered for both himself and his wife.
‘Was your daughter unhappy about anything?’
‘No. What would she have to be unhappy about?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hikmet said. ‘That is why I am asking.’
Cahit Seyhan shrugged. There was very little emotion in that room. The man sat in virtual silence in a pool of grey cigarette smoke, the Seyhan sons were apparently already back at work and the family they were staying with were almost invisible. Only a slight reddening around Saadet Seyhan’s eyes gave any clue to how she might be feeling. But then maybe she had not wept. Maybe she had just not slept.
Hikmet offered Cahit Seyhan his card. ‘You can use me as a contact,’ he said. ‘If you have any questions . . .’
‘We don’t,’ Cahit Seyhan said as he pushed the card away.
‘Oh.’ Hikmet’s boss, Çetin İkmen, would no doubt have said something pithy and appropriate at that point, but Hikmet just felt frozen out and rejected.
When he finally left the family, Hikmet walked out on to a street where every woman he could see was covered. That was by no means unusual for Fatih municipality; what was out of the ordinary was the fact that he noticed it. Back when they had lived in the old apartment, some of the women had covered and some had not. When İsmail had started becoming very religious and had suggested the move to Fatih, Hikmet hadn’t really thought too much about it. He spent so little time in the apartment, he hardly noticed where he was. Except that now he did, and he wasn’t sure what he felt about it.
It was İkmen’s friend and colleague Arto Sarkissian who finally made the call. A pathologist with thirty years’ experience, the ethnic Armenian had known the policeman and his family all his life.
‘I have just received the body of a seventeen-year-old girl,’ Arto said. ‘Our forensic investigators tell me she was called Gözde Seyhan.’
‘Ah.’ İkmen put a hand up to his forehead and sighed. ‘The dental records matched with what was left of her teeth?’
‘Her dentist has confirmed it.’
İkmen looked out of his window at the darkening sky outside, and then he said, ‘OK, Arto. Keep me informed.’