‘When she was talking about Yaşar Uzun, she looked up at the ceiling. Specifically when she was talking about having met Yaşar only once and having not noticed that much about him on that occasion, she was looking away. She looked towards me and smiled when she talked about how she had met Yaşar at Raşit Bey’s shop and when she detailed her husband’s interest in carpets.’
Ayşe frowned.
‘Basic psychology,’ İkmen said. ‘She looks into my eyes when she is telling me the truth, she looks away when she is lying. She didn’t meet Yaşar Uzun only once and she did take more than just a passing interest in him. Mrs Melly’s lying technique was very bad, almost infantile. I’ve seen far better than that in the course of my career.’
‘So you think that she’s guilty?’
‘Of something, yes.’
‘What do you mean, sir?’
İkmen smiled. ‘Her husband spends all of his time with his carpets, she’s probably a rather bored diplomatic wife – she may well have taken Yaşar Uzun to her bed. But whether she killed him . . . How, in fact, she did that while in her own bed and without recourse to transport . . .’
‘Sir, to my mind, that just isn’t possible. The crime scene is a good two kilometres from the Mellys’ house. And anyway, why would Mrs Melly kill Uzun whether she was having an affair with him or not?’
‘Anger, maybe? Yaşar Uzun took a lot of money from her husband. Mind you if, as she claims, she has only just discovered that fact, we come to an effective dead end there.’
‘The Tourism cop killed him,’ Ayşe said simply.
‘You didn’t think that initially. You felt there was no connection between the two. Why have you changed your mind?’
‘Because logically it makes sense. Ergin’s gun killed Uzun. If, indeed, his wife, whom he could have also done away with too in my opinion, was sleeping with Yaşar Uzun. It explains why Ergin killed Uzun and why Mrs Ergin is still missing.’
‘But how did Mrs Ergin, a conventional, if slightly rebellious, housewife, meet and have a relationship with a smart operator like Yaşar Uzun? With his quarter of a million pounds sterling and his love nests in Bulgaria, this was a very ambitious carpet dealer. What would he want with an ordinary housewife like Handan Ergin, not to mention the baggage represented by her baby and her police officer husband?’
Ayşe, her brow now furrowed with thought, said, ‘Maybe Mrs Ergin met Yaşar Uzun when she was having English lessons with the diplomatic women. Mrs Melly and the others all knew him and the place where the lessons were held is only a short walk from the Kapalı Çarşı.’
‘Yes, but again, why would he?’ İkmen said. ‘Why have an affair with such a poor prospect when, surely, a lot of far more attractive single women were available to him?’
‘But, sir, if you remember what Nikolai Stoev implied about Uzun’s property deals . . .’
‘One house for the girlfriend, the apartment for “other ladies”, yes. But Handan Ergin had nothing to offer Yaşar Uzun! Why bother to set her up somewhere?’
‘Perhaps he loved her?’
İkmen looked up at his deputy and slowly smiled. Silly old fool, he’d forgotten about that – love. Totally irrational and frequently irritating beyond belief, it could, if not bring them any closer to a solution, explain some of what was becoming a veritable tangle of a case. After all, if his Fatma, a clean-living, sincerely religious woman could love him with all his scepticism and vice, anything was possible.
‘Maybe he did,’ İkmen said with a sigh. ‘Maybe when Ergin suspected his wife of continuing with her English classes, what she was actually doing was going to visit the carpet dealer. I’m going to ask the Bulgarian authorities to observe Uzun’s properties for a while. It cannot be just coincidence that someone carrying Matilda Melly’s passport chose to fly to Sofia.’
‘Maybe not, although you said yourself, sir, that Bulgaria has in the past been somewhere that is easy for those whose documents are not all that they should be. I’ve heard myself that passports are copied there.’
‘Passports are copied everywhere in the world,’ İkmen said gloomily. ‘And before you ask, hot passports have never, in the past, been of interest to Nikolai Stoev. Having said that, if one were to come his way . . .’
İkmen’s mobile phone began to ring and so he turned aside in order to answer it.
Ayşe enjoyed these work conversations. İkmen called them ‘case conferences’ and he’d been sorting out his own and whoever was his sergeant’s thoughts like this since the days, long ago, when Mehmet Süleyman had been his inferior. The constant questioning wasn’t for everyone and Ayşe knew that some of the detectives, like İskender, preferred to go through theories and evidence in the privacy of their own heads. This allowed the detective involved to take all of the credit should he or she solve a case in this way. Inspector İskender, although very attached to his sergeant, was rarely in any great hurry to give him any credit for anything. İkmen, on the other hand, was always very happy to sing Ayşe’s praises. ‘We need’, he was always telling her, ‘more women higher up in the police. You, Ayşe, are my personal mission in this regard.’ Although she secretly doubted that she would ever become a detective. She still hoped, at thirty-three, to be someone’s wife and mother some day.
‘Yes, sir, thank you, sir,’ İkmen said into his mobile phone before ending the call and then putting the instrument back in his pocket.
Ayşe looked at him questioningly.
‘That was Commissioner Ardıç,’ İkmen said with a smile on his face.
Because the name ‘Ardıç’ rarely elicited a smile from anyone, much less İkmen, Ayşe said, ‘Sir?’
‘It would seem, Ayşe, that Inspector Süleyman has finally solved the problem of the man known to us all as the peeper.’
‘He’s caught him?’
İkmen took his jacket off the back of his chair and slipped it over his shoulders. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘He’s on his way back to the station now and would apparently really like to speak to me. Ayşe, during the course of our case conference, it occurred to me that I haven’t been back to re-interview the kapıcı of Yaşar Uzun’s building in Nişantaşı. If anyone could identify this mystery girlfriend it would be him. Now I know it’s already really late and . . .’
‘I’ll bring up the details on the system,’ Ayşe said as she logged into her computer with a smile.
İkmen lit a cigarette, checked his pockets for keys, and then said, ‘Get taxis to and from Nişantaşı, the department will pay. I don’t want you driving around on your own in the middle of the night.’
‘Sir, my car is in the car park, it . . .’
‘Do as you’re told. You can get a cab into work tomorrow too,’ İkmen said as he raised one warning finger up to her. ‘Parts of this city are not safe even for a police officer on her own.’ He then made his way towards his office door and, just before he let himself out, he said, ‘Thank you.’
The commissioner didn’t stay long. He had a function to attend along with his wife. As if to underline this point he let his hands wander to the tight bow tie around his neck several times. As soon as İkmen had entered the room he had seen that Mehmet Süleyman had been both injured, for his right arm was in a makeshift sling, and thoroughly bawled out by a still-glowering Ardıç.
‘Tell him it was you who effectively saved his life,’ the commissioner said to İkmen just before he pushed his way out of Süleyman’s office. ‘For what it’s worth.’
He then slammed out into the corridor leaving İkmen alone with a very white and crestfallen Süleyman. The older man sat in what was usually İzzet Melik’s chair and waited for his friend to speak first. It took a while and when he did it sounded petulant. ‘You told Ardıç about Mürsel.’
‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘I did. I broke your confidence in order to hopefully save your life.’
‘Which I thank you for.’ He looked up with darkened, wounded eyes. ‘If the commissioner hadn’t spoken to Mürsel’s superiors, hadn’t got those operatives to follow us, I would now be in Paradise – or somewhere. But why didn’t you just tell
me
to go to Ardıç myself? I know I said that I feared—’
‘Mehmet, you were living in the paranoid world of that spy! I’ve seen people deal with “those” people before, it makes you crazy!’ He leaned forward and looked into Süleyman’s eyes. ‘I knew you would never go to Ardıç. You’d gone into that place in your head where everyone is under suspicion. Reasoning with you was, I knew, impossible and so I did what you couldn’t. I called Ardıç and I told him. He in turn told me nothing. But I was afraid, of what you might do . . .’
‘How did Ardıç find me? I suppose “they” must have told him to come and take me away.’
İkmen shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about what has happened this evening. I’m here because I want you to tell me.’
And so, inasmuch as he could, Süleyman told İkmen what had happened, what he had done, if not what he had felt, and what had been done to him.
‘I know that what I had in mind was desperate and stupid,’ he said, ‘but so many people were dying. And there appeared to be an acceleration.’
‘Which nearly cost you your life and brought with it much pain and, from what I can gather, humiliation for you.’
Süleyman turned his head away. Now the memory of Mürsel’s fleetingly erotic caresses made him shudder. ‘The peeper is dead. Those “futuristic” MIT people shot him.’
‘Ardıç was working with them. I wonder when he first knew about Mürsel? When I told him what you’d told me, on . . .’ İkmen paused. ‘You’ve a very badly made sling around your arm,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home, get your wife to put it right for you.’
‘Provided she still wants me,’ Süleyman said gloomily.
‘What, the woman who worships the plates you eat from? Oh, Mehmet!’ He was about to laugh when suddenly the look on his friend’s face struck him as something more than just post-traumatic gloom. İkmen sat forward and said, ‘Mehmet, did that Mürsel . . . You say he suddenly went from trying to seduce you to . . .’
‘He said some negative things about me.’ It was almost as if the words were threatening to choke him. ‘It’s nothing.’ He looked up then and forced a smile. ‘İzzet called. My phone was off.’
‘Did he leave a message?’
‘Yes, but I haven’t listened to it yet. My arm . . . I can’t . . .’
İkmen stood up and walked across to the stand where Süleyman had hung up his jacket. ‘Do you want me to listen to it?’ he asked as he slipped a hand inside the jacket and took out Süleyman’s phone.
‘Yes.’
After a little fumbling with what was an unfamiliar phone to him, İkmen managed to call up the ansaphone and listen to İzzet Melik’s tired, seemingly eastern dust-soaked voice. He didn’t understand it, but he relayed the basics of it to Süleyman. He said, ‘Apparently since he managed to assure him that Cabbar Soylu was indeed no more, the cleaner’s husband is prepared to talk about Deniz. That must mean something to you . . .’
For the first time in what seemed like for ever, Süleyman smiled. At last İzzet had managed to make contact with the right person and, apparently, get him to talk. ‘Oh, yes it does,’ he said. ‘I think it could mean justice for a poor innocent who didn’t deserve to die. We’ve had a lot of those lately.’
‘Too many,’ İkmen agreed. And then he put the mobile phone back into Süleyman’s jacket and held a hand out towards him. ‘Come on, I’ll drive you home.’
Unlike in the case of the masked man in the hamam, Süleyman was happy to take İkmen’s hand. He rose with difficulty. ‘Allah!’
‘So do we know why Mürsel and the peeper were in league?’ İkmen said as he just very lightly steadied his friend with one strong hand.
‘Not for certain.’
‘Will we ever know, do you think?’
Just once before, İkmen had been forced to have dealings with those engaged in ‘security’, in his case both foreign and domestic. Süleyman knew this had happened, he also knew that the older man had hated the whole process. It had, he had said later, made him feel dirty. ‘I have no idea,’ Süleyman answered. ‘There is no way of knowing with these people.’
‘I see,’ İkmen said with what his friend knew was understanding.
They walked slowly towards the office door.
‘I must answer İzzet’s call,’ Süleyman said as he took his mobile out of his jacket pocket with his left hand.
‘Once we’re in the car, I’ll dial and you can speak,’ İkmen said. ‘Oh, and by the way, Mehmet, I don’t know exactly what nasty poison that spy spat into your ear earlier this evening, but I’d just like to point out that all of my daughters have been in love with you at one time or another. At the moment it is Gül, whom you may or may not have noticed staring up at this office window on her way to and from school.’
‘Çetin, you don’t know . . .’
‘I know a man whose basic beliefs about himself have been shaken,’ İkmen said. ‘In your case your honour and your looks. And seeing as a creature like Mürsel is entirely without honour . . . As I have said, Mehmet, people, mainly women although by no means exclusively, find you irresistible.’
Süleyman, in spite of the pain from his shoulder, smiled. ‘Çetin, how do you know all these things about people? I mean, I know that your mother was a witch . . .’
‘Well then, there is your answer, isn’t it?’ İkmen replied as he led his colleague out into the dimly lit corridor beyond the office.
Of course witchery, magic, or whatever one chose to call the supernatural was, he believed, involved in much of what İkmen did on an everyday basis. His ‘feelings’ and ‘hunches’ fell into this category, as did his sometimes frighteningly uncanny ability of knowing where his children were, especially when they didn’t want him to. But sometimes, as in this case with Süleyman, it was just knowledge of the person coupled with basic psychology. Süleyman only indulged in self-deprecation when he was really low and, as İkmen had told him, because he could in no way imagine how Mürsel could have impugned his honour, it had to be his looks that were attacked. Although he had personally never seen him, İkmen imagined that Mürsel was probably jealous. That or just so horribly frustrated that thwarted desire had spun viciously into spite. After all, according to Süleyman, he had very shortly after the start of the supposed massage turned very calmly to the subject of Süleyman’s death. But then ‘such people’ were ever thus – good or bad, it was their job.