'You thought it might have been?'
The party heading for the back entrance had stopped now. Slowly, her eyes full of a furious malevolence, Tansu Hanim was turning to face Suleyman.
'You . . .' she began.
'I had to see whether or not he would identify you,' Suleyman said, adding quickly, 'and he has not.'
'That man is—' But then she stopped and for just one frozen, monstrous moment she watched as Cengiz Temiz did what, at first sight, could have been an ungainly dance.
'The demon walked like this, you see,' Cengiz said as he tottered backwards and forwards on Tepe's arm, with what looked like a very pronounced limp. 'White hair like the lady but,' he teetered back and forth once again, giggling, 'like this!'
'Allah!' Although said under her breath, Tansu's exhortation to divine intervention, coupled with the whitness of her face and the shakiness of her hands, caused Ìkmen to look at her sharply. She gave every appearance, he thought, of one who has just woken from a beautiful dream only to discover reality. It was one of those moments when a person involuntarily gives others fleeting access to the raw core of his or her being. But, as ever with things psychological, unless one could interpret such a moment, its true meaning could not be ascertained. And as the door to Tansu's soul closed and she regained her composure, Ìkmen realised that he hadn't a clue about what he had just seen.
'Get me out of this stinking pit, will you, Adnan?' she said as she took hold of her lawyer's arm and began to walk forwards. 'I want to see my manager and my sister.'
"They're waiting with your car,' the lawyer soothed, 'ready to take you home, away from all this hideousness.'
'We had to do this, madam,' Suleyman began.
'You will be hearing from me in due course,' Adnan Öz said with a slight bow. 'You can't trick people like Tansu Hanim and expect to get away with it.'
Suleyman indicated that Tepe should put Cengiz Temiz, who now appeared to be disturbed by what was going on, into his new cell. Then turning once again to Adnan Öz he said, 'I look forward to hearing from you, sir.'
Dutifully holding the door open for Tansu, her lawyer and Yilmaz Emin to pass through, Ìkmen bowed to them politely as they left. The fact that Tansu averted her eyes when he looked at her could just have been bad manners, but it could also have been because she didn't want him to know that she was crying.
Once they had gone, Ìkmen shut the door and looked across at Suleyman who was now slumped against the wall with his head in his hands. Tepe, for his part, had settled Cengiz Temiz into his cell and had just come back out into the corridor when Ìkmen said, 'Don't lock up yet, Tepe. I need a moment with Mr Temiz.'
'Oh, right' Tepe stood to one side while Ìkmen entered the cell. Suleyman, who had come back to himself somewhat as Ìkmen spoke, was right behind him.
The overweight, unwashed heap on the edge of what passed for a bed in that terrible place rolled his eyes as Ìkmen approached him.
'You had a bit of a fright there, didn't you?' Ìkmen said with a smile.
'Who are you? Have you got a cigarette?'
'My name is Çetin,' Ìkmen said as he took a cigarette out of his packet and handed it to Cengiz.
'Can I have a light too?'
'Yes.'
Ìkmen handed over his lighter and Cengiz lit up. For a few moments he puffed contentedly before saying, 'Mr Avedykian said I don't have to talk to him any more.'
'Who?' Ìkmen asked.
Cengiz pointed rudely towards Suleyman.
'Oh.'
Suleyman duly turned away and walked towards the far corner of the cell.
Ìkmen smiled. 'But you can talk to me though, can't you?'
Cengiz didn't answer, seemingly absorbed in his cigarette. 'Cengiz?'
'What?'
Ìkmen held out his almost full packet of cigarettes to Cengiz and smiled. 'Listen, Cengiz,' he said, 'if I give you this packet of cigarettes, will you answer just one question for me?'
For a few moments Cengiz looked from the packet of cigarettes to Ìkmen's face and then back again. He licked his lips as if just the look of the cigarettes was making him drool with anticipation.
'You can keep the lighter too,' Ìkmen offered.
A small grunt-like noise seemed to indicate that Cengiz had consented to this. It was enough for Ìkmen.
'OK, Cengiz,' he said, 'why didn't you tell Inspector Suleyman that the devil woman, or whatever you call her, walked with a limp? Can you tell me that?'
Cengiz's eyes narrowed and he put his hand out for the cigarettes.
'Not until you answer my question,' Ìkmen said, putting the pack back into his pocket. 'Well?'
Cengiz, pouting a little now, shrugged. 'He never asked me.'
'He never asked you what, Cengiz?'
'Whether the lady had one leg smaller than the other leg.'
Ìkmen took the cigarettes back out of his pocket again and held them up close to his face. 'But she did, is that what you are saying, Cengiz?'
'Yes.' He made a quick grab for the cigarettes which Ìkmen foiled.
'Ah, not yet!' he said. 'Not yet. So what you're saying is that the woman you saw just now looked like the woman who killed Mrs Ruya except that that woman had one leg which was shorter than the other. Is that right?'
'Yes.'
'Are you certain?' 'Yes!'
Ìkmen handed the cigarettes over and then leaned back to watch as Cengiz Temiz secreted his precious haul within the considerable folds of his clothes. Turning to face Suleyman, Ìkmen said, 'Latife Emin does look remarkably like her sister, don't you think?'
Chapter 14
'Latife Emin does not limp, nor does she have one leg noticeably shorter than the other!'
'Ah, but have you really looked at her legs, Suleyman?' Ìkmen said. 'No, you have not!'
'Well, of course I haven't!' Suleyman cried as he flung himself wearily down behind his desk. ‘I have paid Latife Emin very little heed during the course of this affair. I mean, what would have been her motive?'
‘I don't know.' He sat down in front of Suleyman's desk and lit a cigarette. As he did so, his ulcer made small twinges of protest 'But that surely is something we must now find out'
'Oh, so I just drag Latife Emin back in here and parade her before Cengiz Temiz!'
'No.' Ìkmen sighed. 'Both you and I know that given the status of these people, we can't do that If they were nobody, then we could, but it is in the nature of all societies to have those on top and those on the bottom, and those on top get treated more gently.'
'So what do you suggest then?' Suleyman asked angrily. 'I pass this over to MIT on the pretext that because all the protagonists involved are Kurdish it might be political?' 'You wouldn't do that.'
Suleyman looked down at his hands and groaned. 'No, you're right'
'Let us try, if we can, to think laterally,' Ìkmen said in a slow, considered voice. 'Why don't you get the file out and let us review the evidence in the light of what happened today.'
Suleyman took the folder out of a drawer and laid it on his desk. 'Of course, you don't actually have to be here at all,' he said as he rubbed his tired eyes with his fingers.
'No, but I am and so . .. OK, Mrs Urfa was killed by the ingestion of cyanide-laced halva. What other forensic evidence do we have?'
Suleyman consulted the various documents in front of him with a grave expression on his face. 'We have. Cengiz Temiz's prints all over the body, plus some footprints that match his footwear .. .' He perused the information, frowning. 'Erol's prints on the table, the child's, Ruya's on kitchen equipment and her pen . ..' He looked up, frowning even more. 'Except that. . .'
'What?'
'Erol said that his wife didn't read or write and so why would she have a pen?'
'She could have used it for drawing,' Ìkmen opined,
'but I take your point Write that down, just in case.'
Suleyman took a sheet of paper from his desk and scribbled this seeming anomaly at the top of the page.
'So, as I understand it,' Ìkmen continued, 'Cengiz Temiz basically walked in on the murder scene.'
'According to Cengiz the door to the Urfas' apartment was open, he went in, saw both the devil woman and Ruya Urfa's body.'
'The devil woman ran when she saw him . . .'
'With, what we now know, was an unsteady gait'
'But why was the door open?' Ìkmen asked. 'I mean, the idea that the woman murdered Ruya with the door open, notwithstanding the fact that the world was currently watching football, is absurd.'
'Unless,' Suleyman said, 'she had gone back to get something she had forgotten.'
'True. But what?'
'Who knows?'
'How possible do you think it is that Cengiz Temiz murdered Ruya in order to procure a baby for Mina Arda? Really?' asked Ìkmen.
Suleyman smiled a little sadly. 'Even if one takes into account the fact that Cengiz has a previous conviction for immoral behaviour, I don't think he'd have the cognitive skills to kill in this way. That his "theft" of the baby was both opportunistic and philanthropic seems to me beyond doubt. I am quite in accord with Dr Halman there.'
- 'Right' Ìkmen paused for a few moments before carrying on, as if absorbing what had already been said. 'So let us assume that the devil woman does indeed exist' 'Right'
'She looks like Tansu Hanim, wears clothes like her, and Tansu, let's face it, has a very good motive.'
'Yes,' Suleyman said, 'except that Erol told me that even with Ruya dead, he would not and could not marry Tansu. He will, he says, marry another woman from his village. He wants more children.'
Ìkmen's eyes narrowed a little. 'Mmm. Indeed. Not one he is betrothed to, though. Must be quite some tight little community he comes from. Any idea where?'
'Out east
Suleyman replied. 'I could find but I suppose.'
'Yes, that might be a good idea.'
Ìkmen knew full well that Suleyman was far from convinced with regard to his theories about Erol Urfa's beliefs but this piece of information, which seemed to point towards a very closed and old-fashioned community life, only served to heighten his own interest But if Tansu knew about Erol - which, given the content of her songs, seemed to be so -she would also know that murdering Ruya Urfa would do her personally no good at all. 'Unless of course,' he said out loud, 'it is not Tansu who writes her songs but another member of her entourage.'
Suleyman, who had not been privy to Ìkmen's thoughts, looked confused. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean that if Tansu did write her own bitter songs, it indicates that she knows that Erol is a Yezidi.'
'Oh, not this again!'
Ìkmen held up a hand. 'No, hear me out' he said, 'please. If Tansu wrote those songs, it could be that she knew he was a member of the sect which would mean she would know she could never marry him. Motive gone. But if, as I feel, she is not a very literate woman, she could have got someone else to write her songs for her. Someone who, possibly, got to know about Eroi's origins.'
'Or someone who just has a particular liking for peacocks,' Suleyman said acidly.
'Well, yes, but—'
'What you're saying is,' Suleyman interrupted, 'if someone else wrote those songs, Tansu's motive still stands. But without a positive ID from Cengiz Temiz
'We arrive back at her oh so similar sister yet again.'
'Who has no obvious limp and no coherent motive that I can see,' Suleyman reminded him.
'Unless it was to free Erol for her sister. They are all awfully close, aren't they, the Emins? I mean, Tansu keeps them all in some style, doesn't she?'
'Yes. But if we assume that Latife did kill Ruya in order to free Erol for her sister, then she, at least, could not, following your reasoning, have written Tansu's songs. Assuming of course, as I do not, that this Yezidi thing means anything at all.'
Ìkmen smiled. 'You know what this case is like, don't you, Mehmet?'
'A nightmare?' He shrugged. 'The one where I fail spectacularly and have to take a taxi-driving job?'
'No,' Ìkmen said as he removed a cigarette from his packet and placed it in his mouth. 'It is an arabesque.'
'Well, it's about those involved in Arabesk, yes.'
'No, not the music Arabesk, but the form,' Ìkmen said with a decided twinkle in his eye. 'Arabesque as in a complicated pattern of either form or calligraphy designed by the Arabs and then refined by our ancestors. Art without the human or animal form which, as we know, only Allah may create or destroy. You must know what I mean, surely!'
'Well, yes,' Suleyman said, 'although the connection did not occur to me until you mentioned it. Some arabesques are positively maze-like, aren't they?'
'It is said that the rooftops of Saa'na in the Yemen almost seem to move with the proliferation of fiendishly complex mazes.' A moment of silence passed between them and then he said, 'So what are you going to do about your maze then, Mehmet?'
But before Suleyman could answer, there was a knock at the door.
The familiar features of Ìsak Çöktin appeared within the office. 'I've written that report you wanted about the cyanide, sir’ he said as he placed a sheaf of papers onto Suleyman's desk. 'Thank you.'
'I did also ask Miss Latife Emin about their gardener’ Çöktin continued.
'Oh?' Suleyman said, looking up now with interest 'And?'
'Well, he's called Resat he does quite a few of the big gardens in and around Yeniköy’
Suleyman smiled. 'Including, I think we will find, that of a Mr and Mrs Ertiirk,' he said with some satisfaction. 'For if this Resat is indeed the same as Ertürk's man, then I know for a fact that he uses cyanide to kill their rats.'
'How do you know all this, Mehmet?' Ìkmen asked, really quite amazed at the younger man's sudden insights.
'It is a long story involving two deranged young women.'
'Oh?'
'Which I really don't have time to go into now.' As he spoke he shuffled once again through the file on his desk until he eventually found a small scrap of paper. He handed it to Çöktin. 'This is the telephone number of a Mr Kemal Ertürk’ he said, 'which I would like you to call in order to get hold of some details about where this Resat lives. I think we may need to speak to him very soon’