Baksheesh (10 page)

“What sort of person was Osman?”

“He wasn't a bad man. Otherwise I couldn't have put up with him for so long. Culturally, we were very different, of course. That bothered him more than it did me. For instance, he couldn't bear it if I read a book. There were no books at home. I would read them secretly and then throw them in the rubbish bin. For a book-lover, that was akin to murder. The first thing I did after hearing Osman had been killed was to chuck out the rubbish bin. Would you believe it? I couldn't bear looking at that rubbish bin. It was like a bin of guilt.” There was silence.

“Can I have a cigarette?” she said.

I'm not one to lecture people.

“If you like,” I said.

She didn't say a word until she was halfway through the cigarette.

“After you phoned, I called Özcan, Osman's youngest brother. He's a sensible kid.”

“I had the honour of meeting him. But he didn't seem very sensible to me.”

“Excuse me, but can I ask you something? Are you really German?”

“I prefer to say that I'm an
Ä°stanbullu
, but yes, I am German by origin.” She smiled.

“Don't get me wrong. You speak Turkish very well, which is why I asked. You even use the old-fashioned terms properly and only have a very slight accent. You can tell sometimes, in certain words. I'm very fussy about language. I always used to get top marks for Turkish at school.”

“How did you know I was German?” I asked, wondering if it was because of my new orange hair.

“Özcan told me on the phone. He said your father's the Minister of the Interior in Germany.”

“What?” I said.

“Your father…”

“My father's dead. He died years ago. Where did that come from?”

She raised her shoulders, making her look as if she had no neck. Then I remembered. I'd said it after the police took my statement when one of Osman's brothers made threats at me. He must have actually believed me. So what if my father had been a minister? What strange things grab people's attention!

“Did you give up school on account of Osman?” I asked.

İnci Hanım seemed to like talking about her schooldays.

“No, I wouldn't have done that. I was in my last year when we met. I graduated from high school. It was a commercial high school, one of the vocational schools where they send children from poor families so that they can start earning quickly – you may have heard of them. They teach bookkeeping, typing and so on. For a vocational-school graduate, getting into university is no more than a distant dream. I wanted to study, to go to university and absorb all that culture. Now, perhaps I can do it. If I get any money, that is. Maybe one of the private universities, because they're easier to get into than the state ones.”

“If you really want it, nothing is impossible,” I said.

She twisted her lower lip.

“Doesn't it seem strange? One person dies, a second is born, and a third one feels free for the first time in her life…”

“While another is accused of murder,” I said.

She smiled, showing her thirty-two teeth once again.

“Don't. Nobody's accusing you of murder.”

“Did Özcan say that? Only yesterday, he was practically foaming at the mouth when he accused me in front of the homicide police.”

“The main suspect is the uncle. It was Musa's idea to accuse you to divert suspicion away from him.”

“Who is Musa?”

“Musa is the next brother after Osman. He runs the car park in Kuledibi. Or rather the car park runs him. He's a real idiot. What can you expect from someone that dumb? According to Özcan, the police never took those accusations about you seriously, so I don't understand why you are.”

“It's not something to be taken lightly. They took my statement and made me sign it.”

She shrugged.

“Round here they come and take statements just for a traffic accident.”

“But that's normal. At least it's because you've witnessed an accident, not for no reason at all.”

“Have you spoken to a lawyer?”

“I don't want to hear the word lawyer,” I said.

“Why? Have you been cheated by one?”

“What made you say that?”

“I don't know. They say lawyers are swindlers, don't they? That's probably why.”

I lit a cigarette, signalled to the waiter and ordered two more teas.

“My lover's a lawyer, but we've just split up. Less than a week ago,” I said.

Osman died from a bullet wound to the leg. Or rather from loss of blood. The wound itself wasn't fatal, more a “watch your step” message. “They probably just got into a fight,” Ä°nci had said. Osman's office was a wreck. Chairs, tables all over the place. Whoever was there had pulled out a gun. A shot to the leg. A warning. Neither the gunman nor Osman thought it would end in death.

But Osman had a gun too, didn't he? Couldn't he have fired back?

According to Ä°nci, he never went around empty-handed.

When I asked what she had meant by that, Ä°nci replied that my Turkish was so good she'd forgotten it wasn't my mother tongue, and that it meant he never went out unarmed. However, it was possible that he wasn't carrying a gun in the office, just as he didn't carry one at home.

This meant Osman would have been armed when he came to my shop. I tried to recapture his entry. I hadn't noticed what he was wearing. Or if there was a bulge around his waist. One thing I knew for certain was that I needed to pay more attention the next time I hurled an ashtray at anyone. You never knew who they might be. As Yücel Bey said, it was a jungle out there.

Ä°nci had invited me to her apartment for dinner, but so much social activity within a few days was too much for me. Besides, I was of the view that people shouldn't be too familiar when
they've only just met. If I had gone, she'd have given me a tarot reading.

 

The next day was Sunday. When I woke up and realized this, I wanted to bang my head against the wall with exasperation because it meant the previous day had been Saturday and I'd forgotten all about my Saturday morning rendezvous with Yılmaz at the tea garden in Firuzağa. It was my fault for refusing to carry a diary – just because I didn't want to behave like a typical German.

I got up and rushed straight to the phone. When I'd arrived home the previous evening, there hadn't been a single voicemail, which was not impossible since Pelin was now around to answer the phone. Pelin hadn't been in when I arrived home and she hadn't left me a note. So Yılmaz hadn't rung. It infuriated me that, never mind my mobile, he hadn't even rung me at home. After so many years of friendship, I felt I could expect that much from him. Thinking up a few choice words to say to him, I dialled his number and woke him up.

“Don't you have a clock? Today's Sunday,” he said. If it were possible to kill someone down a phone line, I can assure you I wouldn't be sitting here writing this now.

“I wanted to apologize for yesterday,” I said.

“Let's talk later,” he said.

Scratching my head, I went into the kitchen. I needed a really good cup of coffee. Even something milky, like a cappuccino. There had to be some of that stuff you can mix with water to make a concoction that resembles cappuccino. I opened a cupboard and took out a large tin containing single-portion bags of powdered cappuccino. It was still three months before their sell-by date. That was good news. The bad news was that I also noticed the ingredients, one of which was something called Stabilizer E339. There was no way I was going to drink anything containing that
stuff even if, on that lovely September morning, the whole world claimed it was harmless to human health. I went back to the sitting room to order a packet of Turkish coffee from the window. In Istanbul, you can call down to the local shop like that. Ordering by telephone is also an option. But why do that, when you can call out of the window? I shouted down to young Hamdi, asking him to bring me up a packet of Turkish coffee.

Five minutes later, Hamdi was at my door with the coffee. Another reason to love Istanbul and the Turks. In Berlin, I would probably have to scour half the city to find a shop selling coffee on a Sunday morning.

I finally managed to wake Pelin by slurping my Turkish coffee loudly on the balcony outside her bedroom.

“Why did you get up so early?” she said, having managed to stagger as far as the balcony door without opening her eyes.

“It's not early at all. It's nine o'clock,” I remarked.

I heard the flush go in the bathroom. Then a door shut with a bang. She'd gone back to bed. I continued to sit there like some sort of vagrant until, finally, the telephone rang.

It was Ä°nci. My new friend.

“Good morning. Did I wake you up?”

“No, darling. I got up at least two hours ago.”

“I woke up early this morning, too. Never do usually. I've just been talking to Özcan. He's Osman's youngest brother, as you know. He's like a friend to me. He still doesn't get why you're interested in this business. Poor kid, he's not a crime-fiction reader like us,” she said, with one of her wonderful laughs. I could just visualize all those pearly teeth.

“I started on one of the books you gave me last night. It's very gory, isn't it? I think I'd better read it after the birth, because I'm not going to be able to put it down.”

“Mmm, don't read it at night, otherwise you'll never get any sleep.”

“Have you seen the papers today?”

“No.”

“After two days, it's made page-three headline news in three of them. I don't know how, but they got hold of Osman's passport photo and they also found out he'd had a fight with his uncle over money. That was all.”

“You said you spoke to Özcan.”

“Hah. That's why I called you, actually. Özcan is coming to see me this afternoon. You said you wanted to ask him a few questions, didn't you?”

“What time shall I come?”

“Come early. Come now, if you like. We could look at the tarot cards. Have you had breakfast? We can have it together.”

“Fine,” I said.

 

Ä°nci's home was immaculate. Like that of every good Turkish housewife. In fact, like Istanbul in general: spotless interiors and windows, with balconies and streets too filthy to set foot in. That's why I complied so willingly when asked to remove my shoes at the door. She gave me some high-heeled house slippers with feathers on: size thirty-six. They didn't fit my feet of course, so I put on some men's slippers that were there. Slippers of a dead man. As I put them on, a cold hand seemed to pass rapidly up my body, from my feet to my head. I felt as if I too might become a corpse because of those slippers. As if death was a contagious disease, like leprosy. I took them off and put them back on the hall stand before entering the sitting room.

While I guiltily drank my second coffee of the day, Ä°nci told my fortune with the tarot cards. The chariot card appeared. It signified that I would be taking a big step forward. There would be a great change in my life. Apparently, it's the only tarot card to forecast any change for the good.

“You'll find a new lover and be happier than ever,” she said.

Actually, I'd have preferred the change in my life to be a new home, rather than a new lover. Was that so strange?

Ä°nci proudly showed me the baby's room where everything was all ready for her son. He was to be called Osman Emir and was due in three months. I felt obliged to feign interest by making a close examination of the piles of tiny outfits.

We talked about Habibe for a while. Ä°nci commented that the mermaid costume was the reason why her album hadn't caught on.

“Mermaids have no sexuality because they have no sexual organs. What man do you think is going to fancy a woman with no legs and no whatsit between them? Women didn't like her either, because she showed too much cleavage. Nobody's going to find a sexless mermaid they've seen on TV so memorable that they have to go out and buy her album, are they? Of course not. So it didn't sell. In that business, you're marketing sexuality, not a song.”

I commented that one of Hans Christian Andersen's most beautiful and charismatic fairy-tale heroines was a mermaid.

“See, that just backs up what I said. In this world, a character without sexuality can only be a heroine in a fairy tale, not a singer trying to get her CD sold out there to real men and women,” she exclaimed.

Maybe she was right. What do you do with a sexless singer?

Özcan rushed for my hand as he walked in. It was awful. Turks kiss the hand of anyone older then themselves and raise it to their forehead, out of respect. We ended up almost wrestling in the middle of the room while he tried to kiss my hand and I resisted. In the end, with İnci's help, I won.

Özcan said he was very upset about what had happened to me. I studied his face intently to see if he was being sarcastic. But no, he was serious. Yet if he was upset, why had he previously tried to convince the police that I committed the murder?

He seemed to read my mind. “It was Musa who said you must have done it. I just went along with him, miss. But it had nothing to do with you, did it? You don't go and murder everyone you have a quarrel with.”

I nodded. He was just a kid of fifteen or sixteen. He was bound to go along with what his elders said.

“Your uncle—”

“He ran off with my brother's money on Tuesday night. Osman had a payment to make early the next morning so he'd taken the money home for safe keeping. My uncle found it somehow and ran off with it. We always keep an eye on him because we know he's no good. He must have taken it while everyone was asleep. We let our folk know it had gone in the hope of getting some back before he'd spent it all. But they haven't come up with anything yet. Nor have the police. Drink, gambling, women – that man's into everything. He probably regretted taking it and went back to see Osman. Then I expect they got into a fight and he ended up shooting him.”