A lot of people in the room turned to look at Haldun Alkaya who nevertheless remained silent.
‘She had six toes on each foot,’ İkmen continued. ‘Ziya Bey must have had a very nasty shock on his wedding night.’
‘He took her!’ Nazlı Kahraman protested fiercely. ‘The whole village saw her bloodied sheet!’
Various people murmured their agreement.
‘I’m sure that a bloodied sheet was held aloft and I’m sure that the celebrations of Ziya Bey’s marriage were most enthusiastic,’ İkmen said. ‘But whether Ziya Bey made Aysu Alkaya pregnant is another matter. If he did then it would seem unlikely he would have killed her – unless you subscribe to the view that the perfectionist Lemon King would have hated the possibility of having a deformed child.’
‘My father would never . . .’
‘Or that the child wasn’t indeed Ziya’s own,’ İkmen interrupted. ‘But we will leave aside who may or may not have been the father of Aysu Alkaya’s child for the time being except to say that I know that you, Nazlı Hanım, knew that the girl was pregnant.’
The old woman looked at him with real hatred on her face.
‘That first time I met you, you told me that you had washed Aysu’s clothes with your own hands.’
‘Not every day!’
‘Maybe not,’ İkmen said. ‘But if you were washing clothes at all you would know who was bleeding or had bled and who was not. You are a woman, Nazlı Hanım, a much older woman than Aysu Alkaya, but I think you would have known whether or not the girl was pregnant.’
‘I did not . . .’
‘Having said that,’ İkmen said as he raised a hand to silence her, ‘I don’t believe for a moment that you killed her, Nazlı Hanım. I don’t think either that you genuinely do know who killed her.’
All eyes were now turned towards Nazlı Kahraman who said, ‘In that, at least, you are correct, Inspector.’
‘I think you worry that people think that your father killed his last wife . . .’
‘But he didn’t.’
İkmen didn’t answer her. Some moments of what was almost silence, save for the English translation whispered by Arto Sarkissian, passed before he spoke again, this time to Turgut Senar.
‘What is so special about the American Dolores Lavell’s father?’
The American was not in the room as far as İkmen could see, but he saw Turgut Senar look for her before he answered.
‘Nothing.’
‘I disagree,’ İkmen responded.
Everybody looked at him.
‘For years you’ve seen this woman come and go. You’ve taken no notice of her at all. Then she shows you a photograph of her father and you are suddenly the woman’s best friend.’
Turgut Senar shrugged. ‘Are you saying I killed somebody, or . . .’
‘No, I’m saying that I think you remember Dolores’ father from when he used to come here years ago, when he was in the American forces. I think that his presence here has some meaning for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
İkmen panned his gaze around the entire room. ‘Do you know what kind of weapon was used to kill Aysu Alkaya?’
‘No . . .’
‘A pistol called a Colt 45,’ İkmen said. ‘An American weapon, carried by soldiers like Dolores’ father in the late 1950s and early 1960s.’
Turgut Senar turned his head away.
‘It is not a weapon one comes across every day in Turkey.’ İkmen put his cigarette out and then immediately lit another. ‘At least not in a place like Muratpaşa. Of course, all that we have of the weapon is the bullet that was fired from it back in 1983. How old the gun actually is, I don’t personally know, but I suspect it is of 1950s vintage.’ He looked for and found the pale face of Inspector Erten and asked him, ‘Have ballistics come back to you with any more information, yet, Inspector?’
‘Er, no, not yet.’
İkmen smiled. ‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘no matter.’ And then he turned back to Turgut Senar once again. ‘I’m not accusing you of killing anyone with a gun or otherwise, Turgut,’ he said. ‘I just want to know whether you knew Dolores Lavell’s father and his friends back in the 1960s . . .’
‘No.’
‘What’s he saying about me?’ a voice with an American accent asked in English.
Dolores Lavell stood at the top of the stairs, panting from the climb.
İkmen switched to English and said, ‘I just asked Mr Senar whether or not he knew your father, Miss Lavell. He said that he did not. Do you think that he is telling me the truth?’
She moved further into the room, shrugging as she did so. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask his brother?’
‘Kemalettin?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why should I ask Kemalettin, Miss Lavell?’ İkmen asked.
Dolores Lavell sat down almost opposite a now wide-eyed Turgut Senar and said, ‘Kemalettin told me to get away from Turgut while I could earlier today. He said that his brother was only interested in me because he used to know my daddy when he was a kid. I asked Kemalettin how that could be, how a little Turkish kid could have known a big black man like my daddy, but he said he couldn’t tell me that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, Inspector, Kemalettin said that his brother and his mom had told him never to talk about it. Could all just be in Kemalettin’s head, I don’t know . . .’
İkmen moved to stand over Turgut Senar and said, ‘Where is your brother Kemalettin now, Mr Senar?’
There was still a police guard outside Abdullah Aydın’s hospital room. Again it was an officer Süleyman didn’t recognise although, in spite of the fact that the man didn’t speak to him as he passed – he appeared barely sentient – the inspector knew it would have been foolish to assume he had not been seen. Without looking at the officer again he pushed his way into the men’s lavatory and then leaned back against the wall with a sigh.
It would have been more pleasant for Süleyman had he been alone in the toilet, but he wasn’t. The hospital was packed and so it was logical that the toilets should come in for a lot of punishment as a consequence. Not all of the men in there with him were bleeding, but a significant minority were engaged in doing just that into the sinks and, in one case, on to the floor. Some groaning was going on, too, as well as a lot of coughing, which was not made any better by the fact that everyone was smoking. Süleyman, braced against the wall, closed his eyes. In order to force the police officer away from Abdullah’s room, İbrahim was going to have to make a scene so terrible he would probably end up being imprisoned for years. Now that he’d walked the route Süleyman realised just how far it was. With great impatience he sighed. İbrahim making an exhibition of himself in the waiting area just wasn’t going to be good enough.
‘Kemalettin was standing outside the Cappudocia Coffee Bean last time I saw him,’ Rachelle Jones said to İkmen. ‘That was, I suppose, about half an hour ago. He was just letting the snow fall on his head. Looked like a snowman.’
‘Go and see if you can find him,’ İkmen said to the small group of jandarma that had gathered around him. ‘Oh and bring his mother here, too, if you can, we need all the “actors” in this drama now.’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
As the jandarma left, İkmen went back over to Turgut Senar, still uncomfortably seated beside Baha Ermis, and said, ‘You know that it’s my belief all of this – Aysu Alkaya’s death, my abduction – is about money.’
‘I thought you said you knew who killed Aysu Alkaya,’ Turgut Senar replied. ‘And who kidnapped you.’
‘I don’t know why, if you know, you don’t just come out and tell us,’ Nazlı Kahraman put in. ‘It seems to me, Inspector, that you’re getting some sort of pleasure out of our discomfort.’
‘I’ve just been stuck out in a frozen valley with a half-burned corpse!’ İkmen blustered. ‘I’ve been beaten up. Of course I want to make you suffer, Nazlı Hanım.’
The room became very still. İkmen caught Altay Salman’s nervous eye. Menşure Tokatlı cleared her throat in what could only be described as a threatening fashion.
‘The people who abducted me tried to burn Aysu Alkaya’s body,’ İkmen said rather more calmly now. ‘I rescued what I could of it from the flames and what remains will accompany Dr Sarkissian and myself back to İstanbul for analysis.’ He swept his gaze quickly around the room. ‘In view of my abduction everyone in this village will be DNA tested and if anything matches what remains on Aysu’s body or on my clothes, that person will have to give an account of his or herself . . .’
‘But, I repeat, if you know who did it, Inspector,’ Nazlı Kahraman said, ‘why not just tell us? Surely you want to arrest this felon . . .’
‘
Felons
,’ İkmen corrected. ‘Quite a few people kidnapped me, Nazlı Hanım. One was wearing very distinctive items of clothing.’
And then came the call to prayer, signifying the end of the fast for that day. Considering the fact that most of those present were fasting, the number of people moving over to the samovar for tea was surprisingly small even if a veritable host of individuals lit cigarettes once the call was at an end.
‘God, this is exciting,’ Tom Chambers whispered to his Armenian companions. ‘The inspector is magnificent.’
‘Çetin can at times overcome the impression that his small and shabby appearance can sometimes give,’ Arto Sarkissian replied. ‘I just hope that everyone is as awestruck as you, Mr Chambers.’
‘Why’s that?’
Arto Sarkissian leaned in more closely to the Englishman. ‘Because while they are dazzled by him, they will not be asking themselves whether he is telling them the truth about what he says he knows.’
‘Oh.’
‘He is taking a sort of a gamble if you will,’ Arto said.
İkmen watched closely the comings and goings from the samovar. The German, Ferdinand Mueller, gave him what İkmen interpreted as a knowing look.
‘Yes, I know, I will get to that,’ he said to the balloonist in English.
‘It may be nothing . . .’
‘It may be, but we will see,’ İkmen said.
He may have said more had not the jandarma returned with a very white-faced Nalan Senar. Behind her, but holding her hand, was a snow-drenched Kemalettin. They moved straight away to sit next to Turgut. İkmen did not try to stop them.
Süleyman made İbrahim wait ten minutes before he allowed him to set off for the lavatory along the corridor. Following at a distance, the older man just hoped that his young protégé didn’t go too far over the top with his unreasoning crazy person act.
In view of the distance involved, from the waiting area to Abdullah Aydın’s room, Süleyman had decided that a rather more local diversion was what was needed. So, if İbrahim could pick a fight with one of the men in the lavatory across the corridor, the officer on guard was much more likely to become involved with it. After all, he was a young man and, important assignment or no important assignment, it was unlikely he’d be able to resist the opportunity of a good brawl. Süleyman followed his friend as far as the bend in the corridor just before the private room and the lavatories. He then leaned back against the sickly green paintwork, sweating. İbrahim was, he knew, a real force to be reckoned with once he got into a fight. But the officer was armed and, although he desperately wanted and needed to know what Abdullah Aydın might know about the peeper, Süleyman was also quite nervous about what might happen next. For some time there was only silence.
At first it wasn’t İbrahim who broke the silence, but the sunset call to prayer. The police officer first sighed and then took a large simit roll out of his jacket pocket and bit into it. Only when he was halfway through his supper did things in the lavatory begin to kick off.
At first it was impossible to make out what was being shouted or by whom. A rumble of male voices tumbled out on to the corridor, eliciting only one fleeting glance from the police officer. He, like Süleyman, knew that things can get heated in hospitals and that more often than not disputes between patients or patients and staff blow over quickly. This, however, went on. Over a minute passed and then Süleyman distinctly heard İbrahim’s furious voice.
‘You did it on purpose, you filthy pig!’ İbrahim screeched.
The other man or men involved said something to which the boy replied, ‘You can get AIDS from blood! If you’ve given me AIDS . . .’
The police officer looked up from his simit.
‘I haven’t got AIDS!’ A huge and furious voice boomed from inside the toilet. ‘Only queers get AIDS!’
‘Well, maybe you are queer!’
Allah, but when İbrahim did something he really did it thoroughly! Süleyman had no idea about the size or appearance of the man he had obviously accused of getting his blood on him somehow. But if he sounded as big as his voice then İbrahim could be in trouble.
‘Queer!’
‘Bastard!’
Someone or something fell to the ground and the police officer got off his squat hospital chair and took his baton from out of its holster. For a moment he just stood outside the toilet listening to the noises of heads and elbows hitting the hard, concrete floor. Süleyman, wincing at what sounded like İbrahim’s pain, held his breath as he waited for the officer to go inside the lavatory. Just go in, he thought as he watched the officer first look at the lavatory door and then back at Abdullah Aydın’s room. He had obviously been told not to leave his post under any circumstances, but would he obey? Süleyman could almost see the arguments and counterarguments pass across the poor man’s brain until suddenly, at the moment when it seemed most likely he would return to his post, he opened the lavatory door and went inside.
‘What is all this?’ he yelled. ‘Are you mad?’
Checking quickly that no one else was about to see him, Süleyman ran from his hiding place and, barely daring to breathe, he stood in front of Abdullah Aydın’s door.
‘If you hit me again . . .’ he heard İbrahim scream as he let himself inside the dimly lit room and then took a moment to catch his breath.
The boy, Abdullah Aydın, appeared to be asleep on the bed. Lying on his side facing away from the door he breathed evenly and without noise. None of the machines that Süleyman had seen inside that room on his first visit seemed to be either attached to anything or working. Abdullah did not, it seemed, need any help from outside sources any longer. The men in the toilet were still screaming and so Süleyman moved quietly towards the bed and the boy inside it.