‘Will he watch the fire, do you think?’ Hikmet Yıldız asked.
İsmail shrugged. ‘I don’t know!’ Turning to İkmen again, he said, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Well, you’re going to set fire to an apartment and then run away,’ İkmen said.
‘Allah!’ İsmail Yıldız wrung his hands until they went purple.
‘You get to have some pyrotechnic fun, while we get to rescue the girl,’ İkmen said. ‘We call the fire brigade and get her out.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘We’ll only take her out once the fire officers have arrived,’ İkmen said. ‘In a body bag. We don’t know where this Cem might be hiding. But he’ll have to have some sort of confirmation that you’ve done what you said you would. So, whether he is
in situ
or not, we have to give him that proof.’
‘What will you do with this Sabiha?’
‘We’ll take her to a safe house,’ Ayşe Farsakoğlu said. ‘Poor child! What will be left of her life after this?’
‘Cem told me she has a boyfriend,’ İsmail said. ‘A neighbour. The girl’s brother told their father. That’s why the family want her dead.’
‘Yes but having a boyfriend can mean a lot of different things,’ Ayşe continued. ‘Maybe they are in love, but then maybe the two of them just looked at each other one day; you know how it can work with these people.’
‘These people’ included, İsmail knew, him. She’d meant religious, pious, very moral people – just like him. He could understand why Sabiha’s parents might want to put her to death, even if he could in no way approve of such an action. But the way this female colleague of Hikmet’s was looking at him now made İsmail Yıldız feel humiliated and low. She looked down on him and people like him. She had no love for piety or religion, and although he disapproved completely of honour killing, he found that because he could relate to the reasons why it happened, he felt conflicted. There was no way in the world that he was going to kill Sabiha; he was going to do exactly what the police told him. But he was not comfortable with that, and there was no sense in which he ever would be.
‘If you arrive at the apartment in Çarşamba at eight tonight,’ İkmen said, ‘we will be there to meet you.’ Then in response to what appeared to be yet another question coming from İsmail he said, ‘You simply enter the apartment – we will have replaced the key underneath the mat – and then set the fire. We will all be waiting for you to do that. Don’t worry, we won’t really let you burn the apartment down.’
‘You will be . . .’
‘We’re police officers, İsmail,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘You leave the details about how we’re going to run this operation to us. All you need to remember is to take the petrol you will buy this morning to the apartment at eight o’clock tonight, set the fire, run away and then wait for Cem to contact you. As soon as he calls you, you call us.’
‘But what if he double-crosses me?’ İsmail asked. ‘What if he gets me to do the job and then just disappears with all the money?’
‘Oh, I don’t think that will happen,’ İkmen said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’ll want to use you to kill again,’ İkmen said. ‘You know we all complain about the escalating violence in this great big dirty city of ours, but finding someone who is prepared to kill in cold blood, even for money, is still rare. Also, you have no criminal record. He’ll want to hang on to you, possibly employ you again. By this act you will become a valuable commodity.’
Although he smiled, İkmen felt suddenly troubled. What, he wondered, had Cem seen in İsmail Yıldız that made him think that he could kill? Maybe it was nothing apart from lack of a criminal record and his financial need. But then maybe it wasn’t.
Cahit had gone out and taken his awful sister Feray and her daughter Nesrin with him. She’d heard him talk about shopping, and the two women had giggled excitedly. Her husband was going to buy them things, things he’d never even thought to buy for her. He was doing it to hurt her, Saadet knew that. Once Cahit and the women had gone, her jailers consisted of her nephew Aykan and her son Lokman. It was the latter who unlocked the door and brought her a breakfast of bread, cheese and olives at just after nine. He put it down on the floor in front of her in a way that was both contemptuous and embarrassed. He didn’t seem to notice her broken, bloodied mouth. Or if he did, he didn’t say anything about it.
‘It’s your—’
‘Lokman, my soul, please close the door behind you and sit with me,’ Saadet said. She sat down on the floor and gestured for him to join her.
But he remained where he was and said, ‘I have to get back to cousin Aykan.’
Saadet wanted to say all sorts of cruel things about how the computer-addicted Aykan was unlikely to even know that her son had left the room. But she didn’t. Instead she said, ‘I don’t know what your father has told you about me . . .’
‘He said you went out whoring yesterday,’ Lokman said. ‘He said that you must be punished now.’ There was still embarrassment on his face, but there was also a small smile now for his mother. It was clearly fighting to overcome the contempt that his father had tried to instil within him.
‘Lokman,’ Saadet said sternly. ‘You know me. You know your own mother wouldn’t whore.’
She could see that he knew that. His eyes glistened. ‘But then where did you go yesterday? Where did you go?’
‘I went shopping.’
‘You were hours! No one, no neighbours, saw you, and you were hours!’
‘Lokman, I am a covered woman who is unaccustomed to this district,’ Saadet said. ‘Why would anybody notice me? I went shopping! I admit I was out far too long, but I needed to walk and to think. Son, I have lost all my children except for you. Allah has seen fit to take Gözde and Kenan from me.’
For a moment his face seemed to harden. He had never liked Kenan, even when they were children. But he had loved his sister, and now the mention of her name caused him to suddenly soften. He sat down on the floor in front of his mother and pushed her plate towards her. ‘Eat.’
Saadet ignored the plate. ‘Lokman, I need to know something and I need to know it now.’
‘What?’
‘Why did you try to hide your sister’s mobile telephone from the police?’ she asked. ‘It troubles me, makes me wonder if you had some hand in Gözde’s death. Or rather in covering it up.’
He gazed over at her with straight, damp eyes. He looked for a moment as if he were about to choke, but then he cleared his throat and said, ‘Gözde was seeing a boy from up the road. I knew about it. They cared for each other.’
Saadet felt her heart jump. What it meant if Lokman knew, she couldn’t imagine. ‘Did you tell your father?’
‘No! No! I didn’t tell anyone! I took the phone so that no one, not even the police, would ever know, ever besmirch my sister’s name!’ Lokman said. ‘Kenan knew because Gözde told him herself; she didn’t trust me enough. Kenan would have told no one. Afterwards, he believed that me and Father had ordered Gözde’s murder!’
‘Yes, I know. We all ended up in the police station, didn’t we.’
‘How could he do that?’ Lokman said. ‘How could he . . .’
‘He could do it, Lokman, because your father did kill your sister,’ Saadet said baldly. ‘Kenan knew.’
Lokman frowned and then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, that’s not right, Mother. Father was here with you and Auntie Feray, Nesrin and Aykan when it happened. He couldn’t possibly—’
‘Your father arranged it,’ Saadet said. ‘I didn’t know until we arrived here that day and I could do nothing about it! I didn’t believe it at first. Even when we went back to our burnt-out apartment, I didn’t believe it. But then the fire officers said that they’d found a body and I knew. I cried in your arms, remember, Lokman? Your father told me that he paid someone . . .’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know!’ Saadet said. ‘Do you think if I knew that I’d be sitting here now? If I knew who killed my daughter I’d be fighting to get past you to get out of here. I don’t know his name. I would know his face, though. I need to get out to tell the police.’
‘Tell the police about my father?’ He looked shocked and horrified.
‘Your father killed Gözde!’ Saadet said. ‘He paid every
kuruş
we have so that it could be done! Why do you think we are so broke? Why do we not even try to go back to our apartment?’ She lowered her voice just in case her fat lump of a nephew might somehow hear her. ‘Your father has ruined everything, Lokman! He must be brought to justice! Think about it!’
Stunned, Lokman looked down at his own hands as they lay limply in his lap. Still he said nothing.
Saadet, desperate, leaned forward and tried to look into his face. ‘Last night, Lokman,’ she said, her throat drying against the words that she had to spit out now, ‘your father raped me. I am so sorry to have to tell you this, my son.’
Not so much as a tiny flicker crossed his features. Whether he was shocked or not, she just couldn’t tell.
‘I need to get out of here and tell the truth,’ she said. It was her final attempt to reach him, which could, she knew, also be her last chance. ‘You have to help me, Lokman,’ she added. ‘If you do not, I will die in here. If not by your father’s hand, then by my own.’
He looked up at her then with what to Saadet was an unknowable expression on his face.
Sleeping in his car had not been an option. When he left Gonca’s house in the early hours of the morning, Mehmet Süleyman drove out to the beautiful village of Yeniköy, where he parked up beside the Bosphorus. There he sat, sleepless and eventually red-eyed, until the sun came up and he went to get a takeaway coffee from a small local
büfe
. Tired, depressed and still bewildered at his lover’s behaviour, he eventually managed to wake up enough to drive to the station, where he found that İzzet Melik was already waiting for him.
‘Sir,’ the sergeant said as soon as Süleyman entered his office, ‘sir, I was at the Tulip nargile salon last night, on my own time, and I got into conversation with the owner. We got on well and . . .’ He stopped and stared at his superior with a frown on his face. It was very rare that Süleyman looked anything less than immaculate, but this morning he was positively shabby.
Süleyman lit a cigarette, which he then waved at his inferior. ‘Carry on,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to shout at you for going on about Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir. I’m not going to shout at you about anything.’
İzzet was relieved. Although he hardly dare admit it to himself, he had been worried in case his boss railed at him. They had not, after all, parted on anything like good terms the previous evening. Süleyman had been furious that İzzet had had the temerity to so much as breathe a word about his gypsy lover. Now he appeared subdued. It made İzzet wonder about what might have happened in the intervening twelve hours. Had Süleyman thought about what had been said and come to the conclusion that he had put İzzet and all his colleagues in a difficult position? Or had he maybe spoken to her, the gypsy, about it? Had they, she and he, argued about it, maybe? Had the gypsy’s family finally taken a hand in their business as Izabella Madrid had suggested? Süleyman did after all look more miserable than İzzet had ever seen him look before.
‘Sir, we have absolutely no reason, as far as I can tell, to think about any of Hamid İdiz’s other students. In terms of his murder, I mean. But these boys . . . or rather Murad Emin . . . I went, as I told you, to see his old piano teacher, Miss Madrid, again, and she is worried about him. Murad has changed in the last year, and not for the better.’ Seeing that Süleyman was about to speak, possibly to raise some sort of objection, he went on, ‘I know that Mr İdiz could still have been murdered by someone he just picked up somewhere. But sir, there is something wrong about this boy. Also, at the Tulip nargile salon, the boys play about on computers. They may just play games, Google women’s breasts. The owner of the place seems to think that what they do is quite innocuous, but I don’t know.’
Süleyman leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. ‘You say you have an easy relaitionship with the owner?’
‘He offered me the use of his computers any time I wished,’ İzzet said. ‘I approached him in the guise of a wrestling coach; you know that is what my brother does. The owner of the Tulip is a great enthusiast. Offered to let me look up stuff about all the old Ottoman wrestlers on the net. It sounded fascinating.’
‘And did you take him up on this offer?’ Süleyman said.
‘No. I felt it was too soon, and also I need to know what I’m looking for before I do that. But I will do it when, with your permission, sir, I go to the Tulip for a lunchtime smoke.’
‘Of course.’ Süleyman sighed. ‘With my blessing, İzzet. Did either of the boys, Murad or Ali Reza, see you at the Tulip?’
‘Murad did,’ İzzet replied.‘But he didn’t acknowledge me in any way. I don’t know whether he recognised me or not. But if he did, I don’t think he said anything about it to his boss.’
Süleyman frowned, ‘Mmm. Yes. All right, İzzet, get over there at lunchtime.’
He didn’t say anything more. İzzet did think about maybe tackling him on what appeared to be a change of heart with regard to Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir, but then thought better of it. He had paperwork to catch up on, as well as, later, a bit of research prior to his visit to the Tulip. After all, if he was going to try and find out what the boys were looking at on the computers, he needed to know how best to do that. A visit to a friend of his in the computer support team was therefore a necessity. He sat down at his desk and switched on his own system in a silence that was very intense. What on earth could have happened to Süleyman?
For his part, Mehmet Süleyman sat and smoked and inwardly berated himself for a fool. İzzet had always had a point with those two boys, Ali Reza and Murad. They were the only pupils of Hamid İdiz who had reported either seeing him masturbate or hearing about it. Ali Reza had not, apparently, been too disturbed by it, but Murad had. The boy had been upset and, in addition, had expressed some views that would point towards an antipathy towards homosexual people. And yet because of that one remark from the boy’s mother as they were leaving, that might or might not have referred to Gonca, Süleyman had chosen to ignore Murad. He had
chosen
to do that! Paranoid beyond belief that his wife would somehow find out about the gypsy, he had avoided anyone he thought might know about her for months. Even İkmen, he now realised, was from time to time kept at arm’s length. And then, as it had transpired, everyone apparently had known anyway! İzzet Melik had many faults, but lying was not one of them, and so Süleyman knew that it had to be true.