He glanced across at his sergeant as he worked away diligently at his reports, and just the look of him made Süleyman feel ashamed. Murad Emin could well have killed Hamid İdiz, and both he and, most importantly, İzzet knew it. Thanks be to Allah for İzzet, the clear-sighted, noble, honest man! Süleyman wondered how he could possibly have allowed himself to let his own needs override his sense of justice. Murderers had to be caught, for the sake of everyone in the city, even the country. If in doing that his wife became aware of his infidelity with the gypsy, then so be it. Even the loss of his son, that dear, adored child, was not worth the danger that a killer on the loose represented. A killer could, after all, attack almost anyone once that first murder had been committed, even Mehmet Süleyman’s own beloved child.
The Antep Apartments were in a small street not far from the Sultan Selim Mosque. A shabby 1960s concrete block that was typical of that part of the Çarşamba district, it had one large front entrance and a small back exit that was accessed by a concrete yard. At the back of that was a low wall, and beyond that a patch of waste ground where lots of little boys kicked plastic footballs about. In common with most areas where migrants from the countryside had settled, the streets teemed with people and life was lived very much out in the open. Women, though veiled, sat on their doorsteps, watching their children play and laugh and squabble amid the dust of the street. Men stood in small flat-cap-wearing groups on street corners, smoking, eating
börek
and discussing football.
‘This is not, İkmen, the sort of place where one passes unnoticed,’ said Commissioner Ardıç, Çetin İkmen’s boss, as he viewed with some distaste the domestic scene that was unfolding around their car. ‘These types . . .’ he waved a swollen, dismissive hand in the general direction of the street, ‘know their own, and they do not generally take kindly to outsiders.’
Like İkmen, Ardıç was a city man born and bred, and like a lot of city people he did not have a great deal of time for unreconstructed migrants from the countryside. He routinely referred to the quarters where they lived as ‘ghettos’, and he viewed their often very separate lives as products of entirely their own making. That İstanbullus did not sometimes readily accept them was to Ardıç unthinkable. İstanbullus could not, apparently, do any wrong.
‘We can’t just arrest this family,’ İkmen said. ‘If we do, this Cem character will just disappear.’
‘So what is your plan?’ A small child, a girl in a cut-down adult dress with dirty hair and a sore on her lip, was looking at the men in the car with open curiosity. Ardıç, who viewed the urchin with disgust, tapped his driver on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you do something about that child? Shoo it away or something!’
But İkmen very quickly put his hand on the driver’s shoulder too, holding him into his seat. ‘Actually, sir,’ he said, ‘we should maybe go now. I don’t want to call further attention to us. I just wanted you to see where this operation is going to take place.’
‘Oh, very well, if you say so.’ Ardıç shrugged. The car began to move slowly away from the kerb and towards the end of the road. ‘So this plan that you have . . .’
‘According to Constable Yıldız’s brother, the family will leave the apartment at seven o’clock tonight,’ İkmen said. ‘A team of plain-clothes officers will follow them and keep them under surveillance at all times. Sergeant Farsakoğlu has already made contact with the
kapıcı
of the building and is at this moment in his apartment, where I will join her at six o’clock this evening.’
Ardıç frowned. ‘She’s a striking woman, Farsakoğlu. How did she get in there without attracting attention?’
İkmen smiled. ‘It is really quite amazing what a set of dreary old clothes, no make-up and a very unfashionably tied headscarf can do,’ he said. It was true. The timid lady visitor to the apartment building’s caretaker had been almost unrecognisable as Ayşe. ‘We cannot just occupy that building once the girl’s parents have gone, because we have to think about this Cem and where he might be. Maybe he will be watching to see that İsmail Yıldız does what he will hopefully be paid to do.’
‘Clearly we have to apprehend this character,’ Ardıç said. ‘Honour killing for money! Whatever next? But then that is your rural type, isn’t it, that—’
‘The aim of the operation is to secure the safe passage of the girl out of the apartment, to apprehend this Cem person and, ultimately, to take the girl’s family into custody,’ İkmen interrupted. He knew that their driver was a ‘rural type’, and was anxious not to let Ardıç offend his sensibilities. Try as the commissioner might to treat everyone equally and with some respect, İkmen knew that he just did not either understand or trust those migrants from the countryside who had not integrated into city life. The driver, he felt, fell into that category.
‘You’ve contacted the fire department?’
‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘They will expect a call from the
kapıcı
once the fire has been set and İsmail Yıldız has left the building.’
‘How are you going to manage that?’ Ardıç asked.
İkmen smiled. ‘Oh, our colleagues at the fire department have told us how to create a very small, very noxious blaze, sir,’ he said.
‘Contained, I trust.’
‘Of course. Sir, this is largely acting.’
‘Mmm.’ The commissioner eyed him narrowly. ‘You’re rather good at that, İkmen. But that said, your face is somewhat familiar to the public due to your various media appearances.’ İkmen had, from time to time, been on television to give out statements on behalf of the İstanbul police. He had also, more recently, appeared on several news programmes in the wake of his very successful undercover operation in London, where he had almost single-handedly saved the life of the British capital’s mayor.
With a sigh, İkmen flicked his own moustache and said, ‘This will go, and with a suit that is actually ironed . . .’
‘Oh, of course,’ Ardıç said without a hint of irony in his voice. İkmen in smart clothes without his moustache
was
unrecognisable. ‘Just make sure that the vast horde of plain-clothes officers I have allowed you to use in order to support this operation know who you are.’
‘Yes, sir.’ İkmen smiled again, but then very quickly frowned. The scene of the operation was going to be overseen by a large team of men and women who would be communicating with İkmen and Ayşe Farsakoğlu inside. They would be looking for a man fitting the description of Cem that İsmail Yıldız had given them and making sure that none of the local people got to know what was really going on. And then there was the girl . . .
Ardıç had some misgivings about that too. ‘This girl,’ he said, ‘er . . .’
‘Sabiha.’
‘What if she does not believe what you tell her?’
The plan was for İkmen and Ayşe to take the key that her family would leave underneath the doormat and let themselves in.
‘Oh, she will believe us,’ İkmen said. ‘It will break the poor kid’s heart, but she’ll believe us. She’ll have to.’
The driver took them out of the tangle of the small streets of Çarşamba and drove back to the station along the western shore of the Golden Horn. Maybe it was being close to the water and the open sky above, but only once they were near to the Horn did Çetin İkmen feel as if he could breathe easily again.
Chapter 24
Both originally İzmir men, İzzet Melik and his computer support friend Şenol had a lot in common – with the exception of computers. Şenol understood them, while İzzet just got by. In discussion with Şenol about the computers at the Tulip nargile salon, it soon became apparent to İzzet that he didn’t know enough to even start to find out what Murad Emin and Ali Reza Zafir might have been looking at. And so Şenol, in the guise of a sports fan friend (which he was not) went along with İzzet when he drove to Tophane for his lunchtime smoke.
Because the Tulip was all but empty when they arrived, İzzet found it easy to engage the owner in conversation. As ever, it was about wrestling, and this time Mustafa Bey absolutely insisted that İzzet and his friend look at all the websites devoted to the Ottoman heroes of the sport on one of his computers. For a while he looked at the sites with them, getting ever more enthusiastic as he found information about more and more arcane and obscure Ottoman wrestlers. İzzet was, he had to admit, rather taken with it himself. But for poor Şenol, feigning interest in something he personally found mindless was almost an act of will too far. It was therefore with some relief that he watched the owner go to take in a delivery of tobacco and serve a few customers.
‘You enjoy yourselves, take your time, İzzet Bey,’ Mustafa said as he left the back room to go back into the salon. ‘There’s no hurry.’
But of course there was, and Şenol started the second machine up as quickly as he could once the owner had gone. İzzet largely left him to it.
‘You know what we’re looking for, don’t you?’ he said as Şenol looked from one machine to the other and then back again, pressing keys and pushing buttons as he went. ‘Evidence that someone has visited extremist
jihadi
sites,’ he added. ‘Anything extreme, violent, anti-Western, anti-democratic.’
‘Insane interpretations of Koranic scripture,’ Şenol said.
‘All that stuff.’
Mustafa was busy with the tobacco supplier, a small hunchbacked man whose complexion was very similar to the leaves he was now holding up for his customer to see. From what the owner said, it seemed very likely that he was going to personally try the product before he committed to buying. An old man who could have been his father turned up and said that he would prepare a pipe for the three of them to share. Then another man, possibly again some sort of relative, poured some tea from the samovar for the tobacco man, Mustafa and his father, then set about serving the few customers in the salon. So everyone was occupied. İzzet, though still very much on the alert, told Şenol to take his time. There was no great hurry, and so care could be taken. Şenol lit up a cigarette, and the light from the two screens bounced against the surface of his pale blue eyes. İzzet, also smoking now, began looking at the two large stacks of DVDs under the table that the computers stood upon. The first one he found was
Bambi
.
When Sabiha’s brother Emir had got married back in their old village, he had stayed on to work on their uncle’s farm. Emir’s absence had made Sabiha very sad. He had been a nice brother, generous and kind. He had even liked Sami, which was amazing given what everyone else said about him. Sami was Sabiha’s guilty secret, a neighbour who was also her boyfriend. He was a year younger than Sabiha; he was also a little simple, although not, as some said, brain-damaged. Just a bit slower than others in some ways. Sami had not been slow to respond when Sabiha had kissed him. Emir had told Sabiha that he believed she and Sami should be married. But she knew that she could never tell her father about Sami. He would not approve, especially if he knew what Sami had done. Because Sami had not just kissed Sabiha. Every time she thought about the pain and also the pure pleasure of having him inside her, Sabiha glowed with excitement.
‘Why are you going to Sultanahmet this evening?’ she asked her mother. Her parents, especially her mother, almost never went out after six o’clock. ‘Why can’t I come?’
Sami and his family were away, staying with relatives in the east. So it wasn’t even as if Sabiha could organise a secret little tryst while her parents were out.
‘Your father has business,’ her mother said as she folded the tea towels into the airing cupboard.
‘What business?’
Her father was a cook at a small restaurant in Kumkapı. He worked for a family of Armenians who, he always said, treated him very well.
‘Is Father looking for a new job?’
Her mother didn’t answer. She just kept on folding the tea towels, her face very straight, not looking up at her daughter. Sabiha gave up trying to speak to her and flung herself down on the sofa. It had been an odd sort of day so far. Her father had left early to go to work because, he said, he was doing the lunchtime shift as opposed to his usual evening slot. He wouldn’t say why, just like her mother would not be drawn about where he might be taking her for the evening. Sabiha couldn’t believe that the two of them were actually going out, as in, to a restaurant or a bar (they didn’t drink), or to anywhere that wasn’t quiet and pious and somewhere that her mother would immediately dislike. That said, perhaps her parents
were
going out for a romantic meal together after all! If she had secrets, then so could they.
Sabiha looked over at her mother and said, ‘You know, Mum, I think you’re really pretty. I mean it.’
Her mother deserved to go out. She was just as pretty as the free and easy secular women who went out in places like Beyoğlu and, to a lesser extent, Sultanahmet all the time. This time her mother did look up at her and smiled. But then just as quickly her smile fell into a cloud of tears, and with a face contorted by grief she ran out of the room. It was turning out, Sabiha thought, to be a very odd day.
‘I have done what you asked, Şukru,’ Gonca said as she stitched a hank of white horsehair on to her canvas. Some strange woman who ‘thrilled’ to her art up in Cihangir had commissioned it. A collage to represent gypsy life past. Few had horses these days, and no one still had bears.
Her brother, once a master of bears, walked into her studio and smiled. Gonca always knew that he was near, even without looking at him. They were, and always had been, practically twins. ‘What do you want, Şukru?’
He sat down in an old wicker chair that she kept over by the sink and looked at her. Her face, though still very beautiful, was pale from lack of sleep and the absence of make-up. Her eyes, he could see, were clearly puffed around the edges, where, presumably, she had been crying. To get rid of the policeman had been difficult for her. But then Şukru knew that it would be. Some years before, his wife had died suddenly and violently in a road traffic accident. He knew the pain of a love suddenly curtailed.