Authors: Barbara Nadel
‘I know it must sound arrogant . . .’
‘Arrogant! Imagine if Diaz had come to İstanbul and offered to use his vacation to help us with some ancient, almost certainly
unsolvable crime!’ İkmen opened his mouth to speak, but Süleyman cut him off. ‘And don’t talk about DNA evidence and how it
is so useful in solving old crimes. You don’t know if any evidence that could possibly conceal DNA is still available, you
don’t know whether anyone apart
from the man who shot at us is a suspect, you don’t know how investigations proceed in this country!’
‘I know that I feel for that man,’ İkmen said. They both sat in plastic-covered armchairs in front of one of the dusty windows,
which was open to allow their cigarette smoke to escape into the frigid Detroit air.
Süleyman hadn’t wanted to make his friend and colleague feel bad. But his apparent identification with Ezekiel Goins had caused
him to embarrass both of them in front of foreigners and almost get them killed. Like it or not, what İkmen needed was grief
counselling, or at the very least someone to offload his feelings on to.
‘It is generally we old Ottomans who have difficulty talking about our feelings,’ Süleyman said as he flicked his cigarette
ash into a saucer they’d found underneath a radiator. ‘You—’
‘Yes, I know that the peasants usually express themselves very effectively,’ İkmen cut in bitterly. He looked across at his
friend, whose head was now bowed, and said, ‘You only think like this because you were married to a psychiatrist.’
Süleyman did not reply. İkmen was right, of course. It was only since his marriage to Dr Zelfa Halman that he had even considered
the possibility of talking about one’s problems as a form of cure. He also knew that by beginning to refer to İkmen as something
other, and lesser, than himself, he had insulted him. But what had been said had needed to be discussed. İkmen couldn’t carry
on projecting his own feelings on to someone who was a complete stranger in a totally foreign land. ‘Çetin, you—’
‘I will cease and desist from any involvement with Ezekiel Goins from now on,’ İkmen said. He threw his hands in the air as
he spoke, as if batting the entire subject away from him. It was a bad-tempered and resentful gesture.
‘And when we get home, you must seek some help,’ Süleyman said.
İkmen shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ He was furious. Süleyman knew the signs and so he stopped talking at that point. In many ways, Çetin
İkmen was one of the most accommodating and easy-going men imaginable. But angered or crossed, he was a formidable force,
and Mehmet Süleyman was very aware of the value of not becoming his enemy. In all likelihood, come the following day, he would
be back to his usual affable self once again. But as İkmen rose from his seat, went to his bedroom and closed the door behind
him with a bang, Süleyman did wonder whether he’d pushed his friend too far.
Grant T. Miller had all the right paperwork for the very handsome Beretta PX4 Storm Pistol he’d let off at the Turks and which
Diaz now had in his possession. And if Inspectors İkmen and Süleyman were failing to press charges – Diaz strongly suspected
that the younger one, Süleyman, just wanted to forget it all and go home – Miller was within his rights to ask for it back.
When, however, it was to be returned to him was another matter.
‘You don’t shoot at people like that,’ Diaz said into the telephone on his office desk. It was nearly nine p.m. but Grant
T. Miller had known he’d still be at work. Diaz’s colleagues were aware that he rarely went home unless he absolutely had
to.
‘It’s a US citizen’s right to defend what is his. I know the constitution’s in English, which might be a problem for you!’
Miller laughed, a bronchitic, sickly liquid sound. ‘But if those Muslims aren’t going to press charges then you need to return
my property to me, Diaz.’
Gerald Diaz knew that in theory, the old man was right. He’d shot at the Turks but he hadn’t wounded them, and they hadn’t
wanted to take any action against him. Diaz had taken the old man’s legally held gun off him more out of spite than anything
else. Grant T. Miller was a nasty racist bastard, but any proof beyond what would amount to word of mouth of current or indeed
past law-breaking by him was non-existent. So he was the son of a Jewish father who was an anti-Semite. So he continued to
openly discriminate against blacks, Jews, Hispanics and anyone else who didn’t conform to his racial-purity standards well
into black Mayor Coleman Young’s administration.
So what? Grant T. Miller was well known and feared, and that had changed little in spite of his apparently reduced circumstances.
But then Miller knew people, significant people. He always had and he probably always would. That was one of the big problems
about trying to pin anything at all on him. He was, as Diaz knew very well, extremely effectively protected.
‘Your Beretta’ll come back to you when I have time to get up to Brush Park,’ Diaz said wearily. He was tired, gagging for
a cigarette and needed to be outside if only to blow away the sound of Miller’s wheezing. ‘I do have a job I have to do.’
‘Don’t you just.’
Diaz squirmed.
‘Weren’t you up here for that drive-by on that nigger kid the other day? That was you and your little black girlfriend over
in front of the Royden Holmes House, wasn’t it?’
Diaz felt his mouth curl in disgust. The old bastard had watched them as they went about their work on Aaron Spencer’s death.
He had picked up straight away on Officer Rita Addison, young, pretty and black.
‘You banging that, are you, Diaz?’ the old man said, laughing through mucus as he did so. ‘You doing some race relations of
your own with her?’
The things he wanted to say to that toxic old man! The abuse he wanted to hurl at him! But Gerald Diaz took a deep breath
before he let himself speak, and then he said, very quietly, ‘Mr Miller, I do not have to listen to racial abuse. The city
of Detroit has standards.’
‘What, with niggers taking over every neighbourhood, dealing crack cocaine and knocking up every woman under the age of forty?
What kind of standards are they? Eh?’ Miller laughed. ‘City of Detroit has standards, my ass! That’s like saying that a whore
has got her virginity! Stop talking horseshit, Diaz, and bring me back my gun. You can drop it off when you and your little
girl come up to look at your crime scene again.’
This time Gerald Diaz didn’t take a calming breath; he just leaned in as close to the receiver as he could get and said, ‘Fuck
you.’ Miller was just starting to laugh again when he slammed down the phone.
It was only later, when he was getting ready to go home, that Diaz remembered that it wasn’t possible to see the Royden Holmes
House from Miller’s place. In addition, as far as he was aware, Grant T. rarely if ever actually ventured out beyond his front
door and on to the street.
Diaz made a detour to the ballistics lab before he drove home.
Ayşe Farsakoğlu sat on the edge of her bed and put her head in her hands. Now that the morning had come, she felt completely
ridiculous. Only nervous children got rattled by noises in the night, and she was a very competent (or so she’d thought) adult.
Her brother Ali had left İstanbul to go to Azerbaijan on business the previous morning. Travelling for his company was something
he’d done many times before, and so Ayşe was accustomed to it. As usual, she’d got home from work in the early evening, fixed
herself some supper and then settled down to watch TV until eleven p.m. She’d gone to bed tired and had fallen asleep almost
immediately.
Then, at just gone two a.m., she had woken with a start. Unusually cold and yet sweaty, she’d immediately felt her ears straining
into the darkness, scanning for sound. Quite what sound she was trying to detect, Ayşe didn’t know. But what she
felt
was a definite notion of intrusion. There was someone or something in her apartment, the lizard brain that existed at the
back of her rational mind was screaming at her. And so, because she was alone and because İkmen was out of town, she’d called
İzzet Melik, who had come from his place in Zeyrek across the Golden Horn to Gümüşsüyü immediately.
Although she had left a window open in the kitchen, no one had been into the apartment as far as either of them could tell.
But in spite of that, she still couldn’t shake the conviction that she’d been observed, her space violated in some way. As
soon as they’d
investigated every room of the apartment, Ayşe had tried to persuade İzzet to go back home. It was very late and they both
had to get up and go to work in the morning. But he had insisted upon making her tea first, and they had then talked and drunk,
and he had smoked, until just after four in the morning.
It was of course quite possible that some unknown person had been observing Ayşe for some reason. But it was, they both agreed,
unlikely. Everybody who lived in her block and in the surrounding streets knew she was a police officer and treated her with
both respect and a good deal of reserve. People from outside Gümüşsüyü were obviously unknown quantities, but Ayşe didn’t
think that anyone she could call an enemy was free and on the streets at the present time. Such offenders’ relatives were,
of course, another, if unlikely, matter. If she were honest with herself, Ayşe had to eventually concede that what had probably
unnerved her had come about as a result of her recent contact with Ali Kuban’s Facebook fan site.
Commissioner Ardıç had decided, in his wisdom, to monitor closely the traffic into this site. Kuban had been out of prison
for less than a week and the fan site was already, if without his apparent participation, doing a very great deal of business.
It was Ayşe that the Commissioner chose for this task.
Not only praise for Kuban but also fantasies woven around his old crimes, as well as some new and even more inventive suggestions
for further offences, flooded in. Ayşe, though aware of how important her part in monitoring the site was, felt sickened.
In reality the majority of those involved were probably just stupid kids mucking around. But what of the minority? What about
those who were taking Kuban’s release and a possible resumption of his ‘career’ very seriously indeed? In spite of Atatürk,
of women’s suffrage, of more educational opportunities for girls, there were still a lot of men who believed that females
were only good for housework and for sex. Any woman or girl active outside the family home was a slattern and a whore and
was therefore fair game for any passing pervert. In spite of all her
efforts to leave her work behind her whenever she left the station for the day, this particular task had stayed with her and
infected her sleep.
‘Such opinions strike at women more than men,’ İzzet had said as he passed her the glass of tea he’d made for her in her kitchen.
‘Ardıç should have given that job to a man. It is after all Vice who will take any action that is required, not us.’
‘Maybe he thought that my extra female empathy would make me more sensitive and attend to the material more closely,’ she’d
replied.
They’d talked. Then she’d started yawning and he’d suggested that they both get some sleep. She’d agreed. She’d thanked him,
apologised and then told him to go home and try to rest before work. But he’d insisted upon staying. She was still obviously
rattled and might wake again in a state of agitation. This was quite possible. She wasn’t entirely comfortable about İzzet
leaving her. But she was also very far from comfortable about him staying. She knew how he felt about her, even if they had
never actually spoken about it.
He’d looked away from her then and said softly, ‘Of course I will sleep in your living room, in a chair.’
She’d let him stay. She feared she might have insulted him by locking her bedroom door, but she’d done it anyway. Now it was
morning and she needed to go to the bathroom. But how to do that without having to pass by the living room?
Ayşe eventually rose, unlocked her door and then very tentatively put her head outside to look into the living room. İzzet,
as far as she could see, had already left. His departure left her feeling odd. In a way she was relieved that he had gone,
but in another way she wasn’t.
The conference downtown was taking up too much of the lieutenant’s time. He was supposed to be taking the lead on the Aaron
Spencer homicide, but in reality it was Lieutenant Shalhoub who was doing most of the work. Rita Addison got on well with
Shalhoub, but he was no Gerald Diaz. People liked him but they didn’t trust his judgement in the same way that they trusted
Diaz. Diaz could get people to talk to him. Over the course of many years, Diaz had made it his business to get to know Detroiters
in all walks of life. He knew politicians and gang members, charity hostesses and junkies, urban activists like Martha Bell,
fences, forgers, mad people and crack-dealers. He knew them all, and to the extent that they could, they all trusted him.
Had Diaz had his mind fully on the case, Addison knew that he would already have picked up at least a whisper about who might
have hit the young boy. But he was the key speaker down at the Cobo that morning.
‘He’s talking about managing drug-addicted informants,’ Rita told Officer Mark Zevets as they continued to search the grounds
of the old Royden Holmes place for the bullet that had killed Aaron Spencer.
‘Well he should know,’ Zevets replied as he sifted through a pile of earth with one plastic-gloved hand. ‘Diaz is the only
person I know can communicate with a junkie on a comedown without getting a knife at his throat.’
‘Trick is, I think, he likes them,’ Addison replied. Then she straightened her back and said, ‘You ever know a slug so difficult
to find as
this one? Went clean through that boy’s head and into another dimension!’
Zevets shrugged.
The search for the bullet that had killed Aaron Spencer had taken on a strange, almost mythical quality. Usually bullets that
had passed through people’s bodies were found within hours. But not this one. The search for this bullet was stretching out
into days and, according to John Shalhoub, for a very good reason. Although they were still mounting searches of the garden
and the waste ground surrounding the house, the most logical possibility was that the bullet had actually entered the property
after it went through Aaron Spencer’s skull. The problem was that the Royden Holmes House was filled with rubble, old furniture
and any number of dumped auto parts and cans of used sump oil, and clearing that had to be a job for the forensics people.
In a house that had been left derelict for so long, they could find anything, even dead bodies. Junkies died in such places;
gangs dumped their victims in them. The bullet, as far as the ballistic scientists were concerned, could very easily have
passed into the body of the house. The boy had fallen with his head just leaning against the half-open front door.