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'But I don't know who her doctor—'

'Well, ask Semra Arda, she should know! Or perhaps even Inspector Ìkmen! He seems to know everything there is to know about everything!'

'Oh, right.'

'Go!' And then turning to the fuming woman in the corner, Suleyman snapped, 'And? Yes?'

As soon as the door had slammed behind Cohen, Zelfa Halman started. 'What do you think you are doing with Cengiz Temiz?'

'What?' Either through tiredness or genuine forgetful-ness Suleyman was suddenly and completely confused.

'Cengiz Temiz?' She moved towards him, her cigarette held before her like a weapon. 'You know, the man with Down's syndrome you put into the care of three characters straight out of a Lovecraft short story.'

'Eh?'

'When I arrived less than an hour ago he was hysterical, swimming around in his own piss and had mutilated himself! God knows how long he'd been like that. I strongly suspect that those cretins you had charged with his care only called me when they smelt his blood!'

'Dr Halman—'

'I'm telling you now that if the Temiz family make a complaint, I will support them.' She rudely pointed her cigarette at his face. 'I expected better of you, Inspector! You and Ìkmen are usually more compassionate than what generally passes for policemen in this bloody country.'

'Upholding prisoners' complaints is your right, Doctor,' he said. 'In Ireland—'

'Where people are frequently bombed and shot,' he looked up at her face which was now white with fury. 'Yes? You were saying?'

The switch from Turkish to English was sudden and ferocious. 'Don't even begin to tell me about the country of my birth, Mehmet! Don't even breathe about things you don't understand! There is about as much similarity between yourselves and our Garda as there is between a rock and my arse!'

'Then perhaps, Dr Halman,' he said, joining her in the English language, 'you should return to practise in the country of your mother.'

'Don't think I don't want to!'

He turned aside to retrieve a stack of files from the floor. 'If that is what you want, that is what you must do.'

As a thick, resentful silence enveloped the room, Suleyman opened the top file and made some attempt to get beyond the first sentence. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as she paced angrily up and down in front of his desk. Then suddenly and explosively, once again, she said, 'So do you want me to go or—'

'My personal feelings are irrelevant,' he answered, slipping easily back into his native tongue. 'If you are professionally frustrated here . ..'

'So you'll not ask me to stay for any other reason then?'

Anxious that those outside should not be privy to an exchange that had now taken on a personal edge, Suleyman returned to English again. 'If you wait for me to beg, you will wait a long time.' Turning aside to pick up his cigarettes he added, 'If you fail to understand then speak to your father.'

'Oh, I understand all about Turkish male pride all right!' she said as her eyes unbidden began to water. 'It fucking stinks!'

He stood up quickly, towering above what was now the shrunken figure of his opponent 'I have no more time for this,' he said. 'I have people to interview. If you wish to draft a report on Cengiz Temiz and leave it on my desk I will attend to it as soon as I can.'

'So I'll not be seeing you at the house for a while then?'

"That decision is entirely in your hands,' he said and then, turning sharply, he put his hand on the door handle and turned it.

It may have been an optical illusion but Zelfa Halman did think that she saw just a little wetness around his eyes as he moved away. But as he opened the door onto the babbling hordes outside, she flung the word 'Bastard!' at him anyway.

Those beyond the door suddenly became very quiet

Çetin Ìkmen switched the telephone off and then flung it carelessly onto the floor.

'What's going on?' Fatma said as she kicked the sheets back over to his side of the bed and turned her sleepy face up to his. 'Is it Bulent?'

'No. Go back to sleep.' He kissed her lightly on the lips and then swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he sat up, he felt his head swim with tiredness.

'get in . . .'

'I have to go out,' he said as he shakily placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit up.

Fatma opened her large brown eyes and blinked. 'Why? You're not working.'

He breathed the smoke deeply and then almost instantly clutched at his stomach. 'Someone needs me.'

'But you're not well!' She sat up, suddenly and shatteringly awake. 'Anyway, who needs you so much Çetin? At this hour?'

As he clipped his watch onto his wrist, Ìkmen sighed. 'Madame Kleopatra. It's a long story, but basically Suleyman has left her in the hamam to die alone.'

'But Mehmet wouldn't—'

'Yes, but Cohen says that he has. Dr Katsoulis is on his way but he's having to come from his home in Anadolu Kavagi. Madame is an institution, she should not die with only her nightmares for company.'

'Why should she have nightmares? She was, I thought, always a good woman.'

Ìkmen stood up and stretched, cigarette in mouth. 'When Halil and I were little, Mother used to take us to the Ìskender Hamam. It was a long way for us but Madame even then had something of a reputation. Like most women, Mother would take food, all the clothes and potions we needed for the day and,' he smiled, 'her cards. Madame lay great store by my mother's predictions.'

'So she's a witchcraft friend, is she?' Fatma said with a scowl. Despite having been married to Cretin for nearly thirty years, Fatma still did not approve of her late mother-in-law. That she had been Albanian lent her a strange 'otherness' that was forgivable. Her practiced the so-called black arts was less acceptable.

Her husband, dressing hurriedly now in the half-light from the street lamp outside, ignored Fatma's disdain, as was his custom. 'Then when Mother died, Madame played a different type of card game with my father,' he said. 'Madame, Mimi Sarkissian and Timür would play for hours for just a few kuru§ -until Madame took to her deathbed.'

'Was her husband still alive then?'

Ìkmen knotted his tie and shrugged. 'I don't know. Arto's father had died which was why Mimi used to come.' He sighed. 'I can't believe Mimi died so quickly after Timür. When Madame goes, that whole way of life will have disappeared.'

With a grunt of pain as her back creaked, Fatma hauled herself across the bed and then kneeled up to help her husband with his tie. 'You're a good man, Çetin Ìkmen,' she said, her hps a little tight around this admission.

When she had finished arranging his tie, Ìkmen bent down to kiss his wife again. ‘I am an old sinner, as well you know,' he said with a smile. And then flinging his jacket across his shoulders he crept quietly towards the bedroom door.

Fatma who had far too many children to be able to help herself said, 'Drive carefully.'

* * *

As soon as Mina Arda took her eyes off the female officer across the desk and looked at Suleyman, she started to shake. That moment when she'd first seen what had to be the most attractive customer she'd had for years now seemed very far away. Now, by sharp contrast, she could barely tolerate his voice without wanting to be sick.

'You do have a right to legal representation,' he said.

The female officer cleared her throat in a way that Mina interpreted as disapproval. Not that talk of lawyers made any difference to Mina anyway. With absolutely no assets beyond her meagre 'wages' from Mickey, she knew what type of lawyer she could afford.

'No,' she said, ‘I don't want that.'

'I should tell you,' he said as he settled himself next to the female officer and lit up a cigarette, 'that the charges against you are very serious. Your mother claims she did not know the child you appeared with on the night of Mrs Urfa's murder was Erol Urfa's daughter until she saw the broadcast yesterday evening. She says you "needed a child". Can you tell us about that?'

'No. But if you ask my mother, she will.'

'You're being very obstructive for one who is facing charges of both kidnap and murder.'

'I didn't kill Mrs Urfa! I didn't even know her!'

'But you came into possession of her child in order to fulfil some sort of need.' He flicked the ash from his cigarette into an ashtray and then leaned forward across the table. 'Did perhaps Mickey procure the child for you or—'

'Mickey has got nothing to do with it! He may be a crazy violent bastard and I hate him, but—'

'You don't need to protect him, you know,' the female officer said. 'He can't hurt you now.'

'Officer Kaya is right,' Suleyman put in. 'You must look to yourself now, Mina.'

'Look,' Mina said, tears rising in her eyes once again, 'whatever Mickey may or may not be, he's got nothing to do with this!'

'Considerable quantities of hashish have been discovered in your apartment Mickey, we know, made a call to a known drug dealer just before I entered your apartment. Together with an ampoule of what would seem to—'

'It's morphine,' Mina said and then added quickly, 'which is mine.' She sighed. 'Mickey hates children. He would have gone crazy if he'd found out I had the baby. I stole the amp from the lady my mum looks after.'

'Madame Kleopatra?'

'Yes. I thought that if I could give Mickey a little bit extra every so often it would allow me time to go and see the baby.'

'So he does take opiate drugs then?' Kaya asked.

'What do you think!' Mina then turned back to the hated Suleyman. 'Mickey isn't involved in this’ Inspector. Let him go.'

'So, if Mickey isn't involved and you did not kill Mrs Urfa in order to procure her baby, how did this all come about, Mina?'

Mina slumped her chin down onto her hands and murmured, 'Can I have a cigarette?'

Suleyman pushed his packet and lighter across the table to her. Mina lit up and then, on a sigh, she began.

'It was the fat boy who brought her to me,' she said and then, seeing the look of confusion on Suleyman's face, she explained, 'He's a client of mine. He's middle-aged, lonely and ... he says he loves me and . . . you know. He brought me the baby with some wild story about how her mother had been killed by a devil. He said that with the mother now dead and this demon or whatever on the loose, he had to put the baby somewhere safe and so he came to me. Not that I cared very much where the little one came from, as soon as I saw her, I knew that I wanted her. Just like the fat boy knew I would.'

'So how soon after that did you realise that the child was in fact the missing Merih Urfa?'

'I had a feeling when I heard about it on the radio sometime the following afternoon. Then when I saw the little one on the television . . .' She shrugged.

Officer Kaya frowned. 'How did this fat boy know, as you put it, that you, a working woman, would want a baby?'

Mina looked from Kaya across to Suleyman and then back at the woman again. Td rather tell you alone or with another lady, if. . .' She put her head down and looked at the floor.

'So do you know the name of this fat boy?' Suleyman said, quickly changing from a subject that he knew he couldn't handle to one that he could.

'Yes.'

'Well?'

Mina looked up into what seemed to her to be his hard eyes. 'He didn't do it, you know. It was as he said, a demon.'

'Well then, if it was a demon, your friend has nothing to fear, does he?'

As soon as he had said it, Suleyman realised that he had spoken in that patronising way the upper orders were wont to do when attempting to communicate with the poor and ignorant. Not that Mina was a member of the latter group, as he soon found out.

'A smart man like you doesn't believe in demons, Inspector,' she said. 'I know you're just trying to get me to deliver my friend and—'

'If you don't, Mina, you will stand trial for kidnap, at the very least, on your own.'

'And given the profile of this case,' Kaya put in, 'you could go to prison for a long time.'

'Besides,' Suleyman said as he ground his cigarette out in his ashtray, 'perhaps what your friend saw, though not a demon, was a person whose description could be very useful to us. We do need to catch this person before he kills again, you know.'

Mina took a long drag on her cigarette and then tapped some ash out onto the floor. 'The fat boy might be a bit crazy, but I definitely heard him call the demon a her.'

'So he saw a woman somewhere in the vicinity of Mrs Urfa's apartment presumably, and . . .’

'He saw her coming out of the apartment, I think. Then he went in to get the baby.'

Suleyman frowned. 'How?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, I need to know and very quickly, Mina.' Suleyman rose to his feet and walked over to her side of the table. 'And now would be as good a time as any.'

He placed his hands firmly on the table one each side of Mina's body. She cringed. Towering above her, his tall body reeking of expensive aftershave and privilege, she suddenly felt very small and very frightened. People, she had heard, sometimes disappeared in places like this. Hard-faced policemen could and did do awful things, the bazaars were full of such stories. And just because this man and his unnatural-looking woman in uniform hadn't beaten her yet didn't mean anything really. Mina felt her heart begin to pound. Perhaps she should have taken the inspector up on his offer of a lawyer after all. Not that it was too late now, but.

'I'm waiting, Mina’ he said gently, wheedling into her ears. 'If this person kills again you will not only be answerable to the law but also to Allah. You will have colluded in another death. Think about it'

'But if I say’ she said through the tears that were now spilling heavily down her face, 'you will hurt him and I know that he didn't do it. He is gentle and good.'

Pressing home his rising advantage, Suleyman placed his lips almost on Mina's ear as he whispered, 'But if he is innocent I will have no reason to hurt him, will I?'

Officer Kaya, who had been watching what seemed to be almost a seduction enacted before her, shifted nervously in her seat But neither Suleyman nor Mina paid her any heed.