Petrified (12 page)

‘It’s very possible that the heroin drop is a bluff, sir,’ İskender said as he looked sideways at a very slightly reddening Suleyman. ‘The informant is one of Rostov’s prostitutes, so this could well be a set-up.’

‘What we’re proposing, sir,’ Suleyman continued, ‘is to stake out both the drop site and follow Rostov himself. If, as I suspect, his “work” takes him somewhere other than the location I’ve been told, we will be in a position to see why he’s hoping to divert our attention elsewhere. I’ve had contact with this informant for some time and I believe her “mission”, if you like, is to try and lead us as far away from Rostov’s business dealings as possible.’

Ardiç leaned back heavily in his considerable chair and looked into Suleyman’s eyes. ‘Why you?’ he said. ‘Why contact with you?’

In the absence of any cohesive departmental plan with regard to the gangs since the demise of the dreaded Zhivkov organisation, it was a fair question. It wasn’t, however, that easy to answer. There were several possibilities, including the notion that Masha had received her information about Suleyman from someone inside the department. Someone who could have knowledge about what Suleyman was involved in investigating. In addition, there had been some gossip about his marriage. His wife was, after all, a lot older than he.

Masha said she loved him, which had to be a lie. And yet . . . She’d thrown herself into his pleasure with abandon. Even when he’d finished, she’d continued; stroking, sucking, winding her body in an almost desperate fashion around his. The relief had been amazing, or at least it would have been had he not felt so guilty.

‘Inspector Suleyman?’

The harsh words of his superior brought him back to himself.

‘Er, I suppose Rostov must have discovered, somehow, that certain officers, including myself, have an interest in trying to control organised crime. Inspectors İkmen, İskender and myself have had some success in this area. If you recall, sir, last year—’

‘The subtext,’ Ardiç interrupted, ‘is that some of my officers are paid by and loyal to people like Rostov.’

‘Sir . . .’

‘I know you don’t want to actually come out and say that, Suleyman,’ he continued, ‘but you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. Some of my officers are in the pay of mobs,’ he shrugged, ‘I know that. I don’t know their names, but I know my department has leaks. If you know this is a set-up, you will also know that men at the drop site could be in considerable danger.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There is also the possibility of a double bluff,’ Ardiç looked at both of his officers in turn, ‘that Rostov wants you to go to the drop site and follow him while whatever it is he wants to conceal from us takes place elsewhere.’

Suleyman looked at İskender who shrugged. ‘We had considered that too, sir. But we need to make a decision. We don’t have much time.’

‘I don’t like getting involved in anything at short notice,’ Ardiç said. ‘I like to be given time to plan, which is not, of course, what Rostov wants us to do. He wants us to react. The question is, do we play his game and see what, if anything, we can achieve by that, or do we take the safe option and do nothing?’

He leaned back into his chair and puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. The two officers in front of him remained silent while they waited for Ardiç to answer his own query.

C
HAPTER
7

There were strange, unearthly figures moving around Melih Akdeniz’s house and garden. Creatures, whose sex was indistinguishable, covered from head to toe by thick white overalls. Also present were İkmen, and the beautiful policewoman he always had with him, the two of them serious and hot in their stuffy-looking business suits. Seemingly oblivious to the activity was the artist himself, who was in his garden, sitting in front of a large sheet stretched tightly between two trees. He was sewing what looked like a small jacket.

Although the people of Balat had been told by the police to move away from outside Melih’s house several times, a considerable number of them persisted in returning. Mainly old people and children, this group also included the tall and exotic figure of Gonca the gypsy, who was there with the youngest of her daughters, six-year-old Ceylan. Half hiding from what she called ‘the spacemen’ behind the folds of her mother’s skirt, the little girl looked gravely at the artist as he pushed and pulled his sewing needle through several thicknesses of plum-coloured velvet. He was a man that Ceylan knew, not a friend of her mother’s but someone who would sometimes come to the house, sometimes at night in order to share her mother’s bed. Other men did that too . . .

‘What’s he doing?’ the child asked her mother, pointing at Melih’s downturned, shaggy head.

‘He’s sewing,’ her mother replied.

‘Is sewing art?’

Gonca smiled. ‘It can be,’ she said. ‘Many things can be art. Walking along the street can be art if it’s done in the right way.’

Ceylan frowned. ‘Do you paint a picture with your feet?’

‘In a sense,’ Gonca said, and then she too frowned as she watched Melih Akdeniz break off from his labours to drink from the small brown bottle that she knew to be always at his side. Instinctively her eyes flew to İkmen, who had also been watching the artist at work.

Would he, obviously confused about the purpose of the little brown bottle, now go over to Melih and ask him about it? Well, even if he wanted to do so, he didn’t. He just stood with that slim and attractive girl and looked on, unsmiling.

Gonca, who knew only too well what the significance of the little brown bottle was, could have told the policeman all about it. But she didn’t. If İkmen was half what her mother had told her Ayşe İkmen had been, he’d know soon enough.

Melih reached down and picked up something that was familiar to Gonca from the ground beside him. He held it up just as one of the white overalled forensic technicians passed in front of him obscuring the gypsy’s view. But Gonca knew what it was anyway, and when the technician had moved away, she looked at it again and smiled. That brought so many childhood memories flooding back.

She’d come to see him, she said, because she thought they might go to lunch together. He knew she was lying. Lunch for her was a cigarette. She’d come to check up on him. It wasn’t the first time. But he smiled anyway, sent out for kebabs and settled down to the idea of entertaining his wife for half an hour.

‘So, you’re all alone in here then,’ Zelfa said as she looked around his office with critical eyes.

‘I am at the moment,’ Suleyman replied. ‘As you know, Çöktin shares with me.’

‘But not today?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re alone today?’

‘Yes.’

If the lack of sex hurt him physically, the constant questioning damaged him psychologically. In fact, the questions and the implications behind them hurt him more. The distrust, the suspicion – none of it justified – until Masha, of course. Suleyman looked down at the desk in front of him lest his eyes reveal what his mind had just recalled.

‘So are you always busy like this or do you get to actually go out to lunch sometimes?’

‘Not generally,’ he replied, still with a smile. She was fishing to see whether he would own up to having lunch with another woman. When had their conversation descended into this?

‘Oh.’

Couldn’t she see that by doing this, by pushing him away physically and by dwelling on her own insecurities, she was actually precipitating the event she was most afraid of? She was a psychiatrist, she had to be in contact with people like herself from time to time. Not, of course, that any of this excused his behaviour with that whore. Middle-aged insecurity allied to sexual problems wasn’t exactly an unknown phenomenon – lots of men had it and experienced it from their wives. Lots of men didn’t look elsewhere. He’d have to tell her.

‘Zelfa . . .’

Catching, if misinterpreting the pleading tone in his voice, she snapped at him in English. ‘If you’re going to start on about my consulting a colleague, you can save your breath.’

‘No . . .’

‘Sex isn’t everything, you know, Mehmet,’ she said. ‘Sometimes women have problems and men have to fucking wait.’

‘Yes, I know, Zelfa, and I haven’t bothered you.’

‘No, although whether you’ve “bothered” any other females . . .’

His patience, together with his brief desire to confess, cracked. ‘I don’t have to dignify that with an answer!’

As if stung, Zelfa jumped to her feet. She leaned across the desk and pointed one finger into Suleyman’s face, ‘Oh, that’s a good answer, Mehmet,’ she said. ‘Getting out of it while saying fuck all! Christ, man, you should have been a psychologist. You’ve got all the skills for it!’

‘The skills maybe,’ he countered, ‘but not the knowledge!’

‘Well, of course you haven’t!’

‘Because if I did then maybe I might be able to work out why you don’t love me any more!’

For just a moment Zelfa remained motionless. Then, as the implication of what he’d said sank in, she pushed herself away from his desk and sat down again.

‘But I do love you, that’s why—’

‘You persecute me, Zelfa!’ He pulled himself up straight in his chair and lit a cigarette. ‘With your constant suspicions, with your outbursts of self-hatred, with your contempt for anything to do with this country—’

‘I don’t want my son to forget that he’s Irish!’

He flung his cigarettes and lighter across the desk at her. ‘But he won’t! Yusuf is fine. He’s a very happy child. I too would be happy if you would just let me back in . . .’

‘To my knickers!’ Zelfa took a cigarette and lit it. She then threw the packet back at her husband.

‘No!’

‘Ah!’

‘No, I mean,’ he screwed up his eyes as the effort of trying to express himself properly took its toll, ‘of course I want to make love to you, but I want to feel that you love me.’

‘Oh, I love you, it’s just you’re—’

‘Ah, yes, of course, because I am such a huge adulterer, aren’t I? I . . .’ he took a breath, preparing himself to tell her what he knew would, despite all her protestations to the contrary, shock her to the core.

And then his office phone rang.

‘Allah!’

Under the toxic gaze of his wife, Suleyman picked up the receiver and mumbled his name.

‘Sir, it’s Hikmet, Constable Yıldız.’

‘Yes?’

‘Sir, I’m out at Atatürk Airport. I was meeting a relative, but then I saw Rostov . . .’

‘Rostov?’ The Russian’s home had been watched since dawn. How and when had he got out? Suleyman took a pad of paper out of his desk drawer and grabbed a pen.

‘Yes, sir,’ Yıldız continued. ‘I know you’ve an interest in him at the moment. I thought you’d like to know he’s picked up a very big trunk.’

‘From the airport?’

‘Yes. There’s several flights just landed. One from St Petersburg.’

‘So did this trunk come off that flight?’

‘I don’t know, sir; couldn’t get close enough to see.’

‘So where is he now then, Yıldız? Rostov?’

‘He’s still here, sir, with some airport official and this trunk. I expect it’s antiques. That’s his business, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Officially it was. However, in view of what was supposed to be happening later on that evening, this could possibly be an important development. ‘Are you able to follow him, Yıldız?’

‘Well, I suppose I could put my uncle in a taxi . . .’

‘Do so,’ Suleyman said, ‘and keep in touch.’

‘OK. But what if Rostov and the trunk part company? What do you want me to do?’

Suleyman frowned. The trunk was tempting, but in view of the fact that they now had Rostov back in their sights, he was loath to let him go.

‘Follow Rostov,’ he said. ‘As I said, keep in touch and if the trunk goes elsewhere, I’ll arrange to have it tailed. I’ll relieve you myself as soon as I can.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Suleyman then cut the connection.

‘I’m sorry, Zelfa . . .’

But she’d gone and he hadn’t even noticed, so caught up had he been with Rostov and those around him. Inwardly Suleyman winced, and when his and Zelfa’s kebabs did finally arrive, he was too miserable even to think about eating.

It was his wife, Maryam’s, birthday in two days’ time and so Arto Sarkissian used his lunch break to go and look for a suitable gift. And although he knew that Maryam would probably prefer something from one of the new shopping malls like Galleria, he found himself, purely out of self-interest, driving in the direction of the Kapılı Çarsı. Not only had he grown up going into the Grand Bazaar on a regular basis, often with Çetin İkmen, he had friends there who he knew would help him to choose wisely.

As soon as he entered Lazar’s gold shop, Arto was enveloped in a cocoon of familiar affection. Ever present behind his gold-encrusted counter, the tiny old goldsmith smiled with impish pleasure as he regarded the corpulent figure of the pathologist easing itself uncomfortably into his little kingdom.

‘Doctor!’ Lazar cried as he first pushed his spectacles up on to his nose and then raised his arms in greeting.

‘Lazar.’

Due to his size, Arto couldn’t possibly get behind the counter to get to Lazar. But the goldsmith knew this and so he came to him. And after embracing and listening to Lazar’s usual selection of traditional Ottoman greetings, Arto told him why he had come and allowed Lazar to take him through to the room he reserved for his ‘special’ guests, behind the showroom.

‘Çetin Bey hasn’t bestowed honour on this humble business with his presence for some time,’ the old man said, referring to Çetin İkmen.

‘No.’ Arto sat down on one of the red velour settees that Lazar kept solely for his guests and took off his jacket.

The goldsmith bent low in order to speak quietly to him. ‘I understand there are some problems,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘Fatma Hanım’s brother,’ he shook his head sadly, ‘cancer.’ He lit a cigarette and sighed. ‘A terrible thing.’