Petrified (22 page)

‘What’s best for them is if the work proceeds,’ her husband responded in a low, menacing tone, ‘which it won’t if this fucking cancer takes me away or if the police get that necrophiliac to say what he shouldn’t.’

‘Don’t use that word!’ Eren screamed. ‘Not with my babies. He wouldn’t touch them!’

‘No, but you know as well as I do exactly what Reşad is,’ Melih said as he lowered himself wearily down into a chair and lit a cigarette. ‘At least this way he’s no longer fucking the living,’ and then briefly he laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Eren, that was glib. It’s just my way of dealing with stress.’

‘I thought that was fucking other women,’ Eren responded sharply.

Melih smiled. ‘You’ve never really come to terms with my need for other women, have you, Eren?’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve pretended, joined in when I’ve wanted you to, said you’ve understood. But you’ve never really approved. Prudish . . .’

‘Shut up, bastard!’ She turned away and walked back towards the window once again.

‘Eren, if my work is to—’

‘Fuck your work!’ she screamed, her tearful eyes now beginning to drip with water. ‘Fuck you, Melih, with your ideas and your ego and that vicious thing inside you, eating . . .’

‘Eren!’ Slowly, and amid much pain, Melih rose from his chair, walked towards his wife and, once he was opposite her, he slapped her face with the full force of his hand.

Eren didn’t so much as whimper.

Several seconds passed in silence before she reached out to him and, tenderly taking his head in her hands, kissed him full on the lips. They embraced, again tenderly, Eren stroking Melih’s back like a mother gently patting her infant.

‘Melih . . .’

‘We have to get them back, Eren,’ he said sadly. ‘I’ve put too much into this to watch it fail now. I’ve worked, planned, done deals with devils. To a purpose, yes. This will be the greatest, most innovative artistic statement the world has ever seen.’ And he turned to her, his face drawn and stained with fear. ‘I hope that we might be able to trust Reşad, but what if we can’t?’

She took her head from off his shoulder and moved back so that she was looking at him. ‘But, Melih, they’re not ready.’

‘I know!’ He sighed, a jerky ill little sigh. ‘I know. But what can we do?’

Eren shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

Melih took his mobile phone out of his pocket and dialled a number on the keypad. ‘All we can do is get the children back,’ he said.

‘So that the show may begin?’ Eren said hollowly, looking out into the blackness of the garden once again.

‘Yes,’ her husband said as he placed the telephone up to his ear, ‘and we’ll all be together again.’

It was 10 p.m. by the time the lawyer, a Miss Korcan, finally sat down opposite İkmen in Interview Room No. 4.

‘As I understand it,’ she said, fixing İkmen with clear and motionless eyes, ‘there is no physical evidence which connects Mr Kuran with the possible abduction of Nuray and Yaşar Akdeniz.’

‘No, although his van is currently under analysis at the Forensic Institute,’ İkmen replied, ‘and Mr Kuran did leave İstanbul just after the vehicle was taken and against my expressed instructions.’

‘Yes, he went to visit a Mrs . . .’ the lawyer looked at her client for clarification, ‘Edip?’

Reşad Kuran nodded his agreement.

‘A Mrs Edip in Bursa, as I believe he explained to you, Inspector.’

‘Yes,’ İkmen said, ‘although quite why he would do such a thing . . .’

‘Oh, Inspector.’ Miss Korcan smiled a little, the policeman felt, shyly. ‘When one is in love . . .’

‘He’s hardly a besotted teenager, Miss Korcan!’ İkmen countered angrily. ‘And at thirty-seven Mrs Edip can’t exactly qualify for that status either!’

‘No.’

‘And besides,’ İkmen continued, ‘as Mr Kuran knows only too well, my real concern is not with Mrs Edip or any of these other details that have come to light since the disappearance of Nuray and Yaşar. What fascinates me, Miss Korcan, is why your client appears to be incapable of remembering where he went and what he did on the night the children disappeared.’

‘Ah, but the children didn’t disappear on the Friday night, did they, Inspector?’ Miss Korcan smiled. ‘Mr and Mrs Akdeniz assert that the children were still in the house in Balat on the Saturday morning.’

‘An assertion that is completely unsubstantiated,’ İkmen put in.

‘Yes. But why would they lie, Inspector? Mr and Mrs Akdeniz are the children’s parents. They love their children.’

From everything that Melih and Eren had ever said to him and from his own observations of them too, İkmen had to agree with this. And yet something wasn’t right. Kuran had left İstanbul for a reason, which had, he knew, everything to do with his van.

‘I would still like to know where you went after you visited the Akdeniz house on the Friday night,’ İkmen said, addressing Reşad Kuran. ‘You picked up a painting . . .’

‘Mr Kuran’s memory of that night is somewhat hazy,’ the lawyer interrupted smoothly, ‘as an insulin-dependent diabetic’ – İkmen looked across at Ayşe Farsakoǧlu who just shook her head very slightly – ‘Mr Kuran cannot always be counted upon to recall every detail of his daily existence.’

‘So if your memory’s that bad, how do you get and keep business, Mr Kuran?’ he asked. ‘If I wanted someone to deliver goods for me I’d want to know that person would know where he was going to, what he was doing and what he’d done.’

‘If you ask my brother-in-law—’

‘Your brother-in-law can’t remember either,’ İkmen cut in tartly. ‘I suppose that when you’re pouring morphine down your throat all day long, the world does tend to get a little indistinct. Given his past, I assumed at first that his use of the drug was recreational, but I believe it is prescribed. He must be very ill, our greatest living artist.’

‘I didn’t have Nuray or Yaşar in my van that night,’ Kuran leaned forward, speaking emphatically. ‘You can search my apartment, ask my neighbours.’

‘Yes, yes,’ İkmen said as he ran one hand through his sweat-soaked hair, ‘I agree that we may not find anything of value in either your home or your transport. But that doesn’t detract from the fact, Mr Kuran, that I can’t understand how you can be so sure you don’t know where you went that night when you are, apparently, absolutely certain that Nuray and Yaşar were not with you. Does diabetes affect only parts of the memory? Please tell me because I’m interested.’

Concerned if unfazed by the look of confusion on her client’s face, Miss Korcan said, ‘But in the face of only circumstantial evidence, all of this is irrelevant at this time. My client has admitted that he was in error when he went to Bursa to visit Mrs Edib and has agreed to stay in İstanbul until your investigations are at an end, Inspector. He has, despite the fact Mrs Edib is a married lady, given you her details in order that you may verify his story. I don’t see what may be achieved by keeping him here at this time.’

She was right. Beyond İkmen’s belief that Kuran had to be dissembling, there was nothing more to be said without embarking on the same circular argument they had been having for hours. Kuran couldn’t or wouldn’t explain why he didn’t know where he’d been on the Friday night in the apparently clear knowledge that the children weren’t with him. And until something came to light to force that issue they were at an end. Reluctantly, İkmen agreed to let Kuran leave.

Miss Korcan, pleased with what was for her a most successful night’s work, led the way. However, just before Reşad Kuran got up to follow her, İkmen leaned across the table towards him and said, ‘Where are they, Reşad? Where are Nuray and Yaşar?’

‘Wh—’ As if shocked by electricity, Reşad Kuran’s head jerked backwards, robbing him temporarily of speech.

‘I will find them, you know,’ İkmen hissed as he watched the man in front of him stumble as he got up from his chair, ‘and then I’ll come for you.’

Reşad Kuran turned and ran, his jacket hanging limply from his hands, into the corridor after his lawyer.

When the room had returned to silence once again, Ayşe Farsakoǧlu went over to İkmen and stood in front of him.

‘Why did you say that, sir,’ she asked, ‘about the children?’

İkmen lit a cigarette before replying. ‘To shock him . . .’

‘But what if he is telling the truth?’ she said. ‘What if he really can’t remember what he did? People are frightened of the police, it’s quite natural. He may have left the city simply because he was spooked.’

‘I take your point,’ İkmen said as he sat down wearily in the chair that Reşad Kuran had recently vacated. ‘But he’s a kiddie fiddler and I’m afraid I believe that once a kiddie fiddler always a kiddie fiddler. Nuray is a little girl . . .’

‘Yes.’ Ayşe, sitting opposite now, sighed. ‘And Reşad is her uncle. Surely Mr and Mrs Akdeniz would have known something. Surely, for the sake of their daughter, they would have brought Kuran to our attention before?’

İkmen shrugged. ‘He’s Eren’s brother.’

‘Yes, I know. But surely her maternal feelings for her children would override her feelings for Kuran.’

‘I don’t know,’ İkmen said. ‘To be honest with you I can’t make either Melih or Eren Akdeniz out. They live in a world that is beyond my understanding. The only thing I’m sure of is that those children are suffering in some way . . .’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it’s one of my, you know,’ İkmen gesticulated in order to get his point across to her, ‘I see things in my mind.’

‘Yes, Orhan,’ she lowered her eyes as she spoke of İkmen’s previous, deceased deputy, Orhan Tepe, ‘used to talk about it sometimes. He said that when you have these very strong pictures in your mind, you’re always right.’

İkmen smiled. ‘Sometimes. But then going back to Kuran, what did you make of his exit from here in the wake of my remark, Ayşe? What do you think, if anything, his response means?’

Ayşe drew heavily on her cigarette before replying. She was dealing with a range of emotions right now – sadness at the sudden mention of Orhan’s name, and pleasure because İkmen was now obviously beginning to trust and confide in her.

‘The fear was all over his face like a tattoo,’ she said.

‘So what do you think he’ll do now then, Ayşe?’ he said. ‘What would you do if you were him?’

He reached across the desk and picked up the receiver of the interview room telephone.

‘Well,’ Ayşe said, ‘assuming he has the children or knows where they are, I’d keep as far away from them as I could, if I were him. Maybe that was what he was doing when he went to Bursa.’

‘Maybe. But if he knows we’re on to him and the kids are out there somewhere, he’ll also know it’s only a question of time before we find them.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I think if I were him I might try to hide them more securely or even kill them,’ İkmen said as he dialled a number into the telephone keypad, ‘which is why I’m going to have him followed.’ As he waited for someone to answer he added, ‘Oh, and tomorrow I think we might go and see how Mr Akdeniz is getting on with his new exhibit. If he is as sick as his intake of morphine would seem to suggest then I expect he’s keen to finish soon.’

Yeşim Keyder walked around the body three times before she finally came to a halt and nodded her head. When she spoke, however, her cold, pale eyes remained on the young boy’s face.

‘His name is Miguel Arancibia,’ she said. ‘He was Rosita’s brother.’

Orontes, who was leaning over, peering at the side of the corpse’s head muttered, ‘Degradation. Oh, we must do something . . .’

Suleyman hadn’t seen the boy’s body before. He was both fascinated and repelled. That it could be as much as fifty years old was abominable. Death was hard to bear but he had been brought up a Muslim and so he believed that if Allah willed a thing to be so then that was that. The dead had gone, what possible function did their empty shells perform?

‘If you knew who he was, why didn’t you tell Sergeant Çöktin?’ Arto Sarkissian remarked with some heat in his voice. ‘We’ve been labouring under the misapprehension that we were dealing with a mystery here.’

Yeşim Keyder looked up from the corpse with hard eyes. ‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ she said coldly. ‘Most people in this country don’t understand or are against embalming. This absurd belief that the soul of the deceased cannot rest until the body is buried doesn’t help.’

‘That is a traditional Turkish belief.’

‘Yes, it’s ridiculous.’

Suleyman cleared his throat. ‘So what then has changed your mind, Dr Keyder?’ he asked. ‘Why share this information with us now?’

‘I went to see my lawyer today,’ the old woman responded briskly. ‘Apparently I cannot take possession of my late brother’s apartment in Kuloǧlu unless I arrange for Rosita and Miguel to be buried together. My sister-in-law added that caveat to that will without my knowledge.’

Señor Orontes looked up, frowning.

Suleyman sighed. He was going to have to take this further which – given the old woman’s level of hostility – wasn’t going to be easy.

‘I need to talk to you, Dr Keyder,’ he said as he motioned for Arto to re-cover the corpse. ‘May we use your office please, Doctor?’

‘Of course.’

‘Look, all I want to do is to arrange for the priest Vetra to come and take Rosita and Miguel away . . .’

‘All in good time, yes,’ Suleyman said as he started to move towards the laboratory door, ‘but there are some questions that I need to ask you first, Dr Keyder.’

‘What questions?’ She hadn’t moved. She was still motionless beside the corpse, Señor Orontes at her side.

‘I think if we go to the office . . .’

‘I’d rather you said whatever it is you have to say here,’ Yeşim Keyder snapped. ‘If I’m not under arrest for anything, which in view of the fact that I’ve done nothing wrong I assume I am not, then I would rather not be questioned in a formal manner.’

Arto looked across at Suleyman with nervous eyes. The younger man simply shrugged by way of reply.