A Passion for Killing (26 page)

‘It’s different in . . . in our line of work,’ Mürsel replied.

Süleyman looked into the face of one of the black-clad guards – it was completely impassive. ‘Well, if it is, then it shouldn’t be,’ he said forcefully. ‘Our country is not some third-rate dictatorship, we are not some arrogant superpower! We are, Mürsel Bey, the inheritors of a fantastic civilisation and a truly great republic.’

‘Your patriotism is impressive, Mehmet Bey . . .’

‘Yes, because unlike yours it is genuine! I do not use my country as some sort of cover for . . .’

‘No, no, but of course you don’t.’ Ardıç put a steadying hand on to Süleyman’s arm. ‘That is not at issue, Inspector. No one could doubt your loyalty to your calling. But time is short and I am aware that our friends here are . . . needful, shall we say, of being elsewhere. Is there anything else you wish to ask Mürsel Bey before we go?’

Süleyman thought for a few moments about all the things one might want to ask a man who had ordered the death of his own child, but then he decided that whatever those things were he neither wanted nor needed to know about them. The only thing that remained in his mind now concerned not Mürsel but Nuri Koç.

‘Mürsel,’ he said, ‘did Emine Koç know that her brother was in the same service as yourself?’

‘She knew he was successful,’ Mürsel replied. ‘They would see each other occasionally, until the last five years.’

‘When Nuri changed, became out of control?’

Mürsel shrugged. ‘Yes. She was told he was missing.’

It wasn’t going to be easy telling Emine that her brother, who was now dead himself, had killed her husband. And quite where he was going to start on the subject of Deniz, Süleyman really didn’t know.

‘Nice girl, Emine,’ Mürsel smiled. ‘Very accommodating. Unlike Kumru she didn’t require payment.’

Süleyman felt his face go white. He did not, after all, know too much about Deniz Koç’s birth – apart, of course, from his illegitimacy.

‘You’re not saying that you . . .’

‘I’m not saying anything, Mehmet Bey,’ Mürsel said with absolutely no side or irony in his voice at all.

‘But . . .’

‘Inspector?’ Ardıç was standing now, his huge body shuffling uncomfortably about on top of his small, almost dainty feet.

‘Sir?’

‘We should go,’ he said. ‘I feel our time is up.’

Süleyman looked across at Mürsel as he sat, slumped and bloodied between his captors.

‘What will happen to him?’ he said as he looked again into the totally impassive faces of the men who guarded the spy.

‘I don’t know,’ Ardıç replied simply.

Süleyman stood.

‘But whatever it is, it was written,’ said Ardıç who was at heart a religious man. ‘Allah is merciful.’

And then without any further conversation, the two policemen left that small hidden room underneath their familiar offices and squad rooms. As the door closed behind them, Süleyman took one last look at Mürsel and saw for the first time ever that his eyes were filled with fear.

Ardıç, shuddering with either cold or fright or both, took hold of Süleyman’s one good arm and pulled him roughly along the corridor.

‘I hope never to see this place again in my lifetime,’ he said as he puffed his way back towards the stairs. ‘I pray to Allah that you never do so either, Inspector. And, by the way, Emine Soylu is never ever on any account to know that her brother was the peeper or that he arranged for the murder of her husband.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Abdullah Aydın, the only person who ever actually saw the peeper’s face, doesn’t know who he was and will be released by Mürsel’s people soon,’ the commissioner said. ‘They will make up some name for the offender in due course and young Aydın will just tell what he saw, which was very little. Soon the whole affair will have just melted into the dust.’ But then he looked up at Süleyman’s doubtful face and added, ‘Or maybe not.’

Peter Melly’s office on the first floor of the British Consulate in Beyoğlu was, though not state-of-the-art, extremely large. If one ignored the scarred and battered desk, the threadbare carpet and the rather tired decoration, Melly’s office was very grand. It had to be, İkmen felt, at least four times the size of his own humble place of business. Not that the policeman looked about at his surroundings for long. As he sat down in front of the obviously hungover Englishman, he came straight to the point.

‘Mr Melly,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you that we have only as yet managed to account for half of the money that you gave Yaşar Uzun for the Lawrence carpet.’

‘Half? What? Sixty grand?’ Peter Melly sat back heavily in his chair and then said, ‘It is safe, isn’t it, the Kerman?’

‘I have it locked inside my office,’ İkmen replied and then thought briefly about the dingy old filing cabinet the carpet was currently locked in. Hardly where a fanatic like Melly would have put it. But then, unlike Melly, İkmen didn’t want to look at the Kerman any more than he had to. There was, he felt now, something both mesmeric and wrong about the piece. Looking at it would take up far too much of his time if he allowed it to do so. The Kerman perhaps had chosen him in that negative way it had chosen Yaşar Uzun. İkmen inwardly shuddered. ‘Mr Melly, the money?’

‘Oh, er . . . Well, I don’t know,’ Peter Melly said. ‘I gave Yaşar a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. How should I know what he might have done with it?’

‘Can you think of anyone else who might have come into possession of the money?’

‘No! Why should I? I gave that money to Yaşar in good faith. I don’t have a clue . . .’

‘Mr Melly, if I were to search your house . . .’

‘Well, you wouldn’t find sixty grand, that’s for sure!’ Peter Melly cried. ‘Christ, I wish you would! I’m totally skint!’

‘Skint?’

‘Penniless. Without money,’ the Englishman said. ‘Search the house if you must, but . . .’

‘I’m afraid that I will have to do so,’ İkmen replied.

Peter Melly put his hand in his jacket pocket and took out a bunch of keys. ‘Here you are,’ he said as he threw them across the great scarred table at İkmen. ‘Knock yourself out.’

Before he took the keys, İkmen said, ‘Mr Melly, wouldn’t you like to be present at the search?’

‘No.’

‘Well, can I get Mrs Melly to come over? I understand she is staying with Mr and Mrs Monroe.’

‘That’s up to her,’ Peter Melly responded curtly. ‘She is, she says, flying home to England tomorrow. I don’t know whether she’ll still be interested in our home.’

İkmen did not reply. The look of pain on Peter Melly’s face was distracting. Whatever Melly and his wife may not have had in terms of a relationship was, he felt, far outweighed by the sheer habit and comfort – albeit probably unconscious – of their being together. That applied in even the worst of marriages and it hurt.

For a while İkmen tried to persuade the Englishman to return to his home for the search. But he wouldn’t. He was, he freely admitted, not interested. None of his own carpets even approached the Lawrence Kerman in his eyes and now that Matilda had gone he was bereft. He had ignored her for years, but now that he was truly sorry it was obviously too late. And so İkmen left and went back to the station to gather up his search team. Ayşe Farsakoğlu was the first officer he saw.

‘Sir!’ she said as she watched him slowly and wearily cross the station car park.

He took his cigarette out of his mouth and walked over to her. ‘Ayşe.’

‘Sir, we’ve had a telephone call from Scotland Yard. Mr Roberts, the owner, we think, of the Lawrence carpet, is getting into Atatürk Airport tomorrow morning.’

‘Are the officers in London satisfied that this Mr Roberts is who he purports to be?’

‘Yes, sir, they seem to be,’ Ayşe said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, sir, but I’ve offered to meet Mr Roberts at the airport.’

İkmen shrugged. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘What is one more or less greedy carpet-fancier to me?’

It wasn’t like him to be bitter. But she could see that he was depressed. Whatever had passed between İkmen and Mr Melly had obviously far from cheered the policeman.

‘I’ve told Mr Melly that we’re going to search his property,’ İkmen said as he walked with Ayşe back towards the station. ‘He’s no interest in being there and so we will briefly detour to the house of the Canadian couple the Monroes to see if Mrs Melly would like to attend. I have the keys.’

‘Yes, sir.’

And then he stopped suddenly and, looking up into the cheerful light blue sky, he said, ‘You know your Mr Roberts, Ayşe? You know what depresses me about his visit?’

She frowned. ‘No, sir.’

‘The lack of proportion inherent in it,’ İkmen said. And then seeing that she didn’t really understand he continued, ‘I can easily discover who owns a contentious and valuable carpet but I cannot seem to get any closer to whoever has taken Yaşar Uzun’s life. I’ve no doubt that the carpet dealer was a lying gigolo, but he didn’t deserve to die and I am as far, it seems, from his killer as I was at the beginning of this investigation.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I—’

‘Oh, it’s no one’s fault!’ İkmen cried. ‘It’s just . . . You know, Ayşe, when I first saw that Kerman rug all covered in filth in the back of Uzun’s Jeep, I was captivated. I looked at that dully glowing Tree of Life motif and I was hooked. When I was locking it away in my office I found myself wondering how often I would go and take sly, slightly guilty peeks at it in the days to come. But do you know I haven’t done that once.’

‘We have been busy.’

‘We’re always busy! But if I want or need to find time for something, I will find it,’ he said. ‘But with that rug, I didn’t. I put it away, I left it alone, I moved on. And do you know why?’ He smiled. ‘Because it isn’t important.’

‘A lot of people would beg to differ,’ Ayşe put in darkly.

‘I know,’ İkmen replied. ‘I know. But compared to a human life . . .’

‘Oh, compared to a human life it is nothing,’ Ayşe said. ‘That is self-evident.’

He put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘You’re my kind of person, Ayşe. You’ll probably never be rich, but . . . Oh, come on, let us get some young, energetic types together and go and search Mr Melly’s house. It will yield absolutely nothing, but . . .’

She was, she said, packing to go away on a short holiday.

‘It’s all been so horrible and I’m so tired,’ Emine Soylu said as she led Süleyman into her elaborate but strangely impersonal living room. ‘Please sit down, Inspector.’

He went to where she had indicated and, being careful not to knock his injured arm or shoulder as he did so, he sat down. Now that he was here, he was nervous. Although how he might have felt had he been obliged to tell her the whole story of her husband’s demise, he didn’t know. Statements taken by İzzet Melik now from several members of staff at the Perihan Hanım Institute in Van left little room for doubt with regard to the fact that Cabbar Soylu had ordered Deniz Koç’s death. A male nurse was actively being sought in connection with the crime. However, with regard to who had killed Cabbar Soylu the picture was complicated by the fact that Nuri Koç’s name was never going to be allowed to come out into the public domain. The offender was dead and the official line was that he had been a particularly disturbed vagrant. This was the story that Süleyman dutifully told Emine Koç now.

‘You shot him yourself?’ she asked as she looked at his injured right arm a little doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘We fought, which is where this injury has come from, but then I managed to get hold of my gun and that was, well, that was the end . . .’

‘You did a good thing,’ she responded forcefully. ‘Such people do not deserve to live!’

He wondered whether, had she known the truth, she would have felt the same. But then he didn’t know whether she had loved her brother Nuri or not. He had, in his own way, loved her.

‘This is good news,’ Emine Koç said as she lit up a cigarette and then leaned back in her chair. ‘Now perhaps Rahmi will stop chasing shadows.’

‘Your son looks for reasons, revenge . . .’

‘Cabbar’s son, as he never tires of telling me these days, looks for vengeance, yes,’ she replied. ‘It is almost as if my marriage never existed, as if I am nothing.’

She stared straight ahead of her, the intensity making her face look both very old and very young and vulnerable at the same time.

‘And yet you are financially secure?’ He still baulked at moving on into the subject of her real son even though he knew he had to get to Deniz eventually.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Rahmi of course has money, but this house is mine, I have other means provided by my husband too. He was a good husband.’

Süleyman smiled, but out of nervousness rather than joy. Emine Soylu had loved her husband. He had provided well for her and, Süleyman felt, in his own brutal way had cared for her too. But things were going on right at that moment in Van and Hakkari which meant that not telling Emine what her husband had done was not a viable option.

He leaned forward in his over-stuffed seat. ‘Mrs Soylu,’ he said gravely, ‘there is no easy way to tell you this . . .’

‘What?’ Sitting forwards again, her eyes were awash and glowing with fear. ‘What do you have to tell me? What?’

‘Mrs Soylu, we have reason, strong reason, to believe that your late husband Cabbar Soylu was responsible for the death of your son, Deniz Koç in 2003 . . .’

‘What?’

‘Mrs Soylu, your son Deniz was living at the Perihan Hanım Institute in Van . . .’

‘Yes. Yes, but Deniz died. They think that he may have taken his own life. They do, people like Deniz, he . . .’

‘Mrs Soylu, I am very sorry,’ Süleyman said, ‘but I would not be telling you this unless we had enough evidence to at least begin an investigation. My sergeant is currently in Hakkari, helping the authorities there pursue the man your husband instructed to kill Deniz for him.’