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'No,' she said, lifting her tear-stained face just a little, 'to Mr Yilmaz's room. We, um ...' The tears, silent this time, started flowing once again and Beikis buried her eyes in Suleyman's handkerchief. 'Oh, sirs, what must you think of me!'

Even though he knew he strictly shouldn't, Ìkmen placed a fatherly hand on the girl's shoulder. She couldn't be much more than seventeen, if that, and sadly he could easily imagine what Mr Yilmaz might have said to get this little one into his bed.

'Did Mr Yilmaz say he would help you with your career if you slept with him?' Ìkmen asked.

‘I only had to take my shirt off at first,' the girl said sadly, 'but then he said that wasn't enough and he'd only really be able to help me if I, I, oh . . .'

'He took advantage of you, Beikis,' Suleyman said with a sigh, 'which was very wrong.'

'Yes.' Feeling, quite correctly, that the inspector wanted her to get to the point of the story, Beikis pulled herself together once again and carried on.

• But you don't want to know that,' she said. 'What you need to know is about Madame.'
  

Suleyman nodded encouragingly.

'When I went to Mr Yilmaz's room, he had just got out of the shower and was sitting on the end of his bed drying riimself with a towel.' She gulped nervously at the memory of this. 'So I sat down next to him, and we, well, I don't want to say, but a little later I heard a car start. It wasn't Mr Galip coming back, it was definitely someone going somewhere. And Mr Yilmaz, who was recently given a new Ferrari by Madame, which he loves, ran over to the window to make sure that no one who shouldn't was driving his car. Madame and Miss Latife have both driven it and he doesn't like it.'

'So what was there when Mr Yilmaz looked out of the window?' Ìkmen asked. 'And did you go over there with him?'

'Yes, I did go and I did see.'

'What did you see, Belkis?' Suleyman asked, his heart now beating faster with excitement.

'I saw Madame dressed in one of her big white furs driving off in the silver Mercedes.'

'And did you see her return again?'

'No, I went up to my room soon after that. Then I went to sleep.'

'What about in the morning?' Ìkmen asked. 'Did you see her then?'

'Yes, I did, and she was crying. I heard her say to Miss Latife that she thought something bad might have happened to Mr Erol. Miss Latife had to give her tranquillisers to calm her down.' Then as if suddenly aware of what she had said, Belkis clapped her hand across her mouth. 'I won't have to speak about Mr Yilmaz in the court, will I?'

Chapter 12

The pigeon is dead

And so is my heart

His feathers are black as the night

I killed you my soul

For the love you won't share

My hatred puts daytime to flight

'. . . and on and on and on,' Tansu said as she rocked miserably about on the sofa in front of the television screen. Then, laughing, but without mirth, she threw what was left of her champagne down her throat and poured another draft half into her glass and half across the surface of the table. She wasn't bothered. As soon as she had a decent amount in her glass she drank it and then flopped back to look at the TV screen again.

She didn't hear her sister walk across the room towards her.

'Watching one of your old movies, Tansu?'

The star turned to face what looked like a smarter, more sober version of herself. 'Yes,' she slurred. ‘I like to look at myself when I was a beautiful girl.'

Latife took a few moments to view the film before saying, 'You were thirty-five in this one.'

Leaning forward with an almost demonic leer on her face, Tansu said, 'You wouldn't say that to me if I was sober!'

'No I wouldn't. But seeing as you won't remember any of this in a few hours' time, I can say what I like.' She sat down beside her sister on the sofa, making sure that she was just far enough away to be out of danger.

'I've given you and our brothers everything,' Tansu murmured as she watched her younger self run fearfully from a big man with a sword. 'Not that I resent that I would do it all again.'

'Thank you.' It was said automatically, expressing acceptance rather than gratitude.

'Yilmaz is angry that I got rid of his little girl, but I said you can fuck anything you like, you're my brother.'

'What if he wanted his freedom?'

Tansu frowned. 'What do you mean?'

Latife sighed. It was a lot like trying to explain things to a child when Tansu was like this. 'What if Yilmaz wanted to leave this house? Would you give him that?'

'But Yilmaz doesn't want to go. He hasn't got anywhere to go.'

'Yes, but what if he did have somewhere? Would you let him leave?' She looked hard into her sister's face Just at the moment when Tansu's soft eyes turned hard. 'Well?'

The voice when it came was more like something animal than human. Td throw his ungrateful carcass out without a kurus.

'Nobody uses kurus any more, Tansu, they're worth nothing.'

'Well, how should I know that?' She leaned forward, wobbling slightly at the waist. 'I have people to do the money thing, don't I?'

'You have people to do everything except have sex, drink and take drugs.'

Tansu laughed, but not out of good humour, a fact made evident by her words. 'I'll kill you for that tomorrow,' she said, 'my dear, bright little sister.'

With an accepting shrug, Latife pushed herself up against the back of the sofa and was about to close her eyes when Galip and Yilmaz entered the room. As they walked somewhat shakily across the floor, Latife thought at first that the two men were as drunk as her sister. It was not until she felt a familiar sickening flip in her stomach that she realised that they were quite sober. Another small earth tremor to add to all the others that had been occurring of late. Not, as born and bred Istanbuhs were wont to say, that it meant anything. The earth moved, it sometimes did a bit of damage, it shuffled back again and everything was the same once again. Insallah it would always be so.

As the tremor subsided, so Galip and Yilmaz regained their equilibrium.

'If this carries on, I’m going to get out and go down south’ Galip said as he picked up Tansu's almost empty bottle of champagne.

'A-a-and m-me,' Yilmaz echoed, 'I w-will Moo’

Tansu observed her brothers with a lizard-like eye. 'You'll go south soon anyway’ she said contemptuously, 'so you can spend my money on beer and foreign women.'

Galip just laughed, but Yilmaz was genuinely stung by her words. 'I-I'm going to m-my room.'

'To think about poor little Bellas?' Tansu taunted.

'Y-you t-take away everything w-we w-want!' he said, suddenly furiously angry. 'Y-you just give us w-what y-you tthink w-we should w-want!'

'Oh, is that s-so, Y-yilmaz?' Tansu hissed in obvious and hurtful imitation of her brother's impediment.

'Y-you, a-are—'

'Come along’ Latife said and stood up. She took hold of her brother's arm. 'We've all had a very upsetting time lately, perhaps it might be better if—'

'Buts-she—'

'Yilmaz! Come along!' And with that Latife pulled her brother bodily from the room.

'I was born a slave, but I will die free!' a much younger version of Tansu wailed from the television set.

The older Tansu threw what was left of her champagne at the image, laughing bitterly as the flowing liquid distorted the rosy-hued skin on the screen.

It isn't easy to concentrate on anything when one's mind is tortured by anxiety. Even the most simple task may be rendered virtually impossible. When, however, that which has to be attended to is both unfamiliar and complex, the task becomes doubly difficult. This was a lesson that Ìsak Çöktin was learning as he attempted to make some sort of sense out of what Miss Göle, the laboratory technician, was attempting to tell him.

'The principal industrial use of cyanide is in the manufacture of steel. It's used to pickle it. A by-product of this process is a substance called hydrocyanic acid,' then as if suddenly noticing the glazed look on Çöktin's face for the first time, she said, 'Do you follow, detective?' '

'Yes,' Çöktin smiled in that particular way people do when they haven't a clue what is actually happening.

Holding up a fragile glass bottle filled with an amber-coloured liquid, Miss Göle then announced, 'And this is what it looks like.'

'Oh.' Çöktin reached out to take it from her, but Miss Göle stopped him with her free hand.

'No, I don't think so, detective,' she said sternly. 'Your mind is far too distant for you to be trusted with something so delicate and at the same time so deadly.'

How right she was. And yet, try as he might, Çöktin just could not drag his mind away from the subject of Erol Urfa - or the invidious position his relationship with that man might have placed him in. Inspector Suleyman was not happy about what he perceived as partisan behaviour. He was quite correct in his assumption that that was what was happening and he was probably also quite correct in still having his suspicions about Erol. Not, of course, that Çöktin could agree with that. The whole point about followers of the Peacock Angel was that they were not wicked or profane or violent If only he could explain that to Suleyman - but then that was as impossible as it was ridiculous. It would also be professional suicide - if, of course, he had not already committed that act.

'Cyanide may be created by distilling the stones of either the plum or the cherry. Anyone who has access to distillation equipment may produce it. We here at the institute, for instance’ Miss Göle said with a smile, 'could manufacture cyanide with ease’

'I see’ Had he been listening with full attention, Çöktin would have been chilled by her words, but instead his responses were as half-hearted as his questions. 'So can cyanide be used domestically?

'You mean in the home?'

Çöktin shrugged. 'Yes.' Suleyman had used the words 'domestic uses', which he assumed meant within people's houses and apartments. Oh, if only he could just give up on Erol and let the legal process take its course like it had for every other suspect he'd ever come into contact with!

'Well, not really,' Miss Göle said as she shifted her spectacles up onto the bridge of her nose, 'although I have come across several instances where it has been used to kill pests. Rats, mice, wasps - you know.'

He wrote it all down, his pen making notes almost without thought from him.

'Usually, though,' Miss Göle continued, 'when it is used domestically, those employing it generally have some sort of connection with industry. They bring a little home from their place of work.' She smiled. 'A sort of perk, I suppose you'd say.'

'Right'

She looked down at her watch and then pursed her lips. 'Well, if that is all.

'You've been most helpful,' Çöktin, said taking her hand in his and shaking it firmly. 'Thank you.'

'It's nothing,' and with that she made her way back to the door of the laboratory and then held it open for Çöktin to pass through. 'Goodbye, detective.'

'Goodbye, madam.'

Once back out in the reception area, Cdktin looked briefly over his notes. Sketchy and half-hearted, they were no more or less than he had expected. But then with his mind so alarmingly distracted, what more could he have hoped for? There was no logical reason why he should have become so involved with Erol. After all, the singer didn't actually need to have him as an ally. It was just that as soon as Çöktin knew what he did about Erol, he felt duty bound to help. After all, did he not understand the pressures himself?

In order to assure himself that really he did not, Çöktin took out his identity card and looked at the word that was written beside religion. The bitterness which gave the lie to that word rose up within him immediately. So no assurance here, then?

No. He put the card back inside his wallet and tried to forget about it.

Although famous enough to appear regularly in most of the national newspapers herself, Tansu Hanim's family were almost totally unknown to the average man in the street. It was an ignorance that extended even to the fact of her surname which, Ìkmen and Suleyman discovered from the singer's brother, Yilmaz, was Emin.

Although considerably younger than his famous sister - Yilmaz claimed he was forty - he had neither her confidence nor her challenging demeanour. And under the sort of pressure Suleyman was exerting, Ìkmen felt that Yilmaz must soon crack.

But Ìkmen was wrong. Whenever Suleyman asked him what he was doing on the night of the murder and whether or not he saw his sister leave the house, Yilmaz just said that he was in his room alone all evening and that Tansu, as far as he knew, had stayed in also. He did not mention the servant Belkis, which - was clever, or perhaps lucky, Ìkmen thought, because it meant that Suleyman was being manoeuvred into a position where he would have to mention her. Soon Yilmaz would want to know why this questioning was necessary, and the reason, as both Ìkmen and Suleyman knew, was only hearsay.

However, recalling the rather impressive set of security measures, both human and electronic, that had greeted the two policeman at the entrance to Tansu's seraglio, Ìkmen decided to take one of his famous unconventional leaps of faith.

As Suleyman impatiently wracked his brains to think of another approach he might take to his interrogation, Ìkmen said, ‘I expect you're wondering why we're asking you these questions, aren't you, Mr Emin?'

'Y-yes, I w-was. I mean you c-come here—'

'Well, the fact of the matter is,' Ìkmen said as he looked out into the garden and then beyond at the rushing waters of the Bosphorus, 'the video tape from your sister's security system shows that she did leave this house in a Mercedes car on the night of Mrs Urfa's murder.'

'Oh.' As Yilmaz looked down at the floor, his eyes visibly filled with panic, Suleyman mouthed some very furious if unintelligible words at Ìkmen.

This had no effect upon the older man, who continued, 'And so you see, Mr Emin, if you did observe your sister leaving this house on that occasion, it would be pointless, maybe even criminal, to keep it from us. Withholding information from the police—'