Baksheesh (21 page)

“Sweetheart, I don't know what I think. I've just come from the basement where the old woman was killed. You might be right. I sat on the divan where the woman used to sit. From there you can certainly see everyone who enters the main door of the building opposite. I made one of our lads stand in front of the door while I sat in her place. He was clearly visible and you could make out the people standing on the steps. It's a narrow street anyway. The buildings are practically on top of each other so of course I could see him. I spoke to the forensic pathologist again about the time of death. He says it was between seven-thirty and nine-thirty, but probably closer to seven-thirty. Since the sun would have set at seven-thirty or eight o'clock in Istanbul on 29th August, it is indeed very likely that the old woman saw the murderer leave the building. We're working on the assumption that the murderer left when it was still light. If it had been dark, the woman couldn't have seen him, of course.”

“Great,” I said. “So you're well and truly convinced.”

“It's not a question of being convinced. The uncle and the vendetta theory got us nowhere.”

“Then you must find some new suspects,” I said, smiling. “Did the old woman have good eyesight?”

“Oh, well done you. That's a very good point. According to the grandson, she couldn't see things close up. That boy's got a good head on his shoulders – studying at university. He says his grandmother had spectacles, but didn't use them for distance because her distance vision was very good. I haven't looked into that yet. I'm taking the woman's spectacles to be analysed. If her eyesight was good, then there's no reason why she shouldn't have seen the murderer come out of the main door. In that case, our job is to find out who saw the woman and why they might be a suspect. Would the woman suspect everyone who left the building at that time? Not Osman's brothers, probably. They're in and out of there every day. There are builders on the top floor. One of your intellectual types has bought the penthouse and he's doing it up. All sorts of people go in and out of that building during the day, from the architect and owner to technicians and labourers. None of them, or anyone like them, would have aroused any suspicion in her mind. That's why I think Osman's killer was someone she knew, someone she was surprised to see in her own street. The woman had just returned to Istanbul where she knew no one apart from her family and neighbours. I'm getting fingerprints taken of everyone in the neighbourhood and all the relatives. Anyone the woman might have known. Let's see what turns up. If none of them match the fingerprints at the office, then I'll carry on with my mental gymnastics.”

“How did the killer know the woman had seen him, and why should that terrify him? Do you think the woman called out to him from the window? Or they caught each other's eye? Or that perhaps she said something to him?”

“I also got one of my colleagues to sit on the divan while I stood on the steps. The old woman could easily have seen anyone standing on the steps, but the killer wouldn't have been able to see her through the basement window so easily. That's why I think
she probably opened the window and called out. Maybe there's an eyewitness who saw her talking to the killer.”

“If anyone else gets killed in the neighbourhood, I suppose we'll know there was.”

Batuhan looked annoyed with me.

“At this very moment, the boys are going round all the apartments and shops asking if anyone saw the old woman talking to anyone after seven o'clock on the twenty-ninth of August,” he said.

“They should also ask if anyone heard a gunshot that day,” I said.

“We asked that a long time ago. Nobody admitted to hearing any shots. It's very noisy around there so it's possible for a gunshot to go unnoticed.”

Actually that was true. It wasn't hard to believe that the sound of a gunshot might get lost in the noise of Istanbul.

“I think the killer was someone well enough known for the woman to recognize him,” I said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“A film actor, singer, TV presenter or something. I don't know – someone in the media.”

“There weren't any famous people in Osman's circle, believe me,” he said, with a sideways grin. He looked at me to make sure I appreciated the burst of intelligence in those words.

“Why are you so disparaging about Osman? Anyone can have famous people in their lives.”

“Not a car-park attendant,” he said.

“But the man certainly had a spark about him. How many people start with nothing and get to own several car parks, a restaurant, café and coach company within fifteen years?”

“Oh, I see you've researched your victim well. So what else did he do? Did you know he held gambling sessions in the café basement? Or that he ran a trade in women? Did you know he had been asked to stand as an MP for UEP at the next election?”

“UEP?” I said. Some cigarette smoke went in my eye and I blinked to stop mascara running into my eyes.

“That's what they wanted. This family belongs to Van's biggest clan and Osman had acquired a bit of a reputation. If a popular clan member is chosen as candidate, it wins votes for the party. There's nothing surprising about that. Osman was keen at first. But later he probably thought his past might catch up with him.”

“I think his past was much cleaner than that of the killers, gangsters and fraudsters currently in parliament. What's a bit of gambling and pimping these days?”

“Burning down historical buildings, turning people's land into car parks, providing unlicensed weapons… I'm sure we could find more if we tried.”

He lit a cigarette.

“You owe me a meal,” he said suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him.

“Yep,” I said, “you're right, But we can't go out before Pelin gets back. Anyway it's pouring with rain. I could order some toasted sandwiches if you like.”

I wasn't in the mood for going to the fish restaurant in Kadiköy with Batuhan.

“Very well, order me two sandwiches and some buttermilk.”

As we ate our sandwiches, my mobile rang once and cut off immediately. I knew without having to look that the caller was Kasım Bey, but felt it might not be quite right to speak to a government employee whom I'd recently bribed when I was with a police officer. I decided to wait until Batuhan had left before calling him.

 

“You took your time,” said Kasım Bey. Turkish men are like that. The moment they feel the slightest bit sure of themselves, they expect people to come running.

“Yes,” I hissed, knowing it was impossible to knock manners into every Turkish man I encountered. Selim was enough for me.

“There's a complication with this apartment of yours. I went to see it today to work out a reserve price, something we have to do before the auction. Some squatters had been in there, using it as an office. Apparently one of them was killed there a couple of weeks ago. The door was sealed so we couldn't get in. I'm just about to try and get it unsealed. I thought I should tell you in case you don't want to buy an apartment where someone's been killed.”

“Makes no difference to me,” I said. I'm not known for being sentimental. “When will the auction date be known?”

“I'll put it up for auction as soon a reserve price has been set. If we'd been able to get in today, the auction would have been next week. But I'm on the case.”

“You mentioned a friend of yours the other day. What happened about that?” I asked, wanting to know how much more money he wanted.

“We'll discuss that later. Let's get this sorted first. I'll just say you should be prepared. You need to have twenty per cent of the reserve price at the ready in order to bid at auction. A banker's letter of guarantee would be better. Put your money into a dollar deposit account and get the bank to give you a letter of guarantee. That way, you'll gain on both the interest and the rise in value of the dollar in the meantime.”

Clearly, my baksheesh to Kasım Bey had not been for nothing. “How much is twenty per cent?”

“We'll do our best to keep it reasonable. After all, that's why you're taking care of us, isn't it?”

“Always lick the hand that feeds you, eh?”

“What?” he said.

I wasn't sure if that saying existed in Turkish.

“Nothing,” I said.

 

I couldn't leave the shop until closing time because Pelin had turned off her mobile and disappeared. I started reading a book,
but was bored with it after three pages. I made some green tea, which I left untouched. I even stubbed my cigarettes out after smoking them only halfway down. I was sullen to my customers. I had a terrible feeling that I'd missed something or omitted to do something I should have done. A feeling of guilt. A feeling that I'd known since childhood, that was engraved on my identity, that I'd never quite managed to escape as an adult. It burned my insides like a hidden dragon that would raise its head to spout flames at inopportune moments. Like when I entered the forbidden territory of my father's study, read notebooks I wasn't supposed to touch, and learnt things I wasn't supposed to know.

I wondered if I'd omitted to ask someone a particular question, not listened properly to a reply or not evaluated a clue well enough. Why couldn't I shake off this feeling? What could be the link between the old woman and someone in Osman's circle of acquaintances? Or was there in fact no clue there to evaluate, and I was reading too much into mere coincidence? Why shouldn't there be two murders right after one another in the same street? Why not two completely unconnected murders?

But if there was a link between those two murders?

The killer could have been someone local, as Batuhan reckoned. Or somebody famous, as I thought. A famous person that the old woman would recognize. So I was back to where I'd started – İsmet Akkan. After all, his claim to have been in a holiday village on the night of the murder wasn't enough to get him off the hook.

As soon as I realized that this was why I felt uneasy, I went straight to the phone and called Batuhan. The time had come for İsmet Akkan to be questioned by the police. Also Osman's other famous friend, the retired footballer Yalçın Tektaş.

 

You can't usually solve a crime by just sitting and thinking with your chin resting on your hand. To solve a crime, you have to go out into the street and talk to people. You have to know about
the victim's past, even his or her plans for the future. The more a detective knows about the victim, such as acquaintances, occupation and secrets, the closer that detective gets to a solution: the road to murder is paved with the victim's deeds. For instance, in the latest book I read, an old man kills a neighbour who is about to sell his garden to a construction company. The poor man wants to live out his days of retirement in peace but gets his hands bloodied because he can't bear the idea of noisy construction work going on in the garden next door. Thus, if you didn't know the victim was about to sign an agreement with a construction company, you'd never solve that murder. Yet to me, that murderer's motive was obvious, and one I'd sympathize with. Living in Istanbul, I can't understand how I too haven't ended up murdering someone. Perhaps the reason is simply that I lack the murderous gene.

Turks definitely have a poetic gene. God, how this country teems with poets! Even the most ordinary people turn out to be secret, undiscovered, misunderstood poets who thrust their leather-bound notebooks of doggerel in your face. They even take pride in presenting you with these sordid outbursts. I said poetic gene, but anyone who spends long enough in this country of histrionic poets will eventually start to write verse. Take me for instance. Was it not I who, a few days before, sat writing a poem outside the apartment where Osman was killed? Unless it was sheer coincidence that I chose to rest my chin on my hand and write a poem, it meant only one thing: I was turning into a Turk.

Yes, I was definitely turning into a Turk. I no longer spoke the truth, to avoid breaking people's hearts, ending friendships or getting myself into trouble. I would gaze at my girlfriends when they looked as if their heads had been licked by a cow and say, “I love your new hairdo.” And I'd stare at their sagging tummies when they sat down and say, “Darling, you don't have an ounce of fat on you.”

When I handed back Ä°nci's notebook of squalid verse that she called poetry, I said, “These are wonderful.”

After phoning Batuhan, I'd closed up the shop and rushed over to see Ä°nci, since I was never going to solve this crime by staying in.

“Did you really like them? Tell me the truth,” she said.

Hearing the truth is enough to break a Turk's heart. But as I said, I'm no longer as tough as Germans are. Or at least Berliners.

“They're lovely. Have you shown them to anyone else?”

“No, you're the first person to read them. I lost contact with all my friends because of Osman. I don't have anyone else to show them to.”

“What sort of person was this Osman? He must have been unbearable if he didn't let you see anyone,” I said, thinking I was changing the subject rather masterfully. Quite masterfully, in fact.

“He wasn't at all unbearable. Just a bit jealous.”

“Only a little?”

“Well, he didn't lock me up when he went out. I could come and go where and when I pleased. He used to say, ‘I trust you, but I don't trust other people. If I left you with a battalion of soldiers, I know you'd come back white as white.' He was right of course. You've no idea how evil people can be. After all, look at what's happened. They killed Osman.”