Baksheesh (26 page)

“Selim Bey is a man I really trust. I'll do whatever I can for you. If Selim Bey asked me for a million dollars, I'd give it to him without any kind of receipt. You must excuse me, but when I'm angry, I get carried away. I have high blood pressure, diabetes, the lot. My doctor says I have to lose weight. ‘Those baklava and pastries are poison,' he says. But it's what we put down our throats that keeps us alive. I know I shouldn't eat that stuff, but I can't help it. A kilo of baklava at one sitting has no effect on me. They never rot my teeth. I've banned my missus from making desserts and pastries at home. My missus is Albanian. The naughty girl makes leek pastries so good you want to eat your fingers too. And they have this dessert. Do you know it? It's called
kaymaç
. Of course you don't. Why would you? Like crème caramel, only better. Oh my God, it's delicious! The wife doesn't make it at home. But what happens? The kids go out and buy it, so I still eat it. Tch!” he said, pretending to spit at his belly. “The fatter I get, the more I swell up. My doctor worked out a diet for me. I'm supposed to eat two pieces of cheese the size of a matchbox in the morning, but I eat a kilo of the stuff at one sitting. So what am I supposed to do with those little bits? Am I supposed to measure out cheese in little pieces as if I lived in an orphanage? But I must have cut down on what I eat and drink because I've lost three kilos in three weeks.”

My brain sometimes goes numb when I'm talking to Turks.

“Can we get back to the business of land allocations?” I said.

“Yes, sorry about that. As I said, you have to talk to one of the party elders and get him to deal with the District Council. In Beyoğlu, they have a majority in the District Council so it's no problem. That can be sorted. The Council meets twice a year – in October and June. It would be difficult to get anything done in time for the meeting next month. There isn't time. But if you're interested, I'll find out where the council plots are and who can sort it out. Let's see if we can get something done by June. But as I said, these men won't allocate anything to us that might be profitable for them. They keep that for themselves.”

“Are you going to talk to the Council Chairman?”

“No, I wouldn't go directly to the Chairman. He doesn't get involved in things like this.”

“What kind of things does he get involved in?” I asked, just out of curiosity.

“They say he's set up a team. There's Fevzi Bey who is head of the Historical Works Foundation, our Chairman and a building-contractor friend of theirs. The three of them work together. They select buildings in high-rent areas. For instance, here on Ä°stiklal Caddesi, there's a big Islamic charitable centre dating back to Ottoman times, which the Historical Works Foundation has decided to turn into a hotel and our Council Chairman has approved the plan. Is it right to turn a great Islamic charity centre like that into a hotel? But it's happening. And who do you think is going to build the hotel? Tarık, the building contractor of course. They'll divide the money they make from it three ways. That's how this business works. They're going to plunder something that was built and maintained by the Ottomans for seven hundred years. It makes me furious. The poor orphans have rights too. These men are such crooks.”

“Who are you presently in contact with?” I asked, congratulating myself on my subtle tone.

“The Council Chairman has a right hand man, his Vice-Chairman, by the name of Temel. We call him Chief because that's what Temel means. He's from the Black Sea region. I talk to him.”

I think the colour of my face must have turned yellow, red or something in between – maybe orange.

“Temel?” I said, with a gasp as if I'd just run 1500 metres in under four minutes.

“Temel Ekşi. He's the Council Chairman's number one man. Everything ends up with him. The Chairman wouldn't get involved personally, anyway. This Temel used to be a building contractor. That's why I say, whenever there's land for allocation in a good area, it gets earmarked for them. I'll ask my boys if any allocations are due to come up.”

“Actually, I was just asking. I'm really thinking more of the bar business. I don't understand much about the construction business,” I said. “What's this Temel like?”

“Before the twelfth of September coup in 1980, he was into all sorts of things. He and his mates used to go out hunting leftists, but they stopped after the coup. He's still more of a nationalist than an Islamist. His relationship with me is even better. Temel's the only one there worth talking about.”

“Does he go around armed?”

“Those people never go around empty-handed. The worst is when they carry a sawn-off shotgun. They cut it down so that it fits easily into a pocket. The ammunition's cheap. The Islamists use that type of weapon. But Temel isn't like that. He's interested in firearms. It's his hobby and he has a collection at home. He carries a gold-butted magnum. It's a fantastic tool. A fight broke out at our restaurant once when he was there and he let them see it. Just let them see it, didn't draw it. He said, ‘If I draw this, I won't put it back without firing.' That's the kind of man he is. Likes a drink too. He's different from the others. ‘How come
drinking is forbidden when it's in all the literature?' he says. ‘The Prophet banned drink for people who don't know how to handle it.' I think he's right.”

My back had begun to ache. It must have been psychological. I looked at my watch.

“I have to go now,” I said. “I'll get back to you when I decide whether to pursue this bar business or not.”

“You should have had something to eat. We didn't offer you anything,” he said. Another example of traditional Turkish charm! I ask you, what German would insist on trying to make a guest have something to eat? Merely offering a coffee brings them out in a cold sweat.

“Thank you, but I ate before I came,” I said.

“Give my best regards to Selim Bey. He hasn't called me for ages. We must go out for a drink one evening,” he called out after me.

I didn't go back to the shop, but bought a spicy sausage döner kebab, the latest Turkish delicacy, and went home. By the time I got there, the grilled sausage inside the bread was stone cold and the fat had congealed. The bread was saturated with orange-coloured fat. I tossed it into the bin without even tasting it, made some green tea and sat down at my desk to make a list of the things on my mind. At the top, I wrote down the question that intrigued me most, even though the answer appeared to have nothing to do with everything else that had happened:

I had a few more questions about İnci that were waiting for answers. For instance, Hafize Hanım. The woman who was supposed to be helping İnci with the housework. For some reason I felt uneasy about her.

The shared past of Habibe Büyüktuna and İnci.
This was also bothering me. One of the women was lying about how the relationship between Osman and Ä°nci had started. Why? Which one of them was it? I thought about it for a while and then decided the answer to that question was not going to help me solve the murder. After all, I was looking for a murderer, not a liar. I crossed out that question.

Ä°nci's married lover.
I was pretty sure his name had three letters, but couldn't remember exactly what it was. Never mind. I had a vision in my head of how a scenario with him might have played
out. Osman found out about this lover and summoned him to his office. In the fight that ensued, Osman ended up getting shot. However, this didn't make a lot of sense, because the picture İnci had drawn of her childhood sweetheart, the engineer and teacher's son, just didn't fit – a bit of sociology was required here. And something else: if even engineers and teachers' sons couldn't venture out into the street without a Magnum in their pockets, then this country had become a place I shouldn't remain in a moment longer than necessary. If I'd known such things went on here, I'd have pursued my career as an amateur detective and bookshop proprietor in America. It would have made no difference to me.

Another factor that spoiled this scenario was the old woman. I had simply no idea how she fitted into the picture. Even if the married lover was aware that the old woman had recognized him, what could she have said that necessitated her being killed?

Furthermore, what was the point of doing away with a man whom Ä°nci only saw intermittently? Surely he'd realize what harm it might cause her. The pathologist had admitted to being unconvinced that the bullet was intended to kill Osman. In which case… Yes, in which case the teacher's son had just wanted to send a message like, “Watch your step or your life won't be worth living.” He couldn't have known the bullet would exceed his intentions in the way it did.

Osman's brother Özcan.
Why wasn't his name on the list of cooperative partners? Could this have rocked his relationship with Osman? Maybe they had a big row and Özcan reached for his gun. After all, if Özcan was to take over running the business after Osman's death, it meant he had something to gain. It was certainly a mighty motive.

Something else not to be ignored was that the old woman probably knew Özcan. If she'd seen him leave the building looking dazed with a gun in his hand, it would have meant she'd signed her own death warrant. It was quite possible Özcan would have
rushed out into the street with the gun in his hand if he'd shot his brother, because he would have been terrified. For the old woman to think he was the murderer, she must have seen him throw the gun down. I could think of no other alternative.

Council Vice-Chairman Temel Ekşi.
He'd arranged for a land allocation to be made to Osman's cooperative, but hadn't managed to access party funds for the money to pay for it. The party leaders were giving him a hard time, and he'd kept phoning Osman to pester him for money. He'd even been round to Osman's office. That day when Osman had half-suffocated me at the door of his office, the mysterious voice I'd heard calling out could well have belonged to Vice-Chairman Temel. The reason he hadn't come out to see what was going on was that he thought I might recognize him.

He would also have been uneasy about the old woman if she'd seen him from her window on the day of the murder and he wouldn't have been able to get her out of his mind. But I'd failed to find a motive for Temel. What would he have hoped to achieve by wounding (not killing!) Osman? He would have wanted Osman to have two good legs so that he could earn money to pay off his debts. Then I remembered that Turkish men don't think logically like me. If it was Temel, he would have fired in a moment of rage, because having drawn his gun he couldn't put it back without shooting. Why? Because he was a man's man. A prime specimen of a man. A Turkish man.

Ä°smet Akkan
. I'd delegated my questions concerning this once-famous film actor to Batuhan, so I just wrote his name down and nothing more.

The former footballer
. I didn't even write down his name. Sometimes it's best to trust one's instincts. Actually my instincts about murderers, as distinct from my instincts about men in general, had proved to be somewhat wanting in the Kurt Müller murder case (see my previous adventure). Nevertheless, I decided
to follow them again. I'd sensed he had nothing to do with the murder right from the start.

I lit a cigarette and read through my notes. They weren't very long.

Then I went for a shower. My stomach had shrunk from hunger. I decided to stop off at the Bambi Büfe before going to see the concierge at İnci's apartment building.

 

I ate a
kumru
sandwich. I think it would have been better if I hadn't. Not my thing. Certainly didn't take the place of a couple of well-browned toasted cheese sandwiches. Still, I was trying to eat a balanced diet. That's why I stuck it out with the
kumru
, consisting of salami and different types of sausage, all for the sake of the Vitamin B12 that's found only in meat. There are so many varieties of Vitamin B, each with its own number. Very confusing. If they have to put different numbers after the B, why not call one Vitamin T and another Vitamin Z? I don't understand it. We're expected to have a balanced diet, but everything is so complicated.

I got stuck at the countdown traffic lights at Taksim Square. But there was no rush. I waited calmly for the forty seconds it took for the lights to turn green. I had no idea of the best time to go chatting to a concierge. We didn't have one where I lived. This was considered disastrous by my middle-class Turkish friends. Yılmaz, for instance, thought it extremely odd. “So who puts the rubbish out?” he asked once, biting his lips in amazement when I replied, “I do. There's a rubbish bin at the end of the street.” Recently he asked, “Still no concierge?” and looked at me in disbelief when I replied, “Do you have to employ someone just to throw out the rubbish and wipe the steps down once a week, for God's sake?”

Actually, I do have a cleaner once a week. But that's not quite the same thing, is it? In my fervent left-wing days, I was opposed to paying anyone to clean up my mess. But my mother always had a cleaner, so it was inevitable that I would as well. At one time,
I even went as far as getting friends to give me haircuts, like my mother did. It was amazing that I ever managed to get a lover.

 

I didn't want to park in the grounds of Ä°nci's apartment block, so I drove round the streets of Etiler looking for a parking place. I needed to be careful because I didn't want Ä°nci to look down from her balcony and see me getting out of the car. Like a spy. Since I was going to interrogate the concierge.