Baksheesh (29 page)

“I agree,” I said.

“So what's your theory about that?”

“That Musa didn't follow Ä°nci,” I said.

“And?”

“Osman's brothers threatened her and got her to talk. Either that or they offered her money. I don't really know, but it was something like that. She was afraid that if any one of her lovers was exposed she'd be ruined. Push her a little and she's sure to give you the name and address of the teacher's son. After all, he won't go to jail for murder,” I said and stopped suddenly. “Hang on, you're not torturing this woman, are you?” I asked.

“Are you joking? What torture? We live in a constitutional state and we're currently preparing to go into the European
Union. Do you think we still use torture? Is that what you think?”

“No, I don't,” I said, but I still scrutinized his face carefully. I didn't trust this police state.

“So, what about the child's father?” asked Batuhan.

“The maid says it's not Osman's. I don't know. Nobody knows. How are you going to find out something like that?”

“What makes you say it's not Osman's?”

“Ä°nci has given up the idea of pursuing a paternity suit. She went to see a lawyer a few times, but in the end did nothing. The maid must have known what was going on from Ä°nci's telephone conversations,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Phew! What bastards. And she's pregnant, too. Tuh!” he exclaimed, pretending to spit in the face of Ä°nci and her different lovers.

“I spoke to Temel Ekşi,” he said, pulling a face as if he had just eaten a whole lemon.

“Why?” I asked.

“His number appeared frequently on Osman's telephone records. I went to the Council to see him. He said nothing about this land allocation business. He just said, ‘I know Osman. He has a car park in Beyoğlu and wanted another place for a car park in Kasımpaşa. We spoke several times recently.' It all sounded reasonable to me, so I left. What else could I do?” he said, putting his head between his hands. Then he looked up at me and said, “We're getting close to the end, aren't we?”

“I don't know. Are we? Were there any fingerprints on the knife that killed the old woman?”

“You've touched on a very good point. Very good. Bravo!”

“Why?”

“There were no fingerprints,” he said in a way that made me think there was something else.

“So what was there?”

“A strand of hair in the woman's hand. As the knife was going in, she must have grabbed at the murderer's head and plucked out a hair.”

“Whose was it?” I asked, excitedly.

“We're looking into it. Samples have been taken and they're looking for a match.”

“Who did you take samples from?”

“Everyone. As I said, everyone's still a suspect.”

“Temel Ekşi?”

“No, we didn't take a sample from him. Until talking to you, I… I don't think he would consent anyway. We'd have to have a very good reason. Other than the phone conversations, there's no evidence against him, so it would be difficult to persuade the prosecutor. We'll see what happens.”

I looked at my watch. Time was flying and I needed to leave immediately.

“One other thing,” I said. “They're all cooperative founder members apart from Özcan. Osman made everyone else in the family a partner, so why not Özcan? Don't you think that's odd?”

“It is odd,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “Very odd.”

“Also, the family ganged up to pin it on different people, starting with the uncle, then Ä°nci and even me. They're just trying their luck.”

“But they didn't get anywhere with you,” said Batuhan.

“What do you mean? They took my statement at the police station, didn't they?”

“OK. Let's clear this up. You told those men your father was Minister of the Interior, didn't you?”

“My father's dead,” I said.

“But they didn't know that. You must have scared the wits out of them.”

I crossed my legs, swaying the upper leg back and forth. It
always pleased me to think that there were people who were afraid of me.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“I'm going to seek consolation in my wife's arms,” he said.

I stared at him wide-eyed, couldn't help it. I was no longer swaying my leg, as you can imagine.

“I have no wife,” he said. “I mean it! I'll show you my ID card, if you want.”

What did it matter to me if Batuhan had a wife? What do I care about people's marriages? Or whether they are married or not?

“Show me,” I said.

He emptied the contents of his pockets onto the table. Wallet, keys, a half-empty packet of tissues, a ballpoint pen and notepad with curled-up edges. His mobile, cigarettes and lighter were already on the table.

“What is it?” I said.

“I don't have my ID on me,” he said.

“I don't believe you,” I said. “Look inside your wallet.”

He opened each pocket of his wallet. Unfortunately, there were only a few coins in it. Life's tough for state employees in Turkey.

“Fine, you can bring it next time we meet,” I said.

 

The dinner that evening was a great success. Firstly, Belkis Hanım, Selim's mother, loved the present. Secondly, all Selim's relatives were there and nobody expected me to say a thing. I even scored a few points by not speaking unless spoken to. That way, I created the impression of being a serious, respectable and enigmatic woman. Turks love that sort of thing.

Selim, of course, suspected something. As soon as we were in the lift, he asked why I was like “a nightingale that's eaten a mulberry”. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. I'd never heard that saying before. It was an interesting metaphor. Apparently it's used when a normally talkative person, like me, remains silent.

“My head's in chaos,” I said. “
Tohu va vohu
.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means ‘chaos',” I said. “It's in the Torah. Book of Genesis, second sentence. In the original Hebrew text, it's used to describe the state of the world before God began to create order. When the Torah is translated into other languages, all sorts of adjectives are used for
tohu va vohu
. For instance, the earth was ‘desolate and void', ‘formless and void', ‘disorderly and void', the earth was ‘void and its surface formless'. But what it really means is that the world was in chaos.”

“My chaotic Torah-quoting darling,” he said. “What was it? Tohutu what?…”

“
Tohu va vohu
. It's not me that's chaotic, it's your country.” He drew back my hair and kissed my neck. Why don't men take women's intellectual and political concerns seriously?

“So, Frau Hirschel, what is it that's so chaotic about our country?” he asked, putting his arm around my waist and pulling me towards him.

“This murder for a start,” I said.

He was playing with my hair.

“True,” he said.

We reached the car park level and got out of the lift.

 

As we drove to Selim's apartment, I told him some of what had been happening. He listened to me without saying a word. I told him the rest while we were sitting on the sofa having a brandy.

“So what's the problem now?” he asked when I'd finished.

“What's the problem? What do you mean?”

“What's bugging you?”

“I'm wondering if in fact the murder had nothing to do with Temel Ekşi and if Osman's family planned the whole thing. They may have got Özcan to commit the murder because he was still a minor and would get off with a short sentence. The old woman's
murder was then unavoidable because she would have seen who Osman's murderer was. Or there's another possibility: Özcan was angry because he wasn't a founder member of the cooperative, so he went to discuss it with his brother and a fight broke out. The family know that Özcan is the killer but won't hand him over to the police. That seems more logical.”

“Not really,” he said. “It's not logical at all unless there was another reason for hostility between Özcan and his brother, other than the fact that he wasn't a member of the cooperative.”

“What do you mean?”

“If, as you say, Özcan is a minor, he can't be a founder member. Founder members have to be over eighteen. He could be a shareholder through a guardian, but not a founder.”

My eyes were burning, as if I'd rubbed pepper into them.

“Say all that again,” I said.

He repeated what he had just said.

What a wonderful thing it is to have a lawyer as a lover. Such useful people, lawyers. And what a good lawyer he was to have his girlfriend's name as his email password. Lovely man. The solution to some things is so easy. Love a lawyer and learn how many little things get overlooked by ordinary people. So Özcan wasn't hostile towards his older brother. Or if he was, there was nothing in the information at my disposal to tell me that. So who did the hair found in the old woman's hand belong to? Temel?

 

When I woke up, Saturday morning had come round again. I left the house without waking Selim. I could never understand how a person who woke up at seven o'clock every weekday without fail could stay in bed until noon at the weekend. I didn't have a single outfit at Selim's place that was suitable for going to meet Yılmaz at Firuzağa, so I had to go home first to get changed.

Pelin was asleep. I went into the study and looked to see if there were any voicemails. The light was blinking. My landlady
had called to remind me about the refuse-collection tax. That woman was a serious head case. I'd already paid it, together with all the previous years' bills.

No one else had called.

As I was putting on my trousers, my mobile rang. I knew who it was without looking. It was Batuhan.

“The pathologist's results have come through,” he said.

I swallowed hard.

“Who?” was all I could say.

I heard the sound of a lighter down the phone.

“It doesn't match any of the samples we have,” he said.

“Did you take a sample from Özcan?”

“We did. I stayed awake all last night thinking about your theory. It certainly seemed plausible. But as you know, these things are never cut and dried. We're having to go back to trial and error methods. There's not a shred of substantial evidence. Let's see if Temel Bey will consent to giving us a sample. I've spoken to his colleagues in Beyoğlu. Your Temel is a very colourful figure. They say he always goes around loaded. Has a gold-handled Magnum that he's very proud of. Apparently he struts up and down Ä°stiklal Caddesi like a cowboy and has previous form for wounding a policeman outside the French Cultural Association.”

“Is his gun unlicensed?”

“I had a check done and he certainly has a licence for one gun, probably the gold-handled one. But that wasn't the gun used to shoot Osman. However, guys from the Black Sea region are mad on guns and he's bound to have others. I just called to let you know. Let's see if anything comes of it this time. If it does, I'll owe you a big thank you.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “It's my duty as a citizen.” Before putting down the phone, I couldn't help asking, “Did you find out who the father of Ä°nci's child is?”

“We'll talk over dinner,” he said.

I told Selim a lie on Wednesday evening as I was leaving to meet Batuhan. I wasn't going to tell the world I was having dinner with a police officer, let alone someone in the murder squad. Especially not my lover!

We went in Batuhan's red car to his newly discovered kebab house. After passing through the strange back streets of Aksaray, we suddenly came out at the waterfront. Istanbul is so big, even the people who live here can't be expected to know every district, especially someone like me who became an
Ä°stanbullu
late in life. Moreover, what would anyone interested in the beauties of Istanbul look for in that district? Its single item of beauty is the Aksaray mosque, which also bears the name of a woman called Pertevniyal Valide Sultan. Actually, looked at closely, this mosque is indeed beautiful. It's the most decorated of all Istanbul's mosques. However, if I had to pick a mosque whose beauty made me tremble inside, my vote would always go to the Sülemaniye Mosque. Designed by the architect Sinan on one of the seven hills of Istanbul, for me it remains without equal on account of the way it harmonizes with nearby edifices such as that centre of human sciences and scholarship – Istanbul University – and the way it dominates the city's historic peninsula.

 

Batuhan's kebab house was in a district close to Aksaray called Samatya, where I had spent several Sundays strolling through the
streets during my fifteen or so years of living in Istanbul. Samatya is one of Istanbul's lovely old neighbourhoods. The delicious meze and pitta bread covered with well-seasoned mincemeat, known as
lahmacun
, certainly matched the beauty of the surroundings. However, by the time the kebabs arrived, I found our topic of conversation had made me lose my appetite.

It had been established that Temel Ekşi was the murderer of the old woman. The hair found in her hand matched the sample taken from Temel, who had at first denied everything, but in the end admitted to killing the old woman.

I obviously needed a little time to digest this. It meant I had indeed solved the murder! There was no need for modesty. It was definitely me who had solved it. I looked at the man sitting opposite. He was busy spreading some spicy dip on a piece of bread. Did he really think there was nothing to connect two murders that had been committed in two buildings opposite each other? Was he never going to reach the same conclusion as me?