Dance with Death (15 page)

‘And Baha, you should go too,’ he continued.

Stepping back a little from the centre of the conflict, Altay Salman said, ‘I think that Hakan Bey has made a very good point, friends. Now . . .’

But Turgut Senar was already walking out of the door and into the street. Baha Ermis opened his mouth in order to have the last word only to be silenced by Altay Salman.

‘If you say anything or follow him I’ll arrest both of you!’ he hissed. And grabbing hold of Baha by the scruff of his neck, he threw him towards the entrance before going back to sit down with İkmen. ‘That’s the only trouble with the country,’ he said. ‘The people.’

‘Altay, how did Baha know so much about the tests on the body?’ İkmen asked. ‘You said he doesn’t come in to town that often.’

The dashing captain shrugged. ‘Maybe Haldun Alkaya went and boasted to Nazlı Kahraman about the tests when Baha was in her house. Haldun’s accused the old woman of being directly responsible for his daughter’s death on many occasions. And now with the baby . . . Or maybe that idiot Erten told someone else, someone he shouldn’t have, and word slipped out. Or perhaps some nosy constable overheard our conversation in the mortuary. Who knows?’ He shrugged. ‘Anything is possible out here. What do I know? This is vendetta land where all the inbreds with two heads and a hump make it their business to know everything – and keep the city folk at arm’s length while they do so.’ He lifted up his glass to the barman and indicated that he wanted another rakı. ‘Will you join me?’ he said to İkmen.

‘Only if I can have a double,’ İkmen replied.

As if to symbolise his split from his troubled past, Turgut Senar had chosen to live in a modern apartment on the edge of the village as opposed to one of the chimney properties up on the hill. It hadn’t always been so. When his father was still alive he had been happy to live with his wife and daughter at home in his parents’ chimney. But when his father died at the same time as all the trouble over Kemalettin and the Alkaya girl, Turgut decided to move his own family out to a new apartment at the bottom of the valley, to a less oppressive atmosphere. Of course his ‘new’ property was not as picturesque as his parents’ place, but it was more convenient for the bus station and the tourist office and it also meant that his daughter Zara was protected from her strange uncle Kemalettin’s offensive behaviour. Though of course the girl could still see him out and about in the village just like everyone else, as Turgut was doing now.

Lurking in the doorway of the now defunct Bellydance Bar, which was almost opposite the Red Dragon, Kemalettin Senar was smoking a cigarette with one shaking hand whilst stroking his penis with the other. Turgut, still angry at Baha Ermis as well as the world in general, walked over to him and ripped his hand from his member with some ferocity.

‘Put yourself away, you disgusting animal!’ he said as he roughly zipped his brother back into his trousers.

‘But now that Aysu has gone I have to pleasure myself,’ Kemalettin said as his eyes began to water with tears. ‘I like sex . . .’

‘Then why don’t you go to one of the whores at the Anadolu Pansiyon?’ Turgut replied, naming one of the very thinly disguised brothels at the western end of the village.

‘They’re Bulgarian,’ Kemalettin began.

‘So? If it’s money you’re worried about . . .’

‘No. No, I just want Aysu,’ he said. ‘I want to feel myself inside her body.’ Kemalettin began to cry.

Turgut leaned in closely to him. ‘But Kemalettin, it’s all in your head, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘You never had sex with Aysu.’

‘Yes, I did! We had sex in the cave with the mummy on the wall. You know that, Turgut. We always had sex there!’

‘No you didn’t!’ his brother insisted. ‘And even if you had, you never own up to it. Not to the police, not to the Alkayas, the Kahramans, not even to me.’

‘I told Father.’

‘Father is dead,’ Turgut said. ‘Just like Aysu. Dead! You must forget about her, brother!’

‘I didn’t kill her, Turgut!’ Kemalettin, his nose dripping with snot, wept.

‘Of course you didn’t!’ Briefly, Turgut looked around to see whether anyone was looking. Then fixing his eyes on his brother once again he said, ‘We were together that night, weren’t we? You and me, together.’

‘But . . .’

‘
All
night, just as we told the police then, just as we will tell them now.’ Turgut leaned in closer to his brother’s ear. ‘Not part of that night, not most of it,
all
of it.’

‘Turgut . . .’

‘On the life of our mother!’ Turgut stood back and held one of his hands out to Kemalettin as if in offering. ‘Imagine my hand is Mother’s life, Kemalettin.’

‘Yes?’ He didn’t have any idea where this might be going but he followed, slack-jawed, what his brother was saying anyway.

‘Swear on Mother’s life, Kemalettin!’

‘Swear what? What?’

‘Swear to me,’ Turgut whispered, ‘your brother, that you will tell anyone who asks,
anyone
, that you and me, that all of our family, were together all night the night that Aysu disappeared.’

‘But . . .’

‘Swear!’

‘I . . .’

Turgut thrust his hand under his brother’s long, dripping nose and said, ‘Swear, you retard!’

Kemalettin Senar took his brother’s hand limply between his cold, damp fingers.

‘So what do you do?’ the man, whose name Süleyman now knew was Mürsel, said.

‘I work for a hotel chain,’ Süleyman said without a flicker.

He had followed Mürsel to the bar of the Büyük Londra Hotel on Meşrutiyet Caddesi. Vaguely shabby in that old Ottoman way that the smarter Pera Palas Hotel does rather more stylishly, the Büyük Londra attracted an eclectic clientele fond of caged songbirds, enormous chandeliers, 78 rpm records and gin slings. Surrounded by fey, generally middle-aged European women, several middle-aged, Turkish men of a certain type, including Mürsel, were in attendance. Flopped into comfortable, if somewhat threadbare armchairs, Mürsel and the others regarded each other and Süleyman with soft, but hungry, eyes.

‘So is it Inter-Continental, Kempinski . . .’

‘It’s a large chain,’ Süleyman said with a smile, imagining as he did so the lush gardens of the Çırağan Palace Hotel where his brother Murad worked.

Mürsel raised his elegant manicured hands into the air and said, ‘Well, if you’d rather be elusive . . .’

Süleyman, still smiling, lit a cigarette. He quite enjoyed the company of this educated, attractive, obviously very smitten homosexual. It wasn’t an entirely uncomfortable experience.

‘Of course you are married with children,’ Mürsel said as he first sipped and then gulped at his gin and tonic.

‘Why do you think that?’

Mürsel smiled. ‘Well, you’re not exactly a child, are you?’ he said. ‘And looking like you do, your mother is bound to have married you off to the highest bidder. Some very pretty, fertile girl who has furnished you with two perfect children. That’s what happened to me.’

He raised his glass up to the barman who, trapped behind his minuscule bar in the corner of the salon, set to making another gin and tonic with a will.

‘Join me?’ Mürsel said while he still had the barman’s eye.

‘No, thank you,’ Süleyman replied, placing one hand over his heart as he did so.

‘Got to get back to the wife and children?’

‘Something like that.’

One of the other men rose from his seat and went to sit down beside a particularly nervous-looking European woman. She spoke to him, Süleyman noted, in French.

‘Well, you’d better be careful out there at night on your own,’ Mürsel said darkly. ‘Men are at a considerable risk in this city these days.’

Süleyman settled back a little into his chair. ‘You’re talking about the recent attacks?’

‘I understand this criminal’s penchant is for rather attractive men not averse, as it were, to the intimate company of their fellows. Or so it is said in some circles.’

The elusive, somewhat archaic language was, he had heard, typical of homosexuals of a certain age. ‘Yes, but I am married . . .’

‘And so am I,’ Mürsel said with a straight, rather humourless face. Then leaning forward he whispered, ‘But when someone wants you badly enough, that doesn’t really matter.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Maybe he, this criminal, is just a man of great passion. Maybe he just refuses to allow conventional morality to stand in his way. Maybe he just takes what he lusts for, what we would all have if we could.’

‘Maybe.’

Süleyman’s blood was quite cold now. Whether it was because of what had actually been said or because of the seriousness inherent in Mürsel’s words, he wasn’t sure. Here, however, was a man who was going to be worth watching. Süleyman suddenly gave him a brilliant smile.

‘So what do you do?’ he asked as he replaced his packet of cigarettes in his pocket. ‘You never did say.’

‘Oh, I trade,’ Mürsel replied.

‘In?’

‘Oh, many things,’ he said, smiling too.

‘What? Carpets? Textiles?’

‘Many things,’ Mürsel reiterated.

‘You’re very . . .’

‘Guarded? Yes, I am,’ Mürsel continued. ‘Some men have to be as we both know.’

‘Yes.’

Before he brought Mürsel his drink the barman wound up the ancient gramophone on a table over by the window and the beautifully tortured voice of Billie Holliday rippled across the salon. Mürsel, responding to its plaintiveness, smiled.

‘Oh, well, I must be going,’ Süleyman said as he rose to his feet with one nervous spring. He had gained some small insight into this man’s thinking with regard to the peeper but that was very far from having any notion that he had been following the policeman since their first encounter on Monday evening. Mürsel obviously liked him and, although it was tempting to string him along in the hope that he knew – or let slip – something as yet unknown about the peeper or his victims, he was extremely guarded as well as being unnerving.

‘Goodnight,’ Mürsel said as he left.

Once out in the street, Süleyman stood in front of the ornate nineteenth-century hotel façade and sighed. Going off on his own, pursuing what were in reality only gut feelings, wasn’t really on. He’d have to mount proper surveillance on the baths and other places the peeper’s victims had mentioned. Following Mürsel had been a reflex, reckless and probably ultimately fruitless, too. He was just a rather predatory man who fancied him, that was all. But Süleyman shuddered all the same; he still had the feeling that he was somehow being watched. He took his mobile out of his pocket in order to call Zelfa. They hadn’t spoken since they’d slept together the previous night.

‘Oh, Sunel Bey . . .’

He’d called himself Sunel for no particular reason, it had just simply been the first name to come into his head.

Süleyman turned to find Mürsel right behind him. ‘Yes?’

‘You left your lighter behind,’ Mürsel said as he placed it into Süleyman’s hand. ‘There.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Süleyman said. ‘That’s . . .’

‘You’re very welcome.’ In one lightning move, Mürsel pulled Süleyman’s head towards his own and kissed him full on the lips. ‘I’ve seen you naked,’ Mürsel breathed once he had detached his lips from Süleyman’s. ‘You can do with me what you will!’

Although vaguely aware of someone coming into his room through the darkness, İkmen thought that it could only be Fatma and turned over to get some more sleep. When the light went on, however, he knew that he had to be mistaken.

‘What . . .’

‘It’s three o’clock,’ Menşure said briskly. ‘Ferdinand Mueller is coming to pick you up at four.’

‘What?’

‘For your balloon flight,’ Menşure said tetchily as she banged a small tea glass down by the side of İkmen’s bed. ‘Have a drink and wake up.’

He saw her, dressed and immaculate even at that early hour of the morning, through a sort of damp, sick fog. Businesslike and bustling, she was neither sympathetic nor alone.

‘Ah!’ İkmen, now that he could fully appreciate who it was, jumped to the head of his bed in one panicky movement. ‘Why have you brought
him
?’

‘Kismet?’ Menşure looked down at the enormous ginger and grey cat at her feet and smiled. ‘I knew that if anyone could get you up it would be him.’

‘Just don’t let him near me!’ İkmen said as he reached across to his jacket and took out his cigarettes.

Menşure smiled. ‘Afraid of a little cat? Shame upon you, Çetin İkmen!’

‘He isn’t a cat,
I
have a cat, Marlboro; he sits on my lap at night and purrs. He, this you have here, is a demon crossed with a fighting machine!’ İkmen said. ‘You said yourself he’s part lion! I don’t care if he’s thirty or whatever he is, his father or his grandfather or whatever took a lump out of my brother’s leg.’

‘Forty-five years ago.’

‘Seems like only yesterday,’ İkmen said as he surveyed the enormously scarred head of the growling animal at the foot of his bed.

But even when Menşure and the cat left a few minutes later, İkmen knew that the animal had achieved his mistress’s purpose. He was awake, shaking, and ready to get out of the hotel as quickly as possible.

Zelfa Halman Süleyman was barely conscious when her husband woke her up to make love yet again in the early hours of the morning. But he was so passionate as well as being so gloriously masculine that she could hardly refuse him. Usually far too cynical to be impressed by such blatant masculinity, Zelfa felt as if, on this occasion, she had just simply been swept along in the wake of his unstoppable desire. Maybe, she thought, as he kissed her mouth, he really does want to make our relationship real once again. Maybe she could just throw all of her legal papers away and, as she had dreamed so many times before, lick every centimetre of his body.

Mehmet Süleyman, it was true, wanted his wife badly. He also needed her body to cover up what had happened earlier that evening with Mürsel. The kiss, that terrifyingly comfortable kiss followed by the admission that had almost caused the policeman to scream. ‘I’ve seen you naked,’ he’d said. Only after offering his body to Süleyman had he added that he’d seen him naked ‘in my dreams’.