Dead of Night (37 page)

‘I just told Miller when Diaz found the bullet in the Royden Holmes House. That was all!’ Shalhoub yelled. ‘I swear!’

Night had fallen by the time they got around to Grant T. Miller. İkmen, who again was invited to observe, was no longer exhausted,
having got a second wind once he’d been able to go outside and smoke for a while. He’d also managed to speak on the phone
both to his wife and to Mehmet Süleyman. He hadn’t been able to tell either of them when he was coming home, but just speaking
to them both had felt good. Everything in İstanbul was apparently ‘good’, although it was generally agreed that it would be
better if he were home.

Miller’s attorney, according to the Chief, who again sat next to İkmen in the observation room, was a hotshot, an expensive
celebrity lawyer who had his suits made to measure in London. He was called James P. Masterman, and he looked very confident
and very relaxed. But then so did Lieutenant Fortune and Detective Scott. For the time being, they had finished with Lieutenant
John Shalhoub.

Fortune began. He looked into Miller’s eyes and said, ‘Tell us about your company, Gül.’

Miller turned aside to whisper to his attorney, and then he said, ‘How does that relate to what happened last night?’

Fortune looked through his notes. ‘Gül, a Turkish word meaning “rose” – your mother’s name also, I believe – is a real-estate
company owned wholly by you. Previously jointly owned with your mother, it was apparently serviced occasionally by Councillor
Samuel Goins, who would travel down to Savannah to retrieve the company mail and pay the rent.’

‘Lieutenant, my client has been in custody for coming up to twenty-four hours now,’ James P. Masterman said. ‘Can we concentrate
on the events of last night? That is why we’re here, isn’t it?’

Fortune looked at Scott and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged her assent. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So what’s your version of last night’s
events, Mr Miller? I’d urge you to remember that two of our officers who were involved in that incident are still fighting
for their lives.’

‘Sadly,’ Masterman put in.

‘Yes.’ Grant T. Miller suddenly looked small and old and vulnerable. But then it wasn’t just Çetin İkmen who thought that
that was entirely the impression he wanted to create. ‘Officers,’ he said as he looked from Scott to Fortune and from Fortune
to Scott. It was at this point that İkmen noticed that Fortune had an evidence bag on his lap. ‘I know it’s difficult to hear,
especially when you have two of your fellows in the hospital,’ Miller continued, ‘but you have to know that an officer called
Lieutenant John Shalhoub, an Arab of all things, has been blackmailing me for years.’

‘Really?’

‘Planting evidence in my home . . .’

‘Evidence of what?’

Miller had a brief confab with his attorney, who then answered for him. ‘Lieutenant Shalhoub used his knowledge about my client’s
sexuality to extort money and favours. When my client refused to pay him any more, Lieutenant Shalhoub killed a male prostitute
called Artie Bowen with whom my client had been involved in the past and then put the body in my client’s home in order to
incriminate him. As you can see, my client is an elderly gentleman who couldn’t possibly remove said corpse on his own.’

‘So if Shalhoub wanted to incriminate your client, why did he make it his business to go and collect Mr Miller before Lieutenant
Devine and his team arrived yesterday afternoon?’ Fortune asked.

Mr Masterman smiled. ‘Because he was desperate,’ he said. ‘Shalhoub had only sought to threaten my client with Bowen’s body.
Now that it was about to be discovered, he faced having his revenue stream cut off. So with the ultimate intention of both
escaping abroad and extorting money from my client overseas, he kidnapped my client and effectively buried him underneath
the Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard.’

‘To go pick him up later?’

‘Yes.’

‘Weird that Officer Shalhoub thought he could evade Interpol. Him being a cop himself . . . Maybe he panicked.’ Fortune sighed,
then said, ‘You do know, sir, that we have a witness to last night’s events.’

‘A foreign gentleman, yes,’ the lawyer said. ‘My client informs me that in the past this gentleman has attempted to speak
to him on behalf of a man called Ezekiel Goins, a character apparently obsessed by the erroneous notion that my client killed
his son.’

İkmen felt strange hearing himself discussed in this way. He said to the Chief, ‘Does this lawyer actually think this story
can work?’

‘Mr Masterman has supreme self-confidence,’ the Chief said. But he smiled as he spoke.

‘Mr Miller,’ Fortune continued, ‘I want to go back to your company, Gül. Why’d you name it that?’

Grant T. Miller smiled. ‘Because I liked the sound of it.’

‘Not because Councillor Samuel Goins suggested it?’

‘Why would he?’

‘As a little joke, maybe,’ Fortune said. ‘Using a Turkish word he learned from his Turkish-obsessed brother as a way of both
flattering and getting back at you? Rose was your mother’s name; surely rendering that into Turkish was a little offensive?’

‘No.’

‘So you admit that it was Turkish, and it was Sam Goins’ idea.’

‘No!’

‘My client merely admits that the connection between his mother and the Turkish word for rose is not a thing he finds offensive,’
Masterman said. ‘Councillor Goins . . .’

‘Councillor Goins made sure that your client got the real estate around his house,’ Scott said. ‘That is fact.’

Investigators had been to Goins’ house and had found all the documents they needed neatly laid out on his desk. For how long
he’d been planning to kill himself it was impossible to tell, but that he had meant to do it when he did was easy to see.

‘OK,’ Scott said, ‘let’s go right back to the beginning, shall we? When John Sosobowski and Gerald Diaz came to your house
for the first time in December 1978 to remove Ezekiel Goins, who was attacking you, you, Mr Miller, entered into a sort of
negotiation with those officers.’

The lawyer frowned, while Miller just carried on looking straight ahead.

‘She’s going to let him have Shalhoub’s version,’ the Chief said to İkmen.

Scott continued. ‘You could see that Diaz didn’t want Goins prosecuted, while Sosobowski wanted him nailed to the wall. You’d
wanted a cop in your pocket for years, and here was Sosobowski all nice and racist. Problem was Diaz. He was the rookie, but
he made it quite plain that he wasn’t frightened of Sosobowski, or you or anyone. He even had the gall to tell you that he
was of the opinion, given your reputation, that maybe Mr Goins’ beliefs had some substance. He was a firebrand back then,
wasn’t he, Mr Goins?’ The old man’s gaze didn’t falter, even though his face had now darkened. ‘So you did a deal, the three
of you. You agreed to drop charges against Ezekiel Goins, while Diaz agreed to overlook the fact that Sosobowski was now gagging
to work for you. Diaz was always a handsome guy, but he must have been really beautiful back then. Throwing in an expensive
funeral, too. What was that? An enticement to the pretty little rookie to come back?’

At first Miller didn’t speak, but then he said, ‘What a marvellous fabrication. That Shalhoub?’

‘Mr Miller, we’ve ordered an investigation into Marta Sosobowski’s
finances,’ Fortune said. ‘Think we may find some payments from a company called Gül? Mmm. You know John’s pension wasn’t really
up to the apartment she lives in at the moment. But I may be wrong.’ Now he lifted up the evidence bag he’d had on his lap
and put it on the table. ‘What I’m not wrong about is this.’ He put his hand inside the bag and took out a twisted piece of
metal. ‘This used to be a Beretta PX4,’ he said. ‘
Your
PX4, Mr Miller.’

This time Miller’s face paled, and for the first time in the interview he averted his eyes.

‘You know we found this out at a car wreckers on Eight Mile? One of Diaz’s old informants, useless hick called Redmond. No
obvious connection to you or your tame cop. Shalhoub had come across Redmond working with Diaz in the past, and he fixed him
up with the little matter of disposing of this weapon. Not good enough for you, though, was it, Miller? You told Shalhoub
to make sure of the job by killing the wrecker; said you’d make it go bad for him if he didn’t.’

‘This is bullshit!’ Miller looked at his attorney. ‘Shalhoub is framing me!’

‘This gun is accusing you!’ Fortune said. ‘You shot at the two visiting Turkish officers with it, and as Diaz had just found
out on the night he died, it was also used to kill Aaron Spencer. You know he even sent a text to one of the Turkish officers
to tell him he’d finally got you!’

‘Yes, but if Diaz had, as you say, finally “got” me, why had he let John Sosobowski be my creature for so long, eh?’

‘You tell me? Loyalty to Sosobowski?’ Fortune smiled. ‘All I know is that maybe just like Councillor Goins, Diaz finally got
pissed off with you, what you stand for and what you’d made him become,’ he said. ‘Two things set all of this in motion, Miller.
A cop from a foreign country came, and quite by chance he listened to old Zeke Goins with fresh ears. He wouldn’t let that
mystery go. I don’t know why. But it got Diaz looking for your blood again. And you killed a kid.
Diaz suspected it, and it disgusted him. He was going to call time on you, and so you had him killed.’ He leaned across the
table. ‘Whichever way you swing it, we’ve got you for Aaron Spencer at the very least. We’re working on the others.’

The lawyer shook his head. ‘Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘my client—’

‘Grant Titus Miller,’ Fortune cut in, ‘I am arresting you for the murder of Aaron Reginald Spencer . . .’

Sophie Devine, Ed Devine’s wife, came straight back to Detroit as soon as she heard about her husband. Çetin İkmen first met
her at the Detroit Receiving Hospital. Ed was now sitting up and even taking liquids, while Sophie, a tall, well-built white
woman in her fifties, sat beside him stroking his forehead.

On Detroit PD Chief’s orders, Donna Ferrari had driven İkmen to the hospital. She too was happy to see Devine almost back
to his old self again. Neither she nor İkmen wanted to tell him about Mark Zevets, but they were both fully aware that the
lieutenant would want to know of little else.

And so when the inevitable question came, Ferrari dealt with it immediately and without ambiguity. ‘I’m afraid Mark Zevets
died just over two hours ago, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘His injuries were too bad for him to survive.’

Devine shook his head in disbelief. His wife said, ‘That poor boy! His poor family!’

Zevets’ condition had been grave from the start, and so his family had been alerted to the possibility of his death and had
consequently been with him since his arrival at the hospital. As far as anyone could tell, he had died without excessive pain.
A small consolation for his family, as was the honour guard that the department had already pledged to provide at his funeral.

‘Grant T. Miller has been arrested for the murder of the young boy Aaron Spencer,’ İkmen told Devine. ‘So far Lieutenant Shalhoub
has admitted to killing the car-wrecking man on Miller’s orders.’

‘What about Diaz?’

‘Neither of them are admitting to Diaz,’ Ferrari said. ‘But it’s pretty certain that once the lieutenant had taken that Beretta
off Miller, the old man knew he’d either have to somehow persuade Diaz to lose the forensics he knew he would perform on the
weapon, or he’d have to kill him. We think that Diaz, although sick to the gills with Grant T., was conflicted. Shalhoub didn’t
fess up to removing those ballistics records from the system. There’s a chance Diaz could’ve done it himself.’

‘He must have protected John Sosobowski for years,’ İkmen said. ‘To finally arrest Miller could risk damaging his memory.’

Ed Devine shrugged. ‘Weird! I never saw them as close.’

‘Maybe they weren’t; maybe they were just tied together by that encounter with Miller.’

‘That was a shaker about Sam Goins,’ Ed Devine said. ‘I never saw that one coming!’

‘How could you?’ İkmen said. ‘From what we can infer, Lieutenant Diaz had probably worked it out, but then he had access to
Sosobowski and to Miller.’

Devine shook his head again. ‘Terrible thing.’

‘Goins didn’t want his brother to know.’

‘Chief’s going to have to think about whether or not to open up the case on Elvis Goins,’ Ferrari said.

‘I hope he doesn’t,’ İkmen said. They all looked at him. ‘What purpose would it serve?’ he asked.

‘But Inspector, ain’t getting the truth for old Zeke Goins one of the reasons you hung around?’ Devine asked.

‘Yes,’ İkmen replied. ‘But,’ he wiped a weary hand slowly across his tired features, ‘maybe sometimes I am wrong. Maybe in
this instance, in these circumstances, Mr Goins is better left without that knowledge.’

‘Well someone’s gonna have to explain to Zeke why Sam was at the Packard plant,’ Devine said. ‘How you think they gonna do
that without telling him the truth about Elvis’s death?’

İkmen didn’t know. He was glad that Ed Devine was making a good recovery, but all he really wanted to do now was sleep. The
department had booked him a room at the Hilton, but Sophie Devine wouldn’t hear of it. ‘All your things are at our apartment,’
she said as she led İkmen out to her car. ‘No need to move them. I’ll take you home and you can do whatever you like, and
that includes smoking cigarettes behind closed windows!’

It was nearly time to get up for work, and still Ayşe Farsakoğlu had not slept. The previous day had been one of the strangest
she could ever remember, and its echoes had kept her awake and agitated all night long.

When she’d gone to her office the previous morning, Mehmet Süleyman had been waiting for her. He told her he wanted to talk
and she really feared that he had somehow found out that she had directly disobeyed his orders by sleeping with İzzet Melik.
She had no idea what the punishment for such an offence might be, but she feared it would not be easy.