Deadline (11 page)

Ersu Bey looked at the sell-by dates on the packets of butter on the shelves and put them in strict order of use. So many people were slack about such things and they mattered. Using
older butter before new stock just made sense. He began humming.

Tania had called him superstitious too. She’d said that his habit of always making up their bed in exactly the same way every morning was the same thing as people wearing boncuks and Ma
ş
allahs to ward off the Evil Eye. She’d been brought up under the Soviet system and so anything that smacked of superstition or religion was anathema to her. Not that she’d really believed that Ersu had been doing anything occult. She’d just used his very particular nature against him when someone with more money came along.

Ersu Bey began sorting the cheese. He didn’t miss his wife, except for the sex, very much at all, if he was honest. The only thing that gave him any real pause for thought about his current state of mind was the fact that, given the choice between life and death, he would occasionally select the latter. A lot of people wanted to die but that didn’t mean they actually planned to do anything about it. Currently he was locked in a fridge which probably wouldn’t kill him, but he was, deep down, quite indifferent as to whether or not that would really happen, even if he was a little scared. He cared about his guests up in the hotel and hoped that they were being properly looked after by the night staff. That did bother him, he had an anxiety about that. Allied to the deep sense of pride he felt at being employed by the
Pera Palas, this did not make for a settled state of mind. So when the door of the fridge did eventually open, Ersu Bey was in fact quite relieved. He would just have liked a little more time to sort out the cream.

‘Do you know what he was doing in your room, Lale Hanım?’

Their captors hadn’t allowed Lale Aktar to clean herself up after she’d found the boy’s body in her hotel room, which meant that when she looked up at
İ
kmen he could see a long smear of blood along her jaw and down her neck. It made her look as if she’d been savaged by a vampire.

‘I’ve no idea.’

İ
kmen, who had just lit up a cigarette in the no-smoking Kubbeli Saloon, flicked his ash into a dirty coffee cup. None of the masked creatures around them made any comment. ‘As far as you know, he hadn’t obtained a key to your room?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘No.’

He wrote on a notepad their captors had given him. ‘And you didn’t give him a key?’

‘No. Why would I?’

The boy, whose name, Söner Erkan, he had discovered from one of the other actors, had been sweetly attractive. With his trim figure, his razor-sharp cheekbones and full if slightly
sulky mouth, he had been the sort of male who could very easily turn a woman’s head. In the normal course of events,
İ
kmen wouldn’t have pursued this line of inquiry until later on in the investigation. But in this instance there was no time for niceties.

‘You might give him a key if you wanted to talk to him for some reason,’
İ
kmen said. And then he looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Or if you intended to have sex with him.’

She returned his gaze with rock-solid steadiness. ‘No, on both counts,’ she said.

‘You didn’t find Mr Erkan attractive?’

‘I didn’t know him,’ Lale Aktar said. ‘My understanding is that he was an actor in what was going to be a murder mystery evening. What he was doing in my room, I can’t imagine. Their performance, or whatever you call it, was just about to get going, wasn’t it?’

İ
kmen didn’t answer. The performance had actually started during dinner, as Mrs Aktar well knew. What they had all been waiting for in the Kubbeli Saloon had been for the ‘murder’ itself to actually happen. ‘So why were you in your room when the event was just about to get into its stride? You were a team leader, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. But I
had to . . .’ Lale Aktar put her head down, then raised it but this time looked away from
İ
kmen. ‘I had to . . . get something . . .’

‘What?’

‘Well, something, er, personal.’

‘Something personal? What?’

She didn’t answer.

‘What, Mrs Aktar?’
İ
kmen asked again. ‘Tell me. Whatever it is, I can assure you I will not be shocked, embarrassed or disturbed in any way.’

Lale Aktar looked as if she might be about to cry. But
İ
kmen ignored this and said, ‘Mrs Aktar? Please.’

Only Arto Sarkissian and Mehmet Süleyman had ever seen
İ
kmen interview a suspect before and both Krikor Sarkissian and Hovsep Pars now looked visibly uncomfortable. Neither of them realised that this was very gentle probing. Krikor Sarkissian walked away.

Lale Aktar turned to face
İ
kmen and whispered. ‘A sanitary towel.’

İ
kmen didn’t miss a beat. ‘For menstrual blood?’

Old Hovsep Pars turned away. No one, in his world, ever spoke of such things.

‘Yes,’ Lale replied.

İ
kmen smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He drew on his cigarette and then looked at the notes he’d already taken. ‘So please describe to me, Mrs Aktar, what happened when you went back to
your room in order to get what you needed. What happened when you first entered room four eleven?’

Lale Aktar swallowed. ‘You have to use a swipe card to get into rooms in this hotel, so I swiped my card and let myself in. I flicked the light switch that puts on the light in the little entrance vestibule and made my way through the bedroom and into the bathroom.’

‘Did you put the light on in the bedroom?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t think so. The bathroom is behind the vestibule and so to get to it you just sort of skirt around the edge of the bedroom. And there’s a short corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom which is where the wardrobes are. There’s a light for that somewhere too, maybe outside the bathroom, but I can’t really remember.’

‘So the corridor is what is actually behind the vestibule,’
İ
kmen said.

She shrugged. ‘I guess so. But the bathroom is behind that – if you see what I mean.’

‘But it would have been dark in the room,’ Süleyman put in. ‘Which means that light from a vestibule that is separated from both the corridor and the bathroom by a wall wouldn’t penetrate. Another light source would have been needed, wouldn’t it? Unless you just stumbled around in the dark.’

This time
she smiled. ‘Oh, no.’ Then she shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I was in a hurry. I may have put the bedroom light on or I may have just put the light on in the corridor . . .’

‘But you don’t remember seeing the body of Söner Erkan on your bed until you came out of the bathroom?’
İ
kmen said.

‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘No. I came out of the bathroom and walked into the bedroom . . .’

‘Did you put the bedroom light on?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure.’

‘But the room was illuminated?’

‘At some point – before I found, er, the . . . yes.’

‘So you came out of the bathroom, down the corridor outside the bathroom, into the bedroom . . .’

‘And he was lying on the bed, right in front of me.’ Again she turned away.

İ
kmen looked at Süleyman. The famous novelist clearly needed a moment to herself as she relived her one and only encounter with real, non-fictional death. After about a minute,
İ
kmen cleared his throat. ‘So what happened next?’

Her head still turned away from him, Lale Aktar said, ‘I was shocked.’

‘Obviously.’

She turned and looked at him and her eyes began to visibly fill with tears.

‘What did you
do first, Mrs Aktar?’

‘First?’

‘Take it step by step,’ Süleyman said. ‘What was your first impression of the body on the bed? Were you frightened? Did you think that Söner Erkan was alive or could you see that he was dead?’

For a moment she just sat with her mouth open, as if she were in some way trying to catch the right words. Then she said, ‘There was so much blood!’ She looked directly at Süleyman. ‘I’d never seen blood like it!’

‘So you knew that Mr Erkan was dead?’

‘I must have done, I suppose.’

‘So the light must have been on for you to see the blood.’

‘I don’t know, I . . . Yes, I imagine so . . .’ She began to cry.

Krikor Sarkissian, returned now from his short walk, addressed their captors. ‘I want to comfort her, she’s a friend,’ he said.

The leader of the gang nodded his assent and Krikor went over to sit beside his friend and took one of her hands in his. ‘It’s OK,’ he said as he squeezed her fingers. ‘They have to do this.’

‘I know.’ She smiled though her tears at him and then she looked at
İ
kmen again.

‘Could anyone have left your room while you were in the bathroom?’
İ
kmen asked. ‘Was there time for a person to do
that? Did you hear any sort of noise from the bedroom or beyond when you were in the bathroom?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear anything. As for someone leaving the room . . . I was in the bathroom for a minute, maybe a bit more. I suppose it’s possible . . .’

‘When you came back down to the Kubbeli Saloon,’
İ
kmen continued, ‘your dress and your hands and arms were covered in blood. Can you confirm to me that it was blood from Mr Erkan?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how did it get on to your body and your clothes, Mrs Aktar?’

She looked at Krikor Sarkissian and for a moment it seemed as if she might be about to cry again. Krikor said, ‘Go on, my dear.’

She shook her head. ‘You are going to think I’m so stupid!’

‘No . . .’

‘You will.’ She took a deep breath and then she said, ‘Because I moved him.’

‘You moved him.’

‘When I found him, he was face down on the bed. I wanted to see who he was and so I rolled him over,’ she said. ‘I pulled his shoulders and as he flopped over I got covered in his blood.’

Piles of cigarette
butts outside doorways were a common sight in post-smoking ban
İ
stanbul and so Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu was not surprised to see them even outside the Pera Palas kitchen door. What did come as a shock, however, was the sight of a man with his back to her, standing in the inner doorway that led from the corridor she was now in to the kitchens. And he was armed. Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu knew a Kalashnikov rifle when she saw one.

‘What is it?’ Nar, who couldn’t see around Ay
ş
e’s body, hissed at her.

Ay
ş
e began riffling though her coat pockets to try and locate her phone. ‘Sssh!’

Nar attempted to move past Ay
ş
e to get a look at the inner kitchen door.

But the policewoman held her back. ‘Do you have a phone with you?’ she whispered.

‘A phone? Yes. Don’t you?’

‘I left it at home,’ Ay
ş
e said.

‘Well, that was a bit—’

‘Just give me your phone!’ Her frustration, mainly at herself, was causing her voice to rise. She looked towards the kitchens to make sure that the gunman wasn’t coming towards them.

Following an instinct that was more to do with wanting to protect her one-time lover from whatever danger lurked inside the hotel, Ay
ş
e moved forward, pulling

Nar – who
had put her precious shoes down and was desperately trying to extricate her phone from the top of one of her stockings – behind her. To both sides of her were doors, possibly to store cupboards or fridges. She heard men’s voices from the kitchen.

‘What are you going to do?’ a young voice said.

There was a laugh, then an older more smoke-dried voice said, ‘Bodrum for me. A boat, a bottle of rakı, maybe a girl . . .’

‘In your dreams,’ a third voice said.

‘What? The boat, the rakı or the girl?’

‘What do you think!’

They all laughed. Frozen, Ay
ş
e wondered what to do next. She could hear Nar behind her, breathing heavily. She hoped she’d found her phone. But then she heard the young man say, ‘It’s quiet outside, I’m going out for that cigarette now.’

‘Oh, have one in here!’ the older man said.

‘No,’ the young man said, ‘I can’t smoke in a kitchen, it just isn’t nice.’

‘OK.’

Ay
ş
e grabbed the handle of the door nearest to her and opened it. She pulled Nar after her. The blinding whiteness of the room was the first thing that hit her. It was some kind of fridge or freezer. Once Nar was in, Ay
ş
e pushed the door to, but not shut. She made Nar keep it open with just one finger.

Hiding in a fridge
was certainly a novel experience but the real surprise for Ay
ş
e and Nar came in the shape of a rather urbane-looking man who appeared to be moving blocks of cheese around.

The boy, Alp
İ
lhan, was
clearly frightened but in spite of his fear, his love for what he did shone through.

‘Murder mystery events are only part of what we do,’ he told
İ
kmen, Süleyman and the others. ‘We put on plays, our own work and others, anywhere that will take us.’

‘You all go to Bo
ğ
aziçi University?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘Yes.’

İ
kmen looked down at his notebook. ‘And you started Bowstrings the summer before last?’

‘Yes. With Ceyda Ümit and Söner Erkan. It was my idea.’

He was a pleasant enough young man but there was a streak of what might be quite ruthless ambition there too. His fictional guise as an Ottoman prince rather suited him.

‘I assume that, being students, you needed to raise some capital to start Bowstrings,’
İ
kmen said. ‘You must need to pay for costume hire, publicity, for rehearsal time for your plays. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So
how did you do that?’

He sighed. ‘I work as a tour guide in the summer,’ he said. ‘I can speak English and so I get some work through a travel agency in Sultanahmet. But that’s not much. Most of the money that Bowstrings have had so far has come from Söner’s parents. They’re rich.’