Deadline (8 page)

‘The prince is bankrupt and it may well be that he is indebted to the Armenian.’

‘Stereotypical, but it may be true,’ Süleyman said. ‘But, you know, I wondered whether they were lovers.’

‘So did I.’

‘Not something that
many of the clerics in our party would approve of, but the actors are young and maybe they’re keen to push the boundaries and sensibilities of their audiences. I can’t see Dr Krikor having a problem with that either.’

‘So the Armenian may kill the prince because he has defaulted on a loan?’

Süleyman shrugged. ‘A bit obvious. Maybe he’ll kill the princess . . .’

‘I think she might have had some sort of liaison with the Italian tutor,’
İ
kmen said. ‘He worked in Antep in the past, which is where she comes from, and yet he protested, I felt, rather too vehemently about not knowing her or her family. People like the princess and her family are, or were, just the type who would have had an Italian tutor on their staff.’

‘And Italians are very attractive to woman.’

İ
kmen smiled. ‘Something of a generalisation, but I know what you mean.’

‘It’s partly the language, of course,’ Süleyman continued. ‘It sounds so beautiful.’

‘Makes you wonder whether your Sergeant Melik wooed my Sergeant Farsako
ğ
lu in Italian,’
İ
kmen said and then instantly regretted it.
İ
zzet Melik did indeed speak perfect Italian but
İ
kmen was sure Süleyman didn’t want to be reminded of that. He was not, so
İ
kmen had heard on the grapevine, going to attend his ex-lover’s wedding to
the sergeant. He’d made some sort of excuse about having to go and visit relatives out on the Princes’ Islands.

Süleyman didn’t want to talk about
İ
zzet Melik. ‘The princess could kill the Italian in an effort to silence him if she did have an affair with him in the past.’

‘So that the prince didn’t find out?’

‘She clearly loves her husband. Yes.’

Mehmet Süleyman didn’t love Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu any more but
İ
kmen knew that he was still not happy about her marriage. He was possessive rather than actually attached to women he had once either dated or been married to. It wasn’t a trait that
İ
kmen felt was in any way attractive, shedding as it did a rather selfish and arrogant light on his friend whom he nevertheless, and for all his faults, loved.

‘But is she capable of murder?’
İ
kmen asked.

‘What, you mean because she’s so pretty?’

İ
kmen laughed. ‘No, you know me better than that!’ he said. ‘Since when was I ever taken in by a pretty face?’ He wanted to add,
that’s your weakness, not mine
, but he stopped himself. ‘And what do you think of the notion of
İ
zzedin Effendi killing his younger brother for his money? You know that Yusuf Effendi has a lot of money, don’t you?’

Süleyman didn’t reply but he did frown.

Some of the
casual members of staff drove him crazy. There were two lads who were supposed to be stacking the dishwashers, but neither of them seemed to know how to stack properly. Plates, cups and glasses were just chucked in randomly. Left in that sort of state, they’d break! Ersu Bey saw no other option but to do it himself. The night staff were not generally his concern and he didn’t want to get involved with them, but he’d tell management about them at the earliest opportunity. Sitting about on work benches were about eight of them in total and they looked like a bunch of lazy articles to Ersu. If any of the guests wanted room service in the middle of the night they’d have quite a wait with people like these at the helm.

And then there was the butter! A boy, a dark, Kurdish-looking character, had come straight in and made himself a sandwich using smoked salmon leftovers. Fair enough, but he’d taken butter out of one of the fridges to make the sandwich and had then failed to put it back. Although no actual cooking was taking place, the kitchen was still warm and, if left out on a bench, the butter would melt.

Shaking his head in silent frustration, Ersu Bey picked the butter up and took it through the kitchen to the fridges and freezers at the back. Butter was kept with all the other dairy products in a walk-in fridge. Ersu opened the door and went inside.

Because the fridge was dedicated to milk and its various derivatives, it
was a somewhat colourless environment. Cream, butter in white cartons and cheese made the place look like a cross between an industrial unit of some sort and a version of CS Lewis’s fictional frozen land of Narnia. Ersu put the butter back on the correct shelf and was just about to leave when he heard the door into the fridge close. He knew from long experience of working in hotels that fridge doors like this could only be opened from the outside. He also knew that such devices were virtually soundproof. Ersu Bey, old soldier and consummate professional, told himself that he would have to keep his wits about him. In all probability the stupid kids who were on duty had either carelessly knocked the door or were just having a laugh at his expense. But there was something at the back of his mind that didn’t quite believe that.

There was an air of anticipation in the Kubbeli Saloon that
İ
kmen found both completely understandable and also very odd. Everyone was waiting for some entirely fictitious murder to occur and yet there was a tension in the room that was almost ominous. It bore some relation to the anxiety he’d felt when he’d first gone to see the film
The Exorcist
. There had been so many accounts in the press about revolving heads and projectile vomiting that
İ
kmen had both wanted and not wanted to see it. He’d gone with Arto Sarkissian and, although he’d been a
married man with children at the time, he’d watched most of
The Exorcist
through his fingers. Now again he found he had an unreasonable urge to lie low and shield himself from what was about to happen.

‘Do you think it will all start off with a scream?’ Arto Sarkissian eased himself down into the chair next to
İ
kmen’s and smiled. ‘Krikor has told me nothing about any of this, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea what to expect.’

‘Nor I,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But then thankfully we don’t have to worry too much about it, do we? It’s for Süleyman and the novelist to work it out.’

‘I think we have to help,’ Arto said. ‘And anyway, it’s supposed to be fun.’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t like fun.’

‘But my brother’s guests do and so if you can be a little bit convivial . . .’

‘Arto, my dear friend, I will strain every nerve to make sure that everyone except me has a wonderful time,’
İ
kmen said. Then recalling his recent conversation with Mehmet Süleyman, he added, ‘I’ve already done my bit in terms of my colleague and his apparent fascination with Mrs Aktar.’

‘Süleyman and Lale Aktar?’

‘Don’t look so shocked, you know what he’s like,’
İ
kmen said. ‘You also know how most women can be around him too.’

‘But Lale loves
her husband, he—’

‘I put him straight,’
İ
kmen said. A long discussion about Lale Aktar and her husband was not something he wanted to have. ‘It’s OK – now.’

The Armenian sighed. He’d drunk far too much whisky and eaten much more than was good for him and he felt really rather uncomfortable.
İ
kmen knew the signs, Arto wanted to go to bed and sleep it all off. But he wasn’t going to be able to do that.
İ
kmen looked across the room for Krikor Sarkissian’s assistant, Burak Fisekçi, but he wasn’t about. The whole event had largely been his work. Burak, the son of Armenian parents, was single. Dedicated to Krikor and his clinic, he seemed to have very little life outside of his work. In that respect,
İ
kmen could relate to him, but
İ
kmen had a family. Voices could be heard in his apartment twenty-four hours a day. What, he wondered, could Burak, who lived alone now that his mother was dead, be feeling in this place so full of people and their noise?

‘Oh, I do wish they’d get on with it!’
İ
kmen said. ‘Having to keep getting up to go outside for a cigarette is making me tired.’

‘Then stop smoking,’ Arto said. ‘I’ve been telling you to stop for over forty years, indulge me for once.’

‘And lose my reputation as the man who chooses not to listen to his doctor?’
İ
kmen stood up.

‘If I were your lungs, I’d leave home,’ Arto said.

‘Ah, but you’re
not, are you, you’re . . .’ And then he stopped talking, as did everyone else in the Kubbeli Saloon. He looked where they were looking and he had to admit that he was impressed.

Like some of the other guests,
İ
kmen had expected the murder to be a bit farcical – a bloodless, almost comic affair, complete with unconvincingly fainting ladies. But this was in a whole other league. It was also, in terms of suspects and players, entirely unexpected.

Lale Aktar, her face trembling with an emotion she could barely hold in check, stumbled into the Kubbeli Saloon with both her bloodstained hands held out in front of her. Her gold sheath dress, her hair and even her face were also spattered with blood.
İ
kmen was just thinking what excellent make-up had been used on her when he smelt something that was most definitely not make-up.

Someone gave
her water, probably because they thought that’s what you should do.
İ
kmen wiped one of her bloody hands on a tissue which he then turned away to examine and to taste. His suspicions confirmed, he pushed aside all the other men who were coming to Lale’s aid and asked her, ‘Where did this happen?’

‘Happen?’ She looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language.
İ
kmen led her to a chair.

‘Come on, Lale, tell us what you found and where?’ one man asked jovially.

People were laughing, but then why shouldn’t they? It was an entertainment, a performance. Wasn’t it?

‘My room . . . four hundred and eleven. The young prince!’ the novelist said.

Süleyman, who was now at
İ
kmen’s side, said, ‘This is odd.’

İ
kmen looked at him.

‘Odd that Lale should find the body,’ Süleyman continued. ‘I
thought she was supposed to be leading the other team.’

İ
kmen took his arm and led him to one side. ‘I want you to keep everyone away from her,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’

‘Because the blood on her hands is real,’
İ
kmen said.

For a moment Süleyman seemed to wonder whether he’d heard
İ
kmen correctly, but when he realised that he had, he got to work rounding up members of his team who were nearby and assembling them next to a group of tables in a corner. And although other people did come up and attempt to speak to the novelist,
İ
kmen managed to get them to move away so that he could speak to her.

‘The young prince is just a fiction, Mrs Aktar,’ he said. ‘Do you mean the boy who’s playing that part? Is he dead in your room?’

Lale Aktar moved her head slowly up and down once and then she whispered, ‘On my bed.’

Later, Çetin
İ
kmen would bitterly regret the fact that he didn’t call for back-up there and then, but like everyone in that place, he was still half in a fantasy. He’d have to at least check room 411. Süleyman saw him leave the Kubbeli Saloon and followed him.

Years before,
when he’d been a young private, Ersu Bey had had an accident. His company had been on patrol just outside the eastern city of Mardin in an area known to be rich in archaeological sites. Over the centuries Mardin and its environs had been conquered by the Byzantines, the Persians, the Arabs and the Turks, and all of them had left evidence of their civilisations behind them. His commander had told them to be careful where they trod, but Ersu had taken his eyes away from where he was walking just for a second, to look back at the fortress city of Mardin, and had fallen through the earth into what had turned out to be a Persian cistern. Then, as now, he had been entombed, alone. Then he’d broken his leg and now, as he recalled those old events of the late seventies, his right calf duly began to ache.

It had taken his brothers in arms the best part of a day to get him out. The roof of the cistern had been unstable, hence his fall, and they’d had to first locate where the firm ground was and then send men down to get him. Because he’d broken his leg, lifting him out had not been easy. He still remembered how claustrophobic he had felt in the cistern, how scared he’d been and the pain he’d suffered. His broken leg had been fixed and he had made a rapid recovery, but it had always been a struggle not to limp ever since. Now he was trapped again and this time it was not in a damp cistern but in a cold fridge.

Ersu knew that if
he cried out no one would be able to hear him. The vindictive or careless night staff (he couldn’t decide which they were) wouldn’t let him out until either they’d had their fun or one of them needed milk, butter, cream or cheese for some reason. Intellectually Ersu knew that he wasn’t in mortal danger. Had he been trapped in one of the freezers, that would have been another matter. But he was cold and uncomfortable and in spite of the fact that someone had to let him out in the end, he felt scared. Alone with his own thoughts was not a place that Ersu Bey liked to be and there was a limit to the number of times one could distract oneself by reading butter wrappers and cream cartons. After a while he began to sing. Strangely, the songs that came to mind most readily were some of Stevie Wonder’s greatest hits from the seventies.

The room that had once been Agatha Christie’s favourite was larger than the one the Pera Palas had allocated to Çetin
İ
kmen. Decorated in modern pale tones of white, pale grey and warm gold, the room was nevertheless furnished in dark wood and decorated with pictures and articles about the famous author, as well as a desk supporting her typewriter. The bed, which was new, like all the beds in the refurbished hotel, had the body of the young boy who had played the prince’s younger brother sprawled across it, face up. By the look of him, he had been stabbed at least
five times, once in the throat.