Deadly Web (31 page)

Süleyman shrugged.

The gypsy beside him, and still in possession of his arm, smiled. ‘Well, we’ll soon know, won’t we?’ she said. ‘As time goes on and the magician becomes evermore anxious.’

‘Why should he be anxious?’ Süleyman asked.

‘Well, darling, it’s like this,’ she said, and then proceeded to tell him about how a magic circle is created and specifically about the four now, supposedly, open portals.

In response he just put his head in his hands despairingly.

‘Inspector Süleyman has a few problems with this,’ İkmen said. ‘Which I can appreciate.’

Gonca looked at the younger man and frowned sympathetically. But then she suddenly turned her entire attention on to İkmen and said, ‘But if you are to do this then you will need to do it correctly, so listen and learn, İkmen. Magical people are tricky and ritual magicians are the cleverest of all tricksters known to man.’

‘Jak! Jak!’

Not again! Not now that he’d only just managed to get into his book for the first time in a week!

‘Jak, come quickly!’

With a low growl of suppressed fury, Jak Cohen hauled himself out of his chair and walked into the living room. Why the hell he was bothering to try to get the latest
Harry Potter
under his belt in this madhouse he couldn’t imagine.

‘What now?’ he said as he regarded his brother’s indignant face over the top of the TV remote control.

‘It’s this video,’ Balthazar said indignantly. ‘
Women with Sea Snakes
? More like women with rubber snakes!’

‘Oh God.’ Jak raised his hands up to his head and said, ‘Did you get that out of the bin?’

‘Yes.
Women with Sea Snakes
 . . .’

‘Why? Why did you get it out of the bin, Balthazar?’

‘Well, I—’

‘Christ Almighty!’ he said in English before reverting back to Turkish. ‘You don’t honestly think that they put girls in with real sea snakes, do you?’

Balthazar squinted at the strange, watery images on the screen and said, ‘Well . . .’

‘Of course they’re rubber, Balthazar. Real sea snakes would kill them, especially given what they’re doing with the poor bastards!’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Oh, watch it if you must!’ Jak said with a sigh. ‘But please, don’t moan.’ He looked wearily at the screen and pointed, ‘Look – that girl there, she’s nice. Imagine she’s giving you a blow job or something.’

But then as he looked at the screen, it suddenly went blank.

‘Or maybe not,’ Jak said. ‘What rubbish!’

He’d just moved to eject the tape from the machine when a picture of sorts appeared on the screen. In the middle of it was a girl, naked and on her knees.

‘Leave it! Leave it!’ Balthazar said as he tetchily waved his brother away from the screen. ‘This looks good.’

‘Christ!’

Jak, his concentration as well as his patience well and truly at an end, sank down into a chair to join his brother in appreciating whatever degraded rubbish this might be.

A dark shape, which appeared to be a man, moved behind the girl and then, just for a moment, she was entirely still, eyes staring straight at the camera. Only when she began to move did his hands reach around, take her breasts and move her up and down against him.

‘This looks real to me,’ Balthazar said appreciatively.

‘The quality’s awful,’ his brother said, ‘and it’s quite, well, creepy in a way . . .’

‘Mmm. Good, though.’

They watched for a while – the sex, the genuine at first fear and then pleasure that seemed, from what they could see, to be in the girl’s eyes. That, Jak said, was unusual. Porn actresses were, in his experience, generally dead in the eyes. But then something else happened that made them both sit up. It happened very quickly and so they had to play and keep on playing that part of the tape many times over before they could work out absolutely what it was. When they did, however, Jak took the tape out and laid it down on the floor in front of the television. Then they both just stared at it for a time while Balthazar tried to work out what one might do in a situation like this.

‘On Saturday night I did what I usually do, which means that I had dinner at Four Seasons in Beyoğlu and then went to visit a friend.’

‘What friend?’ İkmen said sharply.

Max Esterhazy smiled. He appeared to be perfectly at ease in this stuffy little room with its tiny window and numerous cigarette ends. Even the mirror, which everyone in the room knew was of the two-way variety, failed to disturb Max’s seemingly natural sang-froid.

‘A lady,’ Max said. ‘Her name is Gül Özpetek – she’s divorced and lives in Şişli. And yes, I can and will give you her details and yes, I did stay with her all night. I usually do, Ülkü will tell you.’

‘If we could find Ülkü that would be most compelling,’ İkmen said. ‘But we couldn’t let her back into your home, a crime scene or so we thought, until we had either found you or a dead body.’

‘Of course.’

‘Unfortunately Miss Ayla appears to have moved on from where she had been staying, however,’ İkmen looked up. ‘What about Tuesday’s events, Mr Esterhazy? Your disappearance . . .’

‘My client didn’t disappear, Inspector İkmen,’ Sevan Avedykian slid in smoothly. ‘He left his apartment at five p.m. and, since that time, has been staying with a Mr İrfan Şay, a gentleman, I believe, with an interest in Mr Esterhazy’s area of expertise.’

Sevan Avedykian was, as İkmen knew of old, a pragmatic sort of man who was probably not easy around words like magic.

‘Why didn’t you tell your maid where you were going, Mr Esterhazy?’

‘Mr Şay, a respected businessman, is anxious to keep his interest in things of an occult nature to himself,’ the lawyer said.

The subtext behind this was one that İkmen could understand. After all, officially, ‘sorcery’ was still a crime in the Republic and so people, particularly of a ‘respected’ nature, might well want to keep their interest in it to themselves. However . . .

‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘I can understand that, but it still doesn’t account for the fact that your client failed to tell his maid that he was going to be absent. He could at least have left a note. I mean, when, Mr Esterhazy, were you planning to return to your home?’

Max Esterhazy shrugged. ‘I don’t know, old boy. One gets into conversation . . .’

‘And yet you cancelled at least three of your tutorial sessions,’ İkmen said. ‘You also rescheduled Miss Topal’s session to take place not at your home but on Büyükada. Why was that?’

‘Fitnat and myself have frequently had our sessions out on the island,’ he smiled. ‘It’s so very pleasant out there when it’s hot. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it in the end.’

‘Did you let Miss Topal know?’

Max shook his head and sighed. ‘No, and I know that was appalling manners, but İrfan and myself, well, we got involved, if you know what I mean. He is a very demanding student, eager for knowledge. I should, in retrospect, have just cancelled Fitnat, but she is such a needy student.’

‘So you didn’t go out to Büyükada yesterday evening?’

‘No.’

‘Not keeping those around you apprised of your movements does seem to be a weakness of yours, Mr Esterhazy.’

For the first time since İkmen had discovered him, Max Esterhazy exhibited some displeasure. ‘I’m not accustomed to having my movements proscribed by others,’ he said. ‘Ülkü knows I sometimes go off for several days at a time. I also, sometimes, cancel tutorials – sometimes I don’t feel inclined to teach. It isn’t unusual.’

‘But large amounts of blood spattered over your study is unusual,’ İkmen replied.

‘I don’t know anything about any blood.’

‘So the kapıcı lied when he said he saw you re-enter your building on Tuesday afternoon?’

‘I think he must have been mistaken,’ Esterhazy said evenly. ‘Maybe he confused me with one of the other foreign gents in the block. There are several of us, you know.’

‘Yes, but you’ve lived there for over twenty years,’ İkmen said. ‘A space of time in which, I imagine, the kapıcı would have got to know your appearance very well. I don’t think he was mistaken, Mr Esterhazy.’

Max Esterhazy shrugged.

‘And besides,’ İkmen continued, ‘Miss Ayla said nothing to us about your “going off” for several days at a time.’

‘Maybe she forgot.’

‘If we knew where she was perhaps we could ask her,’ İkmen said acidly.

‘Well, unless she’s with her ghastly boyfriend, I can’t help you,’ the magician replied. ‘I know nothing about blood or Ülkü or her boyfriend. I’ve just returned from a somewhat protracted stay with my friend İrfan, I need to get on with my life and—’

‘Where were you, Mr Esterhazy, on Tuesday and Thursday nights and on Wednesday evening?’

‘I’ve told you, Çetin, I was with my friend İrfan who, I know, given the circumstances, will be very happy to verify what I’ve told you.’

‘I’m sure.’ Süleyman was probably looking him up now, back there behind the mirror with Gonca – may Allah protect him.

‘Why are you asking about Tuesday and Thursday nights and Wednesday – whenever – anyway? What happened—’

‘Two murders were committed, Mr Esterhazy, one on Tuesday night and the other on Thursday night. One of the victims, Lale Tekeli, was a student of yours. Then on Wednesday a colleague of mine was shot and wounded whilst going about his investigations in your apartment. Last Saturday night was also a time of tragedy for the family of another of your students, Gülay Arat.’

‘Gülay and Lale?’ Max Esterhazy shook his head in disbelief. ‘No! Great girls, both of them. No! I liked them. You think
I
killed them?’

‘You were missing . . .’

‘In common with many others, I imagine,’ Sevan Avedykian put in tartly. ‘Please, Inspector—’

‘We have reason to believe, Mr Avedykian, that certain aspects of these crimes reveal a connection to ritual magic.’

‘Then why not tell us what they are, Inspector?’ the lawyer responded calmly. ‘My client would, I know, welcome the opportunity to refute them. If indeed he needed to do so. As he said on all the occasions that you named, he was with other people who are prepared to vouch for him.’

They all sat in silence for a few moments then, the lawyer and his client amid an air of self-satisfaction, and İkmen in order to gather his thoughts. Avedykian was, of course, quite right in his assertion that Max – provided his alibis checked out – could not easily be placed at any of the scenes, ritual magic or no ritual magic.

‘Now, Mr Esterhazy, I should tell you,’ İkmen said, ‘that in the course of our investigations into your supposed disappearance, we did contact your sister, Mrs Maria Salmon.’

‘Did you?’ he smiled.

‘Yes. And during the course of that conversation it quickly became apparent to me that certain details about your past were at odds with what you had led me to believe.’

‘I take it that by this you mean my client’s parentage,’ Avedykian said gravely.

‘Yes.’

‘I put it to you, Inspector,’ he continued, ‘what would you have said to people if your father had once been a member of the Nazi party?’

‘I think I would have said nothing,’ İkmen replied. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have created an entirely fictitious background for myself.’

‘But you are not in that situation, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Then you cannot possibly understand,’ Avedykian said, ‘the shame and horror that my client experiences on a daily basis. Mr Esterhazy dealt with his situation in the only way he knew how. If a little foolish, you will as I’m sure you have, Inspector, find that my client’s “lie” is only one of omission. His father was indeed a titled Austrian and his family did indeed flee to England at the end of World War Two. Remember too that my client has never been either a member of or had association with the Nazi Party.’

‘Your client took money from someone who was,’ İkmen said.

For the first time in the interview Sevan Avedykian looked genuinely nonplussed. Max had, in a very short time, prepared him well but he had omitted to mention the money.

‘Your father sent you money, didn’t he, Mr Esterhazy?’ İkmen said. ‘From Panama.’

Max Esterhazy looked down at the floor and then murmured, ‘Yes.’

‘Every year until his death in 2001.’

‘Yes.’

‘A Nazi war criminal sent you money, which you spent in the full knowledge of both his offences and his associations.’ İkmen leaned in towards Max and said, ‘If you were so ashamed of him, why didn’t you tell the British authorities where he was? Was it because you were greedy? Now that your work is your only source of income—’

‘I was coaching İrfan for money,’ the magician said as he raised his amiable head once again. ‘It’s why I cancelled all the kids’ lessons – I admit it. İrfan’s rich and he pays me well. The only offence I’ve committed is letting those kids down. Christ, Çetin, how was I to know some nutter would slosh blood all over my flat!’

‘You have no reason, as far as I can see, to keep my client in custody,’ Sevan Avedykian said firmly. ‘You’ve presented no forensic evidence and my client can verify his movements on the days you have indicated.’

‘And the kapıcı?’

‘It is the kapıcı’s word against that of my client,’ the lawyer smiled. ‘You know as well as I do how difficult such cases are to prove – in either direction.’

‘Yes, but your client, Mr Avedykian, has already admitted to being a liar.’

‘We have, I feel, dealt sufficiently and satisfactorily with the subject of Mr Esterhazy’s past,’ Avedykian said. ‘And besides, quite why my client would deface his own apartment with human blood is something that I personally would like to know.’

‘Then why don’t you ask him?’ İkmen said.

‘Oh . . .’

‘Çetin, I didn’t do it!’ Max Esterhazy laughed. ‘Why would I? Quite apart from anything else, where I’d get human blood—’