Deep Waters (25 page)

Zelfa smiled wryly. ‘Like a wicked, unholy vampire, you mean?’

‘No,’ he responded with what Zelfa felt was admirable calmness. ‘It was not, you will recall, me who was born in the shadow of Bram Stoker’s epic, but my sister.’

‘Does she experience trouble in churches then?’ Zelfa asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Out of the corner of her eye she saw him frowning. ‘But then she doesn’t go into them – at least not with me. She’s never ever been to the Aya Sofya. Perhaps I should take her sometime.’

‘Perhaps you should and then if you find that God doesn’t strike either of you dead you can both feel a bit more certain about who and what you are,’ she said even though she knew that she was making fun of a delicately constructed and desired delusion.

Ali Evren did not react badly; in fact he smiled.

‘Oh, I’m pretty sure my sister would feel something, doctor,’ he said. ‘In spite of what she says, Felicity has no reflection.’

For rather longer than was strictly safe, Zelfa took her eyes off the road and stared at him. ‘What did you say?’

‘You heard what I said,’ her patient responded calmly.

‘But Ali—’

‘I don’t want to talk about this any more,’ he said with finality. ‘So we won’t.’

Resisting the urge to press him further, Zelfa concentrated on her driving. With so much rain coming down, it was difficult to see and the road required her full attention. But it wasn’t easy, what with this strange boy and his invisible sister and her appointment earlier with Dr Aksu. It was one thing talking about being menopausal; having it confirmed by tests was something else. She wasn’t at all sure how she would face the clinical fact. Perhaps she might do something mad like go back to Ireland without telling anyone . . .

‘It’s the next on the left,’ Ali said.

The small street in which Ali lived branched left off Kuçuk Bebek Caddesi. Though no residents of Bebek were poor, it was not one of the better streets. Architecturally a mish-mash of styles, the houses encompassed nineteenth-century Ottoman cottages through to the strangely clinical curves of the Art Deco villa that, apparently, belonged to the Evren family. Zelfa assumed that the property was supposed to be white, they usually were, but time and the elements had ensured that the house now matched the present grey colour of the sky. But this far up in the hills behind Bebek proper there was really only one reason why a person would purchase a house, any house. Even through the rain, Zelfa could see that the view was spectacular – a raging torrent of Bosphorus directly below, and beyond it Asia stretching on and on to strange, shut-away China. Instant romance in just a glance.

Her mood changed when she went into the house. It was dark and cluttered in a way that Art Deco houses should not be; the place was littered with items that looked cheap even if they weren’t. The telephone in the hall, an ‘antique’ china and gold leaf affair, was a typical case in point.

Insisting, as she knew he would, that she stay for tea, Ali escorted Zelfa to one of what appeared to be two living rooms. Here, seated in front of an enormous bay window, she found herself looking not at a beautiful view, for she was on the wrong side of the property, but at a very vulgar gold Rolls-Royce which was parked directly outside the window. Hating her own hypocrisy, she made some admiring comments before Ali left to go and get the tea. When he had gone, she turned her attention to other parts of this horrid room. It contained overstuffed furniture, nasty, cheap kilims, a large gaudy mirror and a smattering of quite staggeringly lovely eastern European icons.

‘Hello.’

The suddenness combined with the clipped Englishness of the greeting made Zelfa jump.

‘Jesus Christ!’ she said as she placed a calming hand on her chest.

The woman was tiny and dressed entirely in black. At first Zelfa thought she must be either very young or very old. In fact she was neither. What she was, however, was extraordinarily misshapen, hunched over to one side and with a face that could have been lovely, had it not been stretched and distorted by an agglomeration of ugly red lumps.

‘I’m sorry I startled you,’ she said and extended a small hand out towards Zelfa. ‘My brother told me you were Irish.’

‘Oh, right,’ Zelfa replied, also in English, as she took and encompassed the hand in hers. Strangely, though tiny, it was firm and sinewy. Christ, Zelfa thought wryly, if this was Ali’s beautiful sister, she would hate to see someone Ali considered ugly.

‘I am Felicity,’ the woman said, ‘David’s sister.’

‘David?’

The strange face attempted a smile. ‘It’s what Ali was known as back home,’ she said. ‘I still use it myself. Habit.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes.’ She pulled back from Zelfa, her face grave. ‘Nice though it is to meet you, doctor, I’m afraid that I will have to ask you to leave.’

‘Oh?’

‘We are expecting the police here any minute.’

‘Nothing wrong, I trust,’ Zelfa began. ‘I—’

‘Nothing that any of us can do anything about now,’ Felicity Evren answered cryptically. ‘A family matter. Of no concern to those outside, if you know what I mean.’

‘Of course.’

Felicity swung an arm towards the door. ‘Then let me escort you out,’ she said, ‘and thank you for so kindly bringing David home.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing, really . . .’

But Felicity was already moving off towards the hall and the front door. Zelfa wondered if the poor woman ever ventured out through it. For herself, she was certain that if she suffered from whatever it was that afflicted Felicity, she wouldn’t have needed the excuse of a sick mother to make her stay indoors. People could be so cruel about such things. No wonder Ali was so stiflingly protective of her, so weirdly kind – though also at times almost bitter too. Maybe this was part of his strange, multifaceted problem. Perhaps Felicity simply
wanted
to disappear. Zelfa could see why.

When they reached the front door, Felicity again attempted a smile before opening the door.

‘You know, I’m really quite concerned about your brother’s condition,’ Zelfa said as she stood in the doorway. ‘He has some unusual and, I think, not always helpful perceptions of events.’

‘Oh.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. And although I can’t actually tell you what they are because of client confidentiality, a talk with you about him might be useful.’

Felicity nodded gravely. ‘Well, of course, whatever I can do to help David . . .’

‘Perhaps you could call me,’ Zelfa dug in her bag for one of her business cards, ‘soon?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Felicity said with another of her twisted smiles.

‘Sometime tomorrow perhaps?’

‘Yes . . . possibly . . . Now I must say goodbye, doctor,’ she said and began to close the door.

‘Oh, er, yes. Goodbye. Thank you.’

The door slammed shut.

As Zelfa turned towards her car, her eyes widened at the sight of Mehmet Suleyman standing in the rain on the driveway.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t ask you why you’ve just left that house,’ he said as he suppressed the urge to smile at her.

‘No,’ Zelfa replied, ‘you shouldn’t.’

‘Not unlike the seal of the confession, the doctor/patient confidentiality thing,’ İkmen said as he joined Zelfa and Mehmet Suleyman. ‘Is that not right, doctor?’

‘It is,’ she smiled and then turned back to her fiancé. ‘I’ll call you later.’

‘Make sure that you do.’

‘Yes, sir!’ With a laugh gurgling at the back of her throat, she made her way over to her car. As she passed Suleyman, he gently squeezed one of her hands, and they shared a look, just briefly. But it was significant enough for the people watching from inside the house to notice.

Since Angeliki, Mehmet and Mehti had been out of the apartment for a while the place somehow felt cleaner. And although Orhan Tepe knew that this perception was probably quite irrational, there was no doubt that some physical features of the place had changed since he had last burst through the front door. For a start, with just Aryan in residence, there was a lot less cigarette smoke, while vegetable peelings, the traditional preserve of Angeliki, were entirely absent. What was totally unexpected was the presence of Engelushjia Berisha.

‘I don’t suppose your parents would be very pleased if they knew where you were,’ he said to the girl as he sat down in the chair next to hers. Engelushjia bowed her head and reddened.

‘I do hope that nothing is, er, happening here,’ he added, looking at Aryan Vlora.

‘Miss Berisha and I are simply trying to find a way to help my brother Mehti and discover Rifat Berisha’s killer,’ the Albanian replied with what Tepe felt was remarkable calmness.

‘It’s true, Sergeant Tepe,’ the girl put in. ‘Both Mr Vlora and I want the same thing.’

‘But your brother has confessed to the murder of Rifat Berisha,’ Tepe pointed out.

‘Do you have any forensic evidence to connect my brother to Rifat’s murder, Sergeant?’ Aryan asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Well, you won’t find any.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he didn’t do it,’ Aryan replied simply.

With a sigh, Tepe took his pen and notebook out of his jacket pocket and opened it. ‘It’s about the night of Rifat’s murder that I’ve come to speak to you, Mr Vlora,’ he said as he wrote something Aryan couldn’t see at the top of one of the pages. ‘I want you to tell me what you and your brothers were doing that evening.’

‘What, again?’

‘Yes. You must appreciate that if a story changes, as it has done in this case – first Mehti was at home all night with you and then he wasn’t – we have to check it out.’

Aryan shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘So what happened?’

‘We all ate together – we usually do. Our mother likes that, she . . . Well, at about seven Mehmet decided he was going to get drunk.’

‘He didn’t take any of his drugs then?’ Tepe asked.

Aryan sighed. ‘No. He doesn’t always do that. In fact most of the time he prefers to drink and anyway, as I know you know, Sergeant, good drug dealers rarely sample their own products. At any rate, Mehmet sat down in front of the television with a bottle of rakı while I did what I usually do.’

‘Which is?’

‘He draws,’ Engelushjia Berisha said. ‘People and streets and stuff. He’s good.’

Tepe looked up from his notebook and raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was difficult to imagine any sort of artistic pursuit in such a. squalid, seemingly barren place. But then Inspector İkmen had said that he’d been told Aryan Vlora was not in the usual mould of unemployed immigrant. ‘I’ll show you,’ said Aryan. He left the room briefly and came back with one of his drawings.

Tepe was impressed. He could see that Aryan had considerable talent and acute observational skills. The picture, which was of his mother, had managed to capture much of Angeliki’s character, even down to her overriding spitefulness. Tepe expressed his admiration and then pulled his interview back on track.

‘So,’ he said, ‘Mehmet was drunk and you were drawing.’

‘My mother fell asleep and at about eight o’clock Mehti went out.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No, although,’ he hesitated, as if undecided about what he should say next, ‘although I knew that since Dhori’s disappearance he spent a lot of time standing around in the vicinity of the Berishas’ place. I’d seen him myself.’

‘But he never did anything,’ Engelushjia interjected. ‘I remember Mother saying she saw one of the Vlora boys outside a couple of times – she thought it might be Mehmet and was afraid. But Rifat wasn’t, he said it was only Mehti and then he laughed. It would explain why he was so fearless.’

‘So it’s well known that Mehti is no threat?’

‘Yes,’ Aryan replied.

‘And yet you, as a family, seem to have quite a reputation,’ Tepe said. ‘Miss Berisha’s parents are frightened of you and the attack on Mr Bajraktar can only have increased their fear.’

‘A
fis
in blood either rules through fear or it perishes,’ Aryan replied gravely. ‘The Vlora boys are feared but in reality it has always been my mother and Mehmet who have been the most enthusiastic.’

‘But if you didn’t approve, Mr Vlora—’

‘Oh, you think it’s easy to just say you don’t want to play this game any more, do you?’ Suddenly roused to anger, Aryan stood up and started pacing across the room. ‘Sergeant Tepe, do you have any idea what my brother Mehmet would do to me if he came in here now and found Engelushjia here?’

‘Well . . .’

‘He would kill me! Our rules, the Kunan of Lek Dukagjini, demand it! We cannot be cowardly, we cannot show mercy, we cannot even discuss our differences!’ His hands visibly trembling now, Aryan lit a cigarette before sitting back down in his chair. ‘And that suits a madman like Mehmet just fine.’

‘What about Mehti?’

Aryan put his head in his hands. ‘Mehti would like to be like Mehmet but he just isn’t. He’s a fool and, yes,’ he raised his head, ‘I know that he attacked Bajraktar and that he hurt him. But I believe he only did it because he couldn’t bring himself to kill Rifat Berisha – as well as to punish Bajraktar for being an informant. He also did it to impress Mehmet who wanted him to do it. He was actually proud that he had put us in danger from the Bajraktars. Mehmet, I know, relishes being in blood with them. They are a very powerful
fis
, as your Inspector İkmen well knows.’

The connection between İkmen and the transsexual was not something Tepe wanted to discuss right now and so he simply cleared his throat.

‘Mr Vlora and I are thinking about other people that Rifat might have known – people who might have wanted to kill him,’ Engelushjia offered.

‘And yet,’ Tepe persisted, ‘Mehti left this apartment at about eight in the evening and returned when?’

‘The following morning, yes, but—’