Divorce Turkish Style (32 page)

“If you ask me, his advances towards Tunca were a symptom of his naivety, because no normal person would behave that way,” said Orhan.

“No, it wasn't normal, and nor would I regard it as innocent. I'd say he was being either bad-mannered or downright immoral,” I said.

“If you knew Cem, you'd understand what I'm trying to say,” said Orhan.

“How do you know him?” I asked.

“I went with Sani when she went to collect her belongings from their house,” explained Orhan. “I talked to Cem a bit then. He wasn't like a mature adult. I certainly doubt whether he could ever run the company. I think he's just there for the sake of appearances.”

“What was all that business about money? Why didn't Sani have any money?”

“She was so broke, she even sold her car,” said Orhan.

“I thought she sold it to buy a newer model,” I said, trying to remember what Naz had told me.

“Newer model? Where did you get that from?” asked Orhan.
“She didn't have a penny to her name. At first, I couldn't believe that she could have ended up so broke, but it was true.”

Obviously, Sani had given no thought to her future.

“They say money gets its own revenge,” said Fofo. “If people acquire money after living without it for a long time, they either spend it all, or stash it away for fear of being left penniless again.”

“In either case, their relationship with money is never healthy,” said Orhan the amateur psychologist.

Meanwhile, we'd been driven all round Paşabahçe and had returned to our starting point in front of the house. However, Orhan continued driving, without even slowing down.

“If Sani had agreed to marry Cem in order to conceal his homosexuality, don't you think she was entitled to some money?” I asked.

“Yes, and she was receiving it while she was married to Cem. But when it came to divorce… They were against divorce,” said Orhan.

“
They
were against it? You mean Cem's family?” I asked.

“Sani had made a pact with Tamaşa Hanım, whom you obviously suspect had something to do with Sani's death,” said Orhan.

I thought back over everything that had been said. Had I implied this in any way?

“How did you work that out?” I asked.

“You showed my wife a picture of her,” said Orhan.

So Orhan's wife had recognized Tamaşa, even though she'd barely glanced at the photo.

“Do you know Tamaşa Hanım?” I asked.

“I've never met her, but I know that Sani didn't like her,” said Orhan. “They had this horrid arrangement.”

“Has your wife met her?” I asked.

“My wife? Leave her out of it,” said Orhan sharply.

“Had Sani been threatening to expose the fact that Cem was gay?” I asked.

“She made all kinds of threats. It was very unpleasant,” said Orhan.

“Have you ever seen Tamaşa Hanım anywhere near Sani's house?” I asked.

“It's not something I'd notice, to be honest. It's dark when I get home in the evenings, and I tend not to look at people's faces when I'm out in the street, anyway.”

“When did you last see Sani?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“It's a perfectly normal question, isn't it?”

“We met on Tuesday morning and my flight was later that afternoon,” said Orhan, stopping to give way to a car coming from the right. “If you don't believe me, there's an exit stamp in my passport.”

“So you went to Sani's house on Tuesday morning?” I asked.

“Her house? Of course I didn't go to her house. She lived right opposite us. I'd never have met her there,” protested Orhan.

Clearly Orhan Soner and his wife did not have an open marriage.

“In that case, where did you meet?” I asked.

“Where we always met.”

“Which was?”

“I have a little place in Beylerbeyi,” said Orhan.

It was the first time I'd met a man with a pied-à-terre. I studied his face more carefully and cleared my throat in preparation for my next question, which wasn't easy to ask.

“Did you have sex?”

“That's got nothing to do with you.”

“Sperm was found in Sani's underwear,” I said. “If it belongs to you, then it's not only of concern to us, but also to the police.”

Orhan didn't reply immediately. He was probably considering the ramifications of this.

“As far as I know, there's nothing in the statute books about adultery being a crime,” he said eventually.

“Not adultery, but concealing information from officials—”

“You're not an official, and I know nothing,” he interrupted.

“Are you certain about that?”

“What would I conceal from you?”

Indeed, what could he be concealing? I had no idea. He certainly didn't trust me. But why? Because of his fantasies about the TLF? Because he had a pied-à-terre? Then it struck me that it was because his wife had denied knowing Tamaşa from the photograph.

“We don't want to be involved in this,” said Orhan, clenching his fist and banging the steering wheel.

We
don't want… First person plural. Meaning him and his cartoon wife. Hmm.

“I'm sorry, but you're already involved,” I said.

“We don't want to be involved!” cried Orhan.

Owners of Mercedes and Volkswagen automobiles say they aren't what they used to be. However, Audis are still very good, something I was reminded of when Orhan suddenly slammed on the brakes halfway down a hill. It was here that the fiction stopped and Orhan started telling us everything he knew.

I wanted to call Batuhan on the way home, but Fofo stopped me. “You can talk to him more comfortably at home,” he said.

“You're right,” I said, stretching contentedly. “Let's enjoy ourselves first. We're not a bad team, are we, Fofo?”

“Not bad? We're marvellous! Mar-vel-lous!” he laughed. “Bloody marvellous!”

*

While dear Fofo made some green tea to warm us up, I settled myself comfortably on the sofa and dialled Batuhan's mobile.

“What's happening? Where are you?” I asked.

“Don't ask. I'm in Yedikule, with an unidentified corpse,” said Batuhan.

Poor bloke. And in that weather!

“Batuhan, we've solved it. Call in on your way back and we'll explain everything.”

“You've solved it?” he cried. “Have you spoken to Orhan Soner?”

“Actually, his wife—”

“I knew that man was involved,” said Batuhan, ignoring me and making it clear that his money was on Orhan. “Was his trip abroad all fiction?”

“No,” I said. “That's not it. His wife saw Tamaşa Hanım getting out of a taxi in front of Sani's house on Tuesday evening.”

“Tamaşa Hanım? What did she have to do with it?”

“Ah!” I said. “She had everything to do with it.”

Turkish mothers treat their sons like infants even when they reach seventy, and Tamaşa was no different.

“Was she protecting Cem?” asked Batuhan.

“Exactly,” I said and took a deep breath.

“Good God!” he said. “Mothers!”

Epilogue

A matelassé It Bag by Miu Miu head designer Miuccia Prada, and a perfume created for Audrey Hepburn

The attorney was persuaded to issue a search warrant for Tamaşa Ankaralıgil's house based on Simin Soner's evidence. After that, matters took a dramatic turn. Tamaşa was sleeping peacefully in her nice warm bed when the police arrived at her door. However, the paparazzi were wide awake. The following day, photos of Tamaşa being escorted by officers to a police car outside her house appeared on page one of all the papers under headlines like
Mother-in-law's Revenge
,
Scary Mother-in-law
and
Brides Beware!

During her first interrogation, Tamaşa admitted that she'd been to see her daughter-in-law to discuss alimony and the divorce proceedings but denied all charges, claiming that when she left the house Sani had been very much alive, and had even escorted her to the door.

It wasn't the evidence of the trainers, which were found in her wardrobe and which matched the footprints on the floor of Sani's sitting room, that led Tamaşa to confess. Which was interesting, don't you think? She never denied being at the house. Tamaşa's downfall was brought about by something we hadn't really touched on during the investigation: the brown dye under Sani's fingernails, which had been mentioned in the autopsy report. This turned out to have come from a brown bag produced by Miu Miu for the 2006 summer collection. Apparently, when poor Sani fell,
she'd tried desperately to cling on to her mother-in-law, but had grabbed hold of her bag instead.

And why did this monstrous mother-in-law make no attempt to get rid of any evidence that might implicate her when she learned that Sani had died after she'd left her unconscious on the floor? I guess she was unable to bring herself to sacrifice her priceless Miu Miu bag. In my opinion, Tamaşa's problem was that she didn't read crime fiction. If she had, she would have destroyed everything she'd been wearing or carrying as a precaution, even if she was unaware that the Turkish police now used ultraviolet photography.

It was of course Tamaşa who took Sani's laptop from the house. She'd learned from her son that Sani kept a diary and had taken the laptop, thinking it might contain damaging information about her relationship with Cem. I had no way of knowing what Sani had written in the diary, but it must have been sufficiently bad for Tamaşa to send her chauffeur and his brother-in-law to steal the GreTur computers from the office. These poor men were given light sentences, since neither had any previous convictions. Tamaşa also claimed that Cem's arrangement with the nightwatchman to keep an eye on Sani's house had been her idea, though I couldn't help thinking Cem at least had a hand in this.

The matter of the mysterious stopper that Naz had found at Sani's house and which I'd absent-mindedly thrown into my bag, turned out to be rather unfortunate – for us, at any rate. We learned that it was indeed the top of a bottle, and that it must have rolled under the table and escaped Tamaşa's notice when Sani clutched at the Miu Miu bag, causing its contents to spill on the floor. By the time I'd handed over the stopper to Batuhan, it was covered with our fingerprints, and couldn't be used as evidence. As you can imagine, I was subjected to a lengthy sermon about the necessity of putting any object found at a crime scene straight
into a sealed container without touching it by hand. As an expert in crime fiction, I was of course well aware of this fundamental rule. But hey, sometimes people just get caught up in the heat of the moment.

You're probably wondering about the bottle that the stopper had come from, and so you should. I learned from Jasmin Gil that Tamaşa had used the same perfume ever since her youth. It was L'Interdit, a perfume created for Audrey Hepburn by Givenchy in 1957. Since only limited amounts were produced, it was hard to find. The perfume was a mixture of spices, pepper, rose, jasmine, sandalwood and hibiscus (this information came from the Internet). Batuhan didn't bother to look to see if there was a bottle of L'Interdit without a lid in Tamaşa's house, because evidence contaminated by our fingerprints was of no use to him.

Jasmin Gil called a few days ago to say that she was returning to Bodrum, and thanked us for all that we'd done. I said that there was nothing to thank us for, and that we'd merely been doing our duty. Jasmin had met her father after Tamaşa's arrest and was optimistic that their relationship could be restored, even after so many years. I certainly hoped that would happen. With Tamaşa's true nature revealed, there was nothing to prevent it.

Batuhan said he was very grateful for our help in “closing this file” (his exact words), and that he would nominate us for one of the medals handed out by the Istanbul police to members of the public whose assistance has led to an arrest. Hearing this made me feel as if I'd been doused with boiling water, whereas Fofo could hardly contain his excitement at the thought of claiming his medal, until I brought him to his senses. When receiving such an award, it was obligatory to shake the hand of Istanbul's Chief of Police, and having close contact with one member of the police force was quite enough for me.

I know you're curious to know what happened with Sinan. We met up again, and I told him in the kindest possible way that there could be nothing between us and that he should find someone his own age. After all, I had more important things to do than chase after boys, such as paying off my bank loan and stashing away a few pennies for a rainy day.

And Selim? I still find my hand reaching for the telephone. Who knows what might happen?

A KATI HIRSCHEL MYSTERY NOVEL