Harem (39 page)

İkmen watched, puzzled.

Süleyman then repeated the process, moving his head towards the arm and then looking, unfocused, back in İkmen’s direction. İkmen stood up and looked closely at the bandage – not that there was anything to see. It was clean, the arm wasn’t or didn’t appear to be swollen at all. He must have injured it during the course of the fight or whatever it was he had been involved in . . .

‘Does it hurt?’ İkmen asked. ‘Do you want me to get the doctor?’

‘Drug . . .’ The unfocused eyes lurched wildly to the side as Süleyman began to struggle in order to breathe.

‘You want some more painkiller?’

‘Drug!’ Süleyman did that head movement towards his arm again and suddenly İkmen understood. He sat down and took his friend’s hand in his.

‘Somebody drugged you, didn’t they?’

The struggle for breath, the panic, subsided and Süleyman raised his head slightly from the pillow and made a sound somewhere deep inside his throat.

‘Nobody hit you, you were drugged.’ Shaking now, İkmen ran his fingers through his hair and then reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.

Drugged. If he had been frightened before, it was only a pale reflection of what he was feeling now. Even in the palace he hadn’t felt the way he did now. Back there, there had been nothing to see, just the smell of blood and cordite and the sound of men moving other men around, violently. But here he was looking at a man, a friend, drugged almost to paralysis, to idiocy. He had no way of knowing whether Süleyman would recover without talking to that doctor who insisted he had sustained a head wound. Lies! All the way along there’d been nothing but fucking cover-up, deception.

‘İkmen!’

The door had opened without him noticing. And if the voice that called his name hadn’t been familiar he probably wouldn’t have reacted at all. As it was, he turned only slowly, the gun still hanging from his hand, infuriating Ardıç almost beyond reason.

‘Give that thing to me,’ the commissioner hissed as he stomped angrily towards İkmen, his hand outstretched to receive the weapon.

İkmen tossed it unceremoniously into Ardıç’s hand and then turned back to look at Süleyman once again. His superior turned away briefly to check the weapon, grunting as he did so. İkmen pressed his head close to Süleyman’s ear as if in a final, affectionate embrace. ‘Don’t say anything about the drugs to anyone,’ he whispered. ‘No one.’

Süleyman’s eyes rolled wildly before closing.

İkmen heard Ardıç say ‘Bring him!’ just before two pairs of hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to his feet. He found himself looking directly into his superior’s furious eyes.

‘You’re coming with me now, İkmen,’ Ardıç said tightly. ‘And you will do everything that I ask of you.’

Cemal had improved. Aysel, despite the bags under her eyes and her constant yawning, had to remind herself of that. Less than a year ago the baby had been waking at least five times every night whereas now he stayed asleep, although he rarely settled before ten and he always woke between five and six. She slept – sometimes. Sometimes she didn’t, most often due to influences outside of Cemal. Orhan mainly.

Aysel cradled Cemal in the crook of her arm and placed the milk bottle between his lips. Although he now ate solid food with relish he still liked his bottle first thing in the morning, cuddling up to her, his eyes all dizzy with pleasure. If only Orhan could see this, she thought sadly, even he would have to be touched by it. But Orhan wasn’t in, which wasn’t an unusual state of affairs. The Sultan of his own home, he only told her where he was going if it suited him. But she knew. If it wasn’t work then it was Ayşe Farsakoǧlu. Aysel had known almost from the start; she had, after all, had some warning. He had wanted to do those sick things, while she had not. His attitude alone had told her that he would go looking elsewhere for satisfaction. Then at Inspector Süleyman’s wedding she’d seen just where he was looking – at a tall policewoman in dramatically revealing clothes. One didn’t have to be a witch to know these things. But one did need to be made of stone not to be affected by it.

She glanced up at the clock on the wall when the doorbell rang. It was five fifteen. Very early for anyone to be calling. Perhaps Orhan had misplaced his key – perhaps he’d left it in his mistress’s bed. Aysel put the now sleeping Cemal down on the sofa and walked out into the hall. In line with what her husband had told her about security, she opened the door just a crack at first. But then almost immediately she opened it all the way. It was only İkmen.

‘Good morning, Çetin Bey,’ she said and tucked a few stray hairs back behind her headscarf.

‘Aysel.’ His voice was very cracked this morning, very smoke-dried. ‘May I come in? I need to speak—’

‘Orhan isn’t here, Çetin Bey.’ She smiled, noticing that he didn’t. He did usually, he was very nice.

‘It’s you I need to speak to, Aysel.’

‘Oh.’ Lightly she stepped aside to allow him to enter. Even then she was aware that the casualness of her manner wasn’t natural.

But she carried on anyway. She offered to make Çetin Bey a drink – the good hostess, entertaining her husband’s superior. He declined, both that and a seat, but he made her sit.

‘Aysel, I’m afraid there has been an incident,’ he said looking down at her with very tired, very serious eyes.

‘Oh? What sort of incident?’ Still light, still smiling happily.

‘Some of our officers were involved in an operation up at Yıldız Palace last night.’ İkmen found and then lit a cigarette. ‘They were attempting to smash one of the gangs. Some officers got hurt.’

‘Ah.’ She looked down at her hands which were fidgeting in her lap.

‘I’m afraid Orhan—’

‘Is he dead?’ It sounded so matter-of-fact, almost heartless.

İkmen took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid he is. I’m so terribly sorry.’

‘How did it happen? Was he shot?’

‘Yes, he was.’ İkmen sat down in the chair opposite her. ‘He died trying to make İstanbul a safer place. I know that’s no consolation right now, but I believe that it will be one day.’

Aysel looked up with eyes that were perfectly dry, only the hollowness of their expression hinting at the slow caving in of the soul that was happening out of sight. ‘It was good of you to come and tell me,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s not a part of my job that I grow accustomed to,’ İkmen replied sadly. ‘Orhan was a good officer and I will miss him.’

‘Yes.’

They sat in silence for a while as Aysel stared glassily in front of her, completely impassive – outwardly, at any rate. Not a murmur from Cemal; he must still be asleep. Good.

After a deep, rather shaky sigh, İkmen spoke again. ‘Is there anyone I can contact for you?’ he asked. ‘Your family, someone in Orhan’s family?’

‘My parents . . . They live in Aksaray. I’ll do it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’ She looked down at her hands once again. ‘Will you tell Sergeant Farsakoǧlu?’

When he didn’t say anything, she prompted him. ‘Will you?’

‘All the officers your husband worked with will have to be told.’

Aysel looked up sharply. ‘I do know, you know,’ she said. ‘About Orhan and the sergeant.’

‘Aysel . . .’

‘It’s all right though.’ She made her face move into the template of a smile. ‘I never had a problem with it.’ Then she stood up and walked to the stove. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee?’ she said. ‘It’s French and very good. We have crystal sugar too . . .’ Then very suddenly she began to cry. And as her self-control collapsed Aysel gave herself over to one long, awful scream.

It was six thirty by the time they reached the Yerebatan Saray, the most comprehensively explored and exploited of all the city’s cisterns. At first İkmen thought that for reasons his fogged and battered brain could no longer fathom, they were going to his apartment which was round the corner from the cistern. But a grimly determined Ardıç, who uncharacteristically had driven the two of them there, had other ideas.

As they came to a halt outside the unprepossessing little building that serves as entrance to the cistern, he turned to İkmen and said, ‘My brother will open up for us. He is the custodian.’

İkmen, who hadn’t ever given a thought to Ardıç’s family beyond his wife and horribly overweight twin sons, was mildly surprised. Ardıç seemed so well-heeled, with his house on Büyükada and his little chats with the mayor and other dignitaries. It was odd to think that his brother gave out tickets to tourists and cleaned up the water that constantly dripped from the roof of the cistern onto the walkways below. Maybe if he was lucky they let him put on the music that accompanies the coloured lights which play up and down the rows of ghostly ancient columns. But this inequality between brothers was not such an odd phenomenon. His own brother was a very well-connected and wealthy accountant, while he – well, he did as he had always done and coped, with the job, with the endless children, with the lack of money.

‘Come on,’ Ardıç said and opened the door on İkmen’s side of the car. İkmen slid rather than stepped out onto the pavement, a small corpse-like figure with eyes so tired they had all but disappeared. A thin version of his superior ushered them down into the cistern where, rather kindly İkmen thought, the other Ardıç had switched on all the coloured lights plus some Western classical music that he didn’t recognise. It was pleasant and not too loud. It also provided some cover for the potentially irritating sound of dripping water. Supported by 336 eight-metre-high columns, this vast space had been built specifically to supply water to the Great Palace of the Byzantines. A vast imperial and administrative complex, the Great Palace stood beside the Hippodrome and covered that patch of land that is now called Cankurtaran. Little remains there now of old Byzantium, beyond the meagre fragment of wall that is the Bukoleon Palace, a haunt of drunks and drop-outs, just minutes away from the house of Ahmet Sılay, the self-styled film star. As İkmen descended the stairs into the cistern he thought how odd it was that Ahmet Sılay and indeed the memory of that quite different cistern where they had discovered poor little Hatice’s body all seemed so very distant now. At some point, the nature of what he was doing and why he was doing it had changed. A new dimension had been introduced, much of which he didn’t understand.

Ardıç sat himself down at one of the small tables in the café area and indicated that İkmen should join him.

‘Osman is making us some coffee and then he will go,’ Ardıç said as İkmen dropped heavily into the chair opposite. ‘He’ll have to come back at eight to open up properly, which will give us nearly an hour and a half.’

İkmen looked up with a doleful expression on his face. ‘What for?’ he said. ‘What now?’

If he hadn’t been so exhausted he would have dressed his speech up a little more for his superior’s benefit. But he hadn’t slept, he’d just told Aysel Tepe that her husband was dead and he was confused. Something dreadful had happened and, although he had some ideas about why, he felt that he really didn’t
know
anything.

Ardıç cleared his throat. ‘When Osman has gone we will talk,’ he said. ‘Just you and me. No notes, no records, just a conversation that will never have happened and will never be spoken of again.’

‘More mystery.’ İkmen lit a cigarette and looked glumly down at the damp floor. Well, at least it was cool in the cistern, that much could be said for it.

Osman Ardıç came over with two cups, a pot of coffee, milk and sugar. He didn’t speak, just smiled at his brother and then left.

As soon as he’d gone, Ardıç poured coffee for both of them and then lit a cigar. He eased his large body back into the chair until he was comfortable and looked across at İkmen.

‘I need to know everything that you know, İkmen,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I know that you, Süleyman and İskender were in Yıldız Park last night when certain incidents took place.’

‘You mean when something terminal happened to my sergeant?’ İkmen thought about adding to that the fact that Süleyman and possibly İskender had been drugged, but he thought better of it.

‘Orhan Tepe was on the Mürens’ payroll.’

‘Presumably he got in via Hassan Şeker.’ İkmen sighed. ‘I assume it was Tepe who told you I was still pursuing the confectioner. Tepe was paid to make sure that we didn’t pursue Şeker with regard to Hatice İpek.’

‘He was very willing and wanted to do as much as possible for the organisation,’ Ardıç said. ‘Tepe had lots of expenses and so he would do almost anything for money. I trust Mrs Tepe was content with your version of events, İkmen?’

‘Yes,’ he responded dully. What he’d told Aysel Tepe had been both kind and necessary, but he hadn’t enjoyed it.

‘The media have been told that our men were involved in a gun battle with various crime families up at the palace last night,’ Ardıç continued matter-of-factly. ‘A major criminal of Bulgarian origin died. We sustained one casualty but apart from that the operation was a success.’

‘Until Zhivkov’s thugs start picking off our men in the street.’

‘That won’t happen.’ Ardıç paused to drink some more coffee.

‘Why? All dead, are they?’ İkmen smirked at the absurdity of the notion.

Ardıç fixed him with very grave eyes, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they are.’

İkmen paused just briefly before he replied ‘And we . . .’ He stopped as if the words had caught in his throat.

‘Yes, we did that too,’ Ardıç flicked his eyes away as people do when they lie.

‘Well, haven’t
we
been busy, then?’ İkmen said acidly. ‘Makes you wonder, what with us being so very good, why we left it so long? We could have flushed Zhivkov and his friends out a long time ago, couldn’t we? My—’

‘Yes, all right, İkmen, I think I get the point!’

İkmen tasted his coffee and, finding it rather bitter, loaded three large spoonfuls of sugar into his cup. He finished his cigarette and then lit another.