A Passion for Killing (20 page)

It was only four o’clock when Mehmet Süleyman arrived home. But then he’d hardly spent more than an hour at his pretty little house for the past week. Situated in the Bosphorus village of Ortaköy, Mehmet Süleyman and his wife and son shared their charming wooden cottage with Zelfa’s aging father, Dr Babur Bey. But when Mehmet arrived there was no one in and so he went straight up to his bedroom and took a shower. Then, after choosing what he was going to wear for his meeting with Mürsel, he lay down on his bed to think – or rather to worry.

What if his bad feelings about Mürsel were misplaced? What if what he said about the peeper was all absolutely true? He had, after all, believed every word Mürsel had said on the subject when he had first come into contact with the spy. He wasn’t alone, either; Ardıç had underwritten everything that he had been told. But then that was before the peeper apparently went off-script. At the beginning he had been a serial offender whose hatred of homosexuals had eventually escalated to murder. Apart from the fact that he was, unlike most killers, highly trained to do just that, his actions did not diverge from what was generally accepted knowledge about offenders of his type. But then there was Cabbar Soylu, the Jewish girl and, significantly, Mürsel’s sidekick, Haydar. According to Mürsel, Haydar had died because the peeper had been just too quick for him. But people like Haydar did not die easily and besides, by Mürsel’s own admission, there had been two of them and only one of him. There was something wrong. He didn’t know what, but he felt it in every bone and organ of his body. This ‘instinct’ was something that didn’t make itself apparent to him every day. Çetin İkmen at times lived his life by such gut feelings, but not him, not Mehmet Süleyman the rational Ottoman gentleman. Not for him cases involving semi-mystical carpets that had once belonged to a probably deranged enemy of the old empire. Leave all that to İkmen and good luck! But then what İkmen didn’t have to deal with was the possibility of either inflaming or infuriating the spy Mürsel. Because as a strategy, the promise of sex in exchange for truth about what was actually happening was fraught with danger. For a start, he had – or, rather, he told himself he had – absolutely no intention of satisfying Mürsel sexually. If of course, once the seduction began, the agent gave him the choice of not going ahead. Although no bigger than Süleyman, Mürsel was almost certainly more highly trained in the arts of both attack and defence. What if he overpowered him? What if, worse still, Süleyman found himself giving into Mürsel in an act of sensual curiosity? What if he liked what happened then? In the past, he had always managed to successfully suppress those occasional sexual feelings he had for other men. What if suddenly he could not? And then there was also the fear that what he was proposing to do would be for nothing anyway. What was he going to do if Mürsel just denied everything? What was Mürsel, once in possession of the fact that Süleyman suspected him of something, going to do with him? Would he have him flung into some ghastly secret service jail? Would he kill him?

If he were honest, Süleyman didn’t even really have a coherent theory about his suspicions. That Mürsel always seemed to know where the peeper had been and why he had done whatever he had done was consistent with his role as a member of the secret services. But then if he was that close, why was he consistently failing to catch the peeper? People were continuing to die because of Mürsel’s incompetence, or worse. If only he could speak to someone about these things! But İkmen had his phone switched off and İzzet in faraway Hakkari was dealing with his own problems. Thus far, to his knowledge, the investigation at the Perihan Hanım institute in Van had come to nothing.

Süleyman thought about these and other things until his father-in-law returned at six. After sharing tea with him, he went back upstairs and began to dress. When his wife eventually arrived with their son at just before seven she was surprised to see her husband standing in front of his wardrobe mirror staring at his own image with still, blank eyes. He looked very smart and, as ever, very handsome.

‘You look’, she said to him with half a laugh in her voice, ‘as if you’re going on a date.’

Çetin İkmen was not amused. Having started his investigation into the consular women of Peri at the house of Peter Melly, he was dismayed when, having moved on to the Monroes’ place, he discovered that the Englishman had lied to him.

‘Matilda is staying with Mark and myself,’ Kim Monroe said when İkmen mentioned that he had already visited her neighbours but had been unsuccessful in tracking Mrs Melly down. ‘She’s left Peter.’

‘Mr Melly told me his wife was out shopping,’ İkmen said as he replaced the tea glass the Canadian had given him on to its saucer.

‘For a new husband, maybe,’ Kim said. ‘That business with the Lawrence carpet and the money was just the last straw.’

‘What do you mean?’ İkmen asked.

Kim Monroe sat down opposite İkmen and, unusually in his experience for a Canadian, lit a cigarette. They were outside on one of those big Peri patios overlooking the Monroes’ pool and the forest beyond the village. A manicured, rather disturbing idyll to İkmen’s way of thinking, and one which this woman was about to expound upon.

‘You’re an intelligent man, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to ask whether or not you can see through all this.’ She swept a hand across the view in front of them. ‘Apart from the trees nothing here is real. Everybody has heaps of money, some of which they spend in the village store, which carries goods from Harrods in London and Macys in New York. Everyone lives in a fabulous house with servants, they have fabulous holidays, and anyone who is anyone collects either carpets, villas, jewellery or all three. I’m not knocking it, but it does encourage a kind of atmosphere of invincibility. Anything is possible, money is no object. Some people inevitably end up getting into trouble.’

‘Like Mr Melly?’

‘I’m sure you’ve noticed that Peter’s house is stuffed with carpets. It’s his thing.’

‘But not Mrs Melly’s?’

‘No.’ Kim Monroe looked down at the floor.

‘So what was her “thing”, as you put it, Mrs Monroe?’ İkmen asked.

She put her cigarette out before looking up into his eyes and saying, ‘This is only hearsay, you understand . . .’

‘But?’

She sighed. ‘But it’s said that Matilda took lovers. Local men.’

‘I see.’ İkmen cleared his throat. ‘And your evidence for this contention is?’

‘I saw her once, about a year ago in Bebek.’

‘With a Turkish man?’

‘In a restaurant, yes,’ Kim said. ‘They were cosy . . .’

‘Kissing or . . . ?’

‘Just cosy.’ She smiled. ‘On its own it would have been nothing, but then more recently, late last year, Doris Klaassen saw her, she thinks, coming out of an apartment up in Teşvikiye.’

İkmen shrugged. ‘So?’

‘So at that time she was supposed to be helping out at a British Consulate kids’ party,’ Kim replied. ‘As well as the British women, Doris and I had volunteered to help out too. At the last minute Matilda cancelled. She said that her maid, who lives over in Sarıyer, was sick and she wanted to go and see if there was anything she could do. So I went off to the consulate and I met Doris there. Doris had driven via Teşvikiye because she wanted to drop in to Marks and Spencer first. She was just going back to her car after visiting the store when she saw Matilda, a little flushed, she said, but unusually for her dressed to kill. Doris had to look twice to know it was her.’

‘But Mrs Klaassen didn’t actually see a man with Mrs Melly?’

‘No.’

Women, both local and foreign, were inclined to dress up when they went shopping up in Teşvikiye/Nişantaşı. It was that sort of area. It was also the place, on Atiye Sokak, where until very recently Yaşar Uzun the carpet dealer had lived. Yaşar Uzun’s stylish place, way beyond his means as a carpet dealer, not five minutes away from Marks and Spencer’s . . . Was it possible that Matilda Melly had had her own and quite separate ‘arrangement’ with the man who had been doing rather dubious business with her husband? After all, if Nikolai Stoev was to be believed, someone had to have been the woman for whom Uzun had bought the house on the Bulgarian coast. However, with hearsay, one had to be careful, but İkmen felt that a visit to both Doris Klaassen and the kapıcı of Uzun’s building would not be a waste of his time. But then his mobile phone began to ring and so he was forced to turn his thoughts to other things.

They didn’t stay for long in the bar of the Pera Palas Hotel. For although its somewhat faded early twentieth-century glamour certainly appealed, and always had done, to Süleyman, Mürsel was clearly uncomfortable.

‘I think that maybe Haydar’s death is having a more profound effect upon me than I had imagined,’ the spy said after he had paid the silent waiter for their drinks and then retrieved his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘There’s far too much chatter here. Too much music.’ He looked with some distaste through to a salon that gave off from the bar where a lone pianist played ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ on a really quite battered baby grand. ‘Do you fancy going on somewhere else? Somewhere quieter?’

‘If you like.’ Süleyman smiled. And in truth, despite his misgivings about going anywhere with Mürsel on his own, quite how he was going to have broached the subject of the peeper with the spy in the Pera Palas bar had given him pause for thought.

Once outside the famous pale green hotel, Mürsel turned to Süleyman and said, ‘You know I have the keys to the Saray Hamam?’

Süleyman frowned. It had been outside the well-known gay haunt called the Saray Hamam in the old red light district of Karaköy that he had first encountered Mürsel Bey. He’d been following up on leads given to him by some of the earliest peeper victims. They had all at some time or another used the Saray, in order to meet or just look at other men. It had been Süleyman’s contention at that time that the peeper was possibly following his victims home from the hamam.

‘Why do you have keys?’ he asked. ‘Surely the hamam is open for business now? It isn’t late.’

‘No, but it’s closed at the moment,’ Mürsel said. ‘The owner, a charming man from Adana, a friend, is currently on vacation. Ibiza, I believe.’

‘He’s given you the keys?’

‘Yes.’ The spy smiled. ‘How does a nice quiet bath sound to you, Mehmet?’

He heard his heart begin to pound, but he said, ‘Great.’ And so after first walking up on to İstiklal Caddesi the two men strolled down into the tiny dark streets of old Karaköy.

Two things had happened. First, Ayşe Farsakoğlu told him about the results of her inquiries about Yaşar Uzun’s purchases in Bulgaria. ‘The Bulgarian Consulate officials were completely in accord with what Nikolai Stoev told us about Yaşar Uzun’s property in that country. So, in light of the Ergin lover theory we talked about, I asked them to check and see whether anyone called Handan Ergin had somehow managed to get out of this country to Bulgaria. She hadn’t, of course, although what you might be interested in, sir, is the fact that a fifty-two-year-old English woman called Matilda Melly flew to Sofia on Wednesday, 7 April. There is no record of her re-entering Turkey.’

İkmen, who was now inside the Monroes’ house and well away from Kim, said, ‘But that’s impossible. Matilda Melly is still here in the city.’

‘All I can do is repeat what the Bulgarians told me,’ Ayşe said. ‘A British woman called Matilda Melly flew to Sofia on Wednesday, 7 April. Where she went after that isn’t known. But it would appear that she is still in the country. Would you like me to ask the Bulgarian authorities to look for her, sir?’

‘Well, yes,’ İkmen said. ‘Accepting the possibility that there could have indeed been two middle-aged English women in this city with the same name, this maybe raises the spectre of impersonation or identity theft too. In the past, Bulgaria had something of a reputation for this sort of thing. We must alert the British Consulate too. You’re at the station?’

‘Yes, sir, I . . .’

‘I’ll get back as soon as I can,’ İkmen said. ‘Mrs Melly has been proving interesting from this end of things too. But I’ll speak to you about that later.’

‘Sir, there’s something else, too,’ Ayşe said.

‘Yes?’

‘A telephone call from London. The man who claimed he was the grandson of Lawrence of Arabia’s servant is apparently genuine. He’s called Lee Roberts and seems very anxious to come out here and see the carpet as soon as he can get a flight.’

‘Is he.’

‘Officers at Scotland Yard are e-mailing copies of his documents to you and I’ve told them to give Mr Roberts our contact details.’

İkmen sighed.

‘Did I do the right thing, sir?’

İkmen rubbed the side of his head with his hand. ‘Yes, yes, of course you did, Ayşe,’ he said. ‘I’m just tired and although I want to clear this carpet thing up as soon as I can, the thought of another person to look after and talk to does not fill me with joy. I’m sure that Mr Roberts will be charming, but he is a foreigner, he almost certainly won’t speak Turkish, and—’

‘And I’ll look after him for you,’ Ayşe said. ‘I need to practise my English. And anyway, sir, if he is who he says he is, he won’t be with us for very long, will he?’

‘No.’

İkmen heard a noise behind him which proved to be the front door of the Monroes’ house opening. He turned to look in that direction and saw a short, lumpish middle-aged western woman. For a moment they both just stared at each other, until İkmen murmured into his phone, ‘I’ll call you later, Ayşe.’

‘Who are you?’ the woman said in what İkmen recognised as British-accented English.

‘My name is Inspector İkmen, of the İstanbul police. And you are?’

‘Matilda Melly,’ the woman said now with a sudden and surprisingly beautiful smile. ‘You interviewed my husband . . .’

‘In connection with the murder of Yaşar Uzun, yes,’ İkmen said. This was the first time he’d met Melly’s wife and it was proving interesting. Her clothes and general demeanour were indeed dull and plain and, on the surface, she appeared so homely as to seem almost invisible. But as Kim Monroe had suggested, there was something else underneath that was entirely at odds with her plain exterior. It came to the fore in her smile, which made her something different, something beyond beautiful. Although whether that meant that Matilda Melly was or had been having affairs with anyone was quite another matter.