A Passion for Killing (3 page)

Just briefly, Mehmet Süleyman averted his eyes. ‘On the face of it, no,’ he said. ‘But it’s the peeper, all right, and so that means more work for me.’

What he didn’t and couldn’t tell İkmen was how he knew that this murder was probably the work of the peeper. Süleyman had been assigned to the peeper investigation from the very start and, at one point, he had come very close to getting a victim to provide him with a useful description of this man. The peeper always worked from behind the protection of a mask, but on this particular occasion the victim, a young man called Abdullah Aydın, had managed to remove it and see his face. It was at this point that another agency, in the shape of a very charming but sinister man Süleyman knew only as Mürsel, had effectively taken the reins of the investigation from him. Mürsel, Süleyman’s boss Commissioner Ardıç had told him, worked for an organisation that concerned itself with national security. To Süleyman this could mean only one thing: MIT, the Turkish Secret Service. But this was, if not denied, not confirmed either, and no names of any specific agencies were ever actually used by anyone involved. But whoever they were, the man known as the peeper had at one time worked as one of their agents and was now dangerously out of control. In order to allay public fear, the police would continue to investigate the peeper’s crimes, but it was Mürsel and his people who pulled the strings and who would also eventually take charge of the offender’s ‘disposal’. It was Mürsel who had told Süleyman that Cabbar Soylu was almost certainly a peeper victim. Unhappily for Süleyman, no one apart from Ardıç and himself could know about any of this, and that included his good friend Çetin İkmen.

‘And now on top of this new murder I also have my father,’ Süleyman said as he attempted to ignore the doubt and slight suspicion he could see on İkmen’s thin face.

‘Your father?’

‘On the phone just now. He wants me to look for some carpet dealer for him.’

‘Why?’

Süleyman sighed. ‘My father has this old friend called Raşit Bey. He runs one of the oldest carpet dealerships in the Kapalı Çarşı. Every so often my father offers him a kilim or a tapestry or a carpet, usually from my grandfather’s old house. You know how it is.’

İkmen nodded. Whenever the old man couldn’t pay a large utility bill or needed to repair his ridiculously extravagant car, he generally sold something. It had to be, İkmen had always felt, a depressing way to live one’s life. Not for the first time, he was glad that the only thing he had ever possessed in abundance was children.

‘So Raşit Bey’, Süleyman continued, ‘was at Father’s house this morning, looking at probably the largest carpet my father still possesses and he mentioned that one of the people he employs has not turned up to work for the last three days. The kapıcı of this man’s building hasn’t seen him and Raşit Bey is worried.’

‘Your father wants you to find this man,’ İkmen said as a statement of fact.

‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘Isn’t life grand?’

İkmen laughed.

‘But he is my father, and so what can I do?’ Süleyman said. ‘He expects me to deal with this personally, which I cannot do, but I cannot let him know that.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I will have to ask İzzet to go over to the man’s apartment and see what he can find. But I can’t really spare him.’

‘Where’s İzzet now?’ İkmen asked.

‘On his way over to Dr Sarkissian’s laboratory to observe the autopsy,’ Süleyman said.

It was already almost half past two, which seemed rather late for the pathologist to begin his work. ‘It’s only just started?’

‘Yes.’ He looked his friend straight in the eyes. ‘You know what scenes of crime are like in public places, how difficult it can become. And the hotel is effectively a place with public access.’

Yes, İkmen did know that. What he also knew was that corpses found in public places usually meant that work at the scene of the crime was conducted under pressure from all sorts of people – the local council, public officials and in this case, he imagined, the management of the Hilton Hotel. ‘Public’ corpses were generally removed first and briefly to the Forensic Institute for the harvesting of samples and then on to the pathologist in haste rather than slowly. But then this was Mehmet’s investigation, not his, and so there were probably all sorts of pressures surrounding the incident that he didn’t know about or understand. However, he made a mental note to ask the pathologist, who was also his oldest friend, about his latest ‘subject’ when he could. As of that moment he couldn’t, try as he might, equate the homosexual killer known as the peeper with that rough thug Cabbar Soylu.

‘So why don’t I look into this carpet dealer thing for you?’ İkmen said finally with a smile.

‘I can’t ask you to do that!’ his friend replied. ‘You’ve got mountains of paperwork to go through and only five days in which to do it. No, that isn’t fair on you.’

‘What, taking me away from the thing I hate most about this job?’ İkmen laughed. ‘My dear Mehmet, I would pay you to deliver me from it.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Ayşe is so much better at paperwork than I am. She enjoys it.’

‘Çetin, you’re the one appearing in court, not Sergeant Farsakoğlu.’

‘I know,’ İkmen said. ‘But I trust Ayşe. She knows what we need and what we don’t. And besides, this carpet dealer thing will probably only take a few hours. You know what carpet men are like? He’s probably having a passionate liaison with some woman somewhere.’

‘He’s not been seen at his apartment.’

‘Well give me the address and I’ll start there anyway,’ İkmen said. ‘Leave your sergeant to do his duty at the mortuary. I’ll deal with this carpet man.’

Süleyman shrugged. ‘As you wish, Çetin.’ And then he pushed the empty cigarette packet he’d written on earlier across the desk towards his friend. ‘His name is Yaşar Uzun and this is his address.’

İkmen looked down at the writing on the packet and frowned.

‘Er, Sergeant Melik, would you mind coming in here for a moment please? I need to ask you something.’

İzzet Melik hoped that he would now be leaving the pathology laboratory with its sickening smells and disturbingly familiar body parts sitting in kidney bowls, but that was obviously not to be the case. Dr Sarkissian the small, almost circular Armenian pathologist, wanted to speak to him about something in his office.

‘Doctor . . .’ Melik walked into the doctor’s office with heavy feet. Fortunately he didn’t spend his every working day watching autopsies, it was very bad for his digestion. As he sat down opposite the pathologist’s desk he stifled a rather sick-tasting belch.

‘Now, sergeant, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I have to ask you some questions about our victim, Cabbar Soylu, before you leave.’

‘Yes, sir.’

İzzet Melik had a few questions of his own about what he had been told was the latest peeper victim. But he settled himself to answer Dr Sarkissian’s queries first, if he could.

The Armenian sighed, his face assuming a grave aspect before he spoke. ‘Sergeant, I will be honest with you, as I will be with Inspector Süleyman, and tell you that I believe Mr Soylu’s corpse has been tampered with by someone.’

This was not a situation that was totally alien to İzzet Melik. His stomach lurched and he calmed himself by stroking his very thick, black moustache before replying. ‘Indeed.’

‘Yes, and because it troubles me, I had a brief conversation with my colleague, Dr Mardin, who has some small experience in this area,’ the doctor said. ‘When I was away on vacation last autumn, you, sergeant, so Dr Mardin tells me, attempted to assist her in the investigations she was conducting on behalf of the police at that time. I understand from Dr Mardin that her fears have never been satisfactorily allayed.’

İzzet Melik felt the Armenian’s myopic eyes, heavily magnified through his very strong spectacles, regard him critically. İzzet knew exactly what he was talking about and so he didn’t even attempt to contradict him.

‘You mean the corpse of that rent boy last November, don’t you, doctor?’

‘Nizam Tapan, yes.’

‘The one that was . . .’

‘The one that went missing for two hours between the crime scene and the laboratory. Yes, I do,’ Dr Sarkissian replied. ‘Nizam Tapan, according to Dr Mardin, was entirely “clean” when she got him. There was not a hair out of place and not a speck of dirt underneath any of his fingernails.’

‘Yes,’ İzzet said with a sigh, ‘I remember.’

‘Together with Dr Mardin you questioned Inspector Süleyman about it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’ At first his boss had been as concerned as himself. He’d made all sorts of noises about taking the information up to his boss, Commissioner Ardıç, and beyond if necessary. But then the whole thing had just died down. No more questions had been asked and the peeper had not, until that morning, struck again – or so it was thought.

‘Was the body of Cabbar Soylu clean, doctor?’ İzzet asked.

‘Yes, it was. There was not one fibre of forensic evidence on him,’ the doctor said. ‘The cause of his death was a single, very expertly placed stab wound to the heart. The assailant was left-handed, which is consistent with the profile of the offender we call the peeper. But beyond that . . . Mr Soylu was middle-aged, rather unattractive and, I understand, married with a child. Do you know why Inspector Süleyman is so convinced that this man is a victim of the peeper?’

‘No, doctor, I don’t,’ İzzet replied. ‘And to he honest with you . . .’ He paused just briefly before continuing. He didn’t, after all, want to speak behind Inspector Süleyman’s back. He liked him. But he was troubled, too, and needed to speak to someone. Dr Sarkissian was, he knew, a very old and trusted childhood friend of Inspector Çetin İkmen and everyone knew that İkmen was the most honest man in the police force. ‘I don’t know why Soylu has been designated a peeper victim. He doesn’t fit the profile we’re accustomed to.’

‘So when did Inspector Süleyman decide that the peeper had killed him?’

İzzet sighed. ‘Well, he was at the scene very early, just after the uniformed officers who’d been called in by the hotel management. When I got there he was on his mobile phone and, when he finally got off, he told me that Cabbar Soylu was in all probability a victim of the peeper.’

‘Then I arrived . . .’

‘You pronounced life extinct, the body was measured and photographed and then the team from the Forensic Institute moved in.’

‘Or so it would seem,’ Dr Sarkissian said.

İzzet Melik looked up into the doctor’s eyes with fear building in his chest.

‘The Forensic Institute tell me that the body was entirely clean when it arrived at their laboratories. What was it that happened last time, sergeant? With the rent boy?’

İzzet considered his answer carefully. None of the weird things that had happened with Nizam Tapan’s body, apart from his ‘cleanliness’, could, after all, actually be proved.

‘It would seem that the body went somewhere else before it arrived at the Institute,’ he said. ‘Persons unknown having gathered the evidence from the corpse then passed that information on to the Forensic Institute – or not. Nothing can really be proven in all of this, of course.’

‘No.’ Dr Sarkissian twirled a ballpoint pen between his fingers. Behind him on the wall, a stern portrait of Atatürk looked down impassively. ‘And this time, of course, I know that the body did indeed go straight to the Institute because you accompanied it, didn’t you, sergeant?’

‘Yes, doctor. But I didn’t go inside.’

‘The body was at the Institute for an unusually long time,’ the doctor said as he leaned down on his desk, his large brow furrowed in thought.

‘Yes.’

‘But unlike Nizam Tapan’s, Cabbar Soylu’s corpse didn’t go on any sort of excursion before it arrived at the Institute.’

‘No, doctor.’

‘And yet it, too, was clean!’ He stood up and rubbed his bald pate angrily with his hands. ‘Which is utterly impossible. Everybody picks up dirt and fibres on their clothes, even in expensive hotel suites. The Institute scientists only ever take samples, they never clean bodies of all evidence! Bodies have to go through my hands first before they can be cleaned.’ He sat down again and looked İzzet Melik square in the eyes. ‘I don’t know why, sergeant, but I think that either the Institute did not for some reason examine Soylu or someone at the Institute is lying. And,’ he sighed wearily, ‘even though it pains me to say so, I have a bad feeling that Inspector Süleyman knows this is happening and why.’

İzzet Melik said nothing. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t agree with the doctor.

An owner of a successful carpet shop could conceivably afford an apartment in the up-market northern suburb of Nişantaşı, but not a mere salesman. Otherwise known as Teşvikiye, the district was characterised by designer shops, beauty parlours and luxury car showrooms. Apartments were at a premium and generally inhabited by wealthy business people, lawyers and doctors. Looking up at the clean, smart apartment building on Atiye Sokak which runs across the junction of the super cool Teşvikiye Caddesi with Maçka Caddesi, Çetin İkmen couldn’t help wondering how the salesman Yaşar Uzun managed to exist in such a place. Fiscal matters aside, quite how the young man from, apparently, some dirt village just outside Antalya, managed to cut it amongst the educated and ostentatiously monied folk of Nişantaşı, İkmen couldn’t imagine. Even the beggars were fatter and better clad in this part of town.

He entered Yaşar Uzun’s building via an efficiently silent revolving door. A man who could, from the looks of him, have been something relatively impressive in middle management came out of a small office to his left and asked İkmen what he wanted. Amazingly, this smart young man – probably only in his forties – was the kapıcı of the building, a post generally occupied by poor village men or rather crusty elderly gents with bowed and aching backs. But then this was Nişantaşı . . .