A Passion for Killing (7 page)

Mr Wilhelmus Klaassen of the consulate of the Netherlands in İstanbul was an extremely tall, dark-haired man in his late forties. Like most Dutchmen he spoke flawless English but, in addition, he spoke Turkish too, which was quite a treat for İkmen. Mr Klaassen’s Turkish was the best the policeman had ever heard coming from the mouth of a foreign national.

‘How long have you been in Turkey, Mr Klaassen?’ İkmen asked as he followed his host into the latter’s enormous modern home.

‘Three years now,’ Mr Klaassen replied. ‘And you don’t have to be formal. Call me Wim, please.’

Wim. He was so friendly and seemingly open that İkmen was almost tempted to ask him to call him ‘Çetin’. But thirty years plus of maintaining a professional distance from ‘the public’ militated against it and so he just smiled as he sat down in a very large chair beside a very bright window.

Wilhelmus Klaassen and his wife Doris lived in one of the higher up and more prestigious parts of Peri. Their property consisted of a two-storey house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms as well as a considerable garden with a swimming pool. Every room afforded spectacular views of the Belgrad Forest, like the one İkmen was gazing at now. Stunned, he was still trying to take in the knowledge that ‘Wim’ had only started to learn Turkish one month before his posting to İstanbul when ‘Doris’ brought him a very welcome glass of tea.

‘We have to learn other languages, Inspector,’ she said as she handed the glass and saucer over to him with a smile. ‘No one but the Dutch speaks Dutch.’

‘Not many people outside Turkey speak Turkish, present company excepted,’ İkmen said and then with a view to just getting the next question over with because he had to, he said, ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

Western people, especially Americans and Canadians, didn’t generally like smoking and so he didn’t have very high hopes. But he was to be pleasantly surprised.

Wim laughed. ‘Oh, you look so worried, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Don’t be.’ He took an ashtray off one of the many coffee tables in that vast living room and gave it to İkmen. ‘I am a Dutchman, I smoke cigars. It’s what we do.’

The three of them passed pleasantries then about the house, the view and the various lovely things the Klaassens had in their home before they got down to what they all knew they had to talk about.

‘How well did you know Yaşar Uzun?’ İkmen asked as the couple both surveyed him sympathetically with their big, blue eyes.

‘Not very well,’ Wim replied pulling on a long, black cheroot as he did so. ‘We know Raşit Bey. We were introduced to him and his shop by the previous Dutch consul who did a lot of business with him. It was from the previous consul that Doris and myself kind of inherited Raşit Bey’s carpet shows. When he left we took over. We first met Yaşar last year when he came along with Raşit Bey to see how things were done. Then this year he came just with the boys and gave, I must say, an even better talk than Raşit Bey. His English is – was – excellent. Do you know how his car came to come off the road, Inspector?’

‘No.’ He hadn’t told them that it was thought Yaşar Uzun had been murdered. Plenty of time for that shock later. ‘So tell me about this carpet show, Mr, er, Wim, if you will.’

The Dutchman shrugged. ‘Once a year the boys and either Raşit or Yaşar come to us for the evening with a selection of their carpets. Doris and myself are avid collectors of village carpets as I’m sure you can see, Inspector.’

There were various brightly coloured rugs hanging on the snow-white walls and spread out across the floorboards, but İkmen didn’t have a clue about what precisely these carpets were.

‘Our friends likewise,’ Wim continued. ‘And because Raşit Bey and his boys are so knowledgeable, we like to buy from him.’ He looked at İkmen with a sudden serious cast in his eye. ‘Do not take this the wrong way, Inspector, but there are a lot of useless, cheating dealers out there . . .’

‘Oh, you don’t have to tell me about cheating carpet dealers, Mr – Wim, I can assure you,’ İkmen replied.

‘Raşit Bey’s prices are very good,’ Doris put in. ‘And the Nomadic Trappings he gets hold of are amazing. A couple we knew from the Swedish consulate, they love those. Turkoman camel bags, baby slings, salt bags, even sometimes old dowry trappings. Raşit Bey has so many wonderful pieces.’

Including, İkmen remembered, some of the Süleymans’ carpets from their many and various defunct palaces.

‘So anyway,’ Wim returned to the subject at hand, ‘the show. On Monday Yaşar and the boys arrived at about four in the afternoon with the carpets. Unloading from the van took them just over an hour, they bring so much. Then Doris made us all some drinks and sandwiches and we sat talking in here until our guests started to arrive at about seven.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, it took a while for everyone to arrive, people come from both here in the village and from İstanbul too.’

‘All consular people?’ İkmen asked.

‘Some. We have friends in the NATO coterie too,’ Wim said. ‘On Monday night we had people from the Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and one couple of Turkish friends too. Yaşar started his talk, which is about the different types and grades of Turkish carpets, at about eight fifteen. By the time all the buying and selling had finished the boys didn’t get away with the remaining carpets until, I suppose, about twelve-thirty.’

‘Mr Uzun, I understand, stayed on a little after the carpets had gone.’

‘Yes, Doris made him coffee,’ the Dutchman said. ‘He was tired and asked for a coffee before he set off back to İstanbul. We talked. Amongst other things we bought a very rare Turkoman tent-door decoration. Inspector, forgive me, but was Yaşar’s accident of a suspicious nature?’

But before İkmen could answer, the front doorbell rang and Wim excused himself in order to answer it. Because of the open-plan nature of the lower floor of the house both İkmen and Doris Klaassen could see who was at the door almost as soon as Wim. It was a rather flustered-looking, thin man in his fifties who spoke English with a pronounced British accent.

‘Oh, Wim,’ he said distractedly, ‘God! You haven’t heard from that bloody Yaşar Uzun, have you? I called the shop yesterday, but they say he’s missing. I’ve rung and rung his mobile . . .’

‘Ah, Peter, yes, come in,’ Wim replied also in English. ‘You must talk to our . . .’

‘I had a deal with that bastard!’ the Englishman continued. ‘Months of negotiation. Now, possibly, I can complete . . .’

‘Peter, this is our guest, Inspector İkmen from the İstanbul police,’ Wim said as he gently ushered the much slighter man into his living room. ‘I am afraid that he has some bad news about Yaşar.’

İkmen looked up into a small, grey face and began, ‘You are a friend—’

‘Mr Melly was at the carpet show on Monday night,’ the Dutchman explained a little nervously now, İkmen felt. ‘He is from the British Consulate.’

‘Mr Melly.’ İkmen rose and extended his hand, which the Englishman took in what could only be described as a cursory manner.

‘Yes?’

He remained standing even after İkmen and the Dutch couple had seated themselves once again. İkmen looked up into a pair of craggy-browed dark grey eyes. ‘I am afraid, Mr Melly, that Yaşar Uzun is dead,’ the policeman said. ‘And in answer to your question, Wim, we do have some grounds to suppose that the reason Mr Uzun’s car left the road was not purely accidental.’

‘Fuck.’ The Englishman dropped into the nearest empty chair and immediately lit a cigarette. ‘Shit.’

‘It’s a shock, isn’t it?’ Wim said in the English they were obviously now all using. ‘And you say it might not have been an accident, Inspector?’

‘You mean someone killed Yaşar?’ his wife, her brow furrowed in shock, interjected.

‘It would seem so,’ İkmen said as he looked at the Englishman who was visibly trembling.

‘But how? He . . .’

‘I can’t tell you any details at the moment, Mr Melly,’ İkmen interrupted. ‘However, if you had business which, from what you have said so far, would appear to be unfinished, with Mr Uzun, I will have to ask you a few questions. If you don’t mind, that is.’ One had to, İkmen knew, be very careful around diplomats. They could, if they wanted, just disappear back to their own countries in a very short space of time. Every policeman he had ever met, both Turkish and foreign, hated dealing with them. Holding on to a diplomat was, as one British policeman had once told him, like trying to grab on to water.

‘I don’t expect you to believe everything about this, Inspector,’ Peter Melly said as he put his coffee cup back down on the little occasional table Doris Klaassen had provided for him. ‘I’m not sure that I really truly believe it myself in the cold light of day.’

‘I’m listening,’ İkmen said, his fingers steepled reflectively underneath his chin.

The Englishman sighed. ‘It seems like I’ve been dealing with Yaşar Uzun for ever,’ he said. ‘But in reality I suppose it has to be at the most eight months. I adore carpets and I love history.’ He stopped in order to take a deep breath after which he said, ‘He, Yaşar, had a Lawrence carpet for me.’

İkmen frowned. ‘A Lawrence carpet?’

The Englishman and the Dutchman exchanged a look before the former turned back to İkmen once again and said, ‘I suppose I should have guessed it wouldn’t mean anything to you; as a Turk, I mean, I . . .’

‘Well, you are right in that regard, Mr Melly,’ İkmen said. ‘I’ve heard of kilims, just today of “village carpets”, but of Lawrence carpets, I am afraid I am totally ignorant.’

Peter Melly lit a cigarette. İkmen noticed it was a very smart Black Sobranie. ‘Lawrence, as in T. E. Lawrence, was a British military hero of the First World War,’ the Englishman said. ‘He, er, he fought with the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and 1918. We, um, we regard him as a hero . . .’

‘Lawrence of Arabia, yes,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘I have seen the movie. Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. Yes, he was a heroic figure for you.’ He looked pointedly across at the Englishman. ‘The Ottoman Empire was by then a dying and corrupt administration. Some years later, as I am sure you are aware, Mr Melly, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk changed everything.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘So Lawrence of the Arabs . . .’

‘Ah, yes, well,’ Melly continued, ‘Lawrence collected oriental carpets. It is well documented and, of course, to own one of his carpets would be quite a coup. Expensive, but a coup all the same.’ He leaned forward, his face a taut mask of excitement. ‘Yaşar Uzun had such a thing. I have seen it, held it. I was in negotiation to buy it.’

‘Were you.’

‘I had to have it!’ Peter Melly said and then, through gritted teeth, he added, ‘Had to!’

Although by no means a carpet aficionado, İkmen, like everyone else, was well aware of the trade in ‘famous’ carpets. The fact that some celebrity or historical icon had owned a particular carpet could increase its value considerably. A picture of a carpet supposedly once owned by the nineteenth-century English explorer Charles Doughty had appeared in the newspapers only a few months before. This fragment, which is all that it really was, had been valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. But then that carpet had been verified by experts as a genuine item.

‘How do you know that this Lawrence carpet really is a Lawrence carpet?’ İkmen asked.

After first looking up at Doris, who duly went off to the kitchen to get more drinks, Peter Melly said, ‘It’s quite a tale. Do you have some time?’

Until Arto Sarkissian had finished his autopsy on Yaşar Uzun, İkmen theoretically had all the time in the world. But then even if he hadn’t he was now intrigued. Lawrence of Arabia was a troubling and indeed incomprehensible figure for him. That a man should go away from his country and become as one with another, seemingly more primitive people, was deeply strange. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have some time.’

And so after Doris Klaassen had finished replenishing everyone’s drinks, the Englishman began.

‘Lawrence’s speciality was blowing up trains,’ he said. ‘The Turks, er, Ottomans, built the Hejaz railway through Arabia originally to transport pilgrims to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina. But when war broke out, of course, they used it to carry troops. I don’t know exactly when Lawrence came into possession of the little Lavar Kerman prayer rug Yaşar Uzun was selling to me, but I know that he was an enthusiastic collector and that his Arab irregulars routinely looted Turkish transport trains. It’s basically how our government, the British, paid these men. But anyway, the man to whom Lawrence eventually gave the Kerman was a young enlisted chap, a Brit, who was his batman in Cairo . . .’

‘Batman?’ İkmen frowned.

‘Sort of like a servant,’ Melly explained. ‘Privates, non-commissioned men, can, or rather could, act as servants to officers. Cleaning their kit, pressing their uniforms, doing their housework, basically. This young man, Private Victor Roberts, was Lawrence’s batman. He gave Roberts the Kerman as a way of expressing his thanks for the young lad’s efforts. According to Roberts, Lawrence told him the rug had been taken from a Turkish transport train just outside a place called Ma’an which is, these days, in southern Jordan. Lawrence and his men blew the train up and then looted whatever they could find which included this rug. It’s still stained with blood Lawrence claimed had belonged to a young dead man, a Turk, of what he described as “unusual beauty”.’

‘I think I’ve heard it said that Lawrence was homosexual?’ Wim said.

Melly shrugged. ‘It’s very possible. No one really knows. But anyway, Lawrence gave the rug to Roberts who carried it with him all the way to Constantinople.’

‘İstanbul.’

‘Constantinople as it was then, Inspector,’ the Englishman said to the Turk who shrugged his assent. İstanbul indisputably had indeed been Constantinople – up until as late as 1930. ‘We, the British, as I’m sure you know, occupied the city after the First World War until your man Atatürk took it back in 1923.’