Dead of Night (15 page)

What really bothered her, however, was Diaz’s history with Miller. Rumour had it that back in the 1970s, when Diaz and John
Sosobowski had attended his house after Ezekiel Goins attacked him, the two officers had persuaded Miller to drop the charges,
rather than Miller himself making that decision. Had Diaz, she wondered, been setting Grant T. Miller up in some way? The
two Turks had decided not to press charges against him. Had the fact that Miller had, in effect, got away with it again made
Diaz mad enough to try and frame him for that Brush Park drive-by? But if that was the case, then how?

Although he would never have openly admitted it, Diaz could very possibly have believed that Miller had killed Elvis Goins.
The boy had been dealing heroin at a time when gangs of all different kinds across the city had been competing to get as many
people on to the drug as they possibly could. By the seventies, the long Motor City dominance of the car industry was most
definitely on the wane, and a lot of people were unemployed and without much hope for the future. What else was there to do
but
get high?

Most of the dealers who’d dominated the streets at the time were long dead. However, those who many in the city believed had
manipulated and covertly controlled the gangs from behind the scenes were another matter. Several prominent local politicians
as well as members
of the Detroit PD itself had been, at various times, suspected of involvement in the drugs trade back in the day. But there
had never been any sort of proof against any of them. The old Detroit story, as far as Rita was concerned: of corruption,
abuse of power and the exploitation of the poor.

Then again, had that Beretta even belonged to Miller? None of its paperwork apparently existed, apart from Weiss’s report.
But that didn’t say anything about who the owner of the piece might be. That Diaz had taken the weapon from Miller was a matter
of fact. Where it had gone after Weiss had tested it was unknown. As far as Rita could tell, the ballistics man had tested
the weapon late and in a hurry. His report had been thin and sketchy. However, according to that same ballistic laboratory
report, the gun had been handed back to Diaz once the tests had been completed. But it was no longer in Diaz’s possession.
Had he maybe given it back to Miller?

The shot that had killed Gerald Diaz had not come from a Beretta, and so the weapon was not in the frame for his killing.
But according to the Turks, Diaz had believed that Miller had other guns apart from the Beretta. That said, why would Miller
kill Diaz anyway? So Diaz had been snooping around! Ever since Elvis Goins’ death, certain members of Detroit PD had been
looking with suspicion at Grant T. Miller. It was nothing new. The only thing that was novel was the fact that the arrival
of the Turkish police officers had apparently agitated Elvis’s dad, Ezekiel, again. He’d gone back to shouting his mouth off
about Miller, and Gerald Diaz, Rita knew, had become very worked up about that.

One thing was for certain: if the text message Diaz had sent to Inspector İkmen had actually been intended for the Turk, it
could only refer to Grant T. Miller. ‘Got him’ in that context, to that person, could only mean that. And yet, got him how?
For Elvis Goins’ murder? For what?

Diaz’s office phone rang then, and Addison picked it up.

According to one ‘fan’, Ali Kuban’s greatest ‘hit’ had been a night-time assault on a sixteen-year-old gypsy girl in the lee
of the city walls at Sulukule. Apparently he’d kept up a sustained attack on her for several hours, and raped her three times.
Two years later, her parents had found her dead body hanging from the rafters of their home, which was not even five minutes
away from where she’d been attacked. In the note she left behind, she’d said it was the nightmares that made her do it. She
just couldn’t stand to see her rapist’s face any more.

‘It is said that psychologists can tell whether someone who enjoys the idea of a certain type of crime is capable of actually
committing an offence similar to it,’ İzzet Melik said as he stood next to Ayşe Farsakoğlu at her office computer. They were
looking at Kuban’s fan site, which made, apparently, ever more disturbing reading.

‘I think the one who calls himself “Monster” could be escalating,’ Ayşe said. ‘To me, what he writes signals a heightening
of excitement. Here.’ She quoted: ‘
Just imagining the fear makes me hot. I wish I had a girl here with me now
. You see?’

İzzet shrugged. ‘Sort of. But Sergeant, you know that men, particularly young ones, can put on the most ridiculous shows of
bravado.’

‘Yes.’ But about rape? Surely that had to be a step too far?

‘Also, some men and even boys get off on violent sex, as we well know,’ İzzet continued. ‘Whether this “Monster” really is
one of them, I’m not qualified to say.’

Monitoring Kuban’s fan site was not actually their job. Ayşe had been all but told by Ardıç that she should stop doing it.
But because she was so uneasy about it, she couldn’t. İzzet, although he didn’t actually support her in this activity, did
provide her with a listening ear. In a way he hoped that talking to him whilst looking at the site would help her to exorcise
some of the fear she felt because of it. A lot of men, it seemed, admired Kuban’s ‘work’, and he could easily imagine that
for a woman to contemplate such a thing was disquieting.

‘These men move around amongst women and girls all the time. Every day!’ Ayşe said. ‘They could be teachers, doctors, police
officers, anything!’

In spite of her mounting anxiety, he only tentatively put a hand on her shoulder. He was in love with her, but he didn’t want
her to know that. That would be unprofessional and quite wrong, and besides, she didn’t reciprocate his feelings.

‘And I hate to think of that terrible old creature encouraging these men!’ Ayşe said.

‘Ali Kuban?’

‘Well, I imagine he’s getting off on all this praise!’

Whether she’d even noticed his hand on her shoulder, İzzet didn’t know. Probably not. In all likelihood she looked upon him
no differently from the way she viewed her own brother. But that, he told himself, was OK.

‘I just wish I didn’t feel so helpless to do anything about this,’ Ayşe continued. ‘I mean, it’s all very well to say that
we can’t do anything until an offence is committed . . .’

‘If we did, our prisons would burst,’ İzzet said. ‘Having potential for something is not the same as actually doing it.’

‘Oh!’ Ayşe shook her head impatiently, and then sighed. This calmed her a little and she said, ‘I know. Intellectually, I
know. But in my heart . . .’ She shrugged.

İzzet took his hand off her shoulder and sat down beside her. ‘It’s mostly fantasy, I think,’ he said. ‘Everyone fantasises.
Not everyone, fortunately, fantasises about violence. But a lot do. Young boys in particular, especially now.’

‘Because?’

‘Because of images they are exposed to online, on television, on news broadcasts. Look at how violent that
Valley of the Wolves
series is! That directly taps into the perfectly reasonable patriotic feelings that many people have, and makes being a Turk
synonymous with being some sort of bigoted super-soldier!’

Ayşe too was far from keen on the hit series
Valley of the Wolves
, with its graphic violence and heavily nationalistic message. But she was surprised to see that it upset İzzet Melik so much.
Men like him generally lapped up such programmes. But then İzzet was no ordinary mustachioed macho man. Brought up in the
liberal city of İzmir, he had been educated by an Italian-speaking Jew who had imparted to him a love of all things Latin.

‘But people very rarely act on their fantasies,’ İzzet said. ‘Or if they do, it’s something that they do alone or through
books or films. Again, our prisons just wouldn’t cope if all these people were punished for their unhealthy desires. Sexual
assault, if you look at the instances that take place outside the family, is very rare. Rape still makes headlines because
it’s so unusual.’

Ayşe knew that. And yet because sexual assault within families was known to happen, if only according to unreliable anecdotal
evidence, there was, she felt, still an undercurrent of approval amongst some men. And if her occasional reading of some English-language
newspapers was to be believed, such attitudes still held sway abroad too. Large numbers of men, it seemed, remained wedded
to the idea that women only existed to do their bidding and bring them pleasure. She looked at İzzet and smiled. With other
men he had a reputation for being a rough handful. But with the women in the department he was always very sympathetic and
polite – especially to her. Ayşe knew that İzzet had been divorced for a number of years, and wondered why that had happened.
In a strange sort of way, although heavy and rather ugly, he was really quite a catch.

‘You can turn the place upside-down,’ Grant T. Miller said as John Shalhoub and a group of officers that included Rita Addison
walked into his house. ‘You’ll only find what remains of an old man’s life.’

They didn’t have to tell Miller what they were looking for, only that they needed to search the place. But Shalhoub had told
Rita and the other officers that they were looking for firearms. Shalhoub it
had been who had first discovered that the Beretta that Weiss had tested for Diaz could have come from Miller. Shalhoub had
learned something else from Weiss too, which he had also passed on to his team. It was that the bullet that had been found
at the supposed drive-by shooting of Aaron Spencer had almost certainly come from the self-same gun.

‘I’ve never done drugs in my life,’ Miller said as he followed Rita into his dust-covered living room. Every surface was piled
high with old newspapers, even the ancient harmonium that his mother had liked to play on Sunday evenings. On the floor, what
had once been a very fine Persian carpet melted into the wet and rotting floorboards underneath. The whole place stank of
mice and of mould. ‘And as for pornography,’ he continued, ‘what would I do with that?’

Rita looked around at him and saw the leer that crossed his face as he viewed her from behind.

‘I’m an old man,’ he said. ‘What would be the point?’

Rita didn’t reply. In her experience, a lot of old men could and would look at porn, some of it hard-core. Some of them would
even act on their fantasies, or try to with their unfortunate wives or with prostitutes. She set about lifting up a pile of
papers, the top edition of which was dated 1987. Shalhoub and Zevets were upstairs, while two other officers were in the room
that Miller used as a kitchen. Once he’d finished looking at Rita, the old man headed down there to make himself some coffee.

Officers Smith and O’Reilly were making quite a mess of Miller’s provision cupboard by the time he arrived. Unopened but now
broken packets of Oreo biscuits lay scattered over the floor, together with boxes and boxes of old cube sugar.

‘My mother used to use this as a sewing room,’ Miller said as he flicked the switch on his kettle and then spooned some cheap
instant coffee into a cracked bone-china cup. ‘But when the tower rooms went, back in the eighties, they took the kitchen
with ’em and so we decamped here.’

Smith pulled open the doors of an art deco gramophone cupboard and began removing saucepans and cake tins. O’Reilly wondered
what a badass old racist like Miller would feel about having Smith and Addison rooting through his stuff. The old man, it
was said, used the ‘n’ word very freely when the mood took him.

‘Shame, really,’ Miller continued. ‘This was an elegant room when my mother was young. She’d sit here and sew, listen to Brahms
on the gramophone. She was a very cultured southern lady.’

Smith looked across at O’Reilly, who very gently shook his head. No one really knew whether Miller’s old ‘southern gentleman’
thing was really part of his personality or not. It was certainly, in his mind at least, a part of himself that he valued
very highly. Maybe it actually took him away from all the vile and unjust things he’d done to people over the years. Perhaps
it was, if a person was feeling charitable about it, something of a defence mechanism.

Miller tapped Smith on the shoulder. The police officer looked around into a pair of brilliant blue, seemingly amused eyes.
‘You looking for weapons, are you?’ Miller said.

O’Reilly stopped what he was doing and made to stand up. ‘Mr Miller . . .’

‘’Cause if you are, then I got a nice little Glock 18 you might like,’ Miller said. ‘Had it years. These days, given my financial
embarrassment, it’s the only piece I retain. You boys like to see it, would you?’

Çetin İkmen didn’t tell Ezekiel Goins anything he didn’t already know. Diaz was dead, and no one, as yet, knew who had killed
him or why. He didn’t allude in any way at all to the text the dead man had sent him. His motive for going to see Zeke Goins
was more to do with just being there as a fellow man who had lost his son. For the Turk, this, his first trip to America,
had been upsetting. He hadn’t expected that. He’d imagined that by distancing himself from Turkey for a while, he might actually
get some relief from thoughts about his dead son. But because of the old man and now also because of Diaz’s death, he felt
more intimately connected to his grief than he had done for a while.

‘In Gerald Diaz we had a good friend and ally up at the department,’ Martha Bell said as she put a cup of coffee in front
of İkmen on her kitchen table. ‘Now?’ She shrugged. ‘Too many Detroit PD want to punish the kids that hang on these streets,
criminalise their habits, send them crazy so they drive around shooting people. Don’t need to be like Gladys Knight and hear
it through the grapevine to know that’s true.’

Because she was so strong, it was easy sometimes to forget that Martha had lost a son too. Ezekiel Goins, who had come inside
with them, said, ‘Sam’ll help us keep the gardens going, Martha. He knows people.’

‘Oh, I ain’t afraid for Antoine Cadillac so much,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows what we do and why we do it. No, I had plans
and Diaz knew it and he was open to supporting me.’