Dead of Night (24 page)

‘I have a computer in my office in İstanbul and a mobile telephone that isn’t a BlackBerry,’ İkmen said. ‘I’m an old man,
Officer Addison; there is a limit to the amount of technological information I can absorb. Now, let us consider, step by step,
everything we know about Elvis Goins’ death, about Grant T. Miller and about Lieutenant Diaz.’

As Rita spoke, İkmen wrote down salient points, as well as adding some of his own.

‘As far as I can tell,’ he said, ‘the fact that Elvis Goins was a gang leader and a drug-dealer has to be significant. Whoever
killed him probably did so as part of a drugs war. Other gangs? Other dealers?’

‘At the time, there were rival drug gangs, yes,’ Rita said. ‘Black gangs, white gangs, Hispanics. I think the Delta Blues
were the only mixed-race, Melungeon crew.’

‘Melungeons who, as I understand it,’ İkmen said, ‘were derided by everyone.’

‘They were just making a play for some sort of recognition back then,’ she said. ‘Mayor Coleman Young was doing his best to
get black people a fairer deal. Other groups were hopeful too. Eventually Sam Goins came out of all that and really shook
things up. But back in the seventies, the Melungeons were still nowhere.’

İkmen wrote it down. ‘Also, Miller was involved in drugs, was he not?’

‘So it’s said. But there’s no proof. Diaz, I think, believed it. Zeke Goins of course does. The basis of his belief that Miller
killed his son rests on the idea that Elvis and Grant T. were rival dealers. The Delta Blues were small-time, just started
out.’

‘So you wouldn’t expect the money Elvis had then made from drugs to pay for an elaborate funeral?’

‘No.’

İkmen told her about Tayyar Bekdil’s experiences with the owners of the Voss Funeral Home.

‘Sadly and stupidly, I got quite drunk with Mr Goins earlier today.’

‘Oh.’

İkmen shrugged. ‘Sometimes the death of my own son is difficult to bear. When bereaved people talk, such things can happen.
But what I do remember him saying is that part of his guilt revolves around the fact that when he left his wife, after Elvis’s
death, he left her without any money.’

‘Could’ve spent it all on Elvis’s funeral,’ Rita said.

‘Maybe. When I have asked him about it, he always intimates that he paid for it himself. But he never actually says that he
did.’

‘So . . .’

‘So maybe whoever did pay was protecting himself or someone else,’ İkmen said.

‘Hush money?’

‘In a way.’

‘But if that was the case, and maybe Miller paid for Elvis’s funeral, then it didn’t work,’ Rita said. ‘Zeke Goins attacked
Miller . . .’

‘Who didn’t press charges.’

‘And then he hit the road. After he came back, he has been accusing Miller of Elvis’s death ever since,’ Rita said.

‘Diaz met both Miller and Ezekiel Goins when Goins attacked Miller, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, with his then partner, John Sosobowski.’

‘Do you know anything about him?’ İkmen asked.

‘I know that he’s dead,’ Rita replied. ‘The two of them went out to Brush Park in response to a call from Miller saying he
was being attacked by Goins. They broke it up and then took Miller to the hospital. He didn’t want to press charges.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘No. Maybe like you he didn’t want the trouble of it.’

‘Mmm. But perhaps we should ask him,’ İkmen said.

Then they talked about Diaz and how, so far, no one was definitively in the frame for his murder.

‘I was looking on his computer system just this afternoon,’ Rita said. ‘A guy who could have been one of Diaz’s informants
was found dead in a car crusher out on Eight Mile. Lieutenant Devine, who’s working that case, asked me to look on Diaz’s
system to see whether there were any references to the dead man, Kyle Redmond.’

‘And were there?’

‘Not obviously,’ she said. ‘Diaz was very cautious, as you know; he used pseudonyms for his informants. Nothing jumped out
that seemed to suggest a car wrecker from Eight Mile.’ She frowned. ‘What I did find, though, were some references to something
or someone called Rosebud.’

‘Rosebud? Like the sledge in the film
Citizen Kane
?’

Rita nodded. ‘Hadn’t thought of that, but yes.’

‘What about Rosebud, then?’ İkmen asked.

Rita shrugged. ‘Hell knows!’ she said. ‘Mystery to me. All Diaz said about it was that whatever it was, it was bad.’

Rita didn’t leave İkmen’s suite until nearly midnight. They’d talked for hours and discussed all sorts of scenarios that might
pertain to the recent deaths of Diaz, Aaron Spencer and Kyle Redmond. But they’d come to no firm conclusions apart from the
fact that a visit to John Sosobowski’s widow was something they needed to do. Sosobowski had probably been the closest person
to Gerald Diaz.
Maybe he had told his wife things he hadn’t told anyone else. Maybe he had known who or what Rosebud was.

Rita was aware of a man standing in the hall talking on his cell phone when she left, but as she got into the elevator, she
didn’t think about that. The man didn’t get in with her. Even when the elevator stopped before the lobby, she didn’t think
anything about it. Elevators did that all the time.

The doors opened at floor eight and two young white men walked in. They were, Rita reckoned, probably on welfare. Baseball
caps pulled tight over their eyes, their baggy jeans down round their asses and the laces undone on their big white sneakers.
‘Welfare chic’, Diaz always described such a look. Rita herself preferred ‘dealer duds’. She made to move over so they could
stand together, but she didn’t get the chance. Before she could even think about reaching for her gun, they pulled her out
of the elevator and threw her to the ground. Wordlessly, the taller of the two sat on her while his companion took his sneakers
off and put them tidily down by the wall.

‘What do you want! You want my purse? Take it!’

But they didn’t want her purse. The one who had taken off his sneakers put on one steel-toecapped boot and kicked her with
all his power square in the face. Rita screamed, and he kicked her again. Then she lost consciousness.

By the time someone had called for an ambulance, Çetin İkmen, six floors above, had gone to bed and instantly fallen asleep.

‘You have a problem,’ İkmen said as he flicked the ash from his cigarette out of the window. No one had smoked in that office
for years, but İkmen was not prepared to even begin to talk unless he was allowed to do so. Details of the attack on Rita
Addison had left him shaking with fury.

The Chief of the Detroit Police Department sat behind his desk looking smaller than he usually did. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Officer
Addison . . . she was looking into things at my behest. What she was appearing to unearth made it difficult to trust . . .’

‘Someone in your department did not want Lieutenant Diaz’s evidence about what I know was Grant T. Miller’s Beretta to be
discovered,’ İkmen said. ‘Unless that gun or the bullet he fired at me are found, there can be nothing to connect him, without
doubt, to the murder of the young boy Aaron Spencer.’

‘There’s you.’

‘Which was why you wanted me to stay on here?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you thought, sir, that you might well have a problem in your department, with Mr Miller.’ İkmen drew heavily on his cigarette
and then completely failed to blow the smoke out of the window.

The Chief sighed. ‘People like Miller – and in recent years he’s had his black equivalents too – have had undue influence
over this city since the beginning of the auto industry. Where there’s money, there’s bad smells, and even when the money
moves out, the stench can remain. Some of these people have influence in Detroit, and if
you look, you can see it. They’re dealing drugs, running protection rackets, buying up cheap real estate. But we can’t connect
Miller to any of that. So what’s his game?’

‘Does he have to have a game?’

‘Unless he shot Aaron Spencer for nothing except the colour of his skin,’ the Chief said. ‘And you know what? I can’t believe
he did. He’s bad, but he’s no fool.’

İkmen put his cigarette out on the metal windowsill and then lit up another. ‘He shot at my colleague and myself.’

‘He didn’t kill you.’

‘No.’

‘So why kill the kid?’

İkmen shrugged. ‘Why has Officer Addison had her teeth kicked out, her head stamped upon? Why is Lieutenant Diaz dead? Sir,
I am not from this city, and I know only that it has many problems but that the will to bring it back to life is here, is
real. Lieutenant Diaz thought in a different way. It was an inspiration to me.’

‘His involvement with Antoine Cadillac and other community initiatives was a passion of his,’ the Chief said. ‘I’ll tell you,
that’s where my head is too, in part. But when shit like hits on kids and cop-killing happens, what can I do but give in to
the baying for blood that breaks out across Detroit? This city, Inspector İkmen, has had an ongoing battle with cronyism and
corruption since before I can remember. I’ve always liked to think my officers were above that. Maybe I was just delusional.’

‘I think we can assume that Officer Addison is not corrupt,’ İkmen said. ‘But you know that. You instructed her to work to
find that missing bullet. You have to think now about others you know or feel you can trust.’

The Chief put his head down and shook it from side to side. ‘According to Addison, she was attacked by two white males in
their twenties,’ he said. ‘Dressed like a hundred thousand other street punks.’

‘Did they say anything when they attacked her?’

‘Not a word.’ He looked up just as İkmen put his second cigarette out on the windowsill. ‘But then if it was a hit . . .’

‘If.’

‘If.’

Both men became silent then until eventually İkmen said, ‘Do you know about a person or an organisation called Rosebud?’

It was an odd feeling not to be knocked back by Ayşe Farsakoğlu, especially now that Mehmet Süleyman had returned. Maybe she
was disappointed that İkmen hadn’t come back with him and wanted someone to talk to. But whatever the reason, she seemed to
be quite happy to be sitting opposite İzzet Melik in the upstairs room of the Black Sea Pide Restaurant.

It was lunchtime, and the place was buzzing. There were local tradespeople, a lottery-ticket seller, a smattering of police
officers and a small bunch of tourists who looked as if they might be Scandinavian. İzzet and Ayşe had ordered food as soon
as they’d arrived, and were now eating.

‘Dr Sarkissian is now certain that Kuban took his own life,’ İzzet said. He’d heard Süleyman having a conversation with the
Armenian earlier.

‘Yes,’ Ayşe said.

‘An end to the matter.’

‘For us, yes,’ she said. ‘But Vice should follow up on the men who admired him.’

‘If they can.’

‘If they have the will.’ It was said bitterly. That absolutely no Vice officer had been in Sulukule on the night of Ali Kuban’s
suicide still appalled her. Men, she felt, still mostly failed to take the threat of crime against women seriously.

İzzet quite deliberately ignored her. He didn’t want to have a conversation he’d already had with her several times already.
‘Mehmet Bey didn’t like Detroit,’ he said. ‘Apparently it’s a mess.’

‘Çetin Bey has other opinions,’ she countered. If briefly, she’d spoken to İkmen just after she’d arrived for work. He’d apologised
to her for not returning, but had said that what he was being asked to stay on for was important. ‘He says Detroit is fascinating.’

İzzet smiled. İkmen always liked a challenge. ‘I’ve heard there’s a lot of corruption in that city,’ he said.

‘There’s a lot of corruption everywhere,’ Ayşe replied.

Although she’d come along with him happily, her spikiness was unsettling, and İzzet almost wished that he’d opted to have
lunch on his own. He didn’t say anything more and just waited to see if she’d open conversation with him again. It took several
minutes, but when she did speak, her tone had softened.

‘I miss Çetin Bey,’ she said. It wasn’t exactly an apology for her earlier, sharp tone, but he knew that it was as much as
he was going to get from her.

İzzet knew that it had only been a few months since her father had died. He knew that Çetin İkmen had helped her, as much
as he could, to get through that.

‘I’m sure he’ll be back as soon as he can,’ he said. Then, on impulse, he moved one of his hands across the table and put
it gently over hers. At no point did Ayşe look up at him, but she didn’t withdraw her hand from underneath his either.

Marie Addison was in the kind of shocked state that turned a person to stone. She’d been in to see her only daughter Rita
just the once, and had looked at her terrible smashed face with a mixture of numbness and curiosity. While Rita’s older brother
Frannie, an attorney, raged and threatened and cried, Marie just sat outside her daughter’s side room and stared at the floor.
Detroit PD had provided Rita with round-the-clock security, and so there was a uniformed officer at the door to her room,
as well as Ed Devine, who had come to visit. Sitting next to Marie, he put a hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Rita was conscious
when they brought her in. That’s a good sign.’

‘You think?’ Frannie Addison was furious. He walked up and down the corridor, agitatedly waving his BlackBerry around and
rubbing a hand compulsively across his bald pate. ‘My sister has no teeth, Lieutenant. Her head has been smashed! If she ever
wakes up again, who’s going to make that right, huh? Detroit PD?’

‘Mr Addison,’ Devine began, ‘we’ll do whatever—’

‘Whatever what?’ Frannie Addison was a tall, very slim man, who nevertheless found fronting up to the much larger Ed Devine
no trouble at all. ‘What was my sister doing in a shithole like the Lakeland Plaza in the middle of the night, Lieutenant?
Can you tell me that?’

Marie looked up and said, ‘Frannie, please . . .’

‘Please what?’ He stared down at her with total fury in his eyes. ‘Please what, Momma? Shut up and go away? Just ignore the
fact that my kid sister looks like the fucking Elephant Man?’