Dead of Night (33 page)

‘You think this could be a lovers’ argument gone wrong?’ İkmen asked as he made himself look again at the ghastly, pulped
head of the man on the bed.

Devine sighed and then said, ‘No.’ He looked at Weiss. ‘But if what you say’s true, then maybe we could be looking for a missing
rent boy.’

‘That’s the road I think Grant T. probably travelled, yes,’ Weiss said.

Grant T. Miller’s bedroom reminded İkmen of a room he’d been
in years before when Mehmet Süleyman had still been his sergeant. A deluded old woman called Maria Gülcü had lived at the
top of a house in Beyoğlu, convinced that she was the only surviving daughter of the last Tsar of Russia. Like this room,
Maria Gülcü’s chamber had been dark and vermin-infested, and once glittering fabrics had been overtaken by mould. He looked
down and saw a pair of damp, battered slippers that had originally, by their appearance, probably been red. Ed Devine saw
them at almost the same time. ‘Mmm,’ he said, ‘didn’t know that Grant T.
had
any shoes.’

‘Why?’

‘Well known he always wears house slippers,’ Devine said. ‘Can’t see him going out with nothing on his feet. Can’t see him
going out period.’

‘Unless someone came and took him out,’ İkmen said.

Both of the other men considered this for a moment, and then Dr Weiss said, ‘But who?’

‘Miller still has influence in this city,’ Devine said. ‘We know he has a lot of money. He could well own this Gül property
company.’

‘Which remember, gentlemen, is apparently administered by a man who is most definitely not Grant Miller,’ İkmen said. ‘The
landlord of the Gül mail box in Savannah reported that a middle-aged northern man came to empty it from time to time. If Gül
and Mr Miller are one and the same, then he has to be using at least one other person to help him.’

The other two men were silent.

‘And if we assume that Mr Miller did indeed use rent boys considerably younger than himself, then a middle-aged man would
not fit that profile. Mr Miller has therefore to be involved with someone else, someone who maybe is helping him even as we
speak.’

‘Could even be someone we know, too,’ Devine said. ‘Grant T. didn’t know that we were coming. Rather convenient that he’s
out now, just at this precise moment, don’t you think?’

There was a sound he recognised! An acetylene torch. He could hear it fizzing and spluttering above his head. Scrappers had
to be in – the homeless, the addicted, the desperate – in search of metal to sell, especially copper. Copper made good dollars.
Grant T. Miller hadn’t survived all these years without knowing what made top dollar, what one could barter with and how.

It was cold and damp underneath the old plant, but it had still been a good idea. His own, of course. That people – junkies,
scrappers, kids, urban explorers – came to the plant all the time was no bad thing. It was far too obvious! Folk’d think he’d
have to be mad to go there. But the junkies, the scrappers, the kids and the urban explorers wouldn’t bother him even if they
did happen upon him. Who was he anyway? They wouldn’t know. He just looked like any old bum. They certainly wouldn’t call
the police. Not doing what they did. Breaking into places like this was technically illegal.

Grant T. sat down on what looked like an old junction box and wished that he still smoked. Leaving in a hurry meant that he
hadn’t been able to grab anything to eat or drink, and so he was hungry and bored. When he had smoked, years ago, he’d done
so to help while away the many weary hours he’d spent supervising the line. Five dollars a day was what those grunts from
Fuckarse, Alabama, or whatever shit shacks those hillbillies he’d had to oversee had come from, got back in the day. Good
money for people whose momma and poppa were brother and sister. White trash. At least the niggers didn’t inbreed – or didn’t
seem to.

His sense of calm, given his predicament, came as a surprise to Grant T. Miller. Technically, he’d lost everything – his home,
his money, his liberty. The whore Bowen had had to die, unfortunately, simply because he wasn’t content with what he was given
and was threatening to blab his mouth. Funny that a kid who gave blow jobs for a living couldn’t keep his mouth shut! Grant
T. laughed, softly. Then he wondered what Canada would look like after such a long time. He hadn’t, he reckoned, been over
the border for at least thirty
years. Not that he was going to stay in Canada for very long. There was another, final destination that he had in mind. It
was somewhere his hated father had known very well. Given that fact, in reality, Grant T.’s predicament wasn’t so bad after
all.

Only a cigarette would do. Ayşe thought about just making do with the glass of water that İzzet brought her, but it wasn’t
enough. So when he offered her a smoke, she took it and then felt awful about herself. How weak she was! In all sorts of ways!

But then if Mehmet Süleyman hadn’t expressly forbidden her to take her relationship with İzzet Melik any further, would she
actually have slept with him at this point? Ayşe didn’t know; she was totally confused – about everything. She turned on to
her side, pulled the duvet up over her naked breasts and looked at the man in her bed. İzzet was overweight, had monstrous
bags underneath his eyes and reeked of tobacco. On the other hand, he’d made love to her with such tenderness and yet such
passion that just simply recalling what had passed between them made her want to take him in her arms and cradle him like
a child. Oddly, there was a side to İzzet that was child-like and which came to the fore when she was with him – or so it
seemed to Ayşe. She liked him. He was a nice man, a clever man, and now he was also a considerate lover too. But still her
flesh refused to be set on fire by his. This disappointed her, and it must have shown on her face, because İzzet took her
chin in one of his hands and said, ‘What’s the matter?’

She made herself smile. ‘Nothing.’

‘Everything . . . it was . . .’

‘Everything was, is, fine,’ she said, and then she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Everything’s wonderful.’

He took her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. Just touching her aroused him. But then for him, what they were
doing was the fulfilment of a long-held fantasy. When she’d first suggested they go back to her apartment, he’d been so stunned
he’d just
babbled. She’d had to take him by the hand and lead him to her bedroom. And now her brother was not, apparently, returning
home that night, and so theoretically they had the apartment to themselves until the morning. Ayşe wondered what Süleyman
would make of it, should he get to know, and then she felt guilty for even remembering his name. Here she was with a kind,
passionate man who would marry her in a heartbeat, and all she could think about was a shallow, spiteful philanderer. But
then the philanderer’s face reared up in her mind, and she saw, as always, just how handsome and charming he was. Just for
a second it made her pull away from İzzet.

Looking wounded, he said again, ‘What’s the matter?’

Yet again, she made herself smile. ‘Nothing,’ she said, and then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him until he
forgot all about her tiny moment of oddness.

As the crime-scene team moved in, so İkmen, Devine and Weiss moved out of Grant T. Miller’s bedroom and went downstairs and
outside. They all needed to clear the smell of death out of their nostrils, and İkmen wanted a cigarette.

Chewing hard on his nicotine gum, Devine shook his head and said, ‘You go out to talk to a man about a suspicious realty company
and you end up with a dead body with a pulped-up head.’

‘I don’t see how a frail old man like Mr Miller could do such a thing,’ İkmen said as he smoked as hard as Devine was chewing.

‘Maybe someone helped him,’ Devine replied. ‘Maybe the kid was drunk or drugged when Miller smashed him.’

They both watched for a moment as Dr Weiss moved various fronds of snow-encrusted vegetation aside at the back of the property.

‘Rob? What you looking for, man?’ Devine asked.

For a moment he didn’t answer. İkmen for his part, and not for the first time, wondered what the mutilated body had been doing
in
Grant T. Miller’s bed. Had he killed the man after having sex with him, or maybe . . .

‘You know I think that if I’m not mistaken, this is what remains of the Millers’ old garage,’ Dr Weiss said as he pulled away
branches and bindweed from a slowly emerging wooden structure. Ed Devine shrugged his shoulders helplessly at İkmen, as if
to signify that this was not unusual for the slightly eccentric academic.

‘He had a car to die for – if you’ll pardon the pun,’ Weiss continued as he carried on clearing twisted vegetation. ‘An early
concept car, a Packard Pan American. Two-seater convertible, it was beautiful. I was just a kid when he got it, and I used
to run out of my house to see him drive it down the road, usually with his mother beside him. I badgered the life out of my
poor father to get one too. Of course he never did. God, if that’s here . . .’

As Weiss carried on hacking his way through urban jungle, Ed Devine took his cell phone out and called John Shalhoub. ‘He’ll
need to know what’s happened here,’ he said to İkmen before the officer at the other end picked up.

Part of and yet not part of the unfolding scene, Çetin İkmen watched his colleagues go about their business, then turned and
looked out into the street. Beyond the wrecked Johnson house opposite, there was little but ruins for at least three blocks
all around. This was the land owned by Gül. Back towards the city, he could see a few turrets that belonged to the last remaining
derelict mansions to the south, then Brush Park became what the Americans called project housing.

Even if he had been a rent boy, what had brought the dead man to such a place as this? And if Grant T. Miller was indeed the
sort of man who would pay for sex, then was he maybe famous for that in some quarters? Although it seemed unlikely that anyone
else could have killed the man in Miller’s bedroom, they couldn’t assume, as yet, that it had been the old man. That Miller
himself was missing could be viewed in two ways. Firstly, that he had indeed murdered the dead man and then run away; or secondly,
that the murderer had
been a third party, who had then taken Miller to somewhere unknown for reasons equally unknown. His mind turned to Ezekiel
Goins, and he was disquieted that it did so. There had been so much hatred between those two for so long! Had Goins finally
had enough and maybe kidnapped Miller? Had he followed the dead man to Miller’s house and, catching him in the act with the
old man, killed them both? But if that were the case, then where was Miller’s body?

‘Inspector İkmen?’

He looked around and, shocked out of his reverie, put a hand over his heart as he regarded Mark Zevets. ‘Officer,’ he said,
‘you caught me dreaming.’

Mark Zevets smiled. ‘No problem.’ Then he said, ‘Inspector, is it right that a body has been found here?’ He looked up at
the old house and sniffed.

‘Yes,’ İkmen said. ‘A man. But not Mr Miller.’

‘You know who?’

‘No,’ İkmen said. ‘Miller is not at home. When we arrived, the house was empty. Dr Weiss thinks it possible that the crime
could have a sexual element.’

Zevets raised his eyebrows.

‘Mr Miller, Dr Weiss believes, could possibly have had an interest in young men,’ İkmen said.

‘Really? Rotten old creature like him?’ He looked appalled for a moment, then said, ‘You don’t think there’s any chance that
the dead man was a rent boy, do you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ İkmen replied, ‘that is a theory. The body is . . . mutilated . . .’

‘What colour is he?’ Zevets asked.

‘Colour?’ It wasn’t a question İkmen was often asked back in Turkey.

‘Yeah, the rent boy, was he black or white?’

‘Oh, white, er, or rather the man we think may be a rent boy. Why?’

Mark Zevets pushed open Grant T. Miller’s rickety gate and entered his garden. ‘Because I’m looking for a missing rent boy
called Artie Bowen,’ he said. ‘A crackhead who funded his habit by going down on men. Some of them may well have been old
white guys.’

‘Why are you looking for this man, Officer Zevets?’ İkmen asked.

‘Because apparently he was best buddies with the guy Lieutenant Shalhoub believes killed Gerry Diaz.’

Night was beginning to fall over the Motor City, and those skyscrapers that weren’t bursting into bright electric light were
fading into the darkness like fictional spies. Only at night did one really get the measure of just how many Detroit skyscrapers
were now empty. Çetin İkmen turned away from the window and looked back into Ed Devine’s office, which except for him was
empty. The identity of the dead man in Grant T. Miller’s house had been established as one Arthur ‘Artie’ Bowen, a rent boy
from Lafayette Park, the man that Officer Zevets had been looking for.

Artie, it seemed, had been best friends with the man who it was still thought had killed Lieutenant Diaz. That said, apparently
the forensic investigators were throwing doubt on whether Clifford Kercheval, Diaz’s supposed killer, had actually taken his
own life. Devine, amongst others, was currently in a meeting about that.

İkmen had little to do beyond sinking into his own thoughts. Lieutenant Shalhoub had returned from the Voss Funeral Home with
news that Mr Stefan Voss had persisted with his story that he knew nothing about Elvis Goins’ funeral. His brother Rudolf
had done ‘all that’, apparently. It seemed strange, but then with only Rudolf’s signature on the paperwork, it was just possible
that he was telling the truth. Although why hide an innocuous thing like that anyway? Unless it was because those who’d been
involved at the time were somehow still involved now. İkmen shuddered as he thought about Grant T. Miller lying beside the
rotting corpse of Artie Bowen, maybe even using it for sex . . .

The door to the office swung open and Devine put his head through. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘we’re going out after Grant T. Miller
– if he’s still alive, that is. You want in on that?’