Dead of Night (34 page)

İkmen stood up. Finding Miller was now the only way to get answers to so many things, not least of which could still involve
who had killed Elvis Goins. ‘Yes.’ He put his coat on. Then he said, ‘Where are we going to look?’

Devine first smiled, and then let his face settle into a grave frown. ‘Everywhere,’ he said.

Grant T. Miller and his mother had paid for Elvis Goins’ funeral, and Ricky Voss’s great-uncle Stefan knew it just as surely
as Ricky himself did. The Millers had given Voss a blank cheque! It was the only time that had ever happened, and Zeke Goins,
completely unaware about where the money had come from, had spent like a wild man. The incident was legendary even if, as
his grandfather used to say, discretion had to be upheld at all times. One did not want to upset the Millers. It was generally
held to be unwise.

But Ricky hadn’t been comfortable about effectively lying to the police. They’d all been fully aware, since before Ricky could
remember, of the fact that Grant T. and his mother Rose had paid for Elvis’s funeral. His grandfather had taken payment, that
was true, but the whole family had known.

What if the issue about whether or not the Millers had paid for Elvis’s funeral was crucial to something that maybe threatened
someone’s life or liberty in the present? It was easy for Stefan to say that it didn’t matter! But what if it really did?

Stefan had gone back to his house and everyone except Ricky had left for the day. If he made up some shit about how his uncle
was getting senile and how he’d been embarrassed to show him up in front of the police, maybe . . . Ricky looked at his vast array
of telephones and other gadgets and wondered whether he should just e-mail. But then if the cops really did need the information
quickly,
that wouldn’t be any good! Some people, even some big companies, took for ever to read their e-mails. No, he’d have to call,
and he’d have to get the right guy too. There was no point talking to anyone but the right guy. Ricky Voss breathed in deeply
and picked up his cell phone.

‘As far as we can tell, Miller didn’t leave town on a bus,’ Ed Devine said as he motioned for İkmen to get into his car. ‘And
seeing as he don’t have no car . . .’

‘Not one that works,’ İkmen said.

Devine, smiling now, sat in the car and fired up the engine. ‘Thought old Rob Weiss was gonna pass out when he saw that Packard
Pan American in Miller’s garage,’ he said.

‘The car was . . .’

‘Beyond reasonable repair? Sure! But I’ve not see Weiss as jazzed as that for years!’

They pulled out of Beaubien Street and on to the wide boulevard known as Gratiot.

‘It’s my hunch that if Miller did kill that Bowen guy, his best bet would be to try and get across the border to Canada,’
Devine said. ‘That’s what I’d do. And knowing Miller as we do, we know he has money and possibly the help of others too.’
He looked across at İkmen. ‘So we’re stopping everything going under the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel.’

‘Which we’re going to now?’

‘Yeah.’

İkmen looked out of the car at the streets of downtown Detroit. They were just leaving Greektown and the huge new casino,
headed now for the river and the complex of buildings that littered the shore in front of the tunnel.

‘We’re taking over from Regine and Ferrari,’ Devine said, naming a couple of officers, only one of whom İkmen knew. ‘We got
a good complement of uniforms, which we’ll need.’

To stop every vehicle travelling from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario was clearly not going to be an easy task.

‘Shalhoub and just about everyone else is searching the metro area,’ Devine continued. ‘Miller could just lay low for a few
days and then try to cross.’

‘Do a lot of criminals try to cross the border into Canada?’ İkmen asked.

Devine laughed. ‘Is the Pope a Catholic? Sure,’ he said. ‘They get our scum, we get theirs. Cosy, huh? Tonight we just oversee,
though. Rookies can get their hands dirty with the search.’

It was still going to be a long night. Devine’s cell phone, which was on hands-free mode, began to ring. He pushed a button
to answer it. ‘Devine.’

‘Lieutenant, just had a call from a guy called Richard Voss, very anxious to talk to you,’ a shrill and distorted voice said.

Devine mouthed to İkmen that it was headquarters.

‘Did he say what he wanted?’ Devine asked.

‘He said he’d like you to call him back about an old funeral,’ the voice said. ‘Mr Voss said to tell you that they all knew.
He said you’d understand what that meant.’

Devine and İkmen looked at each other, and then Devine said to the cell phone, ‘Give me Voss’s number, will you.’

In spite of needing to be down at the tunnel almost immediately, Devine pulled the car over to the side of the road, picked
up his phone and called Ricky Voss. When he finally got finished with that, he turned the car around.

‘But I thought we were going to the border?’ İkmen said as Devine executed a very rapid U-turn in the middle of the road.

‘Change of plan,’ Devine replied. He pressed a button on his phone to bring up speed-dial and called Mark Zevets. ‘Hey, Mark,’
he said as İkmen sat in some confusion beside him, ‘where you boys at now?’

‘Just coming up on the old Packard place,’ Mark Zevets’ crackly voice replied. ‘Gonna take a look. You down at the border?’

‘Yes, we are,’ Devine said. He put his foot down hard on the accelerator. ‘Mighty busy.’

‘You drew the short straw!’ Zevets joked.

‘Sure did.’ Devine accelerated even harder. ‘You boys stay safe,’ he said, and cut the connection.

İkmen, who was no great fan of really fast driving, said, ‘Can I be allowed to know what’s going on, Lieutenant?’

Devine looked across at him and said, ‘Where Miller is, I don’t know. But I know a man who may well do.’

‘Who?’ İkmen asked.

But Devine was already back on the cell phone, telling Sergeant Ferrari that she and Frank Regine were going to have to hang
on down at the border for a little while longer.

‘I ain’t been scrappin’, no,’ the kid said.

‘Bo, don’t try and mess with me,’ Mark Zevets said as he made the boy take him over to a big pile of metal in one of the old
offices upstairs. ‘There’s enough scrap here to keep even you high for at least a week.’

The old Packard plant was one of the biggest ruin sites in the city. Mark Zevets often wondered if the mile upon mile of what
had once been one of the most prestigious factories in America was in fact the largest ruin site in the world. People on the
run had been known to hide out there in the past. Searching through its endless empty factory floors, offices, bathrooms and
car parks for Grant T. Miller was something he knew had to be done, but it was a laborious, eerie task. Especially at night.
Urban legend had it that homeless people lived in the old Packard, and there had at one time been some evidence for this.
But in reality, most of those found lurking in the building were actually people like Bo Tara, drug addicts seeking to make
a quick buck stripping the place of its metal.

‘But I’m not here to bust you for scrapping,’ Zevets said as he held his torch up to the boy’s vaguely sleepy-looking face.
‘Bo, have
you seen an old man around here? White, eighty-odd years old, filthy pyjamas?’

‘Some old junkie?’ Bo sucked his teeth dismissively. ‘Man, this place teems with folk like that, you know what I’m sayin’?
People pass through, sometimes high, sometimes—’

‘This old man isn’t a junkie,’ Zevets said. There was no point giving Bo Miller’s name; he was far too young to know about
him.

‘So why you looking for his ass?’

Zevets was considering whether to tell him that the man they were looking for could have murdered someone when he heard John
Shalhoub shout up from outside the building.

‘Zevets!’

Dragging Bo with him, Mark Zevets walked over to one of the empty spaces where a window had once been and pointed his flashlight
down towards the ground. ‘Hey!’

John Shalhoub, standing on a small pile of brick and litter, looked up and said, ‘Anything?’

Zevets directed the flashlight’s beam at Bo’s face. ‘Only Mr Tara,’ he said.

Shalhoub groaned and shook his head. ‘Christ, Bo,’ he said, ‘can’t you leave this fucking place to rest in peace?’

‘I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!’

‘Yeah, right, and I’m Barack Obama,’ Shalhoub said.

‘Lieutenant, with respect, we’re not here for scrappers,’ Zevets cut in. ‘Bo says he’s seen no one we’d find of interest.’

‘He high?’

Bo Tara, furious, leaned over the windowsill and said, ‘Would I be out scrapping, as you have it, if I was high?’

Shalhoub looked up at his partner. ‘Zevets?’

‘He’s a little spaced, but . . .’

‘Bo, go back to whatever crack shack you call home these days,’ Shalhoub said. ‘Zevets, get down here. I wanna take a look
at the tunnel that runs underneath this place.’

Mark Zevets began to move off towards the exit to the ground floor of the plant, dragging a clearly reluctant Bo Tara with
him. When they got outside, he told the boy, ‘Just go now, Bo. Come pick your scrap up some other time.’

Bo Tara pulled the hood of his jumper up over his head and began to slouch off towards East Grand Boulevard. Amazingly, on
the side of the road he saw a car that was clearly not abandoned. It wasn’t a cop car. Maybe it had been stolen? But then
the headlights from another car passing through the desolation of Packard temporarily blinded him, and so he just stumbled
off into the wasteland in the general direction of the place he called home.

Ed Devine switched the car’s headlights off and took his gun out of its holster underneath his jacket. Then he turned to İkmen
and said, ‘You stay here.’

İkmen was appalled. ‘No!’

‘Man, I can’t issue you with a weapon! You’re a foreigner! Stay here, get in the driver’s seat, and if anyone tries to jack
the car, just get the hell out!’

Devine started to open his door, but İkmen caught him by the wrist. ‘Lieutenant Devine, are you going to tell me what is going
on?’

For a second, Devine appeared to wrestle with himself, then he pulled his door shut and said, ‘Listen, Çetin, it could be
a colleague who’s involved with Miller . . .’

‘I guessed that!’ İkmen said. He was angry that Devine apparently thought he was so stupid. Not to have realised what his
tense silence meant would have been stupid. Besides, as they both knew only too well, Miller had enough money to be figuratively
everywhere. ‘Who is it?’ İkmen asked.

Ed Devine wiped sweat from his brow. ‘I can’t tell you until I’m certain,’ he said.

Zevets and Shalhoub were the only officers İkmen knew for certain
were at the great ruin that loomed three storeys high on each side of the car. It was only eight p.m. but in this deserted
and unlit part of the city it already looked as if it was dead of night.

‘It’s a terrible thing to make accusations against brother officers unless you’re sure,’ Devine continued.

‘So can’t you wait . . .’

‘If I’m right, someone else could get hurt!’ Devine said. Suddenly apparently galvanised into action again, he got out of
the car. ‘Stay here!’

İkmen got out too.

Devine stamped one foot on the ground. ‘Man!’

İkmen walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Ed,’ he said softly. ‘You know that back in my country we are obliged
to carry guns too. But I find that I rarely do that.’

Devine looked at him as if he were insane.

‘You know why?’

Devine shook his head. ‘I can’t even begin to . . .’

‘It’s because I have a brain as well as a trigger finger,’ İkmen said. ‘And my brain, and yours, is much cleverer than that
finger will ever be. Lieutenant, if I can’t reason my way out of trouble, then maybe I am in the wrong job. This is my philosophy.
It has kept me free from bullet holes for over thirty years.’

‘In İstanbul,’ Devine replied. ‘Çetin, with respect, this is Detroit! Car-jack central, murder capital of America, junkie—’

‘Detroit is a city of people just like İstanbul,’ İkmen cut in. ‘You think we don’t have killers in my city? You think you
are unique?’ He buttoned up his coat to show that he meant business. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let us go and find what you are
looking for.’

To feel this way was not only destructive, it was also irrational. But Mehmet Süleyman couldn’t help it. In his absence, somehow,
Ayşe Farsakoğlu had taken up with İzzet Melik. A colleague, Metin İskender, had told him. He’d seemed to find it quite amusing.

‘Remember that Disney film,
Beauty and the Beast
?’
he’d said. Then he’d mumbled something about if Farsakoğlu and Melik were both happy, then who was he to criticise? But then
İskender was happily married. He had also never so much as had lunch with Ayşe Farsakoğlu, much less an affair.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and İzzet Melik still hadn’t left Ayşe’s apartment. Süleyman sat in his great white BMW
outside and fumed. What on earth was a woman he had bedded doing with a creature like İzzet? Ugly, lumbering, when it was
hot very sweaty, he was an absolute oaf of a man! Except that Süleyman knew full well that he wasn’t. Unattractive and ungainly
were only aspects of İzzet. He was also intelligent, sensitive, perceptive, and in addition he loved Ayşe with all of his
heart. If a man like that committed to a woman he really loved, then it would be for ever. Ayşe would be cared for, on all
levels. They could even have children! Oh, that was a ghastly thought!

But then was it? Really? Only for him. To some extent he’d always been like this. If he had something, then no one else was
allowed to have it too. As a child, his brother Murad had readily let little Mehmet play with his toys. But little Mehmet
did not reciprocate. What was his remained his, and that included people. And yet he’d dismissed
Ayşe Farsakoğlu from his life years ago! Surely he didn’t still have feelings for her after such a long time?

Of course he didn’t! She was still lovely, but he rarely, if ever, thought about her in a sexual way. No, he was just plainly
and simply jealous that his ugly inferior was having sex with a beautiful woman while he was all alone. What a spiteful, ungenerous
man he was! Mehmet Süleyman felt his face colour at the thought of it, hot red blood running to his cheeks in the moonlight.
Shameful! And he’d threatened to expose her if she didn’t get rid of İzzet, and had followed them from the station to a restaurant
and then on to her apartment! What an awfully sad man he was.