Deadline (32 page)

Arto took a moment to compose himself after his brother’s outburst and then he said to
İ
kmen, ‘Are you going to tell people tonight, Çetin, about—’

‘No.’
İ
kmen shook his head. ‘Tonight is about all of us, not just me. We survived.’

‘In a world where wealth can enable killers to reach outside jails to kill again and again?’ Krikor said bitterly. ‘Should we be grateful for that?’ He stubbed his cigarette out on the ground and then
lit up another.

Çetin
İ
kmen drank his beer, smoked and kept his counsel. Quite how Krikor was going to deal with this evening, he didn’t know. Even with Caroun at his side, he was still really fragile.

‘Is Sergeant Melik coming this evening?’ Arto asked after a pause.

‘Sadly not,’
İ
kmen said. ‘He . . . had to go to
İ
zmir to see his family . . .’

‘Is it true that he’s considering transferring back to his home city?’

‘He’s considering it, yes,’
İ
kmen said. But he knew that wasn’t strictly true.
İ
zzet had already made his decision. After 12 December, he had first cancelled his wedding to Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu and then requested a transfer back to
İ
zmir. At first Mehmet Süleyman had been loath to accede to such a request from a good officer like
İ
zzet. That was until
İ
kmen had explained to him just why the Melik/Farsako
ğ
lu wedding had been cancelled. They’d talked long and drunkenly into one dark night back in early January about it, with Süleyman insisting that he needed to speak to
İ
zzet man to man. He didn’t have any designs on Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu and had not encouraged her fixation upon him in any
way. This was not strictly true and
İ
kmen knew it. But it had still taken a lot of time and patience to convince Süleyman to keep his mouth shut. The damage, albeit to a large extent just in
İ
zzet’s head, had already been done. Now it was better that he went back to
İ
zmir.

‘Have you had a look at tonight’s menu?’ Arto said. There was nothing more to be said about
İ
zzet Melik and Ay
ş
e Farsako
ğ
lu. None of them could do anything about that situation now.

‘I know two things about it,’ Çetin
İ
kmen said. ‘Firstly, it is completely different from the menu we had on my birthday. And, gentlemen, didn’t I always tell you that the twelfth of December was an ill-starred date?’

Neither of the Sarkissian brothers reacted.

‘Secondly,’
İ
kmen said, ‘in honour of the late great Agatha Christie, for dessert we are to have a typically English cream tea with scones, jam and cream. I expect it will be a very smart and fashionable version of the cream tea but . . .’ He frowned. ‘You know, from what I’ve read about her, Agatha Christie was rather a nice woman. She was a lifelong non-drinker and non-smoker, which is a little dull in my opinion, but she was ill used by her first husband and had something of a breakdown in the nineteen twenties.’

‘When she disappeared,’ Arto said.

‘Yes. The maître d’ Ersu
Bey was telling me earlier that some people still believe that the answer to Agatha’s mysterious disappearance lies somewhere secreted in room four eleven.’

‘What, even after the refit?’ Krikor shrugged. ‘Unlikely. Years ago they had some woman who claimed to speak with the dead go into that room and hold a séance, but it was all nonsense. Anyway, Agatha Christie’s dead now and so what does it matter?’

Çetin
İ
kmen found the new, acerbic Krikor Sarkissian hard to take sometimes and so he distracted himself by looking down over the rooftops of Şi
ş
ane towards the Golden Horn. It was almost the middle of March and the city was beginning to crawl out of its winter coat of fog, smoke and mud. There was even a slight floral smell on the air which hinted at spring and yet another new start for
İ
stanbul.

‘But Krikor,’
İ
kmen said, ‘that room is a mysterious place. Somehow, at some point, a golden samovar was secreted in there but I didn’t see it.’

‘Those gunmen took it in and just put it in a cupboard,’ Krikor said.

‘I know that.’
İ
kmen laughed. ‘But I like the mystery bit of it all too, even if it is just a myth.’

‘Well, you’re a witch’s child and so you would,’ Arto Sarkissian said.

‘Will Lale Aktar
ever get out of prison, Inspector?’ Ceyda Ümit asked Mehmet Süleyman. They were seated together at a table that also included Ceyda’s boyfriend Alp, Deniz who had played the American Sarah in the murder mystery performance, Commissioner Ardıç, and one of the original guests, a lady called Fatima.

‘She may do but she’ll be old,’ Süleyman replied. ‘She’s shown no remorse, Miss Ümit. Judges don’t like that.’

‘Doesn’t she care about her husband? Her family? Her career?’

‘Apparently not,’ he said.

‘I heard that her books are selling more quickly than ever,’ Alp said.

‘That,’ Süleyman replied, ‘is sadly the nature of fame, or should I say infamy. Indirectly the offender is rewarded.’ Then he looked at his watch for what Ardıç noted was about the fifth time since they’d all sat down to eat.

‘Do you have to be somewhere, Inspector?’ he asked.

‘No, sir.’ Süleyman smiled.

Ardıç looked at him from underneath untidy, craggy brows and then pointed his knife at his plate and said, ‘This sea bass is excellent. Not an easy fish to get right, sea bass.’

‘No.’

They all carried on eating in silence. Music, Chopin, played gently in the
background and there was of course the sound of people talking at other tables which was occasionally punctuated by laughter. This came mainly from Special Forces Commander
İ
pek, for whom the 12 December operation had been just one more job. In the past he and his men had stared down al Qaeda and the PKK, as well as several of
İ
stanbul’s more punitive criminal gangs. He’d moved on.

The waiting staff came and cleared away the plates from the fish course and Süleyman excused himself from the table. Ardıç, shaking his head, said nothing but he was annoyed that Süleyman seemed to have better things to do. Then he noticed that
İ
kmen was leaving his table too and he reasoned that they were probably going outside to smoke.

Plates cleared, Ardıç discreetly loosened the cummerbund round his middle and looked at the menu to see what the meat course was going to be. Beef. That was good. He wasn’t as partial to beef as he was to lamb or veal but it would do; besides, the wines that had been chosen to accompany each course were making whatever was presented go down very well indeed. They were truly outstanding.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention?’

That was, if Ardıç was not mistaken, Süleyman’s voice yelling across the ballroom. He looked up and saw Süleyman standing by the
entrance from the Kubbeli Saloon into the ballroom with
İ
kmen and another, younger man he vaguely recognised.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please!’

The talking stopped and everyone looked in his direction.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a guest,’ Süleyman continued. ‘Someone who was not among our number when we all suffered here in this hotel on the twelfth of December. But we welcome him anyway. His name is Mr Kemal Aslanlı.’

He stood aside so that everyone could see a shy-looking man in his mid-thirties carrying a large sports bag. Muhammed Ersoy’s cousin. Nobody said a word. But then nobody, including Ardıç, could believe what they were seeing. Although cleared of any involvement in Ersoy’s plan to murder as many people as he could in the Pera Palas Hotel three months before, just having a member of the family in the same room was causing some people discomfort. How could
İ
kmen and Süleyman be so stupid?

‘Good evening,’ Kemal Aslanlı said.

Nobody responded.

But he persisted in his slightly rough, countrified voice. ‘I’ve got something here,’ he said and put the sports bag down on to the floor and shoved both hands into it.

Several people gasped. But
others looked at the smiles on the faces of
İ
kmen and Süleyman and took them as signals that everything that was happening was really OK. Kemal Aslanlı took something large covered in a white cloth out of the bag and walked over towards the table where the Sarkissians were seated. He looked at Krikor.

‘Sir, my family want you to have this,’ he said. ‘For your clinic. It is our way of telling you how much we are not like my cousin Muhammed. You will want to sell it to raise funds and that is fine with us.’

He pulled the white cloth off to reveal the fabulous Ersoy golden samovar.

Not everyone got drunk but Nar Sözen didn’t let that hold her back. Mixing champagne with rakı gave her, she found, the courage to dance with an assortment of men who really didn’t want to dance at all – especially not with her. But she was big enough not to be easily pushed away and one of her victims was even Mehmet Süleyman. Eventually, however, even Nar was too tired to go on and so she sat down next to Çetin
İ
kmen in the bar.

Alone, he was quiet and thoughtful. Krikor Sarkissian had taken the presentation of the samovar by Kemal Aslanlı well, but it had been a very emotional evening for all of them and he was tired. In reality he probably didn’t need someone like Nar
swaying drunkenly about on the seat next to his but he smiled at her anyway and said, ‘Have you had a good evening?’

‘A celebration of survival and courage!’ Nar said, quoting what the event had been billed as on her invitation. Then she leaned in closer still to
İ
kmen and said, ‘You know, you should get that old cousin of yours out, that girl over in Beyazıt.’

She meant Samsun.

‘She’s bereaved,’
İ
kmen said. ‘But, yes, you’re right.’

‘Out with people of her own kind,’ Nar said. ‘Not on the game at her time of life or—’

‘No.’

‘So do it,
İ
kmen,’ she said. ‘Get Samsun over here to Beyo
ğ
lu and I’ll show her a good time. You know I will!’

He looked up into Nar’s eyes which were surrounded by smudged mascara and said, ‘Yes. You’re a good girl.’

‘I am!’ Nar took a swig from her glass of champagne and then she lowered her voice and said, ‘Inspector, is it true that you’re going to retire?’

İ
kmen thought for a moment and then looked around to check that nobody he knew well was listening.

‘Because if you do retire, this city will be in trouble,’ Nar said. ‘I mean, you are this city, aren’t you,
İ
kmen? You and
İ
stanbul,
İ
stanbul and you, you’re like . . .’

‘Nar . . .’ She was right, in a way, and he began to feel his eyes sting
a little with tears as he thought about it.

‘Yes?’

Now it was
İ
kmen’s turn to lower his voice. ‘Tell no one, but yes, I am retiring,’ he said. ‘Although not until the end of this year. I will be sixty.’

Nar, who hadn’t really believed the rumour when she’d first heard it, just sat with her mouth open. Çetin
İ
kmen himself wondered, not for the first time, and quite apart from the issue of his age, why he was doing it.

Muhammed Ersoy
shared the champagne his guest had brought him with the guest and with the guard who had been bribed to allow this meeting to take place. Çetin
İ
kmen, Mehmet Süleyman and that fat man Ardıç could rant on forevermore about the effective punishment of the rich but Muhammed had always found ways around the system and he always would.

The man in front of him, Adnan someone or other, raised his glass and said, ‘On behalf of my employer, Mr Ersoy, to you.’

‘Thank you.’ Muhammed Ersoy batted his eyelids slightly flirtatiously and said, ‘And how is Kostas? Has he had any trouble with the police?’

‘In relation to Fener Maritime Sigorta? No,’ Adnan said.

‘Good.’

‘But it is only one of Mr Istefanopoulos’s companies.’

‘Yes. The one you work for is . . .’

‘Antalya Holdings. Import, export.’

‘Of course.’ Ersoy looked at the
guard and then clicked his fingers at him to signal that he should put his champagne glass down and go.

The guard went.

Muhammed Ersoy leaned in towards the man sitting opposite him and said, ‘I trust that Kostas is . . .’

‘Grateful that he was given the opportunity to take over his brother’s company, yes,’ Adnan said. ‘Also very pleased that your cousin Mr Aslanlı is continuing to support the business.’

‘Well, why should he not?’ Muhammed Ersoy said. ‘Kostas is not his brother Yiannis, is he?’

‘No, sir. Mr Kostas is looking forward to working in your mutual interests enormously.’

‘Please tell him that I am too.’

They both drank from their glasses again and then, at around one in the morning, Adnan left.

Later as he lay back down on his really rather comfortable bed after his nice hot shower, Muhammed Ersoy pondered on how easy it had been for Kostas Istefanopoulos to take the samovar from his brother’s house in Yeniköy and bring it to the Pera Palas Hotel on the night of 12 December. He’d made himself look shabby, he was from out of town anyway, and when he’d returned to Yeniköy that night he had picked up his car and then driven all the way back to his home town of Antalya. Well, he hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near
İ
stanbul when either Nurettin
shot his brother or Yiannis got arrested, did he?

Insurance. Not for nothing had Muhammed Ersoy set Yiannis Istefanopoulos up in that business. It was something he knew a lot about.

When he closed his eyes and went to sleep, Muhammed Ersoy did so in a cocoon of complete contentment.