Hotel Bosphorus (12 page)

Such thoughts quickly evaporated. He was bearing down on my left hip joint with a firmness that made me want him like crazy. I felt his large dark hand pushing up my skirt while the other caressed my breast through my shirt.

“Shall we go to the bedroom?” I whispered.

“Why?” he asked.

“Come on,” I said, disregarding his policeman's fantasies.

He didn't reply, but he also didn't move.

I heard the sound of the silk-covered buttons of my shirt dropping one by one onto the stone floor of the passage and wondered how he was going to undo my bra. Would it be with the dexterity of experience, or the excitement of a novice?

He didn't undo my bra.

He pulled aside the bra and exposed my breasts, then pulled my shirtsleeves and bra straps over my elbows. I couldn't move my arms very easily; in fact I couldn't really move at all – all my energy had evaporated. “Paralysed by desire,” I thought. My clitoris was aching to be touched. I wanted his dark hand to find the place between my legs that was on fire, but my skirt, my long tight skirt, prevented his hand from going where I wanted it.

My back was against the cold white wall; the sleeves of my blouse and my supposedly elastic bra straps trapped my upper arms… Because I couldn't move, couldn't guide him in any way, couldn't undo his trouser zip, couldn't push his hand to where I wanted it to go, or maybe because I couldn't pull up my own long tight skirt, whatever the reason, I felt a sudden need to escape from my lustful torpor, and more importantly from the control he had over me, so I repeated, “Let's go to the bedroom.”

“Shhhh!” he said.

As I heard the sound of a zip being undone, I leaned my head on his shoulder and looked down. With his trousers round his legs, he pulled down his white cotton underpants with one hand. In the light that filtered into the passage through the open balcony door, I saw his dark hard penis and I wanted it inside me like mad. He pulled up my skirt until it was gathered round my waist; he held me by my hips and, with my back against the wall, lifted me up as easily as if I were a rag doll. With my legs entwined around his hips, I couldn't move my arms or my body, which was squashed between the wall and his penis, but despite every organ in my body desiring the superiority he exercised over me, I was seized with anger and an unreasonable obstinacy.

“I don't want to,” I almost shouted.

“What?” he said. Tenderly, he pushed my hair away from my forehead.

“You heard. I don't want to. Put me down,” I said.

He didn't say another word and put me down. Silently, he pulled up his underpants and his trousers that were around his ankles.

He didn't say, “What happened?” He didn't ask, “Why?”

I tugged my skirt down and tried to fasten my shirt buttons, then realized they were no longer there. My heart started pounding again. A moment ago it had been pumping blood down to my groin; now the blood was rushing upwards to my brain. I turned away from him and went to the bedroom. Dazzled by the ceiling light, I put on the first T-shirt that came to hand in the drawer of the wardrobe.

“Would you like some coffee?” I said, as I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen without looking at him. He was still standing motionless in the passage, where he had just done up his zip. He looked at his watch.

“It's nearly one o'clock,” he murmured.

“So?” I said.

“A beer would be better than coffee.”

“What happens if a policeman is caught driving after drinking?” I asked, kneeling down to search for a beer in the depths of a kitchen cupboard.

“Policeman? You mean if an inspector is caught,” he corrected me. “They'd say: so sorry, sir, didn't recognize you, sir.”

“You're not serious,” I said.

“Of course I'm serious. Have you ever heard of an inspector losing his driving licence because of drink driving?”

“No, I haven't. But that doesn't count, because you're the only inspector I know,” I said, trying to stand up. “There's no beer in the house, but I have some wine if you want.”

“A German without beer in the house is like a football team without a manager,” he said.

There was no point in asking what he meant because it was clearly just a police joke. I understood then that the tension of a little while ago would not affect our relationship, and he wouldn't ask me why I hadn't wanted him.

I woke up with a dreadful migraine in the right side of my head. It was so early that I wouldn't have normally been awake even if I'd set my alarm. I went into the shower and massaged my shoulders under the hot water. Afterwards, I went out onto the balcony with a large cup of strong Turkish coffee. But the coffee made me feel shaky, so I waited patiently for the local shop to open at eight o'clock. I had nothing to eat at home and I didn't want to take migraine tablets on an empty stomach.

Vans delivered trays of golden newly baked bread and piles of newspapers to the doorway of the corner shop. The grocer's boy, Hamdi, sprinkled handfuls of water on the ground from a plastic bucket to keep down the dust, turning it to mud. He then started to sweep the ground with a coarse twig brush. Was it coarse, or was it the way Hamdi did it? To decide, I held out against the migraine and stood at the window for a while watching him. In the end, I decided there was no answer.

“Hamdii! Hamdiii!” I called out in a loud whisper.

He raised his head and our eyes met.

“Hey, Kati! You're up early this morning. Do you want all the papers again today?” Without waiting for a reply,
he ran into the shop for scissors to cut the nylon tape that bound the piles of papers.

When he came back, I called him again, “Hamdiii! There's a list in the basket. I need bread as well.”

“OK, miss, straight away.” He turned towards the shopping basket I lowered from the window, with surprising agility for a lad of his size.

I rested my elbows on the window sill and settled down to wait for Hamdi to fetch the things on my list. Two minutes later, he was at the shop door again.

“Miss, we've run out of blackberry jelly. There's quince and raspberry. Which would you like?” he shouted out at the top of his voice. Thinking of my neighbours trying to sleep, I motioned to him to keep his voice down, hauled the basket back up and put on my slippers to go to the shop.

 

I'd been taking migraine tablets after breakfast ever since Fofo had left. Despite the coffee, I closed the bedroom curtains and went back to bed in the hope that I might sleep for another half-hour.

When I woke up, the sun was high and I had fully recovered from the migraine.

I sat in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil and looking at the front pages of the newspapers: the effects of the economic crisis that had burst on us in February had not gone away. There had been protest marches against increases in the cost of living in various parts of the country. Two MPs were roughed up when they asked people to be reasonable on a visit to Elmadağ, a district of Yozgat; one of them was taken to Yozgat State Hospital.

I wondered whether this resistance to the rising cost of living might actually topple this Turkish regime
that had survived every kind of political scandal and corruption.

As I poured the tea, I noticed a photograph on page three of Lale's newspaper. It was a picture of Fofo's former lover, the lawyer in the cravat. This piece of low-life was standing next to an extremely attractive man, and they were both surrounded by police. I glanced at the headline – “Gangland Producer Caught at Home Partying with Lover” – and found myself willing this lover to be our cravat-wearing lawyer.

It was difficult to make sense of this article, but it quickly became clear that Fofo's former lover, the lawyer Ali Vardar, was not Mesut Mumcu's lover but his lawyer. If that was the case, Ali Vardar had the chance to make up for his scumbag life by being useful: he could tell me what he knew about his client.

I felt a thrill of excitement as I dialled Ali Vardar's number, which I'd found in an old phone book; however, I still had no idea what my strategy was going to be.

The woman who answered the phone sounded as if she wanted to be included in the annual poll of Turkey's most sexy women. I asked to speak to Mr Vardar.

“You've called the wrong number, sweetie. This is his home not his office. Call the office,” she said, and put the phone down.

I dialled the same number again.

“Madam, I'm Ä°smail Yurdakul's secretary. If you have Mr Vardar's office number, would you mind giving it to me?” I asked.

It was irrelevant who Ä°smail Yurdakul was or whether he was someone of any importance. However, being
addressed as “madam”, especially by a secretary, would make her drop her aggressive tone and melt like butter, trash that she was. If it worked, this was the quickest way of finding Ali Vardar's office number.

“Ä°smail Yurdakul?”

I had expected her to say, “And who is he?” or at the very least, “You asked to speak to Mr Vardar a moment ago.” As it was, there was no need to overrate the woman's intelligence, because this unpleasant little scene didn't take place.

“Ali's office number is 2937347,” she said, and put the phone down again.

In view of the woman's ability to memorize this number, it seemed that Ali had changed his sexual preference and found someone suited to his class and clientele.

When I dialled the office number, a competent-sounding voice told me that Mr Vardar was out and would not return before six o'clock, so I should phone later.

 

I made my way through the narrow streets of Çukurcuma, using my years of experience to avoid any serious danger. As I walked, I didn't think about the Kurt Müller murder or about Batuhan. I thought about Bellini, composer of
La sonnambula
, who died at the age of thirty-four. When I say I thought about him, I hadn't the slightest idea what he looked like or what kind of person he was, I just thought what a shame it was that he had died at the age of thirty-four. Turkish politics was full of so many useless people; why did Bellini have to die instead of one of them?

I finally decided that reading newspapers was having a negative effect on me. All that news about corruption,
shameless politicians and dicey businessmen was depressing me.

As I sat alone in the coolness of the shop's air conditioning, drinking gallons of tea while I waited for customers, I couldn't stop thinking about Bellini and Turkish politicians – it was a badly timed obsession.

 

This time, I saw Batuhan before
caycı
Recai did. It was a little after three o'clock. Unfortunately, he was in plain clothes again. He gave a cursory glance at the books in the window and came in.

“Hello,” he said, distantly and absent-mindedly, holding out his hand to shake hands as if nothing had happened between us. I began to think there was something mentally wrong with Batuhan. Was he actually being mature and tolerant about what had happened the previous night?

“Hello,” I said, thinking as I extended my hand that it was time I went for a manicure. What a thankless task all this physical grooming was.

I set aside my thoughts about Bellini, my nails and Turkish politicians, and tried to concentrate on Batuhan.

“You're in plain clothes again today,” I said, for something to say.

“I always wear plain clothes.”

“What do you mean ‘always'? When we first met, you were in uniform.”

“There was an official meeting at the station that day and I had to be in uniform. I normally wear plain clothes.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

I wanted to change the subject, so I said, “I see you've arrested Mesut Mumcu.”

“Yes, they arrested him.”

“Aren't you handling that investigation?”

“When it's an ordinary murder, I take care of it. Otherwise it goes to Organized Crime. At the moment we're squabbling over it, but it looks as if I'll lose.” His manner was perfectly normal as he pulled up a chair and sat down. I was just about to open my mouth to speak when his mobile rang.