So he had spoken to Erol in what must be their own language, had he? Silently he wondered whether the urbane Inspector Suleyman was aware of this fact He wondered at a still deeper level just who this friend Erol had been with was and whether he or she or the events that were now crowding around his charge would have any impact upon sales of Erol's latest album. Not that he could air such views to Erol without looking like a heartless dog.
As the images on the television moved from factual news items into that strange, land that is inhabited by dubbed Brazilian soap operas, Aksoy leaned forward to switch the set off. As he reached out, a woman who looked not unlike Tansu thrust her heaving breasts towards the face of an elderly man wearing a bad wig.
'Do you think my daughter is dead, Ibrahim?'
Aksoy pushed the ‘Off' button and then slid back into his seat again. He didn't know. How could he? In so many ways Erol was like a small child with his constant asking of impossible questions. How? What? Why? When? He had come to the city like this and, unlike other migrants who had built a kind of cynical second skin, he had remained childlike in this respect. If he didn't know him better, Aksoy would think that perhaps Erol was using this innocence of his to cover… To cover what? To cover the fact that perhaps he was capable and willing to ki-
'I don't know what has happened to Merih any more thanyou do, Erol.' He spoke quickly, anxious to block out what was developing into a worrying thought. There were whole swathes of Erol's time outside of work and Tansu and his publicity that he knew absolutely nothing about Time, he imagined, Erol spent with his own kind.
'Yes, but-'
And then the telephone rang. As he went to pick it up, Ibrahim Aksoy noticed that Erol Urfa did not take his eyes off his face for a second. He hoped the young man couldn't sense what he was thinking.
Suleyman switched the car radio off as soon as Tansu Hanim's familiar voice floated out of the machine. He'd had quite enough of that for one night He took a tape at random out of the glove compartment and he pushed it into me machine. He was pleased to discover that the music he had chosen was Dvorak's New World Symphony – civilised and yet, to him, undemanding. The music together with the inky darkness of the night provided some little comfort for his tired mind. He still had to remain alert enough to be able to get home, or rather to Cohen's place which was the nearest thing he had to home now, but it was a whole lot easier without that woman's raucous tones in his ear.
Just over two hours ago he had entered a house that quite frankly beggared belief. Tansu's home combined the worst excesses of progressive architecture with the tastes of a person who would be far more comfortable in what remained of the old gecekondu shanty districts. The woman herself, who had greeted him lying prone across a large pink sofa, had he could see, been beautiful at some point. Small and thin with the exception of her enormous silicone-enhanced breasts, Tansu Hanim did indeed look a lot younger than her years until one went up close. Even the thick make-up couldn't hide either the old acne scars or the quite livid tracks of the plastic surgeon's knife. Magazine photographs could be air-brushed, movie cameras could have any number of filters available for close-ups, but real life was quite different and Tansu the star was not the same as Tansu in the flesh.
He'd been ushered into 'the presence' by a woman who announced herself as Tansu's sister. Although possessed of the same platinum-blonde hair and a fairly extensively renovated face, the similarities between the two stopped there. While Latife went off to make tea with her very own hands, her sister wept copiously for her 'beloved’ Erol Urfa and for the tragedy that had so recently overwhelmed him. It had of course been Tansu who had, via a few well-chosen words about her lover's supposed 'indisposition', sent the press corps screaming up' to the apartment on Istiklal Caddesi. In a civilised block like the Izzet Apartments, Suleyman had been able to keep the crime scene unusually discreet; since so few people actually knew that Erol had aflat there, it was really quite easy. Until, that is, Tansu's performance at the officers' club. That alone made him dislike her and as he'd struggled to get any sort of sense from her thickly rouged mouth, his feelings had become more and more hostile.
All she could talk of was Erol Urfa. Although she did from time to time, briefly, express her sorrow at his wife's death and the disappearance of his daughter, most of her words alluded to how she was feeling. But then some of these older women who had younger lovers were both obsessed and desperate to retain their affections. But Suleyman quickly turned his mind away from that particular subject and thought about what he had actually learned from the conversation with Tansu.
Erol had not been with her on the night of the murder. According to Coktin, Urfa had been with some old friend of his from back east. No name had, as yet, been forthcoming but Suleyman had already determined to question Urfa himself at the earliest possible opportunity. Coktin had spoken to the star in his own language, exhibiting an implicit solidarity that may or may not have been helpful with regard to the extraction of information. Tansu had been at home all that evening, mainly sitting out on her veranda which had become, or so she said, so pleasant since she'd had a nearby wasps' nest destroyed. Her sister said that she had been with her on the veranda too, for all that was worth. Of the woman's two brothers, the eldest, Galip, had been at the Inonu Stadium watching the football match live while apparently the younger one, Yilmaz, had watched the match on television. Both men had been co-operative in a bemused sort of way until, that is, their sister, finally catching on that she could be a suspect in this affair, became quite hysterical during the middle part of the interview. Leaping like a cat, all claws bared, from her sickbed, she had paced the room spitting verbal bile at quite imaginary accusers for some time. Suleyman had been horribly embarrassed at the time. It had been ' difficult, after that, to have any sympathy for a woman who was, though ageing, still a spoilt, vicious child at heart Suleyman knew he would have to take care not to condemn her out of hand. She, if anyone, had good reason to want Ruya Urfa dead but there was nothing, as yet, to connect either her or her relatives directly to the scene.
But time would tell. Forensic had lifted several sets of fingerprints from the apartment, as well as some faint footprints. Soon the process of identifying to whom these belonged would begin, as would the interrogation of Cengiz Temiz who had been discovered finally on a Tiinel train. According to Coktin he would say absolutely nothing beyond denying that he had killed Ruya Urfa. Now down in the cells for the night, he would have, ample time, if he were capable of such thoughts, to reconsider his words. His parents had, apparently, already engaged one of the city's top defence lawyers.
The mobile telephone that was sitting on the seat beside him buzzed into life. Suleyman picked it up and put it to his ear.
'Suleyman.'
'Hello, it's Sarkissian. Just thought I'd let you know that the cyanide that killed Mrs Urfa was administered in a sweet.'
'Oh?'
'Yes, almond halva to be precise. Clever, eh?'
An almond sweet to cover the smell of the bitter poison? Yes, it was, and if Coktin was right about Cengiz Temiz, it was far too clever for him.
'Thank you’ Doctor,' Suleyman said at last. 'Will I see you in the morning?'
'You will. Your office. At what time?'
'About nine.'
The doctor laughed. 'You rise too early for me. Make it ten and I'll be there.'
'I look forward to it' Suleyman smiled as he switched the phone off again.
So Mrs Urfa was seduced to her death by sweet things, was she? No remnants of the sweet had been found outside of Ruya Urfa's body, which suggested that whoever had given her the halva had taken the residue away with them. After, that is, he or she had watched the victim fight for breath and then die. Cyanide, which is a very quick-acting agent, robs the bloodstream of oxygen thereby effectively asphyxiating the victim.
Perhaps it was these grim thoughts that made Suleyman, unconsciously, pull off the long shore road and head for a small wooden house that nestled discreetly behind a row of trendy art shops. But perhaps not The pretty Bosphorus village of Ortakoy where, hopefully, he could spend a little time before returning to Cohen's unruly apartment had become quite familiar to him in recent months. That he had fetched up here so unconsciously was, however, a worry. If he was driving to Ortakoy without thinking then what else was he letting slip about his visits to the village?
After he had parked his car, he walked up to the salt-stained front door and knocked For quite some time he heard nothing from inside. The lights were on but even so no one was in, or maybe the old man was at home alone. Suleyman put his hands into the pockets of his jacket and watched as the earth beneath his feet juddered just very slightly. 'Only a tremor,' he muttered softly to himself, his usual mantra to chase away the demons of the
