Arabesk

Fatma who had far too many children to be able to help herself said, 'Drive carefully.'

* * *

As soon as Mina Arda took her eyes off the female officer across the desk and looked at Suleyman, she started to shake. That moment when she'd first seen what had to be the most attractive customer she'd had for years now seemed very far away. Now, by sharp contrast, she could barely tolerate his voice without wanting to be sick.

'You do have a right to legal representation,' he said.

The female officer cleared her throat in a way that Mina interpreted as disapproval. Not that talk of lawyers made any difference to Mina anyway. With absolutely no assets beyond her meagre 'wages' from Mickey, she knew what type of lawyer she could afford.

'No,' she said, ‘I don't want that.'

'I should tell you,' he said as he settled himself next to the female officer and lit up a cigarette, 'that the charges against you are very serious. Your mother claims she did not know the child you appeared with on the night of Mrs Urfa's murder was Erol Urfa's daughter until she saw the broadcast yesterday evening. She says you 'needed a child'. Can you tell us about that?'

'No. But if you ask my mother, she will.'

'You're being very obstructive for one who is facing charges of both kidnap and murder.'

'I didn't kill Mrs Urfa! I didn't even know her!'

'But you came into possession of her child in order to fulfil some sort of need.' He flicked the ash from his cigarette into an ashtray and then leaned forward across the table. 'Did perhaps Mickey procure the child for you or-'

'Mickey has got nothing to do with it! He may be a crazy violent bastard and I hate him, but-'

'You don't need to protect him, you know,' the female officer said. 'He can't hurt you now.'

'Officer Kaya is right,' Suleyman put in. 'You must look to yourself now, Mina.'

'Look,' Mina said, tears rising in her eyes once again, 'whatever Mickey may or may not be, he's got nothing to do with this!'

'Considerable quantities of hashish have been discovered in your apartment Mickey, we know, made a call to a known drug dealer just before I entered your apartment. Together with an ampoule of what would seem to-'

'It's morphine,' Mina said and then added quickly, 'which is mine.' She sighed. 'Mickey hates children. He would have gone crazy if he'd found out I had the baby. I stole the amp from the lady my mum looks after.'

'Madame Kleopatra?'

'Yes. I thought that if I could give Mickey a little bit extra every so often it would allow me time to go and see the baby.'

'So he does take opiate drugs then?' Kaya asked.

'What do you think!' Mina then turned back to the hated Suleyman. 'Mickey isn't involved in this’ Inspector. Let him go.'

'So, if Mickey isn't involved and you did not kill Mrs Urfa in order to procure her baby, how did this all come about, Mina?'

Mina slumped her chin down onto her hands and murmured, 'Can I have a cigarette?'

Suleyman pushed his packet and lighter across the table to her. Mina lit up and then, on a sigh, she began.

'It was the fat boy who brought her to me,' she said and then, seeing the look of confusion on Suleyman's face, she explained, 'He's a client of mine. He's middle-aged, lonely and… he says he loves me and… you know. He brought me the baby with some wild story about how her mother had been killed by a devil. He said that with the mother now dead and this demon or whatever on the loose, he had to put the baby somewhere safe and so he came to me. Not that I cared very much where the little one came from, as soon as I saw her, I knew that I wanted her. Just like the fat boy knew I would.'

'So how soon after that did you realise that the child was in fact the missing Merih Urfa?'

'I had a feeling when I heard about it on the radio sometime the following afternoon. Then when I saw the little one on the television…' She shrugged.

Officer Kaya frowned. 'How did this fat boy know, as you put it, that you, a working woman, would want a baby?'

Mina looked from Kaya across to Suleyman and then back at the woman again. Td rather tell you alone or with another lady, if…' She put her head down and looked at the floor.

'So do you know the name of this fat boy?' Suleyman said, quickly changing from a subject that he knew he couldn't handle to one that he could.

'Yes.'

'Well?'

Mina looked up into what seemed to her to be his hard eyes. 'He didn't do it, you know. It was as he said, a demon.'

'Well then, if it was a demon, your friend has nothing to fear, does he?'

As soon as he had said it, Suleyman realised that he had spoken in that patronising way the upper orders were wont to do when attempting to communicate with the poor and ignorant. Not that Mina was a member of the latter group, as he soon found out.

'A smart man like you doesn't believe in demons, Inspector,' she said. 'I know you're just trying to get me to deliver my friend and-'

'If you don't, Mina, you will stand trial for kidnap, at the very least, on your own.'

'And given the profile of this case,' Kaya put in, 'you could go to prison for a long time.'

'Besides,' Suleyman said as he ground his cigarette out in his ashtray, 'perhaps what your friend saw, though not a demon, was a person whose description could be very useful to us. We do need to catch this person before he kills again, you know.'

Mina took a long drag on her cigarette and then tapped some ash out onto the floor. 'The fat boy might be a bit crazy, but I definitely heard him call the demon a her.'

'So he saw a woman somewhere in the vicinity of Mrs Urfa's apartment presumably, and…’

'He saw her coming out of the apartment, I think. Then he went in to get the baby.'

Suleyman frowned. 'How?'

'I don't know.'

'Well, I need to know and very quickly, Mina.' Suleyman rose to his feet and walked over to her side of the table. 'And now would be as good a time as any.'

He placed his hands firmly on the table one each side of Mina's body. She cringed. Towering above her, his tall body reeking of expensive aftershave and privilege, she suddenly felt very small and very frightened. People, she had heard, sometimes disappeared in places like this. Hard-faced policemen could and did do awful things, the bazaars were full of such stories. And just because this man and his unnatural-looking woman in uniform hadn't beaten her yet didn't mean anything really. Mina felt her heart begin to pound. Perhaps she should have taken the inspector up on his offer of a lawyer after all. Not that it was too late now, but.

'I'm waiting, Mina’ he said gently, wheedling into her ears. 'If this person kills again you will not only be answerable to the law but also to Allah. You will have colluded in another death. Think about it'

'But if I say’ she said through the tears that were now spilling heavily down her face, 'you will hurt him and I know that he didn't do it. He is gentle and good.'

Pressing home his rising advantage, Suleyman placed his lips almost on Mina's ear as he whispered, 'But if he is innocent I will have no reason to hurt him, will I?'

Officer Kaya, who had been watching what seemed to be almost a seduction enacted before her, shifted nervously in her seat But neither Suleyman nor Mina paid her any heed.

As he moved Mina's chin upwards so that he could look directly at her face, Suleyman said, 'Please tell me his name now, Mina. Please.'

As his large slanted eyes bore into hers, Mina murmured, 'His name is Cengiz Temiz’ And then, all of a sudden as if a spell or some such had been broken, her revulsion of him returned and Mina put her head down and