Mr Urfa away from the site so that the doctor and forensic don't have to deal with too much conflicting information.'
'OK.'
Then just before Suleyman replaced the receiver, a thought occurred to him which rather graphically made him suddenly aware of just how inexperienced he was. 'Oh, and ‘Coktin, er…'
'Yes, sir?'
'What leads you, apart from Mr Urfa's opinion, to deduce that this lady has been murdered?'
'The smell of bitter almonds,' ‘Coktin said with the simple clarity of one who knows he need elaborate no further.
Chapter 2
The man who had really rather frightened Isak Coktin when he first saw him running up to and screaming 'Help me!' at the kiosk where he was buying cigarettes was now sitting as silently as stone on what was probably his bed. Dr Sarkossian, although a pathologist by profession, was always mindful of the pain the living frequently experienced in the presence of the dead and had, in order to alleviate Mr Urfa's hysteria, administered ten milligrams of something Coktin could not remember to the traumatised man. Known simply as 'Erol' to his millions of dedicated fans, Urfa looked in reality rather older than his reported twenty-five years and, probably unsurprisingly, less handsome than his publicity photographs. Not, of course, that those wolves from the press and television stations would be fazed by Erol's uncharacteristically haggard looks when they did, probably sooner rather than later, set up camp outside the scene of this tragedy. Big stars equalled big headlines, especially when they involved not only murder but also a juicy secret. Erol Urfa, known to his most passionate devotees as 'The Sad Nightingale', had shot to fame four years earlier via his rendition of the extremely sentimental song of the same name. Originating as he had from some tiny, obscure village in the east, fame had very quickly overwhelmed Erol who had, according to those who cared about Arabesk, made some very bizarre decisions. The most notable of these was his much publicised affair with the veteran Arabesk star, Tansu Hamm. Although as blonde, if not more so, than Madonna at her sleaziest, and notwithstanding millions of liras' worth of plastic surgery, Tansu had to be, by old Inspector Ikmen's reckoning, at least the same age as he was. So even saying she was fifty was being kind.
Of course to someone of Coktin's age, such a strange course of action had to have reasons that had nothing to do with love. There were numerous possibilities. When he first came to the city, Erol had been fresh and lacking in credibility. The vastly experienced Tansu would have given him that as well as enhancing her own flagging career with his vibrant and youthful presence. What that presence did for her bedtime activities was also quite easy to see as well. And with managers and agents, if the press were to be believed, involved in every aspect of the lives of the rich and famous, who could even begin to guess what influence they were also exerting upon this pair? Not that Erol and Tansu's relationship was in any sense a secret. Pictures of them holding hands, kissing or just shopping appeared almost weekly in most of the newspapers. What was a secret, however, and a big one, was the existence of the girl now lying dead in Urfa's kitchen. If the woman who looked, even in death, like a peasant girl of no more than sixteen was indeed Erol's wife then firstly, why had he kept her a secret and secondly, why had he married her after the beginning of his affair with Tansu? 'Sergeant Coktin?'
He turned round quickly at the sound of his name and found himself facing a police photographer. 'Yes?'
'Inspector Suleyman wants you.'
With a brief nod of acknowledgement, Coktin glanced just once more at the motionless Erol Urfa before moving off in the direction of the kitchen.
Although for some the mere appearance of men within a kitchen is incongruous, the two that Coktin found himself facing as he entered looked far more comfortable in that setting than the dead woman at their feet must have done when she was alive. Although not nearly as elegant as the younger, slimmer Suleyman, Dr Arto Sarkissian possessed the same sort of casual grace and wore similar, if larger, designer suits. Both blended very easily with the clinically beautiful, all-metal German kitchen. The girl, in her multi-coloured, multi-layered, heavily headscarfed ensemble, looked like little more than a bundle of rags.
'Well, Coktin,' the Armenian said with his customary, almost unfathomable jollity, 'you were right, I believe, about the substance involved.'
'Cyanide?'
'A distinctive bitter almonds smell plus the livid appearance of the hypostasis would seem to suggest death by oxygen starvation. Carbon monoxide can cause the same effect in the skin but not the bitter almond aroma. A most excellent preliminary deduction on your part. Well done.'
‘Thank you, sir.'
Then, turning to Suleyman once again, the doctor continued, 'I will of course have to test in order to confirm my findings, but I think it is only a formality. There are some interesting deposits in Mrs Urfa's mouth which suggest she may have ingested the substance in food, but we'll see.'
'Could she have done it herself?' Suleyman asked as he looked down at the dead woman with more, or so Coktin thought, than a little distaste.
The doctor briefly sucked his bottom lip before answering. 'Mmm. Suicide. Could always be, of course, but with, so far, no note to that effect I can't be certain. There is a pen, as you can see, on the table, but… Once the forensics are completed I'll be in more of a position to say. However…'
'Yes?'
'I have my own thoughts. Strange as it may seem in a world characterised by the Internet and remote guidance weapons systems, we could have a good old-fashioned poisoning on our hands.'
Suleyman smiled. 'I wasn't aware that that method had gone out of style.'
'Oh, it hasn't. As you and I both know, Inspector, people are regularly despatched via overdoses of drugs both prescribed and illicit But real, honest-to-God poisons are unusual. With the exception of weedkiller, actual poisons rarely turn up in our line of work – ask Cetin Ikmen if you don't believe me.'
Coktin, who had been listening very attentively to all this, bent down and looked searchingly into the woman's horrified open eyes. When alive, he imagined she must have looked something like his own mother when she married his father. Child brides both, certainly in his mother's case, from some little village so insignificant it barely boasted a name.
'When women are poisoned,' the doctor continued, 'I subconsciously, I must say, see the shadow of the harem.'
Suleyman gave Sarkissian one of his almost obscenely perfect smiles. 'You are, I take it, theorising that a woman may have perpetrated this act?'
'Oh no,' Sarkissian replied, waving his hands dismissively in front of his face. 'I am just a doctor, not a theorist. That is your job, my dear Suleyman.'
'But?'
'But,' he was smiling again now, obviously pleased to give vent to his thoughts however off kilter they might be, 'our Mr Urfa is extremely popular with women. I thought, as I expect you did too, that he was solely involved with the lovely Tansu Hanim. And if I am shocked that he has this little wife then perhaps others were surprised also. Surprised and envious maybe. Not that my silly, florid mind is totally obsessed by old harem tales of women slipping poisons into the sherbet of their rivals, you understand…'
'But it is a most unexpected turn of events nevertheless,' Suleyman concluded.
'Talk!'
All three men turned to face the source of the harsh, rather common voice that came from the man now slumped against the doorway of the kitchen.
'While you talk you do nothing about my Merih’ Urfa growled, pushing roughly against the hand of a young constable who was now, too late, attempting to restrain him.
Moving forward in order to protect the gaze of his live patient from the face of his deceased charge, Arto Sarkissian put one friendly hand out towards the famous singer in a gesture of concern. 'Now-'
'Merih,' the man repeated the name, his voice now clearly exhibiting that deliberate but slurred quality of the
