Latife Emin pushed herself back into her chair and observed the two men harshly. 'But I would look stupid and surely attract attention if I went somewhere without any shoes. And anyway, if my feet are so noisy, why have you not noticed it before?'
'If one is not looking for a certain thing or if something appears irrelevant one does not always notice it,' Ikmen said gravely. 'And, if on the night of the murder you were wearing one of your sister's nice long coats- Well, as you've said yourself, you do routinely compensate for your infirmity and so you would look quite normal, wouldn't you?'
Briefly, as the silence of the night moved into the glass-bound room, Latife Emin looked sharply down at her feet before returning her gaze once again to the faces of her interrogators.
'Your doctor is spending a great deal of time with my sister,' Latife Emin said as she tried to make herself more comfortable in her chair.
'Maybe your sister has injuries of which she was previously unaware,' Ikmen said calmly, 'or perhaps Dr Halman is administering a sedative.'
'In order to keep her quiet while you interrogate me?' Latife said with a smile. ‘I don't have to tell you, I suppose, that all the points you have put to me so far are speculative.'
'So you know law as well as English, do you, Miss Emin?' Ikmen said. 'You're a clever lady. I wonder what other skills you possess.’
She turned away, looking out through the glass and into the garden.
'Having spoken to your gardener, Resat,’ Suleyman said, 'we are aware that a bottle of the same poison that was used to kill Mrs Urfa is on the premises.'
'Yes, in the greenhouse,' she replied smoothly. 'Do you want to see it?'
'Not yet'
'I believe you labelled it for him.'
'Yes, Re§at can neither read nor write.'
'But you like writing for him, don't you?’ Ikmen said as he lit up another cigarette. 'You like to label things properly and show Resat that you can do that’
Latife Emin pushed one hand up into the thickness of her hair and then looked down at her watch. 'You do know,' she said, 'that if this business goes any further your so-called witness will be given a very hard time. Our lawyer can easily confound sane people, but with an idiot-'
'Oh, Mr Temiz is quite sane, I can assure you,' Ikmen replied and then frowning he said, 'And besides, why should Mr Oz wish to confound Mr Temiz if, as I believe you are implying, he is not telling the truth? An 'idiot', confounded or not, will become very quickly overawed and disorientated by the judicial process anyway. And if Mr Temiz has not been telling us the truth then it will come out at that stage.'
'Although it is, I must confess,' Suleyman said, to Ikmen rather than Latife, 'much better if the real facts are known prior to trial.'
'Oh, yes,' his colleague replied, 'it allows the defence to really think about what mitigating circumstances might have been at work and, of course, to prepare the accused for all eventualities.'
Latife Emin laughed, quite a pleasant, trilling sound, devoid, unlike her sister's laugh, of any thickened smoker's cough.
'Oh, good try, gentlemen,' she said, 'but I know that if you had any conclusive forensic evidence I would be at the police station now instead of sitting here comfortably in my own home.' She rose to her feet. 'So, if you will excuse me…'
Suleyman looked across at Ikmen, his face registering some panic. But Ikmen, unmoving, seemed perfectly calm.
'You can of course go, madam,' he said, 'although if you are innocent, as you say, I am sure you won't mind getting dressed and coming with us to see Mr Temiz down at the station.' He smiled. 'Just to clear things up, you know. I mean in light of the fact that Mr Temiz was convinced that your sister was the assailant until he saw how she walked and considering that the two of you do look so very alike…'
'You may wear your shoes to travel, but we'd like you to take them off when we arrive,' Suleyman added. 'You do understand, don't you?’
She looked at both men in turn, and for quite some considerable time before answering. 'I’ll get ready then,’ she said decisively. 'Let's get this cleared up as quickly as possible, shall we?'
As she left the room Suleyman shot Ikmen a nervous glance.
‘I think I'll go and help Doctor Halman take Tansu Hanim to her room now,' the older man said, to Suleyman's ears, somewhat cryptically.
Tepe, who was now a little more relaxed than he had been during his silent vigil with C5kotin and the Emin brothers, offered to drive his superiors, the doctor and Tansu's sister back to the station. He liked driving Suleyman's car, when pushed it really did go. Not of course that he would be racing the BMW on this occasion. Coktin, for his part, drove alone in Tepe's car. One didn't have to be a genius to work out that he was unhappy about the events of the evening so far. But then it had all, for him, got rather too personal – especially when the singer and her brother called, somewhat desperately, upon his loyalty as Kurd. As Tepe pulled away and down the drive, he saw two pale faces at one of the downstairs windows. The brothers.
Once on the road, Latife Emin, who was seated between Suleyman and Dr Halman in the back of the car, turned to the psychiatrist and said, 'Will my sister be all right?'
'Yes. She's had a nasty shock, but I've given her something to help her sleep which will also bring her blood pressure down.'
'She has high blood pressure?' There was genuine concern, if not panic, in her voice now.
The doctor shrugged. 'It often accompanies stress. I doubt if it is a permanent condition.'
As the car passed though the picturesque districts of Istinye and Emirgan, both wealthy areas characterised, now that the sun had set, by fashionably dressed people going out to either eat or just enjoy the cooler night air, silence entered the BMW. And although Suleyman did, from time to time, look out at the colourful scenes which flashed by his window, he also occasionally stole a glance at Latife Emin's face which, with the exception of her continually darting eyes, was quite calm. But then, he thought, why should it not be so? She had been correct back at the house. All of the evidence against her, unless Cengiz Temiz identified her was circumstantial. And besides, he couldn't imagine what her motive for killing Ruya Urfa might have been, especially in light of Ikmen's belief that Latife probably knew about Erol's religion. OK, Latife had on one occasion, as far as they knew, got closer to Ruya than most people, but whether she found out then that the Urfas were Yezidis was unknown. And anyway, if Latife were as clever as Ikmen seemed to trunk, then she would not have killed Ruya in order to free Erol for her sister. She would have known that he would never marry Tansu. So if Latife had killed Ruya, there would have to be some other motive, wouldn't there?
Heading south underneath the great supporting struts of the Fatih Bridge, the car was making rapid but safe progress towards its destination. Glancing up at the mirror Ikmen, who was seated beside Tepe, looked at the reflection of Latife Emin's pale face with interest. Not a flicker. Her nerve, he had to confess, was quite remarkable. He wondered how long it would last, especially when she was confronted with Cengiz Temiz. After all, the man had nearly collapsed when he saw Tansu -a fact which, surely, Latife knew.
Half an hour later, after the car pulled into the station car park, Ikmen got his answer.
Quite when istanbulis developed the overwhelming anxiety so many of them exhibit when brought into contact with the police or the army is difficult to say. The troubled times of the 1970s when politics became both dangerous and polarised, or in the more settled eighties when the country, though quiet, lived under the yoke of martial law? Perhaps although Ikmen felt personally that this phenomenon went back far further, back to the days when every man and woman lived in fear of what he or she might inadvertently say, back to the time of the despotic Sultan Abdul Hamid.
Had Abdul Hamid never reigned, it is difficult now to say just when the republic would have come about. Perhaps it would have still come into being in 1923, but living under a despotic regime for so long had certainly added impetus, the nation had been aching for change. Abdul Hamid, it is said, possessed more spies, who pandered to his paranoid fears, than any other modern monarch. There were thousands of them and he read
