Arabesk

every one of their reports. On a daily basis.

Latife Emin got out of the car quite calmly and willingly. She even, without assistance, walked purposefully over to the back entrance.

'You will be required to remove your shoes and then walk up and down in front of Mr Temiz,' Ikmen said as he placed the large carrier bag he had just taken from the car boot in front of her. 'And, of course, you will have to wear this,' he added.

But it was the smell that finally did it.

When Suleyman opened the door onto that long, cell-lined corridor illuminated by the weak yellow light of night-time incarceration, a hot waft of reeking air escaped into the night. The scent of miserable unwashed bodies. Or perhaps it was the actual sight of the long blonde coat inside the bag. Latife Emin placed both her hands on the door posts and braced herself rigid inside the entrance. From the back she looked like a figure, so it occurred to Ikmen, of Christ crucified.

She said just one word, 'No.'

'Having come this far, we must go on,' Ikmen said as he placed one hand gently on her shoulder. 'Mr Temiz has already been prepared for your visit.'

'No!'

'Miss Emin…'

'And if he identifies me?'

Ikmen looked at Suleyman and then back at what appeared, in the shadows, to be the deep blackness of her eyes.

'Then we will have to ask you some more questions, madam.'

Her face contorted in a way that, had Ikmen been a less well-informed individual, he could easily have mistaken for the mask of a female devil.

Gentiy, but with some insistence, Dr Halman took hold of Latife Emin around the waist in an attempt to steer her into the building. 'Come along’ she said, 'this needs to be-'

'No! No, I can't!'

'But then why did you-'

'I'll tell you, all right?' she cried as great, misery-fattened tears streaked down her face. 'Just take me somewhere civilised and I'll tell you anything you want to know! And here’ she kicked the bag containing the coat violently away from her, 'take that thing away from me! Take it now.'

Chapter 17

Unusually, Inspector Ikmen asked that Interview Room 3 be thoroughly cleaned before he and Inspector Suleyman took the small, platinum-blonde woman into it. Quite why, the two young constables charged with this task didn't know. But then Ikmen could be very odd at times, and even though they knew that officially he was not supposed to be at work, the constables did as he instructed, albeit slowly. It was not, they knew, a good idea to do otherwise.

Once Latife Emin had settled herself into her chair she spoke her name and age clearly for the purposes of the tape. She was, she claimed, fifty-two; which provoked a small flurry of speculation on Ikmen's part as to the real age of her older sister, Tansu.

Suleyman, sitting directly opposite Latife, began the interrogation immediately. 'When did you first meet Ruya Urfa, Miss Emin?'

'A year ago, maybe a little more,' she replied. 'She was pregnant at the time. Sweet girl.'

'Did you talk to her?'

'Yes. My sister was pointedly ignoring her. I felt sorry for her.'

'What did you talk about?' Ikmen asked as he removed his jacket in the face of the growing heat within that room. 'Can the sister of Erol's lover and his wife have anything to talk about?'

Latife smiled. 'We talked about education actually,' she said. 'Ruya was worried in case she let bom Erol and her unborn child down.'

'Why? Why should she let them down?'

'She was illiterate.'

Suleyman looked knowingly at Ikmen and then said, 'Did you meet her again?'

Latife Emin shrugged. 'She said that she wanted to learn to read and write and I said that I'd help her. It was her idea to keep our lessons a secret from Erol. She wanted to surprise him. He was rarely at home with her and so sometimes we would meet at her apartment and sometimes in a park or pastane.'

'You liked her?' Ikmen bit his lip and then frowned.

She replied very simply, 'Yes.'

'And so when,' Suleyman said as he took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and then lit one, 'did your liking of Ruya Urfa turn into something more malignant?'

'Never. I always liked her, she was sweet'

'And so…'

'It was only when I'd put the extra pieces together to confirm what I had suspected some time before that I decided to, er…' She looked down at the floor before composing herself once again. 'I knew that Ruya would be alone on the night of the football game. I suggested we use that time to improve her skills and she agreed. I had access to Re§at's cyanide which I drizzled onto a block of almond halva, knowing that the sweet would disguise the smell.' She looked straight into Ikmen's eyes as she spoke. 'She struggled for what seemed like hours even though it can only have been a few moments. I didn't intend for her to suffer.'

It had all been recited so coldly, almost like an exercise in linear thinking, that for a moment Ikmen found himself quite lost within the horror of it all. If she had not spoken again almost immediately, neither of the men would have uttered a word for some time.

'When it was over I left,' she said. 'I picked up what remained of the halva, I took off my shoes so I wouldn't make any noise on the stairs and I started to go.'

'But?'

'But just as I was opening the door I remembered Ruya's pen. Anyone who knew Ruya would know that she would never use such a thing and so I went back into the kitchen to get it. If I hadn't heard the idiot man behind me when I was halfway back, I would have got it. But he gave me a fright and so I just ran.'

'Leaving the pen and Cengiz inside the apartment.'

'With Merih, yes.'

'So you must have left the front door open in order for Cengiz to…'

'Yes. I thought I had time and that no one was about.' She shrugged. 'I did intend to remain undetected if I could. Fate, maybe.'

'So how,' Suleyman, ever the stickler for detail, asked, 'did you get from your sister's house to Istiklal Caddesi without being seen?'

Latife Emin sighed. 'If you walk out around the back of the house and then make your way through the trees on the left-hand side, no one is going to spot you easily, especially if you wear black and cover your head. The reason I wore the particular, coat of Tansu's I did was firstly because it was long and so it covered my feet and secondly because it has a black lining which I made the most of, together with a dark scarf, when I was amongst the trees. I would never normally wear such a thing. As I know you know, our security cameras contain no tape and besides, no one in our household would even think of looking for a person on foot. My siblings barely cross rooms without their cars.'

'But then you are a country girl at heart, are you not, Miss Emin?' Ikmen asked wryly.

'Yes,' she smiled. ‘I like the garden and the greenhouse. I'm happy to walk from the house to the road to get a taxi into the city.'

'Even with bare feet?' Ikmen enquired, wincing at the thought

'Yes,' she smiled. 'When I was young, Inspector, shoes were a rarity.'

Her smile, seemingly frozen across the mask of her face, for a moment held both men entranced. Whether