A Chemical Prison, page 10
‘So,’ Suleyman began slowly, ‘if that is the case then what we are looking for is someone who doesn’t want to be caught and yet wants you to know that he is still around?’
‘Who wants me to know that he is cleverer than me,’ İkmen corrected. ‘He has presented me with a puzzle, which I must say intrigues me, and now he wants me to know that he is around to enjoy my perplexity.’
‘You are, I must say, sir,’ Suleyman said, ‘ascribing a lot of significance to an act we do not know to be suspicious.’
İkmen shrugged. ‘What else can I do? Until we know who this boy is and or get some sort of grip on a motive we have to explore every angle, however tenuous.’ He picked up the miniature and held it up. ‘We know that the boy was locked into that apartment for some reason and this is a cage. Cages might imply imprisonment for some time and with those atrophied limbs of his …’
‘Atrophied limbs?’
‘Yes, I thought I told you. Dr Sarkissian has observed that the boy’s limbs are sort of withered, underdeveloped for his age. Like those of a cripple or one who has been bed bound.’
‘But why was the boy imprisoned?’ Suleyman said. ‘Drug connection? Yes, maybe. But then what about old Emine’s sighting of Zekiyan with a child all those years ago? OK, sexual abuse doesn’t have to be obvious and if this man has a history of “liking” children …’
‘Could have just been a nephew or niece,’ İkmen replied, ‘and our boy was hardly a child, but it’s a fair point. Some of those needle scars on his body were very old and extremely numerous. He must have got the drugs from somewhere and if Mr Zekiyan or whoever, maybe even this other man Zekiyan has occasionally been seen with, had been supplying him for some years, it may well be that sex could have been involved at some stage. I’ve got Dr Sarkissian looking into the darker side of the Armenian community which may or may not turn up something.’ He put his hand up to his mouth and frowned. ‘There are a couple of kiddie-fiddlers I could check out.’
Suleyman sniffed his disgust, a gesture that was not lost upon İkmen.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I won’t ask you to talk to them.’
‘So where do we go from here then, sir?’ Suleyman asked, quickly changing the subject to one that his mind would not shrink from.
‘Well,’ İkmen said, ‘as soon as Mrs Taşkiran finishes her portrait of the boy, which should be very soon now, I will circulate that to the papers and to other forces. I’ll check out the kiddie-fiddlers while you handle the drug angle. A trawl of local contractors who could have carried out that work at the top of the house might be useful too. I think it would also be instructive to send a few men out to some of the refuse dumps and try to find out whether a large number of quite nice clothes or food have recently been deposited. Refuse men are usually quite sharp with regard to nice rubbish.’
Suleyman, who had been writing all these points down on a piece of paper, said, ‘OK.’
‘I must also remember to ask Arto Sarkissian where he thinks this Mr Zekiyan might have bought his Christian ring. I expect we’re talking the Gold Bazaar here, but such an unusual piece might have to have been purchased at a particular place – maybe somewhere the Christian clergy go. Anyway. In addition we must not, I feel, forget one other aspect that neither of us has mentioned, other than obliquely, before.’
Suleyman looked up and shrugged. ‘Which is?’
‘Well, lest we forget, Suleyman, we do have rather a lot of our friends from over the Black Sea living in the city at the moment. Friends who are, at least nominally, Christian.’
Suleyman pulled a face. ‘The Beyazıt branch of the Moscow Mafia, you mean.’
Surprised and also rather pleased that his normally straight-laced deputy should make a joke, İkmen said, ‘Yes, and that’s really rather good, Suleyman. Well done. Indeed, our Russian friends could possibly be involved. Where there are hard drugs they do tend to follow.’
‘Yes.’
‘They do have a penchant for such trade as well as, of course, selling us their bleach-blonde women.’
‘Hah!’ exclaimed Suleyman with disgust. ‘The Natashas.’
İkmen laughed. ‘Yes, bless them. Every street corner should have one and in my part of town, of course, it does. My wife’s sister spits at them. But—’
Suleyman’s telephone trilled into loud and intrusive life.
‘Excuse me please, sir,’ the younger man said as he moved to pick it up and then, announcing his name into the receiver, he listened with what İkmen observed was a grave expression. Several seconds later, his face now alarmingly white, Suleyman threw the receiver, still connected, down on to his desk and started to run out of the room.
‘What the hell is—’ İkmen started to ask.
‘It’s your friend Lenin,’ Suleyman shouted as he approached the top of the stairs, ‘he’s taken Farsakoǧlu hostage down in one of the interview rooms.’
It is well known that, in general, male police officers are of the opinion that their female counterparts are not really capable of dealing effectively with acts of violence. They do not always, however, express such opinions in public. Constable Cohen on the other hand did not let such sensibilities hold him back. As İkmen approached him, demanding to know what was happening, he was very free with his opinions.
‘What that silly woman thought she was doing with that nutter, I don’t know. I mean—’
‘What, exactly, is the position, Cohen?’ İkmen asked as he, Suleyman and three other officers stood outside Interview Room Number Five.
‘Well, she was asking him some questions, sir, and—’
‘You were in the room with her?’
‘Yes. But then he, this Lenin, gets all sort of agitated and the next thing I know he’s got her round the throat. Across that table like a—’
‘You did, I take it, attempt to stop him, Cohen?’
The little man drew himself up to his full height and pulled his shoulders just very slightly backwards. ‘Oh yes, I … But have you seen the size of him? All that hair and those great big hands and shoulders like a lion …’
‘Yes, well.’ İkmen, rather roughly, or so Cohen thought, pushed past him and opened the door on to a scene that looked not unlike a still from a rather bad Egyptian movie. Over in the far cigarette-butt-strewn corner, an extremely tall man of quite staggeringly filthy hairiness was holding the very pretty neck of Sergeant Farsakoǧlu tightly between one vast finger and thumb. Under the powerful spell of her own fear, the young woman’s eyes had widened to a degree that made them look as if they could almost encompass the room and, as she caught sight of İkmen, they became if anything even bigger. As the man’s eyes contacted with İkmen’s, he reacted by pulling the woman still closer in to his chest and grunting.
Despite furious, hissing entreaties from his rather more than usually agitated deputy, İkmen thrust his hands very casually into his pockets and then smiled at the man in a warm and friendly fashion.
‘Well, Vladimir Ilyich,’ he said, ‘it’s a great pleasure actually to meet you in the flesh. What can I do for you?’
The man simply carried on staring.
İkmen shrugged and then took a cautious step forward. ‘I understand you claim to have murdered the boy in İshak Paşa Caddesi?’
‘She won’t believe me. She laughed at me,’ the man said, inclining his head towards his hostage. His voice was cracked and scarred by too many nights spent under the open sky.
‘Well, now,’ İkmen said, ‘it’s not really up to Sergeant Farsakoǧlu, is it? If you have committed this very serious crime then I think you should offer your confession to a rather higher authority, don’t you?’
‘I could snap her neck in a second if I wanted to.’
İkmen acknowledged this statement with a small bow and, at the same time, he moved just a fraction closer to the scene. ‘I’m sure that you could, sir. But wouldn’t you rather talk to me about all of these issues first? I am an inspector of police and I am therefore much more important than the sergeant there.’
‘Yes?’
İkmen could now feel Suleyman at his back – a rather tense presence which he sincerely wished was not there. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was not, he could see, the sort of man one would want to antagonise.
İkmen took his cigarettes out of his pocket and offered one to the man. Strangely, he declined, although that was probably more because (so İkmen thought) he didn’t want to loosen his grip upon Farsakoǧlu than because he didn’t actually want one. İkmen, for his part, lit up and once again smiled warmly.
‘I often see you around and about in Sultan Ahmet,’ he observed. ‘You speak to people about your politics and—’
‘They never listen! They neither understand nor deserve the concept of world revolution. You have to fight if you want equality. Blood is what it’s about! You don’t get anywhere unless you have the guts to spill blood.’
İkmen took one step nearer. ‘Was that why you killed the boy in İshak Paşa?’
‘I put my knife to his throat, yes.’
‘Why him?’
The man laughed. ‘Why not? I don’t have to justify myself to you! When they come to write the history of this time, it will be my name that will live on to frighten the children, not yours.’
‘Indeed. However, the killing or maiming of a woman is, don’t you think, another matter?’
‘Not if she works for a fascist system.’ And then noticing that İkmen had, somehow, crept closer to him, the man said, ‘And you can stay where you are too or I’ll have the both of you.’
‘If you let Sergeant Farsakoǧlu go you can willingly have me in exchange.’
The man laughed. ‘You are joking, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, isn’t that brave!’ he said, turning the head of his hostage around to face him. ‘He must really like you, girly, just like I do!’ Then, obviously highly amused by all this, he started to laugh into the woman’s terrified face – an eerily unnerving development that made absolutely no sense to anyone else in the room apart from the man. It also signified, despite İkmen’s best efforts, that his instability was if anything escalating.
As the man laughed, İkmen was aware of the fact that Suleyman was no longer at his back, but when he did finally register that his deputy was now standing beside the man, it came as almost as much of a shock to him as it did to the hostage-taker. With what could only be described as spiteful intent, Suleyman jammed his pistol up against the side of the man’s head and then exhorted him, for his own good, not to move. The laugh died on the man’s dirty lips as quickly as it had been born.
‘Take your hands from my colleague’s throat,’ Suleyman said through rapid gulps of air, ‘and do it slowly.’
‘Are you going to kill me?’ the man sneered. ‘Blow my brains out across her lovely face?’
‘If necessary,’ Suleyman replied. ‘If you move in a way that I don’t like I will not hesitate.’
‘I’d do as he asks,’ İkmen put in, ‘and then I promise that I will listen to you. And I will not laugh, Vladimir Ilyich, you have my word on that.’
Although at first the man’s movements were too small to really see, it slowly became apparent that there was a slight decrease of pressure on Sergeant Farsakoǧlu’s throat. As if to signal this, she coughed a little and then moved her neck just fractionally to one side.
‘But why should I believe you?’ the man asked İkmen.
‘Because I give you my word,’ İkmen replied, ‘and because my word both as a man and as an officer of the law is not a thing lightly given. It’s about honour, Vladimir Ilyich, which is, I know, as important to you as it is to me.’
Although nobody in that room could even begin to guess at the man’s thoughts, he did at least appear to give this speech some consideration. In fact, as İkmen watched him, he fancied that he could almost see flickers of inner conflict moving across the tramp’s fine, if filthy, features. Now that he was looking at him properly it occurred to İkmen that this man, though obviously deranged and confused, had an air about him that had definitely not been engendered on the street. Was it the odd flash of confidence or the sculpted nose? The occasionally sophisticated use of words? Or was it just İkmen’s own preconceptions that assumed anybody who had the wit even to consider complicated political and philosophical concepts had to be someone of substance? It was intriguing and, although he was nervous for Farsakoǧlu’s safety, İkmen was aware of an excitement within himself at the prospect of actually getting to grips with this man’s mind.
‘I’m waiting,’ Suleyman said and, as if to emphasise his point, clicked the safety catch off.
‘I could die and become even greater than I have been in life,’ said the man slowly.
This was a dangerous and not unexpected development which İkmen countered immediately. ‘But if you die, Vladimir Ilyich, how will you know whether or not we tell the people lies about you? Perhaps to us you are not the great revolutionary you know yourself to be? Perhaps we will demonise and abuse your memory?’
The man grunted and then once again, appeared to drift into some deep thought process.
İkmen, afraid of what might result from this further hiatus, held his hand out to the man and said, ‘Give me back my girl, Vladimir Ilyich. She’s nothing to you and everything to us. Show us that you can be that brave.’
His fingers were only just lightly touching her neck now. And as the man’s eyes fixed upon İkmen’s face he moved them just that little bit further outwards and then pushed the woman into İkmen’s waiting arms. As she barrelled forwards into İkmen, Farsakoǧlu let out a small but still half-strangled cry.
Suleyman, in one swift movement, kicked the man in the shins and then pulled him by his hair down on to the floor. ‘Face down, hands behind your head!’
Two of the observing constables, including Cohen, ran forward to offer assistance. Somewhere, somebody shouted, ‘Fucking bastard!’
As the scene behind İkmen and Farsakoǧlu became one of arrest there was a very real danger that things would get very ugly. Policemen don’t like it when one of their own is attacked and with a woman involved that dislike can easily turn into outright fury. As İkmen attempted to turn away from the shaking woman he became very aware that if he didn’t do something very quickly traditional Turkish machismo would explode around him.
‘Cuff him and sit him on a chair, Suleyman,’ he said and then, turning to the one constable who had not gone over to the prone man, ‘and you, take the sergeant here upstairs and ring the hospital. I want her fully checked out by a doctor and then sent home.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Gently, he placed Farsakoǧlu into the arms of the constable and then walked up to his deputy who was still standing over the man with his gun pointed at his head. ‘Get him up and cuff him, Suleyman.’
‘Oh, but, sir,’ Cohen said, ‘can’t we just … I mean, you go out and then … He’s a total bastard!’
‘Get him up, cuff him and put him into a chair!’ İkmen reiterated to his colleague.
Suleyman, his breath still coming short and heavy, looked up into the eyes of his superior, who did not like what he saw there. There was fury, real and tangible murderous intent. It was not like Suleyman, not at all. And with the others clustered like a small but dedicated lynch mob around him, they formed a tableau that İkmen found both repellent and disturbing.
Drawing himself up to his full, diminutive height, İkmen did something he had never done before – he threatened his sergeant in public. Something had to be done to break this potentially murderous spell that had overtaken them all.
‘Sergeant Suleyman, I am ordering you to raise that man, cuff him and put him in a chair! Failure to comply with my order will result in you being placed on a charge and relieved of duty!’
‘Oh, sir,’ Cohen exclaimed, ‘you wouldn’t—’
‘Oh, yes, I would and will, Cohen!’ İkmen looked at each of the men in the room in turn, ending with Suleyman whose eyes were as hard as diamonds. ‘If any of you so much as breathes at that man in an inappropriate or violent manner I will be utterly merciless!’
Suleyman, who had only now, found his voice, said, ‘Sir …’
‘Don’t even think it, Suleyman!’ İkmen held up a warning finger. ‘This man is ill.’
‘He’s a fucking nutter!’ a large constable named Gülügölü muttered.
‘Yes, that’s quite right!’ said İkmen. ‘A nutter and therefore not responsible for his actions! Now get him up, cuff him and put him in that chair there’ – he pointed to the appropriate place – ‘and then go and pray to Allah that I don’t assign you all to some hellish duty in the mortuary!’
With Cohen’s help, Suleyman raised the now shaking man up from the floor and then put him, in cuffs, into the chair.
‘You were going to kill me, weren’t you?’ the man said as he looked up into Suleyman’s now quite immobile face. ‘I know you’re a killer, I can see it in your eyes.’
‘That’s quite enough of that, Vladimir Ilyich,’ İkmen said, attempting to catch hold of yet another potentially explosive situation.
But then yet again, quite inappropriately, the man laughed. ‘I’d rather his violence than your false understanding,’ he sneered.
‘What do you mean?’ İkmen asked.
‘I mean, policeman, that you can’t even begin to understand me. I mean that you’re calling me a madman is something you do for yourself, not me. I mean that you know nothing’ – he spat copiously down at İkmen’s feet – ‘not even the fact that one of your own is a blood-crazy killer.’
And then he laughed again, but this time he didn’t stop.
Chapter 7
Driving away from the central areas of the city felt not unlike extricating oneself from a huge monster. As well as experiencing rapid urban development over the past twenty years, İstanbul had also suffered a massive rise in population, which had both pushed property prices up and filled the streets, particularly in the more central districts, to bursting point and sometimes beyond. Even at this time of night – it was now eight o’clock – the streets around Taksim Square were choked with traffic and, as Arto Sarkissian moved the car forward, by the centimetre at times, he could feel weariness at it all emanating from the silent man beside him.
