A Chemical Prison, page 39
‘Thank you,’ İkmen said with a small bow. ‘I appreciate that.’
‘It’s really the least I can do given my own rather unprofessional part in this affair,’ the doctor said, looking down briefly at the floor.
İkmen frowned. ‘Unprofessional? I don’t understand.’
‘I went to see Avram just prior to Suleyman’s visit. I told him what and where our thoughts were headed with regard to doctors and their involvement.’
‘Ah. That.’
‘Yes, that, Çetin,’ Arto said with a small, sad smile. ‘I allowed other loyalties, my affection for a younger protégé to …’
‘Yes, you did, although that is over now.’
‘Not for me it isn’t.’ Arto’s face had taken on a slightly stiffer almost mask-like quality. ‘I allowed outside and really irrelevant issues to cloud both my judgement and my actions. By wanting so much to believe that Avram had to be innocent I did something that was both dangerous and wholly unprofessional.’
‘But you won’t do it again.’
‘Won’t I?’ The doctor turned his newly hardened eyes upon his friend and asked, ‘Can you be certain? What if another Armenian friend of mine becomes involved in something?’
‘Then we will meet that situation if and when it arises. I admit,’ İkmen continued, lighting yet another cigarette, ‘that your actions did disturb me at the time, but—’
‘I’m not so different to Krikor really,’ the doctor interrupted. ‘I criticise him for thinking too kindly of other Armenians but I do it myself.’
‘We all think more charitably about our own, Arto,’ İkmen said. ‘It’s just human nature. And, OK, I was angry at first, but when I really got to thinking about what you did … Well, the difference between that and my, say, favouring Suleyman if I suspected he was in trouble, which we both know is pertinent …’
They exchanged a knowing look.
‘Is not so far away from what you did. It’s just that there are more of us than there are of you in this country. We must all be vigilant with regard to outside loyalties. We must all, furthermore, accept that even those we love may be capable of evil deeds. We have chosen to uphold the law with regard to criminal acts and so we must always put that first, irrespective of our personal feelings, because if we don’t, who will?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘People with rather more, shall we say, political motives? Like those who work in other areas of the field concerned with anti-terrorist activities?’
‘Things we do not become involved with since we do not concern ourselves with either politics or religion?’
‘Exactly!’ İkmen smiled. ‘Because while there are men like us the “others” cannot ever truly be in control, can they?’
Arto smiled back. ‘No.’
‘Every nation has both that other type of law-keeper and it has us, Arto, and’ – İkmen raised one finger to make his point clear – ‘those nations that don’t have the likes of us are generally places where one is strongly advised not to go, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which makes men like us, so I believe, extremely important.’
The doctor laughed. ‘Well, if you look at it like that …’
‘I do so value our friendship, you know, Arto,’ İkmen said, and then rising from his chair he moved across the room and kissed his old friend firmly on both cheeks.
Suleyman brought the car to a halt just in front of one of the side entrances to the main hospital building. ‘I should imagine that Ersoy quite charms all the nurses,’ he said as he put the car into neutral and pulled up the hand-brake.
‘He tries,’ the doctor replied, ‘but they’ve all been chosen to be not easily susceptible to that sort of thing.’
‘Rather, shall we say, plain women, are they?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘That’s very sexist of you but it’s about right, yes.’
‘He can get inside your head so easily,’ he said. Looking down at the steering wheel he added, ‘He got into mine.’
‘Yes, but you coped,’ she said.
‘I nearly killed him, which is exactly what he wanted me to do.’ He looked up at her. ‘Not really coping as such, is it, Doctor?’
‘Ah, but you didn’t kill him, did you?’ she said, placing one small but firm hand on to his shoulder. ‘Ersoy lives and so, even more importantly, does Dr Sarkissian. That makes you what we call back home a fucking hero, Sergeant Suleyman.’
That word again! Once more the thought of such a thing coming from a woman’s mouth made him blush. It also, secretly, made him want to laugh too. She was so very amusing, this strange, unkempt little medic with her funny Irish life and her Turkish father.
‘You know that he resents you a lot, don’t you?’ she said, breaking his train of thought with her oddly accented voice again.
‘Who?’
‘Muhammed Ersoy. Because you didn’t kill him. He’s very bitter.’
‘Oh.’ There really was no sensible answer to that.
‘Good thing he’s not ever going to leave jail then, isn’t it?’ she said as she unbuckled her seat belt and swung her legs out of the car. ‘He might come after you and I, for one, would not fancy your chances.’
‘You wouldn’t?’ Suleyman looked suddenly very affronted.
Dr Halman laughed. ‘Sorry to dent your machismo a bit there, Sergeant, but given Mr Ersoy’s record on clever crimes of cold violence as compared to your own I think he’s just a little ahead at the moment, don’t you?’
Suleyman smiled in recognition of her words and then looked up at her again, ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I understand.’
‘Good,’ she replied and then, just as he was putting the car back into gear, she put her head through the window and said, ‘Call me.’
Suleyman, a little taken aback, said, ‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘To talk about Ersoy, to get some of that guilt out of your poor tortured soul.’
‘You mean like therapy?’
‘You’re still, in my opinion, quite traumatised, yes.’
‘But …’
‘Oh, I won’t charge you anything for my time,’ she said with a smile, ‘look upon it as a favour or, if you like, as closure for us both.’
He laughed. There was that psychological term again, the one İkmen had almost sneered at. ‘I will see,’ he said, ‘but thank you anyway, Doctor.’
‘It’s a pleasure,’ she said as she pushed the door shut.
As he watched her hustling briskly towards the door of the hospital, Suleyman suddenly laughed out loud. The thought of what he and this small, dumpy, rude woman might look like walking together had entered his mind – and amused him quite considerably. It was the first time that he had really laughed in a long while.
Sitting at different tables, separated by what looked like an endless parade of sin in the form of chilled cakes and pastries, Zuleika Suleyman and Ayşe Farsakoǧlu had both, independently, decided to subsume their woes within the confines of the Pera Palas Hotel pâtisserie.
Zuleika, whose husband had that morning placed his suitcases plus three boxes containing books and personal effects by the front door of the apartment ready for collection later that day, chewed almost without consciousness on a chocolate éclair. Very soon she was going to be a single woman again. Admittedly, she did not have the financial worries that caused many of her other divorced girlfriends so much grief. Mehmet’s wages had only ever supplemented her considerable income and so his desertion would, from that point of view, make very little difference to her life. That he himself was removing to another place was, however, another matter. Once, long ago it now seemed, she had loved him with the kind of passion she could barely understand. Handsome, kind and clever, he had been, or so she had thought, everything that she desired in a man. Like her, he was ‘old money’, plus he was through his father’s family a direct descendant of a sultan. It had all been so perfect. Except … She put another forkful of éclair into her mouth as she tried, in vain, to expunge the source of her failure.
Why and how could it be that none of the ‘bedroom activity’ had worked with her? She had both loved and desired him so … That first time had made her almost physically sick. Him grunting away on top of her, producing pain the like of which she had never experienced before; his hands, hands that she knew had fondled and caressed other women’s bodies, roaming all over her torso. In spite of the fear and pain that he must have seen in her eyes, he had carried on pleasuring himself at her expense. Was it the knowledge that he had been with other women before that had made her feel like that? Or had it perhaps been the deadness in his eyes as he took her, the look of a man simply doing his duty which, as a good son of his family, he always did – until now.
He had, apparently, told his mother, Auntie Nur, that he had never loved Zuleika. Not that Zuleika herself had been unaware of this. Mehmet if nothing else had always been quite honest with her about that. Even before their actual marriage, he had spoken to her in terms of their both ‘learning to love each other’. But it had never happened. He had, probably in part as a result of her horror of sex, remained indifferent, and she? Well, she had over the years slipped into the kind of carping bitterness that can only sour still further an already unsure relationship. And now he was going. Even in the face of his mother’s wrath – she had even declared him dead to her – he was leaving, which had to mean that above everything else he actually wanted to go; he wanted rid of her. Although quite why it had happened at this moment in time as opposed to any other she didn’t know and now probably never would. She bit back her tears as she chewed yet another lump of cake, contemplating the endless sea of loneliness that seemed to stretch out before her – a loneliness she knew that, at her age, would only be punctuated by men who were more interested in her money than her soul. But then perhaps, as she had said when she’d first been told about the separation, her mother could find some nice man for her daughter. Zuleika’s tears dissolved into a short, bitter chuckle.
Ayşe Farsakoǧlu’s thoughts were punctuated by some bitterness too. As she looked across at the tall, immaculately coiffed woman sitting across from her slowly devouring a large éclair, she couldn’t help thinking that perhaps someone like that was more suited to the attentions of her now ex-lover. Kind and courteous as he no doubt was, just by virtue of what he was, she had felt a little shabby by comparison. With her thick, unruly hair and slim but strong frame she could, she reasoned without too much effort, easily imagine herself in the role of the aristocrat’s sexual plaything. In truth it was a role she had been very willing to play but now that he had told her that their affair was over, that he needed time to reassess his life in light of his recent separation, and in view of the admitted difficulties that being involved with someone in the office would bring, she was beginning to think differently about the matter.
OK, so she had thought for a while that she was in love with him – had even considered giving up her job after he dumped her – but in truth had her feelings for him ever been anything other than infatuation? He was handsome, charming, very sexy and he had been so gentle and loving to her when he’d arrived covered in blood from the carnage in Avedykian’s apartment, but what they had in common outside of the bedroom was minimal. He enjoyed neither a drink nor a laugh in the way that she did. The earthy humour of the Anatolian peasant largely eluded him and although it was an odd thought, it occurred to Ayşe that when it came to a suitable life partner she really had far more in common with her lover’s boss, Çetin İkmen, than she did with Suleyman himself. It was such a bizarre, almost insane notion that, just for a second, she burst out in a small giggle.
Yet despite her laughter there was still, she felt, a very real message behind all this. Of course, İkmen was totally out of the question, being too old, too unattractive to her and far, far too married. But … But somebody like him surely had to be more suitable for her than someone like Mehmet. İkmen, although he frequently courted danger in low bars and cheap districts, was in a way safer than Mehmet. In times of real trouble, like when that poor madman attacked her, İkmen was calm and rock solid in his resolve to attain a peaceful solution. There had been a wildness in Mehmet at that time – perhaps it was the craziness of what he imagined to be his love for her? The madman, Lenin, had seen it, dubbed him a killer even, and in truth there was something about him that was at root quite out of control. Perhaps she thought, sourly, it was his old aristocratic blood. They had all been, and if Muhammed Ersoy was anything to go by, still were quite unhinged. Perhaps in a way, given this evidence, she had had a rather lucky escape when he had dumped her – that or she was just deluding herself in order to feel better.
As she popped a small forkful of thick, sickly-sweet baklava into her mouth she looked over at the other lone woman, the elegant one, and smiled. It was a sad little smile and was greeted with an expression that was not dissimilar. It was hard to imagine, given the lady’s polished elegance, but it seemed from her face that she was in the midst of some kind of woe also. Quite what that could be, given her wealth, beauty and the presence of a large wedding ring on her finger, Ayşe could not imagine. But then the rich did, had to, have worries as well as the poor. Cushioned by money, they could never really be assailed by concerns as great as those of the poor, but if the woman’s face was anything to go by they felt just as keenly as other folk.
One thing that was different, however, was that Ayşe now had to get to work. The smart woman’s numerous store bags attested to what was probably a day of shopping – something Ayşe on her meagre salary could rarely even contemplate. Nodding briefly to the proprietor of the establishment, Ayşe finished the last mouthful of her cake and rose to her feet. It would be interesting to know what exactly was making the elegant woman so sad, but she knew that one did not engage in conversation with such a person unless one was invited to do so. But as she left she did just briefly incline her head in the lady’s direction and was once again rewarded with that slow, mournful smile.
Once the tired-looking young policewoman had left, Zuleika Suleyman put her head into her hands, taking care not to smudge her make-up as she lightly touched the skin around her eyes.
‘You know,’ Muhammed Ersoy said to the taller of the two large guards who spent such vast amounts of time in his room these days, ‘if I were not as rich and powerful as I am and having done the things that I have done, I would probably be incarcerated in some dirty little cell right now – even with this very poor shoulder of mine.’
The guard didn’t answer; he just kept looking straight and steadily ahead of him.
Ersoy was used to this kind of treatment now and he prattled on anyway. ‘It must be so irksome for people like you,’ he said, ‘big boys just fresh’ – he moved one hand suggestively up and down one of the bars on his headboard – ‘out of the rough Anatolian plains.’ He laughed, amused by the complete lack of reaction he was getting from these men. He pushed it as far as he felt he could go. After all it, like life, was only a game and these men, unlike the dreadful beast who’d taken his statement did not, as yet, appear to be in the business of naked aggression. ‘You know I’ve paid so many men like you to suck my cock it hardly—’
The door opened to admit that funny little psychiatrist woman, bringing Ersoy’s obscene little speech to a halt, to the obvious relief of at least one of the guards.
‘Oh, hello, Doctor,’ he said, reverting to English which he knew made her feel much more comfortable. Then looking hard into her face, he said, ‘Your pupils are dilated – have you seen someone you would like to fuck? Or is it myself you feel attracted to?’
‘I don’t know that that is any business of yours, Muhammed,’ she said briskly and then, sitting down on the chair beside his bed, she asked, ‘how are you today?’
‘Oh, I’m still miserable to be alive, thank you,’ he said brightly. ‘Still hurt that one of my own kind should be so inept with a gun as to—’
‘Your anger at Sergeant Suleyman seems to be achieving obsessive status.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said with a smile, ‘I don’t think that that is so, Doctor. After all, what would it profit me to pursue him when I am obviously so very unwell at the moment?’
‘Unwell?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘mentally. I mean, don’t you—’
‘You are not, as far as I am concerned, in any way psychotic, Muhammed,’ she said, taking a notebook and pen out of her attaché case. ‘We’ve talked about voices which, if I recall correctly, you do not hear. Your obsessions although unbalanced could not be described as full-blown delusory …’
‘Oh, but that was then,’ he said, his voice honeyed to an almost tooth-rotting degree.
‘That was when?’ she said frowning. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That was before I became unwell yet again. I do get quite frequent bouts of it, you know. Yesterday afternoon …’
‘Just after your lawyer left you,’ she said with what both felt and tasted like a mouthful of bile.
‘Why yes, it was just after he left, that’s absolutely right,’ he said smiling.
‘Oh, give it up, will you, Muhammed, for the love of God!’
‘Give …’
‘If you’re going to try and get out of all this on the grounds of being under the influence of Shaitan or some other crap, you can forget it. You’re gonna live, you’re gonna stand trial and you’re gonna go to prison, old Ottoman money, hereditary madness or whatever!’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,’ he said, bending down to move his face just a little closer to hers.
One of the guards moved forward but she waved him away with her hand.
‘Nothing is certain in this life, Doctor,’ Ersoy whispered gently into her ear, ‘and if it were that would be very boring, wouldn’t it? That man, for instance, the one you would like to fuck so much, if you were sure of him there wouldn’t be any fun …’
