‘I completely accept that you have no connection to the gangster Tayfun Ergin,’ she said as she looked up at the man sitting opposite her. ‘Although what he’s doing in Fatih . . .’
‘Gangsters are everywhere these days!’ Cem Koç said nervously and completely oblivious to the irony of a criminal complaining about other criminals. ‘I’ve heard it said that Tayfun Ergin is trying to provide protection to the coffee houses where the Faithful sometimes meet. But they don’t want him. They don’t need his kind.’
‘So you didn’t get the idea to set up your contract killing business from Tayfun—’
‘I didn’t get it from anywhere!’ Cem said. ‘I didn’t get it! Such a thing does not exist!’
Ayşe Farsakoğlu looked over at the other officer in the room, a constable, with whom she shared a smile.
‘The girl’s parents are, they say, totally ignorant of any kind of need or arrangement to kill her.’
‘Yes, because no one wanted to do that, only that man . . .’
‘İsmail Yıldız? Did he make the whole thing up?’
‘Well, yes . . .’
‘Well no, actually,’ Ayşe said with a smile this time at Cem Koç. ‘Sadly for you, Mr Koç the girl’s brother in Diyarbakir has confirmed Mr Yıldız’s story.’
‘The girl’s brother?’ His face reddened. ‘Ah, yes but if he was in Diyarbakır . . .’
‘The police in Diyarbakır began questioning Mr Emir Şafak yesterday,’ she said. ‘You know, Mr Koç, he admitted that he and his parents had sought his sister’s death for some time. He told them how grateful his father had been to meet you.’
Cem Koç lowered his head towards the table.
‘He named you, Mr Koç,’ Ayşe said. ‘He said that you knew his father from the Gül Mosque, that you often talked of this and that after your prayers.’
‘No, he’s—’
‘He named you!’ Ayşe said. ‘If you want to see a copy of his statement . . .’
‘No! No.’ Cem Koç put his head in his hands, and for a few moments Ayşe left him alone with his misery.
Then she said, ‘Cem, we know you intended to earn money from the death of Sabiha Şafak. The best thing you can do now is to tell us who else, if anyone, is involved.’
Cem stayed completely still with his head in his hands for some time. At last he murmured, ‘You set me up. I’ve seen the cop shows from America. With that Yıldız man you set me up.’
‘No,’ Ayşe said calmly. ‘We did not, Mr Koç. You approached Mr Yıldız. We were just fortunate that he came to us. Had he not, then you would be facing a much sterner charge. Now . . .’
‘Oh.’ Cem Koç raised himself up from the table and wiped his weary eyes with the back of his hand. He sighed, looked up at the ceiling and then appeared to make a decision. ‘I met a man in a nargile salon, over in Tophane,’ he said. ‘We got talking. He told me that he’d had this difficult daughter who had dishonoured him. He said that he’d managed to rid himself of her with no risk to himself because . . .’ He faltered here, but Ayşe did not help him. ‘He’d paid, he said, six thousand lire to have her killed. Some very ordinary lads, under-age, had done it. The father was proud of it.’
‘And you thought . . .’
‘I couldn’t kill anyone! I couldn’t! But . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve got debts. I kept on thinking about it. I didn’t speak to anyone, but . . . I thought if I could just find someone who could do such a thing. Rafik Bey at the grocer’s shop is a friend. Everyone goes into his shop to buy things but also to talk. I said that if he heard of anyone who really needed money and was up for anything . . .’
‘Rafik the grocer didn’t know what you would want this person to do?’
‘No! No,’ he said. ‘I told him I had a new business. I said it was a little outside the law. He said he was OK with that. Only me and that . . . man knew.’
‘How did you know that İsmail Yıldız wouldn’t just come to us?’
‘He did!’
‘But why did you think he wouldn’t?’
Cem Koç thought about this for a few moments. ‘I don’t know. I just
felt
that he was genuine. He was so bitter at his brother, the police officer. He wanted to prove himself, to be a man somehow.’
‘İsmail Yıldız is not under-age,’ Ayşe observed.
Cem Koç shrugged. ‘But he was willing to take the risk anyway. He said so. What could I do? He was there, and he was willing.’
‘Where did you get the two thousand lire to pay Mr Yıldız with?’ Ayşe asked.
‘A moneylender,’ he replied. ‘I was trying to be clever, trying to cover my tracks. I borrowed the money and then when the Şafaks paid me . . .’
‘How much?’
‘Six thousand lire, like the man in the nargile salon had told me,’ he said. ‘I reckoned that was the going rate.’
‘For a bespoke honour killing?’
He shrugged.
‘Do you know, Mr Koç, whether this type of “trade” is something that many people do?’
He looked up. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘How would I? I met one man in a nargile salon who told me about one killing. I just went by that.’
‘How did you meet the Şafaks?’ Ayşe asked. ‘How did the subject of Sabiha’s death arise?’
‘Her father and I go to the same coffee house,’ he said. ‘We talk. He said that his son had told him that his daughter was bad. He was distressed. I told him I might be able to help.’
‘For a price.’
‘Yes. But he was happy with that, he . . .’
‘And are you now ashamed of what you did?’ Ayşe asked. On some level Cem Koç had to approve of honour killings, otherwise nothing on earth could have made him procure someone to perform one.
‘I don’t think that bad girls should dishonour their families,’ he said.
‘Yes, but do you think that—’
‘I think that their families should do it really,’ he said. ‘But everyone is so afraid of being caught. You, the police, you’re so much better these days, aren’t you?’
Ayşe felt sick. She had revised her opinion of Cem Koç during the course of this interrogation. He was just sorry that he had got caught. He didn’t have a scrap of feeling for Sabiha Şafak. To hell with what his financial needs might be!
‘Do you know the name of the man you got this idea from in the nargile salon in Tophane?’ she said coldly.
‘No.’
‘What was the name of the salon?’
‘I don’t remember.’
Ayşe sighed. ‘Well then, Mr Koç,’ she said, ‘do you think you might recognise this man if you saw him again?’
‘I might do,’ Cem Koç replied.
‘Well, let us see if we can get a description from you, shall we?’ Ayşe said. ‘Let’s start with that.’
Chapter 33
It was almost midnight by the time İkmen and Süleyman were ready to interview Cahit Seyhan. He was brought from his cell to the interview room in a state of bleary-eyed exhaustion. The officers, by contrast, though both had now gone for what seemed like an eternity without sleep, were buoyed up by some information that was hopefully going to make their interrogation of Seyhan a whole lot easier.
‘Right, Mr Seyhan,’ İkmen said as he sat down opposite the man. ‘One last time, did you pay to have your daughter Gözde murdered? We know you are not as well off as you were . . .’
‘I did not kill Gözde,’ Cahit Seyhan said emphatically. ‘No.’
‘Right.’
Süleyman sat down next to İkmen and opened up a cardboard file.
‘So, Mr Seyhan,’ İkmen continued, ‘can you please tell me why both your wife and a man called Cem Koç who you met in the Tulip nargile salon in Tophane say that you did?’
Cahit Seyhan growled and then threw a limp, dismissive arm into the air. ‘My wife is a liar!’ he said. ‘I want to have more children with her and the bitch denies me!’
‘Yes, there is also a rape charge,’ Süleyman said.
‘She wants to have me put away so she can run around with men!’
Both İkmen and Süleyman ignored this.
‘I don’t know any man called Koç!’ Cahit Seyhan said.
‘Well you told him all about the arrangement you had come to with what you described as “some under-age boys”,’ İkmen said. ‘Koç has identified you.’
‘I was—’
‘Murad Emin, who is a waiter at the Tulip, is under-age,’ İkmen said. ‘Murad Emin, Mr Seyhan, who your wife identified as the person you yourself pointed out to her as being Gözde’s killer! Was it your idea, or did it come from the boy?’
‘We know that people, particularly in the countryside, sometimes employ under-age boys to perform honour killings because their age will preclude them from long prison sentences,’ Süleyman said. ‘Whose idea was it? Yours?’
‘I don’t know this Koç man! I don’t know him!’
‘How did he know you, then?’ İkmen said. ‘He described you and then we got him to look at hundreds of photographs, and he picked you out!’
Cahit Seyhan looked around the room as if trying to find some sort of way out. İkmen lit a cigarette and the room began to take on a vague and diffuse greyness.
Süleyman, who also lit up, now said, ‘If you tell us everything and name everyone involved, we can make sure that your cooperation is noted.’
‘What, do some sort of deal?’ Seyhan looked suddenly eager and even a little hopeful.
‘No,’ İkmen said as patiently as his growing anger would allow. ‘We don’t do deals. We’d make sure that your cooperation was noted. That’s all.’
Cahit Seyhan looked down at the desk for a long time before he spoke. He had been betrayed by his wife and his son. Why Lokman had turned against him, he couldn’t imagine! They surely had to have a duty to him above anyone else. Now more than at any other time he regretted coming to the city. Had they stayed in the village, Gözde would have remained pure, Kenan would have married and Lokman and Saadet would never have had the courage to betray him. But they were no longer in the village; they were in a place that he didn’t understand, an evil place that was going to destroy him.
‘I liked the music at the Tulip,’ he said at last. ‘The piano.’
‘You conversed with Murad Emin because of the piano,’ İkmen said.
‘I spoke to both the boys,’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘They offered to help me out. With Gözde.’
‘They?’
‘Ali Reza took the money,’ Cahit Seyhan said. ‘He planned it, but Murad did it. He wanted to. He said it was his duty. Ali Reza I think was only in it for the money. I find that really unsettling. To kill only for money. That cannot be right. How does one clear one’s conscience when money is involved?’
He stared down at the desk with an expression of frozen hopelessness on his face. İkmen looked over at Süleyman and let his next lungful of smoke out on a sigh. He was shattered, relieved that Seyhan had finally confessed but also totally baffled by the man. Süleyman, for his part, could think only about the two boys.
‘Leopold and Loeb were a couple of very talented, very intellectual boys who lived in Chicago in the 1920s,’ İkmen said. It was morning now, and Murad Emin had, at İkmen’s request, been transferred back to police headquarters. ‘In 1924, they killed a fourteen-year-old boy called Bobby Franks. They did it both for the thrill of the thing and also to see if they could get away with it. They didn’t, mainly because neither of them could keep their mouths shut. They wanted the world to know how clever, how daring and how wild and crazy they’d been. They got put away for life. But then that’s how young people are, isn’t it, Murad? Young people just have to open their mouths.’
Murad Emin, pale from lack of sleep, remained silent and unmoving.
‘We would not have paid you half the attention that we have had you not alluded so vehemently to your own piety,’ Süleyman said. He was very well aware that it was İzzet Melik and not him who had pursued Murad Emin with such vigour. But he put that embarrassing thought to one side. ‘And now that Mr Seyhan, Gözde’s father, has confessed to procuring her death via you and Ali Reza Zafir, there is really no point in maintaining this ridiculous silence now.’
‘Mr Seyhan has confessed, Mrs Seyhan has identified you and when the forensic material comes back from the laboratory you will have run out of places to hide,’ İkmen said. ‘Now you tell us everything.’ He looked briefly over at Süleyman and then went back to the boy once again. ‘Tell us everything about the murder, about your part in it and about Ali Reza.’
The boy looked up with wide, terrified eyes.
‘Tell us
everything
about Ali Reza,’ İkmen said. ‘Everything.’
Murad Emin began to visibly shake. The psychologist Hatice, who had been standing over in the corner of the interview room, went outside and came back in with a blanket and a drink. She put the blanket around the boy’s shoulders and placed the drink down in front of him.
‘Drink some tea,’ she said. ‘I know that this is very hard, Murad.’
He looked at her through eyes streaming with tears.
‘But you must trust us,’ Hatice said. ‘We are all here not just because we know what you did, but because we know what you didn’t do. You didn’t kill Hamid İdiz, did you, Murad?’
He reached forward with a hand that shook so much, Hatice had to bring the tea glass up to his lips for him. İkmen and Süleyman looked on as the psychologist made the boy drink and then wiped his face with her handkerchief. ‘Murad. Please.’
At first his voice was not much more than a whisper. ‘No.’
‘No, you won’t tell us anything, or no—’
‘No, I didn’t kill Hamid Bey,’ Murad said.
‘Do you know who did?’ İkmen asked.
Hatice, now squatting down beside the boy, put her arms around his shoulders, which, for a very pious boy, did not seem to trouble him. He nodded his head.
‘Was it Ali Reza Zafir?’
The unmoving silence that followed made Çetin İkmen think for a moment that maybe there was another, unknown killer out there somewhere, another crazy kid they had yet to apprehend. But then the boy said, ‘Yes.’ He sighed, and it was as if an invisible membrane had burst, allowing a free flow of words and deeds and horrors. ‘He wanted to see what it was like. I’d told him how horrible the girl’s death was. How when I’d set her on fire she’d turned and looked at me through the flames, her face melting down into a scream!’