Hotel Bosphorus (10 page)

The loneliness of old people in Germany certainly makes them talkative. “Sandra!” I repeated, in a warning tone of voice. She was definitely talking too much.

“OK, OK. Anyway, Detlev arranged an appointment with Müller for me this morning at ten o'clock. I drove to Düsseldorf, which as you know isn't far. Mr Müller is quite young, thirty-five at the most. He met me personally at the door, thanks to Detlev of course. I told him straight away that I too was a doctor in order to establish a bit of closeness, and then I told him about you. The poor young man hadn't a clue what I was talking about until I mentioned Istanbul, and then he looked very strange. I quickly explained that I wasn't ill and that you had asked me to do some research on his brother, which was why I'd made the appointment. He looked worried and I immediately realized that he was anxious because of Detlev. ‘Young man,' I said, ‘everyone except us thinks this is an ordinary thirty-minute medical appointment. It has nothing to do with anyone else.' He relaxed then.”

“So, what did you learn, Sandra?”

“You don't let me get a word in edgeways.” She paused for a moment. She'd said so many irrelevant things that she had confused herself.

“What did I learn? Mr Müller said he hadn't seen his older brother for a long time. They'd more or less lost
touch. Apparently this young surgeon was paying all the costs of their mother's care home; his older brother Kurt was a good-for-nothing. I asked him what his brother did. He said he'd made some stupid films. They last met twelve years ago, when Kurt asked if he could stay with him for a while. Our surgeon friend reckoned that Kurt was in serious trouble, otherwise why would he want to stay in his brother's student flat, because normally he had plenty of money to throw about. However, our surgeon didn't let him stay and hadn't heard anything of his brother since, until he saw press reports of his death. Kurt didn't even go to see their mother in the care home. Mr Müller said he didn't want his name associated with that of his brother.”

“Is that all?” I asked, feeling disappointed.

“That's all,” said Sandra.

“Didn't he have any close friends? Did you ask if there was anyone else we could contact?”

“Yes, I asked him that as well, but Mr Müller doesn't know of anyone. I asked him who his brother's friends were when he was at school in Bielefeld, and he said his closest school friend was Günter Basile.”

“Is this man still in Bielefeld? Do you know him?”

“What do you mean, do I know him? The whole of Germany knows him. Do you still not read the papers?”

I chose to ignore the last remark. “Who's this Basile?”

“He's the number-two man in the Liberal Democrats…”

“And former defence minister, I remember now,” I said.

“Yes, in the last government. But I doubt if a successful politician would meet you or me to rake over memories of a long-forgotten childhood friend.”

“Hmm,” I said.

Sandra hadn't come up with anything.

 

I walked home, changed into my favourite pink shorts and a T-shirt with a Donald Duck motif that I'd bought from a surplus stall at the local Tuesday market, and started making a mushroom omelette. I realized I was inviting trouble by eating eggs in that heat, but I couldn't be bothered to think about health. Anyway, I needed to punish myself for being unable to set aside all this detective work, and concentrate on my mounting telephone bills and neglected shop accounts.

I was lying on the sofa picking at the omelette and some week-old lettuce leaves when the doorbell rang. It was eight twenty-five.

I bent down and crept to the window to see who was at the door. No one was there. Some local children must have rung the bell and run away.

I had just settled myself on the sofa again when the doorbell rang a second time. This time, I went straight to the door and, sounding like a sensible woman living alone, called out, “Who's there?”

“Batuhan.” I have to say that the sound of his voice gave me more pleasure than if it had been my favourite tenor in
Il trovatore
.

I simply have to describe to my dear readers what I saw when I opened the door. Batuhan was wearing ordinary tight-fitting jeans, a claret-coloured polo shirt with a green crocodile on his left breast, and claret-coloured espadrilles on his feet. For me, it wasn't just the fact that they were claret-coloured, but that all production of espadrilles was supposed to have been banned by a special decree of the Council of Ministers. It was
inconceivable that anyone in a senior position in the service of the state would go for espadrilles.

To complete the picture, Batuhan was carrying a briefcase in his hand. At least that wasn't claret-coloured.

“I didn't know your home phone number, so I couldn't call you. Anyway, when I dropped you off at home last night, I wasn't as drunk as I thought, so I remembered the way. Are you alone?”

“I had the Berlin Philharmonic here, but they've gone now,” I said. As soon as I spoke, I was horrified at my bad joke. However, either Batuhan was used to bad jokes or he laughed to humour me. A third possibility also occurred to me, which was that he didn't know what the Berlin Philharmonic was, but I didn't want to admit that, even to myself.

“Come in,” I said. He was still standing outside the door.

I plunged back into the living room to hide the unappetizing and pathetic-looking plate of omelette and salad lying on the sofa before Batuhan entered. We had become quite at ease with each other by the end of the previous night's meal and bottle of
rakı
. Nevertheless, being on familiar terms did not mean he needed to know how and where I ate when I wasn't eating kebabs.

I kicked the plate firmly under the sofa and called out to Batuhan, who was now standing in the entrance hall.

“Won't you sit down?”

He stopped at the door of the living room, opened his briefcase and took out two bottles of wine. I desperately wanted to remark, “I hope those aren't claret as well.” But I controlled myself.

“I brought some wine. You'll have a drink, won't you?”

“Sure,” I said.

He followed me as I went to the kitchen to get a corkscrew.

“Has there been any progress in the investigation?” I asked.

He didn't answer, but sat on the chair next to the kitchen door watching me struggle with the cork.

“I'll open it if you like,” he said finally.

I passed the bottle and corkscrew to him, took out some wineglasses and put them on the kitchen worktop.

“Not much is happening,” he said. He was obviously not referring to his difficulty separating the cork from the wine bottle. “A lot of pressure is being put on us. It makes me sick.”

He spoke as if we'd been friends for forty years. I leaned my chin on my hand and looked at him thoughtfully. He was busy with the bottle and didn't see the expression on my face.

“Why is there all this pressure? It's a murder investigation, and you're an inspector on the homicide desk. You do this sort of investigation every day.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, but the murder victim and suspects are foreign citizens. The German police want to get involved. I'm being pressured from above to solve the case as quickly as possible without letting them in. So far the Germans haven't got the necessary clearance, but who knows what'll happen tomorrow,” he said wearily.

“My theory about the murder…” Before I could finish my sentence, he stood and picked up the briefcase that he'd kept close by him and the wine bottle.

“Shall we go into the living room?” he asked.

“Are we going to talk about the murder?” I asked, sitting on the sofa with a wineglass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I was getting tired of playing cat-and-mouse.

“Yes, we are. There are a few things I want to ask you.”

“I had no connection with it. Why are you asking me questions?”

“It's not because you had any connection with it. I just want to ask you some questions,” he said.

I imagined my new visiting card:

“I'll answer your questions if you give me details of how the murder was committed,” I said, well aware that my words had a whiff of blackmail but, as you know, sometimes you have to resort to dubious methods to get what you want.

With an openness that surprised me, Batuhan started to explain without any hesitation.

“Because the body was in water, it's impossible to determine what time the murder took place. After the crew had dinner together that night, five of them stayed out, including Müller. They all returned to the hotel and got into the same lift at around eleven forty. The rooms of Müller, his assistant director Miss Bauer and production assistant Mr Gust were on the fourth floor. Those three came out of the lift together. Gust realized that Müller was very drunk and offered to take
him to his room, or rather his suite. On that floor there are two suites on the Bosphorus side of the hotel, with good views. On the other side, the street side, they're all rooms. Müller declined the offer, so Gust and Bauer went to their rooms on the street side and Müller went off in the opposite direction. In other words, they separated as soon as they came out of the lift. Those two were the last people to see Müller alive. According to their statements, they spent the night together in Miss Bauer's room.”

He stopped for a moment to take a sip of wine.

“Had Bauer and Gust previously been having a relationship? Or was that the first time?…”

“They said they got it together for the first time that night over dinner. Of course, the man's married. They drank a lot and spent the night together.”

“Their rooms were next door to each other, which is too much of a coincidence if they weren't having an affair. Which of the film crew allocated the rooms, and how?”

“The room reservations were made before they arrived in Istanbul. They'd booked eleven single rooms and two suites. But it wasn't clear beforehand who was to stay in which room. Reception had allocated randomly. The suites… Well there were two suite reservations. The two suites in the hotel were next to each other and had been booked for the film crew, or rather for Müller and his friend Miss Vogel. As for Bauer and Gust's rooms being next door to each other,” he said scratching his head, “that was coincidence of course.”

“That's a very big coincidence, Batuhan,” I said sardonically. Contrary to what I thought, my manner did not offend Batuhan's masculine pride. He took out
a notebook from the briefcase, and jotted something down.

“You're saying Müller came out of the lift at eleven forty and was last seen alive walking towards his room.”

“Yes, and the body was found at five twenty.”

“It is true that he was murdered in the bath, isn't it?”

“Do you think we, the Turkish police, are the sort of people to joke about such things?”

Actually, I'd never felt less like laughing.

“That left less than six hours. If he hadn't been killed, he would have started that day with five hours' sleep. If I'd been in that situation, I'd have gone straight to bed rather than indulge in a bath. All the others said he was drunk, except for those two… What were their names?”

“Bauer and Gust. But there was no need for anyone to say whether he was drunk or not, because the autopsy made it clear that he had a high blood-alcohol count.”

“Hmm,” I said, deep in thought. Clearly, Müller hadn't been burned to a cinder by being electrocuted as I'd expected. There was a body on which an autopsy could be carried out.

“It seems odd to me that someone who was drunk would go and have a bath instead of going straight to bed.”

“Getting into it with a whisky glass is even stranger,” he said.

“He had a whisky glass in his hand?” I stopped. “In his hand? What do you mean? In the bath?”

“No, in his hand. He was clutching the glass very tightly.”

“How?” First his body turned out not to have been burned to toast, and now this.

“In the case of sudden or traumatic death, the muscles in the lower arms, especially the hands, remain contracted instead of slackening. Haven't you ever seen war photos showing dead people with flags in their hands, who apparently died for the flag and with the flag clutched in their hand?”

Without responding to Batuhan's last sentence, I grimaced and said, “In the bath, with a whisky glass stuck in his hand… Poor man.”

Suddenly I had an idea. “So, any suspicion of suicide was eliminated because he had a whisky glass in his hand?” I said. As I said this, I thought about the reaction of the wardrobe mistress who had been the first person to see the body.

Batuhan responded to this, saying, “Suicide never even occurred to us because of the position of the body.”

“Fine, but didn't he try to save himself?”

“There was no chance of escaping death in such circumstances. Again, because of the muscles. You remember how I said the hands and forearms remain contracted? Well, there is involuntary contraction of the other muscles in the body as well. It would have been absolutely impossible for him to get out of the water.”

“OK, so what state was the body in?”

“What do you mean, what state was it in?”

“Well, I thought when people were subjected to an electric shock, they were burned to a cinder, but, according to what you said, that was not the case.”

“Yes, a normal electric shock would turn a body to charcoal.”