Hotel Bosphorus (9 page)

As the subject moved into his field of expertise, the magazine reporter, bless him, poured out more information.

“Mesut is the former lover of Sedef Armen. They were preparing to get married at one time. In fact, Sedef had even had a wedding dress made; she was all ready to become the lady of the house, but then changed her mind. She poured out her heart to my boss Fatih, saying that after they got married Mesut wasn't going to let her work and that, after so many years of trying to get somewhere in this business, she couldn't just lose everything in one fell swoop. Fatih didn't write about all that; it would have been unprofessional to reveal the contents of a private conversation. But later, Kemal Güngör wrote about it in his column.”

“Just a minute,” I said, interrupting him. “Who are Fatih and Kemal Güngör?”

I think he was now convinced that I really was from another planet. In fact, I was beginning to think the same thing myself.

“Fatih is the boss of my agency. He's well known in the artistic community. And Kemal Güngör is the publishing director of the women's weekly magazine
Kadının Resmi
.”

“What do you mean by the artistic community?”

“Well, I mean artists.”

I realized I was being a bit tedious but, despite my knowledge of Turkish and my razor-sharp intelligence, this magazine-speak was completely foreign to me.

“Do you mean singers, beauty queens and so forth?” I asked.

He nodded his head in an exaggerated fashion to indicate “yes”.

“OK, so why did Mesut Mumcu go to jail?”

The crime reporter muttered something not very polite at the magazine reporter and took a sip of his tea before answering my question.

“He went down for a few crimes. Abduction, inciting violence, murder. He'd have been in real trouble if it hadn't been for the amnesty. It's about seven months since he got out. His gang almost broke up while he was inside, but when he came out he gathered his old team together and even managed to expand the business. For instance, he's just gone into this film business. It would've been his first film.”

“Is Mesut Mumcu involved in drugs?”

I doubt if any of my readers would think I was wrong to suspect that drugs lay behind the murder of Müller. International film production costs, the fees of a big-time female film star, the expense of putting everyone up at the best hotels… A gangland boss wouldn't fund all this and go to so much trouble unless it was for some big drugs deal. And normally, a Giacomo Donetti
screenplay would never be handed to someone like Kurt Müller. There was definitely something very fishy about all this.

“Mesut never does drug deals himself. His brother Aksut runs the drugs branch of the organization. They're one of the biggest families in the South-East. There are seven of them. There are some uncles too, but it's really their father who runs everything. The oldest brother, Maksut, is an MP; he's been in parliament for two terms. The sister, Yakut, is a businesswoman. You must have heard of Mumcu Tourism; they have hotels and holiday villages. Yakut's husband is German but he got himself circumcised and became a Muslim. He's been a Turkish citizen for four or five years now. He met Yakut when he came to Turkey on holiday and it was love at first sight for him. Yakut really led him along. She's a very beautiful woman. Jet-black hair, good figure, fair skin.” He stopped for a moment, looking at the lad from the magazine and me. “She's quite something, she's even studied abroad.”

The magazine reporter couldn't help being impressed by the in-depth knowledge of the middle-aged crime reporter. I interrupted.

“And the other three? Didn't this family produce any normal people? No housewives or teachers?”

“One of them was a favourite of the late President Turgut Özal. Damn, I've forgotten his name. Oh, what was it?” He was asking the magazine reporter who, from the way he was noisily stirring his tea and screwing up his face, clearly didn't know.

What name would parents give to their fifth child, given that they had called their other children Mesut, Aksut, Maksut and Yakut? I was about to say, “It doesn't
matter,” when it clicked. Even I hadn't missed the news about Turgut Mumcu's escape abroad.

“Wasn't it Turgut?” I asked.

“Yeah, of course, Turgut. He had the same name as the President. When he escaped to America, they were after him for falsified import records, faked invoices, tax evasion and stuff like that. He's probably living out his days in Miami now.”

“The death of men like that is bad for our business,” observed the magazine reporter.

“You said there were seven, so that leaves two. Do you know them too?” I was thinking that perhaps I ought to read the papers more often than just on Saturdays.

“Yes, there were two other siblings,” he nodded. “Everyone knows their story.” He addressed the magazine reporter, saying, “You know, don't you, Cumali?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” said Cumali, but I could have sworn that he didn't.

“The two youngest were Dursun and Yeter. They were very close in age, but I think Dursun was the older one. When their brothers and sister left for Istanbul, Dursun was left in charge of the tribe. He was young, but the one who most resembled his father. I think he was intending to go into politics because he set up a large protectionist network in the area.” He stopped, and then started explaining to me what a protectionist is.

“They give guns to villagers so that they can fight against terrorists…”

“I know, I know. Some of the chiefs set up statesupported people's militias,” I said. Even though I didn't read the papers, I wasn't so out of touch that I didn't know what protectionists were.

“Dursun's sister Yeter had started at university in Diyarbakir. She got involved with terrorists when she was still in her first year. People say she went off to Bekaa in Lebanon. Of course it was a huge blow for the family. At first they said she'd been kidnapped, but everyone knew she'd gone of her own accord.”

“How do you know so much about this family?”

“I'm from the same region, in the South-East. The family lived in the city nearest to me. I come from one of the villages around there,” he said, lighting another cigarette.

“Was Yeter killed?” I asked. I had sensed the story was a tragic one and I couldn't think of a more tragic ending. He nodded his head solemnly and said, “She was badly wounded in a fight somewhere outside Diyarbakir and died a few days later. Her family went down there to collect the body for the funeral. The mother was already grieving that her daughter was a terrorist and when she got news of her death, it killed her.”

“And Dursun? What happened to Dursun?”

“Dursun lost it after that. He'd go out with the men hunting terrorists in the mountains. People say he went a bit mad. It wasn't long before a terrorist's bullet got him.”

For a moment, we were all silent.

“You were interested in that film director's murder, weren't you? So how did we get on to this?” said the south-eastern crime reporter.

“Because of Mesut Mumcu's drugs links,” I said.

“Oh yes. As I said, Aksut looks after the drugs business.”

“Is that something everyone knows about?” I asked.

“How would everyone know about it?” said the crime reporter.

Clearly we were getting to a point where both reporters were starting to become cagey.

“I don't mean… I'm just talking generally.”

“Of course, it's no secret. We don't write about it in the papers, but we know who's involved in what.”

“You said the police were being very secretive about this investigation. Why is that, do you think? I mean, is there something unusual about it?”

He didn't reply immediately. He twirled his plastic lighter between his thumb and forefinger, leaned forwards and asked the waiter for three more teas.

“When our boss said a friend of Lale Hanım wanted to talk to a reporter about the film director's murder, I thought it couldn't be just an everyday murder… There's… how would you say, there's something different about it?”

“Something incongruous?” I suggested.

He looked up from the lighter he was fiddling with, glanced at me and said, “Where did you learn your Turkish?”

“I was born in Istanbul and lived here until I was seven. I've also been living here for the last thirteen years.”

“Your name's foreign, so…” he said, clearly unsure what to make of me.

“So, there's something incongruous about this murder…” I said, trying to get back to what we had been discussing.

“Why are you so interested in it? The homicide desk is behaving strangely to be sure. They usually give us more information, but they haven't even told us properly how the murder was committed. All they said was that someone threw a hair-dryer into the water when the man was having a bath.”

“But you have police contacts you can ask for information.”

“At the moment, that's the problem. When the boss told me to be here at four o'clock, I called an old friend from back home, thinking I'd get some information. He's a policeman himself. I asked him if he knew anything and promised not to write about it. But this investigation is clearly being conducted at a high level. Even the cops have no idea what's going on. It's strange. What's so secret about it? My friend said there were certain constraints. The murder victim is German, so the Germans want their own people to be in the investigation team. The suspects are also German, that is to say one of the film crew might have murdered him. If they go back home, they can't be arrested. It all needs to be sorted out quickly, or at the very least they need to find some sound evidence.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. If they were taking this business so seriously, Batuhan had taken a big risk by gadding about with me at the kebab restaurant.

At my insistence, I paid for the teas and rose to go back to the shop. We shook hands and the crime reporter said he would let me know if he heard anything. He wrote my name and the shop telephone number on his cigarette packet. I nodded my appreciation.

 

The café where I'd met the reporters was only two minutes away from the shop. When I went in, Pelin was working away at the computer.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied brightly.

“Working hard, are you?”

“All the shop records were in such a mess. The incoming invoices, outgoing invoices, cheques and cash payments just didn't add up. I just thought I'd spend some time taking care of the paperwork.”

She had emphasized the words “some time”, but I had no idea what she meant.

“Have there been any calls?”

“Loads.” She got up and slung her bag over her back. “Anyway, I'm off. I'll open up the shop tomorrow. Take a look over the books if you have time. I've left a list of who called on the table.”

Without giving me time to even say “See you later”, she disappeared. The air conditioning had been working continuously all day, making the air inside the shop very heavy. I took the risk of opening the door and letting in some sticky heat.

My Australian friend Cindy had rung for some reason, but what really interested me was seeing Sandra's name on the list; Sandra, the retired doctor in Kurt Müller's home town.

I went straight to the telephone.

I had just taken a deep breath, ready to leave a voicemail after the fourth ring, when I was surprised to hear Sandra answering in person. “Sandra,” was all I could say.

“Kati! You got my message very quickly,” she replied, in that weary tone that only retired people have.

I had no idea what she meant by “very quickly”. Trying not to think about the cost of calls between Turkey and Germany, I asked, “Did you manage to find out anything?”

“I certainly did, and I enjoyed myself. Let me know if you have any more detective work that needs doing. I feel like Jessica Fletcher.”

Good, I had brought a little excitement into the life of my retired friend.

“OK, so what did you learn?”

“Well, as you know, Müller is a very common name. So I thought there was no point going through the telephone directory. I called my son's friend Reinhard, who works for
Bielefeld Post
, our local paper. He'd heard nothing about a murder victim called Müller. The man's hardly a Wim Wenders after all. Hallo!! Hallo, Kati!”

“I'm here, I'm listening to you,” I said.

“Oh, I thought we were cut off. The connection's not very good, there's a bad echo. The sound quality has really deteriorated since privatization. Anyway, Reinhard phoned Müller's family, saying that he was writing an article. A man gave him the mother's rest home address. However, the woman is very old and couldn't talk very well. She's probably senile. Apparently Müller has a younger brother living in Düsseldorf who agreed to meet Reinhard. I asked what his job was. And you'll like this, he's actually a surgeon. What's more, he's my brother's senior consultant. I thought such coincidences only happened in films.” She took a breath and let out a loud laugh. I think Sandra had just lived the most exciting two days since her retirement.

“I called my brother Detlev straight away. He was really surprised to hear my voice. We see each other so rarely, especially since Mother died. You haven't met his wife. It's his third, and she's twenty-five years younger than Detlev. It's not right…”

“Sandra!”

“Oh yes, yes. What was I saying? Oh yes, I called Detlev and asked him to get me an appointment with Mr Müller. As an ordinary patient. Naturally, I said nothing
to my brother about the murder. Since I didn't know Müller's specialist field, I just invented an illness. But Detlev insisted he had a neurologist friend who's a better surgeon and said he'd fix up an appointment for me with him. That friend is Turkish, and I know you like Turks. Detlev told me the man's name, but I've forgotten it. I'll find it out for you if you want, if you still…”