‘There’s really no need,’ İkmen said as he recalled the contemptuous looks his brother’s housekeeper had given him the last time he had visited. But then what did he expect? His brother, as a successful, childless and now divorced accountant, lived, dressed and ate well. Çetin, on the other hand, as a married policeman with nine children, looked exactly like what he was – a stressed-out chain-smoker with several barely controlled stomach ulcers.

  ‘Well then, I will see you later,’ Halil said with a resigned sigh.

  ‘Thank you, Halil.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  But it was, and Çetin İkmen knew that they both knew it. The one thing that the subject of Ayşe İkmen could never be was nothing. Though dead for over forty years, the witch of Üsküdar had always been the focus of passionate speculation to those interested in such dark things – and, of course, to her two sons, between whom, although they never spoke of her, İkmen often thought, she stood immovably, like one of the harsh mountains of her birthplace.

  She hadn’t expected to find someone like him in a place like this. Tall, slim and quite spectacularly handsome, the man was locking the door to what she assumed must be his office. And, because he was so obviously leaving, Felicity Evren had to assume that this attractive man couldn’t possibly be the inspector she had spoken to on the telephone. He was, in all probability, a colleague whom, had she felt more confident of her Turkish, she would have asked about this İkmen fellow, simply to speak to him. But as quickly as he had appeared, so Inspector Suleyman, or so the plate on his door would have it, had gone, leaving Felicity alone with the door opposite – the one belonging, so its plate said, to Inspector Çetin İkmen.

  A single tap on the glass brought a short, wiry man to the door. First, slightly bemused, his face quickly resolved into a really very pleasant smile.

  ‘Hello, Miss Evren,’ he said in perfect English as he extended a small hand towards her. ‘Thank you so much for coming so promptly.’

  ‘Anything I can do to help . . .’ She shrugged, the upward motion of her shoulders accentuating the pronounced puffiness that İkmen observed on the left-hand side of her face, and the barely concealed discolouration of the flesh.

  ‘Please sit down.’ İkmen pulled his hand free from her grip and motioned her towards the chair in front of his desk.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She sat, her tiny form almost disappearing from view behind piles of paper.

  ‘Can I get you some tea?’

  ‘No. Thank you,’ she said and smiled in a manner almost as disconcerting as her shrug.

  İkmen, ever the perfect host, took his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, ‘but please, if you want to smoke then don’t let me stop you.’

  He nodded by way of thanks and lit up.

  ‘My father smokes quite heavily,’ she said as she watched İkmen light his cigarette and then exhale with pleasure. ‘Like all of you, really.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘All of you?’ he said. ‘Meaning, Miss Evren?’

  Laughing, she answered, ‘Turks, Inspector. My father, like you, is Turkish.’

  ‘Oh. And you?’

  ‘Like my mother, I am English,’ she said, ‘but then that is something that I think you knew already.’

  He smiled.

  ‘You speak the language so well, Inspector, and with such a perfect accent.’

  Ever embarrassed by flattery, İkmen looked down at the desk in front of him. ‘My father taught English, French and Russian at the university. Many years ago now, however.’

  ‘My father lived in London all his life until now, but he doesn’t speak the language as well as you do,’ she replied.

  ‘Thank you.’

  And then, for a moment, a silence descended upon them. Felicity Evren, feeling that she might perhaps have over-flattered this unknown man, looked away. İkmen, too, though for other reasons, sought out something upon which to pin his gaze. This, conveniently, turned out to be Rifat Berisha’s file.

  ‘So, Miss Evren, how long did you know Rifat Berisha?’ he asked.

  ‘For about eighteen months.’

  ‘Right.’ İkmen turned the pages of the thick file and came to the postcards and tickets from London.

  ‘And where did you meet Mr Berisha?’

  ‘I bought a very delicate cup and saucer from him,’ Felicity Evren said with a smile of remembrance. ‘He had a stall, with some other men, at the Ortaköy Sunday market.’

  ‘These other men,’ İkmen asked, ‘were they Albanian too?’

  She shrugged. ‘I imagine so, yes. I couldn’t understand anything they said.’

  ‘And then?’ İkmen prompted with a forward movement of his shoulders.

  ‘We became friends, Inspector,’ she answered, smiling that awful crooked smile of hers. ‘He showed me so much of this city. We had a lot of fun together. I’ve only lived in İstanbul for two years, since I came here with my father and brother.’

  ‘So your mother . . .’

  ‘Is dead, Inspector.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  She just shrugged and, taking this as his cue to move on, İkmen said, ‘When did you last see Mr Berisha, Miss Evren?’

  She paused to think. ‘The morning before the night of his death. We had lunch together.’

  ‘Where?’ İkmen put his cigarette out and then immediately lit another.

  ‘At the Yeşil Ev,’ she replied, naming one of the ever increasing number of Ottoman Mansion Hotels.

  İkmen, frowning, observed, ‘Expensive.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘I’d been shopping. It was a nice way to finish my trip.’

  İkmen took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘And so, Miss Evren, did Mr Berisha, at either that luncheon or before, give you any reason to think that he might be in some kind of danger?’

  ‘No,’ she replied without, this time, pausing to consider her answer. ‘Although he didn’t talk very much at lunch.’ She smiled. ‘I’m afraid I tended to go on a bit about my purchases. I always hogged the conversation.’

  ‘And yet you and he had a lot of fun.’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ she said with a sudden, quite aggressive sharpness. ‘Rifat liked the way I was with him. Our friendship was good!’

  ‘Yes,’ İkmen said in as conciliatory a way as possible. ‘Yes, there are plenty of things that men and woman can . . . do . . .’

  ‘We did not have . . . have sex, either,’ she added, still quite obviously fuelled by anger. ‘I loved Rifat and I will miss him bitterly, but not in . . . in that way.’

  ‘No.’ İkmen nodded. ‘Quite right.’

  Another small silence followed, which was again eventually broken by İkmen.

  ‘So did you and Rifat ever go further afield, outside the city?’

  ‘We spent a day in Bursa together,’ she said, ‘just before the earthquake.’

  ‘No other trips then?’ İkmen asked as he looked down once again at the postcards and tickets in Rifat’s file, ‘You didn’t go abroad?’

  ‘Abroad?’ She laughed. ‘Are you serious? Rifat was Albanian, Inspector İkmen, they’re not welcome in a whole lot of places, you know – especially in Europe which is where I tend to go when I leave Turkey.’

  İkmen frowned. ‘So you have no idea where he might have obtained these?’ he said as he pushed the postcards and tickets towards her.

  Felicity Evren looked down at them briefly and shrugged. ‘No. I suppose I may have given him the postcards at some time but I don’t remember doing so.’

  He smiled. ‘And you have no idea where else he might have got them from?’

  ‘No.’

  İkmen took the cards and tickets back. ‘Do you know how Miss Berisha came to have your telephone number, Miss Evren?’

  ‘She didn’t say. It must have been amongst Rifat’s things.’

  ‘No, he memorised it actually,’ İkmen said blandly. ‘Engelushjia Berisha told my sergeant that her brother gave her your number when he went abroad with you last year. He didn’t know where he was going to be staying, but he wanted her to have the number just in case anything should happen to him.’

  Felicity Evren turned her face away.

  ‘Miss Berisha also told my sergeant,’ İkmen continued, ‘that while he was abroad with you, Rifat had surgery. He gave you one of his kidneys, didn’t he, Miss Evren? Before you answer, remember that I can order you to be examined to verify this.’

  ‘You have no idea,’ she said, still not looking at him. ‘I had kidney disease . . . It’s . . .’

  ‘And in return you gave Rifat a very nice car.’

  She turned back to face him again, her features red with anger. ‘That was not why I gave him the car!’ Her voice trembled with emotion. ‘Rifat helped me because he loved me. I gave him the car because I am rich and I loved him. No money ever changed hands!’

  ‘Free donation of an organ is not illegal,’ İkmen said. ‘You must understand that when our doctor discovered that Rifat had only one kidney—’

  ‘You thought the worst!’ she snapped.

  ‘Well, considering his parents were entirely ignorant of the matter . . .’

  ‘It was his body! He could do what—’

  ‘But you must agree, Miss Evren, that the apparent secrecy surrounding his donation does look suspicious – we were bound to investigate.’

  Her poor twisted face now attempted a smile. ‘I know.’

  İkmen felt quite sorry for her. ‘But now that you have told us the truth, that is fine,’ he said gently, ‘though I will of course have to check with the British authorities.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Please do,’ she said distractedly, obviously now chastising herself. ‘We obtained a visa for Rifat at the consulate and . . . I’m so very sorry that I lied to you, Inspector İkmen. I just thought that with Rifat’s death you would think all sorts of things and . . .’

  ‘Well, as long as that is all, miss.’ He paused briefly in order to give her some time to vouchsafe more information. But she didn’t. ‘Perhaps you would be good enough to give me a statement to that effect.’

  She sighed. ‘Of course.’

  But then something subtly changed. Felicity Evren suddenly leaned forward and pointed to her face. ‘You know, although he helped me beyond all measure, I didn’t need Rifat, as some women might have done, to feed my ego. I mean, looking the way that I do, why would I?’

  Taken aback, not quite understanding what was expected of him here, İkmen simply said, ‘No, miss.’

  ‘Had I wanted Rifat to love me, I would have had no difficulty in securing his affections. One doesn’t when one is beautiful, does one?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ İkmen said with great honesty. ‘But if that is your perception . . .’ He shrugged.

  Felicity Evren smiled, crookedly. İkmen turned away. Was she being ironic or was she just delusional? At a loss, he returned again to the day of Rifat’s death, taking a kind of refuge there.

  ‘So after you had lunch with Mr Berisha . . .’

  ‘I went home and Rifat, to my knowledge, went to his home,’ she said.

  ‘And he didn’t seem either nervous or worried?’

  ‘No. I invited him to dinner at my home, next Friday, and then we parted company.’ She shrugged. ‘Very normal.’

  ‘Right, well,’ he said as he gathered various bits of evidence back into Rifat Berisha’s file, ‘we’ll need all the details about your trip to England in your statement.’

  ‘You want me to do that now?’

  ‘I’ll take you down to one of our interview rooms in a moment, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Very well.’

  İkmen stood up. ‘Then that will clear up at least one part of our investigation, will it not?’

  ‘Yes.’ She rose too and smiled as he held the door open for her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’

  Of course her story made perfect sense, and İkmen had no doubt that the British authorities would confirm the details. But he wasn’t particularly happy about it. Rifat’s parents had had a right to know what he had done, even if Rifat himself hadn’t wanted them to. What if he had become ill upon his return to the Republic? What could poor little Engelushjia have been able to do about that? And anyway, it was an abuse of power as far as he was concerned. The rich could buy anything and everything they wanted. He knew it was how life was, but that didn’t mean that he necessarily liked it.

  There were other issues here too. Like Felicity’s appearance, and her attitude to it. Also, if she had been so concerned about the matter of Rifat’s gift of a kidney to her as to lie to the police about it, what else might she or her family want to conceal about what had happened over in England?

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  Grunting against the steep gradient that fell away sharply behind the white BMW, Zelfa Halman pushed the car door open and eased her feet down onto the pot-holed road surface below. She turned to look at the small Fiat that had pulled up behind them.

  ‘Isn’t that your brother?’ she called across the car roof to Mehmet Suleyman.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, smiling. Joining her in the road, he took one of her hands in his. ‘I wanted Murad to be with us when we told people. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ And then squeezing his hand encouragingly, she walked with him down to where a slightly plump man of medium height was extricating himself and a toddler from the Fiat.

  ‘Murad!’

  The face that looked up from behind the tangle of beribboned hair on the little girl’s head was as affable as it was tired looking. Although shorter than his younger brother, Murad Suleyman would have shared Mehmet’s good looks had it not been for the weakness of his chin. It was a feature many put down to the significant amount of imperial blood that ran in his veins.

  ‘Hello, Brother,’ he said as he tried vainly to prevent his daughter, who was now stretching her arms out towards her uncle, from over-balancing out of his arms.

  Letting go of Zelfa’s hand, Mehmet grabbed the little girl from his brother’s arms with a laugh.

  ‘Oh, this is a lovely welcome from a lovely girl!’ he said as the little one wound her arms round his neck, burying her face in the thick collar of his coat.

  ‘Well, you are Edibe’s only uncle, so what do you expect?’ Murad said and then turned his tired eyes towards Zelfa. ‘Good to see you again, doctor.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He smiled breifly at her before addressing his brother once again. ‘So is this just a social invitation or something more?’

  ‘When we get inside, I will tell you everything,’ Mehmet replied. He caught Zelfa’s eye and smiled.

  ‘Not anything to do with Father’s invitation then?’ Murad said.

  ‘No, but . . .’

  The two brothers exchanged what to Zelfa looked like a strained gaze.

  ‘But what, Mehmet?’

  ‘But now is not the time to talk about that,’ the younger man said, breaking once again into a smile directed solely at Zelfa. ‘Tonight is about happy, hopeful things that lie not in the past but in the future.’

  ‘How very mysterious!’

  Murad’s words were not, to Zelfa at least, in any way convincing. He was, she felt, not only ready for the news but judging by the champagne bottle poking out of his overcoat pocket, prepared for it too.

  As they all moved forward towards the Cohens’ apartment block, Zelfa smiled at this small, and kindly, deception.

  In some families it is easy to see resemblances. In others there is little or nothing to denote blood connection. The İkmen brothers, Çetin and Halil, appeared not only unrelated but like foreigners. As Halil’s housekeeper left after serving the two men with tea, Çetin İkmen, now alone with this virtual stranger, began to feel the alienation most acutely. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Halil – in fact quite the reverse was true – more that he felt awkward in his company, especially if that subject was to be discussed. As soon as he’d arrived at Halil’s pleasant Emirgan house, he had, erroneously he thought now, launched into the subject of their mother. That Halil had been reluctant to talk about his family in front of Mrs Kemal had been obvious from the straight-faced silence with which he had greeted Çetin’s opening remarks. Now, however, with only the silence of the night to bear witness to their conversation, the words still stuck in Çetin’s throat.

  Looking across at the well-dressed man sitting back, seemingly comfortably, in his armchair, Çetin shuffled precariously on the edge of his seat and cleared his throat. He took his cigarettes and lighter out of the pocket of the coat he was still wearing and held them aloft for his brother to see. ‘May I?’

  ‘There’s an ashtray on the table,’ Halil answered with a shrug.

  Smiling, Çetin leaned forward to offer his brother a cigarette. With a small bow of the head and the placing of one hand over his heart, Halil refused.

  Çetin, a little more relaxed now he could light up, noticed for the first time that the hair around his brother’s ears and temples was quite white. It was one of those rare moments when one realises that those close to one are no longer young. Counting upwards from his own age, Çetin İkmen discovered that his brother was now fifty-seven. It was a strange, half-known shock that took a little time to recover from.

  In the silence, Halil finally spoke. ‘So what is it exactly that you want to discuss about Mother’s death?’

  Çetin took a deep drag on his cigarette before answering.

  ‘I want to know what happened that day,’ he said. ‘I want to understand.’

  ‘You were there—’

  ‘I was ten years old, Halil,’ Çetin cut in sharply.

  ‘Yes, and I was thirteen.’

  ‘You walked into that room. You stood in front of me. I saw only your back.’

  Halil leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands between his knees. ‘You were my little brother, Çetin. I wanted to protect you. I knew that Mother was dead.’

  ‘How?’ He took a nervous drag on his cigarette and attempted to catch Halil’s eyes which seemed to be trying to avoid his own. ‘One thing I do know is that she was lying on her bed. Couldn’t she have just been asleep?’