‘Why the fourth floor?’ the gunman asked.

  But before İkmen could answer, the leader said, ‘So that he can smoke with a clear conscience.’

  İkmen smiled. ‘Ah, I see you know me very well,’ he said.

  As usual, climbing four flights of stairs wore Çetin İkmen out and he had to spend a few moments when he reached the top of the last flight standing still and catching his breath. His legs as well as his lungs didn’t like such exercise any more. In fact, they hadn’t liked it for years. Çetin İkmen had been unfit for ever.

  But walking on flat surfaces was OK and so he did that. Round and round the gallery, always feeling a little queasy whenever he reached the door of room 411. The masked man watched him with his Kalashnikov always ready in his hands. At a distance he didn’t look so much frightening as absurd. İkmen almost laughed. He lit a cigarette. But then he realised that he didn’t have an ashtray and so he riffled in his jacket pocket for the empty cufflink box he knew was in there and he took the lid off and used that. Just after he passed the door of room 411 for the third time, a masked figure came out of one of the rooms much further down towards the lift. He or she was carrying something. It was something that İkmen recognised and which, if it was what he thought it was, made him sweat with fear. It provoked a whole sequence of terrible memories of appalling events.

  Chapter 18

  Hüseyin Hikmet, or whoever the man was, refused to speak except to say that ‘Allah is great!’ They’d thrown everything they knew about the situation at him – and that included the intelligence about the fake blood that Ayşe Farsakoğlu had given them. Now they wanted to progress to harsher measures. Ardıç and the Special Forces commander, İpek, were conferring about it behind the bar.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu, looking over at the heated discussion between the two men, said, ‘I expect they want to smash up what remains of his fingers.’ Just as Ersu Nadir had told them, Hüseyin Hikmet had only four fingers on his left hand.

  ‘Yes.’ But İzzet Melik was hardly listening. With one arm round her shoulders and a protective hand on her arm, he wasn’t letting her move or even really breathe without him.

  ‘It’ll do them no good,’ Ayşe continued. ‘He’s clearly a religious fanatic. He’s made a decision not to speak and even if they beat words out of him, they won’t be able to be sure that he’s telling the truth.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Allah, what if these people are al Qaeda – or worse!’

  But İzzet Melik ignored that remark. He had other issues on his mind. ‘What were you doing at the Pera Palas, Ayşe?’ His words were almost as much of a shock to him as they were to her. Their tone, which was calm, was also surprising.

  She looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘The Pera Palas,’ he said. ‘Why were you there? You went home.’

  ‘My stomach felt bad,’ she said, ‘so I went for a walk.’

  ‘What made you walk to the Pera Palas?’ he asked.

  İzzet had not been with the department when the original owner of the golden samovar Ayşe had seen being taken into the hotel had killed his brother and his lover. She and others had told him various things about the case over the years but it wasn’t in his blood, like it was in hers – and Süleyman’s. ‘You may not have noticed but when we passed the Pera Palas earlier on this evening someone got out of a car with a samovar,’ she said.

  İzzet shrugged. ‘Yes, I did notice but so what?’

  ‘I recognised it,’ Ayşe said. ‘I’m sure of it. It was the gold samovar that Dr Krikor Sarkissian used to own. The one he was given by the murderer Muhammed Ersoy—’

  ‘Muhammed Ersoy?’ It was Commissioner Ardıç’s voice that interrupted her. Ayşe looked over at him.

  ‘What has the name of that bastard got to do with anything?’ he asked her.

  ‘I saw a samovar, gold, like the one that Ersoy gave to Dr Krikor Sarkissian going into the hotel earlier, when I was passing the Pera Palas with Sergeant Melik,’ she said.

  Commander İpek, somewhat nonplussed at having his conversation with Ardıç suddenly cut short, said, ‘Commissioner, what is this about?’

  But Ardıç ignored him. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone about this before?’ he said to Ayşe.

  His fiancée now, apparently, under attack, İzzet pulled Ayşe close to him again.

  ‘Because sure as I felt, I accept that I could be wrong,’ she said. ‘And anyway, Dr Sarkissian sold it on years ago.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ Ardıç said, ‘it clearly worried you or you wouldn’t be talking about it now. Did you go back to the hotel later because of it?’

  ‘Yes.’ But she blushed. That was not of course the only reason she’d gone back to the Pera Palas.

  ‘Did you see this samovar when you were in the hotel?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So this could be irrelevant?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Ardıç, under the gaze of the confused and offended Commander İpek, frowned and sucked on his teeth. Only Ayşe knew what he was thinking because that was what she was thinking too. Anything to do with Muhammed Ersoy, even an inanimate object, had a resonance that, at the very least, had to be attended to.

  Ardıç walked over to a constable who was sitting at one of the laptop computers that had been set up in the bar and said, ‘Look it up. Google it or whatever it is you do.’

  ‘Google what, sir?’

  ‘Gold Turkish samovar and Muhammed Ersoy,’ he said. ‘Try and find out who owns it now.’

  When Çetin İkmen was not around, conversation among the rest of the group who were supposed to be solving the mystery of Söner Erkan’s death descended into gossip. The two doctors fretted about the state of health of their friends and colleagues in the ballroom, Hovsep Pars was drunk and Lale Aktar appeared to have slipped into a fitful sleep. Only Mehmet Süleyman retained a firm grip on the awful reality of the situation, which was that if they didn’t find the person responsible for Söner’s death, they were all going to die. Probably.

  He looked at the masked men who were guarding them and wondered how many of them were guests who had been ‘shot’ earlier. How many of these people carried real ammunition and how many blanks? He also pondered on the fact that one of them was actually someone that Ayşe Farsakoğlu had sent in. Which one was it?

  Lale Aktar stirred in her sleep and then opened her eyes. She looked at him and smiled.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  She sat upright and said, ‘I could do with a freshen up.’

  She wanted to go to the toilet. Süleyman called one of their captors over, who got another masked man from the ballroom to take her downstairs. When she’d gone, Süleyman found himself staring at her handbag, which was made, in part, from ostrich feathers. It was fascinating the way the individual fronds of feather moved very gently in the air-conditioned breeze. He was starting to fixate on irrelevances. He was exhausted. He shook himself awake. Hovsep Pars, watching him, laughed. ‘You’re beginning to drift,’ he said. ‘You should have a drink, Inspector.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that make me even more sleepy?’ Süleyman asked.

  The old man said, ‘Maybe. But what does it matter if it does?’

  Arto Sarkissian, who was sitting next to Hovsep Pars, put a hand on his leg and said, ‘We must try to remain positive.’

  He laughed. ‘Positive? We’re all going to be slaughtered by lunatics.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘But then Armenians have been slaughtered by all sorts of people, why not lunatics?’ Hovsep Pars said.

  And then Çetin İkmen and his guard walked back into the Kubbeli Saloon. When they saw him, all the others became silent, even Hovsep Pars. He had the look of a man who had just seen an atrocity so terrible he might never recover.

  Lale Aktar stood in front of the long row of stylish sinks in the toilet and she began to speak. ‘Now—’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Nar held up a hand to silence her, while she read the text that Ayşe Farsakoğlu had sent her earlier. This was the first opportunity she’d had to read it. Someone had come to take her place. A soldier. Was he still in the kitchen?

  ‘Now look—’

  ‘No, you look,’ Nar said as she put her phone back into her pocket. She checked to make sure that no one else was in the toilets and then she lifted up her balaclava helmet. Lale Aktar’s eyes widened.

  ‘I’ve come to get you out of here,’ Nar said. ‘Or rather I’m here to . . .’ She found that she couldn’t begin to explain what she was doing. ‘Look,’ she said as she replaced her mask, ‘to get you out of here I need to go.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Someone’s come to take my place – from outside – and . . . Look, I have to go but I may be back.’ She began to walk back towards the toilet door. ‘But I might come back as someone else,’ she said.

  And then she left. Her last view of Lale Aktar was of a woman who was both confused and possibly a little bit outraged too.

  Nar ran through the Agatha Restaurant and into the kitchen. There was no one there. She began to search around the cookers, the sinks, the cupboards – anywhere her replacement might be hiding. After all, if he was a soldier then he’d know not to immediately reveal himself to just anyone who came into the kitchen. She had to be careful too but, hot from the anxiety she’d experienced over the last couple of hours as well as stifled by the balaclava and the jumpsuit, Nar pulled the helmet off and fanned her face with her hand.

  She walked out of the kitchen and down the corridor that led towards the back door when suddenly a hand reached around the side of her head and came to rest across her mouth.

  It wasn’t often that Çetin İkmen didn’t know what to do but now was one of those times. Should he confront the gunmen about the golden samovar or not? What if it wasn’t the samovar formerly owned by Muhammed Ersoy but just some gold-coloured thing that had no meaning? He could ask Krikor Sarkissian about it but he really didn’t want to do that in front of the gunmen. So he wrote him a note. They’d allowed him his notebook and so he wrote ‘To whom did you sell the samovar Muhammed Ersoy gave you?’

  Krikor looked down at what he had written and frowned.

  ‘Write it down,’ İkmen told him.

  Still confused, Krikor nevertheless began to write. Long experience with Çetin İkmen had taught him that he very rarely did anything, however weird, without a good reason.

  İkmen looked at what Krikor had written and then asked, ‘Russian?’

  ‘Yes,’ Krikor said.

  ‘Did he take it back to Russia?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Çetin İkmen lit a cigarette and then passed his notebook to Süleyman.

  The leader, who had been watching, said, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘When I was walking, I had some thoughts,’ İkmen said. ‘I wrote them down. Now I’m showing them to my colleagues.’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell them?’

  İkmen looked into his eyes and said, ‘Because I’ve already written them down. Why should I now repeat them?’

  ‘Because you don’t want us to hear what you’re saying?’

  ‘Maybe,’ İkmen replied.

  The leader’s eyes narrowed. ‘And if I want to see what you’ve written down?’

  ‘Then do so.’ İkmen shrugged. Süleyman, who had read what he had written, went cold.

  The leader looked at the man standing next to him, the man with the camera, laughed and then walked to the back of the room. The cameraman carried on filming.

  After a short, tense pause, Süleyman turned to İkmen. ‘Why the interest in that?’ he asked him.

  ‘Because I think I saw it here,’ İkmen replied.

  ‘In the hotel?’ Krikor Sarkissian wiped a hand across his face nervously. ‘That can’t be possible.’

  Arto said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  Süleyman passed him İkmen’s notebook. The cameraman snorted in amusement. Arto cleared his throat and then gave the notebook back to İkmen. Hovsep Pars, who had fallen asleep, snuffled gently.

  ‘But if it is here and it is in fact what we think it is, then what does it mean?’ Süleyman asked. ‘What relevance does it have to the death of Söner Erkan?’

  ‘Maybe none at all,’ İkmen said. ‘But earlier this evening I saw a man, who later got a taxi to Yeniköy, deliver something to the concierge’s desk. I didn’t see what it was, but the whole situation gave me a bad feeling. Maybe that was because the delivery was the article in question – not that I actually saw it then.’

  ‘And because the deliverer was going to Yeniköy . . .’

  Muhammed Ersoy, the murderous one-time owner of the samovar, had lived in Yeniköy.

  ‘Maybe you’re putting two and two together and making five,’ Arto said to İkmen. ‘Can’t you speak to the concierge?’

  ‘Wrong concierge,’ İkmen said. ‘This one must have come on duty sometime after I witnessed that scene in the reception area.’

  ‘And yet when it comes to . . .’ Süleyman eyed the cameraman and then said, ‘We all know how delicate this particular subject is. We have no idea what, if anything, our captors may know about it. But none of us trusts them.’

  ‘We never did. Did we?’

  ‘No, but after the fake blood . . .’

  They heard footsteps coming from over by the lift. Hovsep Pars apparently woke up and said, just as if he had been awake all through their conversation and had seen İkmen’s notebook, ‘Mrs Aktar comes back to us. I don’t think there is any need to tell her about the Devil, do you? Women should be protected against such evil.’

  ‘Who is Nikolai Nikolaevitch Toplovski?’ Ardıç asked the young man at his side staring at the computer screen.

  ‘An oligarch,’ the constable said. ‘It says here he’s big in Vladimir Putin’s party.’

  ‘Well, any oligarch that isn’t is abroad, in prison or dead, as far as I can tell,’ Ardıç said. ‘So this Toplovski has the golden samovar, does he?’

  ‘He had it,’ the constable said. ‘Then he sold it in late two thousand and nine.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Moscow.’

  ‘To whom?’

  The constable scrolled down the screen and said, ‘I’m just trying to . . .’

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ Ardıç said as he shifted his large stomach uncomfortably. The chairs in the pub were spindly and hard and he just couldn’t get comfortable.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu, looking on with İzzet Melik, wanted to tell her superior that the poor constable could only work as fast as he could translate the information on the screen from English into Turkish. He had spent much of his life in England where his Turkish parents still owned a restaurant but it still wasn’t easy.

  The constable touched the screen with one finger and said, ‘Bought by a company called Fener Maritime Sigorta.’ He looked up. ‘So, Turkish!’

  ‘They must have really wanted it to go to Moscow,’ Ardıç said.

  ‘Maybe, but then perhaps they just placed their bids by telephone, sir,’ the constable said. ‘Or online.’

  ‘Mmm.’ It wasn’t easy for Ardıç to not look sour when certain modern ways of doing things were mentioned. Bidding in an auction ‘online’ seemed very, very strange. How could anyone bid for anything they hadn’t actually seen in the flesh, as it were.

  ‘Fener Maritime Sigorta are based in Maslak,’ the constable said. It was logical that an insurance company would have its headquarters in one of the bright, shiny new business districts of İstanbul.

  ‘Look up the name of the managing director,’ Ardıç said. ‘I need a telephone number or an address or both.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The young man began to do those things on the computer that Ardıç was in the habit of describing as ‘arcane’ and so the commissioner stood up and walked away.

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu left İzzet Melik to stand beside Ardıç. She said, ‘Sir, this samovar thing could be meaningless.’

  He looked at her with red, watery eyes and said, ‘If it was meaningful enough to make you walk back to the Pera Palas and look through the windows then it is not something I intend to leave uninvestigated. And anyway, it concerns Ersoy. You and I both remember that, don’t we, Sergeant?’ Then he waved her away. ‘I must try and explain this to Commander İpek. I do believe he thinks we may all have gone mad.’

  Ayşe returned to İzzet who was staring at her with unusually emotionless eyes. ‘But you didn’t just go back because of the samovar, did you?’ he said.

  She didn’t reply. She made an attempt to walk past him but İzzet caught her arm. ‘It was to see him, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Because he’s still in your head.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me that it isn’t so, Ayşe.’

  She raised her head and looked at him but she couldn’t speak. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes and she felt a tenderness for him that made her put a hand up to his cheek. But he pushed her away.

  ‘You can’t tell me that I’m wrong, can you?’ İzzet whispered. ‘Because I’m not. Are you still in love with him or is he just a fantasy that you can’t get over?’

  Again, Ayşe had nothing to say. She didn’t know. Mehmet Süleyman was not a man she liked, but did she love him? Or did she just obsess about him because of who he was and what he looked like? Or was it perhaps that he represented all the aspirations she’d had as a girl about being loved by a tall, dark, exciting man?

  ‘I won’t stand for it,’ İzzet said into her ear. Some of their fellow officers as well as a few of the Special Forces men were looking at them now. It wasn’t comfortable.

  ‘İzzet, I—’

  ‘Commissioner, I’ve got a name and a district,’ the constable at the computer said.

  Ardıç lumbered over and stood behind the young man. Ayşe and İzzet separated, both trying to concentrate on things other than their own feelings.

  ‘The managing director of Fener Maritime lives in Yeniköy,’ the constable said. ‘His name is Yiannis Istefanopoulos.’

  The name meant nothing to anyone. But Ardıç told İzzet Melik to get in his car and drive to Yeniköy while officers back at the station identified his actual address and telephone number. If nothing else, Mr Istefanopoulos would need to check and see whether his gold samovar was where he usually kept it.