‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember, Burak Bey, whether you were alone?’

  ‘Alone in the toilets?’ He looked away, averting his eyes from İkmen. Then he said, ‘I can’t be certain but I think that someone was in one of the cubicles. But I don’t know who.’

  If Burak Fisekçi was telling the truth then that was almost certainly David Bonomo. But then why wouldn’t Burak Fisekçi be telling the truth?

  ‘Burak Bey, can you tell me anything about the four people who were killed earlier on this evening?’ İkmen said. Then he looked down at his notebook and read their names. ‘Yiannis Istefanopoulos, Aysel Ökte . . .’

  ‘You’ve asked me this before,’ Burak said. ‘And I told you then—’

  ‘Just think again,’ İkmen said. ‘All of our lives could depend upon it.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I’ve—’

  ‘Please listen. Yiannis Istefanopoulos, Aysel Ökte, Raşit Demir . . .’

  ‘Huh!’ It was a sound that signified disgust, but it didn’t come from Burak Fisekçi. A now wakeful Hovsep Pars exclaimed, ‘That fool!’

  İkmen turned to him and said, ‘Why is Raşit Demir a fool, Hovsep Bey?’

  ‘Because he talks to the Devil,’ Hovsep Pars said. ‘He goes into Silivri Prison and he attempts to reason with the unreasonable.’

  Muhammed Ersoy. Again. Aysel Ökte had a connection with Silivri too. Did she, somehow, know its most famous prisoner? Was that the connection between these supposedly murdered people? Muhammed Ersoy? But it couldn’t be because if that was indeed the case, why hadn’t Hovsep Pars been shot too? As the uncle of Muhammed Ersoy’s murdered lover, he had the closest connection to the man he called the Devil of anyone in the hotel, as far as İkmen could tell.

  ‘He calls himself a psychiatrist or some such,’ the old Armenian continued. ‘He goes into prisons and to understand people who are easy to understand. Then he writes academic papers about it.’

  Of course, Raşit Demir was a psychoanalyst.

  ‘What’s to understand?’ Hovsep Pars said. ‘Evil is evil. There is nothing to be gained by speaking to evil people. They should be shot or hanged, like they were in the old days.’

  When Burak Fisekçi went back into the ballroom he made straight for Ceyda Ümit. Holding her boyfriend Alp’s hand, she let go of it when she saw Burak and she smiled.

  ‘Come and sit with us, Burak Bey,’ she said as she put a chair beside her own and patted the seat. She’d always liked Burak Bey. When his elderly mother, Siroun Hanım, had still been alive, she had sometimes come into the Ümits’ apartment and spent time with Ceyda’s grandmother Edibe. Sometimes Burak Bey would join them. Ceyda could still remember, as an infant, crawling around underneath the table while her grandmother, Siroun Hanım, Burak Bey and the old kapıcı of the building played bridge when her parents were both out with their friends every Thursday in the bars and restaurants of Çiçek Pasaj. Ceyda had never known life without Burak Bey and so to her he represented a stability she felt she really needed in such a perilous situation.

  ‘What are the police doing?’ she asked anxiously as Burak sat down beside her.

  ‘Asking questions.’

  ‘They’ve been asking questions for hours,’ Alp said. Then he turned away, shaking his head impatiently. It was all getting to him. It was all getting to everyone. As the time when the policemen had to name their suspect grew closer, everyone in the ballroom became quieter, more tense and, in some cases, lacking in any sort of hope or faith.

  Burak took one of Ceyda’s hands in his. ‘You have to trust,’ he said.

  ‘Trust what?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ he said. ‘The police, Allah, your friends, even me if you like, Ceyda.’

  ‘And what good will uninformed, blind trust do for her?’ Alp was looking at Burak Bey again. Both his words and his demeanour were challenging and Ceyda felt embarrassed.

  ‘Alp!’

  But Burak Bey just smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘Alp is anxious, as we all are,’ he said. ‘Tensions can run high.’

  ‘On the verge of death they tend to,’ Alp put in quickly. Burak Bey ignored him. ‘You will be all right, Ceyda,’ he said.

  She knew he was just saying what she wanted to hear in exactly the same way he’d done when she’d been a child. But Ceyda appreciated it. Alp’s negativity didn’t really achieve anything, but it was a manifestation of how frightened he was. They had all been shocked by Söner’s death – that had been bad enough – but this!

  Burak Bey was older and more accustomed to life. He made Ceyda feel safe in a way that could only be bettered by her own father. But then Burak Bey had always been like a very attentive uncle to her.

  In response to a warm smile from Lale Aktar, İkmen went over and sat down next to her. The time had finally arrived when he could have that little chat he wanted to have with her. It wasn’t going to be easy. The leader and the man with the camera on his helmet were watching them and the subject he had to raise with Lale Aktar was delicate to say the least. But he sat down beside her and they exchanged a few pleasantries before he launched into what he knew was bringing a visible blush to his otherwise very pale cheeks.

  ‘Mrs Aktar,’ he said, ‘may I ask you about something?’

  ‘All our lives are in your hands, Inspector, you may ask me anything,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm. I’m glad you feel that way,’ İkmen said. ‘Because, madam, it is about an issue that pertains specifically to women . . .’

  ‘Oh, then I must be an expert!’ she smiled again.

  ‘Yes. Indeed.’ He was finding this very hard. Even with Fatma he found talking about women’s things very difficult. With his daughters it had been well nigh impossible. He’d managed, once, to talk about, well, sex to Ayşe Farsakoğlu. But that had been in an extreme situation years ago when she’d put herself at risk from a sexually sadistic man. This wasn’t anywhere near as weird as that. In fact this wasn’t weird at all. It was quite natural.

  Lale Aktar looked at him. ‘Inspector?’

  İkmen knew that he just had to launch into it. He took a deep breath and then he said, ‘Well, madam, it’s about your, your menstrual . . . er, your period . . .’

  Lale Aktar furrowed her brow. İkmen saw the two masked men look at him very intently.

  ‘Yes, it’s . . .’

  The masked man with the camera in his helmet turned away. Clearly even with his face covered he was embarrassed. İkmen felt his own face burn.

  ‘What do you want to know about my period, Inspector?’ Lale Aktar said. She looked slightly amused – probably by his old-fashioned awkwardness.

  Well, Çetin İkmen wanted to say, I’d really like to know why it is that after going back to your room to get a clean sanitary towel when you found the body of Söner Erkan, you haven’t, seemingly, changed your sanitary protection since. Every time you’ve been to the lavatory you’ve left your handbag, which would logically contain things like sanitary towels, behind on a chair or a table. Also I didn’t actually discover any sanitary towels in your bathroom. I find it odd. Could you please explain it to me?

  But he couldn’t say that. He just said, ‘Um.’

  Lale Aktar frowned and said again, ‘What do you want to know, Inspector İkmen?’

  He opened his mouth to just say it when he, and everyone else, was distracted by the sound of a gunshot. It seemed to have come from the direction of the bar.

  The technician took his headphones off and threw them on to the table in front of him, his face contorted in an expression of pain. Commissioner Ardıç, concerned, said, ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  The technician shook his head. ‘There was a crack,’ he said. He put the headphones back on but all he could make out was silence. He took the headphones off again.

  ‘Well?’

  Over behind the bar, six Special Forces men were arming themselves prior to their infiltration mission. For a moment they stopped and listened to what was being said.

  ‘It could have been a gunshot or maybe the mic has been knocked out,’ the technician said. He shook his head impatiently. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They could’ve killed our man.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Commander İpek told his men to step up and get ready to go. Then he said to Ardıç, ‘If they did discover our man and kill him, we need to get in there now.’

  Ardıç nodded. ‘Agreed.’

  Ayşe Farsakoğlu, who had been listening with increasing anxiety to what had just happened, came forward and said to Ardıç, ‘Sir, we mustn’t just go in and put the hostages at risk!’

  Behind her, İzzet Melik looked at her with a mixture of pain and loathing on his face.

  Commander İpek answered her. ‘We will stick to the plan, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘My men will enter via the kitchens and assess the situation before any major assault is made upon the building. But if the Pera Palas day shift is due to come on at six, we have only just over an hour to free those hostages. Remember, this is a game these people are playing. We have to be cleverer at that game than they are – if we can.’ Then he looked over at his six hand-picked men who were now ready and he said, ‘All right now, go.’

  Chapter 21

  They dragged the body into the Kubbeli Saloon and laid it down in front of Çetin İkmen, Mehmet Süleyman and the others. Inside the ballroom other guests, who didn’t know what was going on but were frightened by the sound of gunfire, sobbed and screamed. The body wasn’t wearing its balaclava helmet any more and so İkmen could see its face. It was clearly a man, as opposed to a transgendered person, which was, in a way, a relief. But why had the gunmen killed one of their own?

  Lale Aktar put her hands on İkmen’s arm and hid her head behind his shoulder.

  Süleyman said, ‘What’s this?’

  The leader pointed his gun at the body and said, ‘This is one of yours.’

  ‘I don’t know him!’ Süleyman said.

  ‘He came to try and rescue you,’ the leader said. The cameraman beside him leaned close into the dead man’s face. ‘But then you had to know that.’

  ‘We didn’t,’ İkmen said.

  Lale Aktar began to cry. İkmen tried to push down his fear. If this man had indeed come to rescue them, then where was the transsexual and how much longer could she keep her identity a secret from these people? In addition, how many more rescuers were in the hotel and did this mean that the place was about to be stormed? He looked at Süleyman, who was sweating. They both knew how sieges went. Negotiation with terrorists was not, usually, what the Turkish authorities did.

  ‘I don’t care what you say,’ the leader said. ‘Your time is up.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ İkmen said.

  ‘You have ten minutes to tell me who you think killed the young prince and why,’ the leader said.

  Krikor Sarkissian, who had come forward to check for a pulse in the dead man’s neck, said, ‘But you told us we have until sunrise!’

  The leader shrugged. ‘That was then,’ he said. ‘Now we are apparently under attack from outside. You have ten minutes. That’s it.’

  Then leaving just the man with the camera plus one other to cover them all, he walked through to the ballroom. He shut the door behind him.

  Commander İpek’s six men ran silently through the hotel kitchens and then set off up the stairs and into the main body of the building.

  They had all been allocated to different positions on the ground and first floors of the hotel. These could, according to the building’s floor plans and the information they had been given by the maître d’ and Sergeant Farsakoğlu, give them either visual, aural or strategic access to the masked gunmen and their hostages. Two of the men positioned themselves in the reception area – one behind the concierge’s desk, the other in the Patisserie de Pera. Two more made their way up to the first floor, while the final pair hunkered down beside the old wooden lift. This latter pair could see into the Kubbeli Saloon where they both quickly identified two gunmen and six civilians. The door between the Kubbeli Saloon and the ballroom was closed. Officers outside the hotel reported that the gunmen had closed all the gaps in the ballroom curtains some minutes ago.

  ‘We have to make a decision,’ Süleyman said to Çetin İkmen. ‘Who do you think killed Söner Erkan?’

  İkmen looked at the two remaining masked men in the Kubbeli Saloon. Could he, Süleyman and the two doctors overpower them? He kept his eye on them and said, ‘We don’t know what will happen to whoever we name.’

  ‘Everyone will die if we don’t name anyone,’ Arto Sarkissian said.

  ‘That’s what we think.’

  ‘Çetin, it’s utilitarianism at its most basic,’ Krikor Sarkissian said. ‘The sacrifice of one for the greater good of the many.’

  İkmen looked at him with horror. ‘You can’t believe in that, Krikor! Surely!’

  ‘Of course I don’t!’ Krikor Sarkissian said. ‘But what else do you suggest, Çetin? The rescue plan from the outside has clearly run into trouble . . .’

  ‘We should have a secret ballot.’ They’d all thought that Hovsep Pars had gone to sleep again. ‘Well, why not?’ the old man continued. ‘Can any of you think of a better idea? Inspector İkmen, tell me, do you or Inspector Süleyman have a suspect in mind?’

  İkmen wanted to say something about not having been able to ‘complete my investigations’, but that was never going to happen anyway. He had hoped that somehow the situation would have been brought under control by this time but that hadn’t happened either and, he had to assume, it never would. So who, realistically, was in the frame?

  Anyone who was on the fourth floor at the time of the murder, which meant all of the actors, plus Burak Fisekçi, David Bonomo and Lale Aktar. The hotel concierge and the Nişantaşı car dealer had effectively provided alibis for each other. None of his fellow actors had liked Söner Erkan, but had they disliked him enough to kill him? David Bonomo was a quiet family man who worked for the Chief Rabbi and, as far as İkmen could tell, had no connection with Söner Erkan. Burak Fisekçi knew him via his neighbour Ceyda Ümit and through working with him on the murder mystery project. Was it possible he had come to hate the boy enough in that time to want to kill him? And what of Lale Aktar? She’d found the boy’s body – apparently.

  Of course the missing link in all of this was the connection between whoever had killed the boy and the gunmen. That had to exist. Without that, coming to any sort of reasonable conclusion was impossible.

  Cetin İkmen looked into the camera on the gunman’s helmet and said, ‘This task is completely impossible and you know it.’

  And then he remembered the conversation he’d been trying to have with Lale Aktar when the supposed infiltrator had been shot. He still needed to have that conversation and now he felt he could do that without the embarrassment he had experienced earlier. If they were all going to die anyway, there was no place for prudishness.

  He turned to Lale Aktar and he said, ‘Mrs Aktar, are you having a period or are you not?’

  All the men around him gasped at the baldness of his words. Lale Aktar herself looked appalled. Turkish men didn’t talk about such things, at least not in public. It wasn’t done.

  There was a moment of horrified silence. And then Krikor Sarkissian looked at the novelist, frowned, and said, ‘But Lale, my dear, you had a hysterectomy last year.’

  Commissioner Ardıç looked at his watch and said, ‘If these people are serious about their intentions then İkmen and Süleyman have just over five minutes to come up with the name of the murderer of this Söner Erkan.’

  The men already positioned inside the Pera Palas had relayed what they had heard and observed to Commander İpek who, along with his remaining troops, was preparing himself for a firefight inside the hotel. The management of the Pera Palas had been informed, and although naturally fearful for the integrity of their beautiful historic building, they knew that lives had to be put in front of crystal chandeliers and marble flooring.

  ‘All that is irrelevant now,’ İpek said. ‘We’re going in.’

  ‘But what if it’s just some sort of huge bluff?’

  Ardıç and İpek turned and looked at Ayşe Farsakoğlu. Her face was grey and she looked, suddenly, like the middle-aged woman she actually was. But then Ardıç, at least, knew that facing the prospect of losing a person one is in love with can make time take flight.

  ‘We can’t take that risk, Sergeant,’ he said to her. Then he looked at İpek. ‘We must commit our men to your care, Commander, and to the will of Allah.’

  Commander İpek bowed his head. ‘Of course,’ he said. And then without another word, he and his men left the bar and ran across the road towards the Pera Palas Hotel.

  Ardıç, observing that Sergeant Farsakoğlu was alone in the centre of the room, went over to İzzet Melik and whispered, ‘Be with her.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Ardıç took him to one side. ‘I know there are effectively three of you in this relationship you have with Farsakoğlu,’ he said.

  Melik was shocked both by the fact that Ardıç knew and that he was speaking about such a personal thing.

  ‘So that is how it is,’ Ardıç continued. ‘Your fiancée is not sleeping with Süleyman.’

  ‘Sir, she—’

  ‘She is a woman of honour, trust me on this,’ Ardıç said. ‘But Süleyman may be about to die. You love her. You should be with her.’

  They both looked across at Ayşe, who was crying. Nar was lumbering over with her arms outstretched.

  Ardıç said, ‘Sergeant Melik, would you really have your fiancée comforted by a person who has multiple convictions for soliciting?’

  İzzet Melik watched Nar put her arms around Ayşe and hug her. But, frozen by indecision, he just couldn’t move.