‘But by that time maybe it would have been too late.’ He put a hand on her shoulder. Unfortunately, just at that moment İzzet Melik came into the ballroom. When he saw them together, he froze.

  ‘I owe you my life,’ Süleyman said to Ayşe Farsakoğlu. Neither of them saw İzzet and he didn’t wait around for them to spot him. He left as quickly as he had arrived, but with tears in his eyes.

  The doctor wasn’t going to let him out, even with his ribs strapped up. They wanted to take his blood pressure every half hour. Apparently it was unstable, whatever that meant. A nurse came to the side of his bed, put a cuff round his bicep and took it again. When she’d finished, Çetin İkmen looked at her questioningly.

  ‘Now it’s raised,’ she said in answer to his silent question.

  ‘Is it high?’

  ‘Raised,’ she reiterated.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s going up and down all the time. We can’t release you until it settles. You’ve broken four ribs and you’ve had a shock.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Can’t you even try to relax, Inspector?’

  ‘I might give it a go if I had a cigarette,’ he said.

  The nurse pulled a face. ‘No chance.’

  She walked away. İkmen recognised at least two of the actors from the murder mystery performance in nearby beds, as well as the hotel concierge. But Hovsep Pars was nowhere to be seen. It was infuriating for İkmen not to know what was going on. He remembered that Mehmet Süleyman had shown him Muhammed Ersoy’s golden samovar. He seemed to have a recollection that Süleyman had said something about it coming from room 411. But he didn’t remember it being in there when he’d searched Agatha Christie’s old room.

  ‘Çetin?’

  A plump and comfortably familiar face smiled down at him.

  ‘Arto.’

  The Armenian sat down on his bed. ‘I thought you’d like to know that Hovsep Bey is in surgery now,’ he said.

  ‘Let us hope . . .’

  ‘He’s already dying, Çetin,’ Arto said. ‘Cancer.’

  İkmen looked down at the sheet that covered his body. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘He told you?’

  ‘Yes. He was very candid about it. Has the leader of the gang been arrested?’

  ‘He’s actually in surgery too,’ Arto said. ‘I think he may have a ruptured spleen.’

  İkmen looked alarmed. ‘Because I hit . . .’

  ‘No, no, no. He struggled when one of the Special Forces officers was trying to cuff him,’ Arto said. ‘The officer punched him in the stomach.’

  ‘I see.’ İkmen changed the subject. ‘How is Krikor? And Mrs Aktar?’

  ‘Krikor’s fine,’ Arto said. Then he averted his eyes a little. ‘Mrs Aktar has been taken into custody. She colluded with Muhammed Ersoy and whoever he employed to do his bidding. She was in love with him.’

  İkmen shook his head. ‘Love!’

  ‘Given Ersoy’s previous record of romantic conquest, I wouldn’t be surprised if she isn’t the only one to have been dazzled by Mr Ersoy,’ Arto said.

  ‘Love is wonderful but it’s uncontrollable,’ İkmen said.

  One of the actors, the one who had played the Italian tutor, groaned.

  ‘Have you seen Ayşe Farsakoğlu?’

  ‘Only briefly,’ Arto said. ‘We have much to thank her for. Without her we’d probably all be dead by now. You know, Çetin, some of the gunmen tried to get out of the hotel dressed as hostages.’

  İkmen shrugged. ‘Quite a smart move.’ Then he changed the subject back to his sergeant again. ‘Have you thought about why Sergeant Farsakoğlu was hanging around the Pera Palas?’

  ‘Because she’d seen the golden samovar go into the building earlier in the evening,’ Arto said.

  ‘Then why didn’t she do something about it at the time if it bothered her?’ İkmen asked. ‘She was with İzzet Melik, they could have both followed it up at the concierge’s desk.’

  ‘But Sergeant Melik doesn’t remember Ersoy and that time and—’

  ‘So what? If Ayşe had expressed her fears to him, he would have backed her up,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s a good officer and he loves her. He would have done whatever she wanted.’

  ‘What are you getting at, Çetin?’

  He shrugged. ‘Simple. She’s still got feelings for Süleyman. She came back to the hotel on the off chance of seeing him.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t—’

  ‘Call me cynical if you must, but since we’re talking about love, Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s abiding love for Mehmet Süleyman can’t be ignored.’

  ‘But she’s marrying İzzet Melik!’

  ‘Then perhaps she shouldn’t,’ İkmen said. ‘In fact, she shouldn’t, and somebody needs to tell her that.’

  Arto glanced at him sideways. ‘Oh, and I wonder who that will be.’

  İkmen didn’t say a word.

  Arto Sarkissian got up from the bed after several moments of silence and he said, ‘But for now, just rest and try to get your blood pressure on speaking terms with normal.’ Then he left.

  Chapter 26

  ‘You know, greed has become my favourite vice,’ Muhammed Ersoy said. ‘It used to be lust but now I definitely favour greed. It’s such fun.’

  They just looked at him. All three had had the pleasure of Mr Ersoy’s company ten years before. It was a long time to be in prison. But he hadn’t changed a bit. İkmen had always believed in the superiority of incarceration over the death penalty, but he found, to his horror, that in this case maybe prison had been the wrong route to take. In the last twenty-four hours this man had, by proxy, killed and maimed, terrified and enslaved simply for his own amusement. He’d also, albeit indirectly, put İkmen in hospital which he had since left against his doctor’s advice. His ribs were raw and sore and it hurt to breathe. But he was glad he was in Silivri staring at Ersoy who, in spite of everything, was still not a free man.

  Ersoy looked at Süleyman and smiled. ‘Well, you’ve aged quite well, young Süleyman,’ he said. He’d called him ‘young’ Süleyman a decade ago in reference to the fact that he had been to school with Mehmet’s older brother, Murad Süleyman. ‘Still popular with the ladies, are you? With the boys too?’ His eyes flashed with mischief. Openly bisexual, Ersoy had shamelessly flirted with Süleyman on numerous occasions.

  Commissioner Ardıç looked down at the list of names Ersoy had given them of people whom he had recruited, both inside and outside Silivri, to take part in what he called his ‘Pera Palas event’. He’d done it willingly and he’d even had a smile on his face. He’d enjoyed the live feed he’d received from the cameraman in the Pera Palas and was in an extremely good mood.

  ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Ersoy,’ the commissioner began, ‘that when some of these people inevitably join you here in Silivri Prison, they will take some sort of revenge upon you? Apart from anything else, we’ve names of prison staff here and we all know what they can be like.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You promised them money, which they will not now get,’ the commissioner continued. ‘They’re not going to feel too happy about that, I should imagine. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘And who was going to pay these people all this money anyway?’ İkmen asked. He coughed. ‘You’re in prison.’

  ‘Oh, my cousin.’

  ‘Kemal Aslanlı, originally from İskender, sir,’ İkmen told Ardıç. ‘He is Mr Ersoy’s closest living relative and so when Mr Ersoy was incarcerated he took over his fortune and his affairs.’

  ‘Which still belong to me,’ Ersoy said.

  ‘Not really, but it is clear that you somehow managed to manipulate Mr Aslanlı into believing that,’ Ardiç said. ‘What did you do, Ersoy? Convince him that your alleged reconnection with Islam I heard about had made you a better person?’

  Kemal Aslanlı was a cousin from Ersoy’s mother’s side of the family. Little more than lower middle-class grunts from the eastern city of İskender, the Aslanlıs – with the exception of Ersoy’s late mother – were an unsophisticated group of people of whom Kemal was typical.

  Ersoy smiled. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Did Mr Aslanlı know why you wanted him to pay what comes to several million lire to these people you employed to kill and torment others?’ Süleyman asked.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head and smiled again. ‘Kemal is a bit retarded, to be truthful, young Süleyman. He does what I tell him – or rather what those who I trust tell him.’

  ‘And how do you do that?’ Ardıç asked. ‘Mr Aslanlı is not a regular visitor to the Silivri. And if, as you say, the man is a little lacking . . .’

  ‘Oh, you’ll find that most of my business is conducted through a company that is owned by my old friend Yiannis Istefanopoulos. I invested much of my fortune in it some years ago and I encouraged Kemal to continue to do so. It’s called—’

  ‘Fener Maritime Sigorta,’ Ardıç said. Then he smiled.

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Persistent,’ Ardıç said. He looked down at the list of names Ersoy had given him again. ‘So, Mr Ersoy, tell us all about Mr Istefanopoulos and your legendary golden samovar. How do you know Mr Istefanopoulos?’

  ‘Oh, he is in love with me,’ Ersoy said simply. ‘Has been for years.’

  İkmen looked up at the ceiling in despair. Ersoy’s entire life had been punctuated by people who loved him – none of whom he gave a damn about. He had no idea what love was.

  ‘One thing I’ve never been hard up for in all my years in jail is visitors,’ Ersoy said.

  ‘Something, it seems to me, that you’ve mostly bribed your way to achieving.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes I have. But Yiannis was a good friend from many years ago and, as I say, he loves me.’

  ‘But you’re not getting out of prison any time soon,’ Süleyman said. ‘What was in it for him?’

  ‘Beyond the occasional conjugal visit?’ This time his smile was pure reptile and it made the three other men in the interview room recoil. ‘Gentlemen, apart from the enormous fun that I personally derived from the Pera Palas event, I was also careful to arrange that the principal movers in it got something that they each wanted very badly. Greed, you see. It was a marvellous incentive. Yiannis, more than anything else in the world, wanted to see a man called Haluk Mert dead.’

  İzzet Melik had called in sick, or rather too tired to work. Süleyman had been fine about that. İzzet had been up all night and needed to get some sleep sometime. He’d made a brief statement about the part he had played in the Pera Palas events – not that he’d done a huge amount. İzzet had been involved more as a spectator than a participant. Ayşe Farsakoğlu had been far more involved and still had a lot of paperwork to do. İkmen, her boss, who should still have been in hospital, was currently with Ardıç and Süleyman, interviewing the man who had been behind the events of the previous night, Muhammed Ersoy. Just saying his name in her head made her visibly shudder.

  ‘Cold, Sergeant?’ Nar Sözen finished up the glass of tea Ayşe had got for her and then sank back into what was İkmen’s office chair. She’d come in to give her witness statement which she was about halfway through.

  Ignoring her question about the temperature in the office, Ayşe asked Nar, ‘The woman you were allocated to guard duty with in the ballroom, the one who made observations about people’s clothes, did you recognise her at all?’

  ‘Through her mask?’

  ‘Were her eyes familiar to you? Her voice?’

  Nar thought for a moment and then said, ‘No.’

  Two women had been involved in taking over the Pera Palas alongside the other masked gunmen. One of them had been the prison reformer, Aysel Ökte. Now she was dead.

  ‘Some of them tried to get out by changing their clothes with the hostages, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’ Aysel Ökte had been one of them. She’d been wearing a very fetching silk kimono when she died.

  Then Nar, ever curious about people’s private lives and prone to going off at tangents, leaned forward and said, ‘Is it really true that you’re going to marry Sergeant Melik?’

  Ayşe looked down at the floor. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Am I sure about the fact that I’m marring Sergeant Melik? Or am I sure that I want to marry him?’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve not lost your mind!’ Nar said. Then she went off, flailing her arms in the air and becoming highly agitated. ‘Sergeant, Melik is a maganda. What’s a pretty woman like you doing with a maganda? It’s ridiculous! He won’t make you happy, you know. He’ll have you scrubbing the filthy armpits of his shirts, spending hours on end making your own mantı, subjecting you to his arthritic mother whose swollen feet you’ll have to—’

  ‘Sergeant Melik doesn’t have a mother any more!’ Ayşe interjected. What Nar had been saying was bringing tears to her eyes. ‘And anyway he isn’t like that,’ she said. ‘He isn’t how he . . . how he looks. Sergeant Melik is actually a very fine and sensitive man.’

  ‘But without Inspector Süleyman’s nice arse.’

  ‘Nar!’

  The transsexual laughed. In spite of her recent ordeal, she had quickly reverted to her usual irreverent self. ‘Well, what do you want me to say, Sergeant?’ she said. ‘I speak as I find. I go along with what I see and I see Melik as a maganda and find him obnoxious. I think that you can do better, but what do I know? I’m a woman with a penis, so I’m not exactly an expert on marriage.’

  ‘Nar, did you recognise any of the other masked individuals, either by sight or sound, who took over the Pera Palas last night?’ Ayşe said, trying to return Nar to her statement.

  ‘Er . . . no . . . Don’t think so.’

  ‘And when you told Lale Aktar who you were in the Pera Palas toilets, did you get any inkling at all that she might be working with the gunmen?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ayşe said. ‘Did you pick up any hostility when you told her who you were?’

  ‘She was a bit pissed off when I first went into the toilets with her,’ Nar said. ‘But then, once I’d told her what I was going to do, I’d say her attitude towards me softened. I suppose she was duping me, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. But then that’s nothing to feel bad about, Nar,’ Ayşe said. ‘Mrs Aktar duped almost everybody. The Special Forces officer who replaced you is dead because of her.’

  The rest of the interview took another hour. Then Nar left to go back to her transsexual sisters and no doubt eventually a night on the prowl for men who enjoyed the slightly outré side of life. She had to make up for the previous night’s complete lack of action and money.

  Alone, Ayşe Farsakoğlu considered what Nar had said about İzzet Melik. There had been a time when she’d seen him in the same way that Nar did. Every time he’d come near her, she’d cringed. But as well as changing considerably over the years, the more she’d learned about İzzet – like his love of all things Italian – the more she’d come to like him. He was, in addition, a gentle and considerate lover. It was true that he did not make her flesh catch fire with desire. But then she wasn’t exactly a young, flawless nubile herself any more. And besides, flaming desire wasn’t always a good thing. She’d had that and it had only ever brought her pain.

  She hadn’t spoken to İzzet since they’d both left the Pera Palas just after 8 a.m. Now it was midday and he’d probably be in bed. And anyway she didn’t want to call him, not until he’d calmed down somewhat. He had, after all, read her very accurately the previous evening. Seeing Süleyman in a tuxedo had been her real motive all along. But that didn’t mean that she wanted to be with him. She certainly didn’t want to be his wife. But would İzzet understand that?

  In order to make herself feel a little better, Ayşe rang their wedding venue, the Emperor Alexis Hotel, and asked to speak to the manager, Fevzi Bey. She asked him how preparations for her upcoming wedding were coming along. Fevzi Bey paused for quite a long time before he told her that İzzet Bey had called only just two hours before to cancel the whole event.

  ‘Haluk Mert was a ghastly little nouveau riche who cheated Yiannis out of what still remained of his old Phanar money back in the early nineteen nineties,’ Muhammed Ersoy said. ‘As a friend and sometime lover, I helped Yiannis start Fener Maritime Sigorta just prior to the deaths of my brother and my dear Avram.’

  ‘You killed them.’

  He merely smiled at Süleyman and then continued. ‘When I first learned that the old Pera Palas Hotel was going to be renovated I wondered how I might have some fun there. One gets so bored in prison!’ He looked at Süleyman again. ‘I played in the Pera Palas as a child, you see, as I think you did, didn’t you, young Süleyman?’

  The whole ‘young Süleyman’ thing was beginning to really grate now, but Ardıç and İkmen as well as Mehmet Süleyman himself knew that there was no point in asking Ersoy to stop.

  ‘Yes,’ Süleyman answered shortly.

  ‘My father used to bring me along when he met with Jews in the bar – for business – and my nanny would always complain that when I got home my hair smelt of cigars. Happy days.’

  ‘So why try and trash the place?’ İkmen asked. All the ‘old Ottoman’ nostalgia stuff made him want to heave.

  Ersoy shrugged. ‘Why not? It isn’t the same Pera Palas today as it was when I was a child. But if you really want to blame anyone for the damage to the Pera Palas you’d have to point the finger at Burak Fisekçi.’

  ‘Dr Krikor Sarkissian’s assistant?’

  ‘I met him with the lovely – here I’m being ironic – Aysel Ökte one day at the beginning of two thousand and nine,’ he said. ‘Such a nice man.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ İkmen said baldly.

  ‘Is he?’ Muhammed Ersoy furrowed his brow for a moment and then said, ‘Oh, well. It was Burak who told me that Dr Krikor was planning some sort of fundraiser in the Pera Palas as soon as the hotel reopened. He told me that the great and the good from all over the city were going to be invited and it just struck me how similar it was going to be to that event you came to at my palace, Inspector İkmen, when I presented my golden samovar to Krikor. I decided then and there that I’d really like to see you with that samovar again. But I had a problem because it was in Russia by that time.’