Forfeit

by Barbara Nadel

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Police Procedurals; Private Investigators

Synopsis

GREED, LUST AND BETRAYAL LEAD TO MURDER in Barbara Nadel's twenty-third Ikmen mystery, as Ikmen and Süleyman work to uncover a tragic tale of dark secrets and double lives...

In the early hours of the morning, Turkish TV star Erol Gencer is found dead at his home on the outskirts of Istanbul. But he is not alone. Beside him lies a Syrian refugee whose stomach has been split open with a cheese knife. Did Gencer kill his guest before committing suicide, or are they victims of a sinister double murder?

The dead Syrian is soon identified as Wael Al Hussain, whose wife, Samira, is in prison for attempting to kill Gencer a year ago. At the time, no one believed Samira's story that Gencer's wife had planned the attack, but now Samira's sister begs Çetin Ikmen to re-examine her claim.

Meanwhile, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman is on leave with his teenage son, Patrick, who is visiting from Ireland, but when Detective Kerim Gürsel's transsexual ex-lover, Pembe, is also murdered, shortly after confessing that Wael Al Hussain had used her for sexual favours, Süleyman knows he must help Kerim solve this complex case.

Entering a world of the Syrian diaspora, where tales of mythical storytellers abound, Ikmen and Süleyman uncover a tragic tale of dark secrets and double lives where nothing is at it seems...

(P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Limited

Release date: May 13, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

Çetin İkmen – former İstanbul detective

Çiçek İkmen – İkmen’s eldest daughter

Bülent and Kemal İkmen – İkmen’s sons

Berekiah Cohen – İkmen’s son-in-law

Samsun Bajraktar – İkmen’s Albanian cousin, a transsexual

Dr Arto Sarkissian – police pathologist, İkmen’s oldest friend, an ethnic Armenian

Inspector Mehmet Süleyman – İstanbul detective

Sergeant Ömer Mungun – Süleyman’s deputy

Inspector Kerim Gürsel – İstanbul detective

Sergeant Eylul Yavaş – Gürsel’s deputy

Selahattin Ozer – police commissioner

Yusuf (aka Patrick) Süleyman – Mehmet’s son

Dr Zelfa Halman – Mehmet’s ex-wife

Nur Süleyman – Mehmet’s mother

Murad Süleyman – Mehmet’s brother

Edibe Süleyman – Murad’s daughter

Gonca Şekeroğlu – gypsy artist, Süleyman’s lover

Rambo Şekeroğlu – Gonca’s son

Asana Şekeroğlu – Gonca’s daughter

Rambo Şekeroğlu senior – Gonca’s brother

Sinem Gürsel – Kerim’s wife

Pınar Hanım – Sinem’s mother

Emir Cebeci – Sinem’s brother

Pembe Hanım – Kerim’s transsexual lover

Madam Edith – Pembe’s friend, a transsexual

Betül Gencer – wife of deceased TV psychologist Erol Gencer

Sibel Gencer – Erol’s first wife

Hürrem Gencer – Sibel’s daughter by Erol

Filiz Tepe – Erol’s boss at Harem TV

Berat Tükek – fan of Erol Gencer

Samira Al Hussain – Syrian woman in prison for attempted murder of Erol Gencer in 2018

Wael Al Hussain – Samira’s husband

Rima Al Numan – Samira’s sister

Rauf Bey – traditional seller of herbs and spices

Belkis Hanım – Rauf’s wife

Genç – a pornographer

Lagun – a prostitute

Kiyamet Yavuz – friend of Betül Gencer

Sami and Ruya Nasi – stage magicians

İbrahim Dede – a dervish

Harun Sesler – Roma gypsy godfather

Serkan Sesler – Harun’s son

Wahıd Saatçı – a drug dealer

Neşe Hanım – a witness

Fahrettın Bey – magic shop owner

Hafiz Barakat – Syrian refugee

Eyüp Çelik – celebrity lawyer

Kurdish Madonna, Virjin Maryam, Matmazel Gigi, Bear Trap Hanım, Sucuk Hanım – trans prostitutes

Zenne Kleopatra – male belly dancer

Sıbel Akşener – a meddah or storyteller

Müslüm Bey – a kapıcı

Mevlüt Aktürk – a landlord

Dr Emir Doksanaltı – a psychiatrist

Nabil Nassar – a Syrian bookseller

Abbas – a Syrian refugee

Truth, my friends, truth!

One name is like another, the same is true of orphans and of neighbourhoods. A tale of the past is told, a lie is heard as truth, and thus the time is passed.

And so, my friends, to a tale of a poor boy, a powerful paşa and a woman of enormous wit . . .

‘Did you feed him?’

Gonca Şekeroğlu took off the old dress she’d put on to answer the front door and threw it on the floor.

‘I opened the fridge and told him to help himself,’ she replied.

She’d been in bed with her lover, Inspector Mehmet Süleyman, for several hours before her son Rambo had knocked on her front door and put an end to his mother’s sexual congress. Naked, she got back into bed.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Süleyman asked as he cupped his hands around her breasts. ‘I thought he was doing something in Bulgaria.’

Gonca arched her back in pleasure as he began to lick her nipples.

‘Oh who cares?’ she said. ‘He’s a grown man, he makes his own decisions. Now, baby, I am hot for you . . .’

Her breathing came short and laboured. He moved a hand down her body, over her hips and between her legs. She groaned. He lifted his head from her breasts and said, ‘My fantasy is for you to go on top . . .’

She laughed as she swung one of her legs across his body and mounted him. He moved his hips beneath her and she said, ‘Oh baby . . .’

He gripped her waist, digging his fingers into her flesh.

‘Gonca . . .’

Then his phone rang.

‘Really!’

He put a hand out to the bedside table and picked it up.

‘Süleyman.’

‘Mehmet Bey, I am sorry to disturb you,’ a familiar voice said.

‘Kerim Bey?’

Kerim Gürsel was another inspector working in the homicide division of the İstanbul Police Department.

‘Yes. Look, I’m out in Sarıyer, and if I tell you that this incident has taken place on Değirmendere Ayhan Sokak . . .’

That road name made Süleyman sit up, much to the discomfort of Gonca.

‘Ow!’

‘I worked on that attempted murder up there last year. Erol Gencer,’ Süleyman said.

‘I know,’ his colleague replied. ‘That’s why I called you, Mehmet Bey. Because this time Erol Bey did not have the benefit of his wife on the premises.’

‘So he’s . . .’

‘Oh yes, quite dead,’ Gürsel said. ‘And he’s not alone . . .’

The boy was clearly shaken. He had, after all, found the bodies. Or rather he’d seen them through the trees and shrubs that surrounded the villa. Kerim Gürsel had tried to see the poolside area from where the boy said he had been positioned, but could make out little beyond a wide tree trunk and a portion of wall. He strongly suspected seventeen-year-old Berat Tükek had actually been trying to get into the property when he found the bodies. He wouldn’t be the first star-struck mentally unwell young person to do that.

Erol Gencer, one of the dead men, and owner of the villa, was a media phenomenon. He’d apparently trained as a clinical psychologist many years before, although nobody seemed to know whether he’d actually practised. What he had done was get involved first with radio, then as a consultant on psychological matters on TV, eventually hosting his own highly successful show. Some people said he’d fucked his way to the top of the talk-show media tree, but however he’d done it, most people in the country knew who he was, and many of them claimed to love him.

Dr Erol, as he was styled, was not only handsome and urbane but also, apparently, really caring. People displaying varying degrees of insanity or social dysfunction or both appeared on his show. Some would lose control and fight, others would weep, and a lot of women with husband trouble would express suicidal ideation. But whatever was wrong, Dr Erol, with his broad shoulders, deep, calming voice and seemingly genuine love for his fellow beings, would try to do whatever he could to help. Young people particularly adored him. By contrast, he had always made Kerim Gürsel’s skin crawl.

Berat Tükek broke through Kerim’s reverie. ‘This doctor who’s coming, is he a psychiatrist?’

‘No, a pathologist,’ Kerim replied. ‘Apart from anything else, he’s required to formally pronounce life extinct. Not sure a psychiatrist could do that. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing, it’s all right . . .’

The kid was probably on a sack of medication. Although in spite of being shocked, he seemed all right for the time being, sitting next to one of the local cops who had been first on the scene. Even if the boy was mentally ill, he appeared far from being in any sort of crisis. But then whatever state he was in, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a suspect. There was a convention that a person who found a body or bodies, unlawfully killed, was most likely to have committed that offence. Young Berat was going to have to endure a lot of unwanted attention in the days to come. Maybe psychiatric support would be needed?

As scene-of-crime officers secured the area, Kerim stepped to one side and called his wife. Now that he knew that the pathologist, Dr Sarkissian, was on his way, as well as Kerim’s own sergeant, Eylul Yavaş – who was bringing Erol Gencer’s wife from the couple’s apartment in Nişantaşı – he could finally let Sinem know he was all right.

Of course had he been alone with his wife in the apartment when he had been called to the scene, he could have simply left her sleeping and written her a note to explain his absence. But his mother-in-law, the redoubtable Pınar Hanım, was staying with them, sleeping in the next room. As soon as his phone had beeped, Pınar had been in their bedroom demanding to know what was happening. Kerim and Sinem’s baby was due imminently, but he knew the old woman would stay on after the birth for God knew how long. How he would endure it, Kerim didn’t know.

As soon as Sinem picked up, he said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes.’ But she didn’t sound it, she never did. Sinem Gürsel suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Usually the pain that resulted from this was dulled by medication, but now that she was pregnant, she had to limit her drug intake.

‘Can you take anything?’ he asked.

‘Not yet. Where are you?’

‘Sarıyer,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’

‘Oh.’ Sinem had been Kerim’s wife for long enough to know what this meant. Someone – maybe more than one person – had died.

‘Did your mother go back to bed?’ he asked.

‘Eventually . . .’ There was a pause, and then she said, ‘I wish she’d go home.’

‘You know she won’t.’

‘Oh Kerim, I am so sorry!’

‘What about?’

‘My mother,’ she said. ‘If she wasn’t here, things could get back to normal. I know you—’

‘Sinem, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. Just look after yourself and our baby. That’s all that matters to me.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Inspector Gürsel.’

Suddenly a short, portly individual wearing thick round glasses was at his side.

‘I have to go,’ Kerim said and ended the call. ‘Dr Sarkissian.’

‘Ah, Inspector Gürsel,’ the pathologist said. ‘So what dark deed has dragged us from our beds this time?’

He didn’t have to be driving over to Sarıyer in the middle of the night. From Gonca’s house in the Old City, the smart Bosphorus village of Sarıyer was hardly just around the corner, and he was officially on leave. Only for two weeks, but they were crowded ones, and hot. August in the city was living up to its unbearable reputation, and his son, visiting İstanbul for the first time since he was a toddler, was finding it challenging.

In spite of having fallen out of love with Yusuf’s mother many years ago, Mehmet Süleyman had always made sure he supported the boy. His ex-wife had been a dual Turko-Irish national, and so when the marriage had ended, Yusuf – or Patrick, as he preferred to be called – had gone with her to live in the Irish Republic. Every year Mehmet spent most of his annual leave staying at a hotel in Dublin so that he could see him. Now sixteen, Patrick had come to İstanbul to get to know his father and his family in situ. So far it hadn’t gone well.

Seemingly horrified by his father’s small flat in Cihangir, Patrick had gone to stay with Mehmet’s brother Murad, his daughter Edibe and the Süleyman family matriarch, his grandmother Nur, in the old woman’s mansion in Arnavautköy. Outwardly unimpressed by his father’s family’s connections to the deposed Ottoman imperial family, the boy nevertheless seemed to prefer to reside in a building with some class. Back in Ireland, he lived with his psychiatrist mother in a large Georgian house just off O’Connell Street. He also went to one of the best schools in the city, Gonzaga, and spoke, for some reason, in a sort of exaggerated drawl. In spite of having a Turkish father and a half-Turkish mother, he purported to speak no Turkish at all, and had declared himself bored to tears by most things as soon as he’d arrived. Physically, he was tall and looked mature for his age. He was also, like his father, extremely handsome, and when they’d spoken on the phone prior to his visit, Mehmet’s ex-wife Zelfa had admitted she was having trouble with Patrick and girls.

In a way, Mehmet felt slightly guilty about palming the boy off on his brother, but only slightly. Even before Patrick had arrived, Mehmet hadn’t seen Gonca, his Roma mistress, for several weeks due to work commitments. And although he also had a girlfriend, in the very pleasing shape of Çiçek İkmen, he had yearned for the older woman’s somewhat wilder approach to sex. When he’d left her to go out, voluntarily, to Sarıyer when Kerim Gürsel called him, she’d lost her temper, and as he’d disappeared into the night, she’d called out after him, ‘I’ll never suck your cock again – bastard!’

She would, and they both knew it. But that was what made her so hot to him – her never-ending sexual passion. Unlike dear Çiçek, who was beautiful, kind and also sexy, just not that sexy . . .

But women and children lived in one part of his mind, his work in another, and what Kerim Gürsel had told him had piqued his interest. The previous September, Süleyman had been called to an incident at this very same property in response to a request from the wife of TV psychologist Erol Gencer. Betül Gencer had an unnamed woman at gunpoint in the bedroom she shared with her husband. The woman, who turned out to be a Syrian national called Samira Al Hussain, had apparently been besotted with Gencer and had turned up to kill him when he wouldn’t acknowledge her. She was now serving time for attempted murder in Bakırköy women’s prison.

It was easy to see which house was Gencer’s by the number of police cars parked outside, together with a black Mercedes S Class he knew belonged to the pathologist, Dr Sarkissian. Once out of his car, he walked towards the entrance to the property and showed his ID to the officers who admitted him. As he walked inside the vast white house, he could still smell Gonca’s deep rose perfume on his skin, and it made him smile.

‘Mehmet Bey!’

Kerim Gürsel looked pale underneath the spotlights in the ceiling of Gencer’s hallway. Süleyman knew that his colleague’s wife was pregnant and also that she had a long-term illness. Kerim was probably not getting a lot of sleep. And now this . . .

The two men shook hands and then briefly embraced.

‘What’s the story?’ Süleyman asked as they walked out of the house and into the garden. Scene-of-crime officers were measuring, bagging up and collating evidence, while Dr Sarkissian, a small but wide figure in white plastic coveralls, was leaning over a body on the ground. Body number two was about two metres away, face down, on the edge of the swimming pool. The water was threaded with thin tendrils of blood.

‘Well, there are two victims, both male,’ Kerim said. ‘One easily identified as Erol Gencer, although no formal ID will be made until his wife arrives. The other . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Slim, looks middle aged to me. Can you remember what the circumstances were surrounding that attempted murder of Gencer last year?’

Süleyman told him what he knew and added, ‘The woman involved was Syrian. Worked in Fatih selling scarves, I think. In the past, when she first came to the city, she’d worked the streets. She had, she claimed, serviced Gencer on several occasions. But there was no evidence for that. She was fixated on him. His wife maintained that she’d stalked him, although that was never reported to us. The woman, Samira Al Hussain, had several psychiatric assessments. There was a lot of trauma in evidence, as there so often is with Syrian refugees. Of course she’s in Bakırköy now . . .’

He saw Arto Sarkissian hold up a hand in greeting, and waved back.

‘Not the psychiatric hospital?’ Kerim asked.

‘No.’

‘But if there was a question mark over her sanity . . .’

‘She had a . . . I suppose you’d call it a cover story that just didn’t make sense,’ Süleyman said. ‘While she held to that, progress was difficult. But then she changed her story and admitted to the charge of attempted murder. She said she had stalked Gencer.’

‘You said there was no evidence for that.’

‘Until her confession, no, nothing solid,’ he said. ‘Neighbours reported seeing a woman about, but whether that was Samira or not they couldn’t say. I don’t know precisely what caused her change of heart. But the fact remains that when the local cops broke into this house, they found Betül Gencer holding a revolver and Samira Al Hussain with a knife to Erol’s throat.’ He called over to the pathologist. ‘Doctor!’

‘Hello, Inspector Süleyman. I thought you were on leave,’ Sarkissian said.

‘I am.’ Süleyman smiled. ‘Sort of.’

‘Ah.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Don’t know,’ the doctor replied. ‘Certainly no idea about the TV star as yet, though he’s vomited quite spectacularly. Cursory look at the other man, but that one’s pretty obvious.’

‘In what way?’ Kerim Gürsel asked.

‘Stomach slit open,’ the medic said. ‘Terrible mess. Good job he’s lying on his front.’

‘It makes me despair,’ Çetin İkmen said as he lit a new cigarette from the smoking butt of his last one. ‘Conforming to a stereotype is so lazy and also, I think, insulting. As if the old Turkish teyze isn’t bad enough, poking her nose in everywhere in the real world, now we have the old bags on social media.’

His wife Fatma, who was dead and existed only in ghost form, said nothing.

Even though it was three o’clock in the morning, ex-homicide detective Çetin İkmen wasn’t able to sleep, and so he’d come out onto his apartment balcony to talk to his wife. Famed for his impeccable clear-up rate when he worked for the İstanbul Police Department, İkmen was a skinny sixty-two-year-old with a massive cigarette habit and a bit of a drink problem. He was also the son of a once-renowned Albanian witch whose ability with things not of this world, including ghosts, he had inherited.

August in İstanbul was as hot as a hearth and so he wasn’t the only one struggling with sleep. As he looked down onto the thoroughfare known as Divan Yolu, the Sultanahmet Park beyond and the great mosque itself beyond that, he saw that a lot of people were milling about aimlessly in the dark. For a moment he wondered where his children and his friends might be. Was Mehmet Süleyman, as he suspected, having wild sex over at Gonca Şekeroğlu’s quirky house in Balat? He went back to his original subject.

‘Bülent spends half his life on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as far as I can see,’ he continued. ‘Supposed to be blocked by the state, I think, but of course our son can get round most things. In fact most people can – hence old women wearing tights that could withstand nuclear attack fixated on pouring bile into the ether. Some of these old harridans are “influencers”, whatever that may mean. Just hope they’re not influencing people to kill “bad girls”. And as for bloody husbands—’

‘Whose husband?’

İkmen looked up into an elderly, heavily made-up face and said, ‘Ah, Samsun. Good night?’

Samsun Bajraktar, İkmen’s transsexual cousin, threw herself into the chair she knew Fatma wasn’t using.

‘Desperate,’ she said as she lit up a cigarette and then leaned back. Ever the diva, she was wearing a long red cocktail dress and impossibly high-heeled shoes, which she now took off. ‘My feet are howling.’

‘Apart from that . . .’

‘Oh, the club?’ She shrugged. ‘Usual nonsense. Loads of silly little things dancing around a couple of bears. If any of them get off with those, they’ll end up with black eyes – if they’re lucky.’

İkmen said, ‘Cynical.’

Samsun worked on the bar at a gay and trans pub in Tarlabaşı. She’d seen it all.

‘Just heard you talking about “bloody husbands” . . .’

‘Bemoaning social media,’ İkmen said. ‘As if the stereotypical Turkish husband didn’t already have enough scope to persecute his wife, now we have the rumour mill that is online. A place where anyone, even if they’ve never set eyes on you, can tell you they saw your wife with another man in the bazaar and you will believe them.’

Samsun snorted. ‘Well, I’m not Turkish . . .’

‘Oh, Albanians are no better,’ İkmen said. ‘Men are no better!’

‘I’m not a man.’

‘I know. I’m just . . .’

‘Just what?’

‘Bülent came round today and regaled me with his stories from his social media addiction. It depressed me.’

‘Did you tell him to leave?’ Samsun asked.

‘No, he’s my son and . . .’ İkmen shrugged. ‘The only work I have on at the moment is on behalf of a client who works in the Mısır Çarşısı and thinks his wife is stealing his bloody useless herbal Viagra to give to her lover.’

Now retired from the police force, Çetin İkmen made a little money and kept himself amused by working as an ad hoc private investigator. Sometimes the cases he worked on were very interesting, and sometimes they weren’t.

‘Wouldn’t mind if the wife was some kind of siren,’ he said.

‘A vision in muted colours and headscarf?’

‘Oh that’s dressing up for a party for this woman!’

They both laughed, and then Samsun said, ‘Çiçek in bed, is she?’

‘Hours ago,’ İkmen said. ‘Waitressing’s hard work in this heat. She was exhausted. She’s off tomorrow.’

Although forty-three years old, Çetin İkmen’s eldest daughter still lived at home with her father and Samsun. Divorced and purged from her job as a flight attendant in the wake of the attempted coup of 2016, she now worked in a café in the funky district of Cihangir.

Samsun said, ‘She told me she’s out with Mehmet Bey and his son tomorrow.’

‘They’re going to Arnavautköy, yes.’

Samsun leaned forward. ‘Have you seen Prince Mehmet’s son yet, Çetin?’

‘I went with Mehmet Bey to pick him up from the airport, yes. Very handsome young boy; very bright too, apparently. But he doesn’t speak any Turkish, which upsets his father.’

‘Handsome?’ Samsun shook her head. ‘If the kid behaves like his father . . .’

İkmen wanted to defend his friend against what he knew his cousin was about to say, but he couldn’t.

Samsun lowered her voice. ‘I’ll be honest, Çetin, I worry about our Çiçek and him. I mean, I thought that was all over in the spring . . .’

‘There was some sort of falling-out, but now they’re back together again. I don’t get involved,’ İkmen said.

‘Well maybe you should . . .’

‘She’s a grown woman!’

‘Word is that Prince Mehmet is fucking the gypsy again,’ Samsun said. ‘And no, Çetin, that isn’t just old-lady gossip. I have it on very good authority from a girl I know who lives in Balat who’s seen him going into Gonca Şekeroğlu’s house. She, this girl I know, she knows a woman who lives over the back, and she says they fuck openly, in the garden!’

İkmen sighed. Having his best friend dating his daughter was not ideal, but when Süleyman had started seeing Çiçek he had promised himself that he wouldn’t listen to gossip. That said, his much younger friend was well known to have little self-control when it came to women. And women, it seemed to him, had very little self-control around his friend. It was well known that Süleyman had been in a passionate on/off relationship with Gonca for years.

Eventually İkmen said, ‘What do you want me to do? Keep her in?’

‘No!’

‘Then what?’

Samsun shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Warn her or something.’

‘Warn her? She’s not an idiot!’ İkmen said.

‘Oh, well then . . .’ Lost for words, she looked to where her cousin’s wife’s ghost had been sitting and saw that she was gone. But she said what she was going to say anyway. ‘What Fatma Hanım would make of all this, I don’t know!’

Sinem Gürsel lit a cigarette. If Kerim knew she’d had one, he’d go mad. But he wasn’t coming home for hours yet, by which time the smell would have gone. She had all the bedroom windows open. And she was in pain.

Tonight it was her fingers that were the worst afflicted area. She had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since she was a child. As the years had passed it had only got worse, and now that she was pregnant, at the age of forty-two, it seemed to be less under control than ever. This was partly because there was a limit on the strength and frequency of painkillers she could use in her condition.

As she smoked, she looked out from her bed into the darkened streets outside her window. She and Kerim had lived in the down-at-heel district of Tarlabaşı for twelve years. With its multicultural population of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, its Roma contingent, and its shifting population of gay men and women, trans girls and prostitutes, it wasn’t the most obvious place for a police officer and his wife to live. But it was perfect for the Gürsels. It was convenient for the pharmacy where Sinem obtained the medication that prevented her from screaming in agony, and it was also close to the room that Kerim’s lover, a trans woman called Pembe Hanım, rented from another trans girl down by the Syrian Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary.

Kerim Gürsel had told Sinem Cebeci that he was homosexual when they were both fifteen. In common with a lot of girls at their school, Sinem had been secretly in love with Kerim. He was so thoughtful, kind and handsome, and he was good fun. However, unlike the other girls at school, Sinem was Kerim’s best friend, and so when she told him that she was queer too, their relationship blossomed. They went everywhere together, with Kerim in the role of Sinem’s dashing protector. Only after they married, to provide cover for each other’s sexual preferences, did Sinem tell Kerim that she was in fact bisexual, and that had been all right. But things had changed.

Firstly Kerim had met and fallen in love with Pembe Hanım, who later also became Sinem’s carer, helping her with the housework, personal care and shopping. The transsexual had moved in, and most nights Sinem had to make sure she took sleeping tablets so she didn’t have to listen to her beloved Kerim and Pembe making love in the next room.

At the end of the previous year, however, Sinem’s condition had worsened, and her mother Pınar had insisted upon caring for her. As Pınar Hanım moved in, so Pembe Hanım moved out, and Kerim was obliged to sleep with Sinem to keep up the image of a normal marriage. But he still went to Pembe for sex, in spite of his mother-in-law’s near-constant berating of him for not getting her daughter pregnant.

Kerim and Sinem had tried to have sex early on in their marriage, but had soon given up. Sinem had felt hurt, but she’d had to hide her feelings. However, when her mother came to live with them, she managed to persuade her husband that maybe trying for a baby wasn’t a bad idea, to put her mother off the scent.

And so they’d tried. Sinem had attempted to hide how aroused she felt when her husband touched her. Not that he was fooled. Although he never accused her of lying to him about her sexuality, he now knew that she was heterosexual and in love. Then one night, at the right time in her cycle, he’d impregnated her, and now she was so much in love with him it hurt. She ached to have him back with her and prayed that the incident he’d gone out to attend to was not dangerous.

Of course, Erol Gencer’s wife was beautiful. No male TV star had a wife who was anything less than perfect. Although Betül Gencer was, it seemed, more heavily reliant upon plastic surgery than most. Süleyman wondered how old she was. He also wondered why he was in no way attracted to this type of woman. Most men seemed to be. But then a lot of men were also very attracted to older, naturally beautiful if physically flawed women, like Gonca. In his experience, those women had fewer inhibitions.

Kerim Gürsel greeted the woman with his condolences. Sitting beside him on a vast white sofa in what was now solely her living room, she said, ‘How did it happen? How did Erol die? I don’t understand.’

‘I’m afraid we don’t yet either,’ Kerim said. ‘Betül Hanım, do you know whether your husband was due to meet anyone here tonight?’

Her eyes were dry, but they possessed a staring quality that Süleyman had seen in those undergoing shock many times before.

‘No.’ Then she said, ‘Was he with a woman?’

‘Would you have expected him to be with a woman?’ Kerim asked.

Erol Gencer had been the sort of man women threw themselves at. Were Süleyman a betting person, he would have put money on the TV psychologist having one mistress at the very least.

Betül Gencer said, ‘No! No, we were happy! We were in love! What will I do without him?’

Kerim Gürsel was a deeply compassionate man and Süleyman could tell that he wanted to comfort this woman in some way. But he was too professional to put an arm around her, even though in his case there could be no ulterior motive involved.

‘You don’t know how he died?’ she reiterated.

‘Not yet,’ Kerim said. ‘But our doctor is investigating. We will find out. As you can see our forensic team are also working hard. It will be necessary, Betül Hanım, for them to take a DNA cheek swab from you for elimination purposes. I trust that is all right?’

‘Yes . . . Yes, of course.’

‘Now, Betül Hanım, is there anyone I can call for you?’

‘There’s my mother. But she’s in our village.’

‘Anyone here in the city? A friend?’

‘My brother Levent,’ she said. ‘He lives in Kadıköy.’

‘All right. Would you like me to call him for you?’

‘Oh no. No, no, I can . . .’ She took her phone out of her bag and dropped it on the floor. ‘Oh fuck it!’ she said. ‘Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!’

Then she dissolved into tears as Kerim Gürsel picked up her phone and waited for her sobs to subside.

Erol Gencer’s death dominated the news. In print, on TV, on the radio and especially on the