'Although it is, I must confess,' Suleyman said, to Ìkmen rather than Latife, 'much better if the real facts are known prior to trial.'
'Oh, yes,' his colleague replied, 'it allows the defence to really think about what mitigating circumstances might have been at work and, of course, to prepare the accused for all eventualities.'
Latife Emin laughed, quite a pleasant, trilling sound, devoid, unlike her sister's laugh, of any thickened smoker's cough.
'Oh, good try, gentlemen,' she said, 'but I know that if you had any conclusive forensic evidence I would be at the police station now instead of sitting here comfortably in my own home.' She rose to her feet. 'So, if you will excuse me…'
Suleyman looked across at Ìkmen, his face registering some panic. But Ìkmen, unmoving, seemed perfectly calm.
'You can of course go, madam,' he said, 'although if you are innocent, as you say, I am sure you won't mind getting dressed and coming with us to see Mr Temiz down at the station.' He smiled. 'Just to clear things up, you know. I mean in light of the fact that Mr Temiz was convinced that your sister was the assailant until he saw how she walked and considering that the two of you do look so very alike…'
'You may wear your shoes to travel, but we'd like you to take them off when we arrive,' Suleyman added. 'You do understand, don't you?’
She looked at both men in turn, and for quite some considerable time before answering. 'I’ll get ready then,’ she said decisively. 'Let's get this cleared up as quickly as possible, shall we?'
As she left the room Suleyman shot Ìkmen a nervous glance.
‘I think I'll go and help Doctor Halman take Tansu Hanim to her room now,' the older man said, to Suleyman's ears, somewhat cryptically.
Tepe, who was now a little more relaxed than he had been during his silent vigil with C5kotin and the Emin brothers, offered to drive his superiors, the doctor and Tansu's sister back to the station. He liked driving Suleyman's car, when pushed it really did go. Not of course that he would be racing the BMW on this occasion. Çöktin, for his part, drove alone in Tepe's car. One didn't have to be a genius to work out that he was unhappy about the events of the evening so far. But then it had all, for him, got rather too personal – especially when the singer and her brother called, somewhat desperately, upon his loyalty as Kurd. As Tepe pulled away and down the drive, he saw two pale faces at one of the downstairs windows. The brothers.
Once on the road, Latife Emin, who was seated between Suleyman and Dr Halman in the back of the car, turned to the psychiatrist and said, 'Will my sister be all right?'
'Yes. She's had a nasty shock, but I've given her something to help her sleep which will also bring her blood pressure down.'
'She has high blood pressure?' There was genuine concern, if not panic, in her voice now.
The doctor shrugged. 'It often accompanies stress. I doubt if it is a permanent condition.'
As the car passed though the picturesque districts of Ìstinye and Emirgan, both wealthy areas characterised, now that the sun had set, by fashionably dressed people going out to either eat or just enjoy the cooler night air, silence entered the BMW. And although Suleyman did, from time to time, look out at the colourful scenes which flashed by his window, he also occasionally stole a glance at Latife Emin's face which, with the exception of her continually darting eyes, was quite calm. But then, he thought, why should it not be so? She had been correct back at the house. All of the evidence against her, unless Cengiz Temiz identified her was circumstantial. And besides, he couldn't imagine what her motive for killing Ruya Urfa might have been, especially in light of Ìkmen's belief that Latife probably knew about Erol's religion. OK, Latife had on one occasion, as far as they knew, got closer to Ruya than most people, but whether she found out then that the Urfas were Yezidis was unknown. And anyway, if Latife were as clever as Ìkmen seemed to trunk, then she would not have killed Ruya in order to free Erol for her sister. She would have known that he would never marry Tansu. So if Latife had killed Ruya, there would have to be some other motive, wouldn't there?
Heading south underneath the great supporting struts of the Fatih Bridge, the car was making rapid but safe progress towards its destination. Glancing up at the mirror Ìkmen, who was seated beside Tepe, looked at the reflection of Latife Emin's pale face with interest. Not a flicker. Her nerve, he had to confess, was quite remarkable. He wondered how long it would last, especially when she was confronted with Cengiz Temiz. After all, the man had nearly collapsed when he saw Tansu -a fact which, surely, Latife knew.
Half an hour later, after the car pulled into the station car park, Ìkmen got his answer.
Quite when istanbulis developed the overwhelming anxiety so many of them exhibit when brought into contact with the police or the army is difficult to say. The troubled times of the 1970s when politics became both dangerous and polarised, or in the more settled eighties when the country, though quiet, lived under the yoke of martial law? Perhaps although Ìkmen felt personally that this phenomenon went back far further, back to the days when every man and woman lived in fear of what he or she might inadvertently say, back to the time of the despotic Sultan Abdul Hamid.
Had Abdul Hamid never reigned, it is difficult now to say just when the republic would have come about. Perhaps it would have still come into being in 1923, but living under a despotic regime for so long had certainly added impetus, the nation had been aching for change. Abdul Hamid, it is said, possessed more spies, who pandered to his paranoid fears, than any other modern monarch. There were thousands of them and he read every one of their reports. On a daily basis.
Latife Emin got out of the car quite calmly and willingly. She even, without assistance, walked purposefully over to the back entrance.
'You will be required to remove your shoes and then walk up and down in front of Mr Temiz,' Ìkmen said as he placed the large carrier bag he had just taken from the car boot in front of her. 'And, of course, you will have to wear this,' he added.
But it was the smell that finally did it.
When Suleyman opened the door onto that long, cell-lined corridor illuminated by the weak yellow light of night-time incarceration, a hot waft of reeking air escaped into the night. The scent of miserable unwashed bodies. Or perhaps it was the actual sight of the long blonde coat inside the bag. Latife Emin placed both her hands on the door posts and braced herself rigid inside the entrance. From the back she looked like a figure, so it occurred to Ìkmen, of Christ crucified.
She said just one word, 'No.'
'Having come this far, we must go on,' Ìkmen said as he placed one hand gently on her shoulder. 'Mr Temiz has already been prepared for your visit.'
'No!'
'Miss Emin…'
'And if he identifies me?'
Ìkmen looked at Suleyman and then back at what appeared, in the shadows, to be the deep blackness of her eyes.
'Then we will have to ask you some more questions, madam.'
Her face contorted in a way that, had Ìkmen been a less well-informed individual, he could easily have mistaken for the mask of a female devil.
Gentiy, but with some insistence, Dr Halman took hold of Latife Emin around the waist in an attempt to steer her into the building. 'Come along’ she said, 'this needs to be-'
'No! No, I can't!'
'But then why did you-'
'I'll tell you, all right?' she cried as great, misery-fattened tears streaked down her face. 'Just take me somewhere civilised and I'll tell you anything you want to know! And here’ she kicked the bag containing the coat violently away from her, 'take that thing away from me! Take it now.'
Chapter 17
Unusually, Inspector Ìkmen asked that Interview Room 3 be thoroughly cleaned before he and Inspector Suleyman took the small, platinum-blonde woman into it. Quite why, the two young constables charged with this task didn't know. But then Ìkmen could be very odd at times, and even though they knew that officially he was not supposed to be at work, the constables did as he instructed, albeit slowly. It was not, they knew, a good idea to do otherwise.