Deep waters, p.32
Deep Waters, page 32
part #4 of Inspector Ikmen Series
‘And yet,’ İkmen said, ‘at the end he was still convinced that he, if not his sister, would cheat death.’
‘Yes and no.’ She smiled. ‘A psychiatrist’s classic answer. I know. I feel he must have known the fantasy couldn’t continue in its present form, and so the only way out of it was to throw himself from the museum and then either live as a fully formed vampire or face the hated spectre of death as a kind of punishment for not achieving his goal. I think he finally realised that whichever route he took was going to lead to hell.’
‘So he was doomed,’ Suleyman said.
‘Yes. A familiar place for him,’ she said as her fingers worked towards and then retreated from her cigarette packet. ‘Your mother is a depressive and commits suicide, your father is mostly absent and thinks you’re mad anyway, and your beloved ugly sister fucks you. You’re hardly going to be comfortable in the world of nice people and positivism. With work, of course, he could have been.’ She shrugged. ‘But, true to his nature, he concealed too much from me, and his father just wanted him well, whatever that may mean.’
‘His father wanted him in an institution,’ İkmen said, ‘after Rifat’s murder.’
‘Mmm.’
Both men knew Zelfa was still troubled by what she saw as her failure with Ali Evren. But neither of them alluded to this.
İkmen continued, ‘Felicity argued with her father about this on the night of his death. She knew exactly why Ali had killed Rifat and the reasons for his drinking the Albanian’s blood. She told her father this. She also told him that she didn’t want Ali hospitalised. But İlhan Evren wasn’t having it. We’d been to see him, he was already scared. He was also disgusted by the notion of his children having sex – unsurprisingly. And so to try, I presume, to bring his daughter back to reality and make her confront what she and her brother had done, he made her look at her face in a mirror. And she saw it, maybe as she says for the first time in years – I don’t doubt that people can avoid their own image if they want to but whether she was actually invisible to herself is another matter.’
‘And so she killed her father in a fit of rage, did she?’ asked Suleyman.
‘I’ve arrested her for his murder, yes,’ İkmen replied. ‘Felicity Evren does not seem to be as criminally adept as her late father was. İlhan could have screamed and shouted at us about Albanian blood feuds and with Mehti in custody we would probably have believed him. But he was too cautious for that. He knew that unless he had actually seen something like the green Fiat with his own eyes, he shouldn’t allude to it. He had too much past to make mistakes. And so he let us draw our own conclusions, which we did for a while.’
‘But İlhan did dispose of the body?’
İkmen lit a cigarette. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he did, together with Felicity. And very professionally too. A pity for her that she didn’t take quite so much care over the killing of her father. But then she isn’t a gangster. She’s just a deluded girl who had sex with her brother. It’s hard to imagine what her state of mind must have been to enable her to kill her father like that. The rage she must have felt . . .’
‘Her brother was more important,’ Suleyman said.
‘Yes. Ali gave her the sex she craved. And as I think I’ve said to you before, Mehmet, sex, envy and fear are the only three motives for murder. But then again, there was certainly a degree of cold calculation in her actions. She said she loved Rifat and yet she disposed of his body without a thought and then turned on the tears for his family. But she’s not all that tough. We had to call the doctor down just before I left her. She sort of collapsed, though not physically. Became almost catatonic. Maybe she was thinking about what lies ahead for her. I don’t know how long she’ll get . . .’ For just a moment İkmen slumped. His face, devoid of animation, was, Suleyman thought, really starting to look old.
İkmen sat up straighter. ‘Still, that is for a judge to decide and not us,’ he said. ‘She’s really rather a pathetic figure whose brother . . .’
‘I shot, yes,’ Suleyman finished for him.
Zelfa reached out and took one of his hands in hers.
‘Everybody’s account of your actions includes the observation that you had no choice,’ İkmen said. ‘Only Yıldız doesn’t proffer an opinion and that’s because he wasn’t there and couldn’t see. You will probably have to prostrate yourself, metaphorically, before Ardiç with regard to your initial lack of procedure, but I don’t think it’ll go beyond that.’
‘Ardiç is not happy about my involvement either,’ Zelfa said. ‘I underestimated the seriousness of Ali’s mental state. I miscalculated badly.’
‘Please don’t say that in a public place, Zelfa,’ İkmen said. But nobody laughed.
Suleyman, agitated now, got up and moved across to the window. The reflection of the thin winter light from the snowy street below made him blink.
‘Anyway, when this is all over I’m going to stop working for anybody apart from myself,’ Zelfa said as she watched her fiancé watch the street scene outside.
‘Just private practice?’ İkmen asked.
‘Why should I put myself through the misery of admitting the wildly psychotic to medieval institutions or visiting wolf-men in prison when I can talk to bored housewives and under-achieving middle-aged men. Neuroses!’ she cried, unconvincingly. ‘That is the way forward.’
‘But won’t you get frustrated?’ Suleyman asked as he turned back to the room and away from his own morbid thoughts. ‘I don’t want you to be bored just because our paths crossed over Ali Evren.’
‘Oh, I was thinking I might take this step anyway,’ she said as she, very consciously, placed one hand across her belly. ‘If we’re to be married, it’s going to be awkward.’
Suleyman sighed. ‘Yes.’
And then silence descended upon the group once again. İkmen knew that he was going to have to find an opportunity to ask Zelfa’s advice about what he should do about Halil. But whatever his intentions had been earlier in the day, now did not seem to be the right time. Perhaps he would phone her later when she got home. Right now they were all preoccupied with the bizarre set of circumstances that had led to three people losing their lives in acts of what seemed to İkmen to be mad pointlessness. That the professional cloud that currently hung over poor Suleyman.
But there was still one thing he wanted Zelfa to explain to him, if she could.
‘Zelfa,’ he said, ‘you mentioned earlier that you would return to the subject of this mirror business . . .’
‘Ah yes,’ she said. But although she was listening to İkmen she was looking at her lover as he leaned against the windowsill, staring up at nothing on the ceiling. He looked so tired and strained. All the more reason to get what she knew she had to tell him over with as soon as possible.
She rose from her seat and placed Ali Evren’s file back in her cabinet. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘but I think I’ll do that on the way home, if you don’t mind, Çetin.’
‘Oh, yes, er . . .’
‘We’ll take Çetin back first, Mehmet,’ she said as she retrieved her coat from the back of her chair.
‘Yes,’ he said absently. ‘Of course.’
None of them spoke until they reached Suleyman’s car. Dusk and the still thickening snow had thrown a cloak of silence across the great city of Constantine and, until they got inside the car and Suleyman put the heater on, the three of them were struck dumb by its icy spell.
‘Of course, theoretically, Ali Evren could have killed his father,’ İkmen said from the back seat of the car. ‘His prints are going to be all over that office. Adnan Öz will, I know, exploit that. But I suppose we’ll just have to wait, as ever, for forensic.’
‘Yes.’ Zelfa turned round in her seat to look at him. ‘But then why did he seem so shocked when his sister told him of his father’s death?’
‘Because he didn’t do it,’ İkmen replied, ‘but Felicity Evren hasn’t confessed to the murder of her father, nor do I believe she will. I know because of what she told us that I have a case but I would like some forensic evidence too.’
Suleyman switched on the front and rear windscreen wipers. The sound of mechanically moving snow swished dully.
‘So where does all of this leave us with regard to Rifat Berisha then, Çetin?’ he asked as he, to his fiancée’s secret chagrin, lit up a cigarette. ‘I know we all heard the boy admit to it and there is also the sister’s testimony, but is that enough?’
‘We have to check prints and samples against those taken from the Evren family. When it’s done we’ll know for sure. Or not.’ He sighed. ‘Useless Mehti Vlora! If only he’d stayed after he saw Rifat enter the Evren house. But he was too scared even to do that.’
‘Well, I for one do think that Ali was telling us the truth,’ Zelfa began.
‘Oh yes,’ İkmen nodded, ‘I agree. But it’s so much easier if you’ve got some concrete evidence too. But tell me something about Felicity and her mirrors, Zelfa.’
‘Shall I take you straight home, Çetin?’ Suleyman interjected as he slowly pulled out into the slush-filled road.
‘Yes, that’d be good,’ İkmen replied and then, turned back to Zelfa, idly noting that, unusually for her, she wasn’t smoking. ‘So, this theory, Zelfa.’
‘The condition, or rather theoretical condition, is called negative autoscopy,’ she began, and as the car travelled through the snow-bound city, İkmen was treated to an explanation that, even by his standards, was unusual. But he found that it made sense to him. Not seeing what one didn’t want to see was understandable. In effect it was the reverse of what, some would say, happened during his encounters with his mother. He wanted to hear from her and so he did, at least that was what someone like Zelfa would say. Uncle Ahmet, like his other Albanian relatives, would describe this phenomenon as a ghost – which in a sense it was, whether one believed in the spirit or not. Something of a person remained – an intelligent energy of sorts. Felicity Evren, in contrast, had closed her mind to her own image and made herself a sort of blank slate on which she could impose whatever she wanted. And it occurred to İkmen that in some ways this was not so different from what Halil had done with what he had seen the day their mother had died. The mind did what it had to do to make life bearable.
How all this would go down at Felicity Evren’s trial, İkmen really didn’t know. Judges were notoriously conservative when it came to strange or paranormal crimes like this. Felicity Evren could very well be sent to an asylum. How very ironic that would be. But then, İkmen thought, so could he if he went too esoteric on them!
When they arrived back at his apartment building İkmen said goodbye to his colleagues and then spent a few moments alone in the snow looking at his reflection in the window of the jewellers beneath his home. And though he knew he was neither young nor attractive, he liked what he saw. His life was written in his face and, for all its hardships, he liked his life. To not have a reflection would be a denial of all that. İkmen scowled and then laughed at the image this created in the window. He lit a cigarette and went inside.
Chapter 25
* * *
A lot of people, including lawyers, consular officials and even one relative from England, came to visit Felicity Evren in the days that followed. Through thick snow and icy winds they came, anxious to provide comfort, encouragement and advice. But the woman herself just sat, silent since her interview with İkmen and, with the exception of occasional visits to the bucket in the corner of her cell, unmoving. And even when İkmen was finally called in to see whether he could rouse her from her torpor, she just carried on sitting, staring at the the walls that contained her. Whether, as some believed, she was play-acting or not, it was patently obvious that in this condition she was in no position to be brought before a judge. Dr Sezer was called in to spend some time with her. Hüseyin Sezer was, as Zelfa Halman told İkmen when he went to see her about Halil, an expert in the field of altered, especially catatonic, states.
‘It is known that when long-held fantasies or delusions are brought to an end for whatever reason, the subject’s mind can shut down,’ she said. ‘If Felicity did indeed experience negative autoscopy for many years, the combination of finally having to face the reality of her appearance, followed by her father’s death plus her subsequent experiences, could well have primed the trigger.’
‘I was actually making some progress with her,’ İkmen said, ‘but—’
‘But you arrested her, Çetin, and so, like it or not, you provided the catalyst that pressed the trigger. You and I both know that nothing is truly decided until a person comes to trial, but to many lay people arrest equals guilt, which equals imprisonment. A whole host of negative concepts enter a person’s mind when he or she is arrested – shame, guilt, imprisonment, ruin, death. And with somebody like Felicity whose world was already imploding . . .’
İkmen rose to his feet and stretched wearily. ‘Mind you, Dr Sezer did say that when he went in she moved. “Inappropriate sexual gestures” was how he termed it.’
Zelfa raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘Çöktin, who accompanied the doctor, said that she made a couple of attempts at pulling Sezer’s hand between her legs.’
‘Which means,’ Zelfa said with a shrug, ‘that she may be play-acting but what is more plausible to me is that her underlying principal motivation is now coming through. I see a lot of this with my chronics. Years spent trying to repress some overriding fixation out in the world suddenly slip away when they’re admitted to hospital. Although we place our patients in chemical straitjackets, we also accept far more from them when they are hospitalised. Mad people, Çetin,’ she smiled, ‘do stuff we would never countenance in the sane. But they’re mad and so we make allowances.’
‘You think Felicity may be some kind of nymphomaniac?’
Zelfa moved forward to help her visitor on with his coat. ‘I think that had she been pretty or even ordinarily nondescript we wouldn’t be seeing what we’re seeing today. All part of the tyranny of youth and beauty,’ she said bitterly. ‘I feel sorry for her. All that woman ever really needed was a boyfriend who appreciated her as opposed to her money.’
‘Which, given the sums involved,’ İkmen said, ‘makes you wonder why her father never put her forward for plastic surgery.’
‘Well, I know they can do a lot these days,’ the psychiatrist replied, ‘but from what I’ve observed of Felicity there appears to be actual malformation of the bone structure, which is difficult to address. I don’t know why she’s like that, but what I do know is that if you start moving bone about you can get into real difficulty. Look at Michael Jackson.’
İkmen pulled a disgusted face. ‘Indeed.’
They stood and looked at each other for a few moments. İkmen seemed reluctant to go.
‘So you think that provided my brother has some support . . .’ he began.
‘Your brother has no history of psychological turmoil, Çetin,’ Zelfa replied. ‘It will be a shock, of course, but he is physically fit, you say. I know Arto is very worried about this but my own feelings are that if the truth is presented to Halil within the security of a loving Turkish family, you may find that the darkness that surrounds your mother’s death is not as impenetrable as you thought. There are usually flashes of awareness even within the most intransigent cases of denial. I mean, if we accept that Felicity Evren has been suffering from negative autoscopy, even she had to have some notion of herself as she really was to behave as she did. Reflection or no reflection, she knew she was unappealing. Why else would she have turned to her own barely pubescent brother?’
‘Well . . .’
‘If you were to bring Halil along here to have me break the news about your mother, he would be insulted, wouldn’t he?’
‘I’d only be trying to protect him.’
‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘just like he tried to protect you when your mother died.’
Recalling his own feelings of resentment regarding this, İkmen nodded. ‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘And anyway he is a man.’
‘If you do need any help, you know where I am,’ Zelfa said.
‘Yes,’ he smiled. She opened the door for him and he left. She did, İkmen thought as he walked away, look very well indeed for a woman in her forties who was pregnant with her first child. A little larger than usual, but . . . Not that either Zelfa or Mehmet had told him about their impending addition. All Mehmet had said was that they were. going to marry sooner rather than later – news that İkmen had not commented upon. Unbeknown to his friend, İkmen had been in this situation himself long ago when Fatma had not been quite so staid as she was now. That and of course the fact that he was without doubt the son of the witch Ayşe Bajraktar. This meant that sometimes he didn’t have to be told things in order to acquire knowledge. As he descended the stairs to the street, he smiled.
When he got back to his office, İkmen first went to see Commissioner Ardiç and then, alone, spent some time reviewing the forensic evidence they had so far. It wasn’t good. No prints on the knife that killed İlhan Evren – but an immense amount of material pertaining to the Evren children, the chauffeur and the associate known as Dimitri Asanov, the man who had discovered Evren’s body. Tracked down from paperwork in Evren’s office, the police had found Asanov at his home, washing his blood-spattered clothes. İkmen had interviewed him. A nice enough man – a pimp – he’d been over in Polonezköy when Evren died. And no one had seen anyone either go into or come out of the Evren house during the night of the murder. Reserved rich Bebek folk.
And so it was possible that Felicity Evren could go free. There were no witnesses, no conclusive forensic evidence, no confession. But as he turned to the forensic reports pertaining to Rifat Berisha’s car, İkmen allowed himself a little smile. İlhan had been very good, hadn’t he? There was nothing of him in there. Ali and Felicity, yes, but İlhan? Received forensic wisdom stated that this had to be impossible. But as İkmen, if not the more technically minded Suleyman, knew, nothing is ever either foolproof or impossible. No wonder the British police had never been able to connect Evren to any acts of violence. They must have been so pleased to see the back of him when he came to Turkey. Clever old man!
