Free A Passion for Killing by Barbara Nadel

breathed.
    ‘Both Sergeant Melik and my assistant Dr Mardin certainly brought the Nizam Tapan case to his attention last November,’ Arto Sarkissian continued. ‘He said that he would do something about it and then – nothing; the case was dropped. Now this. I don’t even know why Cabbar Soylu has been designated a peeper victim anyway, no one does. Except Inspector Süleyman.’
    Outside, the sunset call to prayer began its sinuous wash across the many, many mosques of İstanbul. İkmen imagined his wife as he knew she would be, praying. How nice it must be, he thought, to have such ironclad certainty in your life!
    ‘Mehmet Süleyman is not corrupt,’ İkmen said softly at length.
    ‘No . . .’
    ‘And yet, Arto, I assume this conversation has to involve you asking me to challenge him about the events you have described.’
    ‘Don’t you think this is serious, Çetin?’ the Armenian asked.
    ‘Yes.’ İkmen looked up into his friend’s face, frowning. ‘And I don’t doubt that what you, Dr Mardin and Melik say is true. But Mehmet Süleyman? I can’t believe him capable of wrongdoing . . .’
    ‘I don’t believe that he is willingly concealing evidence either,’ Arto replied. ‘But what has happened is nevertheless wrong and I, at least, need some clarification. I’ve tried to talk to him myself, but to no avail. So, Çetin, yes, I do need you to talk to him about this. You are his friend, he loves and respects you, and I don’t want to have to take this up to Ardıç, I really don’t.’
    ‘No.’ Quite what the explosive commissioner of police, Ardıç would do about such a situation, İkmen didn’t know. Old and disillusioned as he was, Ardıç still had the reputation for being a vicious and unpredictable adversary. İkmen shook his head as if to dislodge the image of a fat, enraged Ardıç from his mind and said, ‘But to get back to my body, Arto. Is there anything else I need to know?’
    ‘Yes. Your carpet dealer was shot after he had brought his vehicle to a halt. He was in his car when he was shot. From short range and, I think, he turned away from his assailant. So the murderer was outside and shot into the car as Uzun twisted his body away.’
    ‘So he pulled over for some reason.’
    ‘Yes, but then once he was dead, he and the vehicle were pushed down into the forest below. Then the tracks were, as we’ve seen, erased.’
    ‘Mmm.’ İkmen frowned.
    ‘Apart from that,’ Arto said, ‘Yaşar Uzun was in good health. He smoked cigarettes and, sometime recently, cannabis, too. But he wasn’t what I’d call a user of cannabis. I think he was just a man who enjoyed the occasional – what do they call it – joint?’
    ‘Yes. So no grim diseases or heroin abuse or anything like that?’
    ‘No. You know, Çetin, that Inspector İskender thinks this might have been a Mafia hit.’
    ‘Yes.’ İkmen sighed. ‘But then we all know that their influence stretches into most corners of society, carpet trading being only one of the more obvious arenas. All I have to do is to work out which particular mob is responsible. Could it be the delightful Edip family of Edirnekapı, or maybe what remains of my local gangsters, the Müren family? But then again maybe . . .’ He rubbed his tired face with his rough, leaf-dry hands. ‘Arto, do you know much about the English soldier called Lawrence of Arabia?’
    His friend knew as much as İkmen, basically what he had gleaned from the famous 1960s film. But he didn’t know anything more and certainly the whole carpet thing was a total mystery to him – except in one regard.
    ‘I do know that provenance is important,’ the Armenian said. ‘For instance a carpet that can be proven to have belonged to a significant member of the old imperial family could fetch a very high price. Even those enormous carpets that can be difficult to sell because of their size can fetch big prices if they belonged to, say, a sultan or maybe a prominent