Free A Passion for Killing by Barbara Nadel Page B

nineteenth-century vintage. Four storeys or more in height, the grimy stucco-encrusted façades looked uniformly neglected. Open doors, like this one, frequently revealed litter-strewn halls and the usually sightless lower windows were more often than not covered in fly posters for bands and slightly fanatical political organisations. Inside there was often a rather dodgy-looking lift and this building was no exception. But Süleyman got in after Mürsel, without any questions or comments about where they might be headed. After all, if this place, wherever it was, turned out to be another venue in which Mürsel attempted to seduce him, there was nothing novel in that. Mürsel always tried, so far without success, to seduce Mehmet Süleyman. Wherever they were going in this uncomfortably small lift was unlikely to make any difference to that.
    As the lift slowly ascended, Süleyman attempted to look at anything except Mürsel’s sensual, mildly amused face. Knowing something about what people like him did, which involved a lot that gangsters also did, made the policeman cringe. There were, he knew, far less destructive and far more honourable ways in which one could serve one’s country. But then like everything else in life, being or not being a spy was a choice and he had chosen to most definitely pass on that option.
    The top floor of this particular building turned out to be the fifth. Mürsel got out first and led Süleyman along a depressingly dusty corridor towards a very nondescript door. Before he opened it, he said, ‘Welcome, Mehmet, to the most magnificent view of this city you will ever see.’
    The entire rooftop area was set out like a lush garden restaurant. Funky metal tables and chairs nestled in amongst great shady palms, long-leafed tobacco plants and tubs of very brightly coloured tropical-looking blooms the policeman could not even begin to identify. It was all very gorgeous although it was as nothing compared to the enormous copper bar that stretched across the entire front end of the space. And that in turn was as nothing to the truly amazing view of the city that lay beyond the bar and its serried ranks of rakı, blue curaçao, vodka and gin bottles that reflected in a golden glow across the bar’s deep coppery surface. With the sun setting in the west, across the Golden Horn which Süleyman was now looking down upon, everything made of either stone or metal shone with a pale yellow glitter.
    Mürsel at his shoulder said, ‘So down directly below us we have Şişhane district, then the Horn, then across the water to the Old City, Balat, Fener, and all those old neighbourhoods. Then’ – he pointed across the Golden Horn towards the north-west – ‘up there, is Eyüp.’ He smiled. ‘Where your Ottoman ancestors would have been girded with the Sword of Osman, my dear Mehmet. Fancy a country boy like me knowing something like that.’
    To be girded with the Sword of Osman in the Holy Mosque of Eyüp was the Ottoman monarchs’ equivalent of the coronations performed by western European royals. When a sultan came to power one of his first acts was to show his people he was their legitimate ruler by being girded with the Sword of Osman as soon as he could. Mehmet Süleyman could indeed count several sultans amongst his ancestors but that was not something he dwelt on at length and so he ignored Mürsel’s allusion to it and sat down at the bar in order to enjoy the view.
    ‘So how do you know this place?’ he asked, aware, as promised, of the complete and utter emptiness of this wonderful place. ‘It’s amazing.’
    ‘It’s also not yet officially open,’ Mürsel said as he sat down next to Süleyman and lit a cigarette. ‘It’s a little early in the season as yet. It’ll be heaving come June, with the beautiful people, the monied set. One of our friends is the owner.’ He looked down into the street below and said, ‘Oh, look, there’s Haydar!’
    Haydar was a sort of henchman of