An Oriental Murder Read online

  “I will be down in the lobby if you need me. It’s a strange thing, it looks almost like an impossible set of murders. No one entered the room and no one left the room and yet we have two dead bodies. How? Let me know when you’ve solved it, Yasemin Hanim.”

  Sinan winked at the forensics team and walked away.

  The reception for the authors’ congress was well underway. Mutterings of a double murder floated amid the crowd lending a frisson of excitement to their world of make-believe crime. Sinan had no intention of staying. He knew he could interview the occupants of the hotel the next day but the woman with the copper-coloured hair and the long black dress stood by the birdcage lift and held out her hand.

  “Bea Schiller. You must be Inspector Sinan Kaya.”

  Sinan opened his mouth to speak but she continued.

  “I have heard so much about you. You really are as dashingly good looking in the flesh as they described in the write-up about the Sultan Suleyman incident.”

  Sinan had little self-consciousness. He rarely felt embarrassment. He knew that he was good at his job. No, not simply good but exceptionally good. If people wanted to comment on this, that was fine. But this copper-coloured woman. This Bea Schiller caught him off guard. Close up, her resemblance to Ani was less but she still had an air of something… familiar. He was silent.

  “Please, let me get you dinner. The congress will finish their reception drinks in a minute and then dinner will be served. Please join me.”

  On a conscious level Sinan felt the need to distance himself but the softness of her hand and the hunger in his stomach led him to the large dining hall.

  Gold-plated candelabras lined the long, linen-draped tables. Waiters darted in and out of guests swaying in from the drinks reception. Sinan drank a large gulp of ice cold water. He closed his eyes as he felt the cold hit the nerve endings at the back of his throat. Plates of mezes, yoghurt with herbs, spicy tomatoes, broad bean puree and fried octopus were placed in front of each of the guests. Bea pulled her chair closer to Sinan.

  “We American women are pretty forward, you know. Sorry about that. Hope I’m not intimidating you?”

  Sinan took another gulp of water and spoke without meeting her gaze.

  “Not at all. It’s a pleasure to be asked to eat with a beautiful woman.” As he said the words, he remembered his promised date with Zeynep from the fraud department.

  “So, do you think you know how the two bodies were killed? A classic locked room scenario, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I’m not sure about agree but it looks odd. You know when Sultan Mehmet II took the city of Constantinople from the Byzantines it looked to be an impossible task. But he waited, bided his time, sized up the barriers and struck in the least expected way at the least expected time.”

  “Fascinating. So, a kind of locked room scenario for the whole of the city.”

  “Yes. But there was, as there always is – unless you believe in magic – a solution.”

  “So, what did this Sultan Mehmet II do?”

  “In 1453 he besieged the city with troops and ships for fifty-three days. He was only twenty-one years old but sniffed the scent of a wounded empire. There was no apparent way to get his ships into Istanbul along the Golden Horn. The Byzantines had set up a series of chains that effectively blocked any ship’s entrance. So Mehmet ordered a road of oiled logs to be set up on the hill at Galata.”

  Sinan waved his hand in the direction of the door as though this explained where the nearby district of Galata was.

  “And?” prompted Bea, ducking beneath Sinan’s hand.

  “And, well… he was the sultan and he ordered hundreds of men to haul the boats up the hill on the oiled logs and deposited them in the Golden Horn. He couldn’t reach it by sea. It was a locked city. But he found a way in.”

  Bea cradled her chin in her upturned palms and stared. Sinan looked at his fried octopus, the flesh was slightly warm, he thought, before placing a large forkful in his mouth. Bea laced her fingers together, leant across the table and whispered,

  “The spider weaves the curtains

  in the palace of the Caesars

  The owl calls the watches

  in the towers of Afrasiab.”

  Sinan looked up and smiled. Just as he was about to reply, an elderly woman festooned in scarves towered over Bea.

  “Inspector Sinan, my mother – Agatha Schiller.”

  Chapter Three

  I want the right of life,

  of the leopard at the spring,

  of the seed splitting open.

  Cutting along the body of his fish to remove the backbone, Sinan was unaware of Bea and her mother. He continued with the skill of a surgeon to remove the head and to dissect the brain. It was only when Bea spluttered that he looked up.

  “Do you intend to eat that or serve it up for an autopsy?”

  Sinan squeezed a slice of lemon over the flesh of the fish and grimaced.

  “The art of life is in the preparation and that includes eating. Now, I can eat without bones catching at the back of my throat.”

  “And the brain?”

  “The best part of all.”

  Agatha Schiller watched as her daughter twirled her fork around her plate. A flush of colour spread its way up her neck to her cheeks and Agatha was certain that the effect was not caused by the wine. She had seen her daughter work men on many occasions, particularly her menagerie of husbands. Flicks of hair, concentrated eye contact and the twirling of fingers were part of her repertoire. But Sinan, oddly she thought, was not responding in the same way. Perhaps his police training had made him resistant to the ploys of amorous women. He was certainly striking and this was not unnoticed by many of the women at the table. She watched as the two Yorkshire girls, Ginge and Kylie stared, stroking the base of their wine glasses suggestively. Sinan was unaware. He was starving. The food was good and it was not often that he got to eat in the Pera Palas Hotel. If questioned he would explain that it was part of the investigation. The fact that the chef served the best grilled red mullet this side of the Bosphorus was immaterial.

  “But still, the perfect locked room scenario, don’t you think?”

  Sinan stabbed his fork into a side bowl of samphire drenched in garlic and olive oil.

  “Depends what you mean.” Sinan looked sideways at Bea and winked. She felt her muscles twitch.

  “No way to get in and no way to get out. Who could have murdered two people?”

  “Well, there are a number of possibilities. She may have killed him before killing herself or vice versa. Or there may have been something in the room. Or there might have been a third person in the room who somehow, quite miraculously I have to admit, escaped past the four security guards.” Sinan munched on a forkful of fish while staring directly at Bea. She looked less like Ani in the half-light of the candelabra. Her hair was less red and her skin darker, features sharper.

  “Okay, I concede that there may be other options but it sure looks like an intractably, unsolvable locked room scenario to me. You know I write detective novels and I wrote one just like this a couple of years ago. It got serialised on NBC. You might have watched it, The Inescapable Conundrum.”

  Sinan chewed his fish and looked blankly at Bea.

  “No television, I’m afraid.”

  Bea stared. Of course he had no television, she thought.

  “Well, if you have time after dinner, I would like to talk to you about my theory.”

  Sinan’s concentration was side-lined as a slip of paper flew across the table. Bea peered over and caught her mother’s censorious gaze. Dabbing the corners of her mouth with a serviette, Bea screwed her eyes in response to her mother and placed her hand proprietorially over Sinan’s. She caught the child like written invitation to have cocktails after dinner in mid-air and when she looked up, she saw the Yorkshire girls winking at Sinan.

  “Thank you, ladies but I‘m afraid I cannot drink on duty.” Sinan smiled at the two young women who
promised a non-alcoholic cocktail and lots of laughs. Unwilling to concede defeat, Bea commandeered the conversation explaining that Inspector Sinan Kaya planned to interview herself and her mother regarding the murders. The girls blanched at the mention of murder, wine spilling from their open mouths.

  Sinan was not too tired to miss an opportunity to sample the quince dessert. A bowl of ruby coloured fruit with a scoop of thick cream. But Bea continued to talk. Warm air from her mouth blew close to his ear and as he shuffled to one side, she matched his move.

  “I knew him, you know.”

  Sinan looked across the table. Agatha Schiller’s lipstick was smudged and her eyes were slightly glazed.

  “Mother, are you drunk?”

  “Stupid girl. Of course, I am not drunk. I know how to carry myself unlike you, my darling, gifted daughter.”

  Agatha spluttered the words as though they caused her pain. Sinan closed his eyes and savoured the sharp sweetness of the quince. The bickering between Agatha and Bea continued but Sinan focused only on the taste lingering in his mouth. Scraping his bowl with one of the hotel’s silver spoons that he thought, absentmindedly, detracted from the taste, he gazed along the table. A crowd of writers from all over the world. Links with the Prime Minister? The man with the tie covered in pharaohs. The small, white haired ghost of a woman. The hawk nosed man beside her. Possibilities ran through Sinan’s mind as the sweetness of the quince tingled the back of his tongue.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  Agatha staggered out of her chair, flinging her head back, bellowing at Bea.

  “Mother, calm down. You are making a scene.”

  Bea tripped over the leg of her chair as she moved round to support Agatha. Sinan watched as she pushed her fiercely away.

  “I need to speak to you, Inspector. I need to report a crime.”

  “Mother, you are embarrassing yourself. Please, sit down and finish your dessert.”

  Bea looked along the table and across the room to the other writers who were now transfixed on another scenario.

  “I need to speak to the Inspector.” Agatha gripped the back of her chair, toppling slightly to the right while jabbing Bea in the waist with her forefinger.

  The serviette was also decorated with the tugra of Sultan Suleyman, Sinan noted as he wiped his mouth. Without saying a word, he pushed his chair beneath the table and caught Agatha beneath the elbow. Together they walked out of the dining hall into the reception. Bea scuttled behind trying not to trip over the black netting of her dress.

  It was just about possible to fit three people into the manager’s office behind the main reception desk but it was, nevertheless, a tight squeeze. Such proximity heightened Agatha’s lily of the valley perfume and Sinan gagged as she leant over him to sit down. Her red lipstick had leaked into the deep lines around her top lip. She avoided looking at Bea.

  “So, Mrs Schiller. What would you like to tell me?”

  Sinan softened the tone he would normally use for people he felt were wasting his time. He came across them frequently but Agatha Schiller was an old woman, about the same age as his mother and despite the clown-like lipstick and brash clothes, she looked vulnerable.

  “Him. I knew him.”

  Sinan looked at Bea for further clarification but she shrugged her shoulders and pouted.

  “Mrs Schiller, if I may be so bold, could I ask you to explain who ‘him’ is.”

  “Agatha.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Agatha, call me Agatha not that silly Mrs Schiller. Goodness knows I should have been, Mrs Demir.”

  “The Prime Minister, you mean. You knew him?”

  Bea opened her tired eyes wider and shrugged when Sinan looked at her.

  “Yes. A long time ago when I was young and the tulips were in bloom and the book bazaar was where you could find the secrets of the universe.

  You'll live, my dear--

  my memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind.

  Of course you'll live, red-haired lady of my heart:

  in the twentieth century

  grief lasts

  at most a year.

  Nazim Hikmet, wonderful poet, don’t you think so, Inspector Sinan?”

  “Oh mother, stop being so melodramatic. You’re not writing one of your potboilers you know.”

  Bea stopped suddenly and bit her bottom lip.

  “Potboiler, did you say?”

  Agatha raised her voice and Sinan drew a deep breath. He had eaten well but now he should be back in his flat in Besiktas where nothing awaited him other than the promise of a cold bed and fraught sleep. He had forgotten about his date with Zeynep and it was now too late. He pictured her guiltily, sitting in the café by the police station. The chance of a warm, inviting body gone.

  “No, mother. It was just a slip of the tongue. You know how much I admire your work.”

  Sinan felt time drift. Agatha’s face, gargoyle-like, was wet with tears.

  “I killed him.”

  Bea laughed, “Oh, mother. Now you really are being ridiculous. For the love of God, will you stop to think what you’re saying. You are not narrating one of your stories to Marsha now, you know.”

  “I know that dear but you see, I had to do it and now I have to confess.” Powder from her face mixed with tears to form rivulets and dripped on to her scarf.

  Sinan scratched the stubble that poked though his chin and savoured his options. He could dismiss what this old lady said as whimsy or he could pursue it, feeling in his gut that it would be a waste of time and energy. Although he was tempted to take the first option, he knew that he could not.

  “Okay. This is a big thing to confess to, Mrs Schiller, I mean Agatha. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you kill Prime Minister Demir and why?”

  As though now taking a small slice of delight in garnering the full attention of Sinan and Bea, Agatha leant forward. She looked around the room alert for eavesdroppers.

  “Well, you see. I have cancer of the skin, young man. Terminal, I must add.”

  “No, it’s not, mother. You know it isn’t. Stop with the pity tourism and cut to how you did it.”

  Agatha narrowed her eyes at Bea for what appeared to be an inordinate length of time. Sinan scraped his shoes along the vinyl flooring. No carpet here in the servants’ quarters, he thought.

  “As I was saying, I have terminal cancer and thought to myself how can I cure it? Doctors in America, so expensive and usually so useless. Anyway, I read about this marvellous honey that you can buy on the sly in the Egyptian bazaar here in Istanbul. Do you know it?”

  Agatha pursed her lips and leant further forward.

  “The Egyptian bazaar? Yes, of course. I buy herbs and spices for my mother that she can’t get in her village.”

  “Wonderful. Well, you may know of the deli bal then.”

  Sinan scratched the stubble above his top lip, wishing that he could just leave and get to bed.

  “No, no I can’t say that I have heard of it. Look Mrs Schiller—”

  “Agatha.” Her voice was sharp and shrill.

  “Sorry, Agatha. Can you tell me what you have to tell me and then we can all sleep? I’ve got to get across the city to Besiktas and the ferry will probably not be running for much longer.”

  “I’m coming to it. Be patient, handsome Inspector. All good things come to those that wait. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, Inspector.”

  Bea stared with horror at her mother. Was she really flirting? She squeezed her eyes closed after seeing her mother place her spindly fingers on Sinan’s knee.

  “Mother!”

  Bea’s voice warbled. Sinan stood up suddenly but Agatha pulled him back down.

  “Mrs Schiller… Agatha, I really must be going.”

  “Wait, young man. There’s more. The deli bal or mad honey as I know it, is supposed to cure cancer of the skin. Have you heard of this?”

  Sinan shook his head and yawned.

  “Well, you see. It ma
kes great claims. However, the thing you must remember is that it can kill if you take more than half a teaspoonful. It is grown in a very small area high up in the mountains in the Black Sea region of Turkey. The unique thing is that the bees feed solely on rhododendrons which are poisonous. The pollen they take from these flowers concentrates the poison in the honey. Terribly expensive though. Mind you, the poor honey farmers have to scale the sides of cliffs to reach the wild bee colonies and danger deserves a fair reward, I say.”

  “And the link to the murder of Mr Demir, the Prime Minister is…?”

  Sinan’s patience had all but given way. Tapping the tip of his shoes on the vinyl flooring, he was hoping that Agatha would also sense the limit of his attention.

  “Well, I have plenty of syringes.”

  Sinan raised his eyebrows. Bea bit her bottom lip. Blood dripped onto her hands but she was oblivious.

  “For what?”

  “Not heroin, if that’s what you think I meant!” Agatha laughed alone. “No, I have diabetes and have to inject myself so you see I always have a ready supply. Well, I saw him. In the reception. With a floozy. Young enough to be his granddaughter… Perhaps we could have had our own if his family had not bribed him with a new car in return for cutting off all links with me, the infidel. Anyway, I went straight to my room, filled the syringe with the mad honey and followed him into the birdcage lift. It was so easy. I lifted his shirt while he was canoodling with the whore and injected him.”

  Sinan pictured the stickiness on the bed.

  “And he didn’t even recognise me after those months that have bewitched me for my whole, entire life.”

  The three sat in silence. Noise muted by the walls, drifted through as though from a distant radio. Sinan stretched his fingers out, cracked the joints and yawned again. Bea reached out to her mother’s hand but Agatha snatched it back.