Barbara Nadel - Arabesk

'When women are poisoned,' the doctor continued, 'I subconsciously, I must say, see the shadow of the harem.'

Suleyman gave Sarkissian one of his almost obscenely perfect smiles. 'You are, I take it, theorising that a woman may have perpetrated this act?'

'Oh no,' Sarkissian replied, waving his hands dismissively in front of his face. 'I am just a doctor, not a theorist. That is your job, my dear Suleyman.'

'But?'

'But,' he was smiling again now, obviously pleased to give vent to his thoughts however off kilter they might be, 'our Mr Urfa is extremely popular with women. I thought, as I expect you did too, that he was solely involved with the lovely Tansu Hanim. And if I am shocked that he has this little wife then perhaps others were surprised also. Surprised and envious maybe. Not that my silly, florid mind is totally obsessed by old harem tales of women slipping poisons into the sherbet of their rivals, you understand…'

'But it is a most unexpected turn of events nevertheless,' Suleyman concluded.

'Talk!'

All three men turned to face the source of the harsh, rather common voice that came from the man now slumped against the doorway of the kitchen.

'While you talk you do nothing about my Merih’ Urfa growled, pushing roughly against the hand of a young constable who was now, too late, attempting to restrain him.

Moving forward in order to protect the gaze of his live patient from the face of his deceased charge, Arto Sarkissian put one friendly hand out towards the famous singer in a gesture of concern. 'Now-'

'Merih,' the man repeated the name, his voice now clearly exhibiting that deliberate but slurred quality of the unhappily sedated.

'No, Ruya,' the doctor corrected, 'or that was what I thought you said your wife's name was.'

'Yes, Ruya, my wife, she was, is…' Urfa slumped forward a little, his head dropping towards the doctor's shoulder in a movement of despair. 'And Merih…'

Suddenly and for no reason that he could logically fathom, Suleyman was possessed by a shiver of apprehension. The sort of feeling Ìkmen had always told him he must learn to trust 'Who is Merih, Mr Urfa?' he asked. 'If Ruya was your wife, then Merih is…?'

Looking past the doctor's shoulder, directly at the body of his wife, Urfa whispered, 'She is our daughter. She is just ten weeks old.'

'But…'

Then, his eyes filling and finally overflowing with tears, Urfa choked, 'She was with her mother. She was always with her mother! But now she has gone. I see her nowhere.' And with that his eyes turned up inside his head as he lost consciousness.

In retrospect, a pink, open-necked shirt was not as respectful an ensemble as he would have liked for the occasion, but then when one is in a hurry one does not always think of such things. And Ibrahim Aksoy had been in a tearing hurry as soon as he had put the phone down on the luminous Tansu Hanim less than half an hour before. When, so the star had told him, she had earlier that morning attempted to contact Erol Urfa at his Ìstiklal Caddesi apartment, she had been answered not by her beloved but by a very curt man who had informed her that Mr Urfa was currently 'indisposed'. Quite who this person was, why he was in Erol's apartment and what this 'indisposition' might consist of was not disclosed. But Tansu had been worried enough to contact the only person she knew she could really trust vis-a-vis Erol, his manager Ibrahim Aksoy. As, effectively, the owner of the young superstar, Aksoy would either maximise publicity for his charge's indisposition, if that were appropriate, or cover it up in as diplomatic a fashion as possible. Either way he would sort it, just as Tansu's own manager had, over the years, dealt with such indispositions of hers -her jealous lovers, her plastic surgery operations, all those abortions.

Quite what Ibrahim Aksoy had been expecting as he made his way to the Ìzzet Pasa Apartments, he could not now recall. That it included neither clusters of armed policemen nor an earlier, almost surreal encounter with a peculiar man who claimed to be a neighbour of Eroi's was pretty certain. If asked, Aksoy would probably have described the peculiar man as retarded. This man had, unbidden, approached the corpulent manager as the latter puffed his way past the old French consulate at the Taksim end of Ìstiklal Caddesi.

Barrelling out from Zambak Sokak on the right and lumbering rather more closely to Aksoy than the latter found comfortable, the man simply said, 'Mrs Ruya is dead.'

Aksoy knew that Ruya was the name of the contentious country wife his client insisted upon keeping.

'Mrs Ruya who? ?he asked, anxious as one in his position would be to clarify matters.

'Mrs Ruya across the hallway.'

'Across the hallway? Across the hallway where?'

'From my apartment' Spoken through a long, thin strand of drool, the man's words smelt as well as sounded. Aksoy took a handkerchief out of his pocket and placed it delicately across his outraged nose.

'And your apartment is where?' he inquired.

'Mine is Ìzzet Pasa Apartments 3/10,' he said.

Aksoy's lipid-encmsted heart, aware just like his brain that Erol's address was Ìzzet Pasa 3’12, did not know whether to jump for joy or sorrow. If this congenital idiot was correct, then the inconvenient child bride was now no more. Just to make certain, however, he asked,'You do mean Mrs Ruya Urfa, I-'

'Didn't do it myself!'

'Eh?'

Quite suddenly this extraordinary creature had, for some reason, taken fright. Why, Aksoy could not imagine. He had, as far as he was aware, been quite polite to the fool, or at least he thought he had. For a few moments he stopped and watched as the man, the fat on his back wobbling over the creases in his shirt, retreated down the road, muttering things that Aksoy could not catch.

Later, as he approached what turned out to be a knot of policemen standing in front of the entrance to the apartments, Aksoy prepared himself for the fact that what the 'idiot’ had just told him might actually be true. He also readied himself to use that information if necessary.

Aksoy was intercepted by a tall, uniformed man. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'may I help you?'

'I have come to see my client, Mr Urfa,' Aksoy said with a smile. 'I am his manager, Ibrahim Aksoy. You may have heard-'

'Nobody is permitted to visit Mr Urfa at the present time, sir.'

'Oh. Is he in trouble then, or unwell?' Aksoy, whose mind was in reality exploring all the possibilities that would now exist for Erol if Ruya really were dead, placed a concerned expression upon his face, hoping it might just belie the loudness of his shirt.

The officer remained coldly impassive. 'I cannot comment, sir.'

'Oh.' With a twirl of his moustache Aksoy feigned moving away and then, thoughtfully, twisted round to speak to the officer again. 'It isn't anything to do with his wife, is it?' He watched the policeman's eyes narrow. 'Little Ruya?'

'Why would you think that?' The 'sir' bit had quite gone from the officer's speech now.

'Oh, just a passing comment somebody made to me.'

'What do you mean? Who?' Both the policeman and his gun leaned down menacingly towards Aksoy who felt himself go just a little bit pale.

'Well, it was a man.' Then looking quickly from side to side to ensure that no one else was listening, Aksoy added, 'An idiot type actually. Said he lived here at the apartments.'

'Yes.'

'Just mentioned that Mrs Urfa, Ruya, may have, well, er, may have sort of died and-' 'This man was a neighbour?' 'So he said.'

The expression on the policeman's face was, for just a moment, almost indecipherable. A mixture of what could have been suspicion coupled with stone-faced gravity. Ibrahim Aksoy found it, whatever its composition, really rather frightening. He quickly changed the subject back to one that directly impacted upon himself.