Barbara Nadel - Arabesk

'So,' he said, 'can I see Mr Urfa now? Offer him comfort, the loving shoulder of a true friend…'

Although it seemed like so much more, probably only a second or two elapsed before the policeman replied.

'No,' he said, and grabbed hold of the manager's shirtsleeve, pinching just a little of the plump man's skin between his fingers. 'But you can come and see the inspector. He'll be very interested in your idiot.' Then turning to one of his colleagues he suddenly smiled and said, 'Did you see the match last night?'

Leaving Çöktin to sit with the now conscious Urfa,

Suleyman quietly took hold of Dr Sarkissian's elbow and led him out into the opulently mirrored hall.

'What I don't understand.' he said as he tried, but failed, to avoid observing his own figure in the glass, 'is why Erol Urfa didn't tell us his daughter was missing in the first instance. I mean, surely as soon as he could see that his wife was dead his first thought must have been for his child.'

The doctor, who had managed to position himself so that he could not see any part of his own body in the numerous mirrors, sighed heavily. 'In theory you are right However, shock can do very peculiar things to people. Finding one's wife dead, although I cannot speak from my own experience, could I believe temporarily rob a man of his everyday wits.'

'Yes, but even so, with a child involved…'

'More of a baby than a child. Ten weeks old. It's very new and Urfa does not even live here in the accepted sense.' He paused briefly and shook his head. 'But then perhaps we are not the best of men to be considering whether or not a man may easily forget his newborn infant. Although, as you lot say, Insallah you will know the joy of parenthood one day, my dear Suleyman, even if I may not.'

Not a little embarrassed by what the much older and rather regretful man had said, Suleyman smiled briefly before changing the subject. 'So what we have then is a possibly murdered woman and a missing child.'

'Who may,' Sarkissian said, raising one finger to make his point, 'be the key to the mother's death. Somebody may have killed Mrs Urfa not out of desire for the woman's husband but in order to possess the child.' Then clapping one hand affectionately across Suleyman's back, he added, 'Could be awfully melodramatic this, you know.’

'Not a little like the music Mr Urfa makes.'

Sarkissian indulged in a muted laugh. 'Quite so! Çetin Ìkmen, as I know you must appreciate, will be thrilled.'

Although Suleyman, for whom the subject of Ìkmen was delicate on all sorts of levels, did not immediately answer the doctor, it was not his silence that caused the latter to suddenly wrinkle his brow into a frown. Something which seemed to be behind Suleyman's shoulder appeared to be the culprit As soon as Suleyman turned and followed the line of Sarkissian's gaze, he knew exactly what had given the medic pause.

He revealed his amusement via the tiniest of smiles. 'It really is a very awful shirt.'

'Awful doesn't express fully what I feel about it,' the doctor replied with some vehemence. Then thrusting one hand forward in order to indicate the figure now lurking alone in Urfa's dining room, he inquired, 'Who is that man anyway?'

'He's Urfa's manager, Ibrahim Aksoy.'

'What's he doing here?'

'He came here wanting to see Urfa. He also reckons that somebody he describes as a "retard" told him Ruya Urfa was dead even before he reached these apartments. This "idiot" told Aksoy he was a neighbour.'

'But nobody knows that Ruya Urfa is dead except ourselves, Urfa himself and-'

'And, the person who committed the act, if this is indeed murder. Yes, Doctor. The men are in the process of visiting all the other apartments in the block now.'

'And Aksoy? What of this grotesque in pink?'

Suleyman smiled. 'Disarmed and alone, he is, I think, frightened enough to be telling us something approximating to the truth.'

The doctor, his eyes wide with surprise, inquired, 'You mean he came in here carrying a weapon?'

'No,' Suleyman said. He slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a very small mobile telephone.'Only this.'

Sarkissian's face rearranged itself into a picture of recognition. 'Which, had he used it to call the press corps-'

'Would have been like placing a bomb under this investigation before it has even begun,' Suleyman concluded.

As both the doctor and the policeman stood looking at Aksoy as if he were an exhibit in one of the glass cases at the Topkapi Museum, the manager turned slowly to return their gaze. His eyes reflected a deep, almost hysterical fear.

‘ ‘ ‘

Unlike Ibrahim Aksoy, Kenan and Semahat Temiz were, as they always had been, very calm around policemen. Secure in their habitual law-abiding innocence and cushioned by their not inconsiderable fortune, Mr and Mrs Temiz were not even mildly fazed when a young and to them rather abrupt policeman came to the door of their apartment They had of course overheard all the commotion from that strange young woman's apartment across the hall for some time and had even spoken briefly about it between themselves. Their son Cengiz was wont to say from time to time that the young man who sometimes came to visit the girl was some sort of popular music star, but then Cengiz did make things up. It was therefore fortuitous, or so the old couple thought at the time, that Cengiz was out when the policeman called.

"Good morning, officer,' Kenan said as he opened the door, as was his wont, just a crack first and then the whole way once he had identified the caller. 'Is there a problem? Can we help you at all?'

'You might, yes.'

Semahat, who had now joined her husband at the door, smiled at the officer through a haze of her beloved Angora cat's fur. This animal, whose name was Rosebud, went everywhere with her mistress except outside the apartment

'Well, show the officer in then, Kenan,' she said to her husband as she turned to go back into her drawing room.

'Oh, yes, but of course. Please come inside.' Kenan, his old, lined face just touched by the thinnest blush of red, ushered the officer into the hall and then, following his wife, into the drawing room.

Without even pretending to the usual niceties that normally predate any sort of Turkish conversation, the officer launched into his reason for being in the Temiz family apartment The quantity of lovingly tended high-quality Ottoman copper artefacts it contained was quite lost on him.

'I understand from other residents that you have a son,' he said, addressing his remarks only to Kenan.

'Yes,' the old man replied. 'Cengiz.'

'Is he in?'

'No. He went out some time ago.'

'It is his custom,' Semahat expanded, 'to take food to the cats of Karaköy and other locally deprived areas.' Tucking Rosebud's tail underneath the cat's behind, Semahat lowered herself gently down onto a silk-covered divan. 'We are, officer, as you can see, great lovers of our beloved Prophet's most faithful animal friends.'

Taking a notebook and pen out of the pocket of his shirt, the policeman continued, 'Large, is he, your son?'

'He's a big man, yes,' Kenan said and then, stuttering a little as a slight unease overtook him, he added, 'Er, just, um, what is this about, officer?'

'A bit simple too.'

Semahat, her cat still in her hands, sprang from her seat like a panther. 'I beg your pardon!'

Looking at her properly for the first time and seeing, for his pains, the face of an elegant but outraged elderly lady, the policeman cleared his throat and then mumbled a very brief and barely audible apology.

'If,' Semahat declaimed, her eyes most definitely, if metaphorically, looking down upon the officer, 'you mean that my son suffers from Down's syndrome then that is indeed true. Though chronologically our son is now forty-five years old, his mind is that of a child.'