Barbara Nadel - Arabesk

'Not an easy thing to bear,' her husband added, his face now slightly turned away from the hub of the conversation. 'Even if he is a good boy.'

'At what time did your son leave this morning?'

'At about seven, as is his custom,' Semahat replied.

'Mmm.' The officer paused to look around the room for a moment 'Do you know which exit he used?'

'Which exit?'

'It would be helpful,' Semahat enunciated with not a little acid in her voice, 'if you could, officer, tell us what all this is about. My husband and I are accustomed to rather more consideration from the police than you are currently exhibiting. Not that we have had that many dealings with you fellows before, of course.'

'If you could just answer the question, madam.' A moment of impasse hung briefly between the old woman and the young policeman. Neither was accustomed to being talked down to by others. Kenan in his own, faltering fashion eventually broke the spell.

'My son always uses the, er, the fire escape,' he said. 'It saves taking the food for the cats from the kitchen and into the living areas. It also,' and here he briefly lowered his eyes, 'um, means that not so many, ah, people, um, see him go, if you know what…'

'I see.' The policeman wrote something down on his notepad. Details, the couple assumed, about their son.

As he finished his small paper exposition, Semahat cleared her throat. 'Before we go any further, officer,' she said, 'I think I would like to speak to your superior. In fact I think I will insist upon that, if you don't mind.'

The officer looked up sharply. 'You want me to go and get Inspector Suleyman?'

'If he is your superior, yes.'

'Oh, right' Slowly and, Semahat observed, rather thoughtfully, the officer put his notebook back in the pocket of his shirt and then rubbed his face somewhat nervously with his hand.

'Now would be best,' she pressed.

'Oh, right.' As he walked out of the room, Semahat got the impression that the policeman was leaving with his tail, metaphorically, tucked between his legs. This Inspector Suleyman was obviously a person who frightened the young man quite a lot. Not, of course, that she, even despite her white-faced nervousness, had any intention of being over-awed by this character.

Kenan, his legs now giving way to the shaking that had afflicted other parts of his body much earlier, sat down. 'I wonder what he's done,' he said to his wife without looking at her.

'Cengiz? He's done nothing,' she stated simply. 'He is a child.'

'Not in every way,' her husband said softly. 'Not with girls…'

'Yes, he is!' She followed this with some furious stroking of Rosebud. Then cooing into the animal's delicate ear she whispered, 'He doesn't like naughty girlies, does he, Rosa? Not Daddy Cengiz. No.'

'Semahat-'

'No!'

'Mr and Mrs Temiz?'

The man who now stood in the doorway to their drawing room was, obviously, older than the young policeman they had spoken to earlier. He was also, by his gravely appropriate smile, his good clothes and handsomely confident demeanour, of quite a different order socially. For a moment Semahat found herself wondering what this charming stranger could possibly want with them.

'I am Inspector Suleyman,' he said and moved forward to take Kenan's hand in his own and then gently bow respectfully across the old man's wrist. 'My officer thinks it more appropriate that I speak to you.'

'He was most rude,' a still angry but nevertheless slightly mollified Semahat said from behind Rosebud's not inconsiderable fur.

Inspector Suleyman's chiselled features became grave. 'I am very sorry if he caused offence to you, madam,' he said. 'Please be assured that I will personally reprimand my man for-'

'Yes, yes, thank you.' Kenan, who was now on his feet again, agitatedly paced across the floor. 'But what of Cengiz, Inspector? What of my son?'

Suleyman placed both his hands together in front of his mouth before removing them and speaking. 'The situation is this, Mr Temiz,' he began, and then suddenly changing tack completely he said, 'Could we all sit down?’

'Oh, yes! Yes, where are my manners!' the old woman said, giggling slightly and nervously at the back of her throat, like a girl.

They all sat down. The elderly couple watched and waited expectantly for what words would drop from the lips of a man who was at least their equal.

'My officer tells me that your son left this apartment at seven o'clock this morning via the fire escape exit. Is that correct?'

'Yes,' Kenan said, 'it is what we told the boy. True.'

'So when my men arrived at these apartments at seven forty-five, your son was out?' 'Yes.'

Suleyman looked down briefly, thinking, before he continued, 'You must know by now that my men and I have been across the hallway in the apartment of the family opposite’

'Yes.' Semahat, almost in spite of herself, frowned. The young woman and the baby. The people Cengiz talked of sometimes, at moments when he felt…

'One party from that apartment has this morning been found dead,' Suleyman said.

'Oh!'

'Allah,' Kenan exclaimed. 'What, er…'

'Whether the circumstances surrounding this person's death are suspicious or not we do not yet know for certain,' Suleyman continued smoothly. 'However, what we do know, from the testimony of a friend who came to visit the family this morning, is that a man answering the description of your son and claiming, further, to originate from these apartments knew about this event and talked to him of it before we did.'

'What time did this man say he met our son?'

'At around eight'

Semahat smiled. 'Ah, but Inspector, you and your men were already here by then.'

'Yes,' Suleyman smiled, 'but if Mr Aksoy is correct then he met your son before he arrived here. Your son, or whoever it was Mr Aksoy spoke to, talked of a death, claimed his own innocence and then, for some reason, ran quickly northwards, back on Ìstiklal Caddesi towards Taksim Square.'

'But,' Kenan was frowning as if finding the conversation difficult to follow, 'but Cengiz never goes to Taksim Square, at least not alone.

'Well, according to Mr Aksoy,' Suleyman said, 'he came shooting out of Zambak Sokak which, as you know, is already at Taksim.'

'But that's nowhere near to Karaköy, where he should have been, it's…'

'Do you have any idea where your son is now, Mr Temiz?' Suleyman asked.

Kenan looked distractedly at his watch. 'Well, he's late…'

'Somebody must have told him about this death!' Semahat said as she stood up and with uncharacteristic lack of care let Rosebud drop heavily to the floor. 'That must be the explanation. Someone told him and now he's frightened to come home because of all the policemen.'

'That is indeed possible,' Suleyman replied, watching closely as the old woman wrung her hands hard one against the other. 'But until I can speak to Cengiz about these matters I will not know.'

'You mean you want to question my son? About death?'

'I am afraid I will have to, Mrs Temiz. If only to eliminate him from my inquiries.'

Kenan, his mouth now dry with cold fear, coughed. 'But Cengiz is-'

'Our son is as a little child,' his wife interjected’ her face suddenly small, caved in upon itself in its desire to hide from what seemed to her all this awfulness.

'I understand that your son has Down's syndrome, Mrs Temiz,' Suleyman replied kindly, but then injecting just a little more hardness into his voice he said, 'However, if I am to move towards the truth of this situation, and that after all is my job, then I must question everybody who may know something about it. And that, Mrs Temiz, includes your son.'

Even without ever clapping eyes upon the actual person of Tansu Hanim one could, if one were observant and knowledgeable, roughly gauge her seniority by looking at her home. Occupying a large swathe of land along the shores of the Bosphorus at Yeniköy, its magnificent nineteenth-century gates did not in any way prepare one for the 1970s concrete horror that arrogantly fronted the great waterway. Constructed prior to legislation designed to preserve old Ottoman buildings, the erection of Tansu's house had deprived the world of something, although now barely remembered, far more graceful.