A Noble Killing Read Free

set fires on floors, in bins, all over the place. They come to the city, never even seen an electric oven before . . .’
    ‘But if, as you think, the apartment was empty, that couldn’t possibly be what happened, could it?’ İkmen asked. ‘Would anyone just set a fire and then walk away?’
    ‘Some of them brought up in mud huts can and do,’ the officer said gloomily. ‘You can make a fire out of wood on a dirt floor with a hole in the ceiling. It’s how a lot of them have always lived. Doesn’t occur to them that they can’t do that here.’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody peasants!’
    A lot of Çetin İkmen also felt irritated by what to him seemed like further evidence of the baleful influence and ignorance of ‘them’. He could almost see the family in his mind. The father, flat-capped, mustachioed and unsmiling; the bowed, veiled mother, old before her time; the children, timid if female, while the boys boiled with resentment, struggling to contain their pent-up envy of everyone better off then themselves. On the other hand, the fire officer was generalising, and there was not, as yet, any evidence to indicate how the blaze might have started. Maybe a faulty electrical appliance was to blame? That, too, was not an unusual scenario, even in the best houses and apartments in İstanbul.
    İkmen was looking at Süleyman backing the SUV around the corner at the end of the street when the fire chief came out of the building and walked over to his officer. Süleyman had reversed the vehicle at speed. This had prompted some gasps of terror from the car’s owner, whose thick hair gel had actually started to melt under the onslaught of heat from his own fear and anger.
    ‘We’ve found a body,’ the policeman heard the fire chief say to the officer in a low, calm voice.
    ‘Just one?’
    ‘I think so,’ the chief replied.
    İkmen turned and held his badge up for the chief to see. ‘Need any help?’ he asked.
    For a moment the fire chief frowned, and then he said, ‘Yes. Yes, actually it might be no bad thing to have a police officer involved.’
    Like many Turkish apartment blocks built back in the 1960s, the Mersin Apartments provided a lot of space for their tenants. Apartment A, like all of the others in the building, had three good-sized bedrooms, a kitchen, a big living room and two bathrooms. Arranged around a large central hall, it had the look of a place that had once been very well cared for. Now, although only one of the rooms had actually been subjected to fire, the hall ceiling was scorched where flames had escaped through the open door. The sound of water dripping from ceilings and down walls into the many pools of liquid on the floor sounded lonely and eerie, especially in counterpoint to the gruff voices of the fire officers. And although the scene had now been declared safe from both gas and noxious fumes, there was a very unpleasant smell on the air that İkmen couldn’t place.
    ‘I believe this was a bedroom,’ the fire chief said as he led İkmen towards a doorway into a deep black hole.
    ‘If we’re waiting for forensic examiners . . .’ İkmen began.
    ‘It’s just to the left of the door. You don’t need to go in. Just look.’
    İkmen moved slightly forwards. Beyond the door was something so black, so matt in apparent texture that it gave him the feeling he was invading an utterly solid and unyielding place. He quickly pulled his head backwards. The fire chief, who was accustomed to such scenes, said, ‘I know, it’s a shock. It was a fierce blaze. When we got here, the place was full of poisonous smoke. Then we had what we call flashover. This is when the smoke and the soot ignite and there’s a brightness of flame you just wouldn’t credit unless you’d actually seen it. Afterwards we get this.’
    ‘A black room.’
    The chief unclipped a torch from his belt, switched it on and then gave it to İkmen. ‘This should help.’
    İkmen shone the beam of light through