A Passion for Killing Read Free Page A

victim. Unhappily for Süleyman, no one apart from Ardıç and himself could know about any of this, and that included his good friend Çetin İkmen.
    ‘And now on top of this new murder I also have my father,’ Süleyman said as he attempted to ignore the doubt and slight suspicion he could see on İkmen’s thin face.
    ‘Your father?’
    ‘On the phone just now. He wants me to look for some carpet dealer for him.’
    ‘Why?’
    Süleyman sighed. ‘My father has this old friend called Raşit Bey. He runs one of the oldest carpet dealerships in the Kapalı Çarşı. Every so often my father offers him a kilim or a tapestry or a carpet, usually from my grandfather’s old house. You know how it is.’
    İkmen nodded. Whenever the old man couldn’t pay a large utility bill or needed to repair his ridiculously extravagant car, he generally sold something. It had to be, İkmen had always felt, a depressing way to live one’s life. Not for the first time, he was glad that the only thing he had ever possessed in abundance was children.
    ‘So Raşit Bey’, Süleyman continued, ‘was at Father’s house this morning, looking at probably the largest carpet my father still possesses and he mentioned that one of the people he employs has not turned up to work for the last three days. The kapıcı of this man’s building hasn’t seen him and Raşit Bey is worried.’
    ‘Your father wants you to find this man,’ İkmen said as a statement of fact.
    ‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘Isn’t life grand?’
    İkmen laughed.
    ‘But he is my father, and so what can I do?’ Süleyman said. ‘He expects me to deal with this personally, which I cannot do, but I cannot let him know that.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I will have to ask İzzet to go over to the man’s apartment and see what he can find. But I can’t really spare him.’
    ‘Where’s İzzet now?’ İkmen asked.
    ‘On his way over to Dr Sarkissian’s laboratory to observe the autopsy,’ Süleyman said.
    It was already almost half past two, which seemed rather late for the pathologist to begin his work. ‘It’s only just started?’
    ‘Yes.’ He looked his friend straight in the eyes. ‘You know what scenes of crime are like in public places, how difficult it can become. And the hotel is effectively a place with public access.’
    Yes, İkmen did know that. What he also knew was that corpses found in public places usually meant that work at the scene of the crime was conducted under pressure from all sorts of people – the local council, public officials and in this case, he imagined, the management of the Hilton Hotel. ‘Public’ corpses were generally removed first and briefly to the Forensic Institute for the harvesting of samples and then on to the pathologist in haste rather than slowly. But then this was Mehmet’s investigation, not his, and so there were probably all sorts of pressures surrounding the incident that he didn’t know about or understand. However, he made a mental note to ask the pathologist, who was also his oldest friend, about his latest ‘subject’ when he could. As of that moment he couldn’t, try as he might, equate the homosexual killer known as the peeper with that rough thug Cabbar Soylu.
    ‘So why don’t I look into this carpet dealer thing for you?’ İkmen said finally with a smile.
    ‘I can’t ask you to do that!’ his friend replied. ‘You’ve got mountains of paperwork to go through and only five days in which to do it. No, that isn’t fair on you.’
    ‘What, taking me away from the thing I hate most about this job?’ İkmen laughed. ‘My dear Mehmet, I would pay you to deliver me from it.’
    ‘Yes, but . . .’
    ‘Ayşe is so much better at paperwork than I am. She enjoys it.’
    ‘Çetin, you’re the one appearing in court, not Sergeant Farsakoğlu.’
    ‘I know,’ İkmen said. ‘But I trust Ayşe. She knows what we need and what we don’t. And besides, this carpet dealer thing will probably