Brother Kemal Read Free Page A

acquaintances. Marieke is sixteen, she has a right to do that, and if she’s enjoying the situation … she wouldn’t be the first daughter in the throes of puberty who wanted to show her mother a thing or two.’
    She was looking absentmindedly at the floor. The cigarette end dropped from her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. Suddenly she raised her head and asked, impatiently, ‘So now what?’
    ‘So now what?’
    ‘What are you suggesting?’ Her voice was harsh and stern, but she was being stern with herself, not me.
    ‘You mean what should you ask me to do?’
    ‘I want you to bring my daughter back!’
    ‘Yes, I know that, Frau de Chavannes. But suppose you were to try Erdem or Evren first …’
    ‘Erden! Erden Abakay. He lives over the café I mentioned on the corner of Schifferstrasse and Brückenstrasse. He’s quite well known there, you’d find him easily.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘Then you’d get my daughter out of there!’
    ‘Without telling her I was doing it for you?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And preferably I’d beat up Abakay and threaten him – if he ever comes near Marieke again, and so on?’
    She didn’t reply to that.
    ‘Frau de Chavannes, I’m a private detective, not a bunch of heavies. Once again: suppose you call Abakay first and try to speak to your daughter?’
    She shook her head. ‘Out of the question.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I’m afraid of saying something wrong, something to drive her even further into that bastard’s arms. At the moment it doesn’t take much to make my daughter feel I’ve said something wrong.’
    ‘Suppose your husband were to call?’
    ‘My husband?’ She looked at me as if this were a remarkably idiotic question. ‘I definitely don’t want to drag him into this.’ She turned away and went back to the bookshelf for another cigarette. ‘Anyway, he’s away. He’s guest professor at the Academy of Art in The Hague. He won’t be home for another two weeks.’ She lit her cigarette, turned to me, and said firmly, ‘I want to get this whole thing out of the way by then!’
    ‘Okay, but then please tell me more or less how the story goes. If I come across Abakay I don’t want to hear any startling new discoveries. “Frau de Chavannes is my sister’s best friend,” that kind of thing.’
    ‘Nonsense. It was more or less as you thought. He approached me in the café, and I was a bit curious. A man speaking to a woman alone in a café, where do you find that these days? And I was probably rather bored that morning. We talked, and he was actually amusing – well, amusing in a nightlife, gambling, who-cares-about-tomorrow kind of way. Then he claimed he was a photographer and had taken a series called
Frankfurt in the Shadow of the Banking Towers
. Portraits of low-life crooks, characters, prostitutes, hip-hoppers …’
    She cast me a glance. ‘I know, not very original, but …’
    She was searching for the right words.
    I said, ‘But together with the nightlife, gambling scene, the who-cares-about-tomorrow attitude, the immigrant background …’
    She examined me for a moment as if, once again, she had grave doubts about letting a man like me take a look at her life. Then she drew on her cigarette, blew out the smoke vigorously as if to dispel those doubts, and went on, ‘Could be so. I was thinking mainly of my husband.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘I knew you were going to say that.’
    ‘What should I have said?’
    ‘Listen: I didn’t tell you the truth at first. I hoped to solve the situation just like that. I’m well known in this city, my husband is well known all over the world, while to me at least you are an entirely unknown quantity. And you’re a private detective. What do I know about private detectives? If I didn’t need help so urgently … Do you understand? Why should I trust you? I’m sure there are tabloids that would pay a few euros for a Hasselbaink mother-and-daughter story aboutmysterious underground