Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [87]
There was plenty to say, but at that moment I felt it was still too early. I stood up. lhan Bey peered at me for a moment before rising to his feet as well.
“Thank you, lhan Bey,” I said, extending my hand.
“Is that it?” He seemed a bit unsettled.
“That’s it,” I said.
I shook his cold hand again, and he thanked me. He walked to the conference room door and opened it. As he started to walk out, I called after him.
“That makes five murders,” I said. “I’m not going to let you get away with a sixth.”
His hand was still on the door handle. He squared his shoulders and his face flashed red with anger. He looked arrogant. He closed the door and took two steps toward me.
“I knew your brother, Sadık Bey. He was a few years older than me, and he was my big brother too. When he pointed a gun at someone, he fired; but you—you’re just trying to corner me with a pistol of blanks. I really don’t know how it is that we didn’t meet when you were a kid. There was something your brother used to say: If you’re going to do something, do it with your body and your soul.”
I took a long look at his face.
I left the skyscraper through exit number four and walked toward a fountain flanked by ugly, stylized lion statues. I lit a cigarette. I could tell I was being followed; I could feel it.
My cell phone rang. It was Faruk. “Where are you, sir?” he asked. I told him to go on home. My hotel was nearby.
It was starting to get dark. I began walking, up the stairs and to the top of the hill. I remembered this place. We used to come here to fly kites or play ball sometimes. It was a soccer field of natural grass, but once we found a woman’s body here; the grass was yellow and her head had been smashed with a stone.
I made it up to Büyükdere Avenue; there was an iron rail that ran between two lanes to keep people from crossing.
I walked toward the bus stop, where a group of people were standing waiting. I killed some time glancing around at the towering buildings and skyscrapers. I had five bodies, five skyscrapers, and one suspect who really shouldn’t even be called a suspect. I didn’t have a shred of evidence; all I had was a hunch. I kept my eye on the bus stop across the street, the factory stop … Faruk had told me they call this place “Silicon Valley” now. I took the stairs leading down from behind the stop, and then walked through the underpass and along the dirty dimness of flickering fluorescent lights and the reverberating drone of traffic, before emerging on the other side and heading up another set of stairs. The old Neyir building had been turned into a courthouse, restored complete with black windows to give it a modern air. The pharmaceutical factory was still there across from the new courthouse, but with a few added stories and an annex in the rear. As I walked toward the factory stop, I was so sure of the footsteps silently trailing after me that I didn’t even turn around to make sure they were really there.
Faruk was blabbering about something he’d read in the paper. “Sadık Bey, they say that if all the toilets in the skyscrapers on this avenue were flushed at the same time, Istanbul’s entire sewage system would explode,” he told me, laughing.
“We’d really be up shit creek then, wouldn’t we?” I said.
“Somebody ought to test that theory,” Faruk replied, still laughing.
As I made my way toward Mövenpick Hotel in 4th Levent, I could still feel the pair of eyes behind me. The road used to be lined with all kinds of factories, big and small, but now the corporations had taken over and it was one long series of buildings fronted by black glass, all postmodern, all tightly guarded by private security companies, all rigged with cameras in every corner.
About ten minutes later I reached the lot where the bus terminal used to be, before they tore it down. Somebody would want to erect a skyscraper here too; it was just a matter of time. I crossed the street at the Çeliktepe intersection. When I reached an iron curtain surrounding a new skyscraper still under