The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 07 by Maxim Jakubowski (ed)

Author:Maxim Jakubowski (ed) [Jakubowski, Maxim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, British, crime, detective, mystery
ISBN: 9781849011976
Google: l8AoQQAACAAJ
Amazon: B003U2TCQI
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 2010-04-28T22:00:00+00:00

THE HOUSE THAT GOT SHOT

Barbara Nadel

INSPECTOR ÇETIN KMEN cast his gaze slowly around the bloodied, shredded room before him and then, turning to his equally shocked female sergeant said, “What a mess.”

“The whole house is the same, sir,” Sergeant Aye Farsakolu replied. “Bullet holes everywhere.”

“Do we know who she was?” kmen said as he tipped his head in the direction of a blood-soaked body lying face downwards in front of him, its arms outstretched to each side clutching what looked like small lengths of rope.

“Not yet,” Aye said. “Apart from this house the rest of the street has been empty for some months. This part of Haskoy is in the process of being redeveloped.”

kmen, looked down at the young woman with a cynical eye. As well as working as a police officer in Istanbul for over thirty years, he had lived in the city all his life. He’d seen a lot of metropolitan districts “redevelop” – not always for the better. Haskoy, a somewhat distant and rickety suburb on the northern shore of the Golden Horn was just the latest in a long line of “newly discovered” districts. Once home to a sizeable Jewish as well as a gypsy population, the little wooden houses of Haskoy had a certain shabby romance to them. Just not this particular one – not anymore.

“Well, whoever the victim was, she was only part of the assailants’ target,” kmen said as he put his hand in his pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes.

“What do you mean by that, sir?” Aye replied with a frown.

“Well, it’s obvious,” kmen said. “Whoever did this was shooting the house as much as the occupant.” Then after lighting up a cigarette he moved past the officer on guard at the front door of the property and went outside.

Over the course of the next few hours, many Istanbul police officials came and went from the house on the corner of Harab Cesme Sokak. Photographers, forensics and ballistics experts, ordinary officers and of course the police pathologist Dr Arto Sarkissian. The latter, who was a contemporary and old friend of Çetin kmen, didn’t take long to pronounce life extinct.

“What a thing to do to an old woman, eh?” he said when he came out to join kmen in the street. “I’ve counted twelve bullet wounds so far and I’m sure I’ll find more when I get her over to the lab. Insanity!”

“The whole house is shot to pieces,” kmen said as he looked across at the great wall that surrounded the once busy old synagogue opposite. “She’s old, our victim. I wonder if she used to be a congregant over there.”

“At the synagogue? Maybe,” Arto shrugged. “The few Jews that remain around here do tend to be old. But whatever she may have been, one thing is for sure, this murder will not do the redevelopment around here much good. Especially if you add in our victim’s slithery comrades and the possibility that they in turn may have more family somewhere nearby.

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