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village. What so captured the public’s imagination about this book was that the killer was a woman who liked to torture her victims. Illiterate and furious, the vengeful widow Handan, the anti-heroine of
Screams
, had been an instant sensation. Feminist groups loved her, ministers of religion and other conservative elements saw the character as a threat, and Lale courted even more controversy when she told the press that some elements in
Screams
were derived directly from her own village background. She’d been raised around illiteracy, forced marriages, honour killings and dangerous folk beliefs that included the likening of strong, independent women to witches.
    By thetime
Screams
came out, Lale was slim and polished and Faruk had made sure that every liberal media tycoon was right behind her career. Her life was charmed and she knew it. Lale – and Krikor admired her enormously for this – didn’t just give money to the charitable causes she supported, she got stuck in. As well as taking time to visit his clinic, she volunteered with a scheme that fed the homeless, visited prisons and hospitals, and continued to write ground-breaking crime novels that challenged the status quo. Occasionally Krikor found himself wondering what, if anything, she did for her family back in her village, or indeed for her father who was serving a sentence for an unspecified crime in a prison somewhere in Anatolia. Krikor never asked her about it and, as far as he knew, neither did her husband.
    ‘Krikor, where’s Arto?’
    She wasback at his side with a champagne flute in her hand.
    Krikor looked around and saw his brother leaning up against the bar talking to a small man wearing a red cummerbund.
    He pointed. ‘Over there.’
    ‘Is that his friend Çetin İ kmen with him?’ she asked.
    Krikor looked back just to check and then said, ‘No. I think that gentleman may be something to do with the Chief Rabbi’s office. We have several representatives from the rabbinate here tonight. I think that Inspector İ kmen is probably outside smoking. Why?’
    She smiled. ‘I’ve heard Arto talk about him and I noticed from my list that he’s on my investigative team.’
    ‘Is he?’ Arto laughed. ‘Oh, what a naughty man my Burak is to put Çetin in opposition to his colleague Mehmet Süleyman.’ He looked around to try and see where Burak Fisekçi had gone, but he’d sloped off somewhere, probably in an attempt to be alone. Events like this were not easy for him.
    ‘Well, don’t change it now, Krikor,’ Lale said. ‘If I’ve got a police officer on my team then I’m not complaining.’
    ‘I wantto win for my own self-esteem,’ Süleyman said.
    It was cold outside the hotel and a light mist was beginning to come up from the Golden Horn. But Süleyman and İ kmen, together with other small groups of guests who were also braving the weather, had to smoke somewhere.
    Shuffling stiffly from foot to foot in an attempt to keep warm, İ kmen said, ‘You sure it’s not to impress the famous novelist?’
    ‘Well, yes, that too . . .’
    ‘She is married,’ İ kmen said.
    ‘I know that!’
    ‘Yes, and I know you, my dear friend,’ İ kmen said. ‘Neither time nor misfortune seems to have impinged on the effect you have on women. But I don’t have to tell you how bad—’
    ‘Yes, yes, I think I know by now just how tediously disapproving you are of my private life.’ He took a drag from his cigarette and then said, ‘I’m not going to make a pass at Lale Aktar, Çetin. Apart from anything else, why on earth would someone like her even be aware of a penniless policeman like me?’
    ‘Because you are the opposing team leader.’
    He shrugged.
    İ kmen raised a warning finger. ‘Competition can be very erotic,’ he said. ‘That which we are not can be highly alluring. I shouldn’t have to tell you this. Your second wife was a psychiatrist.’
    The slightlypained and also chilled look on Çetin İ kmen’s face made Mehmet