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known locally, was not far from Gaziantep where Süleyman had to be by that time. Rather than think about how strange it was that he was so reluctant to go home since Bekir had returned, instead he thought about his friend and wondered how he might be coping, having to work with some peasant from the back of beyond.
    The drive from the airport into the city was not exactly a picturesque trip. Gaziantep was heavily populated and industrialised. Factories, car repair garages and line upon line of almost Soviet-style tower blocks marched relentlessly across the dusty landscape like ranks of silent, depressed soldiers. The man at the wheel, Inspector Taner’s cousin Rafik, reminded Süleyman a little of Çetin İkmen. Thin and sporting a thick, black moustache, he drove a battered old Mercedes similar to the one that İkmen had kept alive for so many years. Unlike İkmen, however, he did not talk continuously, even if the amount of smoking that went on was very familiar. Inspector Taner herself was quite another matter.
    The last thing Süleyman had been expecting, especially way out in the wild, wild east, was a female officer. He had thought about the possibility of Taner’s being a young man, but a middle-aged macho character had been what he anticipated. An image of a tall and attractive woman had not even entered his mind. Inspector Edibe Taner was, Süleyman reckoned, somewhere in her forties. Slim without being thin, she had thick shoulder-length hair that was coloured a dull but affecting shade of dark purple. Like her long, red fingernails, her face was heavily painted and she had thick black lines round her eyes that made her look more Egyptian than Turkish. Everything about her seemed to speak of strength: her long straight nose, her firm jaw, her large and muscular bustline.
    ‘I’ve booked you into a hotel called the Princess,’ she said as they sped past a large and very brash Jeep dealership. ‘As I expect you are well aware, Inspector, hotels in general in this part of the world are not up to İstanbul standards. But the Princess, Rafik tells me, is clean if basic.’
    ‘You won’t get bedbugs,’ the man at the wheel muttered.
    Süleyman smiled. They were a direct pair, which he liked, and there was a little private fun to be had for someone whose family had been princes staying in a hotel called the Princess. ‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ he said.
    ‘Once you’ve checked in I’ve taken the liberty of organising dinner,’ Taner said. ‘It’s the best restaurant in town, believe me.’
    ‘Thank you.’ Süleyman saw Rafik smile and wondered what it meant. Was Taner joking with him, perhaps?
    ‘We need to talk about what you know of our friend Yusuf Kaya and what developments have occurred with regard to him since I’ve been here,’ the woman continued. She offered Süleyman a long black Sobranie cigarette, which he gratefully accepted, and then lit one up for herself. ‘Do you drink, Inspector Süleyman?’ she said after a pause.
    ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a problem or—’
    ‘I do,’ Taner said with a smile and what Süleyman felt was astonishing candidness. ‘Rakı.’
    ‘Ah.’ There wasn’t really very much that he could say to that. Before he could think of any way in which he might move their conversation forward, the car turned into a dark and rutted side street. On one side was a tiny coffee house with several men sitting outside at low tables, playing backgammon. On the other was a six-storey sixties-style block sporting a scruffy sign which said Princess Oteli .
    ‘We’re here,’ Taner said as she swung her long, slim legs out of the car door. The men at the coffee house opposite watched, almost mesmerised, as she stood up and then smoothed her mini skirt a very short distance down her thighs.
    ‘If you get into a fight with a gypsy you have to know what you’re doing.’
    ‘Oh, well, I imagine you do!’
    İkmen, sitting with his wife in the living