On November 7th 2005 – a week after Jeannie’s disappearance, and two days before I was due to return to London – I went to visit Haluk and Lüset in their villa on the Bosphorus, just outside Bebek. It was the same villa where Haluk had once lived with his grandparents, but it was no longer furnished in naugahyde and plastic. Instead there were comfortable sofas in muted colours, and built-in bookshelves, and kilims of arresting and unusual designs, and ancient urns. The parquet floors glinted in the autumn sunlight as anxious servants rushed back and forth on slippered feet with trays of tea and cakes.
They took me out to their terrace, from which I could see the bridge where Jeannie and Sinan had sat in traffic, hand in hand.
Haluk and Lüset wanted me to know that – until they had been pulled into this ‘senseless tragedy’ – these two dear friends of theirs had enjoyed a happiness that was all the deeper for having come to them so late.
They had the photographs to prove it, and as we went through the albums, they reminisced. There they all were at that lovely restaurant outside Assos. What a happy day that had been. Here they all were in Göreme, Çıralı, Sile, Bodrum, Knidos. Did I remember Uludağ? Had I been back to Turkey for a blue journey? No? Then it was decided. The following September, I would be their treasured guest. They no longer owned their own yacht – as I must have heard, Haluk and his family had been locked up in a series of senseless lawsuits. The family business had yet to recover from the Turkish stock market crash four years earlier. But what did it matter, Lüset asked, if you had the sea and the sky? ‘This view is all I need to feed my soul,’ she said. ‘And what is the point of a summer house when all is said and done? Is it not better to bring together a group of friends and rent a gulet? It is simple, but so beautiful, as you shall see for yourself.’
‘A good gulet can sleep between twelve and sixteen people. If all are friends, there is laughter from dawn till midnight! Look. You can see for yourself!’ One laughing group after another. Always the same cast. With Sinan and Jeannie smiling at the centre. The pictures could all have been from the same blue journey, but for the bump that turned into a baby and then a tousle-haired boy. ‘You can see from Jeannie’s face what this boy meant for her. How it brought her back to life. Though the pregnancy – well, yes, this was another question,’ Lüset conceded.
‘Could it have been another way?’ said Haluk. A woman coming so late to motherhood was bound to travel through “a few storms”.’
‘You are right, my darling, but some storms could have been avoided.’
‘Perhaps, my dear. Perhaps. But have you ever known a time when gossip could be avoided?’
For there had been rumours. Senseless rumours. Rumours that did not bear repeating. Suffice it to say that they had all served the same purpose – to destroy the peaceful happiness that Jeannie and Sinan had brought each other. ‘But storms are never made to last. This is one thing life has taught me.’
‘Difficulties born of arid soil can flower into blessings.’
‘The arrival of Jeannie’s father, to give just one example. Of course we were concerned! Of course we wondered about his true motives! But time had moved on. He was happy to see his daughter happy, and look, look at him in this picture with his grandchild. Have you ever seen a happier man?’
‘With time, even Jeannie understood this,’ Lüset said. ‘This is the nature of family bonds.’
‘Then I take it,’ I said, ‘that, at least for a while, she resented her father’s presence.’
‘Of course, but only for a time.’
‘Why did he come back? Do you know?’
‘Why is this even a question? It is obvious! His family was here!’
There was something about their communal smile that made me want to press for facts. Closing the album, I asked why, in their view, was Sinan wasting away in prison, and Jeannie missing, and her father presumed dead?
But it was two against one.
I persevered, sailing against the winds of platitude until they had conceded that this ‘unfortunate state of affairs’ might perhaps have been avoided if Sinan had avoided roads leading back to the past.
‘Then I take it you regret his decision to make that film about his childhood. My Cold War, I mean.’
‘How could we criticise such a beautiful and important film?’ Haluk said.
‘Sinan is an artist!’ Lüset said.
‘Artists must take risks!’
‘Yes, and Jeannie understood this! Whatever else, she understood this! But at the same time, she was a mother.’
‘As Sinan was a father. So naturally…’
Haluk’s voice trailed off. As if to suggest I was pushing my luck.
‘As I recall it,’ I said, ‘Sinan ends the film with a string of questions. Though he does not allude directly to the Trunk Murder, the questions very clearly point in that direction.’
‘Yes, this was his most artistic touch,’ said Haluk.
‘If we went through the questions again now, how many could you answer?’
‘By which you mean…?’
Refusing to answer the plea in his eyes, I recited them from memory: What happened next? Who was the true mastermind? Where is he now? What does he have to say about himself? Who are his new paymasters? Cui bono?
Instead of answering, Haluk sat forward, his eyes bulging just slightly, his lips pressed into a disbelieving smile.
‘Let me put it this way,’ I said. ‘What really happened in that garçonniere of yours in June 1971? If none of you were guilty of that murder, why did you pretend that you were? Whose dirty work were you doing? Who were you protecting? Who are you still protecting? Why did you and your friend Sinan skip town and leave two young girls to take the rap? Haluk, what was it like, to open the paper and find that Suna had jumped from a fourth floor window? What does it feel like now, knowing that – had you acted differently – you might have saved your wife from torture?’
Haluk opened his mouth, and then he closed it. Lüset took his hand, and then she dropped it.
When I spoke, neither would look me in the eye. But I still tried to speak honestly. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That was harsh. And unnecessary. I apologise. And now I’ll leave. I’ll just say one last thing. I’m not asking these questions lightly. I want to help you. I can’t help you unless I know what happened.’
‘This is nonsense. What happened is over.’
‘No it’s not,’ I said. And that is when I blurted out what I had only just come to see. ‘What happened is not over. This person you took the rap for…’
As Haluk raised his head to meet my gaze, his eyes bulged again, just slightly.
‘You’re still protecting him, aren’t you?’
No answer. Just the faintest of smiles.