Deadline by Barbara Nadel

was just about to get going, wasn’t it?’
    İ kmen didn’t answer. The performance had actually started during dinner, as Mrs Aktar well knew. What they had all been waiting for in the Kubbeli Saloon had been for the ‘murder’ itself to actually happen. ‘So why were you in your room when the event was just about to get into its stride? You were a team leader, weren’t you?’
    ‘Yes. But Ihad to . . .’ Lale Aktar put her head down, then raised it but this time looked away from İ kmen. ‘I had to . . . get something . . .’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, something, er, personal.’
    ‘Something personal? What?’
    She didn’t answer.
    ‘What, Mrs Aktar?’ İ kmen asked again. ‘Tell me. Whatever it is, I can assure you I will not be shocked, embarrassed or disturbed in any way.’
    Lale Aktar looked as if she might be about to cry. But İ kmen ignored this and said, ‘Mrs Aktar? Please.’
    Only Arto Sarkissian and Mehmet Süleyman had ever seen İ kmen interview a suspect before and both Krikor Sarkissian and Hovsep Pars now looked visibly uncomfortable. Neither of them realised that this was very gentle probing. Krikor Sarkissian walked away.
    Lale Aktar turned to face İ kmen and whispered. ‘A sanitary towel.’
    İ kmen didn’t miss a beat. ‘For menstrual blood?’
    Old Hovsep Pars turned away. No one, in his world, ever spoke of such things.
    ‘Yes,’ Lale replied.
    İ kmen smiled. ‘Thank you.’ He drew on his cigarette and then looked at the notes he’d already taken. ‘So please describe to me, Mrs Aktar, what happened when you went back toyour room in order to get what you needed. What happened when you first entered room four eleven?’
    Lale Aktar swallowed. ‘You have to use a swipe card to get into rooms in this hotel, so I swiped my card and let myself in. I flicked the light switch that puts on the light in the little entrance vestibule and made my way through the bedroom and into the bathroom.’
    ‘Did you put the light on in the bedroom?’
    She frowned. ‘I don’t think so. The bathroom is behind the vestibule and so to get to it you just sort of skirt around the edge of the bedroom. And there’s a short corridor between the bedroom and the bathroom which is where the wardrobes are. There’s a light for that somewhere too, maybe outside the bathroom, but I can’t really remember.’
    ‘So the corridor is what is actually behind the vestibule,’ İ kmen said.
    She shrugged. ‘I guess so. But the bathroom is behind that – if you see what I mean.’
    ‘But it would have been dark in the room,’ Süleyman put in. ‘Which means that light from a vestibule that is separated from both the corridor and the bathroom by a wall wouldn’t penetrate. Another light source would have been needed, wouldn’t it? Unless you just stumbled around in the dark.’
    This timeshe smiled. ‘Oh, no.’ Then she shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. I was in a hurry. I may have put the bedroom light on or I may have just put the light on in the corridor . . .’
    ‘But you don’t remember seeing the body of Söner Erkan on your bed until you came out of the bathroom?’ İ kmen said.
    ‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘No. I came out of the bathroom and walked into the bedroom . . .’
    ‘Did you put the bedroom light on?’
    ‘I don’t know. I can’t be sure.’
    ‘But the room was illuminated?’
    ‘At some point – before I found, er, the . . . yes.’
    ‘So you came out of the bathroom, down the corridor outside the bathroom, into the bedroom . . .’
    ‘And he was lying on the bed, right in front of me.’ Again she turned away.
    İ kmen looked at Süleyman. The famous novelist clearly needed a moment to herself as she relived her one and only encounter with real, non-fictional death. After about a minute, İ kmen cleared his throat. ‘So what happened next?’
    Her head still turned away from him, Lale Aktar said, ‘I was shocked.’
    ‘Obviously.’
    She turned and looked at him and