Deadly Talent

2. Bölüm

“Here you are Mr Cenk, you wait inside. Mrs Esra is coming now.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you like something to drink while you wait?”

“No, thank you.”

After the secretary left, Cenk started to walk around the room. It was quite a big office; on one side there was a large wooden carved table and leather armchairs, and on the other side there were listening chairs where the sessions were held. Cenk took a cursory look at the books on the big bookshelf and then stood in front of the full-length mirror and looked at how he looked for a while without taking his hands out of his pockets. In the meantime, he saw that his belly was slightly protruding. He noticed the photographs on the table while he was interested in his abdomen, which was obviously just starting to get fat. In fact, these were frames that immediately attracted attention, but Cenk was not a very attentive person, he was often absent-minded, sometimes he could not even understand what the people talking to him were saying at the first time. He had many qualities suitable for police work, but attention and intuition were definitely not among them.

In the picture in the frame, a very beautiful woman with blonde hair and white skin like northern Europeans was sitting on a swing set in a lush garden. On her lap, a girl of 3-4 years old was tugging on her long curly hair and shyly trying to hide her face from the camera, but she still appeared in the photo with all her cuteness. In the other frames, there were always photographs of the girl and the woman, who was probably her mother, but only in one photograph was a middle-aged man intervening. The man was big and wore a short-sleeved blue jersey.

Cenk was reaching for the photo with the swing and taking it in his hand when the door behind him opened.

“Sorry Mr Cenk, I kept you waiting.”

Cenk almost dropped the picture, he put the frame back on the table with a quick but clumsy movement.

“No, it’s not important, I was... I was looking around.”

The woman smiled, pointing to the picture with the tip of her nose: “My daughter,” she said.

“God bless you, you have a very beautiful daughter.”

The woman was in her late thirties, with a glossy and smooth skin, her blonde hair pulled back in a bun, beautiful, yet mature and dignified. She was wearing a white suit that matched the colour of her skin. The woman’s green eyes were sparkling, after admiring the picture of her daughter with a swing as if she was seeing it for the first time, she extended her hand to Cenk.

“I am Dr Esra Can, your new psychologist...”

“Nice to meet you, Cenk Akkaya.”

“Here you go.”

“Thank you.”

As Cenk was about to sit down, he took out his hand that had been in his pocket since he entered the room.

“Oh my God, what happened to your hand!”

“It’s nothing important, a little accident.”

“Nothing important, your hand is bleeding!” Without saying anything else, the woman ran to the medicine cabinet in the room. She took cotton wool, bandages and batikon and sat on the chair next to Cenk. With the paper scissors on the table, she cut the bandage Mehtap had made, then cleaned the wound and wrapped it again. She did all this so skilfully and with such care that Cenk felt a closeness to the woman. He was watching her without taking his eyes off her.

“Where did you get these wounds?”

“Well, there was a small accident at home...”

“These cuts don’t look like accidents. I think they’re glass cuts.”

“You can’t miss anything.”

“And the stab mark, is that a house accident too?”

“No, it’s not, I’m not going to lie to you, I got into a fight with some muggers on the way here, that’s where I got the stab wound.”

“Well, why didn’t you go to the doctor?”

“We had an appointment with you.”

“The appointment could have waited, this is much more serious.”

“Not as much as you think. I didn’t feel the pain of any of the wounds on my hand. There won’t even be a trace of them in a few weeks.”

Esra had finished the bandage, got up without saying anything, took the materials back to the cupboard and went back to her desk. The woman’s previous sincere demeanour had taken on an official air.

“Yes Mr Cenk, let’s get back to the subject.” Esra put her thin-framed glasses on her eyes and started to examine a file in her hand. The woman was authoritative from top to bottom.

“She should have been a police director instead of a doctor,” Cenk thought. “Although she looks more like a businesswoman.”

“Mr Salim, your psychologist before me, left a very detailed report about you.”

“Anyway, all he knew was writing reports.”

Esra pretended not to hear this.

“I know almost everything about your life. The incident when you were little, the k********g of your brother and the nightmares that started afterwards and never ended. Similar situations occur in many people who have experienced such horrible things in their childhood, but it is not very common to see someone who experiences it as often as you do.”

Cenk was playing with his wrapped hand at this time. “You wrapped my hand very well, I couldn’t move my fingers when my wife wrapped it.”

“Mr Cenk, I would like to listen to your experiences from your side.”

“Why? As you said, everything is already written there.”

“No report can give as much information as the patient himself.”

“All right, as you wish. We’re here to talk. When I was ten years old, my brother Cemil, who was six years younger than me, was kidn*pped. The kidnapper was a criminal named Hayati Aygül, who was arrested by my father but later escaped from prison. He was a murderer, a maniac. He had killed six people at a petrol station he had entered to rob, even though he had taken the money. My father was in charge of the homicide unit at the time and managed to catch this maniac in a very short time; but the man escaped while being taken to court, and instead of running away and hiding, the damn guy came to our house and kidn*pped my brother.”

“Did anything happen between you and your brother before that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, was there a fight or any resentment?”

“What quarrel or resentment with a four-year-old boy? What a ridiculous question!”

“Why didn’t you inform your parents when your brother was kidn*pped and chased him yourself?”

“That sounds like a police question.”

“I apologise, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’m just trying to understand what is written in your report.”

“Our house was on the edge of a grove in Beykoz. There was a forester’s house in the grove. On weekends, I used to play with the forester’s children until late. That evening, I stayed with them until around seven or eight o’clock. It was getting dark early because winter time had started. On my way home, I saw that man on the road. Even though the bastard saw me, he continued on his way without making a fuss, and he had my brother in his arms. He was holding my brother like he was holding a sack, not a person.”

“That must have made you very angry.”

“More than you can imagine. I ran after him, but he was too strong for me, I think he was in his early twenties, and he knocked me down with one punch and kept going. After I was down for a while, I got up and started chasing him, and when we met again, he shot me in the head.”

“Where was your family during all this?”

“My father was at the police station, on duty, and my mother had put Cemil to bed and was working in the kitchen. The killer had kidn*pped my brother from his bed.”

“But then he was caught, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was caught a few days later and after the trial he was executed. At that time, the justice system in the country was not as bad as it is today, and murderers got what they deserved.”

“Did you watch the execution of the murderer?

“No, they didn’t allow it. I think they should broadcast the executions live.”

“So, what happened to your brother?”

“The killer confessed to everything. He killed him that night and buried him in the woods. They found his body in a state of decomposition.”

“Did you see your brother’s body?”

“No, I was in a coma at the time and couldn’t even attend the funeral, it took me three months to get out of hospital. But it is very interesting, it seemed to me that I had slept for a few hours. I can also tell you that I saw photos of my brother’s body later, after I became a policeman, his face was still very beautiful.”

“Let’s talk about the bullet that hit you.”

Cenk rubbed his hand on his forehead where the wound was still slightly visible.

“Yes, this bullet changed my life forever.”

“What I find most interesting in your file is that you didn’t feel any pain after the bullet in your head.”

“Yes, the last pain I felt was the pain of my brother. For 25 years, although I have experienced bullets, stab wounds, traffic accidents, electric shocks, heat and cold, I have never felt any pain. The bullet that entered my head destroyed some of the nerves in my brain and since that day my body does not perceive pain.”

“So if someone stabbed you in the back, you wouldn’t even realise it until you bled to death?”

“No, I feel it but I don’t feel the pain, let me show you, please give me your hand.”

Esra hesitated for a moment.

“What?”

“Don’t worry, give me your hand.”

Esra extended her hand. When Cenk took her hand, Esra’s other hand went to the bun of her hair and her face blushed slightly, but Cenk’s attention capacity was too far away to perceive these details and their meaning.

Cenk touched his forefinger to her wrist.

“This is all I feel even in the heaviest blow to me.”

After the woman withdrew her hand, he assumed his authoritative personality again.

“So Mr Cenk, how did you become a police officer despite having such a problem?”

“My father was the head of the Police Intelligence Department. He had just retired when I applied to the academy. My uncle was the deputy head of the Presidential Intelligence Department, though he still holds the same position.”

“So you had very good references.”

“Yes, too good for anyone to object, and our family has been in law enforcement since the Ottoman Empire. Family is very important in bureaucracy.”

“Well, does this painlessness help your profession in any way?”

“It only makes me braver, there is no advantage other than that. As a matter of fact, I would give anything to feel a little pain.”

“So that’s it! So not being able to suffer makes you suffer.” Esra started taking notes for the first time.

“I would even settle for the slightest headache or nausea.”

“However, many people would love to be like you.”

“There are no fools in the world! My situation is not something to envy, but rather an apology. I put myself in the same category as the blind or the deaf. You can’t do something that is normal for all other people, you don’t know what a terrible thing it is. The pain and suffering we go through is a natural consequence of being human, and when you forget what pain is, you lose your humanity. “

“Maybe that’s why you have nightmares so often. Your subconscious is often making you suffer so that you don’t dehumanise yourself.”

Cenk looked at his doctor for a while with admiring eyes.

“Yeah, that could be it. It makes perfect sense. Maybe that’s how my brain reduces the agony of not being able to feel pain.”

“Does the agony make you more irritable?”

“Yes, I think it does.”

“Does this bullet in the head do you any other harm?”

“My doctor says it makes me easily distracted, impairs my judgement and impairs my perception.”

“So, are you really absent-minded?”

“I think so, for example, after picking up a book and reading a few pages, I often have to go back to the following pages. Although I am a deputy commissioner in the organisation, I have not yet been able to solve any case based on evidence, but I am perfect in operations, which is enough to cover my other deficiency.”

“Well, let’s talk a little bit about your family life, your relationship with your wife...”

Before Esra could finish, the clock on the table started to ring with all the noise.

“Ah! Our time is up for today. Make sure you come by next week. I think we will be able to make progress with you.”

“I hope you are right, doctor. Although it is obvious that you are too good compared to Salim.”

“Please don’t say that, Mr Salim was my professor at the university.”

“Then let’s hope the horn is past the ear.”

They shook hands again and Esra took her other hand to her bun in a shy manner. Cenk’s mind was completely elsewhere.

***