As the gray sky above the İnciraltı Nursery gave way to pitch-black darkness, the inside of the prefabricated administrative building had turned into an interrogation hell.
Aylin had transformed Master Rıza's cramped, stuffy office into a makeshift interrogation room. The ashtray on the desk was overflowing with cigarette butts. Outside, the melted skull pulled from the acid tank had long been bagged by the Crime Scene Investigation teams, but Aylin's rage had not subsided. It turned out Cem was a victim, not a killer. Aylin's massive, arrogant mind was now writing a new script: The elite killer slipped a hitman into the nursery to silence his contractor, Cem. Maybe he has a spotter hiding among these laborers.
"Next!" yelled Aylin, with an uncompromising and exhausted authority in her voice.
The door slowly opened. In walked that ordinary worker, shoulders slumped, hands trembling, with a dirty bandage around his neck. Yekta.
As Yekta perched on the plastic chair, he didn't lift his eyes from the floor. His neon vest was soaked in mud and sweat. He knew the detective sitting across the desk was the exact same woman he had held a knife to by the acid tank just twenty-four hours ago. The narcissistic god inside him roared with laughter, savoring the irony.
Aylin found Yekta's name on the worker list in front of her. She narrowed her eyes and looked at the man across from her. She examined those crude stitches on his neck, his calloused, cracked fingers, his pathetic and cowardly body language. Aylin was a woman obsessed with perfection. This man standing before her, however, was a pathetic loser battered by life, devoid of any aesthetics, clumsy enough to butcher himself with a chainsaw.
Aylin's brain rejected seeing Yekta as a potential threat in a matter of seconds.
"Where did you last see Cem?" Aylin asked, her voice carrying only the weariness of wanting to get this procedure over with.
"I saw him in the depot, chief," Yekta said, his voice trembling, biting his lower lip slightly. "He was going to bring me a radio battery. When the pain in my neck flared up... I took medicine, my vision went dark. He must have left then. I swear to God I didn't see anything else, chief. When I heard what came out of that tank, I almost lost my mind anyway."
Aylin huffed and massaged her temples. It was obvious nothing was going to come from this man. His mind was so narrow, so cowardly, that he didn't even have the capacity to be an errand boy for an elite serial killer.
"Alright," said Aylin, pointing to the door with the back of her hand. "Get out. Sign your statement with the officers and get the hell home. Leaving the city is forbidden."
"Thank you, chief, God bless you," Yekta said, standing up hunched over. As he walked out the door, he didn't alter that terrified expression on his face by a single millimeter.
It was 9:30 PM when he walked to the police barricade at the nursery's outer gate. The cops checked his ID and lifted the yellow-and-black crime scene tape. Yekta walked right under the noses of the police army and that genius detective obsessed with him, getting official permission from them to stroll away into the dark streets of the Aegean.
Invisibility wasn't hiding in the dark. Invisibility was making people look at you and see only their own arrogance.
11:45 PM.
At the back of the Hilal district, right where the İzban tracks ended, began the old tannery (leather factory) ruins that Izmir had forgotten and left to rot. The air carried a heavy scent of ammonia, mold, and wet concrete. Streetlights didn't reach here.
Yekta had taken off his neon vest and dressed entirely in black. With a small flashlight in hand, he slipped inside through the crumbling factory walls. Broken glass shards and empty paint thinner bottles crunched beneath his feet.
"Psst... Gardener."
The voice came from the mezzanine where massive, rusted leather vats were located. Yekta didn't shine his flashlight in that direction; he just stopped and waited.
From the darkness, the blackmailer known as "Blind Mouse" slowly descended. He was in his forties, skinny, dark-skinned, his face covered in pockmarks, a man with the sneaky gaze of a rat. He was one of those scums who scavenged scrap metal in Izmir's sewers, making the underground his home. In his right hand, he held a rusted switchblade.
"So it's you, huh?" said Blind Mouse, grinning and showing his rotten teeth as he approached Yekta. "They're talking about you on all the channels. Elite surgeon... Rich landscape architect. Man, if those detectives saw that you were just an ordinary grunt who couldn't even close the manhole cover under the parking lot, they'd all die of grief!"
"Give me the photo," Yekta said. His voice was an icy wind echoing off the cold walls of the ruins.
Blind Mouse burst into laughter. "Not so fast. I said one million in cash. I'm giving you one week. Either you bring the money, or I hang that photo on the door of the police station. Your perfection is over, boy."
Yekta, hands in his pockets, took a slow and calm step toward the man. Blind Mouse reflexively thrust his switchblade forward.
"Look here," said Blind Mouse, his voice trembling slightly. "You're used to cornering those rich, defenseless bitches. I'm not like them. Your fancy little knife won't work in these ruins. I'll gut you."
Yekta was laughing inside. This stupid rat thought Yekta was just an "artist" who hunted women, incapable of close-quarters combat. Yet Yekta had swung sledgehammers for years, toppled thick tree trunks single-handedly, a worker whose muscles were woven like steel cables. Brutality was in his blood.
Yekta's right hand pulled a heavy, curved piece of iron from his jacket pocket. This wasn't that aesthetic, crescent-shaped pruning knife. This was a thick, rusted manhole hook, the heavy tool sewer workers used to lift iron covers.
"I prune orchids," whispered Yekta from the darkness. "But for sewer rats like you... I only do pest extermination."
Yekta lunged forward with such sudden, predatory speed that Blind Mouse didn't even have a chance to swing his switchblade. Yekta's left hand snatched the man's knife-wielding wrist mid-air, his thick fingers squeezing hard enough to crack the bone. The knife dropped to the floor.
The moment the man opened his mouth to scream, Yekta brought that heavy manhole hook down on his kneecap with terrifying violence. The sound of bone shattering echoed through the tannery walls. Blind Mouse dropped to his knees with a scream of agony.
Yekta didn't hesitate. He grabbed the man by his collar, hauled him up, and slammed his back viciously against a rusted leather vat. There was no aesthetic. There was no flawless cut. Yekta began raining blows onto the man's face and chest with his raw, heavy laborer's strength. With every strike, the man's resistance broke a little more, his face turning into a bloody pulp.
Finally, Blind Mouse collapsed onto the concrete floor in a semi-conscious state. Spitting blood, trembling.
Yekta quickly rifled through the man's cargo pants pockets. Hidden inside a crushed cigarette pack in his back pocket, he found the original polaroid photo and the cheap camera's memory card. Pulling out his lighter, he burned the photo right before the man's eyes. The ashes drifted onto the concrete.
"Forgive me..." wheezed Blind Mouse, blood trickling from his mouth. "Forgive me, brother... I swear I won't tell anyone..."
Yekta crouched down. He looked at the man's bloody, pulverized face. There wasn't an ounce of mercy in his eyes; there was only disgust.
"Perfection," Yekta said in an icy voice, "is leaving no trash behind."
He raised that heavy, rusted manhole hook into the air and brought it down on the man's head on that dark tannery floor for one final, fatal blow. Blind Mouse's twitching ceased forever.
Yekta stood up. He was panting, but a massive sense of relief washed over him. The last snag, the final witness in Izmir had been eliminated. Now he could process his Bodrum transfer paperwork and set off toward the blinding white streets of the sunny south.
But just as he was turning to leave, lightning struck in Yekta's genius, demonic mind.
Aylin... That stubborn detective would never let this case go until she found the killer of the bone (Cem) pulled from the acid tank; she might even freeze his transfer process. The department needed a "killer." A dark killer who ruled the underground enough to murder the contractor Cem.
That famous, freezing smile appeared on Yekta's lips. His gaze shifted to the corpse of Blind Mouse lying in a pool of blood on the floor.
If the Izmir police needed a killer, Yekta would give them one. And he would wrap it up with his own hands, presenting it on a silver platter to Aylin's arrogance.
ns216.73.216.152da2
and then Add to home screen.