Only Gonca’s eyes were dry, and that was because she’d known of her brother’s death for a long time. At intervals people came in from the community to pay their respects. They brought food, drink and cigarettes for the family, who they hugged to their chests and wished long lives. Şukru had been a man of power in Tarlabaşı. Şukru’s wife, Bulbul, sat opposite Gonca with her dead husband’s nine children clustered around her. He’d never been faithful to her for a moment but still she mourned him as her lover, the father of her children and her breadwinner. But she was a woman whose beauty and temper had disintegrated many years ago, and this had left her bitter. When there was a lull in the visits from neighbours she looked at Gonca. ‘What is the policeman you open your legs to going to do about my Şukru’s death?’ The old man waved a hand, hoping that he could calm the situation and silence his daughter-in-law, but Bulbul persisted. ‘Well?’ ‘He’s doing everything he can,’ Gonca said, not rising to the bait that only a few years before would have had her out of her seat and at the woman’s throat.
