The Serenity Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  “I might as well let the guys at the stand know,” Hüseyin said, reaching for the phone. “So they’re not worried about me. Let me tell them I’m here.”

  God knows what the guys at the stand would think, how they would interpret it.

  “You can’t stay here,” I said, putting down the phone. “No way.”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “Why’s that? The best way to stay safe is to be near you. If the guy is after me and I’m always with you, our paths are bound to cross. And you can catch him, just like that, easy as pie!”

  Half of his reasoning was true. I wasn’t quite sure about the second half, the easy-as-pie bit, that is.

  I let go of the phone so he could make the call.

  9.

  My deal with Hüseyin was simple: okay, he’d be “with” me but not with me.

  It was high time I shook off that panicky feeling that had started to envelop me and put on an air of cool. I called the ever sensible Selçuk.

  “We can’t go giving police protection to everyone on your list. That’s impossible,” he said.

  He had a point.

  “So what am I going to do?” I asked.

  “Not you, us,” he said. “The police, the security forces. They’re looking for clues. Whatever they can find. Anything.”

  “What do you mean? Are we going to wait for someone else to be murdered?”

  “That’s not quite how I would put it.”

  “But that’s exactly what it means…”

  “This is a game, a race against time,” he said. He called it a game too. They’d used the same term. “If we’re fast, we’ll catch him before he strikes again.”

  “Will we be fast enough?”

  “Without question!” he said.

  “So what have they found so far?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you. They must have something. Besides, there are eyewitnesses to the attempted murder of the television host.”

  Right, they should have absolutely no problem at all identifying someone who fired a gun from afar in the pitch-darkness of night and then ran off. Those eyewitnesses were sure to possess a wealth of knowledge, weren’t they?

  “But,” he added, “that case looks more like an organized crime, whereas this one seems less professional.”

  “But Selçuk, I’m the one who heard his threats with my own ears and then found Sermet Kılıç’s dead body.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not serious. Maybe there’s some deeply rooted issue behind it. I really don’t know.”

  “There are the voice recordings,” I said. “You must have the technological know-how. Can’t you identify the voice? Every voice is unique, you know. Just like fingerprints.”

  Right, and how would they know to whom the voice belonged? Or if they had a fingerprint, what would they match it up with? How would they find whose it was? What archive, what records did they possess? The police would have a voice and fingerprint, but wouldn’t know to whom they belonged.

  “If you’re right, then it has to be someone who knows you,” he said.

  Yep. And I knew a lot of people. Not to mention the ones whom I didn’t know but who still knew me.

  There was nothing we could do but wait.

  I ordered food from our neighborhood kebab shop. Hüseyin had lost his appetite. He didn’t finish the lahmacun he ordered, or his one-and-a-half-portion Adana kebab. He downed two boxes of ayran one after the other.

  It didn’t take me long to get ready for the club. I was in no mood to get fancy. I went for the simplest option: black trousers with a tight black jersey jumper. And around my neck a dashing necklace of large crystals, which I had bought while in Rio. Quartz and agate sprinkled among an abundance of amethyst: attached to one another with fine wires, some of the crystals seemed to be suspended in air, a virtual doppelgänger of the galaxy.

  “I’m ready,” I said, as I spritzed on some perfume.

  Hüseyin looked me over, from head to toe. Compared to what he was used to seeing me wear to the club, I qualified as positively homely.

  “What is it, ayol?”

  “Nothing,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Come on, then, we’re leaving.”

  It was a calm night. And good thing too, because I might have exploded at any moment, like a grenade that’s had its pin removed. It was only a matter of time before I projected the rage boiling inside me onto someone, anyone. Hüseyin, who hadn’t said a word on the way, who believed his silence would render him invisible, went and sat in a secluded corner. Chubby Müjde, spotting an opportunity, quickly seated herself next to him. Hüseyin was just Müjde’s type. I was spying on them as I listened to Hasan give me a full report on what drinks we were running short of and a humdrum summary of the accounts. Not long after she had sat down, Müjde rose from her seat beside Hüseyin with an ostentatious toss of her hair.

  In the cacophony of the club I couldn’t hear her say, “He’s nuts, ayol!” but I could easily read her lips. She went up on the stage and began swaying her hair as she danced a dance she believed to be erotic.

  “Burçak, you’re not listening to me,” said Hasan.

  He was right. I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t care less whether we had used up two bottles of gin instead of three bottles of whiskey, or how many kegs of beer were sold over the weekend.

  “Have you started again?” he asked, motioning with his head toward the corner where Hüseyin sat. I wanted to slap that cynical smile off his face. Instead I tried taking a deep breath.

  “Come with me,” I said, grabbing hold of his arm and dragging him upstairs, into the storage room we called our office. He walked in front of me, giving the low-rise jeans slipping down his butt a yank with each step. When we reached the top of the narrow staircase, Hüseyin’s head appeared at the bottom. He had come after me as if I were running away, and looked at me with an expression of concern and curiosity.

  “You wait there,” I said, shouting in an attempt to make my voice heard over the earsplitting music.

  I ignored Hasan’s giggle and made do with opening the door and fiercely shoving him into the office.

  I paid no mind to his plea, “Ay, take it easy!” as I closed the door behind us.

  “Look here, darling,” I told him. When I start a sentence with “darling,” and say it in that tone, he knows I mean business.

  He studied my face carefully, widening his eyes. “Ay, you’re angry, ayol.”

  “Yes, I know, don’t push my buttons.”

  Strangely enough, Hasan too had picked up “ayol.” Following the visit of my friend from Rio, drag queen Suzy Bumbum Ricardo, Hasan had let himself go; he’d become completely unwound. Ricardo had been in town on a dual pleasure and business trip, her itinerary consisting of sightseeing and performing at our club. The utterly feminine Ricardo and Hasan had gotten on like a house on fire. Meanwhile, Hasan had driven me mad by being at Ricardo’s beck and call every minute. She hadn’t had to ask for anything twice, and when she finally left, she gave her most flamboyant stage costume to Hasan as a token of remembrance. Thus this leafy green costume, which was adorned with sequins from head to toe yet nevertheless covered only a small portion of the body, hung right in front of me, in its nylon packaging. Even in the dim lighting, the sequins on it glittered.

  Sharing any old gossip with Hasan and Hasan alone was enough to ensure that the masses got wind of it immediately, whether it concerned them or not. He had an extraordinary ability to disseminate such gossip at an incredible speed. He even managed to deliver it in less than twenty-four hours to people he hadn’t even seen in person. And since I was aware of this splendid trait of his, my prologue ran a little longer than usual. With utmost clarity I explained to him that there was no room for joking around or sloppy gossip, and I made him repeat each important sentence after me.

  “And darling, as you may have guessed by now, it could very well happen to you too,” I said, to intimidate him.
r />   Upon hearing this, Hasan put both his hands over his mouth and opened his eyes wide, but not a single sound escaped his mouth.

  “You see now why Hüseyin is here?”

  He nodded yes.

  And then, in a hugely theatrical air reminiscent of Ricardo, he joined his hands over his heart and said in a high-pitched voice that would make countertenors green with envy: “The situation is grim!”

  That sound couldn’t possibly have come from the Hasan I knew. Unless, of course, he’d secretly been taking singing lessons for the last couple of months. It sounded as if he’d borrowed the shrieks of our national nightingale Sertab Erener, winner of the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest.

  A knock on the door halted our conversation from reaching its conclusion. I opened the door violently, thinking it was probably Hüseyin. But instead, there in front of me stood none other than she of the colossal bushy eyebrows, Lulu. I wasn’t able to rein back in the anger I had intended for Hüseyin. Bushy-eyebrows Lulu took a step back.

  “Slow down, abla…” she said, in a deep dark bass voice, the exact opposite of Hasan’s high-pitched shriek.

  “Sorry…” I said. I raised my eyebrows in inquiry.

  “There’s someone asking for you downstairs…”

  The dull, surly, expressionless look on this girl was inexplicable. She always moved as few muscles as possible so as not to ruin her makeup or develop wrinkles. She was like the Sphinx; sometimes she’d speak without moving her eyes, barely opening her mouth. And she’d make fun of herself, saying, “Everyone else has Botox done, whereas mine is natural, abla.” I’ve always wondered what she was like in bed. If it was anything like I imagined, it was awfully hilarious. Without even batting an eyelash, or opening her mouth too wide…

  I must have looked blank, because she felt the need to explain.

  “Hasan is here with you, and Şükrü Ağabey couldn’t leave the bar, so…I had to come up to let you know.”

  “Who is it?”

  “How should I know, abla? He asked for you, not for me.”

  Although she had previously proven that she did not actually have shit for brains, by behaving in this way from time to time she planted a seed of doubt: Or did she? With those terribly blank looks, that expressionless face, her finger-thick black eyebrows which she refused to dye despite her corn-silk hair, her right leg bent at the knee, and her men’s size-nine feet shooting out the front and back of her shiny silver-strapped high-heel shoes, one of which she leaned sideways on, she looked like an imbecile.

  “Don’t look at me like that, ayol, abla,” she said, uncomfortable at the way I was looking her up and down. “I’m not well, you know…”

  To indicate she was unwell, she stroked her hair with her left hand, and then, putting her body weight on her other foot, leaned sideways on her left shoe. If she went on leaning sideways on her shoes like that, her heels wouldn’t last.

  “Okay. I’ll be down in a minute,” I said.

  “Shall I wait?”

  Why! Oh, why!

  “No, darling,” I said, emphasizing the “darling.” “You go downstairs. I’ll be right there.”

  “Okay, but what do I say to the guy?”

  I summoned patience and took a deep breath.

  “Tell him I’ll be down…”

  She turned around and headed down the stairs, taking each and every step with great caution. She turned again on the second step and called out to me.

  “Please don’t be long. I have a potential customer. I don’t want to be stuck with your guy…”

  I turned to Hasan and asked, “Deal?”

  “Deal? What deal? I mean, did you tell me all this so I could warn everyone, or so I’d shut my mouth and find a place to hide?”

  It was charming that he was so in tune with himself.

  “You decide!” I said, as I turned around and walked out.

  Strangely enough, it was that square-faced police chief Hilmi Kuloğlu. He stood in front of the bar holding a glass of whiskey on the rocks, looking around, his eyes peeled. He was wearing a poorly tailored dark suit. Not to mention the white shirt and tie.

  “Hello,” I said, taking utmost advantage of the fact that we were on my turf, my very own queenly realm.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m rather surprised,” he said, referring to the current setting.

  I gave him a polite, regal smile.

  “Chief ordered me to inform you should we find anything. It may not be all that important, but there are a couple of things.”

  He downed half the whiskey in a single gulp. He’d be footing his own bill if he failed to convey any useful information.

  It became clear to me instantly: He was there to see the place. To quench his curiosity. And instead of any real dirt, he was going to hand me crumbs, just for the sake of his curiosity.

  “Please, let’s go upstairs to my office,” I said.

  He swallowed his remaining whiskey, left his glass at the bar, and tagged along behind me.

  Hüseyin was at my elbow before we even reached the staircase. He had a furious expression on his face.

  “Will you tell them to cut it out?” he said in a huff. “I went to the toilet to take a leak, but they wouldn’t let me do it in peace. One came to watch, another fingered me…What the hell is going on?”

  I could barely suppress my laughter. Clearly the girls were messing with him.

  I motioned to Hasan from a distance, signaling that he should look out for Hüseyin.

  “It’s taken care of, don’t worry about it,” I said, patting him on the shoulder before sending him on his way.

  Square-face had listened to us. Clearly in shock and unable to contain his curiosity, halfway up the stairs he asked, “Does stuff like that happen in the toilets?”

  Without stopping or turning to look at him, I answered, “You can go down and see for yourself in a moment, Chief.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like that…I mean, I didn’t mean it as a member of the police. Just…I was just curious.”

  “That’s exactly what I meant,” I replied.

  I pushed open the door to the crammed storage room office and let him through. We sat down. I returned to the same seat, right opposite Ricardo’s green costume.

  “Yes, Chief, please, go ahead; I’m listening.”

  He looked at me, forcing a smile, but then soon grew self-conscious and stopped smiling; it hadn’t suited his face anyway.

  “Please, if you call me Hilmi instead of Chief, then I’d feel comfortable calling you Burçak.”

  It seemed we had on our hands yet another officer who’d learned his interviewing techniques from American television and movies.

  I didn’t answer him.

  I began tapping on the table in front of me to let him know that I was listening.

  He cleared his throat first. As if he were preparing to deliver a long sermon.

  “As you might imagine, there are fingerprints everywhere in Sermet Kılıç’s apartment. We are now certain he was poisoned. We’re looking into what it was that poisoned him.”

  “Actaea spicata, in other words, baneberries,” I said, interrupting his sermon. “The murderer sent me a message.”

  “You don’t say! You’ve already found him, then!”

  “No,” I said, summarizing the whole story in two long sentences.

  “So it’s more complicated than I thought,” he said finally, his voice tinged with worry.

  “What else have you found besides fingerprints?”

  “Um…there were no fingerprints on the teacup. But there is something else that’s strange,” he said. “We found a burned CD, without a label or anything, inside the stereo.”

  “What’s so strange about that? Pirated CDs are available on every street corner. They’ve got every film you can imagine. Besides, anyone who has a CD writer can copy movies at home.”

  “You see, that’s precisely what’s so strange. There’s no computer in Sermet Kılıç’s apartment. Pirat
e copies always have labels on them so they don’t get mixed up. And the CD was burned by you. That’s what the root record shows.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “It means the CD was burned on your computer…”

  I didn’t remember burning a CD for Master Sermet. We didn’t have that sort of a relationship. But preparing special CDs for people is something I would do. Still, I would have remembered if I had. Besides, I was always careful to label the CDs I burned.

  “What’s on the CD?” I asked curiously.

  “Music,” he replied, looking at me as if that explained everything.

  “What music, ayol?”

  “Well, classical, electronic stuff. Without lyrics…”

  Well, that was quite helpful. Such a wealth of details to go on!

  He crossed his legs and pointed his eyes to the skin that now showed under his trouser hem. I looked. There wasn’t a single hair there. He couldn’t possibly be waxing!

  “This is all I have the courage to show at the moment,” he said, giggling. “But my whole body is soft and silky!”

  He displayed his joy by clapping his hands.

  I felt like I was in a cheesy comedy film. The grim-faced police officer was slowly succumbing to the transvestite tendencies that secretly burned inside him!

  “I do hesitate when I’m going out to work…I mean, if something were to happen, if I were to get hurt or have an accident and were taken to the hospital, it would be weird for them to discover me wearing women’s underwear. Not only would I be discharged, but once word got out, I’d never be able to rid myself of the stigma.”

  He’d begun rounding his r’s and stressing his syllables less.

  And now, yes, finally it was time for him to recount his story, which he was just dying to share. In fact, that was the one and only reason he was here, to recount all this, and to find a place where he could visit and be himself. Secretly!