The Serenity Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  “I’ve been asked to watch your apartment.”

  “Yes.”

  I glared at him.

  “I’m a retired sergeant,” he said, as if sensing my disappointment. “From the intelligence agency.”

  That was good news, at least.

  “Where would you like me to wait?”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  I wasn’t about to choose where he’d sit and wait.

  “I could stand outside the apartment building or sit in my car across the street,” he said, shedding light upon the issue at hand. “It’s a’ 98 gray Toyota.”

  Indicating the bag on the floor by his feet, which resembled a miniature suitcase, “I’ve come prepared,” he said. “I’ve brought my portable stool, my music, and crossword puzzles with me.”

  He smiled a reassuring smile. He had big teeth that were black in between. The fourth or fifth tooth on the right was missing. You could see it when he smiled.

  “Don’t you worry, sir,” he said. “Not even a fly will enter without me knowing. It’s not a busy street anyway. I’ll take a good look at everyone who passes by this street. But what are we going to tell the building residents?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “What can we say?”

  “We’ll think of something,” he said, nodding his head. “If you need anything, I’ll be downstairs. I wouldn’t want to disturb you any further. I can see you’re doing your skin care.”

  I apologized for the mask on my face. There was no need for me to be rude to the man just because he had disappointed me in the looks department.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he turned around and asked another question.

  “Excuse me, may I disturb you if I need to go? Or would you rather I used the caretaker’s lodgings?”

  This hadn’t occurred to me, but of course he could use the toilet.

  “And to eat, please do come up to eat,” I said. “Tea will be ready any minute.”

  “Please don’t go to any trouble,” he said, motioning toward his bag again. “I’ve got my thermos and sandwiches with me.”

  “I didn’t think much of him at first, but he actually seems a rather skillful man, unassuming but observant,” I said to Hüseyin.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  As if I would. As if I’d always lived with bodyguards, under surveillance.

  “We need to go to the drivers’ union,” he said. “I don’t know what needs to be done, but there must be a procedure for a taxi being set on fire, a way to use the license plate on another car.”

  I told Hüseyin that I had other plans.

  “If we finish early, we can go see a couple of cars. I’ve told the guys about it, they’re going to let me know if they find something suitable.”

  It seemed the time had come for me to address that delicate topic of us. I ran the risk of hurting him, but it had to be done.

  “You know what—” I began.

  But I was interrupted by the sudden sound of people talking in the next room.

  We both noticed it at the same time.

  We looked at each other, trying to figure out what was going on.

  I stood up and went into the study. I had completely forgotten about the CD, which had been playing softly in the background. Now it was playing the sound of groans, and a conversation interspersed with gasps and screams. One of the voices belonged to my ex, the opera background singer Aykut. And the other person making the erotic noises must have been me. I went red all the way to the roots of my hair. My lovemaking with Aykut had been recorded. We were listening to it. My blood froze. I knew my mouth was open in shock.

  Someone had recorded the noises in my bedroom! In my bedroom!

  I rushed to stop the CD.

  I didn’t know what to think.

  “Who was that?”

  At first I didn’t understand what he meant.

  “Who was the man you were making love with?” repeated Hüseyin.

  I would rather he hadn’t heard it. But the noises we were making were not easily ignored. We were literally screaming and shouting.

  “An old someone,” I said. “It was months ago.”

  That was true. I hadn’t seen him for months. He had dreams of becoming a pop star. He was making an album. It wasn’t out yet.

  “He must have been pretty good, judging by the noises you’re making,” Hüseyin said sulkily.

  That was true too. Aykut was a stallion. There was no stopping him. And it seemed Hüseyin was jealous.

  “You’re jealous…” I said in amazement.

  His head hanging low, he straightened the tassels on the edge of the carpet with his bare feet. His feet were nice and smooth too, just like his hands.

  “So?” he said. “Only stupid and ugly people don’t have jealous lovers. And you’re not ugly or stupid.”

  He lifted his head and looked at me. There was a bright, hopeful expression on his face.

  “But I’m not in love with you,” I said, just like that.

  I couldn’t possibly have known how many different versions of this conversation he had already played out in his head, but it seemed he had prepared himself for such a reply.

  “You can get used to me if you want to,” he said. “I’m a good person. I’ll try to make you happy. Okay, I might not be as good as him in bed, but tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. I can do anything.”

  A man’s pride rarely permitted such declarations. Yet there was Hüseyin, willingly pouring his heart out, holding nothing back.

  His goodwill was heart-wrenching.

  “That’s not the point,” I said, trying to smile.

  I could feel my face grimacing in lieu of a smile.

  “What, then?” he said. “I’m not cultured, sophisticated, smart, or flashy enough for you, is that it? You’re ashamed of me because I’m a taxi driver. Is that it? I saw yesterday how difficult you find it to introduce me to other people. You didn’t know what to say.”

  He was right. I really didn’t know how to describe or introduce him.

  “Why didn’t you say I was your lover? Or your boyfriend? I wouldn’t have been ashamed.”

  Yeah, right, as if you weren’t the one telling me what to wear when we were going to see your mom. Don’t be ashamed around her next time, I thought of saying.

  “What about your family?” I said to cut it short.

  “Oh…You mean when we were going to my mom’s…”

  “Yep, that’s exactly what I mean…”

  He scratched his nose.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. But you might be right. They need to know too. They might not understand at first, but they’ll probably get used to it. However long it takes…”

  This conversation would have been so much easier if he hadn’t been so understanding. He was leaning against my desk. I didn’t move. His gaze had entrapped me.

  “You’re too good for me,” I said, gulping. “But I want you to know that everything you said has made me very proud. Really. Thank you.”

  I couldn’t have given a more professional talk.

  “You don’t want a relationship,” he said, going back to where he’d left off, as if I hadn’t said anything.

  He had fixed his eyes on mine, waiting, ready to make meaning out of a single blink, a single twitch.

  His Adam’s apple moved up and down when he swallowed. He held his shoulders upright.

  We just waited. For something to happen, for someone to come, come and interfere. We needed a savior, someone other than the two of us.

  Time had frozen like it always does in scenes like this.

  Someone had to do something.

  “I can’t come with you,” I said quietly. “To the union or the…”

  “I understand,” he said.

  His voice was deeper and huskier than ever.

  He turned around and walked out of the room.

  Hüseyin arranged to meet with one of his frien
ds from the taxi stand to sort out the bureaucratic to-do list together. He thought he’d already had his turn as the target of the psycho’s wrath with his car being burned. Forgetting his fear of the psycho for a while, he let the realities of everyday life take over.

  “Can I come back when I’ve finished?” he said.

  What could I say? I simply nodded.

  He placed a kiss on my cheek before he left.

  Now I was going to sit down and listen to this CD with the pornographic recordings, from start to finish. I had listened to the first track, I knew that one already, so I skipped it. I knew the next one too. This was the group Emerson, Lake & Palmer, which I sometimes listened to myself. There were noises in the background I couldn’t make out that kept surfacing and then disappearing. It was hard to understand while listening like this. I put my earbuds in. Yes, there sure were other noises in the background. In the next, and the next track too. And then in the fifth, the noises got louder and clearer. This was Handel’s Water Music. And I could hear my own telephone conversation over it. It sent shivers down my spine. I was giving one of the girls advice. Next track. It was Handel again. This time it was the Alcina opera series and there were water sounds in the foreground. The shower! My shower! I was trying to sing along with the aria.

  My apartment was bugged! The psycho had been recording and listening in on my apartment for months. My bedroom, my living room, my bathroom…it was everywhere. I looked around in panic, as if I were going to turn around and immediately see the listening device. I wanted to find it, rip it apart, and throw it away. I was sure that I was being being watched too.

  My back went ice-cold. My hair stood on end.

  Everything I said in the house was being listened to.

  I remembered that audio recordings do not count as valid evidence in court, which was a relief as I recalled the million illegal things I’d talked about in my apartment, the latest being the Cemil Kazancı business.

  I couldn’t speak a word at home anymore. I couldn’t call anyone.

  I listened to the whole CD. It was simply scandalous. Everything was on it. He’d done the sampling, queued a bit of this and a bit of that, and then created this CD. Everything that had happened in the privacy of my home.

  I had to search for the listening devices. But where were they? And what were they? The more technology advanced, the smaller the little bugs had gotten. The latest photocell technology ones resembled stamp-sized tinfoil. No wires, no batteries. As long as they absorbed a little daylight every now and then, they could function flawlessly for years.

  When had they bugged me? My relationship with Aykut had ended months ago. So that trick the previous day with the telephone technicians, or something of a similar sort, had happened at least once before. Satı, as I’d learned, wouldn’t volunteer anything unless she was asked. They must have come the previous day to replace a bug that had malfunctioned. Why was I the target? What did he want?

  He’d hacked my Web site. And my computer. He knew where I went and who I was seeing. He was both watching and listening in on my home. What kind of a pest, what sort of a lunatic, was I up against?

  Again, I thought longingly of escape plans, leaving everything behind and fleeing. But I had forgotten to extend my goddamn passport.

  I hadn’t thought of it in my first sudden fit of depression, but I could call Selçuk and have my passport extended the same day. All I’d have to do was pack up my things.

  I would be able to escape Hüseyin and his hopeless love for me. And the psycho. It would be like a long, never-ending holiday. I could get lost in places where no one knew me, where people expected nothing from me.

  After dreaming up such radical fantasies of escape, it became easier to generate more reasonable solutions. I could move to a hotel or stay with someone for a while. Ponpon’s home was a castle I could seek refuge in any day. But, alas, my psycho knew that place too, and thus it would mean putting Ponpon in danger.

  Although he would complain, I could be a guest at Alı’s place for a while. But it would be a blow to his machismo in the eyes of his neighbors, and in the area where he lived, that was equivalent to death.

  I could move into Genteel Gönül’s, where I was sure the psycho would never think of looking for me. Then again, I had spoken to Gönül on the phone quite often. He’d find me if our conversations had been recorded, so I’d end up pulling Gönül down with me as well.

  He had turned me into a poisonous plant. Whoever came near me was in danger.

  A hotel was the wisest option.

  When Satı arrived I tried acting normal, as if nothing had happened. After all, I was being spied on. I packed a tiny bag, offering no explanations, only taking the essentials. I could buy new clothes, underwear, makeup equipment, and a toothbrush later.

  Before leaving the building, I told Yılmaz, who had pitched a camp at the entrance of the apartment building and was solving crosswords busily, about the girl with the bicycle, whom he should watch out for. I gave him all the details about her supplied by know-it-all Melek. And I left a little note for him to pass on to Hüseyin when Hüseyin came back.

  Yılmaz didn’t ask a single question, or even give me a quizzical look. He was like one of those people who had long ago solved the mystery of life.

  23.

  Next stop, the Blue Sky Hotel in Taksim. I knew the manager. He’d give me a deep discount.

  I went up to my room and, after making the phone calls I needed to make without my psycho listening in, I headed straight to an Internet café. I had a lot to do.

  As a precaution in case my Internet user IDs were also being traced, I created a new e-mail account.

  I sent an urgent request for help to the Web-Guerrillas group, where good and evil hackers from all walks of life gathered. “Someone is accessing and using my computer, what should I do?” I asked. Suggestions would pour in before the end of the day.

  Then I sent Jihad2000 a separate, private message. Of course, I took advantage of the opportunity to tell him just how much he had let me down. I explained at length that the situation was much more serious than he’d made it seem, that I really needed help, that if we were still friends now was the time for him to prove it, and exactly what it was I expected him to do. I was sure he’d be at his computer even in his sleep.

  Sure enough, while I was still looking at a few Web sites, a short and simple reply from Jihad2000 arrived: “Okay.” One thing down.

  Once I had finished, I went to the brasserie at the Marmara Hotel. I ordered myself a ritz salad and a mineral water. Considering all of the food I had consumed over the previous couple of days, I’d best watch what I was eating.

  I was now ready to turn on my mobile, which had been switched off since the night before. I was ready to hear from my psycho again.

  As I sipped my mineral water and waited for my salad, a series of text messages, his text messages, were delivered to my in-box. He was raging. Each message got more and more angry.

  Just when my salad arrived at the table, my phone rang. It came from yet another pay-as-you-go number.

  “Like the recordings?” he asked in his croaking voice.

  Of course, if he was listening in on my house, he knew I’d listened to the disc.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “You’re just too cool for your own good, now, aren’t you? Interesting? Hah! They’re exquisite! Absolute perfection!”

  “You’re a lousy piece of shit,” I said in a low voice. “It was pathetic of you to cut up my bras.”

  “You don’t need them, you’re a man.”

  “I get to decide what I wear,” I said. “Setting the car on fire was unnecessary too. Hüseyin hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “Now you’re defending him just because he screwed you twice. Was it really worth being fucked? Did it give you inner peace, him fucking you like that, huh?”

  Oh, so we were getting vulgar. I was ready to talk dirty.

  “I’m sure your cock i
s tiny. I bet you can’t even get it up.”

  Accusations of sexual inadequacy due to an itty-bitty malfunctioning wiener are enough to send a knife through the heart of any man. As a man myself, that much at least I knew for sure.

  There was the silence I expected.

  “You’re wrong,” he said.

  “Your silence tells me that I’m not. Or maybe you were taking a look. So is it still in place?”

  “Tonight,” he said, in his thoroughly pissed off psycho voice, “Hüseyin dies!”

  That had gotten him worked up; I could switch off my mobile now.

  When I finished my salad I went upstairs to the lobby. There were phones on the side wall. I dialed Jihad2000’s number.

  “So?” I asked as soon as he picked up.

  “Right,” he said. “I was able to pick up the base station he’s calling through. It’s in your neighborhood.”

  “No shit! I know that already, ayol. The man is spying on my home. Of course he’d be calling from the same neighborhood.”

  “I’m not the CIA or Mossad. Don’t overrate me. Mine is just an amateur home system. This is the best I can do. I can’t give you an exact location.”

  It was impossible to miss the bitterness in his voice.

  “Sorry,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. Thank you. By the way, how are you?”

  “Compared to you, I’m good. I take on the jobs you lot turn your noses up at. Luckily I’m not stuck with another psycho like you.”

  With that, he reminded me of a previous stalker, in what had been another unpleasant scenario. Jihad2000 and I had first met thanks to similar threatening messages, written by none other than Jihad2000 himself.

  “Let’s not go down that road,” he said when I reminded him. “It was an aggression rooted in suppression. I’ve overcome it, thanks to you.”

  It was kind of him to credit me.

  “I’m seeing Pamir in a while,” he said. “Going to her place…For the first time. Seeing as there’s no hope with you…”

  I wished him a wonderful time. I couldn’t expect everyone to live a monk’s life just because I was being sucked into a whirlpool of terror.

  But I had urgent plans to make.