The Serenity Murders (5 page)

“And all you’ll have to do is write about it…”

“Of course, if it’s exciting enough.”

I turned the television on. The channels were broadcasting news about the attack on Süheyl Arkın. And what were they using as visuals? The moment the threatening call was received in the studio. So there I was, on the screen again, and on every single channel. The phone call, which hadn’t originally been broadcast in full but which had been recorded, was now on air for the world to see and hear. And Süheyl Arkın being carried on a stretcher, the
emergency entrance at the hospital, a doctor commenting on his condition, and then us again…They had identified the location from which the phone call had been made. It was a phone booth in Bakırköy. No suspects had yet been taken into custody. The police were doing their best to track down the criminal. The shadow of my eyelashes really did fall on my face. And the Swinging Bombays truly were dazzling.

The doorbell rang. No one comes to my place without notice, except for the grocer’s delivery boy and the apartment caretaker. I looked through the peephole. My frail downstairs neighbor was at the door.

“Good morning,” he said, scratching at his greasy, shoulder-length hair. “I saw you on TV last night. I wanted to congratulate you.”

I thanked him, smiling politely, getting ready to close the door. At times like this I feel like Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
, or Grace Kelly, the princess of Monaco, shaking hands with the plebeians.

In his extended hand he held a CD-ROM.

“I recorded the whole thing.”

It was a polite gesture. I thanked him once more.

“I might have missed the very beginning, though…” he said.

He wiped his palm on his faded T-shirt, as if it were sweaty. He was a graphic designer or a cartoonist, or something like that. His hands were stained with ink. He was terribly skinny. You could count his ribs.

He had fixed his gaze on me, and was waiting to be invited in.

As a matter of principle, I like to keep relations with my neighbors at a minimal level of sociability, lest familiarity give rise to that notorious offspring.

And so I gave him a look that told him I would not be letting him in.

“Well, I should be going.”

I tried Jihad2000 again.

“Wow, well, if it isn’t my famous friend,” he answered. “What have you got yourself into this time?”

I hadn’t especially got myself into anything. I asked him what he’d found.

“Not much,” he said. “I think we’ve got a professional on our hands.”

He had said “we,” thereby claiming the problem as his own too. This was a good sign. It meant he’d look under every stone, put tracers on the menace, and finally discover where he had logged on from. Sitting in a wheelchair all day long, he had nothing better to do.

“I haven’t really searched that hard. I just had a look around…”

Hmm, this meant he’d need to be bribed into looking harder.

“So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“I’ll catch him, all right. First I just need to know how you’ll reward my efforts.”

“Tell me straight, what is it you want?”

“You…”

His feelings for me were not mutual. I didn’t like sadomasochistic relationships. I had sent him Pamir, one of our girls who shared his proclivities, and she’d managed to keep him entertained for some time.

“Out of the question,” I said. It really was.

“I got really horny watching you last night. The leather trousers…And those shoes you were wearing…”

I knew these could be fetish objects, but I had by no means intended to make Jihad2000 horny.

“We’re friends,
ayol
! Plus it would be rude to Pamir.”

“So what…Friends fuck too…I jerked off watching the recording.”

I had no intention of continuing this conversation. If I did, it would turn into bad phone sex.

Television was going to make me a newly sought-after celebrity. From Hüseyin the taxi driver to Kemal Barutçu, a.k.a. Jihad2000, it seemed my past dalliances had remembered my attractions and now couldn’t get enough of me.

I was so hungry my stomach was in cramps. I couldn’t help but think of Ponpon’s invitation. I got ready and left my apartment in a dash. My stomach was craving courgette
börek
. I’d stop by the hospital afterward.

________________

1 Neuro-linguistic programming

M
y stomach full of delicious courgette börek, I arrived outside Florence Nightingale Hospital in a state of semi-lethargy, to find before me a doomsday crowd. One celebrity after another was walking in to visit Süheyl. There were several cameramen posted outside every door. Nesting at appropriate angles, they did their best to capture every person who entered or exited, celebrity or not. Considering my recent rise to fame, if I hadn’t come sans makeup, dressed in ordinary, rather modest men’s clothing, I would have had no chance of escaping them. In this guise, though, I was sure to pass unnoticed. Alas, my fifteen minutes would be over before the day was through.

A hand touched my shoulder.

“Hello.”

It was the famous gossip columnist Koral Kohen. There he was, staring at me, with his coal-black curly hair, chubby face, and eyes that always showed an expression of surprise no matter what he was actually looking at. I smiled when I recognized him. I’ve known Koral Kohen for years and he always makes me laugh. He visits all sorts of venues and is buddies with all yet intimate with none. Whatever he hears, he writes in his column or goes on TV and recounts, without questioning the truth of it in the least. And then, within a week tops, he is able to win back the hearts of those
he offended with his slanderous gossip. That, in a nutshell, is Koral Kohen.

He was after a story and he had caught me.

“I watched the show last night,” he said, rolling his eyes. That meant he was impressed. “I think he’s fine. It’s meant to give the ratings a little boost, that’s all.”

“You mean it’s all a lie?” I asked, astonished. I was used to Koral generating conspiracy theories, but this, to be honest, seemed a bit far-fetched.

“Don’t you see?” he said. “He’s on every television channel, on the front page of every newspaper today. What could be better for a program that’s taking a plunge in the ratings?”

Oh, so the program I had been on was a dead bird, its ratings plummeting!

“So what about the images on TV?” I asked. “He was wounded…rushed into emergency…And all the things the doctors said…”

“He’s in showbiz, hon. He could easily arrange all that.”

And to indicate that his explanation was final and that the topic was closed to further discussion, he quickly turned his head toward a different direction.

“But I’m still being threatened,” I said. “I received dozens of threatening messages last night. There’s a psycho out there saying,
Catch me if you can, or else I’ll kill everyone you love, one by one
. Or do you suppose that’s fake as well? To make it more realistic, perhaps?”

The expression on his face told me that he thought I was being silly. What I had just said ran completely counter to his theory. He looked as if he couldn’t believe his ears, as if I had said something wrong. He made a wry face, the kind one makes after gulping down a spoonful of disgusting cough syrup.

“Are you worried about Süheyl?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course I am. No matter how you look at it, it’s
an unpleasant situation. Plus, I was there. I heard it all. The threat was pointed at me too.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

“You have a lot of confidence in yourself, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say
a lot
, but, yes, I do.”

He was rescued from having to respond when a navy BMW drove up to the hospital door. He, along with the other journalists and reporters, gravitated toward the vehicle. The commotion continued as the members of the press thrust forward toward their target, constricting the circle that had formed around the car.

I had met the newcomer before and knew him to be Süheyl Arkın’s friend. Dr. Bedirhan Ender, the health diet specialist who had also proclaimed his expertise in the field of herbal therapy. After generating a mass of readers and followers thanks to his books, he started writing a weekly column for one of the mass circulation newspapers, and had recently begun hosting a program on Süheyl’s channel. He explained how to make medicine from herbs, and which herb is good for which illness. He also hosted guests he had cured and listened to them as they conveyed their eternal gratitude, an expression of fake modesty plastered on his face. In truth, he was as proud as a peacock.

He spoke into the microphones that were shoved in his face, saying how upset he was, describing the incident as a genuine tragedy, and explaining that everything possible would be done to cure Süheyl, but that ultimately, at the core of everything was inner desire and divine ordinance. The aura of sterility radiating from Bedirhan Ender was too much for me. He was always clean-shaven, his hair always perfectly styled, his gold-framed glasses sparkling clean and resting at the exactly correct position on his nose, his shirt starched and white as snow, his jacket stiff, his trousers
ironed. Perhaps worst of all, anyone with half a brain could see the herbal remedies he claimed as his own dated back centuries, millennia even. It pissed me off even more when he claimed that he had lived in a Tibetan monastery for some time, and that he was a messenger sent to spread the knowledge that he had acquired in Tibet. Even my grandma knew at least half of what he preached, and besides that, there were those with similar interests and knowledge in our Reiki group too. What’s more, they had learned all that same stuff without having to go all the way to Tibet! In short, I detested the guy. Although I did believe in what he taught, I detested the way he presented and promoted himself.

I wonder, if I were to give the psycho his name, might he give priority to Dr. Bedirhan Ender and rub him out first? I was frightened by my own thoughts!

Because of the crowd and commotion, it seemed I wouldn’t be able to get in to see Süheyl Arkın after all. Frankly, I wasn’t all that bothered. The sluggish feeling that follows a serving of
börek
was slowly wrapping me in its warm embrace.

At this point, a little physical activity could only do me good. I decided to go see Master Sermet for our usual program: tai chi to warm up, unwind, and balance my energy, followed by aikido. I hopped into a cab and headed for his apartment, which he always says is in the classy neighborhood of Ulus, but which I would describe as being just up the hill from the rather more ordinary Ortaköy. It was an old building, in which he occupied two apartments on the same floor. One he lived in, while the other he used to hold his classes. He led groups that came at a fixed time on certain days of the week, but I didn’t belong to any of those. I had started off as a private student, and as the relationship between master and disciple transformed into friendship, I became someone who stopped by whenever I felt like it, someone who sometimes popped in simply
for a chat, and who had also equaled his master’s mastery of aikido and perhaps had even come to surpass it, as the master occasionally admitted.

While the side of the road looking onto the Bosporus bore all the hallmarks of prosperity and sophistication, the opposite side appeared equally middle-class. And there, on the middle-class side of the road, was where Sermet Kılıç lived, bitterly calculating ways in which he could upgrade to the other side. “I’d double my fees,” he said. “Think about it, the whole of high society would come rushing!”

In order to attract new customers, he himself had started taking jujitsu lessons. “It’s a completely different discipline,” he would say, trying to tempt me into learning it.

Due to a recent increase in hair loss, he had had his head shaven and then proclaimed, “See, I look like a real Tibetan monk now.” He certainly was as skinny as one. He wore baggy trousers and cotton jackets or tunics that he secured by tying a belt around his waist. And he always wore his specially made soft shoes. He was super-sensitive when it came to animal rights and so he preferred not to use leather. Naturally, he was also a vegetarian.

The lock on the metal entrance gate was broken, so I pushed it open and walked in. They had planted grass in the minuscule garden, but it had failed to flourish due to neglect.

As I walked up the stairs, I felt the courgette
börek
I had had at Ponpon’s weighing me down. Ponpon was an excellent cook. She could knock the socks off any housewife. She never skimps on ingredients, especially butter: “That’s what gives it its flavor,” she argues. The third slice of
börek
I had eaten out of sheer gluttony was now giving me a guilty conscience. But Master Sermet always has green tea. I’d feel much better after a cup of warm green tea.

I stopped at the landing on the third floor. I could hear the sound of a familiar tune. The soft music was coming from the
apartment opposite his home, but the door to the studio was wide open. I wondered if I had arrived during class hours. But then who would come at this time of the day? People prefer sessions either in the early hours of the morning or after work.