The Serenity Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  My eternal fan and rival, Jihad2000, who had recently become my friend as well, had sent me three messages, the last of which was clearly marked “urgent” in the subject field. I read that one first.

  “What’s going on? What are all these threatening messages pouring in for you? If there’s anything I can do, I’m at your disposal,” it read. What threatening messages was he talking about? What was pouring in? I knew he liked reading my messages. Although he had promised several times never to do it again, he was incapable of controlling himself, or of reining in his curiosity, or of restraining his sense of rivalry. And so he hacked into my account and logged in to read my messages before I had a chance to do so myself. Although this did give me a sense of protection, it also annoyed the living daylights out of me. I had a few addresses he still hadn’t managed to access, but with his talent and patience, he’d access those too soon enough. Of that I was certain.

  Jihad2000’s other messages pointed to the source of the threat. The psycho viewer who had called the show had found my e-mail address and sent me a threatening message every hour. Apparently there was no room on this earth for me and my kind. He was going to wipe us out. Those who influenced me, those who had made it possible for me to achieve inner peace (this bit he had typed in capital letters and put in quotation marks), would get their due too. He had copied all the names I had published on my Web site, and heralded the fabulous news that he would murder someone each week until I found him.

  The one sent at 3:16 in the morning was a notification of his accomplishment.

  “Strike one! I shot Süheyl Arkın, the closet-case faggot who flaunts you and your kind in front of the public as if you were some kind of hot shit. I’ll have more news for you soon!”

  A cramp gripped my stomach as I read his words. What a truly wonderful start to the day. I headed straight for the shower. By the time I got out, my remaining coffee was cold.

  Still wearing my bathrobe, I sat back down at the computer. My stomach was growling, but my curiosity outweighed my hunger. First, using classic hacking methods, I tried finding his address, his connecting computer. Our psycho was smart. He had connected from a different area, with a different computer, each time. Clearly, he was using Internet cafés. That’s what I’d do if I were him: the best way not to leave a trace. The messages had been sent from providers such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Freemail, and so on, where you could create an account easily without providing any sort of personal information whatsoever.

  “Let’s see if you have the guts to find some ‘inner peace’ now,” it said. He addressed me as an “enemy of peace,” which I didn’t believe I deserved at all. “It’s you and your kind that disturb the peace.”

  My head had started to ache. I looked at the list of names; it was a veritable who’s who of my illustrious life. On my Web site, besides those whose names I had mentioned on the program, I had listed the names of people I didn’t know, of whom I was just an admirer or whom I held in high regard. Instead of taking the easy route and simply copied and pasted the list, he had actually examined it and copied one by one only those names he deemed appropriate targets for his cause.

  My site was actually dedicated to Audrey Hepburn. It had her photographs, biography, filmography, in short, everything about her. John Pruitt was also prominently featured as the ideal man. Besides these two, there was of course my Reiki master Gül Tamay; my aikido tutor, the tai-chi master Sermet Kılıç; my gushing fount of love and joie de vivre, Zekeriya “Ponpon” Güney; and the one and only hypnotherapist in the country, NLP1 expert Cem Yeğenoğlu, who was only on there because he had insisted. From the list in his threatening message my menace had specifically excluded foreigners like the mortician from New York, my makeup master Alberto Maggiore, and my personal development guru Will Schutz.

  I checked the program that tracked visitors to my Web site. There had been visitors whom I knew; but for the most part, it revealed dozens of anonymous addresses. Scanning all these from start to finish, tracking them, would be enough to make one lose one’s wits.

  When Jihad2000 failed to respond in his chat room, I decided to give him a call. I was sure he would have thought of everything I had, and done even more than I had already done. His private line, the one his mother didn’t answer, rang and rang. He was probably in the bath or using the toilet. I sent him a message coded “urgent urgent urgent” which read, “Call me,” and got off the computer.

  I suddenly realized why I’d been feeling empty all morning: There was no music! Wimpy Ferdı downstairs hadn’t yet begun blasting his music yet. He may have been a nosy neighbor, but devoid of manners he was not. I’d had a run-in with him once when he moved in the previous year, and that had done the trick. He does not commence with his roaring, wall-shaking rock music until he’s heard noises coming from my apartment first.

  Silence wasn’t doing me any good. I quickly reached out to the Handel shelf and pulled out the Athalia oratorio. The beauty of baroque music filled my home like sunlight. Emma Kirkby’s angelic tone, Joan Sutherland’s nightingale soprano, little Aled Jones’s hair-raising, prepubescent soprano together with Anthony Rolfe Johnson’s tenor; it was simply perfection. The conductor Christopher Hogwood, the man responsible for launching the authentic instruments movement, had once again made a recording that would be a milestone in classical music.

  Accompanied by this angelic group, I could now sit and think, and begin making plans.

  If this psycho was serious, I mean, if he really was the one who shot Süheyl Arkın, then we were in deep shit. As Süheyl Arkın had considered it his duty to turn over stones that were not meant to be touched, there was of course the possibility that he had been shot by some other offended soul, in which case my psycho would be taking credit for someone else’s work.

  When someone like Süheyl Arkın, the apple of the media’s eye, was shot, the police would waste no time in finding a suspect.

  I answered the ringing phone thinking it would be Jihad2000, but it wasn’t; it was Ponpon.

  “Ayolcuğum, darling…You can’t possibly imagine how proud I felt as I watched you. You spoke just as fluently as myself. I just watched the video recording again and, believe me, I couldn’t find a single flaw.”

  “Stop exaggerating, ayol,” I said. “For one, the lights were completely wrong. Whenever I turned my head you could see the sagging skin on my neck. Plus, I was nervous, and so I spoke in a rush. What’s more, the shadow of my eyelashes fell on my face.”

  The girls had told me all this one by one last night. I hadn’t forgotten, and was now reporting it all to Ponpon.

  “Oh, you’re exaggerating,” she said. “Come on, get up and get yourself over here. You can pick up your cassette and we can eat together. I made delicious courgette börek. It’ll be out of the oven in a short while. I put yogurt…”

  Ponpon sure knew how to make a girl’s mouth water. The way she described courgette börek…

  “I’m expecting a phone call.”

  “Just redirect it, ayolcuğum…”

  “And then I have to go to the hospital. You know they shot the program host, Süheyl Arkın.”

  I was doing my best to bid that courgette börek a tearless farewell.

  “All right, you have no intention of coming. It’s up to you, cream puff. I’m not going to insist. Come if you want, don’t if you don’t. I’ve issued my invitation.”

  And slam, she hangs up on me. You can never tell when or at what Ponpon will be offended. My hand reached out to the phone to call and try to make it up to her, the smell of courgette börek filled my nostrils, and my stomach growled, but my distress over what to do about the threat hurling psycho outweighed all else.

  I called Mehmet and suggested we go to the hospital together. After all, he too was one of the three people to be threatened.

  “I’d like to, but unfortunately, I don’t have time,” he said. “I’m flying to Rio de Janeiro tonight.”

  I knew he lived there six months a year.<
br />
  “It won’t take long, just fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “Still, I can’t.”

  “But you’ve been threatened too…”

  “Exactly, that’s why I’m leaving. There’s no need for me to walk around here like a target. I was going to leave anyway, now I’m just leaving two days earlier than planned. Write to me if you find anything. I’ll be checking my e-mail. I’m sure you’ll have solved the case and tracked down the psycho by the time I’m back.”

  “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

  4.

  My 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 a
n 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.