The Prophet Murders

by Mehmet Murat Somer

  I put the menu aside when Gönül approached with a brightly chirped, “Merhaba efendim.

  She had apparently made an effort to play it straight. But the effect was still a disaster. The phosphorous green tiara adorning her long tresses was a dead giveaway.

  As she kissed me, I nearly keeled over from the stench of the knock-off Joop perfume she habitually drenches herself with. I really must remember to buy her a reasonable bottle of perfume or cologne.

  Knowing what she is like, I ordered for us both. She would, of course, opt for the most expensive pizza. A self-satisfied smile was fixed on her face.

  “Tell me right away what you have to say,” I prompted.

  “Ay, just give me a chance to catch my breath sweetie. I’ve only just arrived, you know.”

  “I’m just dying to know. . . ” I said.

  “I’ll tell you . . . I’ll tell you . . . But first let me have a look around. Where am I? Who’s here? What are the guys like? Then I’ll tell you.”

  She scrutinised, one by the one, the occupants of the three other tables and each and every waiter. She looked each one directly in the eye, and bestowed on them all a tiny screech of admiration. I felt myself redden. It would be some time before I visited Pizza Express again.

  “Just get a load of all these gorgeous waiters!” she practically shouted.

  Everyone heard.

  “What’s with the blushing?” she asked.

  “It’s a bit much,” I said.

  “What do you mean? Appreciation for true beauty is a virtue.”

  “Look,” I pleaded, “Just try not to shout.”

  “Fine then,” she said, lowering her voice slightly. “You.

  know I’ve got a weak spot for men like Kadir Inanir. Look at that one over there.”

  She pointed. I grabbed her finger and pulled it down onto the table. “He’s a young Kadir.

  Ianir Well, aren’t you hot stuff mister! I He’s a bit short, his chin’s too bony and the eyes are all wrong. But you can’t have everything, now can you?” anir at any age, The waiter, who looked nothing like Kadir I arrived at our table with rolls and dipping dishes of aromatic olive oil. Gönül watched his every move, rapt.

  Realising she was about to open her mouth, I kicked her under the table.

  “Ay abla, that hurt!”

  “Enough!” I said. “If you keep this up we’ll be thrown out of here. We’ll end up eating sandwiches at the shop down the road.”

  “What’s the problem? Haven’t they all got pee-pees?” was her response. Fortunately she’d said this in a low voice. No one had heard.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “Tell you what, we can go down to Bebek when we’re finished. It’s crawling with men. Now tell me what you found out.”

  “You’re always so pushy. Questions, questions, questions . . . ”

  I gave her a long hard stare. She glared right back. Then she pouted slightly as she began telling me about the coroner’s.

  “The autopsy performed on Gül’s body revealed that she had had intercourse with more than one person.” Gönül’s eyes grew misty as she told me this. “She’d also been tortured a bit. That is, she’d been severely beaten.”

  “What’s more,” she continued, “Gül came. I mean, she ejaculated. That was never her thing. She’d never come on the job. ‘That’s private; just for my own pleasure,’ she’d say. She was a real lady.”

  I didn’t ask for an explanation of the connection between not coming and being a lady. She was concentrating on her story.

  “They’d also put one of those metal rings on her thingy. You know, the one that keeps it erect all the time. It was still on when they found her and she’d turned quite purple.”

  Now that was strange. There was no mention of a cock-ring in the coroner’s report. Nor was there any mention of the deceased sporting an erection.

  “That’s not her way at all. She wouldn’t dream of sticking one of those things on. She’d even hide her thingy when she made love. She was ashamed of it. So why would she put that metal thing on it to keep it hard . . . It’s just so strange. I wanted to tell you all of this because you’re so good at connecting the dots. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Just like Lieutenant Colombo.”

  Her reference to Colombo dated us both. As for the cock-ring, it could only mean one thing: Gönül had been the active partner. And that pointed straight to Adem Yildiz.

  “But you’re not even listening to me,” she protested.

  Right at that moment her pizza and my enormous salad arrived. As always, a waiter stood on either side, one with a pepper grinder and the other with a dish of spicy oil. Gönül wanted both.

  “Don’t mind me,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure something out. I was a bit lost in thought.”

  “You know what I told you about thinking too much!”

  And she let loose another raucous laugh. There was no trace of the mournfulness of just a few moments earlier.

  “And don’t neglect your food. My pizza is delicious. I hope that green stuff is going to fill you up.”

  “I’m dieting,” I explained.

  “Ayol, if eating grass was enough to lose weight cows would have perfect figures.”

  And she laughed again, of course. If there was anyone left who hadn’t noticed us, they did now. There was no ignoring Gönül’s chortles. And anyone who heard them naturally looked over to see who or what had produced them.

  We finished lunch with idle chatter. She explained in detail the pain and suffering caused by a rectoscopy. It was dulling my appetite, so I let her get on with it. Over half my salad remained untouched.

  As she mopped up the rest of the sauce on her plate with a bit of crust, she dropped a bombshell.

  “Did you realize that the police never found her clothes, handbag, identity card or anything else? You’d think that they had carted her off as naked as the day she was born!”

  It was an astute observation.

  “Maybe the police took everything,” I guessed.

  It was entirely possible. I’ve heard that the victims of traffic accidents have found themselves relieved of their wristwatches.

  “Ayol, what use would a policeman have for the sort of clothes Gül wore?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know Gül. She wore nothing larger than this.”

  Gönül extended her hand.

  The hand was actually rather large. But that’s another story.

  “Then they must have been lost,” I said.

  “All right. Let’s say everything was lost. But wouldn’t you expect a single shoe, a bag, a pair of panties, an ID card or something to be left behind?”

  She had a point. The fact that absolutely nothing turned up was a bit strange.

  “I wonder how they identified the body,” I mused.

  “Once our girls are out on the market there isn’t a single policeman who doesn’t know who they are. She got arrested and taken to the venereal clinic every other day. Then she’d hand over some cash and get released.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” I persisted. “They’d have to find some way to identify the body.”

  “Then they must have spotted the tattoo on her bottom. She’d had a big pink rose done. The second she arrived in Istanbul. And she always wore a G-string. She wanted to make sure everyone saw it.”

  I didn’t ask where or how Gül had displayed her bottom to the police. Where there’s a will there’s a way. So our little Gül-Yusuf was even more of an exhibitionist than the rest of us.

  Twenty-five

  As soon as I returned to the office I called Selçuk to confirm what Gönül had told me.

  “I see you’ve really got involved,” he said. “You seem to call every day. When you haven’t got any questions you don’t bother to phone. Not even to check in.”

  “Please don’t,” I said. “You know a lot better than me how the police approach cases like this. No evidence of any kind has been collected and there
hasn’t been a proper investigation. They just see another dead transvestite and close the file. I’m a bit sensitive about things like that.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  I ticked off the things I’d learned from Gönül.

  “Why isn’t any of this on record?” I asked. “And it really is odd, isn’t it, that the girl, I mean Yusuf, didn’t leave a single thing behind. Where’s her handbag, her clothes?”

  “Look, you’re right. It doesn’t make any sense to me either.

  I’ll have to ask around. I’ve got a bit of clout with some of the guys in the department. I’ll do what I can and get back to you.”

  “I’ll be at the office,” I said, and gave him my number.

  “By the way, what are the results of the DNA tests?”

  “Still too early,” he said. “We won’t get results for a week, ten days.”

  “Bureaucracy,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t say that,” he said. “I can’t really defend the investigation, but we’ve got a lot of work and not many experts. Unless someone’s there tightening the screws nothing really gets done.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And when it’s a dead transvestite no one wants to crack the whip. They’re afraid of what people will think.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. Look, I’m doing all I can, aren’t I? I don’t care what anyone thinks.”

  I recalled that he’d said the opposite just the other day, but knew that reminding him now wouldn’t help.

  “Fine,” I said. “I wonder if you could get a policeman to go with me to investigate further. We could at least have a look at the house in Küukyali, the cistern and the garden . . . ”

  “Are you out of your mind! Do you really think they’d agree?”

  “Then I’ll do it myself,” I said.

  “I can’t stop you. And I can’t promise to help you if you get into trouble.”

  After I hung up I asked Figen, whose hair was looking frumpier than ever despite her lunch break visit to the coiffeur, to inform me immediately if anyone called from the police department.

  The phone rang the moment I stepped back into my office. It was Selçuk.

  “There’s something I forgot to tell you,” he said. “They found another body. It had been decomposing in the water for a long time. It was a male with silicon breast implants.”

  The wind was knocked out of me. I’d been hoping that she would turn up safe and sound one day.

  “Funda,” I said. “Her real name must be Yunus. I can’t remember her last name. I’ll find out for you if you like.”

  “That’d be great,” he said. “It’ll be a real help to the guys here.”

  Funda Yunus. She’d ended up as fish food just like the Prophet Yunus. But the whale that swallowed the Prophet hadn’t touched our girl. In any case, according to the Holy Book, Yunus lived for years inside the giant fish, then emerged and went on with his life. Our Yunus wouldn’t have that chance.

  I began a rough calculation of how long she’d been missing. That is, how long her body had been floating in the sea. It was months since the beginning of summer when Funda had gone missing. Her body would have decomposed by now. It’s true that salt water has a pickling effect, but, in the end, a body is composed of water and flesh and can withstand only so much.

  There was something fishy going on.

  I’d promised Selçuk that I would find out Funda-Yunus’s surname. Hasan would be the best person to handle this.

  What’s more, I hadn’t had a chance to tell him about Adem Yildiz’s sexual tastes.

  He answered on the first ring. I told him about the discovery of the body I suspected belongs to Funda. He’d heard about it.

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “Like there’s any way to reach you. I left at least five messages with Ponpon. I called your office, but the secretary wouldn’t put me through or take a message. It’s high time you got yourself a cell phone,” he scolded.

  “So what happened?”

  “It may or may not be Funda. There’s no way to identify the body.”

  “But it had breasts,” I said.

  “That’s right. Silicon doesn’t rot or dissolve,” he pointed out. “That’s why the police phoned our girls. To ask if anyone could identify the body.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They picked up the first two girls they saw working the street and took them to the coroner’s. One of them fainted when she saw the body. It was that bad. They told the police they couldn’t help.”

  “Hasan,” I asked, “Could you find out what the last name of Funda, that is, Yunus?”

  “So, you’ve moved on from first names to last names, have you?”

  “This is important,” I informed him. “I owe someone a favour.”

  “The police.”

  “Bingo. That’s right. I promised a police friend of mine.”

  “I’ll look into it. But I just want to say something. There’s no way a body could have stayed preserved in the sea for that long. The police said so too. It may not be Funda. But don’t get your hopes up too high either.”

  “That is, unless they kept the body somewhere else, then threw it into the sea,” I pointed out.

  “You mean they refrigerated the corpse somewhere?”

  “It’s certainly possible . . . ”

  As I hung up the phone I pondered what I’d just suggested. They wouldn’t even need a full-size meat locker. A largish deep freeze would do. They could have kept the body there awhile, then tossed it into the sea. It would, of course, take longer for a frozen body to thaw out and putrefy.

  And where are there large refrigeration units and coolers? In the food business. What business was Adem Yildiz in? Cakes and pastries. Once again, everything was pointing to him.

  Once again, I didn’t have a shred of evidence.

  I needed to think, but I couldn’t concentrate. Images of violent murders flashed before my eyes. Adem Yildiz was killing off our girls, one by one, more methodically than any horror flick villain.

  At least Dolly Vuslat had escaped in one piece. I’d have to warn her. It would be foolish to take chances. It might also be foolish to assume that the name Dursun meant she was safe.

  There had to be a way. This Adem Yildiz of ours must have left incriminating evidence of some kind behind. I didn’t have much faith in the DNA tests, but they could be the evidence I was looking for. How could I possibly accuse him? He was a pillar of the community. There was no way the police would conduct a DNA test based just on my suspicions. I couldn’t expect every man around to be tested just on the odd chance he was guilty.

  There was no point in sitting here with these thoughts spinning around my head. The files from Jihad2000 hadn’t led to anything Or maybe I was in no condition to see what was staring me in the face.

  I decided to go to the gym. A bit of physical exercise would do me good. And I’d burn off some off those extra calories and clear my conscience.

  Twenty-six

  I came up with a plan that was as risky as it was daring.

  What did I most need? Hard evidence. I had none. Since it was proving so difficult to find, I would have to create my own.

  In a sense, it meant entering the lair of the beast.

  What turned the man on? Young transvestites. Would I fit the ticket? No. First, I had to find a fresh girl. As bait. I needed a girl that I could send to him, one prepared to face danger and whose every step I would have to monitor. Preferably, a girl named after a prophet.

  I ran through the names of various prophets, trying to find a prophet whose namesake had not yet been murdered. The list. began with Isa, Nuh, Lut, Bunyamin, Zekeriya, Yahya, Yakup, Davut . . . Those were the first names that sprang to mind. That would be more than enough.

  The most foolproof names were most likely Isa and Nuh.

  A potential sticking point was the willingness of the girl to go along with my scheme, but I tried not to think about that. Anyone with a
lick of sense would refuse to get involved, but there were two things working in my favour.

  First, it would be an insult to refer to any of the girls as intelligent. In the commonly used sensed of the word, none of them were what you might call bright. It seemed to me that common sense and intelligence were not attributes any of them chose to cultivate. Choosing to walk on the wild side, defiantly turning a blind eye to risks, gave us the freedom to behave in an unorthodox way.

  I would certainly be able to find someone as mad as me. I had even begun matching names to some of the girls I knew.

  The second point working for me, and one that carried with it certain inherent risks, was that the girl did not necessarily have to know that she was being used as bait. It would be dangerous. Some would even regard it as treachery. But I did fully intend to remain at the side of whoever I recruited in order to reduce the danger to a minimum.

  Adem Yildiz was not my type, but many of the girls would find him irresistibly attractive. He wasn’t particularly tall, but his long, thin face made him seem taller. He had a honey-brown complexion that had looked almost pale under the lights at the club. It contrasted nicely with his dark hair and closely clipped beard. I prefer men with pert, rounded bottoms. Adem Yildiz didn’t have one. In fact, his was rather large.

  He had expensive taste in clothes. I hadn’t looked closely, but he might even sport a Rolex. That alone would do the trick for any number of girls.

  Owing to the early hour, I had been unable to find a partner at the Hilton squash court. I contented myself with batting the ball against the wall while I formulated a plan. Tossing out one of the girls as bait could well mean putting her life in danger. . .

  As I envisioned the familiar faces at the club, my own plan horrified me. And the only girls I really knew were those at the club. I couldn’t say I was familiar with the ones who worked the streets or hung out at other clubs. The person most likely to be able to help me was Hasan. There was also ükrü, whose penchant for young girls I’d only recently learned about.