The Serenity Murders (27 page)

I had to inform Hüseyin’s family, but I didn’t know how. Their son had stayed out for two nights; on the first his car was set on fire, on the second he had been poisoned. It would be impossible for them to understand, to approach the matter logically and reasonably. They were going to hate me. As if it weren’t enough that I had led their son down the wrong path into unnatural relationships,
now I had brought all this destruction upon him. All the marvelous vampy femme fatales of cinema history would seem perfectly innocent compared to what his mother Kevser Kozalak would think of me.

I didn’t know their home phone, and I could never work out where they lived. Someone at the taxi stand was bound to know their phone number. In my head I rehearsed what I would say. None of it would be glad tidings.

Yılmaz wasn’t at his usual spot. Seeing as I wasn’t around, it seemed he’d taken the opportunity to leave himself. I cursed him from the bottom of my heart.

Satı had visited, scrubbed, cleaned, and tidied every corner of the apartment as promised. She had left a new note for me on the refrigerator:

“Your home is as clean as a whistle. Have fun messing it up again. I don’t see why you’d butcher your bras. You should have given them to me if you didn’t want them.”

I’d feel better if I took a shower.

I had enough time for that.

The doorbell rang before I could turn the water on.

I dragged my feet to the door.

My downstairs neighbor, the nosy Wimpy Ferdı, stood before me.

I could tell I wasn’t looking good when he took a step back at the sight of me. He had that ever present annoying grin on his face.

“I apologize,” I said, ashamed of how I must have looked. “I had a really terrible night. I’m tired and haven’t slept at all. I was just about to take a shower.”

“Ummm…” he said. “About last night…”

Of course he must have watched everything from his window. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world. He was wearing a faded T-shirt that was damp with sweat and clung to his scrawny little
body. His trousers, on the other hand, were as loose and baggy as ever.

“Please accept my apologies, we caused a bit of a racket,” I said. “Especially when the police arrived…”

“Ummm…I mean…I wanted to…ummm…ask…if there was anything I could do.”

Just because he was nosy didn’t mean he wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t string a single sentence together.

“I was just wondering if…” he said, rolling the words around in his mouth.

“Wondering if what?” I said, trying to speed things along.

“You found the person you were looking for?”

Ayol
, would I be in this state if we had found him? Roses would be blossoming on my cheeks, my energy would be sky-high. I simply grunted no.

“I’d like to help,” he said, doing his best to drag this unbearable conversation out even further. “I have immense respect for you. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything I can do. If you need to talk, you know, or anything.”

“
Merci
,” I said, indicating that that would never happen, not in a million years.

He wasn’t the only man on earth yet.

I was getting ready to close the door when he grabbed it.

“Oh, yeah, and the gentleman downstairs.…” he said, holding the door open.

“Yılmaz,” I said, yawning for real. “You mean Yılmaz Karataş?”

“He couldn’t find you, so he knocked on my door this morning.”

I was waiting for the rest of his story, but he kept trying to poke his head into my apartment. Apparently he was incapable of craning his neck and talking at the same time.

“And did he say anything?” I asked. “I was just about to go take a shower…I’m sort of in a hurry.”

“I understand…” he said, staring blankly.

If he really truly did understand, he’d deliver Yılmaz’s message and be gone.

“What did Yılmaz say?” I repeated, this time in a sharper tone.

“That he was going to take a shower, change his clothes, refresh his packed lunch box, and then be back.”

What an important message! I would have worried all day long if I hadn’t received it.

“Thank you,” I said, pushing the door closed.

He stopped it with his hand again. The ink stains on his hands made him look even filthier than he really was.

“It was seven o’clock in the morning when he knocked…”

What was I supposed to do about that? The man had spent all night perched on the edge of a portable stool and knocked on my wimpy neighbor’s door as soon as the day dawned.

“I apologize if he woke you,” I said, making one final attempt. “I’m really in a hurry. My friend is in the hospital. I have to get back.”

He must have had a tic. His mouth twitched to the right again.

“If you’d like me to come with you…”

I had always managed to maintain a respectable distance between my neighbors and myself and I had no intention of changing that policy today. I was not in the mood for building neighborly relations. Especially not with Ferdı.

“No, thank you,” I said. “I’ll handle it myself. Bye-bye.”

And then I shut the door, tight.

I felt better after the shower. I’d grounded my negative energy in the process. I stayed under the water longer than usual. I sent him a message in the shower in case my psycho was recording. It was an offensive swear word. I repeated it several times in case he had missed it.

I quickly shaved. My reflection in the mirror looked awful. I
had purple rings under my eyes. A nod of gratitude to my psycho for that! Thanks to him, I was on the verge of becoming a walking cadaver. I quickly stepped away from the mirror. I wasn’t happy with how I looked. What good would it do me to study myself and fray my nerves even further? I’d have the opportunity to sleep at some point, and I’d look better after I’d done so. Then, after a good, thorough skin-care treatment, I’d be completely revived.
Thank God for cosmetics
, I said to myself.

Coffee and a shower had made me feel good, if only temporarily. Still, I took a vitamin pill, just in case—at least it would keep me on my feet.

I was planning on taking some clean underwear and clothes from Hüseyin’s bag, but then I decided taking the whole thing made better sense. There was no point in leaving it at home.

The message light on the answering machine was flashing. I ignored it. My mobile was switched off too. I had no intention of chitchatting on the phone with anyone.

Sleep had already started descending upon me before I even left the house. I must resist it.

At the bottom of the stairs I bumped into Yılmaz, who was drinking his morning tea and reading his paper. As promised in the message, he was back and already seated on his portable stool.

“Morning, sir,” he said.

“Good morning.”

He had changed his clothes and put on something more comfortable, but he still had the tie and V-neck sweater.

“Is everything okay? Are you all right?”

Did he have to remind me that I looked like a hag? As if I didn’t know already.

“I didn’t sleep very well,” I said.

“I just ran home and back myself. I left you a message. With number three.”

“Yes, he told me,” I said. “He said it was seven in the morning when you left.”

I expected him to understand that seven o’clock was a bit early to be knocking on people’s doors, but he just responded with a self-assured smile, displaying his missing tooth.

“I thought I’d go early and be back early, while no one was about.”

That was enough chitchat. I moved toward the door.

“Taking a trip?” he asked, motioning at the huge sports bag I was carrying.

It would take too long to recount the details of
Hüseyin was poisoned and hospitalized last night
, and if I said I was going on a trip, well, that would only give rise to more questions requiring further explanation on my part.

“I’m off to the gym,” I said, inspired by the shape of the bag I was holding.

“I’ve noted down everyone going in and out,” he said, pulling out a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. “And the times…”

I really didn’t want to listen to him reading all the way through his list right now.

“Let me,” I said reaching out my hand. “I’ll take a look myself.”

My eyes were burning from lack of sleep. I took a quick glance. It was two pages long. His handwriting was neat. Clearly he had military discipline, after all. I slipped the note into the side pocket of the sports bag.

I jumped into the first taxi I could find and went straight back to the hospital.

H
üseyin lay there with a drip in his wrist, a tube in his nose, and a tube in his mouth. His eyes were closed.

In the armchair by his side, Hasan had his eyes closed. He opened them the minute I walked in.

“They just came to check on him,” he said quietly. “He’s fine…”

How could he be? The guy’s car had been burned, he’d been poisoned with pesticides, his stomach had been pumped, and now he was lying in the hospital with tubes sticking out all over his body.

“I’ll wait,” I said. “You can go now.”

He looked at my face.

“I think you should go and rest a bit, seriously. You’re pale. I don’t want to get you down, but you look like a corpse. I’ll stay here. He’s not going to ask for anything anyway. Go and sleep for a couple of hours and then come back. You’ll feel much better. He’ll need you more when he wakes up anyway.”

He was right.

“I can give you my keys if you like. You can go to my place.”

My room at the Blue Sky Hotel, which I’d be paying for anyway, awaited me. I thanked him nevertheless.

“Call me if anything happens,” I said, giving him my new pay-
as-you-go SIM number. I didn’t want to switch on the other one and hear the psycho’s latest psycho babble.

“And whatever you do, don’t let anyone in! I mean, except for people we know…” I added.

I thought for a minute; maybe someone we knew had poisoned him at the club yesterday.

“No!” I said. “No one! Whether we know them or not. Only me…If you want, we can have a ‘No Visitors Allowed’ sign put on the door.”

The receptionist at the hotel had changed, but I still felt that I had to offer an explanation. We had dashed out, leaving a messy room and filthy elevator behind us.

“No pwoblem at all, sir,” replied the girl, who spoke with a lisp. “Tings like tat happen. How is his healt? Tat’s what matters most. Is he better?”

I thanked her for her concern and kindly requested that no phone calls whatsoever be put through to my room.

I had to make two phone calls before lying down on the bed: one to Ponpon, and one to Jihad2000. I would take care of Hüseyin’s family when I woke up, when I had a calm, fresh mind.

If we didn’t have daily contact, the ever panicky Ponpon would raise hell, alarm friends, then acquaintances, and finally the police to find out what had happened to me. Even if Pamir had recounted her own version of events of the previous night, Jihad2000 still must have been waiting to hear from me. It wasn’t hard to guess that he was probably bursting with curiosity. I called him first. He listened to the latest updates without comment.

“It’s unlikely he’d come after me,” he said.

He was possibly right: if my psycho was tracking my Internet access from my computer, he would have located Jihad2000 ages ago.

“I think you shouldn’t be so optimistic,” I said. It would be best
if he remained a bit anxious, especially considering that he was one of those responsible for the events of the previous night. “Keep your security tight these days. There’s no guessing what he’ll do next. No one is innocent in his eyes. I mean, look at Hüseyin!”

There was no sound for a while, which made me think the line had been cut.

“Hello? You there?”

“I’ll talk to Pamir. Perhaps we should escape to Cyprus for a week or so.”

It seemed they were becoming an item very fast; from hotel rendezvous and home visits, to holidaying together. It was a good thing that he had directed his interest away from me and toward Pamir, but not so good that he was now panicking and making escape plans.

“
Ayolcuğum
, where have you been?” Ponpon answered the phone. “I called your home number, but there was no answer. I think your answering machine isn’t working either. I almost lost my mind.”

I was in no mood for reproachful comments.

“There’s nothing to lose your mind about. Here I am, on the other end of the line!” I said scoldingly. Hasan must have already told her about last night. He could easily go without food, drink, or sleep, but he’d break out in rashes if he didn’t rush gossip about last night’s events like this to interested parties as soon as possible.

“
Ayolcuğum
, what’s wrong with you? Why this rage and fury? I was calling to thank you for the present you sent…But by the sound of your voice, you’re fuming.”

“What present?” I said. “I didn’t send you any present.”

“Oh, come on,
ayol
! It arrived early in the morning, before I even got out of bed. A young boy brought it. There’s a card attached. The message is quite sweet.”