The Prophet Murders Read online

  Mehmet Murat Somer was born in Ankara in 1959. After graduating from the Middle East Technical University Industrial Engineering Department, he worked for a short time as an engineer, and for an extended period as a banker. Since 1994, he has been a management consultant, conducting corporate seminars on management skills and personal development. When not working out in the hammam, he writes books in the Hop-Çiki-Yaya series, of which The Prophet Murders is now one of six. He lives in Istanbul.

  The

  Prophet

  Murders

  Mehmet Murat Somer

  Translated by Kenneth Dakan

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by

  SERPENT’S TAIL

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3a Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  www.serpentstail.com

  First published in Turkey in 2003

  This eBook edition published in 2010

  Copyright © Mehmet Murat Somer, 2003

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN: 978-1-84668-150-1

  The Prophets

  Contentes

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  One

  I grabbed a cup of coffee and the morning paper and settled into my chair by the window. It’s my morning ritual. I drink only two cups of coffee a day. The first, always in the morning. Mind you, what I call “morning” is what ordinary people refer to as “the afternoon”. I go to bed late. For I am, as they say, “a creature of the night”.

  A news item hit me like a slap in the face.

  “Transvestite Burned to Death”.

  I got a sour taste in my mouth. Naturally, it affected the flavour of my coffee: the last mouthful was distinctly bitter. Putting down my cup, I concentrated on reading the article. Bad news about our girls always gets me down. Not all of them enjoy a life of leisure like me. Some of them make a living out on the streets. It can make them tough and hostile.

  For many reasons, the number of our dead is on the rise. Life gets more difficult with each passing day; petty crime is rife; our girls are growing careless; everyone’s out of control and violence is spreading. The price of life is cheaper than ever. And as for our girls, they’re getting knocked off for a handful of change.

  Many of the girls working the highway have been hit-and-run victims. The sense of security they got from working in large groups turned out to be a false one. The end, when it came, was sudden. And bitter.

  Just like my coffee when I saw the news.

  This time, the tone of the tabloid was especially demeaning and nasty. Exactly what you’d expect from. As always, they ran an old picture of the victim as a man. In other words, someone less colourful and lively than the person we all knew. What’s more, it was an unflattering picture from an identity card. A transvestite called Ceren. I didn’t really know her; she didn’t hang out at our club. Her real name was brahim Karaman. And she was only twenty-three.

  I quickly scanned the report from start to finish. She died in a fire in her apartment in Tarlabai. Fortunately, no one else lives in the abandoned building. The fire company suspects faulty wiring or a smouldering cigarette butt.

  Our girls have the survival instincts of wolves. They seem immune to disaster and can cope with just about anything. But like everyone else, when they’re drunk or doped up they might sleep through a fire. That’s probably what happened. I felt a sharp pang, thinking about how someone so young, in the spring of her life, had been cut down in her prime. Had she ever even fully savoured the joys of being a transvestite?

  I tossed aside the paper and stared blankly at the street below. A series of images flashed through my mind: the faces of all the girls we’d lost. I can’t think of a single transvestite who has died of natural causes. Foul play is always involved. And the police invariably record the deaths as unsolved crimes. If murder can’t be proved, our girls are always blamed. That’s how the press treated this particular case: a fire broke out in the home of a drunken vagrant, a stoned transvestite. And he died. I silently cursed them all. But it didn’t help. I was still furious.

  After a while, I forced myself to snap out of it. Life goes on, despite the pain. And I had a lot of work to do. Most urgently, I was due to have my legs waxed. Fato abla is an elderly transvestite. Before becoming too decrepit, and in order to avoid – in her words – “becoming a spectacle”, she had taken up a new career. Fato abla goes from house to house, waxing shoulders, plucking eyebrows and even giving the odd hormone injection to those who require one. I was born with shapely eyebrows. I have never resorted to hormones, and have no intention of doing so. I glory in being both Man and Woman. As for waxing . . . it is a basic and constant necessity.

  Fato abla has the gift of the gab. Her clients roar with laughter as she regales them with tales of her younger days, then scream with pain as she uproots unwanted body hair. Even though I’ve been having my legs done for years, and my arms and bottom depilated on occasion, it still hurts every time, and my eyes always fill with tears. Fato abla teases “Well, it’s not easy; all that manly bristle.” While men with dark complexions have coarse hair, fair-skinned types like me are usually covered in down. At least, that’s what I’m like. My light complexion may make me more sensitive to pain. Anyway, all I know is that I sometimes scream silently, and at other times like a banshee.

  Fato abla rang the bell right on time. The older she gets, the less trouble she takes with her make-up and appearance. As a result, she looks strangely ordinary. If I passed her on the street, I’d describe her as a big woman with strong features. She was wearing a simple short-sleeved cotton dress, printed with large roses on a cream background. Draped over one shoulder was an enormous straw handbag, and on her feet were low-heeled leather sandals, one size too small. As always, her toes and heels overflowed. The effect was completed by an old-fashioned straw hat, trimmed with a swathe of fabric matching her dress. Her eyes were hidden beh
ind oversized dark-tinted glasses. At one time, she no doubt paid a small fortune for them.

  As she laid out the tools of her trade, I undressed. I chose some music to ease the pain and drown out my cries: a CD compilation of old Turkish pop hits that a friend made for me. Every half-remembered song from the late ’60s and early ’70s is there. I love singing along with the ones I remember the words to. Fato abla knows them all by heart, and dredges up long-forgotten showbiz scandals she has read about in the gutter press. Our session started off light-heartedly enough.

  The first song is “Birazcik Yüz Ver (Pay a Little Attention to Me)”, a rhythmic number by Gönül Turgut, someone I greatly admire as a woman, as well as an artiste.

  Fato was off and running.

  “Gönül Turgut was the greatest singer of her time, you know. Even Ajda Pekkan used to imitate her when she first came out.”

  “Whatever happened to her?”

  “She gave up music when she got married. What a waste of talent. And a shame for music, too.”

  “She was an alto. Just like us,” I threw in.

  “How dare you!” she bellowed. “No one talks about my Gönül Turgut like that. How can you compare a foghorn to a voice like hers? Just listen!”

  As she spoke, she stripped off another patch of hair, delibera- tely provoking a loud scream and deftly underlining her point.

  We got idle chatter about singers and their lives out of the way. It was time to talk about the morning news of Ceren’s fiery death. Fato abla had heard about it too. As she applied warm wax to my leg, she began:

  “But Ceren never lived there. Her apartment’s in Cihangir, near Taksim. Right behind the German Hospital. I waxed her legs often enough to know.”

  “What do you mean? That she didn’t die at home?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me,” she replied. “Like I said, her place was in Cihangir. Near Siraselviler. And certainly not in some derelict building on Tarlabai. And it wasn’t abandoned. There are respectable people living on every floor. In fact, our girl Afet was living there. On the floor above.”

  My leg didn’t hurt all that much, but when she moved up to my groin I started letting out regular shrieks. Fato abla paused to think for a moment. Then she corrected herself.

  “I think she still lives there. She hasn’t made any appointments, but I ran into her on the stairs last time I visited. She didn’t even say ‘hello”.’

  It was clear she looked down on standoffish Afet, but was it really fair of her to take it out on my groin? My eyes filled with tears.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I groaned. “The world’s full of insensitive people.”

  “I feel the same way. But what do I care if she ignores me? Am I the one who’s still wet behind the ears?”

  “These new ones have no manners or respect,” I deliberately provoked her.

  “Get her! Look who’s talking? And how long have you been around?”

  We burst out laughing. But my groin still smarted.

  We chatted about this and that. As the CD began playing “Anilar (Memories)”, composed and sung by Uur Akdora for Turkey’s first Eurovision song contest trials, we paused for a glass of cold ayran. We agreed that it was one of the best songs in the history of Turkish pop. And sang along softly.

  “That girl’s disappeared too,” I murmured.

  “That ‘girl’ is the same age as your mother. And what do you mean ‘disappeared’. She’s splashed across all the society pages. I think she even writes a column for one of them.”

  “You mean Uur Akdora landed a rich husband and gave up music, too?”

  “Oh no, sweetie. Her family was well-off to begin with. She condescended to share her three songs with the people, and then reclaimed her place up there in society.”

  She waved in the general direction of the ceiling.

  I was now silky smooth. Fato abla massaged lemon juice into the newly waxed areas, to prevent rashes and swelling.

  Just as she was leaving, she got a puzzled look on her face. “It just doesn’t make sense. What on earth was that girl doing in a deserted building? All by herself . . . And she was so choosy about customers and where she worked. There were entire neighbourhoods she’d refuse to visit, let alone a place like that. It doesn’t make any sense. Anyway, may Allah grant a long life to the living,” she concluded, sighing heavily as she made her way down the stairwell.

  I realised I’ve overlooked something. And Fato abla had put her finger right on it. Seriously, what was one of our girls doing in a vacant building in the middle of the night? And all alone?

  Two

  What was Ceren doing in that abandoned building in Tarlabai? Assuming she had some sort of business, why on earth did she stay when her work was done? And why didn’t she flee when the fire broke out? How did she burn to death?

  I didn’t have the answer to any of these questions. But perhaps I could find someone who did. I sat down next to the phone. First, I called Hasan. The head waiter at our club, he refers to himself as the “maitre de club”. Despite working at a transvestite joint, Hasan isn’t even gay. Not yet, anyway. At least that’s what he claims, and we go along with it. None of us – not just me – know of his having ever been with a woman, man or girl. He’s acquainted and on good terms with all our girls. You could say he was like our community muhtar, the elected, well-informed head of a village or neighbourhood. Hasan’s up on the latest news, especially when it comes to who’s been doing what with whom. In other words, he’s got the goods on us all. And what he doesn’t know, he immediately finds out. As you may have guessed, he’s quite a character.

  Clearly, he’d just woken up. No, he hadn’t heard of Ceren’s death. Yes, he was truly upset. No, he didn’t really know her, had seen her just a few times with some of the other girls. She’d been in great demand recently, and was willing to cater to the more bizarre fantasies of her customers. She’d fallen out with her neighbour, Afet, so I wouldn’t be able to get much information out of her. She usually went hooking with a new girl, Gül. No, Hasan didn’t know much about her either. Yes, Hasan was going straight back to bed when I got off the phone. No, it wasn’t that he’d finally had an amorous adventure of some sort, it was just that a crying baby on the floor above had kept him awake. We’d talk later at the club.

  Although I wasn’t able to find out what I was looking for, I had managed to learn quite a lot about Ceren. And from someone who didn’t even know her well.

  Despite what I’d been told, I decided it would still be worthwhile to call Afet. She is one of the girls who hang out at the club, if only from time to time. Afet is quarrelsome and malicious, and her long, aubergine-purple hair is teased up high, in order to make her look taller. Unable to stand up straight on her high-heeled shoes, she bends her knees slightly while walking, which gives her an even more menacing appearance.

  Picking up the phone, Afet immediately announced that she was too busy to chat unless it was urgent, adding that she’d come to the club early for a talk. We arranged a time.

  Neither call had satisfied me. And there was still time to kill before the game shows I’m addicted to. I went to my computer room to do some surfing. First, I armed myself with a glass of ice tea the size of a vase and some spinach börek I’d picked up from the patisserie.

  I love cooking, and am good at it, but just don’t feel like bothering these days. At most, I grill a cut of meat and toss a simple salad. When dining out at a quality restaurant, I’ve got no problem; but when it comes to snacking, I seem to gravitate towards whatever’s labelled junk food. At this rate, everything in my wardrobe will have to be let out. So much for Audrey Hepburn elegance!

  Internet chat sites seem to be growing more popular and crowded by the day. In addition to the standard sex rooms, there are ones for lesbians, gays and transvestites. I’m the webmaster of one of them. The room’s called “Manly Girls”! There’s a novel of the same name. Full of high hopes, I bought it in high school. But when it turned out
to be a runny-nosed melodrama I abandoned it in a forgotten corner. The novel was a dud, but its title was perfect for us. In an inverted sort of way. I sometimes go online to chat or to monitor other conversations. If someone catches my attention – and someone inevitably does if I stay online long enough – I open up a private window.

  The name of our chat room sometimes attracts aggressive trolls. They join in, cursing and threatening, until they’re kicked out. The regulars agree that most of them are closet cases, as gay as can be. I could track them down and ban them for life, but they tend to sign-in from internet cafes or secretly from their workplaces, so it wouldn’t do much good. They’d just find another way to come back.

  For example, we’ve got a radical fundamentalist who goes by the codename Jihad2000. This person drops in at least once a night to warn us in capital letters that we’re all doomed. That we’re the reason the country has gone to hell, which is where we’ll all burn for eternity. He claims it’s blasphemy for us to recite prayers, since our foul mouths would only soil the word “Allah”. After a couple of minutes, he’s done. He storms into the room, interrupts everyone’s chat, fires off his messages and disappears in a puff of fire and brimstone. Then he drops by again later if he’s got nothing better to do.

  I suspect that Jihad’s nick refers to a holy war waged against us.