The Kiss Murder by Mehmet Murat Somer

middle of her forehead. Her head was tilted back, lifeless.

Chapter 8
    I t would seem an obvious case of murder. Elderly ladies are generally not found slumped in armchairs with bullet holes in the center of their foreheads.

    “Is she dead?” Hüseyin asked. I nodded yes. Gönül bellowed in a decidedly masculine fashion.

    “They found her, too,” I said.
     
    “We’re in deep shit now,” sighed Hüseyin. He was white as a sheet.

    We had two choices: inform the police or scram. Simply running away seemed the less intelligent of the two. The robust lady downstairs had seen us. And I had touched a few things since we’d entered the flat, so some of the fingerprints would belong to us. It did cross my mind that the police didn’t always bother with things like fingerprints, but caution was still advisable. And what was there to be afraid of? We had every reason to be there. We had come to pay our condolences to the mother of a dead friend. Unable to find her at home, we’d checked at the upstairs neighbor’s and been greeted by a corpse.
     
    Against my will, I found myself listening to the game show still blaring on the TV set. The question was: The most common intrusive igneous rock type is: (A) granite; (B) rhyolite; (C) basalt; (D) andesite. It was easy enough to whittle down the right answer to (A) granite. After all, it’s the only intrusive rock on the list. Of course, the contestant was clueless.

    Gönül’s voice brought me back to my senses and the present situation:

    “ Abla, who is this woman?”

    But wasn’t it Sabiha Hanım? Perhaps not. There was no way for me to know. I turned to Gönül, my face a question mark. She provided a swift answer.

    “This isn’t Sabiha.”

    The contestant had eliminated two of the possible answers. Rhyolite and andesite were erased from the screen. I devised my own set of possible answers to the question confronting me. (A) This was an unrelated murder; (B) We were face to face with a serial murderer prepared to eradicate all who crossed his path; (C) This woman, whoever she was, had mistakenly been killed in place of Sabiha Hanım; (D) Why on earth were those letters and photographs worth killing for? The response deserving of immediate elimination was, of course, D.

    Hüseyin placed a hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we’d better get out of here.”

    I politely, but firmly, removed the overly familiar appendage. “No way,” I said.
     
    In a clear voice, for their benefit, I summarized the situation: Getting the police involved would mean being escorted to the police station and spending the rest of the night there; Gönül would most likely be roughed up, and have a visit to the state venereal clinic arranged for her; there was no telling what exactly would happen to Hüseyin.

    The contestant insisted on “basalt” and was promptly eliminated.
     
    The corpse was not yet cold. The time of death was fairly recent. Who was behind this? Were the blackmail materials so damning that they justified these cold-blooded killings? How was I supposed to find out his identity? Where was the real Sabiha Hanım? What, if anything, had happened to the letters and photographs?

    It was safe to assume that Sabiha Hanım was still alive. I ran through the list of alternatives once again. Finally, I decided to consult the studio audience:

    “Look,” I began, “if this woman is not Sabiha Hanım, we still have to find her—that is, we still have to find Buse’s letters and photographs.”

    “First let’s get out of here. I don’t like cops,” said Gönül.
     
    She had a point. Neither do I. And I suspected Hüseyin wasn’t partial to them, either. Taxi drivers are such easy pickings for the cops, real whipping boys when it comes to issuing tickets and general bullying.

    “Well then, let’s remove all signs we’ve been here and clear the hell out!”

    I had to hand it to Hüseyin; perhaps he wasn’t so dim after all.

    After we had restored the scene to