Perfect Match

by D. B. Thorne

  He looked at himself one last time and then began to wipe the make-up off again. He’d think about it. He didn’t need to make a decision now. No rush. Sol. She’d called him Sol. He dried his face with a towel, and sighed into its giving softness. Hell, he didn’t know.

  twenty-five

  OLIVIA HAD TAKEN OFF HER TOP AND TORN IT INTO STRIPS and wrapped her hands in it, anything to get a better grip on the paint-tin lid that was her only hope of salvation. She’d had a long internal debate about the wisdom of removing her top, leaving her in only a bra, wondering whether it would act as a provocation, put her at further risk. Rape, that was what she worried about, whether being essentially half naked might put ideas in the mind of whoever had imprisoned her. But then she took an impartial look at her position, imprisoned in a pit with a grille on top and a car parked over that, and figured that whether she was wearing a top was neither here nor there. Whatever that monster had planned for her was going to happen, was already decided. All that mattered was getting out of there before he came back. And to do that, she needed to tear her top to pieces and get to work.

  It was lighter than it had been before, Olivia guessing that the early morning was turning to day. She could see the underside of the car parked above her, its pipes and welds and angles, could see the top foot or so of the pit she was in. The rest was in deep shadow, completely black. She held her hands up and inspected them. They were caked in dried blood, her nails ragged. It wasn’t like they were used to hard work. She didn’t do manual labour, never had done.

  She thought of work, of her work. She should be there, she had appointments to keep, people to speak to. Nothing on site, though, only phone calls, one with a media agency in New York. Would anyone miss her? Probably not; the company she worked at, the start-up, was chaotic at the best of times. It was mostly young people, the default assumption if somebody was late in being that they’d probably had a heavy night and were still sleeping it off. No, nobody would miss her, not for hours and hours, maybe not all day. And what if they did? It wasn’t like they were going to go to the police. That wasn’t going to happen. That, Olivia told herself as she worked away at a rusting steel joint, was definitely not going to happen. So stop thinking about it, and work harder. The only way you’re getting out of here is if you get yourself out. So work harder.

  To motivate herself she thought again of her mother. She imagined what she’d be doing right now. She’d be awake and up. Dressed immaculately. She always dressed immaculately, even if she had nothing to do and nowhere to go. She would rather die than open the door to the postman in a dressing gown. No. No, that wasn’t possible. So. Right now, she might be:

  Having her hair washed and set.

  Taking the car out for a drive.

  Playing bridge with her friends, who she didn’t like.

  Talking on the phone with one of those friends, discussing how much they both mutually disliked the others.

  Visiting the shops. Never ‘going shopping’. No, her mother visited shops.

  Watching her cleaner clean, no doubt inadequately.

  Doing the Times crossword.

  Counting the ways in which Olivia had a, let her down, b, defied her, c, ignored her, d, embarrassed her, e, failed to meet her standards in any of thousands of small yet inexcusable and unforgivable ways.

  With these thoughts Olivia worked away harder and harder at the joint of steel, continuously, for minutes, pushing, scraping, bending, bleeding. Eventually she stopped because there was another thought in her head that she was trying to smother, to bury with anger at her mother. But the thought would not stay away and she looked at the joint, and at the paint-tin lid, which was worn into an almost unusable crescent, and accepted the thought, which was that she was making zero progress. None at all, not even the ghost of an impression on the remaining joints. She was getting nowhere.

  She had worked her way through four joints. Four in how many hours? Two? Three? How long did she have? Demmy would be back sometime. Where was he anyway? She’d need to work her way through twelve more bars to make the forty-by-forty-centimetre hole she figured she needed, the absolute minimum she needed to squeeze through. There was no way, absolutely no way. It was the work of a week, or a month. And her paint-tin lid was almost worn away. There was no way.

  She sat down on the floor of the pit and looked up at the sharp concrete edge of it, delineated clearly now in the light flooding in from whatever windows there might be in the space beyond. Okay, she thought. Okay, Olivia, think. Breathe. You need to get yourself under control. Take control.

  Where was Demmy, and when would he be back?

  He’d left an hour ago.

  Early morning.

  So, logical conclusion: he had a job.

  Even monsters needed to work. Didn’t they?

  So, logical extension: he’d be back eight or nine hours after he left.

  So, she had time.

  Hell, it was only a theory. But she needed something, and this would have to do. She had eight hours left to save herself. Which wasn’t much, but it was something.

  What she didn’t have was a tool to work with.

  She got on all fours and felt around on the floor of the pit. No, she thought. Be methodical. You’ve got eight hours. Do this properly. She made her way to one of the short walls of the rectangular pit. Do a sweep, she thought. Make sure you don’t miss a single centimetre. The floor was grainy with old detritus, tiny pieces of metal and scraps of cloth and paper. She brushed the palm of her hand over the surface, feeling the sharp gravel and metal against her skin. She worked from side to side, crawling backwards, slowly, careful not to miss anything in the utter blackness of the pit’s bottom.

  Nothing.

  Ow. Sharp.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  What was that? A screw, or a bolt. Not big enough.

  Nothing.

  A rag. Keep that.

  Nothing.

  Shit. That hurt. She was bleeding. Again.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Another screw.

  And another.

  Nothing.

  What was that? Round. Metal. Another paint-tin lid?

  She lifted it up and looked at it in the dim light just beneath the grille. It wasn’t a paint-tin lid. It was round and metal and had a hole in the centre. The edge of the circle was gritty, like sandpaper, and sharp. It hurt her finger as she ran it across. She didn’t know what it was. She’d never done manual labour. One thing was for sure, it was a whole hell of a lot better than that crappy paint-tin lid. It looked substantial, strong.

  Olivia felt a brief burst of adrenaline, a flush of faint hope. She crouched down, then took a firm grip of the circle of metal and ran it along the joint where two bars met. The circle’s edge cut into the webbing between her index finger and thumb. Shit, it really was sharp. She took the rag that she’d found and wrapped it around half of the circle, then tried again. The circle caught on the metal and made a loud rasping sound. It left bright steel where she dragged it across the bar. She did it again, and again, and again, and could see a shiny groove where her metal circle’s edge had removed old steel. Again, again, again, her heart beating faster as she worked. This was happening. This was really happening. She had eight hours. She had eight hours, and she had a real chance. She closed her eyes briefly, in thanks to she didn’t know who. Now, Olivia, she thought, get to work.

  twenty-six

  FOX DID NOT WANT TO SPEAK TO SOLOMON MULLAN, NOT OVER the phone, definitely not face to face. Particularly not his face, she thought, without a twinge of guilt. She had enough to worry about. But he had been insistent on the phone, telling her that the information he had was important, critical, that lives were at stake. She thought he was probably delusional, already slightly demented from his hermit lifestyle, pushed over into fantasist la-la land by what had happened to his sister. Which was, she still maintained, most likely an accident. Almost certainly an accident. Yes, she wa
s still happy with her initial assessment. Drug-addled stripper slips on a canal towpath. Case closed, as far as she was concerned. It was the brother, Luke Mullan, that she cared about. That she had only ever cared about. Take on the sister’s case to get to the brother. And now she had Luke Mullan in her sights, she didn’t want to hear any more conspiracy theories from Solomon Mullan. Didn’t need any more distractions. But somehow, and she still didn’t understand how, somehow he’d managed to get her to say yes. To agree to a meeting. She must be losing her grip.

  ‘Send him up,’ she said into her desk phone, slamming it back into its cradle. Idiot, she thought. Haven’t you got enough on your plate? She closed her eyes and tried to will herself calm, assume a professional demeanour. Hear him out and move on, she thought. Just hear him out.

  There was a knock on her door and she paused, took a deep breath, and said, ‘Come in,’ as evenly as she could. The door opened and a woman in uniform, Fox couldn’t remember her name, stood aside to let Solomon Mullan past. He looked just as he normally did, sunglasses on, hood up, shuffling along and staring at the floor, a walking apology for the way he appeared. Spare me, thought Fox. Just, spare me.

  But she said instead, ‘Mr Mullan. Please sit down.’ She indicated the chair in front of her desk, but he didn’t look up, just walked to it and sort of folded himself down into it, focusing on the edge of her desk nearest him.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said in his precise, considered way.

  Fox ignored his thanks, said instead, ‘Mr Mullan, I am very busy. I do hope that what you have to say to me is worthwhile.’

  ‘I have new information,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Pertaining to?’ said Fox.

  ‘Pertaining to the likely scenario that multiple women are being targeted by the same person.’

  ‘Please tell me,’ said Fox, staring coldly at the top of Solomon’s bowed and hooded head, ‘that this isn’t a continuation of the theory you brought to me last week.’

  ‘I would prefer to call it a validation of that theory,’ said Solomon.

  Fox closed her eyes and willed herself to stay silent. Count to five, she thought. No, scratch that, count to ten. ‘Go on,’ she said eventually, her voice barely more than a whisper, a reluctant croak.

  ‘It’s the messages,’ said Solomon. ‘I always thought they were strange.’

  ‘The messages?’

  ‘Between my sister and her prospective date, and between Rebecca Harrington and the person she’d arranged to meet. There was something about the messages, an inconsistency in the grammar. An unconventional syntax.’

  ‘Haven’t we been here before?’ said Fox. ‘Rebecca Harrington’s death was ruled a suicide.’

  ‘And I believe that verdict was incorrect.’

  ‘Mr Mullan, please …’

  ‘Both messages make clear reference to Shakespearean plays,’ said Solomon. He spoke clearly but quietly, and Fox had to listen carefully, his words aimed towards her office floor.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘Shakespearean plays,’ said Solomon. ‘That, and the similarity of their circumstances, stretches coincidence too far.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mullan, I’m struggling here,’ said Fox. ‘You’re going to need to start making some kind of sense.’

  ‘In Rebecca Harrington’s suicide note, she explicitly references Antony and Cleopatra, by paraphrasing her last words. Farewell, kind mother. Father, long farewell. These aren’t the words of an uneducated drug user.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Fox. She knew Antony and Cleopatra, had read the play at school. ‘So …’

  ‘And then,’ Solomon continued as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘she’s found dead, an apparent suicide. Like Cleopatra. In the play.’

  Fox reached out and picked up a pen. She drew an exclamation mark on a piece of paper in front of her, then a question mark. She almost added WTF, but stopped and said instead, ‘Sorry, Mr Mullan. This is a waste of my time. Of our time.’

  ‘And then there’s my sister,’ he said, still in that same precise and quietly determined voice. He took off his sunglasses, rubbed his eyes, still looking at the floor. ‘In her message exchange Hamlet is referenced, the implication being that she was being cast in the role of Ophelia.’

  Fox thought back to the exchange. ‘Really?’

  ‘Her prospective date used the phrase What hour now? I always thought it sounded unnatural. It turns out that Hamlet asked the very same thing of Horatio, in the play.’

  ‘In Hamlet.’

  ‘Yes. And then the reference to the Convent bar. There’s a clear parallel with Hamlet telling Ophelia, Get thee to a nunnery.’

  As Solomon had been speaking, Fox had been drawing an untidy black circle, going over it again and again until the paper gave way underneath. She didn’t have time for this. Solomon Mullan, she decided, was insane.

  ‘Mr Mullan, I’m afraid I’m going to have to end this meeting.’

  ‘But you can’t,’ said Solomon, sounding surprised. He glanced up quickly, giving Fox a brief glimpse of his hideous white eye. ‘I haven’t finished.’

  ‘But I’ve heard enough,’ said Fox.

  ‘My sister was found drowned,’ said Solomon. ‘Like Ophelia. The comparison is almost exact.’

  ‘No, Mr Mullan, it’s—’

  ‘And then there’s Portia. From Julius Caesar.’ Solomon was talking rapidly now, louder. ‘She swallowed hot coals, just like a woman found in Victoria Park only days ago. She’d been on an online date, too. Ophelia, Cleopatra, Portia. The evidence is … You can’t ignore it. It’s impossible to ignore.’

  Not impossible, thought Fox. Nowhere near. She frowned at him, at the top of his head, his face once again turned towards the floor. Either he was mad, or this was some crazy way of compromising her investigation, forcing it in a different direction. She had to admit that although what Solomon Mullan was saying sounded mad, the way he was saying it seemed rational enough. So maybe this was a plan, a diversionary strategy. It didn’t matter which, really. What mattered was getting him out of her office before he could muddy her real investigation any further.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave,’ she said. ‘I agreed to this meeting in good faith, but had I known you were going to bring me something like this, I would not have made the time.’

  ‘This,’ said Solomon, ‘is your job. Police work. Running an investigation, and conducting it thoroughly.’

  ‘My job,’ said Fox, trying to keep the fury out of her voice, ‘is to target criminals. Not run down bizarre conspiracy theories brought to me by solitary fantasists.’ That was probably going too far, she thought, without much remorse. She was beyond pissed off.

  Solomon nodded at the floor. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You’re unwilling to listen. Tell me, Inspector Fox. Just what is your agenda here?’

  ‘My agenda?’

  ‘What exactly are you investigating?’

  ‘When did you last see your brother?’ said Fox.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since I last spoke to you,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’re done here,’ said Fox.

  Solomon shook his head. ‘You can’t ignore this.’

  Fox picked up the phone and hit zero for the front desk. ‘Fox here. Could I have a couple of uniforms …’

  ‘I’m leaving,’ said Solomon, standing up quickly. He dropped his sunglasses and he bent down and picked them up, fumbling at them in panic. Despite her anger, Fox couldn’t help but feel some pity for him. His existence must be genuinely miserable, unremittingly so. She watched him open her office door and pause in its frame, considering something before walking through, leaving the door ajar behind him.

  ‘Hello?’ said a voice coming from the phone receiver she was still holding in her hand.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Fox. ‘He’s gone.’ And please, she thought, let that be the last I see of him. As she gazed at her open door, she tho
ught of Sergeant Bright and his theory about the woman he was investigating, who’d been found asleep, drugged. How he too had thought there might be similarities with Tiffany Mullan’s case. She felt a brief shiver of uncertainty, a quick but deep lurch of anxiety that she was ignoring something, rejecting something significant. She thought back to the message exchange that Rebecca Harrington had had. Infinite variety, wasn’t that it? But no. No, she didn’t have the time. This wasn’t her investigation, and nobody had brought her compelling evidence. She didn’t have the time, and she didn’t have the evidence. She put the receiver of her phone back on its cradle, firmly. Luke Mullan. That was what mattered, and she’d find him no matter what.

  Solomon wasn’t new to feelings of frustration, but this, this feeling he had after his meeting with Fox, this was something else. He could feel it in his nerve ends, in his fingers, a furious buzz. Due to Fox, but also himself, his weakness, his … what? His impracticality. He just couldn’t hack it out there, always on the back foot, behind on points because of his face, his hideousness. And Fox, that tall ice-covered mountain, too steep and too slippery to get any purchase on, entirely unassailable.

  He needed to call Kay but he didn’t want to, didn’t feel equal to it. To admitting his failure to persuade Fox about what was happening. Because it was happening, he was sure of that, sure that he wasn’t deluded or … What was it she’d called him? Fox? A solitary fantasist. But he wasn’t solitary, because he had Kay, too. And the Brain Pool. So he wasn’t a solitary fantasist, he was just a hideous misfit who couldn’t win round an indifferent and probably corrupt police officer.