by D. B. Thorne
His negative cycle of thoughts was interrupted by a call coming through. Kay. He checked his webcam and accepted the call, experiencing his customary lurch of impossible desire at the image of Kay on the screen, her hair unpinned, unruly ringlets spilling artlessly around her shoulders.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hello, Kay,’ said Solomon.
‘I have news,’ she said. ‘Are you ready?’
‘Um,’ said Solomon, not sure that he was, but Kay continued regardless. ‘I’ve been looking for a pattern, some kind of, I don’t know, method I suppose you’d call it. To what’s been going on. Because otherwise it’s just … Well, I mean there’s got to be a pattern, it’s not like this is random, you know?’
Solomon nodded. It was true. There had to be a design behind it all. Something predictable. ‘And you found something?’
‘Maybe,’ Kay said. ‘We haven’t got all the data, so it’s hard to know. But looking at the dates, first we had Rebecca Harrington. That’s Cleopatra. Then your sister, for Ophelia. And last week it was Portia. And if you look at the plays, they’re in reverse order. Chronologically. I mean, there are a couple missing, there’s no Desdemona, and Othello comes between Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra. But assuming we’ve just missed her, then what’s happening is this person, whoever it is, what he’s doing, or she …’ Kay paused for breath, then said, ‘They’re working through tragic heroines, going backwards in time.’ She stopped and looked up at the screen and shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘It feels like a reach,’ said Solomon.
‘The data supports it,’ said Kay.
‘It’s an incomplete data set.’
‘True,’ said Kay. ‘But the pattern’s there.’
‘Okay,’ said Solomon, nodding. ‘It’s a reasonable hypothesis.’ One of thousands, he thought, but instead said, ‘So that means … Who’s next? Potentially?’
‘Juliet.’
‘Another suicide.’
‘Right. First she was drugged, so it looked like she was dead, and then she woke up and Romeo was dead, so she … Well, it’s complicated. Shakespeare, you know?’
‘I know.’
‘So the way I see it, she’s next.’
‘And after her?’ Solomon thought, then said before Kay could answer, ‘Lavinia. Titus Andronicus.’
‘That’s the last one.’
‘God,’ said Solomon.
‘I know,’ said Kay.
‘Raped, hands cut off, tongue cut out,’ said Solomon. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘I don’t think we’re there yet. It’s got to be Juliet.’
‘Okay.’ Solomon didn’t say anything else, and there was a brief silence. Kay twisted a strand of hair with a finger, then looked up at the screen.
‘So how did it go? With the policewoman? What did she say?’
‘She said …’ Solomon rubbed his face, suddenly itchy where his scarred skin was. ‘She didn’t want to know.’
‘What?’
‘She wasn’t interested. She thought I was crazy.’
‘But … What about the evidence?’
‘She said I was a fantasist. She wouldn’t listen.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She’s got her own agenda,’ said Solomon.
‘These are real women,’ said Kay. ‘She must care.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Solomon. ‘I tried, I really did.’
Kay was silent, shaking her head. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Solomon. ‘But Kay? I promise you, I’ll think of something. I promise.’ Kay looked up at him again, and Solomon was doubly glad that she couldn’t see him, couldn’t meet his gaze. Because he was making a promise he had no idea if he could keep.
twenty-seven
THIS IS HAPPENING, THOUGHT OLIVIA. THIS IS DEFINITELY happening. She didn’t know how long it had taken, didn’t know how long she had left, but she was getting there. She’d cut through eleven bars, almost three sides of the square she’d set herself. Five left. She adjusted the rag, the one she was using to hold the sharp-edged circle of metal she’d found, refolded it so that it was an effective barrier between her hands and the blade. Because it was sharp, really sharp, and was going through the rusty bars of the grille above her about, she didn’t know, about a hundred times faster than that paint-tin lid she’d started out with.
She felt the rasp and snag of the blade as she worked it against the latest bar. Her plan was to cut through three sides and then use brute force, pull the grille down as if it was a trapdoor and the last side was hinged, really work at it until it snapped. So this bar, bar number twelve, could be the last one she needed to cut through. This thought made her scrape and rub harder, ignoring the pain in her hands, which were cut and bloody and kept cramping up as she struggled to get a good enough grip on the circle of metal.
As she worked away, she felt the blade of the circle bite deeper and deeper into the bar until it suddenly gave way. She dropped the blade and hooked her fingers into the grille and pulled it, the area she’d cut out hinging down towards her. Up, down, up, down, she felt the resistance lessen and lessen, the hinge growing weaker and weaker. Screw it, she didn’t even need it to fall off, that would do. There was a space, a square hole, forty centimetres by forty.
Looking up at it, it didn’t look so big. Not big enough. Olivia wasn’t huge, but she wasn’t tiny either, and that hole didn’t look big enough. And the underside of the car was so close to it, only a few centimetres above the grille. How was she going to squeeze through that hole, then bend enough to get between the grille and the car? She didn’t know. Didn’t think she could do it. She’d miscalculated, spent the last however many hours on wishful thinking, nothing else. There was no way she could fit through that hole, fold herself out from under the car. No way.
She sat down on the floor of the pit and looked up at the sharp ends of the cut bars, their tips shiny where they’d been cut through. She had no top, had torn it up hours ago. She thought of the news reports, the speculation. She managed to cut through the grille holding her, but appeared to give up. Her mother, nodding along to that, in sad recognition of her daughter’s innate failings. Well, she always did. Give up, that is.
Olivia got up, put her head through the hole she’d made. It was in the corner of the pit, at least she’d thought of that. Not made it right in the middle. She was almost standing. She felt her shoulders against the underside of the grille, both sides, which meant that the hole was too narrow. She turned so that her shoulders were diagonally across the square hole. How was she going to lift herself up? She thought, then ducked back down into the pit. She put her hands above her head, got them through the hole first. She rose up, feeling the jagged ends of the bars nagging and tearing at the skin of her arms. She leant forward and reached out, getting a hand on the underside of the car, its front bumper. She pulled and immediately felt the cut bars dig and rip into her chest. She closed her eyes and pulled and heaved, but the bars just dug in further, snagging on her skin. If she pulled any harder she’d just impale herself on them. This wasn’t going to work. It would kill her, no way she could pull herself up and over them.
She let herself sink back into the pit. Okay. This wasn’t the end. This was a setback. She needed to cover the ends of those bars. The bars on the edge she had to drag herself over. She could do that. She had … What did she have? She had shoes. She had ballerinas, and she could put them over the bars, and haul herself over the soles. That would work. She took them off and placed them over the bars, pushing them on as securely as she could. She worked herself back through the hole, again feeling the bars’ edges cut into the skin of her arms. But her front was protected by the shoes, and she leant forward again and grabbed the car’s bumper and pulled. And pulled, and heaved, all of her strength, and felt her feet leave the floor of the pit and her body begin to slide up and out, out of the pit.
She pulled and wriggled, her legs shimmying, her bare feet danci
ng as she worked her way out. Her head banged against the underside of the car, her shoulders scraping metal. Then one of the shoes she’d placed over the bar ends fell off and she immediately felt a stabbing sensation as the bar cut into her stomach, and she let go of the car’s bumper and slid backwards, the exposed bar ends raking into the flesh of her chest as she fell back into the pit. She pulled herself into a foetal position, the pain so great that she could barely breathe. She wept quietly, her head on her knees, trying to ignore the agony where the bar ends had cut into her.
After some time, she didn’t know how long, the pain began to subside, and instead of pain she felt anger, a cold anger, that she had been put in this pit, that she had been so easily duped, that somebody had had the arrogance to think they could do this to her. No. No, she wouldn’t allow it. No way.
She scrabbled around for her shoes. Okay, this can work. She found the remains of her T-shirt and used them to tie her shoes to the bar ends, working the scraps through the bars and around the soles of the shoes, pulling the knots tight. Reef knots, that was what she needed. Left over right, right over left. She worked as quickly as she could, aware that she’d spent too long on the floor of the pit, feeling sorry for herself. She needed to move, and fast. Once again she pushed her way through the hole, arms first, leaning forward to grip the car’s bumper. She pulled and heaved and again felt her feet leave the floor of the pit. Pull, she thought. Just bloody pull.
Behind her, somewhere beyond the car, she heard a sound, the same sound she’d heard earlier, of a door opening, then closing. She stopped, listened. He was back. She closed her eyes, concentrated on her fingers. Get a grip. Now pull. She heaved and squirmed and felt her legs flailing behind her, felt the pain of her damaged chest and stomach dragging over the soles of her ballerinas. Felt her waistband snag, bucked desperately and got over it, the bar ends at her back cutting into her skin, her head and shoulders banging against the underside of the car, her target a narrow band of light between the floor and the car. Her arms burned with the effort and she bucked harder, squirmed and writhed until she felt a shift in balance and understood that more of her was out of the pit than in. She pulled and pulled, her head now level with the car’s bumper, her thighs sliding over the edge of the hole she’d made. She was out.
She crawled commando-style out from under the car and stopped, listened. No sound. Where was he? She looked behind her, through the gap between the bottom of the car and the floor. She couldn’t see anything, no legs, nobody approaching, just the space she was in, some kind of large shed. Where was he? There must be another room. He must be out there somewhere, in another room.
Olivia looked about and saw a pile of tyres in a corner, stacked seven or eight high. She ran across and ducked behind them. It was quiet. She crouched down and tried to control her breathing, then peered around the side of the stack of tyres. The shed was still empty, just a big space with a corrugated roof and pieces of machinery and car parts in the corners and against the walls. The car she’d been under was an old Ford, a rusting orange Escort with no engine and a missing driver’s door. And in the opposite corner to her, a doorway. A dark doorway. Which now had a man standing in it.
twenty-eight
OLIVIA DUCKED BEHIND THE TYRES AGAIN AND CLOSED HER eyes. She could just stay where she was. Maybe he wouldn’t find her. Maybe he’d just figure she was gone, and he wouldn’t bother looking. Maybe she was already as good as free. She listened to Demmy’s footsteps as he walked towards the car, and the pit that she’d escaped from. Maybe it would be okay.
Except it wouldn’t, would it? she thought to herself angrily. It just wouldn’t, no way. You need to get out of here, get away. So okay, okay. Here’s what she’d do. She’d wait until he got to the car and looked underneath. And while his back was turned and he was trying to make sense of just exactly what was going on, working out how she’d escaped, she’d go. Not run. Walk, walk silently and quickly. She didn’t have shoes on, so she’d make no sound. She’d walk silently and quickly and once she was through the doorway she’d run like hell. That’s what she’d do. But to do that, the first thing that needed to happen was she needed to open her eyes and see what was going on. That’s what she needed to do first. So, Olivia? Olivia, bloody open your eyes and take a look.
She put her head around the side of the stack of tyres and watched Demmy walk towards the car, the car between her and him. He looked different from the night before, all character in his face gone, no expression on it at all. He stopped a metre away from the car and said softly, ‘Come, Olivia, now is the time to enjoy that nice-preserved honesty of yours.’
He waited, his head cocked to one side. It was very quiet in the huge shed. He frowned, then said, ‘Olivia?’ He walked to the car and rapped on its roof with his fist, making a booming sound in the silent shed. ‘Olivia?’
He dropped down out of view, and immediately Olivia moved, coming out from behind the stack of tyres and walking sideways, her back to the wall of the shed, keeping as close to it as she could. The car was still between her and Demmy, but she was moving around it and she’d need to get past it and into potential view before she made it to the doorway. Exposed, in the open, she realized that she had lost her bra and that she was bare-chested and bare-footed, smeared in blood and muck. She kept moving.
‘Olivia!’ Demmy’s voice was suddenly loud, panicked, and Olivia walked faster and faster. As she skirted the walls, the car gave up its protection and she could see Demmy, only metres away, kneeling down and looking into the pit.
‘Olivia!’
She got to the doorway just as he shuffled backwards and began to stand. She turned and went through it into another shed, this one narrow and dingier, a grimy window in one wall, both edges lined with workbenches, tools, vices, car parts. She ran through it and reached the door, a cracked round black plastic handle on it that she turned and pushed. Was it locked? She pulled instead and it rasped open, its bottom dragging along the ground, the noise loud, too loud, far too loud.
‘Olivia!’
The voice was close, so close, and Olivia ran outside, into some kind of yard, old car parts scattered everywhere, the ground earthy and strewn with sharp stones, which skewered the soles of her feet as she ran. Through the yard, onto a track that led between trees, grass growing down the middle, rutted each side. She ran and ran, not knowing where the track led, further into the woods or out, out into salvation. Her lungs hurt and her breath rasped roughly in her throat.
‘Olivia!’
The voice was still close but not as close as before, she didn’t dare look behind to see, had to keep going, the track she was running down juddering in her exhausted vision, every strike of her feet against the hard rutted ground sending a jolt of pain through her body. Up ahead she could see a pole with a sign on it, green with white lettering that she couldn’t read, and beyond that an opening-out, something grey, tarmac, a road. She kept running, aware that she was making a noise, an involuntary keening sound. She reached the end of the track and ran into the road just as a pickup truck came around a bend and she collided with its bull bar, aware of the squeal of brakes as she was thrown high into the air before everything turned black.
twenty-nine
‘SO SHE’S OKAY?’
‘She’s okay. She still can’t remember what happened, but she’s out of danger.’
‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Luke. ‘Not being there for her … You know?’
‘I know,’ said Solomon. He was standing in an outside seating area, benches provided for those patients who still needed to smoke, even though they were literally surrounded by disapproving healthcare professionals who probably watched them exhaling toxic fumes thinking, why do we even bother? The reception on his mobile wasn’t great, but that was probably due to Luke calling in from the Essex interior. ‘You’ll be back soon. You won’t have to hide forever.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes,’ said Solomon, with as much certainty as he could man
age.
‘Because I learnt something interesting the other day,’ Luke said.
‘Oh?’
‘A mate of mine gives me a call. Tells me he’s heard there’s a copper after me. Says he knows her. Name of Fox.’
‘Go on.’
‘This mate of mine, he tells me I want to look after myself, ’cos she’s heading up some kind of heavy-duty organized-crime task force. Tells me that’s what she does; she’s some rising star in the war on illegal money.’
Solomon frowned. ‘Then why did she take Tiffany’s case? That’s got nothing to do with …’ He stopped talking. ‘Oh.’
‘Explains why she doesn’t give two shits about finding who did that to Tiff.’
‘She never cared.’
‘Course she didn’t. She saw it as a nice juicy chance to get her hands on me.’
Solomon crossed to a bench and sat down. ‘That explains a lot.’
‘Doesn’t help us much though, does it?’
Solomon looked up at a man in a dressing gown fumbling with a pack of cigarettes, eventually working one out of the full packet, then lighting it with a trembling hand. He was hooked up to a drip and was old and looked ill, and Solomon couldn’t help but think he might not get to the end of his packet of twenty. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.
‘Solomon? You there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘What about Arnold? When does he want his money?’
‘Soon,’ said Solomon, calculating. ‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘You’ve got it?’
‘I’ll have it.’
‘Okay.’ Luke was silent for a moment, then said, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I’ll think of something.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yes,’ said Solomon, quietly.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise,’ said Solomon. He gazed into the middle distance, at nothing, and felt something forming in his head, an idea, or the beginnings of one. ‘I absolutely promise you.’