by D. B. Thorne
‘Well okay,’ said Luke. ‘You’re the man.’
‘I am,’ said Solomon. ‘I certainly am. I’ll call you back.’ He cut the call and closed his eyes again. He stayed perfectly still, but was perturbed by what he was feeling, a strength of emotion he was unused to. Fox had played him, played him from the start, and he was angry. Actually angry. He understood that he felt emotions, shame being top of the list; in fact if he was to draw a pie chart of his emotional range, the shame portion would be the entire pie except for the narrowest of slivers that would contain, possibly, fear and loneliness and frustration. But anger? Solomon thought of his sister, of what had been done to her. Of the other women, whom nobody cared about. Fox didn’t, never had done, never would do. She had lied to him, outmanoeuvred him, made a fool of him. And all the while, other lives were in danger – no, had been irrevocably damaged. Yes, he was angry. And he was right to be angry, it was perfectly normal. It was acceptable. It was to be expected.
His job was suddenly clear, and he had no doubt about whether he was equal to it. He knew that he was. If the people whose job it was wouldn’t do something about this, then he would. And he would redeem his brother and avenge his sister in the process. Because that was his job, his role in the family. He might be disfigured and he might be despised, but he was still a borderline genius. And that was what would count, ultimately.
Solomon got up from the bench and left the hospital, walking in the direction of his home. It was a warm day, but overcast, and a light rain fell, hitting the pavement’s thermal mass and releasing rich smells of stone and fuel. As he walked, he broke the situation down, examining it, mining it for hidden strengths, unseen advantages.
One thing he did have was information. Knowledge that others didn’t know he had. And that gave him power.
Specifically, he knew that Fox was working for organized crime.
Specifically, he knew that Tobes, or Caesar, or whatever he was called, was choosing women to play roles of his choosing.
Specifically, he knew that Thomas Arnold didn’t have a clue about how international offshore money laundering worked.
Solomon crossed Tower Bridge, stopping halfway across to watch a motor launch scud through the wash from the other river traffic, throwing up dirty brown spray as its prow slammed into waves before careening over them. Purpose, that was what he needed, purpose and momentum. He started walking again, thinking about the problem at hand.
He also knew what they wanted, what these people wanted. He knew their motivations, which meant he knew how to get to them. And that gave him leverage.
Specifically, he knew that Fox wanted to haul in a criminal, somebody big.
Specifically, he knew that Tobes, or Caesar, or whatever he was called, wanted to find a new victim.
Specifically, he knew that Thomas Arnold wanted somebody to wash his money clean, the more of it the better, because his clumsy car-washing scheme was about as sophisticated as a prawn cocktail and would land him in prison eventually. And sooner rather than later, in Solomon’s opinion.
So, okay. Solomon had the beginnings of a plan. What he didn’t have, and what he definitely needed, was an ally. An accomplice. Somebody who was brave, whom he trusted and who trusted him, and who, crucially, was a female. With an accomplice like that, he thought, he had a chance. All he needed was an accomplice. Plus, of course, and at this Solomon sighed unhappily, a fair amount of luck.
Back at his apartment, Solomon scribbled down a rough critical-path analysis while he had it in his head. It soon became a flow diagram of bewildering complexity, the vast variables at play, the unreliability of the human factors and the preponderance of unknowns keeping him drawing and redrawing until even he couldn’t completely understand the scope of what he was planning. He stopped and looked down at his Byzantine scribblings. It looked less like a simple plan, more like a wiring diagram for a monumentally ambitious nuclear reactor, and he screwed it up and threw it into a corner of his living room. It was always the same. As soon as real life intruded, actual people with their individual needs and motives and general unpredictability, things got difficult. No, not difficult, impossible, the introduction of human variables putting his calculations beyond the capacity of any theoretical model.
Logic and process wasn’t going to help, not with this. The fundamental plan was fairly simple, he told himself, more in hope than conviction. Fairly dangerous too, at least in parts, but only for him, not for anybody else. Not for Kay. Because she was part of the plan, or at least she might be. Needed to be, if Solomon was honest.
Purpose and momentum, he thought. Purpose and momentum. He opened his laptop and sent her a message:
Can you talk?
He waited, staring at the screen. A moment later, a reply:
Yes.
He dialled her number. Purpose and momentum. He needed to get her on board but he needed to be honest, tell her what was happening. What the dangers might be, the potential costs. Get her on board with eyes wide open.
She accepted his call and her face came on screen. She was at her lab desk, holding a pen, her hair pinned up. Maybe she always had it up at work. Maybe it kept it out of Bunsen-burner flames. Idiot, Solomon thought. God, he was nervous.
‘Hello, Kay. I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
Kay didn’t reply or move, and Solomon waited, assuming that his screen was frozen, some glitch in their connection, a bandwidth issue. But then he saw Kay blink, which didn’t happen with frozen images.
‘Kay? Can you hear me?’
Kay blinked again, then said, ‘Oh.’
Solomon felt a surge of terror and looked at his screen. His webcam, he hadn’t disabled his webcam. His webcam that was, right now, beaming an image of his wrecked and hideous face to Kay’s screen, an image so horrifying that it had robbed Kay of words and movement.
He grabbed his mouse and turned the camera off, too late, way too late. She’d seen him. Seen his face. She of all people, she had accepted a call and been confronted with that. He wheeled his chair away from his desk, back, back, and put his head in his hands in dismay and horror. How had this happened? How had he done this, made such an unspeakable mistake?
‘Solomon? Are you there?’
Solomon didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. He kept his head in his hands, frozen with shame and dread.
‘Solomon? Please, Sol. If you’re there, tell me.’
She would now be looking at his avatar, the question mark, spinning around. Only there was no question any more, was there? She knew. She’d seen him and she knew, and so that was that.
‘I don’t know if you can hear me, Solomon, but I want you to know that I’m sorry if I appeared surprised, or shocked.’ Kay spoke slowly and clearly, every word considered. ‘I just … I just wasn’t prepared. That’s all. That’s all it was. Solomon?’
But Solomon couldn’t answer, didn’t have the words, and instead he wheeled his chair back to his desk, one hand partially covering his eyes so that he didn’t have to look at Kay, didn’t have to see her expression of guilt and pity and, underneath, disgust. He reached out with his other hand and took hold of his mouse again, and just as Kay said, ‘Solomon, please,’ he cut the connection and her face disappeared.
thirty
SOLOMON WOKE TO THE SOUND OF KNOCKING. HE CHECKED the time. Eleven o’clock. He’d fallen asleep early. The knocking wasn’t loud, but it was insistent, a quick rapping that didn’t sound like it was going anywhere. He lived in an apartment building. Who could be knocking? Nobody could get in from the street, so maybe someone from a neighbouring apartment. Maybe they needed help. Maybe the building was on fire.
He got out of bed and walked to his door. The rapping continued, not loud, but somehow … How would he describe it? Determined.
‘Hello?’
‘Solomon? It’s Kay.’
‘Kay?’ What was she doing here? How had she got here? How did she know where he lived?
‘Can you let me in?’ Her voice
was muffled through the door, but it was her, it was definitely her.
‘I …’ Solomon was frozen with panic. She couldn’t come in, of course she couldn’t. No way. ‘I don’t think …’
‘Let me in,’ Kay said.
‘Why are you here?’
Kay rapped on the door again. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You’ll have to let me in sometime.’
Solomon thought. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Two minutes.’ He walked to his bathroom and warily eyed the make-up that Marija had left him. He’d used it before, he knew the ropes. He took a deep breath and picked up the foundation, opened it and started painting it on his skin, working up the layers, smoothing it out. He worked as fast as he could, but wasn’t anywhere near finished when Kay started knocking on the door again. He thought he heard her call something, it sounded like ‘You can’t hide,’ and he called back, ‘One minute,’ before going back to work. Hurry, but don’t rush, he thought. God. He was applying make-up in the bathroom mirror. What was he thinking?
‘We have you surrounded.’ That was definitely what Kay had just called through the door. He tried to ignore her, kept applying the foundation as quickly as he could.
‘Come out with your hands up.’
He was almost done. Eye patch, where was it? No, clothes. He wasn’t dressed, was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers. He went to his bedroom and pulled on a pair of jogging bottoms, then found the patch. Another look in the mirror. Not great. Far from great. Better, but not great at all.
‘This is your final warning.’
One more look. Enough. It was what it was. He turned off the light, then switched it back on and put away the make-up containers. Then he went to his door, stopped, turned back to dim the lights in the entrance and in the living room. Get the lighting right. Okay. He went back to the door, stood at it. Okay. He was doing this. He was.
He turned the latch, and pulled the door open.
‘At last,’ said Kay. She still had her hair up and was wearing a white shirt and jeans, trainers. She smiled. ‘Can I come in?’
Solomon stood back out of the light of the corridor outside and nodded. ‘Yes. Come in.’
She brushed past him cheerfully. Solomon paused, then closed the door and followed her into the apartment. She was standing in his living room, looking at his desk, the screens, the wires.
‘Um,’ said Solomon, not a thought in his head.
‘Got anything to drink?’ said Kay.
Solomon didn’t drink, not really. He thought. ‘Scotch.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh. Well I’ll have that then. Have you got any ice?’
‘No.’
‘That’s okay. I’ll just have it neat.’
Solomon went to the kitchen and reached down a barely touched bottle of Teacher’s. He poured two glasses and took them into the living room, put them on the coffee table. Kay was sitting in one of the armchairs. Solomon stood.
‘How did you find me?’ he said.
Kay frowned, as if the question was redundant. ‘It wasn’t hard.’
‘You hacked me?’
‘Like I said.’ Kay reached forward and picked up a glass, took a drink. ‘It wasn’t hard.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘A man with a dog. A Pekinese. The dog, not the man.’
‘Oh.’ Solomon didn’t know what else to say. He’d imagined that he lived in a remote bubble, secure, unreachable. It turned out that Kay had found him within a couple of hours. He bent down and picked up the other glass, but didn’t drink.
‘Listen, Solomon, I needed to see you. I couldn’t just leave things like they were. I just, well, I just imagined you thinking about how I’d reacted, my face, it must have been … Well, I just needed to see you, talk to you properly. Because however I seemed, it wasn’t … I mean, it wasn’t that bad.’ She winced and closed her eyes briefly. ‘Sorry. That sounded a lot worse than I thought it would.’ She paused, then said, ‘And could you sit down? You’re making me nervous.’
Solomon sat down. ‘I like the eye patch,’ said Kay.
‘Anything’s an improvement, right?’ said Solomon, wishing that he could make himself sound less bitter.
‘Don’t say that,’ said Kay.
Solomon didn’t say anything. He could smell the Scotch as it evaporated up from his glass. Kay was silent too, and they sat like that for some moments. Then Kay said:
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ said Solomon.
‘I came to say what I just said.’ Kay downed her Scotch. ‘I don’t know. I guess I hoped you’d say something. React.’
‘I don’t have anything to say,’ said Solomon.
‘Solomon, please.’
‘I don’t know why you came,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have come.’
Kay didn’t reply immediately, and Solomon sat, his head bowed, his customary apologetic pose. Then she muttered something he didn’t pick up.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, Don’t you get it?’
‘Get what?’ said Solomon, confused. What was he missing here?
‘Jesus, Solomon.’ Kay put her glass down firmly, annoyed. ‘I came because I’m like you. That’s why. I’m the geek. The one no one understands. Or wants to talk to, or be stuck with at the school disco. The one nobody wants a second date with. Forget how you look for a moment, think about who you are. You’re weird. You’re odd. You probably always were. Just like me. Only now, you’ve got a face to match. And do you know what? I think you like it. I think it makes things easier. I do. I really do. You get to hide away and assume that nobody will like you, because of how you look. But me? Me, I have to live out there in the world, where people talk to me and chat me up and ask me out on dates, and I know they don’t like me. I know, because it’s proven, because they don’t invite me out on a second date. Ever. Why? Because I’m the geek. And no one understands me. And you know what?’ She took a breath, exasperated. ‘I think you might. I think you might understand me and like me and maybe want to spend time with me. But since you spend your life hiding behind that absurd question-mark avatar like you’re some kind of enigma beyond imagining, it’s hard to tell. You know?’
Solomon nodded down at his glass, and then looked up at Kay. ‘But I look hideous.’
‘I don’t care how you look,’ said Kay. ‘I care about how you talk, and how you think. I care about who you are, because I think that we, you and me, I think we could have something.’
Solomon shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that.’
‘You should,’ said Kay. ‘Because I believe in you.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘I already know enough.’
Solomon shook his head again. ‘Kay …’
‘It’s fine,’ Kay said. She picked up her glass and looked at it in disappointment. ‘I’ve said what I had to say. I know it’s hard for you. But I’ve said it, and you can do whatever you want with it. Have you got any more Scotch?’
Solomon nodded and went to the kitchen and came back with the bottle. He poured a decent measure for Kay.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Now. Since I’m here. There was something else. What the hell are we going to do about this madman?’
Solomon explained his plan to Kay, or at least as much as he could explain without giving away key details of his other life, chiefly his extensive criminal activities. Kay listened and drank Scotch, watching his face. It made Solomon uncomfortable but he didn’t say anything, didn’t want another dressing-down.
After he finished, Kay nodded to herself, then said, ‘And if, let’s just say if this works, then I’m supposed to meet this person on my own?’
‘The police will be there.’
‘They will? I thought they didn’t want to know.’
‘I’ll make sure they do.’
‘How?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ said Solomon. ‘You need to trust me.’
‘Right.’
‘You can say no. You probably should.’
‘I trust you.’
Kay said it with such simplicity that Solomon was momentarily overwhelmed. ‘Kay, I …’
Kay yawned. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Do you have a spare bed?’
‘No. Only mine.’
‘Then I’m going to sleep in it.’ She stood up, a little unsteadily. Solomon stood too. ‘Which way am I going?’
‘I’ll show you.’ He led Kay to his bedroom and she put her arms loosely around his neck and said, ‘Goodnight,’ before kissing him softly on his good cheek. She let go and sat on the bed and then flopped backwards and lay quite still. ‘Wake me up at eight,’ she added, and Solomon watched her for a moment before heading for the sofa.
thirty-one
A HYPOTHESIS, SOLOMON KNEW, WAS WORTH NOTHING WITHOUT testing. And Kay’s hypothesis that his sister’s attacker was enacting the roles of Shakespearean tragic heroines in reverse chronological order was plausible, but untested. And so he had devised a test, a brute-force, unsophisticated test that he had no idea would work or not. But at least, he told himself, he had optimized the test so that it stood a chance of success.
The plan was to dangle Juliet out there as bait, and see if anybody bit. To give the plan a bit of help, Solomon had just finished hacking the API of the dating app that all the victims had used. Now, Kay’s new, entirely false, profile was being served up as a matter of priority to every registered male in a five-mile radius. Not only that, she was now called Julia, loved doing ‘cultural stuff’, and was interested in meeting somebody who enjoyed the theatre. It struck, Kay and Solomon reckoned, the right note. A wannabe sophisticate who gave her unworldliness away with the word ‘stuff’. Wide-eyed, try-hard and vulnerable. Somebody who might provoke contempt in their target, get him to bite. That was the idea. And Julia, the name, close to Juliet but not quite there. As far as bait went, it was as targeted as they could get it. Now, it was time to test the hypothesis. Was Juliet the next on the list?
It might work. It should work. And of course, though Solomon was too shy to say this to Kay, she was very pretty. Which, too, would help. Though even the thought of this, of Kay’s attractiveness, simultaneously caused Solomon to doubt whether they could ever be together in the future, whether there was any possibility for them, this unlikely matching of Beauty and the Beast, or at least some approximation of that. Stop thinking, he told himself. You think too much.