Perfect Match

by D. B. Thorne

The bar was filling up and Solomon people-watched while he waited for Kay to show. He checked his watch. Ten to nine. There was a group of men in suits, talking loudly and laughing, probably came for a drink after work and didn’t fancy leaving, wanted to put off heading home for the weekend to where children and wives and responsibilities lurked. Smaller groups were dotted about, the people young and fashionable, beards and black-framed glasses and too-short trousers, which after his years in self-imposed exile Solomon now recognized as a thing, too-short trousers worn with shoes but no socks. It was strange how styles changed, particularly if you weren’t around to witness the slow evolution. Rip Van Winkle, or something like that, as if he had woken up to a world subtly yet irrevocably altered.

  He was nervous, his thoughts running in strange directions, disconnected, agitated. This was the bar where Demmy had chosen to meet Kay. Solomon tried to imagine how he did it, what went down. He had read about date rape, Rohypnol slipped into drinks. He guessed that was what Demmy did. Hadn’t both Rebecca and Tiffany been found with drugs in their bloodstream? He watched a young woman laugh loudly and lose her balance, a man next to her having to hold her up, the man laughing too. Did he slip them drugs and then, when the effects took hold and they could no longer stand, put an avuncular arm around them and walk them outside? That would be one way to do it. That would be the obvious way to do it.

  Kay came into the bar, pushing her way through the crowd. Her hair was down, ringlets spilling over her shoulders, and she was wearing make-up and a dress, a short yellow dress. Solomon felt a surge of adrenaline that he could not entirely put down to apprehension or fear. She looked beautiful; of the crowd yet apart from it, somehow unattainable, no, unclassifiable, in a way that he could not properly articulate. A mystery, he guessed. He wondered just how strong this house gin was.

  Kay saw him and went cross-eyed briefly to acknowledge him, which made Solomon smile but also made him ineffably sad for a reason that he could not precisely identify. Then she walked towards the bar and stood a couple of metres from him. He had sent Fox a shot of Kay, and now he caught the inspector’s eye and she nodded, a perfunctory and weary concession. Solomon didn’t care. She was here and she would do what she’d promised. That was all he cared about.

  He checked his watch again. Two minutes past nine. He should be here. Demmy. He’d said nine, so he should be here. Glasses, curly hair. Solomon watched the crowd, its fluidity and movement, the laughing, the shuffling, the different groups like disparate tribes, all in opposition to each other. As if some kind of underground invitational contest had been organized and here they were, waiting, waiting for the bell to ring, for something to happen. Solomon, he told himself. Stop drinking that gin.

  Kay was waiting to order her drink, her elbow on the bar, a note in her hand to attract the barman. A man next to her put his hand over hers, covering the note, and said something to her, close to her ear, no way that Solomon could hear. Kay smiled and shook her head and took her hand away from beneath his. The man didn’t have glasses on and his skin was dark, south Asian, but Solomon turned to Fox anyway, in case, even though he had shared the photo of Demmy with her. She knew what she was looking for. Fox caught his gaze and shook her head. He couldn’t see from this distance, but he imagined that she rolled her eyes as well.

  Solomon had been nursing his drink for half an hour now, and he began to feel an absurd guilt that he wasn’t spending enough money to rent his place at the bar. He drank the last of his glass and turned and ordered another gin and tonic.

  ‘House?’

  ‘What’s its strength?’ Solomon said.

  ‘Its strength?’ said the barman. ‘Let me think. It’s organic. It’s locally brewed. It creates jobs. That what you mean?’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘Just … Forget it. I’ll have a beer.’

  ‘Meant to be a joke,’ said the barman. ‘No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Solomon. ‘How about a Corona?’

  The barman sighed, and said, ‘Coming up.’

  Solomon took his Corona. He’d forgotten that bar people always pushed a segment of lime into the top, which Solomon now pushed through into the bottle, which in turn messed with its pouring. Which Solomon enjoyed, because it gave him a chance to ponder the vagaries of nano-wave dynamics while he waited for Demmy to show. He waited, and he drank, and he tried not to look at Kay, whose presence he imagined he could actually feel, next to him though two metres away. Impossible to actually feel, but he could feel her anyway.

  A man in glasses, Solomon didn’t get a good look at the frames, walked to the bar and stood next to Kay. Curly hair. Glasses, and curly hair. Solomon looked at his bottle of Corona, suddenly imagining it as a weapon. It could serve a purpose. Was this Demmy? Solomon checked his watch. Nearly quarter past nine. Late. It had to be him. Didn’t it? He looked over once again at Fox, who was watching, for the first time intently.

  ‘And you think that’s funny? In what, and I want you to be precise, exactly in what way do you think that meets the criteria of funny?’ Kay had taken a step away from the man in glasses and was looking up at him with contempt. No, Solomon corrected himself, not contempt. Anger. Solomon glanced over at Fox. She was standing where she always had been, but her two companions were making their way over.

  ‘Kay?’ he said loudly, not looking at her, talking into the room. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘No,’ said Kay. ‘No, it’s just a dickhead. Who’s going to piss off, and take his woeful chat-up lines with him. Yes?’

  ‘Lesbian,’ the man said, which made Kay laugh.

  ‘Off you go.’

  ‘Going.’

  Solomon held a hand up and Fox’s officers stopped and did, in Solomon’s opinion, a not-especially-subtle about-turn.

  Twenty past nine. Solomon looked at Kay, who shrugged.

  ‘What do you think?’ said Solomon. ‘Keep waiting?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Kay. ‘If I have to. I’m not used to this.’ She gestured out at the bar. ‘Meat market.’

  ‘He’d be here,’ said Solomon. ‘If he was going to show.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Or me,’ said Fox quietly, appearing like some kind of cold wraith in the midst of the bar’s warm noise. ‘Eff why eye, we’re going. Off. Obligation fulfilled, evening wasted, as anticipated.’

  ‘Are you Inspector Fox?’ said Kay.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s exactly like you described her,’ Kay said to Solomon.

  Fox didn’t react to this, although Solomon imagined that it would give her pause for several days, something he could not help but love Kay for. One of many things.

  ‘It’s a no-show,’ said Kay, after Fox had left, taking her colleagues with her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Kay. ‘Something we did? Scared him off?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ said Solomon. ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Regroup,’ said Solomon. ‘Rethink.’ He had no idea.

  ‘You have no idea,’ said Kay. ‘But that’s okay. We’ll think of something.’

  They walked outside and Solomon ordered a cab for Kay. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Why? Not your fault.’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. He sighed. ‘Why wasn’t he here?’

  They stood outside the bar in silence, and Kay’s taxi pulled up. ‘You want to share?’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘You’re not going my way. I think I’ll walk.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad,’ said Kay. ‘You did all you could.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Solomon. He watched Kay get into the cab, watched until it was out of view, then turned and walked back through the dark streets to his apartment.

  thirty-nine

  THE TAXI STOPPED AT A RED LIGHT AND HE WATCHED THE dark silhouette of her head and shoulders. He was in the car behind, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t looking for him. She didn’t kn
ow she was being followed. Again, her hubris amazed him. This woman who had said that her name was Julia. Who had said that she loved doing ‘cultural stuff’. Who enjoyed the theatre, and wrote verily in text exchanges. He could laugh, it was all so obvious. So clumsy and amateurish.

  There were two of them, he knew that now. He had seen them talking together in the bar. Her and an accomplice. A man and a woman, hubris combined. Salmoneus and Cassiopeia. It didn’t matter. They had walked into the trap and now he was following her, and soon she would be part of his next performance. Julia-not-Julia whose name was now Lavinia.

  The lights changed and the taxi headed down Victoria Embankment, the street lamps painting the car’s roof orange. It took a left over Southwark Bridge. He followed, and as they crossed the Thames marvelled at the city’s beauty, the buildings either side of the river lit up and those lights reflected by the always twisted and churning water, black and restless. This city, he thought as they drove across the bridge. What a stage, its scale and history a perfect backdrop. He wound down his window and let the night air in, breathing it in deeply, feeling an affinity with his surroundings, a shared ambition and greatness.

  They drove for some time down a main route he could not name. At last the Prius took a left and he followed, keeping his distance now that the streets were narrower, even though it was dark and there was no way that the driver ahead or the woman in the back knew they were being tailed. No way at all. They took a left, another, then a right, the streets becoming narrower at every turn, more oppressive, tower blocks hemming them in, squeezing them tighter. The Prius indicated once more and pulled over on the left in front of a row of terraced three-storey Victorian houses. He passed and stopped twenty yards further up the street and wound down his window. He waited, watching the taxi in his rear-view mirror. The woman would get out, and the taxi would go, and then it would all be in the performance.

  The taxi pulled away and he reversed back down the street to take its place. The woman was walking up the steps to the front door of the town house.

  He opened the door and threw a mobile phone at the bottom of the steps, a soft clatter. ‘You dropped your phone,’ he called out.

  The woman who wasn’t called Julia turned. ‘God,’ she said, and walked back down. He got out of the car and crossed the pavement, bending to pick the phone up.

  ‘It’s fine,’ the woman said. ‘I can—’

  He stood up and pressed the cloth into her face with one hand, holding the back of her head with the other. She struggled, but he was too strong, so strong that he had time to check up and down the street before dragging her back to his car, opening the back door and easing her in. She slumped backwards across the seat and he pushed at her and folded her legs in clumsily as if she was an awkward piece of luggage. Then he stood up and looked around. There was nobody there, nobody to see what had happened. It had all been over in seconds, perfectly performed. And if he could do it out here, in the world, there was no doubt that he would have been able to do it on the stage. If they’d let him. If they’d appreciated his talent. It didn’t matter, not now. When they read about it, they would be amazed. His, they would finally realize, was a particular kind of genius.

  He got back into the driver’s seat and pulled away. He had a long way to travel, and he needed everything to be in place before the night ended. He looked into the rear-view mirror, where the woman was unconscious on the back seat. Lavinia.

  forty

  IT WASN’T UNTIL FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON THAT Solomon acknowledged to himself that he was panicking. Until then he had been worried, but he had kept his worst fears suppressed, endlessly spinning less catastrophic scenarios in his head, telling himself that these were the more reasonable explanations for Kay’s absence, the more plausible. She was at the lab. She was out running, shopping, she’d gone to a gallery, the cinema. Any one of a hundred, a thousand possibilities.

  He had tried messaging her at eleven but there had been no reply. Fine, he’d thought, she’s not online. Nothing remarkable about that. He’d tried again at midday, then called her mobile. No answer, so he’d sent her a text, asking her to call him. At one o’clock he’d called her lab.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. Could I speak to Kay Spinazzi, please?’

  ‘Can I say who’s calling?’

  ‘Solomon Mullan.’

  ‘I’ll have a look.’ He had waited, hoping, willing her to be there, to come to the phone. He had listened to background noises, the faint sound of two people talking and laughing, then footsteps approaching.

  ‘Sorry, she’s not here.’

  ‘Has she been in today?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Who did you say you were?’

  Solomon had hung up and sat in his living room, telling himself to stay calm, to think rationally. He had Kay’s address from the night before when he had ordered her taxi, and now he ordered another, pacing his apartment while he waited for the cab to turn up, then heading down to the street anyway, anything to keep moving, to avoid thinking. The taxi had arrived and he’d sat in the back, his hand wrapped around his mobile, hoping to feel it vibrate, to hear Kay tell him breathlessly that she was sorry she’d missed his calls, no, she hadn’t realized that he’d be worried, she’d just fancied a walk and had lost track of time. But no call came, and he arrived at her address and walked up the steps to her house and rang the bell. He waited for a couple of minutes, was about to ring again when the door was opened by a man with a beard, wearing a dressing gown.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Could I speak to Kay, please?’

  The man looked Solomon up and down. Solomon was wearing make-up and his eye patch, but the man’s gaze made him feel suddenly ashamed and inadequate. ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Well … Do you know when she’ll be back?’

  ‘Search me. Don’t think she came home last night. Must have got lucky.’

  ‘She didn’t come home?’ Solomon couldn’t keep the panic out of his voice.

  The man frowned. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Are you sure she didn’t come home?’

  He shrugged. ‘Pretty sure. Is there a problem?’ he asked again.

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘Just, if she comes back, could you tell her to call Solomon? It’s very important.’

  ‘Solomon.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay.’ The man stepped back into the house, then stopped. ‘You want to come in?’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘Thanks.’ He turned and headed back down the steps and walked up Kay’s street, hurriedly although he had nowhere to go and no plan. Kay was missing. She hadn’t come home. She hadn’t come home because, obviously, yesterday at the bar they’d thought they were oh so clever, when actually they were idiots. No, scratch that, he was an idiot. Solomon Mullan. There was a word for it. Hubris. Imagining that they were two steps ahead when they were one behind, always had been. Solomon hadn’t even stopped to maybe consider it. And now Kay was missing and it was on him, completely on him.

  He passed a park and he walked in and sat down on a bench. The day was warm and overcast and he closed his eyes and tried to think. He tried to tune out the traffic noises and the sounds of kids playing and think, really think. Had he actually done any proper thinking yet? Probably not. He’d got by on arrogance and hubris, mostly. Believing that he must be better than his foe, that if he was morally better then it must follow that he was superior in every other regard.

  But who was this foe? Who was this person who had attacked his sister, who was causing violence to women? He took a deep breath and realized – no, he didn’t realize, he acknowledged for the first time that he had no idea. None. In his mind there was nothing, a blank, an empty space. He could not understand this person, could not fathom him, could not guess his motives or comprehend his actions. He, Solomon, had been busy constructing plans to catch somebody whom he had no knowledge of beyond the superficial. The complacency of his behaviour suddenly appalled hi
m. What had he been thinking?

  So. He leant forward and put his head in his hands and tried to put these reflections aside, exchange them for a more profitable train of thought. He had acknowledged that he did not understand this person. Part of the larger picture, of how he understood facts and knowledge systems and binary problems, but did not have an instinct for people, could not get a handle on the messy business of real life. So, he needed help. He needed help, and fast.

  He took out his mobile and called Inspector Fox.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we’re done. It’s a Saturday and you’ve already wasted my Friday night. Enough.’

  ‘She’s missing,’ said Solomon. ‘Kay’s missing.’

  ‘I saw her last night.’

  ‘She didn’t get home.’

  ‘Maybe she met somebody.’

  ‘No. I put her in a taxi.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘Just after you left. Nine thirty.’

  ‘So, maybe she went out somewhere else afterwards.’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘No, she’s missing.’

  ‘Mr Mullan, it’s only been a few hours since she was last seen. She’s a grown woman. You don’t think you’re being … alarmist?’

  ‘I just know that—’

  ‘I’ve had enough of listening to your theories, the things you somehow know to be true. If she doesn’t show up, report her missing. This has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You’re a police officer.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Fox. ‘I’m not your therapist. So please, stop treating me like it.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Goodbye. Please don’t call again.’

  Fox hung up and Solomon sat staring at the screen of his mobile, sitting on the park bench. He had no idea what to do next, and he needed help. And if Fox wasn’t going to step up, then he had only one more place left to turn. He got off the bench and headed out of the park, looking for a cab.

  Solomon had only just crossed Southwark Bridge, the Thames sparkling in the evening sun, when his mobile vibrated. He entered his code and looked at his messages. A new one, from Kay. He opened it, his fingers clumsy, his hands shaking.