Perfect Match

by D. B. Thorne

  23303842285218651676239881179543892

  He read through the numbers, then hit reply.

  Kay? What does this mean?

  He waited, watching the screen, feeling the taxi’s motion as it turned corners on the way back to his apartment. Then, a new message:

  That is all you get.

  Solomon replied with a single question mark, but got nothing back. All he had was a string of numbers, which at first glance meant nothing. He sat in the back of the cab and closed his eyes. They must mean something. They had to. But he could not say what.

  forty-one

  ‘RUN THAT PAST US AGAIN, SOLOMON, IF YOU COULD,’ SAID Fran. ‘And please, try to calm down.’

  ‘Kay is missing, and I believe that she has been abducted by the same person who attacked my sister and engineered the note that you have already seen, Rebecca Harrington’s suicide note that used references from Antony and Cleopatra,’ Solomon said.

  ‘But how?’ said Fran. ‘How was she abducted?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Solomon.

  ‘And why do you think that this is the case?’ said Masoud. ‘Do you have evidence?’

  ‘We found out who he was,’ said Solomon. ‘And by we, I mean Kay and I. And we, well, she, she arranged to meet him.’

  ‘Oh Solomon,’ said Fran. He watched her face on his laptop screen. She looked dismayed. Worse, disappointed.

  ‘The police were there,’ said Solomon. ‘I thought it would be safe.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ said Fran. ‘What went wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Solomon. ‘I think … I think he knew. That he was watching us, when we thought we were looking for him. And maybe, I don’t know … He didn’t turn up, but then perhaps he did, and I think maybe he followed Kay.’

  ‘How did he know who Kay was?’ said Fran.

  ‘Well, he had her photo,’ said Solomon. ‘It was a date. We wanted him to think he was meeting her for a date, so he needed to see her.’ He stopped, then added, pointlessly, ‘It’s how it works, nowadays.’

  ‘Solomon, no. How could you have?’ said Fran. ‘How could you have put Kay in danger?’

  ‘I think that’s enough, Fran,’ said Phil. He was turning his pint with his fingers on the table in front of him and he spoke quietly but firmly. ‘I imagine that young Solomon’s feeling enough guilt right now.’

  ‘And I should think—’

  ‘I said enough,’ said Phil. ‘We’re here to help, not castigate. We’re not going to nail him to the cross for this.’

  Fran thought about saying something else, stopped herself, then nodded. ‘You’re right, Phil. Solomon, I apologize. It’s just that I’m fond of Kay.’

  ‘I think we all are,’ said Phil. ‘All the more reason to listen to Solomon and try to help. So.’ He looked directly at the screen, at Solomon. ‘Do you have anything?’

  ‘He sent me a list of numbers,’ said Solomon. ‘Let me share my screen.’ The numbers replaced his avatar, so that the Brain Pool could see them:

  23303842285218651676239881179543892

  ‘He sent you that?’

  ‘From Kay’s phone, yes. I replied, and all I got was a message. That is all you get.’

  ‘That was the message?’ said Masoud.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And these numbers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do they mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘From what I remember,’ said Fran, ‘the hypothesis was that this person was casting women in the role of tragic heroines. By women, I mean his victims.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Solomon. ‘Kay had a theory, that these heroines were being chosen in the opposite order Shakespeare wrote them.’

  ‘Cleopatra,’ said Masoud. ‘Who else was there?’

  ‘Ophelia. And Portia.’

  ‘She wasn’t a tragic heroine,’ said Fran. ‘She was just a heroine, and a good one.’

  ‘I mean the Portia from Julius Caesar,’ said Solomon, ‘not The Merchant of Venice. There was a story in the paper, about a woman who had been forced to eat hot coals.’

  ‘My God,’ said Fran. ‘And you think that was him?’

  ‘She’d been on a date,’ said Solomon. ‘It all fits.’

  ‘And the police,’ said Masoud. ‘They know all this?’

  ‘All of it,’ said Solomon. ‘They’re not interested.’

  ‘Sounds right,’ said Phil. ‘Doesn’t serve their purposes. Too intellectual. Beyond them. Shouldn’t be the thin blue line, should be the thick one, you ask me.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Phil,’ said Fran. ‘So who did Kay think was next?’

  ‘Juliet,’ said Masoud. ‘No, Solomon?’

  ‘Right. And we put the hypothesis to the test, and this person, whoever he is, he used references from Romeo and Juliet in his messages to Kay.’ Solomon thought back to them, the mentions of death and night, toads and distilled liquors. They couldn’t have got that wrong.

  ‘GPS coordinates?’ said Phil.

  ‘I thought of that,’ said Solomon. ‘They don’t correspond, no matter what I try. Cyclical, repetition, polynomial, I’ve tried algorithms, can’t find a pattern they match. Phone numbers, post office protocols, IP addresses. These numbers mean nothing, whatever I do with them. Either he’s a mathematical genius, or it’s something else.’

  ‘Alphabetical?’

  ‘No. I ran it through everything I could think of, and it only returns random strings of letters.’

  ‘The text,’ said Masoud. ‘Have you gone to the text? Romeo and Juliet?’

  ‘First thing I tried,’ said Solomon. ‘Look at the first five numbers. Act Two, Scene Three, line thirty, word three.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I get the word the. From the line, Full soon the canker death eats up the plant.’

  ‘It sounds reasonable,’ said Fran. ‘The. Often the beginning of a sentence.’

  ‘Yes, but look at what comes next. Which number.’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘That should designate the start of the next sequence. It should denote the act number, but Romeo and Juliet doesn’t have eight acts,’ said Solomon. ‘So the pattern doesn’t work.’

  ‘How about if you use the first six numbers of the sequence,’ said Fran. ‘Act Two, Scene Three, line three hundred and three, word eight.’

  ‘There are only ninety-four lines in Scene Three,’ said Solomon. ‘It doesn’t work.’

  The Brain Pool were silent for a moment, Phil busying himself with his drink.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Fran, breaking the silence. ‘Poor Kay.’

  ‘The question I have,’ said Solomon, ‘is why? I don’t understand this person. Why is he doing this? It’s so … theatrical.’

  ‘Because he wants people to appreciate him,’ said Phil. ‘That’s obvious, right? To him, this, all of this, it’s a performance. I’ll bet my house that your man’s a failed actor who’s now got some shitty job, and he’s eaten up by resentment, watching his contemporaries make it. Classic narcissistic personality. Can’t get my own way? Then I’ll show you.’

  ‘It explains the theatricality,’ said Fran.

  ‘He’s transferred his animosity,’ said Phil. ‘From the theatre to the world in general. All the world’s a stage, right?’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Won’t argue with you there,’ said Phil. ‘I expect he’s psychotic.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’ said Solomon.

  ‘Keep running those numbers,’ said Phil. ‘He wants you to find him. He won’t have made it too hard, that’s not what he wants. He wants the attention, I expect he wants to be caught.’ He nodded. ‘Definitely. Otherwise, how does he get the reviews he wants?’

  ‘All the world’s a stage,’ said Fran. ‘And we’re his audience.’

  ‘We all are,’ said Phil. ‘We just don’t know it yet.’

  ‘The answer is in those numbers, I have to agree with Philip,’ said Masoud.
‘But Solomon, the police need to be dealing with a situation like this.’

  ‘I know,’ said Solomon. ‘I know. And I’ve tried. I just can’t see how—’

  ‘So here’s what we do,’ said Phil, setting his drink down and sitting up straight in his seat. ‘We all report Kay missing. Each one of us. Fran, call me and leave a message on my voicemail. Say that you’re Kay, and that you’re worried because somebody’s been following you. Call Masoud and tell him the same thing. Got it?’

  ‘That’s illegal,’ said Fran.

  Phil waggled a hand. ‘It’s a grey area. But if Masoud and I play it to them, it’ll mean they have to act immediately. Yes?’

  ‘All right,’ said Fran slowly.

  ‘Good. Solomon, keep running those numbers. There’s something there, there’s got to be.’

  ‘How do you come to know so much about how the police work?’ said Fran.

  ‘I’m an anarchist,’ said Phil. ‘It’s my duty.’

  Solomon broke the connection and called Fox. Again. He had called and called, left messages, but had no reply. Outside it was dark, the day almost over. He looked again at the string of numbers he had been sent. The answer was there. And if he could find it, then the police would have to listen. He went to the kitchen and made coffee, then sat back down in front of his screen, wondering what else was left to try.

  forty-two

  GOD, SHE WAS SO ANGRY, SO ANGRY AND FULL OF RAGE WITH nowhere to direct it. Solomon, I trusted you. I trusted you to steer a way through this, to elegantly weave through the variables and arrive at a safe harbour, trophy in your hands. And you fucked it up. How could I have trusted you, how could I have believed that you were infallible, like some supernatural being, sent from the stars to challenge and liberate and, ultimately, love me? How could I have been such an idiot?

  And how could I have fallen for it? How? Some random in a car pulls up and tells me I’ve dropped my phone and, what? I giggle like a sixteen-year-old out on the town for the first time, five too many sambucas in me, and I patter, I remember it and I actually did, I actually pattered down those steps in my little dress into the jaws of some crazy who I already knew was out there. The idiocy of it all was almost worthy of an independent inquiry, a jury of peers who could look at it cold-bloodedly and work out a five-point action plan to ensure that This Never Happened Again.

  But she was grateful for the anger, was trying to guard it, shield its heat from the cold threat of terror that was close, and getting closer. She was in a pit, her hands tied behind her back, bound tightly together with something hard and sharp. Cable ties, she thought. The pit smelt of earth, damp and claylike, and the edges of the pit were ragged and moist, but in the absolute darkness she could see nothing at all. So she sat in the darkness and tried to retain her anger, keep it hot, and think of the things that this monster wanted to take away from her, but that she would not allow. The things that even in this hideous black pit she would not, would not, let him take from her.

  Like her work. Her experiment. The One. She had been engaged in it for three years already and it looked like lasting for a whole lot longer, and she needed to be around to see it. Because she’d put so much of herself into it, it had been her idea, her yet-to-be-proven stroke of genius, her revolutionary use of enzymes to bridge the organic/composite divide and create artificial life, genuinely artificial, quasi-sentient life. And that was worth living and breathing and fighting for.

  She had done the science bit already. She’d tried to move the board covering the pit she was in, but there was no way it was going anywhere. She’d got to her knees, then her feet, and used her back, pushing up with her legs. She’d read somewhere that your legs were stronger than your arms by some ridiculous factor. But the board hadn’t moved, hadn’t even buckled. She’d tried digging with her hands but she could barely move them, they were bound together so tightly. And so she’d made the reluctant but pragmatic decision to conserve her strength for the unlikely event that she was in a position to get away, to make a break for it.

  What else did she not want to lose, would not accept losing? Solomon. Because even though she was trapped in a pitch-black pit beneath an immovable board, she knew that Solomon was out there, and she still believed in him, at least kind of, despite her fury. He was quiet and shy and awkward but he had something, there was something other-worldly about him, assured in a way she had never encountered in anyone before. He was out there and he would be looking for her, and just the thought of that made her feel better. Not much better, but better, better-ish. She didn’t know why, could never have explained it. Yet there it was. She had an unshakeable faith in a young, unassuming, diffident man with a face most people couldn’t bear to look at. Why, she could not say.

  It was dank and not warm in the pit and Kay only had on the dress she’d worn to the bar, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t get it to cover more than about sixty per cent of her body, the rest of it cold and getting colder, unable to generate warmth against the cool soil. She wondered whether it was day or night, and how long she had been trapped here. A few hours? A day? Longer? Her anger was dwindling, was almost gone, no match for the chill fear that this pit was pushing out from its sides. No match at all.

  Okay, she was scared. She nodded, acknowledging her state of mind in the blackness. She was scared, and that was fine, but at least she wasn’t panicking. No, she wasn’t panicking yet. And why? Because, along with her kind-of belief in Solomon, she also knew, or at least was pretty sure, what was coming. What was planned for her. She was Juliet, and Juliet killed herself after, as far as Kay could recall, a fraught chain of events involving a sleeping potion and a gullible boyfriend. So this wasn’t finished. She wasn’t going to die down here; she was going to have her apparent suicide carefully stage-managed. Which meant that there would be a confrontation with her tormentor, she would have to see him again, at least once. And although she was scared, she knew that she wouldn’t be left down here forever, to starve to death. She would have her confrontation, and they would see. Or Solomon would come to the rescue. Whatever. It wasn’t over yet.

  There was a noise above her, footsteps on the board, and she called out, ‘Help!’

  No response.

  ‘Help. Please, I’m trapped.’

  Nothing.

  ‘I’m trapped. Please. Help. You have to.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Call the police. Just call them. Get them here, now.’

  She stopped yelling and listened. The footsteps had stopped. She held her breath and felt the perfect silence, the damp indifference of the soil walls. She narrowed her eyes to concentrate better, even though she was in absolute darkness. And then she heard a voice, a man’s voice, muffled through the board over the top of her pit, so muffled that she struggled to make the words out.

  ‘First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.’

  ‘What? What did you say? Hey! I’m trapped. Down here.’ Kay banged on the board above her with her knee, as hard as she could, shouting, ‘Help! Help me!’

  ‘First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.’ The voice was louder this time, and Kay was sure that she’d heard right. She heard the sound of footsteps again, this time moving away, and she slumped down into the corner of the pit and pulled her knees up under her chin. That had been him. But it obviously wasn’t time yet, time for whatever he had planned. And what was that he had said? First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw. She didn’t recognize that from Romeo and Juliet, had never heard it before. She didn’t know what it meant, but it had the ring of violence to it. And for the first time since she’d found herself in the pit, Kay began to feel a terror she was not sure she could control.

  forty-three

  CHRIST, FOX WAS TIRED. WHAT A WEEK SHE’D HAD. SHE’D RUN A successful operation but had still had to put up with all kinds of crap from senior officers who wanted to know who had sanctioned what, who’d okayed the wire and the use of firearms and the presence of an in
formant, and the money, so many questions about the money. Where had it come from? If it had been made under exploitative conditions, if there was a human cost to it, then where should it go? How should it be redistributed? Who gave a toss? thought Fox. Give it to the donkey sanctuary. She didn’t care. They didn’t need to know where it came from; they had Thomas Arnold and Luke Mullan in custody, and Thomas Arnold on tape talking about laundering the money they were so conflicted about. They should be promoting her, not wringing their hands. In fairness, her superior, Goven, had eventually told them all to piss off and leave her alone, but still. And this Solomon Mullan, like a fly she couldn’t swat, always buzzing around her, one crazy theory after another. She’d had enough of this week and yet here she was, working another Sunday. Enough. Enough already.

  But the truth was that, although she’d had a hell of a week, she hadn’t slept well, either. She had a feeling, a nagging feeling, like when you leave home and remember you might have left the stove on, but by that time you’re so far away that going back is too much of an ask, so you leave it. You leave it, but you can’t forget it. That was the feeling she had. And it was all down to that one phrase. Cocktails of infinite variety. The phrase that had been in Rebecca Harrington’s message exchange with her date. Because Fox had recognized it back then, immediately, recognized it from Antony and Cleopatra. But she’d had other things on her mind, other priorities, so she had ignored it. She was ninety, well, okay, seventy per cent certain that it meant nothing. But it was there, the feeling, and it wasn’t going away.

  She opened the door to her office and sat down behind her desk. She had a day of paperwork ahead of her, the aftermath of her, let’s not forget, successful operation to put a major money launderer behind bars. She looked without enthusiasm at the papers stacked on her desk. This was no way to spend a Sunday. She should be hanging out with friends, meeting for lunch, spending the day drinking and laughing. Yeah, right. As if that ever happened. She’d long accepted that she wasn’t the drinking-and-laughing type. Or the having-lots-of-friends type either, come to think of it.