by D. B. Thorne
There was a note on her desk. A sergeant had called from Islington nick, wanted Fox to call back. Whoever it was had left a mobile number, but not a name. Fox didn’t recognize the number, and anyway, it was Sunday. How important could it be? And even if it was, frankly, she didn’t care, not right now. She had forms to complete, actions to justify. She took a pen out of her desk tidy and got to work.
*
By lunchtime, Fox had had enough. She put down her pen and leant back in her chair, rubbing her eyes. She didn’t want to be doing this. Admin. Couldn’t somebody else do it? She was management, she shouldn’t be filling in forms. She should be making decisions, and delegating the small stuff to some fresh-faced sergeant. Speaking of sergeants, she remembered the note that had been on her desk. She dug it out from beneath her papers. Still didn’t recognize the number, but what the hell, she’d call it anyway.
She picked up her mobile and dialled the number, listening to it ring the other end. It went through to voicemail, where a Sergeant Bright asked her to leave a message, which she didn’t. Sergeant Bright. She recognized the name but couldn’t place it. She put her phone down on her desk and left her office, wondering if there was anything edible being served downstairs. The canteen was closed, a cleaner mopping the floor, and Fox swore and walked through to the front of the station, wondering where would be open on a Sunday. A uniformed officer was putting a poster up, and Fox gave it a glance, then stopped.
‘Who told you to put that up?’ she said.
‘This? Just came through.’
The poster’s headline read, Missing, and underneath was a shot of Kay Spinazzi.
‘Came through from where?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said the officer. ‘Just an email. Asking us to circulate the poster.’
Fox’s feeling of unease increased, suddenly ratcheted up. She’d ignored Solomon Mullan, but he’d got somebody to listen. Now it was official, and she … Shit. She was implicated, she was part of this, and if it all went south, then she’d be in the firing line. She’d ignored Mullan and now, somewhere, there were other officers looking into it. She felt a surge of fear, of dread. Cocktails of infinite variety. She shouldn’t have ignored it. Maybe she shouldn’t have ignored it.
Fox turned and went back upstairs to her office, her hands tingling in near panic. As she walked along the corridor, she remembered the name, it came back to her. Sergeant Bright. The officer who’d suggested there was a connection between Tiffany Mullan and … she couldn’t remember who. The woman who’d been found in that church. Shit. What did he want? She got to her office and saw that she’d missed a call. From Bright. God. She sat down and put her hands on her face, fingers over her eyes. Okay, she thought. Okay. Breathe. You need to jump on this, jump on this now. Before it’s too late. If it’s not already too late.
She returned Bright’s call, listened to it ring through again.
‘Sergeant Bright.’
‘Sergeant, it’s Inspector Fox.’
‘Yes, Inspector. Thanks for calling me back.’
‘No problem.’ Calm, she thought. Speak calmly. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Right, yes. Well, I came across another case, not one of ours, but I heard talk of it.’
‘Yes?’
‘A young woman who had been abducted but escaped. This was several days ago. She was hit by a car and taken to hospital.’
‘And this relates to me how?’
‘She’d been on a date, somebody she met online. One of those swipe-if-you-like-me things. She’d been drugged and woke up in a pit.’
‘But she escaped.’
‘Right. So anyway, I thought I’d share it with you.’
‘Thank you.’ Fox breathed slightly easier. It didn’t sound like there was a strong link. ‘Anything else?’
‘Nothing specific. I’ll forward you the case details. Well, apart from one thing, the reason it got me thinking.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just something odd. A phrase, the one thing she can remember her abductor saying.’
‘Which was?’
‘Hold on.’ She waited. ‘Here we are. First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw. Apparently that’s what he said.’
‘Which means?’ said Fox, scribbling it down, feeling her sense of dread washing back, stronger than last time, a tide coming in, some kind of reckoning arriving.
‘No idea,’ said Sergeant Bright. ‘It’s a line from Shakespeare. From Titus Andronicus, that’s all I know.’
Fox felt an urge to vomit. She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing, slowly, gently.
‘Inspector Fox?’
‘Thank you,’ she managed. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
She hung up and dropped her phone as if it was suddenly too hot to hold. She scratched her head with both hands. Her heart was beating too fast and she could feel sweat prickling on her scalp. Shit shit shit. Oh God. Oh shit. She sat motionless for minutes, running scenarios through her head. They all ended with her getting fired, or at the very best demoted, with no chance of career progression. She needed to act. At least if she acted, it would be recognized; her superiors would be able to see that she’d tried. Made an attempt at redeeming the situation.
She picked her phone up again and called Solomon Mullan. He answered on the second ring.
‘Inspector.’
‘Solomon, I need to—’
‘You need to help me. Kay has been abducted and—’
‘I know,’ said Fox. ‘Listen to me.’ Solomon sounded manic, on the edge. They both were. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have some new information,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Other cases,’ Fox said. ‘That have just come to my attention.’ Which was true, or at least half true.
‘What other cases?’
‘A woman was found drugged, last week. It might be related.’
‘Drugged? Where?’
‘In a church,’ said Fox.
‘What happened?’
‘She was discovered. Alive. She’d been there for a couple of days.’
‘Asleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Solomon. He sounded more panicked now than he had when he picked up. ‘Juliet. That was Juliet.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We were wrong. Kay and I, we—’
‘There’s something else,’ said Fox. ‘Another case. This time the woman escaped.’
‘When?’
‘Recently.’
‘How recently?’
‘Several days ago,’ said Fox. ‘That’s all I know. But Solomon, she remembered her abductor quoting a line from Shakespeare.’
‘Titus Andronicus,’ said Solomon.
‘Yes,’ said Fox, momentarily astonished. ‘How did—’
‘It doesn’t matter. Inspector, I need your help.’
‘Of course,’ said Fox, as if her assistance had never been in question.
‘Stay by your phone,’ Solomon said. ‘I’ll get back to you. Just be there. Can you do that?’
‘I’ll be here,’ said Fox. ‘But what exactly—’
‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Solomon, and cut the connection, leaving Fox with a silent phone to her ear and an almost overwhelming sense of dread and culpability. This could be her career, right here.
forty-four
KAY WAS TRAPPED SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SLEEP AND WAKE-fulness, the cold against her flesh piercing her sleep, her bound hands painful, but her mind too exhausted to break the delicate surface of consciousness. In this fitful state she dreamed, and in this dream the cover of the pit she was in had been removed and she was looking up at the silhouette of a man, black against the dark night sky above him, and he was whispering down at her, repeating the same words, again and again.
First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.
She turned and twisted, half asleep, senselessly trying to find a comfortable and warm position
in the pit. In her dream the man left, and the sky above her was now bright, a bright blue, full daylight. And Solomon appeared at the top of the pit, no eye patch or sunglasses, and his face wasn’t scarred, and he was handsome and perfect, his curly hair framing his face as he looked down at her. Only now the pit she was in was deep, so deep, and Solomon was reaching down and she was reaching up, but their hands couldn’t meet, would never meet, and she was crying, and it was no good, no good at all, because she was trapped in her pit forever.
Kay writhed and shivered in her pit, and dreamed, dreamed of being saved by Solomon, but in her dreams he was too late, always too late. She didn’t blame him, though. No, she didn’t blame him, because she loved him and at least he was trying. At least he was doing that.
Titus Andronicus. Solomon looked back at Kay’s message exchanges with her abductor, the man who had called himself Demmy.
Do you know Mr Todlq’s?
No. Sounds … weird.
I mean Mr Toad’s. Which also sounds … weird. But it’s pretty cool. All drinks freshly distilled.
What time?
At dead time of the night.
He got the play up on his computer, Titus Andronicus, the full text. Searched for ‘toad’. An immediate hit:
The thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries.
He searched for ‘distilled’. Another result:
Upon whose leaves are drops of new-shed blood
As fresh as morning dew distill’d on flowers
Finally, ‘dead time of the night’. Another hit. Solomon leant back in his chair and read:
And when they show’d me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here, at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confused cries
As any mortal body hearing it
Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.
Titus Andronicus. He had latched onto Romeo and Juliet, rationalized the references, the imperfect references, reached an erroneous conclusion based on imprecise data. Latched onto Romeo and Juliet without exploring any other possibilities. He had been wrong, wrong the whole time. It was Lavinia. Kay had been cast as Lavinia, who was attacked and raped and mutilated by Tamora’s sons, Chiron and Demetrius. Demmy. Raped, her hands cut off and her tongue cut out. No. No, it couldn’t happen. It couldn’t. He had to stop it, had to be allowed to stop it.
The numbers. Run the numbers, according to your original hypothesis. That they match the text, that they correspond to acts, scenes and lines in the play.
23303842285218651676239881179543892
Okay. First, 233038. Act 2, Scene 3, line 303, word 8. Solomon found the scene and counted lines. Such a long scene, he forced himself to count slowly. Get it right. Here was the line:
For, by my soul, were there worse end than death.
The eighth word. End. He wrote it down, moved to the next sequence. 42285. Act 4, Scene 2, line 28, word 5. He counted again, quicker this time, and found the line:
But were our witty empress well afoot.
The fifth word was empress. Solomon moved on, through the next five sequences.
Act 2, Scene 1, line 8, word 6.
Hill.
Act 5, Scene 1, line 67, word 6.
Buried.
Act 2, Scene 3, line 98, word 8.
Pit.
Act 1, Scene 1, line 79, word 5.
Twenty.
Act 4, Scene 3, line 89, word 2.
Hours.
End empress hill buried pit twenty hours.
Twenty hours. How long had it been since he’d received the message? He checked his phone. 18.47. Twenty hours from then was 14.47. What time was it now? Gone two. 14.28. Nineteen minutes. There were nineteen minutes left to find her. Solomon opened another window and pulled up Google Maps, typed in Empress Hill. One result, in Epping. He called Fox, who answered immediately.
‘Yes?’
‘I think I know where she is. Where Kay is.’
‘How?’
‘Doesn’t matter right now. Empress Hill. It’s in Epping.’
‘What is it, a street?’
‘Yes. The information I have is that she is buried in a pit at the end of Empress Hill.’
‘She’s what?’
‘We have nineteen minutes to find her.’
‘Slow down. How do you know this?’
Solomon forced himself to stay calm, to speak clearly. ‘I’ve been sent a message. A cryptic one. Specifically, it reads end empress hill buried pit twenty hours.’
‘Twenty hours. What’s that, a deadline?’
‘It leaves us nineteen minutes.’
‘I’ll send a car,’ said Fox, ‘and meet you there. Give me your address.’
Solomon gave Fox his address and she hung up. He went back to his screen and stared at the map, at Empress Hill. Kay was there, and he was here, and he was too late. He couldn’t be too late, but he was. Because there were nineteen minutes left to find her, which wasn’t long enough. Wasn’t nearly long enough. He bunched his fists and rubbed his head, as hard as he could. Too late. Much too late.
forty-five
HIS GOAL WAS AUTHENTICITY, STRIPPED OF ARTIFICE AND theatricality. His ambition was the purest form of performance possible. His drama was real, played out on the world stage, his players entirely genuine, experiencing the emotions rather than acting them out. Feeling the fear and the pain on the most visceral level. It was that realism, that authenticity, that made his art so pure. That made his art of the highest form possible, an emphatic riposte to all those who had doubted him and his ability.
Lavinia was still there. They hadn’t found her. She had been in her pit for nearly twenty hours now and they hadn’t found her. He thought of his pursuers. If they were coming, they would have been here by now. Perhaps the challenge had been too cryptic for them. They could not understand. But the thought of them out there, looking for him, gave his role an extra dimension, heightened the tension. For wasn’t Demetrius caught in the end? Caught and murdered? He welcomed the tension to the role. It added to the authenticity.
It was nearly time. Nearly time to thrash the corn. In the forest behind him there was a recently felled tree; that was where it would happen. The axe was new and unused and had a blade that was sharp enough to cut skin when you rubbed your thumb along its edge. Lavinia’s wrists were not thick and should not be enough to trouble the blade when it came down. For the tongue there was a knife and pliers, although how that would play out was still uncertain. The cutting-out of a tongue was a difficult act to imagine. It was a difficult act to imagine and would be a difficult act to carry out. But for the sake of purity and authenticity, it was necessary.
He walked across the forest clearing to the board. Two oil barrels filled with concrete were on top, lying on their sides, held in place by wooden chocks. They would take some shifting, he knew, because he had rolled them on there in the first place. He should get to work. There was little time left, just over thirty minutes. He was nervous. This was a key performance, the apotheosis of all that he had been working towards. The key performance, but the most challenging. He took a deep breath, then stepped forward onto the board.
From Wapping to Empress Hill in Epping was 18.2 miles. Imagining a constant speed of sixty miles per hour, it would take 18.2 minutes. Reduce that speed to fifty miles per hour and it would take 21.84 minutes. Up it to seventy and it would only take 15.6. The police car Solomon was in was using its lights and sirens, but it was still doing nowhere near sixty. Or fifty. Another red light ahead, another queue of traffic to navigate, the cars pulling to the left and right to create a passage for the police car to crawl through. At forty miles per hour, it would take 27.3 minutes to travel 18.2 miles. At thirty miles per hour it would take 36.4. But they didn’t have that amount of time. Solomon looked again at hi
s watch. 14.44. He’d waited seven minutes for the police car and had been in it for three, and they hadn’t yet done four miles. There were three minutes left. To travel 18.2 miles in three minutes would involve driving at 364 miles per hour. There was no chance.
His phone rang. Fox. He picked up. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got officers on the scene, at Empress Hill. There’s nobody there.’
‘There has to be.’
‘Nobody. An empty pit, but nobody there.’
Solomon thought of the play, of Titus Andronicus. The exact wording. Exeunt DEMETRIUS and CHIRON, dragging off LAVINIA. She might not be there, but she had to be close.
‘Where is the pit? In a forest?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not there yet. Get out of the fucking way,’ she shouted at someone or something on the other end. ‘Traffic’s murder.’
‘She must be close,’ said Solomon. ‘Tell them to find her.’
‘They’re waiting for extra officers,’ said Fox. ‘They want reinforcements.’
‘There’s no time.’
‘They haven’t been briefed on the situation. They won’t move until they get reinforcements, or I get there.’
‘How far out are you?’
‘Hold on.’ He heard her ask somebody, presumably the driver. ‘Seven miles away.’
Solomon checked his watch. Twenty-eight seconds left to go. To cover the distance, she’d need to travel at … He thought for a moment. Nine hundred miles per hour. Too late, much too late. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Just send help.’
‘Doing my best,’ said Fox. ‘I’ll call you if I hear anything.’
Solomon sat back as they hit the A406 and stayed left to take the M11, the lanes clear in front of them, their speed approaching a hundred. They’d be there soon, they had to be right behind Fox. They’d be there soon, but not soon enough.
First she’d heard the sound of something heavy being moved above her. Then he’d pulled away the board covering the pit she was in, daylight flooding in. She’d had to close her eyes, she was so unused to the light, to any light at all. He’d thrown down a crate and she’d stepped onto it and he’d pulled her out, over the edge of the pit. She was in a forest clearing, the sunlight warm against her cold skin. He stood there looking down at her.