by D. B. Thorne
He didn’t look like his photo, the photo he’d used for his online profile. He wasn’t wearing glasses and his hair was short, very short. Without the curls and the glasses his face was difficult to describe. White, blank, characterless. Just a face.
‘Let me go,’ she said.
‘No, I won’t do that,’ he said.
‘Please.’
‘I cannot.’
Kay was kneeling on the ground, bare dirt covered with patchy ivy. She tried to stand up, her bound hands making her as unsteady as a toddler.
‘Please. People will be looking for me.’
‘Yet they haven’t found you.’
‘They will.’
He smiled. ‘All too late. Come.’
He held her by the arm and pulled her.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To a barren detested vale.’
‘No.’ Kay struggled free from his grip. ‘No. I don’t want to.’
‘Where never shines the sun.’ He intoned the words as if possessed, as if another voice was speaking them, using him as a mouthpiece. ‘Where nothing breeds.’
‘What? Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do.’
‘No,’ said Kay. It was true. She didn’t. She didn’t recognize anything of what he was saying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t in Romeo and Juliet.
‘Come.’ He reached for her again, and Kay stepped to the side, leaving him off balance, then launched herself at him, colliding with him shoulder to shoulder. He staggered and put a foot out to steady himself, but his foot slipped on the edge of the pit and Kay slammed into him again and he fell backwards into the pit.
Kay turned and looked at the forest surrounding the clearing. Which way was safety? She didn’t know, and she didn’t have time to think. She ran, her sandals not easy to run in, through the trees. She couldn’t put her arms out to push aside the branches of the trees, and they caught at her as she ran, snagging on her skin. The floor of the forest was uneven, covered with tree roots and pieces of wood, dead branches and whole rotting trunks, and with her hands bound behind her she couldn’t run fast, couldn’t properly balance. She felt as if she had only just learnt, had yet to master the complex act of running. Behind her she could hear him shouting, not far away, not far away at all, and she raced ahead, through branches that tore and clawed and cut her skin until her foot slipped on a rotting log and her ankle turned beneath her with a popping sound, then pain, huge pain, and she lay on her side looking up at the blue sky through the trees as his voice got louder and louder and closer and closer.
*
By the time Solomon arrived, Fox was already out of her car and talking to two uniformed officers. They were at the end of a residential street that had a wooden fence at the end with a gate set into it. Fox looked up as Solomon got out of the police car.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘This is it?’
‘Backup’s two minutes away,’ she said. ‘You want to wait for them?’
‘No.’
‘So let’s go.’ She nodded to the officers and they went through the gate and up a trail, which narrowed to almost nothing before coming to a clearing. In it were two oil barrels on their sides, and a pit half covered by a large wooden board.
‘Tumble me into some loathsome pit, where never man’s eye may behold my body,’ said Solomon.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nothing,’ said Solomon. ‘She should be here.’
‘She may be near,’ said Fox. ‘But where? We’ve got the whole forest to search.’
Solomon looked at the trees surrounding them. He couldn’t even see the trail they’d come by. Somewhere in there was Kay. But like Fox said, where? They could search for weeks without finding her. He felt a sick wash of dread and despair. They were too late, and now she was gone, and it was all down to him and the false assumptions he had made.
‘We’ve got more officers arriving,’ Fox said. ‘We can search properly. By grid. We’ll find her.’
‘Maybe,’ said Solomon. He didn’t say anything else, but thought of Kay and what her abductor had planned for her. Rape, her hands cut off, her tongue cut out. They might find her, it was true. But finding her wasn’t what Solomon was worried about.
‘I’ve asked for a helicopter,’ said Fox. ‘I’m waiting. They’ll have thermal imaging.’
Solomon nodded, gazing around him at the quiet forest, the silence broken by the crackle of one of the officer’s radios. The officer responded, then left the clearing, the way he had come. To meet the backup, Solomon supposed. Fox walked to the pit and looked down into it, then turned to Solomon and was about to say something when they heard a sound. Fox stood quite still, listening.
‘That was—’ said the officer, but she silenced him with a finger and a look. The three of them stood silently, and heard the sound again. This time it was clearer. A woman’s voice, screaming in fear or rage, coming from within the forest.
‘You, stay there,’ Fox said to the officer. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Solomon, and took off running, Solomon right behind her.
She had run away but he had pursued and caught her, and the fear and pain that she was experiencing was true and real and right, an authenticity he could hardly have dreamt of. Here, in this forest, in its dark interior, the performance was coming together in a way that no ordinary stage could have replicated or rivalled. His hand was clamped around Lavinia’s neck, and she was whimpering and sobbing, her eyes closed tightly from the terror and the pain, her ankle clearly broken, bent at a hideous angle.
‘First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.’
He took his hand away from her throat and stood up. Here would do. Here would be perfect. The log that she had fallen over would serve as the block. He unbuckled his belt and opened his trousers, then paused. He wasn’t ready. He had not considered this, the act, the act and the moment, and he wasn’t ready. With Lavinia sobbing and her ankle broken and her face covered in dirt and tears and snot, he had not considered this. That the act would be difficult, that the pressure and the setting would affect him like this. Affect his performance. He felt a slow build of anger and shame. Authenticity. He needed authenticity, but he was not ready.
‘What are you going to do?’ said Lavinia, looking up at him.
‘First thrash the corn, then after burn the straw.’
‘You keep saying that,’ she said, anger beneath the fear. ‘I don’t know what it means.’
‘Why, Lavinia,’ he said, ‘of course you do.’
‘Lavinia?’ she said. ‘I’m not …’ She closed her eyes. ‘Oh no.’
‘Of course you know.’
‘I’m not Lavinia,’ she said. ‘Please.’
He bent down and rolled her over and put the sharp edge of the axe against the black cable ties that held her wrists.
‘They told me, here, at dead time of the night,’ he said, summoning up his darkest tone, his most ominous expression, as befitted the scene. ‘A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes, Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins …’ He cut through the ties and pushed her shoulder to get her on her back again. ‘Would make such fearful and confused cries, As—’
‘Please.’ This time the word was not an entreaty but something else, something mocking, disdainful.
‘As any mortal body hearing it,’ he said, ignoring her, ‘Should straight fall mad, or else die suddenly.’ He stopped and stood up straight, then repeated, ‘Or else die suddenly.’
‘You’re not on stage,’ she said. ‘You’re not an actor. You’re …’ She paused, searching for the word, closing her eyes tightly in pain before opening them again and looking right at him. ‘You’re ridiculous.’
‘No, Lavinia, no …’
‘I’m not Lavinia. My name is Kay Spinazzi and I’m a research scientist. And you …’ She stopped, caught her breath as pain racked her. ‘You are, I don’t know what you are. A joke.’
‘No,’ he s
aid, heat flushing his face. ‘I am … You don’t understand. This is … purity.’
‘You don’t have a cl—’ She stopped again, pausing a moment to master her pain. ‘A girlfriend, do you?’ She laughed, a brief snort of breath before she winced in pain once more.
‘Nay, then I’ll stop your mouth,’ he said.
‘Have you actually listened to yourself?’
Enough, he thought. The purity and authenticity was now in the balance, his performance compromised and hers not right, not right at all. Where was the fear? He needed to bring back the fear or it was lost, the performance ruined. He bent down and took hold of her arm and dragged it over the log. She struggled and he dropped her arm and stepped on her broken ankle, which made her scream.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, don’t.’ She tried to sit up, and this time he stamped on her ankle, making her scream again, and then her body went limp as she passed out. Even better, he thought. The performance was back on track, purity and authenticity restored. He arranged her arm over the log, taking his time, then picked up the axe and took aim at her pale wrist.
*
‘Kay,’ Fox shouted as she ran, Solomon close behind. ‘Kay Spinazzi.’ The trees were thick and they had to fight their way through, warding off branches with their arms. ‘Kay Spinazzi, if you can hear me, shout. Kay Spinazzi.’
They leapt over logs and dead branches, slippery with rot, heading towards where they had heard the scream. Solomon saw a glimpse of yellow, bright against the dark greens of the forest.
‘Here.’
Fox stopped and they pushed through a tangle of ivy and branches. Kay was lying on her back, unconscious, as if asleep, her legs carelessly arranged and one arm thrown above her head across a log, the end of it a mess of flesh, the bright flash of bone, and blood that pulsed from it rhythmically, turning the ivy leaves around it dark red and glistening.
forty-six
‘SHE’S GOING INTO SURGERY,’ SAID FOX. ‘THERE’S A CHANCE she’ll keep the hand.’
Solomon nodded, looking at his own hands, Kay’s blood still visible beneath his nails, caked into the sides. He’d tied a tourniquet around her arm as tightly as he could, and carried her out of the forest, Fox walking beside him, holding Kay’s arm up above her, keeping her partly severed hand from moving as Solomon hurried back over the uneven forest floor. They’d put her into the back of a police car and it had taken off, getting her to hospital within minutes, blood being pumped back into her, dragging her away from the edge of death, morphine easing that journey. Her blood was on Solomon’s shirt, his trousers, so much blood. He closed his eyes and saw again the mess of her wrist, the ghastly white of her carpal bones. He knew what microsurgery could do nowadays, knew that however bad it had looked, there was always a chance. But something about the visceral gore that he had seen outweighed his rationality. How? How could anything be salvaged from such wreckage?
‘So,’ said Fox. She rubbed her eyes with a thumb and index finger, a very human gesture.
Solomon looked at her as if for the first time, seeing a person, somebody with feelings and failings, flesh and blood below that icy exterior he had not been able to fathom, to get a toehold on. Just a person, and one who was exhausted, he thought. Exhausted, and probably ashamed.
‘So,’ he repeated.
‘Let’s say that I accept your theory, as crazy as it sounds.’
‘You should,’ said Solomon. ‘I believe that it’s been amply borne out by events.’
Fox nodded. ‘Fair enough. So the question is, who is he?’
Solomon shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, let’s start with some hypotheses,’ said Fox. ‘Like …’ She stopped and yawned. ‘Jesus, I can’t think. Do you want a coffee?’ She stood up.
‘Yes.’
‘Be right back.’
Fox left and Solomon sat alone in her office. Fox had asked the same question that Solomon had been asking himself for hours. Who was he? Who was this man who killed and tormented women, who used them as unwilling actresses in his own performance? Solomon didn’t know, but he felt like he was getting closer. There was something nagging away at him, an anomaly, something that didn’t fit, though he couldn’t say just what.
He closed his eyes and imagined all that had happened and all that he had learnt since the morning the hospital had called him to tell him that his sister was in a coma. He imagined a landscape, panoramic, the events appearing as features of that landscape, abstract shapes and patterns of different sizes and prominence. He stilled his breathing and concentrated, exploring that landscape, travelling through it, over it. He lost himself in it, no longer in Fox’s office but somewhere else, in his own theoretical wonderland, a place where he understood the rules completely because they were his rules, and his alone. Who was he? Phil’s words: He wants you to find him. If that was true, then there had to be something. Solomon had to have missed something, something that had been there all along. He receded into the landscape of his mind, immersed in it, looking, seeking, deeper and deeper. There was something there. There had to be. He could feel it.
‘Didn’t know if you took sugar, so I didn’t give you any,’ said Fox, coming back into the office carrying two Styrofoam cups.
Solomon held up a hand, eyes still closed. He tried to stay where he was, lost in his thoughts, in his landscape, because he was beginning to see something, see it clearly, the thing that he had been looking for. Above the landscape, against the pristine blue sky, were three silver clouds. Three silver clouds that stood apart. Three anomalous silver clouds.
Caesar.
Dwkd.
Mr Todlq’s.
‘What?’ said Fox. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Caesar,’ said Solomon.
‘Caesar.’
‘Julius Caesar. Portia in Julius Caesar. She’s tragic, but she’s not iconic. Not like Ophelia, or Juliet.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Fox.
‘He chose her for a purpose, a particular purpose. There’s always a purpose.’
‘Again, I don’t—’
‘Jonathan,’ said Solomon.
‘Jonathan?’
‘I think his name is Jonathan.’
Fox frowned. ‘Why?’
‘I need more data,’ said Solomon. ‘That case you told me about. The woman who was found asleep in the church.’
‘Drugged.’
‘Right. Do you have her message exchange? When she set up her date?’
‘Hold on.’ Fox picked up her phone and dialled a number, listened to it ring then said, ‘Sergeant Bright? … Uh-huh. I need something from you … The message exchange the woman from the church had … Yes, could you send it to me immediately? Thank you.’ She hung up and looked across her desk at Solomon. ‘What have you got?’
‘Nothing yet,’ he said. ‘A theory.’
‘The name Jonathan is more than a theory.’
‘I need to be sure,’ said Solomon. ‘Has anything come through?’
‘Not yet,’ said Fox, looking at her computer. ‘Like I said, Jonathan isn’t a theory. It’s a name.’
‘It could be,’ said Solomon. ‘The data’s incomplete.’
‘I …’ began Fox, then stopped and looked at her screen. ‘Hold on … Yes. Here it is.’
‘Open it,’ said Solomon, closing his eyes.
Fox clicked open the email attachment from Sergeant Bright. ‘Okay.’
‘There should be a misspelling in it, probably followed by the words I mean.’
Fox read the JPEG of the phone screen that Bright had sent her. ‘Website says from Russia argentina pehu I mean peru.’
‘How did he misspell it?’
‘P-E-H-U.’
‘Chamberlain,’ said Solomon. ‘Possibly.’
‘What …?’
Solomon shook his head. ‘I need you to do the same for Rebecca Harrington. You’ve got that exchange?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, same process. Any misspelling fo
llowed by the words I mean.’
Fox found the file and opened it up, and read, ‘Gluh … I mean glamorous.’
‘Spelling?’
‘G-L-U-H.’
Solomon nodded to himself. ‘Huh.’
‘Okay,’ said Fox. ‘You’re going to need to tell me what’s going on.’
‘Have you ever heard of Caesar’s cipher?’
‘No.’
‘It was used by Julius Caesar,’ said Solomon. ‘It’s one of the simplest. You replace each letter with the one that comes three places later in the alphabet. So A becomes D.’
‘So …’
‘So in the exchange with my sister, he wrote D-W-K-D. He tried to pretend he meant awkward but mistyped it, only it doesn’t add up. The letters aren’t close enough together on the keypad to be easily confused. Meaning that it was mistyped on purpose.’
Fox nodded, and frowned at the same time. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly.
‘In Caesar’s cipher, that sequence, D-W-K-D, translates to A-T-H-A. There are almost no words that contain that sequence of letters. Jonathan is one of the few. Jonathan or Nathan, but Nathan is less common.’
Now Fox shook her head. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Do you have a piece of paper?’
Fox took a sheet from the printer beneath her desk and pushed it across, then handed him a pen.
‘Okay,’ said Solomon. ‘Start at the beginning. The first victim. Rebecca Harrington.’
‘Cleopatra,’ said Fox, unable to keep the guilt from her voice. Cocktails of infinite variety. The phrase she’d tried to forget, but that had kept gnawing at her.
‘Right. So in her message exchange, we’ve got G-L-U-H. Which becomes D-I-R-E.’
Fox frowned, thought. ‘Right. Counting back three letters.’
‘Next should come Cordelia and Desdemona,’ said Solomon. ‘The hypothesis must be that they were victims, but haven’t yet been identified as part of the pattern.’