Perfect Match

by D. B. Thorne

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox, trying not to imagine her role in that investigation, the glory it might offer.

  ‘Let’s assume that one of these victims’ message exchanges contributes C-T-E-D-B, and the other Y-J-O-N.’

  ‘Why?’ said Fox.

  ‘Stay with me,’ said Solomon. ‘Next is Ophelia. D-W-K-D becomes A-T-H-A. Yes?’

  Fox watched him in silence. He looked up at her briefly, then continued.

  ‘Portia comes next, but we don’t have her message exchange, though we should be able to get hold of it, as her case is being investigated. But I would expect that it would provide N-C-H-A.’

  ‘Why?’ said Fox, again.

  ‘Wait,’ said Solomon. ‘Then comes Juliet, P-E-H-U becoming M-B-E-R. And finally Lavinia, O-D-L-Q becoming L-A-I-N.’

  Fox shook her head. ‘Which means?’

  ‘Which means that we know his name,’ said Solomon. He wrote out the deciphered words, the ones he knew for sure and the ones he had postulated. That he had postulated but that he was eighty, no, ninety per cent sure of. They had to be right. He turned the sheet around, and Fox read the words:

  D-I-R-E-C-T-E-D-B-Y-J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N-C-H-A-M-B-E-R-LA-I-N.

  ‘Directed by Jonathan Chamberlain.’ She looked up from the sheet of paper. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Possible, certainly,’ said Solomon. ‘I would say probable.’

  ‘Jonathan Chamberlain,’ Fox said again. ‘And this from, what? Two sample sequences?’

  ‘The hypothesis came from two samples,’ said Solomon. ‘The data just keeps confirming it.’

  Fox looked at him across the desk. ‘You are extraordinary.’

  ‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘It was there all along. I was just too slow to see it.’ Stupid, he thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could he have let this person fool him for so long? He felt ashamed, disgusted. There was no excuse. This was basic stuff.

  ‘But why?’ said Fox. ‘Why leave this trail?’

  ‘Because he wants to be caught,’ said Solomon. ‘He wants the attention, the admiration, the limelight. Deep down, that’s what he wants. Directed by. He wants the celebrity. No.’ He paused, realizing that at last he had a proper understanding of him. ‘He doesn’t want it. He needs it.’

  Fox leant back in her chair and turned her head to look out of the window. She stayed in that position for some time, Solomon happy for the interlude. Then she reached out and took the pen that she’d offered Solomon and went back to gazing out of her window, holding it in both hands, turning it slowly.

  ‘He parcelled out his name,’ she said, eventually. ‘Right up until the end.’

  ‘He had a plan,’ said Solomon.

  ‘A schedule,’ said Fox. ‘The plays he would perform.’

  ‘Or direct.’

  ‘So he has a background in it, in theatre. You’d say?’

  ‘A failed actor,’ said Solomon. ‘He couldn’t make it on stage, so he decided to take it out on the world.’

  ‘All the world’s a stage,’ said Fox.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But he wanted the acclamation, so he seeded his name throughout.’

  Solomon shrugged, suddenly sick of this person, this man with his grandiose resentments and tiresome parlour games. Directed by Jonathan Chamberlain. It was monstrous, beyond his imagination. ‘I guess,’ he said.

  ‘So let’s find him,’ said Fox. ‘I’m in. Let’s go.’

  forty-seven

  VENGEANCE IS IN MY HEART, HE THOUGHT. HE UNLOCKED THE door to the room and turned on the overhead strip lighting, which flickered and buzzed before throwing a rancid yellow light over the shelves of linen: sheets and towels and pillow covers. He reached up, then stopped at a voice behind him.

  ‘Jonny?’

  He took down his hand and without turning around said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’

  ‘Ill.’

  ‘You didn’t let anybody know.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Oh? Who?’

  ‘Jean.’

  ‘Jean’s on holiday.’

  He turned around slowly and gave the ward sister a smile, goofy and guilty. ‘Oh. I forgot. Sorry.’

  ‘I’m going to have to give you a warning.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’ The ward sister looked at him with disgust, shaking her head. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  Jonny considered telling her to go to hell, thought about taking a step towards her, laying his hands on her. He could leave her in here, hide her body underneath the piles of laundry. She wouldn’t be discovered for hours, more than enough time. He could, he really could. He wanted to. The ward sister watched him, and she must have seen something in his expression because she took a step back, out of the small room, out into the corridor.

  ‘Not good enough,’ she said, all power and confidence gone from her reproach, and she turned and walked away, Jonny listening to her footsteps hurrying down the corridor. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be here much longer anyway.

  Vengeance is in my heart, he thought, reaching up for what he had come for. Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand.

  ‘What is it?’ said Fox. Solomon was looking at his phone, which had just vibrated. He glanced up at her.

  ‘A message. From Kay’s phone.’

  ‘Can’t be …’ started Fox, then, ‘Oh. From him.’

  ‘It must be.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It says, Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘It’s a line from Titus Andronicus,’ said Solomon. ‘Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.’

  ‘So you’ve pissed him off,’ said Fox. ‘That’s no surprise.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Solomon. ‘So. What have we got?’

  ‘No Nathan Chamberlains, but I’ve got a Jonathan Chamberlain. He’s an actor, or was, hasn’t done anything for the last three years.’

  ‘What kind of acting did he do?’

  ‘Adverts, mostly,’ said Fox, reading her computer screen. ‘A couple of bit parts in soaps. Nothing much. Nothing you could make a living from.’

  Failed actor, thought Solomon. ‘Is there a photo?’

  ‘Here.’ She turned her screen so that he could see. A man, curly hair, white. It could have been him. There was no reason why not. If it was him, then he had not so much a face, more a blank canvas upon which could be laid any number of variations.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Date of birth, agent details. Though if he hasn’t worked for three years, his agent’s probably dropped him.’

  ‘So how do we find him?’ said Solomon.

  ‘Well,’ said Fox, typing as she spoke. ‘Let’s see if he’s got a criminal record.’ She typed some more, hit return, and waited, looking at her screen. ‘Nope. Okay, we can at least find out where he lives.’

  ‘He’ll be local,’ said Solomon. ‘He must be. All the victims have been in east London.’

  Fox typed some more, then shook her head. ‘Nothing local. I’ve got a Jonathan Chamberlain in Wimbledon … No. Too old, nearly seventy.’

  ‘Nobody closer?’

  ‘No.’

  Solomon frowned, then shook his head. ‘Can’t be him.’ He thought some more. ‘Are we sure that it’s his real name? Jonathan Chamberlain?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Stage names,’ said Solomon. ‘A lot of actors have them. We could be looking for the wrong name.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We could call his agent,’ said Solomon.

  ‘It’s Saturday.’

  ‘It’s worth a try. They might know something.’

  Fox nodded, picked up her phone and called a number. Solomon watched and waited. Fox shook her head at him, said, ‘Answering service,’ then stopped and picked up a pen and wrote down a number, before hanging up. ‘She left a mobile number. For emergencies.’ Sh
e paused. ‘What kind of emergencies do actors have? Bad reviews?’ She called the number she’d noted down, and Solomon watched again, and listened.

  Vengeance is in my heart, he thought. He waited for the lift door to open, then walked out into the freshly polished corridor, gripping the pillow tightly. Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand. The corridor was empty and quiet and smelt of cleaning products. It had been easy, finding out who he was, too easy. Solomon, the name stored in Lavinia’s phone, wasn’t a common one. Solomon, who had a disfigured face. He’d noticed that at Mr Toad’s, even though he’d been wearing make-up to cover it. A quick search on the internet had thrown up a news story about an acid attack on a Solomon Mullan. Mullan. So that was the connection. Yes. It made sense.

  Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. He’d ruined everything. Solomon Mullan had ruined it all, had sullied its purity, had destroyed its authenticity. The scene had been perfect. The forest setting, Lavinia’s terror, it had all been perfect. And then, just when he’d been ready to strike, he’d heard the voices and his stroke had missed and he’d had to run. Solomon Mullan had ruined it, and he would have to pay for that, would have to be made to suffer. Suffer in a way that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

  ‘So, Jonathan Chamberlain,’ said Fox, putting her phone down. ‘Not Oscar material, is what his ex-agent reckons.’

  Solomon had listened to one side of Fox’s conversation with the agent, but it was the agent who had done most of the talking. ‘Oh?’

  ‘A bit try-hard, is what she told me. Try-hard, and very needy. She said that everything was always somebody else’s fault, and that she regretted ever having taken him on. A persecution complex, was what she told me.’

  Solomon nodded. ‘That sounds right.’

  ‘He hated directors, would develop obsessions about them. When they turned him down for roles. Then she dropped him, and he fixated on her, wouldn’t stop calling her and telling her how deluded she was, how misguided. She said she thought about going to the police, but he gave up in the end.’

  ‘And? His name?’

  ‘Right. Jonathan Chapell, two Ls. She said he thought it sounded too Protestant, so he changed it. Didn’t do him much good, though.’

  ‘Chapell. That’s not a common name.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Fox typed into her computer again, Solomon watching her. ‘No criminal record,’ she said, ‘but I’ve got an address for a Jonathan Chapell in E8. Athestone Road. Hold on.’ She typed some more. ‘That’s a match. The date of birth is the same as Chamberlain’s.’

  ‘You’ve got him?’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Fox said.

  ‘So let’s—’

  Fox held up a hand. ‘This is where things get complicated,’ she said. ‘I need to bring a team in to handle this.’

  ‘It’s just one man.’

  ‘Who is extremely dangerous,’ said Fox. ‘And we don’t want to miss him. We’ll have to watch his home, and his place of work.’

  ‘If he’s got one.’

  ‘Easy to find out,’ said Fox. She typed some more. ‘National Insurance number’s all you need, and to get that, all I need is a name and date of birth, which I already have. Give me ten minutes and I’ll have his whole life in front of us.’ She read her screen. ‘Current employment, Royal London Hospital. We’ll have to—’

  ‘Royal London?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Solomon stood up. ‘We’ve got to go. Now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Vengeance is in my heart,’ said Solomon. ‘And my sister is in that hospital.’

  He pushed open the door without knocking. She was awake, and looked up when he came in.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. He had a brief, fond feeling of something approaching nostalgia. Ophelia. She had been so sweet, so biddable. But then she had been full of barbiturates.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better,’ she said. ‘Are you a nurse?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘No. No, I’m not a nurse.’ He smiled, and whispered, ‘I don’t like nurses.’

  She smiled briefly back, then frowned and said, ‘Then who are you?’

  ‘I am your sweet prince, here to sing you to your rest.’

  Tiffany’s eyes widened, then she closed them and said softly, ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘You do?’

  She nodded, her eyes still closed but tears leaking through, running down her cheeks. She didn’t say anything.

  ‘You remember?’

  She nodded again, her lips squeezed tightly together.

  He took a step towards her bed and stood above her. He dropped the pillow he was holding onto her legs and took out a long black cable tie. She didn’t open her eyes. He put the cable tie through the metal tubing of her bed frame, running the free end through the tie’s eyelet, forming a large loop. He took a scalpel from his back pocket.

  ‘Put your hand through this,’ he said.

  Tiffany opened her eyes and looked at the cable tie, then up at him. ‘I don’t want to,’ she said.

  ‘If you don’t, I will cut your throat.’

  She shook her head. ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘You have to. You have to do it.’

  She blinked slowly, then nodded and put the hand of her good arm through the loop of the cable tie, and he pulled it tight with a zipping sound.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she said.

  He put his finger to his lips. ‘Shh.’ He crossed to the other side of the bed and took out another cable tie, pulling it tight around her other arm, the one in a plaster cast. ‘Just to be sure,’ he said.

  She watched him do it and didn’t say anything. She blinked away her tears, but more came to take their place.

  ‘You see,’ he said gently, ‘your brother, Solomon, ruined something very precious of mine. Something that meant a great deal to me. So I have decided to take revenge on him by taking away something precious of his.’ He picked the pillow up from where he had placed it on the bed.

  ‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘It won’t hurt,’ he said. ‘You just need to remember not to panic.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It will be like a long sleep,’ he said. ‘Just that.’

  ‘Please,’ Tiffany said again.

  He shook his head and placed the pillow over her face. ‘It’s too late. It’s all your brother’s fault, and it’s far, far too late.’

  Fox had taken a car herself and called it in as she drove. The hospital was close by, less than a mile in a straight line, and they had pushed and battered their way through the traffic, Fox laying on the horn and screaming out of the window at any cars that didn’t move quickly enough. They had made it in three minutes and Fox had left the car at an angle across the street in front of the hospital, doors open, lights still whirling, throwing panicked blue across the hospital’s stone facade.

  Solomon ran through reception, Fox just behind him, up the stairs and down the corridors he had walked so often to see his sister. Past open wards, past a nurses’ station, an X-ray department – Christ, it had never seemed so far on previous visits – left at phlebotomy, his legs not moving fast enough, Tiffany’s room not arriving quickly enough. Another corner, this was the corridor, past door after door after door, a waiting area, another door, and this was his sister’s room.

  He opened the door and saw the bed and a man standing over it, a pillow in his hand, clamped over his sister’s face, her legs thrashing, the covers kicked off. The man looked up and said, calmly:

  ‘I can’t get her to die.’

  ‘Away from the bed,’ said Fox, moving past Solomon and spraying liquid into the man’s face from a black canister. He let go of the pillow and stepped backwards, and Fox rounded the bed and reached for his arm, but as she did, he cut her across the face with a scalpel. Fox took hold of his hand and bent it backwards and he dropped the scalpel, and she ste
pped back and sprayed him again, a sustained burst. He made a mewling sound and staggered into the corner of the room, his fists covering his face.

  ‘A hand?’ she shouted to Solomon.

  Solomon joined her, but he only watched as she took out handcuffs and efficiently cuffed one of the man’s wrists, then turned him and brought his other arm behind his back, securing both wrists together. Solomon turned to his sister, who was gasping for breath, arching her back, lifting her whole body from the bed as she tried to take in air.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ said Fox.

  Solomon turned back to Fox. Blood was pouring down one side of her face, the lips of her wound ghastly, so deep that Solomon had a glimpse of her teeth through her cheek.

  She sucked in breath and staggered, nearly fell. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked him.

  forty-eight

  ‘THEY TRACED DESDEMONA AND CORDELIA,’ SOLOMON SAID. ‘OR at least, the women he cast them as. In Greece. He took a holiday there three weeks ago. They were both British tourists. One, Desdemona, she survived. But not Cordelia.’

  ‘God,’ said Kay. ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘And you?’ said Solomon. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Alive,’ said Kay.

  ‘Your hand?’

  ‘I can move my little finger.’

  ‘The doctor says you should get all sensation back.’ Solomon paused. ‘You know, when I saw it, in the forest, with the blood … I don’t know. It was like my rational mind was telling me that there was hope, but there was something …’

  ‘Hey, Solomon?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Keep it light, could you?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m tired. Will you come back soon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise.’ Solomon stood up. ‘I’ll see you.’

  ‘See you.’

  Solomon left Kay’s room and headed for the exit, yet another hospital visit over. How many had there been in the last few weeks? Nineteen. He knew the number, of course he did. He never forgot. As he walked out of the hospital, he thought about Kay, about how much she meant to him. He pictured her in his mind, the image of her that he had. A bird in a gilded cage, the cage elaborately wrought, the bird inside splendid, singing happily. He realized now, or at least he thought he did, why she was in that cage. It was not to keep her trapped. No, it was to protect her from any monsters outside, monsters that would bring harm to her, and compromise that blissful happiness she possessed. That cage was there, he realized, to protect her from him.