Perfect Match Read online

  Solomon nodded down at the edge of the desk nearest to him and audibly swallowed. ‘Understood. I apologize. Please continue.’

  ‘Does she have any other sources of income?’

  ‘Such as?’ Still Solomon didn’t look at her, kept talking down to the desk in front of him. Fox sighed.

  ‘Such as, I don’t know. Waitressing. Minicab driving.’ She paused. ‘Prostitution.’

  Solomon shook his head and rocked slightly forward. Fox watched the hair on the top of his head – black, wavy, thick – and waited. ‘Mr Mullan?’

  ‘No,’ he said eventually.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, she isn’t a waitress, no, she doesn’t drive a cab, and no, she doesn’t solicit men for sex.’ There was an edge to his voice now, and Fox knew that the prostitute barb had stuck, and had hurt.

  ‘As far as you know,’ she said, giving it a twist.

  ‘Let me ask you a question,’ said Solomon. ‘Are you conducting an investigation into my sister’s attack, or her reputation?’

  He looked up at this and Fox forced herself to maintain her gaze. She even smiled slightly, allowing him his objection. ‘Point taken,’ she said, and looked down, away from Solomon, back at her sparse notes. ‘Though there is, so far, no evidence that she was attacked.’

  ‘Or that she wasn’t.’

  Fox nodded quickly. ‘That’s what I need to find out.’

  Her phone rang and she picked it up without speaking. She listened for a few seconds before saying, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ She listened to the reply, closed her eyes and said, ‘At once.’ She replaced the handset, picked up the notes she’d been reading from and said, ‘Excuse me,’ before walking out of the office.

  Inspector Fox’s office was in a police station in east London made of rough grey concrete that looked as if it had been poured sixty years ago, in a hurry. The reception was lined with posters warning against car theft and burglary and mugging, and populated with exactly the demographic of people Solomon suspected carried out those very acts. He had been called by Fox just after he’d arrived at the hospital, and it was now gone two in the afternoon. It felt as if he’d been up for a long time, and he’d sat in the reception with his head hung between his knees, a forlorn posture that hadn’t looked out of place.

  ‘Mr Mullan? Solomon Mullan?’ A uniformed officer had opened a door next to the reception desk and waited for Solomon to pass him before showing him down a corridor and up a flight of stairs, eventually to an office with frosted glass on it and a name card: Inspector Fox. He’d knocked on the door and waited for a female voice to say, ‘Come in,’ before opening the door and stepping inside.

  Now, with Fox gone, Solomon looked around her office. There wasn’t a lot to take in: a monitor and keyboard on her desk, a pile of papers, a desk tidy with four identical black pens in it, a telephone. She was young, couldn’t have been that much older than Luke. Thirty? Young for an inspector. She was probably on some fast-track programme, held a first in PPE from Oxford and the force couldn’t believe they’d managed to get hold of her. But they had done, and to prove it, there was a certificate on the wall behind the desk telling Solomon that Helen Fox was, beyond doubt, an officer of the Metropolitan Police. Just as his sister was indubitably a stripper and, as far as he was aware, nothing else. Not a waitress or a cab driver or a prostitute. Extra work wasn’t in her character. Tiffany had never been what people would term a grafter.

  The door opened and Fox came back in, sat behind her desk and without a pause looked over at Solomon and said, ‘And your brother is Luke Michael Mullan.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We know about him.’

  ‘I imagine you would,’ said Solomon. ‘He has a record.’

  ‘Quite a record,’ said Fox, a laugh in her voice that might have been an attempt at levity, at building rapport. Or it might have been simple malice. ‘What’s he doing nowadays?’

  ‘He collects,’ said Solomon.

  ‘Collects?’

  ‘For wayward women and afflicted children,’ said Solomon, knowing as he said it that he shouldn’t, but finding it enjoyable nonetheless. Why did he want to goad this cold, uninterested woman? ‘Rickets, that kind of thing,’ he added.

  ‘I see.’ Fox was silent for some time and Solomon wished he had the confidence to meet the gaze he was sure she was levelling at him. ‘I think,’ she said at last, ‘that we should talk about your family.’

  If he had to choose one word to describe the Mullan family, Solomon thought, that word would probably be ‘motley’. His father had been an amateur boxer in his youth, but he’d had more desire than skill, or in his words, ‘I liked fighting, but fighting didn’t like me.’ During Solomon’s upbringing his father had worked on offshore rigs, coming home at unexpected moments with large presents and a lot of noise. Solomon had adored him, but he’d been dead over ten years now, his mother soon after, apparently deciding that life wasn’t much worth living without Sean Mullan in it. Solomon was twenty-three, an orphan since the age of thirteen. But at least he’d always had his brother and sister.

  For a time they’d been taken in by distant family, travellers who had treated the three of them like their own, which essentially meant, Solomon now realized, as indentured labour. After several months, an exasperated social worker had had them removed and they’d been placed in care, left feeling like aliens recently landed on a faraway planet. But almost immediately their father’s sister Dorothy had, in her words, ‘sprung them’, and taken them with her to live on her farm in the Essex countryside. In the car on the way there she had explained to them that she was happy to give them somewhere to stay, but she didn’t have any money, and any she did have she wasn’t keen on sharing. So they’d have to pay their own way, something the eldest sibling, Luke, immediately saw to, mostly via burglary.

  ‘How is my family relevant?’ said Solomon.

  ‘It’s unconventional,’ said Fox.

  ‘Hardly unusual nowadays.’

  ‘And you,’ said Fox, frowning. ‘You’re not what I’d expect.’

  ‘You mean …’

  ‘No, no, I mean …’ She paused, tried to find the right words. ‘You seem educated.’

  Solomon frowned. ‘I shouldn’t be?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected it, no.’

  ‘Would you mind explaining why?’

  Fox looked at the monitor on her desk. ‘Parents deceased, chaotic upbringing, limited education. The three of you.’

  ‘Books are freely available,’ Solomon said. ‘There’s no tax on reading.’

  ‘You don’t have a record.’

  ‘I’d need to commit a crime in order to have one.’

  ‘I’m just surprised—’

  ‘Inspector Fox,’ said Solomon. ‘Please. My sister is lying in a coma. Most of my family is dead. I’m tired, both physically and of this line of questioning.’ He took a breath. ‘I would like to know what happened.’

  Fox raised her eyebrows and sat back in her chair. ‘I told you as much as I know on the phone,’ she said. ‘Someone saw her and raised the alarm. A passing couple dragged her out, attempted resuscitation. The ambulance crew took her to the Royal London, where she remains. Her blood alcohol level was high, which suggests she had been out beforehand.’

  ‘Do you know who raised the alarm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, was it a man? A woman?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Robert White?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You’re aware that there’s a restraining order out on him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox, in a way that suggested no.

  Solomon shook his head at the floor. ‘You don’t think that would be a good place to start? Looking for the man with a record of violence towards her?’ He took a deep breath and tried to will himself calm.

  Fox was silent for a moment and he heard the sound of pen on paper, the inspector making a note. Then she said, �
��We do know she had been on a date.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She had an app. On her phone.’

  ‘Do you have a picture? Of this date?’

  Fox opened a drawer in a pedestal beneath her desk and pulled out a plastic ziplock bag. She opened it and took the phone out. ‘You do much online dating?’ she said.

  ‘Do I look as though I do?’

  She turned the phone around so that Solomon could see it. ‘Know him?’

  A picture of a man, young, blond hair. Not bad-looking. Nice eyes. Something about the mouth, pouty, sullen. Solomon had never seen him before. He would remember. ‘No. Has he got a name?’

  ‘Tobes.’

  ‘Tobes?’ said Solomon. ‘I’m assuming that’s short for Toby?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t have a surname?’

  ‘We’re looking into it.’

  ‘Well, that’s reassuring,’ said Solomon.

  ‘They’d arranged to meet. Had some communication.’

  ‘Could I see?’

  Fox picked the mobile up, swiped at it, put it back down. ‘This was the exchange.’

  Drink?

  When?

  Can u do Saturday?

  Day off! Where shall we go?

  To a convent.

  ???

  Convent. A bar. Dwkd. I mean awkward. Have you been?

  To Convent? No.

  You should!

  OK …

  What hour now?

  ??? Hour?

  Time. What time.

  Oh. 9?

  C u then.

  Solomon looked up. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s all we’ve got right now.’

  ‘Did anybody see them there?’

  ‘At the bar?’ Fox shook her head. ‘No. Not on CCTV either. Looks like they either changed plans or he stood her up.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anybody standing Tiffany up.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Fox.

  ‘And you can’t match the photo? You’ve tried social media, I imagine?’

  ‘We know what we’re doing,’ said Fox. ‘We’ve run the algorithms. Nothing’s turned up yet, but we’re still working on it.’

  Solomon nodded. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You’ve definitely never seen that face before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then there is just one more thing. Where were you between, say, eleven p.m. and three a.m. last night?’

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Can anybody vouch for that?’

  ‘You could check my building’s CCTV,’ said Solomon, ‘if you have the time. Apart from today, I haven’t been outside for years.’ He stood up. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you used that time to find out what happened to my sister.’

  Fox opened a drawer and retrieved a card, holding it out to Solomon without looking up. Dismissed. He took it, then pulled his hood over his head and found his Ray-Bans. But before he put them on, he looked down at Inspector Fox and waited for her to acknowledge him. When she did, he met her gaze properly for the first time. To her credit, she didn’t flinch.

  ‘My sister is one of the finest people I have ever known,’ he said. ‘Whatever you think of my family, please do the right thing by her.’ He didn’t wait for a reply. Putting the inspector’s card into his back pocket, he turned and opened the office door and found his own way out.

  four

  ONCE, IN BETTER DAYS, YEARS AGO, SOLOMON AND HIS OLDER brother Luke had been close, bonded by common misfortune and the need to grow up fast. He supposed they had been a team, one the brains, the other the muscle. And I wasn’t the muscle, Solomon thought as he let himself into his flat, feeling a surge of relief at its safe familiarity, its order and predictability. He hadn’t realized how on edge he had been, every second that he had been outside. How anxious, how scared, how terrified of other people’s reactions.

  On 1 January just over two and a half years ago, Solomon had woken up in Luke’s spare bedroom after a New Year’s Eve party that still hadn’t finished when he’d gone to bed at four. As he walked downstairs that morning, his brother’s house had had the look of a post-apocalyptic disaster, sleeping bodies arranged randomly on chairs, sofas, under tables, propped against walls. He hadn’t been drinking, didn’t drink, never had. He got to the kitchen and put on coffee, checked the fridge for milk. None. Obviously. He’d walked to the front door, not imagining that there would be any waiting on the doorstep, but living in bleary post-party hope.

  He opened the door, but before he could look down he sensed movement in his peripheral vision and then felt something splash in his face, a cold feeling to begin with, freezing, but that sensation soon turned to burning and his heart began to beat so quickly that he thought he would pass out. He turned and felt his way back to the kitchen and found the sink, splashed water into his face as fast as he could, kept on and on and on until he felt hands on his shoulders and realized that he was screaming, a sound he didn’t recognize as his own, that couldn’t be coming from him. He turned and could make out his brother, Luke, and he saw the look on Luke’s face and he managed to stop screaming and said to him, an animal moan, ‘How bad is it?’

  Of course Solomon knew that bad was a relative term and that he hadn’t died, hadn’t really come close, certainly after the medic had shot him full of adrenaline. But he had lost the sight in his right eye, which now looked like a small white half-boiled egg. The skin on that side of his face was shiny and had the texture of a plastic bag that had been screwed up and rudimentarily straightened out. Half of his ear was gone, and one side of his mouth was almost lipless and pulled down into a permanent expression of sardonic disapproval. How bad was it? It was bad, very bad, and a year of operations had only made it worse, the closer each procedure brought him to normality, the more obviously the project was doomed to failure. He would never look human again, and nobody would ever be able to look at him without surprise, dismay, disgust or, in most cases, fear.

  What made it worse was that he knew, and Luke knew, that he had never been the intended victim. Luke had been the target, for any of a number of reasons, and Solomon had done nothing, nothing at all to deserve it. But neither had said anything and it was only because they were brothers, and needed each other, that they hadn’t drifted apart, each repelled by the force of that denial.

  He’d had a place at Cambridge lined up, reading philosophy. He’d given it up. He’d had a girlfriend, or at least kind of, but that hadn’t lasted beyond the first viewing of what was left of his face. He’d had a future, friends, had escaped the fetters of his upbringing, but that was all lost. All he had left was a flat, which was crucial, because as soon as he could, he made sure he never had to leave it again.

  Solomon was late back, and so he headed straight for his living room, which to any outside observer would have looked more like a laboratory with easy chairs. One wall was taken up by a large desk, several laptops, four flat-screen monitors, speakers, routers and a Gordian tangle of wiring. He opened a laptop and waited for an animated spinning wheel to catch up. He tapped softly at keys, and on the central monitor an image of a table appeared, four people at it, drinking. They all met together twice a week in the same pub. Well, all of them except Solomon.

  ‘He lives,’ said a man, enormously bearded, in his fifties. He raised a pint of beer to the screen.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Solomon, sitting down. ‘There was a family emergency.’

  ‘Oh my good Lord,’ said a grey-haired woman. ‘What in heaven’s name happened?’

  ‘My sister,’ said Solomon. ‘She’s in hospital.’

  ‘Nothing serious, I do hope,’ she said.

  ‘The words “emergency” and “hospital” would rather preclude that, don’t you think?’ the bearded man said. Which effectively summed this group up, Solomon thought, pedantry trumping sentiment every time.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ said a younger woman, pretty, with long hair in ringlets. ‘Phil, don’t be a
pest. Ignore him, Fran.’

  Phil, the man with the beard, raised his eyebrows at this unwarranted accusation, but kept quiet.

  ‘Welcome, welcome, in any case,’ said a middle-aged man, raising a glass. ‘We extend to your sister all the best.’ Masoud, as cultured a person as Solomon could hope to meet.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Solomon. ‘I’ve interrupted.’

  ‘Oh, not really,’ said Fran. ‘In fact you’ve arrived at just the very moment. We were debating …’

  ‘Gently discussing,’ said Phil.

  ‘… the merits of this question,’ Fran continued, ignoring Phil. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Kandinsky was a member of which Munich-based art movement?’

  ‘Kandinsky?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I should know this,’ said Solomon. He paused. ‘I should. This is irritating.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ the younger woman agreed. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘What is it for?’ said Solomon.

  ‘A new show,’ said Masoud, then added importantly, ‘Channel 4.’

  ‘Arts based?’

  ‘No, but it’s got specialized sections, and art’s one of them,’ the younger woman said. ‘Think Trivial Pursuit, with some kind of overcooked elimination mechanic.’

  ‘With you,’ said Solomon, closing his eyes. ‘Kandinsky.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fran patiently.

  If Solomon had ever known the answer, he’d still know it now. But he didn’t, which he found surprising.

  ‘Die Brücke,’ he said. A guess, not like him.

  ‘No,’ said Phil, delight in his voice, no attempt to hide it, Phil being Phil.

  ‘Unlucky,’ said Masoud. ‘That was Berlin. Ludwig Kirchner.’

  ‘Who shot himself in the face,’ said Phil.

  ‘Thank you, Philip,’ said Masoud. ‘So the answer is Der Blaue Reiter. But please, do not feel bad. Nobody else got it either.’

  ‘Which means it’s too difficult,’ the younger woman said, in a way that suggested she’d been advocating the same view for some time.