I read her reply over and over again.
‘Hi, Saul,’ she wrote. ‘I was a little surprised to spot your entry. Most people are not quite as direct as you. Certainly not in regard to marriage and children. Not even on this website. I like it though. If that’s what you want, why not say it? After all, it could save a great deal of time-wasting for all concerned.
‘I’m a little older than you, so I thought I should make that clear straightaway. I’m 38. I’ve never been married and I’m childless, but I would very much like to have children before it is too late. I am looking for somebody who wants that too and is prepared to be as direct as you have been about it. I no longer have unlimited time. I know women nowadays seem to have children much later in life, but I do feel that my body clock is running out.
‘I am a qualified nurse and I work in a residential care home, not far from where I live in Cheltenham. This was a natural progression for me. I looked after my mother full-time, until her death three years ago. When I was twenty-five she had a stroke which left her helpless. Perhaps it’s unusual nowadays for a daughter to do what I did. Perhaps you think it stupid, I know some people do, but I decided that I would care for her and did so for ten years. I couldn’t get out much, so there’s never really been a man in my life.
‘I am only telling you, so that you can understand why I’ve joined this site and why I would very much like to get to know you better.’
Obviously that was what I wanted too, but I wasn’t at all sure how to go about it. I liked the sound of Sonia, I really did. And if I was serious about marriage, which I really thought I was, in spite of the difficulties which would almost certainly arise, then surely the sooner I met her and her ticking body clock the better.
However, I wasn’t ready to meet her yet. Fortunately, I learned through doing a little research that there was a kind of etiquette on a site like this. It seemed that considerably more email correspondence was called for, before you actually met. This suited me well enough.
So began our internet courtship. Sonia was shy too, which helped me. It was, after all, my shyness which had somewhat conversely driven me to this most extraordinarily open way of getting to know someone.
She sent me pictures of her family. Of herself at work. Of her pet cat.
I decided I would be a cat person too. Well, it was only barely a lie. I’d always liked cats. They were lazy, indolent and fiercely independent. They did exactly what they wanted. They were probably the kind of creature I wished I was. But I was more like a dog. I wagged my tail. I sought approval. Unless I felt threatened or abused, then I’d lash out and attack, just the way dogs do. I had gone out of my way to please those around me. However, unlike most dogs, I wasn’t very successful at that either.
I sent Sonia a picture of a large, black cat I found somewhere on the web and pretended he was mine. I hoped she would forgive me that too. I said his name was Tigger. I’ve come across cats called Tigger before, named after the creature in ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, I suppose; although I think the original Tigger looked more like a comic book tiger.
I was getting really good at Photoshop. I took a selfie of myself outside Swindon comprehensive, then amended it as I had my original Marryme.com picture, adding the facial hair, changing my hair colour and the shape of my chin.
‘Got lucky this term with six weeks at a school right on my doorstep,’ I told her.
Of course, Swindon comp was nowhere near my doorstep. I’d never taught anywhere, and had no qualifications to do so. But I started collecting stories about teaching from newspapers and off the net, changed them slightly, added a personal slant and sent them to her as anecdotes from my own daily life.
There were good stories, like the pupil I managed to motivate by encouraging him to expand on graffiti he’d scrawled all over the walls of a classroom and he’d turned out to be a natural poet. Then there were bad ones, like the girl I’d felt to be no threat to anyone, who’d suddenly launched herself at a co-pupil using a biro as a dagger. I made myself a bit of a hero, relating how I’d managed to step in before anyone was badly hurt, thus negating the need for calling the police or any other emergency services.
Sonia lapped it all up, expressing her admiration of what she called my ‘selfless courage.’
‘What happened to the girl?’ she asked.
‘She was excluded I’m afraid,’ I told her. ‘What we used to call expelled. A shame, but apparently there’d been other incidents and it was agreed our school wasn’t the place for her. She was obviously seriously disturbed and needed special treatment. I was disappointed by the outcome but couldn’t argue against it.’
Sonia took everything I said absolutely seriously and totally at face value. I found myself fantasising a little. Using more and more poetic licence about myself. Once I realised how much she liked my stories I began to embellish them quite extravagantly, far more than I’d ever intended.
But Sonia never demurred. She never questioned anything.
I knew I was reeling her in most effectively and I liked it. I very quickly became more than a little afraid of losing her.
In spite of my original good intentions to portray myself as honestly as I could, I became desperate to seem more interesting. I built up a most unlikely scenario, surprising myself with the extent of my own inventiveness. It was as if, once I started making things up, I couldn’t stop.
‘I had an unhappy childhood and as soon as I was old enough I ran away to join the French Foreign Legion,’ I told her. ‘Actually I lied about my age. I was only 15, but either they didn’t know or didn’t care. I turned out to be a rather good soldier. I don’t know why, but I never seemed to have any fear. Once in Algeria, I ran straight into enemy fire to drag a wounded comrade to safety and escaped without a scratch. My comrades said they thought I was blessed by God. They called me Saint Saul.’
It was more than unlikely. It was errant nonsense, but Sonia didn’t seem to find it so.
‘It should have been King Saul, like your biblical namesake,’ she said.
Then she asked: ‘Are you Jewish? It’s an unusual name.’
I said that my grandfather had been Jewish. She took that at face value too.
She eulogised about my every ridiculous exploit, asking few relevant questions, except how I made the quantum leap from my adventurous life in the Legion to becoming a school teacher.
I rambled on about a desperately unhappy love affair ruined by my soldier lifestyle. How I’d decided I needed a new, more settled career, in order to become the family man I so desired to be. And how I’d studied on the net, via the Open University, until finally gaining a place at a teachers’ training college, using the savings acquired during my mercenary career to tide me over until I qualified.
I began to get to know Sonia. Every crazy tale I told her was something I was convinced she would want to hear. And I suppose that was why I eventually told her that I was falling in love with her. Sonia responded with the level of unbridled enthusiasm that I had come to expect.
‘I’m thrilled,’ she wrote. ‘I’ve realised for some time that I am in love with you. To know that this love is reciprocated is probably the best thing that has ever happened to me. When can we meet? Please can it be very soon.’
‘Of course,’ I replied.
And therein lay the problem.
Five
By the time Vogel and Saslow were leaving the Fisher home, DCI Reg Hemmings had already set up a dedicated incident room at Kenneth Steele House, the Bristol headquarters of MCIT. Hemmings had also appointed his favourite administrator, DI Margo Hartley, as joint deputy SIO, along with Vogel. She would be operations manager, overseeing the mechanics and logistics of the investigation.