A/N: There are generic references to 'Sherlock' series 1 and 2 and the events and characters depicted in 'Afterlife'. Readers are duly cautioned that they may incur spoilers for both programs. The London borough of Canley is a fictional place, borrowed from 'The Bill'. DS Jack Martella is a character of my own devising, although his aunt Viv was a serving officer at the Sun Hill Police station.
John walked out of the kitchen and shoved a plate of hot buttered toast under Sherlock's nose.
Sherlock frowned and pushed the plate away with a listless hand. He had retreated into his head and seemed determined to stay there. He hadn't shaved for ten days. He hadn't spoken for a week. Even before he had ceased replying when spoken to, it was clear from his snappish demeanour and general irritability that his mood was descending into a steadily worsening downward spiral. Now he was caught up in a black morass. He barely ate. If he roused himself out of his chair, where he perched like a great, brooding eagle, or off of the sofa, where he reclined, hands folded over his breast and eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, it was to scratch dissonant music from his violin, sometimes for hours, until John had no choice but to leave the flat or risk losing his sanity. He was at his wit's end. He'd thought Sherlock's manic moods were hard to deal with. The depressive episodes were even worse.
"What is this?" Sherlock asked when John resolutely moved the plate back into his line of sight.
"It's toast. You make it by applying heat to bread. It's got butter on it. They get that by separating the cream from cow's milk and then agitating it until the fat globules stick together. The NHS frowns upon butter, but you need fats in your diet to absorb certain vitamins, so I advocate a moderate intake. Now eat it. There's tea in the kitchen as well. Why don't you come in and have some while I make you a proper meal?"
Sherlock tried to push the plate away again. John put it back under Sherlock's nose. Sherlock pushed it away again. "I'm not hungry."
"No," John agreed. "You're starving. You've denied your body so long that it's stopped sending out signals that you need to eat. You look hellish. Your colour is rotten and you need to wash. If a potential client walked in right now they'd walk right back out again because they'd think they'd made a mistake and found your sickroom and not your consulting chamber."
"I need a case!" Sherlock growled. He picked up a piece of toast and looked at it as if he'd rather interrogate it than eat it. "Lestrade won't reply to my texts. He's cut me off from Scotland Yard."
"I know," John said softly. "I spoke to Greg last week. It's been quiet for a change. And even if it hadn't been, the department's been under scrutiny. All of his people have been dealing with paperwork issues preparing for some kind of audit." He chuckled softly. "You should have seen him, Sherlock. He thinks the criminals and the auditors are actually conspiring to keep his team, heads down, in front of their computers."
Hearing that Lestrade was chained to his desk seemed to cheer Sherlock. He bit off the corner of a toast slice and chewed it doggedly. His stomach reacted to the unaccustomed stimulus of food. He pressed his free hand against it as it growled loudly.
"I'll get you some tea." John took a few steps towards the kitchen and then turned back towards Sherlock again. "What would you say to going out in a bit?"
"What for?" Sherlock asked as he wiped crumbs from his fingers and then picked up a second triangle of toast.
"There's a medium in town called Alison Mundy," John replied offhandedly. "She's supposed to be quite good." He forced himself to stay relaxed. It was imperative to stay casual if Sherlock was to snatch, rather than just sniff, the bait.
"A charlatan, you mean," Sherlock said derisively around his toast. "You know that's just cold readings and guided responses." He bowed his head for a moment and then raised it again dramatically. When he spoke, it was with an affected falsetto. "There's a woman standing at your shoulder. Her name starts with the letter J. Do you know someone whose name starts with J?" He switched from one slightly feminine voice to another. "My gran's name was Jane!" he replied to himself tremulously and then nodded as he swapped voices again. "Your gran wants you to know you've made her very proud." He shoved the last of his toast into his mouth and put the plate on the floor before clasping his hands together and then pretending to wipe a tear from his eye. "Oh, thank you! Thank you for telling me exactly what I wanted to hear and validating my self-worth. Charlatan!" Sherlock reiterated in his normal tone of voice.
"Desperate people hoping for comfort," John said as he turned away again before dropping his last breadcrumbs on the water. "Might even be a potential client or two amongst them."
"What sort of client?" Sherlock asked scornfully. "The one who wants to know where Great Uncle Archibald hid the family treasure before he popped his clogs? Really, John. I'll admit to being bored, but I'm not desperate, at least not yet."
John cast his gaze over Sherlock's less than pristine frame. "Uh huh. You haven't left the flat in two weeks. In all that time you haven't touched your experiments. Those agar dishes you prepared and left in the fridge dried up and I had to throw them away. I have it on good authority that the next time you start sawing on your violin at three in the morning, the neighbours are going to riot."
"In case you weren't aware," Sherlock replied, "I've been rehearsing Schumann's emViolin Concerto/em. Ironic given your interest in mediums. It is said that after Schumann died in a lunatic asylum, the violinist Joseph Joachim hid the work away with the blessing of Schumann's widow. It wasn't until the spirit of Schumann's himself demanded its recovery during a séance attended by Joachim's two nieces, was it retrieved from a dusty archive and performed in public."
"Then maybe this is a sign," John said. "You playing the music of a composer who came back from the dead to plead the case for his final work. Maybe someone else out there wants to plead their case, Sherlock. Someone only Alison Mundy can hear."
Sherlock sighed and threw up his hands. "Fine. I'll indulge you, John. But only to stop you from spouting any more outlandish dribble." He glanced around the room, picked up a newspaper and frowned at the date. "Two weeks, you say?"
John nodded.
Sherlock leapt from his chair, and then grabbed the seat back to keep his stiffened legs erect. "I better have breakfast then."
"It's nearly four o'clock," John said.
Sherlock shrugged as if the hour was of little consequence. "Tea, then," he suggested before going to the bathroom to bathe and shave.
"Hi, I'm Alison. Thank you for coming."
Sherlock sat forward in his seat to get a better view of the main attraction and a spring from the threadbare chair dug into his thigh. The Black Box Theatre was a down-at-the-heels establishment devoted to the cause of 'alternative entertainments'. They specialised in producing plays by writers no one had heard of or 'fresh' interpretations of classics. But their tastes were eclectic and it wasn't uncommon to see a handbill out front advertising exhibitions of prestidigitation or sword swallowing and juggling in addition to drag renditions of emHamlet/em complete with a disco interlude. Alison Mundy fit right in.
She was a bit threadbare as well. A faded blonde woman somewhere in her forties, she looked as if she'd had a difficult life. There were stress-lines cut deep around her eyes. Her clothing, although it was neat, had been mended. The beads that she fingered nervously were polished bits of glass. It was a novel take, he'd grant her that. Unlike most stage mediums, there was no glitz or polish to Alison Mundy.
She smiled at the audience in a self-effacing way. "I'm always nervous at the start of these things, and I have a tendency to rabbit on, so I apologise. I never know who's going to come through or how they're going to behave. Sometimes no one talks to me at all and then I feel a bit stupid."
The audience, the majority of whom appeared to be a motley collection of true believers and seekers, made a collectively sympathetic noise. One woman in the front row reached out to the patrons sitting to either side of her and they clasped hands before bowing their heads, as if they were lending their will to the medium's, supplying an extra jolt of cosmic energy to allow the spirits to pass over from beyond the mystic veil.
On stage, Alison Mundy paced back and forth across the worn boards a couple of times and then she went very still. She cocked her head and then she looked upward sharply. "Hello. No. Please. One at a time." She then smiled again, this time very softly, and knelt. "Hello, darling. No, don't be afraid. What's your name?"
She paused, as if listening, and nodded. "Sasha? That's a very pretty name."
A woman in the third row gasped loudly. The alleged medium ignored the outburst in favour of her one-sided conversation. "This lady right here, you mean?" Her gaze travelled upward as she introduced herself again to another invisible someone, this one was evidently much taller than 'Sasha'. She chuckled and then stood to address the audience. She homed straight in on the woman who had gasped. "Hi. Carolyn?"
The woman rose to her feet on unsteady legs. The man sitting next to her reached out and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'm Carolyn," she replied in a trembling voice.
Sherlock observed the set-piece with a moderate amount of interest. The woman was an obvious plant. But the rest of the audience was eating it up, watching with wide eyes and open-mouthed astonishment. Even John was watching the drama unfold with rapt attention.
"Carolyn, I've got Sasha with me. She's fine! Although she misses you singing around the house," the medium said. "But she's got a problem and I think you can help her." She waited until the woman nodded before continuing. "Sasha said a lady has been keeping her company since she fell off her bike. The lady is nice, but she's very shouty." The audience tittered nervously as Alison Mundy smiled downwards, presumably at Sasha. "She won't use her indoor voice."
The man sitting next to Carolyn got to his feet and put his arm around her.
On stage there was a further conversational exchange between the two spirits and the medium. "The lady wants to take her away," Alison Mundy said to Carolyn. "But you told Sasha never to go with strangers."
"That's right. We did," Carolyn said. It was clear she was on the verge of tears.
Several other people in the audience reached for hankies or tissues as Sherlock repressed an urge to snort in derision. Still, he had to admit that despite her rather unassuming stage presence, Alison Mundy was a consummate actress. The way she knelt and stood at intervals, tilting her head and occasionally nodding or smiling, as if there were actually other people on the stage with her, was done exceptionally well.
"The thing is," Mundy said, "the lady says she's your mother. She wants to help Sasha cross over."
"She went deaf … working in a warehouse. Would never wear her ear defenders. There was nerve damage and the hearing aids didn't help," Carolyn explained, although no one had asked her about why 'Sasha' had called her mother a 'shouty lady'. She seemed to have forgotten that she was in a theatre, so captivated was she by the supposed manifestation of her departed child and mother.
"She died before Sasha got to know her." Hesitantly Carolyn left her seat and approached the stage. Lights shone down and from his vantage point, Sherlock could see that tears had made her makeup run. "It's your granny, Sash. The noisy lady is your granny." She wiped at her face with a recently manicured hand and said, "Your Daddy and I love you very much, but it's okay, darling. It's okay to go with your granny."
Mundy said something too soft for the microphone to pick up and then she waved goodbye. "They've gone. They're at peace now."
Carolyn broke down completely and began to sob. Her partner hastily got up from his seat and escorted her out of the theatre.
Sherlock barely restrained the urge to applaud. He glanced over at John. His face was a study in concentration, as if he was attempting to work the angles and failing. Finally he glanced over. "Plant?" he whispered uncertainly.
Sherlock smiled, pleased to see John wasn't as credulous as he had first seemed. The audience around them was murmuring uncertainly as, on stage, the medium seemed to be centring herself for the next ghostly visitation.
She shook her head several times and then she turned sharply to her left. "Hello." Mundy looked up and held out her hand. If there had actually been someone else with her they would have stood about six feet three inches tall. "I'm very pleased to meet you." She listened intently for a few seconds and then smiled and nodded. "I see. Then I'll respect his wishes and not use his name. I don't want to make him any more uncomfortable than necessary."
She looked straight at Sherlock. "Excuse me, sir?"
Well this was an unexpected turn, Sherlock thought to himself. He wondered if John had arranged it, and if he too, had been acting since they had taken their seats in the run-down theatre.
"Your Uncle Sherrinford's been worried about you. He said it's good you got out of the flat. Even if it was only to be amused by me." She cocked her head and then gave another self-depreciating smile. "He says this isn't a repeat of your tenth birthday."
Sherlock repressed the urge to react. On his tenth birthday his parents had hired Marvo the Magician to entertain at the party. Marvo had astounded the audience, both adults and children, with his apparently amazing powers of clairvoyance. Sherlock hadn't know it then, but it had been his first introduction to the art of cold reading.
He smiled back at the medium, wondering just what revelations she had up her sleeve. He didn't know when she had managed it, but somehow Alison Mundy must have researched him. He'd never mentioned Sherrinford Holmes to John. "No donkey in a red sombrero then?" he retorted. "I must confess, I feel somewhat relieved."
The audience tittered nervously.
Alison Mundy tipped her head in her listening pose and then replied to the alleged spirit of Sherlock's uncle. "All I can do is try." She looked back at Sherlock. "Your uncle has a message for you. He says he's worried about the company you're keeping."
Sherlock felt John flinch. Alison Mundy must have seen his reaction as well. She put up a hand and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. He wasn't referring to you. He says, despite your rather violent tendencies, he approves of your relationship with his nephew. He says you're a steadying influence. No, it's the Irish lad he doesn't approve of. He says you bring out the worst in each other and as much as you enjoy the great game, no good will come of it. People, other people, will always get caught up in the middle and be hurt. It'd be much better for everyone, especially for your friend, if you'd just walk away this time."
John leapt to his feet. "I don't know who put you up to this, lady, but that's enough!"
"John!" Sherlock tugged at John's wrist, reinforcing his verbal command. "Sit down!" Despite the sudden and unexpected turn of events, he was enjoying himself. Ushers were coming down the aisle and they were in danger of being ejected from the theatre. "I said, emsit down/em." Sherlock pulled John back into his seat just as the first usher reached their row.
"It's all right," Alison Mundy said to both the audience and the ushers who were looking uncertainly at John. "Sometimes emotions at these events can run a little high. This can be a lot to take in. Especially for a sceptic."
She focused that sweet smile of hers on John. "Your protectiveness of your friend does you credit," she said. "But I assure you that I'm just a messenger and no one, at least not here or now, means either of you any harm." The rise and fall of her shoulders as she shrugged was apologetic. "I'm afraid that's all I have from your uncle." She frowned at Sherlock as she shook her head. "I'm sorry. He's moved on."
Sherlock was thoughtful as he watched the rest of the performance. If John hadn't fed Alison Mundy information about him, then who had?
Alison put her cup aside and sighed contentedly. She was enjoying her stay in London. Her appearances at the Black Box had been well attended, and apart from the outburst by the man Sherrinford Holmes had called 'John', there had been no unpleasantness. Carolyn and her husband Bill had been lovely people, thankful to know their little girl was safe on the other side with Carolyn's mother. There was a private sitting, the primary reason she had come to London, to prepare for later. She hoped that it would go well, and that the grieving family would find peace in its aftermath.
She felt a presence at her shoulder and looked up, expecting to see the server who had been so kind to her earlier. There was a man. A man who looked down on her with pain-filled eyes. His hands were covered in blood. More blood pooled at his feet. He spoke in a raspy voice, as if he couldn't get enough air. "Help me, please!"
Alison did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances. She screamed. And then she caught hold of herself. This wasn't the time or the place to lose her head. This man, whoever he was, needed her help. She rose from her chair to help him to sit. All that blood. It was amazing he could stand at all, let alone speak. She guided him into the spot opposite her and without regard for the mess it would make of her clothes or her hands, she pressed him down onto the chair. "Someone help! Please! Someone call an ambulance!"
A server dropped a plate and then swore. The people at the next table stared at Alison as if she was mental. "What's the matter with you?" she demand. No one else reacted. No one picked up their phone to dial for help or rushed over with clean towels or a first aid kit. No one was doing anything at all but staring back blankly. And then the sickening feeling stole over Alison. Slowly she turned back to look properly at the bleeding man.
"I'm sorry," she said both to the room at large and especially to him. He was of no age to have something so terrible happen. Not that torture was appropriate at any age, but to have his life cut short so brutally seemed especially awful. "I'm so sorry." She smiled apologetically at the people at the next table. It wasn't their fault they hadn't seen a dead man. "I'm Alison," she said to the spirit. She used a quiet, polite tone. "How can I help you?"
Alison listened closely. It was difficult to make sense of what he was trying to say, he was as hysterical as she had been upon first observing him. She made soothing, nonsensical noises to calm him down. She told him she would go to the police, even though she was uncomfortable with the idea. Her previous track record with the constabulary in Bristol was spotty at best. But it was better to be thought of as a crank rather than turn a blind eye to suffering, so she persisted, working in the occasional direct question into her calming patter, unaware the proprietress of the café was dialling 999 and a waitress had just run out onto the street to flag down the two constables who had just passed by on their routine foot patrol.
"Sherlock, your phone is ringing." John looked up from his computer. He'd been trying to write up a case in such a way that it wouldn't get him sued within an inch of his life for libel, but it wasn't really working. It looked as if the story of emThe MP, the Boa Constrictor, and the Two-Way Mirror/em was another one for his private files rather than something he could share with his readers.
"You get it," Sherlock replied without looking up from his laptop's screen. He lobbed the mobile at John with one hand as he typed with the other.
John growled under his breath as he caught the handset. He glanced down at the flashing number and didn't recognise it. He punched the 'answer' button anyway. "Sherlock Holmes's phone. John Watson speaking." He listened for a few moments and then said, "Hang on a second." He put his hand over the speaker. "Sherlock, it's the Desk Sergeant at Sun Hill police station. She says they have someone over there who's insisting on talking to you."
"Oh?" Sherlock paused tapping buttons, but he didn't look up. "Who's that?"
"You're not going to believe it," John teased.
"Tell me or don't, John, I'm busy."
John shrugged, aware he had the Desk Sergeant waiting for a reply and she probably had better things to to do than hang about while they sparred. "It's Alison Mundy, the medium from last night. She had a minor meltdown in a café this morning and caused a disturbance. She says a man has been killed and he wants your help finding his murderer."
Sherlock slammed the lid down on his laptop. He gave John an expectant look as he leapt out of his chair and strode across the room for his coat. "Well, what are you waiting for? Tell the police we'll be down directly!"
They had put Alison in an interview room. It was a small bland space that smelt of old sweat and disinfectant. They had also given her a cup of strong, sweet tea. She was grateful for that. The constables who had detained her could have taken her straight to hospital for a psych evaluation. If unfamiliar doctors got a hold of her it was possible that they'd throw away the key in the interest of public safety and the bloodied young man – she still didn't know his name – would never get help. Still, she was aware that outside the door they were arguing about what to do with her after an officer from CID had come down and taken a statement and then gone away again.
She'd been as cooperative as she could be, explaining who she was and what her particular gift – if you could call it that – was. And why she was in London. She apologised for the disturbance in the café.
The detective sergeant– a harried looking man named Jack Martella – had patted Alison's hand and said if it'd been him, he'd have jumped straight out of his chair. But it wasn't clear if he was humouring her or taking her seriously. His face gave nothing away as he wrote down a description of a sandy-blond haired man in his thirties, roughly five foot eight, or nine inches in height, with a tattoo of a rose on his left forearm and a scar shaped like a W on his right cheek, who was bleeding from his wrists and feet.
Then DS Martella had asked about who they should contact to collect her. The young man had rasped 'Sherlock Holmes. I need to speak to Sherlock Holmes.' Alison had thought that odd. Sherlock Holmes had been at the demonstration the night before. He was the one with the uncle called Sherrinford and the stocky blond companion the uncle referred to as 'John', although he'd asked Alison not to name either when she spoke to them.
Alison hated to presume on the kindness of strangers, especially ones who she had little doubt were sceptics, but she did as she was bid and asked for Holmes. Now it was a matter of waiting to see who next came through the door; the haughty young man and his hot-headed companion from the Black Box or uniformed officers to take her away to hospital.
The Sun Hill police station was in the borough of Canley in the East End, north of the Thames. It took the taxi just under half an hour to get there from Baker Street. During the ride, Sherlock sat erect instead of slouching against the seat back, taking in the passing cityscape with a keen eye. Despite the unusual circumstances of their summons to the police station, or perhaps because of it, he seemed unusually alert. His old fire had returned.
John was glad of it. During their time together he'd seen Sherlock's mood swing precipitously between high and low, but so far the low periods hadn't lasted for more than a few days. A two week period of doldrums, that showed little sign of lifting on its own, had become seriously worrying. Enough so he had been on the verge of contacting Mycroft to ask if Sherlock had experienced long term episodes of depression before. That was until he'd seen the advert in the back of the free newspaper for Alison Mundy's appearance at the Black Box and decided, out of a sense of desperation, to make one more attempt to entice Sherlock out of the flat on his own.
Sherlock had been both riveted by Alison Mundy's demonstration and vexed. He couldn't determine her angle or motive for deceiving her audience. He'd been so intrigued he insisted that they follow her after the performance to see where she was staying. They ended up at a small hotel that catered to travellers on a modest budget. All appearances suggested that Alison Mundy wasn't into the supernatural for a profit. Unless, John speculated, she was playing a long game, and the down-at-the-heels affectation was just set-dressing to help convince her marks that her altruism was sincere.
As for himself, John was equally perplexed by what he had witnessed. It was possible that the theatre's patrons had been salted with shills to guarantee the spirits would be reunited with their grieving loved ones. That would have made a good show. It was also possible that, like Sherlock, Alison Mundy was particularly adept at cold reading, picking up clues about the people in the audience from their appearance and body language.
But there was no way she could have known about Sherlock's uncle Sherrinford unless she'd researched the Holmes family. Until the performance, John hadn't even know that Sherlock emhad/em an uncle Sherrinford. Sherlock didn't speak of his family, ever, and there were no family photos amongst the eclectic collection of objects Sherlock had scattered over their living space.
She'd hit the nail with uncanny accuracy when speaking to the rest of the audience members as well. One or two plants would have been reasonable. A dozen in an audience of fifty beggared belief. John had left the Black Box feeling unnerved.
Alison Mundy was a puzzle. And in lieu of a juicy murder, that was exactly what Sherlock needed to rouse him from his funk. But there had to be more to the self-effacing woman than met their eyes, John was sure of it. He felt the calm of battle descend over him as the taxi pulled up in front of the Sun Hill nick.
DS Jack Martella looked around the CID office and blew out a disheartened breath. He was the second generation of Martellas to work out of Sun Hill, his aunt Viv had risen through the ranks from beat constable to DC. She'd been shot during a traffic stop and killed in a random act of violence that had stunned everyone. When they broke the news to his family Jack had resolved, when he was old enough, that he'd take her place. But there were times when he wished he'd followed his Uncle Paolo into the priesthood instead. If he'd become a priest he'd not have to pay alimony to a demanding ex-wife, and when someone came into to his office babbling of ghosts, he'd have two thousand years of papal instructions to fall back on.
He picked up the case file and felt guilty for exploiting a possible out. As a rule Jack wasn't keen on private investigators. They had their place tracking down husbands and wives who would rather do a bunk than deal with their no longer beloved spouses, or performing routine legwork on other civil matters. But when it came to doing real police work, they had a maddening tendency to get underfoot. An overwhelming case load, complicated by persistent budget cuts and performance evaluations, meant that no one had time to indulge well-meaning civilians. Not when there was someone higher up the chain of command breathing down their collective necks looking for an excuse to complain.
But in this case, Jack was happy to make an exception. Alison Mundy was a problem and a puzzler and he suspected that no matter what he did – if he took her seriously and opened an enquiry based on her statement, or if he packed her off to a loony bin – someone, probably the DCI, was going to question his judgement.
He greeted Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr John Watson with a warm handshake and ushered them both into a conference room. Holmes seemed perfectly at ease with the unusual circumstances surrounding his request to attend at the police station. He had a firm grip, and his hands weren't as soft as his rather expensive clothes suggested they might be. "Thank you both for coming." He turned to John. "Are you a medical doctor or the other kind?"
"GP these days, why?" Dr Watson replied.
Jack took a deep breath and let it out again. "It's this Alison Mundy woman. I don't know what to make of her. Ever since the constables brought her in … I'd swear she was disturbed. Schizophrenic. Bi-Polar. One or the other and off her meds. But she's given us some potentially credible information and the description of a man who's on our missing persons list." He shrugged wearily, trying not to think about paperwork and ticking clocks. Everything these days was on a countdown. "It's possible that she's witnessed something. Been traumatised and had a delayed reaction maybe. And this is her way of coping."
He shook his head, feeling as green and inexperienced as the day he'd interviewed for CID and the Superintendent had slapped a file down in front of him and asked how to approach the investigation. "Then she insisted on seeing you, Mr Holmes. Or rather she says the man with her has done."
"And does this man have a name?" Holmes asked.
Jack shook his head again. He gave Holmes a bemused smile. "She says the recent dead are often so traumatised it's hard to get basic information out of them."
"Ah." Holmes pressed his lips together in an expression of irritation. "No different from the living, then."
DC Denali entered, bearing Alison Mundy's witness statement. Sherlock Holmes made an impatient noise. Jack had a headache. He wanted Alison Mundy done and dusted and out of his nick. He handed the file straight over.
Holmes scanned the document rapidly. As he read through it his expression darkened.
"The man you mentioned. The missing person. Is his name by chance Declan Waters? And is he employed as a taxi driver?"
Jack nodded. "That's right. How did you know that?"
Dr Watson looked over at his companion. "Sherlock?"
"Declan Waters is known to me," Holmes replied cryptically. He turned to Dr Watson. "I think we'll all have a word with Alison Mundy."
"So, Ms Mundy – " Sherlock said as he swept into the interview room and dropped into a chair across from their witness. "– we meet again."
"Hello, Sherlock." Alison Mundy toyed with her beads for a moment. "That's an unusual name, Sherlock. It's very distinctive. Just like your uncle's name, 'Sherrinford' and your brother 'Mycroft'. Your family likes unusual names. Is that why your uncle didn't want me to use it last night? So that you would be less likely to be recognised in public?"
She rattled her thoughts off one after another. Sherlock did that sometimes when he had so much going on his head he had to let some of it out or burst. John wondered if Alison was the same way.
"You know each other?" DS Martella said. He sounded even more perplexed than he had during their initial consultation.
"We attended a demonstration of Ms Mundy's mediumistic gifts last night. It was most interesting," Sherlock replied.
Alison leant forward and regarded Sherlock curiously. "And yet you're still not a believer." Her gaze travelled upward until it appeared she was looking at someone standing behind Sherlock's right shoulder. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. Say it again?" She listened carefully and then nodded. "Your uncle said to remind you, if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
The colour drained from Sherlock's already pale face. For a few seconds he was noticeably discomfited and then he visibly composed himself. He cleared his throat and then replied, "Touché."
John's gaze darted from Sherlock's face to Alison Mundy's, eager to see how she would react. He didn't see what he expected he might. She wasn't gloating. She wasn't even looking at Sherlock. She had turned her body away to face the empty chair at her left. She was engaged in a soft, one-sided conversation with someone only she could see.
Sherlock apparently decided that he wanted to play along. "You! In the chair! If you want me to help you then I need facts, not histrionics. What is your name?"
DS Martella's mouth fell open in surprise. Alison reached out and patted an invisible shoulder.
"Stop mollycoddling him!" Sherlock snapped. "If he wants me to catch whoever did this to him then he needs to pull himself together. Name!"
Alison Mundy looked daggers at Sherlock but she replied. "Declan. He says his name is Declan. Declan Waters. He says you helped him once before. That's why he's asking for you now."
"That's better," Sherlock said. "Now. Tell me what happened."
Not quite sure that he believed what he was witnessing, John opened his notepad and took down the name. He looked up to see that, once again, the alleged medium was listening intently to their new and apparently invisible client.
"It's sketchy. He said he was out for a walk on the towpath near his flat. It was after his shift. He likes to walk after being in the taxi all day. There was the sound of footsteps running... a jogger." She shook her head. "Everything went black."
"And then?" Sherlock demanded.
Alison's face twisted in agony. "Pain. Oh God. The pain." She looked up at them in horror. "His eyes are covered so he can't see. He's been put in a cell ... behind bars. He remembers the clang of the door shutting. He's chained up, 'round his ankles and there are shackles on his wrists. They whip him. And when they do they chant 'In pain there is beauty.' Two voices. A man and a woman. He thinks they sound familiar, but he can't place them."
"You said when he appeared to you in the café he was bleeding," Sherlock prompted.
"What about your hands and feet?" She tried very hard not to grimace, taking a deep breath through her nose and letting it out slowly. For a moment it looked as if she might faint. "Spikes. Metal spikes. Through his wrists and ankles. He's hanging by them. His body weight is distributed wrong. It makes it hard to breathe." Alison took a laboured breath. It was as if her lungs were somehow restricted and they couldn't properly expand.
"Where?" Sherlock demanded. "Where is this taking place?"
Alison rocked back and forth several times and then slumped to the table with her head cradled in her hands. "I can't. I'm sorry. It's so awful."
There was a female constable watching the interview from the doorway. Without being asked, she exited and came back a few moments later with a cup of tea. Martella thanked her and then offered it to Alison, cupping her hand with his as he helped her to drink. He said something too soft for John to catch and then after he straightened, he tipped his head towards the door, indicating they should leave the room.
"Well?" he said when the door closed behind them. "Do you believe her?"
Sherlock's face was closed. John had the impression that he was impressed by the medium's testimony, despite his inclination to be otherwise. "Yes," he replied. "Or rather I believe that she believes. You can leave the matter in my hands, Sergeant. If it becomes a police matter, I'll let you know."
"Don't tell me you're buying into this." John rushed after Sherlock as he swept out of the taxi and down the street, heading towards the river towpath where Declan Waters was known to take his nightly walks.
"Declan Waters is missing. That's a fact," Sherlock said. "No one has seen or heard from him, other than Ms Mundy, for a fortnight. According to his sister, with whom he shares his flat, he put chicken and potatoes on to roast in the oven, went out for his nightly walk, and that was that."
Supposedly thousands of people went missing every year. Sometimes under similar circumstances. Usually, when they did, it was under their own steam. John could understand why the police hadn't exactly made a major effort investigating the disappearance. "He's someone you knew?"
They veered around a delivery van that was parked half on the pavement. Sherlock waited for John to catch up and then he replied. "He brought me a case once. He had an arrangement with an elderly woman. Every Sunday he would pick her up from her home and drive her to church, and then when the service was over, he would drive her home again. This went on for some months. One Sunday, the woman was waiting in her garden as she always did. There was only one problem. Although the lady was dressed as she always was, in a large hat and heavy, old-fashioned veil, he recognised that it wasn't the same woman, even though her family members acted as if it was. He thought that was odd and so he came to me."
"And you investigated?" John said as they reached the steps that would lead them to the last known location of Declan Waters.
"I investigated," Sherlock replied. "It turned out the old woman had died. But her family didn't want that to be known because of a clause in her will that said she would have to reside with them for a minimum of ten years if they were to inherit. They put her body in the cellar to preserve it and hired an imposter to keep up the pretence that she was still alive."
"It wasn't murder?"
Sherlock shook his head. "Just an inconvenient natural death. But unlike most people, Declan Waters was observant enough to spot the substitution. A lot of other people, including the vicar at the church, hadn't. If it's Declan's ghost speaking to Alison Mundy, then with proper focusing, he'll be observant enough to help us find his killer."
Despite its rather grubby views, the towpath was popular with local joggers and dog walkers. Worse yet, it had rained several times in the intervening two weeks since Declan Waters' disappearance. John didn't see how even Sherlock's eagle eyes could pick up any decent clues or trace evidence that might set them firmly on a proper investigative path.
"But what if it's not his ghost, Sherlock?" John asked, giving voice to the fear that had nagged him since they'd first walked into the interview room. "What if this is some kind of elaborate set-up to discredit you. Or worse, lure you into a trap?"
"Then they, whoever 'they' are, are extremely clever people and I want to meet them. I'd also like to congratulate them on their research skills. Their intelligence on my uncle Sherrinford has been unparalleled," Sherlock replied. He entered the mouth of the tunnel below an overpass and then knelt to examine the area more closely. He flicked the beam of a penlight against the concrete walls of the tunnel and then used it in combination with his magnifier to search the ground.
"I admit someone could have paid the theatre to book Alison Mundy and then bribed her to feed me information. But how did they know that I could be talked into attending the demonstration?" Sherlock straightened and put his penlight and magnifier away. "No, John. If someone had sent me the tickets, or given them to you – a nurse at the clinic you've been attending, or even one of those street touts theatres sometimes use – your fears might have some weight."
He froze for a moment and then, using a handkerchief, removed something from the dirt at his feet. He held the object aloft. It was a gold medallion.
"What is that?" John asked.
"A St Christopher's medal." Sherlock peered at it through his magnifier. "There's engraving on the back ... Initials ... 'DW'. Not conclusive proof, but it does make Ms Mundy's story more compelling."
He glanced around the area at large, as if he was reconstructing events on the night Declan Waters had disappeared. "John, stand there." John walked a short distance down the tunnel and then stood. Sherlock retreated even further back into its depths and then called out his next instruction. "Now start walking."
John walked as if he was a man out on his nightly stroll. Not too fast, not too slow. A few moments later he heard the sound of footsteps. A jogger. He ignored them as he supposed Declan Waters had. Joggers weren't anything to be afraid of, as long as you weren't directly in their way, and the towpath was wide enough for three abreast. The steps grew closer, nearly behind him. He walked on, wondering just what Sherlock had up his sleeve. A cloth over his mouth most likely. That would explain the St Christopher's medal, if the chain it was carried on broke during a struggle.
The hand between John's shoulder blades caught him off-guard. Before he could react, he hit the ground. He lay there, stunned. Gasping for air and laid out on his belly, John wondered how one second he could be upright and in the next out flat. The attack had occurred so quickly that there had barely been time to throw his arms out and break his fall.
Seconds later, Sherlock was there. He offered John a hand and helped him to his feet. He wrapped a solicitous arm around John's shoulders. Still reeling from his sudden meeting with the earth, John was helpless to protest as Sherlock half walked- half carried him out onto the street and presumably to his horrific death.
"You think there was a van parked there?" John wheezed as he worked to get his lungs functioning again.
"Car or van." Sherlock glanced around. "Once initially disabled, it would have then been easy for the killer to incapacitate his victim completely." He glanced upward at the CCTV camera mounted at the mouth of the tunnel. The lens had been painted over. John made a mental note to ask DS Martella about it. There was no telling how long the camera had been out of service, but it was possible that the initial kidnap had been recorded.
A rough looking man sauntered towards them, a bottle of cider in hand. Sherlock smiled in recognition and hurried towards him. Limping on bruised knees and starting to feel the sharp sting of abraded palms, John followed.
"Reg. A word?" Sherlock called.
Reg looked about fifty, although as far as John knew, he could have just as easily been thirty-five. He wore a duffel coat, even though the day wasn't nearly cold enough to warrant such a heavy jacket, over khaki fatigues. He had several days growth of beard that was liberally salted with grey. He was bald under his battered trilby hat.
Sherlock offered cash to pass the word, and more cash as incentive to whoever came up with the goods. Homeless network activated, he bid Reg good day and went in search of a taxi to take them back to Sun Hill police station and then onto Baker Street.
Alison stretched out on her dollhouse-sized bed in her postage stamp-sized room and sighed with relief. She put her hands over her face, blocking out the lamp light that came streaming through the window. She was tired and felt emotionally strung out from dealing with the traumatised ghost and the police. She needed a drink to blunt the raw feeling, but there wasn't time. She was meant to do a reading for Mr and Mrs Buhari, the couple who had paid for her to come to London in the first place. They were hoping to contact their daughter Alicia, who had died a year ago on the anniversary of her birth. If she was to be coaxed through the veil, there was no better day for it, but in her current state, Alison wasn't sure she wanted to make the attempt. Spirits sometimes took advantage of mediums who weren't in full control of their powers, and at the moment, the grip she had on hers was tenuous at best.
Though she felt guilty about it, she was glad Declan Waters had fled, back to his body most likely. Although he could just as easily be following Sherlock Holmes, attempting to guide him to the truth even though Sherlock couldn't see him. The detective was an unusual man. Alison had heard some of the police constables talking about him while they were trying to sort out what to do with her. He was a genuine eccentric; high strung and temperamental, but too brilliant and intuitive to be dismissed. He'd solved several difficult cases and rubbed the Met's collective nose in them, just because he could. Despite his arrogant ways, or perhaps because of them, his Uncle Sherrinford kept a close watch, but not nearly as close as that of Sherlock's companion, the prickly Dr John Watson.
Alison wasn't sure what to make of John. Sherrinford called him Sherlock's 'guard dog' and said he was protective and loyal to a fault. He seemed unusually defensive over their relationship. He'd practically leapt out of his chair at the public reading when she'd passed on the comment Sherrinford had made about not liking the company Sherlock kept. At the time, Alison had found that odd, but more than one of the constables had referred to John as Sherlock's 'partner' and it didn't sound as if they speaking in a business sense. Perhaps that was why he was so touchy.
The next time they met up, Alison decided, she would make a point to try and get to know the doctor better. Perhaps then he would see that she intended no harm towards Sherlock and he, in turn, might calm down. The matter settled in her mind, Alison rose, deciding that since the hotel's management had managed to cram a bathtub into the tiny space in the next room then she would take advantage of a soak in warm water to prepare herself for the séance.
Sherlock was contemplating a map tacked to the wall over the sofa when John came out of the bath. He was tracing lines, probable escape routes from the towpath, most likely, and frowning.
He glanced over as John went to confirm his hypothesis. But rather than asking something civilised like 'feel better?', especially since he had been the one to inflict the injury, Sherlock began to rattle off a gruesome litany of facts on the subject of crucifixion.
"Did you know, John, that unlike popular portrayals, convicts were nailed to their crosses just above their wrists, through the space between the radius and the ulna, rather than through their palms? And that a small bench called a sedile was often mounted to the cross as well, so that the condemned could sit down occasionally to relieve the agonising pain, only to paradoxically prolong their suffering?"
"Uh, not really, no," John replied.
"And that quite often one of the causes of death was the organs crushing down on one another, compression of the lungs, for example, leading to asphyxia. Don't you find that significant?"
Their alleged ghostly client had complained of difficulty breathing. He'd also mentioned that there were spikes through his wrists and ankles. "It lends a certain degree of weight to some of the things Alison Mundy said Declan Waters told her, I guess," John admitted.
"Other possible causes of death included cardiac rupture, heart failure, hyporvolemic shock, acidosis, arrhythmia, or pulmonary embolism." Sherlock seemed quite cheerful as he shared his research, completely failing to notice that once again, he hadn't taken into account that his audience might be less than enraptured by his findings. "Of course there was also the potential for death by dehydration or sepsis, depending on environmental conditions, or if the subject had been tortured beforehand."
John had been hungry when he'd got out of his bath. Now he felt faintly nauseated at Sherlock's enthusiasm as he detailed potential causes of death. "And the people who took Declan Waters thought his suffering was beautiful. Lovely people he got mixed up with. So what are you looking at?" John asked, hoping to shift the subject onto something less grisly.
"We've potentially determined how Declan was taken," Sherlock said. "If, during our demonstration earlier, I had only knocked you to your knees, then a foot applied firmly to your back when you were stunned would have effectively knocked the rest of the air out of your lungs, incapacitating you. Then a piece of gaffers' tape over your mouth and tie wraps round your wrists and ankles, and you'd be completely immobilised. Declan was a slight man and not especially fit; a little taller than you at five foot nine inches, but he weighed half a stone less. He'd have been easy to bundle into the boot of a car or into the back of a van. An iron-barred cage," Sherlock mused, rapidly switching mental gears. "Where, short of building one of those yourself, would you find one?"
John shrugged. "Storeroom where they had to lock up valuable goods? Furrier or an old bank with a lock up for deposit boxes? I don't know. Sherlock, isn't this all pointless speculation? We haven't got a body, and a ghost is hardly a credible witness. Who is this Alison Mundy person, anyway? I assume you've checked up on her."
Sherlock gave John a disappointed look. "Of course I've looked into her, John. Alison Mundy, currently from Bristol, originally from Manchester. Formerly a nurse, she makes a modest living doing public readings like the one we attended, but as a medium, she accepts no fees other than meals and transportation to and from out of town engagements. Her primary means of support are government benefits and compensation received for injuries sustained during a train derailment that put her in and out of hospital for the better part of a year. She's no stranger to the psychiatric ward, if you were going to ask. Her habit of replying to the voices in her head did not go unnoticed. Additionally, I have it on good authority, that she's assisted the police more than once, although there was one instance where she was considered a person of interest in a murder enquiry for a brief time before being completely exonerated."
"You believe her," John said. "Even that stuff about your uncle."
Sherlock shrugged. "At this point, John, she's not given me a reason to do anything but take her at her word."
Jack looked down at the evidence-bagged Saint Christopher medal and the accompanying fingerprint analysis verifying it had once belonged to Declan Waters and got a sour feeling in his gut. It wasn't concrete evidence of foul play, but it was proof that something had happened to the missing cab driver on the night he was last seen. His sister had sworn he'd been wearing the medal around his neck when he'd left their flat.
As a result, despite the current state of the camera, he'd requested the CCTV records and was now waiting to see if there was anything useful to be obtained from them. If the towpath was on Declan Waters' usual nightly route then maybe, even if his kidnap hadn't been recorded, there would be a meeting or evidence of something shady, something that would give them critical insight into a crime that from where Jack sat, had no motive to be committed.
In the meantime, all he could do, other than quietly authorise a new house to house enquiry, was to let the constables tasked with going through the hours of video get on with their job.
And wait.