Sherlock
Meeting Sherlock Holmes was an experience that I will never forget. I wouldn't be surprised if that five-minute long experience has already been deleted from his mind.
I would say that I'd be surprised if he had even noticed I was there… but this is Sherlock Holmes we're talking about. He does not miss things like twenty-six year old police constables.
Especially not nosey ones like me.
On the thirty-seventh day of the year, two young adults found themselves in the same alleyway, investigating the same crime and attempting to examine the same body. The twenty-six year old in a droll police uniform, however, had hastily scrambled behind a skip when she heard footsteps approaching, and had even produced her firearm (for safety) when she realised that a tall, chalky-white, curly-haired and, most importantly, armed male stood over the deceased victim of what was clearly a robbery gone awry.
"Bruising beneath the left eye, posthumous… Accidental, means nothing," the man uttered aloud to himself.
No. Wait. To a skull.
The young police officer continued to watch, astounded as the stranger methodically went around the body, and then started to go around the crime scene itself, including the skip shielding the hiding officer. She pressed herself tightly against the wall, a firm grip on her weapon as she heard his well-polished shoes coming closer and closer.
They stopped just centimetres away from her, and it was by the luck of grace that he didn't lean down to investigate further, as a square of handkerchief caught on the torn edge of wire protruding from the opposite side of the alleyway instead caught his attention.
The breath she held was not released. The officer's eyes were too busy following the gangly man across the width of the alley.
"Aha…" A glove-clad forefinger and thumb plucked the scrap of material from the wire and held it above strangely colourless eyes. Nostrils flared as he gave a delicate sniff and, finally, the cowering officer was struck with the intensity of a smile. "Perfume and cologne, of course!" he announced gleefully to the 'empty' alley and his skull, now settled on the ground beside the body. "Murder made to look like a robbery gone wrong!"
His hand was soon rummaging in a pocket, a number dialled on the mobile found there and then the police officer caught the words spoken in a delighted hush.
"The body in the alleyway off… yes, yes, that body! Don't ask, just listen. Go to the girlfriend. If she has a new boyfriend already, or someone hanging around her, arrest him."
She couldn't hear the other side of the conversation, though she desperately wished she could.
"Sherlock Holmes, I've told you many times."
That was his name! Oh, Lords, that was his name!
Just as the female officer finally gathered the courage to pick herself up from her hiding spot, Sherlock had somehow made it to the end of the alley.
She could have sworn he winked at her as he rounded the corner, ankle-length coat flaring out behind him and prompting a disappointed sigh from the officer:
"Sherlock Holmes…"