Lestrade led the trio up the circular staircase. He and John were wearing overalls with white cotton coverings over their shoes, and latex gloves.
"I can give you two minutes," Lestrade said.
Sherlock's voice was casual. "May need longer."
"Her name's Jennifer Wilson according to her credit cards. We're running them now for contact details. Hasn't been here long. Some kids found her," Lestrade explained.
He led them into the empty room, omitting a rocking horse in the far corner. Emergency portable lighting had been set up by the police. Scaffolding poles held up part of the ceiling near where a couple of large holes had been knocked through one of the walls. A woman's body was lying face down on the bare floorboards in the middle of the room. She was wearing a bright pink overcoat and high-heeled pink shoes. Her hands were flat on the floor either side of her head.
Angelica tilted her head to the side as she circled the body before bringing her attention to her surroundings. Sherlock took a few steps towards the body and held up a hand as he examined it from a distance. John face was filled with remorse as he gazed at the woman's body. Lestrade continued to glance between the two Holmes.
"Shut up," Sherlock snapped.
Lestrade's brow shot up. "I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking. It's annoying," Angelica chimed in as she slowly turned around and stared down at the body.
Her face was emotionless as she took in the cadaver. The word 'Rache' was carved into the floorboard, appearing to have been done with the victims fingernails which were broken. It would have been painful; this word would obviously prove to be of use to the case.
"Not German," Angelica mumbled to herself as she ran through the list of options for the words meaning. "Rachel?" She then mumbled.
"More likely," Sherlock responded as he crouched next to the corpse. Angelica mirrored his actions. Sherlock ran his fingers under a fold in the back of her coat. When he drew them back he gazed down at wetness on his fingertips before holding his hand out for his daughter to examine.
Angelica reached into the woman's pocket and pulled out a white folding umbrella. She ran her hand under the material and when she pulled back her hand her fingertips came back dry. She showed her hand to Sherlock.
John and Lestrade watched the pair work. Lestrade's expression was impatient and hopeful whilst John's was filled with curiosity and amazement. Angelica and Sherlock examined the body together, seeming to have a silent conversation as they did. The pair was completely in sync with one another. Sherlock and Angelica shared a pleased look before standing to their feet.
"Got anything?" Lestrade asked.
"Not much," Sherlock said as he pulled off his gloves and took a few steps away from the body.
Angelica was silent as she pocketed the latex gloves and removed her mobile phone from her pocket and began typing furiously.
"She's German. 'Rache': it's German for 'revenge'. She could be trying to tell us something…" Anderson said from the doorway.
Sherlock swiftly approached the doorway and shut the door in the man's face as he responded. "Yes, thank you for your input."
As he slammed the door shut, Angelica was approaching the men. Sherlock returned to her side and stood behind her. He gazed over her shoulder at her mobile phone.
"So she's German?" Lestrade asked.
"No. She's from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night," Angelica glanced over her shoulder at Sherlock. He smiled as she paused for a moment before continuing to speak, "before returning home to Cardiff." Angelica pocketed her phone.
"So far, so obvious," Sherlock said.
"Sorry – obvious?" John questioned.
"What about the message, though?"
Angelica ignored the inspectors question and looked towards John. "Doctor Watson, what do you think?"
His brow furrowed. "Of the message?"
"Of the body," Sherlock said. "You're a medical man."
"Wait, no, we have a whole team right outside," Lestrade insisted.
"They won't work with me," Sherlock hissed.
"I'm breaking every rule letting you in here, especially her," Lestrade said.
"Yes ... because you need me." Sherlock stressed.
Lestrade stared at him for a moment before lower his hand and running a hand over his face. "Yes, I do. God help me."
Angelica smiled and gestured to the body. "Doctor Watson."
"Hm?" He looked up from the body to Sherlock and then turned his head towards Lestrade, silently seeking his permission.
Lestrade sighed and headed towards the door. "Oh, do as he says. Help yourself. Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes."
The trio approached the body. Angelica and Sherlock squated on one side of the cadaver as John painful lowered himself onto his knees next to it.
"Well?"
John whispered. "What am I doing here?"
"Helping me make a point," Sherlock said.
"I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent," John reminded.
Angelica chuckled softly. "Yeah, well, this is more fun."
"Fun? There's a woman lying dead. You're a teenager and you find a murder fun?" John interrogated.
"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper," Sherlock ignored the comment about Angelica.
Lestrade reentered the room and stood just in the doorway. John leant closer to the body and sniffed before lifting the woman's right hand and examining her skin. "Yeah ... Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs."
Sherlock gazed blankly at him. "You know what it was. You've read the papers."
John's brow furrowed. "What, she's one of the suicides? The fourth ...?"
Angelica rolled her eyes. Had he even been present for the conversation back at the flat?
"Sherlock – two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got," Lestrade said.
Sherlock bounced up to his feet. "Victim is in her late thirties. Professional person, going by her clothes; I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It's obvious from the size of her suitcase."
Angelica quickly stood and stepped over the woman. She offered a hand to John which he gladly accepted.
"Suitcase?"
John looked around the room for the suitcase. Angelica copied his actions.
Angelica spoke. "Suitcase, yes. She's been married at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married."
Lestrade shook his head. "Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up…"
Sherlock pointed towards her left hand. "Her wedding ring. Ten years old at least. The rest of her jewelry has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage right there. The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside – that means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It's not for work; look at her nails. She doesn't work with her hands, so what or rather who does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover; she'd never sustain the fiction of being single over that amount of time, so more likely a string of them. Simple."
John stared admiringly at Sherlock. "That's brilliant." Sherlock and Angelica rounded on him. "Sorry."
"Cardiff?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Sherlock said.
"Not to them, Father," Angelica noted.
Sherlock glanced between the other two. "Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring."
Angelica turned back to the body. "Her coat: it's slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind – too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can't have travelled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time?" She fished her mobile out of her pocket and showed the webpage she was looking at earlier to the two men. "Cardiff."
"That's fantastic!" John exclaimed.
Sherlock turned to him and spoke in a low voice. "D'you know you do that out loud?"
"Sorry. I'll shut up."
"No, it's ... fine," Angelica said slowly.
"Why d'you keep saying suitcase?" Lestrade asked.
It was Sherlock's turn to spin around the room in search for the case. "Yes, where is it? She must have had a phone or an organizer. Find out who Rachel is."
"She was writing 'Rachel'?"
Angelica rolled her eyes. "No, she was leaving an angry note in German! Of course she was writing Rachel; no other word it can be. Question is: why did she wait until she was dying to write it?"
"How d'you know she had a suitcase?" Lestrade asked.
Sherlock pointed down at the body. "Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying one night." He squatted down by the woman's body and examined the backs of her legs more closely. "Now, where is it? What have you done with it?"
"There wasn't a case."
Sherlock slowly raised is head to look at Lestrade whilst Angelica's head snapped up quickly. "Say that again."
"There wasn't a case. There was never any suitcase."
Immediately Sherlock straightened up and heads for the door. He called out to the rest of the police officers in the house. "Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?"
Angelica, John, and Lestrade follow after Sherlock.
"Sherlock, there was no case!" Lestrade called down the stairs.
Sherlock began to walk slower down the stairs, but still kept walking. "But they take the poison themselves; they chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn't miss them."
"Right, yeah, thanks! And ...?"
"It's murder, all of them. I don't know how, but they're not suicides, they're killings – serial killings. We've got ourselves a serial killer. I love those. There's always something to look forward to." Sherlock spoke excitedly as Angelica let out an irritated sigh.
John glanced over at her, unsure of her sudden mood change. A few moments ago she was excited as her father about the case; but, her demeanor showed that she knew something he did not.
"Why are you saying that?" Lestrade asked.
Sherlock paused and shouted to the others again. "Her case! Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it?! Someone else was here, and they took her case." He spoke more quietly to himself. "So the killer must have driven her here; forgot the case was in the car."
"She could have checked into a hotel, left her case there," John suggested.
Angelica shook her head. "No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair. She color-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. She'd never have left any hotel with her hair still looking like that."
Sherlock's eyes widen in realization before he quickly stormed out of the house. Lestrade and John looked towards Angelica for an explanation.
"The killer made a mistake. Just look at her," Angelica said and both men stared blankly at her. "Pink. The case is pink. Statistically speaking the killer is more likely to be male, meaning he can't walk around with a pink case without raising eyebrows. Goodbye, Lestrade."
With that, she headed down the stairs. Lestrade shook his head and headed back into the room, leaving John to follow after the teenager. She was waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him and glared at the officer that bumped into him on the stairs and never stopped to apologize. John clenched onto the railing to keep from falling over. John smiled when he saw Angelica had waited for him. He changed out of the overalls and pulled his coat back on before the two headed out of the building.
"He's gone," Donovan stated as she saw the pair walk towards the tape.
"Who, Sherlock Holmes?" John asked.
"Yeah, he just took off. He does that," Angelica shrugged.
John looked up at Angelica. "Is he coming back?"
"Didn't look like it." Donovan said.
"Right." John looked around, unsure of what to do. If anything, he now felt responsible for Angelica, seeing as her father had abandoned her at a crime scene. "Right ... Yes. Sorry, where am I?"
"Brixton," Angelica answered. "We can get a cab down by the main road so that you don't have to walk all the way back to Bakers Street."
She held up the yellow tape for him to walk under after passing under it herself.
"He doesn't have friends. So who are you?" Donovan interrogated. Angelica shot her a dark look.
"I'm ... I'm nobody. I just met him," John explained.
"Okay, bit of advice then: stay away from that guy," Donovan said. Angelica bit her lip and turned to walk towards the main road. John could catch up. "You know why he's here? He's not paid or anything. He likes it. He gets off on it. The weirder the crime, the more he gets off. And you know what? One day just showing up won't be enough. One day we'll be standing round a body and Sherlock Holmes'll be the one that put it there. If not him, it'll be her," She nodded towards Angelica's retreating dorm.
Angelica took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment when she heard the Sergeant's words. Her phone buzzed and she glanced down at the message.
"Why would either of them do that? Besides, she's just a kid." John said.
"Because they're psychopaths. And psychopaths get bored," Donovan said. Lestrade called out for Donovan. "Stay away from Sherlock Holmes" With that, she turned and walked back to the building.
Angelica mumbled to herself. "Sociopath."
She stood a good ten feet away, waiting for John. He caught up to her in a moment and then the two headed off down the street.
"Did you hear what she said?" John asked her.
"Yes." Angelica's voice was monotone as she stared straight ahead.
"And?"
"She's an idiot. I'm a high functioning sociopath. Now, any minute now we will walk by a phone booth and it will start to ring. You are to answer the phone and do as instructed, although, he won't give you much of an option. I'll see you back at the flat, Dr. Watson," Angelica said before taking off in a sprint.
John froze in his tracks as he pondered her words and watched the teenagers retreating form. Once Angelica was several blocks away from John she slowed her pace and hailed a cab back to Bakers Street. When the cab rolled up to Bakers Street, it pulled up behind an expensive looking black car. Angelica paid the cabbie and then exited the vehicle. All the while, she watched her twin brother exit the car in front of her. He now wore a black beanie. She rolled her eyes. Charlie had always been their uncle's favorite.
The twins stood on the sidewalk, silently staring at each other. Neither knew that the other was envious of the other as they approached the flat. They knocked on the door, both having forgotten their keys. Mrs. Hudson let them in smiling as she did so, asking how their trips out were. The twins ignored her and headed for the stairs. Mrs. Hudson smiled to herself and headed back into her flat.
Charlie headed straight for their bedroom as Angelica collapsed onto the coach. She threw an arm over her eyes in an attempt to sleep for a brief moment. Charlie was pulling his mattress up, revealing a box of nicotine patches and a handful of cigarettes he had swiped from his father's secret stash. He pulled two patches before letting the mattress fall back onto the bedframe. He fell back onto his bed and put the patches on his left forearm before draping the same arm over his eyes and drifting off to sleep.
