Chapter Two

John spends the next few days reading the two case files, including the additional notes that Lestrade sends over, and he's leaning more and more toward the murders being unrelated. There are two interviews in the second case that suggest the victim may have been using insulin to lose weight. Neither of the witnesses said this outright, but the possibility is there. The overdose could have been accidental, and the location of the injection in her thigh, rather than being a link to the first victim, was simply the most common location for a right handed person helping her, as he believes may have been the case.

The first case still looks like murder, but an isolated instance. No suspects have been identified, but unlike the second victim, she at least seemed to have dated occasionally, although she had never introduced a date to her small circle of girlfriends. The police were out of leads almost from the start.

John chooses his moment to share his new theory with Sherlock. They are at the rarely-cleared kitchen table eating takeaway fish and chips after a relatively calm day during which Sherlock spent hours on his laptop while John finished his mind-candy detective novel. It's time to stir the pot.

"What if the murders really are unrelated?" John begins.

"Then I would be wrong," Sherlock replies in a tone that dismisses the possibility outright.

"Seriously, there are a couple of interviews with her friends that you haven't seen. I-"

"I read the interviews," Sherlock cuts him off. "Speculation is not evidence, and the comments of the victim's self-appointed 'friends' do not even rise to that level."

John crosses his arms. "You don't know what I was about to say."

Sherlock picks up his empty wrapper and crumples it into a ball as he answers, "You think the murders are unrelated, and you attribute the second to a well-intentioned effort by the victim's friends to help her lose weight." He tosses the paper at the bin and misses. "There is nothing that suggests the victim was unhappy with her appearance, or that she would have consented to such a risk to change it. Not everyone yearns to look like a film star, John."

This is a side of Sherlock that none of his detractors would believe: his fierce defence of those who are different. This victim's slender friends couldn't imagine that she was fine with her own body size, and assumed she would do anything to be like them. John had read the transcript of those comments and thought they were meant to be helpful, but Sherlock saw sniping self-important busybodies. Sherlock's interpretation is on the side of the victim, as it always has been.

"I think you may be right," John says, and drops the subject.

John's shifts at the clinic double for the next few weeks, thanks to a cluster of overlapping holiday schedules. Lestrade completes his review of the time records without turning up a single potential candidate, and the case goes stagnant. The deadline Sherlock set for the next murder comes and goes uneventfully. A second day passes. And then another.

On the morning of Thursday, September 8th , John is eating a piece of toast over the kitchen sink when he hears Sherlock's mobile ringing. A moment later, Sherlock comes out of the bathroom, pulling on his jacket. "They've just found the third victim."

John expects to hear an 'I told you so', but Sherlock says nothing more for the entire taxi ride to the scene.

The victim is 24 year old Lisa Cooper. Her flat is the upper half of a semi-detached house that had originally been a single family dwelling. There is a separate bedroom and ensuite bath, and the remaining space is a single large room with an efficiency kitchen along one wall. It is sunny and pleasant, and extremely tidy. The body was found lying in bed with the sheet pulled up under her chin. Her pupils, John soon finds, are widely dilated. The corneas are clouded over, and the condition of the rest of the body tells him that this murder most likely took place close to the original deadline. The first two victims were found within hours of being killed, but this woman has been dead for a day or so longer. There is another difference with this victim, one that John points out to Sherlock and Greg. "These look like injection marks," he points to two tiny red dots, one on either side of the victim's neck. "There's also one in her left thigh where we would expect to find it.

"Into the jugular," Sherlock notes. "Possibly she wasn't responding quickly enough to the initial dose."

"There's no sign that she struggled at all," Greg observes. "Maybe they're not injections?"

It's hard to imagine the victim sitting still for three forced injections, but she seems to have done just that. There is no sign of a struggle anywhere. No indication of a forced entry. The flat is neat as a pin throughout, and the victim herself looks peacefully asleep. It all echoes the eerie calm shown in photos of the two previous crime scenes.

"How can you commit a murder and not disturb a damned thing in the flat?" Lestrade says, as if reading his mind. "Her boyfriend hasn't been able to reach her for the past two days. He had the landlady let him in, and they found her."

"Which would make him a prime suspect," Sherlock comments. "I need to interview him."

Lestrade purses his lips and looks down for a moment.

Sherlock lifts an eyebrow. "Problem?"

Greg squares his shoulders. "He's a Detective Sergeant on another MIT-"

"Is this where I say 'I told you so'?" Sherlock cuts in.

"And he has an alibi," Greg completes his interrupted statement.

"For what, exactly? The time of death hasn't even been established." Sherlock looks inquiringly at John.

"A range of a few days is the best I can do without a post mortem," John agrees.

Lestrade's face is the image of grim determination. "He's been on duty every day for the past week. And this is clearly the work of the same man who killed the first two women. Looking at Robbins for this murder would make him a psychopath who killed two total strangers, and then his own girlfriend." He shakes his head. "It's not him."

"Or, it could be that he killed the first two to make it look like a serial killer. To throw suspicion away from himself," John adds, and earns a brief smile of approval from Sherlock.

"Exactly," Sherlock adds. "I need to interview him. Is he here?"

"He went out to get some air." Greg replies with an air of resignation. "And we are not going to grill him here with his girlfriend's body in the next room. I'll take him back to my office when we're finished up here."

"We will meet you there. Text me," Sherlock tells him, and heads for the door.

Greg looks back toward the victim's bedroom. "If he was right all along..."

"Even if he was, Greg, you did everything you could," John tells him, and means it.

Sherlock and John stop to speak with the landlady on their way out. She's still visibly upset, but willing to answer questions for what is probably the umpteenth time this morning. The three of them sit at her kitchen table with cups of instant brew coffee that smells a lot better than it tastes, but John is happy for the caffeine.

"Lisa is- was a very nice girl," the woman, who introduced herself as Irene Miller, tells them. She reminds John of Mrs Hudson, but a few years younger and about twenty pounds heavier. "Never a moment's trouble. I just can't believe this." She dabs at her nose with a wadded tissue.

"How long had she lived here?" Sherlock asks with surprising gentleness. Possibly she reminds him of Mrs Hudson, too.

"Just about four years now. I wish I had a dozen like her, to be honest. Never a peep out of her. Quiet as a mouse. So tidy. Always on time with the rent."

"Did you know her boyfriend? Mr Robbins?" Sherlock asks.

She nods and dabs her nose again. "Michael? Of course. I introduced them, in a way. He was here to take a report about my car being stolen, and he came in to have tea with me. Lisa came down to give me her rent payment, and they just seemed to hit it off right away."

"When was this?"

She squints, remembering. "The end of May, I think." She nods. "Yes, she was bringing her June rent."

"So, they hadn't known each other very long," Sherlock gives John a look that says this is exactly what he expected to hear.

John has a question. "When he asked you to let him into the flat this morning, did he say why he was so concerned? Had you noticed anything before that?"

"Well, he didn't actually come to my door. I heard him pounding on her door and went up to see what the problem was. I had to come back down here to find the key. It took some time, and I think he already had called the police before we even got inside."

John and Sherlock exchange a look. Sherlock asks, "Did you mention this to any of the officers who spoke with you?"

She shakes her head. "No one has asked me about that. I never thought about it until just now, to be honest." Her expression darkens. "You can't possibly think Michael had anything to do with this, surely!" She looks from Sherlock to John, and her back stiffens. "I don't think I should say anything more."

Sherlock's gaze is direct. "Mrs Miller, did you know Michael before your car was stolen?"

"What earthly difference can that possibly make?" She's getting angry. "I would like you to leave now, please." She pushes back her chair and stands up.

John and Sherlock get to their feet. "We'll show ourselves out," Sherlock tells her. Mrs Miller follows them and closes the door firmly behind them.

They take a taxi to New Scotland Yard to wait for Lestrade but find that he's beat them to his office, having left sometime during their interview with Mrs Miller. He looks like a man braced for an argument.

Sherlock opens with, "He called for assistance before he found the body."

Lestrade crosses his arms. "Yeah, he told me that. He meant to call for medical assistance and got PCs instead."

John takes a seat, but Sherlock stands behind the other chair with his hands resting on the back of it. "Or he wanted a witness to him finding the body. He barely knew her, did he tell you that? Being panicked enough to break into her flat seems a bit extreme for someone only out of contact for a day or two."

"He said she wasn't feeling well the last time they spoke," Greg explains. "Said he was worried that she might have taken a bad turn and couldn't get to the phone."

Sherlock comes round the chair and sits. "The victim's landlady is very protective of him, incidentally. She stopped talking as soon as she realized where the questions might lead."

Greg frowns. "And yet it sounds like she said more to you than to any of the other officers who interviewed her."

Sherlock scoffs. "Does that surprise you? Do you really think they would follow a line of questioning that could lead to one of their colleagues? Yet another reason to let me talk to Robbins first."

"Fine," Greg says, and stands up. "He's in an interrogation room. I asked him if he wanted a solicitor, and he declined. I'll be watching, so keep in mind you're talking to an officer with a clean record who is fully cooperating with this inquiry, and who has just lost someone he cared about." He gives John a look that asks for help keeping Sherlock in line.

As if that's ever worked.

Michael Robbins is in uniform, seated at the table facing the one-way mirror in the interrogation room. He looks up when they enter and take the seats on the opposite side of the table.

There is a thin folder in the centre of the table which Greg has told them contains the text of Robbins' statement. John watches Robbins' expressions as Sherlock asks most of the same questions the man has already answered in the statement. John follows along in the text, as is the routine he and Sherlock have developed over the years, looking for discrepancies in the suspect's responses compared to earlier statements. So far, everything lines up, but then it's only been a few hours. Hardly long enough to forget even an elaborate lie.

Robbins is composed and appears eager to cooperate, just as Greg had said. He is not pretending to be grief-stricken, which would ring false after such a short relationship.

"Why were you trying to reach the victim this morning?" Sherlock asks another of the questions Robbins has already answered.

"It wasn't just this morning," Robbins replies. "I had been texting and calling since Monday. We were supposed to meet for drinks after my shift, and she never showed."

"That never happened before?" Sherlock asks.

"Well, no. She was very punctual."

John finds the response a little stilted and distant, under the circumstances, and Sherlock apparently agrees, going by his next question.

"Punctual. I might use that term for my landlady. Not someone with whom I was intimate. Were you on intimate terms with the victim, Mr Robbins?"

Robbins' expression hardens. "The victim has a name, Mr Holmes. Yes, Lisa and I were on intimate terms, but we were still getting to know one another. You'll have to forgive my clumsy wording. I'm not an Oxford graduate, after all." There is an audible sneer in that last bit.

"It doesn't take an Oxford graduate to recognize the obvious suspect in a case where a murder victim's lover is the one to find the body, would you agree?"

John hears a tap on the glass behind them and can picture Greg bristling at this near-accusation. Sherlock ignores the warning.

"Of course I know I'm the logical point to start with. I expected to be questioned, but this is personal for you, isn't it? I'm a policeman, therefore I'm worse than useless and a viable suspect in a triple murder? While you're wasting your time on me, the real killer is out there looking for his next victim."

Sherlock ignores the accusation and asks a new question. "Had you met any of Miss Cooper's friends? Is there someone who might know if she was worried about anything? Or about anyone?"

His challenge having been rebuffed, Robbins sags back in his chair. "She never introduced me to anyone. Never mentioned friends at all, actually." He takes a deep breath. "Look, if there's nothing else right now, I'd like to go home. This is all starting to hit me."

Sherlock pushes back his chair. "That will be all for now." He stands up, and walks out of the room.

John gets to his feet, thanks Robbins for his cooperation, and follows Sherlock into the hall. Sherlock, however, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, John finds Greg standing just outside the adjacent observation room door, hands on his hips, staring at the closed elevator doors at the end of the hall. He turns to face John. "Does he really believe Robbins did it?" Greg asks with a rising tone of disbelief.

John chooses his words. "I would say he has not ruled him out entirely."

Greg shakes his head. "Robbins is right. We have to do whatever it takes to make Sherlock see that he's after the wrong man before another woman dies."

John studies him for a moment. "Are you one hundred percent certain that he couldn't have done it?"

"All three murders? One hundred percent. Even if it was just his girlfriend, it would be at least 85 percent."

John's own level of certainty is lower than Greg's, but he has substantially more confidence in Greg's judgment than Sherlock does right now. "I'll do what I can."

Barts Hospital Morgue

Thursday, September 8

Molly doesn't normally mind working with Sherlock peering over her shoulder, but today is an exception. He's actually breathing down her neck which is disconcerting on several levels. Not only did he scrutinize every inch of this victim's body before he allowed her to begin the post mortem, he is now closely observing the internal examination, even down to following Molly as she carries each organ to the scales.

Thankfully, John seems to have noticed her discomfort and has been trying gamely to draw him into a debate with Lestrade.

When she takes a step to her right and actually trips over his shoe, her temper flares. "Sherlock, is there something in particular you're looking for? I can barely move with you right behind me!"

Instead of backing off, he leans directly over her shoulder, actually nudging her out of the way. "Why does she smell of formalin?"

Molly stares at him for a moment, then leans down over the open chest cavity and sniffs. "Oh my god, you're right!" She smells it now, disguised by the 48 plus hours of decomposition, but clearly there. "That could explain the additional injection sites!" They had found the expected injection mark in the left thigh, but there were four others, two in the groin and one over each jugular. John had mentioned the ones in the neck, but he obviously had not seen the other two.

"What?!" John strides to the table and sniffs for himself. "How in hell...?"

Lestrade has joined them, looking baffled. "What's he on about?"

"Embalming fluid, Lestrade," Sherlock sounds triumphant for reasons John can't fathom. "The killer must have returned to the scene when she wasn't found soon enough. He tried to preserve the body!"

Greg looks no less confused. "What? Why?"

"The body wasn't found right away. He couldn't have known that would happen, so the formalin was injected the next day, or later. But how did he get back in without being seen?" Sherlock is pacing back and forth along the table. "He must have taken the victim's flat key and used it to return without the landlady knowing about it. We need to recheck the other victims' effects to see if their flat keys were missing. This killer planned ahead. Every detail. But why? The bodies were all intended to be found. Why..." He stops pacing. "I need to look at the files." And out the door he goes.

Greg turns to John. "What just happened?"

"Something's shifted him off Robbins," John translates.

"Yeah, I got that part. But what?"

"I'm about to find out." John turns and hurries after Sherlock.

Molly turns back to the body on her table. "I'm so used to the smell, it didn't register."

Greg comes around to the other side, facing Molly. "Would injecting the body with whatever he's talking about actually slow the process?"

She considers it. "It's not likely to have done anything at all. Embalming is an involved process that requires draining the blood, which didn't happen here. He may have thought it would help. I can't think of any other reason to inject her with it."

"Do you think you could have missed finding it in the other two victims?" Greg asks.

Molly shakes her head firmly. "There was no decomposition in either victim. They were found within a few hours of death. No decomposition smell to disguise the formalin. I would definitely have noticed. And there was only one injection in each of the first two bodies."

"Who would even know to use something like that? A funeral home employee?"

"They use formulations that include formalin, but they would certainly have it on hand. So would any lab that handles tissue samples." She pauses. "Like a forensics lab."

Greg rolls his eyes. "Oh, lord, don't point that out to Sherlock or we'll be back on Robbins."

"But would Robbins have access to the forensics lab?" She doubts it, from what she's seen. The facility is a trove of evidence, not to mention potential biohazards, and security is tight.

"No reason he would, but I'll check. And I was joking about Sherlock. He won't need us to tell him that a forensic lab could be a source." He starts for the door. "I'll come by tomorrow for your report. Let me know if anything else turns up." He pauses halfway out the door and looks back at her. "Don't tell him anyway." He winks, and lets the door close behind him.

Molly is still smiling when she turns back to the table, intending to finish up, but is startled to find her mortuary assistant standing on the other side where Greg had been a few seconds ago. Her hand goes involuntarily to her heart. The adrenaline rush is a little dizzying. "Steven, you scared me!" There's no point asking how he got in here without her hearing him. It's his defining characteristic, being so cat-footed that she's often teased him that he would have a great career as a burglar. "I was just about to call you."

Steven Basil is not much taller than she is, but quite strong. An avid bodybuilder, he works a second job at a local fitness centre as a personal trainer. His physical strength has been a nice addition to his flawless work performance this past year and a half. He's told her that he's saving to open his own fitness centre but jokes that it will take him so long that she'll probably retire before can manage it. He's never mentioned a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, either of which she would think he'd have in abundance. She finds him exceptionally cute, although the blue eyes and fair colouring are not her taste.

Steven smiles, displaying his perfect teeth. "I can read your mind, don't you know? Want me to finish up for you? I've nothing on at the gym tonight."

"You did read my mind! Yes, thank you. I need to finish my notes and get my report ready for Inspector Lestrade in the morning."

Steven's expression slips into pity as he looks down at the young woman on the table. "What is wrong with people these days? Who could look at that face and think, 'you need to die'?" He looks over at Molly. "I don't understand this world."

He often sounds to her like a much older person. This is one of those times. "It never gets any easier. Try not to let it get to you."

"Has that ever worked for you?"

She smiles sadly. "I'm a poor example. You can do better."

"Like your friend, Sherlock? This stuff doesn't seem to come near touching him," he says, then quickly adds, "Sorry, I didn't mean to sound critical, but I've heard things."

She's used to people taking shots at Sherlock, but hearing it from someone she likes is especially disappointing. "It's wrong to judge people, especially based on gossip." She heads for the door. "I'll be in my office for a few more hours, if you need me."

When she returns to the mortuary to close up at five, it's neat as a pin and there's a note taped to the empty table where Lisa Cooper's body had been.

I'm sorry if I offended you. I didn't mean anything by it. - Steven

Molly tucks the note into her pocket and turns out the lights.

She calls Sherlock when she gets home to share a new detail that she discovered while making her report for Lestrade. Her call goes to voicemail, so she sends him a text.

Sherlock has been pacing between the fireplace and the coffee table since they got back to Baker Street. John seems to have touched off a powder keg of deductions when he asked Sherlock to explain the revelation that had sent him sprinting out of the mortuary.

"The third body not being found right away ruined the pattern. That's why he took the risk of going back to the scene."

John shakes his head. "And that rules out Robbins how?"

Sherlock stops pacing. "The time between murders is too precise to be coincidence. If the time lapse is important to the killer, he'd never willingly allow the third body to remain undiscovered unless he didn't know for certain that it hadn't been found. Robbins is a policeman who would routinely receive information on new cases. He would have known the next day that the body had not been found, and he would not have waited two days to stage its discovery."

John picks up the thread, "And if the killer is a civilian, he would have to wait for it to be reported in the news media. When there was no report, he couldn't be sure whether the body wasn't found yet, or if the media just hadn't been informed, so he waited a day or two, and then went back to the scene with the formalin, thinking he could preserve the body until it was found."

Sherlock frowns. "But if he wanted the body to be found, why attempt to delay decomposition? The smell would draw attention to it without him doing anything that would risk exposing himself."

John puffs his cheeks with frustration. "Maybe he was trying to alter the estimated time of death."

"For what purpose? To protect an alibi?" Sherlock's phone pings a text notification, and he pulls it out of his inside pocket. "Molly has news," he says as he taps the screen. He puts the call on speaker when Molly answers. "John is here with me. What do you have for us?"

"Oh, hello, John," Molly replies.

John can hear the smile in her voice. "Hi, Molly."

Sherlock rolls his eyes heavenward. "What do you have, Molly?"

"It's not much, really, but I thought it was interesting. Lisa Cooper had no living relatives and neither did the other two victims. I don't know the statistics, but that seems a little unlikely to me."

Sherlock looks at John, who shrugs. "How is this part of the post mortem investigation?"

"We have a limited amount of time to locate a relative to claim a body," Molly tells them. "After the post mortem and coroner's inquest, we have sixty days. If no one is located, we release the body to the local council for disposition."

"The same amount of time between murders, except for the third one, who missed the deadline by three days." Sherlock gives John a significant look.

"Does this help with the case?" Molly sounds hopeful.

"You may have just answered a question we've been wrestling with," John replies.

Sherlock picks up the phone and switches off the speaker. "Yes, thank you, Molly. I'll get a copy of your report in the morning." He ends the call and strides over to consult his evidence wall.

"The time lapse between murders could be related to something else entirely," Sherlock begins, "but this is the first potential correlation we've found. If the morgue time limit is what's driving the killer's choice of murder dates, it would mean the he knew about the procedure. Did you know there was a specific time limit?"

"No," John admits.

"Nor did I, not until Molly told us."

"But the rule only applies to unclaimed bodies where the next of kin can't be found," John points out. "How in hell could he manage to only kill women who fit that category? Is that even something that can be looked up?"

"That is an excellent question," Sherlock admits. He moves to the desk ad flips open his laptop. Almost an hour later, he's still typing. "John, come look at this."

John walks over and reads over Sherlock's shoulder. " ?"

"You gave me the idea. You can indeed look up relatives, if you have a starting point and a collection of family trees to search. This is one of the most popular genealogy websites." Sherlock switches to the profile information for the current tree. "The contact is Lisa Cooper who was maintaining the tree." He switches back to the tree and scrolls down to the root entry. "Gender and birth year are the only details listed for living people. She is the owner, and the root of the tree. You can see that every person shown above her is deceased."

"Looks as though she's either from a very small family, or she just never got round to finishing her research." John comments. "It only goes back as far as her great-grandparents." His own tree would reach a bit farther, but not much. He doubts Harry would be able to name as many relatives as John could do. "Maybe she had no one left to ask for the information."

"My mother has a tediously long list," Sherlock mutters.

John has no doubt. He's visited Sherlock's ancestral home. Sections of the main house are more than 400 years old, and there is a portrait hall filled with very grand oil paintings of family members going back even farther than that. Sherlock had invited John to a weekend hunt on the grounds, and that pretty much says all one needs to know about the size and scope of the place.

Twenty minutes later, Sherlock has confirmed that the second victim had also been in the process of researching her family on the same website, and had no living relatives. It takes a bit longer to find the third on a different website. "All three are the same. No living relatives."

"That can't be coincidence."

Sherlock agrees. "It can't be coincidence that all three shared the very specific factor of being without next of kin, and that they all maintained genealogy web pages that would provide that information to their killer. But it doesn't tell us why it mattered to him." He's up and pacing again. "What are the consequences of dying without relatives to claim your body? What practical benefit could there possibly be for a killer to choose victims based on that fact?"

John has personal experience with this question, thanks to an alcoholic father who died nearly a year before John and Harry found out about it. "If someone dies without a will, and no relatives can be located, the local council takes control of whatever assets the victim had, uses them to settle accounts, and buries or cremates the remains." John's father is in an urn buried in a city cemetery in Manchester. Harry has been there to visit. John has not.

Sherlock rakes both hands through his hair in frustration. "But what does it matter? Why would the killer care how long the bodies are kept before burial?"

"What if the bodies have nothing to do with it?" John wonders aloud, then warms to the idea. "What if he chooses women who won't leave grieving relatives behind?"

Sherlock turns slowly and looks at him. "That's a very interesting thought, John." He is silent for a long moment. "Empathy for survivors would not be a factor, however. We're talking about a killer whose defining characteristic would be a total lack of that quality. His motivation would be practical. A benefit to him personally. Perhaps a policeman who is familiar with the process of notifying a victim's surviving family. Relatives can be a nuisance, clamouring for a resolution before he's ready to spring his chosen suspect."

"You're back to thinking it's Robbins?" John's head is swimming with the changes in direction.

"It's your theory John. Which way would you say the evidence is leaning?"

John shakes his head. "The needle is tipping back and forth like a bloody metronome. I honestly don't know."

Sherlock smiles. "At least we're finally on the same page."

"Speaking of pages, we need to let Greg know what you found with the genealogy site."

"I sent a text."

Of course.

Sherlock gets his copy of Molly's post mortem report on the latest victim via messenger just before noon the following day. There is a memo attached with Molly's handwritten notes on her analysis of the blood samples from the two previous victims confirming the absence of formalin.

"What about the flat keys for all of the victims," John asks, reading the report over Sherlock's shoulder.

Sherlock picks up his mobile and makes a call to Lestrade. The call is brief. "The two previous victims' possessions have been disposed of with no note made of the flat keys. The key for Lisa Cooper has not been located. Lestrade is having a search conducted for it."

"So even if we establish that it's missing, since we don't know about the other two, it doesn't really tell us anything."

Sherlock agrees, but for a reason John hasn't considered. "She could have given a key to Robbins. He wouldn't have needed to steal her key to re-enter the flat if he already had one of his own."

"How would he have got his hands on the formalin, let alone know how to use it?"

Sherlock dismisses this with a wave. "I'm sure it's available online. Almost anything is, if you know where to look. Again, who better than a policeman to find a source? As to how it's used, I'm sure that's online as well. Probably in video form."

"Have you looked, or are you assuming?"

Sherlock gestures John toward the laptop. "Help yourself."

John takes up the challenge and quickly finds that Sherlock has guessed correctly. Both access to formalin, and details about its use, are easily available. John closes the laptop and sits back. "Okay, so he could get the formalin and find how to use it. Anyone with internet access could do the same. We still don't know why." He grimaces. "And I am not looking forward to explaining any of this to Greg."