29 December 2014
Whitechapel
Mid-morning
Where are you? -SH
Sherlock had sent the text as he entered the cab; half an hour later, he still hadn't received a reply. He knew that could mean almost anything—Molly could be in hiding, or maybe she left her phone at work. But his mind immediately—irrationally—went to the worst possible scenario. Until he saw evidence to the contrary, he was labouring under the belief that Molly was hurt, bleeding, dying…
He had lost almost an entire day. That was all he could think about: the full day between the sending of her email and the receipt of it. It wasn't how the plan was supposed to go, obviously, and the sheer number of things that had gone wrong in the lead-up was gut-wrenching—Sherlock's forced exile, however short it turned out to be, meant he wasn't available when Moriarty made his reappearance; the spilled water on the mobile and the rice remedy, both of which limited his access to his phone messages; DI Lestrade's lack of knowledge of Molly's father's death, which he would have had had he not sent Sherlock away; no follow-up on Sherlock's frenzied request to track Molly down the day before…
A whole day.
"Do you know how much I could have done if I'd known about this yesterday?" Sherlock asked all of a sudden to no one in particular. He hadn't realized that the conversation he'd been having had been entirely within his own mind.
John was struggling to keep up with his longer-legged companion as they strode away from the Underground station. He deftly picked up what Sherlock dropped. "But you didn't know, and now you do, so…"
Sherlock huffed and tried to see past the slight panic glazing his eyes. "So much can happen in a day, John. Molly could be anywhere."
"Maybe she's just at home," John said. His attempt as pacifying the agitated detective was admirable but ultimately fruitless. Not even he could believe the words he was saying.
They'd followed her clues from St. Bart's Hospital to St. Paul's Underground—unnecessary clues, as Sherlock already knew she would have headed directly to Central Line platform on her homeward commute, but clues which he found breathtakingly endearing nonetheless as he followed her literal footprints mashed into flower beds and patches of mud where she knew he would see them.
Molly lived off Cephas Street, a short walk from Bethnal Green Underground station, but along the roads of Whitechapel her trail grew cold. Sherlock tried not to let his mind wander to that most horrible conclusion—that she'd been snatched somewhere along the way and hadn't even made it home—but the farther he went without a sign that she'd walked this sidewalk in the last twenty four hours, the less hopeful he was.
"John, I think it goes without saying that I'd rather you not blog about this case," Sherlock admitted as they began the trek around a small park.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
"So then why are you here?"
John pulled up. "If you need to ask that question…"
Sherlock stopped, sighing. He knew how important Molly was, not just to him but to everyone. He was honestly surprised Lestrade hadn't followed them there and brought half the Met with him. "I apologize, John."
"'S alright," John returned. "I guess I'm just trying to figure out why any of this is happening. To Molly, that is."
Sherlock scanned the streets, mentally mapping the possible routes, the safest ones, the ones most travelled. "You know when I faked my death, I needed someone I could trust who could—"
He stopped, turning to John, yet another apology ready on his lips. John shook his head.
"It's okay," John said, holding up his hands. "You had your reasons for keeping me in the dark. I'm just glad you had someone to help you, even if it couldn't be me."
"She was just…everyone knew who you were. No one would have suspected Molly."
"But someone obviously suspected, or else she wouldn't be in danger."
Sherlock nodded, that familiar sickening feeling dropping into the deepest corners of his stomach.
John paused, choosing his words carefully. "Exactly how much danger are we talking about here?"
"Potentially great, I'm afraid," Sherlock said. "But I don't think he'll kill her. He doesn't want her. This is about me. And him. And the surest and most devastating way to get to me would be through someone close to me, someone I care about…"
John cleared his throat. "And Molly is…?"
Sherlock had no answer. When he'd first met her, she was just a pathology student. Four years ago, she was the specialist registrar with the incurable infatuation with him, whose lab he frequented far too often than was strictly necessary. Two years ago, she was his lighthouse.
Now?
Molly is…
"A genius!"
Sherlock bolted to the corner of the construction site at the corner of Braintree and Malcolm Place, where a line of orange barricades had been erected to block pedestrian access to the sidewalk. There, a scrap of floral fabric fluttered aimlessly in the midday breeze, caught on the ragged bolt hole of a construction sign.
Molly's shirt. He recognized it instantly, remembering the snarky comment he'd made when she first showed up at work wearing the blouse, maroon coloured with smaller white roses all over it. "Whoever invented floral-patterned clothing should be be shot," he'd said. "They're probably already dead," she'd quipped quietly. "Then they should be dug up, reanimated, and shot dead a second time." Then, after a pause: "Honestly, if you wanted to wear my Nan's curtains, I could have spared you the trip to Marks and Spencer and the 45 you spent on the shirt and made you one myself."
Cruel, he knew, but truthful. He hated florals, especially ones that reminded him of ugly drapery. He hated them especially on Molly.
She knew what she was doing…
"She made it this far," he said as he and John took the road along the railway that turned and ran under the tracks.
As they approached the row of terrace houses, Sherlock's pace quickened. He had not been to Molly's flat since his self-imposed exile, and even then it had only been a handful of times, less than a few weeks in total. In those dark days, when life as he knew it seemed like such a very distant memory, she'd run out to his favourite shops for chips because she knew he missed it, or would simply talk to him about her favourite TV shows or the gossip at the hospital because she knew he didn't want to think about the events that were slowly, insidiously, becoming the new normal for him. Molly had known him better than anyone in that flat; and he, in turn, knew her—knew what songs she'd sing in the shower, or how often she burned her toast, or how she fell asleep watching the home shopping channel with such regularity that he was often forced to trod out of her bedroom in the back corner of the flat at half-three in the morning to turn the television off so he could get some shut eye.
When that happened, he would watch her—sometimes for a minute, sometimes for an hour—while she slept, Toby curled in the nook behind her knees. Like a meditation, her sleeping breath became a rhythm he memorized, something he recalled and could count on during his shakiest moments, when the daunting task of dismantling Moriarty's vast network still looked impossible.
She had marionetted him across the city to her doorstep via a trail of clues that she knew he would follow because he told her he would follow them and she trusted him. He hoped with everything he had that he would open the door to her flat and see her, sitting on the sofa watching tarted-up former soap stars pitching cubic zirconia earrings and imitation leather handbags at hyper-inflated prices to the unsuspecting British public…but deep down, he knew better.
He took the three steps up to the common front entrance of the building in one bound and bent down for the spare key, hidden within the third brick from the bottom right side of the door where it had always been. The brick, he noticed, was sticking out a barely-noticeable eighth of an inch from flush. Molly, he thought with a wry smile, remembering her surprisingly anal-retentive chastisement when he hadn't returned the brick to the perfectly flush position one day during his first visit to his London bolt hole. Another clue…
"Spare key?" John asked.
Sherlock pulled the brick out and retrieved them—two of them, one for the outer, downstairs door and one for the upstairs one. He replaced the brick and slipped the key into the lock, noticing with curiosity—and a new, sickening drop in his stomach—the smeared, greasy handprint on the doorframe. He held up his own hand, hovering it inches above the mystery print, and determined from its size that it belonged to a very large man.
"Are you her friend?" a voice sounded from the window.
Sherlock stepped back to see who was speaking and saw her landlord, Mr. Delacroix, peering out through the grate. Sherlock smiled and went along with it, putting on a voice. "Yes, actually. Mr. Delacroix, is it? How did you—?"
"She told me you might be comin' by," the man said. "Seemed pretty sure of it, actually."
"So she left already?" Sherlock inquired.
Mr. Delacroix Mm-hmm'd. "Afternoon yesterday. Came 'ome in a flurry and left just as fast."
Sherlock turned the information over in his head as he continued to smile. "Well, that's good. She needed the holiday, I reckon. Always working so hard, our Molls, isn't that right John?"
Behind him, John nodded, a little behind the curve but catching up quickly. "Yup. That's our Molls."
Mr. Delacroix managed a half smile before continuing. "I won't take care of that cat of 'ers anymore, not since he bit me last," he said. "I suppose that's why she went to you."
Sherlock feigned a friendly grin and shrugged, "Yep, guess so." Then he slid the key into the lock, turned the tumbler, and pushed the door open. "Thank you, Mr. Delacroix."
"Yeah, right," the man said as pulled his head back from the window and slid it shut.
Sherlock and John regained their composure and walked into the shared entry hall. Delacroix's door on the right was the first, No. 9A; there was a narrow hallway leading to the back garden and a second suite, No. 9B, accessed on the left, beneath the stairs that led up to the remaining two suites, 9C and 9D, belonging to Molly and a retired schoolteacher with two Dachshunds, respectively.
"Up we go," Sherlock said as he took to the stairs.
"The handprint on the doorframe…"
"You noticed that?"
"Not Mr. Delacroix's."
"Decidedly not," Sherlock said as he gained the upper landing. He turned to his right and unlocked the door.
The flat was immaculate, as he might have guessed it would be. Toby, restless from such a long time spent alone, chirped an anxious greeting as he leapt from his perch in the front window overlooking the street and marched to Sherlock, purrs in his throat.
"Molly?" Sherlock said into the darkness as his hand hit the lights and flooded the room.
"I'll check the back," John said as he started to his left, into the hallway between the parlour and the kitchen and down towards the bedroom.
But Sherlock already knew she wouldn't be there.
Damn it, he cursed silently. For all his care and consideration, Molly had been taken; she was almost certainly going to be held for ransom, a payment only Sherlock could make.
Unless he found her before then.
His detective's eyes began scouring the apartment, and he was startled by the sound of footsteps behind him. He turned to see the landlord standing in the doorway.
"Sorry for the fright," the old man said, "But I just remembered something. Something about your doctoral thesis."
Sherlock furrowed his brow but, once again, played along. "Yes?"
Mr. Delacroix scratched his head. "The strangest thing," he said. "Miss Hooper told me to tell you that it was okay for you to peruse her book collection. For your thesis, I mean."
Sherlock spun back to the bookshelves lining the two perpendicular walls making up the farthest corner of what would have been her dining room had Molly owned a dining table. "Ah," he said, barely able to contain his joy. "Right. For my thesis, yes. Of course." He turned again and stuck his hand out to the elderly landlord. "Thank you very much."
"Right," the man returned, glaring at the cat for a moment before muttering another "…Right," as he turned and descended the stairs.
Sherlock shut the door and locked it behind him, then called out to John. "The books," he hissed. "It's in the books!"
John came back from the bedroom. "The books?"
"Clues," Sherlock said as he began scouring the bookshelf. "They're here in the books."
Sherlock grinned ear to ear as he noticed the first and then the second upside down book on the shelf. "Clever girl…" he smiled as he pulled the first book off and flipped through the pages. It didn't take him long to spot the word, highlighted in pink on the first page. He scrambled for a notebook and pen, and as he pulled each upside-down volume from its rotated berth on the shelf, he wrote down each successive highlighted word on the paper beneath his hand.
"What?" John asked, standing beside Sherlock, reading from the list. "Followed. Taken. Two. Male. First…what kind of clue—?"
"It's a message," Sherlock hissed as he tossed the last upside down book aside and read the string of words, fusing and forcing them to make sense. Then he picked up his mobile and punched Lestrade's number. The Detective Inspector picked up on the second ring.
"Sherlock, where are you?"
"Molly was followed and kidnapped by two men in a white Toyota. We're looking for two Caucasian males, both large, one bald and one with dark hair and a stubbled face."
John stared at the list and back at Sherlock while the detective received confirmation from Lestrade. He turned to John. "There's a car in the area. They're going to canvas the neighbourhood for white Toyotas and—"
"Sherlock! How did you get all that from these words?"
Frustrated, Sherlock jabbed his finger at each scribble on the page, and as John read and re-read them, he watched as it all clicked into place. "Followed. Taken. Two. Male. First. Large. Bald. Other. Brunette. Five. PM. Shadow…" he looked up at Sherlock. "Molly…left us a road map to her own abduction?"
"She most certainly did," Sherlock said, almost proudly.
"Using random words from random books?"
"And replaced upside down on the bookshelf for me to find."
John ran a hand through his hair. "You've rubbed off on her, you have."
Lestrade's voice could be heard on the other end of the phone. "My god, Sherlock. You'll never believe this, but they found your white Toyota. Abandoned. Three blocks away."
Sherlock took down the address of the intersection and started for the door, but the anxious Meow at his feet reminded him of his other obligations. He stooped to pick up Toby, cradling the feline in the crook of his arm.
"Sherlock?"
"I'll need to stop on the way home for cat food. And probably cat litter. And a litter box," Sherlock said. "And I'll need an amendment to my rental agreement with Mrs. Hudson to allow for pets on the premises. But first things first…"
They shut off the lights and left the flat, Molly's cat still nestled in Sherlock's arm.