Sherlock

A hotel in Knightsbridge. On the first day of the so-called spree, rooms that should have been occupied were suddenly found to be empty. No pattern to it. A single businessman from Belgium on the first floor, the couple from the honeymoon suite and a family of five just off the stairwell. Considering it's predominantly a couples sort of establishment, there's something almost determinedly random. Until the media coverage began, staff took it as an unlikely coincidence, three walk-outs all in one night. It didn't help that all the luggage was gone. Only when loved ones started calling up and the news was telling everybody to be paranoid did this turn into a crime scene.

I'm sure the police loved that. I'm sure that was just exactly what they needed when the event was reported on Saturday morning.

Needless to say, business has been a bit quiet since. It's good news for any legitimate investigator and bad news for me. Even slipping in via the service entrance, I feel like somebody's bound to notice. But I make it to the first floor. I can only imagine the security staff, the ones who should be watching the cameras, have rather lost heart. Shutting the stable door, as it were, can be a difficult experience for any professional.

All the room doors require keycard access, but there's one at the end of the hall on a standard latch. Cleaners cupboard, hopefully. It only takes a steel rule to jack it open, and once I'm inside I at least feel protected. You see, the time for housekeeping is long past. Most of them will have gone home for the day, and here, hopefully… Yes, on the back of the door, three smocks hung over each other on the same peg. And in the pocket of the first one, the one with a 'Supervisor' pin on the lapel, a master key.

There's no crime scene tape. For appearance's sake, of course. But Mycroft got me the room number, so I know I won't be disturbing anybody. I don't know what he thinks I might see that the police could have missed. After all, I'm sure they turned the room over, and any evidence will have been taken away. Whether they'll interpret it correctly is another question, but I'm sure they got everything. And nobody's been in this room since them, and that was only twenty-four hours after the disappearances, so what exactly does he expect me to find?

But I came, didn't I? Anyway, if they're all stumped, any fresh insight will be useful, won't it? Any distracti-abstraction on the established facts.

So I let myself into the businessman's room. There's nothing to it. Aside from the fact that they've left the bed as he would have left it himself, with rumpled sheets and the covers thrown off to one side, there's nothing of note. A hair clinging to the edge of the plughole. There's a faint scent, a slightly false freshness. It's familiar, but I can't give it a name. Anyway, it's probably just a side effect of crime-scene cleaning.

So how did a man with an overnight bag and briefcase simply vanish from here? There's nothing to tell me.

There's nothing in the honeymoon suite either. Another tousled bed, a short brown hair fallen down between the pillows, the same faint scent. The more I think about it, and where the smell is strongest, it reminds me more of hospitals than crime scenes. Still, the same deep cleansing. Still no bodies or ransom, still no luggage.

The last place to see is the family room. A double and a single in one room, a sofa which folds out into another double in the other. The beds are in the same state as the previous ones were. The sofa, though, has been folded up. Looks unused. In fact, if you weren't paying attention to the fact that there were five people staying here, you might forget that the sofa folds out at all. Same smell here. I spend a while studying the sofa, without opening it. Then I go through to the bedroom. The covers have been kicked off the small bed entirely. A child's slipper, tiny, with a teddy bear's head on the front, remains, left behind.

Just inside the envelope edge of one of the pillowcases on the double, there's another hair. Another short, brown hair, like the other two. Just out of the way enough that it might have been missed but… I mean, you follow, don't you? There's something too neat about it, one hair missed in each of the three rooms. There's something just too contained, too uniform, about all of it. And though I know it's a crime scene, it's frustrating to make no progress even in the light of these facts, so I sit down on the edge of the mattress.

And, to say it short, that solves it.

I lean over and look at the end of the mattress. Just there, hardly noticeable, there are two tiny bulges in the fabric. And I know what the smell is. The comfort of the bed clarified it for me, and the reason I associated it with hospitals. It's activated carbon. It's what they force down your throat if you've been poisoned. Or if you've OD'd. That's not what it's being used
for here, though. Here it's being used for its odour absorbing properties. With some effort I'm able to lift up that end of the mattress, and see the powdery charcoal layer just beneath.

Well… it still doesn't solve the problem of the luggage, that's true. Or how the killer came and went. And yes, there's a killer. But the rest of it… I look over at the single bed, at the dropped slipper, as I take out my phone and call Mycroft.

"Yes?"

"About that hotel," I say, "If you send police over here, am I going to be arrested?"

"You mean you have something?"

"I think I might have eight bodies, if that suits you…"


Jim

Emily Maitliss is on the news telling me how Scottish police have been unable to decide if a series of assaults perpetrated on street performers on Edinburgh's Royal Mile were orchestrated publicity stunts or part of the wider rash of 'blatant criminality' sweeping the nation. The bulk of the confusion comes from the Youtube videos of all the attacks, which are being replaced as fast the site can take them down, and have become a global talking point. Already similar attacks are being reported on the banks of the Thames, down where the Eye is, with living statues being provoked to most unstatuelike behaviour before being beaten senseless, and as far away as Calafornia's Venice Beach. The art-lovers (well, let's face it, art-students) of the world have suddenly decided they will have no more of this softcore, commercial performance, it seems.

So I pick up the phone and call somebody who has friends in the art world and recently promised to cripple the tourism-reliant Scottish capital for me. While it's ringing I peel the post-it note off the now-decimated Man U picture (it's looking close to white now), ball it up in my hand and fire it at the bin. Miss. But what the hell, they can't all be successes.

"Hello?"

"Alright, Dani? Stitches out yet?"

"The ones in my belly. My side's not healing over like I'd hoped, so they have to stay in a while longer."

"Why didn't I know about this? When did you hear?"

"That would have been…Saturday?"

"Sorry. I've been busy. Have you been busy, Danielle?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Didn't spend those four days doing a lot of talking around an Edinburgh art college, did you?"

"Honestly, James, I haven't got the very faintest notion what you're referring to."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stroke of genius, y'know, getting all them young folk involved. You knew it would go viral, didn't you?"

She waits a while, considering whether to admit to it. But she's smiling when she cuts back in. "You were the one who asked for global coverage."

"And what made your mate Raffles suddenly decide that stately home was the one for him last week?"

"Did he? Oh, I should think just the overall mood of the criminal classes would have been inspiration enough for any thief who wasn't intimately connected with the source and therefore in grave danger if it gets traced back."

"Or any thief who decided she just really, really wanted to be in on it anyway." That' might be a bit cheeky, might be pushing her a bit far. Certainly she goes quiet. But then people so often do when you put the truth right there in front of them.

"Jim, it's panned out for you, so it's all alright now. But you never thought this through. It was pure luck someone didn't come ramming down your door the morning after and you know that. Don't ever put me in the position where I have to choose between standing by you and feeling safe." Hm… Anybody else getting the feeling we're still talking about her wounds? I mean, in part. It's definitely a fair point, about my latest endeavour having had a lot to do with luck. I accept that. But… well, I'm proud of that. I've worked hard to keep it all from coming back on me. The luck involved, well… doesn't that just prove that the instinct was right? But I suppose, like her, I've stayed quiet too long. With a considerate sort of interest, she asks, "Is it what you thought?"

Up on the TV, Emily's moved on, looking a bit nervous actually, talking about regional newsreaders being held hostage in their own homes. Not that she need worry; she's national. It's only the like of Points West I want off the air. No real reason, they just annoy me, all that filler and the cute stories and the local charity work segments. Any 'news' program with a cookery section. I was running out of good ideas, if I'm honest.

"Dani, is there anybody you want dead? Say Jeremy Kyle. I'll feel like a tyrant if I say it myself."

"You didn't answer me."

"Oh, I did, I really did… Say Robbie Williams if you won't say Jeremy Kyle."

"What's he ever done?"

"I've had Rock DJ stuck in my head for fucking hours."

"When was the last time you took an hour's break?"

"I can't, I'm getting queried, on average, every eight minutes."

"Make them wait. I'm coming over."

She hangs up so I can't argue with her. I would have, if she'd stayed on the line. Would have talked her out of it and, if I couldn't do that, would have ordered her to stay away and let her side close over so I can have her wriggle into the headquarters of Thames Water and release a fake whistle-blower statement saying how they accepted a bribe of millions to allow toxic waste to be dumped in a reservoir. I've got it written and all, I just need her to email it from an internal computer. I want to see what fucking minister ends up topping himself. I suppose I could give it to somebody else but it wouldn't feel right. Anyway, she doesn't stay on the line, and I don't feel like issuing orders via text or calling her back and… And if I'm honest I want an hour's break. So I spend the forty minutes or so while she's in the taxi putting as much as I can to bed, leaving the workload as light as possible, knowing it'll be huge as ever by the time I come back to it. And by the time I hear her at the door I feel like I'm sort of ready for human company.

Danielle, it seems, begs to differ. "Sweet Jesus," she mutters on sight, then skims straight past me to the kitchen. She takes the pot out of the coffee maker, empties it down the sink.

"Yeah, point taken, love." But no, she hasn't made her point yet. Because she then lifts up the pot and throws it to the tiles so it smashes into a hundred jagged, lethal bits. I don't cry out, because I'm not upset, and even if I really was panicking in my heart which I'm absolutely not, I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. I just tell her, "There's instant in the cupboard."

She starts laughing. "Bollocks there is." Trying to stay pissed off is too much effort. She sets me off. Then, while I'm laughing, while I'm weak, produces a very tempting, brand-new, unopened bottle of Bell's out of her handbag.

"You're a bad person," I say, "when you know how chronically busy I am."

"Oh, I don't mind. I'll drink alone."

"Bollocks you will."