15 February 1988
The air in the hall was oppressive, like a weight pressing down on the motley group of people – girls with modified skirts and back-combed hair sobbing into one another's arms, boys trying to keep straight faces as they whispered to one another that they had been Carl's best friend, teachers discreetly handing one another tissues for crocodile tears.
In the middle of the back row, Jim sat and stared straight ahead. There was a seat free on either side of him, one of which he'd utilised for his bag and the other he had rested his leg on lazily. His knee was bent, and he was leaning on it with a practiced casual grace. Gone were the days where he was conscious about the empty spaces beside him – now he used them for his own gain. He surveyed the stage over the tops of his classmate's heads as Mr Strickland loosened his tie at the podium.
"As you all know," he began, slowly, "There was a terrible accident yesterday at the championship." A wail rose from the crowd and Mr Strickland managed to look even more uncomfortable than before, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "Carl Powers was an asset to this school and he will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him."
Jim could feel his peer's eyes, heavy on him, but he didn't look at them. They were all thinking the same thing of course: not everyone.
His newfound bravado hadn't gone unnoticed by the other children, and those who had previously avoided him out of disgust now did so more out of reverence: Moriarty was the new Powers. His straighter stance carried with it an air of arrogance which Jim had always had – he'd known he was better than everyone at the school for years – but only just revealed. If he dropped a book he only had to count to five until someone picked it up for him, as opposed to when he'd had to count to three until someone stepped on it.
He smoothed down his gelled hair with the tips of his fingers as Mr Strickland kept talking about terrible shames and coping with losses and wondered how much longer he had to listen to this. These people clung to tragedy like a life-raft: each tear was cherished, every memory was shared and nurtured, their joint grief bound them with black threads. This communal sorrow was their way of showing his grateful they were: thank God it was someone else's child, another kid who drowned. At least it wasn't them.
Now, when Jim sat alone, he surveyed his playground.
Gone were the adventure books where he slipped into someone else's skin and lived a life where he could do amazing things without leaving his bench – he'd done them already. He didn't need an endless rearranged alphabet to live because he was already alive. Carl had been his morphine and he hadn't come down from his high yet, hadn't realised that he who seeks vengeance must first dig two graves: one for his enemy, and one for himself. And Jim didn't want to be buried alive. He would have to dig himself out eventually, by committing more crimes to dull the scent of chlorine and dull the guilt of an empty seat in class. But he hadn't seen that yet, and in the days following the swimming championship, he spent break-times in a constant state of euphoria.
On the day he saw Sherlock Holmes for the first time, he was watching the football match between Years Four and Five with a smirk that would suggest to anyone watching that he wasn't joining out of superiority instead of the fact he wasn't invited. But when someone messed up a penalty shot and their whole team rounded on them like a pack of dogs, Jim turned away. He didn't feel like watching a kid getting beaten up – it wasn't one of those days. Instead he chose to watch the other children, standing in packs and playing card games. Had he really wanted to be one of them, once? But they were so… mundane. Their conversations ranged from boring classes to the weather, for God's sake. Who cared? They were never going to leave a mark. Never going to achieve anything.
He scanned the rest of his concrete kingdom wearily, a muted butterfly surrounded by moths, and spotted something out of ordinary: a stranger.
He was thin and lanky – his limbs seemed almost too long for his body. His dark brown hair was a mop, curled in a haphazard way. Despite the warmness of the day he was wearing a double-breasted black trench coat, unbuttoned. Underneath, his white fencing shirt was obviously a size too big for him, and hung long on his spidery arms, but it suited him somehow – the material was thin and flowing, like a summer garb. Though his shirt was a bad fit, his grey trousers seemed almost tailored to his legs: they clung tightly all the way down his calves, extenuating his skinny waist and scrawny ankles. Even Jim, who kept his shoes polished to a shine daily, had to admire the boy's gleaming black lace-up shoes, cleaned so much that the sun glinted off of them.
The stranger was standing on the edge of the playground, talking to Ben Russell – Carl's swimming partner. The latter boy looked uncomfortable, not meeting the other boy's eyes, and he shuffled awkwardly on the spot. He muttered something, before gesturing over to the field behind Jim's bench. The boy started to say something, before shrugging in mid-sentence and turning away, as if Ben wasn't worth the effort.
Ben jogged across the playground and, as he passed Jim's bench, Jim reached out a hand to stop him. Ben glared at him for a few seconds, clearly biting back a snappish remark, before realisation dawned on his face: it was no longer social suicide to talk to Jim anymore. Carl wouldn't laugh at you if you were seen lending him your ruler; you wouldn't need to groan extremely loudly if you got partnered with him in Science. Jim wasn't contagious anymore.
"Who's that guy over there?" Jim asked, nodding to the strange boy.
Ben shrugged and cocked his head to the side. "Call's himself Sherlock." He grinned at the unsaid response – "I know right? Stupid."
"Why's he here?" Jim expected a generic response: with a name like that, maybe he was a foreign exchange, or a new kid, or someone's embarrassing younger brother.
"Carl," Ben said the name softly, almost reverently, as if that was explanation enough. Jim's face apparently showed his confusion, because he continued: "He's here 'cause he wants to know stuff about what happened."
"What sort of stuff?"
"Dunno. Stuff."
"Why'd he ask you?" Jim frowned as Ben shrugged again, and realised how accusing he sounded. "I mean, like, why ask at all? Carl died. Nothing to it."
Ben shook his head and looked over Jim's shoulder for a second, but didn't run. He just replied with, "Why don't you ask him? He said he's gonna be here for most of the morning. Now sorry, gotta go. Football." He darted past before Jim could say anything else, and sprinted onto the field, where Jim already knew without looking there was nothing but the dodgy-looking gang in the corner who stank of nicotine in afternoon classes.
Keeping his eyes on the strange boy, Jim jumped off the bench and crossed the playground slowly. Who was this guy? What did he see in Carl's death that nobody else, not even his wisp of a mother or the paramedics, could see? How clever must he be to have spotted some tiny flaw in the otherwise perfect plan? On par with Jim? The idea terrified him, and for all his cockiness and arrogance, he wondered if he'd met his match in this awkwardly-dressed drifter.
"Y'alright?" He called from a short distance, shoving his hands into his pockets. The boy glanced over, just a flicker of his eyes, and nodded once. He didn't seem to want to do anything else, not even move forward to greet him, so Jim felt the strange need that he was so used to imposing on others, and hardly felt himself, to fill the silence. "What d'you want?" A short pause. "No offence."
"None taken." Jim was taken aback by the boy's voice – he sounded almost bored. Even those three syllables rang with lethargy, as if he was dragging the words from his mouth and throwing them into the world with colossal effort. He waited to see if the boy would offer anything else, and sure enough he did: "What's your name?"
Though Jim had no real reason to suspect this boy of anything other than harmless curiosity, he felt compelled to lie. Just in case it somehow got back to him that James Moriarty was bullied by Carl Powers, and he was questioned again. He thought for a second. "Richard." Did it sound like he was lying? Was the pause too long?
But the other boy was already on his next question, clearly indifferent to the name he'd been given, and only having asked out of politeness. "Did you know Carl Powers?"
Jim swallowed but cocked his head to one side in a shrug, a mimicry of Ben before him. "Sure." The casualness of the word sounded false even to himself, and he felt he had to keep talking so as to cover the awkwardness of his attempt to sound normal. "Everyone did."
"Was he popular?"
"Yeah. All the girls fancied him. All the guys wanted to be him." Jim was proud that he kept the resentment out of his voice, but couldn't shake the feeling that the boy was interrogating him. Why did he care so much? Should he ask? Could he, without arousing suspicion?
"Why d'you care so much?"
The boy looked momentarily surprised, before looking straight at Jim with startlingly blue eyes. He had the odd feeling that the boy was seeing more than just Jim's outward appearance, and it was incredibly unnerving. Like he was being studied, calculated, and catalogued. "The truth?" It was rhetorical, and Jim didn't need to respond. "I don't think it was an accident."
"Oh?"
"I think he was murdered." The statement should have seemed overly dramatic, almost laughable, but it was said with such earnest and matter-of-factness that it wasn't. He spoke with utter conviction, and it was terrifying.
For a few seconds, Jim couldn't speak. "Why do you think that?" He managed, at last. He even managed to raise an eyebrow in disbelief.
The other boy opened his mouth to reply, but just before he did another voice shouted from the playground gate: "Sherlock Arthur Holmes!"
Jim's first thought was Jesus Chris; that really is his name. Then he glanced over the other boy's shoulder and saw a gangly boy standing there. The other boy rolled his eyes and sighed exaggeratedly, not turning to look at the second stranger. They were polar opposites: where Sherlock was thin and wiry, the other boy was slightly plump, though not enough to warrant calling him fat. His hair was a lighter shade of brown, closer to caramel than chocolate, and his clothes were far smarter than Sherlock's: obviously some expensive boarding school. Judging by the irritation in Sherlock's face, this new arrival was his brother.
Without turning around, he addressed the other boy. "Go away Mycroft! I can get myself home."
"We are not shouting this conversation! Come over here. Now." His tone was that of someone who was used to being in charge, and Jim took an instant disliking to him. He glanced at Sherlock pity, and they caught eyes and shared a mutual look of sympathy.
"Just tell me this, Richard." Sherlock said as a parting comment, his tone echoing a little with the pride of a child who'd completed a difficult puzzle. "Have you seen Carl Powers' shoes around here anywhere?" He smiled flatly and, with that he turned away and headed for his brother, already tallying Jim up as yet another brainless school kid who couldn't help him.
Jim stared after him and wondered how many Holmes' there would be in the phone book.
