Royal Game of Ur
"Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness." ~ Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Tea in one of the only clean cups in the house was resting on a chipped saucer. A very large paper cup half-filled with hot coffee provided a modern contrast. A paper bag of Chelsea buns, croissants and Danish pastries coloured the air with a sugary scent.
Dust flew towards the window.
"So what happened?"
John coughed. "Nothing. Nothing happened" he took a sip of tea to clear his throat. "Why do you have a screwdriver with you?'
"You never know when you have to put up a lot of shelves" she dangled said screwdriver in one hand, dragged smoke from the cigarette in the other. "Something happened. Should I have had a chat with the man at the vineyard?"
"It was not the vineyard" John sighed in his seat, mildly uncomfortable, hiding it behind a currant bun like a soldier behind the barricades. "Nor was it the house" he stated quickly as she opened her mouth. "It was a mutual agreement"
Glaring vengefully at the restricted information, Milo blew a cloud of dust towards him, then turned her head casually, displaying far more intuition than was expected of her. "It was Sherlock and the cases, wasn't it?"
John glanced towards the kitchen, head rested in his palm, barely turning in his position as a bored bystander, where the man in question was in full experimentation alongside a severed foot. He was, for all intent and purpose, oblivious to the world. Mrs Hudson had greeted him, Milo had brought pastries and Sherlock was oblivious.
Yes, he was home.
He sighed and fiddled with the tea in his cup. "Maybe"
Milo tapped the cigarette to shake off the excess ash and set it between her lips again, looking at the laptop heat sink critically. "I'd think a woman kidnapped by the Triad on the first date would be more liberal with her definition of normal. It's not worse than being a cop, you know" she muttered carefully, so as to not open her lips, saying 'cop' but thinking 'criminal'.
It wasn't as if Sherlock and John had to worry about raids, or running away in the middle of the night because, suddenly, the Mafia! Awfully hard explaining, that one.
She set the component back and prepared to set the case. "There. Your laptop is clean. Finally. Let's see if the fan is still whirring" she pressed the power button and discreetly pushed it towards him for the password in an attempt to keep his privacy, even though he knew she knew the password and would be able to find out the new one if he would get ideas on changing it.
He inserted it, slowly, tapping each key with a single finger.
"What about you?" he asked.
"Dust isn't a problem for my laptop since it has no moving parts" she continued, turning it towards her, checking the temperature. "It's got some prototype chips and boards in it I want to keep cool at all cost, so it's got a cryo cooler. Better than fans" she muttered back and then looked at his face. "Oh, boyfriends?"
He nodded. "Or…girlfriends?"
"No affiliated other, sorry" she stated, still absorbed in the bars and numbers, without interest and much less ardour than she had used to describe her laptop.
John waited silently for an explanation that, he was fairly sure, would never come. He had asked as curiosity had pushed him, as had the conversation, though he vaguely felt that it had slipped away from him. She certainly seemed like the type to have a gaggle of men proposing or at least waiting, dates every day and possibly a queue or lists, and yet, she spent time with them: a man 'married to his job', cutting up feet in the kitchen and John himself, who had been shot down before even making his move.
He knew the signs, at least.
It seemed rude to point that out, however.
John shook his head. Milo was, after all, a woman. He had decided long ago that while he could certainly attempt to understand them, he would never be capable of fully doing so. Him or any other man. Women could barely understand each other, after all. What were his chances?
"Thanks for looking after Sherlock for me. Did something happen?" he changed the topic in lieu of awkward silence.
"No. He stalked me for a couple of days, but I think he got bored. There was a sale on Oxford Street" she smirked in the monitor. "Shoes. Don't tell him I noticed him or he'll sulk all day. After that, I came round to check his pulse and dust him off a bit. He's in the same condition as you left him, if you've noticed" she enumerated as if they were talking about a mechanical toy.
John hid a smile. "I don't think he knew I was gone, actually"
"I don't think so either. Caught him talking to either you or himself a couple of times. Didn't actually point out your absence. Went upstairs and had tea with Mrs Hudson. She pointed out this fabulous little pastry shop I had no idea existed. I'm thinking of buying it and have them fix me deserts. I would die both happy and almost immediately" she made a small square with her fingers, after extinguishing her cigarette. "These insanely perfect buttery croissants with champagne cream filling that clog your arteries and flood your senses with pure love. It's where I got these" she nodded towards the bag that had come filled to the brim, now half-empty.
"I never understood the instinct of miniaturizing food" he commented, sipping tea.
"They're bite-sized"
"They aren't bite-sized" he pointed at the square. "I couldn't fit all that in my mouth"
Milo pondered this. "You could grip it with only two fingers and dip it in a small tea cup. It's more manageable than a normal croissant and you can still look respectable eating one instead of taking unwieldy bites and ending up with crumbs all over"
John nodded in acknowledgement of those points.
"We have a client!" Sherlock burst into the room, sleeves rolled-up to his elbows and plastic gloves to his wrists covered in something reddish…
He immediately looked suspicious. "What were you talking about?"
"Pastries" John answered at the same time as Milo said "Women". Both gave the other a strange look.
Sherlock's brows furrowed.
If the familiarity between his most recent acquaintances – well, a friend and an acquaintance at any rate – bothered him, he refrained from expressing it. The fact that his thoughts had lately been invaded by a myriad of suppositions, hypothesis and re-evaluations meant that he was seeing pieces of them everywhere, stirring his imagination and fantasy.
He had played his encounter with Moriarty in his head over a hundred times.
What he'd done wrong, what he'd done right, the circumstances, the scale of it all and most of all, what had made such an encounter possible. But speculation and assumptions were not Sherlock's modus operandi.
First off, because he liked the process of thought and investigation almost – but not quite as much – as the revelation and secondly, because Sherlock Holmes hated being wrong. And he hated being seen being wrong. Added to that, the fact that were a lot of spectators waiting for him to be wrong and it was ensured that he never spoke without a fully rounded, tested theory.
He was thus silent on the point that was forming inside his head and returned to the original news.
"Woman, coming to see me about a case. Ship related. Could be interesting" he snapped off his gloves and bunched them up in his fist before sitting down in his customary place.
John continued to sip his tea, delighted at having his laptop back in working condition and Milo crossed her legs and waited.
It was one of those times when she felt rather uncomfortable, imagining just how many people had wanted to track her down for one reason or another, when the police could not and amused herself at the thought of sending Sherlock after her. Seeing the other side of the coin was neither illuminating nor made her see life in a different way. It was, rather, much like seeing the underside of a dead log and its parasites. So many people with so many meaningless problems, without sparing a thought towards their own doings that had slowly led them to their fate.
When the doorbell rang, Mrs Hudson opened the door, downstairs, knowing that neither of them would do so.
The figure that came up the stairs and into the flat was what Milo could call a self-made woman, proud, confident and very sure that her words had some weight. Her short hair was of a dark sort of ginger – it was impossible to get it out of a bottle – and her eyes of startling blue matched her blouse. She was plump, but also the type who would have looked far sharper and more vicious thin. On her, the added weight made her look youthful. The jewellery was not so much as elegant as classical and large, giving off some wealth, but not enough.
Milo smiled when she noted that the shoes were flat and very comfortable. In her bag – Gucci knock-off – there were visible flyers of pleasure cruise offers.
"My name is Matilda Briggs, Mr Holmes. And I have a case for you"
In retrospect, Milo had considered, things could start with worse.
There was something cold in the woman, and a small feeling that she had another reason for wanting this resolved. Something untouchable like a fugitive shadow, a breeze of a second, a nuance in the voice or gaze, a word maybe…but which one? She glanced out the window at her, walking down the street with manly, wide steps and crushed her cigarette into the mug that had remained as 'her ashtray' for the duration of her visits.
It was at the wharf, however, that she realized how complicated things could become in the presence of one of the Holmes brothers. It's something about the Holmes family, she thought, they drink a different sort of water than we do. The thought of a mother and a father inspired terror. Milo would have rather believe that both of them were hatched rather than spend her time thinking on the man's family tree, an entire clan of rigid thinkers with enough of an ego to anchor Britain in its place, unwanted yet unequalled.
She'd trapped her hair in a simple ponytail knotted from inch to inch in anticipation of the wind that might tangle it ever further. It resulted in twenty knots and the vague look of a thick ivory chain. She passed her hand over it, evening the strands carefully, for lack of anything better to do with her hands.
"So, no mention whatsoever?" John had asked, as they climbed onto the ship, Sherlock doing his routine check, staring quite carefully at the door and the floor by it.
"If you would be so kind"
"Not even a vague description or just mention…?"
"I'm not fond of audiences, John. Save it for him" she nodded towards the detective and stuffed her hands in her pockets, opting to gaze at the moored ship onto which they were on.
The entire discussion of The Blog up to that point had been resumed to a simple request of never being mentioned either by name, description or career for more than just a few reasons and seeing as John had avoided such things even before – he had meant to ask, but it never came up – he was fine with it, even if he had been curious.
Despite his ill luck with Sarah, with whom he'd broke up amiably enough, he was sure that his life was still at its most interesting.
Sherlock was never dull and while Milo provided a small amount of sanity, she too had more than a few quirks and mysteries of her own. It had the makings of a novel or at least a small book of stories and he disliked not being able to write it with added detail, which he couldn't have elaborated on either way. There was far too much to censor due to the police files alone and as long as the trials were still in session he had no right of opinion. But still.
He didn't consider himself to be the next Hemingway but he had found he enjoyed writing something others would read and marvel at. It had given him a source of pride and excitement, the same excitement of those who visited regularly. The Scotland Yard read them because they knew the cases and liked the account of their work as well as an insider's view on their brilliant consultant and those outside of the police force envied the adventure.
After all, the events were not commonplace for all.
He looked at all the cruise ships, all expensive looking and cared for, the type with a bigger cost than even Sherlock might get after one of his big cases, each with a different name carefully written on the side. He presented the delicate middle between Milo's bored – almost annoyed – expression and Sherlock's fretting interest.
"Where would you say would the ship was taken to, according to the fuel missing?" he asked the employee who was showing them around.
The boy stopped and pondered this for a moment. "If it went straight ahead, with no stops, I'd say to Gravesend and back"
There were scuff marks of new shoes, dirt and the small lines of large amounts of water that hadn't been cleaned and had simply dried.
The door was opened with a set of keys and Sherlock had barged in, carefully examining the salon and towards the owner cabin, staring at the commonly used buttons and items around the room. The same scuff marks were present on the floor and on the console as if the one driving had placed his feet up.
A low whistle and Milo peeking her small head inside. "How many of these do you have?"
"Three. They're a recent addition" the boy answered quickly, eyes not straying off the woman whose leather jacket had made the light blouse underneath to expose a small slice of midriff. There were many women who exposed it all in the summer or at a bar and yet he stared at this one.
"It can take up to twenty, thirty people?" she asked.
"You know ships?" he asked surprised.
Milo shrugged in a non-committal fashion, exposing more of her transparent midriff and toying with her fingers inside her pockets. Her knowledge or lack of it remained trapped under her silence.
The boy remained with his eyes affixed to her until he noted that he was also being stared at, all three expecting something out of him. His cheeks flushed lightly.
"I'll leave you to it" he bowed out, the sound of his shoes clicking against the fake wooden floor.
"Right, what's there to see here?" John asked, looking back at the wheel. Sherlock's eyes were cloudy in thought.
Milo grinned at him. "You're thinking what I'm thinking"
"Wait, what?" John asked.
Sherlock ignored him. "It is the same type of ship"
"And they're second hand bought, haven't had the whole logo or name inscribed yet either, but have been repainted recently"
"I'm sorry, what's this about?" John tried again.
"Do you remember the Pascoe Robbery last year?" Milo asked, as they exited the ship. A lazy smile was set upon her lips, a relaxed reaction to Sherlock's eyes which seemed to hold a blue flame.
"No…?"
"No?!" Sherlock asked, loudly, consternated that such an event had passed him by.
"It wasn't that huge, Sherlock" Milo gently admonished. "But it did span over a few months, so you must have seen something"
John was going to gently remind them that while they were reading the papers in London, he was in Afghanistan but Sherlock had begun explaining.
"Henry Pascoe was an employee at London City Bank. Then one day he robbed the bank of two million pounds and engaged in a pursuit with the police"
"It was amateurish and far too upfront" Milo continued. "The police immediately realized that it was an inside job and who had done it. It wasn't hard. Pascoe owned a yacht and led them on a chase. He was apprehended somewhere between Dartford and Grays. As expected, the money was not on him or inside the yacht"
"Huh, so what happened to him?" John asked.
"Dead" Sherlock answered. "He was sentenced by the judge-"
"A rotting, hateful worm of a man" Milo completed.
"-to fifteen years. He died in prison. Stabbed three months into his term. There was no official version as to why"
"Of course there wasn't. Want to know why?" Milo grinned with untold glee, facing them and walking backwards. "People talk" she winked and set into the story. "Okay, Pascoe had worked with the bank for over twenty years. Wife gets cancer and needs treatment but he needs much more than he makes or than his insurance could cover. So he wants to make a loan. Only, it's not granted. The bank he had been faithful to for so long decide that it's not a worthy investment" she spat the words with a rare touch of hatred in her voice. "She was already in a terminal stage when he needed more funds, after all. So, Pascoe borrows from an outside source"
John frowned, anticipating her words.
"Exactly. There are like five or so loan sharks and a couple of small branches of the mafia he could have addressed. No one was willing to comment on that further and for good reason. It was still speculation and they were all people you didn't dare borrow a pin from. Anyway he needed cash and fast and he'd gotten it. His wife dies. He stays with the debt, broken heart and so on and so forth, only his performance suffers. He gets fired. At this point, I imagine that threats escalated from broken fingers to bullets. So he robs the bank he worked at. Now rumours are that he never said where the money was stashed and that when the person he'd borrowed from, initially, came to him in prison to make him tell, Pascoe refused to share. So-"
"So he was killed" Sherlock pondered.
"Yep" she nodded with a smile. "The money is still at large. Two million, never recovered and the reward is still in place. Now, there is talk that the reason Pascoe never shared the location of his cash with the guy who ordered the hit was that he didn't have it anymore. He might have panicked and tossed it overboard. Seeing as the police would have needed evidence of that, it was never searched for"
"Alright, but what does that have to do with borrowed ships…?" John asked again. The details of the crime had begun to feel unnerving.
"It's the same type of ship, sailed without stop to Gravesend and back. With stops-"
"It could have been taken right between Dartford and Grays" she completed.
Both of them looked quite pleased with themselves. John shook his head. Asking them for information was like bribing children with candy.
"Alright" he agreed. "So now what?"
They shared a look that was nothing even remotely related to friendship, companionship or trust. They were trying to gauge out each other's thoughts.
"I don't know" Milo admitted first with a light shrug. "Best thing I can do is set up surveillance in here in case there is some young dare doer who is trying to find the money"
Sherlock didn't answer. His eyes strayed to the other ships in the wharf, and from the cut of his jaw, he thought of a plan.
"Sir?"
"What happened?"
"The woman went to a private detective. Sherlock Holmes"
"Hm. Sherlock Holmes. There's a name. And?"
"He was at the wharf, sir. Looking at the ships. Doubt he found anything. And…one more thing"
"Yes?"
"Snake Eyes was with him"
There was a grin like a hyena's, scavenger waiting for a corpse. "Well well, Snake Eyes and Sherlock Holmes on the same case. That's bound to give someone an ulcer"
"Do you want me to-"
"No. We'll continue as is. This might be useful"
He was fairly sure it would be.
