Sherlock
That nasty conversational bullet dodged, Molly is finally persuaded to bring me Steele's effects. If I can get stuck into them before Lestrade comes back he's got much less chance of stopping me going through them. She brings them and together we lay them out on the dissecting table, reconstructing the man as he was brought in. Some bloodstains on the trousers of his suit, but that's from where the broken bones jutted through the skin, nothing to worry about. The suit, though, the suit is worrying.
The suit is well-worn, and easy-clean. The only people who wear suits like this are the kind of people who shouldn't wear suits at all.
"Are you aware you're saying all this out loud?"
"Would you rather I stood here in silence, Molly?"
"What do you mean people who shouldn't wear suits?"
"Look at it. Threadbare. Repaired. Expertly, but still repaired. Worn at the knees and elbows, and stretched here in the jacket, under the arm. Covering a bulge."
"You mean a gun?"
She's quicker than I've thought until now. Maybe she's got a chance after all, hopeless Mr Holloway or no. "Yes, Molly, a gun. We might as well be looking down at combat fatigues."
She has the gun by now. Everything's in a blue plastic crate, and she peers over the edge, finding the shoulder holster to go with it. Gun's a Berretta, semi-automatic, with – yes, Molly produces a clip of parabellum rounds. An old U.S. military favourite, a good disabler and executer. I stretch out a hand and she places a passport in it.
Michael Steele of Richmond, V.A. Occupation listed as personal security.
It doesn't take an expert to look at Steele with his sidewall haircut and his scars and his permanent sneer even in death and put this all together.
I ask her to excuse me just a second, step away across the room and call Mycroft.
You see, he can be useful to me sometimes too. It's nice when it happens like this; he'll think I'm being good, doing as I'm told, feeding him the information he asked for. And I get the pleasure of seeing him do what I want him to do.
The phone rings once, if that. See, he knows I can help him now. This is what siblings are.
"Sherlock, where did you go? I was w-"
"Oh, please, don't bother with all that. Private militia. Does private militia fit the bill? The very scary people I'm not allowed to know about, the ones behind all this that aren't you, could they hire a squad of American ex-military mercenaries?"
"For heaven's sake, where are you?"
"Why? Why does that matter? I'm standing over the body of one of said mercenaries and… And I think I'm meant to be." Realization is beautiful. Realization tastes like the best kind of hit. The same feeling I had looking down from the rooftop, when the strangeness of the death made it almost right, almost worth it. Realization is golden. "I think I'm meant to be on the phone with you right now."
"Sherlock, what's the matter with you? Why are you laughing?"
"Don't you see it, Mycroft? It's all there, why don't you see it? Honestly, it's the gallery all over again. They leave everything in their wake and it's like it's invisible, don't you see? That's why it doesn't make sense, it's too strange."
But it's too late already. I can hear him giving quiet orders with his hand over the mouthpiece. Telling them to find out about the body of an American and kill the investigation. Telling them to find out about an American mercenary squad in operation. Telling them everything he's supposed to because the information was supposed to get back to him and somebody was able to see all those steps ahead, everything, all the angles, and knows exactly how all of this would happen.
It's so beautiful. I'm almost happy to have fallen for it to have seen it in action.
MI5 take the Americans out of the equation.
Darcy and Mies, in possession of the drawings, negotiate their freedom with MI5 unhindered.
Almost happy.
"Molly, quickly. This man has friends and I need to find them within about five minutes."
I say it all with speed and urgency, and she starts to tremble again. Whether its fear or excitement it makes her useless to me. "What happened? Who was on the phone?"
"Nobody, but he's about to close all of this down and this body will be gone before you can lay a scalpel to it once. Do me a favour; don't tell them about the head. And take a picture if it happens. Tell me there's a mobile in that box."
"Uh… yeah, yes, there is." She fishes it out and hands it to me. She's a good assistant. That, or I've baffled her into submission, but either way, she's effective.
It's easy. You look at the numbers, at the call logs in and out, you see who's the most popular, check the messages, then the voicemail and oh, wonderful, glorious, there's one, and the number matches all the missed calls that came in while Steele was busy being dead.
"Boss, you ain't picked up so I'm gonna take it the mick is giving you trouble. But when you're done, we got one of them and we're out at the factory."
That's it. Not the most careful message in the world, no codes, but there doesn't need to be, because it tells me absolutely nothing. Factory. Where? I start going over Steele's shoes, but there isn't time now to get properly stuck in. A factory somewhere out of the way, where Mies or Darcy could have been brought.
"Um-" Molly is starting, but I'm trying to think, so I raise a hand. "But-"
"Please, Molly, this is important."
She grits her teeth, hisses at me, "Yeah, and will this help?" She's holding out a small, handheld satnav. From his car. Brought it with him, protecting it and why? Because that little machine knows where he's been since he's been in London. And I'll bet it knows where the factory is.
With unusually good timing, Lestrade picks just this moment to walk in. Talking about coffee machines and quality and finding change and taking too long. I let him get far enough to give Molly the paper cup, then take him by the arm and start out of the room again. "Come on. You don't want to be here when the spooks land in and if you still want to have a case in the morning we have to go."
"Sorry, 'spooks'?" Molly balks.
"Yes. And Molly, dear, do give them hell. Don't let them intimidate you, they're all just overeducated coppers."
"And what am I then?" Lestrade cries, then realizes there are better questions and starts in on them. Where are we going, what do I mean about his case, and what the hell did I mean by spooks. I tell him I'll answer him in the car.
"And Molly, don't forget what I said about the head!"
Jim
I probably shouldn't be back around this part of town, y'know. Not after just barely escaping last night with a gentleman who'd just shot four people. But maybe nobody will be looking for me for just that reason.
That's the logic that landed Darcy in a hotel room with no second exit. I've clearly lost far, far too much sleep.
And this is already a strange old game I'm playing. I keep thinking of The Crystal Maze, the 'mental' games where these daft fuckers in their stupid jumpsuits would be standing over a map and following clues. Or trying to and doing it wrong while everybody shouted at them and Richard O'Brien was wilfully strange in the background. And you'd be sitting there screaming at them, pointing at the fucking thing, and they just wouldn't get it.
I have clues and I'm standing in the middle of the map. Danielle said she got out of the cab at Wardour Street and knew right away she was being followed. So she probably wouldn't have led them directly towards the hotel. Actually probably would have feinted back to try and lose them, so I've been moving east, but I'm getting too far away now.
She left the drawings with a shopgirl she knew personally. And I'm supposed to know the place because of the window display.
No, this is wrong. I'll turn back towards Wardour Street and start again.
All of this might be wrong, actually. Maybe the best I could do is go and get the two of them fresh passports. Let's face it, when Darcy gets her free, they'll already be within spitting distance of the airport.
When, by the way. I said 'when', not 'if'. He will. He was determined and ready for it. They don't stand a cat's chance in hell of surviving that. I mean it too, I'm not even worried about him. It's just it'll be a raging shame if anything happens to Darcy. He's a hell of a hitter. I already said and I've no qualm over saying again, his kind are hard to come by. Danielle too, come to think of it. And there are lots of career-ending wounds for a thief of her calibre. There's always a place on the short con circuit for her, but there's so many ways to disable her. It could be done and all.
But like I said, not going to happen.
Not a cat's chance in hell.
Speaking of which, I'm going to have to skirt hell on this next corner. Hell is two drag queens and the associated strip-hag all standing tall on platforms and dragged up high with big teased hair and Christ, shouldn't they be back in their coffins? It's eleven in the morning, fuck's sake, I think the clubs are closed, don't you? And I'm actually starting to think the one on the far left, with the suspenders showing, might actually just be a really hideous woman. They're all gathered about looking at something, sickly staring, covering their mouths. And something must develop, because the one that's definitely female, or a really, really good drag, she screams and reels like she's going to be sick, "That is fucking disgustin'!"
As I get closer I see what it is they're all gawking at, and it's not disgusting really. It's perfectly natural. It's how the world goes round. It is quite literally the most perfect illustration of natural order you could ever hope to stumble across on a street corner. It's a cat eating a mouse.
Actually, no, scratch that, it's fucking Treadstone eating a mouse.
I get the mouse off him and fling it at her strappy shoes, just to see her jump. She jumps all the way back to the kerb and clatters down into the road, ripping the backs of her stockings and her thighs, so it's all to the good. "He has to eat, love. We can't all live on coke and cum, now, can we?"
The two big crossers step up to defend her, but they're all talk. Talk, I can ignore. And it does rather cover up, to anybody who might be passing, the fact that I'm about to address a cat. "You'll be off the Whiskas for a week, mate, it's Sheba all the way if you know where your big sister went last night."
A clear plastic platform and stiletto narrowly misses him and gets me in the knee. Taking the shoe by the heel, I stand up, leaving two out of three in the gutter where they belong. I follow Treadstone when he bolts.
Round the corner, onto Broadwick Street. I've already been this way. But I must have been distracted. Too caught up to be properly looking. Now that I'm here again, it's obvious.
This is that Crystal Maze thing again. This is the bit where you didn't get the crystal and you're outside the room, and Richard O'Brien points out the solution to you, and all the good, good people in their armchairs call you all the names they can think of.
She was right about the window display. How could I bloody forget? She wrapped the fucking things around my laptop.
Purple lace underwear in the window of an Agent Provocateur. Of course she knows the staff personally; she's probably got a standing bloody order. This is her Tiffany's. Treadstone even knows where to put himself, curling in the doorway where the door can't hit him, and where he can paw contentedly at the window where a small, tasteful display of riding crops with crystal encrusted handles and glittering masks gleams just enough to catch his attention.
She's making me go in there, isn't she?
You will forgive me if I leave out the details. Suffice to say it's a bit excruciating and I'm going to kill her. Suffice to say that from a shelf full of books with titles like 69, Secrets and Confessions, an artless, sawdust-dry treatise on binomial theory is handed down to me with some pictures folded up in its pages and I take it very quickly away. Just suffice yourselves with all that and know only that we're not talking about this again. We're just not. That's just not a thing that's going to happen.
I'm going to get Treadstone out of here before he goes completely wild and get myself home before I start to look like a suspicious disappearance in the wake of last night's not-quite-suicide. And Darcy's going to phone to tell me he's on his way back to the safe house with Danielle.
And before all that, I'm going to get a coffee somewhere so my hands can stop shaking after that shop, after those women that work in it. Friends of Danielle's each and every of them, and taking me for a friend of Danielle's, and deaf to any and all attempts to explain otherwise, and all very hands-on ladies, all of them, and I have my suspicions they might have had some cruel instructions from the woman herself to be that way. I can't get in a cab like this; he'll ask me what happened. No, coffee first. There's a Pret á Manger around here somewhere…