Chapter 2 - Something's wrong
"All the people that disappeared are usually either very intelligent or talented. It's almost as if somebody was trying to get rid of the fittest of us, "John mumbled as he was looking into one of the folders Lestrade had brought.
Sherlock made a sour face. "Well, not exactly."
"Okay, Sherlock. Enlighten me," John said and leaned back in his chair. Greg had left some time ago and they had been left alone. A loud clanging of some pots could be heard from the flat below. Mrs Hudson probably finished preparing dinner.
"I do not think that whoever does that has actually planned to kill those people," Sherlock mused. "Just given the length of the time he kept them alive after he'd kidnapped them."
"So you think he wants to ... what - torture them?"
Sherlock pondered for a second. "No, no that is not his main goal. Let's look at this case, for example: Professor of Applied Physics Phil Downson found dead in the premises of the university campus just three months after his disappearance from his office at Imperial College London. He was emaciated, he had been probably starving for some time. He bore signs of violent treatment – he had partially healed black eye, one front tooth had been knocked out and two of his lower teeth were chipped. The nails on his right leg were at some point completely torn out, but they later began to grow, so I guess that this had happened in the beginning of his time spent in captivity. There is also one thing that all the victims share - these bruises and abrasions after some handcuffs on both wrists, as well as on ankles and neck. What our killer had intended with him was certainly not just simple torture. He probably tried to blackmail him somehow ... maybe all the victims have something else in common other than just their intellect or talent. Maybe they knew something."
John scratched his head. "So we have to find some other thing they all have in common."
Sherlock just nodded silently, already lost in thought. John took a bite of his grilled cheese sandwich. His roommate has not touched his dinner yet.
When he tried to sweep some crumbs off the folder that was lying open on his lap, he stopped and blurted out: "They're all rich. Sherlock - all of these abductees had a lot of money!"
"Their accounts remain perfectly intact. Not even a pound disappeared," Sherlock replied dismissively. "No. Money - that is only a side product of his work. Our man is not interested in money. Not really."
"Well, we could use some of those sometimes ..." John muttered under his breath. Sherlock glanced at him for a moment, looking offended. John pretended not to notice.
"The cause of death is always the same - cardiac arrest. Phenobarbital was found in the victims' blood. In some US states, this substance is still used to kill prisoners who were sentenced to death. Shortly speaking, this means that-"
"You fall asleep and never wake up," Sherlock finished for him. Both were sitting in silence, when suddenly Sherlock jumped from his chair, took his mobile phone and wallet and ran out the door. He stopped on the threshold and turned to his confused friend.
"They found a new body the day before yesterday. I want to see him so I am going to the morgue." He paused and then added, somewhat unsteadily: "You're going too, right?"
"What a question!" John said with a smile quickly rising to his feet.
"Wait, what about Rosie?"
"She is with my mother. She took her right after Greg had left. "
"Lestrade is no longer here?" Sherlock asked surprised, then looked confusedly around the apartment, to which John just rolled his eyes and walked through the door.
Molly couldn't tell she was surprised when Sherlock erupted through the door of the morgue with John in tow and without greeting demanded to see the body of the deceased athlete.
"I wondered when you would show up here," Molly said, a little annoyed.
"Sure, Molly. Now the body, please!" Sherlock exclaimed eagerly.
John looked apologetically at Molly. "It really would have helped us if we knew about the body as much as possible."
Molly went to one of the freezers, opened it and pulled out the dead man. She unzipped the black bag and began talking.
"Mr Kazah was found two days ago in a gutter near the municipal park about 10 miles away from London. His left ankle had been broken shortly before his death – I've done X-rays - look," Molly paused to get her X-ray photo out of the folder. "There - you see? Comminuted fracture, which had not even had any chance to heal, the ankle is not swollen, so it had to happen literally minutes before his death. Which was incidentally caused by injection of high dose of pentobarbital into the carotid artery. The substance was also found in his blood. The injection site is clearly visible right here."
Sherlock kept walking around the body and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. When Molly paused, he stopped.
"He was obviously a supreme athlete, due to the building of his muscles and his generally trained physique."
John laughed and looked at Sherlock with disbelief. "Well, of course. Indeed, this year he won a gold medal in triathlon. It was in the newspapers and everywhere, on television ... what – are you telling me you've never heard of him?!"
Molly managed a little shaky laugh and turned her attention also to the other man, who was now looking a little taken aback.
His cell phone vibrated and that gave him a chance to escape this embarrassing situation. He pulled it out of his coat pocket, but when he looked at the display, he snorted - clearly irritated. Of course that his brother already knew everything.
"Mycroft?" John asked quietly.
"My brother never misses a thing."
"What does he say?"
"Nothing important. Let's go back to Mr Kazah," Sherlock said evasively and put the phone back into his pocket. He took a deep breath and then leaned a little closer to examine the abrasions and bruises around the death man's wrists. They seemed to have been caused by a specific type of handcuffs which shouldn't have been able to cause such wounds. Medical restraints were widely used to tie the mentally unstable patients to bed and were therefore lined with soft cloth that should have prevented such bruising.
But it seemed that his arms and legs were tightly tied and the restraints had never been taken off.
Sherlock carefully turned the man's hand to look at the inside of his wrist. Around the wrist was a dark line of bruising from the handcuffs. Sherlock noticed, that apart from these obvious wounds and bruises and the broken ankle, Mr Kazah didn't have any other marks on his body. Besides the small puncture wound on his neck, of course.
Why would anyone kill someone he'd been apparently holding for some time and with whom he had plans? Because his ankle got broken? Is this some kind of weird human trafficking? Did the captor get rid of him, because the 'goods' had been broken?
But what about other cases? All of them share the same characteristics. Some special person is kidnapped, held captive for some time, often tortured and then executed. And later the body ends up thrown away somewhere in the suburbs of London.
It was obviously some kind of a collector. Someone who liked to play with people.
"What kind of heartless monster can do this," Molly murmured. The sound of her voice snapped Sherlock back to reality.
"There must be more people involved. It is not possible for only one person to handle all this," Sherlock replied promptly. He pulled out his pocket magnifier and started studying the face of the dead man. He noticed minor bruising from a respiratory mask around his nose and mouth.
"When had Mr Kazah had his last medical examination before he was kidnapped?" he asked Molly. She immediately began rummaging through the folder and after a while she said: "About two months ago – he had an examination to measure the oxygen saturation of his blood during exercise, and it was excellent," Molly paused and turned few more pages. "There were no traces of steroids or drugs in his blood either."
"And there are steroids in his blood now?" John frowned.
"Y-yes, a lot. All kinds of drugs - most of them illegal in this country."
"Interesting," Sherlock whispered to himself.
"At least seven?" John laughed. Sherlock looked at him from the corner of his eye and grinned.
"This is at least eight, John! We haven't got so beautifully complicated case since-"
"Moriarty," John finished for him. He looked sour at the thought of that short Irishman. Well, at least he was already six feet under.
They all could feel the strained silence for a moment. Molly glanced at the watch on her left wrist and wearily rubbed her forehead.
"Sherlock, it's really late and I would like to go, you know, home."
"But of course, Molly, go and enjoy your date!" Sherlock exclaimed with his nose still buried in a file. John smiled a little and wished her luck.
"I don't even ask anymore," Molly sighed, flushing with embarrassment. Then she grabbed her things and left without another word.
Jim was sitting in his chair, sipping tea and flipping through a folder which contained the deaths of all the known victims from the Sherlock's new case.
Before he arrived to his flat in London, he had gone to his office, where he had found on his desk all materials relating to these abductions of people, which had recently sharply increased.
Yes, someone liked to kidnap and play with people. It was quite inconvenient that Jim had no idea, who was doing that. And he was really good because until now, he had completely managed to avoid his criminal network. Someone like that might be an interesting ally.
His eyes began drooping a few minutes ago. He rubbed them with his hand and took another sip of the black tea. He settled deeper into the chair and stifled another yawn.
This was overall a very interesting case and Jim was confident that Sherlock would eventually solve it. So why should he intervene in any way, if it did not concern him directly? Everybody should mind their own business – and Sebastian already knew that.
He himself had been having some trouble with his network recently - it was still new after all, even though it had already reached its original size, it was still necessary to fix some problems here and there. Unfortunately, he had to do it personally most of the time.
Therefore, most of his days consisted of traveling around London, England and throughout Europe - meeting with various clients and allies under a false identity. It would be very dangerous to fly under his real name so he used false documents when travelling. He had many aliases - such as: James Morley, James Dahmer, James Shawcross and many others. His face might still have been familiar to many people and he didn't like to show up in public unless it was necessary. Especially now - when Mycroft started snooping around his net. Another issue that worried him deeply.
He took a deep breath and turned another page.
Whoever was doing it had a talent. Always perfectly hid all traces and was placing the bodies randomly around London. The link between those kidnappings and murders, however, was quite striking. He did not understand how Lestrade couldn't have linked that sooner. The police were incredibly stupid.
The case was certainly very interesting but it wasn't his priority now to chase this freak down. He would let him do what he wanted as long as he stayed out of his business.
He closed the folder on his lap with finality and threw it on a table beside him. He took another sip of his tea but meanwhile it had gotten cold. Disgusted, he immediately put it right next to the file. Raising his arms above his head he stretched, then he pulled a cell phone from his pocket to find out what time it was. The screen showed him 2:36 in the morning and just under that he saw 28 new messages.
Stiffly - not without difficulty - he rose from his chair. He would deal with it in the morning.
He went to the bedroom to change clothes and then, finally, go to bed. He barely paid any attention to his surroundings as he was walking up the stairs. But one thing stopped him cold. He wasn't sure whether it was his sleep-deprived brain playing tricks on him, but he was convinced that the short white hair lying on the stairs right in front of his eyes did not belong to him.
He bent down and with two fingers gently lifted it to take a better look. The white hair glistened in the glow of the chandelier. He narrowed his eyes and looked around with uncertainty. The clock in the hall was quietly ticking and he could heard the humming noise of the refrigerator in the kitchen, but otherwise the entire apartment was completely silent.
He came into his bedroom, pulled a handkerchief out of a drawer, wrapped the hair in it and put it on the nightstand. Surely everything would make sense in the morning. It was probably nothing. Maybe the cleaning lady who came here once a week to clean up and water the flowers, left it here.
When he finally climbed into his bed he still felt his subconscious screaming at him that something was very wrong.