Chapter 12 -
John sighed as he finished eating his meal that Sherlock had had delivered from Angilos the second they had gotten back to the house, while watching Sherlock pace in front of the fireplace while skimming a book on languages in his hand. Sherlock growled in annoyance and slammed the book closed.
"This symbol, I still can't place it." Sherlock glared at the wall of clues before spinning on the balls of his feet. "You had your fill?" He asked. "Good." He continued not giving John time to answer verbally. "I need you to go to the police station and ask about the journalist," He said pulling John from his seat, a surge of annoyance flew through John for a second before leaving, "his personal effects would've been impounded." Sherlock informed him as he slipped John coat onto him. "Get hold of his diary or something that will tell us his movements."
"What will you be doing?" John asked when he noticed Sherlock putting on his own coat.
"I'll go and see Van Coon's PA." Sherlock told him. "If we retrace their steps, somewhere they'll coincide." They had made it outside, Sherlock pulled John close to peck him on the lips before he turned and walked away without a word. The annoyance returned as John tried to get a taxi and three open taxis passed him by before he was finally able to get one to stop, all the while feeling as if someone was watching him.
"Scotland Yard." John told the cabby before slipping into the back, catching a woman in black recording him, however, when he tried to get a better look at her before the taxi took off, she vanished.
~Twelve~
"Flew back from Dalian Friday. Looks like he had back-to-back meetings with the sales team." Van Coon's PA read off the Van Coon's schedule.
"Can you print me up a copy?" Sherlock asked.
"Sure." The PA said before setting about having the schedule printed.
"What about the day he died? Can you tell me where he was?" Sherlock asked pointed at the empty space on the calendar that happened to the very day he needed.
"Sorry, I've got a gap." The PA told him causing Sherlock to bite back a growl. "I have all his receipts." She told him quickly, obviously having seen his annoyance, before leading him back to her desk where she showed him the box with all of Van Coon's receipt.
"What kind of boss was he, Amanda? Appreciative?" Sherlock asked, eyes roaming over her desk, taking in everything. A luxury hand cream.
"Um, no. That's not a word I'd use." She told him nervously as she pulled out every receipt for the day Van Coon had died. "The only things Eddie appreciated had a big price tag."
"Like that hand cream. He bought that for you, didn't he?" Sherlock asked as he began to go through the receipts she had laid out. Taxi Receipt for 18.50 at 10:35. "Look at this one." He handed the taxi receipt to her, and she took it nervously. "Got a taxi from home on the day he died, £18.50."
"That would get him to the office." Amanda said, confused.
"Not rush hour. Check the time." He informed her as he continued to look through the receipts looking for the one the would put him at that time for that amount. "Mid-morning. Eighteen would get him as far as..."
"The West End." Amanda informed him. "I remember him saying." A London Underground receipt.
"Underground, printed at one in Piccadilly." Sherlock told her showing her the receipt.
"So he got a Tube back to the office?" She asked. "Why would he get a taxi into town and then the Tube back?"
"Because he was delivering something heavy." Sherlock muttered. "You wouldn't lug a package up the escalator."
"Delivering?" She asked.
"To somewhere near Piccadilly Station. Dropped the package, delivered it, and then . . ." A receipt for Piazza Espresso Bar Italiano. "Stopped on his way. He got peckish."
~Twelve~
John glared at Detective Dimmok as he slowly searched through the evidence box that contained the Journalist's stuff. He was on edge, every little thing was pissing him off. The cabby's voice as he drove him to the Yard. The sunlight whenever it decided to peek around the clouds. The Scotland Yard building itself pissed John off. The scents of everyone in the building mingling together pissed John off, and even gave him a headache. The fact that everyone decided to speak loudly (not exactly yelling but not exactly using their inside voices either) pissed John off and made his headache worse.
"You're friend..." Detective Dimmok started.
"Stop right there. I am in no mood to hear someone bad mouth Sherlock. Yes, he can be annoying. Yes, he is full of himself. And yes, he's smarter than you lot. Now, can you hurry up and just give me his damn journal." John snapped out shocking the Alpha.
"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" Dimmok bit out. "The journalist's diary?" John took the diary from the Alpha and flipped through it until he found the page he needed, which also happened to be bookmarked by plane ticket for Dalian.
"I'll be borrowing this." John said before rushing out of the Yard and began to follow the Journalist's day as it was written in the diary.
~Twelve~
"So you bought your lunch from here en route to the station," Sherlock muttered as he walked from the station, passing by the restaurant, on his way to figure out where the package had been dropped off at, "but where were you headed from? Where did the taxi drop you?"
"Damn it!" A familiar voice growled out as Sherlock, who was busy looking around, bumped into them. John's scent filled his nose when he breathed it, but something was wrong, John's scent was slightly off. It wasn't wrong, just very distracting. The fact that John's scent had changed even the slightest made Sherlock want to bury his nose in John's hair and... well he didn't know. "Right, I know how into your Work you can get, but can you a least try to pay attention to your surroundings when you walk?" John snapped at him alerting Sherlock that John was pissed.
"What's wrong?" Sherlock asked.
"Nothing." John snapped out. Sherlock forced himself not to continue questioning John.
"Eddie Van Coon brought a package here the day he died. Whatever was hidden inside that case... I've managed to piece together a picture using scraps of information. Credit card bills, receipts. He flew back from China then he came here." Sherlock noticed as he continued talking the more annoyed John seemed to be getting.
"Stop talking." John snapped out causing Sherlock to snap his mouth closed. "It's that shop, over there." He said pointing across the road to a souvenir shop.
"How can you tell?" Sherlock asked confused.
"Lukis' Diary. He was here too. He wrote down the address." John told him before walking across the street.
"Oh." Sherlock said before following John into the building.
"Hello." John said, nodding to the elderly woman at the register. Sherlock's eyes ran over everything trying to find any clue to why the package would have been dropped off here.
"You want lucky cat?" The elderly woman called out to them.
"No, thanks, no." John told her, anger barely hidden in his voice catching Sherlock's attention. Why was his John so angry? Had Detective Dimmok said or done something to him?
"£10! £10!" The woman pushed and Sherlock caught John closing his eyes and breathing in deep to calm himself. "I think your wife, she will like."
"I'm not married, mated, or bonded." John snapped out as he, too, looked around. "Sherlock." Sherlock quickly made his way over to John, and wasn't able to stop himself from taking another deep sniff of John's scent. A strange sort of tingle began to form around his groin. "The label there."
"Yes, I see it." Sherlock told him softly.
"It's exactly the same as the cipher." John told him under his breath before clearing his throat. The cipher wasn't letters, it was numbers!
"Come along John, we're done here." Sherlock told him before gently taking John by the hand and leading him back out of the shop and back across the road.
"What is it?" John asked.
"It's an ancient number system, Hangzhou. These days only street traders use it. Those were numbers written on the wall at the bank and at the library. Numbers written in an ancient Chinese dialect." Sherlock explained.
"It's a 15." John said as they stopped at a vendor along the road. "What we thought was the artist's tag, it's a number 15."
"And the blindfold, that horizontal line. That was a number as well." Sherlock told him showing him a tag with the same horizontal line on it. "The Chinese number one, John."
"We found it." John said with a smile as Sherlock continued down the road. Sherlock lead them to the same restaurant that Eddie Van Coon had stopped off at and ordered John a drink.
"Two men, travel back from China, both head straight for the Lucky Cat emporium." John said sipping on his drink as Sherlock began to try to figure out what the numbers stood for, but the close quarters in which their table sat in caused John's scent to quickly surround him bringing that strange tingling sensation in around his groin to back stronger. "What did they see?"
"It's not what they saw." Sherlock muttered trying to keep himself focused on the case and not how delicious John was starting to smell. "It's what they both brought back in those suitcases."
"And you don't mean duty free." John said, from the corner of his eye, Sherlock caught three Alpha's and four Beta's eyeing his John up and down, this caused Sherlock to reach across the table and take John's hand, intertwining their fingers. A silent message that John was his.
"Think about what Sebastian told us. About Van Coon, about how he stayed afloat in the market." Sherlock said.
"Lost five million." John said nodding.
"Made it back in a week." Sherlock finished before nodding his head at the building across the street. "That's how he made such easy money."
"He was a smuggler, now why does that not surprise me?" John bit out with and eye roll.
"I reckon he would have been perfect." Sherlock muttered. "Businessman, making frequent trips to Asia. Lukis was the same, a journalist writing about China. Both of them smuggled stuff about. The Lucky Cat was their drop-off."
"Then why did they die?" John asked. "It doesn't make sense, if the both turn up at the shop and deliver the goods why would someone threaten them and kill them after the event, after they'd finished the job?"
"What if one of them was light-fingered?" Sherlock asked.
"How do you mean?" John asked.
"Stole something. Something form the hoard." Sherlock said.
"And the killer doesn't know which of them took it so he threatens them both. Right." John said. Sherlock looked out the window, ready to wait for John to finish his drink when he noticed a phone book sitting on a door step still in its package to keep it from being rained on.
"Remind me. When was the last time that it rained?" Sherlock asked before shooting from his seat, forcing John to do so too (causing John to spill his drink onto himself), and ran outside, pulling John with him. Sherlock didn't let go of John's hand until they were at the door the phone book sat at. Sherlock ran his thumb along the ruined pages from the whole in the packaging.
"It's been here since Monday." Sherlock muttered before standing up and ringing the doorbell, taking note of the name on the label: Soo Lin Yao. When no one answered Sherlock started down the alley to the back of the apartment with John following him. "No one's been in that flat for at least three days."
"Could have gone on holiday." A very annoyed John stated.
"Do you leave your windows open when you go on holiday?" Sherlock asked once they had gotten to the back of the apartment nodding towards the open window as he backed up enough to get a running leap at the ladder. He easily climbed the ladder and made his way to the open window.
"Sherlock!" John hissed at him from the alley way. Too focused on the case, Sherlock continued into the apartment, knocking into a vase, but caught it before it could hit the ground, causing it to spill a bit of the water that was in it. A fresh puddle of water on the rug alerted Sherlock that he hadn't been the first one to enter through the window that day.
"Someone else had been here." Sherlock called out to John. "Somebody else broke into the flat and knocked over the vase, just like I did." Sherlock began to search the room, checking the laundry that was in the washer. Stale, been there since Monday. John began to ring the doorbell.
"Do you think maybe you could let me in this time?" John called out to him, having realized by now that the change in John's scent was too distracting right now and the fact that he really needed to focus at the moment, Sherlock chose to ignore John. "Can you not keep doing this, please?" John growled out. Sherlock checked the milk in the fridge, it had spoiled.
"I'm not the first!" Sherlock informed him.
"What?" John asked.
"Somebody's been in here before me!" Sherlock repeated.
"What are you saying?" John asked causing Sherlock to growl in annoyance. Was John purposefully not listening to get back at him for ignoring him or was he really not able to understand him? Either way, it was annoying. Focusing his attention back on searching for clues, Sherlock noticed an imprint of a foot in the rug.
"Size eight feet. Small, but athletic." The killer had been in the house. John rang the doorbell once more as Sherlock took note of a smudge on the glass of a picture frame. "Small, strong hands. Our acrobat. Why didn't he close the window when he left..." He was still in the house. "Oh, stupid, stupid! Obvious. He's still here." Where was he hiding? Behind the changing screen? Sherlock carefully walked over to the changing screen and looked behind it only to have something thrown around his throat.
"Any time you want to include me!" John called.
"John... John!" Sherlock gasped out. Help!
"'Oh, I'm Sherlock Holmes and I always work alone because no-one else can compete with my massive intellect!'" John yelled angrily from outside. Ignoring him had definitely been a bad idea. Never ignore John. Ignoring John gets you strangled. Sherlock was starting to loose consciousness as the killer loosed his hold, put something in Sherlock's coat pocket, and left. Sherlock took a deep breath and coughed while forcing himself to get up. He checked his pocket to find the same black origami lotus flower that had been in Van Coon's mouth.
Once he had his breath again, Sherlock stumbled his way to the front door."The milk's gone off and the washing started to smell. Somebody left here in a hurry three days ago." Sherlock croaked out the second he opened the door. At hearing the state his voice was in, John's anger immediately faded only to be replaced with concern.
"Are you alright?" John asked rushing to help him stand.
"We have to find her." Sherlock told him.
"Who?" John asked.
"Soo Lin Yao." Sherlock told him with a cough.
"How?" John asked as Sherlock bent down to pick up a folded envelope.
'SooLin
Please ring me.
Tell me you're okay.
Andy'
Sherlock showed John the note before unfolding the envelope the see that it had come from the National Antiquities Museum. "We could start with this."