Urgency, Deception, Unease, Danger
Urgency.
"Lestrade!" Sherlock yelled over the phone to be heard above the traffic as he and John ran down North Audley Street. "Do you have what I asked for?"
"Sherlock," Lestrade's voice was faint against the din of car horns and human voices complaining about how many roads the police had closed off. "I've compiled what I can – it's a mess here – it's just… too many cooks."
"I don't need to know that, Lestrade," Sherlock snapped. "The doors – what did the hotel managers say about the damned doors?"
"Donovan spoke to hotel security. Dimmock talked to Chinese embassy security and a PADP officer who'd checked the room. Everyone says the locks are mechanical, not automatic. They had to have been rigged to be secured on command like that."
"Who had the opportunity to do that?" Sherlock demanded, as John grabbed the back of his coat and tugged him out of the way of a motorcycle weaving through the line of cars. "Staff and security must have been in and out of the dining room all evening – how was it that both doors were shut just when the hostage takers wanted them locked?"
"Seems that when Mycroft went back in with two PADP officers and two of the ambassador's team, security outside were tasked with preventing guests and staff from returning to the dining room. Whoever happened to leave the room then could do so, but no one was let back in. So in fact, both doors were closed when Hulme sprang at the ambassador. Her accomplices must have triggered whatever it was that locked them. Hotel managers couldn't open the doors from outside with their keys, then everyone was evacuated in view of the bomb and poison threats."
"Any idea about the mechanism?"
"When PADP scanned for electronic, explosive and digital devices at 1pm, the room was clean," Lestrade said. "Embassy security says the same. But one embassy officer and one banquet manager have admitted that after the room was handed over to embassy security, at about 3pm, the security chief claimed something in the locks was setting off his device detectors. He fiddled with them, then pronounced them clean. He wouldn't have had time to overhaul them, but it seems those old hook bolts are long and large, and the strikers and lock plates have deep holes. He could have slipped tiny squib-like charges into the gaps and triggered them later to throw the bolts into the plates and jam the locks."
"The Chinese embassy security chief tampered with the doors? What's his motive?"
"I can't hear you – what did you say?" Lestrade asked. "Where are you, anyway?"
"North Audley Street," Sherlock said. "A cabbie we flagged down in Baker Street said traffic was backed up almost to Portman Square, so we're on foot. It's only a little over a mile to Berkeley Street."
"I'll tell my teams to expect you at the Berkeley Square end of the cordon," Lestrade replied.
"Anthea's there, she'll get us through," Sherlock told him. "What about my other questions? We know the dining room has no windows. So did anyone touch the ventilation shafts or access the area above the false ceilings? Was anything unexpected brought in today?"
"Let me get to a quieter spot," Lestrade muttered. "Okay… one of our vans is over here…"
Sherlock heard a muffled exchange of conversation, then a vehicle door slamming shut, and Lestrade's end of the line became quieter.
"Sorry, Sherlock… yeah, about that – it's not looking good for the embassy security chief – name of Huang Mingyi. Even his own guys admit that he personally waved through a load of floral arrangements today, which was puzzling, cos the hotel had already set out the flowers approved earlier. Huang, however, claimed these were for… erm… fengshui reasons? Seems they were arranged by Bloomin' Garden in Leicester Square – we're trying to contact them," Sherlock could hear the rapid flipping of paper as Lestrade checked his notebook. "As for the ventilation shafts and false-ceiling boards, after PADP checked these before noon, CCTV footage shows no one entering rooms with access to these areas."
"Still, we can't discount the possibility that Huang could have planted toxic substances above the ceiling or in the ventilation system after the room was handed over to the embassy team. Cameras don't cover every angle."
"We can't discount it, but it's unlikely. That dining room has no ready access points through the decorative ceiling," Lestrade said. "The flower arrangements are a more probable Trojan horse – but we don't know yet if there are toxins, or if Cathy Hulme is lying. It's just that at the start, we thought she had to be telling porkies about having a 'friend' ready to pump chemicals into the room, since our inspection cameras showed nothing in place to enable that, then we learnt about Huang, who's disappeared. So honestly, Sherlock, I'm not sure what to think now."
"I can tell you she's lying about planting explosives around the hotel," Sherlock grunted as John tugged him out of a cyclist's path. "It looked so by-the-way in her miserable, misspelt projection show, it's a bluff. Maybe Huang had tiny squibs, but there's no way he promised her large bombs everywhere."
"Our bomb disposal teams are inching inwards, and they've found nothing yet, so you could be right."
"What about the employment agency owner and her boyfriend?" Sherlock asked.
"Penny Barr and Steve Rowe – yes, DI Hopkins' team is questioning them," Lestrade said. "The Chinese embassy did ask the hotel to use Nifty Response's staff for this dinner. The banquet manager was told it was for security reasons. Barr, however, has confessed that she accepted a bribe from a Chinese embassy official to include Hulme and Samuels among the staff sent to the hotel. Hulme was on their books, but Samuels wasn't. The official told Barr that Hulme would use a different name, and there'd be no security-clearance problem with Samuels, since it was a request from the embassy."
"We're almost at Berkeley Square," Sherlock said. "Meet you where Anthea is – look for the Bentley limo. Where are you?"
"The Piccadilly end of Stratton Street. I'll go over in a few minutes if I can."
Sherlock and John raced on, dodging vehicles and people, until they reached the security cordon, where Anthea's impressive clearance levels got them through. Lestrade trotted towards them from the other end, and all three piled into the rear passenger compartment after Anthea and shut the doors.
"All right, the next thing I have to say is that that woman is not Carter's fiancee," Sherlock insisted fiercely to Lestrade and Anthea, as if there had been no interruptions to his phone conversations with them. "I don't care what CCTV showed of her message. This whole picture is wrong. Why haven't you found out about that side of things yet, or have you just failed to update me?"
"Our teams have pretty much arrived at the same conclusion," Lestrade replied softly from the rear-facing seat beside John's, diagonally across from Sherlock. Like Sherlock and John, he was panting from his run, but his voice was steady, and his hands hovered a few inches above his thighs, palms down in a calming gesture. "But no one knows what's really going on yet. We're analysing everything we have, Sherlock, so help us look at it too."
"Those personal videos uploaded from the dining room after the screeching sound was cut off – the way Hulme speaks, the way she looks, the way she spells! – and Carter with his snobbish lifestyle and glamorous women… Hulme's not his type at all. There's no way they'd have been engaged," Sherlock growled.
"We're checking all that," Anthea said firmly. "The most important tasks for you now are to help us puzzle out whether Hulme and company are armed with toxins, what they may be, and if you're sure they haven't placed explosives around the hotel. DI Lestrade, I've given MI6 the information you gave me about Huang Mingyi. We hope to get something on him soon."
Sherlock saw that Lestrade and Anthea had noticed his agitation, and were settling him and corralling his runaway thoughts in businesslike fashion.
"We've speed-combed through footage from before, during and after the hotel was security-swept in preparation for the event," Anthea added. "Nothing points to major explosive devices being set up. But it's not possible to know what went on in every room. So we need you to look at it from another angle while we keep working on the rest. Remember what you and I discussed on the phone an hour ago. Remember what we're here to do."
"The picture I'm getting from the data you're both giving me is that Huang Mingyi facilitated what Hulme needed at the hotel, but left the details to her," Sherlock said. "What's happened in that dining room smacks of unpredictable amateurism – which makes it dangerous precisely because it's amateurish and unpredictable. Except for someone telling Hulme where the bodyguard's revolver was strapped and the doors locking like that, I detect no other governing hand in the footage Anthea sent me. It's a bloody mess, and Hulme is winging it even if she doesn't know it, because she's acting as if she thinks she's in charge. Someone instigated her to do this, let her plan it so she would believe she was in command, helped her put things in place, then abandoned her to it. Has anyone found Huang yet?"
"We're searching," Anthea said. "His colleagues are looking for him too. The ones I've spoken to genuinely do not seem to know what he's been up to."
Sherlock looked intently at Anthea, Lestrade and John in turn before he came to a decision and gestured for the reports Anthea had brought from Mycroft's office, muttering tersely: "Give me those."
He sped through the details Mycroft's team had compiled about the men Cathy Hulme had met this past week, starting from the day after Carter's body was identified by his mother. He wasn't interested in the reports Mycroft had read earlier. His brother and Anthea would have picked up everything important there, which Anthea had summarised over the phone. What Sherlock had demanded the moment he'd called her after receiving her message about Mycroft being in trouble was the nitty-gritty MI5 had gathered over months about the four far-right extremist sympathisers, long before Hulme came onto the scene. He wanted to see what these men were about, and what she went to them for.
He scanned each sheet and read files on tablet that they hadn't had time to print. They covered every job, hobby, associate and leaning these men were known to have. Mycroft was better at this sort of thing – identifying patterns in a mess of facts and figures – whereas Sherlock was more gifted at pouncing on peculiar details and extrapolating from there. But he had to think like Mycroft now.
Computer-like, he analysed, discarded, inferred, compared and rearranged the facts: one was on the dole, one a security guard, one a dog trainer, one a second-hand car salesman… all four football fans, minor thuggish behaviour at Arsenal and Spurs matches… insignificant… two were dog lovers, one kept bulldogs, the other a boxer, they'd recently dated veterinary clinic receptionists… maybe, keep in view… two previously worked in supermarkets, one at a deli, one at a grocer's… nothing there… one's parents were deceased, another's mother was chronically ill, two had retired dads with mums working part-time, one in a pub, one in a betting shop… no… siblings ran the gamut from an engineer to a supermarket cashier to a bartender to two unemployed individuals to a restaurant worker to one in prison for theft and three still in secondary school… maybe, set aside… close friends included janitors, vet clinic techs, delivery drivers, bartenders, a private-clinic nurse, a store manager, a security guard, a department store salesperson, a cook… maybe, keep in view… wives and girlfriends came and went, current ones were an ice cream parlour worker, a high-street fashion-store salesperson, one on the dole and, of course, the one Anthea said ran the agency Hulme worked for… surveillance reports said nothing of a large size appeared to have been exchanged between Hulme and the men – no one had hauled cases back and forth… something had been bought by Hulme, though – information, or contacts, or small items she could slip into the large, slouchy bag she carried…
Lestrade's phone rang. "Donovan, what have you got on Hulme and Carter? Right… mm-hmm… so they weren't… okay… yes… got it. Thanks. Call me again if you learn anything more." He relayed the information Donovan had obtained: "No one can verify that Carter and Hulme were ever engaged, although they were childhood friends growing up in council housing in Hounslow. Nellie Samuels is Carter's mother. She's been fighting what looks like a losing battle against cancer."
"Told you they weren't engaged," Sherlock grumbled, reading the tablet files.
"After Carter's death, we looked into his background. No security concerns with his mother, who identified and claimed his body," Lestrade explained. "We know Carter made something of himself with his charm and intelligence, did well in school, learnt how to dress and speak and carry himself well to leave his council-housing beginnings behind him. But he wanted more money, fast, so he preyed on lonely women. He spent a lot of it on his mother's health – her breast cancer had spread, and though she responds well to treatment each time, it keeps reappearing elsewhere. It's in her kidneys and lungs now, so she may think she hasn't much time left. Carter paid for private treatments after he got upset with how long she had to wait on the NHS. As for Hulme, she didn't come up in our checks into his background. But Donovan's just spoken to family and friends of Samuels, and they say she'd been unhappy about her son running around here and abroad with older women, and his obsession with his appearance. She complained repeatedly to relatives about Henry getting Botox injections, saying it was ridiculous at his age. And she'd turned to Hulme months ago as an old friend of Henry's. We think she had a deluded hope of drawing her son away from the other women and back to a simple girl from his childhood."
"Looks like both Nellie Samuels and Cathy Hulme are totally delusional, if they think Nellie's approval of Cathy makes her Henry's fiancée," John observed, shaking his head as he looked through the printouts Sherlock was done with.
"In some Chinese communities, posthumous engagements and weddings are carried out so the deceased won't have to remain unmarried in the afterlife," Sherlock mumbled inattentively, still focusing on the documents.
"Maybe that was among the details Huang Mingyi used to bait Hulme and Samuels into doing what they've done," John noted. "The two women seem highly suggestible, while Huang could very well be highly manipulative. If a genius like Eurus could control extremely intelligent people, why can't a person with above-average manipulativeness convince weak-minded people to do as he suggests?"
"Where would Huang have met them?" Sherlock wondered. "Surveillance hasn't seen Hulme with anyone from the Chinese embassy, so maybe he approached Samuels? No, Samuels isn't running the show… he probably approached Hulme, or Hulme and Samuels together… it would have been before Hulme was being monitored, which means… right after Carter died…"
"The morgue," John concluded. "I'll call Molly. She wasn't on duty that day – she was helping Mrs Hudson watch Rosie for us. But she'd know whom to ask."
On speakerphone, Molly confirmed that the Home Office pathologist who'd performed Carter's autopsy was Dr Ramachandran. "But John, you said you wanted to know about the family identifying his body – well, it was the next day, when I was back. Dr Rama was still there, and he and Anita – his assistant – were handling the family fine, so I didn't step in. There was an older woman Anita later said was Carter's mother, looking shell-shocked, and a younger woman who was extremely upset – Anita said she was Carter's friend or girlfriend. When I went for a late lunch that same day at Beppe's with Jilly from Admin, I saw the two women again, in a car along Giltspur Street, with a man who looked East Asian."
"Just a moment, Molly," John said. "Anthea, do we have a picture of Huang?"
"Sending it," Anthea stated briskly. "Dr Hooper, this is Mycroft Holmes' assistant speaking. I've sent you a photo. Please see if it's the same man you saw with Carter's mother and friend."
Molly took a minute to view the picture on her phone before saying uncertainly: "It could be, but the man had sunglasses on, so I can't be sure. Nothing about the picture, however, rules out the possibility that it's the same person."
"Thanks, Molly," Sherlock said.
"You're there, Sherlock?" Molly asked, sounding surprised, as it was the first time she'd heard his voice in this conversation. "Oh, of course – if John's there, you'd be too, wouldn't you?"
"Molly, I'll give you the details when this is over, okay?" Sherlock said, patiently. "In the meantime, please ask Dr Ramachandran for anything he can tell you about his conversation with Carter's mother and friend, and text John, me or Anthea."
"I think Dr Rama's taking the late shift tonight. I'll try to catch him before he buries himself in his first chest cavity… not literally… well, you know what I mean. Message you later."
Once they ended the call, Sherlock asked: "What does Huang Mingyi want? What the devil has he to do with this? Does he just hate his own mission chief?"
"MI6 has something," Anthea murmured, scrolling through a new e-mail. "Huang is very possibly the same Huang Mingyi who was a child when his father was prosecuted in China in 2000 for corruption, in the crackdown that also snared Zhu Zheng's father. They have very little because of the secrecy surrounding these matters, but they suspect that Zhu Zheng wasn't implicated in the crackdown because he agreed to expose his own father and others. If Huang's father was taken down because Zhu Zheng told all to the enemies of those who were eventually executed, then once Huang realised Zhu Zheng had been arrested in Britain for killing Carter, he might have seen it as a chance to get back at Zhu. As chief of security of the Chinese embassy here, Huang would definitely have been among the first to know about Zhu's arrest."
"By instigating the wannabe fiancée of the man Zhu killed to hold the Chinese ambassador hostage? How does that work?" Lestrade asked doubtfully.
"Huang abandoned Hulme to her own devices after facilitating her needs on site…" Sherlock mumbled, thinking aloud.
"He never cared exactly what Hulme was going to do in that dining room…" John murmured, catching Sherlock's line of thought.
"… because all he needed was for her to provide a massive public distraction… and an excuse," Sherlock realised.
"An excuse?" Anthea echoed, tensing. "Huang wanted to get at Zhu, so he engineered this as a pretext for urgently visiting Zhu in prison, without his colleagues. He could tell prison officials he needed to see Zhu at once to find out if he knew the hostage-takers, and…"
"Wandsworth Prison," Lestrade muttered, getting on his phone. "That's where Zhu's on remand. I hate to say this, but though it's improved of late, Wandsworth hasn't had the best reputation for screening visitors – lots of people have smuggled drugs in. What's worse is, they tend to be less particular with checks on embassy officials and legal counsel. Official and legal visits are also in private rooms, or at least a reasonable distance from everyone else, for privacy. Hell, anything could happen."
"I don't care what happens to those bloody men, I care what's happening in that dining room!" Sherlock snapped.
"I'll make this call outside. I need to talk to Donovan and Dimmock, anyway," Lestrade said calmly, opening the car door and getting out. "I'll be back, all right, Sherlock? If we can prevent one more murder, whoever it is, we have to try."
Sherlock opened his mouth again to snap at Lestrade, but the DI shut the door, and Anthea closed a strong hand over Sherlock's wrist to literally drag his attention back to what she needed him to do.
"Sherlock," she said, eyes stern, beautiful face grim. "I know you're agitated, but I need you to go back to the details about the men Hulme met, because I think we both suspect she was buying the toxin from them. So get cracking. Tell me what she may have bought, and how likely it is to be fatal, so we can decide if we should break into the dining room, or if it's safer to talk her down. The revolver she's holding to the ambassador's head is one thing, but it's a known factor. The toxin she claims to have is what we really need to know about now."
Sherlock glared, but she was right. Anthea was bloody right. He needed to refocus. Back to the details… the veterinary clinics, the security guard, the private clinic nurse… and, and… most crucially, Carter's mother's complaints about her son getting Botox injections, which Sherlock intuitively knew would have put the idea of "nice toxins" into Hulme's head…
"Botulinum toxin," he stated, as it came together in his mind.
"What?" John asked. "As in…?"
"Veterinarians do use Botox, don't they?" Sherlock asked him.
"I don't know… wait… yes!" John exclaimed. "A vet I knew a few years ago mentioned she'd Botoxed dogs who were suffering from facial muscle problems that affected their eyelids."
Sherlock sped over the intel. A close friend of Doug Andrews was a lab tech at a Feltham veterinary clinic, probably the one to check the stock each day; Richard Hardie was a security guard for a Spitalfields building complex which housed aesthetic clinics – if one had a doctor on holiday, it might be closed, with no one checking on the medical stock; Neil Ford was on-again, off-again with a veterinary clinic receptionist who might have been persuaded to give him a set of keys; Steve Rowe, boyfriend of the woman who ran the Nifty Response agency, had a good friend who was a nurse in a private aesthetic clinic in Soho. And he had a brother who worked for a restaurant in Fulham called Jade Garden – sounded like a Chinese restaurant – possible connection to Huang? Maybe Huang had gone to Rowe before for recreational drugs or unregistered weapons, and recommended him to Hulme as a starting point for obtaining stolen goods? Rowe and the other men would have been the ones to put into Hulme's head the xenophobic language she used. As for how Hulme, with her odd jobs, could afford to pay them to steal for her, Samuels must have supplied the cash. Carter had cared for his mother; he would have given her money in addition to financing her medical treatments with his dishonest earnings. If Samuels thought she was as good as dead from cancer, and devastated by her son's death, she would have handed any amount of money to the girl she'd hoped her son would marry, for even a remote chance at revenge.
"Anthea," Sherlock said. "Have you already rounded up the other three men? Good. Have your interrogators tell them we know what they've stolen." He gave her what he'd deduced from the data, then added: "Ask each man how much Botox he sold to Hulme, and I'll tell you how dangerous it's likely to be. Hulme is lying about having a friend outside to disperse the toxins – she may have been thinking of Huang, but he's not waiting on her orders. The Botox is in the room with her."
"Right," Anthea said, and started making calls and sending messages.
"Vials of Botox actually don't have that much botulinum toxin in them," John commented.
"I know," Sherlock said. "Only about 0.73 nanograms in a 100-unit vial of crystallised Botox. To kill via inhalation, as Hulme has threatened, it needs about 2 nanograms per kilogram of body weight. That adds up to a ridiculous 200-plus 100U vials of Botox just to kill one person weighing 70 kilograms. Hulme can't have got the men, in so little time, to steal some 11,000 vials unnoticed, which is what she'd require to kill the thirty-nine guests, ten staff and nine security personnel in that room."
"Which means there's hope that what she has isn't as lethal as she thinks it is," John said optimistically.
"Possibly," Sherlock agreed. "But we can't assume the toxin will be evenly distributed through the room. If the vials are hidden in those large vases CCTV showed, and she plans to smash the vases along with the vials, some people may be disproportionately exposed to it. So even if it doesn't seriously harm everyone, I can't guarantee it won't kill a few."
"That means we still can't charge in there and shoot her and Samuels."
"Maybe we should, if we can," Sherlock growled.
"But you know, it sounds like those women are suggestible people being used by Huang," John pointed out. "It would be good to avoid killing them."
"If they hurt Mycroft, they'll wish they were dead," Sherlock stated bluntly, his tightly suppressed feelings breaking loose after he'd forced them down while working on the puzzle, trying not to panic, for Mycroft's sake.
"Sherlock, I know you're worried…"
"I swear, if they hurt Mycroft, I'll kill them," he hissed.
"They're focusing on the Chinese ambassador."
"Mycroft will prioritise Ambassador Luo's safety over his own. If there's any sign that the ambassador is about to be shot or poisoned, he will put himself between him and the bullet or the poison," Sherlock growled.
"But Mycroft is pretty cunning," John tried to reassure him.
"John, when he wants to personally protect someone, his cunning evaporates," Sherlock reminded the doctor. "At Sherrinford, he was trying to protect me, and you saw how absurdly flustered he was. He became calm only when he decided to die for us. If he's protecting the ambassador, he won't be thinking of his own safety at all."
Deception. This woman was not Henry Carter's fiancée. From what Mycroft knew, Carter had been an avaricious man described variously as "posh-sounding", "snooty" and "charming", seeking a picture-perfect lifestyle far from his humble beginnings. Such a man would not have asked such a woman to be his wife. Perhaps she had been dear to him in his past, but he had surely not planned for her to be in his future. She was no social stepping stone, the antithesis of posh-sounding and picture-perfect.
As for the older woman, implied to be Carter's mother, Mycroft had noted earlier in the evening that she seemed frail, but unremarkable. She had displayed no nervousness, maybe because she cared nothing about what would happen to her tonight. Not visibly sick – between bouts of illness, perhaps. He needed a closer look, but the skin above her collar hinted at the telltale marks of burns from a radiation treatment. Cancer.
Hulme, at the beginning, had carelessly declared that everyone could go ahead and film all they liked, put it up on Youtube and tell everybody justice needed to be done. But people had frantically rung their loved ones and the police, others had tried reasoning with her, and the cacophony and chaos increasingly grated on her. Fifteen minutes later, she had tightened her grip on Ambassador Luo and yelled at everyone to keep quiet, turn their phones off and drop all of them on the table closest to where she was ("All of 'em, mind you, or I'll shoot 'im and lots of you after!"), the same table on which she'd already ordered the armed security personnel to leave their firearms.
Mycroft had sent one final update to Anthea, then he'd swiftly extracted his SIM card and memory cards and slipped the tiny objects inside the hem of his jacket through gaps deliberately left in the stitching. Although Hulme and her older accomplice looked incapable of cracking his phone code, it was standard procedure that if he was in another's power, he should disable any gadgets on which he had sensitive information. In an extreme situation with a different type of person in control, he would have immediately destroyed the cards.
This woman, however, only thought she knew what she was doing. Her body language told all to Mycroft. Someone had put ideas into her head and left her to it, and it was fine until she realised she was on her own, with only one frail partner. Unfortunately, this made her more dangerous than an intelligent or seasoned criminal; her atypical behaviour might be illogical.
An hour in, she had grown restless and was agitated by the swivelling CCTV cameras in two corners of the room. She had ordered Chris, the PADP officer who was Luke's partner this evening, to climb onto a chair and tie napkins over the cameras. She then sat on the floor at the end of the room away from where she'd ordered everyone else to. She had the ambassador seated in front of her, the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver trained on him – she'd known enough to release the safety lever earlier, and Mycroft wondered who had taught her about this firearm. The table holding the phones and the Glocks stood between Hulme and the ambassador, and the rest of the room.
A further half hour later, she became angered by the ringtones and buzzing of phones whose owners had forgotten to turn them off before leaving them on the table, and she told Carter's mother to shut them down. She also asked Carter's mother to pick up one of the PADP officers' pistols from the table and train it on the guests and staff to shut them all up, because the sound of their voices was annoying her.
Yet another half hour from that point, and Hulme was fretting, asking Ambassador Luo angrily: "Why aren't you hurrying 'em to bring the pig 'ere so I can shoot 'im?"
"Madam," said Luo Qifan calmly. "You've hardly allowed me to make any phone calls, have you?"
Steady voice, no anger or panic. Mycroft got along well with Luo Qifan for many reasons, not least of which was that he was equal to any situation, and often able to inject light humour even into dire problems. They were close in age, and saw eye-to-eye surprisingly often even if they had to sit on opposite ends of the bargaining table when their respective countries did not agree.
"Y' think this is funny?" Hulme demanded furiously. "One of your people came 'ere and killed Henry and no one's punished 'im! He caused your own people to die too and y' don't care? There's even folks campaignin' to keep 'im here so he won' be executed in China. How can they do that when he murdered Henry?"
Both Mycroft and the ambassador immediately noted Hulme's words about Zhu having caused the deaths of people in China too. Interesting. I wonder who told her that.
"I am sorry for your loss, Madam, and for Henry's mother losing her son," said Ambassador Luo, nodding at the older woman seated on a chair a few metres away. "Regardless of which country holds and prosecutes the man who did this, he will be punished according to the law."
"He slit Henry's throat!" Hulme cried. "Henry was the best thing in my whole life – the best thing ever – and this guy just came and cut 'is throat! Nellie'll pick up that carving knife and cut yours if you don't get 'im here sooner so we can kill him ourselves!"
Again, Mycroft saw that both he and the ambassador had picked up on her use of the word "sooner". What is she expecting to happen?
"You can kill me," the ambassador admitted. "But that won't get you what you want."
"The ambassador is right," Mycroft spoke up clearly enough to be heard from the back of the room, as he rose from his chair and slowly made his way forward, Luke keeping himself between Mycroft and the older woman's pistol. "He isn't the person who can decide what happens to Henry Carter's killer."
"Who're you?" Hulme asked suspiciously.
"My name is Mycroft Holmes. I hold a minor position in the civil service," he stated, ignoring Ambassador Luo's eye-roll at that stock description. "Minor as my post may be, I am a liaison between all the ministries, and I can perhaps tell you how best to proceed from here."
"How?"
"First, I'd like to ask you what you're expecting to happen. Did someone tell you that they would bring the prisoner here if you kept us all in this room at gunpoint?"
"He said he would."
"Who is this 'he'?" Mycroft asked, as patiently as he could.
"He said Zhu Zheng had caused his father's death too," Hulme mumbled, completely mangling the Chinese name.
"What else did he say?" Mycroft asked.
"He said he was just like us, and wanted revenge. Our loved ones had died but Zhu Zheng would get a comfortable life in a British prison and never die for what he'd done. So we should use the ambassador's dinner to do it. He said he'd bring him here. He said we could kill him together."
Mycroft's alarms were going off, as this new information gave him a strong sense that something was wrong in a way that went far beyond two ignorant women taking a foreign ambassador hostage. Someone was manipulating much more behind the scenes, and these women had been roped in because their naivete meant they would give little away to people like himself. He forced out a calm suggestion: "Perhaps I can help by getting in touch with those who can tell us if anything is going on with the prisoner who killed Henry."
"How'll you do that?" she asked.
"Would you allow me to make a phone call?" he asked pleasantly, plastering an artificial smile onto his face.
Unease.
"I don't get it," John said, sounding puzzled. "Why the urgency?"
"Hmm?" Sherlock asked, resurfacing from his wild and whirling thoughts that refused to go past the silent plea of: Mycroft, don't you dare die; Mycroft, please don't die; Mycroft…
"Why the urgency? Zhu Zheng's lived openly in Europe for years," John pointed out. "Huang has been based in Britain for years too. As security chief and a relatively free agent outside China, he could have traced Zhu if he'd wanted. Even if he didn't think of revenge until Zhu was arrested here, why this elaborate plan? Wandsworth Prison, as Greg's noted, hardly has the best record for keeping stuff out. Wouldn't it be easier for Huang to get someone to smuggle a weapon into the prison and do Zhu in at any time? There's no need to rush to use Cathy Hulme or Nellie Samuels. Anyone, any time, would do. Zhu's going nowhere, right? If he's sent back to China, he'll probably be executed; if he stays in Britain, he'll still be in prison. Either way, he'd die in China or Huang could take his time arranging to murder him here. So why this big, big hurry?"
"I'd thought of that once Lestrade sent me the information about Huang's involvement," Anthea said cautiously. "But I don't know what else is behind this. MI6 is already looking into it, but for the fastest result, we need to question Huang."
"Greg's back," John said, opening the door for the DI.
Lestrade climbed in, closed the door, and reported: "Huang was very quick about it, and we were a little slow – seems he got to Wandsworth and managed to see Zhu in private an hour after Hulme grabbed the ambassador. Huang left half an hour ago, but thanks to us alerting the prison about possible danger to Zhu, the guards just checked on Zhu in his cell. His sleeping cellmate noticed nothing, but the guards found Zhu barely responsive, extremities turning purple. In the medical wing, he came to his senses just enough to say that Huang handed him documents in a sealed envelope, and took the documents with him when he left. Zhu's being transferred to a better-equipped hospital as we speak, because Huang most likely poisoned him through the documents with an as-yet-unknown substance that probably works via skin absorption… hang on… another call…"
Lestrade answered the call, listened grimly, then put his phone down and told them: "A motorist called in about a stationary car on the A3 with a dead man in it. It's Huang. Gunshot wound to the head. He'd probably been heading for the M25 towards Folkestone and the Channel Tunnel. Obviously, ballistics needs time to investigate, but a pistol was in the footwell of the driver's seat. We've cautioned them to wait for a hazmat team to check the rest of his car, so we can't as yet retrieve what he may have used to transmit the poison to Zhu."
"Huang shot himself?" John asked.
"Or was made to seem to have shot himself," Anthea said. "I'll see what cameras picked up on the streets and motorways from the time he left Wandsworth to when he was found."
"Huang was using Hulme, and someone else was using Huang," Lestrade murmured. "This other party wanted Zhu dead urgently, then silenced Huang. We need to know whom Zhu was a threat to."
"No, no, no," Sherlock growled, trying to quell the rising panic within so he could remain objective and think better, but it wasn't working, because Mycroft was in there, and the picture had become much more wrong with this new information. "The why hardly matters this very moment – you need to get those people out of the dining room now. Hulme and Samuels are nobodies in this, and Hulme will be panicking by now although Samuels doesn't care either way but you need to get Mycroft out of there because it's not botulinum toxin from some pathetic cosmetic Botox vials any more, it's worse – this person behind it has access to far more dangerous substances like what's poisoned Zhu, and they've tricked Hulme…"
"Sherlock, Sherlock! Slow down!" John cried, catching hold of his wildly-gesturing hands, trying to calm him. "Slow down – what do you mean it's not botulinum toxin any more?"
"Lestrade, the florist you said the unexpected flower arrangements came from – any news?" Sherlock demanded.
"Nothing yet."
"Tell the team trying to get in touch with the owner to break into the shop."
"What? No, Sherlock, the police aren't allowed to just break in…"
"Find an excuse!" Sherlock all but yelled. "In the meantime, get me into that fucking dining room!"
"Sherlock! No one can go in there!" Lestrade protested.
Anthea, who had been tapping away furiously on her laptop while conducting rapid conversations with various parties, finally turned to them to say briskly: "You said earlier that the florist was Bloomin' Garden in Leicester Square? My people are in – no, don't ask how, Detective Inspector. They've found five hundred vials of Botox on the premises. That means what Hulme handed them was never hidden in the flower arrangements. The shop belongs to an Olivia Wu, who is also officially the owner of the Jade Garden restaurant that Steve Rowe's brother works for. Olivia Wu is the aunt of Wu Guangrong, one of Ambassador Luo's deputies here in London. However, the paper trail of actual ownership for both businesses leads back to Anatoly Eskov, a Russian with British permanent residency."
"Anatoly Eskov?" Lestrade frowned. "I know that name. Big businessman, suspected of unbelievable amounts of money laundering, drug-dealing, involvement with international-level spying, being the middleman for illegal weapon sales from Serbia, hobnobbing with any party for mutual benefit, never mind if they'd ordinarily be his enemies – he's reputed to have formed ad-hoc alliances with everybody from British far-rightists to Islamic terrorists to run-of-the-mill drug lords to corrupt politicians and businessmen from Russia and China. And though there's no proof of it, he was widely believed to have had a lot to do with the poisoning of Russian citizens in various countries who fell afoul of whatever rules he and his allies had in place. He's rumoured to love stirring up trouble on as big a scale as possible, because business gets better for him in an unsettled environment."
"He always acts through other people – like Olivia Wu and Wu Guangrong, it seems, in this particular case – so no one's ever caught him directly at his dirty work," Anthea added.
Sherlock's mind raced frantically to form a picture that made sense. He began to speak, slowly, as pieces slid into place, speeding up as odd-shaped bits slotted into the gaps: "Let me propose a scenario: Zhu Zheng was blasé about having killed Carter, remember? He calmly sat in Carter's flat engraving the gold bar after slitting his throat, and couldn't even be arsed to leave London right away. It was as if he no longer cared what happened to him, once he'd ended the trail of misery that had begun with his sister's suicide. We now believe that back in 2000, he escaped being implicated in his father's trial because he aided other CCP members in bringing down his father and Huang's father. But the people he helped may have been hiding as much as the enemies they took down – and he knew all their secrets. When he was arrested here, I'll wager that Ambassador Luo's deputy, Wu Guangrong, was among the embassy officials who visited him. It's highly probable that during the interview, Zhu might have indicated that he didn't give a damn whether he lived or died, and no longer cared about keeping secrets. He might have said that anybody who wanted to ask him about anyone's skeletons from the past was welcome to ask away, and he'd talk. If Wu Guangrong's family was among those with lots of bones rattling in their closets, or if Wu and Anatoly Eskov had shared secrets to keep that Zhu knew about from long ago, they'd want to swiftly silence Zhu. They couldn't wait around to kill him later. Wu must have known about Huang Yiming's family grudge against Zhu, and fired him up, telling him there was no better time than to use Carter's simple-minded loved ones to create a stir at the ambassador's private party so Huang could look Zhu up on that pretext, and poison him with whatever Eskov provided. Eskov offered his and Wu's aunt's florist's shop as the place for Hulme to deliver the Botox, and assured Huang he'd put all the vials into the vases, ready for Hulme to smash. But Eskov, for his own screwed-up reasons, wants to poke holes in Britain's relations with China, and a nice way to do that would be to have the Chinese ambassador murdered in London, ostensibly by British far-right extremists. Hulme's choice of Botox wouldn't be effective in the amounts that could fit into the vases, so to keep Hulme believing she was still in charge, Eskov told Huang nothing, leading him and Hulme to think everything was proceeding as she'd planned. However, he put something else into the vases that would be much more lethal than Botox."
"The same thing that poisoned Zhu?" John asked worriedly.
"That poison appears to have worked through cutaneous absorption. It wouldn't be effective in that room. He's used something else that can kill when inhaled."
Anthea was a little pale as she looked up from her laptop. "Sherlock, my intel says Eskov has a reputation for favouring anthrax. He might have figured that anthrax would be risky for Huang to carry into the prison, so maybe he used a different substance for Zhu, but he could easily hide vials or bags of anthrax in those vases."
"Get me into that dining room, evacuate everyone else, and I'll talk Hulme down, and…" Sherlock began his demands again.
He was interrupted by Anthea's phone ringing, and she squinted at the unknown number. But she answered at once, just in case… and the three men in the car with her shot upright as they heard her say: "Mr Holmes? Are you unhurt? You're using someone else's phone because you've disabled your own, am I right? Okay, sir, you have to listen to me…"
Danger.
"Miss Hulme," Mycroft said firmly, when he lowered the phone from his ear – a random one he'd chosen from the pile on the table because it was the first one that had no screen lock to waste time on. "Catherine Hulme – that is your name, is it not?"
"How'd you know that?" she asked suspiciously.
"You must have taken the advice of Huang Mingyi and Penny Barr to go by the name of a different contract worker from that agency," Mycroft remarked.
Out of Hulme's line of sight, Mycroft saw Ambassador Luo mouth the words: "黃明意? 不可能吧?"
He gave the ambassador a look that conveyed the dismal truth about his security chief, then continued speaking to Hulme: "Huang and Penny Barr discouraged you from using your name tonight as they feared you might have been observed as you went about purchasing the Botox. But I know who you are, and I can tell you that Huang Mingyi was deceiving you. He had no power to bring Zhu Zheng here just because you'd taken the ambassador hostage. Instead, he went to the prison where Zhu Zheng is, and attempted to kill him there."
"No, he said he'd bring him here!" Hulme protested.
"I'm afraid he no longer has any means of keeping that promise, because Huang himself is dead," Mycroft stated matter-of-factly. "He appears to have been murdered by someone else who was using him to use you."
"You're lying. I don't believe you."
"It's the truth, whether you believe me or not," Mycroft said. "They used you and Nellie Samuels because unlike seasoned criminals, the two of you would set off fewer alarms in experienced security officers. However, you've been betrayed. The poison you think you've brought into this room isn't here – it's been replaced with something else. To ensure that all of us would die even if you failed, we believe that the person using Huang has rigged those flower arrangements with small explosives that he could trigger at any moment. So, knowing that you've been used, would it not make sense to take yourselves as well as all of us out of this room? Then you can live to see justice done for Henry, by the laws of this land. Will you allow the people outside to break open the doors, Miss Hulme, so that all of us can be helped?"
Unexpectedly, Hulme's phone rang. She reached for it with her free hand, never shifting the revolver's sights from the ambassador. It was a video call, and as a familiar voice came over the speaker, Mycroft's heart performed the remarkable feat of both soaring and sinking at the same time.
Sherlock.
"Hi Cathy!" Sherlock's voice came clearly over the speaker, and Mycroft caught the barest glimpse of his face from an awkward angle. "I don't know if you know who I am, but my name's Sherlock."
"Oh. You… y-you're that… that guy… I know you – you're that hat detective," she stammered.
"Yeah, that's me. Look, some really bad blokes have been using you, and I want to set things right for everybody, so is it okay with you if I come into the room? It's kind of urgent, Cathy. One of those faceless evil guys is trying to do things the way you wouldn't have, and we're running out of time to stop him. It's just not right that he tricked you. Can you let me in? I know the doors are jammed, but do you mind if I break in?"
"You'll bring people in to stop me," she murmured.
"You have your gun, and I'll bet you've given Nellie a gun too, right? So there's nothing we'd dare to do without your permission. I'm asking your permission to come in. Can I do that?"
"You'll just talk to me?"
"I'll just talk to you. I'm not armed. I'm basically not allowed to carry guns, I don't know why, but I'm just not," he said, and Mycroft could practically see the sulky shrug and eye-roll Sherlock would have given Hulme over the video image.
"O… okaaay… I guess…"
"It could get a bit noisy as we'll have to break the locks, but please don't jump, all right? Please just bear with the racket for a while…"
In less than a minute, sounds of drilling and sawing were heard at one of the doors, then with a few hard thumps and a push, the door cracked open, and Sherlock put his head through.
"Hey, Cathy, can I come in?" he asked.
Mycroft wanted to die. This was the last place in the world he wanted Sherlock to be now, with god only knew how many pounds of anthrax stuffed into those vases and hell knew what sort of remote or timer trigger Eskov might be using…
"You c'n come in alone, no one else, and no one leaves, or I start shootin'," she warned, hooking Ambassador Luo round the neck again and pressing the muzzle of the revolver, safety lever released, hard against the side of his head.
"Okay, I'm alone. See? No one is with me," Sherlock said, stepping inside, coat unfastened, hands in the air by his head to show he wasn't armed. "Cathy, Nellie, it's really important that we don't allow people to use you to do things in a way you never planned to. You've been lied to by Huang Mingyi and a couple of bigger liars behind him, and it's just wrong. Please can you let these people go so they're not caught up in this whole pack of lies you never wanted?"
"Why did that bastard lie to me?" Hulme yelled.
"Probably because he was lied to as well, Cathy. And then those people who lied to him to use you murdered him. We're looking for them, but in the meantime, we can't let them just do what they want while making you take the blame for it."
"I… don't know…" she wailed angrily.
"Can you at least let these guests and servers go, please? None of us has anything to do with this, but the guests and staff are truly without blame here, so please can they go outside first, Cathy?"
"I… I…" she stammered, tightening her grip around Ambassador Luo's neck.
"They have no blame in this, Cathy," Sherlock reminded her.
She was silent for two minutes, then she relented: "Those people over there c'n leave, but no one else comes in, and the ambassador and you, and you with the suit, you all stay."
"Okay, we'll stay while the others leave," Sherlock said. "Everyone, calmly, please – no rushing – through that door, two at a time."
The guests and staff filed out of the room, not quite as quietly or calmly as Mycroft would have liked, but without incident, at least. The ambassador, Mycroft and Sherlock remained with Hulme and Samuels. Luke and Chris did not leave the room entirely but hovered in the doorway.
"When we were kids, Henry promised he'd marry me," Hulme cried to Sherlock. "And he's always said I was a real person, not like the women who gave him money."
"Henry sounds like he was really good to you, and a wonderful son to Nellie," Sherlock said. "Hurting yourselves or others isn't going to bring him back, though."
"I know, but…"
"The man who killed him has already been poisoned half to death – who knows if he'll ever recover? He's suffering now, that's for sure, whether he lives or dies. Is there any good, then, in harming anyone else, including yourselves?"
"I don't know…" Hulme wailed.
Then a voice that had been silent all evening made itself heard, as Nellie Samuels spoke in quietly angry, surprisingly strong tones: "Maybe you don't know, and you've always been a sweet girl, Cathy, but I know that my darling boy was murdered, and I don't care who else dies to pay for it!"
Samuels raised the Glock she had taken from the table earlier, and pointed it at Ambassador Luo.
"As an ambassador, shouldn't you be responsible for what your countrymen do?" Samuels demanded, her voice steady, but her eyes filling with tears.
Mycroft immediately positioned himself between Samuels and Ambassador Luo, and said to the older woman: "Ms Samuels, I believe Henry was a perfect son to you, but representative of his country or not, Ambassador Luo is truly innocent in this matter. Please don't harm an innocent man."
"Oh, Nellie!" Hulme was crying now, her hand holding the revolver lowering itself weakly so the firearm now pointed harmlessly away from the ambassador.
Sherlock seized the chance to carefully approach Hulme. He spoke softly to her, took her hand and eased the Smith & Wesson out of her fingers, then led her to the PADP officers waiting by the door. Mycroft hoped against hope that Sherlock would accompany Hulme right out of the building, but no, his brother turned back once Hulme was taken care of, and came to stand in front of him.
"Sherlock, please," Mycroft said under his breath. "I can handle this. Go."
"No."
"Sherlock…"
"I'm staying. Nellie, if you want to shoot the ambassador, you'll have to go through Mycroft. And if you want to shoot Mycroft, you'll have to go through me. Please, Nellie. Please don't."
"Then I'll just break up one of those vases Cathy arranged to have brought in here, so you'll all suffer as I've suffered, shall I?" she threatened furiously.
"Ms Samuels, please don't take innocent lives," Mycroft said calmly, stepping up alongside Sherlock. "I know you're ill, and you feel that it doesn't matter what else happens in the world now that Henry is gone, but please don't take innocent people with you. Ambassador Luo and Sherlock never did a thing against Henry or you."
"I'm so angry!" she yelled in frustation. "I don't – I don't want… I hate everything!"
To Mycroft's horror, Samuels swung the pistol in an arc to her right, aiming at one of the flower arrangements on the table nearest her. But she was unfamiliar with firearms, and Mycroft could see that her finger was a shade too high on the trigger to fully depress the safety lever, which meant there was a chance the Glock might not fire. Sherlock must have spotted the same thing – and he was quicker than Mycroft, because he'd sprung at Samuels in an instant and forced her arm downwards and away from any of the vases. Mycroft pried her finger off the trigger and wrested the pistol out of her grip.
Samuels began howling in sorrow and rage, but Sherlock held on to her, put his arms around her until she stopped struggling and simply broke down crying, then he ushered her out of the room, followed closely by Mycroft and Ambassador Luo.
"罗大使, 您没事吧?" Mycroft asked the ambassador.
"没事, 没事. 谢谢你, Mycroft," Luo Qifan replied with a thankful smile as they hurried away from the dining room.
The police team in the passageway was in full hazmat suits. Anthea and the Yard would naturally have set up all precautionary measures the moment toxic chemicals or explosives were indicated to be involved. Of course Sherlock refused to don protective gear, Mycroft thought with a shudder when he considered what could have happened to his brother.
"Seal off this whole passageway to everyone except bomb disposal and hazmat, and no one enters any part of the hotel without protective gear," Mycroft reminded the waiting officers. "Guard against possible anthrax exposure. We also still do not know if an external party could remotely trigger explosives that may be concealed inside the green vases with the red dahlias."
"Yes, sir," they replied, before updating their teams.
As none of the vases had broken, it was unlikely that anyone had been exposed to whatever toxins were in them. But to be safe, the police had set up a large tent on the tarmac in cordoned-off Stratton Street, and every person who had been in the dining room was directed in there to be checked for exposure to poisons – they might have to remain there for hours, as it would take time for the swabs from clothes, skin and hair to be processed; it promised to be an uncomfortable night for all.
Sherlock grabbed a blanket from one of the emergency response personnel and wrapped it around Mycroft's shoulders as they stepped out into the cold night air and headed towards the tent. But the phone Mycroft had rung Anthea with buzzed then, and Mycroft answered to hear her say: "Sir, your Jaguar is ten metres from the tent. I've arranged for it to be yours and Sherlock's temporary quarantine space, so you can at least have some privacy. Louis should be approaching you now to lead you there."
"Thank you, Anthea," he said, with feeling. "Thank you for all that you and the others have done tonight."
"Sir, Sherlock was very upset in the Bentley this evening. He was really worried about you."
"I understand. Thank you."
A figure he could barely make out as one of his MI5 team stepped up to them in a full hazmat suit, handed him the car key, and led him and Sherlock to his Jaguar – sans driver, of course, until they were pronounced uncontaminated. They climbed into the back seat, closed and locked all the doors, and prepared to wait for the hazmat officers and doctors.
"Are you all right?" Sherlock asked him the moment they were alone, the dark windows of the car keeping them from everyone's view.
"I'm not hurt at all, Sherlock," he assured him. "But when you went in there, I was so afraid you would be hurt. Please don't do such a thing again. I wouldn't have been able to protect you if the poisons had been released. I wouldn't have been able to keep you safe…"
"No, Mycroft," Sherlock said, shaking his head. "I'd do it a thousand times over…"
"I wouldn't have been able to protect you!" Mycroft repeated.
"Mycroft, no – I was there to protect you, do you understand?" Sherlock insisted, his voice taking on a distressed edge as he leaned into Mycroft, then turned his body to pull him into a tight embrace, burying his face in his neck. "It doesn't always have to be your job to protect everyone at your own expense."
"The fact is, that is often a part of my job," Mycroft sighed, stroking Sherlock's back.
"It shouldn't be," Sherlock said petulantly, almost like a child, starting to tremble a little in Mycroft's arms. "I'll protect you whenever I can. I'll always want to protect you as much as I can."
"Will you?" Mycroft asked softly with a fond smile, holding Sherlock more tightly.
"Always. Don't you dare die on me, Mycroft," Sherlock whispered. "Your loss would break my heart."
Note:
The words the ambassador mouths to Mycroft in Mandarin are "Huang Mingyi? Bu ke neng, ba?" (Translation: "Huang Mingyi? Surely that's not possible?")
And the exchange between the ambassador and Mycroft when the crisis is over goes:
"Luo da shi, nin mei shi ba?" ("Ambassador Luo, are you all right?")
"Mei shi, mei shi. Xie xie ni, Mycroft." ("I'm fine, I'm fine. Thank you, Mycroft.")