I stay silent in the police car, not protesting as they lead me into the station, where I'll be staying the night until they find me a place in the Youth Detention Centre. I know I didn't kill Soo Lin Yao, and as soon as they discover that there's no hard evidence to prove it, I'll be out of here. As the hard metal door slams shut, I walk over to the firm bed they've propped up against the wall, and stand on it, looking out of the bars onto the street outside. Blue and red lights illuminate my face as I look out at the activity outside, and then I drop into a sitting position on the bed, setting a stop clock on my watch. As I file away tonight's events in the library of my mind palace, I hear my door unlock and the footsteps of a tired detective inspector enter the cell.
"Fancy seeing you here," he says, and my eyes snap open.
"Lestrade," I smile, standing up. "Are they here yet?"
"Yep, they're here, upstairs," he says, nodding. "So what happened?" I tell him the unedited version of tonight's events, putting in, or taking out, nothing. As I finish, I meet his eyes. "Quite a night, huh?" He smirks and I nod, looking nowhere in particular.
"I take it they've found nothing to prove I killed her?" I ask, looking back at him.
"Not a thing. They're scanning the bullet and your gun now, but that's all they have." I nod, and he looks to me with a smile. "You're free to go, but you need to be in Magistrates Court on Sunday. Everything's pointing towards your innocence though." I look down at my watch. Fifteen minutes since I was put in here, dad's getting slow. Lestrade leads me out and down the corridor to the desk, where they hand me my phone and knife and I fill out my form.
"How you feeling?" John asks me as him and dad arrives beside me. "I'm sorry, by the way, with the confusion." I nod silently, not looking at him.
"Have you spoken to Dimmock yet?" I ask dad, and he shakes his head.
"No, thought we'd better get you first," he smirks, looking me over. "Didn't think you'd be happy if we spoke to him without you." I smile and Lestrade steps forward from beside me.
"Actually, I need to have a word with him a minute," he says, and dad shrugs, letting him go ahead of us.
"Fifteen minutes I was in that cell!" I mutter to dad as we walk.
"Yeah, sorry about that," he smiles. "Had something to say to Janet." Dad looks to me, and seeing my puzzled expression, continues. "The officer which arrested you." I nod my understanding; that was going to be my guess. I wonder what he means by 'I had something to say', because I doubt it was a calm situation. We arrive at the door to Dimmocks office, and we wait outside as Lestrade steps in.
"So what do we know?" I ask as the door shuts. "The smuggling group is the Black Lotus and they've come from China to search for something of value."
"The Hangzhou numerals relate to a book code," dad continues, " most likely directions leading the Tongs towards the rendezvous of the leaders, but we don't know the book it refers to."
"No, but Soo Lin Yao mentioned that it's from a book that everyone would have," John tells dad. "Something that would be easy for the smugglers to get hold of."
"Yes, but that could be anything," I say as the door swings open.
"Alright, in you go," Lestrade says. "Just to warn you, he's not too happy about tonight's fiasco." I nod my understanding and lead the two boys in towards Dimmocks desk, where he stands, absent minded as he sifts through paperwork behind him.
"How many murders is it gonna take before you start believing that this maniac's out there?" John demands as we stop. Dimmock ignores us as he turns around and heads for another desk, blatantly ignoring us. "A young girl was gunned down tonight," John continues, furious. "That's three victims in three days. You're supposed to be finding him, but instead, you're concentrating on arresting the innocent daughter of the man that's helping you!" He steps back and walks away a few paces in exasperation as dad walks across in front of him to get nearer to the DI.
"Brian Lukis and Eddie Van Coon were working for a gang of international smugglers – a gang called the Black Lotus operating here in London right under your nose." He leans closer to emphasise his point, and finally Dimmock turns around.
"Can you prove that?" he questions bitterly, and dad straightens up, biting his lip as he thinks.
"Yes," I say bluntly. "Yes, we can." Dad looks to me, frowning for a moment before catching on.
"Alright then," Dimmock says, placing his hand on his hips. "Show me."
"Meet us at St Bart's in around fifteen minutes," I instruct, turning away. I push open the door and gallop down the stairs.
"Okay, what are we doing?" John questions as he follows behind me.
"Soo Lin said that 'every foot soldier bears the mark'," I recall. "Lukis and Van Coon were both Tongs, which means they both have the tattoos on their heels."
"Mm, so we're going to Bart's why?" I look at him, smiling grimly.
"We need to look at the feet of a few corpses."
I wait outside the canteen as dad goes in to find Molly. She's on her break at the moment, so will have time to roll out the two bodies which we need. Dad, the expert in false flirting, has offered to go in to persuade her to help us, as it's not strictly allowed for the public to view the bodies after they've been looked over. Then again, we don't follow the rules, and we certainly aren't 'the public'. I watch as dad walks up to Molly, making her jump as he suddenly announces his presence, most likely after stating a question.
"Is it likely that she's going to show us the bodies?" John asks, peering through the door as dad makes an obvious comment about her hair. I look across to him, raising my eyebrows.
"Of course," I say as I catch a glimpse of Molly's face - flustered and happy - as she turns back to the self-service display. "She's head over heels for dad. It's quite sad actually; she doesn't understand that he'll return the same love and devotion to her." I smile weakly, and then continue to watch as the pair comes back out empty handed in terms of food. John steps back out of the way, frowning as he comprehends what I just said. I still haven't talked to him about the relationship my mum and dad had, but I don't think I ever will, to be honest.
"Oh, hello," Molly smiles as she steps outside.
"Your hair looks nice, by the way, Molly," I say, reinforcing dads comment from just a moment ago.
"Really?" she questions, self-consciously lifting a hand up to feel it. "Wow, thanks." Dad rolls his eyes as we drop behind her, allowing her to lead us up to the Morgue.
"Why do they like complements?" dad mutters from beside me. "Surely you'd know that you're okay because it's what you want?" It's my turn to roll my eyes. As the current teenager, I know more about emotions and feelings because of the dramas that occur at school, even if I don't get involved with them myself.
"People want to feel nice about themselves, and by knowing that others think good things about you, then that automatically makes you feel better, and more secure."
"Oh," dad says in understanding, and then screws his nose up. "Dull." I laugh in agreement, and I look up to see Dimmock waiting by the door of the Morgue.
"Ah, inspector," I say, walking forward. "Glad you made it!" Dad snorts at my sarcasm from behind and I frown at him.
"Yeah, alright. Now where's this proof you were meant to be showing me?"
"Proof?" Molly asks, looking startled and turning to dad. "But you said -"
"Detective Inspector Dimmock is under the impression that Edward Van Coon and Brian Lukis have nothing in common with the recent death of Soo Lin Yao," dad begins, and Molly's face lights up.
"Oh! Her body has just arrived."
"Yes," dad says, trying to ignore the interruption, and looking firmly into the DI's eyes. "Well he's also under the impression that my daughter was the one who murdered her, so now we're looking for evidence to prove that these deaths are linked." Molly turns to me, blinking in disbelief at this.
"So you need me...?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I get it." She smiles as she walks forward, unlocking the door and leading us in towards the refrigerator, checking through the labels on the front until she finds the right one. We assist her as she attempts to move each of the covered bodies onto two separate tables, laying them out with some respect. Molly reaches for some latex gloves as we walk back into the room after leaving to wash our hands, and we head over towards the bag containing Brian Lukis. She unzips the bag gently and pushes back the sides to reveal the face, which we don't need to see.
"We're just interested in the feet," dad announces and Molly looks up, frowning in disgust and confusion.
"The feet?"
"Yes. D'you mind if we have a look at them?" He asks sarcastically, smiling as he leads Dimmock to the other end of the body. Molly follows us and repeats her previous actions, pulling back the sides to reveal the feet instead. On the bottom of his right heel is a tattoo identical to the one Soo Lin showed us before. We straighten up after a moment with smug expressions, and move to stand beside the second table. "Now Van Coon." Molly follows us, leading Dimmock over as she unzips the body bag, revealing an identical tattoo on his right heel to the one on Lukis'. Dimmock sighs in silent surrender. "Oh!" dad breathes scornfully, straightening up.
"So ..." Dimmock begins awkwardly.
"So either these two men just happened to visit the same Chinese tattoo parlour or I'm telling the truth." He sighs in resignation.
"What do you want?"
"I want every book from Lukis' apartment and Van Coon's." Dad instructs, seeming to remember what I told him about the books being in common use.
"Their books?" Dimmock questions and I roll my eyes.
"Yes," I confirm. "We need them at the flat as soon as you can." I smirk, remembering the proportion of books in each flat. "In boxes detailing who they came from. We can't afford any mix-ups."
"Look, it's not as simple-"
"Brilliant, well, we'll be off now," I smile as I stride towards the door, ignoring Dimmocks' protests.
Outside, we catch a cab to Baker Street and we enter the building without hesitation.
"Okay, so what've we got so far?" John questions as we climb the stairs. "Thanks the Soo Lin we know that they are all linked through a criminal organisation which arranges the smuggling of antiquities and drugs across the border…" he fades off as dad shakes his head, taking off his coat as we enter the living room and John and I follow his actions.
"Not just a criminal organisation; it's a cult. Her brother was corrupted by one of its leaders."
"Soo Lin said the name," John remembers.
"Yes, Shan; General Shan," dad remembers.
"We're still no closer to finding them."
"Wrong," dad disagrees. "We've got almost all we need to know. She gave us most of the missing pieces." He looks pointedly at John, waiting for him to agree. "Why did he need to visit his sister?" he questions after a moment of impatient silence. "Why did he need her expertise?" Because she was an expert in the type of things they were smuggling, I think to myself. She was the first to know if any valuable antiquities came into the country.
"She worked at the museum," John begins hesitantly.
"Exactly," dad encourages.
"An expert in antiquities," John says in realisation, finally catching on. "Mmm, of course. I see."
"Valuable antiquities, John," dad corrects. "Ancient Chinese relics purchased on the black market. China's home to a thousand treasures hidden after Mao's revolution."
"And the Black Lotus is selling them," John confirms and dad tilts his head as if he has an idea. If the Black Lotus is selling these items, then it must be somewhere that buyers can find it. We need to look online. I head towards the bedroom, taking my laptop from the bottom drawer of my dressing table and start loading the Crispians' website. I place it down on the table and stand aside as dad and John head over, skimming down the page as dad takes his seat in front the laptop. Dad brings up a search for recent auctions of Chinese and other Asian artworks, and I glance down at the prices and dates
"Check for the dates ..." dad mutters to himself, then stops scrolling, pointing instead to a pair of Chinese Ming vases. "Here, John."
"Mmm."
"Arrived from China four days ago," dad tells him, reading off of the information, and then runs his finger down through the details until we find the Sale information. An anonymous source. "Anonymous. Vendor doesn't give his name. Two undiscovered treasures from the East." I remember the distinct shape of a heavy item compressed in Van Coon's suitcase, and I confirm our theories.
"One in Lukis' suitcase and one in Van Coon's," John realises, nodding as dad clicks open another tap, opening up the Quest search site and begins to type.
"... antiquities sold at auction," he says, narrating a he types. The results list appears and there are a lot more to show. "Look, here's another one," he says, pointing.
"Mmm."
"Arrived from China a month ago: Chinese ceramic, sold 400,000." John frowns as he takes up Lukis' diary to check the dates before spotting another entry as I pick up Van Coon's diary print out.
"Ah, look: a month before that – a Chinese painting, half a million."
"And that one there," I say, pointing to a tiara. "Emerald Diamond Tiara. Said to have belonged to Emperor Napoleon III's wife, dated 27th December, sold for £7,994,484. Source is anonymous." John's eyes bulge at the price, but dad continues.
"All of them from an anonymous source. They're stealing them back in China and one by one they're feeding them into Britain."
"Huh," John mutters, consulting the diary again, then checking the print off in my hands. "And every single auction coincides with Lukis or Van Coon travelling to China."
"So what if one of them got greedy when they were in China?" Dad suggests. "What if one of them stole something?"
"That's why Zhi Zhu's come," John says, looking at dad. A knock on the door behind startles me slightly, but I turn around to see Mrs Hudson by the entrance, confirming my predictions.
"Ooh-ooh!" she calls, gaining the attention of the boys as they turn to face her. "Sorry," she apologises; clearly realising that we're busy. "Are we collecting for charity, Sherlock?"
"What?" Dad questions in confusion, and I frown.
"A young man's outside with crates of books." I smile to myself. The game is finally on!
"Okay, I'll let them in." Dad frowns at me slightly as he looks at me but I shrug. Something useful is happening at last.
I follow up behind a group of about five police officers who are bringing the boxes, and come in the living room as the dad starts explaining the code, so I dump the box and move over to where they
"So, the numbers are references," he says.
"To books," John continues.
"To specific pages and specific words on those pages," dad finishes.
"Right, so ..." John begins, frowning as he remembers, "fifteen and one: that means ..."
"Turn to page fifteen and it's the first word you read," had explains.
"Okay. So what's the message?" I roll my eyes in frustration of his utter oblivious nature.
"Depends on the book," dad retorts snarky. "That's the cunning of the book code. Has to be one that they both owned." I grimace at these words and look around at the crates.
"Okay, right. Well, this shouldn't take too long, should it?!" John says, reading my mind as he steps over towards one of the crates as flips open the lid, sighing as he takes a handful of books back to the desk to write them down. I bite my lip, unsure where to start, so I begin where it is logical - the beginning. I breathe slowly, focusing my mind on my mental map of a library inside my palace, then visualise me putting each of these books in alphabetical order into the shelves. This way, the books will be easy to come back to later if I find one which matches. As I reach for my third book, Dimmock walks in, holding up an evidence bag to show dad.
"We found these, at the museum," he tells him, showing the bag to John as he ignored from an explanation from either me or dad, but I could see it contained the photographs of the ciphers which we'd been showing to Soo Lin. "Is this your writing?"
"Uh, we hoped Soo Lin could decipher it for us," John says, taking the bag as I continue my search. "Ta." Dimmock nods and turns back to dad, looking helpless as he continues to unload his crate.
"Anything else I can do?" he asks. "To assist you, I mean?"
"Some silence right now would be marvellous," dad says without looking up. I hit the jackpot and immediately searching through my library, just to make sure. I smirk as I find it and open it up, finding page fifteen and looking at the first word.
"'Stakes'," I say out loud, and John looks up, surprised at my outburst. "From 'Great Expectations'." He nods, noting it down on paper as I make a mental observation on a chalk board which I imagine to be beside the bookcase.
Dad seems to have found another matching pair, but looks unimpressed as he narrates it, then slams the two copies onto the table in front of John, for him to write down. I stack my used books to the side, again in alphabetical order so that either dad or John can find a certain book if they need it.
Books pass by us slowly as time seems to stop. Nobody get another match for another half an hour, when I pick up a second copy of Deception Point by Dan Brown. Excited, I flick through it, although I know inside that it's an unlikely choice; it's too obscure. The word itself doesn't seem to make sense either. I walk over to the desk, dumping the two books on top of an ever growing pile on the desk.
"'through'," I mutter quietly to John. "'Deception Point'." He nods, noting it down before shifting the pair onto the floor.
Time continues to drag, and I find another two, useless words from irrelevant, almost coincidental book pairs. 'Almost' from 'The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Never' from 'Crime and Punishment'. I shift my fifth crate to one side as I've been doing with the others as the sunlight creeps through the window, and I look around, taking in the view of the messy living room. We've compared piles several times, but to no avail. These books are just the ones a well-educated English man would own, not the sort of things an international cult of smugglers would happen to have in their possession. I stop for a moment, looking down in disdain at the new crateful of books which I've just opened, and run a hand through my hair as Johns work alarm goes off. I watch as he runs a hand through his hair, sighing sleepily as he realises that he's got to get up. His first day of work, and from the way his eyes are sagging with fatigue, he won't be making a very good first impression.
We continue to look through the books in silence, occasionally cross referencing the odd title. A little while before John is due back, I sigh pointedly, closing the sixth crate of books.
"This isn't working," I say, walking over to my next crate. "There's too many holes where we could be slipping through our system."
"What do you suggest?" he asks, shifting some more books to one side. I think for a moment, processing the information we have on this code.
"Lets try thinking this through logically," I suggest, walking over to our bookshelf. "First of all, we need to think about the audience of this book." I scan our shelves, biting my lip.
"A book that everybody would own," dad recites, also turning to the bookcase. He pulls down the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the Holy Bible and Tess of the D'Urbervilles and puts them down on the top of the nearest crate. Trying out my own theory, I pick up a few other books, bestsellers of this year, plus some modern classics such as the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, both of which have pointless plotlines and unbelievable characters. There's no real reason to it. Either way, I flip to page 15 of my pocket sized Hobbit, and find another irrelivant word. 'I', as it turns out to be, and even doubling the page number to thirty to make up for the page sizes only brings it up to 'true'. That's unlikely to be used in the warning of two smugglers. Dad is getting the same result from his bible as he closes it, echoing the sound of the door downstairs as it announces John's arriveral, amd dad props his elbows up on the crate, running his fingers thoughtfully through his hair as John enters the room. I look him over, noticing at once the change of clothes which he's now wearing compared to earlier. The contition of his shoes tells me that he's got himself a date. With the doctor, by the looks of things. Well I'm sure they'll be perfect together.
"I need to get some air," dad announces. "We're going out tonight."
"Actually, I've, er, got a date," I mirror John's smug smile as he confirms my deduction, whereas dad on the over hand looks puzzled.
"What?"
"It's where two people who like each other go out and have fun," John explains slowly, eyeing dad suspiciously as I laugh.
"That's whatIwas suggesting," he retorts indignantly, and I hit him softly.
"No it wasn't ... at least Ihopenot."
"Ignore him," I advise.
"Where are you taking her?" dad questions sulkily.
"Er, cinema."
"Oh, dull, boring, predictable," he pulls a piece of paper from his trouser pocket as he walks over to John, and I recognise it as a poster add. "Why don't you try this?" John takes the strip, and looks it over, skeptically. I walk over, peering over his shoulder to see the advertisment for the 'Yellow Dragon Circus', and is obviously torn off of a larger poster. "In London for one night only," dad continues to explain, and I smile,knowing where he's getting at. John doesn't seem to have made the connection and just laughs, handing the paper back to dad.
"Thanks, but I don't come to you for dating advice."
"You don't really have much choice," I begin. "It's the perfect opportunity."
"What are you going on about?" John questions and I roll my eyes.
"Look, just go on ahead. I've already booked us tickets, so you have to go," dad protests.
"Take Sophie, I'm going cinema." I step forward.
"Fine, but it's what she'll be expecting. Just like all the others. No, don't bother doing something different when you've got the cinema to go to!" John looks at me for a moment, then sighs reluctantly.
"Fine, I'll go."
"Brilliant! Have a brilliant time and don't get too distracted with... whoever it is." I say, ushering John out of the house. As the door shuts again, I turn around, and see dad is already on the phone to order some more tickets. We're going to the circus!