Chapter Six: A New Case

Weeks had past since the three had moved into their flat. Things had settled in the dust every once in a while, and for Alice, this was one of those times.

Sherlock had forced her out of the flat and to the market with John. Alice was not a social person, and she hated going out somewhere as boring as this. But, this turned out to be a little more entertaining than she expected. Alice and John had gotten nearly all the shopping done, the only thing that stood between them and going back to the flat was a stubborn machine.

John was scanning the items Alice held in the basket. Going unnoticed by the doctor, a short line had formed behind the pair. John took another item from the basket.

"Unexpected item in bagging area. Please try again," said the machine. John moved the item slowly across the scanner in an attempt to get it to read the barcode.

"Item not scanned. Please try again." John straightened up, staring at the device in exasperation. Alice laughed.

"D'you think you could keep your voice down?" John muttered.

"Today is just not your day," said the ten year old girl beside him. Eventually, John got the item scanned and inserted his card into the machine. He typed in his PIN and the pair waited.

"Card not authorised. Please use an alternative method of payment."

"Yes, all right! I've got it!" Alice laughed quietly to herself, earning her a look from John.

"What?" she asked, "It's entertaining." John sighed and tried to pay again.

"Card not authorised," repeated the machine, "Please use an alternative method of payment." Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw the man in the line behind them had already picked up his own basket in expectation of getting to the scanner soon. John reached towards his back pocket but apparently realised that he has no other way of paying. Alice sighed, putting her face in her hands.

"You don't have anything else on you to pay with… don't you?"

"I might." John then pointed to the machine. "Right, keep it. Keep that. Follow me." Alice only blinked once as John angrily walked away, abandoning his shopping and his card as well. She swiped up his card and followed him back to 221B.

When they got there, the pair found Sherlock is sitting in his armchair calmly reading a book. John stopped just inside the room and exchanged a look with Alice. He then began looking around the flat. Alice, meanwhile, had begun to suspect that something has happened in their absence, but she couldn't tell what had happened.

"You took your time," said Sherlock without looking up from what he was doing.

"Yeah, I didn't get the shopping," John said. Sherlock looked displeased over the top of his book.

"What? Why not?" Alice stifled a laugh of her own, recalling the events that led her and John to return to the flat in the first place.

"He had a row in the shop…" she explained, "with a PIN machine." John glared at Alice as Sherlock lowered his book.

"He... you had a row with a machine?"

"Sort of," John admitted. "It sat there, and I shouted abuse. Have you got cash?" Alice could tell that Sherlock was holding back his amused smile as he nodded towards the kitchen.

"Take my card."

"I got it," said Alice. She walked towards the kitchen where Sherlock's wallet was lying on the table.

"You could always go yourself, you know," said John. "You've been sitting there all morning. You've not even moved since we left." Alice picked up the wallet from the table and rummaged through it for a suitable payment card. "And what happened about that case you were offered – the Jaria Diamond?" Alice glanced over at Sherlock, waiting for his answer.

"Not interested," Sherlock said as he used a piece of paper as a bookmark. He shut the book with a loud snap, and Alice caught eye of something under his chair in plain view. She tapped her foot against the ground, giving Sherlock only a second to then realize that the object she was referring to was still in sight. He quickly slammed a foot down onto the end and slid his foot and the sword further back to get the weapon out of sight.

"I sent them a message." Alice by then had now found a card John could use. She went to put the wallet back on the table but paused to bend over to look more closely when something caught her eye. There was a new, long, narrow gouge in the top of the table. She sighed and ran her finger along the cut, rubbing at it in case it was just a mark that can be removed. Well… this explained the sword.

"Sherlock…" she said in a whisper before looking across to her detective. She looked disapprovingly at him, noting that he could have almost died for the third time in less than a month. Sherlock shook his head innocently. Alice walked back over to John. The two turned and left the room, and Alice knew that Sherlock was smirking.

Later, John staggered up the stairs carrying several bags of shopping. Alice followed right behind. She had two of the bags in her hands.

"Don't worry about us. We can manage," John said sarcastically as they reentered the flat. Sherlock, who was now sitting at the dining table with his hands folded in front of his mouth as he looked at a laptop screen, barely glanced across to them. John sighed heavily as he and Alice carried the bags into the kitchen and dumped them onto the table. As Alice walked into the main living space and dropped down on Sherlock's chair, John turned around from the kitchen table and frowned when he realised which piece of equipment Sherlock was looking at.

"Is that my computer?" he asked.

"Of course," replied Sherlock as he started to type.

"What?!"

"Mine was in the bedroom."

"Did you not want to get up, Sherlock?" Alice asked. Sherlock didn't answer, meaning she was probably right.

"It's password protected!" snapped John in anger.

"In a manner of speaking," said Sherlock as he continued to type. "Took me less than a minute to guess yours." He glanced up at John. "Not exactly Fort Knox."

"Right, thank you," said John, now annoyed. He reached over and slammed the lid down. Sherlock pulled his fingers out of the way just in time. John took the laptop across the room and put it down on the floor beside his armchair as he sat down. Sherlock clasped his hands in the prayer position in front of his mouth as he propped his elbows on the table. John picked up a small pile of letters from the table beside his chair and frowned. Alice leaned over to see what he was looking at. Her eyes caught only one. It was a red bill, which she knew that needed to be paid.

"Need to get a job…" John muttered to himself.

"Well, that's boring," said Alice. "But… I don't want to get evicted from here…" John put the letters back onto the table and looked across at Sherlock for a moment, Alice following his gaze.

"Listen, um ... if you'd be able to lend me some …" John stopped talking when he realised that Sherlock appeared to be a world of his own. Alice rolled her eyes and stood up, grabbing her messenger bag from beside Sherlock's chair. How it got there, she didn't know. It was always turning up in random places. Last week, she found it in the bathroom, for example. She felt that Sherlock had something to do with it.

"Sherlock, are you listening?"

"I need to go to the bank," said Sherlock without looking at either of them. He got up and headed towards the stairs, taking his coat from the hook on the door as he went. Alice followed him. John jumped up and hurried to join them. Alice grinned. Finally, something to do!

Sherlock lead John and Alice into Shad Sanderson Bank. Alice blinked several times as her mind processed the grandeur of it all.

"When you said we were going to the bank, Sherlock…" said Alice as the trio walked onto an escalator behind Sherlock. "This is not what I thought you meant." The group reached the top of the escalator. Sherlock walked over to the reception desk.

"Sherlock Holmes," he said simply. The receptionist nodded and stood. She lead the three to an office. Inside was one of the bank workers. Upon seeing them, he walked over and grinned.

"Sherlock Holmes," said the bank worker. He shook hands with Sherlock, with the bank worker clasping Sherlock's hand in both of his own.

"Sebastian," replied Sherlock.

"Howdy, buddy. How long's it been? Eight years since I last clapped eyes on you?" Sherlock looked back at Sebastian with only marginally disguised dislike. Sebastian turned to look at John and Alice. The young girl smiled a bit.

"This is my friend, John Watson."

"Friend?"

"Colleague," John corrected.

"And this is my assistant, Alice Liddell," said Sherlock once more. Alice nodded in a greeting.

"Right," said Sebastian. He threw a brief look at Sherlock. Grinning unpleasantly, he scratched his neck momentarily. Sebastian turned away, and Alice ran her fingers nervously together behind her back. "Well, grab a pew. D'you need anything? Coffee, water?" Sherlock shook his head.

"I think we're all fine," said Alice. Sebastian walked around and sat down at his desk. Sherlock and John sat side by side opposite him. Alice stood behind them.

"So, you're doing well," said Sherlock. "You've been abroad a lot."

"Well, some," Sebastian admitted.

"Flying all the way round the world twice in a month?" Alice raised an eyebrow as John frowned in confusion. Sebastian just laughed and pointed at Sherlock.

"Right. You're doing that thing." He looked at John and Alice. "We were at uni together. This guy here had a trick he used to do."

"It's not a trick," Alice heard Sherlock mutter quietly.

"He could look at you and tell you your whole life story."

"Yes, I've seen him do it," John said.

"I'm learning to," added Alice.

"Put the wind up everybody. We hated him," Sebastian continued. Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw Sherlock turning his head away and looking down, his face momentarily filling with pain. "You'd come down to breakfast in the Formal Hall, and this freak would know you'd been shagging the previous night."

"I simply observed," Sherlock muttered again.

"Go on, enlighten me. Two trips a month, flying all the way around the world – you're quite right. How could you tell?" Sherlock opened his mouth but Sebastian continued speaking. "You're gonna tell me there was, um, a stain on my tie from some special kind of ketchup you can only buy in Manhattan." Alice grinned.

"No, I..."

"Maybe it was the mud on my shoes!" Sherlock simply looked back at him for a moment before speaking.

"I was just chatting with your secretary outside. She told me." Curiously, Alice raised an eyebrow. That was a boring explanation. Sebastian laughed humorlessly. Sherlock smiled back at him with an equal lack of humour. Sebastian clapped his hands together, then became more serious.

"I'm glad you could make it over," he said. "We've had a break-in."

Sebastian lead them out of his office and across the trading floor towards another door.

"Sir William's office – the bank's former Chairman," he explained, "The room's been left here like a sort of memorial. Someone broke in late last night."

"Did they steal anything?" Alice asked, digging around for that small book she carried with her.

"Nothing. Just left a little message." He held his security card against the reader by the door to unlock it. He opened the door. Hanging on the plain white wall behind the large desk was a framed painted portrait of a man in a suit. Alice presumed it was the late Sir William Shad himself. On the wall to the left of the portrait someone had sprayed what looks like a graffiti 'tag' in yellow paint. The tag looked vaguely like a number 8 but with the top of the number left open, and above it was an almost horizontal straight line. Across the eyes of the portrait another almost horizontal straight line had been sprayed. Maybe because of the texture of the paper or perhaps because the 'artist' oversprayed the line, the yellow paint had run trails down the painting. Sebastian lead the way towards the desk and then stepped aside to allow Sherlock a clear view of the wall. John moved to stand on the other side of Sebastian, who looks at Sherlock expectantly while the detective stares in fixed concentration at the graffiti. Alice had a mobile in her hand. She snapped a photo of the graffiti.

Later they were back in Sebastian's office and he was showing the three the security footage of the office from the previous night.

"Sixty seconds apart," he said as he flicked back and 9 between the still image at 23:34:01 which shows the paint on the wall and on the portrait, and a minute earlier – 23:33:01 – when the wall and portrait were still clean. "So, someone came up here in the middle of the night, splashed paint around, then left within a minute."

"How many ways into that office?" Sherlock asked within a second.

"Well, that's where this gets really interesting."

Back in the reception area, Sebastian showed them a screen on a computer which had a layout of the trading floor and its surrounding offices. Each indicated door had a light against it showing its security status.

"Every door that opens in this bank, it gets logged right here," Sebastian explained. "Every walk-in cupboard, every toilet."

"And... that door didn't open last night?" Alice asked. Sebastian nodded.

"There's a hole in our security. Find it and we'll pay you – five figures." He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and takes out a cheque. "This is an advance. Tell me how he got in, there's a bigger one on its way."

"I don't need an incentive, Sebastian," stated Sherlock. He walked away, and Alice followed.

As Sherlock had returned to Sir William's office to take photographs on his mobile phone of the graffiti, Alice stood nearby, leaning against the he had taken several pictures, Sherlock turned around. He looked to his right where the floor-to-ceiling windows showed an impressive view of the nearby Swiss Re Tower, better known as 'The Gherkin', if Alice remembered correctly. Frowning and looking away in thought for a moment, he then walked over to the windows and pulled up the blinds which are covering what was revealed to be a door onto a small balcony. Opening the door he went out onto the balcony. Alice held the door open as she looked out at the fantastic view over London. Sherlock, however was looking down at the very long drop to the ground hundreds of feet below. Sherlock looked along the balcony and bites his lip thoughtfully before heading back inside.

Shortly afterwards, Sherlock was dancing. Well… he really wasn't, but it looked like that from Alice's point of view. But Sherlock really dancing never really crossed her mind before. Alice shook the thought out of her head as she watched the detective. On the trading floor he had ducked down behind a desk and now rose slowly upright, staring in concentration at the glass doorway to Sir William's office. He then ducked sideways and hurried across the floor, to the bemusement of both Alice and other traders. Sherlock continued to scamper around the floor, frequently scurrying sideways and ducking down behind desks before popping up again and peering at the doorway. He "danced" across the floor again and twirled around a column before backing towards an office on the other side of the floor. Stopping in that doorway, he wiggled about, his eyes still fixed on Sir William's office, then turned and went into the office and headed to the other side of the desk. Alice scampered after him. Standing directly behind the chair of whoever worked in that room, there was a clear view of the top of the painting and the new yellow slash across the portrait's eyes. Sherlock "danced" sideways across the room before coming back to his previous position, confirming that this is the only place on the trading floor where the damaged portrait can be seen. Looking around the room for some identification, he eventually went to the door where two signs were attached to the outside, one showing that this was the office of the Hong Kong Desk Head. He slid the top sign out of its holder and headed off, dragging Alice behind.

Not long afterwards, Sherlock was leading John and Alice back towards the escalators.

"Two trips around the world this month," John said after a long and awkward silence between the three. "You didn't ask his secretary; you said that just to irritate him." Sherlock smiled but didn't respond. This sparked Alice's curiosity.

"I have to agree with John," she said. "But how did you know about his trips?"

"Did you see his watch?" Sherlock asked.

"His watch?" repeated John.

"The time was right but the date was wrong. Said two days ago. Crossed the dateline twice but he didn't alter it."

"Within a month? How'd you get that part?"

"New Breitling. Only came out this February."

"Okay. So d'you think we should sniff around here for a bit longer?"

"Got everything I need to know already, thanks."

"How?" asked Alice. "All you did was look out a window and run around the office like a chicken with its head cut off." John shot a weird look at Alice. "What?"

"Didn't you see it?" Alice shook her head.

"No. Like I said, all I saw was you running around like a headless chicken." Sherlock sighed.

"That graffiti was a message for someone at the bank working on the trading floors. We find the intended recipient and…" It took a second for Alice to piece it together.

"And then they'll lead us to the person who sent it, right?"

"Obvious."

"Well, there's three hundred people up there," said John, "Who was it meant for?"

"Pillars."

"What?" Both John and Alice said at once.

"Pillars and the screens. Very few places you can see that graffiti from. That narrows the field considerably. And of course the message was left at eleven thirty-four last night. That tells us a lot."

"Does it?" said John. The trio made it down the escalator and went through the revolving doors and out onto the street. Alice stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat as she pieced together what was found.

"Er... the traders come to work at any hour," she said, going off the information she had seen, "I'm thinking that some of them trade with Hong Kong in the middle of the night." Then it clicked. "So... you're saying that the message was meant for someone who came in around midnight?" Sherlock nodded.

"Correct," he said. Sherlock held up the name card he had collected with the name facing the other two. It read Eddie Van Coon. "Not many Van Coons in the phonebook. Taxi!"

After a taxi ride, the three stood outside a block of flats. Sherlock pressed the door buzzer marked 'Van Coon'. Releasing it, he looks into the security camera above the buzzers, waited a couple of seconds, then pressed the buzzer again. There was no response.

"So what do we do now?" said John,

"Sit here and wait for him to come back?" Alice suggested nervously. Sherlock has looked at the number of buzzers on the wall and stepped back to look up the front of the building. He came back to the wall and looked at John and Alice triumphantly.

"Just moved in," he stated.

"What?" John asked, confused.

"The floor above. New label." Sherlock pointed to another buzzer which had a handwritten label saying, "Wintle".

"Could have just replaced it."

"Alice." The girl in question hummed a quick response. "How tall are you?" Alice raised an eyebrow at the question.

"I'm disappointed that you don't know my height," admitted Alice, "But I'm four foot, eight inches. Why?"

"Do you think you can make it through those windows?" Alice nodded before she was getting what was being implied.

"Sherlock, there is no force on Earth that could get me to crawl through a window ever again."

"Alice." Sherlock said far stricter than before. Alice sighed.

"Fine." She went up and pressed the buzzer labeled "Wintle".

"Hello?" A woman's voice crackled to life over the intercom. Alice turned to the camera with a little smile.

"Hello, miss," she said innocently. "My..." Alice took a quick look at John and Sherlock. "Family and I live in the flat just below you. I don't think we've met yet."

"No, well, uh, I've just moved in."

"Actually... I left my keys in the flat and my... guardians won't be home for a while." Alice bit down on her lip.

"D'you want me to buzz you in?" She nodded.

"Yes, thank you." Sherlock cleared his throat. Alice sighed. "Do you think I can also use your balcony for a quick second?"

"What?"

Not long afterwards, Alice somehow managed her way into the woman's flat and was standing on her balcony. She looked over it to the ground several floors below. Luckily for her, the top floor which she was on had balconies which only ran halfway across the front of the flat whereas the floor below had full-width balconies. The chances of her falling off were very slim. Then again, the first time she had done something like this she had fallen and broken her arm in the process. But, that was in the past.

Alice climbed over the side of the balcony and closed her eyes.

"I can't believe I'm doing this..." she muttered before she dropped down onto the balcony outside Van Coon's flat. Taking another look over the edge, she turned and reached for the handle of the door quickly. Alice found that it was surprisingly unlocked, which was a good thing or she would have to break the lock. And she didn't think there was enough money to replace it.

Alice went inside and walked carefully across the very elegantly decorated living room.

"Looks like being a trader pays well..." she commented. The room was littered white leather furniture, shiny black tables and minimal clutter. She looked at everything as she goes through the room, and glanced at a pile of books on a table. Alice walked through the kitchen, looking at the work surface before opening the fridge to reveal that it's full of nothing other than bottles of champagne. The front door to the flat buzzed, making her jump.

"Alice," said John from the other side of the door. Alice sighed for what seemed like the tenth time. She moved through the hall. "Alice, are you alright?"

Alice walked around until she came to a large door. She tried to open it, but found it was strangely locked.

"Yeah, any time you feel like letting us in."

"In a minute!" With no other option, Alice pulled a hair pin from her pocket and jammed it into the lock. With a few twists, it finally clicked. She opened the door and walked in. Alice covered her mouth to hold back a scream. A man in a suit and overcoat was lying on his back on the bed... dead. There was a pistol on the floor, and the man had a small bullet hole in his right temple. Alice turned quickly and ran to get both Sherlock and John.

Later, the police had been called and a photographer was taking pictures of the man's- whom was identified to be Van Coon himself- body lying on the bed. A forensics officer was dusting for fingerprints on the nearby mirror, and Alice was still trying to think about why on Earth the man was killed. Sherlock had taken his coat off and was in the bedroom putting on a pair of latex gloves. John stood beside him.

"D'you think he'd lost a lot of money?" He asked. "I mean, suicide is pretty common among City boys."

"We don't know that it was suicide," stated Sherlock.

"The door was locked, Sherlock, from the inside. I had to pick it," said Alice. "I also had to climb down from the balcony if you recall." Sherlock squatted down by a suitcase on the floor near the bed and opened the lid, looking at the contents

"Been away three days, judging by the laundry." Looking over his shoulder, Alice spotted a deep indentation in the clothing inside the case. Sherlock then straightened up and looks at the pair. "Look at the case. There was something tightly packed inside it."

"Thanks – I'll take your word for it," John said rather quickly.

"Is there was problem?" Alice asked.

"Yeah, I'm not desperate to root around some bloke's dirty underwear." Sherlock walked over to the foot of the bed.

"Those symbols at the bank – the graffiti," he said, "Why were they put there?"

"They could be a code," suggested Alice. "I used to use them all the time with a friend of mine."

"Obviously it is." Sherlock moved up to the body and carefully opened the man's jacket to look at his inside pockets. "Why were they painted? If you want to communicate, why not use e-mail?"

"Well, maybe he wasn't answering," said John.

"Oh good. You follow."

"No."

"Yes," Alice said simultaneously. Sherlock threw John a look before moving on to examine Van Coon's hands.

"What kind of a message would everyone try to avoid?" John frowned in confusion. "What about this morning – those letters you were looking at?"

"Bills." Sherlock gently pried Van Coon's mouth open. He pulled out a small black origami flower from inside.

"He was being threatened..." Alice said. Sherlock lifted an evidence bag to put the flower into it

"Not by the gas board," John added.

"... and see if you can get prints off this glass," a man voice said from outside the bedroom. A man – a plain clothed police officer who looked so young Alice felt he wasn't He that far in age from herself – walked into the bedroom. Sherlock turned and walked towards him.

"Ah, Sergeant. We haven't met," he said as he offered his hand to shake. The young man put his hands on his hips.

"Yeah, I know who you are; and I'd prefer it if you didn't tamper with any of the evidence," said the man. Lowering his hand, Sherlock gave the evidence bag to the officer. "Or that a little girl be in here either." Alice glared at him. Sherlock turned his best stroppy look on the man.

"Alice is my assistant. She is in no danger of contaminating the crime scene more than you or I." He sighed. "I've phoned Lestrade. Is he on his way?"

"He's busy. I'm in charge. And it's not Sergeant; it's Detective Inspector. Dimmock." Alice blinked. What did he just say? She didn't believe it was possible that this man was of the D.I. rank. He was far too young!

Dimmock walked out of the room. The boys and Alice followed him into the living room where he handed the bag to one of the forensics team.

"We're obviously looking at a suicide," he said.

"That does seem the only explanation of all the facts," John added as Sherlock took off the latex gloves and turned back to him.

"Wrong," said Sherlock. "It's one possible explanation of some of the facts." He turned to Dimmock. "You've got a solution that you like, but you're choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn't comply with it."

"Like?" Dimmock asked.

"The wound was on the right side of his head."

"And?"

"Van Coon was left-handed." He went into an elaborate mime as he demonstrated his point, pretending to try and point a gun to his right temple with his left hand. "Requires quite a bit of contortion."

"He was left-handed?" Alice repeated. Sherlock turned to her.

"Oh, I'm amazed you didn't notice. All you have to do is look around this flat." He pointed to the table beside the sofa. "Coffee table on the left-hand side; coffee mug handle pointing to the left. Power sockets: habitually used the ones on the left. Pen and paper on the left-hand side of the phone because he picked it up with his right and took down messages with his left. D'you want me to go on?" Alice shook her head.

"No. You've made your point."

"Oh, I might as well; I'm almost at the bottom of the list." Sherlock pointed to the kitchen. There's a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade because he used it with his left." He turned to Dimmock with an impatient look on his face. "It's highly unlikely that a left-handed man would shoot himself in the right side of his head. Conclusion: someone broke in here and murdered him. Only explanation of all the facts."

"But the gun," said Dimmock,"Why..."

"He was waiting for the killer. He'd been threatened." Sherlock walked away and started to put on his scarf, coat and gloves.

"What?"

"Today at the bank," John explained. "Sort of a warning."

"He fired a shot when his attacker came in," Sherlock continued.

"And the bullet?" asked Dimmock.

"Went through the open window."

"Oh, come on! What are the chances of that?!" Alice walked towards him a bit.

"Sherlock is never wrong," she stated. "Just wait until you get the ballistics report. I'm betting that the bullet in Van Coon wasn't fired from his gun."

"But if his door was locked from the inside, how did the killer get in?"

"Good! You're finally asking the right questions," Sherlock said condescendingly, as he dramatically slammed his hand into his glove. He turns and walked out. John looked round at Dimmock and then pointed apologetically towards the departing drama queen before following him. Alice just stuck her tongue out a bit at him before following.

The next day, Alice was pinning up the photographs of the graffiti that had been taken above the fireplace in 221B. John and Sherlock had headed out after they left Van Coon's flat, which left Alice alone. She had nothing else to do, so this seemed like a good way to pass the time.

Sherlock was sitting on one of the dining chairs with his back to the dining table. He had his fingers steepled under his chin and was staring at the photos as Alice pinned them to the wall. John was nowhere to be seen, having left a while ago.

Speaking of him, John walked in from the landing as if on cue and dropped his jacket onto his armchair.

"I said, 'Could you pass me a pen?'," said Sherlock without moving. John looked around the living room as if expecting that Sherlock was talking to Alice. The girl stopped and turned to him.

"Don't look at me," she said simply before turning back. "He asked you about an hour ago for one." John sighed.

"Didn't notice I'd gone out, then," said the doctor. He picked up a pen from the table beside his chair and, without even looking at Sherlock, tossed the pen in his direction. Sherlock lifted his hand and caught it without looking away from the photographs on the wall. John walked over to Alice to look more closely at the photos."Yeah, I went to see about a job at that surgery."

"How was it?" Sherlock asked.

"It's great. She's great." Alice froze and gave John a suspicious look.

"What?" She said.

"The job."

"No, I'm sure that I heard you say she."

"... it."

"Liar." Sherlock finally stopped staring at the photos to look at John suspiciously for a moment. He then jerked his head to his right.

"Alice, you can stop messing with the photographs," he said. "Here, have a look." John hummed a bit as he walked over to the table and looked at the web page on the open computer he had out on the table. The lead article on the 'Online News' page was headlined, "Ghostly killer leaves a mystery for police." Next to it was a photograph of the bald man.

"An intruder who can walk through walls murdered a man in his London apartment last night," Alice read aloud, "Brian Lukis, 41, a freelance journalist from Earl's Court was found shot in his fourth floor flat but all his doors and windows were locked and there were no apparent signs of a break in. A police spokesman said they are still uncertain how the assailant broke in..." She trailed off as the article was cut off from her vision.

"The 'intruder who can walk through walls,'" John repeated.

"Happened last night," explained Sherlock. "Journalist shot dead in his flat; doors locked, windows bolted from the inside – exactly the same as Van Coon." John straightened up.

"God. You think..."

"He's killed another one." Alice grinned. Now this just got far more exciting