Chapter Two
The first thing that John realized when he woke up, was that he was in his warm bed. The second was that the ceiling he was currently staring at wasn't Mrs. Hudson's. The third was the image of a young girl who looked four years younger than her age, opening the door of the flat he shared with Sherlock and being dragged bodily up the stairs to his room. He shot up. "Shi...t...!" he groaned, burying his head in his hands.
Then he got out of bed, panicking slightly at the loss of his clothes. He wrapped a nightgown around his body and stumbled downstairs, rubbing his eyes. "Sherlock..."
Sherlock and Sasaki looked up at him from their place in the sitting room. John wasn't sure what horrified him the most: that Sherlock was conducting an experiment on the coffee table, that he was in the process of submerging a human arm in a container of acid, that he was doing it in the presence of a child, or the fact that Sasaki was watching the experiment with avid interest. "Sherlock...!" John's tone was clearly reproachful.
"I did try to tell him that acid was a hazard to the environment!" Sasaki defended herself. "He should use heated corrosion powder water, I hear that works just as well!" John's mouth dropped open in shock, then he closed it. Then he opened it again to speak, thought better of it, and closed it.
"Corrosion powder?" Sherlock questioned quizzically.
"I saw it done on a pig's limb, in a documentary." Sasaki grinned. "I've never tried it before, though. They said it strips the meat and leaves clean bone."
"It's easy to obtain the powder." Sherlock mused.
"And easy to dispose of the remains." Sasaki agreed.
"The bones?"
"Cremate them, crush them, smuggle it into someone else's cinerary urn. They won't know it's the remains of a stranger, nobody ever will." Sasaki suggested.
"But how will you get the ash into the urn without the undertaker's knowing?"
"Simple, you become the undertaker in question."
"That's just brilliant." Sherlock breathed in slight awe.
"You're thinking about killing someone?" John asked in subdued horror, although it was more of a statement than a question. Sherlock replied 'yes' and Sasaki answered 'no' simultaneously.
"Sherlock and I were merely brainstorming foolproof ways to kill and get away with it. The perfect murder." Sasaki kindly explained. "I'm an amateur writer in my free time, Sherlock has already introduced your blog to me." She grinned. "And I'm impressed!"
John rubbed his aching forehead. "Oh, um, thank you." he mumbled. "What about your parents? Shouldn't you be getting back to your hotel?" he then asked concernedly.
"Don't worry about it! I came to England alone, I just needed to use the laptop for a bit, post a few comments on Facebook, you know." John looked at the laptop Sasaki was gesturing to.
"Sherlock..." Sherlock raised his hands in mock defense.
"Alright! Fine! I'll use my own laptop, then, next time!" Sasaki just shook her head amusedly and was quick to apologize to John.
"It's alright, really, only Sherlock is to blame here." John grumbled. "I'm surprised, though, you two seem to actually be getting along." Sherlock and Sasaki glanced at each other and grimaced.
"No, he's too arrogant." Sasaki whined.
"Too passive... and ignorant."
"Well, I'm only sixteen! Forgive me if I haven't the intelligence you have!" With their brief banter finished, Sasaki excused herself to find Mrs. Hudson and steal a few scones for breakfast.
"She always does that. Why does she do that?" Sherlock waved in the general direction in which Sasaki disappeared.
"Do...?" John coaxed, raising an eyebrow.
"She... knows things!" Sherlock stressed the verb. "Corrosion Powder? Really! It's not natural!" He was, for all the world, grinning.
Then his phone chimed, signaling an incoming mail. Sherlock picked it up and his eyes lit like Christmas lights. "It's from Lestrade! He says to come to Scotland Yard immediately!" He jumped up, grabbing his coat. "You coming, John?" And John knew he would.
"Where is it?" Sherlock demanded eagerly when he caught sight of the DI. Lestrade let out a sigh.
"There... " The constable bit his lips into a thin line like he always did when he was stressed about something. Sherlock entered the evidence room and his eyes positively sparkled.
"That's..." For one glorious moment, Sherlock Holmes, the man who thought too fast for his words to properly catch up with him, was at a loss for what to say. "That's... new." John peered around his flatmate's tall, bony frame and gasped.
"That is..." John felt the rare wish to hurl. "Is that..." John turned away in horror, Lestrade was right to call in Sherlock.
There was not a single inch of flesh on the skeleton, although the skeletal structure itself seemed clean, fresh, polished almost. There was a clear, glass bin on the table near the skeleton's head. It contained two bright blue eyes, the azure colour of the sea on a sunny day. Sherlock stared at the optical organs from his spot at the foot of the table with a morbid fascination.
"Where was this found?" he demanded.
"It was buried in a cemetery, placed in a previously buried coffin."
"Two skeletons in one coffin?" John didn't understand why Sherlock had felt the need for a confirmation like that.
"Two bodies in one grave, yes." Lestrade replied grimly.
"And the eyes?"
"In the coffin with the two skeletons." Finally, Sherlock tore his gaze away from the eyes to look at Lestrade.
"Why was the coffin unearthed in the first place?"
"One of the gravediggers working there noticed that the earth at that grave was upturned recently and thought it suspicious. He called in authorities to investigate." Lestrade sighed. "What do you think of it?"
Sherlock donned elastic gloves as to not unknowingly tamper with evidence, he ran a hand down the skeleton's skull. "This victim, male, young, probably athletic, was killed by a single blow to the back of the head." He clicked his tongue sharply as he made a show of tapping the cavity. "Cracked his skull wide open, was dead before he hit the ground." He ran his fingers delicately over the circular cavities of the eyes. "No scratches, the killer obviously knew what he was doing, he probably even had access to the right tools to extract the eyes." He stooped over the table and began examining the skeletal structure. "The killer was careful not to break any bones, why?"
Sherlock unfolded his frame and began pacing along the length of the room. "He must've had an isolated spot where he could murder his victim and go through the tedious ritual of disposing the body." he murmured aloud to himself. "How long ago was the earth upturned? Was grass growing there?" Lestrade shook his head.
"The gravediggers all agreed that the ground was undisturbed the day before."
"Which means that there must be more than one killer in this case, digging down through six feet to reach the coffin would take longer time than a single killer would have." Sherlock rambled off.
"What about that idea that Sasaki came up with? What if this group of killers consisted of the undertaker and gravediggers? They would have sufficient time, space, and isolation." Sherlock shot a look of contempt at him.
"Then, why would they report that the grave was disturbed, in the first place, John? Don't be ridiculous! Besides, we must bend theory to fact, not fact to theory. You should know that already." He turned back to look at the examination table, deep in thought. "It just doesn't work that way." He tapped a finger against the examination table. "There's something I'm not seeing here..."
Then he looked at Lestrade with a sly look on his face. The DI knew that look all too well. "Sherlock, no..." John looked puzzled, he'd been living with Sherlock for a while now, was there still something he wasn't aware of?