August 23rd, 2010
221B Baker Street, London, England
Arthur sits at the desk, casually spinning around in the office chair he… liberated from Scotland Yard when Alfred's little policeman friends were off gawking at his body. It is a nice chair, or it is now that he's taken some of the stuffing out and shot it full of holes, and it spins nicely, without any of those horrendous noises the ones at the shops make.
Coming to a decision, he stops spinning and reaches for the cheap, disposable, untraceable mobile on his desk. If Alfred were alive, he muses, dialling a number he knows off by heart, he'd have a conniption if he knew what I was doing. Or he'd try to kill me. The phone takes an agonisingly long time to connect, and he's tempted to start spinning again, but he refrains from doing so on the grounds that any noise, no matter how soft, will probably be picked up, analysed and used to trace the call.
The person on the other end of the line finally picks up, and Arthur smiles. But then again, he thinks, it's Alfred's fault I'm so bored anyway.
'Braginsky speaking.'
"Hello. I heard you were in the market for criminal masterminds."